Book of 1 Timothy - Ch. 1, vv. 4-11

Alrighty, I know we have a few folks in the kitchen, but I am going to go ahead and get started mainly just to finish up a couple of thoughts that we pretty much covered last week and then by the time everyone gets in here we'll be moving into some new material and there is quite a bit

I'd like to cover today just because there is a lengthier section than we would normally cover from around verses 6 through 11 that are, they just all really go together and so I would like to try to cover them in one fell swoop, if we don't that's okay, but we'll see what happens here.

So we're still in 1 Timothy chapter 1, obviously just getting the study started and last week we covered verses 3 through 4 which

I'll just read really quickly, it says, As I besought thee to abide in Ephesus, this is

Paul talking to Timothy of course, when I went into Macedonia that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine, neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies.

So we ended last week talking quite a bit about the fables, we stopped short on touching the endless genealogies which is where we'll pick up this morning and he goes on to say,

Which minister questions rather than godly edifying, which is in faith, so do. So like we mentioned last week, the fables, these are myths, this in fact the

Greek term is literally where we get our word for myth from and so these are things, these are legends, these are myths, these are essentially unwritten histories in some cases where it's a time waster, it is

Paul exhorting Timothy not to waste his time debating the false teachers when they are disputing about fables, disputing about myths, there's no end to it, that's what we talked about last week.

And so now let's take a closer look at this endless genealogies stuff. So he includes endless genealogies, this is something we covered a little bit in Titus because in chapter 1 of Titus, Paul is also giving warning about that as well.

He says, let's see here, I'm trying to remember which verse it was,

I can't remember, it's somewhere in between verses 10 and 16 of Titus chapter 1 where he talks about genealogies there as well.

And so we've kind of touched on this before and it's one more thing that Paul wants

Timothy to avoid completely. Now we don't know for sure 100 % what kind of genealogies they were analyzing,

Paul didn't really spell that out in great detail for us. Some believe that they were regarding genealogies of like false gods, false deities, maybe angels, things like that.

We are somewhat familiar with the Gnostics of that time and they would teach on genealogies of what they called the

Aeons, which to them was like just the, all of the gods starting from the original one all the way through down to Jesus and beyond, they believed that Jesus was one of many

Aeons. And so some believe that maybe they were dabbling in those kinds of genealogy, things of that sort.

But what I think is more plausible in this context, because who are we talking about?

We're talking about essentially Judaizers, those that are really wrapped up in the

Pharisaic teachings that apparently still had quite a bit of pull because we're now multiple decades after Jesus rose from the dead, went back to heaven, and you have the apostles out teaching, you have churches being planted, you have the church being born and growing.

And yet you still have this kind of false teaching. And so I believe in this context, they were probably just obsessing over their own

Jewish family trees, which was a thing, which was something that the Pharisees, for example, would do.

After the exiles in the Old Testament took place, Babylon and all, and the various things that happened there, the

Jews and especially the Pharisees during that dark period between Malachi and the

New Testament starting, they would pore over their private genealogies nonstop.

It's just something like I mentioned a second ago, they would quite literally obsess over trying to find the definitive ties with the tribe they were from, or whether they were of the priestly and Levitical lines or not.

And of course, there was some success in it, because as we know, Philippians chapter three, Paul goes as far as to tell us he was of the tribe of Benjamin.

So sometimes these Pharisees were able to figure it out. But the point is, they cared about it greatly.

And so what would happen? They would obsess over the fables, the myths, and the genealogies, the endless genealogies as Paul puts it, and what would happen is it would produce more questions and debates than answers.

At this point, it was centuries old tradition that they were trying to kind of piece together and preserve.

And so there you go. You have debates like crazy, you have questions for the younger

Christians that are coming under the authority of these false teachers trying to figure out, okay, how do we fit into all this?

It was just a mess. There was no true edification. There was no true growth. And so ultimately, these fables and endless genealogies, as we see there in verse four, they don't do anything but, as the verse ends, with ministering questions.

The traditions of this Pharisaic Judaism have been full of contentious material for a long time, for centuries, all the way up to this point, and they even still are today.

We know that in contemporary Judaism, they have this, you know, we often think of religious

Jews as kind of sitting around reading the Old Testament, and they certainly do. They know what we call the

Old Testament, but that's not really what they sit around studying all that much. They have something that they call the

Talmud, and a lot of us are familiar with that term, and it, in and of itself, is full of questions and debates and things that are open -ended, where rabbis have to come in, they have to dispute about these things, and what is the result that those bring?

It brings more questions. And so that's why, when you have someone, Katie referenced it,

I can't remember if it was Wednesday night or when it was, but she referenced that Shapiro -MacArthur interview that they had.

And one of the things you'll notice in that video is, number one, Shapiro gave MacArthur a lot of uninterrupted time, which was amazing.

