House Rule #12 Be Devoted to Scripture (1 Timothy 4:11-16) | Adult Sunday School

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Basic to the spiritual health and success of the church is the Word of God. In this passage Paul exhorts Timothy to keep that priority in his ministry at Ephesus.

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And you'll come winning from this time forth and forevermore, forevermore, forevermore
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I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where does my help come?
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I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where does my help come?
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I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where does my help come?
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Come, from where does my help come?
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From where does my help come?
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How sweet the place where you dwell, oh
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Lord My soul longs and faints for you
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My heart sings out the loud song of joy
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For I have known the living God I want to be where you are, oh
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Lord I want to be where you are, oh
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Lord I'd rather have just one day with you
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Than be anywhere else There's no good thing that you will withhold
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From those who live to follow you
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I'd rather be your servant, oh
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God Than have the riches of this world
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I want to be where you are, oh
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Lord I want to be where you are, oh
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Lord I'd rather have just one day with you
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Good morning, everyone. Good to see you all. I invite you to open your
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Bibles once again to 1 Timothy. This morning we'll be looking at chapter 4, verses 11 through 16.
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There is an outline available. If you don't have an outline, Rick has them, and he will put one in your hands so you can follow along with us.
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We're going to be looking at house rule number 12. Be devoted to Scripture this morning.
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1 Timothy, chapter 4, verses 11 through 16. And let's commit our time to our
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Lord and ask His blessing and guidance as we study His Word together.
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Our Father, we do thank You for this opportunity to gather together to look into Your Word once more.
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And we know we are dependent upon Your Spirit to teach us. We thank You that by Your grace, through Jesus Christ, we are able to look into Your Word and have the great blessing of Your Spirit's ministry in our hearts and minds.
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We pray You would accomplish every divine purpose that You have for us this morning. And we will praise
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You in Jesus' name. Amen. In the world of sports, there are many legends.
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Baseball has its Babe Ruth. Basketball, of course, many legendary players like Michael Jordan.
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American football, of course, many, many legendary players and coaches. And in any discussion of great professional football coaches, certainly a name high on the list, maybe the top of the list, would be the former coach of the
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Green Bay Packers, the late Vince Lombardi. Yes, he made such a mark on professional football in his career that the
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NFL named the Super Bowl championship trophy after him. Of course, it's called the Lombardi Trophy.
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It was July 1961, and the members of the Green Bay Packers were gathered for their first day of training camp.
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The season before, they had made it into the NFL championship game against the Philadelphia Eagles, but had lost the game in the fourth quarter.
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The story is told that Coach Lombardi walked into the locker room that day on the first day of training camp, and before 38 professional football players and the coaching staff, who just months before had come close to winning the
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NFL championship, he began a tradition in Green Bay Packer training camps, a tradition of going back to the basics.
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It's said that Coach Lombardi began that training camp by holding up a football and saying, Gentlemen, this is a football, and he was going to take them back to basics.
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Throughout that camp, Lombardi and his staff drilled the Packers in the basics of football, starting with blocking and tackling.
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They went all the way back to the first page of their playbook as if they were all rookies, and they started from scratch.
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Lombardi was obsessed with the basics of football, the fundamentals of the game.
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Six months later, the Green Bay Packers beat the New York Giants in the NFL championship game 37 -0.
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One commentator commenting on that game says this, Lombardi used a strategy in this game that was common in all the
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Packers championships, a strategy of fundamentally sound football. The Packers had no turnovers in this game and only 16 yards of penalties assessed against them.
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They used this strategy to beat the opposition at their strength, in this case, running the ball at the
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Giants' linemen. This strategy allowed the Packers to control the game, running 63 offensive plays to only 43 for the
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Giants. In 1959, Lombardi had taken over a Green Bay franchise that was the worst team in the league the year before in 1958, and in three years, he turned them into NFL champions.
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In a span of seven years as coach of the Packers, Lombardi won five NFL championships, including three in a row.
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He led the Packers to win the first two Super Bowls, and in the first Super Bowl, they hammered the Kansas City Chiefs 35 -10.
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Lombardi was a successful coach in large part because he coached his players intensively in the fundamentals, the basics of football.
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And this principle of being devoted to the basics is critical to success in any sport or any endeavor of life.
