Fight the Good Fight | 1 Timothy

As Paul brings his letter to a close, he leaves Timothy with a charge that still speaks to us: flee what destroys, pursue what gives life, and hold tightly to the faith once handed down. Pastor Cameron wraps up our journey through 1 Timothy by calling us to fight the good fight with gentleness, guard the gospel entrusted to us, and remember who we are in Christ.

1 Timothy 6:11-16 | additional: 1 Timothy 6:20-21, Matthew 22:34-40

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Cameron Lienhart

Cameron is the Senior Pastor of Conduit Ministries

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Heavenly Father, we're thankful, Lord, for the things that you have done in this community, how you have brought us near to yourself, how you have loved us, how you've knit us together to be your church, Lord. Lord, we just remind ourselves that this is not a community owned by any person. It's not even Cameron and I's, Lord, it is yours. Lord, we are all simply servants and members of your body. Lord, this morning, as Pastor Cameron opens your word, I pray that you would give him spiritual power, that your Holy Spirit would fill him with your sense of direction, and that you would guide him, Lord, that we as listeners would behold you in your word, and that we might hear the message you have for us today. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. Thank you, Pastor Luke. Good morning, Conduit, how are you today? Good. I think, as I was listening to what Pastor Luke was saying, just struck by the goodness of God to us as a church. You know, one of the reasons that we literally need to hire three people or for three separate positions is because, I

Don't know if you've noticed lately, but the parking lot is full and the kids' rooms are full and this room is full and everything's full, and we continue to, we continue to discern how to best receive and steward and lead and manage the growth that the church is experiencing, and I don't want you ever to think that we're always going to get it right, because I can tell you I am not going to always get it right, but we are always going to pursue it in the most faithful way that we know how and trying to make the best decisions in the right moments for the glory of God and for the building of his kingdom and for the health of the church, and so this is just one of those next steps where we feel like, hey, we might need some more people on the team to help us move into kind of this next season of ministry, and so that's where we're at. Last week we had more people here than we have had on a regular Sunday ever, 289 people in the building, almost a third of that were kids, so God is doing

Something, God is doing something significant, and we want to position ourselves to receive that in a way that's faithful. We are finishing up the letter to Timothy, 1 Timothy this morning, and then we have some other things planned for the rest of the year. I really want to talk to you about where we're going in the new year, because I'm really excited about it. I spent some time in study, even for some sermon series in the new year this past week, and I am ready to go, but we're going to finish up 1 Timothy in the best way that we know possible this morning. This was Paul, the Apostle Paul's letter to his protege, a pastor named Timothy who was pastoring a church in the city of Ephesus. Now if that word sounds familiar or that place sounds familiar, it's where we get the letter to the Ephesians that Paul wrote, wrote this to Timothy's church at some point in his ministry. But the letter that he writes to Timothy hits on a, in a very short letter, only six chapters, hits on a ton of different topics, both that you would say are of like a really deeply spiritual and theological nature, like you would, like you would expect a book of the Bible to sound

Like. And then other things were like more practical in nature about how Paul desires Timothy to lead, organize, and pastor the church. Hey, do this with the widows. Make sure you're doing this for the old men. Encourage the men to do this. Encourage the women to do this. Don't do that. Don't do this. Some of the areas that Paul hits in his letter to Timothy, he warns them against false teachers, people who are in the congregation, but who are leading others astray. He, he talks about the power of Jesus to save even the worst of sinners. He, he encourages them to, to pray on all kinds of occasions with all kinds of prayers for all kinds of people. Specifically, he said, I want you to pray for kings and people in authority over you. Paul talks to Timothy in this letter about how men in the congregation need to have self-control and gentleness and that women should be, have propriety and a pursuit of godliness. He talks about the created order of leadership in the worshiping community and the character and the skills necessary for the men and women that are called to those positions. He has warnings for the people in the church to avoid

