Sermon Transcript
Well, hey, if you didn’t know, a congratulations is in order for all of us. We have reached the end of our study of the book of 1 Timothy. We started all the way back in the fall. We’ve been going verse by verse through the book of 1 Timothy. We paused a minute for Christmas, but we’ve made it to the end.
We’re at the last couple verses. Along the way, we’ve learned that 1 Timothy actually isn’t a book at all, of course. It’s a letter that a man named Paul wrote to Timothy in the 1st century. Paul was one of the key leaders that got Christianity off the ground and into the world in the 1st century, and Timothy was like his number one protégé, his number one mentee. If you haven’t been around the last several months as we have worked our way through this letter.
There have been some topics that have come to the surface that have stirred a great deal of, shall we say, conversation, some spirited debate and emotions, which is great. That means you were paying attention, so we’re glad about that. But now, as Paul is closing his letter, he’s going to write the last couple sentences after covering various hot topics What are his final words going to be? How is he going to end this letter that he writes to his mentee? How does he wrap it all up?
This is 1 Timothy 6:20-21, which is in your bulletin insert or will be up on the screen, or you can flip there or use your app. 1 Timothy 6:20-21, Paul writes, O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith. Grace be with you. He says, Timothy, keep believing what you’ve been believing.
Don’t get pulled away by other ideas like some other people have done, and now they aren’t even in the faith anymore. Grace be with you. Signed, your buddy Paul, or however he closed it. If you aren’t a Christian, those couple of sentences might seem pretty straightforward. Keep believing what we believe, and don’t believe what some other people have done and strayed away from the faith.
Like, wouldn’t every religion say that? Like, keep the faith, toe the line, don’t deviate. And you could even forget about religion for a second, like even a football team could say that. Like in the middle of a season, when it doesn’t look like it’s going very well, they all look at each other in the locker room after a game, and someone stands up to give an inspirational speech, and they say something like, don’t give up the faith! Don’t fall away from believing what we said we would do at the beginning of the season.
Like, the goal’s still in sight. Let’s go for it. Like, doesn’t everyone say something? Like this. But with Christianity, it’s not that simple.
What you might not know about Christianity is that it is fundamentally different than what we’ll call normal religion. Other religions— and we can’t say this enough, so maybe someday you will start saying it with me because I say it a lot— but other religions essentially say, be good enough, right enough, long enough, and you will earn your treat. Now, of course, they all have different ideas about what the treat is, whether it’s heaven or karma or good nirvana, or I mean, sorry, good karma or just nirvana, better reincarnation, etc. Like, they all have different ideas about that, and they have different ideas about what it is that you need to do in order to earn your treat. But essentially, they are all pull yourself up by your bootstraps, perform.
It’s everybody else. Christianity, on the other hand, fundamentally different, says that Jesus, not you, Jesus was good enough, right enough, long enough, and we get the credit for the life he lived while he takes the blame for the life that we have lived. We get the treat of that he has earned. Christianity is not pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Christianity is about Jesus rescuing you by again taking the blame that you deserve and giving you the credit that he deserves.
Jesus says— this is Luke 19:10— Jesus says, I have come to seek and save the lost. Seek and save the lost. He’s come to save us. So just imagine Someone is drowning in the ocean, and the Coast Guard flies up in a helicopter, and they say over the loudspeaker— and they probably wouldn’t do this because they’d just get to work, but let’s imagine they’re gonna have a conversation before they do anything— they say over the loudspeaker to the drowning victim, hey, we’ve come to save you!
What do they mean by that? What do they mean by, we’ve come to save you? Well, they don’t mean Hey, we’ve come to save you, so if you just swim harder, you’ll make it. They don’t mean that. They also don’t mean, hey, we’re here to save you, so we’re gonna drop down a set of instructions that will teach you how to hold your breath and kick.
Good luck. We’re going back to base. That’s not what they mean, right? When they fly up and say, we’ve come to save you, they mean someone is going to jump out of the helicopter into the water with you, tie some kind of floaty around you, and lift you back up into the chopper, right? That’s what they mean when they come over to the loudspeaker and they say, we’re going to save you.
And that’s what Jesus means. Jesus saves us. So when Paul says, keep the faith or you will be lost like others have been lost, we kind of have to ask, what in the world are you talking about? It would be like the Coast Guard telling the victim, hey, don’t let go or you’ll be lost. If you’re the victim, you’re like, You’re the one holding on to me.
