Ira Baptist Church
May 3

      • Psalms 61.1-2ESV

  • Higher Ground

      • Hebrews 12.1NIV2011

      • Hebrews 12.2NIV2011

  • How Firm a Foundation
  • I Set My Hope on Jesus
  • Imagine in your mind’s eye an aspiring, athletic young man.
    Imagine he get’s a call one day from an organization that says “we’ve seen your ability and athletic drive, and we want to sign you to travel for us playing football. You start in one year, and between now and then we’d like to give you an unlimited budget to train and prepare and hone your skills.”
    Excitedly, he sets himself up for success, hiring the best trainers and eating the best diet, spending every waking moment living and breathing football. He studies plays and techniques, trends and statistics, he has a goal of being the most well-rounded player in the game.
    Well, the year goes by and the organization reaches out to him, and says “we’d like to fly you over for our training camps beginning soon. We will send you the details and see you in a week.”
    A little later, he opens his email to see his travel and lodging itinerary - he sees that the flight takes him to Madrid in Spain. He gets an uneasy feeling.
    He gets on the flight the next week, lands in Madrid, finds his transportation and shows up at the training complex. To his dismay and utter devastation, what does he find?
    He was playing the wrong sport.
    Now, that is a made-up story for fun and for illustration of one thing.
    Being an expert in something doesn’t matter at all if you become an expert in the wrong thing.
    How does that apply to our study in 1st Timothy? Well, what we will find in 1st Timothy is that there is a real danger in churches of becoming experts in the wrong things, and swerving away from what really matters.

    The first order of a healthy church is to ensure that it is teaching, promoting, and operating according to God’s ways and not our own. Ours is a stewardship of the truth.

    1. A Greeting of Hope - vs. 1-2

    1 Timothy 1:1–2 ESV
    Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, To Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
    1 Timothy 1:1 ESV
    Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope,
    “The promise of hope was [is] one of Christianity’s most outstanding features in a world in which hope had little place.” - W. Mounce
    In that day, much as in ours, reason and society had sought to remove religion from the commonplace but had failed to replace it with any tangible hope.
    Consider the ways in which our world has gone bananas - a striving after wind that seeks to fill a void, a vacuum, caused by a hopeless and humanistic worldview.
    Humanistic, in that it places all the emphasis and all the possibility of solution or of satisfaction in our own hands rather than on something with the power to produce hope.
    Jesus, our hope
    not merely the object,
    not merely the authory, (although both...)
    but the essence and substance and foundation
    Christian hope is an objective fact, not a subjective emotion.
    Christian hope is a person, not a proposition
    Christian hope is a fulfilled reality, not a wish or dream
    1 Timothy 4:10 ESV
    For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.
    1 Timothy 5:5 ESV
    She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day,
    1 Timothy 6:17 ESV
    As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy.
    Titus 2:13 ESV
    waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,
    It is on Christ Jesus that our hope is fixed, centered, and realized. So it should bear no surprise that everything we are, do, teach, promote, and seek to reflect in this world is his.
    That is why Paul bases his authority firmly in this, that it is one which stems from God’s command and the hope that is found only in Jesus.
    That is also why Paul bases the good nature of their relationship on the relationship they have with God.
    1 Timothy 1:2 ESV
    To Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
    Three Benefits/blessings
    Grace
    Mercy
    Peace
    From God and Christ. An objective relationship.
    Do you consider, believer, that you have a direct, objective, and tangible relationship with the Godhead?
    Do you consider that these blessings of hope, grace, mercy, and peace come right from the hand of the God of the Universe to your life?
    And if so, then would you consider that what we do as believers, with these blessings, is to be in response and consideration of where the gifts come from?
    Illustration: Gift from loved one. How would it be used?

    2. An Urgent Task - vs. 3-4

    What is the problem? “Other Teaching”
    1 Timothy 1:3 ESV
    As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine,
    What was the “other teaching?”
    1 Timothy 1:4 ESV
    nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.
    Myths and Endless Genealogies
    Beware of teaching that wants to quickly jump outside of the Biblical text to glean from rabbit trails.
    Speculation says “I want to go deeper, to the minutia, to search out every possible conclusion from every possible trail” but neglects the practice and the obvious application of the plain things and the main thing.
    “Keep the plain things the main things and the main things the plain things”
    Why do we do this?
    Because we confuse knowing ideas with actually having learned or practiced them.
    When we move on to “bigger and better things” while still struggling with the obvious and the fundamental, then we have become academic rather than disciples.
    Let’s put it this way, have you ever known someone who knew a lot of bible trivia but didn’t act much like a Christian?
    Have you ever been that person?
    This promotes speculation, rather than
    “The stewardship of God that is by faith”
    1 Timothy 1:4 ESV
    nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.
    What is stewardship?
    It is the wise management of resources trusted to your care.
    Stewardship “from God”
    That is, God has entrusted resources to his church, and in this case, those who are teachers in the church.
    Not our truth, but His
    Not ours to mess with - ours to steward
    It is done “by faith”
    Can be “faithfully” or “trusting God in the doing”
    really, both
    1 Corinthians 4:1–2 ESV
    This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.
    1 Corinthians 4:4 ESV
    For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.
    This speaks to why unhealthy teaching begins and how it can creep in to even seemingly healthy churches - put a pin in that, because I want to point out the two paths by which unhealthy teaching makes an inroad.

