First Timothy, Lesson 5 Start
1 Timothy · JD McCulley · Apr 28, 2024
1 Timothy, No. 011
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261934585616

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right, guys. Lesson five, right? Otherwise, we'll just go fly by. We've done that before, once or twice. Well, this is 1 Timothy 1, 9 through 11. So who can grab from your Bible 1 Timothy chapter 1, verses 9 through 11 and read that for us? I'll add 8, too.

OK. But we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, realizing the fact that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, and immoral men, and homosexuals, and kidnappers, and liars, and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted." Thank you. So, the objective of the verses that Courtney just read for us It compares two things. We're going to talk about that. But did you notice the comparison of... I mean, there's a laundry list there. But what are the two major things being contrasted? And I'll give you a hint.

Verse 11 is much different than verse 9 and verse 10. So, what do you see there? The law. and the things that a righteous person is not made for. The law being not made for a righteous person, but the law is made for the lawlessness. And we're going to talk about those things. But then in verse 11, what does it say?

According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which I've been entrusted. So, there's a contrast of what the law was made for, and what Paul is telling Timothy that he is now made for, the glorious gospel, because he's been entrusted to that. So you've got the law and the gospel. We're going to talk about the relationship between God's law and the gospel. So let's start with question one. What is the danger of misapplication of the law? How do you even misapply the law? It's going on pretty regularly now. You have to see what the good of the law is.

Is this the mosaic law? or not? No. No? Why? Verse 8 is talking about the Mosaic. It has a definite article, the law of them. The law, yeah. In verse 8 it's the law, and in verse 9 it's general law, or general laws, not the Mosaic law. Yes. So yeah, what he's talking about is just general. The law in general. The law in general. Yeah, if we had the word the preceding, then we would be given potentially a different perspective.

But this is the law in general. And I think that when you start to think about the law in general and how it's mishandled, what does that mean to you? How do you mishandle the law? How do you misapply the law? Well, that's a trick question. I'll give you that. the kingdom law, which is important for you. Or, on the other side of the spectrum, you could adopt the attitude that, well, you know, I'm saved and I don't sin anymore. I don't have any restraints. So you can either mishandle it as a believer by placing yourself under it or thinking that you fulfill it. Is the law to serve the truth? Yeah, the law is good. The law is righteous. But, is it for the righteous man in Christ?

No, it's not. So the mishandling of the law has to do with either getting underneath it, and I had a conversation in the last couple weeks here about a gentleman who is into kind of a messianic Christian movement, Hebrew, he's got very, you know, trappings of all of that, and he finds his wife and himself go completely different directions.

She's under grace and he's under law. and they cannot communicate. There's no way for them to have a conversation about their lives because he thinks that he's fulfilling the law by the righteous deeds that he does, and she's under grace and understands that the Lord has done that for her. It's not her job. And they can't keep their marriage in a way that reflects anything like what we would see here in the scripture. So, you know, the man that needs moral absolutes, needs to be rebuked, needs to be pointed in the way that the law does, is not the believer. The law is to point the unbeliever to Christ, right? And we're going to talk about a few verses there, but Mike, you mentioned in your notes that our society today is turning away from moral absolutes to self-interpretation.

So, it's the pendulum, right? I was thinking about the pendulum analogy, and I thought about trying to draw it this morning, but I'm not going to concern myself with that, because it'll be horrible. You have licentiousness and legalism, right? That's for the unbeliever. For the believer, I think the pendulum is law, grace. And you're going to swing. And you're going to find that the Lord's message to us in this dispensation, this household rule of God, has everything to do with grace. So the believer swings between legalism and licentious. They try to keep things, they try to reject them altogether.

Our society has probably gone more towards the side of licentiousness, right? And that's where you get into your self-interpretation. I was telling a friend, you know, Christianity is a lot like a buffet. You know, you walk up, And if you remember ever going to, I don't know, Golden Corral or Fur's Cafeteria, and especially as a young person, you're like, I want that, I want that, I want that, I want that, I want all that. And your mom's like, no, you don't need all that. You can come back a second time if you really need all that. You're like, nope, I want all of it. And you fit as much as you can on that tray, right?

And that's exactly what unbelief in today's society is like. And it was just like that. in the time of the Israelites as well. Certainly, you know, we can get to God. We'll just build a building, and it'll keep going up, and we'll get there, and we'll achieve those things, and we'll just kind of add what we need to add to make God more adaptable to our society.

And so, it's not that it's a new thought. Self is not new. Self is predominant throughout history. What's happening for us, and this is not a political rant or anything like that, but what's happening for us as Americans is we're seeing the moral pinning of our country be lost to complete and total postmodern self-interpretation.

