Oct. 29, 2017 PM Service: The Gospel - A Sacred Trust Pastor Josh Sheldon

series that we began in the afternoon some time ago in 1 Timothy. We come to the end of this short series with the last two verses of the book, or this letter to Timothy, verses 20 and 21 in the sixth chapter.

Before I read these two, I've always felt it incumbent upon me to tell you where we're going to go next, so you don't think that I wake up on Saturday morning and scramble about my scripture and find something preachable for Sunday morning.

It's much better planned out than that. That said, when I finish a series such as this, as we went through 1

Timothy, I begin preparing for the next and deciding where to go, doing some upfront work for it.

And what has been my habit and my practice, and maybe you've been with me for a while, know this, that when

I finish one series, I tend to do something interim before I go into an expositional series in a book.

The books and going through them sequentially is the core of our preaching. I do take these breaks between finishing one series and getting into the next.

So my thoughts are, just so you know where we're going, ultimately to pick up and go through the book of Jonah as our next series here in the afternoon preaching.

Between this afternoon, when Lord willing, I will finish 1 Timothy in the last two verses of the book, and when

I pick up Jonah and begin to present that to you here in the afternoon, I am inclined to going back to Jesus' so -called high priestly prayer, which is

John chapter 17, and most likely we'll start actually John 15. So this will be a pretty good series, but I think it's a good one for the intimacy that we have here, the smaller crowd in the afternoon, the purpose with which we come together ultimately to take the table and to hear

Jesus again speaking of the love of God the Father for Him, God the

Son, and that love that He has for those who are in His Son is the same as He has for His Son, and many other truths that are in that prayer of Jesus, starting in chapter 15, then

John 17, called the high priestly prayer. I think my plan right now is to present that to you.

When we get through that one, then I will go to the book of Jonah, and we'll go through that as we do sequentially.

So that's the plan that we will go through that way. John chapter 15 through 17, when we finish that, we will go to Jonah, and again my inclination is, though it's not a solid plan yet, my inclination is to do after Jonah a few more, maybe two or three more of the what are called the minor prophets.

Not that their message is minor compared to any other prophet, just that they're shorter books, and so called that minor prophets.

For this afternoon though, 1 Timothy chapter 6, pardon me, and verses 20 to 21, the end of this letter from the apostle

Paul to Timothy, his protege, O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.

Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. For by professing it, some have swerved from the faith.

Grace be with you. So what we have here is this gospel handed down from Christ to the apostles, and then the apostles to the church, and down through the ages to us by God's spirit and word is a precious inheritance to us the church.

It's one to be guarded with perseverance. It's one to be guarded with a jealous concern for Christ's name.

As this letter comes to a close here, this is just what the apostle Paul sets before Timothy, the inestimable worth of the gospel and the constant work of guarding it against the equally constant incursions of falsehood.

In Ephesus in the first century, the false teaching of the false teachers that we met so early in this letter back in chapter 1.

For his part, Paul is very anxious about all this. In 2 Corinthians 11 verse 28, he writes, and apart from other things, he's talking about all the hardships that he endured for the sake of the gospel, apart from other things there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.

He thought of the truths he had taught Timothy as a treasure to be carried by the church, much as Israel marched behind the

Ark of the Covenant. We know from 2 Timothy, written only shortly after this letter, that Paul's date with Nero's sword was soon at hand.

So he hands to Timothy, he hands to us today a different kind of a sword than the one that took his head, he hands the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So he ends the letter with this charge, O Timothy, guard the deposit that was entrusted to you.

The deposit, of course, nothing but the gospel, the gospel upon which the church is built. And Paul uses here the commercial language of a valuable deposit made with a bank, and the bank is responsible for this deposit at all hazards.

Nothing will be spared to make sure that it is there when the depositor returns for his goods.

Now, of course, Paul didn't return to the church to take back his goods, he was executed, as I said.

But this is the kind of care and protectiveness, sort of a mother hen over her chicks kind of a protectiveness, or a she -bear for her cubs, and that's how he is to protect and guard and watch over this gospel, this treasure that was handed to him by Paul.

The language heightens the duty of the minister's calling here to live by the gospel at home and in the church, to be sure that the church is conducting itself in accordance to her one foundation's, and I mean, of course,

Christ Jesus's wishes. Ephesus, where Timothy was ministering, where Paul handed this off to him, had become infected with men who preached what is ultimately a speculative kind of gospel.

