Sermon Transcript
Well, since childhood we’ve been told some things are good for us and other things aren’t good for us, whether a mom or dad or a boss, a teacher, a friend, maybe the Food and Drug Administration, Consumer Reports, whoever it was. There are a lot of people that have come into our lives and suggested, do this, don’t do that, eat this, don’t eat that, read this, don’t read that. Some of that advice has been straightforward and just makes sense, right? So, you know, look, both ways before you cross the street. Obviously, we want to do that.
I can’t tell you, though, how many people I see that don’t do that, even as we’re driving around. But, you know, look both— it makes sense, that advice. When your car is getting close to empty, stop and get some gas. Now, I’ve, over the years, struggled with that one, believe it or not. Actually, I stopped struggling with that when I ran out of gas and I had to call up the chairman of the elder board at our church and in Phoenix, and he had to pick me up and give me a ride over to the gas station.
This is before Uber and before Lyft and before all of that. The reason I had to call him is because I had run out of gas so many times that Bernice said, if you ever run out of gas again, don’t bother calling me, okay? So, you know, it was kind of like tough love, that sort of thing. But you get the idea, right? I had somebody come up after the first service and say, I totally get that.
You know, I can’t tell you how many times I run out of gas, you know. And for me, it took running out of gas, having the chairman of the elder board pick me up to finally cure my problem in that area. You think I would get it. You’ve heard, eat greens, they’re good for you. Do you do that?
Do you eat greens? It took me till college to kind of start eating some greens. So there’s all this advice. We can thank mom. Thanks, mom.
Thanks, dad. Thanks, you know, my doctor. Thanks, my friend. Thanks, my spouse, or whoever for that kind of advice. There’s other advice, however, that’s kind of left us, you know, wondering, confused, call it conflicting advice.
Like, for instance, is it good for you to drink a little bit of wine every day? That’s some advice that’s out there. Notice I said a little bit. Is it good for you to drink a little bit every day? There’s conflicting advice over that.
Or take this, it’s okay to indulge your sweet tooth with chocolate once in a while. Is that okay? Now, there’s interesting advice that comes in on that. In other reports, we’re being told now that cacao contains polyphenols, an anti-inflammatory agent that is actually in cacao. It’s actually twice the amount that you can find in red wine, 3 times the amount you can find in green tea, and 4 times the amount that you can find in black tea.
And so, cacao is this wonderful thing, we’re told, It can lower your blood pressure also. It can reduce bad cholesterol. It can delay diabetes. It can sharpen your mental functions by promoting neuronal growth and blood flow to the brain. So now, you know, when you read those reports, you say, hey, that sounds great.
I’m gonna eat more chocolate, right? And some of you are like, yeah, bring it on. Bring on the chocolate. What about consuming coconut oil? There’s conflicting advice on that.
Some people say coconut oil does amazing things for your health. Other people are saying it’s gonna raise your cholesterol. It’s gonna kill you. So you don’t want to eat any coconut oil, you know, or use coconut oil. What about procrastination?
Now here’s an interesting subject. What about procrastination? Is that a good thing? Is that always a bad thing? Has anybody ever said to you, you know, never do tomorrow what you can do today?
You heard that before? Procrastination is the thief of time. Now where do you find that in the Bible? Is that in the Bible? Actually, it’s not in the Bible.
It’s actually Charles Dickens. He’s the one that said that. In fact, he wrote a book and he used this as a subtitle, Never Do Tomorrow What You Can Do Today. That was part of the subtitle of Sketches of Young Men. Good advice or not?
Well, people are saying maybe, maybe not. According to Joseph Ferrari, who’s a PhD who teaches psychology at DePaul University and is an author of this book, Still Procrastinating? The No-Regrets Guide to Getting It Done, he says that while everybody procrastinates, Listen to this. Not everyone is a procrastinator, okay? Not everyone’s a procrastinator.
