Title: A Charge to God's Servant
Scripture: 1 Timothy 6:11-14
Speaker: Nate Pickowicz
I think one key truth that is often absent from modern preaching is the reality that we are living in the last days. I think that so many preachers, this is my belief personally, I think so many preachers shy away from that, about talking about that, I think partly because so many hucksters have sensationalized the end times. I think there's so much garbage that is being written and published and even said about the end times, it's just not true.
They publish books that forecast the end of days, and they stir people up into anxiety and fear. And yet, when we speak about the end, I want you to note this, and you could find this anywhere in the Bible that talks about the end, that God never commends such panic and such fear for His people, but rather He exhorts us to holiness. But the truth is that the moment that Christ ascended into heaven, we entered into the last days.
And while it has been nearly 2,000 years since that event, the imminence of Christ's return has not lessened, if anything, it's only increased. And we think about the words that Paul says in 2 Timothy chapter 3, just listen to this, Paul says, I realize this, in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power.
And then he adds, avoid such men as these, for among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. I mean, that reads like today's newspaper. I mean, that's the culture that surrounds us.
And even some of those themes that Paul teases out in that second letter, we've already seen demonstrated in 1 Timothy chapter 6. Of course, it's certainly true in Paul's day, but it's even more true even today. And I think our danger is that we are in a place where we could fall into such complacency that we take our eyes off of Christ and we focus only on our earthly lives today. And that's a real danger for us.
See, here's the thing. When we focus on this life only, we become wrapped up then in ourselves. We're wrapped up in our comfort, our desires, our money, our happiness here and now.
And the tendency is to focus so much on our best life now that we forget and neglect to consider our eternal life to come. But that's always been the challenge for every generation of every believer. And I think as we've seen in 1 Timothy so far, that was also the default of the false teachers in Ephesus who took advantage of and abused the church for their own financial gain.
And so, based on what Paul says in that part of the Scripture in 1 Timothy chapter 6, dealing with the tendency of false teachers, he grabs that reality and uses it as an opportunity to teach against that error and exhort God's people to godliness. And so, if you haven't already turned to 1 Timothy 6, I would invite you to do so in your copy of Scripture. 1 Timothy chapter 6, we are marching ever farther along into this letter.
We're going to finish this up in a few weeks here. And as we've seen over the last couple of weeks in the study, the key problem again with the false teachers centers around their pride, around their foolishness and their folly. It's centered around their depravity, their godlessness, and their greed.
And they believe that by presenting some facade of godliness, they would experience financial gain. Of course, the temptation didn't always exist for the false teachers, but it exists for believers as well. Which is why Paul commends, and we saw this recently here, Paul says here in 1 Timothy 6.6, he says, but godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied with contentment.
For if we have brought nothing into the world, we cannot take anything out of it either. If we have food and covering with these, we shall be content. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge men into ruin and destruction.
For the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. And some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. A lack of godliness, a lack of contentment, reveals the rotten fruit of greed and selfishness within the heart.
But starting in verse 11, Paul is going to build again even on that. And he's going to offer a series of imperatives that are designed to steer the believer, steer us away from greediness, away from discontent and selfishness and godlessness, and toward what God truly desires for us. So that's what we're going to see as we pick it up in verse 11 here today.
So 1 Timothy 6, starting in verse 11, Paul's continuing the argument here, and he says, But flee from these things, O man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
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 Christ. And we'll pause right there. Now the first thing I want you to see when you look at this passage, and it does continue, verse 15 and 16 are really part of the passage.
I contemplated doing all of it in one fell swoop, but that would lead to a two-hour sermon, and I just didn't want to do that to you this morning. And so we're going to look at verses 15 and 16 next week, but there really are one cohesive thought here. But look at verses 11 through 14 here, and what you're going to see is the use of imperatives in these verses.
Action verbs that give instruction. Look at these. Verse 11, flee from these things.
Pursue righteousness, godliness, etc. Verse 12, fight the good fight. Take hold of eternal life.
Verse 14, keep the commandment without stain or reproach. These are action verbs. These are imperatives.
They're commands. And these imperatives, they grab our attention, don't they? I mean, it's hard to read through these verses and just kind of skip lightly over these imperatives here, but they direct us toward the way of godliness. And so this morning, I want to build our discussion today together around these five imperatives in order to understand God's charge to all of us as His servants.
And so we're going to work right through one through five here, and you're going to see where this all fits into the argument. But the first one He commends here in verse 11 is, number one, to flee from evil. To flee from evil.
