Protect This House - [1 Timothy 6:20-21]

Can I just say, you know, for those of you who know me, you know that I spent three years in the army, 21 years on the

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and thankfully I never had to take a human life.

Still, I'm a little fascinated by the naivety of people who, you know,

I mean this started 45 years ago, people chanting, all we are saying is give peace a chance 40 plus years ago.

And now I drive by cars and I see lawn signs that say war is not the answer.

And every time I see it, I mean, it's like a reflex for me, I say, well, doesn't that depend on what the question is? Right? I mean,

December 8, 1941, when Congress got together, if I was to ask these people, go knock on their door, hey, please tell me what happened

December 8, 1941, they'd say Congress declared war. And I said, I thought you said war was not the answer. Sometimes war is the answer.

Sometimes you have to stand up. In fact, I would go so far as to say if war is never the answer, then you probably don't have much of value in your life.

There's not much that you really care about. I mean, it's possible that you just think there's nothing really worth fighting for.

There's no property, no person, no ideals or principles that you would consider worthy of struggling for.

And if that's true, then war is not the answer. You're content in whatever circumstances you find yourself, no matter how dire they might be.

Now, this morning, I'm not going to suggest militarism, although it's going to sound like it a little bit, but our warfare, the

Christian warfare is not fought with physical weapons, but with spiritual weapons.

And what are our weapons? The word of God, prayer, the power of God.

But as a church, as Christians, you and I can never have the attitude that the battle over truth is not worth fighting.

In other words, to put it positively, the battle over truth is worth fighting.

Let's open our Bibles to first Timothy chapter six, verses 20 and 21.

This really is a terrific book. God's guidebook on how to lead a church, a letter from the

Apostle Paul to his dear son of the faith, Timothy. Paul told him what to avoid, what to do, what to emphasize, how to handle different classes of people, whom to handle carefully, whom to rebuke.

And the last time, as we looked at verses 17 and 19, we broke down the passage like this, fight against personal sin.

Secondly, fight for personal holiness. Now in your daily lives, as you enter a sin -filled world with sin -filled people, you must fight for the truth, fight for your grip on eternal life, and fight for your

King. We talked about all that last week, and you just say, well, I thought you didn't like violence. Where is all this martial talk?

That's M -A -R -T -I -A -L, martial having to do with warfare. Where does that all come from? Sounds like I want to fight.

Well, I don't. I'd like everybody to just bow the knee to the gospel and we'll be done with it.

But what you need to grapple with is this truth, until the Lord returns, the forces of darkness are going to assault the truth and assault the church that is the pillar and ground of the truth.

Why is that? Because Satan, no matter how delusional this is, Satan thinks that he can win.

He's looking to subvert the truth, and the best way to do that is to cut out the pillar that supports it, the church.

The war is on whether we want it or not. Let's read this morning's passage, 1

Timothy chapter 6, verses 20 and 21, oh Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.

Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. For by professing it, that is professing that knowledge, some have swerved from the faith.

Grace be with you. So this morning, I want to draw your attention to three general orders.

How many of you know what a general order is? I know Tom knows what a general order is. A general order is something when a general comes to you and he says, stand your post.

This is your post. And the general order is, I will guard everything within the limits of my post, and all those kind of things.

These are just basic structural things that soldiers do. This morning,

I'm going to draw your attention to three general orders drawn from our text so that you will fully join in defending the precious treasure that God has given us, the truth of the gospel.

When the curtain is pulled back, as it is here, when you can see the stakes, when you can see what lies in the balance, how can you not want to sign up to help defend the truth?

In these three commands, you will be both challenged to step up your own commitment to the truth, and you will be comforted,

I think, by the sovereignty of God. Our first general order, you must guard the gospel.

You must guard the gospel. Look at verse 20. Oh, Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.

Now you have to guard it in the sense, not in the sense that the gospel is helpless. In fact, we're going to expand this a little bit because it's really more than just the gospel, but gospel kind of fit the outline nicely.

It's really the entire word of God. And as Spurgeon said, it's like a lion.

You don't necessarily have to guard it. But you let it loose and it will take care of itself. But it is under assault.

And in that sense, we have to guard it. Look how personal this is. I mean, he could have just written, you know, something like, he could have just left out the

Oh, Timothy thing. But he says, Oh, Timothy, it's emphatic, it's urgent, it's a plea with Timothy.