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And even though we in the church usually see things separate from the way the world functions, and we should and we do, we do have this in common.
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In the life of the church and in our individual spiritual lives, it is critical that we focus on the fundamentals, the basics of our faith.
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And there's nothing more basic, more fundamental to historic, biblical, orthodox
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Christianity than being devoted to Scripture. We've seen in our study of First Timothy so far that the
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Apostle Paul often sounds like a coach in a training camp, instructing
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Timothy how to set things right in the church at Ephesus. So far, we've seen
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Paul urge Timothy to confront false teachers and their false doctrines. And after being with Paul for probably around 15 years in ministry,
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Timothy certainly would have understood the gospel by then, right? How many times would he have heard it and seen it in action?
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And yet in chapter 1, Paul rehearses the very basic gospel message when he says,
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The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
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Now, that right there would not be comprehended in many professing churches all over this world.
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Liberalism took that concept and, in the past several centuries, virtually ignored it.
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Paul also takes Timothy back to the basics of prayer by telling him and the Ephesian Christians to make supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for all kinds of people because God wants to save all kinds of people.
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He even goes all the way back to the basics of creation for God's model regarding the roles of men and the roles of women in the church and in the family.
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The house churches at Ephesus needed to get back to the basics, and Paul left
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Timothy there to do that very thing. Paul had even prophesied to the elders of Ephesus in Acts 20, and we've gone over this several times, but it's very important because several years before Timothy was left there,
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Paul met with these elders. He prophesied what was going to happen in that church. He said,
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I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.
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And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw the disciples after them.
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We are even told in Revelation 2 when Christ tells the apostle
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John to write to the angel at the church at Ephesus. Now, this is going to be around 30 years after Timothy was there, somewhere around 95
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A .D. this was written. He says to the angel of the church in Ephesus write, the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands,
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I know your works, your toil, and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false.
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They had false apostles in 95 A .D. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my namesake, and you have not grown weary.
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But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at the first.
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Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first.
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If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.
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Yet this you have, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the
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Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
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Even before the close of the first century, the church at Ephesus, after all of that ministry by the
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Apostle Paul, by Timothy, still had some issues within that church.
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And all through this letter, Paul is calling Timothy to get this church in Ephesus back to being devoted to the basics.
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And for them and for the whole church and for us down through history, even now, that means be devoted to Scripture.
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Even when Paul mentions a serious problem in this letter that Timothy must address, it's a result of people within the church departing from the
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Scriptures, from the Word of God. And this chapter begins with what is really a prophecy from the
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Holy Spirit, as we saw, that people would depart from the faith. It's absolutely critical that the church at Ephesus and everywhere be devoted to Scripture.
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And as we'll see from our study this morning, it starts with the individual believer. If your walk with Jesus Christ has developed some cracks in it, if you're having trouble staying on path, maybe, you know, you're getting off into the ditch on either side of the truth.
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It's quite probable that it is because in some way, shape or form, you have departed from the
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Word of God. Jesus Christ is Lord. He's Lord of creation. He's Lord of the universe and he's
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Lord of the church. He mediates that lordship in the church through his spirit, by his word.
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And so churches that neglect the Word of God, churches that depart from it, don't have the lordship of Christ functioning in their midst and in their individual lives.
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Now, I also know, and you should thank God for it, that this is a fellowship, that this is old stuff for you, right?
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That's a good thing, but we're going to go through this anyway. So the first thing we want to see from 1
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Timothy 4, verses 11 through 16, is that scripture is authoritative.
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On your outline, this is Roman numeral number one, scripture is authoritative. Paul tells
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Timothy, 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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First thing Paul wants Timothy to do with the Word of God is to teach it, command it.
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And he says, I'm commanding you. This is a very strong imperative. It's a command force verb.
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It means give orders to command, to instruct, to direct people. Paul is not suggesting that Timothy do this.
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He's commanding him to do this. He has used this same kind of statement in 1 .3
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when he says, I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus, so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine.
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And then in 1 .18, this charge, I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare.
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And then again, 5 .7, he uses this. And in many other places, he uses this idea.
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Paul is exercising his apostolic authority over Timothy, and he's also delegated that authority to Timothy in this very letter.