The original Greek here, this word, if you look at the verse, it says, verse 11, but flee from these things, you man of God. In the original Greek, the grammar of the Greek here, the word you is in the first position. It's in the emphatic position.
Greek is different than English. They place the word order based on emphasis and function, so there's some grammatical differences between English and koine Greek here. But some translations actually reflect this.
Some translations render the verse this way, but you, oh man of God, flee from these things. But regardless of how you rendered in the English translation, we can make some key observations here. The first thing here is that Paul addresses Timothy as a man of God.
That's not an accident, by the way. This title, man of God, that's an Old Testament prophetic address. It was used of people like Moses and Samuel and Elijah and David and so on and so forth.
All of them being called man of God. But even in the New Testament, you could really use this title for anyone who is serving the Lord. In fact, that's how 2 Timothy 3, 17 refers to those who are equipped by the power of God's Word.
We read in 2 Timothy 3, 16, all Scripture is inspired by God, breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. Why? So that the man of God will be adequate, equipped for every good work. Certainly it's written to a pastor, but it doesn't just apply only to pastors and ministry leaders.
Anyone who is doing ministry for the sake of the Lord could be regarded in such a way. And so again, it's applying to Timothy, but all believers serve the Lord, and you could take this on yourself. But I want to go back here to some more of the grammar.
The word but here in verse 11, it's a strong adversative. It's sort of a shift in direction. You're driving your car along, and all of a sudden you grab the wheel and you steer it sharply in another direction.
That's what this word but is doing in the verse, talking about the error of false teachers in verses 9 and 10, and then 11, but you. In other words, something different for you. Whereas those who fall into temptation, harmful desires, ruin and destruction, apostasy, misery, as those are getting caught up into that, Paul contrasts it, but you are to go a different way.
You are to focus on what is different. Well, what is that way? Well, frankly, it's the opposite way. The opposite way.
Because what is the but you leading to? He says, but flee from these things, you man of God. The word translated flee is fugo. It's where we get our English word fugitive, but it refers to some kind of an escape or a running away.
But more specifically, it's actually the connotation is a running away, but it's a fleeing to safety through flight. It's where you're running away from danger towards safety. Whenever there's any kind of an emergency, you watch the news and you see whenever there's some kind of an explosion or a catastrophe or a car accident or something where there's immense danger, you don't see people running into the danger or collapsing building.
You see them running away and finding shelter. That's the idea. That is the flee.
And he says that we are to flee from these things. Well, what are these things? Well, it's clear that Paul is referring to the all sorts of evil in verse 10. Now, he's certainly giving other examples, verse four, conceit, lack of understanding, abusive language, envy, strife, all those kinds of things.
But when he's talking about the all kinds of evil that were wrapped up in, he says, flee from those things, flee, flee from evil, from pride, flee from foolishness, flee from envy and strife and abuse and division and harmful desires and greed among all evils, flee, run away and find shelter. In fact, he uses the same method of exhortation elsewhere. First Corinthians 6.18, flee sexual immorality.
Chapter 10, verse 14, flee from idolatry. Second Timothy 2.2, flee from youthful lusts. This is a strong word, flee, run away.
And I think that we need this exhortation because it's so tempting to think that we can sort of play with fire and not get burned. We hold on to these little pet sins, things that we think we can get away with, not realizing that you can't dabble in sin and transgression and not fall into it. Just generally speaking, as Westerners, Christians who are in the West, I think that's a struggle for us is that we think we can play these games.
How close to the edge of the cliff can I get without falling over versus seeing the guardrail and saying, I want to go the other side of the guardrail as close to the safety of the mountain as I can. And so we're not to be messing around with these kinds of things. If you're being tempted towards sin or a pattern of sin, you need to run.
We see an example of this in Genesis 39, the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, probably the most famous example of this. Joseph is a righteous man. Potiphar's wife, who was the wife of the man who was over him, who was the captain of the guard there.
So strong, powerful position. So his wife literally tries to grab him to commit adultery, sexual morality, and he rips himself away and runs out the door and she's left holding his shirt. That's the kind of intentionality we have to run, even if it costs us something to run away, to flee.
And that's what's needed is to flee from these things. And I even know how this goes with us. Some of you are flirting with some kind of dangerous sin, some pet sin that you really need to be running away from.
Don't coddle it. Don't play games with it. Run.