It was a very respectful interview in that sense. So he let MacArthur, even from the

Old Testament, give the gospel uninterrupted, and for a long period of time, to the point where if you listen to MacArthur talk about the interview later, he said it almost caught him off guard, and so he just kept going.

So a lot of that was him not even expecting he would have that much room to talk.

And so that's kind of an interesting note when you watch it and listen to the way that his presentation flowed, is it was somewhat off the cuff, because he didn't realize he would even have that much time to present what would be the gospel using

Old Testament texts like he did. But, so that was a neat part of the interview, but one thing that was very quick but important was at one point,

Shapiro did try to give kind of an apologetic for why he believes what he believes, and what it ultimately came down to was the disputations of the rabbis in him having to rely on those guys because they're smarter and more immersed in their religious book, which again would be the

Old Testament, but primarily the Talmud. So those coupled together, but the point being is you have someone, and we know the intellectual capabilities of the

Jews are just off the charts in so many cases, certainly someone like Ben Shapiro is a very smart guy, and the fact that he admits he has to submit to whatever interpretations that the rabbis come up with is a testament to what we're talking about here, what

Paul is talking about here. It's confusion. It brings more questions than answers, and Pop -Pop, after last week's lesson came up to me and was, he kind of got a little bit ahead of the study, because he was, he at first was like, well, wait a second, you know, the implication here is that the question asking is a bad thing.

Does that mean that when we get together for coffee talk or sit on the front porch or just get together and spend time and talk about the

Bible and ask questions and sort through things, does that mean that that is bad or a negative?

And of course the answer is no. One thing that he mentioned was we have the statement at the very beginning of Isaiah in chapter one,

I think verse 18, it says, come and let us reason together, and of course

Jesus reaffirms the same thing in the New Testament. So obviously discussing scripture and talking about things and being like the

Bereans that will listen to Paul, but then go to the scriptures to see if what he said was accurate and all these types of things.

That is great. The Greek term behind questions here is more of a matter of contention.

It's a matter of debate. It's a matter of, again, not ultimately getting anywhere, but rather just muddying the waters more and more.

So those are the kinds of questions we're talking about here. It's contentious. It's more about debate than it is anything else.

And that's what this kind of teaching brings, fables, endless genealogies. It creates more questions than answers.

And in addition to that, it prohibits the delivery of godly edifying, which is in faith.

That's the next thing that Paul says there. That's actually how he ends the verse. So it ministers questions rather than godly edifying, which is in faith, verse four there.

Now, this is a really interesting translation at this point in the KJV, because when we hear the word edifying, of course, we think of positive instruction.

We think of teaching in the positive realm. But the Greek term here is actually the same word that's used throughout the

New Testament where we get dispensation from. So when it talks about the fullness of dispensations and things like that in Ephesians and a number of places, this

Greek term is in quite a few places, it's the same Greek term as what is translated as edifying here.

So in other words, another way you could translate this phrase is it brings questions rather than furthering the administration of God or the dispensation of God.

Administration, dispensation, those are synonyms. So a way you could read the end of verse four there is it brings questions rather than furthering the administration of God, which is by what?

Faith. Or you could say furthering the stewardship of God, which is by faith.

So in other words, they're getting in the way of God's plan. They're getting in the way of God's will, his revealed will, the way he wants it to work for his people, for growth to actually be taking place and things like that.

It gets in the way of all of that. That's what their vain talk does, is it does not play into the operation of God or the plan of God.

What they are teaching creates useless speculation and questions rather than contributing to the plan of God, which is by faith.

So that's one way you could take Paul's message there as to what the result of their false teaching is.

Okay, so that kind of finishes up verse four. That was finishing up where we had to leave off last week because we just couldn't quite get there.

So now take a look at verse five with me. In here, Paul shifts the focus a little bit.

He began by talking about kind of the role of the elder, rebuking false doctrine.

He's talking about the role of the elder for a good portion of chapter one here, but kind of the first sub -point is rebuking false doctrine, stopping that, stopping the fables, the genealogies.

What's interesting about it is you stop it by avoiding it, is the way that Paul presents it here, in putting your focus back on God's people.

Now here, beginning in verse five all the way through verse 11, we're going to see

Paul contrasting what true faith looks like over against false teaching. So there's a contrast between the uselessness and the wasting time of false teaching versus true faith and what it brings.

So look at verse five first. He says, now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart or love out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfeigned.

So here we have true faith. We have true saving faith that is about to be contrasted in very vivid terms.

That's the end of the commandment. Love out of a pure heart, a good conscience, faith unfeigned.

So here, Paul begins to show us once more contrast between what the chief end of God's word is, pure faith, versus the vain use of parts of God's word to essentially gain ground in the area of authoritative teaching.

That was a little bit of a mouthful, but think about it for a second. What are the false teachers doing? They are taking certain parts of God's actual word, but they're abusing it.

