1 Timothy 1:1-11 (September 1, 2024)

We can open up your Bibles to 1st Timothy and so we have spent the summer going through part of the book of Proverbs and then we spent the month of August looking at a series on local church ministry and mission and today we open up the book of 1st

Timothy and we're going to slowly make our way through 1st Timothy this fall and I'm excited to begin that study with our church.

The theme of 1st Timothy is church order for godliness.

It's church order. So Paul he's giving instructions to Timothy who is in Ephesus and he's giving him instructions about how to order the church there but we don't want to miss the point or the purpose of that.

It's for godliness. It's so that the church would be godly, holy, and walk in step with Christ.

We see this in over in chapter 3. We'll get here in a few weeks but in chapter 3 verses 14 and 15

Paul gives his purpose for writing when he says these things I write to you though I hope to come to you shortly but if I am delayed

I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God which is the church of the living

God the pillar and ground of the truth. He writes so that those in Ephesus in the church,

Timothy leading them, they would know how to conduct themselves in the house of God which is the church of the living

God the pillar and ground or pillar and buttress of the truth. The theme is church order for godliness.

Paul here is he's just dealing with with the fact that this is the institutionalization of the church and so the church it had begun there we saw that we went through the book of Acts and inevitably the natural course of events with groups of people is there's institutionalization and that is what is going on here and he is he's giving instructions for that.

There's an analogy here that we see in the Old Testament with Israel after the

Exodus and so you have Moses who is leading Israel there they're in the wilderness for 40 years.

God gives the law Moses gives the law there to Israel he passes it on to Joshua who is the lead after him and he passes on this system of governance where they're the elders of Israel the judges

God has put in together the nation of Israel here and organizing institutionalizing the nation and what we have here is you have

Paul and during this between times of the ascension of Jesus and and when

Paul is writing here in the early to mid 60s AD you know you have a period of you know not quite but almost 40 years and he is giving them the apostolic teachings of the teaching from Christ that the

Apostles received their interpretation of the Old Testament he is passing on this body of doctrine the apostolic teaching to the church here we see it to Timothy and he gives them this order for the church offices of elders and deacons that we see later in chapter 3 he's institutionalizing the church so that's the theme of the context in which we'll be studying over the coming months here in first Timothy but let me let me just read this passage verses 1 through 11 and then we'll go through it a few verses at a time let me read verses 1 through 11 our passage for today and God's Word says this

Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ our hope to Timothy a true son in the faith grace mercy and peace from God our father in Jesus Christ our

Lord as I urged you when I went into Macedonia remain at Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies which cause disputes rather than God the edification which is in faith now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart from a good conscience and from sincere faith from which some having strayed have turned aside to idle talk desiring to be teachers of the law understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm but we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully knowing this that the law is not made for a righteous person but for the lawless and insubordinate for the ungodly and for sinners for the unholy and profane for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers for manslayers for fornicators for sodomites for kidnappers for liars for perjurers and if there's any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine according to the glorious gospel of the blessed

God which was committed to my trust amen this is the word of the

Lord to us this morning I want to begin by just looking at the first two verses this greeting introduction salutation to the letter where Paul introduces himself and addresses who the letter is to to Timothy what we see is that Paul he identifies himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ apostle this is one who has authority as delegated authority from Jesus he is there to teach and instruct and order and command he has authority now our culture today is allergic to authority we're allergic to hierarchy but God has baked it into the world and how he has made things including into the church and what we see here is that Paul is an apostle he has that type of authority is one who has seen

Christ there in a vision and he has direct instructions marching orders from Jesus but what we see here is that he is an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our

Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ our hope he is an apostle by commandment in other words nobody self appoints himself as an apostle he received this authority it was delegated all authority ultimately is delegated from Christ and then we see that Jesus is referred to there as our hope

Jesus is our hope and I think it's important just at the outset to remember that we have no other hope but Christ our hope is not found in our place of birth it is not found in our family lineage or descent it is not found in our education it is not found in our civility is not found in our morality it is not found in our profession of faith it is not found in our church attendance it is not found in our church service or abiding by cultural or traditional norms are our hope is found in Christ he alone is our hope

