Let's turn now to 1st Timothy chapter 4
once again, and we'll pick up again tonight
in verse 6, but we're going to make
it through the end of the chapter this
evening, and then next week we're going to
come back and spend an extended amount of
time on a particular verse, but we'll go
ahead and get through the remainder of the
chapter tonight.
But once again, as we pick up in
verse 6, Paul says, if you instruct the
brethren in these things, you will be a
good minister of Jesus Christ and that these
things, of course, are the things that he
was previously referring to instructing the brethren basically
in the goodness and the grace of God,
in contrast to legalistic kinds of things, restrictions
on what you can eat and whether you
can be married and those kinds of things.
Paul says, no, that's that's not what it's
about.
It's not about legalism.
It's not about a bunch of manmade rules.
It's about the goodness of God.
It's about the grace of God, the mercy
of God, the love of God, all those
wonderful things.
And he says to Timothy, if you instruct
the people in these things, you will be
a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in
the words of faith and of good doctrine,
which you have carefully followed, but reject profane
and old wives fables and exercise yourself toward
godliness for bodily exercise profits a little bit.
Godliness is profitable for all things, having promise
of the life that now is and of
that which is to come.
This is a faithful saying and worthy of
all acceptance for to this end, we both
labor and suffer reproach because we trust in
the living God, who is the savior of
all men, especially of those who believe these
things command and teach.
So remember, Paul is writing this letter to
his protege, if you will, Timothy.
Timothy is Paul's disciple.
He's raising him up and he's in the
ministry together with Timothy.
Ultimately, he's going to sort of pass the
mantle of his own ministry on to Timothy.
But here at this point, he's encouraging him.
And giving him instruction on what it is
to be a good minister of Jesus Christ,
he also reminds Timothy that the ministry is
about labor, the ministry is about working hard
for the kingdom of God, that is what
the ministry is about.
It's.
There's labor involved, but, you know, I must
say that there's so much joy in it
that the labor aspect to it, it doesn't
really seem like that big of a deal.
You know, so often people will say to
me, oh, oh, Pastor Brian, I hate to
bother you with this.
You know what?
You're not bothering me with this.
This is what we do.
This is what we delight to do.
We love to do the things of the
ministry.
Yeah, there's labor involved.
There's long hours, a lot of times.
And there's, you know, as a true minister
of Jesus Christ, it's twenty four seven.
You don't clock out at a certain time
and then say, oh, sorry, too late.
You know, I've already clocked out.
You know, you need prayer.
Could you come back tomorrow at nine?
That's when I clock in again.
You know, you don't do that in the
ministry.
Well, some people might, but you're not supposed
to.
There is labor involved, but there's so much
joy in the midst of it that it
just sort of offsets that whole thing.
I was watching a little presentation last night.
On the Welsh revival, Welsh revival happened back
in 1904, and the the real intense period
of that was from 1904 through 1906.
And there was a young man who was
sort of the leading figure, humanly speaking, in
the Welsh revival.
His name was Evan Roberts.
And at the age of 13, I think
it was he had this intense burden for
a fresh outpouring of the spirit of God
upon his homeland, Wales.
And he began to pray at the age
of 13.
Ten years later, God poured out the spirit
in an extraordinary way.
And for three straight years, this guy ministered
almost daily around the clock.
They would have meetings that would go till
three and four o'clock in the morning.
There were so many people getting saved.
And there was such a presence and a
power of God.
People just never wanted to leave.
And so for three straight years, there was
just this intense labor.
But at the same time, as he would
be questioned about, you know, how do you
keep going?
And, you know, you need to get rest.
And you're you're, you know, you're you're putting
way too much time into this and all
of that.
And he would say, you know, it's fine.
It's the Lord's with me.
The Lord strengthened me.
And God kept him and blessed him through
that time.
And then at the end of that three
year period, things didn't die down.
Actually, the revival kind of spread around the
world.
And then there came a time for him
to rest.
He just sort of stepped back.
God had done a great work.
And then they just, in a sense, sort
of enjoyed what God had done.
But the point is this, even though there
was intense labor, the joy and the peace
and the blessing of what God did offset
the whole thing.
And so he never thought of it as
a laborious thing.
Anybody who thinks of the ministry as, oh,
you know, while I'm under this heavy burden
of ministry, they don't really understand the true
nature of the ministry.
Now, it is possible to get under a
heavy burden of ministry.
