1 Timothy 1:3-11 Love or Law?

We are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series,

Blueprints for a Healthy Church, following the plan from the book of 1 Timothy. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning everybody and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here and it is a joy to gather together.

I hope you find it a joy to be together on this journey of faith with one another. He's been drawing us together every

Sunday morning for the purpose of growing us in faith, community, and service. And when we talk about simplicity, you'll notice that's one of our core values here.

Our name is an acronym for our core values, replicating community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth. And when we talk about simplicity, that's exactly what we mean, that we think that everybody needs in their journey, in their walk with God, an increase in their faith, an increase in community connection with one another here, and then also a increase in service.

That is that God has designed you to serve his body in some particular way. And so it's a joy to be a church.

I look forward to Sunday mornings. And this Sunday particularly is exciting. We're going to be having some baptisms immediately following the service.

When I say immediately, we're going to give you about 15 minutes to go get your kids and then come back in and sit down in this area and participate in and observe people who are publicly showing that they belong to Jesus Christ by faith.

God saves us by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. His finished work for us on the cross.

It's not through water. It's not through baptism. It's not through any of that. That's a symbol. But we rejoice that he has saved us and that all it takes is a prayer and a prayer of genuine faith to be brought into his family.

And he leads us up out of a life of trying to be good enough. Some of you, that's your history, that's your past.

You were trying hard to please God when he found you and arrested that slide into self -righteousness and brought you out of self -righteousness into the righteousness of his son.

Or some of you were saved out of a life of trying to find your own way or of living for yourself.

And he brought you into a life of love for God and love for others. And that's kind of what the message is going to be about this morning.

This morning, our text that we're going to be studying and looking at, we're going to see that wrong teaching leads to wrong living.

That if you have the wrong premise and you have the wrong MO in life, then you're going to, the wrong belief system rather, then it's going to lead you to living out of, living the wrong way.

Paul sent Timothy to help set things straight in a church in the city of Ephesus.

That's what we're looking at when we're looking at the book of 1 Timothy. That was in modern -day

Turkey. And that church had been torn apart by false teachers. And so Paul is writing to Timothy to help him mend some of the fractures that had formed in that very well -established church.

Now my guess is that at first reading, we're going to go through this and read it here in a second, at first reading of this text, you might just grab a couple of things.

A couple of things will stand out to your mind, but the flow of it isn't easy to grasp. Even in English, it's not easy to grasp the flow.

And part of it is our misunderstanding of what does the law have to do with our lives and all that. And how many of you could just write in a simple sentence how your life relates to the

Old Testament law? It's complicated, right? It's not an easy answer. And so this could be a potentially complex text when it comes down to it.

And then what gets stuck in our mind is that in verses 9 and 10, we're going to see a list of bad things.

We're actually going to see actually a list of wicked people who are defined by the bad things that they do.

And that really grabs our attention. And all of a sudden, the flow is completely lost because it mentions some things in there that are really touch points for our culture by name.

And now all of a sudden, that's got our attention and we completely lose the flow of the argument. And we just think,

I guess this is a passage about things I'm not supposed to do. But an overly simplistic outline, and I'm going to outline it just briefly before we jump in, because I think that it's good for you to kind of get in your mind a little bit of an overall flow.

What we have here in this text is Paul telling Timothy, stay in Ephesus, shut down the false teachers.

You see, they're teaching false things. And the second point is the goal of the gospel is a life of love toward God and toward others.

The third point is some would rather teach law than love. The fourth point, but the law is to be applied only to unrighteous people.

And the fifth point, those who are righteous don't live by law, but by the good news that comes from law or love, not law.

And so open your Bibles if you're not already there to 1 Timothy 1 3 -11. Again, 1

Timothy 1 3 -11. And recast, this is

God's holy and precious word. I remind you of that because when you see the word homosexuality in here, it's a word that is charged in our culture.

And yet this is God's very holy and precious word to us lining out for us what is in our best interest.

So 1 Timothy 1 3 -11. As 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, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussions desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.

Now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed

God with which I have been entrusted. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your word.

I thank you that it is a word that reveals who you are to us but in that it also shows us what we're made to be and we recognize how much we fall short of that as we even just read any list of do's and don'ts immediately our heart can turn all different kinds of directions.