So Dr. Ferrari writes this. He says, procrastination means actively putting off— putting something off, which is different from pausing or pondering, in which you’re actively collecting information so you can move forward. So essentially what he’s saying in this book is it’s okay to not do a task immediately as long as you’re Preparing actions for what you’re going to ultimately do. Some of us sitting here this morning saying, I like the sound of that. That really sounds good to me, because, you know, maybe you’ve been taking actions forever, whatever it is, but you get the idea.
So, we got all this advice, and I’ve been thinking about the advice that our world has. It’s just stuffed full of advice. Some of it’s really good advice. Other advice, it should cause us to stop Scratch our head, ponder, wonder, especially when the advice concerns the cause of Christ, which if we follow, it can be bad for us. And in that case, the most loving thing that we could do when we hear advice that’s not good for us is to advise, instruct, and even command against the advice.
Now, what I just said right there goes in the face of what’s happening in our world today. When the advice is not in accordance to the Scriptures, it’s best for us to advise, instruct, and even command against that advice. Now, why would we do that? Well, for the same reason that I urged our 8-year-old grandson to stop reading a couple of days ago. I told him to stop reading Dog Man, Lord of the Fleas.
Now, I don’t know if you’ve seen this book. I’m not sure if, you know, this has been on your best read list recently or whatever. But Ander could hardly wait to read Dog Man, Lord of the Fleas, even though he had been in school all day long. So when he got home from school, he checked the mailbox, and there in the mailbox in an envelope was Dog Man, Lord of the Fleas. And all he wanted to do was, you know, rip the envelope open, get into bed, and start reading this book, all of it in one sitting.
Now, under normal circumstances, as a parent or as a grandparent, you would say, my kid’s reading. Good. Go for it. How long’s the book? 250 pages?
That’s fantastic. Just keep reading. I’ll see you tomorrow. Okay? Have a good evening.
That sort of thing. But in this particular situation, Bernice and I would have not been good grandparents had we not said something because, you see, we were under strict orders From the parents who weren’t there. In fact, Bernice briefed me as we were driving over to the home, as we were going to care for the 4 children, and the briefing was just essentially this: When our 4 kids get home from school— this is from the parents— when our 4 kids get home from school, give them a snack and then compel them, compel them to do their homework. Now, I don’t know what you think of when you think of compel. I like that word compel, especially as a grandparent.
It can mean a lot of things to us as grandparents, you know, like, Bribe, pay, you know, impose negative consequences, all of those. But I being a pastor and all and having focused all week long on the passage we’re working on this morning, 1 Timothy 1:5 is at the heart of this passage, I decided that I would see if the way of the conscience, the way of the conscience would work in this situation. Now, I don’t know if this is a good choice or not. It was just a choice that I made. So, Ander, he’s in his bed, he’s deep into Dog Man now, and I said to him, Ander, you know that your mom and dad said you need to do your school homework before you do anything else, and that would include reading Dog Man, right?
No reply. All right? It wasn’t even like I was in the room saying it. No reply. So I said, well, Ander, one of the reasons you need to put Dog Man down and work on math instead is because God gave you a conscience.
So that you would do what is right instead of doing what is wrong. And you see, when we know the right thing to do and we don’t do it, our conscience produces in us guilt and shame and fear and doubt. And you don’t want to do all of that, do you? Huh?
If you always wondered, you know, what it would be like to grow up in a pastor’s home, well, there you got it, all right, right there. So, he didn’t do anything, so I lovingly walked over, took the book away, and hid it. Now, why did I do that? Why didn’t I just say something like, oh, you know, hey, forget it. Just read the book.
This is so good you’re reading. Just read the book, and I won’t say anything to your parents as long as you don’t say anything to your parents. Now, would have I been a good grandpa? Would I have been a loving grandpa? Hardly.
Because when something is wrong and this person who’s in the wrong is headed for some kind of trouble if they don’t get things right, the most loving thing that you can do is step in and help them make what’s wrong right. Right? Yeah. Now, this just isn’t a random grandpa story. It actually connects perfectly with 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 5, where this verse speaks about the matter of love.