I love the Catechism question that asked what is our only hope in life and death and our only hope in life and death is that we belong life and death body and soul to our faithful Savior Jesus Christ Jesus is our hope and that's what

Paul refers to him as here at the very beginning at the outset of his letter to Timothy reminding him yes he is an apostle of Jesus Christ by Jesus Christ command and Christ is our hope then we see in verse two he's writing to Timothy a true son in the faith this is someone that Paul has mentored he has disciple he has poured into he is a true son to Paul in this way a spiritual son and he's writing to Timothy but we also see

I think as we go through this letter he he's writing to Timothy so that Timothy will know these things but he also knows it's gonna be read by others he's writing to Timothy but he's writing with an ear or that the church will have an ear to it as well and that we will as well and we do we have it here in the

Holy Scriptures for so it's meant to Timothy it's directed towards Timothy but Paul knows it's gonna be more widely read because there's instructions for Timothy on how he is to instruct the church and how he is to put things into order but he won't

Paul wants the rest of the church to know that that is what Timothy is doing and that it comes with the authority of Jesus Christ of whom

Paul is an apostle verses three and four we see the charge that Paul gives he says

I urge you when I as when I went to Macedonia I took I told you to remain in Ephesus Timothy so he says to Timothy remain in Ephesus so that you may charge some that I teach no other doctrine nor give heed to fables or endless genealogies which cause disputes rather than God the edification which is the faith we see here the charge that Paul gives again this is or the charge rather that Timothy is to give under Paul's authority at Paul's instruction

Timothy is to charge the church again this implies authority that Timothy has over the church again it's delegated authority but it's authority nonetheless he is to he was to command or he was to charge the believers there certain things the authority from Christ to do so but what was he to charge them what was he what was out of order that he needed to put into order well he says to teach no other doctrine there were some in Ephesus if you go back and read

Acts 19 or 20 again whenever Paul is his farewell address to the

Ephesian elders he warns them that they're gonna be those among them that come and teach false doctrine and sure enough this is what's happening at Ephesus there are some who are teaching other doctrines and Timothy is there to guard the church

Timothy is there to guard the sheep Timothy is there to guard the doctrine of the church and he is to command them charge them teach no other doctrine we see a few things here first thing we see is that there is there's an actual body of doctrine that one can deviate from and so the doctrine of the church is just not some kind of undefined blob of somewhat related beliefs so there's an actual body of doctrine there's an apostolic teaching here that you can deviate from and Paul is telling

Timothy don't let them deviate from this there's apostolic teaching we see that in Acts chapter 2 verse 42 we looked at that a few weeks ago to go over to 2nd

Timothy chapter 1 Paul tells Timothy in another letter he says hold fast to the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus hold fast to the pattern of sound words

I think this probably refers to an early summary of the faith or confession of the faith that's why these statements of faith or confessions are so important in church life there are there are patterns of sound words that define and give boundaries to doctrine so that we know when somebody deviates from it we know when somebody teaches something contrary to it because we know what the thing is you see there's always threats there are there always have been threats when it comes to the teaching of the church the doctrine of the church there always will be there always there's always been false teachers there always will be many of them get book deals they get television programs they get wide audiences so we got to be on guard not just within the local body of the church but we have to guard the local body of the church from the outside influences that are always peddling something and so just because life way sells it doesn't make it true just because Andy Stanley preaches it doesn't make it true just because it's at the

Christian bookstore doesn't make it true we got a no doctrine so we can guard up against it we have to guard against false doctrine

God gave Timothy to the church in Ephesus for their particular contextual challenges that they had at that specific time to charge them to keep sound doctrine