Paul knew this was going to be difficult. Timothy was going to be the point man, as it were, leading this church through a difficult time.

He was going to be the first one to take the fire, to kind of have to avoid the booby traps, to walk through the minefield, as it were.

And this really gives us a picture of kind of a Paul, just kind of last, I mean, this is all metaphorical because it's in a letter, but it's like he's just taking

Timothy by the shoulders, looking him in the eye and saying, look, this is what you are called to do.

Oh, Timothy, do it. Take charge of this. He wanted to strengthen him, to give him the encouragement he would need to carry out this monumental task.

Timothy was to guard the deposit. To guard is to protect by taking careful measures.

And it is really, the idea would be of a military sentinel, of an outpost where there's one man there to watch and kind of warn when the enemy's coming.

It would be as if you were guarding something that was of great value. It's a solemn, serious and high calling.

And to fulfill it, you need to take every precaution, you know, just as kind of an illustration. I don't remember exactly when this happened, probably 77 or 78.

My grandmother was getting on in years and she had a 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air.

And I don't remember how many miles it had, but it was something ridiculous. It was like 12 ,000 miles. And you know, this is a 25 -year -old car.

It had been in the garage, you know, I mean, it was absolutely pristine. And naturally, she gave it to my brother.

That was okay. Yeah, it was perfectly fine. Now, I don't remember exactly what the situation was, but for whatever reason, we had a gate in our driveway that was about halfway down the driveway, but we couldn't put the car behind it.

And so, Roger was parking that thing up on the front lawn and we had cars filling the driveway.

There were bushes on each side of our property. There was like a wall of bushes that divided us from both of our neighbors.

I mean, this is, it sounds like we were in a fortress pretty close. A huge tree in the front yard and thick ivy all across it.

So you know, it was safe, right? I think we had that thing about four days before somebody stole it off the front lawn.

Our protection of the vehicle didn't match the determination of the thieves to steal it.

They were bound and determined to get that vehicle and they did it. The dead of night when no one was watching.

Now, what we've been given, this treasure, is so much more valuable than the

Chevrolet. And even my brother today would agree with that, being a

Christian himself. This deposit is property entrusted to another. It's a banking term and it gives us the idea that this is an item of great value, of immense value.

And just like with that Chevrolet, our enemies are determined to get at it. They want to destroy it, to deface it.

They can't steal it, really. But they want to undermine it. And our job is to guard the gospel.

Now if it's worth taking careful measures to protect or to guard, we have to really fully understand what this means.

Please turn over to 2 Timothy, chapter 1, verses 8 to 14, and we're going to see the only two other occasions in which this word, deposit, occurs in the entire

New Testament. It occurs two other times, and they both happen to be in the same little segment of Scripture.

2 Timothy, chapter 1, verses 8 to 14. Paul writes this again to Timothy, Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our

Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.

Verse 10. And which now has been manifested through 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 apostle and apostle and teacher, which is why

I suffer as I do. And here we go. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom

I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted, there's that word, to me.

Verse 13. Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.

Again, that same word. Now verse 12 has a little different nuance, because I think it really indicates what

Paul is talking about there is his very soul that has been, he has, looking at it from a human perspective, he has entrusted his soul to God, who is able to keep it until the day of judgment.

But at verse 14, just as in our passage, it's clear that the deposit is the gospel, the truth of the gospel, or more expansively we could say it's all of scripture.

What part of scripture isn't in some measure or form about the gospel? What Jesus himself said, you know, the prophets, starting with Moses, the prophets and all of scripture describes him.

Now this deposit, handed down from God himself, his self -revelation, is subsequently passed down from generation to generation.

It's handed off from one generation to the next to the next. One commentator says this, you could turn back to 1

Timothy, I just wanted to read that to you. One commentator says this, the Christian faith is not an invention of man, but a treasure committed by God to men.

It's a priceless treasure that he has given us. As Paul received it and passed it on to Timothy, so he would later in 2

Timothy tell Timothy to pass it on to faithful men. This is really a unique treasure.

I mean, kind of try to imagine some sort of treasure where you would say, you know,

I've got this magnificent treasure and I'd like to share it with you. Let's all go down to Fort Knox, everything in Fort Knox is mine and I'd like to share it with you.

We would never do that because we're greedy. But what do you do to guard the gospel?