It speaks about a matter of the good conscience. It speaks about a pure heart. It speaks about a sincere faith. I mean, how do those descriptors sound to you? They sound fantastic to me.
The goal— 1 Timothy 1:5— the goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. First time I came across that passage, actually, it was brought to my attention by an elder when I was a young pastor. This elder came to me and he said, Dave, you know, I don’t know if you’ve paid much attention to 1 Timothy 1:5, but he said, I really think you need to give some more attention in your ministry to this whole matter of love that comes into focus here. He said, I think you’re doing a good job teaching, and I think you’re doing a good job leading, But I think that you need to bring more love into the ministry. Be more loving in the process.
You know, I think that could probably be said for all of us. And Timothy, being instructed by Paul, is told that this whole matter of love is strategic. And this verse, quite frankly, is one of the most important books— or verses in the entire book of 1 Timothy. This whole matter of love, and the love that’s described here is a self-sacrificing, Christlike love, a love that results or stems from a pure heart, a love that stems from a pure heart, a heart that’s untainted by sin, uncontaminated by self-interest, totally devoted to God and God’s will and God’s purposes. So, it’s devoted to right living.
And this love comes out of a good conscience rather than one that’s filled with guilt and shame and fear and doubt. You see, the fruit of living with a good conscience produces in us things that we really want: peace, and joy and assurance and hope and more, and that’s what God wants for us. And it comes out of a sincere faith, a genuine faith in God and genuine faith in God’s Word, a life focused on pleasing God, living for his glory above my glory. And so, this love, he is saying, comes from those 3 virtues, those 3 virtues of a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith, and this love is the highest and the greatest love of all. Because this love is descriptive of God’s love, God’s pure love, God’s good love, God’s sincere love, God’s all-encompassing, never-ending, unchanging, untainted, uncompromising love.
And this is the love that we should want for one another. This is the love that God wants for His church. This is the love that we should want for our children and our grandchildren and our friends and fellow members of the body of Christ and our unchurched friends. And even those who we might call enemies, this is the love that we should want for them. And so, it’s this very love that Paul is longing for at the church at Ephesus.
He longs for them to experience this. And you notice in verse 5, the word goal is even found there. This is the goal. This is the goal to be realized. If you were with us last week, you heard us introduce this book that we’re into now.
We’re going to do a study for a few weeks on this book. And I want you, as you begin to kind of dig into this book with us, and I hope that you will, we’ve got some study guides in the lobby, pick one up, they’re there for free. You can take and you can read the study guide in advance of our time together. But Paul so longs for the church at Ephesus to live out this kind of love. And because there were some problems, there were some things that happened in the church since they were last there, things that have gone wrong that now need to be made right, He’s left Timothy there in Ephesus to look into these matters, to help the church in Ephesus, because if it was allowed to continue, it would be to the undoing of the church, just like it could be to the undoing of a church in Los Altos or the church anywhere, anywhere else in the world.
And so, to prevent that from happening, Paul gives Timothy some loving advice, some loving advice, and this loving advice, listen, comes in the form of a A command.
A command.
And essentially, let me just summarize the command for you that we’re going to see right now. The command is just simply this: stop meaningless talk. Stop meaningless talk. This is what Timothy’s told. Look with me at verses 3 to 7.
They’re on the message note sheet or in your Bible there if you’ve got it open. He says this— Paul says this to Timothy, as I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command. You might underline that word. Command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God’s work, which is by faith.
The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm. If you’ve ever felt like the church can spend a lot of time and waste a lot of energy on things that don’t matter, things that are just like a waste of time, things that, you know, it really doesn’t matter, boy, you’re going to appreciate what Paul has to say here because he digs into just this matter of what’s happening in the church and even goes so far as to command Timothy to do something about matters that are not right in the church. And so, verse 3, he uses the word command.
