1 Timothy 1:1-2 Setting the Table

You're 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 plans of 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 I'm really glad that God has blessed us with the opportunity to gather together.

We've had a weird year, and so it's just such a great thing. Every Sunday morning, I wake up just delighted and glad that we have an opportunity on Sunday mornings to regather and to recenter our lives, really, in the community of God's people.

I love that. Just to add a little bit to that last announcement there, David Schrock has been leading our middle school and our high school ministry for the last couple of years.

He's done a fabulous job recruiting for those programs, and we've seen growth among those middle schoolers and those high schoolers.

Seen growth in them as well as the numbers of students attending has grown as well, and so we're really grateful for that.

David is going to be continuing to teach gravity, which is our high school ministry, until we find his replacement, so he's been willing to continue to do that.

But the elders have determined that the timing and the resources are available for us to seek someone in a more full -time capacity to work with middle school and high schoolers at this time.

So please be in prayer, as the announcement said, as we seek the right person for that position.

We are looking to hire a youth pastor intern, as it said, and that role will be a full -time position. It has the title intern because the first year will be a chance for us to figure out whether or not we're a good fit for each other, and then the hopes would be that if that works out that we would drop that title intern at the end of that first year and just have a full -blown youth pastor at that point.

So that's a little of what's going on here as we set our sights on the future. We believe that God has created a lot of momentum in our community, in our church, centered on David's leadership in that, and building momentum is something that we want to kind of ride that momentum moving forward, particularly among middle schoolers and high schoolers.

So we're excited about that. But let's turn our attention to the Word of God here, and what he has for us this morning.

Our text is two short verses that's going to be introducing a new series on the book of 1 Timothy. And in these two short verses,

Paul is going to set the table for us for the rest of the book. So he's basically setting some things out on the table, some utensils that we can use for the remainder of our study in the book as we move forward over the course of the summer, week in and week out, kind of going through the next section of 1

Timothy. This short passage is full of important truth that we need to return to time and time again as we follow

Paul's instruction to his protege, Timothy, throughout this book. Now I just set a little bit of context here.

Paul was likely in Greece, in the area of Macedonia, which is near Philippi, in northern Greece when he wrote this letter to Timothy, who was in Ephesus, which is in modern -day

Turkey, and he really sent Timothy there for the purpose of helping the church there through some turbulent times.

The church in Ephesus was going through difficulty. And the Ephesian church was one of the most established churches that Paul started.

Paul started many churches. He would go to an area, plant a church, start it, move on to the next place, start a church there, move on, start another church, move on.

And some of you know that from studying or knowing the book of Acts, and the book of Acts explains that entire journey.

But he spent time in these places, and he spent a little bit of time everywhere. In Corinth he spent quite a bit of time, but nothing compares to the amount of time that Paul spent in Ephesus, according to the book of Acts.

He spent about three years with them, teaching, preaching, and evangelizing. And just to tell you that three years is a long time in the life of Paul tells you that he was moving on a lot.

The stereotype in our modern age is either a military kid or a pastor's kid, and they have a tendency to move.

You can talk with Dave Bunt about how many times he moved when he was a kid. He's a pastor's kid. And so there's a little bit of mythology surrounding those two careers, and just moving, moving, moving.

And so he spent three years there, teaching, preaching, and evangelizing in Ephesus.

But his last recorded words to the Ephesians comes to bear on the book of 1 and 2 Timothy. First Timothy in particular, what we're looking at.

The last thing that we have recorded of him speaking to the Ephesian leaders, and there's tears in their eyes as Paul departs from them for the last time in the book of Acts.

And he says to the Ephesian elders of the church, watch out.

Savage wolves are coming for you. There are savage wolves who are going to come in among the flock, and they're going to try to divide and rip this congregation to shreds, says

Paul. I'm going to be like, that sounds like a great meeting. How encouraging, Paul. Thank you. But how many of you know that if somebody was going to break into your house tonight, it would be a grace that somebody told you, right?