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And so Timothy has to do that very same thing within the church at Ephesus. In these six verses, there are 10 command verbs, 10 of them, just in these six verses.
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This is something that the broader, big tent evangelical church oftentimes does not like to hear.
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They don't want to hear commands. They want it to be suggestions. They want it to be options that we are given.
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But the Bible very clearly is authoritative. And when it's preached and when it's taught, it has the force of God behind it.
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And this is what Paul wants Timothy to communicate to the church at Ephesus. Many times, these commands that are sort of sharp -edged, they sort of cut a little bit in the heart.
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And preachers and teachers oftentimes want to file down these sharp edges in Scripture and sort of moderate them a little bit, file them down until they're smooth and they don't hurt anybody at all.
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And then they want to spray -paint them with some pastel colors that look good and sound good, non -glare, non -toxic.
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And yet, when you read through Scripture, the Word of God is powerful and sharper than any two -edged sword, is it not?
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So he's to command these things, command and teach these things.
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We don't just give commands to people. We also teach them along the way. This is why a teaching ministry is so important.
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Think of the Great Commission. What does he say? Make disciples. That's a strong imperative verb.
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Make disciples. And then you have teaching them to obey all that I have commanded.
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We don't just command people and then say, go out and do what God says. We teach people to obey what
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God has commanded. That's how you make disciples. So we not only communicate the force of the commands in Scripture, we also talk to people about how to obey them and how to bring their lives in compliance with the
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Word of God. So command it, teach it, and then, very important, Timothy, you have to live it as well.
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Important for Timothy and important for us. Command and teach these things.
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That verse 11 there, some commentators put it with the end of verse 10, and that's certainly legitimate to do that.
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With these things, what's he talking about? Well, he says this all the way through here, back to 3 .14,
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the theme verse, I am writing these things to you so that, okay, if I delay, you may know how you want not to behave in the household of God.
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And then down in 4 .6, if you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant.
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And here again, command and teach these things. Well, you can put that with the previous passage, or you can put it as we're doing here with 11 through 16, and both are legitimate.
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Why? Because these things is everything Paul wrote in this letter. He wants him to be comprehensive in his teaching, command and teach these things.
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And the most important part of this, as far as what he teaches, is how he lives his life.
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Paul comes back to this every time. Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.
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Paul not only wants Timothy to teach the truth, he wants him to live it out. The word of God is powerful.
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It's sharper than any two -edged sword, as we understand from the writer of Hebrews. In 2
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Timothy 3 .15, Paul is talking to Timothy about his youth and how he understood the sacred scriptures, able to make you wise unto salvation.
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He says, sacred writings, it says. In the very next verse, he says, all scripture is
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God breathed. He uses the word grafe, which means scripture. So writings, scripture.
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And then in 2 Timothy 4 .2, which needs to be connected with these other two passages, he says, preach the word.
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So he uses three different terms, all synonyms, to talk about the word of God. And it's important that Timothy understand the power of it and that it's his task to teach it and preach it.
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In 2 Peter 1, Peter talks about the word of God, and he refers to it as something more sure, more certain.
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And he's just got done talking about his witnessing, his personal witnessing of the glorification of Christ.
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Remember the Mount of Transfiguration. He says, that experience was tremendous, but we have something more sure, more sure than a personal eyes -on audio -visual presentation of the glory of Christ is scripture.
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So there's many other places we could go, and as you know as well, Jeremiah 23 from the
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Old Testament declares, is not my word like fire, declares Yahweh, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?
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And then the great statement from Isaiah, Isaiah 55, says this, verses 10 and 11, for as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth.
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It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which
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I sent it. When you proclaim the word of God, you teach the word of God, you share the word of God, understand that God accomplishes his purposes through that.
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May not be what you think the purpose is, but he guarantees the purpose that he has for it will be accomplished.
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So Paul's telling Timothy, you have to command it, you have to teach it, and it's so important that you live it out.
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It's authoritative. These house churches in Ephesus were probably at least 10 to 12 years old, so they would have had some relatively mature
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Christians there. They would have also had time to have some false teachers come in and some people to sort of set up shop in some of these house churches.
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And Paul knows that Timothy, as a younger man, is going to be walking in there and correcting things, you know, that are wrong.