But of course, we understand that running away isn't by itself enough, but rather you have to run towards something else, right? Because we can flee all day long, but if you have nowhere to flee to, you're just going to find yourself back where you started. So we are, yes, to run away, to flee, but it brings us towards something else. Number two, not just flee from immorality and flee from these wicked things, evil, but number two, to pursue the fruit of righteousness.
To pursue the fruit of righteousness. Again, in fleeing from evil things, we're called to pursue other things. It's the put off and put on principle of Ephesians chapter 4. And so this Greek word dioko refers to running after, pressing in, pursuing.
It's not just a casual jog, it's a sprint. You're running with your head down, chasing something. That's the pursuit.
Interestingly enough here, this same word is also used elsewhere in the New Testament, and in many cases it's translated as persecute, which I thought was very interesting. What does that mean? Well, it's the idea of an intense pursuit. Now in the connotation, when it's translated persecute in those contexts, it's a negative thing.
It's where an enemy of the church is running after and chasing believers to persecute them and hurt them. But again, the same sense of it, it's a sense of stalking almost. And so we don't do this negatively.
We don't pursue godliness in a way to persecute it or somehow do harm to it. It's quite the opposite actually. Again, you could pursue something negatively here, but Paul is commending to the man of God to pursue righteousness.
And it's expressed in six different Christian virtues here. We're not going to spend a ton of time, but I want to point these out to you. Six things he says to pursue.
First, we are to pursue righteousness. The Greek word is dikaiosine, righteousness. This can be translated a few ways here, but in the most basic sense, it means doing what is right according to the Lord.
Doing what is right according to the Lord. Scholar George Knight explains that it's the conduct according to God's will and pleasing to Him. So whatever you're doing that is in conjunction along with His will as revealed in the Word of God and that which is pleasing to Him that brings Him pleasure as our Lord God, that is what is righteous.
Again, by His standard. We don't set the standard of what is right. God does.
And so when we obey His righteousness, that's what's pleasing to Him. Whereas in the flesh, we engage in our own desires, but in righteousness, we do what God desires. And then closely connected to that is the second one, godliness.
We saw this last week. We've seen this several times in our study here. We looked at it last week.
This word is yesabia. It refers to either piety or a devotion to God, doing things in your life that are devoted to worshiping and serving Him. And so not just doing the things that God desires, but doing so from a heart that desires to do it.
When you're devoted, you're committed, right? It's not just an outward flashy thing. It's a focus of your mind and heart. It's your devotion.
It's your intentionality to God. It's the earnest pursuit of godlikeness. I don't just want to do the things that are pleasing to you to make you happy.
I actually want to be like you, God. That's the difference. Devotion to God.
Godliness is godlikeness, we saw last time. And in that, we also see third, pursuing faith. Pistis in the Greek is a trust in the Lord.
It's where you are leaning back and throwing your entire weight onto something, onto Him. That's the idea of faith, of trusting. Romans 117 notes that the righteous man is one who lives by faith.
In other words, everything you do in your life is by faith. Every decision you make, every action, reaction, what you do, what you say, how you think, how you respond. Everything is being done according to trusting in the purposes and the promises of God.
You're living a faithful life. Again, it's where you pursue a walk of faith whereby you submit everything to God and trusting Him with the results. Let me ask you the question.
Do you submit everything to God in your life? You say, what do you mean? When you make decisions, when you go to buy something, when you go to do something, when you take on a job, whenever you have a conflict, when you have a conversation, how much of God are you considering in His ways in your daily life? We are to be trusting Him at every step. There are no religious and secular things when it comes to the Christian. All of your life belongs to God.
All of your life is to be done in righteousness, in godliness, and by faith. Which leads us then to fourthly, we are also to pursue love. The word here is agape.
Agape is one of those words that we've been trying to define for centuries, but the sense of it I think is really this. It's a self-giving love. It's a compassionate love.
It's a God-like love. We know love humanly as other things, but a God-like love, an agape love, is the love that God gives us His Son. He gives us of Himself and then commands us to do likewise.
I've often thought about a definition, agape love is, it's the perpetual act of self-giving. That's love. Whereas sinful selfishness, it stirs up envy and strife and division, but rather we're called by Christ, John 13, 34 and 35, to actually love one another.
To prefer others, to care for them, to be compassionate, to give to them, to serve them, to pray for them, to consider their needs above our own, and to pursue ways that express that love on a daily basis. And in doing that, fifth, we are to pursue perseverance. Perseverance, who pōmenē in the Greek is also translated elsewhere as steadfastness in the ESV, endurance in the NIV.