That's what he's saying. He's saying, watch out guys, because some bad things are coming. And savage wolves are coming. And they did.

So Timothy was sent there to set things back in order after these wolves have kind of had their way with this congregation.

And he sends Timothy, Timothy actually becomes kind of a bit of a, you know, kind of a targeted individual that Paul sends into difficult situations, and we see that kind of pattern in Timothy's life.

Paul sends Timothy to solve problems. He's his problem solver. And so he sends him there to correct doctrine, to set things back in order, and this letter we're studying is somewhat like a blueprint for the way a church is supposed to operate.

Let's get back to the basics. Let's get back to the blueprint. Let's get back to the way that a church is supposed to run. And Paul, in this letter, is giving instructions to Timothy on how to set things in order in a church that has lost its way.

And so here in the introduction, we find that Paul sets the table with the essential implements needed to get back to enjoying the fine feast at Ephesus of growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service.

The three things that a church needs, the three things that we stand by here and say that you need in your life in order to be a maturing

Christian, you need to be growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service, and they needed that there as well.

So let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to 1 Timothy verses 1 and 2, and I could probably read it in less time than it would take you to find it.

It's going to be a short passage this morning, and I want to just suggest to you that if you're honest, you probably, if you're reading through this in the

Bible in your daily reading or you're just kind of going through the Bible in a year, this passage might not stand out to you.

It might actually be one that you would skip over pretty quickly, but my hope is that as we go through the book of 1

Timothy and we see some of the tough things that Paul is going to say to us in it, I hope you come back to the foundational tools we gather in these first two verses to better digest the hard truths that we're going to see as we go through this book.

So 1 Timothy 1 verses 1 and 2, it's going to be a long one. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by command of God our

Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, to Timothy, my true child in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the

Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for a word that addresses and deals with even the degree and the blueprint of the way that our church should run, the things that we should look like, the way that we should interact with one another, and just even the recognition that we're talking about a church here that's been torn apart and is being put back together.

I thank you that you have preserved recast in those terms, that we have not experienced savage wolves here, and I pray that you would continue to protect this flock.

But Father, we know that even in the process of what it means to be your church that there will be wolves, there will be people who desire to tear apart, and I pray that you would just deal with each one of us in our hearts as we think about this book and as we enter into this new series, that we would think about what it means to be the church, locked tight together like a wall of bricks who are firmly connected to one another because we're firmly built on the foundation of Jesus Christ, and I pray that that would be a reality in our midst,

I pray that even this message would be one that gives us the tools that we need to think rightly as we walk through this book, and that it would be these tools that would help us to walk through this next week with joy and with gladness, recognizing the great things that you've given to us as resources at our disposal for understanding you and knowing your word and knowing the great salvation you have given to us.

We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so get comfortable and keep your

Bibles open, keep your device open to that passage because we're going to walk through it. Obviously, it's not a long passage, you could probably, in the amount of time

I'm going to be spending talking about it, you could probably read it, memorize it, I mean, you could read it many times, but you could probably memorize it, but if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee, juice, or donuts, while supplies last, back there, and you're not going to distract me if you need to get up at any time during the next half an hour or so while I'm talking.

When I lived in England back in the early 2000s, I received what I would call the invitation of a lifetime.

So I was there working primarily with churches, helping them to understand their

Muslim neighbors. There's a lot of Pakistanis that live in the north of England, and so I was there talking with them and working with them, and I got an invitation to the prestigious

Oxford Union Debate Society. It's actually world -renowned. You would recognize many of the people who have taken part in debates there.

Bill Clinton debated on the floor of the Oxford Union. There's probably many names that you would recognize that have been there, and so this was kind of the invitation of a lifetime to go there and hear and be, you know, not participate on the floor in the debate, but be part of the support staff for a debater.

The debate society had opened up a title, a debate title called, and this was it, Are Islamic Values Compatible with Western Values?

