Title: Entrusted with the Truth
Scripture: 1 Timothy 6:20-21
Speaker: Nate Pickowicz
Well, when Jude, the half-brother of Jesus, penned his letter, he had no way of knowing that the firestorm that would ensue in the coming years. Initially, Jude had intended to write an encouraging letter to the church. A letter addressing the blessing of their common salvation.
But at some point, when he was considering writing, he pivoted in his mind and he said in v. 3, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend and earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. An earnest appeal to contend. Why? He continues, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed.
Those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation. Ungodly persons who turn the grace of our Lord into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Within only a few short years from that time, there would emerge a movement that came to be known as Gnosticism.
And it would unleash a wave of sin and error on the church the likes of which had not been imagined before and could not be fathomed even since. Gnosticism, this movement here, got its name from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. But this was so because of the belief that there was a transcendent human knowledge that could lead then to salvation.
And the emphasis on this experiential knowledge stood in juxtaposition to the material world. And so they had it in their heads that what they deemed to be spirit was good, and what was deemed to be material or fleshly was evil. And there was a world of difference between those two things.
And so by their logic, whatever you did in your body which was evil didn't matter as long as you maintained an earnest spirituality. Well, because of that belief, as you can imagine with such a division between soul and spirit, between what was spiritual, between what was earthly, they did with their bodies things that were unthinkable. And it led them into a debauched immoral life.
But this spirit and body dichotomy also led the Gnostics to embrace a heretical view of Jesus Christ as well, which came to be known as the Dosetic Theory of seeing Christ. And they viewed Jesus Christ not as the incarnate God, God becoming man, but only as a divine apparition. Because again, they believed that the body, that material was evil.
So Jesus couldn't be evil. So they thought he was only a ghost, only an apparition. Well, this was rightly denounced as heresy in all the early ecumenical councils, including the Nicene Council, Constantinople, Chalcedon and beyond.
But the heresy didn't die. Gnosticism remained a cultural force and it is still a cultural force even today, albeit under different names. Nobody calls it Gnosticism today.
Today, we call it New Age. We call it mysticism, the occult, some Wiccan practices, ritual magic. This is very popular today and growing in popularity.
But all of these expressions are simply early second and third century Gnosticism. That's all it is. And it amounts to nothing more than doctrines of demons, according to 1 Timothy 4, verse one.
But such opposition to truth has always existed. This is why Paul reminded the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 1, 22, for the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks search for wisdom, secret knowledge. But he says we preach Christ crucified to the Jews' stumbling block and to the Gentiles' foolishness.
Of course, we recognize that the world will never be satisfied with the revelation of God in the Scriptures. There's always gonna be an opportunity or an enticement for them to go down the rabbit hole, so to speak, and chase more and more secret knowledge. And even now, it's very popular to just go down the rabbit hole and pursue this secret knowledge, pulling back the layers of the onion, trying to understand more and more and more, and yet, ultimately, you come up empty.
We're called to a different task. We're called to contend earnestly for the Christian faith, to guard what has been entrusted to us, and that's what I want to explore with you today. And so, for the very last time in our study of 1 Timothy, we're gonna turn to the end of 1 Timothy 6 in your copy of Scripture.
1 Timothy 6, the last two verses. Now, the Apostle Paul has covered a lot of ground in this letter, probably more than you expected, maybe. Certainly, on some level, more than I expected, just the way that the Scripture unfolds and teaches and encourages and helps us.
But Paul, he's talked to his disciple Timothy, but really, he's speaking through Timothy to the Ephesian church, and he addressed questions regarding spiritual leadership through qualified elders. He addressed the service and qualification for deacons. He talked about prayer in the church.
He talked about the roles of men and women, especially women in the church. He talked about personal disciplines. He talked about the care and treatment of widows, the treatment of slaves in the early church.
He also dealt with matters of money and greed and contentment quite a lot. And now he comes to the end of this letter with one final exhortation to his beloved disciple, and he concludes this wonderful letter with these words, 1 Timothy 6, verses 20 and 21. Again, coming in for a landing here, he says, Oh, Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith.