God gives pastors to churches today to do the very same thing I'm so sorry you get stuck with me the best way to guard against false doctrine is to know true doctrine so it's like it's like counting if your job is to spot counterfeit money you work at the bank you got a spot counterfeit money there's two different ways you can go about doing that job one is you can become an expert in counterfeit money you can know all the ways that people counterfeit money and you can look for those things the problem is the counterfeiters always change they're always shifting right they're always saying so it's hard to keep up the other method you can do is you can become an expert in real money if you know what a real hundred dollar bill looks like you can spot the fakes because it won't be exactly the same and the real thing never changes so you don't have to keep up you just got to be able to spot fakes same thing with guarding doctrine we become experts and what the

Bible says we become experts in the teaching of the scriptures therefore we have an ear when something so I'm not trained in music but I would imagine

Gary not like y 'all could be listening in one person's off note you're probably going to hear it it's probably me

I'm not trained in that way but y 'all know music in such a way just like something slightly off you can you can pick it up same way with if we know the word if we know the word we can pick up where it deviates just a little bit all of us can spot the glaring things but the slight things that lead to destruction things that tickle ears to use the

Bible's language there those are sometimes harder to pick up but we know the word we can do that that's the best way to guard against doctrine one way we're attempting to do that here at First Baptist is on our midweek family fellowship on Wednesday nights 630 in the fellowship hall would love for you to join us is part of that is a prayer service part of it is we're going through the

Baptist faith and message 2000 there's a little bit at a time we're not spending a terrible amount of time on it but we're we're taking the

Baptist faith and message 2000 just one paragraph at a time and looking at what our doctrine is the

Baptist faith and message is it's a fairly broad confession statement of faith it's fairly big -tent confession faith very basic confession faith but it's good to be reminded the basics because everything else is built on that so that's one way that we're doing that but the charge here from Paul to Timothy is to charge the church do not deviate or depart from sound doctrine we'll come back to why that is in just a little bit the purpose of that here in just a little bit that's what the charge is but it's also it's not just to not depart from doctrine it's not to be distracted from it either don't be distracted from sound doctrine he says nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies and so the point here is to not give yourself over to endless speculation in such a way that it distracts from the sure things of the faith there's a lot of things we can go speculate and talk about some of its fun some of its good some of its true even but but if you give yourself to this endless speculation it can distract you from the sure things of the faith it can distract you from your primary duties to Christ and to those you are in relationship with and most of all

I think the warning here is about causing disputes and division within the body of the church rather than building up the church is supposed to be about godly edification to use

Paul's word here but often these speculations these focus on fables and endless genealogies they drive up division within the church here's the thing sound doctrine true doctrine important doctrine that's going to cause enough controversy of its own we don't need controversy coming from endless speculations and that's what

Paul is warning it's here he's warning it's endless talk about the things that stir up doubt the things that undermine faith things that undermine and strike at love so let's think about what are some examples of either departing from sound doctrine or just being distracted from it through speculation and things that are just unclear

I think one thing that comes to mind is just really heavy in time speculation is one where there's so much focus on the charts and the graphs and trying to fit headlines from here and there into the book of Revit shoehorn it into the book of Revelation we can get distracted from the main things and trying to figure out the future things that's an example it's not that eschatology is wrong to talk about but there can be a preoccupation with it that ends up being divisive or just distracting you can think about over the last several years last decade or so if you've paid attention to evangelicalism as a whole there's been a lot of kind of race -based just a little better way to say it than the race -based woke stuff you've seen that critical race theory and things like that things that undermines infiltrated the church it's about 2014 and it undermines our doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture it undermines and strikes at our doctrine of Christ it promotes discord within local bodies and within the

Christian body at large another example could be any form of salvation by works it's a departure from doctrine think about egalitarianism various teachings and obsessions with sexuality give one example in a

Presbyterian denomination a few years ago there was a group pushing a thing called revoice which was a it was an effort to try to mainstream celibate homosexual relationships call a lot of its spiritual friendship and all the writings and the podcast and the conferences took up a lot of ink took up a lot of time the back -and -forth about it it stirred up a lot of controversy and did a lot of damage to a lot of churches one seemingly innocuous but I think it deserves some some thought so in the online circles that I run in there's some there's some fun discussion about Nephilim and demons and Bigfoot and mermaids and I know some of you hear me say that you're like what and some of you know you listen to the podcast and you know what