It was wrapped up in enigmas and sophisticated manipulations of the language. They taught of a

God who is high above, as God is, but then made reaching him impossible.

They presented him in the vein of their endless genealogies and myths, that's what we learned in chapter one.

They taught the laws a means to come to God, but they didn't understand what the law was all about. They misaligned the roles to be carried out in the church, and so they upset the church's redemptive drama by which the roles of men and women were realigned with the original design of Eden before sin.

They completely missed the apostolic goal of love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

Now, that doesn't place them, of course, I mean the false teachers, does not place them beyond the range of redemption.

Paul himself, 1 Timothy 1 .13, had been, in his own words, a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent.

He means, of course, opponent to God, and yet Christ chose him. Christ saved him from his madness, and madness it was, madness all of us had before God saved us, running with Balaam on his donkey into a mad plunge of disobedience and heresies against God.

So the false teachers have redemption still placed before them, but we learn here about the constant effort, the never -ending strain we must put forth to guard the gospel, to guard the gospel in our hearts, to guard the gospel in our life, our teaching, in this pulpit, and your responsibility to be sure that as this pulpit proclaims the gospel to you with the

Bereans of Acts 17, is it a true gospel you're hearing, not that a man doesn't make a mistake every now and then, which

I'm not trying to give excuses for errors, but that you are hearing the gospel, that the scriptures are being put forth before you.

Continuous, ever -vigilant guardianship of this precious inheritance that we have, we all have together in this gospel.

The erroneous ones back then are usually thought of as Gnostics.

Gnostics coming, of course, from the word for knowledge. There's some scholarly disagreement on this point.

Some say Gnosticism wasn't well enough developed back then to have been a danger, but I think it's consistent with the way

Paul says that the false teachers at Ephesus complicated things. They placed the gospel beyond the reach of simple readers.

They didn't do what Alistair Begg today constantly says in his messages, keep the plain things the main things and the main things the plain things, which is usually how the scripture puts it out to us.

God gave us his word to be understood, and so that's one of the immediate places we can see where we can exercise this guardianship is, and again falling back on Alistair Begg when he often says, you're sensible people.

You're sensible people. God gave you a brain and an intellect and understanding, and you're able to hear, is a gospel being preached?

Do I understand this? Is this attainable? Can I wrap my arms around it, or is this so complicated, so confusing, so sophisticated that I say aha every minute that I hear this man preach, but as soon as I leave, like a vapor, like a mist, it goes away.

I go, what? What did he say? What am I supposed to do? What is my belief system?

How do I handle this situation at work? What is this relationship with my spouse supposed to be like? It made sense 30 minutes ago.

Now I don't get it, because it's complicated. That's the sort of thing I think these men in Ephesus were doing, and people do yet today, and guarding the gospel.

One of the simplest ways for us to guard the gospel is, is it simple? Is it understandable?

Can I wrap my arms and my mind around this thing and leave here knowing what to do?

And if the message isn't about what to do, something I need to believe, and I understand what I believe, and why, and how that brings glory to the

Lord Jesus Christ. That's what gospel preaching is all about, and guarding it.

Your responsibility to guard what I say. My responsibility to make sure that the notes

I preach from are true to the scripture. One simple way is, was it simple?

Does it just make plain common sense? Not that the gospel's common sense. That God would save sinners is not common sense.

That God would give Jesus Christ to a sinner like me, we could even say is illogical.

But the gospel itself is a trustworthy saying. The Lord Jesus Christ came to save sinners.

Do you hear that? Sunday in, and Sunday out. Glory to the Lord Jesus Christ in a way that you can understand, and maintain, and remember.

Very simple test. Is it simple? We need to be ready to defend this deposit that's been entrusted to us against all comers.

And I don't mean by that, that we must be all expert apologists or debaters. I do mean that the attacks that come against the gospel are really in two main forms.

And first, there's the nothing new under the sun sort of rehashes of the old heresies. And second, there are the new challenges brought on by a society that's sliding ever further from God, more and more inclined to call what is good evil, or evil good.

We face threats of the gospel the ancient world couldn't have imagined. Now under the first, under the nothing new under the sun variety, is for example the

Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons. Their doctrine on the creation of Jesus as a being distinct from God is really just a rehash of Arianism.