Grace be with you. And so in this closing exhortation, Paul is really giving two essential commands here. Number one, to guard, and number two, to avoid.
So guard and avoid. But he wraps all of this up as kind of this final declaration here, and he says, Oh, Timothy. He doesn't just say Timothy.
He says, Oh, Timothy. This exclamation, this Oh, reinforces Paul's powerful appeal. I don't think that we necessarily speak like this anymore.
We don't use Oh in front of our exhortations. Maybe we should start. I wanna start a movement to reintroduce the letter Oh into our exhortations.
Oh, my son. Oh, church people. Oh, my beloved, right? The Oh, the pained Oh.
But Paul uses that here. Oh, Timothy, my brother, my son. It's a fatherly concern.
Isn't it apropos that we're talking about a fatherly concern today on Father's Day? I've determined this year to speak about false teaching on Mother's Day and on Father's Day. I am an equal opportunity blessing to you all. But this is a fatherly concern for his disciple that he heed the counsel.
Timothy, Oh, my dear brother, my dear son. Guard what has been entrusted to you. Guard what's been entrusted to you.
And there's two key words here in the Greek. Fu, lasso, which means keep or protect or maintain, preserve, there's a lot of uses for this word. But here it's translated as guard, guard.
And it describes both the attitude and the posture for what we are to do in the Christian faith. In fact, Paul speaks the exact same way in his second letter. I'm just gonna read these verses to you.
In 2 Timothy 1, 12 through 14, he says, for this reason, this is later, three years later. For this reason, I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he's able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day. He's talking about his testimony of saving faith.
But then he says, retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Guard, through the Holy Spirit who indwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you. It's almost as if he remembers this last sentiment.
Oh, Timothy, guard what's been entrusted. And he brings it back in his second letter. Again, the letter that he writes before he dies.
His parting words, his swan song, is this exhortation to his beloved disciple to retain the standard, to guard the deposit, to keep it secure, which leads us then to the second key word here in the verse, parotheke, which refers to literally a deposit, a deposit. Well, what is this deposit? Paul refers to this in several ways here. In the verse, 1 Timothy 6.21 here, the very last verse, he's actually assigning this word.
He's talking about the faith. You can see it right there, the faith. He says the same thing in 2 Timothy 1.13, which we just looked at.
The standard of sound words, the faith, which is found in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Of course, he also drills this down a little more in 2 Timothy 1.10 by saying that it refers specifically to the gospel, the gospel. And so when we read all these sentiments together, when he's talking about this deposit here, it's clear from both 1 and 2 Timothy that this deposit, which has been entrusted to Timothy, really is the totality of the Christian faith which centers around the gospel.
So it's the Christian faith, but sort of hanging around the center hub of the wheel, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this Christian faith, this gospel faith is been entrusted to Timothy, but not just to Timothy, but to all of us. Remember back in your minds to chapter three, verse 15, which says that the church of the living God, that's us, right? The church of the living God is the pillar and support of the truth.
We talked about how the truth is referring to the Christian truth, the whole totality of the revelation of God given to us. The church is the pillar and the old word is the buttress, the support. Not the foundation like we created it, but we uphold and sustain it.
We keep it, we guard it. And it's clear that's what we're talking about here. Lord Jesus imparted his teaching, which is the doctrine of the New Testament, which expounds the old.
So Jesus' teaching was to take the Old Testament, see it through the lens of the New Covenant, present that teaching to the disciples, and then the disciples, which they taught according to Acts 2.42, the apostles' teaching is Christ's teaching, and that whole body of the apostles' teaching is the New Testament teaching, which is then handed down. So there's a Christian relay happening here. Or the Old Testament then is concealing the new, which reveals the old, which is expounded by Christ, given to the apostles, given in the New Testament, given to us, which is why 2 Timothy 2.2, he tells his disciples, the things that you've heard from me, same word now, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
So even there you have Paul going to Timothy, going to faithful men, going to others. There's a Christian relay happening here. The students of the apostles are handing down the doctrines of the faith to others, those in the early church.