Verse 5, he uses the word command, which is to urge or plea or exhort. It’s to implore, beg, charge. He also uses the same word, but it’s translated differently in verse 18. We’re going to look at 18 to 20 also this morning. We’re going to skip over verses 8 through 17.
We’ll pick those up in the next couple of weeks, but we’re going to jump Jump down to verse 18 also because in verse 18 you find a command there as well. The word instruction is actually the same word as command in verse 5. And this word command that’s used here is actually a word that was used to speak of a military command, a military command which was a demand given by a superior to a subordinate. And so, here Paul is commanding Timothy to stop meaningless talk. And this meaningless talk comes in various forms.
There’s, first of all, the form of false doctrine, verse 3, different doctrines than the glorious gospel of our blessed God, verse 11, as it’s described. This gospel that Paul had taught, this gospel that Paul had trusted, the gospel that is in opposition to humanistic thinking, in opposition to a works-based gospel. This is a gospel that’s by grace. So, he’s saying that kind of false teaching needs to stop. Verse 4, the teaching of myths needs to stop, legends and manufactured fictitious beliefs, oral traditions, evil suspicions, even forbidden practices that the Bible doesn’t forbid.
And verse 4, teaching endless genealogies. There’s an endless interest and have been for years and endless pedigrees and family trees to the point that it’s paramount even in religions today where people are all into genealogy study. And then verse 6, he just kind of summarizes it all and says, so meaningless talk, foolish and ignorant opinions that produce quarrels. You know, and we could get into so many different kinds of meaningless talk. You can just ask questions like, you know, so can God create a rock so heavy he could not lift it?
Let’s talk about that for about 14 hours. Or how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? There’s something to get off on. All meaningless because ultimately it has no value to the gospel. It’s not only not worth your time, but it’s detrimental.
This is what he’s saying here. It’s detrimental because it promotes in the church controversy.
And instead of building up the church in love, Instead of building the church up in faith, it pulls the church apart. And so, he’s saying for the body to grow in faith, it’s got to focus on meaningful matters, and that would be matters of faith, verse 4, matters that focus on Christ. And he evidently has to speak not just only to the teachers that are teaching this, but also to the wannabe teachers, verse 7, those who evidently have an ego that want to be and positions of teaching, but they frankly don’t even know what they’re talking about, even though they say it with authority. I got a guy who’s contacted me, and he’s asking if I would be interested in buying his materials about how to write a book. He contacted me online, wants me to, uh, you know, respond.
Materials about how to write a book. The interesting thing about this is that this guy’s never written a book. He’s never written a book, and he’s writing people and asking them if they would buy his product on how to write a book. And you’re just like, are you kidding me? Come on, really?
People are buying your stuff? Well, essentially in the church here, what you’ve got is people propagating untruth, wannabe teachers even, who are distracting and deceiving and dividing the body of Christ. And Timothy was told he needed to stop it. All right, he needed to stand up and stop it, stop this nonsense in the church. So, this was not a time for, you know, let’s have a prayer meeting about this.
This was not a time for more discussions about this. This was not a time for more patience about this. This was false teaching and it needed to stop because it could be to the undoing of the work that God was doing in the church. It could be to the undermining of the work that God was doing in the church, and it could be to the distracting from the work that God was doing in the church. And so, when that kind of thing shows up in a church, it may need somebody to step forward and say, this has got to stop, somebody like a Timothy.
Now, that’s not to say that this is the only approach, you know, that you could take to controversial things that come up in the body of Christ. You may remember that Priscilla and Aquila on another occasion invited a guy named Apollos over to their home, and they sat together and talked about theology. Actually, Acts 18:26 says that they explained to this individual the way of God more adequately. And so, there was a place to have a conversation like that. You may remember Acts 15, where there was a time in the early church that they held this council, and they dug deep into the matter of soteriology.
What’s that? That’s the doctrine of salvation. And the big question of the day was, what must a person do to be saved? And so, they had these meetings and these discussions about them. And we would say in today’s culture, they had these learning groups and these discussion groups, and they had these listening groups.
