1 Timothy 1:12-20 Fighting the Right Fight

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 plan from 1 Timothy. Let's listen in.

I'm Don Filsack. I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm really glad to be back with you all after a week away. We were down there playing with the bears in the Smoky Mountains. Some of you maybe saw some of the videos, but we really literally did have some extremely close encounters with some black bears while we were down there.

It was kind of crazy. The Smokies are one of my favorite places on the planet. I absolutely love going down there and the nature and the hikes and all that stuff. Not such a great fan of Gatlinburg. If you've been there, it's a little kitschy and touristy, but we really like the hikes in the park and stuff like that.

But when I get a week away like that, I'm always reminded that although I enjoy these travels and I enjoy these other places, this is my favorite gathering of people on the planet. I absolutely love you guys.

I miss you when I'm not here. I miss Dave leading worship and all of that. And we did get a chance to take in another church that just wasn't recast. And so I really wish that God would move the mountains closer.

I wish he would move Florida closer. I wish he would move the Rockies closer. And all of that stuff closer to Michigan would just be fabulous. Anybody with me on that? If they just move it all here, get a couple coral reefs in the area, that would be awesome.

So although the weather wouldn't help with us at all for that, right? But yeah, I missed you guys. We're a church that's strongly committed to the capital T Truth of God's Word. I believe that all 66 books of the Old and New Testament are given to us to grow us in our understanding of God and really ultimately to grow our faith in God and therefore to grow our lives in walking with God.

None of what we do in this process of growing in faith is for the purpose of filling our heads with knowledge. Although my hope whenever I preach is that you do walk away with some new information. But that's never enough for us.

How many of you know that your problem in life is not primarily a lack of information? Have you lived long enough to know that you need more than just more information? You need more than just an education.

You need the power and the strength given to you to actually accomplish what God desires of you in the day-to-day, to honor Him, to love Him. We need a work of God in us. Our text this morning is going to record Paul telling his younger apprentice Timothy the central truth that must be defended.

What is the main thing? What is the main thing for us as Christians in this? Would you admit that it's a confusing world right now? Anybody raise your hand and say, the world is getting increasingly complex, increasingly confusing.

What is the main point? What is the main thing? What is the central truth? Already in his letter, and we've seen this, we've had a couple of sermons already in 1 Timothy a couple of weeks ago. Already in his letter to Timothy, Paul has alluded to the stewardship from God that comes by faith.

A stewardship that, in other words, all of us are stewards of the truth of God as His children, as His followers. Every believer in Jesus has been entrusted with an amazing and glorious treasure. It's an explosively powerful truth that can change the trajectory of any life.

I think many of us have experienced that truth. Many of us have experienced the gospel. We've experienced the life-transforming power of Jesus Christ through the gospel. Well, the problem is that there's a false message that wants to war against that, and that's what was going on in Ephesus when Paul told Timothy, go there and fix it.

False teaching will come in with weak and false gospels. We have all kinds of false gospels in our culture today. We have gospels of wealth and health and prosperity and all kinds of messages that divert away from the central message of what Paul was trying to get Timothy to help the church to focus on there.

In Paul's day, it was a super weak non-gospel that was being presented by false teachers in Ephesus. They were going back to the law in order to please God and saying, you have to obey all of these things and jump through all these hoops and dance to the beat of our drum in order to be okay with God.

What they were really serving up was just reheated leftovers from Judaism. So Paul gives us his testimony of how radical and powerful the real good news is. That's what we're going to look at this morning is a testimony of Paul, of his declaration of what is the central thing.

What is the life-changing truth of the gospel? Now, a testimony is a powerful tool. When a testimony speaks of how God has worked in your life, how many of you know that you can teach somebody something and they can argue with you about it all day?

But when you tell them your story, do you argue with other people's story? No, you listen. You're brought on a journey. You go along with them and to sit... I mean, certainly someone disagrees with somebody's story, but they're just a jerk, right?