What do you do to protect the gospel of Christ? It was there in 2

Timothy 2. You pass it on to other faithful men, you protect it by proclaiming it.

But even that, he would go on in verse 15 of chapter 2 of 2 Timothy, it says, you must do it rightly.

You must do it carefully and accurately. Nevertheless, the point is that this is a treasure that we have that we don't hoard it to ourselves.

We're not to keep it to ourselves. We are to proclaim it. Now let me ask you a question.

What does a church look like that does not guard the gospel, that does not protect the truth?

And this is really the profundity of 1 Timothy because he tells us throughout the book, listen to some of these things that theoretically a church might look like if they didn't guard the gospel.

Theoretically, they might have women in the pulpit, which is handled in 1

Timothy 2 verse 12. They might have practicing homosexuals in ministry, which would be in contradiction of 1

Timothy 1 verse 10. They might have unsaved men serving as elders, 1

Timothy chapter 3 verses 1 to 7. Such a church might hold the men who minister the word of God in low regard, again in violation of 1

Timothy 5 verses 18 and 19. Such a church might have a wickedly high regard for the goodness of unsaved people.

And I just say look at chapter 1 verses 15 and 16. Such a church that does not guard the gospel might be a place where many mediators between God and men are accepted and proclaimed in violation of 1

Timothy 2 .5. Such a church might be a place where doctrines of demons are nurtured, that they're actually tolerated, 1

Timothy 4 verses 1 to 3. Might be a place where holiness is a foreign concept in violation of chapter 4 verse 12, maybe in the name of acceptance.

And it would be a place where the preaching and teaching of the word are virtually non -existent in violation of chapter 4 verse 13.

Obviously such a church were it to exist, might be on a street corner in New England.

I've just described the modern church. Almost 2 ,000 years ago Paul wrote this and it's like, it's prophetic.

It's like Paul knew what he was writing. The Holy Spirit so worked in Paul that he would outline the attacks that would take place over the centuries.

So our first general order, you must guard the gospel.

You must. If you don't, the whole thing just unravels. Second general order, you must avoid the enemies of the gospel.

You must avoid the enemies of the gospel. I'm going to give you two enemies. Both these enemies are to be avoided or turned away from.

Why? Because Paul tells us to. Because the word of God is to be guarded against those things.

Against those things that would seek to contaminate it or distort it. Like I said earlier, there are enemies of the truth.

They are after the truth. They want it, but it's not so they can possess it, it's so they can destroy it. First enemy that you must avoid is to avoid false doctrine.

Again, look at verse 20. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

Irreverent babble could be interpreted as worldly chatter or empty sounds.

And in fact, it's worthless when it comes to sanctification. These are words that are just, they are what they sound like.

They're just babble. They mean nothing. They're not sanctifying. They're not helpful in any kind of way.

In fact, they can have quite the opposite effect. In 2 Timothy 2, verse 16, don't turn there, but the exact same phrase, listen.

But avoid irreverent babble, and he tells us why. For it will lead people into more and more ungodliness.

It's not just harmless, it's undermining the sanctification of the saints.

It moves people in exactly the opposite way that they should be moving. They should be moving in a godly fashion.

This irreverent babble moves them in an ungodly fashion. The closest thing

I can come to to kind of explain this is really postmodernism, which is the idea that there could be many contradictory ideas out there, and they're all simultaneously true.

Now, you just try to wrap your head around that. You know, one person says, Muhammad is the prophet.

One person says, Jesus is the son of God. One person says, Jesus was just a prophet.

One person says, Jesus was a good teacher. One person says, Jesus never existed. And all those things could be simultaneously true.

That's the kind of irreverent babble that he's talking about here. Again, it's not harmless.

And, you know, I think there's kind of a misperception here that we're just against everything.

But can I just tell you something? Here's what goes on on a weekly basis here. In fact, I just erased a phone call this morning from some vendor like this.

People call the church constantly, all these ministries looking to sell us stuff. And we're supposed to be impressed because, you know, they've published books, they've got a best -selling series of DVDs.

You know, why don't we just take the first one and then they'll, you know, on a monthly basis, we'll ship you new, you know, all these kind of things.

And if you don't like it, just send it back. No harm, no foul. Some of it might even be okay.

But a lot of it's going to be irreverent babble. And if, as Pastor Mike says, you know, we look at things, we go good, better, best, some of these things are just okay.

