1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Saviour and of Christ Jesus our hope,

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1 1 Timothy 1:1-11 Caversham Baptist As Christians we are to have a goal What is this goal? To love as Jesus loves us If someone asked you what your goal in life was, what would you say? Would it be a career thing, house thing, retirement thing? Heaven maybe? Has your goal changed over the years? Is it set now or is it something that can still change? Let s look at 1 Timothy 1:1-11. If you turn to the back of your Bible, find Revelation, then go back a few pages where you see the next largish book, Hebrews and 1 Timothy is about four pages before this. 1 Timothy 1:1-11 (Today's New International Version) 1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Saviour and of Christ Jesus our hope, 2 To Timothy my true son in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain persons not to teach false doctrines any longer 4 or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God's work which is by faith. 5 The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. 7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm. 8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers. And it is for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine 11 that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me. The Main Thing Is. I don t know if you ve had a read of this month s Baptist magazine, the first article by Myk Habets, a lecturer at Baptist College it s a good read, he s written about what he believes. And it keeps coming back to one thing, the importance of having a good understanding of Jesus, especially His uniqueness! Have you heard this before? It s kind of interesting how this year I just keep hearing about how Jesus is the centre of our faith, that He is unique. V1 Hope Paul seems keen to remind young Timothy of this, beginning in verse one by identifying Jesus as our hope, our centre, the top wrung of the ladder. This Christian hope is something that

2 we hold on to, as a ship remains at anchor in a harbour during a storm, our lives too are secured by hope that binds us to Jesus. This hope is not something that is me centred, but Christ centred, because of this it doesn t rest on our good works, but is something we have through grace. It is a joyful waiting, an expectation. Paul identifies Timothy as someone who is part of this, who has this hope, this faith, and what a greeting, grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Jesus our Lord. Is there anything else he d need or want? The features of the Christian faith, the thing that mean so much to us, the grace of God, this forgiveness of sin, the excusing of us from what we deserve, what marvellous grace. And mercy and peace. V4 Myths One thing that is a feature of these verses is the amount of talk and listening, some good, some not so good. And Paul instructs Timothy who in some versions is introduced as a child of the faith who has to instruct men, men who are teaching strange doctrine, v3-4 myths and other stuff that wasn t true. There are so many potential sidetracks in the Christian faith, and this passage shows clearly how easy it is to get side tracked into one of the other aspect of Christianity and Jesus importance drops down the ladder. Take numbers for example, the fun of finding the significance of numbers, numerology is it? Look at the list of sins later in the passage, when I first saw them, I added them up, aha I thought, thirteen! How interesting. But in doing this I could just hear Paul saying, I rest my case! Stupid stuff, really stupid stuff for in the Greek, the original version there are 14! How would this bring people to Jesus? By convincing them? Then there are the meaningless calculations when the world will end, despite Jesus clearly saying that we won t know, was it 1968, oh no, mistake, 1974, oh no, got it wrong, 1980, whoops, 2000, ah, what about 2012? What are we trying to achieve here? Scaring people towards Jesus? The devil loves these sidetracks, they keep us from Jesus. I can t say it better than v 4b, these things don t help us live a life of faith in God. [Careless talk costs lives] V5 Love! And then we come to Verse 5, the key verse that I kept coming back to again and again as I looked at this passage. The goal Paul tells Timothy, is love. Quite simple. But what makes this love different from the hippie flower power love, these three provisos, a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith. When linked with love, they make quite a difference. Firstly, a pure heart. This is a good goal to have. David knew what it was like to have an impure heart. Psalm 51 talks of his quest for a pure heart, an uncorrupted heart. (TNIV10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast or loyal spirit within me.) Jesus talks about a pure heart in the beatitudes, Mt 5:8, God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God. And James describes what he would expect to see from someone with a heart that was pure, James 1: If you claim to be religious but don t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless. 27 Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the