That was what was going to be debated by the Oxford Union. Now this is post -911, but not very soon after.

I mean, this is in the early 2000s, and so it was fresh in everybody's mind, and everybody was talking about it.

And one of the featured speakers of the debate was a missionary acquaintance who was working on his doctorate at the London School of Theology, and so he knew

I had a master's degree in Islamic studies and invited me to come along, and so that was a privilege to be a part of his kind of support team and kind of bouncing ideas off of him as we went through it.

So I had several unique experiences that night, and we could talk about those later. It kind of makes for fun party discussions and stuff like that, but the night included the opportunity to share the gospel with a known terrorist,

Sheikh Abu Hamza al -Masri. I had the opportunity, along with Jay, my friend, to share the gospel very directly with him.

Interestingly, he was very respectful and actually said, I like you because you're not afraid of me, and you believe firmly enough in what you believe to be willing to share it with me, and I think

I like you guys. That was kind of interesting. And then, I went to shake his hand, and one other unique thing, it's the first time

I've ever shaken somebody's claw. He didn't have a hand. He doesn't have a hand on either hand, actually.

So he had only claws as a result of building bombs. So yeah, he's a legit, legit terrorist, got the chance to share the gospel.

So I shook his claw. But all of that leads to a lot of different rabbit trails, and you're going like, wait, what?

And I hope that doesn't distract from the point, because the point of that evening that I wanted to point out for this message is that it was the most formal and stressful dinner situation

I've ever been in. The most formal and stressful dinner situation I've ever been in. You're going, food, how can that be stressful?

This is the Oxford Union. It was one that I had to be prepped for in advance, and my friend

Jay Smith cued me in advance. The guy who was speaking at the debate, he said, I've been, I've done these kinds of things before.

He had lived in England much longer than me. He said, watch the young lady who welcomes everyone to the dinner, and she's going to give some preliminary introductions of the who's who.

Then she's going to sit down, follow her lead. Watch her for your cues of which fork to use and which spoon to use, and you're going to be fine.

Now, this was the Oxford Union. We ate great food that evening, but we ate it properly.

There were more forks and spoons than anybody needs to actually consume a meal. You don't need all of those.

How many of you know that you can stab your steak just as well as you can stab your salad with the same fork?

Anybody with me on that? You don't need a different fork for those two things. The table was set, and it was set with eating utensils that we needed for the specific meal that was going to be presented to us that evening.

The meal was fabulous, and as I watched the hostess, who fortunately was seated across the table and two people down from me,

I was able to navigate the very complex queen's etiquette just fine. Didn't even spill anything on my shirt, fortunately.

But today, the table is being set for us in just these two short verses. We have the author of this letter identified as Paul.

He's going to say, I'm Paul, and I'm writing to Timothy. You might just look at this and go, well, that's all that he's saying here.

Verse one, Paul. Verse two, Timothy. Let's move on. But how many of you know that if all he wanted us to know was,

I'm Paul writing this to Timothy, then he would have just said that? But how many of you notice some more words in here?

Are there more words than that in verses one and two? There is. There's more that he wants to bring to our mind than I wrote it and Timothy is the recipient.

There's more that he wants to set up for us here, and it's with intention. He's not wasting any words. He's not just kind of blowing off some generalized introduction.

He's intentional about what he's going to say to us here in these two verses. Nestled here in between the

Paul and Timothy is the theological, the deep theological direction of the letter itself.

It's the stuff that Paul once planted in the mind of the reader from the very beginning. You see, it's interesting because just looking at the beginning, looking at the table setting at that Oxford Union, there are people,

I'm confident, who could have sat down at the table and had an idea of what courses were coming based on the cutlery on the table.

Do you know what I'm saying? I'm going, I just hope there's dessert. And somebody's literally going, dessert is flan because there's a flan spoon here.

And I'm going, flan, gross. Like that's kind of just jiggly pudding or something. But give me some cake or a trifle or something, but not,

I mean, really? How about some pie, you know? But there are six things that we need to keep coming back to as we go through this letter.