It's what I want it to be. It doesn't matter if that happened in history, I can erase it. It doesn't matter what happened to me personally, I can pretend like it didn't happen, and I can reinterpret, just like I can create a buffet of thinking, just like I can create a buffet of food. Whatever it is that I want to combine for the day that makes me happy with the moment, that's what I'll do.

I'll stop there. What do you think about that? I think the key word is self. It's always self-focused. The grace part is Christ-focused, the world is self-focused, and it's all about me and what I think and what I want. It's just a contrast to me. It's between Christ-focused and self-focused.

If it's self-focused, it's whatever you want. You go to the buffet, whatever you want, you'll get. So I can make anything legal in my self-interpretation. Well, you can choose which laws to keep too, right? I mean, there are 613, but I will choose the 10th. I'll take just the first 10. And if I do a pretty good job with that, then thumbs up.

Galatians 3, 24 and 25, Therefore the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ. We talked about this last week a little bit. so that we may be justified, not by the law, but by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. The law had its place in your life.

It's an important tool, and it's the only way that we can understand morality from God's perspective. He had to establish a law for us to know what we looked like when we looked in the mirror. What do you see when you look in the mirror as an unbeliever? If the law is the mirror and it's showing you yourself, what are you seeing?

I can't do this. But if you, there's a lot of folks that think like, okay, I could probably do that. I'll try to do that. And what does it ultimately always end in? Failure. Because it wasn't designed to be fulfilled by you. It's a tutor. It takes you by the hand and it leads you to the Savior. That's the purpose.

What I don't understand about believers and non-believers alike who are good people, you know, that they set a moral standard for themselves, that they can live with, and therefore they judge themselves as being okay. You see a lot of that with peers of mine that came out of Catholicism who probably lived something other than a righteous life when they were young, but now that they're old, they're really humping down the road trying to make sure that they've got enough on the good side of the ledger that God will recognize them. I think they all think in the curving method. Oh yeah, God grades on a curve. As long as my good outweighs my bad.

That example we used to use with Good Seed with the doll and all the little knots that represented the ball. I can't remember that actual verse, but... If you break one, you break the ball. And then we'd take scissors and down goes the little doll. Yeah, so what we would do is we'd have a visual. It was a rope. or string with 10 knots, representing the 10 commands. And here you are on the end. And then we read that verse from the book of James about when you, I believe it's James, when you break one, you break them all. And so then we'd cut it. And that was the visual for, is that what you're gonna put your hope in? You don't break any of it?

It's amazing today. Justification of law-breaking because you have an agenda that you're really passionate about. I may go out and demonstrate and cause property damage and do all kinds of stuff because I fervently believe that somebody is not treating somebody else the way I think they ought to. Well, and we know that when self is responding to law, you put laws around the laws, and you continue to find ways to protect yourself from actually breaking the law. Well, and not only that, you find ways to break it. Without having broke it. That's right. Isn't that funny?

Or justify why you're doing what you're doing. Galatians 5, the passage is quite long, I won't read it all, but In verse 18, 518, it talks about, if you are led by the Spirit, you're not under the law. So the mishandling has to do, I think, with those two things we talked about. You either want to fulfill it, because that's what self wants, is to either follow a moral absolute to the point where you get gratification from yourself about having accomplished those things, and you feel like, I've achieved those moral absolutes.

The other side is that How do we say it? One side is that we try to keep it, the other side is that we turn to picking and choosing, right? And trying to figure out how we can get around it. So, there's so many different ways that our human nature tries to adjust, but in the end of the day, the law was not designed for the believer. It was not designed for the righteous man. So number two, catalog those whom the law can effectively serve. If it's not for you, then what can it do? Who can it serve? There's a list of names. It's Ruthie. Oh. Was that the Holy Spirit? I can't see anybody up here.

So we have a laundry list here. Who is the law for? We'll start with the very beginning. You've got the lawless. Those are the anarchists. We see those on TV quite a bit these days. The rebellious. We could also say the militants. So you've got lawless, rebellious. That's the first pairing. This is who the law is for. The lawless. The militant. The rebellious.

The second combination is you've got the ungodly and sinners. And it points to those who have disregarded God altogether. Disregards to as well. Then you've got the unholy and the profane. So those are the folks that have zeal, but only for the secular things of life. There's no spiritual place. Unholy, lack of holiness, right? Profane, speaks out against zealously.

And then you've got those that kill, kidnap, lie, and perjure. All self-interest, right? What's the self-interest? Kill? You're a danger to me. Or, I don't want you here. So, selfishly, you're gone. Or, selfishly, I do want you, and I'm going to take you, and I'm going to kidnap and steal. And then the last one has to do with murder against fathers and mothers.