3 Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you. This is an interesting progression and links well to this passage where there is much talk but not so much action. And then there is a good conscience, one that s not troubled. A conscience acts as a judge, convicting us when we need it, correcting and advising. Greek thinking was that the conscience was a bad thing that operating retrospectively. That would be pretty much the world s view today I would think, that the conscience is a nuisance? A Christian s conscience is something that is transformed by faith and trust in God. A good or clear conscience is a characteristic of a Christian. This could be difficult for some, if you struggle with accepting that Jesus has forgiven you, and you can t forgive yourself. Do you really accept that you are forgiven? Or does your sin feel too great for Jesus to forgive? Really this is the beauty of the honesty of the Bible, when you read it you ll find that there s some terrible stuff that some people do and yet God forgives them. If He can for them, then He does for us. A pure conscience is something a Christian can have. And thirdly there is sincere or genuine faith. The image early listeners would have had when hearing this was the theatre, actors, pretenders, disguises, hypocrisy. Faith that is seen as one thing one day and something else the next, people who have God on their lips but not in their hearts, have you heard Jesus words before in Mark (7:6-7) You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you (Isa 29:13), for he wrote, These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. 7 Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God. [a] The people Jesus had issues with, the people who brought a woman to Him, who had sinned, but who slowly left as He wrote in the sand. Sincere faith is continuing on the act when you leave the stage, consistency. It s about walking the talk. Someone put it like this. Faith grows spontaneously out of the union of the Christian with the living Christ and rooted in the heart it finds expression in a transparent life. Or can I add, when taken seriously takes root in the heart from the head and is expressed in a transparent life. Sincere faith, good conscience, pure heart, the reason is, the purpose is, the goal is love, agape love the love that is for Jesus, with Jesus, about others not just ourselves. So am I confused here, me saying that the most important thing is Jesus, and the text says that it is love? Look at the verse carefully and you ll see that love comes out of the pure heart, the good conscience and a genuine faith. Jesus comes first, it s through the relationship that we have with Him in our faith that love is expressed, it is our goal, our purpose. If it isn t there then relationship with Him needs to be examined. V6 Meaningless

4 Verse six leads to the conclusion, some people have missed the whole point, they have turned away from these things and spend their time in meaningless or fruitless discussions. Meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Fruitless, without fruit, would that be useless? V7 The Law When I was up in Auckland for the MDC course last month we had Brian Smith come and talk to us. What a wise old man, though I m sure he wouldn t be impressed with that description, he doesn t look that old. I haven t heard him speak all that often and that s a shame because he was very good and he made me think. He talked about the Word, how we have to keep the Word at he centre of our lives and ministries. He said Muslims do this really well. But what is the word to a Muslim? Brian said that unfortunately there are lots of Christians who are just like Muslims, their focus is the Word, as in the book. He said we need to consider carefully what we re thinking when we think, the Word. The question he said is not what is the Word, it is Who is the Word! We need to keep the person of Jesus as the focal point of our lives. Of course He wasn t saying and neither am I that the Bible is not important, that s ridiculous, it s just that we can get it out of order, Jesus is the centre. Brian s words were very comforting for one person who was with us because they had been preaching about how Jesus came to save us, to free us, give us freedom, and that this is a free gift, the Father s love has saved us by grace. No one should have had a problem with that, but there were some who found this scandalous! Can you believe it?! The gospel of Jesus was scandalous because these people had grasped sections of Leviticus and were trying to live by the laws set down there. They had no need of Jesus in their lives. It s incredible that some people can completely miss the point. Trying to live by the law makes a mockery of God, it means that we know better, that God didn t need to send Jesus after all, we have it all in hand! Oh dear. V9-10 Extreme Sin Paul goes on from here to list some extreme examples a number of people who have a different mindset, whose goals are what? For themselves. Each one of these has only themselves in mind. This is not Christian. This is not what we are to be. V11 It s Has To Be All About Jesus! Paul ends the introduction as he began, pointing to Jesus, this glorious gospel, this good news, this incredible act of an incredible God who loved us so much He came to earth as a man in Jesus, living as we lived, understanding our struggles, our battles, our pain, dying on the Cross so that we might be free, that we might live, both now and forever. Our goal now is not heaven, and it s not just love, it s Jesus, He is the centre, He must be at the centre of our walk today and through the week. We are not to be chameleons. Our response to Him is love, for others, however that might be for you, using the gifts you have to show care and concern, in fact Jesus love for them.

5 May it affect how we drive, may it affect how we shop, may it affect every single interaction we have with every single person. The goal of this instruction is that out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith, you live out the love of Jesus. There s a lot of talking going on in this passage. Think about what you are talking about, what proportion is meaningless mythology, and how much is about Jesus and what he s done for us? We need to keep the main thing the main thing Jn3:16 God so loved each of us that He came, we have been set free, let s live accordingly.