Like, you got this floaty wrapped around me. What do you mean, don’t let go? I’m not even hanging on. It might seem pointless to say that, to hang on. It appears pointless to say that, but it’s not pointless.
It’s super important. The warning is super important. So, as we look at this text today, we’ll see what we are to avoid, what is at stake if we don’t listen, and why warn us if we are secure. So, what is— what we are to avoid, what is at stake if we don’t listen, and why warn us if we are secure. So, what we are to avoid.
He says, verse 20, avoid worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge. Which that might make it seem like he means anytime somebody is saying something contrary to what Christianity teaches, that Christians are just supposed to plug their ears and be like, la la la, I’m not listening. I’m avoiding your worldly chatter. I’m going to bury my head in the sand and believe everything you say is wrong without actually engaging in conversation with you. It might seem like that’s what he’s telling Timothy to do.
But that is not what he is saying to do. That is what some Christians do, and that’s actually what Christians can have a reputation for doing about— from people who aren’t Christians. We’re isolating ourselves, being willfully ignorant of any thought that contradicts what Christianity teaches. But again, that is not what he is saying to do. We know that’s not what he’s saying to do because that’s not what he did, and that’s not what Jesus did.
Paul, the writer of this letter, frequently dialogued with philosophers of his day, with other religious leaders of his day, proving that he had mastered all of their teachings so that he could help them see that their thought systems were insufficient and Christianity was true. Jesus, of course, engaged with all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds, meeting them on their terms, talking about their lives, where they are right then. Neither Jesus nor Paul ever put their heads in the sand and said, I’m going to pretend none of this exists. They never did that. So that is not what he’s telling Timothy to do.
It’s not what he’s telling us to do. So what is it then that we are supposed to avoid about opposing ideas? It’s making those opposing ideas our own. Professing worldly chatter or knowledge like others have done and therefore gone astray. If you profess it like it mentions in verse 21, it means that you hold to it, that you agree with it, that you have integrated it into the way that you think, which is what other people did and what got them into trouble.
And that’s why he’s telling Timothy, don’t go down that route.
Sure, engage with other people of other beliefs, of all other beliefs and backgrounds and thought systems, just like Jesus did, just like Paul did, like absolutely, great, but don’t make those ideas your own, don’t make it the way that you look at the world, don’t upload it into your source code. Now that makes us ask, like, what other beliefs are you talking about? Like, what counts as worldly? That’s a cute outfit? Is that worldly?
I like that car? Go Niners! Is that worldly chatter? What’s worldly knowledge? C++?
Calculus? Are we supposed to be like the Amish? Just live off the grid? Just go primitive? Do I need to give up my iPhone?
No. I mean, if you want to give yours up, go for it, but I’m going to keep mine. And that’s not what he’s getting at. I think Paul would say, keep the iPhone, go Niners, and yes, that is a cute outfit. What is worldly then?
Worldly as opposed to godly. So worldly would mean ungodly. Or opposed to God. We would say worldly is anything that undermines your faith in God or contradicts what God has said.
For us in our heads, those opposing ideas might sound like— and this is not an exhaustive list, of course— but those opposing ideas might include things like, when thoughts come to our mind, God doesn’t really love me.
If God really loved me, this wouldn’t be happening to me. Or, the Bible isn’t true. It can’t be trusted. Or, how God says to live is outdated. We don’t really need to follow how He says to live.
Maybe for you it began when you walked into one of your freshman classes in college and whatever your professor said shook your faith in the Bible and what it says about God to the point where you didn’t know what to believe anymore. Or maybe you never believed and then you walked into that freshman class and you’re like, great, now I have a reason not to believe, and you’ve never looked back. If that’s you, you should know that there is another side to that story. There are big-time legitimate scholars who have gone to all the fancy institutions, and have come to the conclusion that we really can trust and live by what was written down long ago. You were probably never told about those big-time scholars in your freshman class, but they exist.
There are serious reasons to trust what was written in all the books that were eventually collected and together became the Bible. And there have been— just think about this— there have been billions of people over thousands of years who followed it, and they weren’t all duped, not all of them. They knew what they were getting into, and they believed it was legit. You don’t have to be pulled astray by what is falsely called knowledge. You don’t have to be.
There is another side to that story. Now, what is at stake if we don’t guard ourselves against what is falsely called knowledge? What if we buy into it? What if we integrate worldly chatter into the way that we think and then go and live that way? What if we start to stray like these other people mentioned in verse 21?
What is at stake if we don’t continue in our original belief?
Everything.
In a word, everything.
Everything is at stake.