If we're self -righteous and we think we're better than everybody else then our heart turns towards arrogance, a direction that just demonstrates all the more our sinfulness or our heart can just be beat down to a pulp and just say

I'm not worthy, I'm not savable, I'm beyond the grasp of your grace and Father, either of those extremes is completely outside of your desire for us.

So Father, I pray that you would speak to us in our hearts the truth of your gospel where we are deeply loved.

We are indeed deeply broken in our sin but deeply loved by you at the cross and that is the place of our hope.

Not in our ability to reform our behavior, not in our ability to obey laws and rules and regulations like these false teachers we're pushing over on Ephesus but Father, ultimately a life based on love for you that takes your word seriously and seeks to honor you with our very lives because we have been loved by you.

And so Father, I pray that love, your love toward us would motivate love back to you and love to others this morning that you would make sense of what appears at face value to be a pretty complex text and that you would speak through me in a way that gives clarity to this text.

I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so make sure you keep your Bibles open especially in this text.

I say this every week but especially in this text because to understand the flow it's going to be really good to be able to refer back to this text to understand the big scope of what

Paul is getting at here as he's writing to Timothy. And I encourage you to get comfortable if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee juice or donuts you're not going to distract me if you need to get up there and re -caffeinate up or use the restrooms.

Those are out the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side if you need those. But in this passage this morning

Paul is giving Timothy his primary assignment. So what you need to understand is that Timothy reading this letter from the

Apostle Paul is getting his marching orders here and that's exactly what's going on here.

And my guess is that the job that Paul is giving to Timothy not a single one of us in this room is eager to sign up for.

I don't think any of us would sign up readily for the job that he's giving Timothy to do.

How many of you would just raise your hand and say I love conflict. I love it. I just love digging in with a good argument with people and I like just going at it.

I especially love delivering bad news to people. Bro, you can't teach anymore. You need to step down.

That's what he's asking Timothy to say to some of the leaders in the church in Ephesus.

You're teaching false doctrine, get out. Anybody signing up for that kind of gig? I don't think many of us would.

We are a culture that increasingly withdraws from conflict, right? Unless it's a chat room or it's on socials, right?

I mean, online, all the gloves come off, right? But face to face, no, we're kind.

But Paul is direct and to the point in verse three. Paul urges Timothy. He says, I urge you.

He doesn't command him, but he urges him and they're friends. I mean, really at the end of the day, Paul has been a mentor of sorts to Timothy, a teacher, a leader, a guy who's taken him under his wing and guided him.

And so there's a trust there. And he says, I urge you, Timothy, stay. It's not done yet. You're not finished with the work that you need to do in Ephesus yet.

Hang in there because he says there are certain, do you see it in the text? He says it twice, certain persons that are teaching falsehood.

There are certain persons. I think that that's code for, you know who they are, Timothy. You know who exactly who

I'm talking about. The certain guys who are teaching false doctrine and are wolves in sheep's clothing trying to tear the flock apart there in Ephesus.

Now I want to point out that this is not some esoterical or theoretical text. These are real people who are in a real church setting in real relationships with one another.

Now it's ancient and so in our minds, it all turns theoretical, but it's not. These are real lives being impacted by this letter from Paul to Timothy.

There are real people who are standing up and teaching the people of God and the people of God are following their teaching and Paul tells

Timothy to shut them down. Now how many of you know human nature enough to know there's a storm brewing in Ephesus?

Do you know enough about human nature to see that in this text? He's gonna go in and he's gonna say, you guys need to clean out.

You're not allowed to teach anymore. Confrontation is the very reason Timothy's being asked to remain there.

Now he says that specific people are teaching the wrong content, a different doctrine, different teaching and some translations have it as a false teaching and that's not wrong in the understanding of the

Greek word that's used there. Wrong content, false doctrine, wrong or different doctrine than what the gospel was that Paul preached there in Ephesus.

Now it's important to take this on as a first point. I mean this is, at the face value of this text, something that I think we all need to grapple with and it's just simply this, there is a wrong content.

There's a wrong content, folks. There is indeed a category of false teaching.

That's a real category. Our culture has increasingly accepted pluralism to the degree that many people believe that there are many truths and many ways to God.

How many of you are hearing that out in the culture? Many truths, many ways to God but Paul is saying that there is a sound or healthy doctrine.