I'm you know what I'm talking about I would say the world is really weird and the

Bible talks about a lot of really weird things if you go and read it and so I don't think it's wrong for us to talk about it it could be fun some of it may be true but John Calvin said he commenting on this passage said it's possible for something to not be false yet be fabulous and so I think we ought to at least hear a warning from Paul here about not going too far with such conversations

I think this is flippable not just this one but but in all sorts of conversations especially that we never want to let it stir up division or controversy within the church especially when much of these conversations are based on the apocryphal book of Enoch which is full of genealogies and wild stories

I think there's at least a case to be made that's possible but those books are what Paul has in mind here when he talks about Jewish fables it's not wrong to talk about but it's good to hear the warning so that we're restrained against our speculations

I think maybe a better example of how this happens today is the guy who owns 10 systematic theology books loves to talk about this or that finer point of theology but he still has a pornography problem has terrible relationships that happens too the point is we want to devote ourselves to sound doctrine not to deviate to the right nor to the left not get distracted by lesser things even if they're true things and devote ourselves to building up the church to pursuing godly edification rather than disputes like verse 4 says and so some diagnostic questions that we can ask ourselves to help us evaluate does it come from the

Bible does it come from human imagination does it promote unity within the body or is it irresponsibly divisive these are questions we can ask to diagnose are we building up the body here's the thing it's good to ask questions it's good to be curious about a wide variety of topics and we all to do that we it's good to be open and honest about our doubts to have an open mind but as GK Chesterton once said an open mind is like an open mouth it's meant to shut and bite down on something until it's bite down and chew the cud of sound doctrine building up the body of the church building up the body of Christ and that's the purpose is to build up the body and we see that that purpose here expressed as love in verse 5 verse 5 says now the purpose of the commandment this is and the commandment is running back to the charge of Timothy is to give to the church the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart from a good conscience from a sincere faith again remember what what's the context what's the theme of first Timothy church order for godliness and the for godliness part is is is the best the best the the important part the church order is that Timothy has authority in the church charge the people he's responsible for keeping good order preserving unity guarding sound doctrine but the purpose of that order is godliness love that proceeds from a pure heart from a good conscience from sincere faith let's think about those three things for just a moment pure heart see the heart is the seat of the person it's the seat of their emotions seat of the will everything flows from the heart therefore one's heart should be clean through confession and repentance of sin washed by the blood of Christ we read about in first Corinthians 6 earlier filled with love from the

Holy Spirit pure heart a good conscience the conscience is to quote Mark Dunn said he says that the conscience refers to the individual's inner awareness of the moral quality of personal actions it's the awareness of the moral quality of our action that's our conscience and our conscience excuse me our action should proceed from faith should not go against our conscience therefore our conscience should be trained for love and then a sincere faith this is our trust in God and our willingness to to hear his word to obey his word this faith should be sincere that is without hypocrisy and so the goal is that the people in the

Church of Ephesus would have pure washed clean hearts trained good consciences and faith without hypocrisy and that love would flow from those to one another and to God love coming from a pure heart good conscience sincere faith is the purpose of the commandment to watch one's doctrine neither departing from the apostolic teaching nor being distracted from it you see doctrine and church unity go together there's a danger though verses six and seven where Paul says from which some having strayed have turned aside to idle talk desiring to be teachers of the law understanding neither what they say nor things which they affirm the danger of false doctrine and distraction is that it causes people to stray from the faith they turn to idle talk always talking but never actually saying anything they desire to teach but they they have nothing to teach because they don't understand the things that they purport to be experts about there's a there's a phenomenon you may have seen it over the last couple years called deconstruction deconstruction is people that grew up in the church they were there were

Christians and they decided they're no longer Christians and they are walking away from the faith they're deconstructing their faith abandoning the church and abandoning