They're exploiting it. They're using it in part rather than the whole counsel of God to further their own false teaching.

And so that's what the real contrast is, is the chief end of God's word is pure faith.

And I mean the whole of God's word, love, pure faith, pure heart, all of these things over against using parts of God's word in vain just to look authoritative and to sound authoritative because God's word is inherently authoritative.

And false teachers know that. So in verse five here, Paul makes a point to briefly emphasize the fact that when

God's whole word comes to bear on the believer, it bears fruit. When we don't nitpick, cherry pick, pick and choose little parts of God's word to create our own pet doctrines, our own opinions, our own preferences, and try to bring authority to it by proof texting or something like that.

When we do not do that and instead take the whole of God's word, it bears fruit.

And again, what is the fruit? It's all in verse five. It at least will include genuine love.

And that genuine love flows out of a pure heart. And when that happens, it gives the capacity for a good conscience.

In other words, we can live our lives not feeling any sort of tension between our will and God's will.

And all of that culminates in a sincere, unwavering faith. That's what faith unfeigned means.

It's unwavering. It's not disturbed. It can't be moved. It's unshakable. And this is important because we're about to find out how these self -described quote unquote teachers are abusing the law, but bearing the opposite of these virtues and these virtuous things that Paul mentions in verse five.

So, ironically, the types of false teachers that we're dealing with here, the same kind that Jesus referred to as hypocrites over and over again, snakes and vipers,

Matthew 23, I've mentioned it before, it's the prime place to go if you ever want to see what Jesus' polemic was over against true false teachers, and it wasn't kind at all.

He let them have it. And these are the kinds of false teachers that now Timothy has to deal with. And once more, they're contrasted with the believers that are not hypocritical in their faith.

The believers in verse five are genuine. They're unfeigned. Their faith is pure.

But it's over against what? We're about to see it in verse six, but I want you to think about something really quick as we move into it.

Look at verse five one more time, not to be too redundant here, but there's just so much in these very brief verses that I don't want to miss anything.

The end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart, out of a good conscience, and a faith unfeigned.

A lot of people talk about this so -called spiritual health, you know, wanting to be spiritually healthy, wanting to ensure that they are one with whatever,

I don't even know how to put it really. You know, there's in every false religion, and I would say even within Christianity, there's this pursuit of kind of a whole spiritual health combo with your physical health and things like that, wanting to feel like a whole complete person.

And so that aspect, that human desire is everywhere, regardless of religion, regardless of where you are in the world, that pursuit, that desire of a fulfilled spiritual health is there.

But what's interesting about it is Paul has no problem talking about spiritual health, and that is, in fact, exactly what he gives us right here.

Verse five, this is true, legitimate spiritual health. These are the specifics of what billions of religious people around the world are after, even though they don't realize that what's in verse five are the specifics.

It's not this kind of strange transcendent, you know, whether you're talking about the extreme and out -of -body experiences and things like that, or even the other end of the spectrum, where it's more of just kind of emptying the mind and feeling one with the soul and these kinds of things.

They're on the pursuit of the spiritual health. They want the specifics, but when they are presented with the specifics, which

Paul does right here in verse five, it's like, oh, well, that's not exactly what I thought it would be like.

I thought it would be more transcendent than that. I didn't think it would be quite so practical. And so oddly enough, though, a form of, you know, putting it in quotes here, spiritual health is what they are after in the billions around the world when they see what it should look like.

Love out of a pure heart, having a good conscience, faith unfeigned, when they see what it looks like in many cases, and I would say the majority of cases, they are inwardly repulsed by it and they turn away from it and they go to other modes of spiritual pursuits, trying to get that fulfilled feeling.

And so in verse five for the Christian, we have what true spiritual health looks like. It's a noble desire.

We should want to feel spiritually healthy just as much as we feel spiritually, excuse me, physically healthy.

But it needs to be in tandem with God's word. It needs to be based upon how

Paul and the other apostles and Jesus himself lay out what it looks like. And that's what we need to pursue as Christians.

Now, look at verse six. You have the presentation of true, legitimate spiritual health in verse five.

And then in verse six, it starts with from. So in other words, it is pulling, it's talking about the true spiritual health in verse five.

From that, some have swerved, having turned aside into vain jangling.

And at this point, you've got to love the KJV. It just doesn't get better than that. They have swerved and turned aside into vain jangling.

Now, the cause of this swerving that Paul talks about, it makes a lot of sense because we look at what the biblically defined spiritual health of verse five is and we recognize that it doesn't really cut all of the smells and bells of other religious groups and factions and things like that, that people want and that they want to be recognized for.

Because we know that if there's one thing about religion, if there's one plus to religion, it is, can

I do it better than the next guy? And when I do it better, what kind of recognition am I going to get?

And so when Paul starts to lay out what we see in verse five and says, this is what true religion looks like, this is what spiritual health looks like.

