Wage the Good Warfare

Wage the Good Warfare 1 Timothy 1:18-20 Justin Deeter April 17, 2016 Introduction Our mother s always told us not to fight, but little boys have an instinctual urge to fight. They want a battle to wage, a competition to dominate, a war to win. So they rough house, shoot guns, have foot races, play video games, because even though our moms tell us not to fight, there is urge within us that has to find an outlet. The Christian faith is a fight; it s a war zone. To survive and to win the victory takes the bravest men and women to make it to the end. Christianity isn t for the weak minded or the faint of heart. Rather, the Christian is a solider who marches into a spiritual warzone. We must be prepared for this battle. Today, as we look at 1 Timothy we are going to look at the secret to fighting the good fight. Today is boot camp, and I want to teach you from God s word how to wage the good warfare, so that you might not be a spiritual casualty but a spiritual victor. Wage the Good Warfare Paul began his letter by charging Timothy to handle the false teachers that are stirring up divisions in the church. Their false teaching revolved around speculations and genealogies in the Law that led to corrosive sin and division witin the church. In the midst of this charge Paul pauses in verses 8-11 to explain the proper understanding of the Law, which leads him to share his own testimony and highlight the Gospel in verses 12-17. One of the major themes in 1 Timothy is that the household of God, the church, should be rightly ordered. This means grounding the church in the sound doctrine of the Gospel. Any other foundation is sinking sand. 1

So Paul picks back up with his opening comments in verses 18-20. He picks back up the charge to Timothy, reminding him again, This charge I entrust to you. Timothy has a weight and a responsibility on his shoulders. Leadership is not for wimps and leadership should never be just filling slots. That s one of the reasons I get so concerned when leadership positions in our own church become slots to be filled by whatever warm body begrudgingly agrees to do so. As soon as we start thinking about just filling in a vacancy out of obligation, the church is in danger. Leaders are those who must give an account to God for their actions. So Paul charges Timothy as an apostle to handle these false teachers as one who has been entrusted with this responsibility. Leaders are stewards who ve been entrusted by God with a sacred task to lead the people of God. This responsibility should never be taken lightly, whimsically, or out of obligation. Timothy s sacred task is a weighty one, and he is summoning his young protégé, whom he calls his child, to rise to the occasion. Now is the hour in which he must act. Paul tells Timothy that he would exercise his duties in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you. As we look at the New Testament we are able to see the special moment of God s call on this young man s life. Timothy was a young man who was well thought off. In Acts 16:2 we are told, He was well spoken of by the brothers at Lystra and Iconium. As a young man he garnered the reputation of godliness and excellence in Christian service. This young man was eventually chosen to be set apart for the ministry. The Holy Spirit gave him the gift of teaching, and was to use it for the good of God s people. This event occurred when the elders (or pastors) of the church laid their hands on him. 1 Timothy 4:14 says, Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. In 2 Timothy 1:6-7, Paul charges Timothy to, fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. He was to nurture, grow, and utilize his gift of teaching, given him by God at his ordination for the good of the church. Paul continually points back to this special event in Timothy s life. He brings it up again at the end of 1 Timothy in 6:12 when he writes, Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. He constantly points Timothy back to the beginning, this special moment of his ordination. He tells Timothy recurrently, Look back to this special moment where the elders laid their hands on you, when you were set apart for this work, when the Spirit came upon you with the gift of teaching, where 2

