WWUTT 643 Keep a Close Watch On Yourself?

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You should never think of yourself as so wise and so smart that you would never fall prey to the devil's schemes.

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Any one of us could be tempted, which is why we need the local church to help to keep us on the straight and narrow when we understand the text.

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You are listening to When We Understand The Text, an online Bible ministry so that we may know all the riches freely given to us by God.

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For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We finish up our study of 1 Timothy chapter 4, verses 11 through 16 today, where the

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Apostle Paul writes, Command and teach these things. Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example, in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.

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Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

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Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the Council of Elders laid their hands on you.

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Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.

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Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.

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And it's that last verse in particular we want to look at today with Paul saying, keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.

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Any one of us are weak enough in our flesh that we are capable of being susceptible to temptation, falling into sin, or even being wooed by false teaching and following that.

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Never let yourself believe that you are above any of that, that you are strong enough to withstand any of that.

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I'm never going to stumble. I'm never going to fall into sin. That is never going to happen to me.

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My brother and sister, if David could fall into temptation by having an affair with his friend's wife

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Bathsheba, any one of us are capable of falling into sexual temptation or otherwise.

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Any one of us are still warring against the temptations of the flesh as long as we are in this flesh.

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Christ himself was tempted and yet was without sin. If Christ could be tempted, you could be tempted.

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And be careful that you don't give into that temptation and thus cause yourself to sin.

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If we are desiring holiness and godliness, which we've been talking about over the course of reading this particular section over the last two weeks, as we've been going through 1

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Timothy 4, 11 through 16, growing in holiness and in godliness. If that is your desire, that you would be holy as your heavenly father is holy, as Jesus said in Matthew 5, then you will do anything to abstain from that sin, not giving yourself permission to do it, not saying, oh, that sin isn't so bad, or it's okay if I do it just once.

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That's not having the mind of Christ. That's not desiring to be like your savior. If you desire to please

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God, if you say that you love God, then you will obey his commands. You will show that love that you have for God in the obedience to what it is that God has called for his children to do.

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And so you must desire holiness and godliness and not give yourself any permission to stumble into sin, or in some cases, if you're giving yourself permission to do it, you're just walking right into that sin.

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That is not the pursuit of godliness and holiness. That is not pleasing to the

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Lord. We desire to please our heavenly father. Do you desire to be a worthy son or a worthy daughter?

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Then you must keep watch on yourself. Do not give any provision to the flesh, but instead desire holiness and godliness.

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Cling to God, flee from the devil, and he will flee from you.

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Draw near to God and he will draw near to you, as James puts it in James chapter four.

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And we need the accountability of our brethren, our brothers and sisters in the Lord to keep us from sin or to call out our sin so that we might confess our sins and thus be forgiven.

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As James also says, James five, 16, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

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The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. And surely, you know, Proverbs 27, 17, iron sharpens iron and one man sharpens another

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As we are devoted to the body of Christ and we're devoted to growing with our brothers and sisters in the

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Lord, it is our brothers and sisters that will keep us on the sure path and help to prevent us from stumbling into sin or unrighteousness.

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We read in Galatians one, or I'm sorry, Galatians chapter six, starting in verse one, brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

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Keep watch on yourself, lest you to be tempted. So don't think that just because you're encouraging a brother or sister in the

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Lord means, see, I'm above this sin. I will never fall or stumble into this sin. Peter talks about this in second

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Peter chapter two, and Jude references it also in his letter. This is blaspheming the glorious ones.

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When you think that you're better, more powerful than Satan, like Satan has no power over me.

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He cannot tempt me to do anything. I will never be fooled by any of those demonic spirits.

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That's blaspheming the glorious ones. When you think that you have more power than they do. Very, very common in the charismatic movement, particularly in the new apostolic reformation that you have teachers there who think that you have this power over Satan and you can bind

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Satan and you can name it and claim it, or you can actually tussle with Satan spiritually and win that battle.

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You don't have more power or authority than Satan does. If God grants

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Satan an ability to do something that what God has granted Satan the ability to do, he's going to be able to accomplish.

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Satan can't do anything that God has not given him permission to be able to do.

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So you can't fight Satan and win that battle. What you're told to do is not go toe to toe with Satan.

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You are told to cling to Christ, your savior. And if you do that,

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Satan can't get anywhere near you. That's what you are instructed to do. Not to believe that you have more power over demonic powers, but that you would cling to Christ.

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You would rely fully upon him and he will exalt you humble yourself before the

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Lord and at the proper time he will lift you up. So we go on in Galatians chapter six as it goes on to say in the next verse, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ showing love to one another, which is what the law of Christ commands us to do.

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For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

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Once again, you think you're better than once again, you think that you have more power than demons have.

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You've deceived yourself. Satan's actually won a battle there because he's deceived you into thinking that you on your own are perfectly capable of escaping from the devil.

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You can't do that on your own. You must rely fully upon the Lord and his strength and be accountable to your brothers and sisters in the

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Lord because they will help you do that. Paul said to the

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Thessalonians, first Thessalonians five 11, encourage one another and build one another up.

