1 Timothy 1:5-11

Introduction

We are examining the commission that Paul gave Timothy.

Last week we saw 2 elements of that commission:

The Commission was personal - The quality of relationship that Paul had with Timothy (A father to Timothy in the faith) gave Paul confidence that Timothy could get the job done.

There is not much commissioning taking place today in our churches becasue the quality of relationship that Paul had with Timothy does not exist in our churches. We know less about people’s love for Christ, His work, and the church, then we did 20 years ago.

Direction - There was direction with the commission. He was to charge teachers in the church to:

Not teach any other doctrine than the Apostles’ doctrine

Not give heed to fables - “Heed” is more than listening; it is listening with the possibility of conforming. If we do not preach or teach the Apostles’ doctrine then we open the door for fictitious truth.

Not give heed to endless genealogies that produces questions rather than Godly edifying. This charge served 2 purposes: We need to keep the main thing the main thing; God’s word needs to solve people’s problems, not add mystery. We may not be dealing with genealogies this morning but we are dealing with the same effects - people split fellowship over the minors and not the majors and we prefer mystery over certainty.

This morning, we will continue with aspects of Timothy’s commission.

Purpose of the Commission

1 Timothy 1:5 “Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.”

The phrase “now the end” means “goal. Paul’s goals in charging or commanding Timothy to address these issues which plagued the church in Ephesus was so that unadulterated preaching and teaching could benefit the church. Paul mentions 3 benefits that come from a church that preaches truth, rejects myths and keeps the main thing the main thing, while resolving real-life issues with certainty: love out of a pure heart, good conscience and faith unfeigned.

Pure, good and unfeigned are adjectives describing the heart, mind and faith that proper preaching and teaching produces. The idea is not that our hearts, conscience and faith are neutral, and needs God’s word to move towards pure, good and unfeigned. People are not neutral. In their natural state people have impure hearts, bad consciences and counterfeit faiths. People are condemned and under the weight of God’s infinite wrath! What is at stake is not good people becoming better but a transformational change from impure to pure, bad to good, and counterfeit to genuine.

1 Peter 1:23 “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.”

Paul understood what was at stake. The church at Ephesus needed to get back to truth!

Conviction and confessing (love out of a Pure heart) - “Pure heart” speaks of a clean heart. Divine love flows from a pure heart. The only way we can love God is out of a pure heart.

And, we cannot have a pure heart unless we are right with God positionally and practically. And, we cannot be right with God without conviction of sin and confessing sin. And, we cannot have conviction of sin that leads to confession of sin without God’s word!

“It's the word of God that does this. It's not new-fangled ideas, it's the old-fashioned word of God. You see God Himself describes the word of God as a hammer. Your heart may have been hard, and maybe it's hard this evening, and you're like the frost outside - each time you hear the Gospel it's like another layer on top of the previous layer, and it gets harder and harder and harder and harder, until you can sit in a meeting or a mission like this and it doesn't affect you at all! My friend, God's word is like a hammer, and it can smash and break the hardest of all hardened hearts. God's word is called the sword of the Spirit. It is double-edged - it's so sharp, the word of God says, it can divide the very bone from the marrow, the soul from the spirit. Perhaps you've been sitting under the word of God, and you've almost felt a dagger go into your heart and into your life because God is speaking to you!”

Salvation:

The last several decades, pastors have grown their churches into mega churches by appealing to the lost - not with the Gospel of Jesus Christ but an environment that makes them comfortable to come. “God wants to make you uncomfortable, He wants to make you tremble, He wants to make you frightened and uneasy because of the Gospel - because He knows that if you're too comfortable you'll never ever want to come to Him!

Proverbs 20:9 “Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?”

Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” In this state, you cannot love God or or neighbor as yourself.

Ezekiel discusses what we need. Ezekiel 36:26 “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” The clean heart that God gives is new, fresh and clean.

Acts 15:9 describes this new heart as a purifying heart by faith. Acts 15:9 “And put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.”

This new heart is accomplished by the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit. Titus 3:5 “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;”

The regenerative work of the Holy Spirit works in conjunction with the Word of God. James 1:21 “Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.” The Gospel is preached, the Holy Spirit regenerates, we are convicted, confess our sins and receive a new heart that is pure.