And it's not all of this extravagant, you know, types of priestly attire going into the temple, loud prayers, the trumpets, the large tithes, all of the stuff the

Pharisees were doing. And of course, you can think about a lot of what takes place within the clergy of the

Catholic Church. You see a lot of it there and many other false religions as well that are really, again, all about the outward appearance of what they're doing.

And can we do it better the next guy? It starts to make sense that we see the source of this swerving, of this moving away from what

Paul is talking about. Verse five is all about self -ambition. So in other words, self -ambition, or I should say selfish ambition more accurately, is the cause of the swerving.

It's having a preference for this vain jangling over against a pure heart, a good conscience in these things.

And of course, vain jangling here is just talking about fruitless discussion. It's talking about vain or idle talk.

So it's just a very fun way of putting that. So you have fruitless discussion, you have speech and talk and things that you're pursuing that ultimately amount to nothing.

That all comes from the cause of a selfish ambition rather than desiring what

God would actually have for our lives. So now the question is, some have swerved, they moved away from true religion, true spiritual health, any desire to actually follow in the footsteps of God's word, and they have moved into vain jangling.

So now the question is, in what form does this vain jangling take? In what form does this fruitless discussion, this idle talk, take?

And what way is their discussion fruitless? And that's where Paul starts to really open things up.

Look at verse seven. He says, they desire to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm.

And so these guys, they desperately want to be teachers of the law. Remember, God's word is inherently authoritative, whether you actually believe in it or not.

There's intrinsic authority there. And so what they're doing is they are taking portions of God's word.

Remember what I said earlier? There's a difference in the whole counsel of God versus cherry picking what you want to pull from and trying to use that as an authoritative basis for your false teaching.

They want to be teachers of the law. What is that? That's something that gets external recognition.

It might even get some appreciation by people looking up to you as a teacher, so called.

And so there's your external recognition right there that the smells and bells of false religion, not what's happening in the heart, but rather what you can do better than the next guy and what might get the attention of everybody else.

That's why they want to be teachers of the law. But there's only one problem that Paul points out here, and it's that they don't know what they are saying.

They don't know what they're talking about. And I heard it once said in the context of this is other than that, everything's totally fine.

The problem is that's a bad that's a bad problem. They don't know what they're talking about. They don't even know what they are saying.

They want to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor where of they affirm.

Now, this is where we really get into an important part of this whole study, the whole book of First Timothy.

This will be one of the most important things that we talk about. Because in verse eight,

Paul makes it extremely clear to everybody in the immediate audience, he's talking to Timothy in the church of Ephesus and every

Christian in every generation from that point forward, it makes it extremely clear to everyone that the problem here is not the law of God.

That's not the problem. It never has been the problem, whether you're looking at the Pharisees, whether you're looking at whoever these false teachers are, those of the circumcision that we're dealing with,

Titus, it doesn't doesn't matter who you're looking at. The law of God is never the problem. Rather, the problem is the vain janglers, the guys that are engaging in the fruitless discussion.

So look at verse eight now, the apostle Paul says, but we know that the law is good if man uses it lawfully.

And of course, that is key. So then the law is good as in it is intrinsically good. It's a part of God's word.

It is good for doctrine, for teaching, for reproof, all of the things that we will see later in the pastoral epistles.

It's intrinsically good, but when it is misused, misunderstood, when it's abused, it becomes an idol for those desiring to be teachers of the law, the people that are in verse seven.

The law of God itself, and of course, all of the distortions of it later downstream, that becomes an idol for those desiring to be teachers of the law.

Rather than worshiping the true God and using his word consistently with his character, they take the law of God, which is perfect, but it's also inanimate.

It's not personal. It's not God himself. It's not the spirit living within you, moving you to grow and to be sanctified.

They take that and they treat it like it's an idol. But this begs the question, of course,

Paul just said, we know that the law is good if a man uses it lawfully. So how can the law in a

New Testament context be used lawfully? Because that's what Paul is writing in. This is one of his last epistles. And so there's a sense in which the law, even in the age of grace, can be used lawfully.

That's what Paul is talking about. How does this play out? Well, Paul has one specific use in mind in this context.

But before we get to what that is, I want us to consider all of the uses.

So what are some proper uses of the law of God now today in a New Testament context for all people, both

Christians and unbelievers? Well, number one, the law of God is lawfully used when we recognize that it is the great revealer of our sin.

And that's one thing that the teachers of the law, these teachers so -called, would lose sight of rather quickly, is that they are trying to live up to this standard as if it can justify them, when in reality, all it is is a mirror in front of a person showing you how much, how dirty you are and how much you need to be cleansed by the washing, the regeneration of the

Holy Spirit. And so the law of God is lawfully used when it is used as the great revealer of sin, when it is used to inform all creatures for their need of a savior.

It shows our inability to live up to God's standard without the spirit. It's an impossibility.