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It is in that fellowship that we have in the body of Christ that we might be held accountable to Christ.

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Luke 17 three, pay attention to yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.

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This is why we need the body that helps to keep us on the straight and narrow, that helps to protect us from sin and from false teaching.

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As Paul gives this illustration of the church in Ephesians chapter four, beginning in verse 11, he says that God gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God, which, by the way, you can't do that.

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You can't all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the son of God unless you're part of a church and growing together with them.

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You can't accomplish that by yourself. Over and over, as I've had this video ministry on YouTube, over and over,

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I'll come across these videos that are made by these individuals who believe that they are doing some sort of work of the

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Lord and they are not part of a church. And I've emailed these individuals, I've seen the videos that they have put together and I've found false teaching in those videos, but a zealousness to want to defend the faith.

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And so I'll email them and find out in our interactions by email that this individual, the reason why their doctrine is so off in these videos is because they're not part of a local church and they think they're right on.

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And they think they're part of the church, even though they're not attending church. And I, no matter what

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I try to communicate to them by email, I cannot seem to convince them otherwise. At least I've never had that occasion.

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Maybe the Lord, the Holy Spirit will work on that person's heart and convict them of sin and bring them to repentance at a later time.

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But at least in those interactions that we have by email, I've not yet had the privilege of seeing someone repent and realizing that they are broken from the fellowship and they are separated from the head of the body who is

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Christ. What will happen to a piece of the body that's been cut off from the rest of the body? It will rot and it will die.

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It cannot survive. And so it's, it's in love and affection that I would approach these individuals and say, because you're cut off from the church, you are not growing in Christ.

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You're not part of his body. And I have reason to believe that that you may not even be part of that body.

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You might not even be saved. And so hoping that they would be convicted in that, that they may repent and come into the fellowship of the body of Christ.

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So here we have it said that part of the purpose of the body is to attain to unity of the faith and no unity can happen if you're not with the body of Christ.

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We attained to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the son of God to mature manhood.

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We are maturing one another in this progress of faith to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ verse 14 so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes, period.

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So we get to the end of verse 15 and there's our period. But notice that one of the purposes of the body of Christ, one of the ways that the body serves one another in the body is that it protects the body from false teaching.

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When we are holding fast to the head, who is Christ, who is nourishing the body and growing it together in love, we are protected from being tossed around to and fro carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

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The church, the local church, the body of Christ helps to protect you from false teaching.

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Again, that's not a strength that you have in and of yourself to be able to defend yourself from false teaching.

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I'm I'm much better than all those false teachers, those guys that are so gullible and these people that attend that church over there.

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I am not as silly as they are, and I will never fall prey to some of those wiles of Satan.

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You are just as vulnerable to falling into false teaching as anybody.

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This is why you need the local church. You need the church. You need to to submit yourself to that teaching that comes from the pulpit on a regular basis, which

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I hope is expository preaching from the word of God, proclaiming the gospel so that you are submissive to the sound teaching of God's word.

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And this is a protection for you. It's growing you in sanctification. It's growing you in holiness.

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You are growing with the body, attaining to unity, but it's also protecting you from false teaching.

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If you are holding fast to the head, you are holding fast to something, you are unified to a church which is built on the rock of Christ, then you're not going to be tossed around to and fro by human cunning, craftiness and deceitful schemes by every shifting wind of doctrine.

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And I've seen it happen too many times, even in my own church, where a person has separated themselves from the body and has fallen victim to false teaching.

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And to this day, I will encounter those individuals in my community who left our church and maybe joined another church.

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Maybe they didn't, or maybe they're still church hopping around. So they don't even have one body of believers that they're grounded to and is holding them true to the teaching of the word of God.

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They just go where they please and so therefore are not submitting themselves to the full authority of God's word or united with a particular body.

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And they are vulnerable to false teaching. And I see them. I encounter them in the community. And I see these individuals being tossed to and fro by every shifting wind of doctrine.

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When we do not bind ourselves to the church of God in this way, that's where we're vulnerable.

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And the church helps to protect us from falling into the very thing that Paul is warning

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Timothy about. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. As much as Paul sent

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Timothy to Ephesus to bring the teaching back to sound doctrine, he realizes

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Timothy is still just a man and he is still just as capable of being led astray by false teachings as any of the elders there at the church in Ephesus have been led astray.

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And so this charge to Timothy to keep a close watch on himself, that he would not let the teaching or this ministry of the gospel that he's proclaiming fall into, what's the word

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I'm looking for, fall into reproach. That it would be consistent, it would be sure, it would be true according to the apostolic teaching that Timothy had received.

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I want to finish up this section in Ephesians 4. Paul says in verses 15 and 16, rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

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And as Paul is telling Timothy here in 1st Timothy 4 .16, keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching, persist in this.

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And we talked about this earlier this week, make this a regular practice, just like training the body.

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If you don't train your spirit, if you are not consistent in the practice of your faith, it can wither.

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You will lose sure footing on the word of God and instead will be tossed around by all these shifting doctrines.