there were prophecies about you. Remember what God has called you too and what those men expected of you. Prove those prophecies true. You ve been charged, entrusted with a sacred task to preach the word, shepherd the flock, and slay the wolves. You ve had those pivotal moments of your life, where everything is on the line. Whether it s the championship game of your soccer league or the final exam of a college degree. You remember just what s expected of you. You remember your parents, who believe in you, the coaches and teachers who invested in you. You look back to a moment in your youth when you were nervously excited about your career. When everything was the first time and you had so much potential. Paul tells Timothy to remember those expectations. Remember how many people have been praying for him. Ministry is hard. The Christian life is hard. It s terribly hard to do the right thing, when you know its not the popular thing. It s difficult to achieve the charge you ve been entrusted with, when you know that you will be demonized, gossiped about, and persecuted. Things are always easy in the beginning, but much harder in the thick of things. We know this don t we? When you first start eating healthy and working out, the first week is easy. But three or four months in, when it gets hard, its easy to throw in the towel and give up. The same is true for our marriage. There is a honeymoon period, and somewhere along the way, life hits you in the face. Marriage begins to take work, sacrifice, and the butterflies of new love becomes normal. The same is true for pastors and churches. Its easy to exercise your duties as a pastor when everyone loves you! It s much harder when you know there are some who will hate you for it. I say that not to garner your pity, because I love you and give thanks everyday that God has called me to you, but sometimes its hard. Timothy is going to have to publicly handle these false teachers, and it might get ugly. People may gossip about him behind his back or accuse him of things he didn t do or question his motives. As a pastor, those things happen on a weekly basis, but Timothy still must exercise his duties. Why? Because he has been entrusted by God. His first responsibility is to God and to exercise his task faithfully in obedience to him. The Christian can never enslave himself to the praise of the crowd, because often faithfulness to Jesus will mean the cursing of the crowd. Yet, Paul charges Timothy to exercise his responsibility as a pastor faithfully, that by them you may wage the good warfare. 3

We typically don t think of the Christian life as warfare, but it certainly is. In fact, we are rather oblivious to the spiritual war going on all around us. The apostle continually describes the Christian life as one of a solider in battle. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:2, ESV) For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. (2 Corinthians 10:3, ESV) Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. (Ephesians 6:11, ESV) Do you not think that Satan and his cohort are actively attacking you spiritually, attacking our church regularly? He does so continually. Therefore, we must be on guard! We must not fall asleep in the trenches. We cannot go into the battle unequipped or unaware of what waits us. Every day the schemes of hell plot to destroy God s people and to destroy Christ s church. Therefore, we must wage the good warfare! I m sure you ve heard of the move, The Karate Kid. A young kid named Daniel gets bullied by a kid named Johnny. Daniel, unaware of how to fight, gets beat up badly until a kind old man named Mr. Miyagi steps in and single handedly protects Daniel. Long story short, Mr. Miyagi takes Daniel under his wings and teaches him how to fight. So we are going to try something here. Your Daniel, Satan is Johnny, and I m going to be Mr. Miyagi. I m going to try to teach you how to fight. Thankfully, Paul tells us exactly how to fight or how to wage the good warfare. We do so by holding faith and a good conscience. Holding Faith and a Good Conscience This little phrase, these short phrases, contain the battle plans of how to fight well in the Christian life so that we aren t overcome by the enemy. It contains the objective and subjective training we need to fight well. On the one hand we need the objective deposit of the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. On the other hand, we need the subjective guidance of a good conscience. Perhaps a sporting analogy will help? To learn a new sport, you must first learn the objective fundamentals. You learn the rules to the sport. You learn how to dribble or throw a pass. You learn how to make a free throw. Great teams master the fundamentals, the objective part of the game. However, 4