But when that happens, you know what you've
done?
You've taken on ministry that God hasn't actually
put on you, because Jesus said my yoke
is easy and my burden is light.
So when you're under the the yoke of
the Lord, the burden of the Lord is
not a heavy, oppressive, laborious thing, his yoke
is easy, his burden is light.
But Paul says we labor.
And then secondly, he said, and we suffer
reproach because we trust in the living God.
All those who live godly in Christ Jesus
will suffer persecution, will suffer difficulty, will suffer
opposition.
That is part of the Christian experience.
It is part of the experience of those
who serve God.
And there's just no way around it.
That's the way it is, because we're living
in a world that's controlled by the devil,
God's enemy.
We're living in a world full of men
and women who are under the influence of
the devil.
And they're under the influence of their own
sinful natures and tendencies and desires and all
of that as well.
And because of that, there is going to
be times of suffering, times of persecution.
As I mentioned last week, I watched a
series of DVDs on the church in China,
the cross, Jesus in China, and much of
this documentary deals with the fact that many
of the believers, especially the leaders, have been
in prison for their faith, some of them
for 20 years, some of them for less
amounts of time.
Some of them have been in prison numerous
times over.
What is their crime?
Their crime is simply loving God, worshiping God,
telling other people about God.
And I was watching the fourth one in
the series last night.
And there's a young lady who has this
unbelievable gift from God to write hymns.
And her testimony is powerful.
She has no more than a junior high
level education, but she's written about a thousand
hymns that are sung by the more than
70 million house church Christians in the country.
And she's been arrested.
And when she was she's telling her story
about when when she was first thrown into
prison, when she got into prison, the prisoners
said, why are you in prison?
And she said, oh, we're here because we
believe in God.
And they said, well, you shouldn't be in
prison for believing in God.
We we've committed crimes.
We've you know, they've done all kinds of
horrific things.
And even the prisoners themselves, they saw the
injustice in it.
But you know what?
That's life.
That's the Christian life.
The author of this epistle, as you know,
Paul, he spent many years himself in prison.
Now, when we think of suffering, when we
think of imprisonment, when we think of persecution,
I think for many of us, we think,
well, wait a second, how could that happen?
I mean, that doesn't seem right.
And, you know, after all, we have rights
and I'm going to go to my congressman.
I'm going to write my senator a letter.
And, you know, a lot of times we
think in those ways, we think persecution is
bad.
It's horrible.
It's wrong.
It should never be the case, but it
is the case.
And you know what?
It's not always bad.
Paul said in writing to the Philippians about
his own experience in jail, he said that
it has actually turned out for the furtherance
of the gospel.
He said, you see, my being in chains,
what it's done is it's created a boldness
in a lot of other people.
They've looked at me and thought, well, if
Paul can go to prison for Christ, we
can surely open our mouth and speak up
for him.
And people began to speak up for Jesus
because they were emboldened by Paul's situation.
Plus, Paul went on to say that he
had an opportunity to minister to people while
he was in prison that he never would
have had an opportunity to minister to otherwise.
He ministered to the Praetorian Guard, which was
the elite guard that surrounded the Roman Emperor.
And Paul shared the gospel with them.
We will suffer affliction.
That's part of.
Our experience as Christians, we will suffer reproach
and we need to get that in our
heads because it's going to happen.
It is happening already.
It's always happened.
You know, even when a culture is is
very Christianized and Christianity is very accepted in
the culture, even under those circumstances, anyone who
was really serious about the Lord in a
deep, devout way always would experience an element
of persecution.
You know, oh, no, here comes the the
real, you know, hyper religious person or back
in earlier times, they used to call him
the enthusiast.
Now, the ones who called him the enthusiast
thought they were Christians as well.
Oh, we're Christians.
We're just, you know, we're normal Christians.
We're not enthused or excited about anything to
do with God.
We're just Christians.
We go to church and all of that.
But somebody who really loved Jesus, somebody who
took the word seriously, somebody who was wanting
to live a holy life.
Oh, they're enthusiasts, they're fanatics, they're fundamentalists.
So it's always happened, even in a so
-called Christian culture.
But as that Christian veneer upon the culture
sort of fades, then, of course, it becomes
a little bit different, a little bit more
aggressive.
And a bit more challenging, but it is
a reality.
I was reading a book this morning and
it's a in many ways, it's a good
book.
There's a lot of great stories in it
about what God's doing all over the world
and so forth.
