House Rule #21 Guard the Sacred Trust (1 Timothy 6:20,21)

Good to see each one of you here today. I invite you to find a place to sit down and we're going to continue in our study of 1 Timothy, and we're going to round third and cross home plate this morning.

In 1 Timothy chapter 2, the last two verses, verses 20 and 21. As usual, there's a handout. If you don't have one, they're being passed around here. And we're going to finish off this great little letter that Paul wrote to his apostolic representative, Timothy, so many centuries ago.

But it speaks to so many issues that we have going on right now. Before we study together, let's commit our time to our Lord and ask his blessing on our time. Our Father, we know that we are dependent on your grace for all things.

And so we would ask now as we look into your word that you would teach us by your spirit, that you would show us what you would have us learn today, apply it to our lives, and we will always praise you in Jesus' name, amen.

Paul’s Charge to Timothy in Ephesus

Well, as we have seen when the Apostle Paul wrote this letter to his younger representative that he had left at Ephesus, his delegate, there was a crisis in the church at Ephesus. They had some serious problems, as we have seen.

And this was a key city in Paul's missionary strategy. It was dominated, as we have seen, by the impressive temple to Artemis. It was a center of worship for this pagan false goddess. It was also a place of trade and commerce, a very, very important city in that time.

And it was also important because for Paul, it was a strategic missionary city. He was very concerned about Ephesus, had spent a lot of time there ministering and planting the church at Ephesus. As we have seen, there are churches that were in-house churches in that city, a city probably of about 200 ,000 people, a very important city of commerce in Asia Minor.

And so several years after establishing the church at Ephesus and needing to travel north to Macedonia, Paul left Timothy and Ephesus to deal with some really serious issues in these churches. And this letter, along with 2 Timothy and his letter to Titus, deal with how the church is to function, not only back then, but also through all time and even now.

So they're very important to see how the church is to be handled, what the priorities in the church are, how the church is to be led, and so on. And though Timothy is technically not a pastor, he wasn't there to pastor this church per se, he is functioning as Paul's apostolic representative.

We would say maybe using the old word, his legate, apostolic legate, to set down the priorities that God has for his church and for how it's to be led and what the priorities are to be. And it's quite a formidable list of issues, as we have seen, that Timothy had to deal with in his churches.

I often wonder, what did he first think when he opened that letter and first read it and went down through there and thought, I've got to do all of that? And he had a very formidable task, and the task still remains today.

In fact, maybe the list could even be a little bit longer. But in 1 Timothy, Timothy is, just to kind of remind us of what the content of this letter is, Timothy is reminded by Paul, commanded by Paul to confront and correct false teachers, calling them to repentance, a sincere faith, and a good conscience.

He is to fight hard for the truth, guarding his own spiritual life as he does that. He is to pray for the lost, no matter who they are, and lead the men of the church to do the same in unity and holiness.

He is to exhort the women of the church to fulfill their God-ordained role of submission to their husbands, working in their homes to raise up godly children, setting an example in their homes of faith, love, and holiness.

He is to carefully and prayerfully select spiritual leaders for the church, based on their godliness, giftedness, and good reputations. He is to actively and aggressively discern and expose spiritual error and those who attempt to teach it within the flock of God.

He is to always be feeding himself on the sound words of scripture, staying far away from myths, false doctrines, and the philosophies of men. He is to work hard in ministry, always keeping his hope set on the life to come with Christ.

He is to continuously discipline himself for the purpose of spiritual growth in godliness. He is to boldly and lovingly command and teach God's Word to God's people. And he is to model the fruit of the Spirit so that all can follow.

Paul says concerning the Word of God, to faithfully read it, explain it, and apply it publicly to the people. He is to keep growing in Christ's likeness in his own personal life. He is to confront the sins of God's people, but with gentleness and grace.

He is to lead the people to give special care for the widows in the congregation. He is to carefully select leaders in the church who demonstrate spiritual maturity and faithfulness. He is to take care of himself physically so that he is strong to serve Christ.

