First Timothy Lesson 34 cont.

Okay, so we have moved now into Lesson 35, and it's a little bit longer, a few more questions. Were there any questions left over from last week that had to do with fight the good fight of faith and take hold of eternal life? Everybody walk out of here fairly clear about that. I guess not, or I guess you did. Don't you all speak at once? So I'll do this.

What's the difference between hold fast, take hold of eternal life, and fight the good fight of faith? They're not the same thing. What's different about them? The good fight of faith that we spent a lot of time talking about was the fact that the contest is between what you know to be true and not be varied away from it, and what all of the noise that you hear around you that try to try to dissuade you that what you do know is true.

Just for the fun of it, I want a show of hands. How many people can be going along and walking with the Lord during the day and all of a sudden a thought comes in your mind that says to you, is this stuff really true? I got one. The rest of you must be super Christian. And then the one thing I know that we didn't spend a lot of time on last week was take hold of eternal life. What is eternal life? What is it?

Who is it? it's the Lord Jesus. So really what he's saying is, take hold of the Lord Jesus. Because in John 17, eternal life is the Father that they may know me and you that sent me. Eternal life is them. And a lot of Christians don't realize that the reason that you spend time in the Word and pray and spend as much time as you can afford with the Lord so that you can come to know the Lord Jesus Christ. That, in fact, is what eternal life is. He is eternal life. So the whole idea is to come to know Him.

The next set of verses We are in 1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 13, 14, 15, and 16. 13 says, I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep the commandment without stain or reproach, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus, which he will bring about at the proper time, he who is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen." What a statement. So my first question on these verses, verse 13, I charge you in the presence of God. What does I charge you mean? I'll give you some background.

First Timothy 1.3, Paul said to Timothy, I urge you upon my departure from Macedonia, remain at Ephesus in order that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines." And then in verse 5 of chapter 1, But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. And then you drop down to 118. He said, this command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may fight the good fight of faith.

So this letter is written to Timothy and we're getting down towards the end of the letter and so Paul really challenges, I think is a good word, challenges Timothy or charges him to persevere, I'm sorry, in the presence of God who gives life to all things. He's given him direction in what to do. And this is after he said in the first chapter, well, here's what God has done to prepare you for what you're doing.

What was his job? Do you remember? Why was Paul writing to him? Timothy had a job. What was it? He was a pastor of which church? What town? Ephesus. So Ephesus is a fairly big church, and Timothy is a reasonably young guy with a lot of older guys around him.

So he's been encouraging Timothy all through 1 Timothy to have backbone about his job, is really what he's saying. Fight the good fight of faith. So, but I charge you as an interesting thing. Paul's far away and he feels impelled to remind Timothy, who is in the chain of command, he's a lieutenant in the church, that there are real witnesses of his conduct.

People pay attention, they watch you, they know. If you're the pastor of a church or you're an elder in a church, people pay attention to how you live. You guys watch me like hawks, right? No? You don't? Oh, well I can sort of slough off once in a while, right?

It's really interesting how important, this is an interesting point that Paul is making to Timothy, that the unseen presence of of the Lord in your life, you may not see it, but others do. Like I see it in you guys, but you don't know what I see and what I don't see. You also see it in elders and deacons, people that are involved in ministering. The Apostle Paul, probably of all men, lived in close relationship to the Son of God most of the time, more so than most any other man.

Do you agree with that? And so he's encouraging Timothy to do the same thing. And what's good about that is that it's not just for Timothy. It's for every one of us as believers that we have, if we've studied the word, we have access by faith into the grace of God and into the intimate personal relationship with the Lord Jesus.

And I know, you know, when I asked the question before, hold your hand up if you had doubts this week. Well, that's one of the ones you're going to have doubts about. Because you're going to say to the Lord, well, gee, I don't know what that's like. You know? Donna?

Well, it seems too in this verse that it's like a heavenly charge. It's in the sight of God and Jesus Christ. So it's kind of like placing Him in the reality, not what He's getting in the world down here from whoever. But that His real calling is a heavenly calling. That's a great point. Do you understand what Donald's talking about?