And then by the time you get to what I mentioned in the introduction here, even to the point where Jude is writing in his letter, he's instructing believers again in the early church now to contend earnestly for the faith which has been once for all handed down to the saints. He makes reference, he's like, this is being handed down, it's been handed to you, contend for it. He doesn't just say defend, he also says contend.
Argue, the word literally in Greek is agonizimai. Agonize, struggle through this, but hold onto it fiercely. Wrestle for this.
See, once it's been handed down, the Christian faith then becomes entrusted to the next generation. It gets entrusted to you. Because it's not enough for our parents and our grandparents to contend for the faith.
And I praise the Lord that generations in past have. Because without previous generations contending, we would not have what we have in terms of the practice, the theology of what we have. Now, certainly the Bible is always going to be there.
The flower fades and everything passes away, but the word of the Lord will never pass away, right? But we don't wanna be in the situation like Josiah where the Bible is buried in the temple and they have to go find it and dig it up and read it and go, oh no, we've been wrong. Let that never be our generation where we have to go and dig it out of a dusty attic somewhere and bring it back out. We wanna keep it central, right? We talked about this last week.
It's not enough for our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents to contend, because we had generations previously in New England who contend earnestly for the faith. New England was the hub of world missions in the 1800s. Did you know that? The modern missions movement was launched out of New England.
Adoniram Judson, Luther Rice, all these guys. Even John Eliot, who was called the apostle to the Indians. David Brainerd, I mean, these were all the heroes that were, we were sending missionaries around the globe from here.
Now, this is the mission field. Why? Because previous generations up here did not contend earnestly for the faith. Some did, I praise the Lord for that, but how many empty white buildings around this region filled with dead orthodoxy do we have left? Quite a few.
The responsibility is to contend earnestly for the faith that has been handed down, and I would even add this word from Paul here, it's been entrusted to us. There is an entrustment that happens, and what we have to do is guard it. Guard the faith.
We don't need to reimagine. We don't need to reinvent anything. Anytime you have the word new in Christianity, watch out.
Watch out. The word new shouldn't be anything, anywhere in the faith for us. We only need to preserve and protect what's already been given to us.
Let me tell you, friends, my sermons are nothing new. They are nothing new. I'm simply endeavoring to give to you, to teach to you what is accepted Christian orthodoxy.
Nothing new. My books are nothing new. They're frankly a little boring because I'm not saying anything new.
Hopefully they're merely guardians of Christian truth as best as I'm able. Christ and Creed just talks about early church creeds, bringing them back for our attention. Why we're Protestant is about the five souls of reformation.
How to Eat Your Bible is about basic hermeneutics. This is nothing new. This is nothing novel.
All of that is just my personal attempt to help contend and also to encourage you as well to contend earnestly for the faith. To guard what's been entrusted to us. But here's the thing.
It is not just pastors and scholars that are supposed to do this. It's not. It's all of you.
If you're a Christian, again, remember the church is the pillar in support of the truth. You're the church. You are called to contend earnestly, to guard what has been entrusted to you.
You have a responsibility. And if you have a responsibility, then it is incumbent upon you to learn the faith, guard the faith, teach the faith, contend for the faith. That's a high calling, but it's a good calling.
You might be asking the question, well, how do I do that? These are strong words, pastor. I'm supposed to guard what's been entrusted and contend. How do I do that? Let me just give you four very simple ways that you can do this.
Number one, know your Bible. Know your Bible. Read it, and then read it again.
And keep on reading it. Study it. Memorize as much as you can.
And then teach it to your kids and help them to understand Christian truth. But it starts with just knowing your Bible. Read your Bible.
That's not legalism. But I'm talking about experiencing the revelation that God's given to you. Why would you not read what he has to say to you? Everybody around the world wants to hear from God.
He has spoken. You gotta listen. So read the word, know your Bible.
And then number two, learn a little theology. I say a little on purpose, because it's very easy to lose yourself in theological textbooks. And I'll tell you, a lot of well-meaning believers have lost themselves in theology to the point where they forget the scriptures.
It's a real problem. It does happen. And so I would encourage you, know your Bible.
Grab a faithful, one-volume theology. You can read books about theology. But grab a little doctrine, because it's gonna help you.
