• But for this morning and beginning today, we’re going to be for the next months and years, no doubt, looking at the pastoral epistles, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus. 

• And I have had an eager heart in the months and months of preparation to begin to teach these books and am now very excited that we can begin together this morning.

• We’re going to be looking just to the introduction and the first two verses as we begin. 

• Would you look at your Bible? I’ll read them to you as a setting for what we’re going to be saying this morning. 

• First Timothy chapter 1 beginning at verse 1, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the commandment of God our Savior and Christ Jesus our hope, unto Timothy, genuine child in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

• I want you to notice one phrase which will be the key phrase for our discussion of this greeting this morning. 

• It is the phrase at the beginning of verse 2, “Timothy, genuine child in the faith.” 

• I want to talk about what it is to be a true child in the faith.

• Just as the supreme joy for a parent is to give birth to a physical child who is all that the parent’s heart could ever hope for and to see that child mature and grow and develop and become fully the person – the person that you prayed he or she would become, reflecting all the perfection of human physical characteristic and all the possibility of character, just as that is the supreme joy for a parent, so the supreme joy for a spiritual parent is to be able to say about someone that they are a genuine child in the faith. 

• Just as you would hope as a Christian, as a Christ-exalting, God-honoring Spirit-filled Christian parent that your child would be all that a physical child could be in the fullness of physical and mental and emotional and social stature, so it is that spiritually all of us would desire to raise one who would be truly a genuine child in the faith that is a real reflection of our spiritual life and values.

• And for Paul to so designate Timothy sets Timothy aside in a very special way. He was Paul’s very genuine reflection. He was a true child of the apostle in terms of his spiritual life. 

• He was all that any discipler could ever hope for, could ever pray for. 

• He was what Paul would have wished him to be in every sense. He is the child of Paul’s ministry. 

• He is the protégé; he is the offspring; he is the spiritual son which Paul has raised, and he is reflective of all that Paul would desire that he should be. And it is to this marvelous man that this and the second epistle is written.

• For us it is the beginning of a new adventure, an adventure with the Word of God, an in-depth study of rich and profound truth that are going to come to us, first of all, in 1 Timothy. 

• The epistle itself deals with many great subjects, subjects which were needful for Timothy to know in his ministry to the church. 

  • It deals with, for example, error in the church and how that error is to be confronted, the proper pattern for church leadership. 

  • The importance of sound theology and the centrality of teaching is a major theme. 

  • The call for godliness and holiness in living and ministry,

  • the proper attitudes and roles of men and women in the church, 

  • how to deal with discipline in the church, 

  • how to confront issues in the church, 

  • how to deal with a sinning leader in the church,

  • the correction of problems that threaten the church, 

these are themes dealt with in 1 Timothy, also in 2 Timothy and also in Titus.

• I might suggest to you that the key verse in 1 Timothy is chapter 3 verse 15, you might want to look at it. 

• We’re just going to get a good overview today. First Timothy 3:15, Paul says, “If I tarry long that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” 

• And in verse 14 he says that’s why I’m writing, in order that you may know how to behave in the church. 

• The first epistle to Timothy then is all about behavior in the church. 

• It is all about the church and how the church is to conduct itself and how its leaders are to focus on the church. 

• It’s an essential, essential epistle.

• Now as I said, as we begin to look at this great teaching on how we are to behave and how the leaders are to behave in the church, we begin with a key phrase in verse 2, true child or genuine child in the faith. Now that particular phrase will act for us as a doorway through which we will enter an overview of the whole letter.

• Now let’s look at a little bit of the introduction itself. It is a standard format. Suppose I need only to remind you that when the New Testament writers wrote their epistles they did not invent some new format. They used the existing Greco-Roman format for letters and that format you see here. 

• It begins with the author and his identification and then the recipient and his identification. 

• In this case, “Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Savior and Christ Jesus our hope,” that’s the author and his identification. And then it’s always followed by the recipient, Timothy and his identification, “true child in the faith.” 

• And then comes a greeting or salutation, “Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” You’ll notice in both cases where you have Christ Jesus in the Authorized it says Jesus Christ. 

• The better manuscripts reverse those and that’s the way I read them. So it is a standard format. It is a very simple format. It never really varies in Paul’s letters. The only thing he may do is extrapolate a little bit on who he is. 

• Instead of just saying Paul an apostle, sometimes he’ll say Paul an apostle, and then he’ll kind of define that as he does here. And he has something in mind when he does that. But that is the traditional contemporary format for a letter. It is not an unusual one.

• So in a normal way Paul writes a letter to Timothy. It is first and foremost – and you need to keep this in mind when you study the Scripture – it is first and foremost a letter from one man to another man. While we look at it as a book of the Bible and its reaching far beyond its original destination in the life of Timothy, we must go back to the realization that it began as a single man’s passionate call to another man in ministry that needed to be applied to the situation in existence. 

• And so we go back to that and that’s how we understand what a book in the Bible means. If we try to interpret it only in a contemporary setting, we are at a loss as to its significance. So we go back and we ask what was happening in the life of Paul, what was happening in the life of Timothy, what was going on in the church in Ephesus where Timothy was then working, and what was it that caused this letter to be written the way it was written? And out of that we draw those things which are applicable to our own understanding.

• First of all, may I note the name Paul? 

• A familiar name to any student of the New Testament, Paulus in Latin, a favorite name among Cilicians, and Paul was from Tarsus a city in Cilicia. 

• It means little or small, and it may have been an indication that at his birth he was small, and it may be an indication that even then when the letter was written he was small – man not of particularly striking stature nor of particularly marked appearance.

• In fact he was criticized. If you read 2 Corinthians chapter 10 verses 1 and 10 – read that section there in between if you will – but particularly verse 1 and 10, it indicates to us that Paul did not have anything about him that was particularly striking. 

• And the sort of athletic-minded bodily preoccupied Greeks would have looked down on his rather groveling slavish common low stature. 

• They use the word tapeinos in 2 Corinthians 10:1 to refer to him and it would be an indication of his weak, unimpressive, rather sickly and small stature. So it may be that he was small from the very beginning.

• But his name Paul sort of loses that initial significance and he becomes to us a man of tremendous stature, a man of comprehensive capability, a man uniquely used by God in the history of redemption, a man who stands head and shoulders above all men. 

• No matter what he was physically, spiritually he is to us a giant, and the very name Paul when you say it sort of belongs in massive granite block letters.

• And so it is Paul who also was named Saul. 

• And it was not uncommon for people in that particular culture to have both a Greek name – Paul, and a Jewish name – Saul, especially because he was a Jew. His father was a Jew.

• And though he was born in a Greek-Roman environment outside of the land of Israel – born in Tarsus, born in a city which was a part of the Roman Empire – he became, when he was born, a citizen of Rome by birth, his father being a Roman citizen. 

• So it was natural for him to have a Jewish name, because he was of the tribe of Benjamin and the most prominent person in the tribe of Benjamin was Saul, so he was given that name. 

• But it was also Paul and that was the name to identify him with the Greek-Roman culture into which he was born. He is called Saul, by the way, in the book of Acts until the thirteenth chapter and the ninth verse, where he first begins to embark on his ministry to the Gentiles, and from them on he is never called Saul again. 

• He was Saul in a Jewish context until he became the apostle to the Gentiles, from then on he is known as Paul.

• Now his background is very easy to identify, and I only want to do it briefly. Philippians chapter 3 – and you can study this yourself – but he gives a testimony as to his background and who he was. Philippians 3:5 he says, “Circumcised the eighth day” – in other words, a very traditional and orthodox Jew went through circumcision – “born of the stock of Israel of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews.” 

• In other words, he was fully Jewish not only in terms of his physiology but also in terms of his commitment. He was zealous for his Judaism. As touching the law he became a Pharisee. His relationship to the law was not one of looseness or indifference. He was an avid legalistic Pharisee. In terms of his zeal for his Pharisaic Judaistic religion, he was so zealous that he persecuted the church which he saw as a threat to Judaism. In terms of the righteousness which is in the law, he was outwardly blameless. He conformed his life to the law in a Pharisaic interpretation. He was zealous for that to the point where he fought against and actually slaughtered those who were, in his own mind, a threat to Judaism.

• We find this demonstrated in the seventh chapter of the book of Acts. And you remember there the record of the stoning of Stephen, and it says that Stephen was being stoned. Of course the Jews were angry at the message that he had preached and they were gnashing on him with their teeth, and they began to stone him. And in the process, verse 58, “They cast him out of the city, stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul.” Now this is Saul’s – really his introduction into the picture. He is there at the stoning of Stephen. So zealous is he for the elimination of Christianity which he sees as a threat to existing Pharisaic Judaism, and it indeed was, that he is there as a part of those who stone Stephen.

• Chapter 8 of Acts, verse 1, goes on, “Saul was consenting unto his death.” He was not an innocent bystander. 

• He was a part of it. “And also at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem, and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria except the apostles.” Then in verse 3 it says, “Saul made havoc of the church, entering into every house and haling men and women, committing them to prison.” And that’s what scattered them abroad. 

• So here was a Jew of the Jews, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a man committed to a Pharisaic interpretation of the law, a man so zealous of his Judaism that he was slaughtering people who were not following properly in the path that he thought was the path of righteousness. 

• He was breathing out threatenings and slaughters against the church, the Scripture says, and making havoc.

• This man, as we find later on in the book of Acts in chapter 9, was on the way to Damascus to carry out further persecution, when he was stopped in his tracks, blinded by Christ Himself, saved, called to the ministry, and baptized.

• He was then sent out to Nabatean Arabia, where for several years, he wandered in the wilderness receiving from the Lord preparation for ministry. 

• He came back. The church was afraid of him, because they remembered his reputation. 

• He was introduced to the church by Barnabas and he was accepted, and then became a pastor of a church in Antioch along with other men listed in chapter 13 of Acts verse 1. 

• He was one of those pastors in Antioch. As you read further into the chapter, he along with Barnabas, another of those five pastors in Antioch, was separated for mission work. 

• And in Acts 13 he then is sent to reach the world, the Gentile world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

• A remarkable man who in Galatians chapter 1 affirms that he did not receive his revelations, he did not receive his gospel, he did not receive his teaching from men. 

• Nobody taught it to him, not even the apostles, but it was given him directly by Jesus Christ. 

• Christ saved him; Christ called him into the ministry; and Christ gave him His revelation. 

• It is this man who is writing the letter. 

• This man with a strong Jewish heritage, a strong Pharisaic background, a zealot for the law, who is now an apostle of Christ Jesus by the commandment of God our Savior in Christ Jesus our hope. He is the one who writes.

• Need we say anything about the word apostle? 

• It means one who is sent – one who is sent. 

• In fact, Kenneth Wuest says the verb apostellō from which this noun comes means to send off one on a commission, to do something as one’s personal representative with credentials furnished. 

• The simplest way to translate it would be envoy or ambassador, someone who goes on a mission bearing the credentials of the one who sent him. In its widest sense, an apostle could be anybody sent – anybody. 

• It could be even a person sent as an ambassador or an envoy in a secular environment, in a political environment. In the widest sense it’s just a general word, meaning someone sent under commission with a mission to carry out.

• In the New Testament sense, it is used of one who was an ambassador for Christ carrying the gospel. 

• And there were many apostles in that sense. 

• Barnabas is called an apostle in Acts 14:14. 

• And there are others in 1 Corinthians 15:7. 

• It is not just restricted to Paul or even to the Twelve. 

• There are apostles in the New Testament beyond the Twelve who were sent with the message of the gospel. 

• In 2 Corinthians 8:23 they are called apostles of the churches, a very important term. 

• In Philippians 2:25 Epaphroditus is called an apostle of the Philippians. 

• So there are apostles in the very general sense of preachers who are articulate the gospel.

• In Romans 16:7, “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen, my fellow-prisoners, who are of note among the apostles.” 

• Andronicus and Junia then are called messengers or ambassadors or envoys. 

• In Galatians, I believe, there’s another reference in chapter 1 verse 19, it says, “Other of the apostles saw I none except James the Lord’s brother.” 

• Well James the Lord’s brother wasn’t one of the original Twelve, so he wasn’t an apostle in that sense, but he is called there an apostle in the broader sense of one who is an ambassador with the gospel of Christ. They then would be apostles of the churches.

• But there were twelve, with the addition of Matthias when Judas was disqualified, and then there was one other named Paul who are not apostles of the churches, but they are Apostles of Christ Jesus. 

• And that is a unique designation which sets apart the Twelve plus Paul as unique apostles. 

• We might say with a capital A. 

• These men were different than the apostles of the churches. 

• That is they were not sent by the churches. They were sent by Christ Himself.

• They were taught by Christ Himself, as Paul says of himself in Galatians 1:12.

• And that’s why here he says, “I am an apostle of Christ Jesus.” 

• These men were called and chosen and sent personally by Jesus Christ. 

• You’ll remember that the Twelve were chosen by Christ, that Paul was chosen by Christ. 

• “A chosen vessel,” the Lord said to him, to bring light to the Gentiles. They not only were chosen and sent by Christ, but these apostles were witnesses of Christ personally, witnesses of His words and His deeds and His resurrection.

• You could not be an Apostle, with a capital A, unless you had seen the risen Christ. 

• You say, did Paul see the risen Christ? Yes, he saw Him in glory on the Damascus Road, and he saw him two other times in exalted visions that God gave him. They were eye witnesses of the risen Christ.

• Thirdly, these Apostles, with a capital A, were gifted uniquely by the Holy Spirit to impart divine truth. 

• It was to them that Jesus said, “When the Spirit comes He will lead you into all truth . . . and bring all things to your remembrance, whatever I have said unto you,” John 14:26 and John 15:26. 

• So they were apostles who called, commissioned and sent by Christ, apostles who saw Christ, heard His words and saw Him after His resurrection, apostles uniquely gifted by Christ for the proclamation of divine truth through direct revelation.

• And then finally, they were apostles who had the ability to cast out demons and heal the sick. 

• They had the ability to do signs and wonders and mighty deeds which are called in 2 Corinthians 12 “the marks of an apostle.” 

• And in Hebrews 2:3 and 4 they were able to do signs and wonders and manifest gifts of the Spirit as confirmation of the message they preached. In Ephesians 2:20 it calls them foundation. 

• The church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. So Paul then, in simply giving this title – an apostle, would not tell us as much as we need to know, and so he adds an apostle not of the church but of Christ Jesus.

• And may I suggest an interesting note? The words Christ Jesus are usually in the reverse order. Only in the ministry and teaching and writing of Paul do we find them in this order, Christ Jesus. Usually it’s the other way around. 

• And there, I believe, is a reason for that. May I suggest to you that whenever you read James or Peter or John, it is always Jesus Christ. And it may well reflect the fact that for them their first acquaintance with Jesus was indeed as Jesus the man. It wasn’t until later that it became apparent to them that He was also the living incarnate Son of God. And the word Jesus is His earthly name – rom the Old Testament Joshua or Jehoshua which means Jehovah saves – but still it was His human name.

• Then came Christ which is the name that is His name of Messiahship. It’s the word anointed. It speaks of Him as sovereign, as King, as Lord. It was not until later that the disciples who first knew Him as Jesus came to understand that He was Christ. 

• But for Paul, the first time Paul ever met Him he met Him in His glorified state in a post-resurrection vision of glory, and so for Paul it is Christ and then it is to understand that that Christ whom he met was none other than the human Jesus. I don’t want to read too much into it, but it’s a nice demonstration of Paul’s perspective, and we find it only characteristic of Paul to reverse those.

• Now why does Paul take such pains to establish his apostleship like this to Timothy? We could understand if he was writing to the church at Ephesus where Timothy is now busy or other churches in Asia-Minor to which Timothy no doubt also was ministering. We could understand if he was trying to lay some kind of weight on his authority with a church but why does he make this statement with Timothy? Does Timothy need to be convinced? Obviously he did not. Timothy knew of Paul’s authority, but it is because Timothy is going to need to enforce these things in the church that Paul has the weight placed upon his own apostleship. Timothy is an ambassador. 

• Timothy, in a sense, is a representative of Paul. And in order for Timothy to have all the leverage that he needs to get his message across, it is important for Paul to lay down some heavy reminders about his own authority. The letter comes to strengthen Timothy’s hand in what is a difficult situation.

• You say, was it a difficult situation in which Timothy ministered? Extremely difficult – extremely difficult. Originally when Paul and Timothy went to Ephesus, the first thing Paul had to do is in chapter 1 verse 20. He had to take Hymenaeus and Alexander and deliver them to Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme. He had to remove two very key leaders in the church. For all we know they may have been pastor-teachers in that church, they may have been overseers in that church. But they were teaching heresy and they had made shipwreck, verse 19 says, of the faith. And when Paul went in there what he did was eliminate those two guys, and then he set Timothy in the leadership and left. And now he’s writing back to Timothy because he knows there will be great difficulty in setting in order what’s going on in that church because of the influence of false teachers, false doctrine. And so to strengthen Timothy’s hand he affirms that this comes authoritatively from one who was commissioned not by a church but by Christ Jesus Himself – Christ Jesus Himself.

• Now he’s not through with this affirmation. “Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus” – now he gives us another strong statement about why he’s writing – “by the commandment of God our Savior and Christ Jesus our hope unto Timothy.” Now he is not only an apostle by the commandment of God our Savior and Christ our hope, but he is writing by the commandment of God our Savior and Christ our hope. What he is really saying here is not only is my commission based upon God’s purpose, but my letter is also, so you better listen to what it said. It’s a strong word – a strong word. It’s as if he said, “I have a direct command from God and Christ to write this letter, Timothy. Now carry this out.” It puts a great burden on Timothy, it puts a great burden on the church who no doubt would have heard that letter read to them.

• Now just a couple of notes. The word commandment here is epitagē and it refers to a royal commandment. It refers to the commandment from a monarch or a king which is not negotiable. It’s not an object for discussion. He is under orders from the sovereign of the universe. And now Timothy is under orders from the sovereign of the universe and so is the congregation to which Timothy carries out the ministry. Usually, and I think for many people who have studied 1 Timothy, this somehow gets overlooked. But usually Paul would refer to himself as Paul an apostle by the will of God. Doesn’t that sound familiar? By the will of God. And that’s true. Such as in 2 Timothy where that’s exactly what he says, “An apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God according to the promise of life,” and so forth. But here he doesn’t talk about the will of God and the promise of God. He talks about the commandment of God because there are some things that are in great disarray in this church. This church has been around long enough to have problems, false teaching, sin. And so he comes on very strong, speaking from commandments. And his orders come from to beautiful phrases, “God our Savior and Christ Jesus our hope.” God our Savior and Christ Jesus our hope. Marvelous, marvelous phrases.

• You know someone once said, and I think it’s really a great thing to remember, that Christianity is a religion of personal pronouns. I like that. We read it in the Psalm that I read to you this morning. My own God; God our Savior; Christ our hope. Ours is not a belief in some distant deity to be appeased, someone we fear to touch or draw nigh unto, ours is a faith that involves intimacy, possession. Notice that Paul says “God our Savior and Christ our hope,” and therefore links God and Christ. This is an allusion to deity on the part of Christ. He links together as co-equal as the source of his divine commission God and Christ. Now this is most important.

• Starting in the gospel account moving all the way through the New Testament you will find that Jesus repeatedly links Himself up with God. Of the over 70 times that He refers to God in terms of His communion with God and talking to God, only one time does He call Him anything other than – what? – Father. And He does that in order to emphasize that they are of the same essence, like begets like. In fact when He said in John 5 that I work and My Father works and linked Himself with God in common essence and common privilege, the Jews became infuriated and said, “He’s making Himself equal with God.” God is always designated as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, God and Christ are inseparably linked.

• And so what Paul is doing here, by saying God our Savior and Christ our hope, is linking Christ and God to the same essence, therefore articulating the deity of Jesus Christ. And I think that was very important at the outset because apparently it was under question among some of the people to whom Timothy ministered. Chapter 3 verse 16 he says, “And without controversy” – somehow in Ephesus there was some controversy about this. There was some discussion about this. But there shouldn’t be for – “great is the mystery of godliness that God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the nations, believed on the world and received up into glory.” That’s a creedal description of the work of Christ. Apparently there were some who were even attacking the deity of Christ, and there is a necessary reminder that there’s no controversy on that issue. God was manifest in the flesh. And so God our Savior and Christ our hope linked together the Father and the Son in common life. And that’s as it ought to be. As I’ve said, that is a ringing theme throughout the gospel record – those two are one.

• In Matthew 11:27, “All things are delivered unto Me by My Father. No man knows the Son but the Father. Neither knows any man the Father except the Son and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him.” That’s a common kind of statement Jesus makes to link Himself inseparably with God. And you can always find in false religious systems the denial of the deity of Jesus Christ. There must have been an aberrant Christology. There must have been an attack on the character of Christ.

• And then he also says, “God our Savior,” I suppose there are some people who believe that – and we know about them. Liberal theologians have many of them acquiesce to this view – that the God of the Old Testament is an angry, mad, vengeful, furious, wrathful God who wants to destroy everybody, but Jesus Christ came along and appeased Him. The idea that God is a God of anger and judgment and fury, and Christ is the loving gentle Savior who comes and appeases this angry God. Nothing could be further from the truth. God is our Savior and salvation began not with Christ but with – whom? – with God. It was God who master planned salvation from the very beginning – God our Savior.

• That, by the way, is a very interesting phrase that appears only in the pastoral epistles. It is a unique phrase to the pastoral epistles, but is derived from the Old Testament. Throughout the Old Testament the designations are very clear that God is a Savior. And I don’t want to belabor the point but just to mention that repeatedly in the Old Testament the text of Scripture speaks about God saving, God reaching out in salvation. For example, were you to look at the Psalms – see if I can mention a couple that come to mind – Psalm 25:5, “Lead me in Thy truth and teach me. For Thou art the God of my salvation.” This is not foreign to God. This is God’s desire. “The Lord,” verse 1 of 27 says in the Psalms, “The Lord is my light and my” – what? – “salvation.” Verse 9 it says, “Thou hast been my help. Leave me not neither forsake me, O God of my salvation.” And Psalm 42, is it, verse 5, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted in me? Hope thou in God. For I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.” In other words, God is a God of salvation. God is a God of grace. God is a God of deliverance. That the Old Testament makes abundantly clear.

• In Habakkuk 3:18, “I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.” So we want to keep in mind that God is not an angry God being appeased by a loving Christ, but God is a Savior. In Luke 1 – do you remember this? – “And Mary said, ‘My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.’” That was the expression of one who wanted to offer worship to God – God the Savior. In Jude 25, “To the only God our Savior.” So, this phrase basically comes from an Old Testament perspective. God is the source of salvation. And we must never think of God wanting to damn men and Christ wanting to save them from God’s damning designs. God is our Savior.

• Now there may have been some reason among the Ephesians for Paul to say this. There may have been some who were teaching that God was not interested in salvation. That also kind of makes sense, because of chapter 2 verse 3, it says there in 1 Timothy, “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who will have all men to be” – what? – “saved.” So there may also have been – it’s very difficult, and I might as well say this at the beginning, it’s very difficult to reconstruct the error in the Ephesian church to which Paul writes. We really can’t – we can’t get a handle on it. It’s very elusive. It has Jewish elements and it also has Hellenistic or Greek elements. Some kind of false religion was moving through that congregation and threatening the church. And of course Ephesus was a flag-ship church, sort of leading all the other churches of Asia Minor, and it was important to keep it corrected. But it must have been that somewhere along the line there was some questioning about whether God was really Savior, because it’s repeated by Paul. The only place he ever uses it, as I said, is in the pastoral epistles. It must have been of some issue. So God is our Savior. By the way, chapter 1 verse 11 emphasizes it in other terminology, “According to the glorious good news from the blessed God.” Again emphasizing that God has given us the good news.

• So beloved, what we want you to understand is Paul is simply saying that salvation began with God and was brought to us through Christ. God our Savior; that’s past tense; that’s the source. Christ our hope; that’s the future promise. God designed the plan, and Christ brought it to pass, and He is our hope. The reason we can hope in the future is because of what Christ has done. Right? Our future hope is tied to Jesus Christ. The salvation that God planned and God designed is realized in Christ Jesus through His death and resurrection. He has become our hope for future glory. In Philippians chapter 3 verse 20, “Our citizenship is in heaven from which also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” We’re looking for Him to come and change our vile bodies and make it like His glorious body. He’s our hope – He’s our hope. Colossians 1:27 says, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” First John 3:2, “When we see Him we’ll be like Him. And whoever has this hope purifies himself.”

• So apparently there were some errorists, some false teachers, some heretics in this church that Timothy was laboring with, and they were wanting to rob the church of salvation. They were defining a God who was not a Savior. Maybe it was an incipient Gnosticism where God was a distant being who started everything and was far off and didn’t care, and there were a series of emanating sub-gods off of Him through which we would try to go and get some appeasement, and Jesus was one who would go to this angry indifferent God and sort of appease Him and make things better for us. Whatever it was, we really can’t label it, there must have been some who were attacking the very essence of God’s redeeming love and some who also were attacking the character and deity and work of Jesus Christ.

• And so even in the introduction there are allusions to this. He says in verse 15, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” He emphasizes the work of Christ, the gospel saving work of Christ. And again as I mentioned in chapter 3 verse 16, again he mentions the work of Christ. In chapter 4 verse 10, again another allusion to this. “We labor and suffer reproach because we trust in the living God who is” – what? – “the Savior of all men.” There must have been some denial of this, especially of those that believe. Chapter 6 verse 14, “Keep this commandment without spot, unrebukable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Which in His times He shall show who is the blessed and only potentate, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” And again there’s another allusion to the deity of Christ, the Saviorhood of Christ and so forth, in talking about the fact that He’s going to come in glory at His great appearing, and so forth and so on. So there must have been some argument about the Saviorhood of God and the coming of Christ and the hope of the future and so forth.

• So the letter then has great import, because there are some very basic things that issue here, like the fact that God is a loving God who wants to save and like Christ is the Son of God, God in human flesh who has died for us and so forth. I mean the very issues of salvation are at stake in this letter. So the letter comes then with a heavy emphasis on authority because there has to be an understanding among those people that this letter is coming from one who was commissioned by God and Christ and one who is writing by the direct will of God and Christ to speak to issues which are at stake in that church.

• And isn’t it sad to think about the fact that here we are about the middle of the sixties, about 64 A.D., we’re about 30 years away from the death of Jesus Christ, and already inside the church there are those who would deny the loving, redeeming, saving plan of God and the deity of Jesus Christ? This is 30 years after His death, and already that’s not outside the church, that’s in the church. And who do you think brought it in? Take a wild guess. That’s the work of the adversary. And so we learn what Paul learned very early, and especially working with the Ephesian church, which he had warned already earlier before this was ever written, that when I leave you’re going to have problems. Remember that in Acts 20? Perverse men are going to rise from within you. Wolves are going to come in and try to mess you up. “I know it will happen as soon as I leave,” he said. “And I commend you to the Word of His grace which is able to build you up. I know what will happen.” And sure enough, he left and it happened. And it happened so extensively that by the nineties when John wrote the Revelation, the letter to Ephesus was that you for all intents and purposes have left your first – what? – love. The Ephesian church became the victim of error initially, and then apparently it got its act together under Timothy, corrected the error and then became a victim of apathy and indifference.

• And it’s an old story, beloved, the enemy will work on the church in whatever way the church will allow it. If the enemy cannot corrupt the theology, the enemy will bring apathy. And here we have a chronolog of this Ephesian church. First this a glowing and exciting and thrilling church in its beginnings. It becomes the church to which Paul gives three years of his life to lay the foundations. The church to which he gives Timothy for oversight and leadership among its already established leaders at this particular time. But in the process of moving from the ministry of Paul till the time that Timothy has come there, in those very few years, maybe ten or twelve years at the most, the church has already reached a place where heresy is filling the place. Timothy apparently was able to set that right. And in a few years after that, the church has become totally apathetic and lost its first love. It’s a frightening thing to think about. But the reason the New Testament gives us these letters is so that we can continually be correcting the same things that will always exist in the life of the church.

• Well it’s from Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the commandment of God our Savior and Christ our hope. And then verse 2 says, “Unto Timothy.” The name is made up of two Greek words. One means to honor and the other is the word for God. Timothy means one who honors God. It’s a beautiful name – one who honors God or he who honors God. No doubt it was given to him by his mother and grandmother who must have been devout Jews, because according to 2 Timothy they taught him the Scriptures from a child. I believe that it’s most likely his father who was a pagan, who was a Greek not a Jew, was not a Christian, not a believer, and may well have been dead at this particular time. But it’s certainly not a factor in Timothy’s spiritual progress. The factors were his mother and grandmother and perhaps they had named him ‘he who honors God’ wishing with all their hearts that he would indeed live up to his name, which in fact he did. His grandmother’s name was Lois, according to 2 Timothy 1:5, and his mother’s name was Eunice, and they had carefully and faithfully taught him the Word of God. In fact in 2 Timothy 3:15, “From a child you have known the holy Scripture.” So they gave him a name of great, great significance.

• Timothy, this young man, was a beloved and trusted companion of the apostle Paul. In fact, probably more than any other was the protégé, the number one product, of Paul’s ministry – his disciple, his replacement. The reason I say that is 1 Corinthians chapter 4, in verse 16 as he writes to the Corinthians, he says, “I beseech you, be ye followers of me.” Pattern your life after me. “And because I want this” – this is marvelous. Because I want you to be just like me – “I sent you Timothy.” Isn’t that great? I want you to be like me, so I sent you Timothy. You say, well why does he do that?” “Who is my beloved son and faithful in the Lord, who will bring you into remembrance of my ways.” In other words, I want you to be like me, so I’m sending you Timothy who is exactly like me. He’ll bring you into remembrance of my ways. He does things the way I do. He is my child in the faith.

• This marvelous man, Timothy, who was with Paul for up to 20 years from the time of his conversion as a man in his late teens to the time of about 35 years of age when he’s receiving this letter. All of that time he’s been with Paul in some kind of ministry with the exception of the time that he sort of seems to disappear during Paul’s imprisonment. He was left behind at Berea with Silas when Paul escaped to Athens and later joined Paul there. In due time he came to Athens in Acts 18. He was sent as Paul’s emissary to Macedonia in Acts 19. He was there when the collection from the churches was being taken to Jerusalem with Paul in Acts 20. He was with Paul in Corinth when he wrote his letter to Rome. He was Paul’s emissary to Corinth when there was trouble in the church, as I read you in the fourth chapter of 1 Corinthians. He was with Paul when he wrote 2 Corinthians. It was Timothy who went to see how things were going in Thessalonica, and he was with Paul when he wrote the letter to that Thessalonian church. He was with Paul in prison when he wrote the letter to the Philippians. He was with Paul when he wrote the Colossians. He was with Paul when he wrote Philemon. He was constantly with him, a beloved disciple. The son of a Jewish mother, a son of a Greek father, he was a perfect companion. He had the Jewish heritage to have access into the synagogue where Paul always began his ministry. He had the Gentile background to understand the culture and be accepted by the Gentiles as well. He was a unique and marvelous tool of God.

• But the most important thing that Paul can say about him, and this is what I want to focus on this morning just to introduce it and then next week we’ll develop it, he calls him “true child” – or genuine child – “in the faith.” That is a marvelous, marvelous and rich statement. This opens up tremendous insight into the character of Timothy. Now next Sunday I’m going to give you the five characteristics of this true child in the faith which are the five goals and objectives for every discipler, the things that you would want to see produced in anyone that would be your child in the faith. I think it will be one of the most significant, one of the most basic, one of the most transferable sermons that I have ever preached on what it means to raise up a true child in the faith. The word child, just to look at this phrase for a moment, is teknon, comes from tiktō which means to beget. It’s not talking about a mature son. It’s talking about a begotten or born son. In other words, the emphasis is not on the fact that Timothy is his child, but the emphasis is on the fact that Paul gave birth to Timothy. It is a birth word. You are my product. You are a genuine child in the sense of the parent/child relationship. You owe me your spiritual life. You are my offspring in the faith. And you are a genuine offspring.

• I love that word, gnēsios. It is the opposite to nothos. Nothos means bastard or illegitimate. Gnēsios means legitimate. This is a legitimate child. This is a true child. This is a genuine child. This is, may I make a comparison, no Demas. Second Timothy 4:10, Paul had another follower by the name of Demas, but it says, “Demas hath” – what? – “forsaken me, having loved this present world.” Demas was a nothos; he was a bastard child, an illegitimate child. This is a genuine child. Not in the physical sense but in the spiritual sense, and that’s what the phrase in faith or in the faith means. It doesn’t have an article. It’s what we call anarthorus, that is without the article. It’s literally ‘in faith’ but it can still be translated ‘in the faith.’ If it’s in faith it is subjective. In other words, he became my child in the sphere of faith. He lives with me in the sphere of faith, where those dwell who have faith in God. Or he could be saying ‘in the faith’ in an objective sense, that is in the content of the revealed faith. He is my child in faith. That’s true because he put his faith in Christ, I put my faith in Christ, and so we are together in the sphere of faith subjectively. It well could be too ‘in the faith,’ and I prefer that as do most scholars. He is my child in the faith, that is he’s my child not in the human realm but in the realm of the faith, that is in terms of Christianity and in the sphere of the faith. But his spiritual birth was real. His spiritual birth was genuine. He is really my child.

• What a joy. I mean, what a thrill for someone to have someone like that. 

• To be able to say to the Corinthians, “I want you to be like me so I’m sending him because he’s exactly like me.” O, bless God, what a joy that would be, to have that kind of reproduction. 

• What Paul is saying is this – a beautiful, beautiful way of expressing this – that Timothy is running true to form. 

• Timothy is true to his spiritual parentage. He is showing marked resemblance to me. In other words, “Look, people, he represents me there among you. He reflects my will, my desire, my patterns of spiritual life. He is born of God and he is my protege, my child, genuine, the product of my discipling.”

• And so this is all very important because the Ephesians are going to resist the efforts that are made here. Not the ones that were good and solid and true to the faith but the rest. And they needed to come alongside Timothy against the error and the heresy and the false leadership. And all of this authority is very, very important. I’m commending Timothy to this church as my own genuine child. And that’s in the heart of Paul. In Philippians he says a wonderful thing. He has such a great affection and love for Timothy. He says in verse 19 of Philippians 2, “I trust in the Lord Jesus to the Philippians to send Timothy.” I want to send Timothy. Why? “I have no man like-minded.” I don’t have anybody like him. Everybody else seeks their own things, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s. “But you know the proof of him, that as a son with a father, he has served me in the gospel.” Isn’t that marvelous? I don’t have anybody like him. Everybody else is serving their own desires.

• You know I’ll tell you something, folks, that’s comforting to me. That’s very comforting, because no matter how hard you try sometimes to produce disciples, you look long and hard and there are far and few between who really are like-minded with you who really could be sent as your ambassador, as your emissary, as your replica into a very difficult situation. And for Paul to have such a Timothy is to have a cherished treasure beyond description. And is it any wonder that he wrote 2 Timothy to him when he saw him begin to kind of fall in to a weak pattern in his life and tried to strengthen him because he was so critical to him? That’s not written to him in some kind of ministerial professional tone. That’s written as the cry of the heart of a spiritual father and discipler who is saying, “Please don’t abandon what I know you to be. Don’t become something less than I’ve seen you to be. I don’t think my heart could stand it, nor could the work of Christ.”

• So he has a genuine son in the right place. And then to strengthen again this issue he has a greeting, “Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” That beautiful phrase usually is just grace and peace. He throws mercy in there because Timothy is going to need all of them in dealing with his problems and his situation. Grace refers to God’s undeserved favor, love, and forgiveness given to sinners to free them from the consequence of sin. Mercy doesn’t free us from the consequence of sin, it frees us from the misery that comes along with sin. Grace wipes out the sin; mercy wipes out the misery. And then there’s the word peace, and peace is the result of grace and mercy. It means not only harmony with God but tranquility of the soul. And so he says, Timothy, this is my wish for you, grace because grace is not just needed at salvation, is it, don’t we need grace after salvation to keep on cleansing us? And mercy is not just needed at salvation. Don’t we need mercy to keep on delivering us from the misery of sin? And don’t we always need peace? And again he emphasizes it’s from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord, linking Christ to God again and emphasizing they belong to us in a personal way. And I might say here it seems also that part of this heresy was to depersonalize God and depersonalize Christ. And so he throws four uses of the word ‘our’ in those first two verses – equal deity, personal possession.

• So the whole thing is really introduced to us in those two verses from Paul who has tremendous passion for this Ephesian congregation because of his own three years invested there. He wants them to listen, so he lays down his credentials as strongly as he can and makes allusion to their heresies regarding Christ and God and the Saviorhood of God and the hope of Christ. He gives Timothy all the weight he can by saying he’s a true reproduction of me and then asks God to pour out on Timothy continuing grace, continuing mercy, and continuing peace that he may carry out the work that he is commissioned to do. Now with that as a background, next week I want to develop the whole idea of what Timothy is as a true child, and developing that you will see an overview of the entire epistle. Let’s bow together in prayer.

• Thank You, Father, for the opportunity to begin a new and a fresh and a wonderful book. 

• For the adventure that awaits us, we bless Your name. 

• O Father, I pray too for those who might be in our midst this day who do not know God our Savior and Christ our hope. 

• May this be the day of the awakening of salvation in their lives. 

• Bless, Lord, every life, every heart, every soul. 

• For those who know You, may we be true children in the faith and may we seek to raise up true children in the faith who can represent us in the ongoing work of Your glorious Kingdom. 

• Prepare our hearts, Lord, for what is ahead and work in our hearts even this day for Christ’s sake. Amen.

• Well, let’s look then at 1 Timothy chapter 1 and we’re looking at the introduction really, just getting a start. 

• We’ll get a little further into it today and then bring it to a conclusion next Lord’s day as we prepare for our communion service. 

• As we open 1 Timothy we read these words, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the commandment of God our Savior and Christ Jesus our hope, unto Timothy, true child in the faith, grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

• Now the focus that I want you to have this morning and for next Lord’s day as well is to focus on that description of Timothy that comes at the beginning of verse 2, “Unto Timothy, true child in the faith.”

• Now it should be a major goal for every Christian to desire to reproduce spiritual children. 

• And I don’t mean only your own physical children, but I mean that you would reproduce yourself over and over again in the life of another person. 

• That is, to bring them to Christ and to nurture them to maturity in Christ. 

• In the second epistle that Paul writes to Timothy, he reminds him in chapter 2 verse 2 that the things he has learned from Paul he is to pass on to faithful men, who then shall be able to pass it on to others also. And in that verse Paul identifies the sequence from Paul to Timothy to faithful men to others also, a sequence of responsibility in the discipling process. We are to be reproducing ourselves. Our Lord said in the great commission that we are to go into all the world and make disciples, teaching them, after having led them to Christ, and baptize them to observe all things whatsoever He has commanded. We are in the process of building up another generation of reproducing believers to follow us.

• And of course, we know that the Apostle Paul made a maximum effort in this area. Now this was really a major goal in his life. Obviously he had a sort of multiple focus. He was involved in evangelism in the Jewish and the Gentile communities. He was involved in building the church and ordaining elders. But he was also involved in this matter of discipling individuals to maturity. He would desire to bring many to the place where he could say to them, as he said to Timothy, “You are my genuine child in the faith.” That is, you are a replica. You are a reproduction. You bear my image in character and ministry.

• Now he was constantly surrounding himself with fellow believers. He was no isolationist. He was no lone wolf. He worked among people because that’s the context you must work in in order to reproduce. And I thought to myself, it might be kind of an interesting thing just for my own information to go back through the New Testament and just retrace the steps of Paul in the book of Acts and in all of his epistles and see his involvement with individual people as he gave himself to the process of raising up his own spiritual children. And it was a wonderful thing, and I’ll only be able to share with you some highlights of it, but I enjoyed so much refreshing my heart in seeing the ministry of Paul that I call the ministry of reproduction.

• Now some of the people that were companions of Paul, some with whom he ministered and labored and served and preached and taught, some with whom he traveled, some who were very close to his heart were not really results of his evangelistic effort. They were not his own spiritual children. Some of them were saved even before he was, such as Barnabas. Barnabas, even before Paul arrived on the scene in the church, was a leading teacher of Scripture. So Barnabas was a companion of Paul, a beloved friend of Paul but not, in the simplest sense, his own child in the faith. And then we’re all familiar with a man named Silas, sometimes called Silvanus. It’s the same man. He too traveled with Paul but was not a product of Paul’s evangelism. He was already a mature believer by the time he met the Apostle Paul.

• And then there was Judas Barsabas, there was John Mark mentioned in Acts 15. These also had already come to know the Lord and had grown to some extent before meeting Paul. There was in Acts 18 and 19 the introduction of a man by the name of Apollos. Apollos also was a man already gifted and capable in the articulation of the truth by the time he met Paul. And then there was Philip. Philip who was redeemed and already of man of great stature, spiritual strength, already a man chosen out of the Jerusalem church in Acts chapter 6 because of his faith and because the grace of God was on him. So Philip was one who accompanied Paul, who knew Paul, who shared with Paul as it tells us in Acts 21:8 but was not the child of Paul spiritually. And then there was Andronicus and Junias mentioned in Romans 16:7. And perhaps another more prominent one, Luke who wrote the gospel of Luke and also wrote the book of Acts, and was the frequent companion of Paul who also was not technically Paul’s own child in the faith. So he had those people around him who really weren’t begotten by him in to the gospel but were nonetheless influenced by him. You couldn’t be around the man without picking up something of his spirit, something of his commitment and something of the character and dimension of his own ministry.

• But there were many others, a larger group of people, some we know about and some we don’t know about, who were direct products of Paul’s evangelistic effort. And these people he poured his own life into in terms of being the human agent for the gospel to reach them. And they were his friends and his companions. Many of them he reached very presently and very intimately and very personally. Some of them may have been reached through a public preaching. Some of them may even have been reached through someone that he reached, and they in that sense were an indirect product. But we read about them in the book of Acts. We read about Dionysius and Damaris and others in the city of Athens in Acts 17; about Priscilla and Aquila in Acts 18; about Erastus in Acts 19; Gaius, Aristarchus in the same chapter; and then we come to chapter 20 and we meet Sopater, Tychicus, and Trophimus who were products of Paul’s evangelism. Child would be the right word for them in terms of their relation to him. And then there was Mnason in Acts 21 who was a member of the disciples of Caesarea who were the fruit of Paul’s labor there.

• We come to Romans chapter 16 and we go from verse 5 to 16 and there’s a long, long list of people who to one extent or another were the products of the ministry of Paul. And we remember Stephanas in 1 Corinthians 16 and Clement in Philippians 4 and Epaphras in Colossians 4 and Eubulus and Pudens and Linus and Claudia in 2 Timothy 4 and then Artemas in Titus 3. And so we know that Paul sort of brought into the kingdom these individuals, and then by traveling with them and working with them and serving with them, nurtured them to spiritual growth and maturity.

• But out of all this group, the group of those who were the direct products of his evangelism and those who were the indirect products, those who were redeemed before he ever met them, out of all of this group there are only two people that he calls ‘true child in the faith.’ Now that is not necessarily to say there were no others, but there were two that he branded as his true children in the faith, they were true replicas of his life and character and ministry. One is Timothy which we note here in 1 Timothy 1:2, “my true child in the faith.” And the other is Titus. And in Titus chapter 1 and verse 4, Paul writes to Titus, “true child after the common faith.”

• Now there’s a reason that there are two epistles written by Paul to these two men; they were key men in Paul’s life. There are reasons why Paul put Timothy in charge of the work at Ephesus. There are reasons why Paul put Titus in charge of the work on the island of Crete. And the reason is because he was greatly concerned about both works, and because he couldn’t be there himself, he wanted one who would be an exact replica of himself in that place. And these two were indeed replicas of Paul.

• Now of the two, Timothy and Titus, one stands out uniquely as apparently most reflective of Paul, and that would be Timothy. We learn that from two passages of Scripture. The first is in Philippians chapter 2, and Paul says in verse 19, “I trust” – writing to the church at Philippi – “I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy shortly to you.” I’m going to send you Timothy. Why? Verse 20, “Because I have no man like-minded.” Now what he means to say there is there’s nobody like me like Timothy is like me. I have nobody that is as much like me as he’s like me. And I want to send him because, “He will naturally care for your state.” In other words, he will do for you what I would do for you.

• And then in verse 21 that rather sad and pensive statement of Paul, “For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ’s.” What a heartbreak. I’m looking around at the people I’ve invested myself in and I can only find one who is like me and the rest are seeking their own things, not really open to the things of Jesus Christ as they ought to be. “But you know the evidence” – or the proof – “of him” – you know Timothy – “that as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel. It’s him therefore that I hope to send.” Isn’t that a marvelous testimony to the character of this young man? Now by the time he writes 1 Timothy, Timothy has been with Paul nearly 20 years, so he really is a product. He really is marked by the Pauline identification.