They don't even meet good, so why would we take them? Why would we pass them along? But irreverent babble is to be avoided.

Commentator Kent says this, Paul does not tell Timothy to refute these things, but to turn away from them every time.

People want to engage in debates, I have no interest in that. If somebody wants to call and debate me, I just, all

I want to do is give them the truth. Another element of false doctrine, contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge.

Now, this is interesting, because you're going to know this Greek word, you know, most of the time you just go, I don't understand Greek and I don't really care.

Contradictions is a word that we use. Antithesis, it's the exact, if I could, if I transliterated it, letter for letter, you'd go, it's antithesis, it's exactly what it is.

And you understand this in the English, because we would say, you know, something is the opposite, it's the antithesis, so if I said, you know, for example,

I'll just throw out a random example, that Benny Hinn is the antithesis of an expository preacher, then you'd get it, you'd know that, you'd say, okay, there's a guy who doesn't exposit scripture.

But the Greek word carries a little more meaning, and it means to place something against something else.

So these contradictions are ideas that are brought up that want to push against the truth of God.

And we don't have to guess what sort of contradictions, what kind of ideas these are, because Paul tells us exactly what they are.

And listen to the Greek, and I'll say it, and then we'll break it down a little bit. Pseudonymous gnosis, or,

I speak Greek for a living, but the idea is, in your

English translation it says, falsely called knowledge. Now, that's good, but I think better would be even falsely named knowledge.

In other words, it carries the label, it says on it, knowledge. That's a lie.

It's not knowledge at all. It's not knowledge at all. Now, in high school

I was way cool. Okay, I was just a geek. But, you know, we used to have a lot of fun, my friends and I, you know, inventing new ways of insulting each other.

And one of the things that I came up with, I started calling people pseudo -intellectuals, you know, faux -intellectuals.

They were fakes, frauds, whatever. And so when he says, this is pseudo -knowledge, this is so -called knowledge, this is, you know, so -named knowledge, falsely named knowledge, it's

Paul's way of letting us know, just when I said that somebody was a pseudo -intellectual, it meant they weren't an intellectual at all.

He's saying this is not knowledge at all. It's fake knowledge. It's false knowledge. And the history of the church, the

Christian church, is filled with new knowledge that isn't knowledge at all.

The Gnostics, the earliest of heretics, taught that Jesus did not come in the flesh at all, that he had no physical body.

They believed that the flesh was inherently corrupt so that God, in the form of the second person of the

Trinity, could not possibly have a body. And that was called knowledge. Well, it was the opposite of knowledge.

It was the antithesis of knowledge. And today we have many assaults on the word by those who have this kind of falsely named knowledge, the pseudo -knowledge.

Evolution. Scientific fact. Anyone who doesn't believe it is ignorant.

In fact, some serious biblical scholars in the Christian world, men like Bruce Waltke and Tremper Longman, I have some of their books.

They have either adopted evolution or expressed openness to it. Listen to what Bruce Waltke said.

And this cost him his job. If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult, some odd group that is not really interacting with the world, and rightly so.

Because we are not using our gifts and trusting God's providence that brought us to this point of our awareness.

It's new knowledge. We have to adjust our interpretation of the

Bible in light of what scientists say. If we don't, they're going to scoff at us.

They're going to think that we're stupid. I got news for you. They already think we're stupid. 1

Corinthians 1 .18 makes it clear that the word of the cross is what? It's foolishness.

It's moronic. It's stupid to those who are perishing. They don't think we're super intelligent. I don't care how many degrees you have.

If you think that Adam was a real man, you are stupid. Get over it.

It's just the reality of it. It's false knowledge. There are some today who would say that, you know what, we don't even have the

Bible as God wanted us to have it. There are many books of the Bible that are missing, that need to be included.

So -called lost gospels. I mean, men are making their living selling these kind of books. I suppose that depends on the sort of God that you believe in.

The God I believe in is powerful enough to maintain and superintend this book and give it to us exactly as He wanted.

He's not at the whim of some men who held a council and kind of kept things out.

Other false claims of new knowledge. I mean, new revelation, new insights.

One man even, I think he's respected, and rightly so, in evangelical circles.

And I remember years ago, you know, Mike told me, hey, go to the bookstore, check out the...