We live on the earth. We're earthly people. Everybody, you know, we were talking about Minnesota before. Except as a Christian, you're not an earthling anymore. You're now a spiritual person in Christ Jesus and you're elevated above. Do you get that? I know you don't get that taught very much, but the Lord Jesus Christ is a spiritual man. If you spend any time reading the Gospels, He's always talking up here, and the disciples are down here trying to figure out what He means. You have to be spiritually alive, which is in Christ and dwelt by the Holy Spirit, to understand what the Lord is saying. And so he's saying to Timothy, look, you're like me. We're in Christ spiritual men. And the body of Christ is with us here.

You're not down on the earth trying to make it better. You're up here, spiritual people. And so stay where you are. Don't descend down here and try to... And what you see in most of Christianity today is Christians will come down to the earth trying to fix it or modify the doctrine so that it will appeal to earthly people. No. When you invite somebody to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, what are you saying to them? You're saying to them, what I want you to do is to leave where you are. which is in sin and death and in the world, and come to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is above the earth. He's a spiritual man. I'm not coming into your environment. I want you to come into mine, which is with Christ. That's really what you're asking somebody to do.

And that's why salvation is rejected a lot, because I don't think that point is made clear. Is it clear the way I'm saying it? So if you're talking to a non-believer, what you're really telling them or asking them or inviting them to do is to leave. The two guys that led me to the Lord, they made it so clear to me about that.

They said to me, I said to them one day, they said, why don't you just do it? I said, I don't know why. I got the facts. And one of the guys said to me, he said, well, what do you see in your mind? I said, well, if I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I think I'm going to die. He said, yeah, you are. I said, well, that's not cool.

I don't want to do that. die to the world, come into Christ. So when I finally did believe, I knew that instantly I was separated from the world. I've known that from day one. Doesn't mean I don't live in the world and I don't sin, because I do, but I know I'm separated. I know I'm, like I've been talking from the pulpit the last few times I'm up there, that Christianity is a new race of human beings that are spiritual people in Christ Jesus, and they're not earthly people anymore.

We're here, we live here, we still have an earthly body, but our life is hid with Christ and God now, right now. And so, if you find yourself in an environment where people are trying to get you to make the earth better. We're not in that job. We're not in that business. Our business is to call out people to Christ, a bride for the Lord Jesus eventually.

That's really what happens. It's the deal. So when Paul exhorts Timothy, he charges him in the presence of God. Where's Paul coming from? The presence of God. He's here. And he says to him, who gives life to all things? And what does it mean that he gives life to all things? To give life, in the Greek, is a word that sounds like this. Z-O-O, zoo, P-O-I-E-O. And what it means is to quicken or to make alive.

So what does that say about every human being that's born on the planet that doesn't know Christ? That they're not alive, in the sense that Paul's talking about, in the sense that believers are alive. you're dead in trespass and sins. Death means separation. So every human being is separated, because they come from Adam, from the life of God.

And so what Paul is telling Timothy, I'm charging in the presence of God who gives life, and this isn't making your chihuahua live. This is giving you spiritual life, his life. And so one of the expositors wrote, the word here is a special appropriateness. Timothy is encouraged to exhibit moral courage by assurance that he is in the hands of the one whose protective power is universal. And by the example of one who, as man, put that protective power to a successful test and was saved out of death.

Hebrews 5, 6, and 7. Somebody look that up. Hebrews 5, 6, and 7. It's a verse that refers to the Lord Jesus. It's an interesting verse. He says, in another place, you are a priest forever in the order of his death. During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death. And he was heard because of his reverent submission.

So here we go. Now, who is Melchizedek? He's a really cool guy, right? Melchizedek was a high priest of God that even Abraham paid tithes to because he recognized that he was a man from God. But it's interesting, one able to save him from death, and it was heard because of his, my version says, piety.