He's actually gonna use that phrase in verse 10. Sound means healthy, that which results in health versus what would be the opposite of healthy, sick, that which causes illness, that which causes disease, that which breaks down and causes corruption.

There is healthy teaching and there is broken teaching and there's plenty of teaching, church, there's plenty of teaching out in our culture that is different from the good news that Paul was spreading and teaching in that first century.

So he sent Timothy to command them to cease, look at verse four with me for a second, nor to devote themselves.

Okay, so you're supposed to charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine at the end of verse three nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies.

The word devote there is a really strong, strong word. Devote, now that in English connotes some kind of strength, right?

Like when you're devoted to something, is that pretty strong? Like I'm devoted to my wife, so I'm hers. You're devoted to something.

The actual word, if you were trying to talk about addiction in the Greek language, you would use this word.

It's like they're addicted to these thoughts, these ideas, these myths, these genealogies, they love them, they hunger for them, they love getting together and speculating and thinking about speculation and just talking up these stories.

To clear this up, how many of you find at least some allure to conspiracies and speculation?

Anybody willing to just say kind of interesting to just like hear that? Any of you ever just like at least watched a flat earth documentary?

It's funny, but it's actually kind of fun, like it's entertaining. Anybody with me on that?

Or am I the only one? I kind of like documentaries anyways, so maybe I'm, yeah, I believe there's only five hands.

Okay, I get it. But it's just kind of humorous. There's an entertainment value to it.

But this is such a contemporary issue and that we often find ourselves drawn into the unknown and we love to make connections that may or may not even be there.

It's likely that these false teachers were going back, here's the gist of what's going on. I mean, just to put it in direct terms, they were going back into the

Old Testament and basing their teachings on stories and fables about the characters that they found there.

Like imagine a historical fictional novel that follows the life of Cain and Abel, but then teaches that in the church and basically says, you know,

Cain was like this, Abel was like this, so act like Abel. And Abel was, and here's five points that you can learn from Abel's life.

Now, how many of you know you're not probably gonna get five points from Abel's life in the Old Testament? There's just not that much written about him.

But they were adding to it. They were adding myths and fables surrounding these genealogies and these

Old Testament characters and they're just plucking one out and telling a story about him and then saying, and see, that's why you need to obey.

That's why you need to follow the laws and the rules and the regulations that they were basically infusing into these stories.

And Paul reminds Timothy that there's a major contrast between speculation on the one hand and truth on the other.

The contrast is between an entrusted revelation and guesswork.

And look at the end of verse four. Look at the end of verse four with me. In order to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies which promote speculation rather than, here's the contrast, rather than, they're interested in all these conspiracies and these ideas that are out there and rolling around in their culture, rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.

We are truth stewards. He has given truth to us and he has left the truth in the care of his people.

It is a truth based on faith and it is contrasted with fiction that leads into all kinds of speculations and wild thoughts.

So recast, be a truth person. Be a truth person which means that you are a

Bible person. Don't be a speculation person. Don't be an expert in the modern mythologies of our day.

I believe this is a timely message for us, church. Consider this as a call to spend more time in the

Bible than you spend online. And here's a legitimate question that we have to ask ourselves.

To a person, I want you to ask this question. I want you to answer it. Is the Bible enough for you? Or do you need to add a little more?

Has it lost its flair? Has it lost its pizzazz? Is it just kind of like, oh, that's humdrum, that's passe.

Let's get some flavor in here. Do we get bored with it? Need to create some stories to fit a narrative that we love.

Let the Bible be the lens by which you see the world around you. Study it, know it.

God has entrusted us with the truth according to verse four. But the goal of that truth is not merely knowledge.

The goal of knowing the word of God is never ultimately that you win Bible trivia.

That's not the goal. The goal isn't that you're, I mean, certainly the more you know it, the better you're gonna be at that. But that's not the point.

That's never to be the end goal. Here's the positive side of what

Timothy needs to convey to the church in Ephesus in verse five. He isn't only to stop the false teachers, but he is to promote the true teaching.

And the whole goal of teaching, the whole goal of Paul and Timothy's charge to the church, the whole goal of their teaching is summarized in verse five.

The goal of all of this correction is that the church would love. The church would love.