Six things that we find in just two verses. Six things that Paul wants his protege to have firmly within his reach before he launches out into the guidelines for teaching the church back to health, leading the church back to health.

He says, here's six things, six implements out on the table for you to be able to digest the instructions that I'm going to give to you.

The first and fundamental thing here is Paul's authority. So if you're taking notes, the very first thing that is a utensil on the table for us is

Paul's authority. He wants to establish that from the beginning. It seems like Paul, I don't know if you've noticed this, if you've studied any of the

New Testament, you would come up with a conclusion looking at the things that Paul writes in his letters that he was being challenged at every turn.

Did you guys know that? His authority was being challenged at every turn. I would guess that he got tired of this.

How many of you, if every time that you spoke up, somebody was like, what gives you the right? Would you get tired of that?

And that was Paul's life. It seems to follow him all the way to the end of his life.

People asking, what gives you the right to speak? Why do we need to listen to you? What gives you the authority to tell a church how to run?

And so it makes sense that Paul begins with this fundamental utensil. Why should we pay attention to 1

Timothy? Well, he's going to tell us. He's going to tell us why we should pay attention to what he's written here.

He gives his title. He says, I'm an apostle, and I'm not just an apostle. I'm not just sent, but I am sent by a very high individual.

His name is Jesus Christ. You see, we miss the force of the word apostle because it's not a word that we really use in English except for religious context in which it's often not defined.

And so what in the world is an apostle? It's a formal emissary or a formal spokesman for another.

More than merely an errand boy, Paul was not Jesus' errand boy. He was one who came in the authority of Jesus Christ, speaking on behalf of Jesus Christ.

How many of you think Jesus is a big deal? Paul was saying, if you think Jesus, if you just raised your hand, then

I'm a big deal too. I'm coming in his name. I'm coming in his authority. I'm coming bringing his words to you,

Timothy. Pay attention. I'm going to speak up, and I'm going to tell you what Jesus says.

And not only that, but he goes on, he emphasizes it even deeper. He says, I'm not just an apostle of Jesus Christ by my choice or because I met

Jesus on the road to Damascus, but I am an apostle by the command of God. The Almighty God made it so.

The Almighty God decreed that I would be an apostle of Jesus Christ.

Paul is not representing Christ because he decided to go to seminary and thought it was a good career choice. It wasn't some day he would stop kind of thinking, well, what could

I do with my life? I really have no other options. I'm not good at anything, so I might as well be a pastor or whatever or something like that.

Apostle, apostle. I mean, he was an apostle, not a pastor. Church planter.

Paul's authority comes with a force of calling that was a very command of God. Do you see it in the text? Do you see what he's getting at?

He's saying, listen up, pay attention. And we're going to need to come back to that from time to time as we go through this book.

There's going to be things that this book says that you're not going to like, and you're going to go, why do I need to listen to it? Why do

I need to pay attention to it? What gives him the right to tell us this, this, or this?

And there's going to be some specific things in this book that are going to make you uncomfortable. What gives him the right? Apostle of Jesus Christ, he says, by the very command of God.

Do you see why that's important? He's saying, right at the beginning, you need to pay attention to this.

The second thing that's on the table that we need to have as a utensil to be able to use to understand and interpret and understand this book is the salvation of God or the

God who saves. I would never want to imply that God himself is a utensil on the table for us to use.

Not at all. But the knowledge of his saving work is. The reality that God the

Father here, and it's no doubt that he's talking about God the Father because then he parallels that with, and Jesus who was our hope, so he's talking about God the

Father. God who saves you. Now, we have all kinds of misunderstandings about the relationship of God and the

Son and the Spirit in terms of who's saving and maybe God is the angry one, the Father is the angry one from the

Old Testament, and Jesus is the nice one from the New Testament. He calms his dad down. What does it say in the text?