building on the fundamentals is the instinctual, subjective part of the game to make good decisions and learning how to use the fundamentals in a live game when you have to make a split-second decision. In some ways, this is what Paul is talking about here. You must rightly hold onto the objective faith so that you can live the Christian life in good conscience when you are in the game of life. So let s talk first about holding the faith, the objective deposit passed down to us over the last two millennia. We live in an age incredibly confused about truth. For many truth is a fluid term, constantly evolving, determined by the individual. Yet, truth is not something self-determined but discovered, revealed by God in word and world. If we as Christians hope to fight the good fight, we must equip ourselves with the objective truth revealed to us by God. That truth is found and discovered in the Scriptures. We must know God! We must study the Scriptures. We must know sound doctrine. Yet, the ignorance of God that plagues the church astounds me. Few of us can name the ten commandments. Many Christians have only memorized one or two verses of Scripture. Many Christians don t even crack open their Bibles. No wonder we are not waging the good warfare; we march into war without a weapon in our hands! That s one of the key jobs of the church, is to equip you with the word so that you can hold onto the faith. That s why our mission statement as a church is to treasure Christ, equip believers, and send disciples for the glory of God. An essential part of what we do at Forest Hills is equip you with the word of God. We want to teach the word deeply. We want to teach you sound doctrine. We want to teach you how to read your Bibles, and encourage you to do so. The reason for that is simple, if you are going to survive this war you must hold onto the faith. The bullets of the enemy are constantly going by your head, yet so many Christians run into battle unaware and unequipped. Knowledge of God and loving God with your mind doesn t hinder your spiritual growth, but accelerates it! The more you know about God, the more you love God. The more you know about the love of Christ, the more you desire the love of Christ in your life! The reason so many of you have no desire for God, and the reason you are getting your tail kicked by temptation and sin, is because you do not know God. You haven t learned the fundamentals. You haven t been mastered by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Grow in your knowledge of the objective faith, and hold on to it! But Paul also instructs us to possess a good conscience, the second element necessary to fighting well. Every believer in Jesus has been given the Holy Spirit who dwells within our hearts. The Spirit prompts our conscience and 5

directs our lives in a subjective way. As we are holding to the objective faith, we must follow the subjective guidance of the Holy Spirit in our lives. John Calvin said, A bad conscience is the mother of all heresies. Indeed, this is true. As Christians when we begin to go against the subjective guidance of the Spirit we are in terrible danger. When the Spirit begins to convict of us sin, warn us of temptation and danger, and then we indulge our sin, we are in grave danger. As one commentator put it, When morals slip, doctrine ebbs, and the fight is soon lost. Not only does the Scripture say this is true, but I ve experienced. I m sure we all have. When people fall away from the faith it often doesn t begin with doctrine, but with morality. They begin to indulge some sin that the Scriptures forbids, going against their conscience, and before long they are adjusting their beliefs to justify their actions. They try to cleanse their dirty conscience by replacing one belief for another. Before long, the fight is lost and we witness another spiritual casualty in this spiritual war for our souls. Often our conscience, guided by the Spirit, will lead different Christians different directions. Watching a certain movie for one Christian may cause no temptation, but for another it leads him into temptation. One Christian s conscience isn t infringed by the action, the other s is. It is never safe to go against our conscience. Trust in the subjective guidance of the Spirit, that spiritual intuition that guides, convicts, and reveals. Some may accuse of you being legalistic, extreme, or radical, but if you wish to fight the good fight of faith, then hold onto the objective deposit of the faith and trust the subjective promptings of the Holy Spirit by holding on to a good conscience. The Tragedy of Shipwrecks Tragically, not everyone fights the good fight. Just like Jesus parable of the sower, some good Gospel seed falls on the thorny hearts. They sprout up for a moment, showing signs of spiritual life, but then sin and temptation choke out their spiritual life. Paul writes, By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander. Paul says that some do not wage the good warfare, but fail to hold on to faith and a good conscience. This leads only to spiritual ruin, a shipwreck. Out of all the ways I wouldn t want to die, dying by shipwreck has to be one of them. You get on the boat unexpected that it will sink. It makes good progress on its journey. It s moving the right direction, then all the sudden something happens unexpected, that you couldn t plan for. A storm comes out of no where, a rock, who knows what, but all of the sudden your sinking. Paul mentions two men as an example, Hymenaeus and Alexander. Their names come up a few times in 6