The church would love God and the church would love one another. And then he goes on to say something that's really intriguing and worth a chunk of our time this morning, and that's that love comes from three things.

It issues from three sources. Where does real love come from? I think the world doesn't have an answer to that question.

There's no real logic to it. It comes in some kind of chemical formulation of goo that got struck by lightning and eventually loved one another.

That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. There's no origin story for love other than maybe it's got something to do with some kind of a evolutionary drive or something like that, but not at all according to the truth.

It comes from first a pure heart, meaning that love actually comes from a heart that's been purified by the love of God and set free from the corruption of sin through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

John says it this way, we love because he first loved us.

We love because he first loved us. And only a heart that's purified by God and set in the right trajectory and understands the great and immense love that's poured out on it by the cross that's a heart that's ready to serve and love one another.

Do you understand what I'm saying in this? A pure heart issues true love.

Love also issues secondly from a good conscience, a good conscience, meaning how many of you kind of have an idea what a conscience is?

It just kind of guides you and directs you throughout the day, tells you what is good and what's right and what's wrong. How many of you ever had your conscience seared where it was like, yeah,

I kind of didn't think that was wrong. And then you found out later it was. Your conscience is not a faithful guide, is it?

Your conscience is helpful, but it's not a faithful guide. So what is this? He's talking about a different kind of conscience here.

Everybody has a conscience. Everybody walking on the planet has the law of God in some sense written on their hearts where they know right and wrong and the nuances of really when

I understand what is and isn't right is a little bit confusing in my own mind. So what's he getting at by a good conscience here?

It means that our conscience, which can deceive us into self -justification, is being repaired through the gospel.

And our convictions and our consciences are best functioning when they are driven by the

Holy Spirit. Who's got the reins of your, who's got the hold of the steering wheel of your conscience?

Yourself? You did before you came to faith in Christ, but no longer. Who is in charge of your conscience now, church?

The Holy Spirit is in charge. He is now driving your conscience. And so what he's getting at here is we have a good, repaired, functioning conscience that results in increasing love for others.

And let me just give you this, let me put some flesh on this for a moment. In a practical way, this has broken some really stubborn stalemates in my marriage with Linda.

It probably has broken some stalemates in some of you as well. I'm often, when we argue, convinced

I'm right. When we argue, she is often convinced she is right.

She's usually actually right. But that's not the point.

The point is that given enough time, even with myself, my good conscience begins to work on me.

Given a little bit of time and a little bit of distance from that argument and the heat of it, it kind of starts to go like this in my head.

You're a jerk. You might have said the right thing, but you certainly didn't say it in the right way.

Go back and make that right. Go back and tell her and apologize for what you can that you did wrong in that situation.

Anybody ever had that before? It's like God sighting. It's like the spirit alive in you driving that conscience to the truth, driving it to where?

To love. Do you see how love is the result of that? My love for my wife, that ultimately the spirit is driving my conscience to say, go reconcile.

Go make that right. Go fix that. Praise God that she has that same thing happen frequently as well, and that's honestly a big portion of good relationships, isn't it?

That's a good portion of love because how many of you know that, those of you that are married in the room, you know you married a sinner, right?

You did know that, right? And so you have to have some way of reconciling, some way of figuring that out or else you'll eat each other up and you'll spit each other out.

This happens a lot in our culture, right? But in Christ, we have good consciences that the spirit drives within us to lead us to love.

The third foundation of love is a sincere faith. Now this is the fundamental foundation of love, a sincere faith.

Where does love and care for others come from? It first comes from the faith that God himself has loved us.

We can love God and others only because he has poured out his great love on us through Jesus Christ, his son at his cross.

While we were still his enemies, he sent his son to reconcile us by paying the penalty of our sins there on that hill 2 ,000 years ago just outside of Jerusalem.

So only a sincere faith results in genuine love. Anything shy of sincere faith will leave us, by the way, here's the point, it'll leave us with fear of God, not love for him.

If you don't have a sincere faith that God has provided a way for you to be saved, how many of you know you'll just be left working for it?

You're gonna be left striving and struggling and terrified of God. Have I done enough? Have I pleased him?

It will leave us with fear and doubt if we don't have a sincere faith. Fear that we might not have done enough to please him.

Fear that I might not be keeping up with you and you might be getting ahead of me. Fear that someone like me could never be acceptable to him.