Legalistic viewpoints on things like food and things like marriage. He talks about the importance of training yourself towards godliness. And he talks about how the, the practical direction of how to minister to people like widows in the church community. And then he talks more on false teachers and talks more on guarding good doctrine. And he talks about the treachery of false teaching and about how pursuing contentment and avoiding idolatrous attitudes towards money is a pursuit that all Christians should have. And then he comes to the very end of his letter and it's kind of almost like, well, what, how do you, how do you like say bye? How do you wrap up something that's as kind of deep, both theological and, and like has a practical nature of it like this, this letter, because that's really all the things that I just wrote are just like walking through each chapter and pulling out the main themes. And there's things that I skipped little things that I skipped. There's just a lot there. But in the last, I would say about 10 verses or so of the letter, he, for the, for, for

The most part summarizes the deeply foundational things that he set out to tell Timothy. And he really kind of like gives himself an underhand pitch for the next letter that he writes Timothy, which we're not going to study right now, but I would encourage you to read on your own second Timothy. All right. Very short, but very rich in content in detail. So his, what I want, what I'm going to propose is that this is Paul's essential final message or like his closing or summary statement to the book of first Timothy. It's this right here. There's going to be things that you need to flee. There's going to think they're going to be things that you need to pursue. I want you to remember who you are. I want you to hold tight to and fight for the confession that you once made. And I want you to keep loving God and keep loving people. Now this is a pretty, this is a pretty, this is a pretty like microcosm type of statement to most of the biblical material that we have. Hey, there's good things. There's things about your life or there's things that exist in your life

That you need to flee from, like get as far away from as possible. And also in the midst of fleeing from things, there are things that you need to distinctively pursue. To flee from one thing leads to a pursuit of another thing naturally. You need to remember who you are. Make sure that you are rooted in the identity that God gives to you and offers to you through faith in his son, Jesus, rather than having someone else tell you who you are, even yourself. You need to hold tight to and remember the confession that you once made. Now we're going to talk about this in a minute, that Paul's not super clear about what he even means when he says, hey, hold tight to the confession. But we have an assumption that Timothy knows what he means and we can make some pretty good inferences about what exactly that confession was made. And then finally, he wants, he wants Timothy to pursue the, this great commandment, to love God and to love others. So let's read from our scripture this morning. We're going to read first Timothy chapter six verses 11 through 16. And then for a reason that I'll share with you in a minute, we're going to skip 17, 18 and 19. And we're going to read

20 and 21. Okay. Here's what Paul says to Timothy in the closing of his first letter. But as for you, oh man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time. He who is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. In 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 some have

Swerved from the faith. Grace be with you. Listen, this is good advice to Timothy. This is really good advice to Timothy, as it is also really good advice to you and I. So let's just start going down through some of these things. He starts in verse 11, "But as for you, O man of God, flee these things." I wanna be clear about something in our Christian life. Paul talks about it here. He also talks about it in letters to like 1 Corinthians where he uses this word, he uses this word flee. There are things in your life, there are things in your walk with Jesus, things that are to be confronted and engaged, and there are things that are to be given a very wide berth. Sometimes in our approach to fight for our own holiness, we engage things in even spiritual practice that we are actually meant to flee from, to run away from, to get as far away from as humanly possible. In fact, one of the things that Paul says in the letters of the 1 Corinthians is as an example, he's like, "I want you to flee from all, " do you know it, "sexual immorality." Don't get up

To the line of being sexually immoral, kind of peer over it, survey the landscape a little bit, maybe see how close to the line you can get without stepping over it because it's fun, right? But Paul says, "No, there are things in your spiritual life that you can engage with, but there are things in your spiritual life that you need to flee from, that you need to run from, that you need to create as much space between you and it as you possibly can." Paul gives a good example in 1 Corinthians of sexual immorality, but he does not do us the favor of saying exactly what he wants Timothy to flee from, at least in this moment here. So we have to take a little bit of inference by the content of the rest of the letter. Everything that we just read in the first five and a half chapters, we just say, "Okay, well, if you were to take all of the stuff that Timothy talked about in a negative way, could you make the inference that he's like, 'Hey, Timothy, I want you to flee from all of these things.'" Well, what things, Paul? The things that I just wrote you about in the letter, all of these things. And if you were to have kind