And, you know, they took all of that into consideration, and they finally came to a conclusion, and everything seemed to work out okay. But there may be a time, as you can see here in Ephesus, where Paul’s writing to Timothy, And evidently that has not worked, and there comes a time where you just got to say, this is out of bounds. We’re done talking about this because this contradicts what the Bible clearly teaches. So stop what you’re teaching. It’s wrong.
It just needs to stop. Don’t continue to waste people’s times. Don’t, don’t continue to bring potential division into the body of Christ. It just needs to stop. Now listen, and the reason it needs to stop is because this is a strategic means of loving others.
You see, that verse, verse 5, is there to show us that this is what it’s all about. And love works from pure hearts and a good conscience and a sincere faith. And there comes a time where in order for the church to grow in a good conscience, a sincere heart, sincere faith, and a pure heart, it’s got to at times say, no, no. We’re reading— Bernice and I are reading right now Francis Chan’s new book titled Letters to the Church. Really enjoying this new book.
It just came out. And there’s a chapter entitled The Order. And in this chapter, Francis Chan likens— likes to ask church leaders, when he gets with church leaders and he’s kind of doing consultation, that sort of thing, he likes to ask them to write out a list of things that people expect from their church. A list of things that people expect from their church. And he said they usually come up with things like, you know, they expect a really good worship service.
They expect strong age-specific ministries in the church. They expect a certain style of worship or a certain volume level of worship or a certain length of worship, you know, all of that. They expect a well-communicated sermon. They expect conveniences like parking and clean buildings and coffee and childcare and other things like that. And so, they get this list together of these things that people expect, they usually expect from their church.
And then he has them write a second list and he says, now, let’s write a second list. And what I want you to list in this list are the things that God commands. For the church. The commandments that God has given to the church, you find them in the Scripture. And usually they put down— he said they usually put down things like, you know, love one another as I’ve loved you, visit orphans and widows in their affliction, make disciples of all nations, bear one another’s burdens, be salt and light, those kinds of commands.
And then Francis, after they finished these 2 lists, he asked them this question. So let me ask, Which one of these lists, if you were to take it, if you were to upset your church, if you were to upset your church, which— what would upset your church more if you took— if you didn’t do this or if you didn’t do this? What would upset your church more? The first list, which are things that people want, or the second list, the things that actually God commands? And you know what he’s found over the years in asking this question that people get upset about?
It’s this one. This list over here. We could so easily fixate on what’s important to us instead of what’s important to God.
And the thing about this list over here is then we could get so off onto meaningless talk.
And not focus on matters of conscience and faith.
I think it’s actually something for all of us to consider. Some of us might look at a passage like this and say, well, I don’t have a problem with that.
Is it possible that we could have conversations with each other and never talk about faith?
It’s possible. Mark chapter 7, Jesus is talking to the religious leaders of his day, and he was upset with them because they were teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. They were teaching as doctrines the commandments of men, and they had left the commandments of God and were holding on to the traditions of men. And that absolutely upset the Lord. You know, we are living in a day where we are living in a world of pluralism, a world of humanistic thinking, a world that could so easily quiet Christians, could shove Christians in such a way that we just don’t even want to talk about the Lord anymore.
But Paul is saying here to Pete, to Timothy is just so important even to this day where there comes a time where if people are off, where people are off, they need to just be told to just stop it. And the reason they need to be told to stop it is for the sake of love. Well, then he jumps on down and you see how far Paul went in applying this message. In verse 18, just pick it up there and we’ll come back and pick up the middle verses here next couple of weeks. He said, Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience.
Some have rejected these and have so shipwrecked their faith. Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I’ve handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme. By the way, the word blaspheme there suggests that they were scoffing at the truth. A form of blaspheming against God, of blaspheming God. And really, it’s a sad day when you think about what he’s writing about here.