• In 1 Corinthians we have another passage which I alluded to last week and I only remind you of. Paul was greatly concerned about the Corinthian church much earlier in his ministry than the writing of 1 Timothy. But even that concern much earlier in his ministry brought him to the place where he wanted to send Timothy. This would be as much as ten years before the writing of 1 Timothy. And even then Timothy was already a product. And so in 1 Corinthians 4, Paul expresses his deep concern and then in verse 17 says, “Because of this” – because I’m so concerned about you – “I have sent you Timothy, who is my beloved son and faithful in the Lord” – and here it comes – “who shall bring you in to remembrance of my ways which are in Christ.” In other words, “He’ll remind you of me.” So the Philippians he says, “I sent Timothy because he’s like me.” To the Corinthians he says, “I’m sending Timothy because he’ll remind you of me.” That is a true child. And that beloved, is what any man of God or woman of God would love to reproduce. You love to have someone who can go and represent you and be you in another place. And so Timothy was more like Paul than anybody else. And he then is addressed as such in this wonderful opening of the epistle.

• Now may I remind you a little bit of the scene? The Apostle Paul has been released from his first imprisonment. The book of Acts ended with him in prison. I believe he was released from that. Upon that release he goes back to some of the key churches and one of them is the church at Ephesus which was such a part of his life, where he for three years had been the pastor himself, the church out of which were founded all the other churches of Asia Minor. He went back to that church, and when he got there he found an unimaginable thing. He found apostates among the elders, heretics among the leaders. And so according to chapter 1 verse 20, he had to throw them out and deliver them over to Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme. So he did a little purging himself. Then he left. And chapter 1 verse 3 says he went to Macedonia, because he had to go on and visit some other churches, but chapter 1 verse 3 says he left Timothy in Ephesus. And so when he writes to Timothy here, his true child in the faith, he is writing to him in Ephesus. And Timothy is there to counteract the effect of these false teachers and false elders and false leaders.

• It is not an easy task. It demands someone who is strong, someone who is sound, someone who is solid, someone who has integrity and virtue and character like the Apostle Paul. And the only person like that would be Timothy. So Timothy is there and it is a very, very difficult place. I think somehow we overlook the fact that 1 Timothy is really a polemic against apostasy. It is really a statement against false teaching and false teachers. And indeed a powerful one. We usually lock in on chapter 3, the qualifications of an elder or the qualifications of a deacon. But the reason Paul is so exercised in his spirit to delineate those is because they had leaders who were not qualified. And there had to be a serious dealing with what was going on in the leadership of that church. And for Timothy to come in there and try to straighten out the people would be one thing, but to come in there and try to straighten out the leadership was indeed a difficult task, a very difficult task. And consequently it’s not long after Paul, having left Timothy in Ephesus and traveled to Macedonia, stops and writes back to Timothy and writes this letter to strengthen him and encourage him and tell him what he needs to do and give him some clout to do it with. And almost at the same time – he wrote Titus before he wrote 2 Timothy – and gave Titus very similar instruction who was also another child in the faith who was maintaining Paul’s profile in Crete.

• And as we all know, these are the pastoral epistles because they are written to men who are setting in order the things in the church and they are the swan-song of the Apostle Paul’s life and ministry. These are the last things he writes. He writes 1 Timothy, then Titus, then back to 2 Timothy, and the Lord takes him to heaven. So you find the passion of a man who wants to see the church be everything Christ died to make it, but even in his own life time he has seen the church, the church where he himself pastored, actually begin to be influenced by apostate false teachers. And his heart is broken as he writes and tries to strengthen the hand of Timothy as Timothy sets things in order. So he identifies Timothy as gnēsios teknon – true child, genuine child. And I believe he says that in order to point out the contrast between Timothy and some of the other leaders who were not genuine and were not reflective of Paul’s doctrine or character. So true child in the faith is not an arbitrary title but it is one that sets Timothy apart from the less than genuine, less than true, less than legitimate, hypocritical, apostate, false leaders and teachers that were influencing the church.

• So Timothy’s genuineness is introduced at the beginning so that the church will know that in the eyes of Paul this is the standard, this is the model, this is the pattern, this is what everyone else is to be measured by, the character and life and teaching and ministry of Timothy, who is reflective of Paul as the child of Paul. So the emphasis is this is a son of Paul more so than an emphasis on the son of God aspect, although of course Timothy is both. He then is the living test of genuineness. And if the people want to know what a leader is, be he true or false, they need only to measure that leader against Timothy.

• And so we see then an overview of the book beginning to unfold for us in the very title Timothy is given – true child in the faith. Because that opens a door for us. And as we walk through the door of that title, we’re going to get an overview of the whole epistle. And I want to do that this morning and next time. I want to approach it this way. There were five things that marked Timothy as a true child in the faith, five things. And this morning we’ll look at three of them and next time two. And they are set in contrast, as we shall see, to the situation there.

• Let’s look at the first one. A true child of the faith is initially identified by saving faith. In other words, we all realize that you can’t be a genuine child of the faith unless you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and are redeemed. So salvation is the beginning. Timothy was genuinely saved. And that’s very basic but very important, because this church had people who apparently were not saved. In fact they were unable to be saved, some of them, because apparently they were even questioning the deity of Jesus Christ. Would you look at chapter 3 for a moment and verse 15? And we’ll come back to that verse several times.

• Paul says, “I’m writing to you” – in verse 14. Then in verse 15 – “because I want you to know how to behave in the house of God which is the church.” I want you to know how the church ought to operate. And the first thing he says after that is, “Look, without controversy” – in other words, there shouldn’t be any argument about this – “great is the mystery of godliness that God was manifest in the flesh.” Who was that? Christ. “Set apart in the Spirit” – Christ – “who was seen of angels” – yes – “preached unto the nations, believed on in the world and received up into glory.” And all of those are elements of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. It seems rather obvious from this verse that what Paul is saying is there certainly shouldn’t be any argument about the fact that Jesus Christ was God manifest in the flesh and all these things are true of Him. But the implication is that even that was up for grabs. So apparently there were some people who were not willing to admit that Jesus Christ was in fact God in human flesh, which would strike a blow at the very deity of Christ.

• Now people who do not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ have absolutely no possibility of being saved, of coming to know God. Because it says simply this in Romans 10, “If you believe in your heart that God hath raised Him from the dead and you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, you’ll be saved.” Now there were some people there who were obviously not committed to that.

• Let’s look at this contrast. In chapter 1 verse 3, the end of the verse, he says I want you to approach those who are teaching false doctrine and, “charge them that they teach no other doctrine than the true doctrine.” So what you’ve got here is false teachers, no doubt ranking among the elders, who are teaching false teaching and false teaching even about Jesus Christ. Do you remember back in Acts 20 when Paul left Ephesus? Remember that, when he left Ephesus He gathered all the elders together and he said to them, “I know – I know this, that after I leave” – in verse 29. Let me read it to you just so we get it right. “After I leave,” he says, “grievous wolves will enter in among you not sparing the flock.” You’re going to get false teachers coming in from the outside. And then verse 30, “Also” – listen to this, this is to the group of elders that he’s meeting with – “from your own selves will men arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them.” I know it will come, he says. They’ll come from the outside and they’ll rise from the inside.

• It’s true. A few weeks ago we had a guy on the outside passing out material who tried to steal the sheep. At the elders retreat over the weekend, we confronted the issue of a man inside the church, who is a member of the church, who is teaching heresy and leading people away from the true gospel of Jesus Christ, right here in our church. And if things continue we’ll deal with him next Sunday morning in the discipline situation in the communion service. But that’s typical in the church. And Paul said to the Ephesians, “I know that’s going to happen. I know that will happen.” And sure enough it happened.

• Since his trip there and his trip to Jerusalem and his capture and his two-year imprisonment and Caesarea and then taken to Rome and imprisoned there and then going to Ephesus and he goes there after those years have passed and sure enough exactly what he had feared had come to pass. And there were perverse people who had arisen among the elders and perhaps even others who had come in from the outside. And there was chaos and there was a teaching of other than true doctrine. Verse 4 says they were giving heed to myths, Judaistic myths and fables, and endless long lists of ancestors, having to do with some kind of ancestor worship perhaps on the one hand or some kind of ancestral strain as being that which affirms a person’s salvation. And there are those who simply minister questions. They don’t give answers; they just stir up with problems with questions. And may I suggest to you that that simply is not edifying; it never was; it never will be. It grieves my heart when I see young people go away to supposed Christian colleges and Christian seminaries, and all they get are people who want to question what the young people believe, supposedly under the guise of testing their faith. That ministers no edifying ministry. That simply brings chaos. But that’s usually what it’s intended to do.

• And so he says these people don’t build up; they tear down. And as a result, verse 6, there are those who have swerved; they’ve detoured off; they’ve turned aside into empty banging and clanging noise. They think they’re teachers of the law but they have no idea what they’re saying, and they don’t even know what they’re talking about. And it’s obvious because the one thing the law came to do was point out sin, and he goes on to list all the evil things. And the implication in my mind is, I’ll tell you why I know they don’t know what the law is about, because they’re still living in those kinds of sins, and that’s the very thing the law came to deal with. That’s what he’s saying. You’ve got people who think they’re teaching the law. The truth is, they don’t know what the law says at all. If they did they wouldn’t continue – the implication is – in the kind of life style they’re living in. And he says in verses 12 and following, and I’m a perfect example of that. I thought I knew the law. According to the law, I thought I was blameless, but the truth is the whole time I persecuted the church and thought I was pleasing God’s law, I was a blasphemer of God, he says in verse 12. I did it ignorantly in unbelief, but I was a blasphemer. In fact in verse 15, “I was the chief of sinners.” So he says, I know about people who think they teach the law, but they teach a kind of law that lets them keep on in their evil vile sinful life style, and they’re blasphemers.

• Look at chapter 4 and we’ll note again that there were people who obviously were not truly saved. In chapter 4 it says the Spirit speaks very pointedly and directly or expressly that in the later times – now in the later times is the time this was written. The later times began when Jesus came. Christ has appeared, Peter says, once in the end of the age. The end of the age and the later times are the same times. They are the time from the coming of Messiah the first time. We are in the later times now. So he says, “In these later times” – we know – “some will depart from the faith.” And they were in Ephesus. Those who seem to have a sort of a good beginning. I mean, it looked like it was going the right direction, but they departed from the faith. And they listened to seducing spirits. The false doctrine is not concocted by men. Do you understand that?

• People say, how can the cults be so systematic? How can the cults be so sophisticated? How can Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Science, and all these other things, all these eastern cults and all these mystical cults, how can they be so sophisticated and so complex and such nicely integrated systems? How is it that they can be that? It isn’t because men have invented them. It is because minds far surpassing human minds have invented them. They are simply seducing spirits and doctrines that come from demons. And demons are far-surpassing to men in terms of their intelligence.

• And so here are people in the Ephesian church who are literally believing and propagating doctrine that comes from demons who seduce people into believing them. And they speak lies and hypocrisy. They are not genuine; they are not true; they are hypocrites. They have had their conscience cauterized so that it’s insensitive. It’s covered with scar tissue; it feels nothing. And they have a certain ascetic approach. They don’t marry and they abstain from foods, verse 3 and so forth. They’ve come to some kind of ascetic level, some monastic life style that is nothing but hypocrisy. It is a covering for their seduction and the deception of the demons who have twisted their thinking. So in the Ephesian church there were those who weren’t genuinely saved. Timothy was a true child in the faith but there were some untrue children who were in that assembly too.

• Look at chapter 6 verse 21, and this is another very good way to get the overview and the picture of this epistle. But here’s the sum of this point. He says in talking about Timothy in verse 20, Timothy, you keep what you’ve got and stay away from the garbage, “which some professing” – what does that mean? Claiming to what? Claiming to be a Christian, professing to be real – “have erred concerning the faith.” The best way to translate that is have missed the mark with regard to saving faith. They’re not saved. They don’t know the way of salvation. They don’t know the way of salvation. They didn’t know how to be born into God’s family. Oh, they thought it was through ritual, through asceticism, through self-denial. I don’t know what. Through human philosophy, human wisdom. He calls it knowledge falsely so called. Through their vain babblings, their profane talk, their lines of ancestors, or whatever kind of religion they had concocted from the seduction of hell’s devils, they had come to conclusions that were apart from the truth. And so that’s how it is in Ephesus.

But over against that was Timothy. And Timothy is a true child, is a genuine – gnēsios – a genuine child. And that is emphasized throughout the epistle. For example, look at the first two verses. This is Paul, one man writing this epistle. Some times when he would write an epistle to a church he would include Timothy and he would include Silas as sort of co-writers, in a sense, but here it’s one man to another man. Not one man to a church, but one man to one man, Paul to Timothy. It says that.

But would you notice the use of the plural pronouns? Our Savior, Christ our hope, God our Father, verse 2, and Jesus – or Christ Jesus our Lord. The use of the plural pronoun is to pull Timothy in to Paul. And Timothy has the same Savior Paul has and the same Christ Paul has and the same Father Paul has and the same Lord Paul has – our. In verse 5 and 6 he says the end of the commandment or the purpose of the commandment is love out of a pure heart, a good conscience and of true faith. And he’s reminding Timothy of things Timothy knows. He says in 2 Timothy, “I remember your unfeigned faith.” I remember your true faith. And here he says, yes, the purpose of God’s commands is love out of a pure heart, good conscience, true faith, “from which some have swerved.” And if he meant to include Timothy he would have said from which you have swerved, but by omission he affirms that Timothy hasn’t swerved. The word actually means taking no pains to aim at the right path, making no effort to go the right way. Some people have made no effort to go the right way. Obviously this doesn’t include Timothy. Apostasy among the leadership.

Look at chapter 4 verse 10 and see again how Paul embraces Timothy as a true child of the faith in the sense of his salvation. Verse 10 he says, “We both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God who is the Savior of all men, especially of those that believe.” And again he uses the word ‘we.’ And he’s writing all by himself. The only conclusion we can make is that he’s pulling Timothy in and saying, Timothy, I know you suffer like I suffer and you bear the reproach that I bear and you believe like I believe.

And then I love it in chapter 6 verse 12 where he again affirms Timothy’s saving faith. He says to him, “Fight the good fight of faith, keep holding on to eternal life unto which you were called.” Oh yes, he was called to eternal life. This is a redeemed person. “And you have professed a good profession before many witnesses.” I believe that is an allusion to an historical event, namely the baptism of Timothy. At his baptism he would have given his profession of faith in Christ publicly before many witnesses, and he says, “Timothy, hold on that calling to eternal life which you have received and to which you confessed in testimony at your own baptism,” and again affirms the genuineness of Timothy’s salvation.

But the best statement made to affirm the salvation of Timothy is backing up one verse, in verse 11 of chapter 6, where Paul says to him this, “But thou” – what does he call him? – “O” – what? – “man of God.” That says it all. He was a man of God. He had as 2 Timothy 1:5 says, “unfeigned faith.” That is faith without hypocrisy, genuine faith. Second Timothy 1:14 says he possessed the Holy Spirit. Second Timothy 3:14 and 15, he had known the Scriptures which were able to make him wise unto salvation. He was truly saved. I mean, you can’t be a true child in the faith unless you are.

I want you to know, folks, that in my brief life I have invested myself in many people, and I can think in my own mind right now of two in particular that I gave hours and hours and hours to, maybe three even, over a period of months and months, even extending at least in one case to a period of over a year of weekly discipleship, who I am convinced to this moment were never redeemed. It was not true faith, true saving faith, therefore they are no longer a genuine child. They have swerved. They made no effort to stay on the right path. And I’m sure if I thought long there would be many more.

Paul had that same experience. In 2 Timothy 4:10 he says, “Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world.” And he says when I gave my first defense in 2 Timothy 4:16, nobody stood with me, nobody stood beside me. And as I read you in Philippians 2 he said, when I want to send somebody to you I only have one person because everybody else is self-centered and only Timothy cares about the things of Jesus Christ. It can be a real heartbreak. People always ask me, what’s the toughest part of the ministry? And the toughest part of the ministry is living with the fact that you can make a major investment in people’s lives with a minimal or a zero return. And it’s hard to deal with that. But not Timothy. Everyone should have the privilege of having a Timothy – not Timothy.

You say, well how did Paul lead Timothy to Christ? Well, we don’t have a direct word on that, but if you go back to Acts chapter 14 and start reading about verse 6 and read to verse 25 – we won’t do it now – you’ll read the story of Paul going in to the area of Galatia. Galatia was a south-central province in Asia Minor. And within Galatia there was a little town under Roman rule called Lystra. It was one of many towns, Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, all in the same area of Asia Minor. Today it would be modern Turkey. And when Paul went to Lystra, there was a man there who couldn’t walk. And so this man came and had faith to believe so Paul says to him, “Stand up and walk.” And the guy starts jumping around and running and leaping. And the people who spoke on the language of the Lycaonians said, “The gods have come down to us.” They saw Paul and Barnabas; they saw this thing happen; they heard Paul preach; and they said the gods are here. Well, they had a myth that in their history the gods had come one other time. And the previous time the gods came down and wanted some place to stay and some food to eat and the townspeople didn’t know who they were and refused to give that to them, so they destroyed the whole town. So this time when they think the gods are back, they’re not going to mess around anymore. So they say the gods are here, let’s not have another problem.

So they ran and got the bullocks, and they ran and got the garlands, and they were going to slay the bullocks, and they were going to offer sacrifices, and they were going to have a whole big festival for these two gods. They called them Jupiter and Mercury. They called Paul Mercury because he was the chief speaker. And so Paul and Barnabas started tearing their clothes and saying, “Hold on, hold on, hold on. You’re not going to worshiping us at all.” And all this was going on in the public square. No doubt Timothy and his mother and grandmother, Lois and Eunice, were there. And I believe that it was at the preaching of Paul and the wonderful things that happened in that place that they were converted. And most Bible scholars do believe that as well.

And then of course, some people came from the other towns, from Derbe and Iconium, and they got a hold of Paul, and they stoned him to death, and they took him out of town and threw him on the dump. And I believe God raised him from the dead at that point, and as soon as he got up off the dump, he didn’t run for the hills, he went right back into town to finish his preaching. So you see, Timothy had had a rather dramatic introduction to the Apostle Paul. And Paul through his own experience of death had been the source of Timothy’s life. And Timothy then followed on with a baptism in which he gave a marvelous profession of his faith in Christ, and I believe it wasn’t long after that that hands were laid upon him – in chapter 16 no doubt, hands were laid upon him as the Word of God came through a prophet that he was called of God to be in the ministry. Hands were laid on him by the elders that Paul had ordained in Acts 14, and Timothy was commissioned to the ministry, and off he went to serve Christ as a companion of the Apostle Paul. So his faith was real. And as over against the unreal faith of the others, his was genuine.

The second thing that marks true children of the faith, true disciples, is continuing obedience. Not only saving faith but continuing obedience. It is a given, folks, and I don’t need to belabor the point, that the New Testament outlines the fact that true believers have a pattern of obedience. Just go to John 14 and read verse 15, verse 21, verse 23, and you will hear Jesus say three times, “He that keeps My commandments, he it is that loves Me.” He says it in different ways but basically that’s what he says. You can go back to John 8 and hear Jesus say, “If you continue in My word then you’re My real disciple.” Or you can hear Paul under the Holy Spirit’s inspiration say in Ephesians 2:10, “We are created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them,” and walk is the pattern of life. The pattern of life of one who is truly saved, the child of faith is continuing obedience.

Timothy had it. And there were some there that didn’t. There were some there that didn’t. I mean, look at chapter 1 verse 19, he says, “Some have put away the faith and they’ve become a shipwreck.” Conscience is the rudder that keeps you on the course. That’s the way the Spirit of God subjectively directs you. And some people having no conscience, putting away a good conscience, putting away faith, have no rudder. Faith, the faith, the sound faith is the map, the chart, the course. Now you tell me what will happen to a ship with no rudder and no chart. No sound faith and no good conscience – shipwreck. And so it’s a very graphic picture of a shipwreck. People who have shipwrecked before they got to the port, before they got to the harbor, maybe they started out in the right direction but they were ruined and they were ruined by an overt act.

The word there put away is a deliberate rejection and repudiation, nauageō, it’s the idea of a willful activity. They threw their rudder away and they threw their chart away and they shipwrecked. Instead of holding on to truth, instead of maintaining a good conscience, they accepted the Satanic blasphemous lies of false teachers and they were shipwrecked, apostate. And he names two of them, Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom he himself when he first came to Ephesus, before he left Timothy there, had turned over to Satan, thrown out of the church that they might under the hand of Satan learn not to blaspheme, learn the consequence of blasphemy.

There were others who apparently were trying to overthrow the faith who were not continuing in obedience. Chapter 2 tells about some women. And apparently from what we get in verse 9, he has to tell the women to “adorn themselves in modest apparel with godly fear and sobriety, not with specially plaited hair and gold and pearls and costly array,” and we’ll talk about that when we get there. But these women were preoccupied with the external and not the internal. And they weren’t concerned with what becomes godliness. They weren’t concerned with good works. And so he says you’ve got to learn to be silent with all subjection. Apparently when you’ve got true teachers trying to get their thing across and you’ve got apostates and false teachers teaching their thing, in the chaos of all of that, some women were beginning to usurp roles that they had no business usurping. And so he permits not a woman to teach or usurp authority over the man but be in silence. And then goes on to explain that that’s not a cultural thing, that’s a creation thing. That’s the way it was from Adam and Eve.

So here you have some abandoning the truth in disobedience who should have known better. Some of these women, by the way, in that church, verse 15 of chapter 5, this verse gets lost but you need to know it. Talking about the women here, younger women, “Some are already turned aside after Satan.” They weren’t continuing at all in the faith. And you’ll remember 1 John 2:19, “They went out from us because they were not of us, if they had been of us they would have continued with us but they went out from us that it might be made manifest they never were of us.” They were like that seed that went into the stony ground and went down and popped up a little plant for a while and finally it died and withered away without fruit. There’s no reality there.

And then remember chapter 4 verses 1 and 2, those who listen to the seducing spirits and the doctrines of demons, it says, depart from the faith. They turned away from the faith. So there were those who didn’t continue. Against that we compare Timothy. He’s the standard: Saving faith, continuing obedience, unwavering commitment. And then in chapter 6, he says there are some false teachers, obviously in verse 3, who don’t teach wholesome words. They don’t even consent to the words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the doctrine which is according to godliness. There were some leaders who were anti-Christ, anti-godliness. They are proud; they don’t know anything. All they want to do is quarrel and argue and dispute about words, and they do it out of envy and strife. It’s jealousy, evil suspicions. These perverse arguments of men with corrupt minds who have no knowledge of the truth are basically being done that they might get money. They want money. They want gain...they want gain. They want to be rich, verse 9 says. Verse 10 says they love money, and that’s why they’ve erred from the faith. They have gold replacing God. The foolish exchange a spiritual treasure that comes to the obedient for material wealth given to the disobedient and with it only sorrowful results.

So some who were not continuing in obedience, intellectual pride, discontent with God’s design, discontent with their God- ordained roles, sexual desire, lust for money, all this was causing people to defect for disobedience and reject the faith of the Lord. People, this still happens. It’s happening here. It always happens. But we still set the standard and we have – that’s why we have elders and leaders in the church who become a standard, whose saving faith is genuine, whose continuing obedience is unwavering, against which we measure. Timothy was genuine.

In Acts chapter 16 when Paul came back the second time to the town where Timothy and his mother and grandmother lived – I think his father was dead. There’s an imperfect tense verb there speaking of his father. His father was a Gentile, which seems to me to indicate that he was dead, and there’s no mention of him beyond that. But when Paul came back to the same town and he talked with the disciples there in Lystra, all they wanted to talk about was this young man Timothy who was so highly respected and so highly esteemed. And because of his spiritual reputation and the virtue in his life and the godliness for which he was known, Paul took him with him. And it was very likely right at that place with the elders there that he was officially prophetically and purposefully ordained into the ministry by the elders. So Timothy was a man of character.

Chapter 4 verse 6 really says it. He says, “You put the brethren in remembrance of these things,” you teach the good things, give them words of the faith and words of good doctrine. And then the end of verse 6 reads this way in the Greek text, “Which you have always followed.” Isn’t that wonderful? That’s wonderful. Which you have always followed. Oh, to have a man that you can pour your life into and say, “Which you have always followed.” In verse 16 he says continue in the good things you’re known for, Timothy.

Yes, he was an obedient model. He was a persevering believer in a church of defectors. So a true child, one that you want to reproduce, is one who has saving faith and continuing obedience. Then very briefly a third thing, we’ll just introduce, humble service – humble service. A true child of the faith, a true product is a servant. God has given me the privilege of, through the years, having some men that God has allowed to be a part of my life. And in many ways the measure of our relationship is their willingness to serve – humble service, a beautiful and marvelous characteristic of true children in the faith. I can show you a true child in the faith in my own ministry by showing you one who with a willing heart and an eager heart serves me. And that’s what Timothy was to Paul.

You know, stewardship of life to the sovereign lordship of Jesus Christ is a fact. We were saved unto good works. In 1 Thessalonians, a marvelous statement is made about that Thessalonian church which was so unique. First Thessalonians 1:9 describes their conversion in these words, “You turned to God from idols.” That’s beautiful, that simple. “You turned to God from idols” – a 180. Then it says this – “In order to serve the living and true God.” And that’s always the point, folks. It’s always in order to serve. I mean, that’s the stuff of which true salvation is made, the serving heart. When Jesus said to the rich young ruler, “Follow Me,” he went away. He didn’t want to follow Him. On the other hand, when Jesus said to the disciples, “Follow Me,” they dropped everything. They dropped their nets, you remember, and they followed. Timothy was a true child in the faith because he was marked out by humble service.

There were others who weren’t so humble and weren’t interested in service. Would you notice chapter 3 verse 6, and here in the qualifications for elders and pastors and leaders Paul has to remind Timothy, now look, when you go about working with this overseer and this elder and pastor and bishop, verse 1, “If he desires the office he desires a good work.” But more than just desiring a good work he has to be a good man, so make sure, verse 6, that he’s not a recent convert, somebody brand new that you really don’t know for sure is genuine. Or else when you lift him up he’ll get so much pride that he’ll ultimately fall into the condemnation of the devil. You know what the condemnation of the devil is? Well, ask yourself this, what was the devil condemned for?

When Satan was in heaven and when he was there as an anointed cherub before God he was a glorious creature. But God threw him out of heaven and he threw him out of heaven for what sin? Pride. So the condemnation of the devil is the judgment that came on the devil for pride. And what he is saying here is that a man in the church who exercises pride is going to fall into the same judgment with which the devil was judged. It isn’t that he’s going to fall into the hands of the devil. It is that he’s going to fall into the hands of God who will judge his pride the way He judged the devil’s pride. So be very careful how you select leadership. And the implication here is that there must have been some people who were very proud and they sought that role not that they might serve the Lord, serve the church, but that they might exalt themselves. Recent converts who wanted self-exaltation.

Go to chapter 5 verse 17, and here were others who were good servants. Verse 17 says, “The elders who are ruling well” – in other words, the elders that are doing as God would have them do – “are to be counted worthy of double pay” – timē. Pay them twice what they ought to have. “Especially if they work hard in the word and doctrine.” If you have hard-working, diligent, faithful men of God, then reward them for that. And then he gives them a couple of statements to support that, “Don’t muzzle the ox that treads the grain. And the laborer is worthy of his reward.” So take care of those that are faithful.

But on the other hand when you find an elder who is not a servant, who doesn’t serve out of humility, you confront that elder. That’s implied before verse 19. But remember this, “Against an elder don’t receive an accusation unless it’s confirmed before” – what? – “two or three witnesses.” And that’s a reiteration of Matthew 18. “But the ones that sin, rebuke before the whole church” – so everybody else will learn to fear how you’re going to deal with that. You say, that’s not easy. That’s right.

And the tendency is when you have a man in a high position of authority, you don’t want to do that because you’re afraid of the impact. There are a lot of people that like him, a lot of people follow him, and he may alienate all those people. You may lose money support; you may split the church; you may get a bad reputation; and it’s a tough thing. It’s one thing to go in and deal with the people, but it’s another thing to go in and start overturning the leaders. And so to enforce how important this is, in verse 21 Paul does a very amazing thing. He says, Timothy, “I command you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels, that you observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality.” Don’t you ever back off because who that leader is, because of who that elder is, because of where he stands, what his prestige is, what his influence is, how much money he gives to the organization. If he is a sinner then you tell the whole church.

Well you’d rather not get in a position like that, right, Where you’d ever have to do that? So verse 22 says that’s a good reason not to lay hands suddenly on anybody. You better be very cautious. And then down through verses 24 and 25 he says some people’s sins are easy to see, some are hidden. So you better be very patient until you’ve really seen what you think you’ve seen. But in the church there, there were some who were not in it because of humble service; they were in it because of pride and self-seeking.

And then in chapter 6 we remind you of what we saw earlier. Verse 4, they were proud. They didn’t know anything but they thought they did. I’ll tell you, folks, there’s nothing more sickening than that. A person who thinks he knows something and knows nothing, especially when it counteracts divine truth. Fussing around and arguing and quarreling about useless words, and really what he’s doing is exercising his own pride out of envy and jealousy. And so they had those who were swollen with pride. They were pompous ignoramuses who wanted to argue, corrupt other people, and wanted to do it for money – roud self-seekers.

But Timothy was different. He was a standard. He was humble. Back in chapter 1 verse 3, we have a little note there that Paul had left him in Ephesus. And he stayed willingly. It’s a small thing but we just are reminded of that. Do you know what happened when Paul took him in Acts 16, gathered him to go with him and travel, what did he do to him first? Remember that? Acts 16:3, he circumcised him. Now that’s a difficult thing for a man just before his twenties to go through, but he did that. He had a humble heart. And Paul felt that he because he had a Jewish mother but a Gentile father and had not been circumcised, he might have some difficulty being accepted by the Jews. And Paul’s strategy was to go to the synagogue and the Jews, and he wanted Timothy to have as much access as possible so he asked that he be circumcised and Timothy was anxious and willing to do that.

And he served the Apostle Paul – I wish we had time to chronicle all of the things that he did for Paul, but he served him – really by the time of the writing of 1 Timothy it’s nearly 20 years that he has served alongside the Apostle Paul. He went on important missions to Thessalonica and Corinth. He accompanied Paul on his last trip to Jerusalem. He was by his side in his imprisonment, and now he’s with him after his imprisonment, humbling serving on his behalf in Ephesus. He was a real servant. In chapter 4 verse 14 he was given a gift, confirmed through prophetic utterance and affirmed by the laying on of the hands of the elders. He was anointed as a servant and he turned out indeed to be a true servant, a true servant, serving faithfully the Apostle Paul. And it wasn’t easy, and he stumbled. And by the time Paul writes 2 Timothy, he’s really going through some struggles, trying to hold his ground. It wasn’t easy. But he was a genuine servant with a humble heart. And in Romans 16:21 Paul calls him, “Timothy, my fellow worker.”

Called, commissioned, obedient, and it wasn’t easy. And that’s why Paul goes to Macedonia, writes him back a letter, and then a little while later he writes Titus a letter, in fact probably at the very same time as 1 Timothy. And then a little after that he writes Timothy again to encourage him in this very, very difficult task. But he had a servant’s heart. And Paul was convinced of it.

What does it mean to be a true child in the faith? It means to be one who is truly saved, who is truly obedient, who is truly humble and commitment to serve the cause of the kingdom. Timothy was such a man he becomes a standard for the church at Ephesus, and he becomes a standard for us – for you, for me, for our church, for the kind of leader we want, for the kind of person we want, for the kind of disciple we want to build up. There are two more things and we’ll look at those next Lord’s day. And may God bless to our hearts the things He’s given us this day. Let’s pray.

Father, we’ve thought of so many things today that we didn’t say, and yet with great confidence and trust in Your Spirit, we know the things that needed to be said were said, and what was unsaid can be brought to the heart by the work of the Holy Spirit. Blessed Lord, thank You for the pattern of Timothy and Paul, for what we’ve learned from just our time together. Help us, Lord, to be those genuine children in the faith and then to raise up other genuine children in the faith. Be pleased, O God, with our worship today and not only that but our life. We love You, we praise You for the privilege of even being considered a child, a representative of You, a servant.

Let’s open our Bibles to 1 Timothy. In preparation for our communion service in a few moments, I do want to go back to our passage in Timothy. We really began two weeks ago to examine this great epistle. We’ve been centering our thoughts around the theme, Timothy: A True Child in the Faith, which is how Paul describes him, in verse 2, in the very opening of this great letter. We’re looking, then, at what it is to be a true child in the faith, as illustrated by Timothy. Friday, I wrote a long letter to a very great man, a man that I love and appreciate, in the Christian ministry.

And he had sent me a stack of letters, correspondence, discussion that concerned him greatly. There was a Christian organization - is a Christian organization - in the United States that’s had a great and wonderful heritage, but, in his view, it’s beginning to drift from its original standards and foundation. And he’s very concerned that it will abandon its strength, its effectiveness, its blessing from God, as it transitions. And as I sat and thought, in response to all that I read, and in response to his letter, and even, later in the day, a phone call from him, my response was this.

It is normal, sad to say, that at the passing of a great visionary leader, a great man of God, an unusual servant whom God has blessed in great ways, that when that person passes on to glory, the organization that he has founded very usually will make dramatic changes. And sadly, very often those changes involve compromise, and that occurs because, in many cases, there is no true child of that great man. There is no replica, there is no reproduction, so that when new leadership comes in, the vision changes, and maybe some of the strength is lost that once made the work so great.

Paul, I know, had that concern. Paul, by the grace of God, was used to establish a great work, a marvelous work, of planting churches all over the Gentile world. And of all of the things that burdened his heart, perhaps none burdened his heart more than the fact that he knew he was going to leave that in the hands of others when he went on to be with his Lord, and he had great concern that there not be a drifting away from the strength that was – was established originally.

And so, he invested his life in men, men who could be his replica, men who could be to the next generation what he was to his generation. He desired to reproduce himself. And one of those men, perhaps the most uniquely like Paul of all that he ever discipled, is this man Timothy, whom he calls “a true child in the faith.” And he’s not referring to the idea that Timothy is a child of God as much as he is that he’s a child of Paul. In other words, “he is really my son, in that he bears my spiritual resemblance. He carries my convictions. He holds my attitudes toward ministry and truth as revealed by God.”

And like Elijah who passed his mantle on to Elisha, Paul desires to pass the mantle of ministry to Timothy. Timothy had spent nearly 20 years with Paul. And Paul had made a maximum investment in him, not only of teaching, but of setting an example, and setting a pace, and building him to be a reproduction. And now, as Paul writes 1 Timothy, and 2 Timothy, and Titus, he’s nearing the end of his life; he knows that. It won’t be long until his life will be taken from him, violently. He’ll be executed for the proclamation of the gospel.

Timothy is now around the age of 35, and Paul is going to leave to him the task of carrying on the work. And I believe that he left him, as verse 3 says, in Ephesus, to give him a very important test. To see how he would handle a very difficult situation, to enable Paul to know how ready he was to take over when Paul left. So, Paul leaves Timothy in Ephesus, to correct some things, to strengthen some things, to set some things right. And it is essential, not only that the Ephesian church be set right, but that Paul see the strength of Timothy in action in a very difficult ministry.

It isn’t long after Paul has left Timothy in Ephesus but he writes back to him, this epistle, and later on, a second epistle, to assist him in the work, and to assist him in his own strengthening process. Now, as we saw in verse 2, he calls him “a true child in the faith,” a true reproduction, a true replica, a living example, a model of a genuine follower of Paul, who was a genuine follower of Christ. In fact, as you remember, in 1 Corinthians, he sent Timothy to bring the Corinthians into remembrance of his own ways.

To the Philippians, in chapter 2, he said, “I have no man who is like-minded except Timothy; he is most like me.” And so, Timothy is that true child, who is to do this ministry. And in saying he is a true child of the faith, in a sense - I pointed out last time - that Paul sets Timothy in contrast to some of the untrue, ingenuine people that were really a part of the Ephesian congregation. Timothy, then, becomes the standard, or the pattern, or the model, by which others can be measured, because of his genuine character and commitment, which is so reflective of Paul, who was like Jesus Christ.

Now, we’ve been noting that there were five things that marked Timothy as a genuine child in the faith; five things. The first one we saw was saving faith, and we demonstrated out of this epistle that Timothy’s faith was real. In chapter 6, verse 12, Paul reminds Timothy that he was called, and had professed a good profession, before many witnesses. In other words, Timothy was known as a believer; from his baptism on, he was one who exercised saving faith. In verse 11 of chapter 6, Paul calls him “a man of God;” a man of God - and we’ll look at that phrase a little later, in connection with another point.

So, Timothy was genuinely saved. In fact, back in chapter 1, verse 1 and 2, Paul, speaking to Timothy, says, “God our Savior, Christ Jesus our hope,” and then, in verse 2, “God our Father, Christ Jesus our Lord.” And the use of the plural pronoun pulls Timothy together with Paul, as those who commonly know God and the Lord Jesus Christ. So, Timothy possessed saving faith. Now, that was not true of everyone in the Ephesian assembly. There were, unquestionably, some whose faith was not legitimate.

Chapter 1, verse 3, indicates that some were teaching false doctrine. Verse 4, they were following fables, and endless genealogies. And verse 7 and following, that they wanted to teach the law, but had no idea what the law was about. Chapter 4, verse 1, they had departed from the faith, and were listening to the seducing teachings of demon spirits. Chapter 6, verse 20, some were following profane and vain babblings, and the opposition of knowledge, falsely so called. And verse 21 says they have erred concerning the saving faith.

So, in Ephesus, there were some less than genuine, and over against them, Timothy a true child in the faith. The second of those marks we noted was continuing obedience. Genuineness is marked in Timothy by continuing obedience. He is one who follows through. He is one who obeys the Word of God. He has the character that is manifest in continuity. When a person is saved, there should be a continual pattern demonstrating that.

Chapter 4 verse 6, Paul says, “If you put the brethren in remembrance of these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine, which you have always affirmed” – or - “which you have always continued to observe.” It is the pattern in Timothy that he lives true to his doctrine; he lives true to his faith. Now, that is not the case of all the people in the Corinth - in the Ephesian assembly, either. Some have departed from the faith, chapter 4, verse 1 says, as I read a moment ago.

In chapter 5, verse 15, some are turned aside after Satan. So, Timothy, again, is set up as a genuine child, as over against those who were not genuine, as indicated by their failure to continue in obedience to the truth they once affirmed. The third thing that marked Timothy - and this is where we closed last time - was humble service. A genuine child in the faith has an attitude of humility in which he serves, and Timothy certainly demonstrated that.

We know from the overview of this point last time that there were in Ephesus some leaders and some elders who lacked humility, and whose service was purely to lift themselves up. That’s implied in chapter 3, verse 6. There were some, no doubt, who were lifted up to an elder’s position too soon, and they were demonstrating pride, and in danger of falling into the same condemnation the devil did when he exalted himself. Chapter 6, verse 4, again speaks of those in the congregation who were proud, but knew nothing.

They thought they knew everything. They actually knew nothing. They liked to argue. They were full of envy, strife, and so forth, and so on. So, there were some sinning elders, who were not proven to be humble servants, but self-exalting seekers of prominence, and the respective people which they did not, by any means, deserve. In chapter 5, verse 17 to 25, Paul has to tell Timothy that such need to be rebuked, and they need to be rebuked before the whole congregation for their sin. Chapter 6, some of them had gotten into loving gold more than God, and so forth, and so on.

But Timothy was a real servant; he had a humble heart. He desired to serve the Lord. The very fact that he stayed in Ephesus indicated his humble service, because it was a very, very difficult place. The fact that he had been called by God, gifted by God, affirmed by the church; the gift of prophecy, a divinely authored utterance, had indicated his call. His sort of ordination occurred when men of God laid hands on him, and he set out to serve humbly in the service of God. Again, in chapter 6:11, he is called, “a man of God,” a marvelous and rich term, that identifies Timothy.

That term, by the way, is used in the Old Testament for several of the particularly unique prophets who spoke the Word of God. And so, Timothy was one who spoke the Word of God in humble service, as over against those who acted in pride. In 2 Timothy 2:24, Paul even says to Timothy, in his later letter, “The servant of the Lord must not argue; but be gentle unto all men, skilled in teaching, patient,” and then he mentions “in meekness instructing.” So, he needed to be a meek servant, and we see indications that, indeed, he was.

Now, this humble service, by the way, was not easy, because Timothy was in a very, very difficult place. In Ephesus, there were those teaching false doctrine. It was very sophisticated false doctrine. It was somewhat philosophical, and Timothy felt, at least to some extent, inadequate to handle it. There was persecution of the truth. There was, no doubt, persecution of Timothy, because in 2 Timothy, Paul says that if you’re a good soldier, you will learn “to suffer hardship along with me.” That’s the way it is.

And when Timothy is the recipient of 2 Timothy, the whole epistle is given to him to strengthen him for a very, very difficult task. But Timothy demonstrates the heart of a true servant, and therein lies his genuineness. When you’re looking for someone to pass the mantle to, when you’re looking for someone to be brought to maturity, to take care of carrying on your ministry, or extending your ministry, or representing you, what you want is someone with genuine saving faith, someone who continues in obedience, and someone who demonstrates humble service.

There’s a fourth of the marks that mark Timothy, and I think it’s so important throughout this epistle, and that is this: his genuineness was marked by sound doctrine. And let’s pick it up there for just a brief few moments, and see what the Word of God has to say. His life was marked by sound doctrine. Now, true believers are those who adhere to sound doctrine, who do not sway away from the truth. Jesus said, “You demonstrate that you belong to Me because you hear My words.” And He said to the Pharisees, “You show that you don’t belong to God because you don’t hear My words.”

When the early church was born, on the day of Pentecost, they “continued in the apostles’ doctrine.” When Paul spoke to the Ephesian elders on an earlier occasion, many years before the writing of this letter, he said, “I commend you to the Word, which is able to build you up.” The Word of God and sound doctrine is essential. But, obviously, in Ephesus there were some who had departed from that. Again, chapter 1, verse 4, they were listening to fables instead of the Word of God. They were following some long lines of ancestors.

They were ministering simply questions rather than answers - debating, discussing, arguing - and as a result, in verse 6, some had willingly turned aside from the truth. In verse 7, it says that there were some who presumed themselves to be teachers of the law, and the truth was they didn’t even understand what the law was all about. Over in chapter 4, again, we are reminded that there were some who were giving profane and old wives’ fables. In other words, fairy tales; useless, unable to edify. Over in chapter 6, verse 3, there were some giving unwholesome words, words that don’t build up, words that don’t strengthen, words that aren’t spiritually helpful.

And they had violated true doctrine, which is connected with godliness. And it says again, in verse 4, disputing, and arguing, and debating. And verse 5, their disputings were corrupt, because their minds were corrupt, and they were destitute of the truth, and so forth, and so on. And then, down at the end of the chapter, again, he mentions the profane vain babblings, the science, or knowledge, falsely so called, and the erring from the faith.

So, in Ephesus, there was a lot of unsound teaching that needed to be dealt with; godless legends not worth telling, confusing debates and arguments, myths, and long lists of ancestors. And this appears to be some kind of a - some kind of Jewish legend, some kind of Jewish concoction of legends, and genealogies, and fights about the law, that really opposed true doctrine and godliness. We don’t know what - what form this heresy took; we can’t give it a name. There’s no way we can recover that historically.

But apparently, it was a mixture of Judaism and some pagan Hellenistic thinking that came together to form some false theology, that had crept in not only in Ephesus, but perhaps in other places as well. These mindless heretics, with their Christless legends, were denying not only the words of Christ - verse 3 of chapter 6, they were denying the very words of Christ - but it seems to me, from chapter 2, verses 5 and following, they may have been denying the mediating work of Christ, and in chapter 3, verse 16, they may have been even denying the deity of Christ.

So, there was a heresy that really attacked the very heart of Christian doctrine. But, on the other hand, as over against that, Timothy was a true teacher of sound doctrine. Look at chapter 4, and listen to what Paul says. Chapter 4, verse 11: “These things command, and teach. And let no one despise your youth” – “you teach what you know to be true.” Back in verse 6, he says, “To be a good minister, you must be nourished in the words of the faith and the good doctrine, unto which you continue to be connected” – or – “in which you continue to affirm.”

So, Timothy was solid in terms of doctrine. And in verse 13 of that same fourth chapter, he says, “Until I get there, give your attention to reading the text, exhorting the people, and teaching doctrine.” Keep on, all of those indicate - they’re all present tense - keep reading, and keep teaching, and keep exhorting. Timothy was faithful in that regard. In chapter 6, verse 2, he says, “These things teach and exhort,” and, again, calls on Timothy to bring to bear on the situation sound teaching, sound doctrine.

The mark of a genuine child of Paul would be one who taught sound doctrine, contrasted to the false teachers. So, the true child of faith has saving faith, continued obedience, humble service, and sound doctrine. I don’t believe for a moment that Paul ever would have left Timothy there if he hadn’t have been a teacher of sound doctrine. If anything is representative of Paul, it is that. I can be very personal at this point, and tell you that when I think about my own life and ministry, and what God has given us here, when I think about the church, and the Master’s College, and the radio, and the tape ministry, I often ask myself the question, who will follow after?

It isn’t that I doubt God; it’s just that that’s a very natural thing for my own heart to desire to know. Who will carry on the work? Who and where is a true child in the faith, or maybe more than just one, who can take it from here, and carry the same kind of commitment? One with saving faith, and continued obedience, and humble service, and one who understands sound doctrine. And there’s one other, a fifth, that is so vital: courageous conviction. I really believe that the movers and the shakers in the spiritual dimension are those who have great conviction.