the New Testament but we are not necessarily sure they are the same guys. But, based off of this context, they appear to be two of the false teachers in the church. These men have made a shipwreck of their faith because of their false teaching and false living. The danger is real. Anyone of us can make a shipwreck of our faith. We are weak and frail, prone to wander from the Lord. It is only by the grace of God that we are kept and protected from our own proclivity to sin. We hear about famous pastors who fall from grace all the time, often in some sort of sexual sin. It happens all to frequently, and it s a tragedy every time. It can happen to anyone of us, therefore we must be on guard. We must utilize the means of grace God has provided, the Scriptures, the Church, the Spirit, to help us persevere in the faith, knowing that it is only by God s sovereign might and will that we are not only saved in Christ, but kept in Christ till the day we die. Paul tells us what he has done to these two men who have made a shipwreck of their faith. He handed them over to Satan. Now that sounds on the surface exceptionally cruel. Why would Paul curse these guys to hell? What is Paul talking about here? Well, he is talking about the biblical practice of church discipline. Paul states that these guys must be removed from the membership of the church, thus separated from the community of the church and given to Satan and his kingdom in the world. We see this practice occur throughout the Bible, indeed it is one Jesus instructs us to do in Matthew 18 whenever there is a member of the church in sin. We first approach him one on one. If he refuses to repent, we bring a second brother with us. If he still won t repent, then we bring him before the church. If he refuses the churches call to repentance, then Jesus tells us to treat him like a gentile or tax collector. The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 5 Paul tells the church to take the man who is committing a heinous sexual sin to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord (1 Cor 5:5). Why would Jesus and Paul both tell us to remove people from the membership of the church? The reason is simple. First, we must protect the purity of the body of Christ. Second, we don t want to give unrepentant sinners a false assurance of their salvation. When a professed Christian who s a member of a church begins to engage in unrepentant sin, then evidence indicates that he has yet to be born again. So by removing the unrepentant sinner from the membership of the church, we hope that the sinner would wake up to the seriousness of his sin and come to Christ. The 7

church never disciplines and removes a member out of hate, anger, or spite, rather just the opposite. We do so out of love, hoping and praying that they will be restored to the faith as they come to Christ! That s what Paul tells us here in 1 Timothy. He hands them over to Satan, so that they may learn not to blaspheme. Paul hopes that by the removal of these two false teachers, they may learn the error of their ways, repent, and come back to Christ and the church. Final Thoughts We live in dangerous times. The spiritual climate in our country only grows darker, and many unequipped Christians are being devoured by the darkness. May we wage the good warfare, and fight the good fight! May we hold to the objective truths of the faith, and may we protect a good conscience. May we not make a shipwreck of our faith, but fight sin and temptation in our lives. May we be courageous enough and loving enough, to hand unrepentant church members over to Satan in hopes that they will repent and be saved. The lines of demarcation are clearly drawn. There is the kingdom of darkness and there is the kingdom of light. There is the kingdom of Satan and the kingdom of God. The church must protect that line, as we partner together, lock arms, watch each others backs together. Perhaps this morning one of the ways you can fight the good fight is by committing to a local church in membership. The church is an assurance of salvation co-op. We d love to have you join us and we will love you enough to protect you from your own sin. Our next membership class will be starting the first Sunday in May during Sunday School. We d love to have you join us. Come talk to me or take your connect card in your bulletin and let us know your interested in being a member. Perhaps others of you are unequipped. You can t hold on to the faith, because you don t know the faith. Perhaps today you need to commit to God to be equipped with his word, prioritizing the study of God s word in your life both at home and hear at the church. Perhaps others of you must restore a good conscience. As a Christian you are living in sin, and the conviction of the Spirit won t let you go. Today, repent of your sin and obey the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps another group of you are like Hymenaeus and Alexander. You ve made a shipwreck of your faith. You ve held on to your secret sin for so long that its killing your faith. That adulterous affair, that pornography addiction, that embezzling of money, is slowly eating at your soul, shipwrecking your 8

faith. Even though our church has not, God has handed you over to Satan, in hopes that you might see the horrors of your sin and that you would come to Christ. Today, turn from your sins and come to the grace of Jesus Christ. Do not blaspheme with your doctrine or in your lifestyle, but trust in the grace offered even to shipwrecked sinners. 9