It's gonna teach you how the scriptures are laid out. It's gonna synthesize verses and concepts for you. It's important to learn a little theology.
Number three, learn to apply God's word to your life in order to be transformed by it. The spirit of God is more than able to take his word and to bring it into your mind and heart and begin to change you from the inside out. We don't wanna be spiritually lazy, lukewarm believers who aren't gonna be valiant to guard the truth.
We talked about that last week. We don't wanna be that, do we? Certainly not. We wanna mature in the faith.
Now, all of us are at different places in our walk with the Lord. We're all at a different place, all of us. And we're not supposed to look left and right and compare.
But to recognize, listen, I wanna grow. I don't wanna be stuck at the same spot. I wanna keep on growing in my love for the Lord, my understanding of the truth, my love for others, the seriousness of mind to apply God's word to be transformed.
And then number four, to tell others about Christ. Take everything that you're growing and everything you're learning and then share it. Share it through evangelism, sharing Christ with other people, through discipleship, teaching others, through defending, apologetics, things like that.
Because here's the thing, engaging with other people is actually gonna help you to get stronger. It's one thing to study and study and study, but when you're responsible then to teach, it forces you to study with a different view. I'll tell you, every week, I mean, I'm challenged by the word of God.
And I don't rest on my laurels, I can't. I wanna make sure that before I get up here and say this is from the Lord, that I know what I'm talking about personally and that I'm transformed myself. This has to hit me as a believer before I can say anything.
But certainly that should be all of our desire to then help other people. We wanna help each other to grow. Even in discipleship, I think about this.
Discipleship isn't just putting each other on a track. Certainly there are discipleship tracks, but even just walking with believers and just helping them. How to navigate this and how to navigate that and what's this like and what does God's word say about this and just living your life alongside other people and encouraging them in the faith.
Here's the thing, when you stop sharing your faith, when you stop sharing Christ with other people, it becomes very easy to forget. And when you forget, the struggle is real. You can't guard the faith anymore.
You can't guard what you don't know. You can't guard what you don't remember. You gotta stay sharp.
Now you know why I preached against lukewarmness last week, right? Because we have to take seriously this stewardship here. It's just setting the stage for these verses. This is a serious stewardship.
We're commanded to guard what has been entrusted to us, which brings us to the second exhortation. Number two is to avoid. What to avoid? Again, verses 20 and 21, he talks about guarding what's been entrusted.
Then he says, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith. This word in the Greek that's used for avoid here is ektrepo, which means literally to turn away from. It's almost as if you're gonna like turn on your heel and go a different direction completely.
But what does he say should be avoided here? First he says, he singles out worldly and empty chatter. We heard that from the scripture reading from Ephesians five this morning already. Worldly and empty chatter, that literally it's bebelos, worldly, profane, godless.
And then he also says empty, the kinophonia, literally empty talker babbling, just saying nothing. There's a lot of that around in the world today. A lot of that on social media, people just talking and typing and they're not saying anything.
It's just noise. But this isn't a new concern. This has always been a concern.
Way back in chapter one verse nine, he references bebelos, those who are profane, translated as profane. But here Paul assigns that quality to the kind of godless and empty chatter. It's the kind of talk that's mentioned in chapter four verse seven.
Remember this? He says, have nothing to do with worldly fables, bebelos, worldly, empty, godless fables fit only for old women. He says, just don't even engage in old wives' tales. Useless talk, useless chatter.
Worldly chatter that does not edify the church and does not glorify God. Just avoid it, don't even get into it. Because it warps the mind and it twists your judgment.
And I'll tell you, I've seen this a lot more. It was a crazy thing. When I came to the faith, I grew up going to church, but when I came to saving faith in my 20s, I started to meet people, we were living in Manchester at the time, started meeting believers who would swear.
That was like a new thing. Believers that curse. And it kind of blew my mind and I just didn't have a category for that.
Is it okay for us to swear, to use foul language? And then you read Ephesians five that specifically says not to do that. It's godless, it's profane. And grouped into that, Ephesians chapter four, the end of four going into chapter five, foul language, harsh sarcasm, coarse jesting, perverted talk, explicit talk, cultural discourse that's useless, perverse soundbites, anything that's contrary to godliness.