Everybody else is just sort of along for the ride; any dead fish can float downstream. It takes a live one to fight the current. And courageous conviction is an element of spiritual strength that is essential to any kind of effective ministry, because you have to realize you’re in a battle and a war. Spiritual growth leads to strength. Spiritual growth leads to strong conviction. And you show me someone without strong conviction, and I don’t care how long they’ve been a Christian, I’ll show you someone who is not mature, because maturity and strength go together.

Jesus had the spirit of no compromise. In Matthew, chapter 10 - marvelous chapter where the Lord lays out the patterns of discipleship, not only for His own, but for us as well - He speaks very pointedly. “Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I deny before My Father who is in heaven.

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I am come not to send peace, but a sword. I am come to set a man at variance against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and as a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

“He that loves father and mother more than Me is not worthy to be My disciple.” He goes on, and He says, “And you have to take up your cross and follow Me, and if you’re not willing to do that, you’re not worthy of Me. And you need not to find your life, but to lose your life for My sake and truly find it.” In other words, it’s all very sacrificial, and it demands an uncompromising spirit. And, in 2 Timothy, Paul reminds Timothy that he’s going to have to have that uncompromising spirit. If he’s going to know real victory, and real joy in his ministry, he has to recognize that persecution, and reproach, and rejection go along with it, but conviction must stand.

Now, many in Ephesus lacked the courage of conviction. They were compromisers. In fact, in chapter 3, verse 13, when Paul talks about a deacon, he says that “the people who have used the office of a deacon well purchase to themselves a good standing, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.” One thing you know about one who’s strong in Christ, and that is that he has a boldness. I don’t mean by that he’s unkind, or ungracious, or lacking in sensitivity, or cruel. I mean that when it comes to the negotiable - the non-negotiables of Scripture, he is unbending.

Some, apparently, in that congregation had reached the office of deacon, and were not bold, and Paul wants to correct that. Back in chapter 3, verse 2, when he begins to outline the characteristics of an elder, or a pastor, or an overseer, he speaks of the uncompromised life. He “must be blameless, a one-woman man” - that is, he is completely committed to the woman who is his wife – “temperate, sober-minded, good in behavior, given over to hospitality” - that is, the love of strangers – “skilled in teaching; not given to wine, not violent, not greedy of money; not - but patient, not a brawler” - or a fighter – “not covetous; He has to show that he rules his house well.”

I mean, this is an uncompromised life. This is a life of great integrity that reaches this level of spiritual leadership. And verse 10 says, “These must be proved.” They must be verified, they must be tested, to see that they hold and live the truth. Then let them be an elder; then let them be a deacon. Obviously, there were some elders and deacons who were compromisers, and that’s the issue to which he speaks. Let me give you another illustration of it, in chapter 5, verse 6. There were some - some widows living in pleasure who were dead while they lived.

Some people lived for pleasure, and were spiritually dead. They were in the congregation. But their whole life was all about pleasure. And while it was apparent that they wanted to make people think they were alive, the truth was, the fact that they lived in pleasure indicated they were really spiritually dead. That is the - the life without conviction. That is the life of compromise, that says, “I do whatever feels good, not whatever is right.” This is further indicated in chapter 5, verse 11. Notice this.

“The younger widows, don’t put on the list of serving in the church - on the support list of the church, for when they have begun to grow wanton against Christ, they’ll marry.” In other words, what’ll happen is, a woman will lose her husband, and she’ll make a vow to serve the Lord. So, she’ll come into the church. She’ll make this commitment, this vow, to serve Christ with all of her heart. And then, soon she’ll be sorry she made the vow. She’ll get angry with the Lord. She’ll desire to be married; she’ll want a husband.

And passion rises up within her, and causes her to violate her vows, and she becomes guilty of breaking a promise to God, and, really, casting off her first commitment. Verse 12: they’ll cast off - or repudiate - their pledge, and then, they will learn to be idle, wandering around from house to house; and not only idle, but talebearers, and busybodies, speaking things they shouldn’t speak. In other words, they’ll drift from their original commitment. This will happen to some. So, verse 14 says, “I want them to marry, and have children, and rule a house” - in other words, young widows are to remarry.

Now, this is a very interesting thing. The implication here is, that casting off their first faith means they will wind up marrying an unbeliever. They’ll vow to be a servant to Christ; they’ll float away, drift away; passion rises up, they cast off their first faith. They become dominated by lust, and they will wind up perhaps being a gossip, or a talebearer; and worse yet, marrying an unbeliever is implied, and we’ll see that as we study the passage, later on.

Verse 15 says, “some have already turned aside after Satan” - in immodesty, lack of submission, in lust, false doctrine, seeking pleasure, deceived by demons - all these more - forms of compromise. Chapter 6, verse 10, others had compromised with money, “and pierced themselves through with many sorrows,” and so forth; you get the idea. So, in the Ephesian congregation, and in any congregation, there are those who are without the courage of conviction, and they are compromised by their lusts and desires. They want pleasure, they want money, they want fulfillment.

They make promises they never keep. They don’t hold the line, and that kind of thing is undesirable, and unacceptable; and so, Timothy is set in that congregation to be a pattern, by which such people can be exposed by comparison. Timothy was a fighter; he was a fighter. And Paul tells him, in chapter 1, verse 3, you charge those “that they teach no other doctrine.” And over in verse 18, he says, “The charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which pointed to thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare; Holding faith, and a good conscience.”

Timothy was to be that uncompromising, strong man of God. Over in chapter 4, verse 3, he says – verse - chapter 4, verse 13, rather - he says, “Keep reading, keep teaching, keep exhorting. Don’t neglect the gift. Meditate on these things” - verse 15 - “give yourself wholly unto them.” And verse 16: “Take heed to yourself, and the doctrine; continue in them.” In other words, what you teach, and what you are; be an example of the believers; all of that. In chapter 6, verse 20: “Keep what’s committed to your trust, Timothy.”

And he calls for Timothy to maintain the spirit of a defender of the faith. By the way, tradition says Timothy was killed in Ephesus - later on, 97 A.D. - for opposing the vile perversions of idolatry in the cult of Diana. He was a man of courage, who had great boldness in the faith, which is in Jesus Christ. This is the man to whom Paul writes this great epistle. And may I say to you, this is the man and the woman that God wants us to be? Marked by saving faith, continuing obedience, humble service, sound teaching, courageous conviction.

May we be so blessed to be those kind of children. Those are the kind of children I wish to have in the faith. I pray those are the kind of children you wish to have as well. I pray those are the kind of children you are. Let’s bow in prayer. Lord, in our brief meditation in the Word this morning, our hearts again are reminded that Jesus Christ died for us. But He died not only to save us from hell, and save us from sin, but to make us the people He wanted us to be; people of great character, true children in the faith.

Lord, we ask that it might be that we are so much like Christ, that it is made manifest to everyone around us that we are His children; that we belong to Him; that we bear His mark. We thank You, O Father, that Christ died to make this possible. We bless Your name, and we ask that, as we come to Your table this day, we might come with thankful hearts for what You have done, and we might come confessing what we have failed to do, failed to be, in coming short of being Timothys, genuine in every aspect.

If there are here, Lord, those whose faith is not true faith, those whose obedience is not continuing, those whose service is not humble, those whose doctrine is not sound, and those whose conviction has no courage, Lord God, speak to us, as we look to the Savior, who died to make us true children, who really do represent Him by showing His character.

• Turn in your Bible to the first chapter of 1 Timothy. 

• We have recently begun a study of 1 Timothy. 

• We’ve had a couple of messages getting started, looking at the introduction, and now we come in this next section to verses 3 through 11. 

• This section has to do with dealing with false teachers. 

• I want us to take verses 3 through 11 as a unit, but we’re going to divide it between two weeks, this Lord’s day and next. 

• Let me introduce our study today by reminding you of something I’m sure you’re very much aware of.

• In John’s gospel, chapter 8 and verse 44, it reminds us that Satan is not only a murderer, but Satan is also a liar. 

• One of the manifestations of the lying intent of Satan is the proliferation of false teachers, that besiege the gospel and the church through all the history of the church’s life. 

• False prophets and false teachers are a part and parcel of the battle the church has to fight in every age, and that really isn’t anything only for us to have to deal with, for, in fact, God’s people throughout all of history have had to deal with false teachers.

• We go to the Old Testament, and we find warning after warning after warning against those who teach falsely. 

• I’m particularly reminded of Jeremiah, chapter 23, clear through chapter 27, where you have many references to false teachers. 

• Wherever God sets the truth, Satan endeavors to sow lies, and falsehood, and error. 

• We are reminded, no doubt, of Matthew, chapter 7, where we hear the words of our Lord telling us that there will be false teachers, false prophets, who, though they are wolves, disguise themselves in sheep’s clothing - which was the garment of a prophet - as if they are true prophets of God.

• We are reminded, later on, in the gospel of Matthew in that great Olivet Discourse, in which Jesus preached a sermon on His own second coming, that

• He warned that there would be many false christs coming in the future. 

• John tells us, in 1 John 2, that already in the world there are many antichrists.

• The book of Revelation draws for us a very clear picture of the consummation of the church age, God’s final picture of what’s going to happen on the earth, and it is a time filled with deception and lies; false teaching, false doctrine, finally summed up in the false prophet and the Antichrist himself.

• In 1 Timothy, the very epistle to which we look, we are reminded, in chapter 4, verse 1, that seducing spirits are loose in the church, loose all around us, with their doctrines of devils or demons. 

• They speak lies. The apostle Paul, in writing to the Galatian church, warns them on several occasions in that letter about false teachers. 

• In writing to the church at Colossae, the major portion of the second chapter is a defense of the sufficiency of Jesus Christ for salvation, as over against those false teachers in Colossae, who are attacking that very sufficiency.

So, in a very general sense, any student of the Bible is aware of the fact that wherever you have the truth, you will have the encroachment of error. I really don’t think we need to just limit our understanding of that to the Bible alone, because here at Grace Church, we have experienced the fact that Satan has endeavored most recently to sow lies among us. Those of us who have been here for the last couple of months, which includes certainly most of our congregation, will recall that I’ve made a couple of references to false teachers in the parking lot, false teachers in the patio, trying to pull away people to their errors.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that there have been some in our own midst who, as members of our church, have pulled to themselves willing disciples, who have been led astray, and been taught to believe that what we teach here is heresy, short of the truth of God, and they have been brought to confusion and chaos in their understanding of what is truth. And I really believe, beloved, that this is only the beginning. I don’t believe it’s going to lessen, I believe it will intensify, as God gives our ministry a greater opportunity and a greater voice in our day.

Well, it was so in Ephesus. That church in Ephesus was, I suppose, by all measures, a great church. It had known the blessing of God, as few churches in history will ever know; that is to say, three years of the ministry of the great apostle Paul himself. A heritage unequalled in most situations. They knew what it was to have Paul as their mentor for three years, according to Acts 20. And yet, as he drew to a conclusion that ministry with them, and gathered the elders at Miletus, about 30 miles away from Ephesus, as he was traveling by ship back to Jerusalem, he called them to himself.

And he said to them, in Acts 20, starting at verse 29, “I know that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in, not sparing the flock.” And like those described in Matthew 7, they come dressed in sheep’s clothing. That doesn’t mean they’re dressed like sheep. That means they wear wool, which was the garment of a prophet. And then he says, “And also of your own selves shall perverse men arise, and draw away people from the truth.” And then he said, “So I commend you to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and assure you an inheritance.”

Paul knew that the church at Ephesus, like any church, would be under attack from lying prophets and teachers. That is exactly what has happened. It is the legacy of every church that stands strongly for the truth to have to deal with what Paul calls, in 2 Corinthians, chapter 2, verse 17, Hucksters of the Word – kapēlos - those who corrupt the Word. Those who come, as he says in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 2, dishonestly; those who handle the Word of God deceitfully. And the subtlety of false teaching of this kind is, that it handles the Word of God, but that it misrepresents its teaching.

It is no real threat to the Christian church to teach something that is explicitly, and overtly, and recognizably anti-Bible, anti-Christ, and anti-God. It is the subtlety of the teaching which appears to be biblical that is the grave danger the church faces, and that which pulls away unwary souls. The church at Ephesus, though it had a great history, a great beginning, and it was the church out of which were spawned other sister churches in Asia Minor, and though it had the ministry of Paul, was never impervious to false teachers.

And so, Paul writes to Timothy, to tell him to stop the false teachers and set things in order in that church. He commands Timothy to keep the teaching pure, and set an example for other churches to follow. Now, in these opening verses, in which he introduces this necessity of stopping false teachers, he helps Timothy and us to understand the necessity for this by four key ideas that I want you to grasp, and we’ll be looking at them this Lord’s day and next. Stopping false doctrine and stopping false teachers demands that we understand four things.

First, we need to understand their effect. Secondly, we need to understand their goal or objective. Thirdly, we need to understand their motive. And finally, we need to understand their result; what they bring about in the chaos. Now, to begin with, it’s important for us to understand the error, and what it creates. I suppose the first point could equally be to understand their error. Their error has a very serious effect. Let’s look at verses 3 and 4, and see if we can’t understand their error, and how we define that error, and what it brings about.

Verse 3 says, “As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine, Nor give heed to myths and endless genealogies, which produce speculations, rather than the plan of God which is by faith.” Now, we’ll stop at that point. Here, we find the error of the false teachers simply introduced to us. But let’s set the scene a little bit. He starts in verse 3 by saying, “I besought,” and that’s a word of exhortation, a word of some strength – “it’s important that you stay, I’m pleading with you to stay.”

Which may indicate that Timothy was looking happily for some new assignment, because this was not an easy one. Here was a young man, Timothy, of the age of about 35. He had been with Paul for 20 years. He was a true replica of Paul, as it says in verse 2: “My genuine son in the faith.” But even so, he had a certain timidity about his character. He was somewhat intimidated by those who would despise his youth. He found it, no doubt, difficult to deal on the level of intellectualism that these errorists were dealing on.

He was not really, in the sense of polemics and apologetics, able to handle their arguments at their level, and he may have felt a little bit inadequate for the task. Furthermore, it wasn’t easy to displace church leaders. It would be one thing if you were working with the people in - in the pew, in the laity, but to be dealing with these leaders and false teachers was a very difficult task. And it may well have been that Paul anticipated that, and that’s why he says, “I beseech you to stay there. I want you to stay.”

Paul had already gotten things started. In chapter 1, verse 20, it says - mentioning Hymenaeus and Alexander, two leading false teachers, perhaps the two leading ones at the very top of the list - “whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.” Apparently, Paul himself, when he was there, dealt with Hymenaeus and Alexander, and sort of set Timothy in motion, and left, saying, “Now, you do to the rest, you do the mop-up, what I’ve done to these two. We must stop and eliminate these false teachers.”

And so, Paul has left for Macedonia to visit the Philippians, and Timothy is left with a very difficult assignment, trying to get rid of false spiritual leaders, in the church at Ephesus, and perhaps in the sister churches in that area. Now, as I mentioned to you a week ago, this letter cannot fit into the chronology of the book of Acts. The book of Acts ends with Paul in prison in Rome, and chapter 28, it is believed that he then was released from that imprisonment, and upon the release from that imprisonment, he journeyed by ship to Ephesus.

On the way, he visited Colossae. He had promised Philemon - in verse 22 of that letter to Philemon - that he would come there, and he did, no doubt. And then he went from Colossae to Ephesus, Timothy coming from Philippi to Ephesus. They met there, they dealt with Hymenaeus and Alexander, they surveyed the situation. Paul left Timothy there, and he himself went on to Philippi, to do the work that God would have him do there, as indicated in Philippians 2:24. So, Timothy is now there. Paul has just gone to Philippi.

He’s not gone long, but that he writes back this epistle, because he knows Timothy has a very difficult task, and he wants to strengthen Timothy’s courage. He wants to strengthen his authority with the people, who also will hear this letter. And so, it’s a letter of great importance, as it deals with the elimination of false teachers in the congregation of that church and the others surrounding it. It is interesting to note that verses 3 and 4, though they are a complete thought, lack the grammatical structure to be a legitimate sentence.

It is elliptical. He starts out with a clause beginning with as, but he never resolves it. And so, in the Authorized, in italics, the last two words of verse 4 are so do, because the editor feels he’s got to complete the sentence. And we understand that Paul, at this point, is not concerned with grammar, which is a hint about the exercised heart that he is expressing over this issue of dealing with Timothy in regard to the false teachers. He is not too concerned about grammar at this point.

He, rather, starts with a passionate cry for Timothy to accept the command to do the job that needs to be done in this church that is so dear to Paul’s heart. He knows Timothy to be a genuine child in the faith. He knows Timothy to be able by the Spirit to carry out the task, and passionately, he encourages him to do that. In fact, in the middle of verse 3, he says, “I am begging you, as I have begged you all along” – “as I besought you, please command some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to myths and endless genealogies.”

In other words, he is really kind of emphasizing the fact that Timothy has apostolic authority, and he wants him to command those people to stop. You don’t deal lightly with false teaching. You don’t deal lightly with false teachers. You don’t deal lightly with error in the church. It must be dealt with immediately and firmly, and so, he gives him what is a military command. Paraggellō basically is a word that carries the idea of a military command. It’s not one you have an option to respond or not to respond to; it’s one which demands a response from an inferior to an order given by a superior.

Now, Paul, according to chapter 3, verse 14, had hoped to come himself. The truth was he never did get there, as we find from his second letter to Timothy. But he’s writing in case he can’t come - and, of course, he never did - to strengthen Timothy’s hand. Just a brief reminder that Ephesus was a key city. It was a provincial capital of that province of Asia – Asia Minor. It was somewhat declining economically, because the river that ran through Ephesus was depositing silt on the shoreline there at the sea.

And consequently, it was pushing the city back inland because of the silt deposit, and it was losing some of its economic capability in trade. But it remained to be a significant city, due primarily to the Temple of Diana - or Artemis. This particular pagan cult was a fertility cult, in which worship was expressed by sensual and orgiastic fertility rites of an indescribable nature. And in the middle of that place is this church, that Paul so passionately cares about, and to which he had sent Timothy, or left Timothy, for this ministry.

Notice that he uses the word some – “command some” - certain individuals, is the idea here. It seems to indicate that there were only a few of them, but they were having a rather wide influence. No doubt, not only in Ephesus, as I mentioned, but in the scattered region around there. And Paul wants them dealt with immediately, even as he immediately dealt with Hymenaeus and Alexander. It’s very possible that they were all known by name, not only to Paul, but also to Timothy. We ask the question, why are their names not mentioned?

And I suppose the answer is, the Lord didn’t want to give them any publicity, on the one hand. On the other hand, the Lord didn’t want to list some names and leave someone out, who then, by being left out, would feel himself rather impervious to any censure. There is no hint, either, that they were outsiders, like those in Galatia and those in Corinth, who had come to pollute the assembly there. In fact, I’m convinced that the some - the certain individuals - were very likely elders, in the church at Ephesus and some of the surrounding churches.

They were those in the highest level. They were pastors, who were false teachers. Now, the reason I’m - I tend to feel that way is just because of the – the flow of this particular epistle. For example, in describing them, it says in verse 7, that they had presumed themselves to be teachers. And we all know, from further looks at this epistle, that teaching was the unique role of the elder, or bishop, or pastor. In chapter 3, verse 2, at the end of the verse, it says in describing a bishop or overseer - who also would be a pastor, an elder; same person, just describing different facets of that man - he is to be skilled in teaching - didaktikos, a skilled teacher.

In chapter 5, verse 17, those elders or pastors who ruled well and were counted worthy of double honor, were those who were especially skilled in handling the Word and doctrine. So, it seems as though these would have aspired, and maybe arrived, at the point of being recognized as teachers within that congregation; they had reached the point of being a pastor or an elder there. It also is curious to me that, in verse 20, Hymenaeus and Alexander were dismissed by the unilateral act of the apostle Paul.

It says “Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.” Apparently, Paul had to dispense with these men - put them out of the church, turn them over to the devil - himself. Which probably says that a coalition of the good people in the church couldn’t do it, which may indicate that they had reached such a state of prominence that the people themselves couldn’t deal with them, and it had to be done with apostolic authority. And that’s why Paul did it, and that’s why Timothy was left there to do it as well.

Furthermore, in chapter 3, the fact that the first part of the chapter is so preoccupied with the qualifications of an elder, or the qualifications of a pastor, seems to indicate that there were unqualified people who had reached that place, and there needed some clear instruction to be given regarding who should have that office. Then also, in chapter 5, we are reminded, in verse 19, that an elder should be accused, but always in the proper way, before two or three witnesses, and if they do sin, they should be rebuked, and there should be no partiality given to them because they are elders.

Now, all of these things tend to indicate that these false teachers had reached a very high level in the church, and had to be dealt with under - in this case - apostolic confrontation. Now, Timothy is told, in verse 3 - look at the end of the verse - to command them with a military command, give them orders that they teach no other doctrine. Now, that’s a long verb. That’s one verb, most likely coined by Paul. He takes the word to teach – didaskaleō - and he takes the word heteros, which means of a different kind - we talk about heterodoxy being something that is in distinction from orthodoxy.

And he puts those words together, and most likely coins the word; teaching heresy is what it means. “Command them to stop teaching other than the truth.” Teaching teaching of a different kind, that conflicts with the revealed truth. So, no doubt, they were using the role of pastor. They were using the role of elder. They had prominence in the church. And they were using the Word of God - probably the Old Testament, most significantly - and using that as their base, and mingling with it teaching inconsistent with the Old Testament, and, to be sure, teaching inconsistent with the gospel of the New Testament.

Therefore, they had changed, twisted, and perverted the whole nature of Christian truth. Now, they had a standard. I mean, it’s 30 years after the day of Pentecost, and even on the day of Pentecost, it says that Peter preached and 3,000 were saved, and Acts 2:42 says, “And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’” - what? – “doctrine.” They knew that the substance of revealed truth, come through the apostles, and the apostles’ doctrine, was the basis of what was true. And these, no doubt, had departed from that. They had violated it.

That’s why, in 2 Timothy 2, Timothy is reminded to “teach only those things that you’ve heard from me among faithful men, among many witnesses, commit those things to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” But they had deviated from the truth, and they were teaching error. Now, we get a little more into what their error was, in verse 4. If we’re going to understand their error, we need look to verse 4, and we’ll see how he begins to discuss it.

“Neither give heed” - which means to turn your mind over to, or to occupy yourself with – “command them not to teach any other doctrine, nor to give their minds over to fables and endless genealogies.” It’s the word muthos - fable, myth we get from it. Legends, and fables, and fanciful stories, that are concocted and manufactured by men and seducing spirits, which would be called, as chapter 4 calls them, doctrines of demons. They were making up things. They were very much like the Athenians, who are described, in Acts 17:21, in a rather general description that gives us insight.

It says, “All the Athenians and strangers who were there” - in the city of Athens – “spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or hear some new thing.” They were preoccupied with some new thing philosophically, and apparently here, these were introducing new things to tantalize the people in Ephesus. And these legends, these man-made or demonically-designed, contrived lies and falsehoods, were being passed off as divine truth. It’s very hard for us to specifically identify these. In fact, we can’t identify what the legends were, because we don’t have that information revealed.

We don’t know what they were reading into the genealogies, or how they were interpolating those. We really don’t have specifics. It is enough to know that what was being taught was contrary to the truth. It isn’t necessary for us to know all the details about the error. But it is highly likely that we can sort of systematize it, by just flowing a bit through the epistles. For example, we find this, in verse 4: “They were giving themselves to myths and endless genealogies.” Verse 7 tells us something else: these who were doing this were “desiring to be teachers of the law.”

So, somehow, these myths and genealogies were connected to Old Testament law, which leads us to believe that there was a Jewish orientation in this false teaching. Chapter 4 tells us that these seducing spirits and doctrines of devils were filled with hypocrisy and lies. Part of it had to do, in verse 3, with forbidding to marry. They were advocating celibacy, and they were also commanding people to abstain from food. So, there was a certain sort of monkish quality, what we call asceticism or self-deprivation, a certain monastic approach, that true spirituality was found through legends, and genealogies, and secretive interpretations of the law.

And through all of these kinds of abstinences, where you don’t get married, and you don’t eat certain things, and by your self-deprivation and indulgence in these fanciful things, you will attain to the standard of divine acceptance. Chapter 4, also verse 7, further identifies this as “profane and old wives’ fables” - myths told by little old ladies, that do nothing but bring about ungodliness, is the intent there. Look at 2 Timothy, and we’ll find - or actually, look at chapter 6 of 1 Timothy, first of all; chapter 6, verse 4, further defines these.

The people teaching them are “proud know-nothings, who spend their time doting about questions, disputing about words.” In other words, it’s just - verse 5 says - a whole lot of perverse arguments of men who have corrupt minds, who are absolutely destitute of the truth, and the reason they’re in it is not for godliness, but for money. And, my dear friend, you will find that the bottom line on all false prophets is money; always the bottom line. Second Timothy further helps us to understand - because Paul writes this not long after, writing Titus in between, and then 2 Timothy - but he also talks about this perversion that was going on, in verse 14 of chapter 2.

He says, “Of these things put them in remembrance, commanding them” – again, he gives them strict orders to lay out commands to these people – “that they not argue about words which have no profit, but do nothing but subvert the hearers.” Apparently, they were quibbling and arguing about words. It may have been that they had taken words out of their context. They had committed to them legendary allegorical meanings. One commentator, J.N.D. Kelly said the Jews had a mania for family trees, and they could literally read in and out of those family trees all kinds of bizarre allegorical speculations.

And frankly, much of the rabbinic Haggadah, much of their teaching, consists of Scripture rewritten on an allegorical basis, with really no relation to “rightly dividing the word of truth,” as he says in verse 15. That verse indicates that they were using the Scripture, but they were wrongly understanding it, wrongly interpreting it, and consequently, wrongly applying it. By the way, that wasn’t limited only to them. That’s gone on through the years, and it’s still going on today. There are people today who still wrongly divide the Word of God.

And as I said at the beginning, the subtlety of false prophets and false teaching is that it handles the Word of God, but it corrupts it. They are hucksters. They use the Word of God to make money; to make merchandise out of people. They twist it and pervert it for their own ends. But there have always been these bizarre interpretations of Scripture. I think about Pope Gregory the Great’s interpretation of the book of Job. Quote: “The patriarch’s three friends represent the heretics.” He’s trying to take it allegorically, and bring it into his own time - the anti-Catholics.

“The seven sons are the twelve apostles” - whatever you say, Gregory. “The seven thousand sheep,” he says, “are God’s faithful people, and his three thousand humpback camels are the depraved Gentiles.” That kind of bizarre interpretation of Scripture was common in the rabbinical period. I have to confess, it’s still common, and I am somewhat frightened by it. The other day on the charismatic television there was a person being interviewed, and they said to this person - oh, they were asking all kinds of questions, and he said he was born in 1929.

And he said God had him to be born in 1929 because his life verse is Matthew 19:29. Oh, they went into euphoria over that. “Oh, how wonderful, and what is Matthew 19:29?” “With men, it is impossible; but with God, all things are possible.” “Oh, what a life verse. That’s your life verse, ‘cause you were born in 1929.” And then the host said, “Oh I was born in 1934, what’s Matthew 19:34? That will be my life verse.” And so, his wife looked up Matthew 19:34, and, of course, Matthew 19 doesn’t have 34 verses.

And so - Mark doesn’t have 19 chapters, so you’re left with Luke. And he said, “Look up Luke 19:34. Look up Luke 19:34, that will be it.” And she looked it up, and with great excitement, she said, “And Jesus said, ‘I have need of him, I have need of him.’” And he said, “That’s it - He has need of me, He has need of me.” And she kept looking, and this she looked up, and said, “No, no, no, it’s talking about a jackass.” And I said, “Right.” It is frightening what people have done and do to the Word of God. However, that may have been his verse; I don’t want to argue the point.

Well, you understand. In 2 Timothy, this wrongly dividing the word of truth is further discussed in verse 16, as “profane and vain babblings: that increase only unto ungodliness” - and it is a word that eats like a gangrene. In verse 18, it – they - they have “erred” from the truth. Down in verse 23, he describes it further as “foolish, unlearned questions, that only start arguments.” Chapter 3, verse 8: they are “corrupt minds,” they “resist the truth,” they are “reprobate concerning the faith.” In verse 13, they are “seducers who grow worse and worse, deceiving others and themselves being deceived.”

In chapter 4, they are teachers who are the result of the lusts of people “who want their ears tickled; they turn away from the truth; they turn to fables.” And Titus, on Crete, was dealing with the same thing, no doubt. Titus 1:10, they are “unruly, empty talkers, deceivers,” and then he says this: “especially the ones of the circumcision” – which, again, indicates to me, that this is some - not some pre-gnostic thing, but this is probably something that is more like a Judaizing element.

It may have some elements of - of the Gentile pagan philosophy in it, but it seems to me, that this is a sort of a Judaizing thing, where they’re coming with the law, only they’re interpreting the law allegorically, with all these legends and myths that comes out as nothing but a lot of babble, with no significance. And he says of them, in chapter 1 of Titus, verse 11, their “mouths must be stopped, because they subvert houses, and they teach things they shouldn’t teach” - and here we go again, and they do it for what? – “filthy lucre.”

It’s the money that’s always at the bottom line. Verse 14 calls them “Jewish fables, and commandments of men” - that is, designed by men – “that turn people from the truth. They profess” - verse 16 says – “that they know God; but their works deny that.” They are “abominable, disobedient” – and, in fact, everything they do demonstrates that they are “reprobate.” Well, you get the idea. Chapter 3, verse 9, of Titus: “foolish questions, genealogies, contentions, arguments about the law; that are unprofitable and vain.”

In fact, he discusses them, in verse 10, as “heretics who should be admonished once and then twice, and then rejected.” They are “subverted sinners, self-condemned.” Now, that’s, really, just an overview of what this heresy was, and again, we cannot really label it in any specific way, except to say that it was contrary to the truth of God. And as I said earlier, it isn’t important that we label and understand everything about a heresy, everything about a misinterpretation; it is important that we understand that what God is saying in this epistle is that stuff has to be what? Stopped. It has to be dealt with.

And it’s frightening to me, to look across America, and see a church that is so naive that people can literally sit and hear false teaching, and not recognize it. As Walter Martin said one time, the average Jehovah’s Witness can take apart a Christian in 30 minutes, because he really doesn’t know what he believes. And people are becoming victimized by all these false teachers because the teachers that they have, though they may in their heart be true, are not teaching their people how to know and recognize that, and how to prevent it from intruding into their lives.

And sometimes, it’s just as simple as turning off your television, turning off your radio, throwing away the book, or walking away from a person who encroaches on you with false teaching. Mixing sacred truth with myths corrupts the Word of God. And the cults have done it for years. And liberalism does it, and we have to be ready to deal with it. Just to sum it up, the teachers that teach it are described in the pastoral epistles as ambitious, avaricious, ignorant, hypocritical, puffed up, corrupt in mind, bereft of the truth, impostors, deceivers, liars, defiled and unbelieving, disobedient, and abominable. Nice bunch.

They have, it says, swerved, turned aside, made shipwreck of their faith, fallen away from the faith, consent not to sound words, erred concerning the faith, erred concerning the truth, turned away from the truth, and are reprobate from the faith. Now, I want you to notice the effect of this error, in verse 4. “They minister speculations.” They provide speculations. In other words, instead of truth, they just question, question, question, and that creates confusion. They stir up useless questionings.

Now, watch this: “rather than the plan of God, which is by faith.” Now, the word here, that you see maybe as edifying, if you have an Authorized, is really the word oikonomia, which Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 9:17, Ephesians 3, a couple of times. It means stewardship, or administration, or dispensation. But it has to do with a modus operandi, it has to do with a means of operation, and connected with theou, the term God, it is the operation of God, or the plan of God, or, if I may add this, the saving plan of God.

What they are teaching stirs up questions, useless speculation, rather than the plan of God, which is by faith. In other words, it strikes a blow at the gospel of saving faith. Therefore, we conclude that it is a system of works righteousness. It is a legalism. Some kind of Judaizing chaos, mingled with pagan Gentile philosophy, that, in effect, negated the salvation by grace through faith, which was the apostolic message and the gospel of Christ. So, what is the effect? The effect is to attack the gospel.

And let me give you some little formula that you can remember that’s very simple. Because of the chaos in the world today, sometimes people get confused about religious systems. I can simply it for you very readily. There are only two religions in the whole world; only two. There is the religion of divine accomplishment; there is the religion of divine accomplishment. That is, that God in Christ accomplished salvation, apart from any effort of man. And then there is the religion of human achievement.

That is, that men, by something they do, attain unto salvation. The religion of divine accomplishment is the Christian gospel. Every other religion in the world, in one way or another, fits into the category of human achievement. And wherever false doctrine comes to strike a blow at the gospel, it will always offer the fact that man, in and of himself, somehow attains unto the level of pleasing God. And these people, who came with their Jewish legends and fables, who tried to interpret the law, which they didn’t even understand, were, no doubt, coming across with some kind of legalistic approach.

Some kind of self-denying approach, some legend-involved genealogically-confused philosophy, that was imposed upon the grid of Scripture, so that everything became chaotic. It’s no different, dear friend, than the Mormons, who pick up the Bible and say, “Yes, we believe the Bible,” but they haven’t got a clue what the Bible means unless they strain the Bible through all their Mormon documents, which misrepresent, misinterpret, and confuse. It’s no different than someone in Christian Science, who says, “Yes, I believe the Bible, but I cannot understand it unless I have The Key to the Scripture,” which is written by Mary Baker Eddy Patterson Glover Frye - she had a problem.

And there are those people who cannot understand the simplicity of the Word of God unless their particular teacher or their system reinterprets it, according to the fanciful legends and musings of minds that are both human and demonic. It is essential that we understand that when anybody comes along with another gospel, Paul has given us a word, in Galatians 1, that says, “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached, let him be” - what? – “accursed” – or – anathema, devoted to destruction.

False teachers are not to be dealt with lightly, not if you understand their error; and their error is inevitably a blow struck at the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith. It is not a trifling matter. Now, the second thing - and I just want to introduce this to you - is we need to understand not only their error and the effect that it has, keeping people from salvation, but we need to understand their goals. What are their goals? Verse 5, Paul says to Timothy, “Now the telos - the end, the objective – “the goal of the commandment I’m giving you is love.”

I want to see in the church what God wants to see in the church, and what God wants to see in the church is love. Jesus said that men would know them by their love, and it’s essential that the church be marked as those who “love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love their neighbor as their self,” as Matthew 22:37 and following says is the great commandment. We are to be marked out by love. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and gave Himself for us.”

And then he goes on to say, “And if we belong to God, we’ll be marked by - by love, because God is love,” 1 John 4:7 and 8. So, the pervasive characteristic of Christians is that they are marked by love. The word is agapē - it’s that love of choice, that love of will, that self-denying, self-sacrificing love, that says “I live my life for the benefit of God” - that’s my love toward Him. “I live my life for the benefit of you” - that’s my love toward you. “I live my life for the benefit of the lost” - that’s my love toward them.

That’s not emotion, that’s a - a love of choice; that’s the highest, that’s the most wonderful kind of love. “The purpose that I’m giving you, Timothy, is to create love there.” And I’ll promise you one thing, that’s not the goal of false teachers. The goal of the commandment is love. And what is it that brings love? It is a pure heart, and a good conscience, and unfeigned or unhypocritical faith. The concept of a pure heart is a magnificent Old Testament concept; a rich Old Testament concept.

The Psalmist, in Psalm 24:4 and Psalm 51:10, where David speaks, cries out for a pure heart, a clean heart. David says, “Create in me” - what? – “a clean heart, O Lord.” First Samuel 16:7, I think it is, where we are reminded that God looks on the heart, while man looks on the outside. The heart is the center of thought. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” The heart is the center of man’s belief, and conviction, and moral character. It is the center of his spiritual desires. It is the center of his longings toward God.

And when the heart is made pure by the washing of regeneration, when the heart is single in its devotion through faith in Christ, when it is, as Romans 6:17 says, an obedient heart, then it is a pure heart. And a pure heart is one devoted to God with an undivided allegiance, because it’s been washed and cleansed by Christ. And out of a pure heart comes love, and a good conscience – good – agathos - perfect, as to produce pleasure and satisfaction and a sense of well-being. The conscience is your self-judging faculty; it’s your self-judging faculty.

And frankly, it responds to your mind. Whatever’s in your mind’s going to activate your conscience. Your mind is the engine; your conscience is the flywheel, and whatever is in your mind will activate your conscience. And if you have a pure heart, you’re going to have a pure conscience; in what sense? Your conscience will not accuse you, right? Your conscience will not damn you. Your conscience will not condemn you. Because if you have a pure conscience, there’s nothing to condemn. The self-judging faculty is going to say, “All is well,” and your conscience is going to provide for you peace, and joy, and freedom from guilt, because your heart is pure.

And that’s what Paul means, in Acts 24:16, when he says, “I always want to have a conscience void of offense toward God.” Certainly, don’t want to have a conscience like these false teachers, right? What kind of conscience do they have? First Timothy 4:2: they have one that’s seared, like with a hot iron, scarred. And then, thirdly, he says this love comes out of true faith; genuine faith, not the hypocritical faith that false teachers manifest. True faith; faith that has no pretense. Let me tell you about a false teacher, all right?

A false teacher has a dirty heart, because it’s never been cleansed by the true gospel: faith in Christ. A false teacher has a guilty conscience, because an impure heart triggers a guilty conscience. Unless that conscience has reached the point where it is so scarred with scar tissue, that it’s lost its sensitivity, like in 1 Timothy 4:2. And a false teacher has a hypocritical faith; he is, at all things, a phony. He wears a mask. He is insincere. And that kind of life will never produce the love of God, true?

The goal, then, and the objective of the false teacher, is not to create an environment of love; the goal is to fulfill their ego and fill their pockets. That’s the goal. And so, verse 6 says, “From these things that lead to love they have turned aside.” They have turned aside - they have swerved. It means to miss the mark, to fail in hitting the target. They have swerved, and then turned aside, two verbs. One means to miss the mark, one means to turn off course, and their goal wasn’t love. They weren’t shooting for goal - the goal of love.

They weren’t headed for the goal of love. They’ve swerved from that. They’ve got another goal, and their goal - it’s very clear - is the fulfillment of their own ego, verse 7: “They desire to be known as teachers of the law.” And in chapter 6, their desire is gold; gold. And, like travelers who leave the right road to take a path to death, they end up teaching, verse 6 says, irrelevant noise – “vain jangling.” Perverted hearts, scarred consciences, hypocritical faith, will never produce love.

That’s why there’s no genuine love in the heart of a false prophet, and he can produce none. Do you understand that genuine love, as spoken of here - a pure heart, a good conscience, and unfeigned faith - can only be accomplished by a transformed life through Christ? You understand, don’t you, that false religion cannot restrain the flesh? False religion cannot reform the life? False religion cannot transform the heart? And all it is, is a lot of noise. Unfortunately - and tragically - it is often damning noise.

And that is why Titus 1:11 is so important: “Their mouths must be stopped.” “So, Timothy,” he says, “if you understand their error and its effect, and if you understand their goal, then you will know how important it is for you to command them to stop.” There are two other things we have to understand, and we’ll look at those next Lord’s day. Let’s bow in prayer. Lord, I’m thankful in my heart this day for godly grandparents, who knew Your Word, and godly parents, who knew Your Word, so that the legacy that I’ve received is the truth.

I’m thankful for godly teachers in my days of education, who influenced my life by their living and their teaching, and gave me the truth. I’m thankful for godly men who have written, and filled my mind and heart with truth. I’m thankful for those who stand alongside in the ministries through these years, who bring to my own life truth. I thank you, Lord, for allowing me to escape the tragic error that has engulfed so many people, and this alone by Your sovereign grace.

And, Lord, too, I thank You that in this church, Your truth has been held up, and sound doctrine has been taught. And, Lord, I thank You for that. And I pray that You will continue to preserve that, and help us to know, as Paul knew, that because of our blessing from Thee, we are not impervious to the encroachment of false teachers. We expect them, as wolves from the outside, and as perverse men rising up in the midst. But, O God, may we see it for what it is, and may there be in our congregation Timothys, who confront it, who silence it, that we may go on believing the truth, to the glory of God.

O God, I pray at the same time that You will - You will give Your people across this nation ears to hear the truth and discern it, and know the error in its subtleties that would lead them away. And that You would even preserve so many lost souls from being persuaded by the seducing spirits that the doctrines of demons are, in fact, the truth of God. Lord, put us on the front lines for the truth.

• Let’s open our Bibles this morning to 1 Timothy chapter 1. 

• We’re looking again at verses 3-11, the opening charge that is given from the apostle Paul to Timothy to carry out a work in the church and the region around the church in Ephesus. 

• Now as I mentioned last time, the primary objective that Paul has in mind with Timothy in the writing of this epistle is to encourage Timothy to bring the church to a place of sound doctrine and godly living. 

• He is concerned about the impact of false teachers, not only what they say but what they model by way of a lifestyle, and he is greatly concerned that Timothy reverse the impact of these false teachers. 

• In so writing to Timothy, he has left us a letter, which all of us in the church of Jesus Christ today or in any era can benefit from because we all face the same potential encroachment of false teaching and unholy living.

• To give you just an idea of the theme that surrounds not only 1 Timothy but 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus, I want to note the two key words in all three of these epistles are the words didaskalia and eusebeia. Didaskalia is the word most frequently translated doctrine. It is used 21 times in the New Testament, 15 of those times in these three small epistles. That gives us a key to understanding what the theme of the epistles is. It is all about doctrine, the need for sound doctrine.

The other word, eusebeia, is the word translated most often godliness. That word appears 15 times in the New Testament and is used ten of those 15 times in these three epistles. Both of those words are used eight times in 1 Timothy alone. And when you find in a brief epistle a word repeated eight times, you can understand that it is woven through that brief epistle in a thematic way. Just that alone tells us that Paul’s concern in writing to Timothy is for true doctrine and godly living in the church. And that makes it essential for us even today.

Now to let you know how important these two features are of true doctrine and holy living, look at Titus. Titus being the second one of these three epistles Paul wrote, though it’s third in order in the New Testament. And in the letter to Titus, Paul is dealing with much of the same kind of thing that he dealt with in writing 1 Timothy, and Titus not unlike Timothy himself is called upon to do a very similar task. But you’ll notice in Titus chapter 1 that as Paul outlines to Titus the kind of leaders, they’re called elders in verse 5 – they’re called bishops in verse 7, just two different terms for the same pastor, the same leader in the church – but as he discusses them, he is concerned about their holy character and about their ability to deal with sound doctrine, those same two things. Their character is the issue in verses 6-8. A man who is to be a leader or pastor in the church is to be blameless. He is to be a one-woman man, to have children who believe, who are not accused of ungodly conduct or being unruly, undisciplined. Again, in verse 7, “He must be blameless as the steward of God.” That is realizing that his life and ministry is a management responsibility for God who is the real owner and possessor. He is not to be self-willed, not soon angry; that is not hot tempered, not given to wine, not violent literally means not to use his fists. He is not to be given to filthy lucre; In other words, he’s not in it for the money. He is to love hospitality. That is, he is a lover of those things which benefit strangers. He is a lover of good, sober-minded, that is he has his priorities in right order. He is fair. He is holy, and he is self-controlled. Now that’s the character of a godly man. That’s godliness. And when Paul wrote to Titus, he had the same concern that he had when he wrote to Timothy, that in the church there would be leadership who are marked out by godliness.

The second thing and the second key words in these epistles was this matter of sound doctrine, of correct teaching. And so the second aspect of church leadership beginning in verse 9 is the ability to communicate truth. This one who is an elder or overseer or pastor in the church is to be able to hold fast the faithful word as he has been taught. In other words, he never deviates from the truth, so that he may be able by sound doctrine to exhort and to confute the opposers, “for there are many unruly and empty talkers and deceivers, especially they of the circumcision,” -- that is Jews who wanted to impose salvation by Mosaic law on people – “whose mouths must be stopped because they subvert whole houses, they teach things which they ought not, and they do it for filthy lucre’s sake, for money. One of their own, even a profit of their own people, said the Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons, and this testimony is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith, not giving heed to Jewish myths and commandments of men that turn from the truth. Unto the pure all things are pure. Unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God but in works they deny him being abominable and disobedient and to every good work reprobate. But speak though the things which become sound doctrine.”

Now here again in the description of the qualifications for a pastor, it is essential to recognize that there are two broad categories. One has to do with godly living, and the other has to do with sound doctrine. Those are the two things that are to mark out the leadership of the church. And the encroachment of Satan into the church is always the encroachment of unsound doctrine and ungodly living. And against that must come the strength of godliness and truth.

Now go back with me to Matthew chapter 7 for a moment and to the words of our Lord who anticipated this particular problem that the church would face. Jesus has brought to a climax the Sermon on the Mount with an invitation in verses 13 and 14. The invitation is to enter into the narrow gate onto the narrow way, which is the way of life everlasting, the way of salvation. And after giving the invitation, he also gives with it a warning to watch out of the broad road, which leads to destruction. It is a religious road but it does not go to heaven. It says heaven but goes to hell. “I’m calling you,” Jesus says, “to the true road, the true path, the true salvation, the true life of God.” “But,” he says, “there is another road, a road of religion on which many walk who do not really know salvation at all.”