I mean, to say your story is wrong. It didn't happen that way or whatever. So it's Paul telling us his testimony and it's a powerful tool. And he uses his own testimony to remind Timothy of what's at stake in the battle for truth.

So for us, let's consider this morning. Here's the fundamental question that this passage is going to help drive home for us. Are you in the right fight? Are you fighting the right fight in life right now?

I have the feeling that many of us have felt like the last year we've been in a battle. There's been a lot of division. There's been a lot of taking sides, a lot of pushing and pulling and all of that stuff.

Are you in the right fight? I hope you can resolve that by the end of the message this morning. We've been embroiled as a culture in a battle on many fronts. There are racial causes that have brought forth battles.

There are political battles being had. There are COVID -19 battles over masks and vaccines. And the list goes on and on about the battles in our culture. Paul will declare the primary battle that all of us ought to take on.

And although this was written to Timothy nearly 2 ,000 years ago, this is a very vital message for us to adopt into our life of faith. God wants to drive this message home to us to make sure that we have a laser focus on that fight that matters most.

And so let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to 1 Timothy chapter 1. 1 Timothy 1, 12 through 20. If you have a device, you can navigate in your device over to that. But I would love for you to have the Bible in front of you so that you can see that what I'm reading is coming.

Follow along in it. 1 Timothy 1, 12 through 20. A little bit of a larger chunk of Scripture, but we'll read it in its entirety and take it on as God's holy and precious word. Church, this is the word that desires to change us.

This is maybe the most privileged thing that we have every time we gather, and that is to hear directly from what God desires to reveal to us. 1 Timothy chapter 1, verses 12 through 20. I thank him, I, that's Paul writing there.

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service. Though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief,.

And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me.

With the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I receive mercy for this reason that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who are to believe in him for eternal life.

To the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever, amen. 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, holding faith and a good conscience.

By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your grace and mercy that has covered so many of us here in this room.

So many of us have experienced and have testimony. We can tell stories. A couple of weeks ago, we had an opportunity to hear baptism stories of testimonies of the way that you've worked in people's lives.

And we rejoice in the way that you work in each individual's history to draw them to yourself. And yet the things that are said theologically in this text are true of all of us. All of us broken. All of us busted.

All of us insolent. All of us warring against your glory and hoarding glory for ourselves, trying to make ourselves look better than we are in self-righteousness or trying to live for ourselves as though we are a god or a goddess on a throne.

And it takes you breaking in with an overflow and an abundance of grace to draw us outside of our self-centeredness to the proclamation that Paul makes in this text of eternal glory and honor to you.

So Father, I pray that today might be a day of initiation for some people, that some might actually begin that relationship with you and that for those of us that are with you, that you might reconnect us with our testimony.

You might reconnect us with that central message that you desire. Our lives, our hearts, all of our communication, our interaction on the socials, all of our interactions would be centered like a laser focused on the one thing that matters, the good news of Jesus Christ.

Make us a church like that. And I pray that this message might be a component of drawing us back to the fight that matters most. I ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

The Church Must Stay Focused on the Main Thing

Okay, well, let me encourage you to keep your Bibles open to 1 Timothy 1, 12 through 20 if you lost your place there. And if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee, juice, or donuts, while supplies last, a caffeinated congregation is an attentive congregation.

And so we always have good coffee back there for you. So hopefully that keeps you focused. But whatever it takes. There's a quote from D .L. Moody that I find appropriate to our current social and political climate.

The reason that I find it so apropos and so applicable to us where we're at is that I think we're at a stage right now in our history, the history of the church, that the church is at risk of being sucked down into the temporary crises of the moment.

Now, I think that's always a threat in history, right? That the things that are being said in the culture, the things that are going on around us, draw our attention. You're with me on that? And that they can draw our attention to such a degree that they become the main thing.

And we can become a people that are flitting from topic to topic to topic. Issue to issue to issue. And we see that all the time. We're being fractured and drawn away into various causes. To the point that if I were to poll you right now and we were to put answers on the screen, what is your primary issue in the world today?