And that fear often stems from misunderstanding where we're going next and that is the role of the law in our lives.

False teachers in Ephesus were swerving away from the teaching of a pure heart and the teaching of a good conscience and the teaching of a sincere faith and they were trading those for empty and worthless discussions about Old Testament people and their epic deeds of mythic obedience to God.

They were into fictional fables that were leading people deeper into the law and away from sincere faith, holding up those who kept the law and pushing down those who didn't and even telling stories about Old Testament characters who were really good at the law.

These false teachers were broken on these three sources of love. They appear to have lacked teaching that brought people to Christ for the gift of a new pure heart.

Their different teaching was not resulting in pure hearts among their followers. Further, their teaching was not resulting in a good conscience.

As a matter of fact, it didn't even really believe in a good conscience. Instead, they were replacing conscience with the law and he's gonna tackle that at length here at the end of this text.

But lastly, their teaching could never lead to a sincere faith because their teaching was based on fiction and made up stories.

So look at this stern indictment of these false teachers in verse seven. They have a dangerous combination according to one of the commentaries and let me read it for us real quick.

Desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.

They have a dangerous combination according to one of the commentaries I read this week by Philip Reich and he said, they possess the dangerous combination of arrogance and ignorance.

Arrogance and ignorance. They make confident assertions without any understanding.

Think about that combination. How many can see the danger in that? Has anybody ever been guilty of that by the way?

I have. I'm a pretty confident individual. I can state things pretty emphatically that I really don't know that much about.

You guys don't find that funny. How many of you can relate to that? You can just kind of spout something and it's like a stat and then my wife is over there on Google going,

I don't think that's the way it works. Oops. So yeah, I think that this is a dangerous combination.

We recognize it. These guys, I would add another thing to the problem here. They have both arrogance and ignorance and ambition.

And ambition. They want to be known it says at the beginning of verse seven. They want to be known as teachers of the law.

But Paul says directly, they don't have a clue. They don't have a clue what they're talking about. And let's pause for just a moment and bring this up to our time

I don't want you to get drowned in the details here of a complex text. But let me just ask you a question.

How gullible are you? How gullible are you? How easy would it be for someone with ambition and arrogance and ignorance to deceive you?

Now, I think probably most of us. Let's go ahead and I'm going to ask you. I do this kind of for fun from time to time. But I'm going to ask you to literally raise your hand if you think you're pretty solid and not very easily drawn in.

You're pretty solid. Go ahead and raise your hand if you say, I'm not that gullible. I'm not that easily drawn in.

How many of you are like, I probably could be tricked. Okay, I think most of us are there.

I think the question here has a different nuance to it. We could get to the same results by asking a different question.

So I ask you how gullible you are. And most of us, to be quite honest, don't want to admit it. You don't want to raise your hand.

I'm gullible. Trick me. Fool me. I'm gullible. No, that's not a really, that's not a, it's kind of a derogatory term in our culture, right?

So I kind of like, nah, I'm just joking. I'm a little bit in my head, but I think I'm gullible. But let's ask the question a different way.

How well do you know the word of God? How well do you know the word of God? How well do you know the stewardship of the word that has been entrusted to you?

How well do you know it? That's the, we're going to get to the same answer. You want to know how gullible you are?

Ask yourself, how well do I know his word? You cannot convince me that you are both disconnected from the word of God and not spiritually gullible.

If you do not know the word of God, you are ripe for the picking for a false teacher.

If you don't know the word, they will lead you down the primrose path with ease.

There are so many reasons we need to be in the word of God. The main one is that it is the very self -disclosure of God himself.

In the word of God, in the Bible, we basically have God telling us who he is and how he has worked with humanity and how he will not work with humanity.

But a very practical outcome of being a student of the word is also protection. Protection from that which is false.

The antidote to falsehood is the truth. So be a student of the truth.

And the aim of the truth, again, remind you, the aim of the truth is love for God that flows from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.

But these self -designated teachers of the law did what every false teacher tries to do down through the ages.

They go for control over people right away. And that's what they were doing in Ephesus. They were trying to control people. How do you control people?

Give them a bunch of rules. Give them a bunch of measurable goals. Give them hoops to jump through. And that really subdues us quickly.