But the premise of the book, I must
say, I completely disagreed with the premise of
the book because the author.
He sort of.
He has the idea that.
The church, rather than just simply worshiping God
and praying and fellowshipping and studying the scriptures
and sharing Christ with people, leading people to
Christ, the church should do that, of course,
but that's only part of what the church
should do.
The other thing the church needs to do
is seek to bring a Christian influence upon
the culture.
The Christian church should.
Should impact the culture to the extent that
we turn the culture into a Christian culture.
And this author put a big emphasis on,
you know, not simply sharing the gospel with
people, he said, in a sense, he kind
of said, well, you know, that's OK and
we get to do that once in a
while and that's fine.
But his point was, we need to go
out and invade the academic world and we
need to go out and invade the world
of politics and we need to go.
And he actually said he wrote the book
as as.
As a means of encouragement for us in
this new 21st century to restore a Christian
culture to this country.
Now, I this guy's a really brilliant guy,
too, and I can't believe that he doesn't
realize that the only reason we ever had
a Christian culture in the first place is
because people originally got born again and influenced
the culture.
But as time goes on and that sort
of wears off and you have fewer people
being born again and really living the Christian
life, that's when things start to change.
So he almost has this idea that somehow
you can turn the culture into a Christian
culture without getting people saved.
You see, evangelism is really the answer, because
when people get saved, they work in the
world in a variety of different places and
then they go back into where they work
and then their life begins to be a
testimony and they have an impact.
And then many times the culture can change
if we have, you know, a large number
of people that are doing that.
But as I'm I'm looking at this book,
I'm thinking, you know, this is this is
not right.
And of course, I understand this person has
a theological background that pretty much teaches that
the church is going to bring in the
kingdom of God.
We're going to set up the kingdom.
We're going to just have a greater and
greater influence as time goes on.
That's what the church is supposed to do.
And and we will kind of, you know,
set up the kingdoms ourselves, the kingdom ourselves.
Jesus, of course, will come at the end
and say, great job, you guys.
OK, glad you got everything ready for me
now.
All right, I'll sit down on my throne,
but that's not the way the Bible says
it's going to go, is it?
And the reality is this, the Bible never
promises.
Never even really hints at the church ever
being anything more than a despised minority in
this world.
That's the picture the New Testament gives us
of the church.
The church is always going to be a
despised minority.
It's always going to be that way.
Why?
Because the world belongs to the devil right
now.
Of course, ultimately, sovereignly, it's God's world.
But how many places in scripture are we
told that Satan is the god of this
age, the prince of the power of the
air who now works in the children of
disobedience?
You see, that's the way it is, and
it's not going to change until what happens
until Jesus Christ comes back.
He's going to set up the kingdom.
He's going to come back and he's going
to judge a world that's rejected him.
He's going to establish his kingdom.
But if we think that somehow we're going
to take over everything, we're going to start
running the governments.
We're going to take over all of the
media.
We're going to take over the world of
academics.
We're greatly mistaken.
That's not going to happen.
It's already laid out for us in scripture,
evil men and evil days are going to
get worse and worse.
Now, I wish it was different.
I'm not a sadistic person.
I'm not hoping for persecution to come along.
I'm not sitting around saying, man, I can't
wait to get thrown in jail for Jesus.
But I'm looking at it realistically and I'm
looking at it scripturally, the scripture never guarantees
that the church will be anything but a
despised minority in the world.
That is what the church will be.
Paul says it right here.
We suffer reproach.
Why?
Because we trust in the living God.
We trust in the living God that the
world rejects.
We trust in the living God that Satan
is opposing.
Now, let's balance it out.
Of course, God's going to win.
He's already won.
Principalities and powers have been spoiled by Christ
on the cross.
And we are led in triumph always, but
it's not the kind of triumph that we
often think of.
It's not a materialistic thing.
It's not a physical thing, necessarily.
It's not a visible thing yet.
It will manifest itself in the future when
Christ returns, but right now it's invisible and
we are a minority rather than the majority.
But the Lord is moving.
He's working.
And of course, ultimately, he is going to
establish his kingdom.
He is the savior of all men.
And one day that will be made crystal
clear.
But as you know, as well as I
do, there is great opposition to him now.
There is powerful opposition.
And as I mentioned, speaking with that Muslim
man today, you know, it was a great
time, a challenging time.
It was a but I came away invigorated.