He is to teach the people to be faithful and hard workers in the church and in their outside employment. He is to honor faithful pastors who rule well and especially who work hard at preaching and teaching the Word of God.

He is to apply the Word of God in the church without partiality. He is to live his life content with what God provides and flee the love of money. Instead, he is to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, and gentleness.

He is to fight for the faith against its enemies. He is to keep all of God's commandments. He is to charge the rich to be generous and to be rich in good works. And he is finally, as we are going to see this morning, guard the Word of God that has been entrusted to him as a sacred trust.

All of that to this young apostolic representative in this first letter. And, of course, we have been calling this list, The House Rules for God's Church. Based on the theme verse found in chapter 3, verses 14 and 15, where Paul very plainly tells Timothy his purpose for writing.

He says, I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.

And so there, in that statement, Paul's probably playing off of this great temple to Artemis that is prominent in that city, that had 60 foot, very ornate columns that were standing on these buttresses that were also ornately carved marble.

And, essentially, he's playing off of that saying, that's nothing. That's just a temple to a dead goddess. We serve the living God, and the church is the pillar and buttress of the truth. And so that's the list of issues that Paul wanted Timothy to deal with in Ephesus.

And we could actually, if you look at 2 Timothy and Titus and combine them, because they are called the pastoral letters, if we boil down the list of all three of these letters, we get a sense of what Paul thought were the priorities.

And we can sum it up this way. In these three letters, two of them to Timothy and one to Titus, Paul wanted Timothy to, number one, be bold in confronting and refuting false teachers and their dangerous, unhealthy doctrines.

Two, make it an absolute, non-negotiable priority to preach and teach the Word of God, what he calls apostolic doctrine, or the faith, as we have seen repeatedly called the faith. And I like the way he says it back over in chapter 6, verse 3.

Sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness. In other words, if false teaching is the spiritual disease, the Word of God is the cure. Number three, pay very close attention to your own spiritual life, so that you are a qualified spokesman for God and an example of godly leadership to the church.

Work hard in your ministry, striving for excellence in all things. And then finally, and he deals with this primarily in 2 Timothy, be ready at all times to suffer persecution and hardship for the sake of Christ and His church.

And as he ends his letter to Timothy, this first letter, it's as if his concern for the church at Ephesus and for Timothy, and you see both of these things throughout this letter, it just sort of bleeds onto the page.

Paul is a man who is so concerned about the truth, but he's also concerned about people, the people of Ephesus, the Christians in those churches, and here clearly for Timothy. And so in chapter 6, verse 20, he begins these last two verses and he says, Oh Timothy, oh Timothy.

It's an emotional appeal from the great apostle Paul and essentially he's just pleading with Timothy, whom at the very beginning of the letter he called my true child in the faith. So clearly Paul is not just a man who's emotionally detached and only concerned about doctrinal issues, he has a very close relationship with Timothy, they had worked together, he led him to Christ, and now he's very concerned about what's going on in Ephesus and Timothy's part in dealing with that.

And another thing we can notice here, as he ends this letter, you may notice that Paul ends this letter almost, it's kind of abrupt, right, compared to other letters in which he often concludes with personal greetings, so-and-so here greets you and greets so-and-so in that church, some of them are very extensive lists.

But like in Galatians, where he's also very much concerned with doctrinal issues, he just sort of ends this abruptly. It's more or less, he's all business concerning the dealing with false doctrine in the church.

But you can still sense his deep concern for this church and for Timothy. And in these last two verses, as he closes out this letter, Paul essentially summarizes the two major themes he has dealt with over and over again.

The issue of, number one, sound doctrine, it's just, Paul is just, he's saturated with the need to communicate the truth in the church. Sound doctrine and holy lives, okay? Those are the two pillars of Paul's ministry here.

Sound doctrine, the truth, the word of God, scripture, what we've seen is called over and over again, the faith. The objective truth, the word of God, sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, back to chapter 6, verse 3.