Of a line of reasoning like that, which I think is reasonable, you would say things like this, that out of the context of the letter, Paul would tell Timothy to flee from a preoccupation with—this is from chapter 1, verses 4-7—a preoccupation with myths, endless genealogies, promotion of speculation, vain theological discussion, and people who desire to be teachers of the word, but do not pursue faithful understanding of it. Flee from them. Flee from it. Flee from doctrine and belief that poisons the mind and that throws you into distractions. Also into chapter 1, verses 19-20, flee from any thought of rejecting the gospel message as it has been given to you. Not like a wrestling with it, like, "Will I accept this or will I not? Will I believe this point? Will I believe it? Will I not believe it?" But Paul's continued commandment, his continued encouragement to Timothy is, "Receive the message as it has been given to you." Receive it in full. Flee from a spirit of rejection over it. In chapter 4, verses 1-5, Paul says that there are demonic and insincere teachings and teachers infiltrating their way into the Christian community whose

Consciences have been seared and who uphold legalism and shame-inducing doctrines in order to exercise control over people. Flee from them. He says again in chapter 4, this is a common theme in Paul's letter to Timothy, that they should flee from irreverent and silly myths. Later in chapter 4, he says in verses 11-14 that there is a, that we can fear from or we should fear or flee from a fear of man and a neglect of the gifts that God has given to you to build up his kingdom and to serve his church. And then lastly, in the second part of chapter 5, verse 20, to flee from partiality. Flee from prejudging someone. I would like to offer perhaps what I think is kind of like a summary statement of all of the things that Paul says here that can kind of, that kind of encapsulate everything that we just talked about that Paul would encourage Timothy to flee from. You could find it in 1 Timothy chapter 6 verses 2-5. I think it's kind of a summary of the whole of the letter. See, is it? We have an IV up here. I'll read it from the screen. Those who have believing masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow

Believers. This is what Pastor Luke preached on last week, right? So for our sake, it's going to start there in like the second part of verse 2, instead as a summary, right? Instead, they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow believers and are devoted to the welfare of their slaves. These are the things you are to teach and insist on. And then he goes into it. If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, they are conceded and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest and controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions, and constant friction between people of corrupt mind who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain. So Paul, again, kind of like steps on the gas of this idea that there is a form of false belief and false doctrine and false teaching that does exist in the church and that it should be recognized, pointed out by the elders, guarded from and

Fleed from as a church. What is kind of like the summary statement of all of these things here? I think that if you were to take all of that information from all of the letter that Paul sent to Timothy, you could say something like this. What does Paul want Timothy to flee from in his closing statement? To flee from things that distract from or distort pure doctrine or belief and to pursue godly living. What does Paul ultimately want to tell Timothy? Hey, you need to flee from anything that distracts from or distorts pure doctrine, pure belief, and instead pursue godly living. See, what has become difficult in our, I would tell you, what has become more and more and more and more difficult in our culture is to discern what is and what is not pure doctrinal Biblical belief. I mean, I don't want to be the dude, it feels weird that I'm up here like, well, when I was in school, back when I was learning, because it doesn't feel like that long ago. But listen, the landscape of both Biblical study and theological

Education has shifted more in the last 10 to 15 years than I would say it shifted in the previous 100. Because now, any dummy with a phone, any dummy with a phone, I mean that's as charitably as I can say it. Paul uses much stronger words for these people, does he not? Teachers with seared consciences who seek to leverage legalism and shame inducing doctrines for their own corrupt minds and their own financial gain. Paul's words are a lot more strong, but any dummy with a phone can get in front of the phone and make a very authoritarian statement about what the Bible says or what God really means or how Jesus would act or respond in this situation or that situation or this situation or that situation. We have a generation of Christians who are getting the majority of their theology from places like TikTok and Instagram rather than in the actual submission to God's word and the leadership of the men and women whom he's placed over them to teach the word to. And so it's an extraordinarily, I don't want to say, we don't need to sound any alarmist in