But at the same time, I came away
grieved in my heart to have sat and
listened to a man blaspheme Christ.
And thinking as he's doing it, that that
he's pleasing God, that this is the position
that he's to take.
But it's not hopeless because someone else did
that a long time ago.
He's the one who wrote this letter.
He blaspheme God, he compelled others to blaspheme,
but he ended up becoming the great Apostle
Paul.
So there's hope, but we suffer reproach because
we trust in the living God.
He is the savior of all men, especially
those who believe Christ died to save everybody.
Every single person that's ever lived, Jesus Christ
shed his blood for that person.
I believe that every person's name is written
in the book of life.
Jesus talked in his letter to the church
of Sardis, he warned them about blotting their
names out of the book of life.
I believe that every man's name is written
in the book of life because every person
had Christ's blood shed for them.
But not every person will be saved, will
they?
He's the savior potentially of all men, but
he's really actually only the savior of those
who believe.
But you see, in the end, when a
man perishes, it won't be because Christ did
not provide atonement for him.
A man will never be able to say,
look, I couldn't have gone to heaven anyway
because Jesus didn't die for me.
A man will never be able to say
that a man who dies and goes to
hell.
He goes to hell, trampling the son of
God underfoot and counting the blood of the
covenant by which he was potentially sanctified as
an unholy thing.
And so when a man goes to hell,
he has no one to blame but himself.
Because Christ died for everyone, but he only
can save those that believe because he will
not violate a man's free will.
He will not force us to believe he
will not make you believe in him.
He'll try to persuade you to believe in
him, he'll give you numerous opportunities to believe
in him.
But at the end of the day, he
does not force us to believe in him.
We must make that decision ourself.
So Paul said to Timothy, he said, command
and teach these things.
And then he said, let no one despise
your youth, let no one despise your youth.
Paul was probably or excuse me, Timothy, that
there's there's a lot of difference among commentators
as to as to Timothy's age.
Some have said that Timothy was probably in
his 40s.
I don't buy that.
In a culture where you only lived, you
know, generally old age was man, if you
reach 60.
Or 70, you know, as a matter of
fact, the Bible says that.
Three score and 10.
That's 70 years, that's about all you get,
and if by some fluke you get a
few more.
Well, it's it's all just trouble anyway.
But 40 years old, no, I believe that
Timothy was probably in his 20s.
He was a young man.
And so Paul says to him, Timothy, don't
let anyone despise your youth, he says, but
be an example to the believers.
Being example now, remember, Timothy's a leader, he's
a young leader, but he's a leader in
the church.
And so Paul says to him, Timothy, it's
important that you set a good example.
And of course, it is important that all
of us as believers set a set a
good example in my text here, it says,
be an example to the believer.
I think in the King James Version, it
actually says, be an example of the believer.
Either one, it can be translated either way,
obviously, but I think.
Both things are really right, because I can't
really be an example to the believer unless
I'm an example of the believer.
I've got to be living the life of
a believer and then I will be an
example to the other believers.
And then he says to be an example
in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit,
in faith and in purity.
Now.
I want to save this verse for next
week to go into greater detail on it,
so we'll just pass from that and finish
up the rest of the chapter.
But Paul goes on to say, till I
come give attention to reading.
To exhortation and to doctrine, so this is
what Timothy was to be doing in.
The congregational setting.
Now, remember, Paul, Timothy is in Ephesus.
A ministry began in Ephesus and Paul has
Timothy there in Ephesus, making sure everything is
moving along as it is supposed to.
He's there to stand up against the false
teachers that are coming in.
He's there to establish the proper order of
the church service.
He's there to give them good, solid instruction
so they can have a fruitful ministry.
So here's what Paul tells him to do.
He says, give attention to reading, to exhortation
and to doctrine.
You could translate this, give attention to reading,
to preaching and to teaching.
That's what church leaders are to do, among
other things.
But but as a priority, church leaders are
to read the scriptures there, to preach the
scriptures there, to teach the scriptures.
Now, of course, in Paul and Timothy's day,
everyone did not come to church with a
Bible like we come today.
Not everyone had a Bible back then, because,
of course, there were no Bibles in the
sense of a book.
There were the scriptures and many of them
were still in the process of being written.
There were the Old Testament scriptures and some
of the other epistles that had already been
penned.
And perhaps some of the gospels at this
time had been penned.
But what would happen is the churches themselves,
they would have copies of the scripture.