The thing is, is that Well, I'll put it in the form of a question. Who can save you? Can you save yourself? Can you give yourself eternal life? Can you earn it? Can you show up one day at the gates and say, look, I got 39 things right and 15 wrong. You let me in? No. What do you need to get into glory, to get into heaven? What's the ticket? You know, like if you're going to a Bronco game today, you've got to have a ticket. You don't have a ticket, you don't get in. What's the ticket to get into heaven? You have to be what? Godly. You have to be righteous. And whose righteousness do you have to have? His. You've got to have his. That's the ticket. If you don't have that, you don't get in. And the only way you get that is by faith.

And even the Jews could have it way back when with Abraham. The big argument in Romans 9, 10, and 11, the fact that God says through Paul, hey, I offered you righteousness if you would just believe me and you would be in the kingdom. And they said, no, never mind. We'd rather work for it. So yeah, you could spend a couple hours with Melchizedek. He's really kind of a neat guy. And notice what he says towards the end of the verse. He said, Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate. Why did he go there? I mean, why does he reference Jesus who testified before Pontius Pilate? What's confession? Let's define terms. What's the word confession mean? It means to say the same thing. Same thing as who?

Now notice that Jesus testified a good confession before Pilate. So he's before Pilate, and what is he telling him? He's saying to him that I am... Pilate asked him if he was a king. He said, yeah, I am, but my kingdom isn't of this world. And you have to understand, Pilate is a Gentile. He's not a Jew, so he doesn't understand Jewish mindset. But what he's saying, what Paul is saying to Timothy is that the truthfulness of Timothy's confession, he's got to have it clear.

He can't modify it or he can't make it fit his personality or fit. You notice that when you go look at that, Jesus did not modify his confession because he was talking to Pilate. The one interesting thing about studying the Gospels is that the confession of Jesus Christ, what he taught, is consistent. It never changes. He doesn't say, well, these guys don't really like what I'm saying, so I better modify it a little bit. He doesn't do that.

Pilate says that the mention of Pontius Pilate in connection with the crucifixion is of constant occurrence in the early church writings. Why is that so important? Because the Lord Jesus is the day he's going to die. And he doesn't, even before the most powerful nation in the world, And it's Representative Punch's pilot.

He doesn't change his confession. He doesn't modify a thing. As a matter of fact, we're studying on Tuesday, and Mark, and Wednesday night, and John. And Mark, we've moved into what we call Passion Week. where we're going to have the Last Supper and the Lord's going to be arrested and that kind of thing. What you notice in there and all the other Gospels is that every single event that happens in that week is orchestrated and controlled by Jesus. Nobody else controls anything but Him. It's really important to know that because it puts the Lord Jesus Himself in the deity category that even he orchestrates every second of his own death.

And he tells them, you're not taking my life from me. I'm freely giving it. I decide. You don't. Now, you're going to be the instrument used for my dying and the method in which you're going to do it, but I'm the one that controls this. Does that ever change? that to the Lord Jesus there's anything going on in your life that he doesn't control? Never. Never. So there's your answer to praying for the Broncos.

A good confession made by Jesus before Pilate concerned his messiahship and from a human standpoint it cost him his life. You think the Lord Jesus said, well, I'll try to soften this up. Maybe he won't kill me. No, he's going to kill him because it's Jesus. And the father decided this is the way it was going to happen.

This is indicated here to encourage Timothy to stand for the truth and especially pertinent because Timothy's kind of timid. So do you ever find yourself sort of timid about the gospel to somebody who maybe is close to you? Or, oh gee, I don't want to hit them all at one time, or I don't want to give them the full... No, you can't be. It's a matter of life and death. You got a thought, Donna? The sun's in your eyes. Do you see that?

As we live as believers, just like Timothy and exhortation from Paul, he's been telling Timothy for five chapters, here's who you are in Christ, and here's the position that God has called you to occupy, the pastor of the church of Ephesus. So act like you're that pastor. And you are seated in the heavenlies in Christ, like I am, and there's nothing to be timid about, even if you have older people trying to intimidate you.