Therefore, we can now love God. 1 John 4:19 “We love him, because he first loved us.”

Why is this important? A few weeks ago, I had COVID and could not come to church. Me watched PCC’s Campus Church. Their pastor is Jeff Redlin. I googled Jeff Redlin. Here is one of the top results: “Jeff Redlin is an abusive religious hypocrite.” Of course, I read the article. Here is the reason Jeff Redlin is an “abusive religious hypocrite.”

“It was only after three weeks that I heard Pastor Timothy Zacharias on a Wednesday evening preaching false doctrine on repentance at CC. The church's official doctrinal position is, and I quote: ‘Repentance is a change of mind resulting in a change of behavior.’ That is damnable heresy, because it implies that you are not really saved unless your behavior has changed. The truth is that behavior modification has absolutely nothing to do with receiving God's free gift of eternal life. You trust Christ as your personal Savior to get saved, and then God seals you with His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit sanctifies every believer with the Word of God, that is, with THE TRUTH (John 17:17). But we must first ‘desire’ that sincere milk of the word (1st Peter 2:2) or we won't grow in grace. We are exhorted in Romans 12:1 to ‘present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.’

“So you see, there are TWO decisions which God wants every person to make. The first is whether to accept Christ as your Savior. And the second is that every child of God decide to follow Jesus as their Lord (Master), to obey Him no matter what the cost. If we do not keep these two decisions separate, we corrupt the Word of God and cast stumbling blocks before the people. I contacted Jeff Redlin on Thursday, July 22, 2021 to  inquire about this gross theological incompetence eat Campus Church. To my horror and disappointment, Pastor Redlin 100% supported Pastor Zacharias and said this is their official teaching at Campus Church.”

Consider what this person is saying. It is possible for someone to be saved without changing their mind, heart or disposition about God! You can be saved without ever loving or following God! Not only did he twist scripture in a way that caused him to teach another doctrine with is a fable, but he completely ignored the whole counsel of God.

Luke 13:3 “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

Acts 11:18 “When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.”

2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

Faith and repentance are not two separate works but are two sides of the same work. You cannot have saving faith without repentance and you cannot have repentance unto life without saving faith.

The kind of faith that saves won’t just have repentance but love - Galatians 5:6 “For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.”

Service

Proverbs 4:23 “Keep thy heart with all diligence; For out of it are the issues of life.”

The problem is sin loosens the guard protecting our hearts. Sin causes us to be less diligent. Often, even deceiving ourselves. This appears to be what happened in David’s life. He sinned by sleeping with a woman who was not his wife. To cover up her pregnancy, he had her husband murdered on the battlefield so that he could marry her. Perhaps, not only did he believed that he got away with the sin but forgot all about the sin. Until Nathan the prophet came and declared unto him to word of God.

2 Samuel 12:13 “And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.”

Psalm 51:10 “Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a right spirit within me.”

True preaching brings about healthy conviction and confession of sin that produces a freshness of love out of the heart that has been washed by the word of God!

If a church is preaching false doctrine, myths or majoring on the minor that does answer the most important questions then there is not going to be much divine love flowing from our assembly.

Good conscience - A conscience “is the God created self-judging faculty of man. It either affirms or accuses a person; it is the voice within that tells us right from wrong - Romans 2:14–15 “For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)”

The problem is though are conscience can guide us to a point, our conscience has been seared by sin. Hebrews 10:22 “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.”

Later in 1 Timothy, Paul wrote: 1 Timothy 4:1–2 “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;”

Sin sears this conscience but the preaching God’s word produces a good conscience before God and man. Titus 1:15–16 “Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.”

Paul was motivated to live his life having a good conscience Acts 23:1 “And Paul, earnestly beholding the council, said, Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.” Later in Acts, he said in Acts 24:16: “And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.”

Later in chapter 1 Paul exhorts Timothy to fight a good fight by keeping the faith and having a good conscience.

How do we ensure that our mind and conscience are good? Paul writes something important in Romans 9:1 “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost.” To have a good conscience means our conscience is being led by the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is leading our conscience to think correctly then we are being guided in truth By the Holy Spirit. Jesus says, John 16:13 “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.”