He's done this New Testament translation. Just read the preface. So I read it, and he says that he's discovered many nuances in the

Greek that no one's ever seen before. So God didn't see fit for 1 ,900 plus years to reveal these things, and now he's bringing it,

I don't know, you know, based on my background. That was a little scary. You know, where we had a guy who said,

Joseph Smith, who said, the truth disappeared from the earth for nearly, well, it was 1 ,700 plus years.

But now God has restored it through him. Men were more powerful than God, but God saw fit to restore it through him.

These kind of new, this new knowledge is frightening. Run from that stuff.

And what is it really that causes people to want to do this? It's this intellectual superiority that we're smarter than the

Bible. You know what? Those people 2 ,000 years ago are so dumb. They're so simple.

We're so much more sophisticated. But that's not really the issue, is it?

The question is, has God changed? Has the hardness of man's heart changed?

Has anything changed? I mean, our technology might be better. Some of the things we can do scientifically are better.

But we're not smarter than God. That hasn't changed. All I know is that Paul here, the apostle of Christ, says that we are to turn from such ideas.

We are to avoid them. One man says this, throughout the history of the church, there have been men who claimed a superior knowledge and have subjugated scripture, that is, put it below whatever their knowledge was.

Subjugated scripture to their boasted intellect. Whether they be termed Gnostics, like in the first century, or modern liberals, the attitude is the same.

We know better than the Word of God. So we have to avoid that false doctrine.

Secondly, we have to avoid those who deviate from the truth. Look at verse 21. For by professing it, some have swerved from the faith.

Some of those who have not turned away from these ideas, who have not shunned them, who have not avoided them, what do they wind up doing?

They wind up swallowing them hook, line, and sinker. It's like a fish who looks at a lure long enough and looks at the light, oh, the pretty, pretty lights.

It doesn't end well for the fish. And it's not going to end well for those who don't turn away from false doctrine.

When the text says that they profess this pseudo -knowledge, it means that they claim to be well accomplished in something.

In other words, they're saying, look, I'm an expert in this knowledge, in this field.

They actually boast about their superior knowledge in it.

These are not the folks who are silently sitting there a little bit puzzled or confused. These are the people who have, you know,

I'm an evolutionist and your stupid T -shirts. They're the ones publishing the books. They've got all the sheepskins, you know, the boast of their intellect and their education, and they know it all.

Now that verb, swerve, translated swerve there, it's the same one used, it's used in 1

Timothy 1, verse 6. And then in 2 Timothy 2, verses 17 and 18, when

Paul talks about Hymenaeus and Philetus, he says that they swerved from the truth, they turned from it.

And originally it's an archery term, and it means to miss the target.

But they don't accidentally miss. It's not like they're doing their best, you know, they have their eyes fixed on the target.

Have you ever done archery, by the way? I got the archery merit badge and that was pretty fun.

But it's not like they somehow, you know, they pulled the string back and they had their eyes set on the target and they let go and they're like, oh, look at that, missed the target.

No, no, no, no. They had some crooked arrow, you know, and some broken bow, and they kind of, you know, did one of these things.

There's the target and they're like this. Oh, gee, didn't hit the target. They didn't expect to hit it.

They had no interest in it. They deliberately swerved from the faith. Note again what

Paul commands with these people. They are not to be debated.

They are to be avoided. Now, I understand many of you are sympathetic, empathetic people.

Sometimes I am too. And you might want to help them. You think, well, you know what, maybe if I just bring the truth to them, and maybe they will, you know,

I mean, we want to repent for them, or we want to pray for them, we want them to repent. It's like the 2

Timothy 2, we pray that God would grant them repentance, that he would open their eyes.

But think of the sheer arrogance, the pride that it takes to say to yourself, the

Bible is insufficient. I have to go outside the Bible to get something more. Or how about this one?

You know, I thank whatever power there may be in the universe that I have not been duped into a literal understanding of Scripture.

It's the intellectual version of the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like this long list of sinners, or even the tax collector.

These guys are too smart for their own good. I say that all the time. You know, there are some guys, I mean, I'm glad that we have men who are brilliant.

You know, the Al Mohlers, the James Whites. I'm glad those guys are on our side. But there are just some guys who are just so smart that they get arrogant, and they leave the path, they depart from the faith, they swerve from the truth.

And here's the scary part. The scary part is, not all those people leave the church. I just talked about Waltke, he's not outside the church.