And in regard to these two paths, no sooner does he offer the invitation to come to the right path than in verse 15 he says, “Beware of false prophets, because for every true prophet calling people to the narrow gate and the narrow way, there will no doubt be a multiplicity of false prophets calling people to the broad gate and the broad way that leads to destruction. Beware of them.” They will come to you, he says, in sheep’s clothing. Now what is sheep’s clothing? That’s easy enough, it’s wool. That’s what you get from a sheep. It’s wool, and wool was the garment of a prophet. A prophet wore a woolen robe. And what you have here is not someone dressed up like a sheep but someone dressed up like a prophet who comes claiming to articulate the Word of God but inwardly is nothing but a wolf wanting to tear and shred the sheep.

And so we are aware of the fact that our Lord instructs us that no sooner will we offer the invitation to the true gospel and the true salvation than we will see also those calling for a decision that leads only to damnation. Misleading false teachers and false preachers who only show the way to hell though they don’t announce it as such. And frankly as I said last week, this is not new. If you want to read Deuteronomy 13:1-5, write it down, you’ll see that even back in the book of Moses in the law of Moses there was the presence of false teaching. You read the 30th chapter of Isaiah and you see it there. We are reminded in the New Testament by the apostle John in that little epistle 2 John in verse 7: “Many deceivers are entered into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ comes in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.” We are reminded as Paul brings the book of Romans to a conclusion in chapter 16, verses 17 and 18: “I beseech you, brethren, mark them who cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you have learned and avoid them, for they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own body, and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the innocent.” Peter in 2 Peter 2:1 says there are false prophets among the people. Just as there were false prophets, there will always be false prophets is his point who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, and verse 2 says, “Many will follow their pernicious ways.” And verse 3 says, “They will make merchandise of those people for their own gain.” In 1 John 4:1, John says, “Test the spirits to see whether they are of God, for there are many deceivers gone out into the world.”

Now they are dangerous because they claim to be from God and they claim to speak God's Word, and we’ve gone over that. Jeremiah reminds us in chapter 5, verses 30 and 31 that the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule with their own authority, and my people love it that way. In Jeremiah 14:14, he said, “The prophets are prophesying falsehood in my name. I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them. They are prophesying deception.” Now they are dangerous because their deception is a damning deception, and it comes from that most damning deceiver at all, Satan who disguises himself as an angel of light says 2 Corinthians 13:11-15, and all of his messengers are disguised as angels of light, and out they go to deceive. Some are heretics, and I suppose we could sort of generally define a heretic as a person who openly rejects the Word of God and teaches contrary. That’s one kind of false teacher. Others would could call apostates. Apostates are those who once followed the faith but have now turned away. And then there are just the general deceivers who come alongside and not like heretics do they deny the faith, and not like apostates do; they say they once believed it but now they’ve turned from it. But they pretend to still believe it and they want to look like orthodox fundamental evangelic Christians, and the truth is they lie. They lie.

Jesus said in Matthew 7 in the passage to which we have looked that you will know them by their what? By their fruit. Not necessarily what they say but you look a little closer to their life and you’ll see. Invariably the false teacher cannot produce good fruit because evil cannot produce good. Jesus says you cannot have good coming out of an evil source. A tree cannot produce good and evil fruit. And so they will produce evil fruit, but they will cloak it. They hide their bad fruit inevitably under ecclesiastical garb, or they hide their bad fruit under the isolation of unaccountability. They exist without any accountability to anyone, and the people can’t get near enough to them to see the reality of what’s under that cloak. Some of them hide their evil fruit under a holy vocabulary or association with good fruitful Christians.

Some of them cover their evil fruit with belonging to a Christian association or with biblical knowledge. But usually they can’t hide it from everyone all the time, and as you look close at a false teacher you will see the fruit. Their character is faulty. Peter calls them in 2 Peter 2 filth spots and scabs, diseased, polluted, wells without water, clouds without rain, dogs that lick their own vomit, all kinds of horrible titles, because their character is vile. They do what they do for money. They make merchandise of people. These are the false teachers.

And as we go back to 1 Timothy, let me just briefly remind you that they had appeared in that place as well, in Ephesus where Timothy was given this ministry. They had arisen in the church at Ephesus and no doubt in surrounding areas. And Timothy is there to straighten the situation out, and it is not an easy task. He’s there to teach sound doctrine and he’s there to deal with unsound teachers. He’s there to be an example of godly living. He is to teach sound doctrine and set an example in his own life and then to put out the false teachers. Now we need to learn from this. This opening charge from verses 3-11 really sets the scene for the rest of the epistle, and in it the apostle Paul gives Timothy to understand four things that will convince him of the necessity of moving against false teachers. First, to understand their error. Secondly, to understand their goal. Thirdly, to understand their motive. And finally, to understand their effect. Now when we understand these four things, we will therefore grasp the urgency with which we must deal with such people.

First let’s be reminded about understanding their error. Verse 3 Paul says, “I want you to stay there, Timothy, in order that you might command certain individuals to teach no other doctrine. Not doctrine that gives attention to myths, Judaistic myths no doubt as we learn from a general look at what was going on, endless genealogies which do nothing but produce speculation rather than the plan of God which is by faith. That is the saving plan of God.” So what you have here is a substitute for the saving gospel. Their error was they invented a new means of salvation, salvation through fables and endless genealogies and speculations, rather than the beautiful, marvelous, saving plan of God which is by faith. Like all false teachers, there was no narrow gate. There was no repentance. There was no confession. There was no admission in meekness in humiliation that you could not attain under the divine standard, but rather they had come up with a system of works righteousness that was parallel to the apostate Jewish system of their day, the religion of human achievement, works salvation, the popular gospel that you’re okay like you are, just keep a few laws and everything is going to be fine.

But they needed to be stopped because their error was an error that was absolutely the most vital issue of all. You see if you believe wrongly about the gospel, everything else is a moot point, right? If you believe wrongly about the saving gospel, you’re damned to hell forever; you have to get that right. There are some places for variation; that’s not one of them. So we need then, Paul says to Timothy, to understand their error, and their error is that they have diverted from the saving plan of God. So a false teacher then in the technical sense is one who teaches other than the saving gospel. Someone asked me this week about a people who might have a different view on this Bible verse or they might have a different view on a certain doctrine of Scripture, are they false prophets? Well they may be teaching error. They may be teaching falsehood advertently or inadvertently, but a false teacher is primarily one that is teaching a wrong gospel. The others would be teachers of a true gospel who are in error about some other things. But a false teacher or false prophet teaches other than the true gospel, and thus damns men.

Their goal, what is their goal? Well it tells us what it isn’t in verse 5, the goal of the commandment, the objective not only of God's commandment but also of Paul’s commandment to Timothy to do this work is to produce love. God wants to produce love. That’s why the Bible says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like unto it, to love your neighbor as yourself. What God wants to produce in us through salvation is that we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and love everyone else as we love ourselves. The goal of the commandment of God as well as the goal of Paul’s command to Timothy within the church is to create a fellowship of people who supremely love God and each other. And he says that that love rises and gives us three tremendous insights: out of a pure heart, a good conscience and faith unfeigned.

A pure heart is a heart that’s been cleansed by God, a heart which has been washed by the blood of Christ. It’s the heart that David cried for in Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew within me a right spirit.” In Psalm 24, the psalmist says, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart.” The only people who come into the presence of God are those whose hearts have been cleansed. And we said last time that the heart is just another word for the center of personhood. It’s another word for the core of life. It’s where your personality is and your character and your mind and your thinking and your believing. It’s equal in the Bible to your mind, and that has to be cleaned and cleansed.

And so the goal of ministry is pure hearts, isn’t it? But that wasn’t the goal of these men. These men were defiled. In fact, I think when in verses 9 and 10 he talks about all these sins, he probably has them in mind because it’s for sure that if you have the wrong gospel, if you have the wrong means of salvation, you’re not doing anything for your defiled heart. A pure heart is the first goal, and that can only come from the pure gospel purifying the heart. And where you have a pure heart then you will have also a good conscience potentially. If the heart has been cleansed, then the conscience, which basically is your self-judging faculty, that’s the definition of conscience, it is your self-judging faculty. It’s what either excuses you and affirms you or condemns you and accuses you. It either says you’ve done wrong or that was good. It’s that little part of you that when you do something right that gives you satisfaction, pleasure, peace and joy. When you do something wrong, it condemns you. And if your heart is pure, then your conscience can be good, because what would be there to condemn you has been covered in the blood of Jesus Christ.

A good conscience produces pleasure, satisfaction, the state of wellbeing, freedom from the feelings of guilt, joy, peace. And the conscience, listen carefully, can only respond to the mind. That’s why in Titus 1:15 he says of the unbelievers, “They are defiled. Even their mind and conscience is defiled.” They go together. If the mind is defiled, the conscience will respond by recognizing the defilement. If the mind is pure, if the heart is pure, the conscience will stop accusing and bring peace and joy, and the result of that will be faith unfeigned, that is faith without hypocrisy. You don’t need to pretend to be something if you’ve got nothing to pretend. People who pretend their faith, people who want to wear a mask of religiosity, people who are phony are phony because the truth is so bad. They’re playing a game that isn’t genuine. But if you’re genuine, you don’t need to play the game. Your faith can be without hypocrisy if your conscience isn’t accusing you because your heart is pure. I think we’ve overlooked that verse too much in evangelical teaching. That’s an incredible thing. If you want to know what the heart and soul of Christian growth and development and ministry is all about, it is all about bringing people to the place where through Jesus Christ their hearts are purged so that they have a good conscience. The conscience stops accusing them. Their faith being genuine then can be paraded as the genuine faith that it is, not some hypocrisy. And out of that pure heart, good conscience, genuine faith will come the love that is the goal and the end product of all that God desires to do in and through us. And we could spend much time developing those themes, but you understand what he’s saying. The goal of sound teaching is love, love for God, love of choice as I said, love of will, love of self-sacrificing giving to God and to others. And that only comes from a pure heart, comes from a good conscience, comes from a genuine faith without hypocrisy. So those are the goals of true and proper ministry.

“But,” verse 6, “these have swerved and turned aside from that unto empty talk.” Their goal is wrong. Their teaching is wrong because it’s the wrong gospel. Their goal is wrong because it’s the wrong objective. What is their objective? Filthy lucre. They want to get rich; they want money. They want money. They’re in it for what they can get; they want to make merchandise out of their subjects. That’s the goal of false teachers, and everything they do destroys the possibility of a pure heart. They’re defiled. Their message is defiled. The doctrine they teach, chapter 4 says, is the doctrine of demons that comes from seducing spirits, and they have departed from the faith. Well you’re not going to have a pure heart if you depart from the faith, listen to seducing spirits and teach doctrines of demons. They couldn’t possibly have a good conscience because verse 2 of chapter 4 says their conscience are seared with a heart iron. Their consciences are scarred, cauterized, nor do they have unfeigned faith because verse 2 says they speak lies and hypocrisy. So chapter 4, verses 1 and 2 is a direct contrast to the right and proper goals of verse 5 in chapter 1. These lying hypocrites, these impure defiled men with a defiled conscience have turned from the right goal of love and they’ve made their own goal, their own pleasure, and their own gain.

Look at their goal. I wish we had time to go through the whole New Testament and see how he seems always, whoever the Bible writer is the Holy Spirit through him seems always to pinpoint the characteristic bottom-line goal of false teachers as to a mass to themselves, people, and money for their own gain. The motives are all wrong, and of course their teaching brings the opposite of love for God and love for fellow men, because it’s all built on love for self, love for self.

The third thing and where we would like you to look for a moment in verse 7 is to understand their motives. What’s behind this? What is their motive? What are they really after? They have a strong motive, by the way. They have a strong desire, but it isn’t the right desire. Verse 7 says, “Desiring to be teachers of the law,” and we’ll stop at that point. They have a consuming desire to be law teachers, to be law teachers; that’s their desire. You say, “Is something wrong with that?” Yes. They don’t know what they’re talking about the rest of the verse says; they don’t know what they’re being dogmatic about. They don’t understand the law of God. They want to be teachers. It isn’t that they want to know the law. It isn’t that they want to know God. It isn’t that they care about the people. It is that they want the prestige of being recognized as a teacher of the law. They were seeking a rabbinic office. They were in the church wanting the prestige and the prominence and all the baggage that went with the rabbi in the Jewish culture. They wanted that. They weren’t content with teaching people the truth; they wanted, like Diotrephes, the preeminence. They wanted, like it says in Matthew chapter 23 when Jesus indicts the Pharisees, they wanted the chief seats. “They love,” he says in verse 6, “the uppermost places at feasts and the chief seats in the synagogues and the greetings in the marketplace. And they love to be called rabbi, rabbi, teacher, teacher.” It was all preeminence. They wanted to wear those fancy robes and that ecclesiastical garb and they sought that prominent and preeminence. They wanted the applause of men. They wanted to collect the offering. They wanted to be teachers. This is just the opposite of a true motive. James 3:1 says, “Stop being so many teachers, for theirs is the greater condemnation.” The one who really understands the whole of teacher understands that it’s not a place for proud people. These were proud people. Chapter 6, verse 3 says that they do not consent to wholesome words, even the words of Jesus, and verse says they’re proud. They were proud, that was the issue, the opposite of the character of a true teacher.

For example, when Patricia and I were in Scotland some years ago, I had the privilege of preaching in many of the Scottish Presbyterian churches. Each of them has in the church what is called the John Knox pulpit. The John Knox pulpit is the pulpit from which only the preacher preaches. At the time appointed, you go through curtains and you stand there and then you stand there and you preach in this pulpit. It’s named for that great man of God who brought revival to Scotland who would know doubt be in grief were he here now to listen to what is preached from most of those pulpits named for him. But I have been interested in the past to read about John Knox to find out what it was about his life that made him such a marvelous servant of God. And one of the things that has stayed in my mind through the years is a comment by his biographer to this effect. He says this: “When John Knox was called forth to preach the gospel, he burst out in most-abundant tears and withdrew himself to his chamber. His countenance and behavior from that day until he was compelled to set himself in the public place of preaching did sufficiently declare the grief and trouble of his soul.” The whole idea of preaching the gospel was so serious and so overwhelming that he was in a state of despair and tears until the very hour he was compelled for the first time to preach.

Martin Lloyd Jones whose life has been a great inspiration to me and whose books and biography I have read said that teaching the Word is such an awesome task that a godly man, “shrinks from it. Nothing but the overwhelming sense of being called in compulsion should ever lead anyone to preach.” The deep sense of unworthiness and fear of such an awesome responsibility is the potential for true usefulness. William Taylor writing in his book The Preacher and his Model tells the story of self-sacrifice that makes the point. It is a legend that there was a Chinese potter who was ordered to produce a great work for the emperor and he tried to make it but he wasn’t successful. At length and driven to total despair, he threw himself into the furnace with the pot that he was trying to make, and the effect of his self-emulation on the pottery, which was in the fire, was that it came out to be the most beautiful piece of porcelain every known.

Now what’s the point of the legend? Well, William Taylor says in the Christian ministry it is self-sacrifice that gives real excellence and glory to our work. When self in us disappears and only Christ is seen, then will be our highest success alike in our own lives and in the moving of our fellow men. We get near to the secret of Paul’s greatness when we hear him say, “According to my earnest expectation and my hope that Christ shall be magnified in my body whether it be by life or by death. And in the measure in which we imbibe his Spirit, we shall rise to his efficiency.” John Stott put it this way, “I cannot help wondering if this may not be why there are so few preachers who God is using today. There are plenty of popular preachers but not many powerful ones who preach in the power of the Spirit. Is it because the cost of such preaching is too great? It seems that the only preaching God honors through which his wisdom and power are expressed is the preaching of a man who is willing in himself to be both a weakling and a fool. God not only chooses weak and foolish people to save but weak and foolish preachers for whom to save them, or at least preachers who are content to be weak and seem foolish in the eyes of the world. And we are not always willing to pay that price. We are constantly tempted to covet a reputation as men of learning or men of influence to seek honor in academic circles and compromise our old-fashioned message in order to do so and to cultivate personal charm or forcefulness so as to sway people committed to our care.”

It takes humility to be a servant of God and a compulsion of the call of God. These men knew neither of these things. These men sought an office for the sake of its own preeminence. And by their subtle novelties and their distorted allegories and by their strict Judaistic legalism and their self-denying ascetism, they wanted to be exalted as law teachers, nomodidaskalos, a Jewish term referencing the idea of teaching the Mosaic law like a rabbi would. It was nothing but an ego trip. They were seeking prominence. They wanted the prestige of a rabbinic role, and they were imposing Judaistic apostasy, the heresy of salvation by works, and they were the authorities who would bring it to the people. And so we have to understand their motive was wrong. They weren’t men in humility compelled to preach; they were men in pride seeking preeminence.

The fourth and final thing that Paul wanted Timothy and us to understand is their effect, their effect, and this is a very strong point. Verse 7 says, “First of all, these who desire to be teachers don’t understand what they say nor that about which they affirm.” The word affirm could be speak dogmatically and you’d get the idea. They not only were saying things that they didn’t understand but they were saying them dogmatically as if they were absolute truth. They were ignorant and they were proud of it. They were parading their ignorance and being dogmatic. The idea of understanding neither what they say in the verb form is a present-active participle, they were continually in a state of not understanding what they were talking about. As a general rule, they could be defined as ignoramuses. They had no idea what they were talking about and there are so many, many like that, even today, who pretend to be teachers of the law and if you listen and know the Word of God, you know they have no idea what they’re talking about. But they pass themselves off as those who teach the Word of God. Furthermore, these people continually and confidently affirm or assert with dogmatism; that’s what diabebaioomai means; they’re very dogmatic about their ignorance. The point is to remember not what heresy they taught, that isn’t even given to us, but to remember that they must be understood for what they do. They’re so ignorant. So he says they want to be teachers of the law but they don’t understand anything about it.

And then quickly almost as a reaction, Paul wants to defend the law, because the tragedy you see of a false teacher is that in his mouth is the Word of God perverted. And unless you’re careful when you throw away the false teacher, you can wind up losing confidence in the word that he spoke, and some of the word that he spoke may have been true when the Scripture was truly represented. The point is you don’t want to throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater, obviously. So Paul hastens immediately to say in verse 8, “We know that the law is good, and by condemning one who wants to be a teacher of the law, we’re not condemning the law. We can condemn that motive and we can condemn that abysmal ignorance of the law and we can condemn that stupid dogmatism that asserts things it doesn’t even realize aren’t true,” and I tell you I hear that so often today. People speaking dogmatically about things they are absolutely in ignorance of. But he hurries to say, “We do not say then that the law is no good. The law is good if the law is used rightly, or lawfully.” The law has a right use. It has a right place, but they’re not using it right. They’re using it as a means of salvation. They’re setting the standard up of salvation by the law, and that is always what appeals to men who are proud because their pride is manifest in the allusion that they’re good enough by themselves to please God. That’s the epitome of pride. Pride says, “I don’t need a savior. Why do I need a savior? I can attain unto God's standard by myself.”

So their pride had caused them to create an approach to the law of God, and I believe when he talks about they wanted to be teachers of the law, he has in mind the mosaic law, the law of God. But he says they don’t know anything about it, but the law is good if you use it right. They were using it wrong. They were feeling you could be saved by the law. That’s always what the false teachers teach, that you don’t need saving grace, you don’t need the death of Christ, you don’t need to come in meekness and humility and fear and brokenness before God, you can get there on your own, you can attain to it. And they misuse the law. They think the law is the standard by which men reach their salvation; that’s wrong. He says the law is good if you use is lawfully. Well how do you use it lawfully? Verse 9, “You have to know this, that the law is not made for a righteous man.” And literally it says in the Greek, “that law.” It’s anarthrous, without the definite article. That law, law in general and certainly encompasses the mosaic law, law is not made for righteous men; that’s obvious. Law is made to condemn what? Sinners. You see the law is good but you can’t treat it like gospel.

Listen carefully, “The law is good but the law alone is not good news.” Did you get that? The law is good but the law alone is not good news. The law alone is bad news, because Romans 3:19-20 says, “Every mouth is stopped when brought before the law of God and the whole world guilty before God, and by the deeds of the flesh will no flesh be justified in his sight.” So what the law does is condemn everybody. What the law does is pronounce judgment damnation on everybody. What the law does is send everybody to hell because you’ve broken God's law, and there’s none righteous, no not one. There’s none that understands, no not one. There’s none that fulfills God's standard, nobody. The Jews thought they did, but in Romans 10 Paul says the reason they thought they did was they were ignorant of God's righteousness, and they went about to establish their own righteousness. The point is they thought God was less righteous than he was; they thought they were more righteous than they were, so they met. That was a lie. They were ignorant of how righteous God really is. The law is not for people who are righteous, but this is what they were going on, they were parading around as if they were righteous keepers of the law. The law isn’t for the righteous. In fact, as long as you think you’re righteous, you’re not going to be ever saved. You’re never going to see the true use of the law, because the law is not for righteous people. The law is for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and for profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for homosexuals, for kidnappers, for liars, for pervert persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine. That’s what the law is for. The law is to crush sinners. The law is to show who we really are.

The law is good, but the law is not good news. The law is good but it’s not gospel, not alone. It wasn’t made for righteous men. It was made for sinners so they could see their sin. And to demonstrate that, Paul lists all those definitions of sinners that I just read to you. The first group, and he really gets his cues here out of the decalage, the ten commandments of Exodus 20, because he runs right through the ten commandments. And the first three pairs, lawless, disobedient, ungodly sinners, unholy, profane, those are pairs and they all refer to the first part of the ten commandments, which has to do with our relationship to God. The idea that we don’t have any other gods before us, that we worship the true god, that we make no graven images, that we remember that he is the only one to be adored and worshipped and all of that. Those refer to that. Starting then with the murderers of fathers and mothers and manslayers and fornicators and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars, he moves through the second half of the ten commandments which have to do with our relationship to other men in society.

Let me show you just briefly what these mean because I don’t think his intention is for us to stop and digress on all these. But you need to know this: These first three couplets that deal basically with the first half of the ten commandments are put together with a negative and a positive result. The first negative is lawless; the positive result is disobedience. Someone who is lawless, that is someone who has no commitment to any law, someone who has no standard is going to be insubordinate. If you don’t believe in the law, you’re not going to pay any attention. So the lawless are disobedient. The negative they are lawless; the positive effect is they are disobedient. The next negative is they are ungodly; they are irreverent. They are without regard for anything that is sacred. They don’t care at all about God or about what is true of God or about what is right. And because they are ungodly, that leads to the positive effect of being sinners. The ungodly then go out and commit sin. They live without any regard for God because they don’t have any regard for God, so that’s how they live. The third negative is unholy, and unholy basically means indifferent to what is right. They’re indifferent to God, indifferent to the duty that they are to render to God. And because they are indifferent to their duty, they turn out to be profane, bebēlos. That is they trample on what is sacred.

So you have a person who is lawless and you’ll have disobedience. You’ll have a person who is ungodly and you’ll have sinfulness. You have a person who’s unholy and you’ll have a life of trampling on everything that is sacred. We could summarize by saying then that the law was made for people who are disobedient, impure, and irreverent. What for? To show them they were. When you put your life against the law of God, you see that you are indeed lawless, disobedient, ungodly, sinful, unholy and profane. And all of that has to do with a defying of God and the duty one has to render to God. It is a sinner attacking God.

Then Paul moves to the second table of the ten commandments, the dealing with men’s relationship to men. And he starts out with the fifth commandment, alluding to it when he says the fifth commandment says honor your father and mother and so forth. He says here the law is made for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers and murderers period, homicidal people. First of all, this involves the fifth commandment which says honor your parents. The fifth commandment is broadened in the next chapter, Exodus 21, verse 15 to talk about the fact that even if a person only hits their parent, if you strike your parent you are to receive the death penalty. So that fifth commandment is in view there. The law was made for people who break the fifth commandment by not honoring their parents. All the way from dishonor to murder and everything in between is encompassed in that fifth commandment to which Paul alludes. Then the word manslayers, which is the word for homicide literally means murder, not manslaughter, which we use to refer to accidental death, but murderer refers to the sixth commandment, which is thou shalt not murder. And then the law in verse 10 is also made for fornicators, sexual sinners and homosexuals, arsenokoitēs. The word coital comes from the back part of that word and it has two words in the Greek, male and marriage bed, males in the marriage bed. Now there can’t be any misunderstanding of what he’s talking about. Male coital homosexuality is a violation of the seventh commandment of God, which is the commandment of sexual purity, which allows no sexual relationship out of the marriage of one man and one woman. And the law was written to expose those people as vile, condemned sinners.

And then the eighth commandment has to do with stealing, and in light of stealing he mentions kidnappers because in his day one of the most prominent ways that men showed their depravity in stealing was in stealing children. Stealing children was a common problem because they were in need of slaves and children were easy prey to steal, take away and use as slaves. In Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7 gives the ultimate penalty for those who do that under the law of God. Then he mentions the liars and perjurers that are also referred to in the ninth commandment. You can see then that he’s moving right through the commandments, and he’s saying the law was made for those people to show them their evil, to show them they were violating the law of God. And you get the idea that behind this is this lingering thought that’s probably giving this whole list because these are the things that are characteristic of these false teachers. Believe me, we go right back to Matthew 7, a false teacher talks good but lives bad. And if the truth were exposed about their life, if he could pull back the backward collar and the ecclesiastical garb, or if he could get behind the associations or the biblical lingo or the religious talk and really see the stuff that was there, you’d probably see some of these things right here. I’m always appalled when these kinds of things manifest themselves in people that we have believed for a long time to be the servants of God.

Just recently received a phone call. A church had two pastors, a senior pastor and assistant pastor, and the congregation found out that both of them had been having affairs with different women through the church for a long time. Well the fruit was made manifest. I don't know what kind of facade they wore; I know they came to the shepherd’s conference here a couple of times and were upset that they couldn’t get as much personal time from us to bring up some issues that they were concerned about as they wanted, and they were unduly demanding. And I remember our impression was that their attitude didn’t demonstrate what we thought would be the attitude of a man of God. Nonetheless, we accepted what we could see at face value and now the truth is known. So that’s not an uncommon situation, sad to say, sad to say. And it may well have been that what Paul is saying in this list is more than just a list out of the ten commandments. It may be because it does take the ten commandments and sort of direct them in a specific area, it may well be that that specific area had something to do with the leaders of that church. It could have been that some of them had killed their parents. It could have been that some of them had stolen children to be slaves. It could have been that some of them were homosexuals. It could have been that some of them were liars who had perjured themselves and so forth and so on. And he says, “That’s what the law is for,” and he may be indicting them in a rather sort of subtle way but indicting them. And he says, “Just in case anything is left out, any other thing contrary to sound doctrine the law comes to expose.”

Nothing wrong with the law. Paul says in Romans 7, “I’m glad for the law because when the law came, I saw my sin.” Do you remember that? In Romans chapter 7, he says, “Is the law sin?” Verse 7, “Is the law sin? No, no, no,” he says. “I had not known sin but by the law.” Right? Romans 7, verse 7. “I had not known coveting unless the law said don’t covet.” “Apart from the law,” he says in verse 8, “sin is dead. But when the law came, sin became alive and then I died. And so the commandment was death to me. Sin through the commandment slew me.” You say, “That’s bad.” No, in the next verse, verse 12, “So the law is holy. The commandment is holy and just and good.” And later on he says, “And I delight in the law of God after the inward man.” No, the law is good, because the law is the first part of the gospel. The law comes and says you’re a sinner and you need to know that, because the second part of the gospel is there is a Savior. So Paul says, “The law comes for sinners,” and he lists all these. And then somebody might say, “Well I’m not in that list, I’m okay,” so he just says, “And any other thing contrary to sound doctrine.” The word sound is an interesting word, hugiainō. We get out word hygienic from it. It means healthy, wholesome, promoting life and health. And the kind of teaching Paul advocates is the kind that produces spiritual life and spiritual growth and spiritual health. So he says, “The law is to expose and condemn and crush the sinner.” And then he lists a few kinds of sinners and then throws everybody in as any other thing contrary to healthy, life-promoting teaching.

“This fits,” verse 11 says, “according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which is committed to my trust.” What does he mean by that? What he’s saying is that this definition of the law is part of the gospel. This definition of the law is according to the gospel. What is the gospel? The gospel goes like this: Man is a sinner, a sinner of such depth and profundity that he cannot redeem himself. But Jesus Christ came into the world, God in human flesh, died on the cross, was raised the third day for our justification, and by faith in him and the grace of God we can be forgiven of our sin. That is the gospel. So to rightly define the law is part of the gospel; that’s why he then says, “This is according to the glorious gospel.” The good news, first of all, is bad, but it’s the gospel. The gospel says that man is a sinner. The first part of the gospel is that you’re lost without Christ, with unforgiven sin for which you will be damned forever in an eternal hell. So when somebody comes along and covers up the message of sin, that’s not any help. You don’t want to hide the law. People say, “Well we don’t want to talk about that.” We have to talk about that. That’s the gospel. That’s according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God.

Now if you have a better message than the glorious gospel of the blessed God, then you must have some kind of problem in really understanding who you are. This is God's glorious gospel. And I’m always amazed at the people who want to emasculate the law part of the gospel. They want to strip out the sin part of the gospel because they think they have a better gospel than the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Glorious, that is to say the gospel demonstrates his glory. Listen, God's glory is his attributes, and part of his attributes are a hatred of sin, right? Part of his attributes are wrath and judgment and condemnation and holiness. And if you strip all that other stuff out and make God into a benign Santa Claus, that’s not the glorious God. That’s not the glorious gospel. He doesn’t reveal himself. You have to see his holy hatred of sin. You have to see his condemning justice, because that’s part of his essential being. And then you understand his grace and mercy and love as well.

So it is called the glorious gospel because it is the gospel through which God's glory is revealed. The wonderful gospel, you start with the law that damns men to hell and you end up with the glory of the Christian in forgiveness, and everything in there is a revelation of God's attributes. You see his attributes of wrath and judgment and righteousness and holiness, condemnation, hatred against sin and all that, and you see his wisdom and you see his love and you see his mercy and his grace and his power. All that God is comes together to be revealed in the gospel. That’s why it is the gospel of his glory, the gospel revealing his glory or the essence of who he is. And who is he? He is the blessed God. What does he mean by that? It doesn’t mean that he’s the God we bless; it means that he’s the God who is the source of blessing. He is blessed in his own person.

In chapter 6, verse 15, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul says that he is the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords. He is blessed, not in the sense that we bless God, but in the sense that he inherently is blessed. He has essential blessedness, essential happiness, essential perfection, which he then can manifest to us. Paul says, “This is the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust, which was given to me.” And he didn’t receive it Galatians 2:7 says from men but from Christ himself, and he wanted to be a faithful steward of it. First Corinthians 4:1 and 2, he wanted to be a faithful servant to give out the mysteries that God had given him. Chapter 9 of 1 Corinthians he says, “Woe is unto me if I don’t preach this gospel.” He says in Romans 1, “I’m a debtor to preach it. I’m ready to preach it. I’m not ashamed to preach it.” See he was under a divine commission from the Damascus Road on. So he says, “Look, the effect of these men is to preach a message that is not according to sound doctrine and not according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust. So we can’t allow this.”

Listen carefully in closing. Now how are we going to be able to watch for this, because we need to be on the alert. Every one of us has this responsibility in the church. What do you look for? Let me go back through these four things and note them very carefully in your mind. When you want to listen carefully to find out if someone might be a false teacher, first of all, listen for their understanding of the Scripture to see if there may be error there. Is it sound? Is it biblical? Is it legitimate? Don’t look at their personality. Don’t look at the religious trappings that are around them. Don’t necessarily look at their associations, although that may tell you some things if the associations are negative. But listen to what they say and do what 1 John 4 says, “Test them against the revelation of God.” What is their approach to Scripture? Are they into all kinds of things beyond the Scripture? Are they saying things that you don’t find verses 4, though they sound good?

Secondly, what is their objective or goal? Is it spiritual? Do you see them as people whose primary goal in life is to produce a group of people who consummately love God? Or do they seem to go after self-love, self-aggrandizement, possessiveness, materialism, personal happiness? What is their objective? Is it love for God and for everyone else, or is it an appeal to personal glory, personal gain? Is their objective holiness, a pure heart? Does that come ringing through the message, the purity of the heart? Good conscience, faith without hypocrisy? Does it ring with a genuiness?

Thirdly, what about their motives? Do they demonstrate a selfless motive? Can you see in them humility and meekness and selflessness? Or does it appear along the way that while they’re helping people, they are getting very wealthy, very prosperous, and are manifesting surpassing attitudes of self-indulgence at the expense of the people supposedly to whom they minister? And what about their effect? What about their effect? Do their followers understand clearly the gospel of Jesus Christ? Do they understand the right use of law and the right definition of the glorious gospel of the blessed God? Do they really understand that?

I remember speaking at a luncheon of a Christian organization. They called themselves a Christian organization. I think some of the people in it might be, and some might not. Some are not; I know this man wasn’t. Anyway, a man came to me afterwards and said, “Well you know I listened to what you said.” And he said, “I’ve been in this organization nine years, and this is how I think it is. I think there is this big door and what you need to do is climb up these steps, and it’s a long, long climb and you get to the top and you bang on the door and you give them your name and you hope they let you in.” He said, “That’s what I think.” I said, “How long have you been in this organization?” “Nine years.” I said, “May I be so bold as to suggest to you that you’re not a Christian?” And he was pretty well shaken by that. I said, “You’re not a Christian. You don’t understand the gospel.” Nobody ever said that to him before; too bad nobody ever said that, right? Because of the trappings and the surroundings, everybody makes the assumption. What is the effect of this? There are people I believe in Christian churches and organizations across the world who aren’t Christians; you know that. But I don’t want it to be our responsibility not to tell them or our responsibility to not have told them when we should have.

So you have the test. Look for their error in doctrine. Look for the objectives and the goals of their ministry. Check their motives out. Take a look at their followers and see what the effect is. And you’ll understand the urgency with which we have to deal with false teachers. Let’s bow in prayer.

Thank you, Father, for our time in your Word this morning. We would rejoice if we could just rest in the joys of the Christian life and not even talk about things like this that distress us and upset us and concern us, but this is the way it is. This is war, and we are soldiers. And there is an enemy and he is aggressive and he is supernatural, and he is brilliant and powerful. And we are weak and desperately in need of your strength. Help us, Lord, to hold fast the true Word. Help us to live godly lives. Help us to recognize the false and confront them that their mouths may be stopped, for they subvert whole houses. Help us to speak the truth. And, Lord, use us and your church because we are committed to the two things which are so on the heart of Paul: Sound doctrine and holy living, for Christ’s sake. Amen.

• We continue our worship by looking together to the Word of God. 

• I want to invite you to open your Bible to 1 Timothy chapter 1. 

• First Timothy chapter 1. The setting for the message this morning is found in verses 12 through 17. 

• First Timothy 1:12 through 17. I’d like to read that text so that you’ll have it in mind as we look at it.

• “And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me in that He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious, but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first. Nevertheless, for this cause I obtained mercy that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering for a pattern to them who should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting. Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”

• In the midst of that marvelous text, there is a faithful saying. I want you to notice it for a moment. Verse 15 says, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Five times in the pastoral epistles and nowhere else, the little phrase “this is a faithful saying” appears. There’s little doubt what it indicates. It indicates a familiar, recognized statement or saying that had already developed in the early church. It isn’t something Paul is saying for the first time but something he is quoting that he knew everyone knew as a trustworthy saying.

It seems as though in the time of the writing of 1 Timothy, which was after Paul’s first imprisonment, there had already developed a fairly well-articulated theology. There were some creeds and some hymns and some faithful sayings, some trustworthy sayings that were really a summary of some great truth. There are five of them, as I said, in the pastoral epistles. Two of those five have added to them the second statement, “worthy” or “valued to be accepted.” Worthy of all acceptance, just as an emphasis.

They are summaries of very key important doctrines which should be believed, should be affirmed, should be accepted, worthy to be believed, worthy to be approved. And the summary statement here is a no-doubt familiar statement to the people to whom Timothy ministers as well as Timothy, which acts as a condensed articulation of the gospel. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Every word is chosen carefully. The church had summarized the gospel in this one brief statement, a statement worthy of belief, a statement trustworthy beyond question.

Christ Jesus. The order is Paul’s favorite order as he writes the pastoral epistles. He prefers Christ Jesus to Jesus Christ, using Jesus Christ six times and Christ Jesus twenty-five times, and I think that may be a reflection of his own conversion experience. It was the glorified Christ, the exalted Christ, the reigning Christ that he met on the Damascus Road before he knew it was also Jesus of Nazareth. Whereas the other New Testament writers who were His disciples who knew Him first as Jesus and then came to know that He was the Messiah prefer Jesus Christ, Paul seems to prefer Christ Jesus.

Bound up in those two terms is all that He is. He is the anointed King, He is the one who came to redeem, He is the one who became the earthly Jesus in His incarnation. Also the statement says He came into the world. That statement is a very important statement. It does not say He came into existence. It does not say He came into being. It does not say He was created. It does not say He was made. It implies not only His incarnation but His preexistence. He came into the world. He was somewhere else and He came into the world, the pre-incarnate Christ. This particular choice of terms sounds very much like John.

And if you are to go carefully through the gospel of John, you will hear John repeatedly speak of the fact that Christ came into the world. In John 1:9, “He was the true light, lighting every man who came into the world.” In chapter 3 of John’s gospel, in verse 19, “Light is come into the world,” a favorite choice of terms for John. You trace it all the way through chapter 16, chapter 18. And Paul here uses that same almost Johannine perception to speak of the One who was pre-incarnate, who preexisted God, the second person in glory who came into the world in the form of man as none other than Jesus Christ, to be the anointed King, the anointed Monarch, the Christ.

Now notice also that it says He came into the world. The world, of course, has to do with our sphere of existence, the Earth, but more than that it speaks of the - of not just the Earth as a geographical entity but the world of men, the world of mankind, the world of humanity, the human race, blind and lost and condemned and damned to hell, hostile to God, engulfed in fallenness and evil, as John again says in 1 John 5:19, “The whole world lies in the lap of the wicked one.” It is that world to which He came, the world of sinners, the realm of unbelief and hostility toward God, the world of darkness.

God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, says John 3:17, but that the world through Him might be saved. He came to redeem this fallen human race. In John’s gospel also, chapter 12, verse 46, “I am come a light into the world that whosoever believes on me should not abide in darkness. If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not, for I came not to judge the world but to save the world.” The world, the human realm, He came to save.

You’ll notice also that it very specifically says that Christ Jesus came into the world to save. To rescue is the implication. To deliver out of darkness and death into life. “You shall call His name Jesus,” it says in Matthew 1:21, “for He shall save His people from their sins.” Luke 19:10 records the words of our Lord Himself, “The Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” The term “save” means to deliver from death and darkness and sin and hell and judgment. And who did He come to save but sinners, a term the Jews loved to use in reference to gentiles.

In Galatians 2:15, it is so expressed, but the Lord used it in reference not only to gentiles but to Jews and everybody and the word hamartōlos appears forty-seven times in the New Testament. It is a very repeated characterization of man. Man is a sinner. That notes his irreligious violation of God’s law as a way of existence. He is not just one who sins, he is a sinner by nature. And thus we hear the echo of the publican in the temple, beating his breast in Luke 18, crying, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner,” and “save me” is the cry of his heart.

So here in eight Greek words you have a marvelous summation of all that the gospel can say. And would we take the time, we could cover so much depth from just those eight Greek words, enough to say Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. The very purpose that God had in mind was redemption of sinners. And isn’t it a wonderful thing to be able, as Paul does in this passage, to celebrate the saving work of God, the saving grace of God? Verse 12 begins with thanks and verse 17 ends the passage with a doxology of praise. The whole passage is offered as praise to God for salvation in Jesus Christ.

I remember as a boy being fascinated with the saving power of Christ, reading stories like the story of Afra Connor, who was the vicious savage, a Hottentot from a place in South Africa called Namaqualand. And Afra Connor was someone that everybody feared. His men came along with him and hardened, vicious attacks on people without feeling resulted in death and devastation everywhere he went. And the governor of Cape Town put a price on his head to be given to someone who brought him in dead or alive.

They were the terror of South Africa until a missionary came by the name of Robert Moffat, and Robert Moffat said that God had called him to the Hottentots and everybody warned him not to go. They said Afra Connor will use your skull for a drinking up. But feeling the call of God and knowing the power of the gospel, he went to the Hottentots, and as God would have it, the very first person who gave his life to Jesus Christ was Afra Connor. And by saving grace, he became an effective and useful tool in the advance of the Kingdom of God. A marvelous miracle of grace.

And I remember reading about Billy Sunday, a drunken baseball player who was walking down the street one day in Chicago with a lot of his teammates and there was someone preaching on a corner. And they were all mocking the one who was preaching. And something that he said touched the chords of the heart of Billy Sunday and he dismissed his friends and embraced Jesus Christ and became a great evangelist. Great transformation. I was reading the other day about Ty Cobb who at the end of his life gave his heart to Jesus Christ. And he said, “I came to Christ in the bottom of the ninth, I could only have wished that it was in the top of the first.”

God has the ability to transform lives. Stories of the power of the grace of God to transform a life are to all of us fascinating. And in my own ministry I have experienced firsthand or secondhand amazing stories of God’s saving power, drunks and drug addicts and murderers and mass murderers, adulterers and thieves and fornicators and homosexuals, and recently people with AIDS coming out of unbelievable lifestyles.

I remember baptizing right in this spot a leader of the Hell’s Angels. The last time he had been in a church prior to the time he was baptized was when he rode his motorcycle down the main aisle of the church, threw a rope around the pastor, and dragged him out the back. And he was in jail for murdering someone and it was second degree, so he had been released and come to Jesus Christ.

And I remember corresponding with that little lady on Death Row in North Carolina who killed her own family and came to know Jesus Christ in jail and listened to our radio program all the time and wrote me all the time to have some help with her spiritual growth. And even when they took her life, which was a just thing to do, she went right into the arms of Jesus Christ.

I know stories of so many people. And you know what’s more amazing? I have even seen God transform morally upright, self- righteous, Pharisaic, zealous, respectable, legalistic sinners. Is that unbelievable? I have seen the grace of God do miracle after miracle. I open the Word of God and I am thrilled at the biblical account of the transforming grace of God. I read about a demon-possessed maniac of Gadara who was delivered by the grace of Jesus Christ and is sitting worshiping Christ, clothed and in his right mind. And I read about Matthew, a despised tax collector, called by grace to pen the glorious Gospel of Matthew and all the disciples and women and people from the crowds whom he taught and healed and won to himself.

And I remember the story of blind Bartimaeus and his friend, also blind, who were healed and brought by the grace of Christ to salvation. And the man born blind and the adulteress woman at the well, and the leper who returned to say thanks, and the sinner who beat on his breast. And Zacchaeus, of whom it was said, “This day is salvation come to this house.” And I remember the transformation of the centurion who saw that it was the Son of God and the thief who was hanging on the cross, and the Jews at Jerusalem when Peter preached, and Cornelius and the eunuch and the Philippian jailer and Lydia and all those others, and I remember the people of Ephesus who, under the preaching of the gospel, took out all their occult idols and all their magical books and burned them in front of the whole city because the grace of Jesus Christ had transformed them all.

And so I understand the spirit of the apostle Paul. And I understand it because of my own conversion, when he says, “I thank Christ Jesus.” And when he says, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Is that not so?

But the most remarkable conversion of all, if we could categorize them in order of significance, the most remarkable conversion of all to me is the conversion of the apostle Paul. And I think that’s what he’s trying to say to us in this passage when he says, “of whom I am chief,” or prōtos, first, foremost. His testimony here is that God can save the world’s worst sinner. That’s right. That’s his testimony and a marvelous testimony it is.

You know, he was so thrilled with his testimony that he repeated it over and over again. Luke wrote it in chapter 9. Paul repeated it - chapter 9 of Acts. Paul repeated it in his testimony in Acts 22, he repeated it again in Acts 26, he repeats it in Galatians 1 and 2, he repeats in Philippians 3, and now he repeats it again in 1 Timothy chapter 1. It is because it was always to him a marvelous, amazing reality that Jesus Christ saved him. There was always a certain sense of almost disbelief in the midst of his unwavering faith that this could even happen. And so did he celebrate the grace of God since he saw himself as the supreme example of that grace.

Now, is this a digression in 1 Timothy? Is this a digression out of the order of what Paul is writing to young Timothy? I don’t think so. The whole purpose of this epistle is to charge Timothy with the task of leading the church at Ephesus and the surrounding churches to reject false teachers who are preaching a false gospel. And so what he is saying in his testimony here is, “I am a true teacher who has been touched by the true gospel and who has taught the true gospel,” and so he’s setting himself up as a testimony to the truth and to the power of the truth.