Replace the source of salvation and love with the law. That's what they were doing. And they were taking people back to the

Old Testament saying, you need to live like this. And so Paul tackles that issue.

And that's what we see from verses 8 through 11 that grabs a lot of our attention in the text. But he starts off in verse 8 by saying, now they're teaching you the law.

Now, you need to understand that Paul says, the law is good. The law is good. It is a

God -given standard that accurately shows what God desires of humanity. Nothing that Paul says in this text is set forward to denigrate or to put the law off or say that it's an error, that it's wrong or anything like that.

The list of laws he appeals to in verses 9 through 10. Hear me carefully. They're a good law. But they are a law.

Hear me carefully, church. These laws accurately show some of the things that God desires his people to avoid.

It's not a comprehensive list, but it's certainly a really good, wide and broad smattering of things that we are to avoid.

But how do we avoid them? Paul is confident that the law doesn't help us.

The law is good when it's used properly, he says. But how many of you know that knowing what a tool is for makes it a good fit for the job?

If you know what the tool is for, hammers are really great for pounding nails through wood, but they're not super good for getting a piece of food stuck, unstuck from your trap tooth, right?

Try that out. I would recommend a toothpick or floss for that, right? So the question in front of us here in the text is what kind of a tool is the law?

What is it for? What's it good at? He says the law is good if it's used correctly. What's a correct use of the law then?

It is a mirror, church. What is the law? It's a mirror. It's a mirror for the dirty and disheveled.

The law is really good at showing us what needs to be fixed in our lives. Are you getting what I'm saying?

It's really good at reflecting back our behavior to it and it to our behavior and saying it's an assessment tool, just like a mirror.

How many of you looked in a mirror this morning? You looked in a mirror? Why? Why'd you look in a mirror?

Did it fix your face? Did it comb your hair? Did it brush your teeth?

It told me, I'm getting older. But it didn't do anything for me other than assess, give me visual assessment of, whoa, that's a mess.

You get what I'm saying? So it's a mirror, but what role does a mirror take in cleaning the smudge off your face?

It can show you, yeah, you've got some dirt right there, but what, do you lean in and rub it off on the mirror?

Is that what you do? Of course you don't. Now, the mirror tells you you have a problem, but it doesn't fix it.

What do you need to fix it? Well, you need a new heart, a pure heart. You need a good conscience.

You need a sincere faith to walk this journey with God. When you see the assessment of broken, broken, broken, what's the solution?

Bang your head on the mirror? Or is it to go to the one who can fix you?

Like go into the hairstylist or go into the person who can do your makeup or go into even just doing, but it's not doing it yourself, obviously.

It's going to the one who can provide the solution to your brokenness, and that's only Jesus. That's how you're gonna get that cleaned up.

The law is not, therefore, for the righteous or the just, but the law is for, and then

Paul gives us what really intrigues us, a list of sinful people. Well, this is not a list of sins.

It's a list of people, and in verses nine through 10, he lists the kind of people who need the work of a good mirror.

That's what he's getting at here. These are people who need a good mirror, and note that it's not merely a list of behaviors, but a list of people who would be defined by these characteristics and actions.

They would be defined by these things. The first six are people defined by their rejection of God, and he uses different nuanced language to basically get at six things that we have a hard time delineating or differentiating.

I think Paul begins here because the root of wrong living is always in a wrong attitude toward God.

It begins there, and it doesn't begin with wrong behavior. It begins with wrong attitude, wrong heart, which is, by the way, the default of the human heart is wrong relationship to God.

Did you know that? That's the default. How many of you with young kids ever taught them, now, little guy, here's how you take a toy from your friend and hit him in the head with it.

Did you have to teach your kids that? You don't have to teach kids that. They just do that. There's already a brokenness in relationship towards others and relationship towards God from birth.

It's in us. It's a part of what it means, and so when you look at these words, lawlessness, disobedient, ungodly, sinners, unholy, profane, we don't have a lot of distinctions between these words.

So what I thought I would do is, after studying the Greek behind the word, which we try to translate into English but doesn't always come across very well, what

I thought I'd do is I'd just give you a quote from a person that's like this. So here's the kind of thing that you would expect a lawless person to say.

Nobody is the boss of me, the lawless person. From the disobedient, I don't have to do what you say.