What I think is interesting about this list is if you hill back into the Old Testament, bring up Exodus chapter 20 and you start going through the Ten Commandments, you see all but one thing represented here. So I really do believe that this striking list of who the law is designed for, what it was created for. It was created for the lawless, it was created for the unholy, it was created for the profane, for those that kill, kidnap, human traffic, all of those kinds of modern day examples of these terms, and I say modern, they were done back then too, slavery was just as real then as it is today. It still happens, right? The law was designed for these. I'll stop there and let you give me some thoughts.

Yeah. I marveled this week at the Supreme Court. They're arguing the immunity a president has by acts that he does while the president, and they just think it's okay for him, because he is the president, to order the death of an enemy. I can't see, I mean, trust me, I wouldn't have it the other way. Yeah. Because then the president couldn't do anything. He'd be ducking all the time. But our Supreme Court, which is the highest law of the land, says, well, because you're in a position of power, some of these laws don't apply to you. Sure. We need a loophole. Yeah.

I find that interesting. How could a righteous man be the president? I'm not sure he could. So your thinking is that even the highest rank in the land still gets loopholes out of the law? Sure. Why? Because of self? I wonder about that, Mike, too. I mean, think of all the battles that the believers in the Old Testament, I mean, they wiped out whole kingdoms.

Sure. And righteously took care of enemies and that. So it wasn't like God said that murder is without kind of righteous intent, I guess. Yeah, this is the conversation that we didn't want to have a couple months ago when I taught, and Nick came out and talked to me about it. Yeah, I think that, first of all, there's the law of the land. That's what we've talked about, right?

Operating underneath the law of the land. Some of you may want to talk about this more with me at another point in time, but there are certain times when the law of the land does not serve the Lord righteously. It is not righteous. The law is not righteous, the law of the land. And you have to make a decision to deal with the consequences of breaking that law of the land based on your commitment to the Lord.

We've had to do that. We had to leave England for a reason. There was a reason we came here, and there's a reason why we're going to face difficult decisions based on the law of the land moving forward. That's not particularly what this is about, but we did touch on it in Titus, and it certainly has to do with these epistles, the pastoral epistles.

Will you deal with the consequences of standing up for the Lord against the law of the land? Well, you should. And you should deal with them. I spoke to that, having just finished the Concealing Carry class. It was interesting. The whole class was about, when are you justified to pull the trigger? And even if you were justified, you're going to get arrested. Yeah. Well, you know, how can you be a Christian and be a soldier? Yeah. Moses? I mean, he wasn't a Christian, but he was a man of God, and he had murder on his resume. Sure. Yeah, I mean...

Again, I go back almost to Romans 7.13, that God puts in the authorities, and you're subject to those authorities.

So if you're in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and you're under that authority, law of the land or whatever. I think it supersedes this or something. It's not murder. You're under command and you're lawfully under the commander, the authority put in by God. Now, if you do criminal acts, horrendous things, killing people wantonly, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, this sword. I mean, there's a divine institution of protection, right? Yeah. Let's take a little bit of a detour back to these questions. I think that's really good.

In the first portion of the Ten Commandments, this is covered in these verses that we're looking at this morning in 1 Timothy. You've got the lawbreakers and the rebels, the ungodly and the sinful, and the unholy and irreligious. And then you get into the second set, which is the second part of the Ten Commandments. Only one You know, that's not mentioned, because you've got murderers, you've got those who kill their mothers and fathers, adulterers, perverts, all those sexual sin. You've got slave traders, you've got liars, perjurers. The only commandment that isn't covered by what Paul is talking about here is the 10th commandment, which has to do with coveting.

I was like, well, we've got a break. You can covet. Oh wait, then there's Roman 7-7. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? May it never be. On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the law, for I would not have known about coveting. There's that tenth one. If the law had not said, you shall not covet. So, who is the law designed for? That list of people that you just read. Who is the law not intended for today?

For a believer, and I think they're the only group of people that ever were and ever will be under a system of grace. They're the only ones. Because Israel wasn't under a system of grace. None of the old patriarchs were. They were always given commands by God and said to carry them out. The Millennial Kingdom will be the Sermon on the Mount type law principle. God will put the law in a Jewish man's heart so that they'll observe it.

But what's interesting is that you mentioned covet, which means desire. That desire never goes away from the sin nature. It's always desiring. That's what it does. That's the one characteristic of the sin nature is desire. It doesn't matter what it is, it's the thing, desire itself. Yeah, it's the reigning motivation for any human being. And just becoming a believer does not erase that desire. But led by the Spirit, rather than keeping the law, are two separate things. When you're led by the Spirit, what happens to those desires? They're still there. They didn't go anywhere. But what happens to those desires when being led by the Spirit?

Because that's the operation of grace. I have an experience I went through in college. Everybody wanted to go to this specific class because they got an A automatically. And it was the study of the Book of John. And the professor, he was real gracious. Right when he joined the class, okay, y'all got an A. Left it at that. He let in three people up to really study the book of John. So, everybody desired to go to his class. Yeah.