Those are all the same family of words here, but it literally refers to remaining under something. Remaining under something. Well, how does that do with endurance? Well, the sense is this.
It's when you're exercising patience and trust while bearing up underneath adversity. When things get difficult, how do you bear up underneath it? How do you endure and survive and continue even when adversity is crippling down on you? All of us experience adversity, don't we? Sometimes it's just a little tiny bit. Maybe somebody gives you a hard time at your job and makes your life difficult for a day or two.
Maybe you have a financial setback. Maybe you're at odds with somebody. Maybe you get sick with a cold.
Those are the smaller things. But then other times there's debilitating illness, financial ruin, loss of a loved one, whatever it may be. How do you persevere? See, discontentment desires to accumulate more and more things in order to satisfy our desires and thereby deliver us out of the uncomfortability of life.
Discontentment says if I have enough things and achieve enough things, I can get out of this jam that I'm in. Ever go through a trial where you're like, I just want to get out of this thing. But sometimes the Lord doesn't let you out.
Sometimes you have to endure under the adversity, under the provident hand of God. Perseverance patiently submits to God underneath the trials and the adversity. John Stott calls this patience in difficult circumstances.
Patience in difficult circumstances. When you encounter adversity, trial, difficulty, how do you respond? Do you respond like petulant children stomping our feet? Lord, get me out of here or I'm going to throw a fit. Or do you say, Lord, whatever you will, I'll obey.
I'll submit. I'll follow. I accept whatever you have for me, Lord, even if it hurts me.
Even if you slay me, oh Lord, as the Bible would say, I will trust you. I will submit. That's hard to do, isn't it? But that is what we must do to persevere to the end.
And then lastly, he talks about not just pursuing steadfastness and endurance, but also pursuing gentleness. Why does he land on gentleness? This expression of the Greek word is unique. It's the only place in the New Testament where this Greek word appears in this way, praopatheia.
Textual scholars have noted this is the sense of meekness and humility, but especially in light of dealing with other people. It's one thing to have difficult time with circumstances. It's a whole other thing to have difficult time with other people, right? Again, John Stott defines perseverance as patience in difficult circumstances.
He then goes on to define gentleness as patience with difficult people. So not just the circumstance, but maybe the person causing the circumstance. We are to be gentle, peaceable.
And so again, we're not just running away from sin and evil, we're also running toward something else. And Paul, again, there's probably 55 or 100 other things he could say, but here he says pursuing righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness, but he knows it's not easy. This isn't easy.
I'm not giving you these prescriptions and saying, well, take six of these and go live a perfect life. That's not this at all. This is hard, isn't it? Which is why I believe he offers a third exhortation.
Number three, fight the good fight of faith. Now we're getting serious. Now there's a fight involved.
Now he's already mentioned this exhortation back in chapter 1 and verse 18. Remember that? It was a while ago. But he offers that.
He says, fight the good fight. Keep faith and a good conscience. We've got to be fighters.
But then Paul dials into something here. He identifies the nature of the Christian life. And again, I think if we don't realize that we're living in the last days and that there is spiritual warfare going on, not just outside of ourselves, but within ourselves, if we don't recognize where we are, we don't realize that we're actually in a war.
There is a fight for the soul of man. There is a fight for your soul every day of your life. He uses this word here, agonizomai.
Does that sound familiar to you? Agonizomai. It literally means struggle or fight or competition. It's where we get our word agonize.
And then he repeats the word again for the word fight. It's agon. So literally you could translate this exhortation, agonize the good agony.
How's that for a bumper sticker on the back of your car with a Jesus fish? I'm agonizing the good agony here. But that's the sense of it, isn't it? Fight the good fight. There is a fight to be had.
And that's how we ought to see it. And I think it's too easy for Christians to kind of coast through their life and think that we're in peacetime and we don't take it too seriously and we neglect our Bibles and we neglect to pray and we don't fight sin and we never seem to confess and we don't humble ourselves and we don't ever stand for Christ. I'll tell you, COVID did a number on evangelism.
COVID trained culture to separate from other people. And we all feel the effects of it. And I'll tell you, our church has, as wonderful as things have gone for Harvest Bible Church, I think one thing that we have struggled with since COVID is that we are too separated apart.
We don't reach out and talk to people, reach for people, get to know people. We don't go outside of ourselves. Again, I think part of that's nervousness and anxiousness and whatever the thing, but I think we've been culturally trained to be aloof.