And so the people would come to church
for the very purpose they would they would
come to this gathering for the purpose of
having the scriptures read to them.
So that's why Paul says to Timothy, read
them now, you have your own Bible today.
And so we can say to you, OK,
your job is to read the scriptures.
And then, of course, you come to church
that we might preach the scriptures and teach
you the scriptures.
But this is the means by which God
feeds his people.
He feeds them through his word.
Jesus said man cannot live by bread alone,
but by every word that proceeds from the
mouth of God.
So we read the word, we preach the
word, we teach the word.
This is how God does his great work
in our lives through his word, he does
his work in our lives.
It's a supernatural thing.
You can't explain it.
Scientifically, it's a miraculous thing.
God's word comes into our lives as we
read it, as we hear it preached, as
we hear it taught, and it does something
glorious in us.
It transforms us.
It changes us from the inside out and
makes us into the people that God wants
us to be.
But for Timothy, he's to read them the
scriptures, he's to preach to them and he's
to teach them.
What's the difference between preaching and teaching?
Well, oftentimes the difference is stated to be
that preaching is for unbelievers and teaching is
for believers.
There's some truth to that, because to an
unbeliever, you preach the gospel to them.
You proclaim the gospel to them so they
can get saved.
But you preach to believers as well.
Paul, he's going to visit Rome.
And he says to them in writing to
them in the very first chapter, he talks
about how he's desiring to come to Rome.
That he might preach the gospel there also,
he said, for I am not ashamed of
the gospel of Christ, for it is the
power of God and salvation to everyone who
believes.
Paul says, I want to come to Rome
and he's writing to Christians.
He says, I want to come to Rome
and I want to preach the gospel to
you.
Now, why would Paul want to preach the
gospel to people who are already believers?
We see Paul understood preaching to not mean
merely relating certain historical facts about Jesus to
unsaved people.
He understood preaching to be imparting to believers
the full implication of what Christ did.
Through his death and resurrection.
So Paul says to them in Rome, I
want to come to you believers.
I want to come and preach the gospel.
I want to come and fill you in
on all of the implications of what the
death of Christ is all about.
What is resurrection is all about.
And preaching has this element as well.
In contrast to teaching, preaching has that an
exhortive element in it.
Now, you see, teaching, on the other hand,
is it's instruction, it's imparting information.
Teaching gives you the information you need.
Preaching gives you the motivation to apply the
information.
So you can get out there and live
the life you see, if if you're just
in an environment where you're simply being taught
without being preached to.
In in the most positive sense, I'm using
that term, you know, sometimes say that guy
was preaching to me, I don't like that.
Well, there's a good there's a good aspect
to being preached to.
It's helping you to apply what you've been
taught.
If you're simply soaking in information and never
being given the application of the information, what
happens?
You get stagnant.
You start to stagnate because the information that
comes in, it's got to go out.
If it just comes in only year after
year after year and it never gets to
flow out, you have a stagnation problem that
occurs.
Now, I fully believe that especially for, you
know, new Christians and so forth, when you
come initially, there's a time you just need
you need to soak as much as you
possibly can.
And of course, God will lead you to
have an outlet for that as well.
But you know, what happens is that people
get into sort of a mode of just
sitting and receiving.
You're just hearing over and over again the
same information.
If you don't get out and apply that
information in your life, you're going to become
stagnant.
You see, the end of the ministry in
the church is not to have a Bible
study.
The Bible study is the means to the
greater end of serving Christ.
If I think that everything is about the
Bible study, as long as you're at the
Bible study, that's all that matters.
The Bible study is important.
But the Bible study is really the place
where you get informed, it's where you get
the information, you get the right information, and
then the pastor, the teacher.
Is to then preach, and it's really a
combination, it kind of the the gifts go
hand in hand together to to motivate you
now to get up and do something with
the information you got shows you how to
apply.
And that's such an important thing.
There are certain people and I've listened to
people over the years who they refer to
themselves, they say, well, you know, I'm just
a teacher, I don't want to tell anybody
what to do.
And, you know, they can pass on a
ton of information.
And I've met their disciples.
There are people that have tons of information.
They've got more information than they can ever
use.
A lot of times they don't even use
the information they've got other than to argue
with people here or there and say, wait
a second, you're wrong.
I know, you know, the details about that
prophetic scenario right there or whatever.
It's not for that.
That information is to go into my heart
and change me and then work itself out
into my life.
So Paul says to Timothy, this is what
you do.