Well, yeah, the flesh wants the easy path, right? And maybe the Spirit does, too. It's not always that we have to go the hard route. But I guess my question is, being led of the Spirit, what happens to those desires to fulfill the law? In this case, we know we've got the murderers, we've got the evil. I'm more so talking about, in this case, How does being led by the Spirit protect you from keeping the law?

It goes back to focus. You focus on the Lord or focus on self. If you're being led by the Spirit, you're not focusing on self. I don't know if it's suppression, but it's not the focus. Your focus is on the Lord if you're being led by the Spirit. So that takes you away from selfish desires and what you want. Well, it's interesting that if you have a desire to fulfill the law, you can know that that is not being led of the Spirit. The Spirit does not want to create a desire in your heart to keep the law.

What is it doing? It's convicting and convincing. He is convicting and convincing you about a person. He's pointing you right back to the one who did it, which takes all the pressure off of you, but requires you to depend on that truth. Fulfilling the law has a lot to do with our dependence upon ourself. Yeah.

I think a lot of times we don't talk about the fact that there are principles under grace. And the principles are based on the fact that if I am a believer, and I have been crucified, buried, and resurrected in Christ. Christ is the life, and he lives his life by principles. And they're not law principles, they're grace principles. And I think one of the difficult things in spiritual growth is to understand that there are principles of this new life. that are supposed to be manifested through you, but you're right, the difference is I'm not depending on the Lord or the Spirit of God to actuate the mosaic law through me, but the life of Christ. Christ fulfills everything without a consequence.

We're talking about the principles, right? The principles of grace, that it's not this willy-nilly, like, oh, I've been saved, and I now have my own path and journey, and it's free from any kind of law. What it's not free from is these principles that you're talking about.

And I think that in this chapter, it's encapsulated by the term Sound Doctrine. Sound Doctrine contains these principles. So, it's not as though we just get saved and we have a free pass from there on out. We have sound doctrine to guide us. And that sound doctrine contains each of those principles that lead us to a person. Right? I was just going to say, doesn't the cross have to fit in there somewhere? Oh, that's one of the sound doctrine principles. It's the first, right? Death first.

I can't remember which fancy term for him and which of the epistles, but one of them is that Paul addresses the people who spiritually, but then their body is free, so they can do whatever they wanted. I forget what the term for them. It's not agnostics, but there was some term for them that basically said, I'm spiritual, so all the sin is sinful.

They can do whatever it wants. So he was addressing the fact that I can get away with murder in my body. I can do whatever I want because that's the body and the flesh. It's the danger, I guess, of a believer. kind of, I'm not under law. My flesh now can do anything at once. And we kind of got that in the grace class too, that grace means you sit in a room and do nothing. We just sit back and do nothing. So I guess my point is there's a danger of this thought of being not totally under law so I can do whatever I want.

That's why it kind of grew back to Romans 13 and some of those. We still have laws and we still have to obey them. I can't just go down I-25 at 125 miles an hour. I'm still under the subject of the authorities and the laws. There are some things as a believer that we are still under law, not just we're completely willy-nilly to do whatever we want. We'll still do it.

Oh, absolutely. The thing that's interesting, I've noticed in the Monday night class, we're talking about reckoning. Uh-huh. And a lot of that has to do with study, study, study, study, study. I see that word over and over again, which is a principle of grace. Well, if I look at it from the old man's viewpoint and a law view, well, I have to get in there, and I have to become a scholar, which is the wrong motivation, I think. I think so, too. I tried it. And the spirit of God is the motivator of what the principles are.

Then you find yourself, I think, not You find yourself, that's good. Complying and studying because it's a wonderful thing to do. You get to spend time with the Lord. And if you didn't say to the Lord, okay, I want to find out, because I need to know. You have to be told. Yeah, I've got to learn this. If I don't, Who knows? I'm going to flounder around. Well, you can't reckon on what you don't know. That's right. You only have yourself. You only have your sin nature to comply with.

And that's where those desires kind of come in. So I know that I got a little off track and we're at the end here, but I think it'll be interesting next week to really hit on this sound doctrine. Because you've got this laundry list, you talk a lot about our society, but I think the edifying real kind of meat of this passage has to do with that, the sound doctrine through the gospel itself. So that'll be good to get into next week.

So let's go ahead and close in prayer. Father, how we thank you that while we do have the sin nature and you use that to teach us of ourself and to lead us to the cross, And even more importantly, through the cross, the resurrection side of the cross. And Lord, we're thankful that you've given us your spirit to lead us, to guide us, that you are our righteousness and that it is not through fulfilling the law. It is through the grace that you've provided through the glorious gospel of which you were entrusted, or that we have been entrusted as well as Paul. And we thank you for that. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.