Sometimes they have to be driven from the church. I mean, imagine what the leadership here at Bethlehem Bible Church would do if we became aware that such prophets of pseudo -knowledge were prowling the passageways of Bethlehem Bible Church.

Prowling the passageways, I like that. Simon Kistemacher says this,

There were then, back in Paul's day, as there are now, individuals in the church who have forsaken the truth.

They prefer not to leave the church, but to drag it along with them into ruin.

They want to pass along their pseudo -knowledge. Now, there are sins that demand that you confront them when somebody offends you personally, and there are sins that demand the church confront them.

Heresy is not something that anyone who loves the church can turn a blind eye to. Again, Satan is assaulting the church, and we see it all the time when we talk about it from the outside.

Isn't it terrible that we have gay marriage? Isn't it terrible that we have this and that and the other thing going on? But what about within the walls of the church?

What about within the body, the nominal body anyway, of Christ? Satan is assaulting the church from without, but also from within.

There are those who are to be avoided, just as their pseudo -knowledge and any other spurious ideas are to be shunned.

So our first two general orders. You must guard the gospel.

Secondly, you must avoid the enemies of the gospel. And thirdly, you must rest in the grace of the gospel.

Look at verse 21 again. Grace be with you. Now, it's interesting, just a few short words here at the end of the book.

You know, this is the only Pauline epistle that he wrote, other than the book of Galatians, which, you know, he just goes right after the church in Galatia.

But other than that, this is the only one where he doesn't say, you know what, I want to send greetings from so -and -so, or, you know,

I'm just so thankful for so -and -so. There's none of that here. It's just grace be with you. And kind of when

I'm reading it, I almost thought, you know, it's almost like he just wants to, it's not quite like this, but it's almost like, you know, when there's a condemned prisoner, you know, they just say, may

God have mercy on your soul. I mean, it almost sounds like that. He's just like reviewing his letter, just going,

Timothy, grace be with you. You've got a tough job. This is a

Herculean task that I'm giving you, and something that cannot be accomplished on your own strength.

I mean, how could anyone do all that is contained in this letter on their own? By the way, he doesn't have to do it on his own, because that grace be with you, it's interesting because it's not singular.

It's not grace to you, Timothy. It's grace to you, plural. So the idea was that this entire letter,

I mean, it's interesting because if I had a letter like this, I'd probably tuck it away and just keep it for safekeeping. But Paul anticipated this was going to be read to the entire church, that everyone in the church would be familiar with it.

And so he says, grace be with you all would be a good way to do it. Now, how could the other readers, those in the church at Ephesus, how could they even do it?

It's going to be tough. I mean, just think about the ramifications, the wave of kind of shock that goes through the church when we have to do a single case of church discipline.

And here, Timothy's going to have to silence people who are teaching false doctrine. He's going to have to weed out all these erroneous ideas.

I mean, there's going to be a lot of strife and discord in that church. So what are all the people going to do?

How are they going to help him? He's not going to be popular, except among those who really understand the nature of this letter and his calling from God.

What they should have been thinking at the end of this letter is, this brother, Timothy, needs our support and our prayers.

In a very real sense, the church today in general is under assault, like I said earlier, as much as the truth is.

How can the church hold together against the forces of Satan, his demons, false doctrine, and these prophets of pseudo -knowledge?

It's simple, really. What's the magic recipe? Proclamation of the

Bible and reliance upon the God of the Bible. Such faithfulness cannot be found within any man, by himself, or any congregation, except by the grace of God.

Unmerited favor of God, demerited favor of God, they would all need it. And that's

Paul's closing prayer to them. The truth is that we would, if it were possible, we would make a smarter way to make ourselves right with God than grace.

Why are there so many religions in the world? I get that question from time to time. Why are there so many different belief systems out there?

I would answer it this way. There are so many different ideas about God and man out there because there is an inherent awareness in each of us that God exists.

We know that from Romans 1. We know just by looking at creation that God exists. The second reason is because we inherently know what's right and wrong.

We have a conscience because God has put his law in our hearts. So for centuries, mankind has tried to reconcile itself to God by being better, by working harder, by sacrificing something they value, by being smarter.

But none of those things will work. If you're here this morning and you think that you and your efforts are good enough to be right with God, I have a simple message for you.

You're wrong. The simplicity of the gospel of grace, the simplicity of the gospel of Christ is as confounding to those who don't believe it as it is comforting to those who do.