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So he might be taken advantage of. And Paul tells him, let no one despise you for your youth.
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Let no one despise you. It's a compound word. It's two parts, to think down.
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That word is made up. Don't let anybody think down on you or look down on you. And literally, it's don't let anybody think down on you, of you, the youth, okay?
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Timothy probably is around 35, maybe 40 years old. He's not a kid.
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He's not a teenager. He has been with Paul, again, around 15 years probably. And so he may be as old as 40 years old.
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But even then, these churches are going to have some established people there, and some of them are teaching false doctrine.
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Timothy is going to walk in there with this letter and his delegated authority from the Apostle Paul, and he's going to have to deal with probably being criticized for being too young.
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Who are you? Who do you think you are? And Paul's antidote for that is not to get in an argument, not to get in a fight.
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What's his argument? Live out the faith. Live out your faith. Set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.
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Doesn't call him to go in there and arm wrestle with people and engage in all kinds of argumentation and stuff.
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Just live your life. Live it out. He wants to exercise your authority by teaching and preaching the truth, but also you have to live it out.
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Live it out in your speech. Avoid falsehood. Avoid anger, bitterness, slander, abusive speech.
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Avoid malice or filthy talk. And on the positive side, speak the truth.
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Speak what builds people up, edification, admonition, with tenderness, forgiveness, and thanksgiving, and especially to Jesus Christ in speech and in conduct.
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So these are two outward, visible ways that you can live before other people.
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And the inner part is important as well, love, faith, and purity.
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In some contemporary circles, it's been common and it's kind of gotten to be sort of a fad for younger preachers to be up in front of people and to use the language of the world in front of people to impress people with their ability to know what the world is really like.
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There's nothing like that found in Scripture whatsoever. In fact, the Bible condemns that kind of thing.
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We are to live our lives before people as an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity.
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So Scripture is authoritative. Many, many more passages we could look at and multiply examples of it, and you could probably think of many more.
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But this is what Timothy has to do. He has to exercise his authority as an apostolic legate or representative.
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He also has to use the word of God. And then second, Roman numerals two, Scripture is to be proclaimed.
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Of course, this is verses 13 and 14. He says, 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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Timothy is to go back to the basics of when he first began his ministry, when he was first called and had hands laid on him.
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And he's to devote himself. That means to occupy yourself, be concerned with it all the time.
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And basically what he's talking about here is what we would call Bible exposition. He tells him,
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Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.
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In other words, read it, explain it, and apply it. This is the classic biblical definition of Bible exposition.
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We have a really good example of this in Nehemiah 8. I invite you to go back to Nehemiah chapter 8.
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And this is nothing new to the New Testament. The Word of God is always supposed to be proclaimed to people.
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And here we have this example from Nehemiah chapter 8. Children of Israel had come back to the land after 70 years of captivity, and they're beginning to rebuild
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Jerusalem and the walls and so on. They also have to rebuild the spiritual lives as well.
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And so we're told in Nehemiah that this gathering that takes place is done.
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And up in verse 66 of verse 7, it says the whole assembly together was 42 ,360 people.
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And then chapter 8 says, all the people gathered as one man into the square, this is in Jerusalem, before the water gate.
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And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses that the Lord had commanded
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Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard.
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In other words, if they were old enough to understand what was being read and being taught, they were there.
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Babies were back behind a glass wall, nobody could hear them. No, it doesn't say that.
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So he brings out the law, and all these people are there before the water gate. And in verse 3, he read from it, facing the square before the water gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand.
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And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform.
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So they had him elevated up to some degree so that the people could hear and see and hear better because they had no electronic amplification, right?
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And on a wooden platform they had made for the purpose, and beside him stood Matathiah, Shema, Ananiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maessiah on his right hand, and Paddaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashim, Hashabadanah, Zechariah, and Meshulam on his left hand.
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Perfect pronunciations, by the way. Don't even begin to question that. Verse 5, and Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it, all the people stood.
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And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered,
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Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands, and they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.
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Also, Yeshua, Bani, Sherabiah, Jamin, Akub, Shabbatai, Hodiah, Maasaiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jehozabod, Hanan, Pelaiah, the
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Levites, helped the people to understand the law while the people remained in their places.