But I'll tell you, COVID wrecked evangelism. We got to fight for that. We got to fight to get that back, to step out of the comfort zone and go and talk to people.
And I think in some sectors of culture right now, we're starting to see a revival of that, which I'm thankful for. But I think we've forgotten that we don't belong to ourselves. Your life is not your own.
Neither is mine. And the Bible actually says that we are God's soldiers. Soldiers.
2 Timothy 2.3, suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. How's that for an advertisement? Suffer hardship with me. That's how Paul deals with other people, other believers.
He says, no soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life. They don't worry about this life here as much so that they may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. Do we think about our life this way? Am I just doing this for my own benefit, for my own comfort? Or am I living my life to please the one who called me into service? We're soldiers.
We've been enlisted by God. Guess what? He doesn't have an A team and we're the B team. That's not a thing, guys.
We are the ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are the hands and feet. We are the body of Christ.
There's not another body. We're it. And so God is employing our uses, our gifts, our talents, our willingness.
He uses us to then bring the gospel, bring love, bring compassion, and to further the kingdom through human effort, believe it or not. Now it's divinely sovereign through his purposes, but he uses our warfare, our spiritual warfare. We've been enlisted by God, but I'll tell you, some of you don't want to fight.
Some are very happy to just sit back, let life pass. Well, I'm saved. I'm justified by faith apart from works to loss, so I think I'm okay.
You are justified by faith apart from works, yes, but you are saved unto good works. Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 is great, but 10 also exists. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that he prepared beforehand so we can walk in them.
Of course, in our struggle, it is not against flesh and blood. Human beings are not our enemy. We don't exist to go and fight the culture war and fight against people.
Rather, our struggle is not against flesh and blood. It is against the deception of the world. It is against the sinfulness of your own flesh.
It is against the schemes of the devil. That's the field of our warfare. That's the enemy, and so he exhorts us, fight the good fight of faith.
He encourages, but again, it's not aimless. It's not an endless fight. No, there's actually hope on the horizon.
Brothers and sisters, we're not going to be fighting forever. Take heart and know that. You're not going to fight and struggle forever because we're called to, number four, take hold of eternal life.
Take hold is epilambano. It's an intensified verb. It's to lay hold of, to seize, to grasp.
Now, he's not telling Timothy or anybody else for that matter to grab eternal life through our own strength. He's not saying, hold on to your salvation, otherwise you might lose it. That's not what he's saying because we possess eternal life as a gift of God by His grace through faith in Christ, in the finished work of Christ, I might add, and so we're secure in salvation if you really are in Christ.
You don't have to wrestle eternal life away from God for yourselves. That's not it. It has been given to you.
Rather, Paul is exhorting us to make it our own, to fully appropriate it, to grasp it. And I know you know what I'm talking about because there might be a reality that you've experienced that's true for you, but you just haven't quite reckoned with it yet. It's almost like when you buy a new house.
You know that maybe some of you haven't bought a house in a while. I certainly wouldn't right now. But when you buy a house, the first night that you're in that house, you don't quite grasp it, do you? Your brain still feels like you're in the old house.
And you wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and you don't know the way. You can't see it with your eyes closed. But then the longer you live in the house, it becomes your own.
You grasp it. You comprehend it. You take hold of it, right? That's the sense here, I believe.
It has to do with walking in the reality of the eternal life you've been given. It's the difference between having a wealthy father who deposits a billion dollars into your bank account and then you're still living like a pauper. It's like, don't you realize that you're wealthy in terms of spiritual riches? Don't you realize who your father is? You've been adopted by God.
Don't you realize that you're not a slave to sin anymore? Don't you realize that the joy of the Lord that you have is actually a true joy? That's what he's talking about. Taking hold of this. Reckoning with it.
Realizing with it. Living within it. And he even says, this is the eternal life, Timothy, to which you were called.
You were called to this. This is nothing short of the effectual call of the believer. This is not the general gospel call to everybody everywhere who may or may not receive it.
No, this isn't the effectual call that Romans 8.30 talks about. God calls you and you respond by saving faith. In other words, it sticks.
And we know that Timothy had responded to this gospel call. He was a believer. Genuine believer.
Well, how do we know this? Well, because Paul says that he had already made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. He reminds him of his confession. And what is this good confession? It's the confession of saving faith.
And he says that's made it in the presence of witnesses. And we might think, I know I think about this when I think about a confession of Romans 10.9. Romans 10.9. If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. And he goes on to say, because with the heart man believes resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses resulting in salvation.