We can't do it. Man cannot fulfill the law of God in and of himself in the entirety of the

Old Testament was there to demonstrate that reality for us. That's why the Old Covenant was put in place in the first place, so that we could recognize what grace actually looks like.

It's lawfully used, secondly, when it informs all creatures of the nature and the will of God.

In other words, his nature having to do with his holiness. You look at something like the Ten Commandments and he says,

OK, you want to live in a way that will be self -justifying? You want to live in a way that is up to my standard?

Here they are in pretty simple form. Now, go keep these perfectly. Of course, you had the

Pharisees that were audacious enough to believe they could do that, including the Apostle Paul himself.

And they start going down the first three commandments. OK, yes, no other gods before him.

Don't make any graven images. Don't use his name in vain. I can check those off the list. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy?

No problem at all. In fact, we'll rebuke Jesus himself for not keeping it well enough in our eyes.

Of course, he was keeping it completely lawfully. But they distorted it. So remember the Sabbath. No problem.

Honor your father and your mother. I can do that. Don't kill. Certainly not doing that. Don't commit adultery.

Don't steal. Don't bear a false witness against your neighbor. Perfect. But then you get to the 10th commandment.

Thou shalt not covet. And that's the commandment that made Paul realize that even being a Pharisee of Pharisees, he could not save himself.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't justify himself. He needed a savior because coveting is something that will crop up in the heart without you even recognizing it's there in some cases because of our fallen nature.

Before you know it, you're coveting your neighbor's wife. Before you know it, you're coveting your neighbor's oxen or his maidservants or his manservants.

And maybe that covetousness, when left unchecked, leads you to do something like committing adultery with your neighbor's wife or killing the person that you are envious of or stealing his stuff because you covet it.

And so, again, you can keep going down the list and what you recognize is that the law of God is presented the way that it is because it is a demonstration of God's holiness in the written form.

So the 10 commandments, as they are written on stone, we know that God's holiness manifests in glory.

Isaiah goes into heaven and he says, I'm undone. So the glory of God is one way that his holiness manifests.

The bound of transfiguration is another example of that. But there's another way it manifests, and that is in the written form on the tables of stone.

It's the holiness of God imprinted by his own finger on the on the tables of stone. So his law demonstrates his nature as in his holiness, as well as his will, as in his actions in time.

And let me be more specific, the things that we can do, the things that human beings need to do in order to be pleasing to him in their actions in time.

And so that's one helpful or one, I should say, lawful use of the law is to show us what the nature and will of God is.

What is it that is pleasing in the eyes of a holy God? Number three, it's lawfully used when it informs all creatures of their duty to God and to their fellow man.

For example, the first table of the law has to do with your relationship with God. Thou shalt not have any other gods before me.

Don't make any graven images. Don't use my name in vain. Remember the Sabbath. That all has to do with our relationship to God.

So it informs our duty to God in that way. But it also informs human beings on their duty to their fellow man.

And that's where the second table of the law comes into play. You know, where you're not killing them and stealing from them and committing adultery with their wives or bearing a false witness against them or coveting their stuff.

So it is properly used when it informs us of how we are to interact with our fellow man without mistreating him in any way.

That's one lawful use of it. Fourthly, it's lawfully used when it teaches the necessity of forgiveness as it unveils the pollution of our own sin.

And of course, that kind of comes into play with what I mentioned earlier to the great revealer of our sin.

But it is also lawfully used when it reminds us of our need for forgiveness because we screwed it up so badly.

All every human being that's ever lived has messed up keeping the law so badly that they require forgiveness from a forgiving savior in order to cover the pollution of their sin and in fact blotted away completely.

And finally, there is a special use of the law specifically for Christians that the lost world doesn't really get to take part in, doesn't really get to experience because they are lost.

And that is when we look at the law, it magnifies Christ's finished work in our sight.

Because he died, excuse me, before he died, he perfectly obeyed all precepts of the law for us so that we didn't have to.

And by when I say so that we didn't have to, I mean for our own justification. So when we look at the law, it magnifies

God's finished work on the cross, in his life, in the reality that in his 33 and a half years on earth, that entire time, not just the last three years, but for the entire life that he exhibited, it was he was perfectly keeping all of the precepts of the law for us.

It makes us recognize that and appreciate it better. Therefore, the law teaches us that we are bound to Christ for doing what we could not do.

That's one way that we could look at it, including his life and his death. These are things that we could not do.

And so when we look at the law as Christians, it produces a depth of love and gratitude on our part that is completely unique to Christians.

Does that make sense? That's why the lost world can't really experience that because they don't yet recognize the degree with which

Christ sacrificed himself and what exactly that meant. So now, with all that being said, what specific use did

Paul have in mind in this context when he says in verse eight, we know that the law is good if a man uses it lawfully.