The same way with us. I have four or five guys I went to college with that aren't saved, and they're all like me, and some of them are not too healthy. And they're probably getting tired of me giving them the gospel. But I give it to them every time I talk to them. I do it in different ways.

I ask them, you're going to die within the next few years, yeah? They'll admit to that. I say, do you know where you're going to be? Where do you go from here? And some of them say, well, I hope I go to heaven. I say, well, wouldn't you like to be sure?

And it's like, don't tell me anymore, I've heard enough. I have one buddy who's kind of resigned himself that he's going to hell and there's nothing he can do about it. He's probably the only one out of the bunch that'll get saved. But you can't be timid about life and death. One thing I've noticed as I've gotten older now, I spend a lot more time with doctors. The good ones are not timid. They tell you, this is the problem, this is how we're going to fix it. And it's, oh yeah, it's going to hurt. And yeah, this is the way it's going to go. And you appreciate that. You just say, well, why don't you put me to sleep before you start all that?

So you understand what Paul is doing to encourage Timothy to, we would call it in our society, to step up. It wasn't that he wasn't doing a good job. There's just evidence that older men who had been around longer would intimidate him, or try to. He would say to them, that Paul says to him, push back. The Lord Jesus, even before Pilate, didn't cower. He laid it out there, even though it was going to cost him his life.

Verse 14, and that you keep the commandment without staying or reproach until the appearing of the Lord Jesus. So the word keep here means to observe or to protect or preserve. You don't modify it and it's, in the Greek tense, it's an aorist imperative, which means it's fact and it's a command. You don't get to say, well, you don't get to decide about this.

And it's almost like this word is used primarily in the military circles. Those of you who have ever been in the military, one of the things that you learn pretty quickly is that when someone who's over you tells you to do something, there's not an argument about it. You do it. Because the consequence is way more severe. Because what do you do in the military? You're a fighter. So this order is pretty sharp to Timothy. He needs to follow it.

He wasn't, maybe put it this way, Timothy wasn't cast in the heroic mold of Paul the Apostle. I don't know, have you ever thought about, what do you think Paul the Apostle, the stature of him was? I think he was probably little, something like that, and skinny, but he was like a wolverine.

He starts out, before he's a believer, arresting Christians and putting them in jail and killing some of them. So people didn't like to see him show up in their town if they were a Christian. And then when the Lord saves him, he still has that zeal. But now he recognizes that the zeal that he has is The energy for that zeal comes from the Spirit of God, so it made him even more aggressive.

Aggressive is probably a good term about the way he is. So Timothy, or Paul, who is Mr. Aggressiveness, is telling Mr. Timidity, you know, buck it up there. So here's a big question. What commandment was Paul talking about? We've got two minutes. He says to him that you keep the commandment without staying. What commandment is it?

Look at 1 Timothy 1.5. Somebody read it out loud. Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith.

So that refers to responsibility that Paul has given Timothy. Paul is the one giving him the commandment. And that Paul's the one that laid this commandment, or charged him, And this whole chapter 1 has to do with those who teach other doctrines other than what Paul has taught him. So the commandment is not something from the Decalogue or the Mosaic. It's, I gave you this commandment.

I want you to keep it. See that? So when he says, that you keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, what I have commanded you to do as the pastor of the church at Ephesus and as a servant of the Lord is that, among other things, you make sure that the doctrine that anybody around you teaches is the right doctrine, the one that you teach. And don't tolerate fables or you go through a whole list of things. That's the commandment. You all right with that? It's not anything to do with the Jewish commandments or anything like that. Okay, we're going to close there. Courtney will pick up on question five next week.

Father, how thankful we are for your word. It's instructive for us to look at Timothy. to see that not every one of your servants has the courage that the Apostle Paul has, but we recognize that Paul's instruction to Timothy is so important to us because we never want to offend anybody or anything, but it's a matter of eternal life or eternal separation from you. We ask that you would encourage us to not be timid. We thank you, Father, for your grace. We pray in your son's name. Amen.