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So you had it read, and you had it explained. Verse 8, they read from the book, from the law of God clearly, and they gave the sense so that the people understood the reading.
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They read it, they explained it, they gave the sense of the word of God. Here comes the application.
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And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people, said to the people,
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This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep, for all the people wept as they heard the words of the law.
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Then he said to them, Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet wine, and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready.
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For this day is holy to our Lord, and do not be grieved, for the joy of the
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Lord is your strength. Famous verse that you've probably heard. That's where it comes from.
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So the Levites calmed all the people, saying, Be quiet, for this day is holy. Do not be grieved.
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And all the people went their way to eat and drink, and to send portions, and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.
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That's Bible exposition. You read it. You explain it. And then you apply it to the people.
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This is exactly what Paul wants Timothy to do in his ministry in Ephesus. And that's what we are to do as well.
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We read it. We explain it. And we apply it to people. Bible exposition. One really good definition from a very excellent professor of preaching and a preacher,
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Haddon Robinson. The late Haddon Robinson says this. At its best, expository preaching is the presentation of biblical truth derived from and transmitted through a historical, grammatical, spirit -guided study of a passage in its context, which the
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Holy Spirit applies first to the life of the preacher, and then through him to his congregation.
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Those elements all have to be there. One thing that happens in some circles is that the person who is preaching and teaching does not apply it to his life.
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And he just throws it out there, regurgitates it. If it doesn't change his life before he communicates it to people, that's not
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Bible exposition. Peter. That's unique to certain individuals where we're also called to claim the word, but not in the same way.
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Well, I think it's back to the beginning. This is definitely the task of those who lead in the church.
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They have to do this. This is a requirement. So I think what Paul is doing here, he's setting things right at the foundational level back in the church at Ephesus.
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So this is basic foundational stuff, like blocking and tackling. But when we share the word of God with people, we should also be ready to explain what it means, talk about it with them, and then apply it to their life in whatever way is appropriate at the time.
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But I think you're right. There are people that do it for a living all the time, obviously, thankfully. But that is to serve as an example to the rest of us as to how we are then to handle the word of God.
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If we just rattle off a quote from the Bible and don't tell somebody how it applies to their life, we haven't taken that full step in Bible exposition.
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If it's the word of God, it's authoritative. There you go. I'm a little hesitant to let people hide behind I don't have the gift.
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Well, you have the word of God. You have the Spirit of God. Maybe the giftedness needs to be developed a little bit.
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Paul tells Timothy, pay attention to the gift that you were given. It's something that can be developed.
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And if you put the lid on this concept that you can't share the word, it has to be done by professionals or pastors or elders or whatever, then
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I think you take away everything that's going on here. We need to do this in order to help people understand the responsibility to communicate the word of God at whatever level with whoever it is.
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Steve? Nope. Oh, I thought you were just stretching. Okay. So, any other thoughts or questions you might have from us?
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Cornell? Sure. Yeah.
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The formal teaching from the pulpit as compared to you or I walking out the door to wherever God would have us out there, right?
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That's why it's so important that we do what we hear, and that's how the word gets spread.
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If it's just in here, then we're not accomplishing what God would have us do. It needs to...
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This is back to football. This is like the huddle, you know? Call the plays, get people ready, and then out there, run the play out on the field.
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You ladies are going to get sick of hearing the football analogies. It's appropriate to understand that there's a position of corporate exposition of Scripture, but as you use those words, don't hide behind that.
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If you're in a position and you're individually sharing your testimony of the word of God and you have an opportunity to speak to more than one person, as it might be, don't shut up.
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Well, I'm not a pastor. At that moment, you're an exposition to more than one person.
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Exactly. Wherever the word places you, that's what you need to be doing with the word of God, but there will be positions, and that's probably some of the stillness.
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Yeah, I mean, we do tend to be a little shy. Hey, let it rip. Throw the seed, right?
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You throw a lot of seed and trust God that He'll use it as He says He will, Isaiah 55, to accomplish
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His purposes. Any other thoughts you might have so far, Steve? I do want to get sort of non -professional, but our lives are always speaking and Ryan and I were here yesterday, and we were leaving after we were here for a short time, you know, to move some stuff.
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And every time I move one thing, I turn around and there's eight more things coming at me.