You read in the scriptures, you preach the
scriptures to him and you teach him the
scriptures.
That's what pastoral ministry is primarily about.
And you do that collectively for the congregation.
You do it individually as well.
We minister the word not just to groups
of people, but we minister the word to
individuals as well.
You know, we refer to counseling here at
the church.
If you have a problem, come on in
for some counseling.
Well, I'll tell you right now, you know,
a counseling is.
We're going to preach to you.
We're going to teach you the scriptures.
We're going to tell you what God says
to do about the problem in your life.
That's what we're supposed to do.
If you've got the idea that you're going
to come in and we've got a couch
for you, you can lay down and we're
going to take you all through your life,
you know, tell me about this.
And how did your parents treat you?
And what was it like, you know, remember
back in your crib, you know, what was
it like back there?
You got the wrong idea.
We're not going to do that.
We're going to say, hey, look, this is
what it says right here and we're going
to do it, of course, lovingly and patiently.
But we're going to point you back to
the word of God.
I had an appointment this week and a
person came in, they've got some huge problems
in their life, huge.
But in the end, I said, you know
what, let's let's forget your problem right now,
let's take your problem, set it right over
here, because it's really a secondary issue.
The real issue is you and God.
And this problem exists because you are not
right with God.
So you got to get right with God.
That's what counseling is all about right there,
so preach.
To them, teach them, read to them the
scriptures, he says, do not neglect the gift
that is in you, which was given to
you by prophecy with the laying on of
the hands of the eldership.
Now, remember, he's talking to Timothy, says Timothy,
don't neglect the gift, Timothy, evidently, from what
we can get.
You know, you have to read between the
lines in a sense, but Timothy was somewhat
of a timid young man.
He was a person who tended to probably
shy away from challenging things and so forth.
So Paul says, no, Timothy, you've got to
you've got to stir up that gift, he
would tell him that at a later point,
but he says here, do not neglect the
gift that that was in you, that is
in you.
And it was given to you by prophecy
with the laying on the hands of laying
on of the hands of the eldership.
And then he said, meditate on these things.
Meditate on these things, Timothy, give yourself entirely
to them that your progress may be evident
to all.
Give yourself entirely to them, a minister of
the gospel is to give himself entirely to
the things of the gospel.
You know, I don't have time for a
million other things.
There was a time in my life as
a minister of the gospel when I was
seeking to minister the gospel and do a
bunch of other things also.
You know, I don't know if it's just
getting older, maturing or whatever, but.
I just I don't have time for any
of those things anymore.
They're not bad things, necessarily, other people might
have time to do them.
I just frankly do not have the time
I want to give myself entirely to these
things.
That's my calling.
That's my responsibility.
That's the responsibility of everyone who's in Christian
leadership, pastoral ministry.
He says, meditate on these things, give yourself
entirely to them, that your progress may be
evident to all.
You see, as people see the leadership, loving
God, growing, being faithful, it inspires others as
well.
You know, I want to say something, it's
kind of on a personal note.
My wife, you know, she teaches the ladies
study here on Fridays, most Friday mornings now
helping out her mother.
And I meet ladies and maybe I've talked
to some of you everywhere I go, I
meet ladies.
Who tell me how God is touching their
life through through Cheryl's ministry.
And a lot of times they're just saying,
where does she get this stuff?
I've never heard.
And, you know, they're just talking about the
blessing of this fresh word that's coming from
God.
I will tell you right now how she
gets it.
She gives herself entirely to these things.
I don't know a person myself who is
more devoted to meditation on the scriptures than
my wife.
She absolutely blesses me in that area.
And all those Bible studies she gives the
ladies, she gives them to me before she
gives them to them.
I steal a lot of those Bible studies,
so I have something profound to say.
But the progress is evident.
You know, Cheryl left here, she left this
church when she was, let me think, I
was twenty six.
She was twenty two and a half years
old when she left here.
She was gone for over 20 years, about
20 years, and she's come back.
And, you know, a lot of people remember
her.
Little Sherry.
Oh, yes.
Little Sherry.
I remember her.
And now she's you know, she's a grown
woman, obviously, and people marvel.
Where did little Sherry get all this wisdom?
Well, she's given herself entirely to these things.
But, you know, guess what?
God will do that for anyone who will
give themselves entirely to these things.
You don't have to be a pastor, a
missionary, an evangelist.