I had the feeling that we would have 50 or more in a room this size. That we would not have any significant unity in terms of what we would declare to be our personal mission in life this week. And it ought not to be that way, church.

We ought to be unified in terms of what our primary mission is in the world today. We're being fractured and drawn into various opinions and various thoughts and various teachings. I mean by this that we're at risk of being nothing more than one more voice.

The church being just one more voice on one side of an ever-expanding argument about race or government or COVID. And the church is at risk. Of finding that we fought the wrong war. So here's the quote.

I set that all up as a setup for a quote. Dwight Lyman Moody was the founder of Moody Church. The founder of Moody Bible College in Chicago. Some of you might not be able to put him in a time frame. He was actually a pastor during the Civil War.

So this is an old dude, long time ago. Not an old dude, he's dead. But just to clarify, he's not still around. This is what he said and it just cuts to the heart this week. It cuts to my heart this week in terms of just where we're at.

He said this. Our greatest fear should not be of failure. But of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter. Our greatest fear should not be fear of failure. But fear of success at the wrong thing.

And I think this is a message that speaks to where we're at in this passage today. Paul in our text is reminding us all of what is worth the fight. What is worth our time? What is worth our energy? There are a lot of people calling us into a variety of causes right now.

Any of you felt a call into various causes in the last year? Am I the only one? I think a lot of us have felt that pull into various issues, debates, difficulties, problems in our culture. He, Paul, has addressed the false teachers in Ephesus already in the text.

Earlier in chapter one, identifying that they are teaching myths and stories about Old Testament characters with the purpose of trying to tie the church to law and obedience in the Old Testament rather than tying the church to love that comes through grace and faith.

And so verses 12 through 17 match in the flow of the text of Paul explaining rather than disagreeing with the false teachers. Now he's going to say, here's the truth. Here's the truth that really matters.

Here's the truth that the church must be focused on. Here's the truth that really has life-changing power. And he begins in a very personal way in the text. Paul begins with thankfulness to Jesus Christ for the power, the strength that Christ has provided to him.

Now Paul knows that Jesus has empowered him for service and has judged him as faithful. And that's made clear by the fact that Jesus appointed him to be a servant. And notice how he uses the word service and not leadership.

How many of you would just say, okay, the Apostle Paul, like leadership. He's a leader, a leader among leaders, right? Like he's an author in the New Testament, authored a significant portion of the New Testament.

So you go, this guy was called out for leadership, but that's not how he sees it. Look at verse 12. I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service.

Paul understood himself in relationship to the Savior as a servant. Paul doesn't key in on his role as a leader. He is just glad to be able to serve his master. Now, if you take verse 12 out of context, let me read it again to you.

And if this verse was put on a mug or was put on a poster, you would get the wrong impression about this entire, you would actually get 180 degrees the wrong message from this text. I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service.

You would misunderstand that every time without the context. You would think that Jesus was looking around, trying to find faithful people to save. And he saw Paul and said, there's a faithful guy. I'll grab me one of those.

And pulled him into his service, right? Is that the way that the text looks? But in context, it means the exact opposite. Paul is mashing up. What you have to understand is there's a distinction between his calling and his salvation.

So his salvation is completely distinct, but he's mashing those up together in this text. And I can say that, let me illustrate it. I can say that Jesus has judged me worthy of the calling of a pastor because he has called me to be a pastor.

But that doesn't mean that I've always been worthy. That is exactly Paul's point, because God gives the person the faithfulness for the task that he calls them to. Do you see that? Have you seen that in your own life?

He gives you both the calling and the ability, the calling and the skill and the calling and the qualification, the calling and the desire to fulfill it. All of that comes from God. Paul was, by the way, clearly well aware that he was not faithful enough to get God's attention.

You have to deal with the text as it's written. By the end of verse 13, he shows that what he was formerly before his salvation and his calling. And he says, I'm well aware that I was unfaithful. He even identifies himself by the phrase ignorant unbeliever.

What was I before Christ found me and rescued me? An ignorant unbeliever. His words for himself. You see that at the end of verse 14. Paul didn't think Jesus was lucky to find someone so faithful as him.