From the ungodly, which literally, the Greek word is a mashup of two words, literally means without worship, ungodly,

I am not accountable to the creator. Sinners, I'll do it my way.

The unholy, I determine my own life. The profane, there is nothing higher to live for than myself.

Those who strike their fathers and mothers, cash me outside, how about that? Well, I guess, it's what

I picture them saying. I don't know, I wondered if anybody was gonna get it, but thanks for the laughter.

But seriously though, the first six of these read like a modern script for our culture, do they not? Lawless, disobedient, ungodly, sinners, unholy, profane.

Even if we talk about sin for just a moment in our culture, these all come up in routine conversations.

I've had conversations with people where these very statements, the statement of the lawless, nobody is over me.

The disobedient, I don't have to do what anybody says. I'm not, I determine my own life. The unholy,

I'll do it my way. How many of you have had conversations that resulted in these kind of quotes? Anybody? I think many of us have.

What gives God the right to define our sexuality? I define the course of my own life.

We've even made a virtue out of self -determination, have we not? Which is really so silly in that we determine none of the most basic things about us.

How many of you, how many of you acknowledge that you just did not have much control over your life? I mean, we didn't pick the generation we were born into.

We didn't pick our mother. We didn't pick our father. We didn't pick our physical equipment. We didn't pick our height, our eye color, our skin color, our nationality, and the list could go on of things that you didn't dictate for yourself.

We, who would like to think of ourselves as self -determined and autonomous kings and queens over our own lives, have miniscule control over our lives.

See, 2020. Put an asterisk there. All of these sins seek to deny that we belong to another who has the right to call the shots.

All of them. And that's the very nature of sin, is it not? At the end of the day, what was the temptation in the garden?

God said these bad things are gonna happen if you take that fruit to Satan. But you know what? I think

I know better. And I think you feel it, too. It looks pretty good. Just take it.

He doesn't know what he's talking about. As a matter of fact, he's afraid you're gonna be like him. He doesn't want you to take over.

So eat it. God says honor your father and mother.

And so that's the very important, that's a very important law. That's a very important mirror to stand in front of anyone who would strike their mother and father.

God says don't murder. And you can see how a murderer would need that law. God says sex is an awesome and powerful gift meant to be confined to the protective marriage relationship that he designed from the very beginning.

And we need that law. God says in Leviticus that a man is not to lie with a man as he would lie with a woman.

And Paul smashes, here's what you need to understand. By the way, one thing that's really intriguing about this passage is that he alliterates.

He chooses his words that start, so everything starts with an A. So this list of things start with an

A and he takes a word, there's other words for homosexuality. He takes one and he literally mashes up two words from the

Leviticus passage here. Man -bed is kind of the idea of it. And he basically mashes two words that are found right next to each other in that Leviticus passage showing that Paul was literally thinking about the passage in Leviticus prohibiting homosexuality while he's writing this letter.

It's abundantly clear that he is thinking about the Old Testament law. He's obviously talking about the Old Testament law and he literally uses two words found in that passage, smashes them together in Greek and then there's this word.

And this word is found in other places as well but it's not an imminently common word.

And you'll hear people who are gonna promote homosexuality, they're gonna say this isn't a common word. It's very clear where he got it.

There are no questions among scholars of ancient languages where Paul got this word. He got it from Leviticus.

He's completely and utterly tying it to that word in that passage. And he's clearly expressing that the law of God prohibits homosexual acts here.

That's the law. It's the Old Testament law. God says don't steal and some would even steal other people.

He takes a pretty extreme example. God says don't lie and there are of course those who would lie and perjure themselves, he says.

And then he goes on to say sound and healthy doctrine prohibits many things.

He kind of just puts a blanket statement at the end. I'm not covering it all. I can't waste all the ink in the scroll to rewrite the whole law here.

So notice what he says in conclusion. The prohibition of these things are in accordance with the gospel.

They are in accordance with the gospel. The gospel does not bring us out from underneath these things.

In other words, people who love God will avoid these things and many more. So what's the big deal?

What's he getting at here in this text? Well, the one with a pure heart, the one with a good conscience that comes from a sincere faith will avoid these things out of a love for God and not out of a fear of law.

It's not like you go back in the Old Testament law and say do all these laws and you're good with God. No, it's coming out of a desire.