That way, but what I do want to say is we live in this culture. We live in this culture where there is a flood of opinion. Everyone's got something to say, but very few people have wisdom. And we need to learn how to discern the difference between what is true and what is counterfeit, to guard our mind against counterfeit truth and belief of which there is a mountain of in this culture. How are we to guard our minds against counterfeit truth? How are we to be ensured that we can flee from the distortion of or distraction from pure and distinct doctrine? Listen, I'm going to tell you the way. This is not a secret. How do I make sure that I don't get confused about all of the theological opinions that I see scrolling on my phone every single day? The number one way to spot a counterfeit is about, is the number one method to spot a counterfeit is to know the real thing better. You have to know the real thing better. The Department of Treasury, who is responsible for the Secret Service, one of the, we think of the Secret Service as the people who guard

The president. But part of the Secret Service's job, actually their first job was to protect the United States Department of Treasury against counterfeit bills. Still, even to this day, the main block of teaching that Secret Service agents who are going to go into the counterfeiting portion of that agency, the main block of teaching they do is not how to examine a counterfeit bill in order to determine if it's actually actually a counterfeit. The thing that they actually study is the stamps that are made to make the real bills. They become absolute experts in the mints or the stamps that produce the actual bills that we use because they know if they can get enough FaceTime with the real thing that when a counterfeit one comes before them, it's going to be so blatantly obvious that it's not real. And this is exactly how you and I should approach the mountain of theological material that is out there and protect our minds from grasping onto things that distract or distort pure doctrine. The real thing that we study in order to guard our minds against counterfeit truth is the

Word of God. This is the primary text of our study. This is the primary text of our mental, emotional, and spiritual guardrail that keeps us safe from believing things that distort and distract us from what it actually is that the Lord wants to say to us. The real thing is God's Word brought to the people, brought to the community of faith, brought to the church in clarity and precision and timeliness as Paul says by the elders of the church. Now listen, this is not to negate the importance of personal study when I say something like this. When I say that Paul's method here is to, is that the elders who are men with extraordinary character as he outlined in chapter three are to bring sound doctrine in teaching in such a way as to guard the flock against improper teaching. And so that responsibility and that calling rests in the ministry of the elders. But that is not to neglect, that is not to say that we, we are to neglect the personal study of scripture at all. You aren't just relying on me or pastor Luke, but it's clear from Paul's letter to Timothy that it was

His and the other elders, both calling and responsibility to ensure that which was taught and upheld in the worshiping community represented the purity of the message as it has been passed down to the apostolic ministry and life of Jesus. And this is why Paul stands so hard on the character of these men. It's because they, they, they must be, they must be trusted. So we have these things that we, that we flee from. We flee from anything that distorts or distracts from pure doctrine. And then we get into this where Paul says, I don't want you to just flee from things. I want you to pursue something. And here he does us a favor by telling Timothy exactly what he wants him to pursue. There are things to flee and there are things to pursue. Paul, I don't think here doesn't seem to like aim to give a comprehensive list of all of the things that we should be pursuing in our lives and our spiritual lives, but rather it's a reminder of the pursuits that kind of overflow in our lives from a life that is surrendered to Jesus. He says five

Things here. He talks about righteousness. I want you to pursue righteousness. Sometimes it's helpful in, in understanding what he's saying to, to, to think of the negation of the thing. Now, righteousness here is not a funny one. I'll just say it's, one that's a little bit different because there's two forms of righteousness in scripture, depending on the verb form that exists in the Greek. There's righteousness that stands as like your legal standing, like a not guilty type of righteousness. You are declared not guilty. This is the righteousness that comes not by our own good things that we do, but is the righteousness that is imparted to us by Jesus Christ. And it's actually his righteousness given to us because we do not have what a righteousness of our own. So there's a legal standing of righteousness that declares our status. You are righteous. You are declared not guilty by your faith in Jesus Christ, not by anything that you did or didn't do all by what Jesus did. You're righteous. Okay. But there's a second usage of the word righteous in the verb form here. And that's actually what this verb form is.

