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's 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 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 the fact that this is the institutionalization of the church, and so the church, it had begun there, we saw that when 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 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's 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's the lead after him, and he passes on this system of governance, the elders of Israel, the judges, God is putting together the nation of Israel here, organizing, institutionalizing the nation.

And what we have here is you have Paul, and during this between times of the ascension of Jesus, and when Paul is writing here in the early to mid -60s A .D., you have a period of not quite, but almost 40 years, and he is giving them the apostolic teachings, or 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, and he's institutionalizing the church.

So that's the theme or the context in which we'll be studying over the coming months here in 1 Timothy. But let me just read this passage, verses 1 -11, and then we'll go through it a few verses at a time.

Let me read verses 1 -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 and 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 is 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, he has delegated authority from Jesus, he is there to teach and instruct and order and command, he has authority.

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, he is one who has seen Christ, they're 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 themselves as an.

Apostle.

Paul, 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, it 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.

Our hope is found in Christ, he alone is our hope. I love the catechism question that asks, 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's command, and Christ is our hope.

Then we see in verse 2, he's writing to Timothy, a true son of the faith. This is someone that Paul has mentored, he has discipled, 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's writing to Timothy so that Timothy will know these things, but he also knows it's going.

To 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 us, so it's meant to Timothy, it's directed towards Timothy, but Paul knows it's going to 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 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 3 and 4, we see the charge that Paul gives. He says, I urge you, when I went to Macedonia, I told you to remain in Ephesus, Timothy. So he says to Timothy, remain in Ephesus, so that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables or endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly 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 at Ephesus, if you go back and read Acts 19, or 20, I can't remember, whenever Paul, it's his farewell address to the Ephesian elders, he warns them that there are going to 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. No, 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. If you go over to 2 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.

They 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 always have been threats when it comes to the teaching of the church, the doctrine of the church. There always will be. 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 Lifeway 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 to know 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. And so sorry you get stuck with me. The best way to guard against false doctrine is to know true doctrine. So it's like, if your job is to spot counterfeit money, you work at the bank, you got to 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 changing, 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 $100 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 the fakes. Same thing with guarding doctrine. We become experts in what the Bible says, we become experts in the teaching of the scriptures.

Therefore we have an ear when something... I'm not trained in music, but I would imagine Gary and Don, like, y 'all could be listening and 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 something slightly off 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 if 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, 6 .30 in the fellowship hall, we'd love for you to join us.

Part of that is a prayer service, part of it is we're going through the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, just a little bit at a time, we're not spending a terrible amount of time on it, but 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 a fairly broad confession, statement of faith, it's a fairly big tent confession of faith, fairly basic confession of faith, but it's good to be reminded of 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 the charge to 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, and some of it's fun, some of it's good, some of it's true even, 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. We're 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 against here.

He's warning against 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 end-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 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 race-based, just, I don't know, better way to say it than the race-based woke stuff.

You've seen that, critical race theory and things like that. Things that undermine. It's 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. I'll give you one example. In a Presbyterian denomination a few years ago, there was a group pushing a thing called Revoice, which was an effort to try to mainstream celibate homosexual relationships, called a lot of it spiritual friendship.

All the writings and the podcasts 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 thought. So in the online circles that I run in, there's some fun discussion about Nephilim and demons and Bigfoot and mermaids, and I know some of you hear me say that and you're like, what?

And some of you know, you listen to the podcasts and 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, 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 applicable not just to this one, 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 it's possible that 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 ten systematic theology books loves to talk about this or that finer point of theology, but he still has a pornography problem and 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 four 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 that 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 ought to do that.

It's good to be open and honest about our doubts. To have an open mind. But as G .K. Chesterton once said, an open mind is like an open mouth. It's meant to shut and bite down on something. So let'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 purpose here expressed as love in verse five. Verse five says, now the purpose of the commandment, and the commandment is referring back to the charge that 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's the context, what's the theme of 1 Timothy? Church order for godliness. And the for godliness part is the, that's the important part.

The church order is that Timothy has authority in the church, charge to 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 seed of the person. It's the seed of their emotions, seed 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, what we read about in 1 Corinthians 6 earlier. Filled with love from the Holy Spirit, pure heart, a good conscience.

The conscience is, to quote Mark Dunn, 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 actions, that's our conscience, and our conscience, excuse me, our actions 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 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. That love would flow from those to one another and to God.

Love coming from a pure heart, good conscience, and 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, you see that in verses 6 and 7, 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 the 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 have nothing to teach because they don't understand the things that they purport to be experts about.

There's a phenomenon, you may have seen it over the last couple of years, called deconstruction. Deconstruction is people that grew up in the church, they were Christians, and they've decided they're no longer Christians, and they are walking away from the faith, they are deconstructing their faith, abandoning the church, and abandoning God.

Many do so very loudly on the internet, eager to teach others 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 90's and early 2000's, 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 piece.

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. One departs morally and then justifies it by changing their doctrinal beliefs. This is often connected to sexuality, so if you read the Old Testament, you're going to come to places where you see that places of false worship also included prostitution.

Their temples more resembled brothels. Or in 1 Thessalonians, you're going to see Paul worn against itinerant religious teachers. These are those 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 1 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?

Because 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 of the law don't actually understand the law, Paul then in verses 8 -11, he goes on a little aside about the law in verses 8 -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, murderers of fathers, sorry, getting tongue-tied, murderers of mothers,.

Manslayers,.

For fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, liars, perjurers, if there's anything else contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.

Here Paul, he's going to talk about the law for just a moment.

Because he said,.

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 the law is good.

The law is good. Now this is the New Testament. 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. Rather it's 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 confirms and fulfills the law. The righteous demands of the law are 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, and 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,.

Well, I don't know, that sounds like legalism.

Well, no.

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 when someone ties the mint in cumin, but ignores the weightier things of the law. Or more so, they invent laws that go beyond what the Bible says at all, and 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 old saying, don't drink, don't chew, don't date girls who do.

That's probably pretty good dating advice, actually. But the Bible never actually says not to drink alcohol, or chew tobacco, or date somebody who does. Or to pick up on another cliche, dancing. There are 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 a more modern example, you can think like recycling, or 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 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 is what we could call license. The theological term for this is antinomianism.

So anti meaning against, namos is a Greek word for law, antinomianism, anti-law.

Against the law.

Here, people use grace, in quotes there. Grace as a fig leaf cover for sin. Because we're under grace, they say, anything goes! It's all forgiven, doesn't matter what you do. So a few years back, there was 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'd use grace as a cover, as a fig leaf to cover his sin. Paul talks about this in Romans 6. He asks, 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, here'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 in 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 restrain. It's why 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 going to have rebellious people. But it does restrain it if it doesn't completely eradicate it. It restrains it because there are penalties attached to it such that I know if I go rob the bank, I'm going to 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 an aside, I think it's important. One application is 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 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 that 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. The problem is Christians misunderstand this. We don't see the restraining influence of the law.