Furthermore, he just mentioned in verse 11 the gospel of the blessed God and now he goes on to give a testimony to that gospel. Not only that, from verses 3 down through verse 10, he mentioned the false teaching of the false teachers, and now he would like to postulate the true gospel. Not only that, in verses 8, 9, and 10, he talks about their misunderstanding of the law, thinking that the law is gospel and you don’t need grace. And here he shows a proper understanding of the law, which is to understand sin and realize the desperate need for grace. It fits. This is no digression. This is no digression at all.

In contrast to false teachers, Paul presents himself as a true teacher. In contrast to the impotence of the false gospel, he presents the power of a true gospel. In contrast to the proud, self-righteous men who think they can attain salvation through the law, Paul presents himself as a humble, defiled, base sinner who must fall on the grace and mercy of God. In contrast to those who, if followed, would lead people away from the saving plan of God into empty talk and unsound doctrine and shipwrecked faith and corruption and lies and envy and strife and arguments and evil and blaspheming and ungodliness that damns men forever, Paul, if followed, will lead men to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which if believed will lead them, says verse 16, to life everlasting. It fits - it fits.

And so this is Paul’s testimony to the grace of God, and it’s a testimony that Timothy needs to pass on to the people in that church so they can see the power of the true gospel as over against the impotence of the false gospel being articulated by the false teachers.

As he gives this testimony, he celebrates the significance of God’s grace, and he presents six tributes to grace, six elements of grace to which he offers tribute. First, the source of grace, then the need for grace, the power of grace, the extent of grace, the purpose of grace, and finally the response of grace, and we’ll look at those as we go.

Now, let me start with a definition. What is grace? If we’re going to discuss all of these features of grace, we ought to know what it is. I’m going to give you a lengthy definition. Don’t write it down, just listen to it, and if you want to get it in detail, buy the tape. Okay? Listen now. Grace, this is grace: God’s loving forgiveness, exemption from judgment, and promise of temporal and eternal blessing given to guilty and condemned sinners freely without any worthiness on their part and based on nothing they have done or failed to do. That’s grace.

God’s loving forgiveness, exemption from judgment, promise of temporal and eternal blessing given to the guilty and condemned sinner freely by God without any worthiness on their part and based on nothing they have done or failed to do. It is God’s free and undeserved and unearned forgiveness and favor. And Paul cries out of the blessedness of grace, it is not cold, logical, analytical terms that he uses to be dissected, it is the outflow of a praising, passionate heart.

But let’s see the elements of grace as he does this. First is the source of grace. Look at verse 12. He is thankful, he says, to Christ Jesus our Lord. Why does he direct his thanks there? Because therein is the source of grace. Over in verse 14, “And the grace of our Lord,” and again it comes from Him. Verse 17, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God.” And so he sees grace coming from Christ and God. And again this is another one of Paul’s ways to put together Christ and God in equal essence. But his point here is that the source of grace is God and Christ.

The verse literally begins in the Greek, “Grateful I am” - “Grateful I am,” the emphasis on the gratitude. And it is in the sense that he is saying, “I am continually grateful, continually grateful to Christ Jesus, the Messiah, the earthly Son of God with heavenly glory, our Lord,” always emphasizing the Lordship of Christ, and the “our” brings Timothy in and affirms the conversion also of Timothy. “I am grateful to Christ Jesus, our Lord.” Why? Because he knows He is the source of grace - He is the source of grace. The law was given by Moses, John 1:17 says, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

I suppose at least ten times in the epistles of the New Testament it says “grace and - grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” God is the source of grace. Romans 3:24 says we are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Do you remember Paul’s testimony in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 9? “For I am the least of the apostles, I am not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace which was bestowed on me was not in vain but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I but the grace of God which was with me.”

In Ephesians chapter 3, verse 8, “Unto me,” he says, “who am less than the least of all saints is this grace given.” I am what I am by the grace of God even though I’m nothing, I am not fit to be an apostle. I am the least of all saints. I am the chief of sinners. Always he sees himself that way and it’s always connected to his blasphemous, slanderous, Christ-hating, Christian-persecuting background. And he knows that if he has received salvation, it is all of grace - all of grace.

So we could say, then, that even in verse 12 there are four features of grace that come to him from the Source. First is electing grace - electing grace. In Acts 9:15, again in Acts 22:14 when he gives his testimony, in Acts 26:16 when he repeats his testimony, in all those places it is very clear that the Lord says, “I have chosen you to make you an apostle.” Paul had a tremendous sense of being chosen by God, called by God, separated under the gospel of God. Not only in terms of ministry but in terms of his election to salvation. He was chosen.

There isn’t a greater illustration of electing grace than the apostle Paul. He is on his way to Damascus, Acts 9, to kill Christians. He is stopped dead in his tracks. He is redeemed and he is called to the apostolate all by the sovereign intervention of Christ Himself. So we could say he’s thankful for electing grace. Everything starts there. He was chosen for salvation. That was God’s divine and glorious purpose. It was the grace of God that brought salvation.

Secondly, he is also grateful for enabling grace. Not only electing grace but enabling grace. It says, “I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has enabled me,” literally, who has given me strength. He not only elected me to salvation but gave me the strength I needed to live out that salvation. It wouldn’t be enough to have electing grace without enabling grace, we’d get lost again. Not only do we experience the grace of salvation but the enabling grace to walk in that salvation and to continue in the faith.

In the end of this epistle, chapter - the end of the second epistle, rather, chapter 4, verse 17, 2 Timothy, he says, “The Lord stood with me and strengthened me that by me the preaching might be fully known.” And this is how he lived his whole life, in the strength of the Lord. “I can do all things,” Philippians 4:13, “through Christ who strengthens me.” “Be strong in the Lord and the power of His might,” Ephesians 6:10. So he’s looking back here, the form that he uses indicates he’s looking - using the aorist - to a specific moment when the power first came and continues to come throughout all his ministry.

And it’s wonderful to know that we are not only elect by grace but we are enabled by grace and that’s why Paul writes in Romans 5 and says, “This grace in which we stand.” We didn’t just receive grace to be saved and grace departed, we received grace and now we live in grace. And it is the grace of God that infuses the strength of God to enable us to live the Christian life.

Thirdly, he is thankful for entrusting grace - entrusting grace. He says, “In that He counted me trustworthy” or faithful. He is very, very amazed that the Lord counted him trustworthy enough to deposit in his life the salvation that God gave him and the truth that God brought to him. And he is one committed to faithfulness. He says it is required in stewards above all things, 1 Corinthians 4:1 and 2, that a man be found faithful. And he says, in effect, it amazes me that He counted me to be trustworthy. Now, did the Savior look around and say, “Hey, there’s a trustworthy guy. Boy, there’s a guy I can trust”? No. It was grace that made him trustworthy.

Let me show you something. First Corinthians 7:25 - very interesting statement. In his discussion about marriage and singleness and virgins and all that he covers in 1 Corinthians 7, he drops a wonderful little thought in here about how he viewed himself. Verse 25. He says, “I want to speak concerning virgins but I can’t quote the Lord, I have no commandment of the Lord; that is, Jesus didn’t say anything that was written down that I can look to, so I’m going to give you my own inspired judgment by the direction of the Holy Spirit and I’m giving it” - listen to this - “as one that has obtained mercy from the Lord to be trustworthy.”

Did you get that? The only reason that we are trustworthy with the stewardship of the gospel and the stewardship of divine truth and the stewardship of ministry is because the Lord gives us the trustworthiness. That’s a gift of grace, electing grace, enabling grace, entrusting grace, and then employing grace. He put him in his service, verse 12, putting me in to the diakonia, a word for lowly service. He appointed me to lowly service. Colossians 1:23 and 25 says, “He made me a minister.” He made me a minister, He made me a servant. He put me into His lowly humble service. And you can tell by that term that he’s not bragging about his wonderful trustworthiness, his great faithfulness, he’s not seeking honor for himself.

I was reading this week about the Spartans and some of the things about their battles, and Plutarch tells that when a Spartan won a victory in the games, his reward was that he might stand beside his king in battle. In fact, the victory for a Spartan in his games gave him the privilege of standing in front of his king in the battle to protect his king. And it went on to say there was a story of a Spartan wrestler at the Olympic games, he was offered a considerable bribe if he would abandon the struggle and he refused.

Finally, after a great effort, he won the victory and someone said to him, “Well, Spartan, what have you got out of the costly victory you have won?” And he answered, “I have won the privilege of standing in front of my king in battle.” I kind of have the feeling that that was the spirit of Paul whose joy was to say, “I bear in my body the marks intended for Jesus Christ,” who cried out, “I want to know the fellowship of His sufferings, I want to even be conformable to His death.”

No, Paul is not exalting himself here. He is talking about the incredible electing, the incredible enabling, the incredible entrusting and employing grace of God that not only saved him and strengthened him and made him worthy to hold the trust of his salvation, but allowed him to serve with humility and blessing.

So when you think of grace, you don’t think of some very limited thing. That’s why 2 Corinthians 9:8 says, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you so that you will have all sufficiency in all things and be able to abound unto every good work.” Grace goes way beyond just the saving act. In 2 Corinthians 12:9 he said, “My grace is sufficient for you” for everything. So he speaks, then, of the source of grace as being God, the source of grace in its fullness for all of Christian life and ministry.

And then the need for grace - the need for grace. In verse 13, the need is very clear. Before his conversion, he was a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious. The grace of God is so vivid in his mind because of what he used to be, of what he was. He persecuted the church of God and wasted it, he says in Galatians 1:13. Because of what he was, his need was profound. A great sinner has to be given great grace. To be chosen, to be empowered, to be trusted, to be appointed to serve Christ, to be made an apostle is one thing; to have that done to someone who used to be a blasphemer, persecutor, and injurious is quite something else.

What does it mean, a blasphemer? One who slanders God. One who overtly, openly slanders God, speaks evil of God. In Acts 26:11 he says, “I punished them” - meaning Christians - “often and compelled them to blaspheme.” He was not only a blasphemer himself but wanted everybody else to blaspheme God, to blaspheme Christ. His attack was directly against Christ. That’s why three times in the book of Acts it says, “Jesus said, ‘Why persecutest thou me?’” Not the church, but me.

He was anti-God in that sense, he was anti-Christ, he was a blasphemer of the first order and, therefore, he violated the first half of the Ten Commandments. All those that speak of a person’s proper attitude toward God he violated, he shattered the first table of the law. He also shattered the second table of the law as the next two words indicate. He was a persecutor. Relentless, maniacal pursuit to do harm to Christians. He wasted the church. Acts 8:3, Acts 9:1 pictures him making havoc of the church, breathing out threatenings and slaughter, binding people up, men and women, going into houses and dragging them out, throwing them in prison. He was a mass murderer. He was a ferocious, aggressive, evil persecutor of the church.

And the last word is a very interesting word. Translated injurious, it really means the idea of a wanton aggressor, an aggressor with no thought for human kindness. Some have translated that word a bully. It is the idea of a violent, aggressive person whose violence and contempt causes him to mistreat and hurt other people simply for the sake of the hurt. It isn’t that he has some pure cause in mind, he gets glee out of watching people be humiliated and suffer and even die. He relishes that.

It is a characteristically pagan sin indicated in - the same word is used in Romans 1:30. It is also the word used in Luke 18:32 to speak of what the crowd and what the Jewish leaders did to Jesus when they plucked His beard and spit in His face and punched Him and slapped Him just for the sheer sport of it. I suppose one way we could translate it would be sadism. He had personal glee and fulfillment out of watching people suffer pain even unto death. And when Ananias was told by the Lord to meet him in Acts chapter 9, it says Ananias said, “I have heard how much evil he has done.” And when the early church was supposed to receive him, they were scared, they were frightened.

Now, this was the need for grace. This is a desperate sinner. This is a mass murderer, a violent, persecuting, God-hating, Christ-rejecting sinner of the worst possible imagination. So great was the need for grace. You say, “Well why does Paul bother to recite this?” Because it’s very helpful to remember the pit from which you were dug, right? Has a lot to do with keeping your perspective, maintaining your humility and your heart of gratitude if you can go back over some of those things.

That leads us to the power of grace. The power of grace was expressed because the need was so great. In Romans 5:20, Paul knew exactly what he was saying when he said, “Where sin abounded grace did super abound.” He was living proof. And he says at the end of verse 13, “But I was mercied.” “I was mercied, I was a doer of outrage, but I was mercied. I was smeared with mercy. I was treated with compassion in my wretchedness.” And he could say with the hymn writer, “And from my smitten heart with tears, two wonders I confess, the wonders of His glorious love and my own worthlessness.” But I was mercied, he says.

What is mercy? Mercy has to do with misery. Grace has to do with guilt. Grace takes away the guilt; mercy takes away the misery that accompanies the guilt. The undeserved relief of misery that comes with saving grace came to Paul and “I was mercied,” he says. How so? How could such a wretched vile rotten sinner be mercied? Because, he says, “I did it ignorantly in unbelief. I didn’t know what I was doing.” He’s not an apostate who knew exactly what he was doing and did it anyway.

He’s not someone who, like the Pharisees, had come to fully hear the Word of Christ, fully understand the power of Christ, saw all His miracles, heard all His teaching and concluded that He was out of the pit and He was devilish. He was no apostate. He was no rejecter of full light. He was not like those in Hebrews chapter 6 who were enlightened and tasted the heavenly gift and saw the powers of the age to come and partook of the energy and power of the Spirit of God and turned their back on that and walked away and thus were unredeemable. He is not an apostate. He is not one who knew everything and turned his back on it, not at all. He didn’t know what he did.

And he’s borrowing this concept, by the way, from his own Jewish background. If you were to read Leviticus 22:14, you would read about unwitting sins, sins that people do and they don’t really realize what they’ve done. And then if you were to go - and you ought to do this sometime, read Numbers 15, and as it describes the Day of Atonement, it says that the Day of Atonement provides an atonement for the sins of people who sin without knowledge, who sin ignorantly. But those who sin deliberately, willfully, cold-blooded, arrogantly are beyond the atonement because they have no repentance.

Someone who sins and repents, understands what they’ve done and comes in repentance and confession and faith, they were covered in Israel by the atonement on the Day of Atonement. But those cold-blooded, arrogant sinners with no confession and no repentance, their sin was not taken care of.

And it’s the same here. Jesus dying on the cross looked out at a crowd that screamed for His blood, a crowd that wanted Him dead, a crowd that put Him on a cross, and He said, “Father, forgive them” - and the reason was - “for they - they don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t fully understand.” The sin is theirs and they’ve committed the sin and it’s a vile, heinous sin, but they really didn’t understand what they were doing. And Peter affirms that in Acts 3:14 to 17 as he preaches and he says, “I know you did it ignorantly in unbelief.”

And that’s the distinction here. It isn’t that he was not guilty for his sin of persecution, he was a vile, wretched sinner. He says he’s the worst sinner of all sinners. But he is a forgivable sinner if, when he sees the truth, he turns from his sin to righteousness. You understand? It’s the sinner who doesn’t turn that’s unforgivable. And what does he say in Acts 26:19? “When I saw Christ on the Damascus Road,” he says, “I was not disobedient to that heavenly vision.” When I saw the truth I believed it, I saw my sin.

Remember Romans 7? I thought I was alive, here I was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, perfect as concerning the law, circumcised - he goes all through that in Philippians 3 - and all of those things, but when I saw the law of God in its reality, I died, he says, I was devastated. “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.”

Could we say that he had a redeemable heart because he was not an apostate, he was not a cold-blooded, arrogant, willful, deliberate sinner against full light? When he saw the truth, he believed the truth. And the power of grace is this, beloved, that it doesn’t matter how wretched the sinner is, grace is powerful enough to transform the sinner if the sinner sees the sin as sin and believes the gospel. That’s the issue. The power of grace to bring mercy to a willing heart, willing to do what’s right and believe the truth.

What about the measure of grace? That’s the power of grace to transform, to bring mercy to such a wretched heart, what power to transform that. But what’s the measure? Verse 14, “And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant.” It super abounded. You got a lot of sin, you got a lot of grace to cover that sin. And here we find the use of the term grace, which is central to the passage, and though it only appears here, it permeates the whole of Paul’s gratitude. Abounding sin gives way to super abounding grace, above the expected measure. Paul loves to add the word huper, super we call it, hyper, transliterated. He loves to add that on the front of words.

And if you go through the New Testament, you’ll find about a half a dozen places where he invents a word by adding hyper in the front of it, super abounding here, exceedingly abundant. And so he gives us the insight into the surpassing measure of grace. The Bible says God is able to make all grace abound, all grace, electing grace, enabling grace, entrusting grace, employing grace, all can abound, exceedingly abundant.

And notice what else he says. With faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. Now, this grace is in Christ Jesus. You’re not going to get grace anywhere else, is that right? You’re not going to get saving grace anywhere besides in Christ Jesus. Apart from believing in Him and receiving Him, there’s no saving grace. But notice what he says, “Saving grace is not only abundant in and of itself” - this is a marvelous thought - you not only receive an abundant, exceedingly abundant saving grace but along with it comes faith and love. Literally you could read it this way, “And the grace of our Lord was super abundant in the company of faith and love which are also in Christ Jesus.” They’re together.

What is that saying? That’s saying this, that when saving grace comes, with it comes faith. What does that mean? When God saved you, God granted you the grace to trust Him. And even your faith in Him is a gift. “For by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God.” God brings grace to cover your sin and He brings with it faith to believe God and He brings with it love to love God and love to love others. I mean, it’s a whole package, folks.

Here you are a naked, destitute, useless, condemned, vile sinner without hope, without anything in the world, and when God by electing grace moves in to redeem you and responds to your willing heart, therein does He bring grace that super abounds beyond all your sin. And even beyond that, He brings you the capacity to trust God and the capacity to love God and love others, and that’s the package that comes with saving grace. Isn’t that marvelous? That’s why when you go through the New Testament - I wish we had time - over and over and over again, faith and love are linked with salvation.

Faith and love. I mean I just - for example, one epistle, Ephesians 1:15, and this is one out of many. Ephesians 1:15, “I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and love unto all the saints.” Chapter 3, verse 17, “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith that you being rooted and grounded in love.” Chapter 6 of the same epistle, verse 23, “Peace to the brethren and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” In 1 Timothy, right where we are, verse 5, “The end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith without hypocrisy.” Chapter 2, verse 15, of 1 Timothy, “She shall be saved in child bearing if they continue in faith and love and holiness with sobriety.”

Faith and love are linked - oh, so often because the package that comes with salvation includes trusting God as a gift. God enables us to trust Him and loving Him and loving others also as a gift. That’s why Colossians 1:23 says you’re saved if you continue in faith because faith is part of the salvation package, and you can tell a true Christian by their continuing faith. Secondly, you can tell a true Christian by their continuing love. Is that not so? If you say you’re a believer but you don’t love God and love His people, 1 John says you’re not telling the truth.

So grace is so abundant, you not only get super abounding grace, but in the package you get love and faith also. That’s the measure of God’s grace. What’s the purpose of it? What’s the purpose of grace? Is that something also for which to rejoice? Let’s move into verse 15 again. “This is a trustworthy saying and certainly worthy of everyone’s acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am prōtos” first, literally worst. I am the worst sinner in the world.

You say, “Now, wait a minute, Paul. You got a bad self-image. You’re not going to make it in the ministry. You got to get your act together, calm down a little bit. You’re a nice guy.” “No, I’m the worst sinner in the world.” You say, “Oh, he’s just - that’s just sort of spiritual talk.” No, he really believed that. He really believed he was the world’s worst sinner. In chapter 15 of verse - chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians, verse 9, “I am the least of the apostles, I am not fit to be called an apostle” - here’s the reason - “I persecuted the church of God.”

I read you earlier that one and Ephesians 3:8, “I am less than the least of all saints.” He believed it. Why? Because it was - it was probably true. I don’t see the Holy Spirit editorializing here and saying, “Don’t believe this, this is just Paul exaggerating.” I think he said he was the worst because he probably was the worst and nobody argued with it, not even God. I mean how bad can you be but be a mass murderer of people who love Jesus Christ? From a human viewpoint, he was wretched. He was a blasphemer of God and Christ, he was a killer of Christians, and he did it for the sheer joy of watching people suffer. Now, that’s a - that’s a perverted mind.

And when he says, “I am the first,” and uses the emphatic pronoun and the word first, he means it. He means it. He was a wretched, vile sinner of massive proportions. He says, “I persecuted this way” - that is, Christianity - “unto the death, binding and delivering both men and women into prison.” And specifically his persecution and his crimes were committed against Jesus Christ. That’s why the Lord said, “Why are you persecuting me?” That was a healthy self-view for Paul because it was accurate, and that’s the basis of the purpose of his salvation.

Look at verse 16, “Nevertheless, for this cause I obtained mercy.” What cause? Because I was so wretched a sinner, because I was so rotten and so vile - now listen to this - because I was the worst sinner alive, I received mercy. Well, what is - why that? Why does God save the worst sinner? Here it comes: in order that in me first or me foremost Jesus Christ might show forth all - what? - long-suffering or patience.

You know why God saved Paul? You say, “To keep him out of hell.” No, that was a benefit. You say, “To get him into heaven.” No that was a benefit. You say, “To have him write the epistles.” No, He could’ve had anybody do that. “To preach.” No, He could’ve had anybody do that. “Well, why did He save Paul?” Because God wanted to save the world’s worst Christian, the world’s worst pagan, and make him the world’s greatest Christian. God wanted to save the world’s worst pagan and make him the world’s greatest Christian.

Why? To show the power of grace, to put Himself on display. You see, the purpose of salvation is to glorify God, to demonstrate His power and His long-suffering. And isn’t that wonderful? Listen to this: If the Lord is so patient and so long-suffering - and the word is makrothumia and it means to be patient with people - if the Lord is so patient with vile, blaspheming, slanderous, persecuting, outrageous conduct among the pagans, if He is so patient as to wait for that person, as to endure all of those indignities, redeem that person, make that person an apostle, let him write thirteen books of the New Testament who was the worst sinner in the world, then nobody else is beyond His grace, right? That’s the whole point.

And you know something? You know what this says to Timothy? Even those false teachers that are creating such havoc, Timothy, are not beyond salvation if they have done it ignorantly in unbelief. God’s willingness to endure the insults and the blasphemies and the rejection and the sins of men like Paul show how great His grace is, how magnanimous His mercy is. And so Paul says, “I am a pattern, I am a hupotupōsis which means an illustration, a model. I am - I like the word illustration. I am the supreme illustration for everybody who in the future will believe on Him to life everlasting. I am living proof that God can save any sinner. Isn’t that wonderful?

Somebody would say, “Well, He can’t save me, I’m too far gone.” That’s not so - not so. Have you overtly, openly, outwardly, purposely blasphemed God? Have you blasphemed Jesus Christ? Have you systematically murdered Christians and put them in jail? And worse of all, the whole time you did it thought you were righteous? This is bad stuff.

Now, I don’t want to push the point too far, but certainly in Paul’s mind, he saw himself as the worst of sinner, and there’s reason to agree. There may be others in history who would rank right with him, but you can’t get any worse than that, than to be the outward antagonist of God and Christ and the church. And so saving him, then, is proof positive that the Lord can save anybody and transform anybody - anybody - and turn them into an evangelist, an apostle, a missionary, a useful servant.

And that’s why we have in verse 17 the response to grace. Now unto the King eternal. Literally, the King of the ages. What ages? The Jews had two ages, the past age and the age to come, the supremely sovereign one, immortal, that is imperishable, incorruptible, no death, decay or loss of strength, the invisible One known only by self-revelation for He cannot be seen by eyes nor heard by ears, only when He’s self-revealed can He be known, the only God - the only God - to Him be honor and glory forever and ever. And then he adds that little Jewish conclusion, “Amen,” which means let it be said, let it be said. You can’t really exegete a doxology, you just say it and rejoice in it.

Now, I trust as you’ve heard this message, you’ve heard the Spirit of God say to you, if you’re a Christian, there ought to be a thankful heart. And maybe if you’ve grown a little cold in that area of your life, you need to reach back and remember what you used to be, and you need to remember your sinfulness and understand again the grace of God so that you have a thankful heart and so that you can cry out in a doxology of praise, “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” And mean it with all your heart.

And others of you who’ve never embraced the Lord Jesus Christ at all, be assured of this, that no matter what your sin might be, no matter how wretched it might appear to you, you’re savable by the grace of God. That’s the message here. Even if you’ve been a false teacher, if you did it ignorantly in unbelief and hearing the truth, you desire to respond. Let’s bow in prayer.

Father, we’re reminded of the beautiful words of John Wesley who wrote, “Plenteous grace with thee is found, grace to cover all my sin, let the healing streams abound and make and keep me pure within.” We thank thee, oh, God, for thy great grace in Christ. We thank thee for what thou art able and willing to do in the life of a repentant sinner. Oh, what transforming grace. May there be no one in this place who has not known that grace who is not grateful for that grace. Fill our hearts with a doxology of praise.

While your heads are bowed in closing moments of our message, if you have never embraced the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Savior, if you have not received His saving grace, you are in a dangerous, eternally dangerous state and foolishly rejecting the gift of life simply and only because you love your sin. Say no to your sin and yes to Jesus Christ. Hearing the truth, believe it and know that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, even sinners as bad as you, to transform them into servants of His own.

Right where you sit, if you’ve never received Christ, open your heart to Him right now, believe and receive Him. If you’re a Christian, ask God to forgive you for the lethargy and indifference and fill you with gratitude, and remember what you were and what you would be without that grace.

• Now, for this morning, let’s open our Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 1.  

• First Timothy chapter 1.  

• We’re going to be looking at an introduction, really, to verses 18 to 20.  

• Chapter 1, as you know if you’ve been with us, introduces this great epistle, and in this particular section, verses 18 to 20, in which Paul sums up the introduction to the whole epistle, there is reference made to warfare, and Paul calls Timothy to fight a noble fight. 

• I want us to look at these verses, and then before we get into them in specific, I want to talk a little bit this morning about this warfare itself.  Let’s look to verse 18.  “This command I entrust unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which pointed to thee that thou by them mightest fight a noble warfare, holding faith and a good conscience, which some having put away have made shipwreck concerning the faith, of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander whom I have delivered unto Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.” 

Now, I want you to notice at the end of verse 18 just this statement:  Paul calls Timothy to war a good warfare, to fight a noble fight.  The word “to war,” that thou mightest war, is a verb from the Greek verb strateuō, which is the source of our word “strategy,” and it means to fight as a soldier, and then to fight a noble – the word kalos means an excellent or noble warfare, and the word “warfare,” strateia means a campaign.  It is not a battle, it is not a skirmish, it is not a brief fight, it is a long-term continual campaign.  So what Paul is saying to Timothy in writing this whole epistle is intended to gear him up to fight a noble warfare, to fight a noble or excellent campaign.  He is calling Timothy to the realization that he is in a spiritual battle.

Now in verses 18, 19, and 20, he gives him three understandings necessary to fight well, and I’m going to look at those three next time.  But for today, I want just to introduce the concept of this noble warfare because I believe it to be so very important in our time.  Not all wars are noble wars, and not all wars are nobly fought.  But here is a noble warfare, a good and excellent warfare that is to be well fought.  Now, what Paul has in mind is a cosmic warfare of massive spiritual proportions.  He’s not talking about a physical war or really even an earthly war.  He’s not talking even about a human war.  He’s talking about war on the spiritual level, and he is reminding Timothy that he needs to fight a noble war, and his reminder to Timothy is indeed a reminder to us as well. 

Now remember, Paul left Timothy in Ephesus.  He left him there to battle against the enemy.  The enemy had encroached upon the Ephesian church, error was being taught, false leaders were in positions of prominence and power and authority, godliness was under attack, and Timothy is to set those things right.  So he is right at the forefront of a part of this great spiritual warfare, and what Paul says to him in these three verses is very instructive to all of us who, at one place or another, are engaged in the same battle, the same campaign. 

Now, let me just say at the beginning that the warfare of which Paul speaks has at its highest level a tremendous conflict between God and Satan.  That is the primary level of the warfare.  Everything else, in a sense comes, under that.  It is a war of the Lord God Jehovah and His truth against Satan and his lies.  It is a war between God and His will and Satan and his will, and such a war is not only fought between God and Satan but between demons and holy angels and between ungodly men and godly men so that this cosmic warfare at the level of God and the highest creature He ever made, Lucifer, filters all the way down to involve every human being – including us. 

Now, for us to understand this warfare, we need to take a look at its elements.  You remember in Luke chapter 14 and verse 31, Jesus laid down a very obvious principle, in another context, but the principle applies.  He said, “What king going to make war against another king sits not down first and consults whether he’s able with ten thousand to meet him that comes against him with twenty thousand?”  In other words, Jesus is saying no king goes to war unless he understands the terms of battle, unless he understands the power of his enemy, unless he understands that which is at stake in the warfare, and we are engaged in a spiritual warfare. 

Now, I think this has escaped most contemporary American Christians who really don’t understand the warfare at all.  There are many who, because they have been given a gospel of easy-believism or cheap grace, because they have been told that Jesus is where you get the goodies and that’s about it, believe that you come to Jesus to get a whole lot of stuff, and life from then on is supposed to be flowery beds of ease and happiness and prosperity, health, wealth, money, and all the rest.  They have no concept of the spiritual warfare at all.  Many Christians are involved in what I would call trivia. 

I was told about the testimony of one lady who got up even in our own church some time ago to share her testimony.  She said, “Satan is attacking me to the degree that I can’t deal with it anymore.  Satan is giving me onslaughts that I can’t cope with.  I’m at the end of my rope.”  And when asked exactly what it was, she said that “Because of painting in our house, we’ve had to put sheets over all of our furniture, and I don’t think I can stand it any longer.”  Now, if that isn’t living at the level of trivia, I’m not sure what is. 

It’s mind-boggling that someone would think that is spiritual warfare and that Satan is attacking you because there’s so much dust in your house.  But there is that trivial level at which so many people live.  There is an ignorance about the reality of spiritual warfare, and if we are to understand what Paul says to Timothy about warring a noble war, then we’re going to have to understand some of the elements in that warfare, and to that end, I want to speak with you this morning. 

Now, originally there was no war and there was no rebellion.  Everything in God’s world in God’s universe was perfectly harmonious.  There was no reaction to His sovereign rule.  There was no animosity toward anything that He expressed as His holy purpose and Will.  There was no conflict, no fight, no rebellion, just perfect peace and harmony.  But then there came a disastrous event which set God and Satan against each other for all eternity. 

In order to understand that, I want you to turn in the Old Testament to the 28th chapter of Ezekiel – Ezekiel’s prophecy, chapter 28 – and I want to set your mind in the framework of understanding this warfare, and we begin to get a grip on it here in the 28th chapter of Ezekiel. 

Now, the prophet Ezekiel is giving prophecies against Tyre.  Tyre, that godless city back in chapter 26, was promised judgment.  God was going to bring a judgment on that city.  Chapter 27, then, is sort of a dirge, sort of a funeral song about what’s going to happen to Tyre, and chapter 28, then, is an indictment of the prince or the king of that city.  But in speaking against the king of Tyre, the prophet goes beyond the king himself to speak of the one who is the source of his antagonism to God.  The king of Tyre was simply a pawn in the activity of Satan.  Satan was using this man as Satan will do, and we are well aware in studying the Old Testament, most specifically the prophecy of Daniel, that behind the godless nations of the world, Satan and his demon hosts are energizing their anti-God activity. 

We know that, and it was no different in Tyre, though the man himself, called in verse 2 the prince of Tyre, referring to the one who was king as he is called in verse 12, though this man was an evil man and a godless man and one who was working against God, he was merely a tool in the hand of the one behind the scenes at the level of this supernatural cosmic warfare between God and Satan.  We see that as we begin at verse 11.  “Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me saying, ‘Son of man’” – and that is a reference to Ezekiel, he is called that in the Old Testament – “‘take up a lamentation on the king of Tyre and say unto him....’”  Now, then, what is said in the middle of verse 12 and following could not even refer to this human being, and we’ll see that as we go.  “‘Say to the king of Tyre, “Thus saith the Lord God, thou sealest up the sum.”’” 

Now, what does that mean?  Simply this:  When a thing is sealed, it is sealed because it is completed.  It is sealed because it is finished.  It is sealed because it is consummated, just as when you write a letter, fold it up, put it in an envelope, and seal it.  When you complete a work and you seal that work, it is done.  So here is one who seals up the sum; that is, a perfectly created being, someone who is so complete that the work is over, that the sum of it is done and the seal is placed.  Verse 12 also says this individual who seals up the sum is full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.  Full of wisdom, lacking no wisdom, and perfect in beauty.  Now, obviously that cannot refer to a human being.  No human being is so perfected as to be sealed off, signed, and finished.  No human being is full of wisdom and no human being is perfect in beauty. 

Furthermore, verse 13 says, “Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God.”  Now, that could not refer to the king of Tyre who was not in the Garden of Eden.  “Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God.”  That is to say we’re looking here at the serpent, the devil, the enemy, the adversary who was there in the glory of the Garden of Eden. 

We also would note, please, that if in his beauty and in his wisdom and in his perfection he was in the garden of God, the fall of Satan and the fall of angels must have occurred sometime after the creation and occupation of the Garden of Eden.  There are people who would tell us that the fall occurs before the creation; that doesn’t seem to square with this text.  If this glorious, fully perfected individual was indeed in the garden of God in his perfection, then he fell after that creation, sometime before he was turned into a serpent in manifestation and brought about the fall of man through temptation. 

So – also it says in verse 13, “Every precious stone was thy covering,” and then it lists nine precious stones, all nine of which are included also in the breastplate of the high priest, which is described in Exodus 39 verses 10 to 13.  They then indicate to us because they are in the breastplate of the high priest and they also here are used in the covering of this incredibly beautiful and perfect created being that they are the sum of the beauty and the glory of God’s creation for God put in the breastplate of the high priest that which manifests the beauty and the magnificence of His own glory reflected in those jewels, and so this being carries the same stones, nine of the same twelve.  It’s simply telling us this is a perfect, glorious, magnificent creature. 

Verse 14 calls him the anointed cherub that covers.  The Jews saw the most sacred of all angels as the covering cherub.  What that means is that when the mercy seat and the top of the Ark of the Covenant was designed by God, it was designed that there would be two angels, one on each side, spreading their wings over the mercy seat, called the covering cherub.  They were representative of those angels which concerned themselves with the holiness of God, and they cover that mercy seat where the atonement was made between God and men by the sprinkling of blood on the Day of Atonement.  Those sacred angels, then, which were the cherub that covered, those to the minds of the Jew which were the most sacred would then be related to this one that was created who is called the anointed cherub that covers, the highest angelic creature, caring for the glory and the holiness of God. 

And it says in verse 14, “I have set thee so.”  God not only created angels – listen carefully – not only created angels but He created them to fit into a ranking.  They are a hierarchy of angels.  There are angels and archangels.  There are cherubim and seraphim.  There are rulers and principalities and powers, and all of those terms have to do with the different strata of angels in God’s design for the functioning of the angelic network to carry out His bidding, and here, then, was one who supremely was set as the anointed cherub. 

Further it says in verse 14:  “Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God, thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.”  The holy mountain of God and the stones of fire would be the glory of the very dwelling place of God.  This is not an angel commissioned to be out somewhere apart from the immediate presence of God, dispatched to some other duty.  Angels, by the way, are not omnipresent.  They can only be in one place at one time, though they can move very fast, as Daniel shows us in his prophecy.  But angels can be away from the presence of God; that is, His immediate glorious dwelling in heaven.  But not this angel.  This angel dwelt in the holy mountain and walked in the area of the stones of fire, speaking of the holy ground on which the throne of God would be placed in that heavenly environment. 

Verse 15 says:  “Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created,” again emphasizing the absolute perfection of this creature.  And then – you might want to underline this – comes the disastrous statement, “Till iniquity was found in thee” – “till iniquity was found in thee,” and there is the beginning of spiritual warfare at the cosmic level as Satan then pits himself against God.  This anointed cherub takes sides against God – iniquity is found in him. 

Now, we do not understand how that came about.  Some people say, “Well, he was tempted from the outside.”  He couldn’t have been – there was no evil on the outside, it was a perfect environment.  Others say he was tempted from the inside.  There was no evil on the inside.  He was perfect.  Where did it come from?  It didn’t come from the outside, it couldn’t come from the inside – where did it come from?  And the answer is we have no idea.  In our finite little minds, we cannot conceive how this can happen rationally, so we accept it by faith in the category of things that we will only understand when we have full understanding in the presence of God.  Until that time, we accept the fact that it happened, and if you have any doubt about it, then you’re not looking around you because sin is here, folks, and it came from somewhere.  It’s futile and, frankly, pointless to debate how it could happen; all we need to do is realize that it did, which is not debatable. 

And so this angel is iniquitous.  Verse 16 further describes that and God says, “Because you have sinned, I’ll cast you as profane out of the mountain of God and I will destroy you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.  Thine heart – here it is – was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness.”  In other words, “You were so glorious and so wonderful that you became corrupt.”  Now, here’s the only indication we have as to the ontology of sin’s origination, it says:  “Thy heart was lifted up.”  It did come, then, from within.  As to how it came from within, we do not know.  We do not know.  But this angel was so enamored with his own perfection and his own beauty and his own wisdom and his own glory, and so by that iniquitous response of pride did he – verse 18 – defile the sanctuaries that God threw him out of heaven to be destroyed. 

Now, let’s find out specifically what the sin is by looking at another Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, and chapter 14.  Isaiah and chapter 14.  And here we find again in a prophecy an indication of the behind-the-scenes power.  This prophecy has to do with Babylon and the destruction of Babylon, but there was a greater power behind Babylon just as there was a greater power behind Tyre, and we find that power identified and spoken of in chapter 14 beginning at verse 12. 

Notice carefully:  “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning.”  Lucifer means day star, son of the morning.  To show you how elevated this creature was, you need only be reminded that in Revelation 22:16, it is said of Jesus Christ that He is the bright and morning star.  When God wanted to speak of the brilliance and glory and magnificence of Christ, He calls Him the bright and morning star.  Here, when the prophet refers to this created angel, he calls him also day star, son of the morning, and though he is not same as Christ, a similar expression is used to speak of the marvelous glory of this creature.  So you understand this is a glorious creature.  “How art thou fallen” is reminiscent of Luke 10:18 where Jesus said, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.”  “How art thou” – verse 12 – “cut down to the ground, who did weaken the people.” 

And why did this happen?  What was this sin that rose up in the heart?  What was this sin that rose up in the bosom, as it were, of this anointed cherub?  Verse 13 tells us very clearly.  Notice in verse 13:  “I will,” “I will,” “I will” – three times.  Verse 14:  “I will, “I will.”  Five times.  “I will,” “I will,” “I will.”  The problem was pride.  The problem was he was lifted up by his own beauty.  He was so close to God that he became jealous of being God and sought to be equal to God.  By the way, he was still offering that temptation to others in the garden, wasn’t he?  When he said to Eve, “If you do this, you’ll be equal to God, and you’ll know good from evil.  That was the projection of his own pride and it is the same problem today.  Romans chapter 1, men reject the true God and out of their own hearts they elevate themselves to be equal with God.  They create gods of their own making, design God who was a God of their own design, they themselves become the ultimate supreme makers of God; therefore, they are God and in such a way defy the true God.  So this matter of pride and seeking to be equal with God is the heritage that Lucifer has left for the whole of the fallen world. 

He says – verse 13 – again, it comes out of his insides, out of his heart, it is not in the environment, it isn’t really in him in his created perfection, and yet it comes from within his heart, it is invented by him.  No inside or outside element of the created perfection of God stimulated it, he on his own invented this pride and he said, “I will ascend into heaven.  It isn’t enough for me to be where I am, I want to go higher, I want to be at the very dwelling place of God.  I will ascend into whatever left of heaven is still occupied only by God and I will take my place with Him.  I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; that is, I will cease to be an angel among angels even though I am a leading angel, and I will go beyond angels” –  “stars” here refer to angels – “I will go beyond that and I will be as God.  I will sit on the mount of the congregation.” 

“I will take my place there where God alone sits, where God alone reigns, in the sides of the north.”  Ancient peoples believed that the gods had their residence in the north, and so the indication here of Lucifer is that he will take, using sort of a colloquial expression, his place, the prophet says, in the throne of God. 

Verse 14:  “I will ascend above the heights of the cloud,” singular, it is not clouds, it is cloud and has reference not to some created cloud but to the Shekinah glory of God.  “I will ascend above the height of God’s glory.  I’ll be like the most high.”  So out of this generated, invented sin of pride comes the warfare, and God then responds in verse 15, and here is the counterattack:  “You will be brought down to Sheol, to the sides of the pit.”  God says, “I’ll take you on and I’ll destroy you.  I’ll take you on and I’ll devastate you.” 

Now you understand from Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 the nature of this supernatural conflict, and it’s going on all the time.  To get an insight into that, look at Job chapter 1.  In verse 6, “There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord and Satan came also among them.”  Some angels come before God and here comes Satan, His enemy.  By the way, the word “Satan” is used in the Old Testament.  It means enemy or adversary.  In fact, if it is used without a definite article, it is usually translated enemy or adversary.  If it has a definite article – “the” enemy or “the” adversary – it is Satan.  The same word is used in the New Testament 36 times.  So Satan, here, comes. 

And the Lord said, “Satan, where did you come from?”  And Satan answered the Lord, “From going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it.”  Here is the restlessness of Satan as he moves about the earth, endeavoring to thwart the plan and purpose of God.  And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect man, an upright man who fears God and shuns evil?”  And Satan answered the Lord and said, “Doesn’t Job fear God for nothing?  You’ve given him so much, of course he fears You.  He’s rich and he’s protected and he’s blessed and he’s got abundance.  But I’ll tell you what, You make it tough on him and he’ll turn his back on You.”  And you remember the test, God did and Job didn’t turn his back and Satan lost the battle. 

But that gives us an insight into Satan and God in conflict, and Satan is always trying to play one-ups on God.  “You say You have a man, let me at him, I’ll show you he’s not Your man.”  He is endeavoring to diminish the power of God, the glory of God, the work of God, the purpose of God, and the will of God. 

Now, in the New Testament he is given many names.  He is called the accuser of the brethren, he is called the adversary, which is a different word than his name.  He is called Beelzebub, Belial.  He is called the deceiver of the whole world, the great dragon, the enemy, the evil one, the father of lies, the god of this world, a liar, a murderer, the prince of the power of the air, the ruler of this world, the ancient serpent, and the tempter.  And he is set against God. 

Now, he is not alone in this.  Let’s go to the last book of Scripture, Revelation and chapter 12.  Revelation and chapter 12.  And I want you to understand that we’re honing in on where we are in the midst of this cosmic warfare.  So far, we know it’s God against Satan and God bringing about His holy purpose all the way along, being attacked by Satan.  But notice Revelation chapter 12 verse 3:  “There appeared another wonder in heaven” – in the vision that John has here – “and behold a great red dragon.”  And in the symbolism typical of Revelation, this dragon has seven heads, which probably refer to the sequential imperial governments of the world, and you can compare that with Revelation 17:9-11. 

We won’t get into detail, but it pictures this dragon as one who is the summation of all forms of anti-God world government.  He has ten horns because he is the supreme ruler of the final confederacy of human nations against God, which we know from Daniel 7 is the ten-nation confederacy of the revived Roman Empire that pits itself against Christ.  So here is the dragon.  He embodies all the evil of the systems of man, he embodies the final form of human world government set against Christ.  This is none other than Satan himself.  And it says in verse 4 that his tail, the tail on the dragon in this imagery, drew the third part of the stars – and there’s that word “stars” again which refers to angels – drew the third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. 

Now, we learned from this that when Satan fell, he drew with him one-third of the angelic host.  Now, keep this in mind.  Angels do not procreate.  Jesus said in Matthew that they’re neither marrying or giving in marriage, right?  Angels do not procreate and angels do not die.  They were created to live forever, either in the domain of God or in the domain of Satan.  Hell itself was created, Jesus said, for the devil and his angels, and hell is eternal because they are eternal.  So angels, then, are created beings.  They were all created at one point in time and they live forever.  They do not procreate.  There are as many demons today – or, rather, there are as many angels today, fallen and unfallen, as there were in the day God created them.  There’s no diminishing and there’s no adding to their ranks.  We know nothing of sequential creation and we know nothing of the obliviating of any angel hosts or forces.  So God creates a whole angelic host and that’s the end of His creation of them and they do not procreate. 

Now, of that group, one-third of them went with Satan in his fall.  That’s what the text is saying.  Two-thirds remain with God, one-third with Satan.  Satan, then, in his cosmic warfare is not alone.  He, though he’s a tremendously powerful creature, though he has great influence in the world, though he can move on the souls of men, though he can become the force behind governments and nations and anti-God activities worldwide, he is not omnipresent – he’s fast but he’s not omnipresent.  But his work is enhanced because a third of the whole angelic host is with him. 

Now you say, “How many are there?”  I don’t know but I do know there are angels and there are angels and there are angels because the Bible talks about them in terms of ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands which uses the word in the Greek language which is the largest Greek word to express numeration.  They have no word larger than ten thousand.  So it’s as if he is saying more and more and more and more.  We might say zillions and zillions and zillions, using our typical hyperbole.  We do not know how many there are.  But a third of them are actively involved with Satan. 