It's righteousness as it applies to conduct. How does the person who's legal standing before God because of faith in Jesus Christ, how do they actually act? They act in righteous ways. They act in such a way so as to display who they actually are internally through faith in Christ. And this is the form that Paul uses here. Righteousness, not in the legal sense, but in the conduct sense. I am righteous as in the opposite of being a wicked person. So I want you to pursue righteousness, Timothy. I want you to pursue faith, Timothy, as in the opposite of fear. I want you to pursue love, Timothy, as in the opposite of condemnation. You're gathering these negations out of the context of the whole of the letter. I want you to pursue steadfastness, Timothy, as in the opposite of being fickle and double-minded and blown about by winds and waves. And I want you to pursue gentleness, Timothy, as in the opposite of being ill-tempered or violent or angry. Pursue these things, Timothy. See, we could say something like, we were to talk about all of these things that we, if we didn't pursue them, outside of Jesus Christ, right? If we were to summarize them, we might say

Something like, well, outside of Jesus Christ, you showed up to life always angry. Maybe that's your testimony. It's mine. You showed up to life always angry. You never stood on any principles or beliefs. You heaped condemnation on others. Internally, you were fearful and that fear came out of you in the form of wicked living. Paul says, hey, Timothy, I want you to pursue these things because here's actually how I want your life to look like. But now, oh, Timothy, now, oh, man of God, now, oh, conduit, pursue a life pleasing to God, reject fear and live into a radical faith. When the world is changing its mind like it changes its underwear. Be steadfast, immovable in love and unshakable in gentleness. Pursue these things to this you were called. As is typical for Paul, he continues on in his closing to Timothy by using words that we most Scott. Well, I don't know if I'm not gonna say most scholars, some scholars, this pastor seems to think I seem to believe that Paul had some sort of I think he was a bro. Okay. I think he hit the gym. I think he liked the things of the athletic nature because in almost all of his writings, all of his letters, he's

Using metaphors that I think were important. Hey, fight the good fight, run the race, win the prize, get to the finish line, right? He's using these things that I think we're understanding to him and he uses one here. He says, I want you to fight the good fight of the faith and take hold of eternal life to which you were called. What is Paul trying to say to Timothy here? What is he talking about? Fight the good fight of the faith. What does that even mean? Well, the context of the whole letter demands that we understand it that Paul is almost certainly talking about that we should fight the good faith as it has to do with proper doctrine and theological belief that what they believe. Hey, Timothy, what your people believe matters. Don't take it lightly. Don't take it flippantly. Don't step out of the fight, get into the ring, fight the good fight. They need to know the truth, Timothy, and you are the one to bring it to them. Now, what are we to say then? How does that, how do we kind of like approach this from Paul to Timothy and kind of apply it effectively to our own lives? Well, what is clear and what becomes clear from the whole

Of the letter is that there are multiple ways to understand the word fight. Now, if you were to say, Cameron Lionheart, when you hear the word fight, what do you mean? I mean a particular thing usually. And it's not full of gentleness and love, right? It's usually pretty physical. And that's generally how most of our culture understands the word or the action of fighting. But I believe that Jesus fought a good fight of faith, right? I believe that Jesus was a fighter. And if I look at the life and ministry of Jesus, his kind of practice of fighting looks quite differently than how I think of the word fight when I think fight. Because Jesus had every, absolutely every resource under heaven and on earth at his fingertips and in his disposable disposal. And he could have used any of them with violent aggression against the Romans, against the Jews, against the wickedness of the sinful life that everyone was living both in that time and now. And instead, he did something different. He fought differently. He spoke differently. He rejected violence as a means to get his point across. When his closest disciples picked up the tools of violence

To fight on their own, not only did he stop them, but he healed the ones that they hurt. Fighting looks a lot different in the darkness of our own hearts as it does in the actual practice of Jesus. This is something we need to come and wrestle with in our culture where everything's like, they don't believe like I do, so we're fighting. Even in the fight against the evil of false doctrine and those who live with kind of an ill intent towards the believers, Paul wanted to remind Timothy that it was his conduct. It was his life and faith. It was his example that would witness the truth to people's lives. We could say something similar to the fact that like, hey, Timothy, here's how I want you to fight the good fight. I want you to fight it with righteousness, and I want you to fight it with love, and I want you to fight it with faith, and I want you to fight it with steadfastness, and ultimately I want you to fight it with what? Gentleness. See we cannot fight even for proper doctrine and proper belief. We cannot fight in such