The God. God our Savior. The Father our

Savior. Now, certainly Jesus Christ came and was the sacrifice for us, but whose idea was that?

It was the Father. Paul calls the

God who commanded him to be an apostle, the God who saves. And this title ought to stand as a stark reminder at the beginning of this letter that there's going to be desert.

Salvation is real. There's going to be desert. We've got it laid out in a way that tells you that there's a good end to this.

And Jesus didn't come to calm down the angry God from the Old Testament. God the Father is the one who set in motion that whole plan of salvation.

He is the initiator of our hope. And so, let me give you a practical application to the first point.

I missed that, and then we'll come back to the one in the second. The practical application for the first point, hopefully you left a little room to jot this in there.

We ought to listen to all that Paul has to say about the church in this book. We ought to listen to everything that he has to say about the church in this book.

And then the second application to the second point, thank God for all his saving work in history as well as in your personal history.

Thank God for all his saving work. He did a lot in history before you were born. Did you guys know that?

Thank him for that. And then he's done a lot in you since you were born. Anybody? Thank him for that as well.

So live a life of thankfulness to the God who saves. The third thing that's on the table, that Paul places on the table for us, is that Christ Jesus is our hope.

And it's right here at the start, and he wants to make sure that we acknowledge Christ Jesus as our hope as we march through this book.

He's our hope. And Paul brings this to Timothy's attention. What a simple reminder that is so central and so life -changing when grasped.

Christ, a word that simply means that predicted

Messiah of the Old Testament, Christ, he is our hope. And his name is

Jesus. Jesus translated means he who saves his people. And our future is placed in him.

As Paul is going to give some difficult tasks to Timothy, it's good for him to remember Christ Jesus is our hope.

I don't know if you've noticed, but hope is in short supply in the world today. Anybody? You guys tracking with that?

You seeing it? Hope is in short supply, and I would suggest this to you, church. This is not meant to be a two -by -four, it's meant to be just deal with it in your own heart and try to figure it out.

But is it possible, is it just possible that hope is in short supply in the world because the church is not proclaiming

Christ to the world? Is that possible? Is it possible that we bear some of the responsibility for the hopelessness in our culture around us?

Because there is only one hope. We have the corner on the market, church. We're the only source of hope in the world.

So if you look outside of the church and you see there's no hope out there, then what does that imply for us?

We're the only ones with it to give. So church, just take that on. I love it that Spencer is leading a class right now on Sunday mornings at nine o 'clock about evangelism.

We need that. And to be quite honest, that's going to be a routine class, and that's going to be something that I hope that by a year from now that nobody has an excuse that I don't know how to share the gospel.

But you can certainly invite people to church. If that's the bare minimum that you can do, you can invite somebody. But practical application number three, live out a hope in Christ Jesus that is contagious.

Don't let your hope rest in you. Don't let your hope end with you. Don't let your hope be like you're just kind of storing it up for yourself, but share it.

Let it be contagious in your life toward others. Now these three things, these first three things come in the introduction of the author in verse one, but now we turn over to the identification of the recipient of the letter who is

Timothy. And a little bit about Timothy before we dive into the last three things that are on the table. Timothy is identified in verse two as Paul's authentic and genuine child in the faith, true child in the faith, he says.

Paul has led Timothy, he led Timothy to faith in a context during his first missionary journey.

So Paul took three missionary journeys. On his first one he traveled only through parts of Asia, I mean only through parts of Asia Minor through modern day

Turkey, and then went back to Antioch where he started. And then he branches out on his second missionary journey, goes back and visits those same places, and then goes around some of Greece and back, and the next one he goes and does the same cycle again, hitting some different places as well.

So he takes those three missionary journeys, but on the very first one he comes to this small gathering of three towns,

Iconium, Lystra, and Derby. So he's there in these three towns, and the three towns kind of have like a big tent revival kind of thing.

Guys in town, people show up, there's a young man there, we don't know how old he was, probably in his teenage years, maybe not even quite a teenager yet.