Now, some of that third aren’t any good to him.  The reason is they’re bound in everlasting chains.  We read in Jude that there were some angels who sinned at the time of the flood in Genesis 6, and they were put into everlasting chains.  We don’t know how many there were but they came down, cohabitated with men, produced a half-breed race which God drowned in the flood.  That segment of demons is bound in the pit, and they are in everlasting chains.  There are others, I believe, that are temporarily chained.  You remember that the demons and the demoniac of Gadara said, “Don’t send us to the pit”?  Perhaps through redemptive history, God has been putting more and more in the pit, and some of them will be released, Revelation 9 says, in the Tribulation.  They’re going to come out of the pit, but not the ones in everlasting chains.  So he started with a third of them, some of them are in everlasting chains, some of them are in temporary chains.  Whatever’s left, he’s working with in the world, and he’s working against God and the holy angels. 

Now, to give you a little more insight into the passage and the conflict, we have to ask the question:  What is the specific target of these angelic beings that have fallen and are now known as demons?  What is their target?  Go back to verse 1.  John says there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars.  Again, typical of the imagery of Revelation, the woman is none other than Israel.  The woman is Israel.  The sun and the moon, no doubt, are references to Jacob and Rachel, and the twelve stars would be references to the twelve sons.  You can compare Genesis 37:9. 

So here is the woman Israel.  And the woman Israel, verse 2, being with child, cries out travailing in birth pain to be delivered.  Here is this woman about to bring forth a child.  Now, what was the great child brought forth through the nation Israel?  The Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, and we know that.  Verse 5, let’s pick it up there:  “And she brought forth a male child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron.”  Well, that can’t be anybody but Christ.  “And her child is caught up to God, His ascension after His perfect work, and He sits on the throne.” 

So we have basically, then, Israel bringing forth a child.  In the midst of that vision, while she desires to bring forth the child, as it were, verses 3 and 4, we have Satan gathering his force, and at the end of verse 4 it says he is ready to devour the child as soon as it was born.  Is that not the case?  What happened at the birth of Jesus Christ?  Did not Satan do everything he could to destroy that child?  He had tried everything even prior to that.  He tried to destroy the whole godly line in Genesis 6 by creating a demon-men race because of the demons who cohabitated with the women, and God had to drown that whole civilization.  He tried to destroy the godly line by so corrupting the nation Israel that there wouldn’t be any possibility of a godly seed.  Even some of the kings who were in that line were cursed and God had to bypass those cursed kings, namely Jeconiah. 

He tried to kill the babies in the New Testament time when Christ was born through Herod.  He tried to kill Jesus Christ by having Him shoved off a cliff.  He tried to get Christ to fall to temptation and forfeit His kingdom and do unrighteousness.  He tried to kill Christ in the garden.  He tried to kill Him on the cross.  He tried to keep Him in the grave.  I mean always the dragon fights against the Messiah.  And that’s the way the warfare goes, Satan against God, focusing on the destruction of Christ and His work, and now he continues to fight against the work of Christ in His church.  He will fight against Christ when He comes in His return.  He will go on and on until finally he is bound forever in the pit of hell, the Lake of Fire. 

But I want you to notice that during the time of the Tribulation in the future, there’s an interesting focal point of the battle.  It says the woman Israel – verse 6 – is going to go into the wilderness during the Tribulation for three and a half years, the period after the Rapture before the second coming.  There’s going to be a holocaust on the earth, but Israel will be protected, and while all this is going on in earth, notice the description that comes in verse 7:  “There was war in heaven.”  Now, you ought to underline that because that’s really true.  That is a consummating statement.  There is war in heaven.  There will be war in the future, there was war in the past, and there is war right now. 

In this particular scene, Michael and his angels are fighting the dragon and the dragon fought and his angels.  Now, there you have another element of the warfare.  It is God against Satan but it is also Satan and his angels against God and His angels, the chief of which is now Michael.  Michael.  And they have fought, and they are fighting, and they will fight.  We know in the Scripture that this battle is not just relegated to the future.  We find Michael in contention with the devil about the body of Moses in Jude 9.  So Michael and the devil were even at it back in the time of Moses, and they will still be at it in the future at the time of the Tribulation, and the war goes on all the time between holy angels and fallen demons.  And folks, we don’t see that but that’s what’s happening – that’s what’s happening, and as I said earlier, there are some people who go blissfully through their church experience as if there wasn’t even a war, and I could wish that our eyes could be opened to see what’s probably going on right in this room that we cannot now perceive.  But it’s here. 

Now, the battle eventually filters down to us.  Go over to verse 17.  The dragon was angry with the woman, went to make war.  Went to make war with the remnant of her seed who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.  When that great battle of the Tribulation breaks out and Satan is, in effect, even wiping out the nation Israel – which he would love to do because that would thwart the plan of God.  It’s sad to me that the Amillennialists are trying to do exactly what Satan is trying to do.  They’re trying to wipe out Israel as a duly constituted nation who can receive the kingdom promised to them.  Satan would like to do that, too.  He’s trying to do it literally; they’re trying to do it theologically.  But God will preserve His people. 

But Satan will attack the people of God in that time as he’s always attacked the people of God.  Just notice verse 17:  “The people who keep the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.”  So now the war has filtered – it started with God and Satan, it went down through the holy angels and the fallen angels and now it’s down and it’s a warfare against those who are the ones who know Jesus Christ, who keep the commandments of God.  So we’re in the warfare, too.  You have Satan, fallen angels, and ungodly men, God, holy angels, and the redeemed, and there are the armies.  For someone to say, “I want to be sexual on Satan’s side and godly” is absolutely ludicrous.  It is treason.  It is spiritual treason.  It is unacceptable.  So we must draw the lines very clearly. 

Now, listen very carefully to what I say.  Satan is not particularly interested in you as an individual.  May I say that?  He is not specifically interested in you as an individual because of you.  He is – who he is after is God.  Do we understand that?  Satan hates God.  You’re incidental and so am I.  Only as we somehow impact God for His own glory is he interested in us.  We are not the issue.  He would destroy us and defeat us, not because he hates us but because he hates God whom we serve and represent. 

So what you have to understand, beloved, is that in your warfare, your victory and your defeat reflect on God.  When we are defeated, it is a sense in which Satan has effectively attacked God.  When we are victorious, it is a sense in which he has been defeated in his attack against God.  Isn’t it interesting that God Himself allows the battle against Him to be fought at our level so that He is victorious or He is in some way defeated, although not ultimately defeated, by whether we are victorious or defeated?  Does that sound strange to you?  Then think again of the words of the apostle Paul:  “He that is joined to the harlot joins Christ to the harlot,” 1 Corinthians 6. 

So Satan attacks the church, and he attacks the church because he wants to attack the work of God because he hates God, and that is why when Jesus goes into the temple and makes a whip and cleans out the place, He says that “I am doing this because you have made My Father’s house a den of thieves,” and He is defending the glory of God, right?  He is defending the glory of God.  That’s what we’re called to do.  And some of you are saying, “Well, I don’t even see a battle.”  That’s because you went AWOL, and the only thing we can hope is that you won’t stay AWOL so long the Lord will take you to heaven, which in military terms would be a dishonorable discharge. 

But it’s appalling how many Christian people live in a trivia-oriented life who have no idea of a warfare because they haven’t been in the battle.  They’re non-courageous soldiers.  They do not war a noble warfare. 

Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy, and he says in chapter 2 words that all of us should remember:  “Thou therefore suffer hardship along with me as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.  No man that fights in a war entangles himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.”  We expect to suffer hardship.  We expect to be cut off from the affairs of this world and this life.  We expect to do what we do for the sake of the One who called us to be a soldier. 

So beloved, we are in a spiritual war.  I mean I see it.  I trust you do.  I can go back to the day in which I went into a room where a demon-possessed girl was, and the voices out of her screamed, “Get him out of here, get him out of here, not him, not him, get him out of here.”  And I realized that they knew who I was and they knew whose side I was on, and then in an instant that became a terrorizing realization to me, which was in a few more moments replaced by a calm, settled feeling of confidence because it was wonderful to know that the demons knew whose side I was on and that they were afraid of that.  Incredible.  I’m aware of a warfare. 

I spent six to eight months with a man who wanted me to disciple him at the end of which time he went away, went to a church that doesn’t teach the Scriptures, wound up in an apostate seminary and now is a rector in an Episcopalian church somewhere.  I know this is a warfare, and the battle wasn’t with his intellectual mind, it was not a battle on a superficial level, it was a much deeper one.  I spent a year praying with a man, 6:00 in the morning, at the end of which time he abandoned the faith.  This is a warfare. 

Recently there was a meeting in the Midwest in which some men criticized me, put me on trial, slandered me, slandered our ministry at the church, slandered the church.  Said all manner of evil against us falsely, and I realized in my own heart when my first reaction was against them that they’re just pawns in a process that is much greater than we can see on the surface because we do not wrestle against flesh and blood; we wrestle against principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world and spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies, Ephesians 6:12 says. 

Now, how does Satan attack the church?  Let me give you some insight into this.  How does he attack the advance of God’s kingdom?  First of all, 2 Corinthians 4:4 – and I’m going to give you some examples of this, not necessarily an exhaustive list.  In 2 Corinthians 4:3:  “If our gospel is hidden, it is hidden to them that are lost.”  If the gospel is hidden, if it is dishonestly presented, as verse 2 says, if the Word of God is handled deceitfully, if the truth is held back, the ones who suffer are the lost.  Verse 4:  “In whom the god of this age” – that’s Satan – “has blinded the minds of them who believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ who is the image of God should shine unto them.” 

You know what?  He does not want the gospel to shine unto them because it is the gospel of Christ, who is the image of God.  It is the glorious revelation of God, and he does not want God’s glory to be seen.  So he blinds the minds of people, and the ungodly who are blinded are blinded by Satan.  They are blinded by his hosts, and he draws those blinds over their eyes in many, many ways.  He can blind them through ignorance.  He can blind them through unbelief.  He can blind them through the bad testimony of those who call themselves Christians.  He can blind them with lies and false religion.  He can blind them with a love of sin.  He can blind them with fleshly gratification which seems to satisfy. 

But he blinds them not because he particularly hates them, but he hates that the glory of God would be made manifest in the face of Jesus Christ.  That’s what he hates because, you see, he is set to be more glorious than God, and so he seeks to blind the minds.  In spite of that, God by His grace gives light and sight, but that doesn’t mean Satan ceases.  What does he do to those who believe?  Let me share Luke 22 with you. 

Luke 22 verse 31 – you remember this account.  Jesus and Peter and Luke 22:31 – very important.  The Lord said, “Simon, Simon” – now listen.  “Simon, Simon, behold Satan has desired you.”  Why do you think Satan wanted him?  Satan wanted to sift him as wheat.  Satan wanted to destroy him, to shake him up and make that which was genuine about him blow away in the wind.  “But I prayed for you that your faith fail not and when you’re converted, strengthen your brethren.”  You see, Satan wants to take Christians and destroy them.  But isn’t it wonderful that when he comes with that destructive power, the Lord holds us up?  The interceding high priestly work of Jesus Christ prays for us and our faith will not fail.  But mark it, beloved, Satan wants to tear you up.  He wants to send your life fragmented into the air and have your confidence in God blow away.  He wants to destroy you. 

Peter, probably reflecting on some of his own experience in 1 Peter 5:8, put it this way:  “Be sober” – know your priorities, get your life ordered – “be vigilant” – have your eyes opened, be aware – “because your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may” – what? – “devour.”  He’s after you.  He wants to take bites out of you.  He wants to devour you into sin. 

So first of all, the strategy of Satan, then, is to blind the minds of people.  Even when their eyes are open, they see and they believe and receive Christ, he comes back like a roaring lion and he wants to disintegrate those people, tear them to shreds, destroy their confidence, destroy their usefulness, destroy their trust in God.  That’s how he attacks.  And remember, beloved, when things come to you that do that, remember the source of those things. 

Let me show you another way.  First Corinthians chapter 7.  First Corinthians chapter 7.  What is the unit that God has designed to pass righteousness from one generation to the next?  What is it?  It’s the family.  So you know that Satan will attack the family, and we get an insight into that here.  It says in verse 3:  “Let the husband render unto the wife her due and likewise also the wife unto her husband.”  Now, what that means is what is due in a conjugal relationship.  In other words, husband and wife are to render each other that physical satisfaction which is part of a marriage relationship. 

To further emphasize that, in verse 4, he says, “The wife has not power of her own body.”  She does not control her own body for its own desires, rather her husband does, and likewise the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife.  That is to say in the conjugal relationship, the one person’s body belongs to the other person for the satisfaction of that person’s needs, and that is by the design of God.  There should be a fulfilling physical relationship as a part of the love commitment in a marriage. 

Now, verse 5:  “Don’t hold this back from one another” – don’t do that – “unless it is with agreement for a brief time so that you can give yourself to fasting and prayer.”  In other words, you’re not supposed to use the withholding of sexual favors as leverage against your partner or as a way to express your anger or your indifference.  “But rather only by common consent in fasting and prayer, then come together” – watch this – “that Satan tempt you not because of your drawing apart, your incontinency.” 

The point is this:  Satan is right there doing everything he can to destroy Christian marriage, obviously, and he’s having a very high rate of success, by the way, in contemporary society.  And every time some pea-brained person comes up to me and says God led them out of their marriage to a new partner, I want to remind them that that wasn’t God and maybe they ought to look at 1 Corinthians 7:5 and find out who it really was. 

Apart from the teaching of Jesus for continued unrepentant adultery, there is no basis for any breaking up of a marriage, and so Satan will attack in a marriage, and this attacking because of the withholding of physical desires is only an emblem of his attacking the marriage of Christians, which is the source of passing righteousness on to the next generation. 

So what is the warfare as it filters down to us?  Satan wants to thwart the work of God.  He wants to destroy the church, not because he hates the church, although he does hate the church, but primarily because he hates the God who is the author of the church.  The issue is God.  We’re simply instruments by which he can get at God.  Think of it.  When you fail to be what God would have you to be, you become a tool by which Satan strikes a blow at God.  When you and I live as we ought to be, we defend God against that attack.  So we are in a warfare, and he seeks to blind, but those who come to sight, he will seek to devour and destroy and disintegrate and ruin their usefulness and shred their lives so that losing their confidence and trust, they become of little help in the battle, and then he will attack.  Invariably he will attack the family. 

Let me show you another one.  First Timothy, right where we are, chapter 3.  And again, we’re talking about this warfare so we know what it is we’re to fight.  First Timothy 3, it’s talking about spiritual leadership, a bishop, or an elder or pastor, describes a pastor here.  A pastor is to be blameless, a one-woman man, and all of that in verse 2.  Comes down to verse 6 and says he’s not to be a novice; that is, a new convert, someone who is not skilled in the things of the Word of God, someone who is not mature, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.  The devil was condemned with pride and so will someone who’s lifted up too fast to a place of spiritual leadership and prominence.  The point I want you to note is in verse 7:  He must have a good report also of the people outside the church lest he fall into the reproach and the snare of the devil. 

Let me tell you something.  There’s nobody in the church the devil would rather catch in his trap than the pastors, right?  And again, we notice that he is being very successful today in doing that.  The church is absolutely without excuse because of its ignorance of these areas of spiritual warfare.  He blinds minds, and we somehow don’t see that, and even those who see feel they can play around with Satan’s domain and they find that he devours them, he sifts them out, shredding their lives, as it were.  They blow away in terms of any strength or usefulness, and then he comes at their marriages, and then he comes at the church in the devastation of spiritual leadership who fall into his traps by immorality, by pride, by dictatorial authoritarianism, whatever else. 

And there’s one other pervasive aspect that you need to note, and we could look at a lot of Scripture, but let me just take you to 2 Corinthians 11.  Second Corinthians 11.  And we draw this together.  Notice what it says in verse 13.  Paul mentions false apostles.  He’s been talking about true apostles and false ones since back in chapter 10, sort of defending himself against some attacks.  Here he says, “These who attack me,” in a sense, “are false apostles.”  They are “deceitful workers and they transform themselves into the apostles of Christ, and no marvel,” no wonder, “for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.  Therefore it’s no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness whose end shall be according to their works.” 

Now, what he says is this:  Another way Satan attacks – and you know it as well as I do – is he designs false religious systems – is that not so? – and sucks people off into them; and they’re worldwide. 

Every time you see a person in a liberal church who’s hearing someone preach who denies the deity of Christ or denies the lostness of man – and I was just reading a series of articles recently about a man who believes – it says he’s an evangelical and believes that everybody’s automatically saved, that Christ dwells in the life of everyone.  Anyone who teaches error like that, of course, just damns people to hell because they’re not responsible for coming to Christ.  Anyone who’s in a Mormon church or Jehovah’s Witnesses or follows the tenets of salvation by works in Romanism, anyone who is a part of Eastern mysticism or Hinduism or any of those kinds of religions is following what they believe to be the way of light, but Satan is transformed into an angel of light and it is a lie, it is deceit, it is dishonesty, and it is ultimately disaster.  So Satan, then, comes against us with false teaching.  This is rampant.  This is absolutely rampant. 

I shiver sometimes when I see the things that are being taught in the name of biblical truth, and I could go through illustration after illustration.  I just read a little booklet somebody gave me this week, “I Went to Hell.”  “I Went to Hell,” and this man talks about how he went to hell three times.  It isn’t true, it’s lies – just lies – and yet the man is held up as an astute teacher and bearer of the truth. 

Recently I’ve been receiving phone calls and letters from people in Argentina who’ve asked for me to come down there because there is an encroaching doctrine of error coming against the church, and they have asked if I would come, and the last call said they would like to rent the largest place in Buenos Aires and they have 4,000 pastors who want to come and be taught the Word of God in reference to this error.  Four thousand pastors who are in need of understanding the deceitfulness of Satan.  I said, “You must have somebody there who can do that.”  They said, “We want you to come.  God’s laid you on our hearts.”  So it looks like one of these days, I’m off to Argentina, and that’s a privilege for me to talk to 4,000 pastors about the truth of God if they’re being attacked by the lies of Satan.  It isn’t that they don’t know what to believe, it’s that they want to know how to answer this and they want to know how to arm their people so their people are not sucked in. 

This is a war.  This is a battle.  It’s going on all over the place, and if you don’t know it, as I said, you went AWOL sometime.  You say, “Well, how do we effectively fight?”  Let’s look back at chapter 10 for a moment, 2 Corinthians 10, verse 4, and with this we’ll draw it to a conclusion.  “For the weapons of our warfare are not” – what? – “fleshy.”  You can’t use your own intellect, you can’t use your own wisdom, your own natural talents.  The weapons of our warfare are not fleshy but “they are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”  Man, we can topple the kingdoms of Satan.  We can cast down his imaginations.  Every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God can be torn down.  “We can bring into captivity” – here’s the key – “every thought to the” – what?  To the what? – “obedience of Christ.”  Would you underline that in your Bible?  To the obedience of Christ.  And Paul says, “I have a readiness” – in verse 6 – “to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.” 

Want to know something, people?  You know what the weapons of our warfare are?  I’m going to give it to you straight as Paul gave it.  The weapons of our warfare can be reduced to one thing.  What is it?  Obedience.  They’re not mystical.  The weapons of our warfare are not human intellect, human prowess, human ability, human skill, human ingenuity.  The weapons of our warfare are reduced to obedience.  Obedience.  When you put on the armor of God, you start with the belt of truthfulness, a commitment to fight on the basis of God’s revealed truth.  You put on the breastplate of righteousness, which is His revealed righteousness.  Your feet are shod with the gospel of the preparation of peace revealed in His Word.  Your helmet is the helmet of the hope of eternal salvation, and your sword is the Word of what?  Of God.  The only weapon we have is the Word of God. 

The Word of God is not a fleshy weapon.  When I go out and try to attack the kingdom of darkness with my own opinion, I get no place.  When I go out with the Word of God, things start falling.  The Word of God has tremendous power, and that is the weapon of our warfare.  Not just the Word of God but what Paul says in 2 Corinthians:  obedience to the Word of God as we wield the sword of the Spirit in an obedient life, a life covered with righteousness as our breastplate, holding up the shield of confidence and faith in God, we’re going to be victorious. 

I don’t believe in any little formulas.  I don’t believe you can go off to camp and get a zap that will last all your life.  Spirituality is not related to zaps, it’s not related to formulas, it’s not related to little formula prayers, little ditties.  Spirituality is nothing more and nothing less than learning the life of obedience to the Word of God so that you really wield the sword, and that’s how you carve a swath through the kingdom of darkness, and that’s how you win the spiritual warfare, and somewhere along the line you start by making a commitment to be obedient, and that’s how you start to fight a noble warfare.  That’s why Jesus said, “Teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” because life in victory is inextricably connected to obedience. 

So what God wants in this noble warfare out of Timothy and what He wants out of us is that we should fight a noble war in a noble way, which means with obedient lives, and we get our lives down to obeying the Word of God.  It’s that simple. 

In all the years I’ve been at Grace Church, I’ve not been interested to give you formulas, but week after week and month after month through all these years, we have simply talked about what the Word teaches and called for people to obey it.  And in that obedience, God has allowed us to have an army here by His grace that have indeed fought.  Many of you have fought a noble war, and God has given us great victory to His glory, for which we praise Him.  But if you’re not there and you’re not in the battle and you’re not a part of that nobility that fights as they ought to fight, may God help you this day to be where you should be. 

Father, we thank you that You have spoken to us so directly through Your Word.  We, like Timothy, are desirous of fighting a good fight, a noble warfare.  We understand now the proportions of this cosmic war and, Lord, we want to know where we fit and what we are to do, and You cry out to us, “Take your weapons, and your weapons are not fleshly, but your weapons are the weapons of an obedient life that wields the Word of the living God.”  O Lord, may we be those obedient soldiers who at any price will serve You, who willingly suffer hardship, cut ourselves off from the affairs of this life, and do what we do to please the One who called us to be a soldier, and in so fighting, Lord, with an obedient life, may we defend the glory that belongs to Your holy name.  And instead of being a reproach to You, may we be a benediction and a blessing.  Give us the victory, Lord, that You may be glorified and that Satan’s slanders and accusations and attacks against You might be defeated on this front by Your power in us, for Christ’s sake.  Amen. 

As we close the service this morning, I want you to listen as I read you the words of a hymn, and I want you just to listen prayerfully to the words of Isaac Watts.  I think they bring to focus what we’ve said.  “Am I a soldier of the cross, a follower of the Lamb?  And shall I fear to own His cause or blush to speak His name?  Must I be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease while others fought to win the prize and sailed through bloody seas?  Are there no foes for me to face?  Must I not stem the flood?  Is this vile world a friend to grace to help me on to God?  Sure I must fight if I would reign.  Increase my courage, Lord.  I’ll bear the toil, endure the pain, supported by Thy Word.” 

I trust that the prayer of that hymn, the prayer of Isaac Watts, is our prayer as well.

Let’s open our Bibles this morning for our study of God’s Word again to 1 Timothy chapter 1.  First Timothy chapter 1.  I want to return to verses 18 to 20, and though this is a very brief passage, it seems as though the Spirit of God has filled my heart with all kinds of things to say relative to the passage, and so we began last week, we’ll continue this week, and finish next week on just these three brief verses.  But they are rich and they direct our thoughts to things most needful. 

In 1 Timothy chapter 1, I want to read those verses for you beginning at verse 18.  “This command I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which pointed to thee that thou by them might fight a good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience which some having put away have made shipwreck of the faith of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander whom I have delivered unto Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.” 

Now, the key phrase that we noted last Lord’s day is at the end of verse 18, “fight a good warfare” or “fight a noble warfare.”  And we reminded you last time that Paul is calling Timothy to the awareness that he is engaged in a war, and in so calling Timothy to that sensitivity, he calls the rest of us as well.  We are to understand that our calling is to fight a noble war against the forces of Satan.  In the first chapter, then, he speaks of this war and in the last chapter of this epistle, chapter 6 verse 12, he says, “Fight the good fight of faith.”  So beginning the epistle and ending the epistle, he reminds Timothy that he is indeed in a war against the forces of Satan. 

Now, last Lord’s day as we began to examine just that phrase, we looked at something of the nature of this warfare.  We saw that we are engaged as an extension of a battle between God and Satan.  Satan having rebelled against God, set about to make war on God to attain his own selfish ends; he fell, not alone, drawing a third of the angels with him.  He now has a host of demons who, along with him, fight against God and the holy angels and men also, by virtue of whether they receive Christ or reject Him, take sides in the battle as well.  So there is a raging cosmic conflict between Satan and God which involves demons and angels and redeemed men and unredeemed men. 

Now, the sum of all of that for us is that like Timothy and like Paul and like all other believers, we are engaged in an intimate personal conflict with the supernatural enemy of God, and the sooner we understand that, the sooner we can prioritize our lives.  We wrestle not against flesh and blood, not a human enemy, but principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world and spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies.  All those are terms describing demons.  We are engaged with a supernatural enemy. 

No one understood that better than the apostle Paul who wrote this to Timothy, who wrote what I just quoted from Ephesians 6:12.  No one understood it better than he did who, in his own testimony, says in 2 Corinthians 12:7 that “there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me.”  Whatever that specifically might have been, he saw as a messenger of Satan to come against him, and so he realized the intimacy of that attack.  In 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, he also writes in verses 17 and 18:  “But we, brethren, being taken from you for a short time, in presence not in heart, endeavored to more abundantly to see your face with great desire, wherefore we would have come unto you, even I, Paul, once and again, but Satan hindered us.” 

Now, Paul knew about this intimate warfare, and he calls Timothy here in 1 Timothy chapter 1 to the same conflict, to be aware that he is engaged in a serious spiritual battle.  In fact, he calls Timothy to fight on the front lines.  In effect, Timothy’s task, as outlined in chapter 1, is to confront the false pastors, false elders, false leaders, false teachers in the church at Ephesus and surrounding areas, no doubt, confronting both their doctrine and their ungodly practice.  That’s not an easy task.  Paul knew it wasn’t an easy task, and even though he had given Timothy instruction as to that task when he was with Timothy in Ephesus, he now writes him a letter reinforcing that because he knows it is a difficult task.  And he calls Timothy in these three verses by way of a summary to fulfill that task as if he were a front-line soldier called to a very hot part of the battle to do something very essential for the matter of victory for the whole army.  So these three verses sum up Timothy’s responsibility and accountability to this matter of fighting a noble warfare. 

Now, I want to add that Timothy was mature enough to handle this.  He was a product of the personal discipling ministry of the apostle Paul.  He had traveled with Paul, he knew Paul, he had pastored alongside Paul.  He had been out there on the front lines as an evangelist and still was called to do the work of an evangelist.  He knew what it was to confront an ungodly society.  He was strong in doctrine.  He was nourished up in the words of good doctrine.  He was well trained, well taught, well prepared, so much so that in terms defined in 1 John 2:13-14, he would have been at least a spiritual young man who had overcome the wicked one by his knowledge of the Word of God.  So he would not be a victim of false teaching.  He would not be a victim of heresy or error.  He was strong enough, mature enough to know the satanic lie, the satanic deception, to nail it, to aim at it, to hit the target, and to be of use to God in dealing with it.  So he is the man that God calls through the expression of the will of the Holy Spirit through Paul to this particular part of the battle. 

Now, Timothy, as I said, does not have an easy task because in the church at Ephesus, there has come an encroaching group of leaders who are the agents of Satan, and they are sowing false doctrine everywhere, and they are not only advocating error but they are advocating evil.  They may not be overtly advocating evil, but that’s the way it comes out.  They are advocating an untrue doctrine and an ungodly lifestyle, and so Timothy is called to deal with this, and it’s a difficult thing.  He’s not dealing with someone down the line, in terms of spiritual responsibility, but with leaders. 

Now, just to remind you of what the issues were, let me remind you of basically two things.  They were attacking the truth; that is, they were attacking sound doctrine, and they were attacking godliness.  Notice, for example, in chapter 2, it seems as though they were even attacking the person of Christ by what Paul says to Timothy in verse 5 of chapter 2.  “There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time.  For this I am ordained a preacher and an apostle, I speak the truth in Christ and lie not, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity.” 

Now, apparently, from that we can ascertain that there was some kind of an attack on the mediatorship of Christ, some kind of attack on the sufficiency of Christ, some kind of attack on the work of Jesus Christ.  We find it again indicated in chapter 3 verse 16.  He says it is without controversy that the mystery of godliness is a great mystery.  It is unarguable that the mystery of God in human flesh, which is what he means, the mystery of God coming in human flesh is a profound mystery, it is a great mystery, and this is that mystery.  God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the nations, believed on in the world, and received up into glory, and there he sort of chronicles the life and work of Christ and again seems to be saying, “Look, this is difficult but this is the truth, the incarnation of God in Christ.” 

And then we find also in chapter 6 and verse 13 – verse 14, rather, he speaks about the Lord Jesus Christ at the end of verse 14.  Then in verse 15 he says, “Which in His times He shall show” and then describes Christ as the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, “who only has immortality” – that makes Him God – “dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man has seen nor can see, to whom be honor and power and everlasting.  Amen.”  In other words, affirming and asserting the deity of Jesus Christ.  So apparently, the deity of Christ was under attack, the person of Christ was under attack, the incarnation of God in Christ was under attack, the sufficiency of Christ as the mediator was under attack.  An attack on Christ. 

Furthermore, it was not only an attack on Christ but an attack also on the saving gospel of Christ.  Back in chapter 1, instead of the gospel, instead of true doctrine, in verse 4 it says these false teachers were teaching fables or Jewish myths, endless genealogies, which don’t do anything but serve to raise questions rather than answers, they bring no godly edification at all, they’re not according to the true faith.  Verse 5, they don’t have a good conscience and unfeigned faith.  They are a turning aside, they are a swerving.  He further says they not only pervert the gospel but they pervert the law.  Verse 7, they think themselves to be teachers of the law; the truth is they have no idea what they’re saying or what they’re affirming so dogmatically.  So they were attacking the saving gospel of Christ. 

Verse 15 of chapter 1, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance – as if some were not accepting it – that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.  They may have been advocating some salvation only for the legalistic elite, salvation only for those who can keep a certain standard, and so again we see them attacking the gospel. 

Further that, verse 17, “The King eternal and immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever,” is again an affirmation of the true God.  All of these things speak about an attack against sound doctrine, and we find in chapter 2 that it is good and acceptable in verse 3, in the sight of God our Savior who will have all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.  Perhaps they were denying the sufficiency of salvation for all men.  Perhaps they were denying the availability of salvation for all men.  Then in chapter 4 verse 1, it says they were teaching doctrines of demons that came from seducing spirits and causing some to depart from the true faith, the faith that alone saves.  Verse 2, they were speaking lies in hypocrisy. 

And so Timothy is enjoined repeatedly in this epistle to preach sound teaching as over against the unsound teaching.  So here were these men who had risen to the heights of leadership and they were teaching lies, teaching lies about Christ, teaching lies about His saving gospel, and they were in a place of authority with all the right credentials. 

I don’t know if you looked at the Los Angeles Times this last week.  One day there was an article on the front page in the left-hand lead column, an article chronicling a meeting together of supposedly all the New Testament scholars, and they were going to vote on whether what Jesus said was really true.  They were going to vote on that as if that’s something that you are supposed to vote on.  What is so sad about that is that these are all people who have masqueraded as teachers of the New Testament and who know not what they teach nor the God of whom they speak.  But they have no right in the world to vote on the veracity of the words of Jesus Christ.  To even assert that such is necessary is to attack the credibility of the Word of God and the Christ of God, and that is in exact terms what their intent is. 

They are attacking the truth of Christ and the truth of the saving gospel.  It is consistent with false teachers, false elders, false pastors, false prophets and apostates that they attack the person, the work, and the preaching and teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ.  They will do that because they are energized by Satan, and Satan’s attack is against God and His Christ, and so it comes in the mouth of false teachers.  They are not just well-meaning souls who have slipped a little in their understanding; they are agents of Satan. 

Now, the second thing that we see in 1 Timothy is not only an attack on the truth about Christ and His work but an attack on the virtue of life; that is, godly living and biblical morality.  Back in chapter 1 verse 5, it says that they are not those who experience love and a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned.  They don’t have any integrity of character.  They’re not pure.  Their consciences are not clear, and a clear conscience is the result of a pure life, a pure heart.  But they’ve turned aside from those things, and they may well be being described in verses 9 and 10 as lawless, disobedient, ungodly sinners, unholy profaned murderers of fathers and mothers, man slayers, fornicators, homosexuals, kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and so forth. 

Their morality matched their doctrine.  It was as in error as was their theology.  They, like those of whom we read in verse 19, had shipwrecked the faith.  They, in verse 20, had blasphemed – that is to speak evil of the true God.  In chapter 2, we find from verses 8 to 10 that women had substituted outward adornment for inward godliness, and verse 10 says they would rather provide godliness with good works than outward array. 

We find also in chapter 4 that Paul reminds Timothy that he is to be a good minister and he is to nourish up in the words of faith and good doctrine to which he’s attained and then refuse their profane and old wives’ fables, and then this:  and to exercise yourself rather unto godliness for bodily exercise profits little but godliness is profitable unto all things.  They’re preoccupations with the external and the outward and the physical, and he says you better put yourself in line to exercise that which leads to godliness.  Now remember, I told you that “godliness” is a key word in the pastoral epistles. 

Chapter 5, we find the same thing in verse 11.  There were younger widows who were wanton against Christ.  Verse 12, they threw away their first faith.  Verse 13, they were idle, they were going around from house to house instead of staying in their own homes and doing what they were called as women of God to do.  They were tattlers – or tale bearers – busybodies, speaking things they shouldn’t.  And verse 15, some already turned aside after Satan, and that has to do with their behavior.  And even some of the leaders, of course, were leading in this and that’s why they needed to be disciplined as he goes on to speak of that in chapter 5. 

Chapter 6 verse 1 speaks of the name of God not being blasphemed nor His doctrine being blasphemed, which indicates that there was some blasphemous things going on.  There were all kinds of arguments – verse 4 – disputes, envy, strife, railing, evil suspicions, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds destitute of the truth, supposing that money is godliness.  But godliness with contentment is great gain.  In other words, they had perverted doctrine and purity of life.  That’s the point, and that’s where the attack was coming.  So you have two things, error and evil – error and evil – and Timothy is called to confront this at high places. 

In fact, if you look at chapter 3, the first 15 verses deal with the qualifications for a leader.  Those are not put in a vacuum, they’re not just dropped in here without any relation to context, they’re here because they’re put in as a contrast – they’re put in as a contrast.  There were all kinds of people – verse 1 – desiring the office of overseer.  There were many people who wanted to be in spiritual leadership.  It says here they desire they office of an overseer.  In chapter 1, it said they desired to be teachers of the law.  They wanted to be teachers and leaders.  But he says you can’t put them there unless they have these qualifications, and I believe they’re contrastive.  They must be blameless rather than sinful and vile like the ones that you have.  They must be one-woman men rather than the men who are preoccupied with multiple women.  They must be temperate and sober-minded and good behavior as opposed to those who are not that are in leadership.  See, all of that is contrastive. 

In chapter 5 verse 17 and following, he says when you find those that aren’t what they ought to be, you need to discipline them publicly before the whole church.  So Timothy has a real job.  He needs to excise out all these false leaders, get them out of the church, discipline them in the church, call them to an account, call the people to rally around the truth of God’s revelation and godly living, and that’s not an easy task.  So he’s on the front line, right on the front line, and I believe it’s a little – very little different from what we have today.  And in our own church, we may not be experiencing all of these kinds of things, but in the Christianity around us, indeed we are, and we’re equally on the cutting edge as Satan tries to destroy our faith in Christ’s person, try to destroy our confidence in Christ’s work, try to twist the true saving gospel, lead people to tolerate evil and sin and any kind of lifestyle in the name of Christianity and destroy the real work of God. 

Now, in the midst of this fiery conflict, what is it that Timothy has to understand?  Well, he has to understand his responsibility and his accountability to three sources:  the church, the Lord, and then to the blasphemers or enemies themselves.  We’ll get into the third one next week.  I want you to look at the first two this morning. 

First of all, and for Timothy and us as well, we learn the same lesson here.  In order to win, in order to fight the noble fight the way it ought to be fought, we have to first understand our responsibility and accountability to the church, and that’s what he says to Timothy off the beginning of verse 18.  “This command I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which pointed to you that by them you might fight a noble warfare.”  So the first thing is Timothy’s responsibility and accountability to the church. 

And let me show you what I mean by that.  Paul says this:  “I command you, you have been entrusted, and prophecies have confirmed that you’re to fight this noble war.”  Now, all of those refer to the church.  Paul, as an apostle in the church, commands Timothy to carry out a commission given to him by that same apostle and confirmed by those who had the gift of prophecy in the church.  He has a responsibility to those within the church who were led by the Spirit of God to call him into the ministry to fulfill that ministry. 

First of all, let’s look at the command.  The word “charge” in the Authorized is “command.”  It refers to a military command – a military command.  It’s used in chapter 1 in that way, it’s used here that way.  It is a military command.  It is not something that is discussed; it is something that is given as an order to be carried out.  Timothy is under military obligation, and this is not new.  Would you look at chapter – I should say this is not isolated.  This is not isolated.  Chapter 5 verse 21, Paul says, using a different Greek term but the same meaning – 5:21 – “I command you” – speaking to Timothy – “before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that you observe these things.”  Now, that’s pretty strong stuff.  “I command you and I hold you accountable to God and Christ and the holy and elect angels.” 

Chapter 6 verse 12, he says fight the good fight and so forth, and then in verse 13, “I command you” – and here he does use the same word as in chapter 1.  “I command you in the sight of God who makes all things alive.”  Then verse 14, “That you keep this commandment without spot and unrebukable until the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ.”  So he is commanding Timothy, like a general would command a colonel, he is commanding him to do this. 

I love that because this puts Timothy’s responsibility in the category of duty.  Duty.  Now, when I say that word, immediately I realize there are many people who don’t understand that.  Duty?  That’s not a word we like to talk about.  We don’t know anything about that today.  In Christianity, we know about freedom.  We know about spiritual success.  We talk about joy and peace.  We talk about fulfillment.  We talk about sort of satisfaction from the spiritual end.  Very indulgent but we know very little about duty – very little about duty – and that’s part of what’s been built into our culture and it’s found its way into the church.  We are an undisciplined culture.  We are an utterly self-indulgent culture, and so what we have gained in the church is a lot of people whose personal preoccupation is self-indulgence, and whatever makes them feel good and whatever they particularly want to do or don’t want to do governs their life.  They know nothing of duty – very little of duty.  We are not a duty-bound people in our thinking. 

As I was flying home from Cleveland this week after speaking to some pastors back there for a few days, two young men who were pastoring a church in the Baltimore area were on the plane and they said to me, “Could we talk to you?”  I said – one fellow said could he speak with me and – one of the two, and I said, “Sure, be happy to, but let me spend a few hours, finish my sermon, and then when – before we get in for a landing, we’ll spend some time talking.”  So we got to talking just as we were coming from Las Vegas to Los Angeles in the air, descending, and they were asking lots of – he was asking lots of questions. 

Then we began to talk more and more, and finally we were at the gate and we were still kind of talking, and he said to me, “How do you know what the priorities of your life are?  I mean you have a college and a radio ministry and tape ministry and you write books and you have the church ministry.  How do you know?”  And basically, as I begin to think about that, even while I was talking to him and afterwards, my life basically boils down to a very simple thing.  I believe God has called me to a certain duty, and I can honestly confess to you that I do not necessarily spend my time doing what I want to do. 

In fact, I said to this young man, “I can’t remember the last time I did something that I just wanted to do, just for the sake of wanting to do it.  I am duty-bound to do certain things, and those are the things that I believe God has given me.  There are other things I might like to do, there are other things that I might wish to do, there are some things I might wish not to do, but I’m bound to do the things I believe God has given me to do.” 

And the young man, while we were talking, said, “I think you understand what’s on your plate, don’t you?  And what you’re to partake of.”  And I said, “Well, I hope I do.”  But I’ve tried to narrow my life down to doing the duty that God has given me to do and that’s fine with me.  I really am much more fulfilled in having the sense of doing my duty to God than I would be in having the sense of doing what I want all the time.  But there’s very little understanding of that in contemporary Christianity.  That’s not a popular thing to just do your duty.  I mean for some people, it’s a wonder that they can show up even around here, and you have a duty to worship God, be faithful. 

I was talking to one pastor recently who said, “When people join our church, they sign a covenant to be here Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, and if they’re not, we go see them and ask them why because we feel that they have a duty to worship God and to assemble with His redeemed people and to use their spiritual gifts and to participate in prayer and fellowship” and so forth and so on.  I would wonder what would happen if we made that a condition of coming to Grace Community Church, you had to come Sunday morning, Sunday night, spend diligent time in prayer and in the study of the Word and share Christ with people.  How many people would be duty bound to fulfill that?  Or how many people would be instantly in one week disqualified?  See, we know little of duty. 

One of my kids was telling me this week about somebody who works in – I guess it’s the Search Program here at Grace Church, and that’s the only thing they ever come to.  They can’t really get around to making it to anything else.  My response to that is if you can’t be at Sunday morning/Sunday night worship and grow along with the church and hear the Word of God spoken, you shouldn’t be serving in the church because you don’t know where we are.  You don’t know where we’re going.  You can’t reinforce what the Spirit of God is teaching us, and you’re not moving along in your spiritual development and growth in response to what the Word of God is teaching you, and I don’t believe I’m here just because I like to be here, I believe I’m here teaching the Word of God because that’s God’s desire for His people. 

I know there are some people who can hardly make it to the service.  They come to a class and go to breakfast.  Well, I realize that water seeks its own level, and there are some people who are just a little bit shallow in the spiritual dimension, but somewhere along the line, somebody needs to come to grips with duty if they’re going to come to the end of their life and have anything to show for it throughout eternity for the glory of God.  It’s a matter of duty. 

Look with me at Luke 17 and that’s – this is an extension of what Paul is saying – but Luke at Luke 17, a sort of bypassed passage, I’m quite confident.  In fact, you may find that apart from reading through the Scripture, you’ve never thought about this passage or haven’t in a long time.  But listen to what it says, Luke 17:7:  “Which of you having a servant plowing or feeding cattle will say to him when he has come from the field, ‘Go and sit down to eat’?”  Which of you is going to say to a servant when he comes in, “Oh, sit down and eat”?  No.  “Will you not rather say to him, ‘Get ready that with which I may eat and gird yourself’” – that is, put on proper clothes – “‘and serve me till I have eaten and drunk and afterward you can eat and drink’?”  I mean that’s what a servant is.  “You come, you serve me, then you can do it.” 

“Now, does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him?  I think not,” Jesus says.  “So you also when you shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants, we have done that which was our’” – what? – “‘our duty.’”  Our duty.  “Don’t give me an honorary degree, don’t hail me as a hero, I just did my duty.  I mean what ever happened to just doing your duty?  Just fulfilling your spiritual disciplines for the glory of God? 

Paul knew much of that.  Acts 26 he says, “When I was confronted by the Lord Jesus Christ on the Damascus Road” – he’s giving his testimony to Agrippa, he says, “O Agrippa, I was not disobedient to that heavenly vision.”  And that heavenly vision was basically a command from the Lord Jesus Christ.  He said, “Paul, basically, I have made you a minister and an apostle to the Gentiles.”  And he says, “I was not disobedient.”  Paul knew all about duty.  “Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel,” 1 Corinthians 9.  “I am duty bound.  I am under divine obligation to use my gift and fulfill my calling.” 

You remember back in Exodus chapter 4 when God gave His duty to Moses and Moses started equivocating and backing out and bowing down and saying, “Oh, I can’t do that, I can’t do this, I can’t speak,” and so forth and so on, and the Lord was very angry with Moses because he wanted to shirk that which was a divine duty.  God gave that duty to Isaiah.  God gave that duty to Jeremiah.  God gave that duty to Ezekiel.  God gave a duty to Jonah.  You remember what Jonah did with his duty?  Went the other direction and wound up in a disaster because of it. 

You see, every preacher and every servant of the Lord is in one way or another duty bound, and I wish we had – I wish we had a society of disciplined people, of people who understood spiritual duty, not just the whims and the will and the wishes of weak-kneed, spineless, contemporary mentality.  Every preacher is under command.  When Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 4, “I command you” – this is 4:1 – “I command you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom, preach the Word.” 

I’ll tell you, I’d like to give that command to a lot of folks.  I meet sometimes people who are in the ministry and they don’t preach the Word.  They preach this and that and this and the other thing.  I was talking to some folks this week who said that they were in a church where all they ever got was book reviews and contemporary analysis, and if these people were truly called, you want to command them.  On the other hand, sometimes I meet young men and they say, “Well, I’ve been called to preach.  God’s put His hand on me.”  Well, when did you last preach?  “Oh, I haven’t started yet.”  “Well, man, if you’ve been called to preach, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ, preach.”  “Well, where am I going to preach?”  “Well, I don’t know, preach.  I started in a bus depot.  People thought I was crazy.  A street corner.  Sometimes in the rain.  Find a place.  Find a place, preach the Word.” 