God many do so very loudly on the internet eager to teach others to just to deconstruct you've had some famous people who have done this they've even turned it into a grift where they're seeking to profit off of the apostasy of others if you go back and look at the

Christian music scene from the 90s and early 2000s it's full of people who have now deconstructed and left the faith why is this happening one reason is that it's no longer socially or financially advantageous to be a

Christian and so now that the incentives have changed you have people who have changed along with the incentives but at a spiritual level

I think we need to see that doctrine love of God love of God's people morality that they all go together it's all of a peace that false teaching and immorality go together people abandon orthodoxy people abandon the apostolic teaching people abandon the church people abandon

Christ because they love their sin more than they love God doctrinal departure usually follows moral departure when departs morally and justifies it by changing their belief their doctrinal beliefs this is often connected to sexuality so if you read the

Old Testament you're gonna come to places we see that places of false worship also included prostitution their temples more resemble brothels or in first Thessalonians you're gonna see

Paul worn against itinerant religious teachers these are these are those who who peddled some weird theological and philosophical ideas in order to prey upon others for illicit sex and the number one driver of today's deconstruction is the desire for illicit sex whether an adulterous heterosexual relationship or chasing the

LGBTQ fad they abandon God because God places limits to guard and protect their sexuality and they sway from the faith they make a shipwreck of their lives so later in first Timothy Paul will tell

Timothy and all of those who read his letter including us he says to watch both your life and your doctrine closely watch your life and doctrine closely why those two things go together we must watch our lives we must watch our doctrine those things go together now having said that these teachers teachers of the law don't actually understand the law

Paul then in verses 8 through 11 he goes on a little aside about the law in verses 8 through 11 let's read that he says but we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully knowing this that the law is not made for a righteous person but for the lawless and insubordinate and the godly and the sinners for the unholy and profane murders of fathers murder mother yeah sorry getting tongue -tied murders of mothers manslayers for fornicators for sodomites kidnappers liars perjurers there's anything else contrary to sound doctrine according to the glorious gospel the blessed

God which was committed to my trust here Paul he's gonna talk about the law for just a moment because he said there's some they they fancy themselves teachers of the law but they don't understand it so Paul goes on to talk about the purpose of the law or the proper use of the law and the first thing we notice is that law is good the law is good now this is

New Testament you know so many I think I think a lot of Christians have a negative view of the law they have a negative view of the

Old Testament they think the Old Testament is or at least the law portions of it are just kind of really strict and oppressive now it is true that the

New Covenant is better than the Old Covenant but it is not true that the Old Covenant was bad isn't it rather is one degree of glory to the next it's not true that the law was oppressive or how else could the psalmist psalm 119 how could he have sung about the law being sweeter than honey more valuable than very fine gold no the law was good and the law is good now yes there are aspects of the law that are no longer operable in the same way today for example we don't offer sacrifices we don't go to the temple we don't do ritual washings yet those elements are in the scriptures for our instruction they inform us even though we don't practice those they inform us about sin and uncleanness and the sacrifice of Christ and the doctrine of the church and they point to Christ who cleans us you see the law is good and the gospel doesn't contradict the law it doesn't abrogate the law the gospel can it confirms and fulfills the law the righteous demands of the law not overlooked by God but rather they are honored in the life and obedience of Jesus Christ in our place further the law teaches us about God and how he desires us to live in his world how he desires for us to live in relationship to him you see the law is good then verse 8 if if one uses it lawfully that's the condition there the law is good if one uses it lawfully it's possible to use it unlawfully and then it is bad there are two general ways that the law is used unlawfully just kind of broadly speaking the first is legalism now legalism is kind of a boogeyman in today's

Christianity it's usually talked about in ways that are not particularly accurate by that I mean a lot of times

Christians will act like any insistence on actually obeying God's Word that's that's late it sounds like legalism well now as I as I often say it you've heard me say it before I'll say it again today insisting on obedience is not legalism but it's love for Jesus says the one who obeys me he it is who loves me obedience and love go together we demonstrate our love by our obedience to Christ and so that's not what legalism is rather legalism is using