Earlier in this letter, 1 Timothy 1:19, Paul told Timothy that some other people who he actually mentions by name had shipwrecked their faith by rejecting what was taught.
If we stray from the faith, we are not in the faith.
Paul writing to a different group of people explained it this way, so same writer of 1 Timothy, Just a different audience. He’s writing to the Colossians, Colossians 1:21-23. In 21, he says, once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your mind because of your evil behavior. So, if you didn’t know, we are enemies with God because of what we have done. We are accountable, like it or not.
We don’t want to feel this way, but it’s true. We are accountable to the one who made us. Our actions, and because our actions are evil, we are enemies with Him because He is good. Now, that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that we are enemies with God because of what we have done. That really shouldn’t catch any of us off guard because if we’re honest, come on, let’s be true here, right?
If other people knew everything we had done, seriously, come on, if everybody knew, if other people knew everything we had done, they would probably reject us as as well, right? So not a big surprise that God’s rejected us and we are his enemy. Don’t worry, it gets better. Verse 22, but now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation. So we were enemies, but now we aren’t.
Great! Why? Because we’ve been good enough, right enough, long enough? No. Because on the cross, through Christ’s physical death in His body, He took the blame for the evil behavior that we have done and exchanged with us the credit He deserves for the perfect life He lived.
So now we have His treat, which is we are seen as holy and blameless, free from accusation. Well, that sounds pretty great. Hold on, he’s not finished.
Verse 23, if, You are holy and blameless, free from accusation, if you continue in your faith established and firm and do not hold out from the hope held out in the gospel. You are now currently at this moment reconciled to God, holy and blameless, if future event you continue to hold on to that faith happens. So this is super important. This does not say if you continue to hold on to your faith, you will then become at some point in the future holy and blameless. It does not say that.
It says you are currently reconciled now if future event happens. If you continue to believe later, then you were always in. You were always holy, blameless, reconciled, back to initial trusting of Christ, of course. It’s, again, it’s not if you believe long enough, after some period of belief, you will become blameless later. If you believe later, you always were.
You got it? Do you like nonlinear thinking? The reverse is also true. If you don’t believe later, then you were never reconciled to begin with. You were never in.
You were never holy and blameless if you don’t continue belief later. This may help you remember it. I think this is the simplest way to say it. What happens later proves where you are now.
So, if you stray from your belief, it proves you never trusted Christ to rescue you to start with.
One of Jesus’ closest disciples named John had the same concept, but he worded it a little bit differently. This is one of Jesus’ best friends who spent a lot of time with him. John said, this is 1 John 3:9-10, John says, no one who is born of God will continue to sin because God’s seed remains in them. They cannot go on sinning. Because they have been born of God.
This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister. So like Paul had said, what you believe later will prove where you are now. Now John says what you do later will prove where you are now. Now.
If you belong to God, you will not continue to sin. If you belong to God, or if you do not belong to God, you will continue to sin. The tense of that word, continue to sin, or go on sinning, is extremely important. We’re talking about consistent, repeated, time after time over a period of time, moving away from God into a sinful direction. John says if you are a Christian, that won’t happen.
If you belong to God, God will turn you around from your sinful behavior eventually. You will not be able to continue— there’s our word— or you will not be able to go on in that direction. Now listen, because that always starts to freak people out, okay? This does not mean that you are perfect.
Watching a lot of people over a lot of years, watching my own life, reading Romans 7, this seems to be Paul’s experience as well. This could look like— you’re like, how does this actually play out in somebody’s life? This is what it could look like. Like, we know what God wants us to do, and we say, forget that, I’m going the other way. And then we actually do whatever it is that we’re not supposed to do.
And then we might do it 2 or 3 or 30 times more. Or we might start doing something even worse, and then after that something worse, and then we do that some more. But the more that we go in that direction, the more something inside of us locks down, and we are like tangibly pulled back in the other direction. And eventually we give up going away from God. Maybe it’s a day, a month, or a year, but eventually We turn around and we say, I’m sorry.
I shouldn’t be going that way. We repent. We ask God to forgive us. We start walking back this way. Now, a week later, we might start running away again, right?
Is that your experience? But what’s going to happen again? We will not be able to continue. We will always eventually turn around. If we do not turn around and repent, if we can actually go away from Him for forever, it proves that His Spirit is not really in us.
It proves we were never reconciled to Him. It proves we were never credited with Christ’s holiness. If we truly stray from the faith, like Paul’s warning about in this last verse of 1 Timothy, it means that we were never in the faith. Now, you might wonder, how does that fit with the picture of rescue that we talked about earlier? I thought it wasn’t up to us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps to keep ourselves safe.