A way so as to separate ourselves from the very source of the strength that we need in the fight, which is the character of Christ. See we may win the fight by beating the opponent with any means necessary to be counted in the win column, but we can win the fight and lose the fight at the same time. We can win the argument, we can win the war, and we can lose everything by defaming the name of Christ through our words, through our character, and through our examples. See we do not fight with hostility and wickedness as the weapons that we wield. The weapons that we wield are the very things that Paul told Timothy to pursue. Righteousness, steadfastness, love, faith, and gentleness. A way of wielding power towards the other that promotes reconciliation and peace rather than division and destruction. It's also interesting to kind of think through the idea of what exactly was the battleground in which Paul was telling Timothy to fight. The whole context of his letter to Timothy is within the context of the worshiping community. He wasn't like, "Hey Timothy, go out there in the public square in the middle of a culture that hates God and whose hearts are darkened

And hardened against him and go out there and just start swinging theological truths until you knock some wicked pagan out with it." Paul's, Timothy's, context was not the culture in the world. Timothy's context was the church. Hey, the fighting that needs to happen, the fighting the good fight that needs to happen, the rejection of the distortion of distraction of good doctrine. Hey Timothy, that's primarily happening in your believing community. What was Timothy's battleground? It was the church.

This is not, this is not like, I'm not saying that we have an isolationist perspective where we never engage the world with the theological truth of the gospel, the hope that, the very hope that they need. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that, well, no, like all of the stuff happens here and just they'll figure it out on their own. Not what I'm saying, even a tiny little bit. What I'm saying is what I find is that we, that the church as a whole, the whole of the Christian church, often over focuses on the world as the problem that needs to change and under focuses on the correctives to pursue holiness and righteousness within our own body. As the method to bring about change and revival in the world. Probably one of the most often quoted portions of scripture when it comes to like evil and prayer and revival of second Chronicles 7, chapter 7, verse 14, right? You know, if my people who are called by my name will hum with themselves and seek my face and pray, turn from their sins and seek and pray, then what? I will

Hear from heaven and I will forgive their sins and I will heal their land. And often in our gusto to see the darkness of the world healed by the power of the gospel, we're like, Hey, you guys need to pray and repent and seek its face. And then when you guys out there, when you do that, then the Lord will heal the land completely ignoring the context of who that is addressed to in second Chronicles, chapter 7, 14. What are the very first few words of that prayer? If my people will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven. I will forgive their sins and I will heal their land. The corrective is to the believers, those who are the people of God. Now, listen, it was clear that Timothy believed and had been passed down to him things from his grandmother and his mother and Paul as his kind of mentor that had both practical implications for his life, his righteousness, and the health of the church and life in Christian community. And Paul wanted him to fight to preserve the things that he had

Received from those people. Hey, you need to fight to preserve the purity of the message that you received from your grandmother, Lois, and your mother, Eunice. And you need to fight to preserve the purity of the doctrine that you received and teaching from me as your apostolic father. You need to fight to do it, to hold tightly to a confession of Jesus' lordship. See, Paul knew well, Paul knew as well as anyone the hostility and difficulty of living for Christ in a world that wanted nothing to do with him. And like I said, he often used metaphors like, hey, get in the game, right? Run the race, fight the fight, contest for the faith, get to the finish line,

Get the prize to, I think, keep himself focused to kind of understand what was actually at stake and what he was to do. And over and over and over again, Paul came back to this primary message like, okay, well, if I'm fighting for something, then what am I actually supposed to, like, what's the trophy that I'm going to win for the fight if I win it? If I run the race that's marked out with me with perseverance, and I don't stop, and I cross the finish line when everything is against me living in this hostile world, what actually do I win at the end of that race? And the winning thing for Paul unilaterally across all of the New Testament is this, like the prize is eternal life. You run the race that's marked out with you for you, you run it with perseverance, you fight the fight, you get in the ring, you contend for the gospel, and the prize is eternal life. This is not absent from Paul's letter to Timothy here, fight the good fight of the faith, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, about which you made the good confession