You know when you come to know what your master and your Lord who bled and died for you, when you know what he wants of you, what do you want to do?

Honor him. You want to obey him. And I love this because there's an excellent book that I listened to last summer while I was riding my bike out exercising.

It's a beautiful book. I would love, as a matter of fact, if it was just like the cost of the book that kept you from buying it but you're like I'm really intrigued by that,

Don. I want to read it. I would buy you a copy. And I'm not saying the church would buy you a copy. I would buy you a copy if you want it.

It's called A Change of Affection. Just the title is beautiful when you read what it's about. A Change of Affection.

It's by a guy named Beckett Cook. He was out on the West Coast. He was actually pretty well known in the fashion industry setting up photo shoots for GQ and all of these really high -end magazines and stuff.

Beckett Cook is his name. Ran into a Bible study. Totally disdained Christians.

Hated animosity towards Christians. Ran into a pastor who was leading a Bible study at a coffee shop. Went over to talk with him basically to say that they're jerks.

I ended up having a long conversation and by the end of this, by the end he ends up giving his life to Christ.

This book actually moved me and I'm sitting there, I'm riding my bike around neighborhoods with tears running down my eyes as I'm listening to this guy's intense love for Jesus.

A love for Jesus so much that it eclipsed his love for sex.

Full stop. I state that pretty directly. I state that pretty crassly. I say it directly because that's exactly his testimony.

It just eclipsed his love for that which he was defining himself by.

We ought to be left to face the naked and grotesque fact that when we sin, we are showing ourselves to love the base things over Christ.

We are showing our affections diverted to something else rather than to Jesus. The law still can serve us as believers to show us like a mirror where we do not love

Christ and others like we ought. But the issue is never an issue of needing more law.

The issue is always an issue of needing more love for God. We need more affection and our loves to be transformed.

Beckett Cook now lives a life of celibacy out of love for the

Lord who died to save him. His affection for the things of this world have dimmed and he testifies in his book of a deep and transforming change of affections that have stemmed from a sincere faith, a good conscience, and a brand new pure heart.

I'm not talking about that he no longer is same -sex attracted. Not at all.

That's still where he's at. I said he leads a celibate life. I didn't say he got tripped over women. He leads a celibate life.

Why? Because sex doesn't define him. What does define him?

His intense and deep affection for his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Where are we at, church?

What about our affections? Our culture will define our sexuality as the most base and important thing about us, will it not?

How many of you are in agreement with me? Is that what they're saying? And here we have a testimony of a man who literally says, that doesn't define me, that has now been taken off the throne and removed.

What's on the throne now? Jesus. And his love and affection for Jesus.

God forbid that we lean into the error of these false teachers, however, who would guide people into the law as the resolution.

What would law have looked like in the coffee shop? What would law have looked like from that pastor in the coffee shop?

You sinner. I'm supposed to keep my distance from unclean people.

Can you imagine that kind of conversation? Can you imagine a law -based approach to this? I think we all can.

But what we need is to remember that we are not made new in Christ to live a life of law.

We are made new in Christ to love our Lord, who first saved us and loved us.

And he showed us this love by bleeding his blood on the cross for us. So if you've asked Jesus Christ to save you, then

I encourage you to come to one of the tables and take the cracker and the juice to remember his body and blood that was given up for us.

Do that during this next song. You can take your time and then go back to the tables back there as the band's gonna come up and lead us in a song.

And then let's go out from here, church. Let's go out from here committed to this gospel that gives us a pure heart, a gospel that gives us a good conscience, a gospel that gives us a sincere faith.

Our hope is in his spirit to guide us into obedience moment by moment and day by day.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ, that at the end of the day, it is not, we are not saved into a life of law, but we are saved into a life of love, a life that at the end of the day is driven by your

Holy Spirit, that certainly you take the fuel of what we know you desire of us and you transform it into our lives, into a daily walk, a daily breathing you in and breathing you out.

And so Father, I pray that you would make that a reality for all of us who are here listening to this message and have had a chance to take it in.

Father, I pray that you would lead us into love, not into law, and that at the end of the day, we would bring honor and glory to you this week.

Thankful for this start of our week where we hear from your word, but we also have a chance to take the cracker that reminds us of your body broken for us, that central reality that your blood was shed in our place, and that that is the place of our hope.