And then of course, holy lives. The personal spiritual sanctification of not just Timothy, but of everybody in the church as well. Our holiness, how we live, how we relate to the church. The church is built on those two pillars, okay?

Pure doctrine and love. Pure doctrine and morality, and you see this all through scripture. Every true New Testament church is built upon those two pillars. And they have to both be there, or it really is not a true church.

Remember that the Apostle John said that Jesus was full of grace and truth. He wasn't a good 50 -50 blend, you know. That statement means he was absolutely full of grace and absolutely full of truth. The perfect man, the perfect God, man.

And Ephesians 4 .15, Paul again said to these same Christians in Ephesus, said that we grow spiritually by speaking the truth in love, okay? There they are, both together. And again, Peter, to tell you that this is true apostolic doctrine, he echoed this very same thing.

His very last words to the church in chapter 3, verse 18 of his second letter, he said, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And there they both are. They're right there.

The grace and knowledge. In other words, pure doctrine, or doctrinal purity, and then the purity of our lives. So these two great truths together form a repeated theme in scripture, and certainly with the Apostle Paul.

And he sort of comes full circle in these last two verses. And he deals with these same two themes, the truth and Timothy's spiritual life. And like so many times before, he issues a command. This is the last command of this letter.

And he says, guard, guard. And so we're just going to call this final house rule, house rule number 21, guard the sacred trust. Timothy and every Christian has been entrusted with a twofold trust. And we're going to see that, and you have your outline there, and we're just going to walk right through the outline and these two verses to see how Paul applies this in his life.

Guard the Good Deposit

And the first thing we see is we must guard the good deposit. The good deposit. Paul says, oh Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. This word guard or keep, again, it's the last command, the last imperative verb of the letter.

And there's been a lot of them. And it communicates Paul's sense of urgent priority, that Timothy has been entrusted with something very precious, very valuable, and he needs to guard it, to protect it.

And the reason is, and that's A there, it is a sacred trust. It's a sacred trust. All through Scripture, and there's so many passages we could look at. You could look at Psalm 19 or Psalm 119 and throughout Scripture, the value, the importance of the word of God.

And remember the theme verse in 14 and 15, the church is the pillar and buttress of the truth. The truth is God's word. This is what Jesus prayed to his father in John 17, 17, praying for the sanctification of his followers, his disciples.

He said, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. And that should forever settle the nature of the word of God. It is a sacred trust. Paul considered his ministry a sacred trust. And he communicates that in some of his other letters.

In 1 Corinthians 9, 17, Paul said, For if I proclaim the gospel, this is 16 and 17, I have nothing to boast, for I am under compulsion. For woe is me if I do not proclaim the gospel. For if I do this voluntarily, I have a reward.

But if against my will, I have a stewardship entrusted to me. Very interesting statement there. Basically, you would ask him maybe, well, wait a minute, Paul, don't you want to preach the gospel? His point here is, this is not something he made up.

He didn't come up with the gospel. It's alien to his natural person. And so if he made it up, and it's something that he's proclaiming because it came from him, then somebody should reward him for it.

But because it is against his will, it's not something he came up with, it's a stewardship entrusted to me. You see what he's saying there? And we saw this very similar statement at the beginning of this letter.

1 Timothy 1, 11. Paul's talking about his own ministry. And in 1, 11, he says, speaking of the gospel, he calls it the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. Paul understood that the gospel is a sacred trust.

The word of God is a sacred trust. And he wants Timothy to understand that as well. And that is also a priority for us. It's something that we need to practice and see in our lives. It's a sacred trust.

And by definition, it is apostolic teaching as we have seen. It's the faith. This is B on your outline. It's the gospel. It's the word of God. And in the broadest sense, it's scripture, all of scripture.

Again, John 17, 17. Jesus said, your word is truth. The value of God's word was not a new concept to these believers. They could go back to the Old Testament, multiple passages as we have seen, to understand the value of the word of God as they have received it because their salvation is based upon the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So it's apostolic teaching. It's the faith, the content of the gospel. And it's objective. You can see it. You can evaluate it. You can hold it in your hand and read it as all Christians have down through history.