So there's something about the confession. Now the confession has to match the belief too. You can confess and lie, but your heart should then bring forth the confession.
If God has saved you and redeemed you, it's hard to keep that quiet, isn't it? And so there's a confession. Now more specifically, this is the confession that Jesus was delivered up to death on the cross, which achieved the salvation for sinners. He was buried and he rose the third day.
It's a gospel confession. All of us are to confess that. And in doing so, we confess our sins and we confess our belief in Christ Jesus.
And by doing so, you receive eternal life. In fact, it is by faith that we take hold of this eternal life. Now some have seen this verse here, this confession that Timothy makes, and they say, well when did he make this confession? Some say it would have been at his baptism.
And when we have a baptism, we always have opportunity for giving testimony, right? That's confession. You tell a little bit of your story of salvation, of how God reached down and saved you and redeemed you, and now what you believe to be true. And so we're having this in a couple weeks here.
A person will get into the water, they'll read their confession, they'll say their confession. And then even if we do that, which we do, as we're getting ready to be baptized, I always ask the question, do you believe that Jesus Christ is God? That he died on the cross to pay the penalty for your sins? That he was buried and rose again the third day? And I say, do you believe that? And they have an opportunity in that moment to say, yes I do. And then I say this, based on your profession of faith, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
That's what that is. It's a confession. You're telling the world that you believe the gospel.
And so some have said that was his confession that he made at his baptism. Others believe that he made this confession at his ordination. And in truth, you do that also there as well.
Whenever you ordain someone to ministry, you want to hear their testimony. You want to hear their confession of what they believe. But the truth is, he would have made the confession at both occasions.
In fact, I believe that Timothy is the kind of man who always would have been making confession. Telling people what he believed whenever and wherever he could. And see, every time we confess that we believe the gospel of Christ, we are reminding ourselves of God's promise to us and we are effectively taking hold of the eternal life that we already possess.
That's why it's good to remember the gospel. The gospel isn't just for when you get saved. It's not just for the beginning, by the way.
There's a reason I preach the gospel every single week. Yes, I want to make sure that unbelievers who might be here for the first time or maybe a person who's been here and is unconverted, they hear that gospel message. But don't we also need to remind ourselves of that? Don't we also need to be trained up in how to deliver that message? I want to try to model that for you as best I can.
Because ultimately, I'm not the only gospel minister in this church. There's a lot more of you. In fact, all of you are gospel ministers.
You need to confess the gospel to others, but then you also need to believe the gospel continuously yourselves. When you feel like you're just a pile of mess and you're struggling in your fight with sin, or you just feel like you're not good enough for God, or you're struggling with assurance, or whatever the battle is, to rehearse the gospel. What is true that Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins? He was buried and He rose again.
Ask yourself the question, do I believe that? And if you say, I do believe that. I'm struggling, but I do believe that. That is your confession of faith.
Rehearsing the doctrine of justification. That your salvation is not based on how good you are. We're not.
It's based on the finished work of Christ that we receive by faith. So the basis of the fact that I'm saved is not me, it's Jesus. Remembering that, rehearsing that, taking hold of that.
Again, I want to note to you that all of these imperatives, all of these exhortations, are only possible for us if we engage in them through the power of Christ by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. In other words, it's very easy to get up and say, here do all these things, and forget that it's not in our personal power to do it. You can't just go drum up the strength to flee sin, or pursue righteousness, or fight the good fight, or take hold of eternal life.
That's not in you personally, in your flesh. Rather, it is God who works in you to do these things. And He motivates you.
And He drives you. And there are many days when He carries you. He lifts us up.
In fact, Paul connects these dots in his final charge in verses 13 and 14. Look at verses 13 and 14. He 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 Christ.
He tells him, I charge you. Parangelo in the Greek is, I direct you, I command you. Demonstrates the seriousness of it.
This is a serious business here. And then he points to the witnesses of the charge, because there are those who actually witness this charge being given to believers. Well, who are the witnesses? He says, it's in the presence of God, and it's in the presence of Christ Jesus.
Now, first he appeals to God, and he says, God who gives life to all things. Now, I think it's important to make note of God as the creator, God as the life giver, at least in a general sense. That's important to know that God created and gives life.
But in the context here, it's fitting to see that God is also, preeminently, the giver of all spiritual life as well. God creates, recreates, and resurrects. And so this isn't about just engaging in religious exercises for the purpose of moral improvement or cultural impact.