So he has a specific use in mind here. It's a lawful use. Which one is it that he has in mind in this context?

His main argument here is that the law is to restrain those who do not know the law or care to understand it or have any true reverence for it whatsoever.

The law, any part of God's word, it's to restrain those people. So they come in and they say, hey, I want to be a teacher of this thing.

Well, actually, the law itself is there to restrain you from being able to do that.

And here's how it works. Let's look at verse nine through 11 and just see this argument unfold.

Paul says, well, let me read let me read verse eight one more time, all of this together. But we know that the law is good if a man uses it lawfully, knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for men stealers, for liars, for perjured persons.

And if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed

God, which was committed to my trust. Now, as we go down this list, we see some pretty gnarly sins that are laid out by Paul in the context of talking about a proper use of the law.

We see lawlessness, we see rebellion, those lacking true piety toward God, in other words, being ungodly, the unholy and profane, father and mother strikers, murderers, sexually immoral, homosexuals as well.

And Paul uses the same Greek term here that he uses in First Corinthians, chapter six, arsenic, which is a very important word study to do sometime because we have a lot of people today that try to argue that, well, the apostles just didn't understand what monogamous, consensual, same sex unions look like in the 21st century.

So they're not talking about homosexuality. That's an improper translation and things like that.

Well, it's all in the Greek and it's an amazing thing. I don't really miss I don't want to get into that here because there's stuff

I want to cover. We don't have time for it. But arsenic, it's a very important word. We can talk about that sometime.

But that's one of the things in view is homosexuality. Then he talks about men's dealers.

You know what that is? It's you remember dad talking about slavery a couple

Sundays ago and he gave a couple of different. So slavery is an incredibly ambiguous term, if you think about it, because there are a multitude of ways you could define it.

And dad gave a few examples, some of which are viewed as, you know, you can actually pull this off in a

Christian context. But then he gave a couple that you can't that are wholesale condemned in the

Bible. And one of them was the like the slave trade that took place and that that what's the word

I'm looking for, polluted a portion of our own American history in the antebellum self and things like that.

The chattel slavery that the dad was talking about. Well, the word here for men's dealers is literally slave traders.

And so when you go kidnap a person to put them into a slave trade, that was condemned all the way back in Deuteronomy.

But Paul is simply reaffirming that aspect of God's law here and saying that is still condemned by God's word. So you can't be a slave trader.

You can't be a liar. You can't be a perjurer. So he goes through this list of, again, pretty gnarly sins.

And a well -meaning Christian might take a look at this. They might take the first part of this passage and they say, oh, well, the law is not made for a righteous man.

That's me. And they'll couple that with the following list of sins that obviously doesn't seem to apply to them.

And they think, oh, OK, so this has nothing to do with me. Now, you run into a problem already when you consider the fact that Christians can rebel.

They can be rebellious. Christians can lack piety. In other words, they can be irreverent toward God even as a believer.

They do lie often, as we all know, and sometimes they even perjure themselves.

So there's a good portion of the sins in this list that absolutely apply to Christians. And sometimes they can do these things habitually as they are being sanctified in time over long periods of time.

A Christian, for example, can deal with the sin of habitual lying, being a compulsive liar. And so right off the bat.

You got to kind of slap the person across the face and say, OK, hold on, get some perspective. Let's remember who a righteous man is.

God says there are no righteous, no, not one. So who is Paul talking about when he says there's when he's talking about righteous men?

And we'll get back to that in a second. But even with all that aside, the fact that Christians can lie, they can perjure themselves in these types of things.

Things start to get really interesting when we see the way that Paul ends this cascade of issues here that fall under the condemnation of the law, because how does it all end?

He lists the sins and then he says, and if there be any other thing, in other words, all encompassing any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, sound doctrine, that is also condemned under the law of God.

So remember what I said earlier, one use of the law, and this is the one that I believe is in view here when

Paul says, unless it's used lawfully, the law is good if it is used lawfully.

One use of the law is that is the great revealer of sin. It's what shows us what our sin looks like when we as Christians even sin, and this comes into play with how the

Bible itself defines sin. And we'll end here, just a couple of more thoughts, but I'll turn to a few places with me.

First, go to 1 John, chapter three, 1

John, chapter three, the apostle Paul says the law of God is good if it is used lawfully.

It enlists a great multitude of sins that is all encompassing. He lists some specific ones, and I believe he did it on purpose to inform the

Ephesian church of maybe some of the things they themselves were dealing with and having some problems with.

And maybe there was even the infiltration of pagan unbelievers trying to mess with them.

We know this was the case in the Corinthian church. They were dealing with sexual immorality as Christians. So, again, it's not like,

OK, we're saved. We got our ticket punched to heaven. Therefore, this doesn't apply to us because we're obviously the righteous man that Paul is talking about at the beginning of verse nine.