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And we left, and Ryan said, wow, isn't that just an example of, think of the power of a group of people.
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One guy could have done that for a weekend, or 10 guys gets it done in an hour with joy.
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And he was talking about the church and the work of the ministry, which is exactly, I think, you know, the impact that we have.
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It's not just insular. It is beautiful to be here and to be encouraged and to have that.
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But as we go out, that message is being preached through our lives and our conduct and our words.
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That's who we are, and we should be very, very different. To the point that somebody would say, why are you being so strange?
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Hey, that's true. I'll take it, you know. Yeah, I mean, it's Ephesians 4, right? There's that list of gifted people.
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Why? Why did God give those people in church? For the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry. The saints are equipped for the work of ministry.
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Sure, we all come and we're edified when we hear the word of God preached and so on. But then that has to have its, got to take root and have its fruit out there in our lives.
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So basic, right, to biblical Christianity. That's what we're talking about, the basics today. So read it, explain it, apply it.
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You do this with your kids, right? You would read it so they would understand it, and you would explain it to them. And then you would say, now, here's how you apply this in your life.
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So it's to be, it is authoritative.
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And because it's authoritative, it's to be proclaimed. And it's also to be practiced as we have seen.
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And again, verses 15 and 16, he says, practice these things, immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress.
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So you see, there's this witness in what he is doing. Practice these things, focus on your life and your teaching.
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Practice these things, immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.
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Here, we're back again to this dual kind of a two -part, two pillars,
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I guess you could say. The church is built on two pillars. It's built on pure doctrine and love, pure doctrine and love.
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And so what we believe and what we do, those two things are there.
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And the combination of those is what the Bible defines as godliness, right?
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Pure doctrine and love. Ephesians 4 .15, Paul said, Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in him.
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So God sanctifies us, how we grow in truth and in love. John 1 .14, Jesus was full of grace and truth.
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The absolute perfect person in each one of those, full of each one, not a 50 -50 blend, you know, he wasn't half and half.
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He was full of grace and full of truth like none of us could ever be, right? The perfect example of godliness.
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And then again, 2 Peter 3 .18, the last words to the church of Peter, Grow in the grace and knowledge of our
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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So Paul tells Timothy, keep a close watch on yourself and the teaching.
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He does a lot here with the word of God, right? The truth all the way through these pastoral letters.
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But he also wants him to focus on his own life as well. They have to be together. We have to do both.
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Two pillars of the church, pure doctrine and love. In John 17 .17, in the high priestly prayer,
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Jesus prayed to the Father. He said, Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth.
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Sanctification, right? How we grow, how we become more Christ -like. How do we do that? In the truth.
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The word is truth. And that's how we do it. We do it by applying scripture to our lives, practicing it.
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And then scripture will lead to salvation. This is the rest of verse 16. Persist in this.
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Notice how you just have to persist. You have to be just dogged in this. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.
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Very interesting statement from him. You will save. Now, Paul fully understands the doctrine of soteriology, right?
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He's the theologian of the New Testament concerning salvation. But it's very interesting how he uses this term to save somebody.
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He understands the sovereignty of God and salvation. He knows how people are saved. He teaches it all through his letters.
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But he is so invested personally in the process that he sees himself as an integral part of the process.
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Because God uses means to accomplish his sovereign work of salvation.
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And, yeah, Peter? I would, yeah.
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Yep. So it sounds a little strange to us to hear him talking about saving somebody.
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In Romans 11, 13, and 14, Paul says this. Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. The Romans were
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Gentiles. And as much then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order to somehow make my fellow
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Jews jealous and thus save some of them. Okay? So he's talking about saving some of his fellow
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Jews. 1 Corinthians 7, same apostle Paul again. And he's talking about believers who have an unbelieving spouse, men with unbelieving wives, wives with unbelieving husbands.
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He says this. If the unbelieving partner separates, in other words, if they say, I'm out of here, I'm gone, let it be so.
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In such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband?
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Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife? Paul knows that they're not going to be the ones who are saving the spouse, but they can be an integral part in God saving them.
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God wants to use his people to help save others.
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Now, I understand it's kind of hard that we don't talk about it that way, but listen to what Jude says, Jude 22 and 23.