No, we're serving a living, all-powerful God. It's God who's at work in us to will and to work for His good pleasure, the Bible says. And so we see this in our service, and that's what Paul actually reasons with in Galatians 1.10. He says, for am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? He says, if I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.
He's not serving other people in his ministry primarily. No, he's actually serving for the audience of one. He's doing everything for the pleasure of one, God.
Again, we're serving a living God. 1 Timothy 3.15, we are the church of the living God. Chapter 4, verse 10, we have fixed our hope on the living God.
Why am I emphasizing this? Because this is not about dead religious deeds. This is about an action that is motivated by a true life that's been given to us in Christ Jesus. And so it's in the presence of the living God that we confess Christ and do any level of ministry.
And then Paul adds, we're also standing in the presence of Christ Jesus himself. He's also there watching. He's the Lord over our confession.
He's the one who came. He's the one who lived and died and rose and ascended. He is the Savior.
He is the Redeemer. But it's interesting because Paul then connects another dot. He says here that Christ Jesus testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate.
Where have we heard that phrase before? Good confession. Wasn't that in the previous verse? Yes, it was. When you see repetition like this, pay attention.
What is this referring to? Well, remember at the Lord's trial where he's delivered over to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, for crucifixion. He's standing there being accused of blasphemy and insurrection against Rome, which he was innocent of everything. But Pilate asks him in John 18, 37, he says, so you're a king then, right? He's asking, are you a king? And Jesus answers, he says, you say correctly that I am a king.
For this I have been born and for this I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice. What is Jesus' confession before Pontius Pilate? Essentially, that he is king.
He's king. More than that, Paul's going to go on to say in verse 15 here, if you look across the page at the next verse, that Jesus Christ, Paul says, is the blessed and only sovereign, the king of kings and lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light. Yeah, that king.
That's the confession. That's Jesus' confession. I am the king of all creation.
I am the king of kings, lord of lords, all belongs to me. I possess light, life, immortality, godliness, the kingdom, everything. It's all mine.
That's his good confession that he made on behalf of himself as he stood before Pilate. But guess what? It's the same confession, the good confession, that Timothy made in the presence of many witnesses. Yes, it is salvation, but it's bigger than salvation.
It's of the Savior himself. And truthfully, that's the good confession that every believer is to make. And I think it's important that we confess what Jesus did on the cross to save us from the punishment of our sins, but I also think it is equally important that we confess who he is.
Who is Jesus? Let me give you an illustration. I could say to you that my wife is the woman who married me, she gave me children, and she lives in my home with me. That's technically who she is.
Versus, I could say, Jessica is the one my soul loves, the godly, intelligent, patient woman who I adore. Right? Both are true, but I can't just get away with saying functionally what she is to me. And so the question is, how do you speak about Christ? Oh, I got eternal life through him.
That's wonderful, that's true, that's good. Confess that. But do you speak about salvation itself, or do you speak about the loving Savior who saved you? Who is Jesus? He's the King of all creation.
The King of kings, a Lord of lords. The one who dwells in unapproachable light. The one who was before the beginning, eternity past, the Alpha and the Omega to eternity future.
He's fully God and fully man. The perfection of the unity I can't comprehend. He is the judge of the living and the dead.
He's the one who will bring vengeance and righteous anger against the ungodly. But he's the one who says, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, I'll give you rest. The Bible says that he won't even snap a bending twig.
He won't extinguish a smoldering wick. He draws near to the broken heart. He took pity and mercy on me.
Jesus is the one who loves me and gave his life for me. And I'm in him by faith. You see the difference? Who is Jesus? He is your savior.
The one whom your soul loves and the one who redeemed you. And so he says it's in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus who testifies the good confession before Pontius Pilate. And then Paul is going to give this final exhortation.
Number five, in light of all that, to keep the commandment. Now, what is this referring to? Immediately we wonder, what is this commandment that he's talking about? And I was scratching my head this week because I was reading all the scholars, all the commentators throughout the course of church history. There's at least eight views on what this means.
I'm not going to give all of them to you. There's a lot of interpretation questions about what this means. The Greek word here is zentole.
It refers to a charge or an injunction or an order or a command. New Testament scholars are quick to note that Paul is not telling Timothy to keep the Old Testament commandments. He's not conveying to him a sense of legalism.
That's not it here. That would undermine the entire concept of justification by faith alone. But rather, most scholars believe that he's referring to the command that's been given throughout the course of the letter here.