And it's also, and this is what's so interesting to me, it is also our individual spiritual lives. There's kind of a dual sense in which he's using this term here. When you're saved, we are given new life in Christ, and we are indwelt with the Holy Spirit of God.

This is God's work, not ours. Paul, again, he describes this, again, to his letter to the Ephesians, chapter 1, verses 13 and 14. Paul says, in him you also, when you heard the truth, the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory.

In other words, the indwelling Holy Spirit is just the down payment. The word actually there means an earnest payment. And an earnest payment guarantees the future full payment, does it not? And this is Paul's argument here from Ephesians 1, 13 and 14.

We have the Spirit of God. And in his letter to Timothy, his second one, 2 Timothy 1, 2, Paul says, I'm sorry, 1, 12, and I'm just going to read 10 through 14 in 2 Timothy, chapter 1, and you'll get a sense of how Paul understands the ministry of the Spirit.

Starting in verse 10, he says,. But now has been manifested by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher.

For this reason I also suffer these things. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day. Hold to the standard of sound words which you have heard from me.

Now again, this is to Timothy, right? Boy, would this ever have been familiar to him. Hold to the standard of sound words. There's that word sound for healthy. Which you have heard from me in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.

Guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us the treasure which has been entrusted to you. And very same theme in 2 Timothy that Paul is talking about here. And there's this dual trust. We have trusted God with our eternal salvation.

And he has given us the Spirit who is the power and the means by which we are to trust, we are to guard the sacred trust that he has given to us in the gospel and the word of God. And it's this very, very fascinating dual concept here.

The commentator William Barclay had a really good statement on this. He says this, this passage uses, and he's talking about 2 Timothy here, what I just read, 10 -14. This passage uses a very vivid Greek word in the most suggestive double way.

Paul talks of that which he has entrusted to God and he urges Timothy to safeguard the trust God has deposited in him. In both cases the word means a deposit committed to someone's trust. A man might deposit something with a friend to be kept for his children or his loved ones.

He might deposit his valuables in a temple for safekeeping for the temples were the banks of the ancient world. In the ancient world there was no more sacred duty than the safeguarding of such a deposit and the returning of it when in due time it was claimed.

So we have a trust, we have the word of God in our possession and we have the spirit of God who is the means that God gives us by which we not just understand the word of God but we are to guard it and protect it and proclaim it.

And 2 Corinthians 4 -7 Paul says, we have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves. And that brings us to Roman numeral 2. We must guard this sacred trust but he also says we must avoid false teaching.

Avoid Irreverent Babble and False Knowledge

Oh Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. This word avoid here it's grammatically it's a word that simply is a modifier for this word guard.

It's a participle that means avoiding. So how do I guard the sacred trust? In part I guard it by avoiding the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. And Paul had no respect for false teachers and their doctrines.

He just didn't. And really we shouldn't either. We should be able to recognize it for what it is and as time goes by more and more there's just more and more babble out there. It's nothing new. It's been going on for a long, long time.

I have an illustration here of it. There's all kinds of them out there. This particular one's two or three decades old but it was a quotation from a man named Thomas J. Altizer. He was a professor of religion at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Emory University was founded by and operated by and still is the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Church.

So this is a quote. This man and a bunch of other professors back two or three decades ago picked up on Friedrich Nietzsche's God is Dead philosophy, the German philosopher back in the 19th century. And it sort of had a revival amongst these theologians.

And even back when this man quoted this magazines were coming out at Easter time with their magazine covers saying God is Dead, you know, question mark. Well, this is a quotation from this theologian who's really an atheistic theologian.

And it's a good example of irreverent babble.

Here we go. Quote.