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And have mercy on those who doubt, save others by snatching them out of the fire.
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He's talking about somebody that's so deep into their sin that it's, you know, I mean, they're almost in the fire.
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And he's basically using probably a quote from Amos 4 .11 or Zechariah 3 .2 from the
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Old Testament about somebody who's so close to hell fire that when they're saved, it's like you just snatched them out of the fire, a burning branch, a burning stick out of a fire.
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And he says that you will save both yourself and your hearers. It's a little strange to hear it put that way, is it not?
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But that's how the Bible puts it. And so we may not want to talk that way. Well, I'm going to go out and try to save so -and -so, you know, but in a sense, it's biblical.
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If we understand how God operates to save people, he wants to use us to do it.
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We are the instruments that he wants to use. We have the gospel, we have the spirit of God, and we have hopefully the love to share the gospel with people.
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So house rule number 12, be devoted to Scripture. Scripture is authoritative.
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We have to proclaim it. We read it. We explain it. We apply it. It's to be practiced.
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We have to put it in our lives and live it out, and it will lead to people being saved.
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Fundamental, so basic. I mean, that's just basic to Christianity. I don't think
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Paul got Timothy together, at least I have no evidence from Scripture, and sat him down, took some scrolls, you know, maybe some parchments, maybe some codices, you know, the word of God, and said,
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Timothy, this is the word of God. But the way he taught him and the way he encouraged him was very much similar to what
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Coach Lombardi did later on, get back to the basics, and the basics must include being devoted to the word of God.
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Everything else is there. How do we learn how to do what we do in the church and through the church? It's revealed to us in Scripture.
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Any thoughts or questions you might have before we close? Okay. You were very patient with all the football analogies.
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Peter. You talked about one of the things that your family was talking about God and how he does not look at the strength of a horse's legs or strength of men.
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What he desires and what is pleasing to him is the fear of the
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Lord. And that's one of those I would think would be one of those foundational aspects of our reverence for God and what we should be clear on when we teach is that the fear of the
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Lord plus the hope in his steadfast love together should be fundamental in our teaching because we have this idea of Jesus and everything, yet we need to start with that reverence, the fear of the
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Lord at the beginning of wisdom. It'll stay there, but would that be one of those foundational things? Oh, absolutely, yeah.
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Classic liberalism, historic liberalism, takes certain truths like Jesus loves you, but they leave out anything else having to do with sin, the judgment of God.
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And so the grace of God doesn't have the meaning that it should because it's not proclaimed over and against the black backdrop of our sinfulness and the judgment of God against it.
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I mean, the good news has to be good news. And how can it be good news? And so what happens then is they have to divert to other things.
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And that's why Paul's statement, he came to the world to save sinners. Well, you go into many historically liberal situations and what they're going to say, why did he come?
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He came to be an example. He came to show us how to live lives. He came to show us how to love one another. All those things are true.
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But if you leave out the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross for the sins of men, what have you done?
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You've just seared people's consciences. You've just certified their religious behavior in some way, shape, or form.
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And as Jesus said, you create a greater child of hell than you started with. To the
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Pharisees. Don't file them off. Just leave them sharp.
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Let the Word of God do what it does. That's why our responsibility, we read it, we share it, we proclaim it, we teach it.
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But don't try and make it more palatable for the unregenerate person because let
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God use it for what it natively does. Like Jeremiah said, it crushes the stony heart.
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The Word of God is like a hammer that crushes. We don't need to embellish it by pounding pulpits.
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We just share the Word of God and let it have its place in people's hearts and minds. All right, let's pray.
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Father, thank you for our time in your Word this morning. Thank you once again that you call us back to be students of your
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Word. And we just thank you that we have it. We pray that you would continue to use it in our lives, in the life of this fellowship.
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We thank you that we have your spirit as well to apply it where it is needed in our hearts and minds.
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Cause us, Father, to be changed through your Word, to sanctify us, as our
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Lord said in the Upper Room. And also, Father, to show to the world what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.
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We thank you in His mighty name. Amen. Among the children of man
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Everyone utters lies to his neighbor
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With flattered lips and a double -hearted speech
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May the Lord cut off our flattered lips
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The tongue that makes great foes Those who say with our tongue we will prevail