I thought it was about God reaching down to save us. Like, isn’t the floaty wrapped around me? You mean I need to muster up the strength for good behavior and maintain faith? What happened to the Coast Guard rescue chopper thing? Well, it actually fits perfectly with the picture of rescue.
As in the 1 John verses there, look at the— or just remember why you aren’t continuing in sin. What is the reason? It’s because God’s seed remains in you. No one who is born of God will continue to sin because God’s seed remains in them. God has put, if you’re a Christian, God has put His Spirit in you, and because His Spirit is in you, you are now turning from what you used to do.
It’s all rescue, the whole thing is rescue. Your good behavior as a Christian is evidence that God is working in you. God has done something and is still doing something, in you. I’ll tell you, one of the most comforting times in my life, paradoxically, in my life as a Christian, what’s comforting is what happens when I try to run away from God. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone here, but I’m still a big, fat, dirty sinner.
If that troubles you that one of your pastors is a sinner, just remember that earlier in this letter to Timothy, Paul said that he was the worst of all sinners. So someday I will have a debate with Paul. And I’ll say, no, Paul, you weren’t the worst. Actually, I was the worst. And he’ll say, no, I’m the worst.
And we’ll go round and round, and we’ll see who actually wins that argument. You’re invited. You can watch. Paul and I are going to have this conversation someday.
I still want all kinds of things that God says, nope, we’re not going to do that. And there are still times when God says that I need to do something, and I’m like, nope, we’re not going to do that, God. And sometimes I say, God, I don’t care what you want, I’m going the other way, and I start running away from what he wants. I do whatever it is he doesn’t want me to do, or I don’t do whatever it is that he does want me to do. And then I either do it or I don’t do it some more.
But then, what feels like a freight train smacks me in the face and turns me around.
And at that moment, I know that I am tangling with someone real, someone who is much more powerful than me, someone who is far better than me, Someone who I know loves me because He’s looking out for my good, like, I’m not an idiot, I know going the other direction will hurt me, and I’m like, let’s do it. And God’s like, nope. So, I know that He loves me. That is comforting. The greatest assurance of my salvation is what happens when I try to abandon God or abandon what He wants from me.
There is a very real God who apparently says something like, okay, Dan, I gave you a certain amount of slack in the line, but now you’re coming home.
Can you relate to that experience at all?
Do you know anything of the God who turns you around when you are running away?
You would have your own metaphor for what it feels like. You may not say freight train. You may not say yanking the slack out of the line. You might describe it differently, but is that congruent with your life as a Christian at all?
Here’s what both Paul and John are saying.
If you can run from God over and over forever with no amount of conviction, no pull in the opposite direction, It’s probably evidence that God’s Spirit is not in you. You are probably not a Christian. Even if you prayed the prayer when you were little, even if you signed the card, walked the aisle, got baptized, you are not a Christian. You are not reconciled with God. You are still enemies with him.
And your prayer today should be, God, turn me from my evil behavior. Put your Spirit in me. Grant me forgiveness through the death of Christ. You, God, are what I want. You’re who I want.
I am sorry for my sin.
If that is your heart’s desire and you express that to God today, God will forgive you through the death of Christ. He will put the same Spirit in you who raised Christ from the dead, and He will turn you from your evil behavior. And when you try, when you try to run in the future, you won’t get very far. And that will be part of your evidence that He is real and is working in your life and is rescuing you.
Our final question for today is, why warn Timothy not to stray? Why tell him to guard against these things? If Paul thought anyone had evidence of salvation, it was Timothy. In other places, Paul wrote that he had no one like Timothy who looked out for other people’s interests and he looked out for Jesus’ interests more than he looked out for his own interests. I mean, I can’t say that about anybody that I know, but Paul wrote that about Timothy.
Paul said that Timothy had experienced a prophetic vision. If Paul thought anyone had been reconciled to God and had been given God’s Spirit to keep him on track, he would have thought that it was Timothy. No doubt in Paul’s mind, I’m sure, that God would keep Timothy going in the right direction. But if that’s the case, then why tell Timothy to guard anything? Isn’t God the one who’s really going to guard Timothy?
Isn’t that what we have been saying? So, if Timothy is secure, if we are secure through our faith in Christ, Why warn us? Why warn us if we are secure?