Somebody might say, well, what do you mean I'm not good enough? Well, Jesus said it himself. No one is good except God.

If we look elsewhere, we see that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Someone might say, well, yes, we all make mistakes.

Sin is not a mistake. A mistake is an accident. It's a miscalculation. When I hit the wrong button on my calculator, that's a mistake.

Sin is breaking the law of God. It's a violation of God's law. A failure to love

Him and to love others. One sin is enough to give the perfect and holy

God reason, cause, to send you to eternal punishment.

The good news is that God Himself provided the only means for forgiveness of sins. He sent

His Son, the second person of the Trinity, eternally God, to be born of a virgin, then live a perfect life, to do everything

God has commanded you to do. His name is

Jesus. He's fully God and fully man. He was put to death on a cross.

A death He did not deserve because He never did anything wrong. God caused that to happen so that He could justly forgive sinners like you.

He transferred all the sins of all those who would ever believe to the account of His perfect, innocent, and righteous

Son. He also transferred the perfect obedience of His innocent, perfect, and righteous

Son to the account of all those who would ever believe. Believers get

His righteousness. He got our sin. Furthermore, that we might know

Jesus is who He claimed to be, the Son of God. God raised Him from the dead on the third day.

The net effect is this, that all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and stop in their futile efforts to justify themselves, all who will heed the words of Christ when

He said, if anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow

Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.

Whoever will bow the knee, as it were, to Christ will be saved. But if you try to save it on your own strength, in your own wisdom, in your own pseudo -knowledge, you will fail.

I would urge you this morning to lose your life for the sake of Christ. What does it mean to lose your life?

It means to stop relying on your own goodness. It means to turn and repent.

And you say, well, I can't do that. And that's grace. That's what grace is. You can't do it. You can't earn it.

But you can cry out to God that He would save you. When you know these things, when they impact you in such a way that you can no longer deny them,

God graces you. He draws you. He graces you. He saves you. Some here this morning might say, well,

I'm not God's enemy. I have nothing against God. To you, I would say, you are not

His friend until you love the Lord Jesus for who

He is and what He did. And if you're not God's friend, you are most certainly His enemy.

The grace, this grace that was sufficient to sustain Timothy, sufficient to sustain the church at Ephesus, to give them the strength that they would need to carry out this task at the church.

This grace is what each of us need each and every day. We must trust in the grace of God. His ongoing giving us the strength that we need to overcome our own sin, to serve others, to love others, to withstand trials, to handle difficult circumstances.

How do we do all those things? It's by the grace of God. How do you get out of bed in the morning?

The older I get, the harder that question is. It's by the grace of God. Now, in closing,

I'd like to put my hands on your shoulders as a congregation, and I'd like to encourage you,

O congregation, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Listen to what

Spurgeon said. This was more than 100 years ago. See if this doesn't ring true today. In these days,

I feel bound to go over again the elementary truths of the gospel. In peaceful times, we may feel free to make excursions into interesting districts of truth, which lie far afield.

But now, in other words, in non -peaceful times, we must stay at home and guard the hearths and homes of the church by defending the first principles of the faith.

In this age, there have risen up in the church men who speak perverse things.

There be many that trouble us with their philosophies and novel interpretations, whereby they deny the doctrines they profess to teach and undermine the faith that they are pledged to maintain.

The things that they teach are contrary, they're antithetical to what they say they believe.

It is well that some of us who know what we believe and have no secret meanings for our words should just put our foot down and maintain our standing, holding forth the word of life and plainly declaring the foundational truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is war, spiritual war, until the Lord returns or takes you home.

I said general orders, listen to this general order, and this is so applicable.

I will guard everything within the limits of my post and quit my post only when properly relieved.

You have an obligation to your Lord to guard the gospel. And when are you going to be relieved of that?

When he takes you home or when he comes back. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, these are treacherous times.

Even as we survey the landscape of Christianity today, and we see so many errant doctrines, so many things accepted that are so blatantly in contradiction to your revealed word.

Lord, would you make us not some kind of fighting fundamentalists, but those who would not be afraid to resist error, who would guard the truth, who would see it for what it is, a grand treasure given to us by God to faithfully give from one generation to the next.

Would you make us a people who would be in the habit of doing so, teaching our children, teaching those within the walls of this church, of even making disciples outside the walls of this church.

Father, would you keep us faithful by your grace to a task that humanly would be impossible.