He believes that his faithfulness only comes after his salvation and his calling. I know, don't misunderstand this at all. Paul knew that he was formerly a really bad dude. He was a blasphemer, he says.

The word that he applies to himself. I was a blasphemer. What does that mean? Well, we can kind of tend to think of it as a very narrow focus of like declaring yourself to be God or something like that.

In a more generic sense, blasphemer is someone who speaks falsely about who God is and what he does. It's somebody who testifies wrongly about God. He says, that was me. I didn't have the message right.

I had the wrong messaging about God before he rescued me. Not only that, Paul says, I was a persecutor. He was seeking to arrest Christians, to throw them into jail, and even having them put to death.

And there are people who died, Christians who died as a result of Paul's work before he came to faith in Christ. And he adds a third assessment that's very severe in the Greek language. He says, I was an insolent opponent.

This is a phrase in Greek that could be translated, as one commentary that I read this week, translated a thoroughly objectionable character. He was not a good guy. But Paul, in sharing his testimony of salvation, acknowledges that his opposition to Christ was done in ignorant unbelief.

He says, I was ignorant. I was an unbeliever. And I did all of these bad things. And it might be said that a prerequisite, because you can look at it and go, well, wait, okay. Is he off the hook because he did these things in ignorance?

Well, not at all. But it might be said that it's a prerequisite to receiving mercy, that one is an unbeliever living in ignorance. The only people who receive God's mercy is somebody who's an unbeliever living in ignorance.

That's the nature of it. All of us born in ignorance. All of us born in a relationship of unbelief and faithlessness towards God. That's the default of the human heart. What Paul is saying here is not that he was off the hook because he was ignorant.

He is saying that he who was, by the way, a very religious man. You have to put this in the context of Paul's life. He was an extremely religious man. And yet he still qualified for the mercy of God because he himself was an ignorant unbeliever.

Paul is not seeking any credit in this text at all for his salvation. He is intentionally painting a low and yet accurate picture of himself prior to coming to faith in Christ. Why? So that the message stands clear what we have to give to the world around us.

So that the central focus is that we have the power that changes lives. We have the messaging that changes lives. We have the testimony and the story, the personal story to change lives. And that's why he's explaining all of this.

So as a setup for the gospel that he's encouraging Timothy to bring to Ephesus and saying let's get back to square one. Let's get back to the basics. Let's get back to the main message. Paul identifies Christ as the source of his strength.

He identifies Jesus as the source of his appointment. He acknowledges that Jesus is the only one who gets the choice of who is faithful. And he acknowledges that Christ is the giver of mercy. That's Jesus's role in Paul's salvation.

He says this is what Jesus did. Let's review what was Paul's assessment of his own responsibility in salvation. What did he bring to the table? Because some of us think well at least I was a little faithful.

At least I was a bit good. And God did get, I mean really when push comes to shove many of us think well God did get a pretty good bargain with me. I am pretty helpful to his kingdom. I understand why he would save somebody like me.

This is what Paul says.

Paul who was shipwrecked for the faith and beaten and stoned and all of these terrible things that happened to him all for the cause of Christ. Church planter going around and planting and starting and writing New Testament books and all that stuff.

And he says you know what I brought to the table? I was a blasphemer. I was a persecutor. An insolent opponent of Jesus Christ himself. I was ignorant and I was faithless. Try that on for a resume. He says that's my resume.

That was me before Christ broke in. And while we, recast, while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. And the grace of Jesus as Paul broke into his life and not just enough to barely squeak by and help him to kind of get past the pearly gates.

No he says the grace of Jesus Christ overflowed. And within, found within that overflow of the grace that was poured out on Paul's life was found faith and love in Christ Jesus as well. If the grace of God is like a coffee pot and we're like a mug then the pot keeps pouring long, long, long after the mug is full.

And within that coffee pot is also found the faith by which we are saved and the love that we have toward God. It can only be found in Christ. Paul has no imagination that he was saved by his own deeds of the law as the false teachers were proposing in Ephesus.