You don't you don't have to have some
recognized position in the church to get the
blessing of God in this area.
And just give yourself entirely to these things.
Meditate on these things and God will work
a powerful work in your life and through
your life as well.
And, you know, as wonderful as it is
to have great teaching from a pulpit in
a church, we need thousands of people out
in the community that can take that and
pass it on to other people around them
because that's where the centers are.
We've got to connect with them.
And so Paul says, finally, we'll close with
this.
He says, take heed to yourself and to
the doctrine.
Continue in them, for in doing this, you
will save both yourself and those who hear
you.
Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine.
You know, we could there's a lot that
could be said about these things here and
we don't have time for it tonight.
We are all to take heed to ourselves
first.
And especially those in ministry, it's easy for
a person in ministry to take heed to
everybody else.
It's easy to read your Bible so you
can get a great sermon to give on
Saturday night.
But you know what?
If I do that.
It won't be long before it becomes evident
that I'm not taking heed to myself, I've
got to take heed to myself, I've got
to make sure my own spiritual life is
in order, I've got to tend to my
life spiritually myself.
No one else is going to do that
for me.
I alone can do it and I've got
to do it.
I've got to take heed to my life
personally, and I've got to take heed to
the doctrine, the word of God.
I've got to pay attention, close attention, because
here's the promise.
When I continue in these things faithfully by
doing this.
I will save both myself and those who
hear me now saving myself doesn't mean that
I'm actually my own savior, doesn't mean that
I worked my way to heaven.
Remember, Paul's talking to Timothy's already saved.
What he's talking about is Timothy, you'll save
yourself from shipwreck, you'll save yourself from disaster,
you'll save yourself from going off the rails
somewhere down the line, which others have done.
But not only will you save yourself, you'll
save those who hear you as well.
There's a great responsibility upon church leadership, and
it's the responsibility to make sure our own
lives are right with God so that we
can be an inspiration to others.
And we need the grace of God to
do that and we need your prayers.
And I know you do pray for us
and all of us here that are ministering
the word to you.
We all greatly appreciate that.
And we hope in turn that we are
being a blessing to you.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you.
That your word is laid out so clearly
for us, the things that those who represent
you are to be.
The character, the lifestyle, Lord, but all of
us, really, you've called us all.
To take heed to ourselves and to your
word, you've called us all to meditate on
the scriptures and give ourselves entirely to them.
And so, Lord, may that be our manner
of life in these days, Lord, as we
look around us and we see the world
just on the fast track to hell.
We're never going to impact it by sitting
around watching TV, by just being caught up
with what everybody else is doing.
We're never going to make a difference.
So, Lord, liberate us from those.
Worthless things that so often preoccupy us, distract
us and help us, Lord, to give ourselves
entirely.
To these things that our progress may be
evident to all and that we, Lord, whether
we're teaching a Bible study or working on
an assembly line or standing in a classroom
or having coffee with a neighbor.
Lord, that we will be reflecting Christ and
his glory to others.
We pray these things in Jesus name.
Amen.
Let's stand together.
If you need prayer tonight, these guys up
here would love to pray with you.
I'd love to pray with you.
I'll be up here as well.
And I'm sure people around you would like
to pray with you, too.
So take your pick.
There's a lot of different ways to get
prayer tonight.
Just want to encourage you to stir up
the gifts that are in you.
Provoke one another to love and good works.
Encourage one another, be a blessing to one
another.
And let's just seek the Lord in these
days.
Let's really let's just go for it and
see what God will do.
I'll tell you guys this.
The Muslims are zealous.
This young guy that we talked to today,
he met with us with the hope of
converting us to Islam.
That was why he met with us.
And we thought he was meeting because he
wanted to become a Christian.
He made it clear, oh, no, I'm not
interested in that.
I want you to become Muslims.
And they're zealous.
And not not just the Muslims.
But all of the other isms out there
are quite zealous.
And as you've noticed, probably the the godless
world around us, so they're quite zealous as
well.
They want us to embrace their ideas.
They accuse us of trying to shove stuff
down people's throats.
They're the culprits.
But the point is, man, they're they're out
there, they're passionate, they're they're spreading their ideologies,
they're preaching their messages.
And it's all lies, it's all destructive, it's
all ultimately going to destroy us.
Damn people, we've got the truth, we've got
the gospel, we've got the good news.
God, help us to have that kind of
zeal and even greater than they do to
impact the world while we have time.
God bless you.