Because what does Jesus say? Out of the heart, the mouth speaks. You say what's in your heart. And so if you're prone to desire this kind of language and coarse jesting and filthiness and godless talk, it's a mirror to what's happening inside of your heart.
I'm not talking about stubbing your toe and uttering a curse word and needing to repent. Yes, that's in there somewhere, but that's a little bit of a different situation than a person who that is what is the fruit of their language, what's coming out of them. Don't curse when you stub your toe, but you get what I'm saying.
It's out of the heart, the mouth speaks. And so he warns against that. Don't get into that.
That's why he says in 2 Timothy 2, 16, avoid worldly and empty chatter. What's the purpose? He says, for it will lead to further ungodliness. You get loose with your language, it will just lead you right down into ungodliness.
And so part of what is to be avoided is certain kinds of godless language. But there's another component. It's not just not swearing and not telling dirty jokes.
It's more than that. He says we're also to avoid the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge. This word here for opposing arguments in the Greek is literally it's antithesis.
Antithesis. It's literally refers to placing something over or against. That's what an antithesis is.
In other words, it's contrary arguments to Christianity. And Paul identifies that many of these antithetical arguments are referred to falsely as knowledge. And the word is gnosis.
Now at this point in history, Paul was not quite yet dealing with the Gnostic movement. Some have believed that actually when you go to places like Acts 8, Simon Magus, some people actually attribute the Gnostic movement to him. That's possible.
We don't actually know. Gnosticism didn't really come into vogue until the 200s and early 300s here. But Paul's dealing with some level of this mystic argument even in his day.
There's always arguments. There's always worldly philosophy and interpretations that are marketing themselves as legitimate understanding. But in truth, they're nothing more than just false.
Even today. Social or woke gospel. False.
Progressive Christianity. There's no such thing. Side B theology.
Have you ever heard of Side B theology? It's wrong. It's false. Liberal Christianity.
Again, you attach these monikers onto Christianity as though there's some kind of a brand of legitimate Christianity. It's just false. J. Gresham Machen famously said in the 1920s, the chief modern rival of Christianity is liberalism, which is an expression of a diametrically opposite faith.
You don't attach a false movement onto Christianity to somehow modify it. Even among the higher critical method, it's nothing more than antithesis. Opposing arguments.
What is higher criticism? What are you talking about? I'm talking about attacks on the Bible's origins. There's whole fields of study that are devoted to attacking Genesis. Specifically the creation account.
The fall of humanity into sin. The curse. The flood.
That's a whole other topic of discussion. The reality of the life of Jesus. Who he is.
The truth of the gospel. There's always opposing arguments. And I'll tell you, some of those arguments come out of seminaries.
And they market themselves as orthodox, but it's false. There have been so many opposing arguments, especially over the last two centuries. The last two centuries in higher critical thinking has been open season on traditional orthodox Christianity.
Unbelievable. And they've worked to attack the foundations, all while claiming to be in earnest pursuit of knowledge. We're just trying to find the truth.
And yet carve out whole sections in books and testaments of the Bible. Falsely called knowledge. It's only the handiwork of Satan.
Satan has no new tricks. He just grabs the old ones, dust them off, and re-markets them with a new PR strategy. That's all he ever does.
He's been doing that since the beginning. That's why Paul says, listen, don't engage with this stuff. Don't try to twist it around and make heads or tails of it and all that stuff.
He says, avoid it. Just avoid it. I'm not talking about dealing with arguments apologetically.
I'm talking about digging yourself into this stuff. People in the academic world, oh, reading broadly, reading heretics and trying to pick out the meat and spit out the bones. Why? To give it a generous hearing.
We hear that phrase all the time. Give it a generous hearing. Heresy.
To seek to find truth in all places. I heard that all the time. To chew on the theological meat and spit out the heretical bones.
But what does the Bible say about this? I mean, I just think about places like 2 Corinthians 10. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not at war according to the flesh. He says, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.