He sees his salvation as a complete work of God that is an unearned gift of grace. Something he couldn't in a million, million lifetimes accomplish on his own. Even his very faith he counted as a gift of the overflowing grace of his Lord and Savior.

Paul summarizes his salvation with a general statement and he says this is trustworthy. You can take this one to the bank. It's deserving of full acceptance. The way that he sets this statement up is a way of ultimately saying you got to pay attention to this one church.

You got to listen to this.

Paul emphasizes this with phrases that are meant to capture our attention. You can bank on what comes next. Jesus came into the world to save who? Sinners. Not, not really, not, not the really good church attenders.

Not the ones who have given a lot. Not the ones who look really clean on the outside and scrub up real nice. Jesus came into the world to save sinners and this is one of the shortest and most concise gospel presentations found in the New Testament.

Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Think about it.

Jesus came here with intention. Where did he come from?

From heaven with the Father.

How did he come here? Christmas. Why did he come here? Good Friday and Easter. Who did he come here to save?

Sinners.

Busted, dirty, filthy rebels against his Father. He came to save people like us. Good news, church. Glorious news, church. How many of you are sinners?

You qualify.

How many of you lived in ignorance?

You qualify.

How many of you were insolent and brash about your own glory and your own honor?

You qualify.

How many of you were unfaithful in your unbelief, dishonoring to God?

You qualify.

You qualify.

Paul is not being melodramatic, by the way. A lot of time and energy has been spent looking at this and, you know, what is the worthy statement worthy of full acceptance? He doesn't go all the way. I think it's really just that Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

But why in the world does he call himself the foremost of sinners here in this text? Is he just kind of being self-effacing and kind of pushing himself down? Does he really believe it? I think he does.

But I think Paul is demonstrating a reasonable humility here in what he says. He saw himself as the foremost of sinners. And he is not offering an objective assessment that he's lined everybody up, polled everybody about all their sins, tallied them up and said, I did more.

It's not objective that way at all. No, of course not. He's giving us a model here. What I think is true, he's not doing this to just be an example to us, but it serves as an example to us of a subjective, humble self-appraisal.

How do you appraise yourself? I think the real position this text should lead us to, as we think about Paul declaring himself to be the worst of sinners, is to disagree with him. That's where it drives us.

Hold on a second, Paul.

You don't know me.

You don't know the things I've thought. You don't know the things I've done. You don't know the conversations in my head. No, no, no, you're not. You're not the worst. I am. It's a moment, a pause for us to consider our own brokenness.

Before God.

See, here's the way I think of this. All the worst things that can be said of Paul are reflections of his life in ignorance and unbelief. All of the worst things that can be said about Don Filsick, the majority of my sins have been committed after I came to taste the kindness and mercy of Jesus.

Some of you in the room are the same way. I was saved when I was eight years old through a WANA program on a Wednesday night at the First Baptist Church in Middleville, Michigan. Most of the sins I've committed in my life have occurred with the knowledge of what my sin cost my Savior.

Some of you can relate to that. Paul did some bad stuff. I assess my stuff worse than Paul's. What Paul sees in verse 16, his salvation as an intentional God-given display of the amazing perfect patience of Jesus Christ.

His salvation serves as a paradigm for those who would believe in Jesus for eternal life. And even today we take comfort in the salvation of the Apostle Paul and his story shared with us about the way that he was a persecutor.

He was an insolent man. He was a violent towards the church and trying to destroy the church of Christ. God broke in. Paul who arrested Christians and had them in prison and put to death. Paul who lived a life of pompous self-righteousness.

Paul who guarded the cloaks to provide good range of motion for those who pelted Stephen with rocks until he fell dead. That Paul. That Paul had overflowing grace and mercy from Jesus. I want you to pause for a moment and consider the legitimate scandal of the cross.

It's scandalous. The worst of sinners can be forgiven? But wait. Yeah, there you go.

Oh, scary.