And the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time. So the fight, the race, whatever analogy you want to use, the fight that Paul was calling Timothy in would be culminated in the return of Jesus Christ. You're going to fight until he returns, keep the commandment unstained and unblemished without above reproach until that point. It was always been and has always been for Paul the goal of keeping eternity in his focus. Because listen, if we keep the world in focus, it's like 0.26 seconds to discouragement, to heartache, to hopelessness. If all that is ever crosses the threshold of our view, ever crosses the threshold of our mind, of our eyes, of our ears, of our hearts, the content that we let in is only of worldly perspective, then it's no wonder we're going to live in a

Perpetual state of hopelessness, despair, depression, anxiety, fear, insecurity, because that is the stock and trade of our enemy who seeks to distract us and distort us from the purity of doctrinal belief that says, "Hey, look, you were met for more than this."

And if you would just for a moment, get a glimpse of the eternity that God has in store for you,

The fight would become easier, the race would become quicker. Eternal life, take hold of the eternal life to which you have been called, remember who you are.

Paul goes on to say, "Keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ." I fought with Paul in my head a bunch of times over this statement this week. I was like, Paul, why couldn't you just give us like, just

Give us a little bit more information here? What do you mean, the commandment? Keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. What commandment would you be speaking about, Paul? There are 613 of them in the Old Testament, literally. Is there one you had in mind? Because we're eager to do it, right? If Paul is saying to Timothy, a pastor in Ephesus, "Hey, whatever you do, the commandment, keep it unstained and free from reproach until Jesus comes back, okay?"

I want to, sure. Need a little bit more, though. What are you talking about, Paul? What exactly do you mean by the commandment? Now, this phrase doesn't have origin in any of Paul's writings or ministry. We can't go to like Corinthians and be like, well, what did he mean over here? We'll go over here and see what he meant by the commandment. He doesn't talk about it at all. It's only the Timothy. It's not something that we find uniquely to him, and he never mentions what it is specifically. But listen, this is where we use something called the rule of faith. Do you know what the rule of faith is? So, the rule of faith is when you come to something like a, maybe a difficult passage of scripture, particularly in the New Testament, but also in the whole of the scripture, you come to a difficult passage of scripture and you're like, man, I have no idea what that means. That just kind of feels like out of nowhere. The rule of faith says that a faithful way to interpret and to understand scriptures that are difficult

Is to use other scripture to help you interpret it because we have a belief as Christians in the inerrancy of the scripture. So that one portion of scripture is not going to negate or speak falsely against another portion. Okay. So that scripture can be used to translate scripture. And it's a faithful way of saying like, well, my gosh, Paul, what did you mean by the commandment? Ah, hold on a second. Is Paul's ministry, specifically his leadership and his influence over Timothy. Do we believe that has somehow historically cut off from the influence or ministry of Jesus? Being like Paul was living in a vacuum and was not affected by the ministry of Jesus at all. No, we don't believe that at all, right? We don't, we don't believe that. Well, you have like Paul's messages over here and Jesus's messages over here and they're way different. So you just kind of choose which one you like. No, we believe that they are faithfully consistent to communicate both the heart and will and nature of God. And so when you look then at the gospels and you're like, well, is there a, the commandment in the gospels? We all think very clearly. Oh yeah, of course there

Is. That was a whole like section that Jesus gotten this argument with the Pharisees and in particular, Matthew chapter 22, 34 through 40, when the Pharisees and the teachers of the law came to Jesus and be like, Hey, a teacher rabbi, what is the most important commandment in all of the law? It's like, well, I'll tell you, it's to love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is this, to love your neighbor as yourself. All of the come, all of the law and prophets hang on these two things. What even what Jesus is saying here is like, Hey, look, you can use, you can use all of scripture to interpret scripture here. That all just means love. It's all an expression of love. And so if we were to understand the connectivity of both Paul and Jesus ministries, we could say very faithfully, I think, and this is where I'm standing as your pastor this morning to say that the commandment that I think that Paul wanted Timothy to, to, keep above reproach and uns, unstained was this absolute commitment