Preaching God’s word produces a good conscience. 1 John 2:18–19 “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” Good preaching eventually pushes out those who conscience are still being seared by sin.

Authentic faith - A 3rd benefit of sound preaching and teaching is “faith unfeigned” The word “unfeigned” speaks of something that is genuine, authentic, real and not pretend or hypocritical. James 3:17: “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” The phrase “without hypocrisy” is the same word translated as “unfeigned” in our text.

There are two ways our faith can be hypocritical:

Years ago, while taking an evangelism class in college, I learned there are three kinds of faiths: temporary, intellectual and effectual; only the effectual faith saves.

What is the difference between effectual and intellectual faith?

Jesus preached on the Sermon on the Mount: Matthew 7:16 “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” A person who has intellectual faith will not be motivated to persevere in producing faith that resembles salvation.

James wrote: James 2:20 “But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” James 2:26 “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.”

Doctrinal preaching and teaching has the power to move people from hypocritical to authentic faith.

Another way of viewing faith unfeigned has to do with confidence. Is your confidence in God or yourself? Whomever your confidence is in will shape your life.

Looking at the problem from this perspective speaks of the problem the teachers at Ephesus had - they did not have confidence in God. Therefore, their faith was hypocritical because they believed in a God that needed them. This means, their faith in God was measured by the confidence they had in themselves.

Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; And lean not unto thine own understanding.” Instead of trusting in the Lord, their faith was anchored in their own understanding.

Jeremiah 17:5 “Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.” Self-serving teachers believe in God but their strength and trust is man.

Do you not what having faith unfeigned will do for the Christian?

Assurance - Philippians 1:6 “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:”

Prayer - 1 John 5:14 “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:”

Fear - Isaiah 41:10 “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: Be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

Temptation - Proverbs 3:26 “For the Lord shall be thy confidence, And shall keep thy foot from being taken.”

The Lord helps - Hebrews 13:6 “So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.”

Attitude - Hebrews 4:16 “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

The name of the Lord - Psalm 20:7 “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: But we will remember the name of the Lord our God.”

He is our Refuge - Psalm 118:8 “It is better to trust in the Lord Than to put confidence in man.”

The Lord’s presence - Joshua 1:9 “Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.”

The sad reality was the teachers at Ephesus had swerved from this goal: 1 Timothy 1:6 “From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling;”

“Vain Jangling” means empty chatter. There is not love out of a pure heart, good conscience, or authentic faith occuring with their preaching and teaching - simply vain, empty and worthless results.

Paul correctly diagnosed the problem with these teachers in Ephesus - They were unqualified to teach.

They were unqualified becasue they did not understand the Law. These “teachers” were butchering and manipulating the Old Testament. Their teaching kept people saved by grace within the yoke of the law. You cannot be a successful teacher or preacher of the Bible if you do not understand the Bible. Especially, something as important as the law!

1 Timothy 1:8, Paul states that the problem is not with the law but those who do not know the purpose or use of the law. “But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully;”

The purpose of the law was to show man’s need of grace. 1 Timothy 1:9–10 “Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;”

The Law of God was not made for the righteous. Based upon what follows, the sense is not those who have been made righteous through Justification by Faith. Rather, the law serves no purpose for the one who is sinless but shows the one who is a sinner their need of Justification by Faith.

Galatians 3:24–25 “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.”

How do we connect what Jesus said in John 14:15 “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” with Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy? The teaching at Ephesus would have included: I need to keep the commands of Jesus to stay saved. Or, even worse, I need to keep the commands of Jesus to get saved. Both ideas not only destroy Jesus’ message in John 14:15 but the very theology of Justification by Faith. The relationship between what Jesus said and what Paul is saying in 1 Timothy is the reason we keep the law or the commands of Jesus. The reason has nothing to do with being saved or staying saved but activity that comes from a heart that loves God. If you love God then you are eternally and everlastingly saved and the evidence of this will be your desire to follow Jesus!

Authority of the Commission

1 Timothy 1:11 “According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.”

Verse 11 links back to verse 3-4. The authority in Paul commissioning Timothy was “according to the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to (his) trust (His Apostolic calling v.1).”

The glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ was the authority!

Matthew 7:21–23 “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”