It's not really the case because he lists specific sins. And then he says anything else that you could ever do, contrary to God's word, contrary to his teaching, that also is condemned by God's law.

In First John chapter three, look at verse four. We see a definition of what sin is.

What is a biblical definition of sin? What is this thing that we talk about so often? The Apostle John says,

Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law, for sin is the transgression of the law.

That's the definition of sin. When we transgress the moral law of God, in other words, stealing or committing adultery or lying or bearing a false witness against our neighbors, when we make any other

God before God, when Catholics make graven images and use them in their worship, when we use the

Lord's name in vain, which is something all of us could fall prey to at any given point, when we make false oaths and promises that we can't keep.

Those things are sin because they are violations of God's law.

And we see this talked about in Paul in Romans chapter three. We see this talked about in James in James chapter two.

In fact, you can turn to James chapter two because we'll look at that one to end with. But here's the point.

Every single time any person sins, whether they are a believer or a nonbeliever, they're transgressing the moral law of God.

Now, this is actually an amazing thing because it reminds us to understand the reality that sin shall not have dominion over us.

It shall not have dominion over believers. This is actually a liberating thing. This isn't trying to this isn't

Paul in Timothy or in Romans or James in his epistle. It's not them trying to say we're bringing the law in because you have to keep it perfectly now as a

Christian. They're bringing it in to remind us that when we sin, we are sinning against God's moral precepts, that which is pleasing in his sight.

And it's also a reminder that that sin does not have to have dominion over us.

Remember, the apostles would not give us these teachings if they didn't believe under inspiration of the spirit that we could actually fulfill them, that we could actually live in a way that's pleasing in God's sight.

Not every second, but as often as we can in that sanctification, the older you get, the more you grow year after year after year, the more periods of time, perhaps the longer periods of time you can go in communion with God.

And that's again, that's a liberating thing. This isn't meant to constrain anybody in a negative sense.

Paul says sin should not have dominion over believers because we are under grace. And so why do something that we are no longer obligated to do?

That's the point. Why violate God's law when we are no longer obligated to do so? Remember, before salvation, we are under the slave master of sin, which means we have to do whatever our sin tells us to do.

It's our master and he's a brutal master. So he's telling us constantly prior to salvation, violate the law of God, violate the law of God, make it worse for yourself, self -destruct.

And then once we come, once we come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, we no longer have to be under that dominion anymore because we are now under grace.

Now, that doesn't mean that our sin means nothing. Our sin still means something. It is still violating God's moral precepts.

So now in James, take a look at this. And this is super fascinating. James is an amazing epistle.

I look forward to working through that on one of these days, but we'll be in these past orals until at least mid -2027, so it'll be a while.

OK, James chapter two, take a look at verse eight. So this is this is

James, this is the brother of Jesus. And he says, if you fulfill the royal law, you are there, right?

James chapter two, verse eight. OK, just making sure I said all of it. If you fulfill the royal law, according to the scripture, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, you do well.

So James here quotes Leviticus chapter 19, the moral law of God from the

Old Testament and says, if you do that, you do well. And who's he talking to? He's talking to Christians in the new covenant under the age of grace.

We're no longer under dominion of sin. We are saved by grace. We are under grace.

But in our Christian lives, as we are being sanctified and growing as believers, if we love our neighbor as ourself, we do well.

But look what he says after that. But if you have respect to persons, in other words, partiality, so you kind of shun the the vagabonds over here and the people and the poor people, the poorer classes, those that are just kind of an inconvenience, a nuisance to society.

You shun them in preference for the higher class. He says, if you do that, if you show partiality, you commit sin and you are convinced or convicted of the law as transgressors.

So how is sin defined? Every transgression of the law of God, that is how we know when we are sinning or not sinning.

You are convicted of the law as transgressors. For whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point, such as showing partiality, he is guilty of the whole thing.

It's you are just as damned to hell if you show partiality as you would be if you were a homosexual or a adulterer or a murderer.

If you commit one, you committed all of it. And it's not to say that sins are equal, by the way, but rather that all sin is deserving of hell.

That's the main teaching there. For whosoever shall keep the whole law. I already read that verse. Verse 10, verse 11 says, for he that said, do not commit adultery also said, don't kill.

Now, if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law.

So speak ye and do so. This is the key verse here. Verse 12. Look at this carefully. So because of this reality, speak ye and so do as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.

What is that? That is the new covenant that we are under. That is the grace that we are now under, as opposed to the condemnation of the law, as opposed to the dominion of our own sin.

So every time we sin, here's a couple of things we learn from this passage in James here.

Number one, if we keep the moral law of God, we do well. So when we love our neighbor as ourselves, that is a good thing, even in the church age.

That is not relegated to the Old Testament Leviticus, even though that's where James was quoting from. So that's one thing we learn.

But secondly, the thing that we learn is that every time we sin as Christians, we are literally subjugating ourselves back under the judgment of the law, which is revealing the sin.