This is what he said. In so far as an eschatological epiphany of Christ can occur only in conjunction with a realization in total experience of the kenotic process of self-negation, we should expect that epiphany to occur in the heart of darkness for only the universal triumph of the Antichrist can provide an arena for the total manifestation of Christ.

Close quote.

Did you get that?

That is irreverent babble. And this man was a professor of religion at Emory University School of Religion. Now, since that was such an old quote, I wanted to do due diligence, you know, because I wanted to go check out and see maybe something has changed.

Maybe they've had a big revival there. So I looked at their website. You can do this. And this is an entire page in fine print on their website. Listen to what they say. Emory University School of Religion.

This is why they say we are here. This is what they do. The study of religion is among the oldest pursuits of humanity and a foundation of the modern university. In the Department of Religion at Emory, undergraduate and graduate students get to know some of the teachings and practices of living religions of the world.

They also engage a broad diversity of questions, arguments, and methods in order to pursue interdisciplinary research projects and to learn about religion as an academic discipline. How is love present or absent from black people's lives?

How do fantasy, science fiction, and religion intersect? How have religious movements contributed to a social change in Latin America? How is the mind-body connection a paradigm to understand religion?

What does conversion have to do with liminality, shape-shifting, and radical empiricism? What rituals and symbols have LGBTQ people developed as representative of their movements? How do women's self-representation negotiate dominant cultural ideologies and representation in cross-cultural settings?

Had enough?

Well, wait, there's more. These and many other questions unfold into a variety of courses and co-curricular events in the department, providing an environment for students and faculty to step back from particular religions in order to study some of their aspects comparatively, theoretically, and thematically across traditions.

That's just the first paragraph. Notice it's all questions. All questions. We question everything. You know why? They don't have any answers. They're absolutely devoid of scripture. And if they're devoid of the scripture, they're also devoid of the Holy Spirit.

This is what Paul is talking about, irreverent babble. And I will say this with due respect to them. They never claim to be a biblical or a Christian school or ministry of any kind at all on their website.

They don't claim to be training people for ministry or to be teaching the Word of God. It's all about questioning and examining and comparing. But it is irreverent babble. And Paul warns Timothy, stay away from that.

Stay away from it because it's going to cause you to be distracted from the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Word of God. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

Contradiction is probably more from the Latin term, contradiction. The actual Greek word is antithesis. You've heard that word. Antithesis. Against the thesis, against the Word. And remember, when the Bible uses this word anti, we pretty much think of it as something like against.

And it is. It has that connotation. The Antichrist will be against Christ. But one of its primary meanings is in the place of. In the place of. The Antichrist will be against Christ. He wants to displace Christ as the object of worship.

And he will. People will rush to him because he will be someone who will be an object of worship. But he will also be a propagator of irreverent babble, contradictions, and what is falsely called knowledge.

This is probably an early form of what later on developed into what was called Gnosticism, from the Greek word gnosis. The idea that certain people have certain knowledge, you know, and you need to go to them to get the answers because they don't have an objective truth, an objective Word of God that everybody can see and look at and learn and evaluate.

You need to go to them. It's sort of a secret subjective knowledge. Paul says to Timothy, avoid it. Stay away from it. It's not true knowledge. It's falsely called knowledge. And it's going to wreck your spiritual life.

That is C. For by professing it, some have swerved from the faith. We've seen this multiple times in our study through 1 Timothy. People who swerve from the faith, they abandon the faith, they leave the faith.

They have it in one way, shape, or another, right? And because of that, they are accountable for it. But when they get involved in all of these other things that are not scriptural, it wrecks their spiritual life.

It promotes speculations. We saw that in 1 verse 4. And we saw that false teachers in chapter 4 verses 1 through 3 are demonically energized. These false teachings, they just don't come out of thin air.

They are demonically energized and they are propagated through liars whose consciences are seared. You remember we looked at that. And so this is a severe warning to Timothy from Paul and to all Christians throughout all time.

Avoid the false teachings. Avoid the irreverent babble. Your spiritual life is subject to being derailed or wrecked. Which brings us to Roman numeral 3 in your outline. We must rely on the grace of God.