Don't we want them to pay? Don't you want them to pay a little bit? Don't we want revenge for the little girl who grew up without her daddy? Because Saul as an insolent opponent of the church had her Christian father arrested and put to death?

What about her?

Or the whole host of reasons you might want somebody to pay a little bit. Have you been there? You don't want, I want you to raise your hand on this. I don't think many of us have been there. Has that, has that spark of fire of justice ever been lit in your mind?

Boy, I'd just like them to pay for what they did to me or to them or to him or to her or to that group. You felt it. I know you have. I know it's not unique to me. I think all of us as humans have experienced that desire for somebody to pay for what they did.

So the question is, do we really cherish grace? Or do we like it for us but despise it for others? Can we accept the freedom that comes with grace? Or do we find it just a skosh unfair? Can a murderer get to heaven?

How about a pimp? How about a racist?

Grace overflowing? To the vilest of sinners who would repent and turn to Christ. Sinners like us. And Paul bursts forth here in the middle of his letter to Timothy in doxology. You have to put yourself in the context.

Paul is not holding the pen. Paul is speaking. Somebody's recording his words. That's the way they did it back in the day. And occasionally he'll actually make a point of saying, by the way, this is the way that I write.

And he'll pick up the pen and close a letter out or something like that like Galatians. He's speaking. And in the middle of recording this letter, he burst forth in praise. And his praise cannot be contained.

And he wants eternal honor and glory to be poured out forever and ever and ever and ever and ever on the king of eternity. The one who is immortal and will never come to an end. The one who is invisible and present in all places.

The only real and true and wise God. Paul has explained the gospel of God's amazing and undeserved grace toward a sinner like him. And he cannot contain the gladness and joy. He who would take all the honor and glory for himself before, now only ever wants eternal glory and honor to God forevermore.

Well, we could end there. And some of you are like, oh good, no. Hold on just a second. Verses 18 through 20. We're going to just look at those real quick. And the reason to include those in the same sermon, because we could end with the doxology and just praise God right now for our salvation and be done.

But Paul is telling Timothy this story, reminding him of his story, reminding him of his salvation for a purpose here. He's told his testimony of salvation here in this place because he wants Timothy motivated by this great truth of the gospel.

I think Timothy was acquainted with Paul's story. I think he's repeating it here to remind him of the gospel that saves real people. And so he once again charges Timothy with the task at hand. He says, stay here.

Remember the charge? This is an allusion to the original charge given. Stay in Ephesus, Timothy. Shut down the false teachers for the sake of this glorious gospel. And he reminds Timothy of his own calling.

He says, Timothy, remember that at your calling, the elders laid hands on you and they uttered prophecies over you. The church laid hands at your commissioning service. And we're going to see that in chapter 4, verse 14.

More detail coming on that in the later sermon. Paul appeals to that commissioning here and those prophecies and his own faith in Christ to give him courage for the task ahead because it's not an easy task that Timothy has been given.

See, what Timothy is being asked to do is enter warfare over the gospel. The end of verse 18 is figurative, of course. It's not that he's literally supposed to take up a sword or a shield or anything like that.

But the idea of battle is found there. It's figurative and it shows that Paul expects this battle for the truth to be a tough one. It's tough in our culture right now, isn't it? Timothy will need to cling to faith in Jesus and cling to a good conscience to guide him as he navigates the coming battles for truth in the church.

Not just out in the world, in the church. And he gives us an illustration of what's at stake. Some have rejected the faith and have jettisoned a good conscience in exchange for the law. Some there in the church in Ephesus were doing that and they were going back to the law and teaching the law and they have shipwrecked their faith.

They have proved themselves to be those who do not have a saving faith that carries on to the end. And somewhere along the way, they've shipwrecked against a reef and the breakers have battered the stern of the ship and it's going down.

Paul names names. Hymenaeus and Alexander as an example. They've been handed over to Satan by Paul so that they may learn to speak correctly about God. So that they can learn not to blaspheme, so they can learn to speak what is true of God rather than teaching falsehood.