It’s a sad day when a church has to get to a point where they actually kick some members out of the church. And that’s what’s being talked about here. Evidently, there are a couple of known teachers, prominent people in this church at Ephesus, potentially elders, perhaps. But leaders, teachers, and Timothy was left in this place to continue to work out the aftermath of what occurred when Paul was there for a short time trying to set things in order. So, he leaves Timothy, but before he left Timothy, he had to put some people out of church, out of the— he had to excommunicate them.
Now, why would that happen? This is hard to imagine in some ways because Paul and Timothy, you remember, had been in this church for 3 years. They had spent teaching the people in this church for 3 years. I mean, if you’re going to get good teaching, come on, that would be good, right? In fact, Acts 20:27 says that they taught them, the church at Ephesus, the entire, the whole counsel of God.
They taught them the whole counsel of God. And before Paul left, he warned them that false teachers could come, and they could even come from within. In Acts 20:29-30, he says, I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number, men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. Well, guess what?
It’s about 5 years after that, and all of a sudden, there are some people in the church like, Hymenaeus and Alexander and others. And Paul sees that, so when they get there on this new visit to Ephesus, they want to see what’s going on in the church. They’re there to care for the people that they’ve loved and that they’ve taught. And they get there and they’re told Hymenaeus and Alexander are teaching heresy. And we’re told actually in 2 Timothy 2:17 that Philetus was also teaching heresy, and it’s pinpointed that Hymenaeus and Philetus were actually teaching that the resurrection, that the resurrection had already taken place.
Can you imagine that? They were teaching that the resurrection had already occurred, which was to say, sorry, you missed the transport. You didn’t get beamed up, Scotty. Too bad for you. Well, it was too bad for them, too.
Actually, that wasn’t exactly what they were teaching. They were teaching that this body is evil, and therefore it would not be resurrected from the dead. This is called a Gnostic belief, that only the soul would be resurrected from the dead. And they believed that their souls had already been resurrected from the dead at conversion or at baptism. Now, you might say, well, no big deal, right?
I mean, why even kind of bother about that? Well, wait a minute. This is like central to the gospel. This is all about the resurrection that Jesus, who was raised from the dead, promised that ultimately His children, those who are in Christ, would one day be resurrected from the dead. So, this is a central point in the gospel.
And so, ultimately, the Apostle Paul evidently confronts Hymenaeus and Alexander about those beliefs that they’re teaching, which aren’t in accordance with the true gospel. He admonishes them, he corrects them, he reproves them, and he commands them to stop teaching. And ultimately, they don’t stop teaching, so verse 20 says, he handed them over to Satan. Now, what does that mean? Well, actually, the same phrase is found in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, where it simply says this.
Paul is writing to the church at Ephesus. He says, it’s actually reported that there’s sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans. A man has his father’s wife. What’s that? That’s incest.
And you, he writes to this church at Corinth, you are proud. Shouldn’t you have rather been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? Even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit, and I have already passed judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present when you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus. And I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present. Hand this man over to Satan, so that his sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.
What’s he saying? To hand somebody over to Satan, in this particular case, to hand another professing believer over to Satan, is to put them out of the church. So put them out of the church and put them into the world of Satan’s domain. Why? Why would you do that?
It seems like punishment. No, that’s not the point. The point is— would be remedial, that they’d ultimately come to their senses and they would repent and they come to believe the truth, and they would come to live the truth, and they’d come to teach the truth. And that’s what Paul is saying here. I had to put Hymenaeus and Alexander out of the church to stop the meaningless talk, but ultimately so that they might come back to the Lord, so that they might come back and embrace the truth even as Jesus taught it.
Now listen, if that sounds unloving to you, to have put a fellow believer out of the church, If that sounds unloving to you, then you have this love thing backwards. Because what Paul is commanding here Timothy— he’s commanding Timothy to do is for the sake of love, stop meaningless talk for the sake of love.
Now, what that says to us today in our culture is simply this: do not let the world seduce you into thinking that intolerance is a bad thing.