God's law or any man -made law as a fig leaf cover for sin that's what legalism is it's using the law

God's law or a man -made rule it's using that as the cover for our sin it's one someone ties the mint and cumin but ignores the weightier things of the law or more so they they invent laws to go beyond what the

Bible says at all and they make then they make that the test of Christian fellowship or that the test of Christian faithfulness and morality the thing that they made up the doctrine of man that Jesus calls for example you've heard the the old saying don't drink don't you don't date girls who do that's it's probably pretty good dating advice actually but Bible never actually says not to drink alcohol or to tobacco or date somebody who does or to pick up on another cliche dancing their forms of dancing that are basically fornication those are forbidden shouldn't do those but dancing as a category is not sinful according to the

Bible or more modern example you can think like recycling or kind of just environmental stuff more broadly it's true being a good steward of God's creation is a biblical thing and we ought to do it we're entrusted with it we ought to care for it that may include recycling but there's no biblical commandment there yet people will set up all sorts of rules to adhere to and make you adhere to using the the power of the government to do they have no grounding in the

Bible whatsoever and then they use their adherence to these things as a cover for their own behavior that is in direct contradiction to the scriptures so here's a theory

I can't prove it but I happen to believe that part of the environmental craze in our culture right now is because we have guilty consciences about abortion and we're trying to cover that shame with adherence to a man -made law this is legalism it's using

God's law or man's law as a fig leaf cover for sin it's a misuse of the law a second misuse it's what we could call license theological term for this is antinomianism so anti meaning against namas

Greek word for law antinomianism anti -law against the law here people use grace for that in quotes there grace as a fig leaf cover for sin because we're under grace they say anything goes it's all forgiven no matter what you do so a few years back there's a prominent pastor down in Florida grandson of a very prominent evangelist he made his public brand in his writings about radical grace which effectively discarded the law or any insistence on obedience to it well a few short years after that he destroyed his ministry when he was caught in an affair he had used grace as a cover as a fig leaf to cover his sin

Paul talks about this in Romans 6 and he asked should we sin so that grace may abound and he says by no means

God forbid no we don't do that that's license that's antinomianism it opposes the gospel and so if legalism on one hand license on the other are misuses of the law is there a right use yes misuse there's a good principle for life misuse does not negate right use just because somebody mismanages something misuses something doesn't mean there's not a right use for it that's the first thing

I would say but the second is this I want to highlight three proper uses of the law there's three right uses of the law the first is the restraining influence of the law the law restrains evil it's part of what the law is meant to do see the law stigmatizes something in the public consciousness attaches penalties to it and its practice thus people avoid it because they don't want the penalties the law restrains this is true of God's law that we find in the

Old Testament this is true of just normal civic law that we have part of the purpose is to restraints while we have laws against murder and theft it's not because our laws against murder and theft makes it where nobody ever steals or murders again right

I mean people are always you're gonna have rebellious people but it does restrain it if it doesn't completely eradicate it it restrains it because there's our penalties attached to it such that I know if I go rob the bank and we spend a lot of time in jail therefore we don't do it right it restrains evil so one application here as a little bit of a side anything is important one applications to a current debate about the question of whether abortion should be criminalized for all involved in an abortion your standard pro -life organizations like citizens for life argue that only the doctors should face any sort of criminal penalty that the mothers who choose this who kill their babies that they should face no criminal penalties now the problem with that is it opens up for all sorts of legal abortion even if you shut the clinics down because as the abortion pill becomes more prolific there are less doctors performing the abortions and more mothers doing it from the privacy of their own home in fact in South Carolina there are more abortions done by pill than there are by at a clinic by a doctor and it's all legal there's no law restraining it so the only way to restrain it is then to restrain it through the law if it were illegal such anyone caught with those pills would face criminal penalties those numbers would go way down that's what the law does we see it with murder we see it with theft we see it with all sorts of things and we should see it here problem is