Because one of the ways in which God keeps us secure is by warning us what will happen if we stray. That’s complex, so here it is again, and hopefully it’ll be up on the screen for you so you can write it down. One of the ways in which God keeps us secure is by warning us what will happen if we stray.
If that’s confusing, think about it like this. It’s like when I took my older son to Yosemite about a year and a half ago. We hiked up— he’s 4 years old at the time, super big champ that he was able to do all this. We hiked up past Vernal Falls, if you’ve been there, to the bottom of Nevada Falls. And then we had a decision to make.
Do we hike like the long way back to our car, or do we take the short way, which is down the stairs in front of Vernal Falls? Now again, my son’s 4. He’d done a great job up until that point, but we’re at the bottom of Nevada Falls, and I’m like, I know if we have to go a whole lot farther, he’s just going to crash hard. So I got to get him back to the car soon, is my idea. So I made the decision, we’re gonna walk back down the stairs and next to Vernal Falls.
The problem with that is depending on how much water is coming off the falls, like a mist can be blowing on the stairs, which makes the stairs wet and slippery. And then there are several sections of this wet slippery stone case that are like very narrow and only one person at a time can fit at the certain sections. And off to the side of the slippery, wet staircase is a giant cliff into oblivion. And the only thing in between you and oblivion is a tiny little railing that you can hold on to. So my 4-year-old and I are going to walk down this narrow, precarious, wet stone staircase on the side of a cliff.
So how do I ensure his safety? This is my number one concern, right? We got to make it back alive or mom’s going to kill me. You know, I’ll just jump off behind him if there’s any sort of problem. I do 3 things to keep him safe.
Number one, I hold his hand with a death grip, right? Like, you would have to cut off my hand to get me to let go of his hand. Number 2, I put him on the side of me that is away from the cliff so that I am in between him and the cliff. But number 3, before we start walking down, I’m holding his hand, I take him to the edge of the cliff, and I show him how far it is to the bottom. And I say, see how far down that is?
What do you think would happen? If you fell down there? A 4-year-old. He says, I would get really hurt or I would die.
Exactly, I said. So when we start down, I need you to be really careful. I need you to stay right with me, and I need you to not let go of my hand, and I need you to keep away from the edge. And if you don’t listen to me, you could get really hurt or you could die. Got it?
Got it, he said.
Now, why did I say that? Why did I warn him? Did he really need to do any of those things? He’s 4 years old. I have a death grip on his little hand.
I’m his dad. I love him. I’m not going to let go no matter what. He could try to jump off the side of the edge, and I would just hold him dangling with one arm over the edge of the cliff. I actually held him like that quite often.
We’d be in the store and he’d want to check out some toy and I’d say, no, and he’d start running away from me and I’d say, whoop, right? Like dangling by one arm right there in the middle of Target. It’s not hard for me to do. I’m a lot bigger than he is. We’re walking down that cliff.
I’m holding his hand. He is safe, period, regardless. No matter what. So, why did I warn him? Was that pointless?
I warn him because the warning is one of the ways in which I keep him safe. It is part 3 of my keep him safe strategy.
That’s what Paul is up to. Why warn Timothy if Timothy is safe anyway? To keep him safe. There’s no contradiction in that.
If you are a Christian, you should hear that warning today. Be on guard. Fight against sin in your life. If God isn’t pulling you back from sin, it might mean that you’re not a Christian.
And that warning might be the very means that God uses to pull you back. From sin. That might be how He is keeping you safe, by giving you that warning. There is a very real cliff, and if you stray from faith, you really will fall into oblivion. But hearing that warning might be the very thing that you need to stay on the staircase.
If you are evaluating your life right now as you sit here, and you’re freaking out because you see sin that God is not pulling you away from, and that has made you cry out from your heart for rescue, God is keeping you safe right now. It’s happening right now. The warning is the means God is currently using as we speak to keep you safe.
Got it? Why warn those who are safe? To keep them safe. What’s at stake if we stray away? Everything.
What are we to avoid? Pursuing sin or adding anything to the way we think that undermines our faith in God or makes us stray from him. Have confidence, Christian. He is holding your little hand, and He will always lead you back home.
May grace be with you. Let’s pray. Father, thank You for never letting us go. Thank You for using all the means at Your disposal to keep us safe, to keep us on the staircase. Thank You for showing us what is over the edge of the cliff, Lord.
And let us never even want to stray from you. But when we do, thank you for rescuing us yet again. We’re grateful for those things and pray them all in Jesus’ name, who made our rescue possible. We, we pray those things in his name. Amen.