To pursuing love of God and love of others. In verse 15, Paul continues in his letter, his ending. He says, which he will display at the proper time. And then talks about the nature of God. He says, he who is blessed and only sovereign, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality, who can dwell, who dwells in unapproachable light, who no one has ever seen. No one can ever see to him be honor and glory and eternal dominion now and forever. Amen. What does Paul want to do here to Timothy? He just wants to remind him once more. Hey, hey, Timothy, in case you forgot, let me just remind you for a second who it is that we serve.

Let me just bring this back to the fore. Let, let this cream rise to the top of this message. And look, any, any, any race that you run, any difficult battle that you fight, anything that you're struggling over, whatever forces there are in the universe, that are against you or against the church, they are subject to and subservient to the one true God who dwells in unapproachable light.

Now, the reason we're skipping verses 17 and 19 is because they're essentially a brief restatement of what was preached two weeks ago, by Jim Bondtrager, our, our guest speaker that day.

And we skip over then to, they're, they're not insignificant. They're just can be rightly understood in connection with what we had already talked about. And then we, we're finally, we're, we're finishing up here and this is where we're going to end this morning in verses 20 and 21. He says, Oh, Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. So a really significant statement here. Guard the deposit entrusted to you. It refers to something that has been entrusted to another. A deposit is something that has been entrusted to another for safekeeping and that the trustee has a sacred duty to guard or protect. So one of the last things that Paul says, Timothy in this letter, guard the deposit that's been given. Guard the responsibility that's been given, guard the teaching that's been given, guard the doctrine that's been given, guard the character that is yours in Jesus Christ. Guard here means to preserve unchanged and unharmed. The emphasis here suggests that there was a body of Christian teaching that could be passed on and should be viewed as a sacred tradition and therefore not changed, but rather transmitted like other sacred traditions from one faithful guardian of the deposit to

Another. In this case, Paul to Timothy, but then in second Timothy, what you're going to say, Timothy is charged with passing on that deposit to elders in the church.

Probably one of the most significant comments on this verse in particular is from Leo the Great. He says this, what is meant by the deposit? What is the thing that Paul, that Timothy is to guard?

That which is committed to you, not that which is invented by you. That which you have received, not that which you have devised.

A thing not of wit, but of learning. Not of private assumption, but of public tradition. A thing brought to you, not brought forth from you. Thus, you must not be an author, but an authorized keeper, not a leader, but a follower. Keep the deposit.

The deposit of God's gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ passed on from generation to generation, guarded by the elders of the church, is to be kept and passed on.

That's Paul's ending to Timothy in his letter. I'm going to read to you what I think from his own letter is the summary of all that Paul would say if he could say it about this message, and then we're going to close. It's from first Timothy. This was the week that I think Eric preached for us. First Timothy chapter one verses 15 to 17. If you had to summarize all of the letter to first Timothy, what would we say? What could we say? I believe this.

Here's a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came to the world to save sinners, of which I am the worst.

But for that very reason, I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. Now to the king, eternal and immortal, invisible, the only God, the honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Jesus Christ came into the world to serve and to save sinners. You could just put a period at the end of the sentence right there. That'd be it. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. We happen to be some of the worst of them.

But we only serve now in our redeemed, righteous states before God as an example for an unbelieving world

Of the patience of God to bring us to redemption. And it is to him that all glory belongs.

Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Passed down from Paul to Timothy and now through the pages of scripture in the history of the church, Lord. We pray, Lord, that you would help us as a church and those ordained, Lord, to lead it, to guard the deposit that has been given.

That we would not make the message, Lord, ever about us. But it would always be about you.

Lord, Paul's words there primarily point to you, a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.

We thank you, Lord, for your mercy. That in us, Jesus might display his perfect patience as an example of those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, the honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.