He shows up and he hears Paul preach. Not only does he hear Paul preach, but he believes.

Gives his life to Christ, then in there Paul leaves, just like he's known to do.

Shows up, there's a little bit of a church established, and then he's on to the next town. Paul returns to that place several years later to find

Timothy a famous preacher. He's already known in the district, according to the book of Acts.

Timothy has grown in his faith. He's established, and it's so clear that Timothy is true in his faith by the growth that Paul sees.

So what does Paul do? He invites him to come along in his traveling ministry, and they become close, and Timothy and Paul work together.

Paul, actually, like I said, begins to actually see Timothy as a problem solver and sends him into tough situations in multiple contexts in the book of Acts.

Sends him in to calm things down and set things straight. I love, by the way, how Paul, in this verse, readily commends those who he sees as true in the faith.

I have to confess that I'm sometimes scared of that, only in part because I don't know what's really going on in your heart, and I can only look at the external, and so this kind of calls me up short and says, commend people readily.

Be eager to say, I see God in you, I see God's faith in you, I see his work in you. Do you know what I'm talking about?

How many of you need that kind of encouragement? Just as I look around and I see faces, I see you,

I know you, and many of you, I see that and I commend that. But I also want to point out that the flip side of this is the hard part, and that's why you don't do the front end.

The back end of this is that by the end of this first chapter, we're going to see Paul literally call out two guys by name and say, these two guys are fake.

I thought they were real, and they're fake. And he calls them out by name and says, don't have anything to do with them.

Now, how many of you go, okay, well, wait a minute, I like the front end of that, I don't like the back end of that. Like, do you see what I'm saying?

And so as a pastor, I'm kind of a little more shy on the front end because I don't want to do the back end. You get what I'm saying on that?

But they go hand in hand. At the end of the day, to commend people for their faith publicly is equally to risk needing to backtrack on that a couple years later, or just several verses later, and say, actually, actually, they're gone now.

They're gone now. They're completely off the deep end. You get what I'm saying on that? Anyways, that's an extra.

That's just an extra nugget in there. But the fourth thing that you see on the table is now in verse two, and we're going to see really the next three are just simple words.

You see them. I think you know where we're going with this because you can see the words. You see the three words there. The first is grace, and that's the fourth thing set out on the table for us to keep returning to as we dig into this book.

All three of these are shown to be gifts from God the Father and the Son, Christ Jesus our

Lord. They come from Him, or we don't have them at all. So why remind Timothy of the grace that comes from the

Father? And I would suggest to you, because some of the things he's going to say in this letter need us to have a firm foundation on grace.

By the way, when you think in terms of grace, you need to recognize whatever your definition of grace, it needs to have strong overtones of inability.

I think that we've muddied the waters on this, so some of you know the acronym God's Riches at Christ's Expense. Have you ever heard that one?

That's an acronym for grace. There's all kinds of catchy things or cliche things that we can say in terms of grace that don't really get to the heart because if you have a definition that doesn't have the inability of the recipient, then it's not grace.

When you think of grace, don't think merely gift, and I've been guilty of this as your pastor. I often substitute when

I'm reading the Bible the word gift for grace and think that I've accomplished something, but that's not it.

How many of you would just kind of admit that usually when you think of grace, you think of gift and that's enough, but it's not enough.

Think gift I couldn't get for myself, and now you're on the right track. Gift I couldn't buy, gift

I couldn't obtain. You can give me a gift that I can buy myself. Do you know what I'm saying?

Anybody with me? So gift is not synonymous. You can buy me a pack of pens. I could go out and buy a pack of pens now, just being honest.

I'd be grateful, but at the end of the day, how many of you know what I'm saying? But you go out and buy me a mansion, whoa, wait a second, but I could still win the lottery and maybe get one of those.

So I don't know, well, did I just say I don't play the lottery? I really don't, guys. I mean, what in the world?

I am not a lottery player. Okay, so anyways, but I think you're getting, don't lose the message here.