Rely on the Grace of God

And so Paul says, grace be with you. This is not just a very nice little tag-on thing, you know. Grace be with you. Bless you, Timothy. No, Paul understands what he means when he talks about the grace of God.

Everything in his ministry is dependent upon the grace of God. Grace of God, as you well know, God's unmerited favor through Christ is God's grace. And Timothy has to rely on it for this tremendous task that he has in ministry here in Ephesus.

It is something that he has to focus on, he has to trust it, he has to rely on it. The you there, by the way, is plural. Grace be with you all. So this would have been read in the church, all the house churches there.

And certainly all of the people would have understood Paul is commending each one of them individually to the grace of God. And in 2 Timothy 2 ,1 Paul really does combine all of these issues. You might turn ahead a page or two in your Bible, whatever it takes to get to 2 Timothy 2.

We looked at verse 1, 11 through 13, but then he continues on. And this really just captures, I think, what Paul is talking about here. In 2 Timothy 2, starting in verse 1, he says, You then, my child.

And there again, a term of endearment to Timothy. Be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. A little longer form of the exact same thing he's saying there at the end of his first letter. And what is this strengthening going to do?

How is it going to help him? And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. There's part of guarding the truth. It doesn't just mean guard it and protect its purity and make sure that the truth of God's word is kept pure.

You have to pass it on. We've seen repeatedly how Paul tells Timothy, teach it, preach it, proclaim it. And what he wants them to do here is to pass it on in trust. There again, it is a trust. Entrust to faithful men.

Why faithful men? Well, you don't take the word of God and bury it in men that aren't faithful because they're just going to go and bury it and it won't be passed on. Faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

Here you have five generations. You have Paul to Timothy to faithful men to others. And the fifth generation is Jesus Christ because he taught Paul. Paul can track his ministry right straight back to his calling, Acts 9, personally called and commissioned by Christ, and then the time that was spent with Christ himself, the risen, resurrected Christ teaching Paul and training Paul.

And if Timothy is going to do this, he has to rely and be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And then it goes on down, sharing the suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus and so on.

So we must rely on the grace of God, God's unmerited favor through Christ and his grace to strengthen us through his indwelling spirit. It is our strength. It is our enablement. And just like Timothy had to rely on it, and so did the people in the churches at Ephesus.

We do as well. In Ephesians chapter six, again, this same group of people that Paul wrote to, he said, be strong in the Lord and the power of his might. And then he goes on to describe the armor, putting on the full armor of God and so on.

Very familiar passage. So the we must rely on God's grace, his unmerited favor through Christ for all things in life and godliness, and because it's our strength and our enablement, and see it is always with us.

Again, this is not a wish by Paul. It's more of a statement of fact. He's encouraging Timothy to trust in the grace of God that is with you continuously. Timothy has a formidable task in Ephesus, and so do we.

And we must rely on God's grace in order to do what he has called us to do as well in our generation. And in particular, that passage in 2 Timothy 2 too, of having the gospel entrusted to us and passing it on, passing it on to faithful men.

We are just one generation away from the gospel being brought to a screeching halt, as you well know. We have to pass it on to the next generation, to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

In other words, we're supposed to be teaching people to teach people to teach people to teach.

People.

Are we not? That's what we are supposed to do.

Well,.

Do you have any thoughts or questions about what we've seen so far in this passage or in anything else in 1 Timothy?

All right.

Well, let's close in prayer.

Father,.

Thank you for our time in your word this morning. Thank you for your grace in each one of our lives. Take these truths, apply them to our hearts and minds, cause us to be obedient children and that we may bring you glory in all things.

And now father, as we gather to worship you and to fellowship, we pray that you would bless our time, be with each one who would lead us this morning in the ministry of worship and the preaching of your word.

Help us to be attentive, to have ears that hear and help us to be quick to obey what we learned today. And we just thank you and praise you in Jesus mighty name.

Amen.