Look at Ezekiel 33, and I’ll show you something I think is sad but true.  It reflects on this same thought.  You remember what Paul said to Timothy, “Preach the Word; be instant” – what? – “in season, out of season.”  That means when it’s welcome and when it’s not welcome, whether they like it or don’t like it, and I want you to see what is really a sad thing.  Ezekiel chapter 33 verse 30, “Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, ‘Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that comes forth from the Lord.’” 

The people are all getting together and saying, “Aw, let’s go down hear that prophet.  Boy, that poor guy is down there giving that message from the Lord.  Let’s go down and hear him.”  They’re really not for him, they’re against him, it says, but they want to go down and hear him, he’s a novelty, “So let’s go hear him.  Let’s hear what he has to say.” 

And so – verse 31 – “They come unto thee as the people come and they sit before thee as my people.”  So you’ve got a mixed multitude.  You’ve got the ones who are there and they’re taking in the Word of God and then you’ve got these others, and they sit there and they hear your words but they will not do them.  They’re not interested in responding.  They won’t do them.  “With their mouth they show much love, but their heart goes after their covetousness.”  They’re interested in their bank account and their stocks and bonds and houses and cars and land and growth and success and worldly things, and with their mouth, oh, they tell you such nice things, “Wonderful sermon, Pastor, great, oh, we just enjoy it,” but they don’t do what you say.  “And you are unto them as a very lovely song, of one that has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument.”  I mean it’s very nice.  “For they hear your words but they don’t do them.”  “They like to hear you,” “Oh, you’re a curiosity, Ezekiel, but they don’t do what you say.” 

He preached his whole ministry to people like that but he preached faithfully.  Why?  Because he was under command.  He was under command.  Now, back to 1 Timothy.  That’s exactly what Paul is saying to him.  “I command you.”  And on what basis?  On the basis of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  “I speak for God.  I command you.” 

And men don’t listen today.  There were some, surely, in the Ephesian church that didn’t listen, and there are many today who won’t listen.  Isaiah 6, God said to Isaiah, “They won’t listen.  Their eyes will be blind.  Their ears will be deaf.  Their hearts will be fat and they won’t listen.”  And it’s true.  You preach your heart out and you preach your heart out and they don’t listen.  In fact, preaching today is somewhat depreciated, especially if you just preach the Bible all the time.  People accuse me and others who do that of being very narrow-minded.  “Poor MacArthur, he has tunnel vision, he’s such a one-dimensional person.” 

I was sitting on the plane and going back there.  I always have these plane experiences, I don’t know why, but I sit down to study and this guy sits next to me, great big, huge guy.  He’s eating his lunch and drinking his vodka and having a great time; I’m studying my Bible and writing all this stuff down to tell you here when I get here Sunday.  And after we get along – the whole ride is bumping and flopping around and so he may have been thinking about God during the flight, I don’t know, but anyway, finally he looks over at me and he says – he saw my Bible and writing, he says, “Nice to know that everything we need to know is in one book, isn’t it?”  I mean here is an unregenerate pagan who knows what half of Christianity doesn’t even know – and most seminary professors.  “Nice to know that everything we need to know is in one book,” he says, and kind of laughs because that stuff makes you laugh – even when things aren’t funny. 

And I said, “What makes you say that?”  I mean we were off, I mean it was great.  Great for me because I got to tell him some things he needed to know.  He was a dentist and he had been doing what just normal unsaved people do, they just travel around and have fun, and he’d toured California for a couple of weeks – great time.  Here’s a guy who doesn’t go to church, doesn’t know the Lord, and he says that everything you need to know is in this book.  “Well, man, if you believe that, that lays a pretty heavy trip on you.”  Well, we had a good talk about that, and we’re going to follow up on that talk. 

But, you know, when you go to preach the Word of God, even though there’s sort of a – I suppose, an initial acquiescence to Scripture, you start to preach it and people start backing off real fast.  Well, we live in a day of media mentality, you know, if you’re going to preach, I mean make it interesting.  It’s hard to compete, you know.  I read this week that in the average one hour of television, there are 13.3 violent acts within one hour.  Any one hour in primetime television, you’ll see 13.3 violent acts.  That’s tough to compete with.  I can’t do one violent act when I preach one whole sermon.  I can’t put scenery, I can’t – I mean I’ve known guys that have tried to fight that. 

There’s a guy up in northern California and they have stage things.  He’ll preach on materialism one time and out comes a Corvette with a girl laying on the hood, you know.  But I’m not into that, I got to confess.  That’s not my style.  But I mean you – I suppose he made some kind of a point, I don’t know what the point was.  But preaching does find its way – find it difficult to get its way into the hearts of people because we’ve been trained to be uninterested unless all kinds of things are blowing up about every five minutes.  People have lost the skill of concentration and meditation.  They don’t think very well, either, when left to themselves. 

There’s an anti-authority attitude.  If you’re in authority and you say this is the truth, they immediately react negatively to that because everybody’s against authority in a society that says, “I’m in charge.”  And there’s a critic mentality, everything is up for criticism.  There’s no respect.  Then there’s a psychological orientation.  People want pop psychology out of the pulpit, not the Word of God, and there are a lot of people giving them pop psychology. 

But the command to Timothy was very simple.  The command is to fight the noble war against the foes identified with Satan, and that’s going to be using the Word of God, and that’s why all the way through the epistle, he says you’ve got to nourish up in sound doctrine.  So you have a command.  In spite of what men say, in spite of what their faces look like, in spite of the fact they come along, shake your hand, say how nice you are, think you sound great, and don’t do what you say, you keep doing it, and you call for the duty that God would have you call for. 

Second thing.  The first one was a command, the second thing in his relationship to the church was a commission.  A commission.  Look what he says, this second main verb here, “This command I give” – really, the first verb, the first one is a substantive, it’s a noun, this command I entrust or commit to you.  Now, here he takes another dimension of this and he says not only do you have a command, but you have a commission.  “I entrust you with this.”  The word paratithēmi is a word for a deposit you put in a bank, it’s a valued deposit.  Paul gave to Timothy a valuable deposit.  What was it?  It was a deposit of truth.  It was a deposit of truth, which is more valuable than anything.  Second Timothy 2:2, “The things which you have heard from me among many witnesses, the same entrust to faithful men.”  “I entrusted it to you, you keep it and entrust it to others.”  He repeatedly told Timothy to keep care of that sacred trust. 

Back in chapter 1 verse 11, he says, “The glorious gospel of the blessed God was committed to my trust,” and he got it from Jesus.  Read Galatians 1.  Paul got it from Jesus.  Paul then took that trust that he had from Jesus of sound doctrine, that gospel, that biblical truth, and passed it on to Timothy, and he says, “Timothy, hang on to that and don’t let it be adulterated and don’t let it be varied and don’t change it.”  The end of the epistle, chapter 6 verse 20, “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to your trust.”  “And don’t listen to all of those profane, vain babblings and false science.  Keep that thing which was committed to your trust.”  Second Timothy 1:14 – look at this – verse 13:  “Hold the form of sound words.”  Verse 14:  “The good thing committed to thee, keep it by the Holy Spirit.”  “Don’t let go of it.” 

So Timothy had a command and he had a commission.  He had a military command to fulfill his calling and a commission of doctrine with which to fulfill that calling, and we must be true to the historic faith.  Watch out for people who have something new.  Jesus gave a trust of truth to Paul, and Paul gave a trust to Timothy, and Timothy gave it to faithful men who would give it to others also, and that same deposit of truth has come down to us, and when you hear somebody come along who’s got a theology that no one ever heard of, run the other direction.  This is an ancient trust to be preserved.  Watch out for those who have new truths.  If it sounds like it’s new, it can’t be true.  Check it out. 

Thirdly, there is not only a command to obey and a commission to fulfill but there is a confirmation to live up to.  He says, “This command I entrust or commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which pointed me to you.”  Now, this command and this commission, this calling of Timothy was confirmed through prophecies.  Now, prophecy, the gift of prophecy, or the New Testament prophet mentioned so often in the book of Acts, the New Testament prophet and the gift of prophecy, you can read about that in 1 Corinthians 12, that gift and that prophet were used by God to speak the will and the Word of God in the early church.  The gift itself is a gift of proclamation.  I feel I have the gift of prophecy; that is, I speak forth the Word of God.  When I use that gift, I don’t speak revelation from God, I’m not getting direct revelation, I speak revelation from the Word of God but not from God directly.  But when the Word was not written, God gave them direct revelation.  God gave them direct words to speak for Him. 

Now, the apostles spoke doctrine usually.  That’s why doctrine was called the apostles’ doctrine, Acts 2:42.  They spoke primarily doctrine, whereas the prophets would speak the practical issues of the church, and if you go through the book of Acts, you can see the practical ministry of the prophets.  For example, in chapter 13, 15, 21, 22, and 26 of Acts, in all those chapters you’ll see some work of a prophet practically bringing the Word of God to a given situation in the church.  Not so much doctrine as what is needed to express the will of God for the life of that church in a practical way. 

Now, these prophets, we don’t know who they were, they’re plural, the prophecies are plural, we don’t know where this happened, but he says the prophecies – and then he uses an interesting verb, it means “leading the way to you.”  Now, the fact that he says “prophecies leading the way to you” indicates to us that there probably were more than one and they were sequential along a path of time that kept directing attention to Timothy, and finally they culminated in chapter 4 of 1 Timothy and verse 14, “Neglect not the gift that’s in you, given you by prophecy.”  In other words, God gave that gift to Timothy and then articulated that gift through the prophecies and then confirmed it by the laying on of hands on Timothy as an act of confirmation by the elders. 

So the elders laid their hands confirming Timothy to the ministry because God Himself, through the voice of the prophets through prophecies, had articulated Timothy’s ministry.  Now, we don’t know what He said, but Paul says to Timothy in one place, “Do the work of an evangelist,” in another place, “Preach the Word.”  So those prophecies must have been those that called Timothy to be a preacher and an evangelist and a teacher of the Word of God.  So he not only had a command from Paul in this verse, he has a commission, an entrusted set of truth, a deposit of truth, but he also has a confirmation as New Testament prophets have articulated that this indeed is a man called to preach. 

You know, I can’t help but wish that was the way it was going today.  Wouldn’t it be great if we came together on the Lord’s day and the Spirit of God spoke through one of us directly and pointed out in the congregation who was called to preach?  Boy, it would be great.  It would simplify so much.  You say, “Doesn’t the Lord do that?”  Yes, the Lord still calls in the heart, but we can’t hear His voice.  You say, “Well, then how do we know whether a guy’s called or not?”  The only way we know is to watch his what?  His life – to watch his life.  But it would be so much simpler if the Lord just told us, and we’d get so excited about that.

But we don’t know the content of those prophecies.  We don’t really know when they occurred, but we know they culminated in the elders of the church laying their hands on Timothy because those prophecies set him apart to preach. 

Beloved, may I say to you that I think we need to re-grip the thought that anyone who serves the Lord Jesus Christ in the role of an elder and a pastor, anyone who serves in terms of leadership, articulating the truth of God, is under command, commission, and should be under confirmation of the church.  That’s so important – so important – so that we are affirmed and assured that they represent the Lord.  And they should be those who understand that they are called to do their spiritual duty, that they are entrusted with biblical truth, they are entrusted with the Word of the living God and the Word is sufficient, and the church comes alongside and says, “Yes, this is so.” 

This was Timothy’s responsibility and accountability to the church.  He was commanded through the apostle, he was commissioned through the apostles’ doctrine, and he was confirmed by prophets who gave prophecies and the laying on of hands of the elders.  He had responsibility and accountability to the church to use his gift and war the noble war. 

And I find myself in the same position, though in a different way called.  I’m under mandate by God to do my duty, I have been given a tremendous trust through generations of people before me who gave me the truth of God, and I am confirmed by the church.  I remember well my ordination time.  I remember facing 200-some pastors and answering questions for hours and hours.  I remember the result and confirmation that my call indeed was legitimate to the ministry, and off I went to fulfill that responsibility as affirmed by the church.  And there are times, beloved, in the distress of battle that that’s all you have to hang on to.  There are times when you say, “I’m not happy with the way it’s going, I’m not happy with a lot of things.  I’m weary in the battle.  I’m tired of the fight.  I’m tired of people who come and listen and do nothing about it.  I just want a vacation.  I want to get out.”  And all you’ve got to fall back on is the fact that you’re called, you’re commissioned, you’re commanded, and you’re confirmed – and you have no choice. 

William Barclay writes about John Knox, the great Scottish preacher.  He was teaching in St. Andrews.  His teaching was supposed to be private teaching, but many people came because he was so gifted.  He was a man with a message.  So the people urged him and we read this, “People urged him that he would take the preaching place upon him.  But he utterly refused, alleging that he would not run where God had not called him.  Whereupon they privately among themselves advising having with them in counsel Sir David Lindsay, they concluded that they would give a charge or a command to the said John Knox and that publicly by the mouth of their preacher.” 

In other words, these people said, “This man should be preaching.  He should not be holding a private Bible study in St. Andrews; he should be preaching.”  And he wouldn’t force himself, he wouldn’t do it on his own, and so the church got together and they said, “We will publicly command him to do that by the voice of our own preacher.”  And William Barclay says John Knox was a man chosen and yet a man who hesitated to take the tremendous responsibility upon himself. 

So Sunday came and Knox was in church.  He doesn’t know anything about this.  He’s just sitting in church, and John Rowe, the preacher, was preaching.  The said John Rowe preacher directed his words to the said John Knox.  He just identifies him in the congregation and speaks directly to him.  “Brother, you shall not be offended, albeit that I speak unto you that which I have in charge, even from all those that are here present, which is this:  In the name of God and of His Son Jesus Christ, and in the name of these that presently call you by my mouth, I command you that you refuse not this holy vocation but that you take upon you the public office in charge of preaching even as you look to avoid God’s heavy displeasure and desire that He shall multiply His grace with you.” 

Whoa.  That’s a strange thing to happen to you when you’re just innocently sitting in church, to be commanded to avoid the displeasure of God and get on with the matter of preaching.  And after saying that, John Rowe said to the people, “Was not this your charge to me?  And do you not approve this vocation?”  And they answered, “It was and we approve it.”  The whole congregation confirmed it, whereat the said John Knox, abashed, burst forth in most abundant tears and withdrew himself to his chamber.  His countenance and behavior from that day till the day he was compelled to present himself in the public place of preaching did sufficiently declare the grief and trouble of his heart, for no man saw any sign of joy in him, neither yet had the pleasure to accompany any man many days together.”  He went into isolation and sorrow, so overwhelmed with the duty, so overwhelmed with the commission, so overwhelmed with the confirmation of the people.  “John Knox was chosen,” says Barclay.  John Knox did not want to answer the call, but John Knox had to because the choice came from God. 

And years afterward, the Regent Morton uttered his famous epitaph by John Knox’s graveside, quote:  “In respect that he bore God’s message, to whom he must make account for the same, he, albeit he was weak and an unworthy creature and a fearful man, feared not the faces of men,” end quote.  That is a more modern call to Timothy, isn’t it?  You have to understand your responsibility to the church when you’re called and commissioned and confirmed to preach. 

And then just briefly, a look at that second point.  In order for us to win the war, the noble war, we have to know our responsibility and accountability to the Lord – not only to the church but the Lord.  Look at verse 19:  “Holding faith and a good conscience” – stop at that point, and there we’re back to those same two things:  faith and a good conscience.  We saw them in verse 5 of chapter 1, a good conscience and unfeigned faith – faith and a good conscience.  We see them in verse 9 of chapter 3, faith in a pure conscience. 

And Paul puts these two things together throughout this epistle.  The first one, having faith, means believing in the truth – believing in the truth – holding faith in the faith.  The faith being the content of truth and faith being believing in that, so we say believing in the faith.  In other words, true doctrine, holding faith, holding the content of true belief and believing in it.  We could say it means commitment to believing the truth of God.  “Timothy, this is your responsibility to the Lord.  You’ve got to hold to the faith.  Hold to the faith.  You can’t let go of the faith.” 

Throughout this epistle, he talks about those who have erred concerning the faith.  In chapter 1, those who swerved, turned aside from the faith.  Chapter 6 verse 21, those who have erred concerning the faith.  Chapter 6 verse 10, they have erred from the faith.  He says you can’t do that.  You can’t swerve from the truth.  You can’t abandon the truth of God, and so our obligation to the Lord in the fulfillment of our ministry is to stay true to the Word of God and then to have a good conscience, and a good conscience simply means a conscience that is pure, a conscience that is undefiled.  Remember we said that the conscience is the self-judging faculty that is in everyone that tells you whether your life is right or wrong, and when you have a good conscience, your conscience is saying, “Good, good, good, you’re doing well, that’s fine.”  It’s a conscience like Acts 24:16 that is void of offense toward God.  It’s a satisfied conscience, a conscience at rest, a conscience that says all things are well, all things are right. 

So what are we saying then?  Your obligation to God, then, is to hold the truth and a pure life.  So we’re back to the two key words in these epistles: doctrine and godliness.  You remember I told you that when we first started the study, the two key words would be doctrine and godliness.  Truth and purity, faith and a good conscience – same thing, just different ways to say the same thing.  Timothy is called to the truth, sound doctrine.  He says it over and over again – sound doctrine.  Charge those people – chapter 1 verse 3 – they don’t teach any other doctrine.  They need to teach the true doctrine.  He emphasizes that in chapter 4 verse 6, good doctrine, words of faith, sound doctrine. 

And then, of course, the emphasis on godliness.  He calls for godliness, chapter 2 verse 10.  The women, instead of caring for the outside, should be adorned with godliness.  That is purity, moral character, godliness.  Chapter 4 verse 7, exercise yourself to godliness.  Verse 8, godliness is profitable.  Chapter 6, godliness – verse 6 – with contentment is great gain.  The call is ever and always to holiness, godliness, purity, as well as sound doctrine.  Now, that is the character of one who wins the spiritual victory. 

Now, let me say something as we draw this together.  Sound teaching and pure living go together.  There is an inseparable link between truth and morality, between right belief and right behavior, and I’m going to say something, I want you to write it down and keep it in mind.  Theological error – get this – theological error has its roots in moral rather than intellectual soil.  Theological error has its roots in moral rather than intellectual soil.  The point is this:  When people teach wrong doctrine, it is not that they do not understand, it is that they are the base evil – evil – and they have a theology to accommodate their evil. 

Don’t you for a moment imagine that a false teacher, a liberal, a cultist, an occultist  or anyone who teaches falsely around the things of God is some kind of poor, well-meaning, nice person who went astray; they are in error because their hearts are evil, and they will not submit their evil to the cleansing work of Christ and the true gospel, so they invent an accommodating error.  And the reason these theologians come along and want to vote on what Jesus said is not because they cannot intellectually know the veracity of Scripture, it is because there are things in the Bible they will not submit to, and in order to avoid unnecessary submission, they will eliminate them.  It’s that simple. 

And so you have the call upon the heart of anyone who is called to ministry to retain true doctrine and true purity of life.  You read 2 Peter 2, and you’ll see how bad theology and bad morals go together.  So the call to a faithful soldier is a call to understand the responsibility and accountability to the church through which we were commanded, commissioned, and confirmed, and the responsibility to the Lord by whom we are called to serve Him with the truth and purity of life.  God save the church from error on the one hand, but not only error on the one hand but error taught by corrupt people.  You know, that is very common.  How many do we hear about who are in the ministry, supposedly teaching the truth, with ungodly lives?  And then even doubly worse, those who teach error, and ungodliness is their pattern of life as well. 

So Paul says, “Look, Timothy, you’ve got to war a good warfare, and in order to do that, you have to know your responsibility and accountability to the church and your responsibility and accountability to the Lord as well.”  And then the last point is your responsibility and accountability to deal with the enemies.  We’re going to see that one next Lord’s day.  Let’s pray. 

Gracious Father, we feel like we have stood on holy ground again.  We feel in a way like we’ve been transported to another time and another place.  We’ve felt the heartbeat of Timothy as the adrenalin pumped through him as for the first time he read those verses, as he sat in that room somewhere in Ephesus and someone delivered this epistle to him and said, “This is come quickly from the apostle Paul – read it,” and he realized the battle at his side, and he also realized the calling of God.  We understand the quickening of his heart, the fear of confronting such a formidable foe as Satan himself, and trying to deal with false teaching and immorality at high levels of leadership in the church, and we understand the human fear and the human timidity and the anxiety and the sense of inadequacy, but, O Lord God, we know that that does not diminish the commission nor the command.  Father, help us to know that wherever error and evil occur, whether in low places or high places, help us to know that we must confront it.  Help us to know that we’re in a war, we’re in a battle, we have to fight that battle, we have to be in that war, and that means we use the gifts given to us commanded to be used.  We teach the Word, which is our commission, that sacred trust given to us.  Help us to serve the church as You have equipped us and gifted us to do, and help us also to have a right relationship with You, that of truth and purity.  And, O God, may it be that as we together as a congregation live out these things and bring to fruition in our lives the understanding of these principles that we may know great victory for the advance of the kingdom and the glory of Christ. 

While your heads are bowed in just a closing moment, there is a war, and you’re on one side or the other, and Jesus said, “He that is not with Me is against Me.”  And if you have not committed yourself to Christ, you’re against Him.  How long will you do that?  I couldn’t help but think this week – and I saw all about the terrible disaster in Colombia, tens of thousands of people being instantly killed and sent into eternity.  What a graphic illustration that is of the judgment of eternal God.  Two months – two months, those people were warned over and over and over and over again to leave and they ignored and they ignored.  Reminiscent of the flood that came upon the civilization of Noah, they were warned and warned and warned and warned and they did not heed.  I understand even those in the Red Cross were spending their time trying to figure out what to do, and while they were trying to figure out what to do, they too perished. 

The Scripture says, “Now is the day of salvation.”  We don’t know – we never know how much time we have, and we trust that the example of Timothy will be the example to all of us of the need for spiritual duty to be fulfilled, holding truth and purity of life, that God’s work may be served and that we may fight on His side against the one who so hates Him.  What a privilege – what a privilege.

For this morning, I want you to open your Bible to 1 Timothy chapter 1 verses 18 through 20.  First Timothy chapter 1 verses 18 through 20.  This is a very brief section of Scripture, a rather clear one as we have found out in our last two studies together.  But in spite of its brevity and in spite of its clarity, it has given rise to three messages as of today, and I won’t even finish today, and so there’ll be a fourth next Lord’s day on this brief passage.  The reason for that is because it opens to our thinking so much very important and quite profound truth.  Let me read these three verses to you and then get into what it is that the Lord has given us for today. 

First Timothy 1:18:  “This command I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which pointed to thee that thou by them might war a good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience which some having put away have made shipwreck concerning the faith, of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander whom I have delivered unto Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.” 

My intention for this Lord’s day was just to finish up the third point in the outline and move on next Lord’s day to chapter 2.  But as I began to look at verse 20, which was the final point in this brief outline looking at the passage, I was struck by the statement “whom I have delivered unto Satan.”  And I found myself pressed to pursue the meaning of that idea.  What does it mean to be delivered to Satan?  And so as we understand the significance of verse 20, we must understand a greater context of being delivered to Satan.  Then this will make good sense to us. 

So if I might, this morning and next Lord’s day, I want to expand that idea of being delivered to Satan.  I even desire to illustrate it with some very pointed and specific illustrations out of our own congregation so that we’ll understand exactly what that phrase comes to mean.  It is a frightening line, “delivered unto Satan.”  It is a startling thought that someone would be given over to the devil himself, but that is precisely what it says, that is precisely what Paul has done to these two men, and it is precisely what he is inviting Timothy to do as well to others who are worthy of such a fate.  It is a portion of the ministry of the church, as it is a ministry of God Himself, to deliver people to Satan. 

Now, the word “deliver” in verse 20, paradidmi, means to hand over, to give over, to commit.  Or the best translation to get the sense here, to abandon – to abandon.  Hands off is the idea, to remove protection and abandon someone to Satan.  It is the same word in Acts 15:26 that the Authorized version translates “hazarded.”  Because it intends to convey the idea of being exposed to great danger, to be out from under any insulation, any protection, any shelter, and given over totally to Satan. 

Now, Paul did this in the church at Ephesus, as he says, and he invites Timothy to carry on the same kind of work.  So it is a work of importance and it is a work of God.  There is a parallel to this, one other passage which uses the same terms, and I want you to turn to it in 1 Corinthians chapter 5.  First Corinthians chapter 5 speaks of a person who is guilty of a form of incest in the church, and it says in verse 5 of this person, this person living with his father’s wife in a fornication relationship, verse 5:  “Enjoins the church at Corinth to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.”  Those two places, 1 Timothy 1:20, 1 Corinthians 5:5, are the two places in the New Testament where we have the idea of abandoning someone to Satan explicitly stated in that way. 

Now, listen carefully to what I say because it’s essential that you understand this.  There are some people who go around today and say there are no conditions under which any Christian should ever be subject to Satan.  I hear that from Charismatic people continually, and that is not what the Scripture teaches.  The Scripture clearly teaches that not only is it a possibility to be handed over to Satan but it is a ministry of the church to do that.  There are times and places and circumstances under the plan of God in which individuals are definitely to be turned over to Satan, and there are times and occasions when God Himself does that very thing. 

Now, listen carefully as we analyze this biblically.  Being turned over to Satan in both of these references that I have mentioned to you has the idea of being put out of the church, of being disfellowshipped – or in the old terminology, excommunicated.  It has the idea of being cut off from any further association with the saints of God and the Lord’s table.  It would be, in the terms of Matthew 18, to take one who has by continual sin been put out of the church and treat them like an unbeliever.  It is to say, then, that to turn someone over to Satan means that prior to that, they were not fully in his power else there could be no turning over, there could be no committing and no abandoning to Satan if they were already in his power. 

Now, 1 John 5:19 says the whole world lies in the lap of the wicked one.  The world is already in his hands.  The world has already been delivered to him by sin.  The instruction to the church to turn someone over to Satan means that that someone is not at that time fully in Satan’s control.  So we must, therefore, be talking about people who are in one way or another under the umbrella of protection provided by the church, and there is in the church the insulation and the protection and the care and the love and the blessing of God.  So we’re talking here about people who are under the care of the church or within the community of redeemed people, under the protection of God, a part of the pouring out of His blessing who are at some point in time put out of that protection and left fully exposed to Satan. 

Now, this could be true of believers or unbelievers.  You say, “How so?”  Because there are unbelievers in the church as there were unbelievers within the community of the redeemed in Israel who, by virtue of their association with the people of God, were therefore under certain amount of protection, and by virtue of a splash effect, people who are around those who are receiving the showers of blessing are also going to get wet, and so God has given even to an unbeliever by virtue of his proximity to or his involvement with the redeemed community a certain amount of protection, a certain amount of blessing. 

Let’s look at some illustrations of that.  The first one is in Genesis chapter 18 – Genesis chapter 18 – and I think you’re going to see some very startling things as we examine this.  In Genesis chapter 18 and verse 26, God had articulated that He was going to destroy the city of Sodom, a city filled with evil, a wretched city known for its flagrant violent homosexuality, and in verse 26, the Lord says, in His conversation with Abraham, “If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I’ll spare all the place for their sakes.”  Isn’t that amazing?  You have a whole city, the sin of which has risen to the nostrils of God, gross evil, a whole city which deserves the wrath of God to be poured out, and the Lord says, “If I can find 50 righteous people, I’ll spare the whole city.”  Now, that’s the insulation that comes to the undeserving simply because of their proximity to the righteous. 

Abraham says, “What about 45?” in verse 28, and the Lord says, “All right, if I can find 45, I won’t destroy it.”  Abraham’s on a roll at this point, so he says, “What about 40?”  The Lord says, “I’ll not do it for 40’s sake.”  “Suppose 30?”  “I’ll not do it for 30.”  Gets all the way down to verse 32 and he says, “What about ten?”  And the Lord said, “Suppose there shall be ten.”  Abraham says the Lord said, “I won’t destroy it for ten’s sake.”  Amazing.  A whole city of thousands and thousands of people would be spared because of God’s desire to be gracious to ten people who belong to Him.  By the way, there weren’t ten, and God did destroy the city. 

But the point is this:  proximity to and involvement with the redeemed people of God acts as a protection and an insulation even to unbelievers, and that can be seen in the history of Israel.  There were within the nation Israel many unbelieving Jews, many, in the words of Paul, Jews who were not true Jews, were Jews by nationality but not by faith, and yet all of God’s abundant blessing to the nation, giving them the promised land with all of its riches, pouring out the wondrous blessing of the ceremonial sacrificial system and the priesthood, all of God’s protection and care and defeating of their enemies was a blessing to the secular Jew in that nation as much as it was in one sense to the religious Jew for it acted as a protection and insulation for the unbeliever as well. 

The point is the same in the church.  The church has unbelievers in it who, by virtue of just being in the church visibly, by attending and associating, are therefore the recipient of the blessing that the Lord pours out on His church in a secondary sense.  To see that illustrated, turn in your Bible to 1 Corinthians chapter 7 where it is most significantly made clear, and here, Paul is discussing marriage and the question of whether an unbelieving partner should – a believing partner, rather, should stay with an unbelieving partner – if you’re a Christian wife, should you stay with a non-Christian husband; if you’re a Christian husband, should you stay with a non-Christian wife, and in verse 14, Paul answers the question by saying, “The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband,” and then goes on to say, “Else were your children unclean but now they, too, are sanctified.” 

In other words, an unbelieving spouse and children within a family where there is a unbeliever are all the beneficiaries of God’s blessing.  Sanctified doesn’t mean they’re saved, it doesn’t mean they receive redemption by virtue of their family relationship.  What it does mean is that there again is that splash effect; they’re around when the showers of blessing come and they get wet.  So the point that Paul is making is:  Don’t unload your un-Christian spouse because of the benefit to him or her in just being around you when God pours out His grace, and even the children are blessed and often led to salvation. 

So the idea, then, is this:  that there is in the shelter of the people of God a protection from the full blast of Satan’s evil designs, and we could conclude in the Old Testament that an unbelieving Jew in the nation Israel was better off than an unbelieving Jew outside the nation Israel where there was no promise of covenant protection, and we can conclude in the new covenant that an unbeliever associated with the church and involved with the church is better off than an unbeliever out there under the full fury of Satan and lying in the arms of the wicked one, simply by virtue of the fact that as God is good to His own, those who are in proximity to His own will benefit in some way from that goodness, and that explains why there are people who want to hang around the church even though they do not want to receive the Christ who is the head of the church. 

Now, it is important to note, then, that for someone to be delivered over to Satan means that they are put out of the insulation and protection of that believing community and they are given over fully to Satan, God withdrawing all of His hand of protection which they, to whatever degree, have enjoyed.  Now, I want you to understand how this works, so I want to go back to the Old Testament and I want you to see, as well as the New Testament this morning, that God has – listen carefully – for his own reasons personally put people out from under the protection of the believing community and into Satan’s control.  God Himself has done that, and I want you to see that from several biblical illustrations. 

Let’s go back to the book of Job, and this is where we begin, the book of Job.  In Job chapter 1, we are introduced to this man who was perfect and upright and feared God and shunned evil.  It describes him as a man who had ten children, 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 she asses, a great household.  This man was the greatest of all the men of the East.  His sons went and feasted in their houses, every one his day, and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and drink with them, and when the days of their feasting were finished that Job sent and sanctified them and rose up early in the morning and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all, for Job said, “It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.”  Thus did Job continually.  This man was so spiritually conscientiousness that he not only kept his heart right before God but he offered sacrifices for his children on just the presumption that they may have thought something in their heart that was wrong and he wanted to be sure that sin was covered.  This is a good man, the best of men, as well as the most prosperous man in the East. 

Now, in verse 6, there is a day when the sons of God – that refers to angels – came to present themselves before the Lord.  Now, we don’t know what day it was, we don’t know what the occasion was, we don’t know what the circumstances were.  That’s as much as we know, that angelic beings came before the Lord and Satan came with them, he being that fallen one, Lucifer.  He came and the Lord said, “Satan, where did you come from?”  And Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro in the earth and from walking up and down in it,” which tells us where he spends his time, and the Lord said unto Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?  Have you considered My servant?” 

You see, Satan is always wanting to diminish the work of God, always wanting to destroy the work of God, always wanting to show God up, and I’m sure he was there to make some accusation against God before all the rest of the angelic beings that were there.  He wanted to make God look bad, that’s his desire, and so God says, “Have you looked at My servant Job and what a good man he is?”  And Satan answered the Lord and says, “Does Job fear God for nothing?”  “You think he loves You and trusts You and believes in You the way he does for nothing?  You think he does that just because it’s in his heart to do that?  Why, You made a hedge around him and around his house and around all that he has on every side, and You bless the work of his hands, and his substance has increased in the land.  Why do you think he worships You?  Because he’s a pragmatist.  He knows who’s delivering the goods.  I mean, it’s simple, he knows how to open the floodgate.  He does his thing for You and You unload on him, all the blessings.  Of course he’s good but not for nothing.”  “Put forth Your hand now,” Satan says in verse 11, “touch all that he has, he’ll curse You to Your face.”  “Take away his stuff and he’ll curse Your face.” 

And the Lord said to Satan – follow this:  “Behold, all that he has is in your power.”  Underline that.  “Behold, all that he has is in your power.”  God turned Job over to Satan, no question about it.  God turned Job over to Satan.  That was a divine act by the sovereignty of God.  “Only upon himself, don’t put your hand.”  “You can do anything you want to his stuff, but don’t touch him.”  So Satan went out of the presence of the Lord.  He was turned over to Satan.  “And there was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house.  There came a messenger to Job and said the oxen were plowing and the ass is feeding beside them, and the Sabeans fell upon them, took them away.  They have slain the servants with the edge of the sword and I only am escaped alone to tell you, and while he was yet speaking, there came also another and said the fire of God has fallen from heaven and has burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them and I am only escaped to tell you.” 

Satan did several things.  He got inside and infused hatred into the Sabeans.  They came and wiped out some of his animals.  Satan got some people to start a fire, burned up all his crops and all of his sheep.  The Chaldeans came, he motivated the Chaldeans.  You see, Satan moves upon all kinds of human agencies.  They fell on the camels, carried them away, slew the servants with the edge of the sword – lost it all.  Verse 19:  “And there came a great wind from the wilderness, smote the four corners of the house where everybody was having a banquet.  It fell on the young man and they’re dead and I’m the only one escaped.”  Just wiped him out.  Just wiped him out, all of his crops, all of his animals, all of his sons, and Job tore his mantle, shaved his head, fell on the ground and cursed God.  Is that what it says?  Fell on the ground and what?  Worshiped, and said, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb and naked shall I return there.  The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away.”  Listen to this line – what?  “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” 

And in all this, Job did not sin, nor charge God with some kind of folly.  You say, “What’s the point?”  The point is this:  God made a point to the devil and to the whole world of people who’ve ever read that account, and the point is this:  that true saving faith is not dependent on positive circumstances.  That’s the point.  What a point.  See, the devil thought, “Well, these people follow You because You give them all the stuff.”  And what the Lord is saying is:  “I’ll tell you this, that when I redeem a life and when I transform a life and when a soul is converted and when a man truly loves Me, that love is not built on circumstances.”  And in a sense, Job is just almost superfluous to the point here.  God is making a point with Satan, and to make the point He uses Job, and the point is to show the strength and the continuity and the unwavering character of true saving faith, true love for God.  Tremendous. 

I hear all the time out of the book of Job that Job is to teach us how to deal with suffering.  Job, the whole point of Job is to show the character of a godly man, and the character of a godly man is that he loves God and worships God not because of what God has done in giving him things, but because of a pure devotion alone.  He trusted God. 

Satan came back.  Another time there was a meeting in chapter 2 and Satan goes through the same conversation.  God says, “Have you considered My servant Job?” and he says, “Let me at him again.”  And so in verse 6 chapter 2, the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, he’s in your hand.  This time you can hit him but you can’t kill him.  You can’t kill him.”  Satan went right out of the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to his crown.  Mark it, folks, Satan can bring disease.  Satan can bring disease, and here is Job with a broken piece of pottery, scraping off the scabs and boils as he sits in the ash pile, and that was a symbol of his mourning and his sadness.  And his very helpful wife – who was not a Proverbs 31 woman – comes up and says, “Curse God and die.”  And he said to her, “You’re a foolish woman.  Shall we receive good at the hand of God and not receive evil?  In all this did not Job sin with his lips.” 

This is incredible.  God is making a monumental point about the nature of true salvation, about the nature of true godliness, about the nature of a really upright heart.  The person who really loves God is not the person who loves God because of what he gets, but the person who loves God because of who he is.  That’s the point.  And you say, “Well, it wasn’t very fair to make Job the illustration just to make a point.”  Oh?  You’ve got to see beyond just the life of one individual to the fact that God was making a point for all eternity.  He has the sovereign right to do that. 

Well, you know how the rest of the story goes.  He has a bunch of well-meaning friends who come over and give him a bunch of baloney from chapter 4 to chapter 37.  That’s, you know, 33 or 34 chapters of doubletalk.  In the middle of it all, Job is sad and he’s heartbroken.  Chapters 3 through chapter 10 chronicle Job’s sorrow, and he’s really hurting.  He’s in pain.  “Oh, that my grief were thoroughly weighed and my calamity laid in the balances,” chapter 6 verse 2.  Chapter 10, he says, “My soul is weary of life.”  And he says in verse 2 of chapter 10, “God, do not condemn me.  Show me why You’re contending with me.”  “What are You doing to me?  I just want to know what’s going on.  I can’t understand it.  I can’t explain it.  I’ve lost my crops, my animals, my sons, my home.  I’ve lost my health.  All I’ve got left is a wife that I’d really like to trade in for a few of the other things that I lost – and in all of this, I don’t have any clue about why this is going on.  Why are You doing this?” 

There’s no answer.  The heavens are vaulted.  They’re absolutely silent, and in the vacuum in the silence of God come all these other people with their wrong answers.  Finally – wonderfully – in chapter 38, God speaks, and it says, “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.”  You know what the Lord said?  The Lord didn’t say, “Well, look, Job, I want to tell you about this.  Now, here’s why I’m doing this, see.  First of all, Satan came up there one day and he said” – listen, Job didn’t know that until he read this book later, which he probably never did.  He didn’t know.  He didn’t know what was going on in chapter 1 and 2.  That happened in heaven – he didn’t know that. 

And when the Lord comes, the Lord doesn’t tell him.  The Lord just says, in effect, “Why are you even asking those kind of questions?  Where were you when I made the world?  Where were you when I laid out the foundation?  Where were you when I created mountains and seas?  Where were you when the morning stars and the angels sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy at the creation?  What do you know about life?  What do you know about death?”  In other words, what He’s saying is “I’ll do exactly what I want and who are you to question Me?”  And He just reveals Himself, His omnipotence, His character. 

And finally Job gets the message in chapter 42.  “And Job answered the Lord and said, “Oh, I see, I get it.  You can do everything, and no thought can be withheld from You, and who’s ever going to hide counsel without knowledge; therefore, have I uttered that which I understood not, things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.”  You know what he says?  “God, I understand.  You’re God, You’re sovereign, You can do anything, You know everything, You have all the privileges.  I’m a fool for even opening my mouth.  I apologize.  I’ve been talking about things far beyond my understanding, which I knew not.  Too awesome for me to understand.”  “So hear me, Lord, hear me, and this is what I want You to hear.  I had heard of You with the hearing of mine ear, but now my eyes seeth You.”  What does he mean by that?  “I knew about You only from hearing; now I know about You from personal experience.  I’ve seen You in action, and I hate myself and repent in dust and ashes.” 

This dear man showed his godliness.  He had the right response.  “Oh, God,” he said, “the sin in all of this is my sin, for not recognizing Your sovereign right to give and take away.  What I said in the beginning is true, the Lord gave, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord.  Who was I to ever question?  God, You had every right to do what You did.” 

Listen, the whole point of this book is to show the character of genuine godliness, is to show the unbreakable reality of a redeemed soul that under no pressure will he abandon his God, under no pressure will he deny his God, under the loss of everything, he stands true.  Someone came to me this morning after the first service and said, “I think now for the first time I understand why God has brought suffering into my life.  I never could understand it.  We’ve examined every single possible reason and now,” he said, “people are always saying to me, ‘I can’t believe that you can have such great faith in God in the midst of this,’ and now I understand that that’s the point.” 

If nothing else, it demonstrates the character of true conversion, see?  Of true love for God, and it led Job from a limited understanding of God to an even greater understanding for God.  And, of course, God poured out blessings starting in verse 7, gave him back more than he had to begin with.  God blessed him with tremendous abundance, and he died but not until he was old and full of days, verse 17 says.  He had the most beautiful daughters.  God gave him the most handsome sons.  God gave him the finest crops.  Yes, there comes a time when God will reward the faithful person.  But for a time – mark it – the Lord, in His sovereign purpose, may choose to turn one of His own over to Satan for His own purposes, if for nothing else than to demonstrate to a watching world the strength and character of genuine conversion so that the world will see people who love God not for what He gives but for who He is.  And our weak, insipid, shallow pop theology of today is ignorant of that.  Job was used by God to prove the character of true love for God, true devotion to God.  What a thought. 

And it was not without great benefit to him because he learned about God’s sovereignty, and he learned a deeper love of God.  He found in himself some sins he didn’t know he had and he understood the necessity of submitting himself to divine rule no matter what it involved.  A true believer, then, can be given over to Satan to bring greater glory to God.  But Satan has limits to what he can do, right?  First, God said to him, “You can’t touch him.”  The second time around, “You can touch him but you can’t” – what?  “You can’t kill him.”  There’s always a restraint even when one is turned over to Satan. 

Do not be surprised, beloved, if within the church of Jesus Christ there are some who, unable to find any reasons why, end up in a situation where it looks like God has totally removed His hand of protection and blessing, and they are in the same quizzical confusion of a Job, they can’t understand why it happened, they cannot humanly explain why it happened, and the answer is somewhere on a divine level, which may or may not become known to us.  But God has His holy purposes, and in His grace there will come a restoration and a time of great blessing. 

Now turn with me as another illustration of this to Matthew chapter 4, and I want to show you something that is equally amazing.  Matthew chapter 4.  Now, here we find another act by which God turns over someone to Satan, and this time it’s one who is even more upright than Job, one who is even more perfect than Job, one who was utterly and absolutely and totally without sin, even the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.  Notice Matthew chapter 4 verse 1.  “Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness.”  Led up by the Spirit.  Mark 1:12 says He was impelled by the Spirit.  For what purpose?  Notice:  For the purpose of being tempted – or tested – by the devil. 

Now, listen to that.  God not only turned Job over to the devil, He turned Christ over to him also.  That’s exactly what it says.  He turned Christ over to Satan.  As God put Job in Satan’s hands and proved the character of true salvation and proved Job’s character, so God put His own beloved Son in the hands of Satan to prove His character and to show that He would not break and that He would not waver and that He would stand true as the perfect God-man.  And you’ll notice in verse 2, this temptation went on for 40 days and 40 nights.  I believe that the temptation not only came at the end, but I believe if you compare all the gospel records, you will find that there was temptation through all of those times. 

Now, a fast of 40 days and 40 nights is a tremendously weakening experience.  Jesus is at a highly vulnerable point, and at the end of those 40 days and 40 nights, there was a great culmination to that temptation, but that is not to say that the temptation didn’t come until the end.  I believe He was tempted through all of that and a great culminating temptation at the end.  It was a time of great weakness physically when He did not eat or drink.  It was a time of great aloneness.  And I read one of the Puritans this week who said that Satan is a pirate who looks to find a vessel that sails without a fleet. 

And Satan is a pirate who looks to find a vessel that sails without a fleet, to find some believer isolated and alone without the protection of others, and there is Christ alone 40 days and 40 nights, weak, in a place that George Adam Smith called the devastation of yellow limestone, a place of barrenness, on the precipice overlooking the Dead Sea on the back side of the plateau of Jerusalem, and there the devil comes to Him by design from God who led Him there by His Spirit and tempts Him and tempts Him in the areas where He had a right. 

First of all, tempts Him to bread.  And was He not the Son of God and did He not have a right to eat and did He not make everything that was made?  And if He could make bread for a multitude, could He not make it for Himself?  And then tempted Him to dive off the temple and thus be hailed as the Messiah and take the right that was His, and was it not His?  And then to take the kingdoms of the world, and were they not His by promise?  He tempted Him in the areas where He had a right, but Christ resisted in the midst of weakness and aloneness all of those temptations.  Verse 11 then says, “The devil left Him and the angels came and ministered to Him.” 

God put His own Son in the hands of Satan and then blessed Him in the end with a ministry of angels for having passed the test, as He blessed Job for having passed the test.  Yes, God by His own sovereign design may choose to put one of His very own – even His own Son – into the hands of Satan to bring Himself greater glory. 

Second Corinthians chapter 12.  Second Corinthians chapter 12, Paul says, “It’s not expedient or fitting for me, doubtless to glory, or to boast.”  “It’s not right for me to boast,” he says.  “I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.”  And he had had so many visions.  You know, he’d seen Jesus Christ risen from the dead.  He had revelations.  He says I – referring to himself – he says, “I know a man – he speaks a rather second-handed here because, again, he doesn’t want to boast, and this man, “whether in the body, I can’t tell, or out of the body” – he can’t really define it – “was caught up into the third heaven” – that is, the dwelling place of God.  “He was caught up” – verse 4 says – “into paradise.”  Verse 3:  He doesn’t know whether it was in the body or out, he doesn’t know the actual spiritual dynamics of what happened, he just knows he was there.  He heard unspeakable words which are not lawful for any man to utter.  “But I won’t glory on such a one, I myself will not glory.  The only think I’ll boast about is my infirmity.” 