That's the famous, or infamous I should say, heretic whose slogan was, there was a time when the

Son was not. Which of course led to the Nicene Creed, which said, and in one

Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, true

God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same essence as the

Father. We do face attacks against the gospel.

That's an old one. That Jesus Christ is just the highest of all created beings, and to say he's created is an absolute heresy, and we need to guard against that.

We need to be sure that when this pulpit proclaims to you Jesus Christ, we proclaim the eternal

Son of God. We can call him the second person of the Trinity, because second is not worse than third, or better than first.

That's not the point of having three persons in Trinity. Do you hear?

The eternal Son of God, who is God of God, who everything that means to be God, he is, and always has been.

Well, that's the nothing new side of the attacks against us. Some of these are just rehashes, and we can go on with others like Pelagianism, and Marcionism, and others like that, as you just keep recycling these old, old heresies that the church has handled several times in our history.

Under the new category, men who make promises from the that the scriptures can't condone have no relationship to.

Particularly, there's the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel. There are those who offer healing for a fee, those who have

Holy Spirit glue, and all these exciting things that they can bring to you that the scriptures nowhere would condone.

We have a gospel light these days, just a call to believe in Jesus after proclaiming salvation, devoid of any conviction of sin or need of repentance.

Oneness Pentecostals teach that there is no personhood in God. They deny the Trinity, claiming God as one.

Now, Jesus, who is God in the flesh, he affirmed that God is one, yet he also clearly taught that he and the

Spirit and the Father, distinct from one another in person, were yet one

God. We today must defend our church against marriages that would be against the gospel on which we stand.

Abortion has existed for many centuries, but never has it been celebrated as a right the way it is today or made so readily, and as they market it, safely, they say safely, available.

There's much against which to guard the gospel, and as time marches on, as the

Lord tarries, it just sort of adds up. And some of them we can point to and say, well, this is just the fifth -century

Arianism. That's true, and yet we have Arianism on top of Pelagianism, on top of health and welfare, on top of liberation theology, on top of abortion rights, on top of same -sex marriage, and it just keeps building.

We must be on our guard. We must be sure what we're hearing. We listen on the radio.

We look on YouTube and find sermons to hear to edify us during the day. Nothing wrong with that.

Even here from myself, who have you known and loved, we've had a great love and unity together for many years, and yet you are to be on your guard for what

I say. Come and correct me if I'm wrong. I'm to be on the guard. We must always be vigilant for this gospel, this precious deposit.

If Paul told Timothy, guard the deposit with which I've entrusted you, we can hear him saying the same to us, because the gospel that Timothy was to guard is no different than the gospel we must guard.

The attacks against it are different, and our adversary comes up with new ways to break it apart, to take a little chink in the armor if he can find it.

But it's Christ who is building his church. They say, unless the Lord builds it, the laborer labors in vain, and yet we know that Christ is doing the work here.

Our part, be sure of what we're hearing. Guard this deposit. We must, as we come under different attacks and new social pressures and new so -called rights and the kind of things

I've talked about, we need to take this scripture as, if you will, as a script.

It gives us God's entire revelation to us, his will for how we are to behave, for what we are to do, for who he is, for who his son is, who the spirit is.

Everything is given to us in the scripture, and yet we don't play out the gospel the way they did 500 years ago in Martin Luther's time, or even 500 years before that.

We must play it, if you will, differently. I'll give you an example of what this is like.

You know, in 1948 and then 1989, two great actors won awards for playing the role of Hamlet.

Both Shakespearean trained actors. One of them was

Laurence Olivier. That was the older one, of course, in 1948. And then 1989,

Hamlet was played by Kenneth Brannig. They both won awards for it. Now what's interesting, and what

I'm trying to get to you, through to you, is the update in not the script, the scripture never changes, but the way we play it out, the way we interpret it, the way we live it out, the way it answers the issues of our day.

Because see, these two men, in their roles, both said every word the same.

They followed the entire Shakespearean script true to Shakespeare's original intent.

They both won awards for it, but they were both completely different. Their interpretation of the script was completely different, one from the other, yet true to the original.

So also, do we guard the gospel by trusting it to answer the questions of our particular day?

We answer differently than Timothy because we're answering different questions, but our answer comes from the same wellspring of truth, which is

God's eternal word. The peril is that by slipping away from the gospel, we will actually, as Paul puts it, swerve from the faith.

A car that changes lanes is in a safe, steady, and intentional movement from this lane to that lane.