Don't lose it. At the end of the day, grace is a gift given by God that you could never get yourself.

You couldn't accomplish it. That's grace. We know that ultimately what grace really is, is

Jesus Christ reconciling us with the Father and fixing a broken relationship that we could never in a thousand lifetimes repair.

We couldn't give enough. We couldn't do enough good deeds. We could not obey enough to fix our broken relationship with God.

And so God, in his grace, giving us what we cannot earn ourselves, stooped down to rescue us by sending his son to pay the penalty we owed.

So practical application number four, remind yourself that you are not saved by your own effort, but you are saved by grace, and we're going to need to keep coming back to that over the course of this book.

The fifth, fifth utensil on the table, fifth thing set out there for us, is mercy.

It's a gift given by the Father and the Son again. You see it in the text. Mercy is a word that gives us some indication about the reason that he has extended grace.

So they're not synonymous, but really at the end of the day, mercy underpins the reason that he has given us something we could never earn.

And it is that he has pity and compassion toward us, would be a good way to understand that.

At the heart of mercy is clemency, a word we don't use very often, but I like the word clemency because it's kind of a kingly word, or a judicial word coming into the presence of one that you know has the right to sentence you to death, to eternal punishment, and coming to him for clemency.

Please, I know what, I know what I deserve. When you plead with a king, or you plead with a judge, at the end of the day you're saying,

I know what authority you have. I know what you have over me. I know the guilt that I possess.

Please be lenient. Are you getting that? That's God's attitude of mercy toward us, and he has extended his mercy.

He will not give his children what we deserve. Grace is giving us something we can't earn, but mercy is not giving us what we have earned.

It's not giving us what we do deserve. We deserve condemnation, and he declares over his children, in Romans 8 .1,

there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Amen? That is the hope.

Grace and mercy go hand in hand in salvation, and where they are found, the final thing will be, and we'll get to that in a second, but let me give you the fifth practical application.

Never forget what you deserved. Again, that's going to go a long way to understanding. This is a utensil that has helped me to eat the tougher parts of the meal.

How many of you know that scripture has some lessons that are difficult to swallow? This is one that helps me to cut those difficult parts into smaller chunks that are manageable.

Remembering what I deserved has been like a knife that cuts some of those into bite -sized chunks.

What we really see in this, in practical application number five, in this identification of mercy, this is a call to come to God's word with an accurate humility, accurate humility about our own selves.

We're not worthy, only he is, and the only hope that we have is that he doesn't give us what our lives have earned, and that leads to, when you put grace and mercy together, what that results in is the sixth thing that we have here that's a reminder for us as we continue through this book, and that is peace.

Once again, peace proceeds from the father and the son, and we think of peace often as a feeling. How many of you just kind of, you can identify peace in your life when you kind of just have a little bit of chill and your shoulders relax.

Do you know what I'm talking about? A lot of times that's what we think about it. A way to identify that maybe we misunderstand peace to some degree is, let me just ask you a question.

Where is your peace place? Where can you go in your life to find peace?

Now, for me, it might be somewhere along a running stream in the Smokies, like just something about that context, in the woods, hunting for waterfalls and seeing the mossy rocks and stuff.

It just gives me peace. It's a place that my family has gone to on vacation every year. Do you know what I'm talking about? Some of you, it might be on the beach.

Some of you might be on a patio in your backyard. It might be the poolside. I don't know what it is for you, but when we think of peace that way, can you guys think of it, by the way?

Are you getting your peace place in your mind? Do you have that place in your mind? Where can you go to kind of find peace?

When we think of it that way, we're talking primarily about the status of our feelings, aren't we? Isn't that what we're talking about?

But the peace offered here certainly results in those calm feelings, but that's not what it's made out of.

The peace offered here is like a peace that comes from a relational stability, a relational healing. If you have been saved by His grace, you have been saved by His mercy.

Here's the point, church. Listen. Then you have peace with Him. You have it, whether you feel like it or not.