It's very broad in application, but namely that he's keeping or guarding or preserving. That's the word for keep, tereo, keep, preserve, guard the mandate as it pertains to the gospel. In other words, you could blow it out.
Everything Paul said in 1 Timothy, it's to keep the totality of the Christian faith. In fact, that's what Paul says at the end of his life in 2 Timothy 4-7. He says that he has fought the good fight.
He has finished the course. He has kept, tereo, same word, he's kept the faith. I've held on to it.
I've walked in it. I've lived it. That's what he's telling Timothy here.
Keep the commandment, the entoli, the injunction, without stain or reproach. He's saying don't dilute it. Don't water it down.
Don't pervert it or stain it either. Don't take a whole bunch of worldly philosophy. Don't take wokeness.
Don't take modernism. Don't take post-modernism. Don't take anything else.
Don't take the occult, magic, all that garbage. Don't take politics. Don't take anything else and pollute the faith.
You keep it pure according to the word of God. So don't stain it. Don't reproach it.
He says keep it. And you might ask, well, how long do I have to do that? How much longer, oh Lord? He gives the answer. Until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In other words, you don't stop until you see him. When am I going to see him? Well, there's really only two choices. Either you're going to see him at death or we'll all be here when he comes.
One of the two. One of the two. But I want you to notice something here, that all of these injunctions, all of these imperatives, all of these do this, do this, do this, look at where it ultimately points to.
It's all pointing to Christ. In other words, when we flee sin, we're fleeing to Christ. When we pursue godliness, we're actually pursuing Christ-likeness.
When we fight, we're fighting as soldiers of Christ. When we take hold of eternal life, we're grasping at the life that Christ has purchased for us. And when we keep the faith, we're guarding what Christ has entrusted to us and the treasure that we have is in Christ.
Yes. We don't do these things unto themselves. All of this is with an eye to beholding Jesus Christ.
And that is where Paul goes next in verses 15 and 16. You see that connection? That's where he's going to land. We're going to go to that next week because I want to spend a whole sermon on just that.
But that's where all of this is going to. We don't just muscle it up and power through and hope we get to the end. No.
You are being carried along and you're walking by faith with your eyes on Christ. He's the prize. And you're living your life and waiting for the appearing of Jesus.
Beloved, we are living in the last days. Take stock of your life. Consider your life in light of that.
Don't turn on the autopilot of Christian living and just keep on going and going and going and yeah, I'll get there eventually. Don't do that. It's so tempting, isn't it? But don't do that.
Rather, consider Paul's words from Colossians 3. Therefore, if you've been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ and God. When Christ, who is our life, Paul says, when Christ who is our life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
Part of our problem is we have our eyes too low. We're looking here. It doesn't belong here.
Yes, we live here, but we have to keep our eyes upward, looking to Christ, looking to his coming, waiting for him anxiously, not with a death wish, not with escapism. No, my life is still lived here to glorify him, but this isn't all there is. I'm marching.
I'm fighting the good fight because I want to see him and I want to get to him at the end. Behold his beautiful face. I love that we sang, Fairest Lord Jesus.
I didn't know we were going to sing that today. How about that coincidence, right? But don't you want to see his face and behold his glory and say, Lord, I'm here. Thank you for bringing me to yourself.
Thank you for going before me. Thank you for bringing me home. And then hearing him say the words that you that echo in your mind and heart.
Well done, good and faithful servant. This is the charge to you as God's faithful servant. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Lord, my words are insufficient and inadequate, but your word is so powerful and true. Your word is perfect and beautiful.
And it's by your word that we live. And it's by your word through the work of the spirit that we are made alive. Lord, we can't do these things on our own.
I can't just muscle my way to flee, to fight, to run, to grasp. Lord, none of us can. But Lord, you are the life that invigorates us.
You are the life that we've been given the reanimation of life in our hearts. You are, as Paul says, you are our life. And we feel the energy of that life coursing through our spiritual veins as we remember that our life is not our own, that we were bought with a price.
So Lord, help us to glorify you in our bodies. Help us to glorify you in our lives, to chase you, O Lord. Father, we're aware that by ourselves we won't make it.
Life is too hard alone. We won't make it alone. But with you, the Bible says, we could leap over a wall.
By faith, we could move mountains. By faith, we will reach you. Not because we have run well, but because you have carried us.
Thank you for being faithful to your word. And thank you that we have the promise to know that you are coming again. And every eye will see you.
And every knee will bow. And every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Thank you for your word.
Encourage our hearts today. In Jesus' name.