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Instead, we need to persist. We need to practice. We need to be regular in our Bible reading and our devotions in our church attendance, because if we're not regular in these things, then we will languish and we will suffer spiritually.

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And any one of us are capable of falling into that sort of a pattern. I remember hearing a parable, and maybe you've heard this parable before as well.

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It could have been something you saw circulated by email or on Facebook. But there was a man who was not attending church, and he made all the same excuses that everybody makes for not attending church.

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Well, I don't need to go to church to hear somebody tell me to read the Bible or learn how to pray.

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I know that I'm supposed to do those things, and I can do those things just fine. I don't need to go to church to be told that I'm supposed to love other people.

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I know that I'm supposed to love other people, and I can do that just fine by myself.

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I am part of the church, am I not? I'm a follower of Jesus, so therefore I am the church.

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And so one day he was sitting by himself at home, and the pastor of the church that he had previously been attending or claimed that he was a part of but did not regularly attend, that pastor came over to his house, and the man let the pastor in, and they came into his living room and sat down in front of the fire.

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And the man was fully ready for the pastor to begin rebuking him for why he had not been attending church.

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But they sat there in front of the fire without saying a word to one another. And the pastor looked at the man, and he said, would you mind if I stoke the fire a little bit?

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It looks like you need the flames to rise a little bit more. And the man said, sure, certainly, pastor, you can do that.

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And so the pastor walked over to the fire. He removed the screen. He grabbed the tongs, and he kind of prodded at the logs, moved them around a little bit.

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The fire started to get higher again. And he grabbed a particular coal, and he pulled the coal out of the fire, and he set it right there on the brick hearth, put the tongs up, and took his seat again.

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And the two of them sat in silence watching the fire burn. But especially that little coal that had been singled out and was sitting there on the brick right in front of them.

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It started out as a glowing hot ember. But as the fire continued to burn, the coal lost its heat.

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The glow began to diminish until eventually it became nothing but a hunk of carbon.

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Wasn't good for anything. You couldn't even relight it. It could only turn to ash and be trampled upon.

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The rest of the fire burning hot, but that coal had become cold and worthless.

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And after a spell, the pastor finally stood up, and he patted the man on the shoulder, and he said,

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I'll see you in church on Sunday, and then saw himself out. I tend to wonder if stories like that are rooted in a little bit of truth, that there was some wise pastor somewhere that had done that very illustration with a member of his congregation.

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You know, Jesus gave an illustration as well in John 15, 5, where he said,

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I am the vine. And you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.

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For apart from me, you can do nothing. We must hold fast to Christ, who is the vine.

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If we cut ourselves off from the vine, you will wither and die. And it is only through Christ that you bear fruit for the kingdom of God, which prompts

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Paul to warn Timothy, keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.

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Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers, lest you become somebody who cuts yourself off from Christ and makes a shipwreck of your faith.

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But continue to persist in this, that you might grow in holiness and godliness as you progress in sanctification, you will remain steadfast in the faith.

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That's that's what Paul is calling for here, a perseverance in the faith.

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Yes, it is true that if we are if we are truly filled with the Holy Spirit of God, we will not ever forsake the way we will remain on the way to the very end, as Jesus said to his disciples, he who endures to the end will be saved.

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But we have not yet made it to the end. If you hear my voice, you have not come to the end of your life.

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And you don't know that you have crossed that finish line yet. So you must be careful.

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If you have the Holy Spirit of God in you, he will keep you to the day of redemption.

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But do not use that as an excuse to think that you can go any way that you want. Lest you make a shipwreck of your faith and reveal that you never actually had the seal of the

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Spirit of God. The faith that you had was just temporary. It was just something that was that was nothing more than a passing opinion.

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But you did not truly love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.

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If you do, you will remain steadfast in the faith to the very end and save yourself.

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Even as somebody who loves the doctrines of grace, it is not beyond me to say to somebody save yourself.

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For Paul says it here in 1 Timothy 4 .16 and Peter said it also at Pentecost in Acts 2.

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Save yourself from this crooked and depraved generation. Understanding that that call to save yourself means that you turn from sin and you cling to Christ who is our

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Savior. You do have a responsibility to respond to the gospel.

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Let's pray. Our Lord God, we thank you for these instructions that you have given to us through your servant

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Paul. That we might learn the things of the Word of God. That we would set an example to one another in speech.

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The words that we say in our conduct, in charity, in our walk of faith, in purity.

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As we pursue godliness. Help us to be devoted to the Word. And that we would not neglect the calling that we've been given to serve one another in the body of Christ.

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Help us to practice this, be immersed in the work of the body and the church that we are a part of.

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So that all may see the progress that we make as we grow in sanctification. And help us to keep a close watch on ourselves.

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That we would not fall into temptation. Or that we would not stumble in this walk of faith by being led astray by false teachers.

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But help us to persist in what we have been called to by the will of God.

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To abstain from sin and cling to Christ. And so save ourselves.

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And those to whom we witness to in the body and even in this world.

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We pray and ask this in Jesus name. Amen. For more about our ministry, visit us online at www .utt