I mean there was a great temptation in the life of Paul because of his many successes and visions and revelations to be very boastful.  “But I won’t do that.  I would desire to boast” – verse 6 – “but I’m not going to be a fool.  So I’ll say the truth, but now I forbear – I hold back – lest any man should think of me above that which he sees me to be or hears of me.”  “I don’t want anybody having an unfair or exaggerated opinion of me, so I don’t boast, even though I’ve had these things.”  “But I have to confess,” he says in verse 7, “it’s not just me that’s restraining” – verse 7 – “unless I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations.” 

In other words, “What keeps me from doing this is” – watch this – “there was given to me” – and I believe the implication there is God has brought that, God has allowed that.  This is a godly man, this is a holy man, this is an upright man like Job was an upright man.  This is a man who knows the Christian experience like perhaps no man who ever lived, other than the God-man Himself, so he is not a sinful man; he deals with those areas of his life before God.  “And yet there is given to me a thorn in the flesh.”  I want you to notice that the Lord gave him this and yet it is called in verse 7 “a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me lest I should be exalted above measure.” 

Listen to this:  I believe that this text tells us that the Lord turned Paul over to Satan at least in this regard.  He gave Satan the right to inflict him – I don’t believe that’s the work of God, I believe that’s the work of Satan – but I believe God intended that Satan be allowed to do that to keep Paul weak so that he would be dependent.  Men with great gifts need that because they tend not to be dependent.  God sent Paul into Satan’s arena to be buffeted.  The word “buffet” is used in Matthew 26:67 in describing Jesus on trial when they punched Him.  It has a root word meaning “knuckles,” and it has to do with blows of the fist that crush the tissue and the bone, and he says, “I’ve got this thorn in the flesh that drives its knuckles into my body.  It is a messenger from Satan.” 

You think God could have prevented it?  Sure.  But God gave it to him so that he would not be proud but humble.  Verse 8:  “I asked the Lord three times to take it away.”  “I asked Him.”  Somebody will say, “Well, some Charismatic will say to us, ‘Well, he didn’t have enough faith.’”  Don’t give me that.  That’s foreign to the text.  “Well, he didn’t claim his deliverance.”  I don’t buy that either.  Because it tells you exactly what the Lord said.  He said, “Take it away,” the Lord said, “No, My grace is sufficient for you, My strength is made perfect in that weakness.”  “I’m not going to take it away because it is enough of a weakness to allow My strength to be manifest.”  So Paul says, “Gladly, happily, I will boast in my infirmities.”  Why?  “Because the power of Christ rests on me.”  “I take pleasure in my infirmities, reproaches, necessities, persecutions, distresses for Christ’s sake for when I am weak, then I’m” – what? – “strong.” 

Now, beloved, God gave to Job disaster, turned him over to Satan.  Why?  That Job might be living proof of the character of a godly man, that Job might learn that God was sovereign, that Job might know God more intimately and better than he had ever, ever thought to know God because in his struggles, he was drawn to God in ways that his prosperity could never bring him.  So God turned Job over to Satan for wonderful reasons and restrains Satan from ultimately destroying Job. 

God turned Christ over to Satan to prove His purity.  God turned Paul over to Satan, at least in this one area, so that Satan could be the instrument of God to keep Paul humble so that he would know where his strength was and therefore was a more effective servant.  So the Lord turns Job over to Satan to prove himself to be a godly man.  The Lord turns Paul over to Satan that Paul may be a greater, more effective servant.  That he may learn humility and that he may learn dependence. 

I want you to turn to Luke 22.  Luke 22 and verse 31.  In Luke 22 verse 31 – listen.  The Lord said, “Simon, Simon” – He’s talking to Peter – “Simon, Simon.”  He’s calling him his old name because he sees characteristics of his old self – sin.  So He chooses the old name to emphasize that oldness that He sees in his behavior, and He says it twice because of His compassion.  “Simon, Simon” – it’s pathos.  “Behold, Satan has desired you.”  And I believe that is true – that is true of every believer.  Satan would love to go around as a roaring lion and devour every believer and show God and show the angels.  I think Satan would like the other angels to rebel.  I think Satan wants to make his point, and if he could just capture the saved, if he could just have them abandon their salvation, if he could just swallow them up in his own evil kingdom, then he could win a victory over God, then he could checkmate God, at least in one point. 

So Satan desires to have you, particularly did Satan desire Peter because Peter was so crucial to the development of the church, the great preacher God used in the founding years.  Satan wants you, and he wants to sift you like wheat.  In other words, he wants to blow you away.  He wants your personality to disintegrate like wheat does when it’s thrown in the air and just blows away the chaff.  He wants to blow away your confidence and blow away your usefulness and blow away your trust in God and blow away your security and blow away your effectiveness.  He wants you. 

You think the Lord could have prevented it?  Of course.  The same Lord who will bind Satan for a thousand years in a pit in the book of Revelation could certainly have bound him here from touching Peter, but He didn’t.  Look at verse 32, “I’ve prayed for you that your faith not ultimately fail.”  “I’ve prayed for you that you’re not going to ultimately lose your salvation.  Just like He said, you can go so far with Job and no farther, you can go so far with Paul and no farther, you can go so far with Peter and no farther, you’re not going to have ultimate failure of your faith.  Then He says, “But when you return,” which is to say, “I’m going to” – what?  “I’m going to let you – I’m going to let you go, I’m going to let you go to Satan, and when you come back” – do what? – “strengthen the brethren.” 

Now, what was Peter being released to Satan to learn?  To learn how to what?  Strengthen others, right?  He, being put through this situation, could then come back and strengthen others.  In the case of Job, God was making a point to Satan, and God was making a point to the whole world of people who read the Bible that a true lover of God will not abandon that love and devotion though he lose everything.  A great, profound lesson.  In the case of Paul, He was teaching humility and dependence.  In the case of Peter, He wanted someone who could tell others how it was to be in the clutches of Satan.  When you’ve been through it and you come back, then God uses you to strengthen others. 

It may be that the Lord in His sovereignty will take a believer who is in some way disobedient, sinful, boastful like Peter was and say, “All right, I’m going to let you go.  You think you can handle it on your own?”  Peter says, “Though I’ll forsake You, I’ll never forsake You, boy, I’ll stand with You, I’ll die with You, I’ll go with You to the end.”  “All right, if you think you’re so great, I’ll just test you,” and He lets you go.  A boasting Christian may find himself out from under the protection of God, given over to Satan, and what he’ll learn is that you can’t do it on your own, and so I believe the Lord literally delivered Peter to Satan so that when he came back, he would be a source of strength to everybody else.  And Peter comes back in verse 33:  “Lord, I’m ready to go with You to prison and to death.”  And, of course, when he had the chance, he denied Christ three times, right?  And then in verse 62, he went out and wept bitterly, and I believe he repented and I believe he got his heart right with God. 

The point is this:  The Scripture indicates that people who are within the framework of the community of believers, whether you’re talking about 1 Timothy 1, Hymenaeus and Alexander, who were pastors in the church, whether you’re talking about Old Testament characters like Job, whether you’re talking about Jesus Christ Himself, whether you’re talking about Paul or talking about Peter, these people who belong to the Lord’s kingdom one way or another who are under the protection of it can for God’s own purposes of remedial instruction and correction and training and illustration of great truth be brought into the dominion of Satan unprotected for God’s holy purpose and glory. 

Some are turned over to Satan for refining, some are – like Peter was.  Some are turned over to Satan for greater effectiveness like Paul was.  Some, for proving the validity of their faith like Job was, but in all of those, the greater glory goes to God in praising Him for the kind of salvation that holds a Job, the kind of power that humbles a Paul and that restores a Peter, and so God receives the glory in all those things. 

Mark it, beloved.  People within the fellowship of the church, be they believers or unbelievers – and in the cases that we’ve looked at today, they’re all believers – can be put out for testing – for testing – to prove whatever it is that God would desire be proven. 

Now, next Lord’s day, we’re going to see what happens to unbelievers and to some believers also within the church who are put out – mark this one – not for testing, strengthening, and proving but for chastening and judgment – for chastening and judgment – and that’s a whole different issue, and that will take us right back to 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 20.  Let’s bow together in prayer.

Our Father, we think about Job, and we are reminded that his being turned over to Satan lasted for years and years, long years, before he could know the recovery of all that he lost.  When we think of the Lord Jesus Christ, we think of one who was turned over to Satan for a few weeks.  For the apostle Paul, perhaps a few years.  For Peter, just a day.  And, Lord, we realize that You have Your purposes, and in these the purposes were for proving and refining and strengthening to Your glory that Job and Paul and Christ and Peter might be the most noble servants that they were, and so Lord, we acknowledge that should it make us better servants, we are willing to suffer whatever the enemy might bring, knowing that he can bring nothing to ultimately cause our faith to fail because we are kept in Your grace and power.  And if it can enhance and enrich that ministry to which we are called, then let us suffer whatever might be and commit our souls in faithful keeping to the one who loves us and gave Himself for us, the one who says, “No man, not Satan, not anyone, shall ever pluck My sheep out of My hand.”  And so, Lord, if it can be for strengthening, for refining, for humbling, for greater usefulness, for the proving of the genuineness of our faith to the watching world, then do in our lives what is needful that You might receive the glory and we’ll count it a privilege. 

While your heads are bowed in just this parting time, I know that the Spirit of God has probed your mind and you’re perhaps viewing things in your own lives in ways you’ve never viewed them before, even as I have.  My prayer is that you’ll understand the Word of God and its application to your heart.  I also pray that if you’re not right with the Lord, you might be right with Him because there is also that chastening.  There are those who come under the power of Satan because the Lord is chastening them, to purge them from sin.  We’re going to see that next Lord’s day, but even in what we’ve seen today, you can see that lingering in the background.  If you are to be placed under the hand of Satan for a time or an area of life, be sure that it’s for a holy purpose of greater usefulness to God and glory to His name rather than chastening or judgment.

• Let’s open our Bibles as we look together to the Word of God at 1 Timothy chapter 1.  

• First Timothy chapter 1.  

• The message that the Spirit of God brings to us today is a very strong word, one that I believe has far-reaching implications and one by no means which I can begin to fully embrace in the hour we have together.  

• But I want you to listen very carefully because it’s not a message often heard but one desperately needed. 

• First Timothy chapter 1, we’re studying 1 Timothy, we are now in the last three verses of chapter 1.  

• The text says, beginning at verse 18, “This command I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which pointed to thee that thou by them mightest war a noble warfare; holding faith and a good conscience which some having put away have made shipwreck concerning the faith; of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander whom I have delivered unto Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.” 

• In our study of this passage, as we are expositing 1 Timothy, we have been noting all three verses, but for last Lord’s day and today, we are focusing in one phrase in verse 20:  delivered unto Satan.  

• A fearful thought, a terrifying reality, but one that the church must understand.  

• Satan, the enemy of God, the hater of good, liar, murderer, demon, leader of demonic forces, despiser of Christ, hellish fiend who lives to destroy all that God designs and will be consigned ultimately to the Lake of Fire to be tormented forever, Satan, that maker of perverts, that maker of madmen and criminals, devastator of families, creator of chaos, to be turned over to him is indeed a terrifying thought. 

• Now, I mentioned last time we studied this that in order to be turned over to Satan, we must assume that prior to that, one was not fully under his control.  Let me explain that a little further.  All unredeemed humanity are fallen in sin, and the Scripture tells us in 1 John 5:19 that the whole world lies in the lap of the wicked one.  Furthermore, Romans 1:18-32 says that because man has fallen into sin, God has given him up.  It says it again, God has given him up.  And a third time, God gave him over to a reprobate mind to work all forms of evil. 

What that says is that God has abandoned the human race in sin to the power of Satan.  That is why Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 2 says that all unredeemed people who are dead in trespasses and sins walk according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air who is called the spirit of disobedience who works in them.  The whole unredeemed human race lies in Satan’s power. 

Who, then, are those that are turned over to Satan?  They must be those who have found some haven from that.  And indeed, we saw last time, those who are a part of the redeemed community, even if they’re unbelievers who outwardly associate, have found in that association a kind of protection.  First Corinthians 7 says an unbelieving wife is sanctified by a believing husband, a believing wife sanctifies an unbelieving husband, and children are sanctified in a home where there is a believing parent.  In other words, to be identified at all with a redeemed community, even if it’s only outward, is to find a haven away from the full fury of the blasts of Satan.  For in the church, as God pours out His blessing on the truly redeemed, it splashes on some of the unredeemed who find themselves in proximity to those who belong to God. 

To be turned over to Satan, then, is to take that believer or that unbeliever who is in the family of the redeemed, at least outwardly, and push them out into the full fury of Satan’s world.  And that’s what we’re talking about.  Some people, by God’s design, by His sovereign purpose and as a holy act for His own intention and Will, are thrust out of the protected place of the church into the Satanic dimension.  And we’re learning about that. 

Paul instructs Timothy in this first chapter that he’s going to have to do that with certain people in the church at Ephesus where he is now located.  Paul says, “I set the example” – in verse 20 – “because I took Hymenaeus and Alexander and I put them out, I delivered them over to Satan that they might be literally, physically trained or physically punished for their blasphemy.” 

Now, that’s the pattern for what I want you to do.  The church is a wonderful haven, a place of protection for believers.  It is even a place where unbelievers can come and find a certain amount of haven from the fury of Satan.  But also, the Scripture is very clear that for God’s own purposes, there are times and there are people who are thrown out into Satan’s domain. 

Now, let me just remind you of what we said last week.  Sometimes the Lord turns a true believer over to Satan for a positive reason tied to His own sovereignty.  And we saw that in illustration in the life of Job.  Job was not just a good man, he was the best of men, an upright man who honored God with everything in his life, a righteous man, a God-loving, God- fearing man.  And yet it tells us in the book of Job that he was delivered over to Satan and Satan was allowed to destroy all of his possessions, to destroy all of his family, and even to bring about terrible illness on his own body.  And Job never really understood why this happened.  Even at the end of the book, he wasn’t sure specifically why God brought it other than the fact that God had revealed Himself in it to be a sovereign God.  But as we look back at the book of Job, we understand why Job was delivered to Satan:  for God to make the point that true love to Him and true faith in Him is not dependent on circumstances.  Job sums it up when he says, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him,” when he says, “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” 

The great truth of the book of Job is that whether or not you possess the blessings of this life or you are stripped absolutely naked of everything, true faith in God and true love for Him stands because it is not based on what we have received by way of blessing, it is based on who He is as a worthy God.  So Job was a tool used by God, delivered to Satan for God to make a great truth clear. 

Then Christ was our second illustration of one delivered over to Satan.  He was led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted of the devil, it says in Matthew 4.  Literally, the Holy Spirit led Him into Satan’s temptation that He might be proven to be perfect and that by victory over Satan in the moment of His weakness after 40 days of fasting might demonstrate His power over Satan, that even in His weakest moment He was a match and more than a match for Satan; which is to say that if He was victorious in that temptation, He will ultimately be victorious in the glory of His second coming when Satan is bound forever in hell.  So Christ was turned over to Satan also in order that He might demonstrate His perfection and His ultimate power over the enemy. 

In 2 Corinthians 12, we saw our third illustration who was Paul.  Paul was delivered over to Satan, given a messenger of Satan, a thorn in the flesh, and he said, “I glory in that” or “I rejoice in that,” “I boast in that because in my weakness, His strength is perfected.”  So Paul was turned over to Satan with limitation, as all of these are.  You remember Job was turned over to Satan but God set limits.  There were limits set in terms of Christ.  There were limits set in terms of Paul.  But in order for Paul’s case, that he might be humble and dependent, he was given a messenger from Satan. 

Then we saw Peter.  And Peter also, Jesus said to him in Luke 22:31, “Satan desires to have you that he may sift you like wheat.”  Perhaps Satan had come to God like he did with Job and said, “I want Peter.  I’ll show you what kind of a guy he is.  I’ll strip him naked.”  Maybe he gave the little bit of the same speech regarding Job, and so Peter was turned over to Satan, not because he had committed some willful sin or lived in some defiant, rebellious attitude, but Jesus said, “When you have come back, strengthen the brethren.”  And we learned in that that Peter was turned over to Satan in order that he might be able to strengthen others who would go through severe trouble. 

So in those cases of Job and Christ and Paul and Peter, there was a positive purpose in the sovereign plan of God.  I was reading also this week about those who will suffer in the great Tribulation.  In Matthew chapter 24 in verses 21 and 22, it talks about those who will suffer during the Tribulation, right before the second coming of Christ.  In Revelation 6, it shows them crying out because they’ve been killed in that Tribulation.  There will be believers deprived of food, deprived of water, deprived of a job, deprived of their lives during the Tribulation when Satan wreaks havoc all over the globe. 

But when you come to those same redeemed saints in chapter 7 of Revelation, it shows them having come out of the Tribulation, having had their robes washed, having been cleansed in the blood of the Lamb, and it says they are day and night forever before the throne of God praising and serving Him.  And I believe what it’s saying is that there will be a whole generation of believers literally turned over to Satan’s fury unleashed in the Tribulation so that when they are delivered out of that, they will have a level of praise to God that may exceed all other redeemed generations.  So God ultimately, then, will receive praise from those who have suffered much because their deliverance is so great, so glorious. 

I want you to turn to Revelation chapter 2 for a moment, and verse 9 and 10, the message to the church at Smyrna, to the angel of the church in Smyrna write – verse 8 – these things, says the first and the last who was dead and is alive, that’s Christ.  And Christ says, “I know your works, tribulation, poverty, but you’re rich.”  “I know what you’ve been through, you’ve been through tribulation, you’ve been through poverty, I know the blasphemy of them who say they are Jews and are not but are the synagogue of Satan, false teachers.”  “Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer.  Behold” – now look at this – “the devil shall cast some of you into prison that you may be tried and you shall have tribulation ten days, that is a brief period of time, be faithful unto death and I’ll give you a crown of life.” 

Listen, in that little church in Smyrna, there were believers who were persecuted for the faith.  They were persecuted by the devil unto death.  God let the devil kill them and then rewarded them with a crown of life.  God desires to reward His children and rewards most nobly those who willingly give their life in persecution. 

Yes, we’ve seen from all of these illustrations that true believers, the best of believers, leaders like Job and Paul and Peter and congregations as the church at Smyrna and those who will come in the Tribulation can be turned over to Satan for God’s sovereign purposes, for the sake of proving the genuineness and the character of saving faith, for the sake of keeping them humble and dependent on God, for the sake of enabling them to strengthen others who go through trials, for the purpose of praise throughout eternity because they’ve been delivered from so much and for the purpose of giving to them special eternal reward.  Yes, believers can be delivered to Satan for physical problems, for problems in the family, even for death for divine purposes. 

But today I want to talk about another aspect of it:  being delivered to Satan not for a positive reason but for a negative one because this is the issue in 1 Timothy chapter 1.  These two men, Hymenaeus and Alexander, were delivered unto Satan not in order that they might prove the truth of their faith, not in order that they might maintain humility and dependence, not so that they could strengthen others, not so that they could receive a crown of life, not so that they could give unlimited and unhindered and eternal praise to the living Christ who had spared them and brought them through a terrible tribulation.  No, they were turned over to Satan for judgment.  That’s different, for judgment.  And the Scripture illustrates this very aptly. 

Let’s go back to 1 Samuel chapter 16, and I’m going to show you several illustrations of this as we move through briefly.  First Samuel chapter 16, Samuel comes to anoint the one God has chosen to be the new king.  We pick up the narrative in verse 12.  Samuel has arrived at the household of Jesse.  God has pinpointed one of Jesse’s sons.  He sent and brought him in.  He was ruddy and of a beautiful countenance and handsome.  The idea was he was masculine and he was handsome.  And the Lord said, “Arise, anoint him, this is he.”  Samuel took the horn of oil, anointed him in the midst of his brethren, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day onward. 

Now, here was the anointing of David, the son of Jesse, to be the king of Israel to replace Saul.  Saul had had the anointing of the Spirit of the Lord.  That’s not a commentary on his personal salvation or on his spirituality.  The Spirit of the Lord came on David here for the role of king, just as the Spirit of the Lord had come in Judges 16 on Samson as the judge of Israel.  This is for the governing of the people so that God’s will would be worked out.  It is not a matter of commenting on the spirituality either of Saul or David.  The Spirit of the Lord had been on Saul for the reason that he was king and in order for God to carry out His Will through that king.  Verse 14 says that.  “The Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul.”  Now, if it had to do with his personal salvation, it would be something altogether different.  But the point is when the Spirit came on David, the Spirit left Saul because the coming and going of the Holy Spirit in reference to these two men had to do with their function as king of Israel so that God’s will would be effected through their ruling. 

Now, notice verse 14:  “When the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.”  People get worried about how the evil spirit could come from the Lord.  It doesn’t mean the Lord is evil.  It doesn’t mean the evil spirit dwelled in the presence of the Lord.  All it means is that even the demons can’t function unless the Lord allows them.  And when the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, it’s as if God turned him over to Satan.  And Satan dispatched some very key powerful demon who went and became the constant companion of Saul.  And the word “troubled,” that common Old Testament word means to terrify or torment.  He became demon tormented.  The word “demon possessed” is not a biblical term.  It’s better to use a biblical term so we understand what we’re talking about in reference to passages of Scripture.  Saul became demon tormented – demon tormented. 

In spite of having the Spirit of the Lord on him for his kingly rule, he was given to rash judgments.  His decisions made under pressure were stupid.  One of them almost caused him to have to execute his own son for eating honey.  He fell to pride.  He despised the authority of Samuel and wanted unilateral control and wanted full confidence and trust and glory from all the people rather than sharing it with anyone.  He was greedy.  He flaunted his injustice everywhere.  He flagrantly disobeyed God.  He took the role of a priest and he tried to hide his disobedience under a cloak of spirituality.  He was a very wicked, very evil man. 

As a result of this, the Spirit of the Lord left him, and an evil spirit came to terrorize that man until his death.  In chapter 18, we get a little insight into this.  And David was wherever Saul was.  David was the one who played the harp for Saul, you know the story.  And Saul set him over men of war and lifted him up to a place of prominence, and they won a great battle, the slaughter of the Philistines mentioned in verse 6.  And as they were coming back, women came out of all the cities of Israel as they marched back toward Jerusalem, and they were dancing and singing and timbrels and joy and instruments of music.  And the women spoke one to another as they played and this is the song they sang, “Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” 

Now, an egomaniac like Saul is never going to be able to handle that.  And Saul was very angry.  The saying displeased him and he said, “They have ascribed unto David ten thousands, to me they have ascribed but thousands, and what can he have more but the kingdom?”  Now, he’d been anointed but he’d not yet taken the throne.  And Saul was in great fear, and he watched enviously David from that day and onward.  And it came to pass on the next day, the evil spirit from God came on Saul.  He was terrorized again.  He prophesied in the midst of the house, apparently, some ecstatic utterances.  And David played with his hand to try to soothe him as at other times.  And there was a javelin in Saul’s hand.  He was a great warrior, a giant of a man, skilled with a javelin.  And Saul threw the javelin and said, “I’ll smite David even to the wall with it, I’ll pin him to the wall.”  And David escaped from his presence twice.  And over in chapter 19 verse 9, the evil spirit from the Lord was on Saul as he sat in his house with his javelin in his hand.  And David played with his hand and Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the javelin, but he slipped away out of Saul’s presence.  He smote the javelin into the wall and David fled and escaped that night. 

Now, this man is demon terrorized.  The story of Saul the tormented man goes from bad to worse.  When that demon was given to him and he was turned over to Satan, even though he’d been under the Spirit of the Lord, even though he’d been part of the covenant people of God and known the insulation of that, whether or not he was actually a true believer, he had known the protection of the covenant people.  He had known the protection that comes from being within the framework where God is pouring out the fulfillment of His promises.  He had known the presence of the Spirit of the Lord as a king.  But he is now thrust out.  The Spirit of the Lord departs, and he’s all alone, abandoned to the kingdom of Satan.  And he becomes not just melancholy, not just despairing, this isn’t some psychological disorientation, he is demonized and he is subject to the control of a supernatural evil power, vile and wicked, who leads him to insanity, to mass murder, into the occult, and ultimately to commit suicide.  And as Thomas Manton, the Puritan, said, “The devil delights to vex men with unreasonable terrors.  The devil both tempts and troubles.” 

The Lord turned him over to hellish power, not for instruction in divine sovereignty, not for him to be able to maintain his humility – he had none – not to make him dependent, not to help him strengthen others, not to give him a crown of life, not to cause him to praise for all eternity, but to punish him, to judge him.  And he went right into the pit of the occult.  He then consulted with the witch of Endor, delving with mediums and demon spirits.  And when the Lord did come back in the form of the Spirit in chapter 19 and cause him to prophesy, he was so out of control in the prophecy that he stripped himself naked, fell on the floor prostrate and totally exposed in total humiliation.  Really, in a sense, bereft of his own understanding.  Later on, he massacred a whole group of good priests because they had given provisions to David and then ended his life as a suicide – which, by the way, is a rare act in all the annals of Israel’s history but not rare among those who are delivered to Satan. 

Let’s look at John 13.  John 13, verse 27.  It is the Upper Room, it is the night of the betrayal of Jesus Christ.  The main character of our focus is Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.  Judas, who had been with Jesus for three years.  Judas, who had seen everything He did, heard everything He said, watched the miracles.  Judas, who could not deny either the truthfulness of Christ – Judas, who could not deny either the perfection of Christ nor the power of Christ, has rejected it all.  And it says in verse 27, one of the most tragic statements in Scriptures:  “After the sop” – that is, after taking that piece of bread and dipping it in the sop, which was part of the Passover meal – “Satan entered into him.”  The divine timetable was set, and God turned Judas over to Satan. 

He had been a part of the community of apostles.  He had been insulated from the full fury of Satan’s world because of the protection of that group, which God had so blessed by the presence of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.  But now he is out of that group.  He is turned over to Satan.  Satan enters into him.  Jesus says, “What you do, do it quickly.”  “Do it quickly.”  And in Luke chapter 22 and verse 3, the text puts it this way, just to add to the understanding you already have:  “Then entered Satan into Judas, surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve.  And he went his way and conferred with the chief priests and captains how he might betray Him with them.  They were glad and covenanted to give him money.” 

He went out, energized by Satan, sold Jesus Christ, then went out in remorse, put a noose around his neck, hanged himself.  The rope broke or the branch broke, he fell down, hit a rock, and his bowels gushed out all over the place.  Suicide, just like Saul.  Turned over to Satan, put out of that sheltered, protected place.  Saul, I believe, illustrates the unbeliever who is blessed by being in the presence of God’s promised people.  Judas, the same.  But cast out as a judgment on their evil hearts. 

Let’s go to Acts chapter 5.  Acts chapter 5.  There was a certain man in verse 1 named Ananias who had a wife named Sapphira.  They sold a possession.  Obviously, they promised the Lord they would give Him all of the proceeds from the sale, 100 percent.  But they kept back part of the price.  So they told a lie to the Holy Spirit.  They came, then, pretending to be giving everything, laid it at the apostle’s feet.  The Holy Spirit instructed Peter about their lie.  So Peter said to Ananias, “Why” – here it comes – “has Satan filled your heart?”  When he lied to the Spirit of God, it was a result of an evil intent, which literally turned him over to Satan. 

Now, I believe there’s no reason to assume this isn’t a believer.  After all, it was the Holy Spirit to whom he lied and only a believer has such communion with the Holy Spirit.  He lied to the Holy Spirit.  The result – verse 5 – he fell down and died.  I believe the Lord turned him over to Satan, Satan filled him, and Satan killed him.  His wife showed up three hours later, didn’t know what happened.  She came in, the same story went on.  Verse 9:  “How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of God” or “the Spirit of the Lord?  Behold, the feet of them who have buried your husband are at the door and will carry you out.  She fell down immediately at his feet and died.  The young men came in, found her dead, carried her forth, buried her by her husband.  Great fear came on everyone.” 

Now, here were two believers who lied to the Holy Spirit.  They were turned over to Satan.  Satan is the one, according to Hebrews 2, who has the power of death.  There are times when God turns people over for Satan to use that power.  And in that case, that’s what happened.  Turned over to him because of sin.  In the case of Judas, an unbeliever, in the case of Saul, likely an unbeliever, in the case of Ananias and Sapphira, believers, turned over to Satan for a chastening.  You say, “Did they go to hell?”  No, they went to heaven if they were true believers, but the judgment was nonetheless exceedingly severe and caused others to have great fear. 

So there are those within the protected community who can be turned over to Satan not for the sake of teaching some great truth, not for the sake of maintaining humility, not for the sake of strengthening others, not for the sake of gaining reward, not for the sake of eternal praise, but for the sake of judgment. 

Let’s go to 1 Corinthians chapter 5.  First Corinthians chapter 5 and a familiar passage.  “It’s reported commonly,” verse 1 says.  “This is common knowledge” – everybody knows it.  Paul says, “I’ve heard it not from one source but from many sources.  There is fornication” – that’s the word porneia, from which we get pornography.  “There’s fornication among you.”  This is a church, folks, this is the church at Corinth who prided themselves, “I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, I am of Christ.”  Those who thought they were kings, those who thought they knew all the answers.  This is a church.  And “fornication is among you and the kind of fornication that isn’t even discussed among the pagans.” 

What kind of fornication is that?  Incest, that one would have his father’s wife.  Now, there are a couple of things you need to know about this.  The fact that the word “fornication” is used rather than “adultery” leads us to believe that it could mean something out of marriage, so that what may have happened here is the father’s wife indicates a stepmother; otherwise, he would have used the word “mother,” having sex with your mother.  But “father’s wife” puts it probably in the category of a stepmother.  And the word “fornication” can take it out of marriage, so what may have happened was a son starts a sexual relationship with his stepmother, it ends in divorce, and the relationship is carried on as a fornication outside marriage after the divorce.  That’s a real possibility.  It may well be that the woman wasn’t even in the church. 

But instead of the church doing something about this incestuous relationship that perhaps had caused a divorce and may have been going on with an unregenerate woman, all of these things, instead of them doing something about it, verse 2 says:  “You’re proud about it, you’re puffed up, and you haven’t even been sorry about it.  You should have taken away the one that has done this deed from among you.”  Should have excommunicated them.  To put it simply, you should have turned them over to Satan.  Put them out of the church, don’t let them enjoy the protection of the church.  You say, “Is this a believer?”  I think it is, as we shall see. 

Paul says in verse 3, “I verily as absent in body but present in spirit have judged already as though I were present concerning him that has done this deed.”  “I’m not there but I know what ought to be done.  I’m not there but I know exactly how this person ought to be treated.  I’ve made my judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ when you are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan.”  What does he mean?  Put him out.  Here’s the only other place the terms of 1 Timothy 1:20 are used.  Turn him over to Satan.  Which means put him out of the church.  Don’t let him enjoy the protection of the church. 

In the words of Matthew 18, “You’ve gone through the disciplinary process of going to him, two or three going to him, the church going to him, now treat him like a pagan and a tax collector, like an outsider, put him out.”  The instruction comes to mind also in 2 Thessalonians 3:6:  “Withdraw yourselves from every brother that walks disorderly.”  Verse 14:  “If they don’t obey the word of this epistle, note the man and have no company with him, put him out, turn him over to Satan.”  That’s what church discipline is when it runs to its limit.  That’s why we at the communion service, when we gather together, as it says in verse 4, when we gather together as we will tonight in communion, if there’s discipline to be done, it’s done there.  We put them out. 

But I have noticed through my own ministry that there are some people we don’t even know about that the Lord puts out.  And I often wonder why people disappear and don’t show up for long periods of time.  And then I hear about the tragedy of the way their life is going, a messed up marriage, immorality, drunkenness, and all these kinds of things, and I realize that what we didn’t know, God knew, and what we couldn’t purge, God did. 

“Put them out,” he says.  “Your boasting is not good.  Don’t you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?  You can’t have that in the church.  Purge it out.”  And then down in verses 9 and 10 he says, “I’m telling you not to company with those people, with fornicators and covetous and extortioners and idolaters.”  “And I’m not talking about the worldly ones, I’m talking about the ones that are called a brother who are fornicators and covetous and idolaters and railers and drunkards and extortioners.  Don’t even eat with them.” 

End of verse 13:  “Put away from among yourselves that wicked person,” turn them over to Satan.  Now, back to verse 5.  “When you deliver them over to Satan it is for the destruction of the flesh.”  Did you get that?  It is for the destruction of the flesh.  What does that mean?  Oh, it can mean a lot of things.  Heart attack, cancer – I’ve seen that – venereal disease, AIDS, it could mean adultery in a marriage, it could mean the destruction of a home, it could mean the illness of a family member.  Listen, what was it for Job to be turned over to Satan?  All of those things.  Could mean the loss of a job, the loss of your career.  When you’re turned over to Satan, there is no way to project what might happen.  But I think we overlook the reality that that goes on a lot more than we are willing to admit.  And we may chalk up diseases and disasters to a lot of other things when they belong in this category right here.  The destruction of the flesh. 

Notice the destruction is limited.  It was limited on Job and it was limited on Paul and it was limited on Peter and it’s limited here.  Satan can destroy his flesh, but his spirit will be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.  That’s why I believe you have a Christian here and also the reference to a brother in verse 11.  You can’t destroy a soul that belongs to God, but you can sure devastate his physical world, his physical life.  It can happen. 

You don’t want to be turned over to Satan as a chastening.  I want to show you another passage that speaks to this, Revelation chapter 2.  This is a church.  This is a church, the church at the city of Thyatira in Asia Minor.  And in writing to the church, the Lord Jesus Christ says, “I know your works” – verse 19 – “your love, your service, your faith, your patience, your works in the last to be more than the first, you’re a very busy church, very active church, but I have a few things against you.  Here they are:  You allowed that woman Jezebel” – and it may not be a woman literally named Jezebel, but a Jezebel type, an idolatrous God-hating woman – “who calls herself a prophetess to teach and seduce My servants to commit fornication and eat things sacrificed unto idols.” 

This woman came along, led that church into immorality and false doctrine.  And He says, “I gave her and her followers, of course, space to repent of her fornication and she repented not.”  Immorality and false doctrine.  “Because there was no repentance, I will throw her into a bed” – implication:  All right, if she wants to be in bed, I’ll throw her in a bed, all right – I’ll throw her in a bed with Satan, that’s what I’ll do – “and all them that commit adultery with her, and that bed will be a bed of great tribulation unless they repent of their deeds, and I will kill her children with death.  And all the churches will know that I am he who searches the minds and hearts and I’ll give unto every one of you according to your works, but unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira” – watch this – “as many as do not have this doctrine” – they don’t follow Jezebel – “and who have not known the depths of Satan.”  He contrasts those true believers and obedient believers from the ones thrown in the bed of trouble and fornication who have known the depths of Satan.  He literally plunged them into the depths of Satan.  What a phrase; what a phrase.  Think of it – turned over to Satan. 

Now, we need to be very cautious.  You that are unbelievers in the church who just come for whatever benefit you can gain are in danger of being turned over to Satan for eternal judgment.  Those of us who are believers, by cultivating disobedience or false doctrine or immorality, are in danger of being turned over to Satan for chastening, which can result in all kinds of physical devastation, the disasters that are indicated in all these texts, as well as death itself.  You see, Peter said the devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may – what? – devour, swallow, consume.  And when you’re turned over to Satan, you’re turned over to his consuming power. 

Now, remember, what is Paul saying?  Let’s go back to 1 Timothy, and I think we have it in perspective now.  What is he saying here when he says, “I have delivered Hymenaeus and Alexander unto Satan?”  Most likely, they were not believers because they had corrupted the gospel.  And he delivered them that they might learn the consequence of blasphemy.  Now, we don’t know whether it meant they would die or whether it meant some disease or the devastation of their possessions or the loss of everything they had.  Whatever devastation Satan wanted to bring within God’s allowance would come. 

But Paul is saying, “Look, Timothy, you have to fight a battle in leadership in the church.  Remember what we said first of all?  You have a responsibility and accountability to the church,” verse 18.  “You have a responsibility and accountability to the Lord” – verse 19 – “to hold faith and a pure conscience.  And now you have a responsibility and accountability to deal with the enemy.  And I’ve given you the example.  What I did to them, you’re to do the rest of those who corrupt the church with false doctrine and unholiness.” 

Now let’s look at verse 19 and see what he says about them.  He calls them “some” – “some.”  They’re the same as the “certain ones” of verses 3, 6, and 7.  They were some pastors at the church at Ephesus and perhaps surrounding churches who were teaching falsely.  But these pastors “which some” – “which” refers to a good conscience – “were not interested in a pure conscience.”  What did I tell you?  Bad theology always rises out of bad morals.  A man’s doctrine is always an accommodation to his morality.  And when people reject the truth of the Word of God, they do it because they want to substitute a system which accommodates their desire for sin.  So there are some who have no interest in a good conscience.  They’re not at all interested in that. 

In fact, “which some having put away” – have put away.  That word apthe, a very strong word, means to violently reject.  It means to discard aggressively.  They don’t want anything to do with it.  They don’t want a pure conscience.  They don’t want to live for holiness.  They don’t want to live for purity.  They want to live for their own lust, their own success, their own gratification.  As a result, when they throw away a good conscience, they shipwreck the faith.  It’s like throwing away the rudder; you’re at the mercy of the wind and the sea.  They confess to be Christians and pastors and teachers of God’s law but with no interest in purity, no commitment to holiness.  They are literally devoid of any truth.  They shipwreck the truth because truth does not rise out of an immoral heart. 

No, an evil conscience and error always go together.  In 2 Timothy 2, we find a note that should be compared with this.  It says their word, these kinds of people, eats like gangrene.  It kills, of whom are Hymenaeus, here he’s mentioned again and this time another fellow, Philetus, who concerning the truth have erred – have erred.  And then in verse 19 it says, “Let everyone that names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”  So we see error and iniquity again.  These men have erred, don’t you err, so depart from iniquity.  The foundation out of which error comes, the soil out of which error grows, is the soil of unholiness.  So these men were not interested in a good conscience; they were interested in evil, and so they threw the rudder away, which is the conscience that gives guidance, and they were at the mercy of the wind and the sea, and they shipwrecked the faith. 

It names them for all time.  Hymenaeus, who is also mentioned, as I read in 2 Timothy 2:17, we don’t know anything about him, he’s just mentioned twice.  The other one is Alexander.  There is an Alexander mentioned in 2 Timothy 4:14-15.  There is an Alexander mentioned in Acts 19:33-34.  There is no reason to believe they are the same because the name was as common as the name John is today – a very, very common name.  What we have here, then, are two pastors, self-righteous egotists who wanted to be prominent teachers of the law but didn’t know anything about what they were speaking of, substituting myths and genealogies and fables and human reason for God’s revelation and living ugly, ungodly lives. 

And Paul says, “I put them out.  And that’s the pattern, Timothy.  If you’re going to be a good soldier in the noble warfare, you understand your obligation to the church, you understand your obligation to the Lord, and you understand your obligation to deal with the enemy.”  Now, when he says, “Whom I have delivered unto Satan,” he means “I put them out of the church.  I put them out.  I put those sinning people away from the protection and insulation of God’s people.  I put them in the domain of the devil, away from the influences of all that is good and godly.”  Why?  That they may learn that you can’t blaspheme and get away with it.  And the word “learn,” paideu, is to train through punishment – to train through punishment.  It’s a very significant word.  It is used in Luke 23 verses 16 and 22, it’s translated “chastise,” and it speaks about the scourgings that were given Christ.  It is to train or to punish someone with the afflicting of physical blows. 

In 2 Corinthians 11, you know that familiar passage, Paul talks about – 1 Corinthians 11, rather, the communion service and how some were weak and sickly and some slept.  And he says when we are judged, when the Lord takes our life, when he lets the devil kill us or make us sick, we are chastened of the Lord.  That’s that same word.  We are trained through suffering, just like you have to train a child with physical pain.  And that’s what is going to happen to these people.  That word is used repeatedly in the New Testament to speak of training through punishment, training through suffering.  It’s used in 2 Corinthians 6:9, it says, “As chastened and yet not killed.”  In other words, we get beat around physically, although short of death, again indicating its use that way.  In Hebrews 12, it’s used in verse 6, 7, and 10.  When the Lord chastens, He chastens through punishment, suffering. 

Now, the point is this:  You cannot see this word “that they may learn” without understanding that it carries the idea of physically inflicted punishment.  I don’t know what disease they got, I don’t know what disaster came into their life, I don’t know whether it meant their death, but they were turned over to Satan to be punished as a lesson that you can’t blaspheme – a lesson to them and a lesson to everybody else.  “Blaspheme” means to slander God, to ridicule God.  To blaspheme the worthy name by which you’re called, James 2:7 says.  In the last days, 2 Timothy 3:2 says, there will be blasphemers.  But blasphemers, those who ridicule God, who slander God, are in grave danger. 

Now, you say, “What do you mean by that?”  Anything that you do that disobeys God is blasphemy.  Anything you say that speaks evil against God is blasphemy.  And any blasphemy needs discipline.  And you or I or anyone who does something against the Will and the purpose of God, who acts in an unholy way, who slanders God’s character, slanders God’s person, or who denies or disobeys God’s Word is a blasphemer to one degree or another and therefore susceptible to having to be taught through physically inflicted punishment such lessons as might be necessary to call us away from that. 

So there are those who by God’s sovereign design are turned over to Satan, and God has a positive purpose in mind.  There are those who, under the sovereignty of God and by the direction of the church, are turned over to Satan, and God has a negative in mind:  the inflicting of severe punishment for the sake of ultimate, final, and eternal judgment or for the sake of temporal chastisement.  In either case, they might learn the consequence of blasphemy.  And blasphemy – I say it again – is any disobedience or any slander or rejection of the person and Will of God. 

Several things to remember, then, as we sum it up.  To be delivered to Satan may be for God’s sake, like Job, for God’s sake, for God to make His point.  It may be for my own sake, like Paul, that I may maintain humility and dependence.  It may be for others’ sake, like Peter, that I might be able to instruct others.  It may be for the sake of God’s desire to reward and give a crown of life.  It may be to produce great praise when such is over.  But on the other hand, it may be for chastening’s sake, like in the case of an incestuous brother in Corinth, or Ananias and Sapphira.  It may be for chastening’s sake unto death, as in the case of the church at Thyatira, committing fornication and listening to false doctrine.  It may be also for final judgment’s sake, such as in the case of Saul or Judas or Hymenaeus and Alexander. 

Now, what is the remedy?  What is – how do you avoid the chastening part and the judgment part?  By receiving the truth and the holiness of God in Christ.  And that’s really the message.  All of that was to lead to this.  It may be that God wants to turn me over to Satan.  It may be that for His own purposes, He wants me to suffer some inflicted wound from Satan to one degree or another, in one way or another in my life.  My only prayer is that it will be for His glory and my good and the strengthening and advancing of His Kingdom, not for punishment and not for chastening.  And that if it need be that I have to suffer some messenger of Satan, if I have, like Peter, to be turned over for a period of time, I can only pray that out of it God will gain the greater glory and I’ll be a more faithful servant, and that makes it a welcome turning over if that’s God’s design, as opposed to being turned over to be physically punished for blasphemy.  So as believers, we seek to avoid that by the pursuit of a holy life.  Let’s bow in prayer.

Lord God, we come with hearts that have literally been stirred because of what the Word has spoken to us today.  We know we’re in a great supernatural warfare, and we know that as Christians, we belong to You, and however you choose to use us as Your soldiers, we want to be used.  Whatever loss there might need to be in order that there can be greater gain, we can accept.  But Lord, we seek not to be chastened, to be turned over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh because of evildoing, because of blasphemy against You, because we have rejected the holy life to which You’ve called us and for which You have empowered us in Your Spirit.  So Lord God, call us to obedience and effect that in us by the power of the Spirit.  Draw us away from the world and the subtle sins which appear to us to be not sins at all but are blasphemies against You.  Show those to us, those secret faults, those presumptuous sins of which the psalmist wrote, that we might know Your hand of blessing in whatever may come.  We want to have the wider view, and that is to see the spiritual conflict and to be a part of it in whatever way we can for Your glory.  Keep us from fighting poorly and help us to fight a noble war, realizing our responsibility and accountability to the church as those who are called and commissioned and confirmed for service, realizing our responsibility to You to hold the faith and a pure conscience, and realizing our responsibility to deal with the enemy that the church might maintain its purity.  Father, help us to find that evil in our own hearts, find that evil that is among us, and Lord, what we can’t find, would You find and remove that we may be a testimony to Your glory.  And I would pray also, Lord, for any in this congregation this morning who are already turned over to Satan, who are already suffering at his hand.  If it be for a positive reason, Lord, give them great faith and strength in it, build them up, make them more useful.  And Lord, if it be in a chastening way, may they repent, may they turn from their sin that they may be recovered from the devil.  If it be that they are on the brink of eternal judgment in the hands of Satan, O God, may it be that they embrace the Savior before it is too late.