When the truth of the gospel is at stake, and that’s what was at stake here, the truth of the gospel is at stake, the truth of God is being compromised, compromised, for us to just let it go on, to tolerate it, to tolerate it in the church is the most unloving thing that we can do. To say nothing and to do nothing is the most unloving thing that we could do. It’s to allow this person who is caught up in the work of Satan to continue to believe untruths that ultimately will steal, kill, and destroy the life that God wants to give them. But please hear this. This, when that happens, if there’s any kind of intolerance, it always has to be expressed in love.
That’s the point here. It’s never anger. It’s never punishment. It’s never hatred. We’re to speak the truth in love.
So, there’s a place for, you could say, intolerance in the church when lies are being perpetrated in the name of Jesus Christ. And when that happens, the most unloving thing that we could do would be to condone what they are doing or say nothing or do nothing. Oh well, that’s just— it’s just how they are. Our daughter-in-law was recently asked by a friend if this friend could drop off her 6-year-old at Mary’s house on school days because they’re real close to the school, and then the 6-year-old could walk across the street with Mary’s kids, our grandkids. And so Mary said, sure, that would be great.
Go ahead, bring her over. So she brought her over the next morning, but before they left for school, Mary was brushing her daughter’s hair. She has 2 daughters, and this 6-year-old saw this and she asked Mary if she might brush her hair too. So Mary agreed to brush her hair, and while she was brushing her hair, she saw lice crawling around on her head. Now, if you were Mary at this point, what would you do?
Just ignore it? Or would you, as a mom, be concerned about this, be concerned about your 4 kids, first of all, and concerned about the 800 other children that are going to be potentially exposed to this in just a couple of minutes? Would you just ignore it? Would you pretend that it wasn’t a problem? Or would you warn the mom?
Would you warn the school? Would you keep your kids away from those kids? Would you do what Mary did, was she took her kids to a lice clinic and she had them checked out to make sure that they were okay and all the rest of that? I mean, what would you do? Well, hopefully you would do something.
Hopefully you would do something that would be loving. And the most loving thing you could do is to do something or say something. When Paul— don’t miss this— when Paul confronted the infaction of false teachers, the infaction of meaningless talk that had pervaded the church at Ephesus, he was doing the most loving thing. And that’s what he wanted Timothy to do. In fact, he uses strong language.
He says, put up a fight, Timothy. Stop the fray. You see it in verse 18. Do you remember, Timothy, how there was this calling that you received from God and how you were commissioned and how they spoke over you? They spoke over you the confirmation of God’s hand on you and your ministry and how you were going to go out and stand up for the gospel.
Well, guess what, Timothy? This is the gospel. You need to fight the good fight, even if it means cleaning house in the church for the sake of— notice, for the sake of faith. For the sake of faith. What are we talking about when we’re talking about faith there?
We’re talking about the objective body of truth, the Scriptures. For the sake of what the Scriptures teach, for the sake of God’s Word, for the holiness of God’s Word. And secondly, for a good conscience’s sake. A good conscience’s sake. Which is the outcome of doing what’s right, not in the eyes of everybody else, it’s doing what’s right in the eyes of God.
So stop meaningless talk for the sake of love.
Do we need to hear that today? We do.
We need to hear it in the church. We need to hear it through the church. Do we want to see love thrive? Absolutely. We long to see love thrive.
See love thrive in here. See love thrive out there. Well, it’s connected to the truth of the gospel, even when it demands making right what’s wrong. And when that happens, step into the fight. It’s the path to the kind of love that ultimately is going to matter most.
Let’s pray.
Father, the impact of love in our culture is something that many people talk about, and we long for it in greater ways, but not sometimes the love that’s talked about, but your love is what we long for. We long for a love that changes lives from the inside out. It comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere, a genuine faith. We long for that in the church and through the church. We long to be more loving.
But not at the expense of truth.
So even today, and as we begin this incredible study in 1 Timothy, may we learn how to do both well, to live in truth and to live with love, that we might be people who love you as you want to be loved, and love others as you want us to love them. We pray that for your glory and for others’ good, in Jesus’ name, amen.