You know what I'm getting at here? Because a lot of times we don't feel like it, but if you have been saved by His grace and His mercy, then you have currently, you possess peace with God.

He has cast your sins as far as the east is from the west. The phrase, it is finished, rests over your debt of sin, and you are no longer in the category of enemy of God, but you've been adopted into His glorious family.

That's the kind of peace that we're talking about here. So practical application number six, rest in the healed relationship that you now have with God if you have asked

Him to forgive you and to be your king. Notice that all three are relational words, grace, mercy, and peace.

It's about a relationship with God, and we need all three of these as the foundation before we can approach this meal correctly.

The illustration breaks down a bit here because anybody can manage a salad with a dinner fork, right? But you won't be able to cut the steak without a knife, so there's that.

But let me state this bluntly and clearly. Let me talk about some of the things that we're going to have to address in this book so that you're going to see, oh, whoa, wait a minute.

That's in here? Whew. Okay. Now I understand why we need these things. Now I understand why we need to establish the authority of the apostleship of Paul coming from a command of God because he's going to take some things that he didn't know how bad it was going to hit our ears in America.

God did. He says, you're going to need some grace, you're going to need mercy, you're going to need peace, you're going to need hope in Christ.

You're going to have to remember that God saves. You're going to need to remember that this book comes with the authority of apostleship from God Almighty.

What kind of things? Well, Paul later in this very chapter, we've only got maybe a week or so and we're going to be talking about homosexuality.

It's in here. And you will not be equipped to understand what he has to say about that subject without these six things to submit to his teaching.

You will not be ready to process the things he has to say about the role of women in the church in chapter two without these things.

You won't be able to grasp what gives Paul the right to declare the qualifications of elders and deacons in chapter three and on and on.

You will not be equipped without these things in place in your life. What do we need in order to approach this book correctly?

We need to be reminded that this book opens up and reveals itself to a heart that has within its grasp

Paul's God -given authority, has within its grasp God's salvation, hope in Christ, grace, mercy, and peace.

Paul didn't just say, I, Paul, write me a Timothy and dive in. He said, let's set the table first.

Let's make sure you're equipped with the right things first. Here's the things that you need to unlock the riches of this book.

These things are prereqs to taking the first Timothy course and really getting it. And so as we come to communion this morning, let's focus our attention on God, our savior, and Christ Jesus, our hope, who together give to those who are true in their faith, gives to us grace, mercy, and peace.

If God is your savior, Jesus Christ is your Lord, then I encourage you to come to one of the tables to take communion during this next song, to remember his body broken for you and his blood that was shed for you.

And then I encourage you to go out from here reflecting on the great salvation, the great hope, the great grace, the great mercy, and the great peace granted to us through the

Father and the Son. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for just even in this short passage setting the table with such, with the implements and the instruments that we need in order to really understand and to grasp these things, and I pray that you would give us a humble approach to your word.

Father, there are things that your word says that rub us the wrong way, routinely, and it should be that way.

So Father, I pray that you would guide us and direct us as we walk through this week. I pray that you would help us to reflect on the great salvation that has indeed been given to us, the grace, the mercy, and the peace that are ours in Christ, and that that would give us a joyful approach to the world around us, that we would, we would, just our hope would be contagious to the world around us.

I pray that you would help us to be bold, and I thank you so much for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It's not an afterthought, it's the main thing, and we come back to this every week because we recognize that we're so prone to wander from the things that are so central, and we need, not routine, we just need to be reminded, and a week barely seems like enough time.

I can't forget by tomorrow, and so Father, I pray that you would press the glory of the cross, the place of our salvation, the hope that we have through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, his body broken in our place, and I pray that this communion would be a time of remembering and reflecting with deep gratitude for the sacrifice that you have made on our behalf, so that we can walk out into the world as your emissaries, as your sent ones to the world in need around us.

I pray that this would, this message would result in hope, just spreading throughout our community.