Christians misunderstand this we don't see the restraining influence of the law that's why our our greatest foe in getting this type of legislation passed is not the left it's not the

Democrats the greatest threat to getting equal protection for equal justice for pre -born children is the

Christian pro -life organizations they're the ones who throw their weight around and their money around to oppose that type of legislation it's the

South Carolina Baptist Convention public policy spokesman it's the Southern Baptist Convention's ERLC it's the it's many of the

Republican legislators they are the ones who stand in the way and oppose that because they fail to see that the law restrains this is true in general civil law this is true of biblical law it's the first use of law second a second use of the law is that it condemns the law condemns the law condemns sinners showing them that they do not measure up to the standard of righteousness making them aware that they stay in a need of someone to save them this is the purpose of the law this is what

Paul says in Galatians when he says that the law was a tutor to bring men to Christ it wasn't that the law could say only

Christ could say but the law would show them their need for salvation the law would show them that where they are missing the mark would show them their sin and that they stood condemned that they needed someone to rescue them there's a saying in evangelism you got to get them lost before you can get them saved that is you got to show somebody their need for salvation before they see the way of salvation you got to get a show them the bad news before you can hand them the good news before the good news will seem good to them yeah get them lost before you get them saved that's what the law does it is the standard whose mark we miss that's the definition of sin by the way missing the mark that's what

Paul's doing here in first Timothy he says that the law is not for the righteous it's for the lawless they're the ones who need the law they're the ones who need to be tutored and brought to Christ they're the ones who need to stand condemned so that they cry out for a

Savior they need to come to Christ and be redeemed and then

Paul what he does he basically just goes through the Ten Commandments varying violations of the Ten Commandments so ungodly sinners unholy profane this basically covers the first four commandments first table of the law then the the next part of the list covers the second table of law the fifth through ten commandments so you have murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers and manslayers this is violating the fifth commandment to honor parents and the sixth commandment to not murder then it goes on fornicators and sodomites this is violation of the seventh commandment deal with sexuality you have liars and perjurers ninth commandment don't bear false witness and he says anything else contrary to sound doctrine so just in case he forgot anything here's this kind of junk drawer that's kind of a catch -all anything else is contrary to sound doctrine that too all of its contrary to God's law all of its contrary to his word and all of it condemns and as James makes clear in his epistle if we are guilty of breaking one part of God's law we're liable for the thing we stand condemned and condemned we run to Christ for salvation the law prepares people to come to Christ by showing them their need and then the third use of the law is that it's sanctifying in other words it teaches us how to live it shows us the standard it shows us how

God wants us to act and behave and live under certain conditions and in certain situations free from condemnation in Christ we are now free to obey and that is the biblical meaning of freedom that we are we have the freedom and the ability to obey

God that's what freedom is for and all this is made possible verse 11 by the glorious gospel that was entrusted to Paul the glorious gospel that Jesus saves lawless condemned sinners that he lived a perfect life and obedience to God in every aspect of his life and he lived that in your place and he died a perfect sacrificial death on the cross spilling his blood where there is no shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins but Christ on the cross shed his blood in your place buried and on the third day raised to new life so that you could have new and everlasting life in him life with him new life that obeys

God in accordance with sound doctrine and that brings us full circle that brings us full circle back to sound doctrine and the charge that Timothy was to make to the

Ephesian Christians I make to you do not deviate from that doctrine do not misuse the law do not misuse any of God's Word do not be distracted by lesser things and speculations but watch your life and your doctrine closely watch your life and your doctrine closely let's pray together our

Father in heaven help us by your grace to watch our life and doctrine closely let us not give way to trivialities in any way that undermines love faith and unity in the church protect us from turning aside to false doctrines keep us holy and pure in your sight give us pure hearts good consciences and sincere faith without hypocrisy so that we may live godly lives as a fitting testimony of your excellence and we ask all of this in the name of Jesus our