But when it swerves, what happens? We have this sudden, jerky, unplanned, spontaneous movement that's sort of dangerous.

And for those of us who are on the road and driving safely, looking first, adjusting our speed to traffic, going into the intended lane, signaling our intention, then easing the car onto the new course, well these others are a clear and present danger.

They swerved. And this is the sort of herky -jerky, sudden, almost violent movement that Paul speaks of, swerving from the faith.

Not a lane change, not something thought through. Look in the rearview mirror, turn your head. I'm not giving lessons here.

Signal, move over smoothly, that sort of thing. Adjust your speed. No, he's talking about just a sudden maneuver that gets in the way of others, that's unsafe for others and for yourself.

I say when others swerve, let them go by. Don't be ashamed to stay in the slow lane where there's no rush, where things are calmer, where we can be deliberate, where we can be thoughtful.

Let's not be ashamed that we're a confessional church, the 1689, a 17th century confession.

So old -fashioned, so clear and concise in its exposition of what

God's Word says. Let us not detach ourselves from these things easily.

Don't let them go. Don't be ashamed that we're slow, we're a little staid. But once the script has been reviewed, we now want to move over into that lane, and we know it's the right one.

We can proceed in the new direction with confidence, knowing that we are true to the original, which is the scripture, and we can move deliberately, we can move confidently with answers from God's eternal

Word for today's current dilemmas. So yes, guard the deposit.

There's no change. God's Word is cast forever in the heavens, but the way it plays out and the questions it answers do change.

Not the Word, not the principles, not the doctrines, not the theology it gives us. None of that will ever change.

But the way it answers what we deal with today, that certainly can.

Well, this letter closes with four simple words, and with this we will close. Grace be with you.

The original language is also four words, but if we translate them very literally, if they're a little odd to our ears, it would be something like the grace with you.

Now it doesn't sound much different, and supplying the word be, grace be with you, is quite correct.

I only bring this up to point out that Paul doesn't mean just grace generally. He says the grace.

He's not just signing off with something like sincerely Paul or regards the apostle. He wishes upon Timothy that which he will need to fight the good fight, that which he needs to stay the course, that what we all need.

He ends with that one source of strength and endurance necessary for all in the church, for housewife, for child, for husband, father, pastor, hairdresser, all the same.

It's grace. Grace be with you. The grace, which is the grace of God revealed and invested in his son

Jesus. The grace of God by which we are saved. The grace of God we spoke about this morning from the solace.

Grace which saves and grace which sustains. Grace which dwells with the contrite in spirit.

Not a grace that says before I come to you, you must know this much more than you did before.

No, it's God's grace. The one that comes from the finished and fully accomplished work of our

Savior Jesus. He did it all. The hymn says it over and over.

Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. John wrote of him, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

It's a wonderful way to end this letter. To remind Timothy what's the wellspring of his strength, his endurance?

God's grace. What holds us together? Why are we able to come together today?

Why we were here last Sunday worshiping together? And why, Lord willing, will we be here next week if the

Lord tarries and allows us to be here once again? God's grace is never -ending, showered upon us grace.

And from that we, like Timothy, find the endurance to do this guardianship of this special and precious deposit that was given to us, to him and to us.

So I think we can appreciate Paul's construction of this letter. With all the issues Timothy faced, and we today face, he ends with the greatest encouragement.

God's grace poured out on sinners, infused into his son's church, and enlivening our every step.

So with that, Paul ends this letter to Timothy. With this, we end our series in 1

Timothy. I trust that you have all been blessed by this preaching, and Lord willing, you're reading through of Timothy during the preaching time.

As we see so much here about our conduct within the church, the organization of the church, our mutual responsibilities,

I as the pastor you've raised up, you as the congregation who are responsible for having raised me up, you've had...

Well, we'll leave that one alone. But it's a letter that has given us this, this mutual responsibility and this together responsibility for being the church that God would have us to be, following the instructions that Timothy gives, following the roles that he sets forth in 1

Timothy 2, being aware of false teaching in 1 Timothy 1 and how he ends the letter, proper rules is chapter 2, raising up leaders who meet the qualifications is chapter 3, and all the rest of it.

I trust that you've been edified, that you've learned as I have in my studies and presenting this to you, just what it means to be a church together and how we're to conduct things.

But I love the way it ends. Grace be with you and may grace be with us even as we proceed.