And then he says, we're destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. And then he says, and we're taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. We don't play fast and loose with error and sort of work it through our system and say, eh, maybe there's some good there.
If it's contradictory to the word of God, why do you need it? Why do you want it? No, we're to tear down strongholds and arguments that are set up against Christianity. But sadly, Christians today oftentimes think they can play fast and loose with the fire and not get burned. There's a forthcoming book by a young woman named Jack Marino Chen called Ensnared.
It's coming in the next couple months, I think. And it's the story about how she got swallowed up in the New Age and occult movement in Southern California. And she talks about in her book how it starts off as just innocent dabbling.
You know, she's just playing around, just a little tarot card here, crystals, little astrology, talking to angels, conversations with grandma from beyond the grave. I mean, all these little seemingly harmless things. And then before you know it, she is trapped in the occult and can't get out.
And she talks about the depression and the spiritual opposition and the slavery of being in the occult movement. And only gets rescued when someone has the kindness enough to share the gospel with her. And now she's devoting her life to destroying the perception of that movement.
I'll tell you, it's nothing to play games with. It's nothing to dabble with because it always leads you to the same place where, verse 21, he says, some who have professed, talking about believers, who said they love Jesus and dabble with these things, some who have professed, and he says, then they have gone astray from the faith. The end of dabbling in heresy always is apostasy.
You never dabble in heresy and somehow end back at orthodoxy. You don't drift back. It's designed to lead you astray.
The Bible talks about, Jesus says, at the end of days, Satan is going to try to deceive even the elect. He's not just after lost people. He's coming after us to try to deceive us and pull us away.
And there are those who creep into churches all the time and try to lead people astray. Peter talks about this in 2 Peter 2. He says, false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality.
That's what Gnosticism is, New Age mysticism. And because of them, the way of truth will be maligned. You won't know the way to Jesus.
Verse three, and in their greed, Paul talks about that in 1 Timothy, in greed they will exploit you with false words. Their judgment from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep. I mean, Jude, 1 Timothy, 2 Peter, I mean, they're just stacked up.
It's the same picture. Heresy is so often appealing too. It looks good from the outside.
And it's wrapped in words like equality, love, prosperity, success, inclusivism, happiness. I heard this one the other day, belonging. We all wanna belong, right? And so because of all that, we get led headlong into the slaughter because we're not discerning.
It leads always to loss. I believe this is why we're seeing a tidal wave of so-called deconversions and Christian deconstructions. Church kids who grow up hearing the gospel, they get to a certain age, and they say they get attacked by whatever college they went to or whatever YouTube channel that they're on.
And their foundations of their faith are attacked. And they say, well, let's examine this. And they don't listen to faithful Bible teachers and Christian apologists.
They listen to the absolute worst people they could possibly listen to, and they deconstruct. And by the end of it, they end up just deists. There's a higher power, probably, maybe.
I'm just here for me. It's so sad. It's so heartbreaking.
It's people sitting in churches who follow deceptive theologies and opposing arguments. And all the way down, they get to the point where they have denied the Master who saved them. That's why we have to be careful, beloved.
We have to be so careful. We have to avoid what Satan has unleashed to destroy us, and we have to guard what God has entrusted to us. We have to keep it.
It's incumbent upon us. And if you think, oh, that's for a different church or a different generation, my friends, you're mistaken. This church exists in this town, so we have work to do here.
The churches who hold the truth in New Hampshire, we have work to do here. That's why church planning is so important, to plant gospel Bible churches with sound doctrine, to plant those and begin to trumpet God's Word and reclaim people and bring them back and reach the lost and hold and contend. New Hampshire should not be the last on the market of Christianity.
We shouldn't be the least church state in the country. We should not be, and yet so many churches have lost it. They do not hold and guard the truth.
And so we must, we must guard what's been entrusted. And then Paul ends his letter with a very familiar phrase. And I'll tell you, if you're reading quickly, you'll gloss over it.
We all tend to do it sometimes. But Paul says, grace be with you. This word grace is charis in the Greek.
It refers to the unmerited favor, the blessing of God given to us freely. And the phrase is oftentimes repeated in the New Testament. And it was meant to encapsulate the blessing of God given to us in Christ.