    3. A Clear Aim - vs. 5-8

    The aim of our charge - What charge?
    verse 3 - the charge to certain persons to stop teaching unhealthy doctrine.
    Timothy, This is why it is so important that you stay there in Ephesus and do the hard work of stopping this false teaching.
    The aim?
    1 Timothy 1:5 ESV
    The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
    Love
    from a pure heart
    and a good conscience
    and sincere faith
    Now, we will break those down a bit in a moment - but to keep the context, let’s look at the next verses
    1 Timothy 1:6–7 ESV
    Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
    Certain persons - vs 3, the false teachers in the church
    Certain person - vs. 6 - not named by name but by their fruit
    What have they done?
    wandered away into vain discussion
    Empty babbling
    Not literally gibberish, but focusing on things that are so miniscule and fringe or even outside of the scripture that they are meaningless to the church.
    How did this happen?
    They swerved - from what?
    these things - Love that issues from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith
    Love - Agape
    A love that lays itself down for the beloved
    A love that sacrifices and has the purest of desires
    Really interesting, though this was a known word in the culture, it really did not find much use outside of Biblical literature.
    In a true sense, The rise and spread of the Gospel defined Agape love. Which is first Christ’s love for us, and the kind of love that he places within us for him and others.
    So what does love have to do with healthy teaching?
    Love seeks to teach what is true, what is best for others, rather than what scratches the itch.
    Love seeks not to find answers that pleases itself, but that serve the good of the church through God’s truth.
    Love says - “this is what I would like to be true, but this is not what is true - therefore, I can’t believe and teach it.”
    A pure or “cleansed” heart
    Titus 2:14 ESV
    who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
    A good conscience
    Romans 12:9 ESV
    Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.
    Genuine, a Spirit-informed conscience that can teach or do what it believes with full and genuine assurance
    Sincere faith
    A personal trust in the savior, our hope.
    So all this says, the goal is not just “love” of any sort and undefined, but love that stems from being cleansed by, led by, and trusting personally in our Lord.
    So what does this have to do with these false teachers, then? Well, they started their worthless teaching when they swerved from these things.
    Which leads to one of those two roads that I said we see unhealthy teaching ride in on
    Unhealthy teaching begins when teachers forget whose opinion really matters
    Remember what we read earlier, when Paul was explaining stewardship in 1 Corinthians 4? His aim and measure of faithfulness was not whether he thought he was faithful, or whether others thought he was faithful - but that God would find him faithful.
    Church, this is our clear and distinct goal. That we teach, promote, and operate according to God’s ways, and not our own.
    Unhealthy teaching begins when teachers leave off their love for Christ and the church.
    It is interesting here, that the false teaching is not primarily an intellectual problem, but a moral problem. Paul does not say that these teachers were persuaded by arguments or logic or better reasoning, but that they swerved away from love. And once they did that, they lost their course. Their eyes were off the main things. They delved into what scratched an itch rather than what God would have his people to know and follow.
    Revelation 2:2–4 ESV
    “ ‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.
    See this picture?
    Strong stand against evil
    Patient and resolute
    enduring and perseverant
    But...
    Abandoned love
    Revelation 2:5 ESV
    Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.
    And there is a warning for a church in any place and any age.
    When we swerve from keeping the main things the main thing
    If we swerve from knowing whose we are, who is really in charge
    If we swerve from out first love - our Savior who died for us, and our brothers and sisters whom he died for
    Then we run the risk of becoming irrelevant and useless in this world.
    1 Corinthians 13:1–2 ESV
    If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

      • 1 Timothy 1:1–2NIV2011

      • 1 Timothy 1:1NIV2011

      • 1 Timothy 4:10NIV2011

      • 1 Timothy 5:5NIV2011

      • 1 Timothy 6:17NIV2011

      • Titus 2:13NIV2011

      • 1 Timothy 1:2NIV2011

      • 1 Timothy 1:3NIV2011

      • 1 Timothy 1:4NIV2011

      • 1 Timothy 1:4NIV2011

      • 1 Corinthians 4:1–2NIV2011

      • 1 Corinthians 4:4NIV2011

      • 1 Timothy 1:5NIV2011

      • 1 Timothy 1:6–7NIV2011

      • Titus 2:14NIV2011

      • Romans 12:9NIV2011

      • Revelation 2:2–4NIV2011

      • Revelation 2:5NIV2011

      • 1 Corinthians 13:1–2NIV2011

  • There Is One Gospel

      • Jude 1.24-25ESV

Ira Baptist Church
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