And there's absolutely no reason for us to do that. We're not under law. We're under grace. We're not under the dominion of our own sin.

We're under grace. We don't have to do that. But every time we sin, that's exactly what we're doing. We're subjugating ourselves back under that harsh slave master of sin and that heavy burden, which is the law of God, holiness in the written form, the

Ten Commandments saying, this is what it takes. This is what it takes to be pleasing in my eyes.

And you just violated it. So we put ourselves back under that burden rather than walking hand in hand with Christ and allowing him to work within our lives and to become more sanctified.

I've already alluded to it, but Romans 614 says, for sin shall not have dominion over you.

That's the positional righteousness that we own, that we lay claim to, that we should remember where we're at, that that is our position.

Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace. So why subjugate ourselves to being judged by the law?

That's what we do when we sin. So Paul then ends this section in verse 11. By pointing out that this proper use of the law is according to what?

And this is really interesting. A proper use of the law is according to the glorious gospel of the blessed

God. I've said it before, but the whole of Scripture is perfectly harmonious.

There's no there's no disunity in it. There's no unnecessary kind of push -pull relationship where it contradicts itself in any way.

It's perfectly harmonious. And you can believe that while recognizing there are different dispensations, different covenants, and all of these types of things.

It still all fits together. All of what Paul just talked about from verses 8 through 11 is according to.

How did he start it? The law is good if it's used lawfully, and he ends it by saying that is according to the gospel.

That is according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, all of which was committed to Paul's trust. Paul wasn't separating doctrine from right living.

It was all one in the same thing for him. The doctrine of the Bible and living as a

Christian, it's all the same thing. And it should be for us as well. That's how we should live our lives. That's how we should view all of Scripture.

So I'll end it there. Matt, you have a question back there? When it says, with respect to persons in James, where you love one person and you look down on the other,

I guess that's what it means, correct? Well, so it's again, it's kind of showing it is looking down on people for sure.

It's showing partiality. He later he goes on and James talks about, you know, kind of inviting the right people to the right party, being a part of the right scene, but not wanting those kind of inconvenient people that are kind of ugly and kind of smelly and don't really have the higher class trappings that we all have and that we desire to have social status, reputation.

Don't put your reputation, don't make an idol out of your reputation would be a pretty good way to summarize it. But yeah, partiality in that sense.

Don't look down on people just because of their social status. So is it strictly social status or could it also be sanctification level or knowledge level of scripture?

Sure. Well, the answer is yes, it is both. James here has social status in mind.

But for what you just talked about, check out Romans 14, because Paul in all of Romans 14 is talking about the same principle, but in the context of sanctification.

So in other words, the mature brother not looking down on the weaker brother because he's just not at the same place in sanctification yet.

So that's there, too. It's just James is talking more primarily of a social status type of partiality.

And then in Romans 14, Paul talks specifically about what you just said, the levels of sanctification, where people are in their

Christian walk and not looking down on the weaker brother. Would you say like we recently talked about like that being the love, even if they like even if they're not the ones you desire to hang around all the time?

Yeah, that's interesting because it creates what seems like a paradox at first, because the teaching of the order of loves is definitionally partiality.

A better way of putting it, I believe, would be prioritizing. But the principle of not showing partiality still fits within that context, to your point.

So you are still to obey your duty. To be there for your family, even when your family are the kind of antisocial, awkward, weird people that don't quite fit the bill of the social status you are desiring.

And we actually do see this quite prevalently throughout the country, where people kind of there's this division in the family because, you know, they are just not keeping up with the

Joneses like I am. And therefore, I'm not going to really give them any of my attention because it's kind of just a waste of my time.

And I don't even really want to be associated with them. Right. If they don't, if they don't dress, you know, according to my dress code of the social club downtown.

Right. They show up in their flannel and jeans and everyone else is wearing their necktie at the Thanksgiving dinner.

And that's just embarrassing. It's mortifying. So, yeah, so you have the reality of the order of love.

So you're prioritizing the Lord first and foremost, then your spouse, then your kids, your family, your parents, honor thy father and thy mother, and you go down from there.

But that, you know, that is not in contradiction to what

James is talking about, which is you are making your social status an idol to the point of maybe you're even shunning your own family, which is your point.

So that's a good thought. All right, you guys, anything else we better dismiss pretty quick.

All right, let's dismiss in prayer and we'll move on to the next service. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this wonderful day, for bringing us together, allowing us to open up the pages of scripture and to be edified by your word, unlike the what the false teachers were trying to accomplish in the time of Timothy.

We thank you so much for giving us this opportunity and forgiving us and equipping us with what we need to figure all this stuff out to delineate what is good, what is bad, what is false, what is true.

We ask that you continue to help us in this pursuit of truth every day. We ask you to bless the remainder of our day, the remainder of our services, and we ask all these things in your name.