In fact, I love what Pastor Mike taught us a couple months ago when he preached on the Aaronic Blessing from Numbers chapter six. And you remember this, many people know this blessing. The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Okay, we've recited that.
Lots of churches even have that in their liturgy. But that blessing, it encapsulated the blessing of God to Israel, that God would draw his people to himself and protect them, that he would reveal himself to them and he would give them peace in the land. But that blessing is only, we understand, that's only made possible through the gospel of Jesus Christ through the gospel of Messiah.
The Lord Jesus coming to earth is the blessing of God. And in saving us, he is keeping us. He's drawing us to himself and he's redeeming us and keeping us to him.
And in the incarnation, we see the face of Christ shining in him. And at the cross, we experience the grace that is that Christ dies on that cross to pay the penalty for our sins. And once buried, he resurrects from the grave and literally lifts up his countenance, literally.
And as he rose victorious and ascends, we see his exalted countenance before the Father. And all who have been redeemed in Christ by faith have this blessing of the Lord lifting up his countenance upon us. And so by our faith in the sacrifice of Christ, we are justified, we're declared righteous, we're forgiven, rendered as guiltless even though we're guilty.
Romans 5.1 tells us, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. You see it? And so following Pastor Mike's unpacking of the text, we see the New Testament phrase grace and peace to you as shorthand for the Aaronic blessing capitalizing on these two key words here, grace and peace.
Of course, you know that Paul extends this again here for the benefit of Timothy and of the church in Ephesus and to us, essentially saying to them and to us, may the grace of God through Jesus Christ be extended to you. Or grace be with you. After all, Timothy would need that grace.
He would need God's grace to help him keep moving forward. We need God's grace today if we are to guard what's been entrusted to us. Again, the truth of God, which is the pillar and support of that truth, that's us.
And so if we are to hold on to this, we're not gonna do it by our own human strength. I'm not just gonna muscle up the energy and the power and say, I'm just gonna guard the truth, me. Doesn't work like that.
No, we need God's grace. It's by your grace, O Lord, that we can hold on to this. And we hold on to it because you hold on to us.
The Spirit indwells His people, He guards us, He ministers truth to our consciences, He convicts us of sin and judgment, and He helps us, He sanctifies us, He gives us the mind of Christ, He illuminates truth. It's by His ministry in us that we can guard the truth. And so yes, in Christ, we do have that.
For it's in Him that we live and move and have our being. And so beloved, with the words of Paul here to his beloved disciple, I would even say to you, O church of God, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid heresy, avoid what's false, so that you don't abandon your profession.
But guard the truth, contend earnestly for the truth. And by God's grace, we will hold on to it as He holds on to us, and then we will be able to take that truth as a torch and pass it on to the next generation so that they might carry the truth. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you. We thank you that your word is truth, and Jesus, you said in John 17 that we are sanctified by that truth. And we contend earnestly for it, and we guard it, and we guard over it, and we protect it, and yes, we love that truth.
We love the faith that you have given to us, O Lord. So Father, we look at all of this. We look at the totality of the scriptures.
We look at the totality of the Christian faith, and we say, O Lord, it's so much. How do we hold on? How do we keep it? And Lord, then we realize that ultimately we just have to remain in you. And it's by your grace that we can stand.
So Lord, I entreat you on behalf of the saints here, Lord. I entreat you on behalf of the saints all over New Hampshire, on behalf of the saints at Grace Life Church, Lord. I entreat you that you would help us to contend earnestly, to stand firm, to guard what has been entrusted.
Not so that we will be seen as mighty and powerful, and anything of ourselves, Lord, but rather that you might be magnified and glorified through us. Help us, O Lord, to guard what has been entrusted. We thank you for the gospel of Jesus Christ that saves the lost, that redeems sinners, and gives new life.
And Lord, for those here this morning who maybe have never turned and trusted in you, they recognize their own sinful condition, that they've lived a life away from you, apart from you, defiled you, Lord, that you would grant them saving faith that they might turn from their life of sin and trust in the finished work of Christ. Save them today, O Lord, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.