The Centrality of the Gospel

Good morning, Harmony!

It has been an exciting year so far. We have had some snow, we’ve discussed church planting and revitalization, and we’ve been challenged to be a sent people.

And that is our focus for this year. We want to be a sent people that are working together to revitalize our local area to reach the lost for Christ, and we want to be obedient to go to other areas as well.

But the only way that we can do that is to be focused on the right things.

Today we are going to begin in the book of 1 Timothy. Now the main focus of the book of 1 Timothy is that we must live our lives Christ-centered for the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of the good news of Christ.

The Apostle Paul has written this letter to Timothy, and it’s going to focus on encouraging Timothy to live a life that is centered on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so, we begin today by looking at the centrality of Christ and the actions that we should be taking as believers in Christ.

When we have Christ as the focus in our lives, we are living our lives in accordance with His Gospel. When we choose to be focused on some other thing, we live our lives according to that thing.

For example, many of us have social media accounts. If I am living my life with Christ at the center of my focus, not only am I going to post things that demonstrate the Gospel, where God says He loves me and He cares for me and He protects and guides me, that truth of the Gospel also protects me from the lies of this world that appear on social media that may say that I am stupid, or useless, or worthless.

But if my life with Christ is out of focus, then I may begin to focus on who the world says that I am. My posts may begin to focus on those lies about how others perceive me, or even how I perceive me, and suddenly I am not living a life that demonstrates the Gospel.

And that’s a small thing, but it gets bigger too.

Our finances - nobody wants to talk about money, but our finances can get us. If I am placing Christ at the center of my life, my finances reflect obedience to be a good steward of my finances, and that isn’t just talking about how I give to the church, that’s talking about every area of my finances. How we spend the money God has entrusted to us reflects where Christ is in our lives. Is He first?

Where we choose to spend our time and who we choose to spend our time with and how we spend our time - all of this reflects where Christ is in our lives.

We must center our lives on Him and His desire for us to walk in the truth so that we are able to see the lies and the ways of those who would teach contrary to the Gospel of Christ and so that we can keep Christ as our focus.

Today as we look at the first chapter of 1 Timothy, Paul jumps right in explaining the necessity for the centrality of the Gospel.

Our main point for today is that:

Main Point: We must persevere in the gospel in the face of false teaching and other challenges.

We must persevere in the Gospel of Jesus Christ in order to meet the challenges of this world head on.

Follow along in your Bibles, beginning in verse 1:

Prayer.

Paul writes to Timothy and says look, there are going to be challenges. You are going to face a bunch of people who are going to reject the Gospel. Not only that, you’re going to have those that say they have received the gospel and are going to want to change it to conform to their comfort zones or their way of life rather than allowing it to change them.

Paul has experience as a believer in Christ, as a missionary, and he wants to encourage Timothy through all of the experiences that he has had to remain centered in the gospel.

And so, Paul starts out with this brief introduction and then gets right into this set of charges or instructions to Timothy to remain focused on the centrality of the Gospel of Christ.

From our text today, we see three actions that we must take in order to be focused on the centrality of the Gospel. The first action that we must take is:

1. We must guard the Gospel, vv. 1-11.

We must guard the gospel.

Verses 3 and 4 give us this list of three things to guard against as believers in Christ.

First, Paul tells Timothy to instruct against false doctrine. Paul says don’t allow something from Scripture to be twisted into saying something that it doesn’t.

We discussed this some this past year when we talked about things the Bible doesn’t say, but this is things like adding doctrine or requirements to Scripture or taking Scripture out of the context that it was written for.

For example saying things like the King James is the inspired translation - that isn’t found anywhere in Scripture, and it’s not really compatible with the message of the Gospel.

Or taking Philippians 4:13 out of context to mean something that it doesn’t. “I can do all things through Christ” means that I can persevere through the challenges of this life because I know that He is with me, not I can be the best football player in the country or the greatest rock star the world has ever seen.

Second Paul tells Timothy to instruct them to not follow myths. Greek mythology was still prominent in the Roman empire, so there were those that were trying to have their feet in both the Christian and their own ways of living. They were trying to tie their Greek and Roman gods to their Christianity, and that creates a false gospel - it moves the centrality of Christ to being a God amongst many gods, and Paul says teach them not to do that.

We see this same thing today; many people attempt or claim to be of two religious beliefs or will say that all paths lead to God. Scripture is clear that this line of thought is in contrast to the Gospel. In John 14:6 Jesus clearly teaches that there is only one way to God when He says

John 14:6 CSB

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

We cannot combine Christ with other religions, that reduces the work of Christ at calvary. Christ came to exclusively pay the price that you could never pay in order to redeem you and free you from the penalty for sin.

Then in verse 5 Paul says the goal of our charge or the goal of our instruction is love. It’s a pure love that comes from the heart, by way of the conscience or the knowledge of what is right, by the faith that comes from a relationship by faith in Christ, a sincere faith.

Paul says that love is at the center of this instruction. Not love for himself, but a love for Christ and for Timothy.

How do we know if the instruction that we receive is biblical encouragement and guidance? If it is centered in the Gospel of Christ then the instruction that we receive is going to be communicated in love - it’s not going to be rooted in something outside of Scripture, it’s not going to be gossip, it’s going to be done in love for the purpose of guarding the gospel in our hearts and developing us as believers in Christ.

Paul goes on to say that some have departed from the instruction of love - some have departed from having the good news of Christ as the center of their instruction. Verse 7 says they want to be teachers of the law. And that leads to fruitless or useless discussion because what these folks are doing is separated from the gospel of Christ.

They only want to teach the condemnation of the law. They are insisting that people live according to the Old Testament law.

And many so-called Christians still do that today. They’ll go and require that a lost and dying world, people who have never known Christ, never heard of Christ, people who have not ever heard the good news of the Gospel of Christ and they’ll require or expect them to live lives according to the Law.

They’ve got it backwards, Paul says.

A lot of times we will push for our Christian beliefs to be the centrality of our nation. We want America to be a Christ-honoring nation. We want for our morals and our laws to be the ones that rule the land.

And I would love for America to be a so-called Christian nation. The only problem with that is that very often what we will do is we will push for the law part or the morality part without the instruction in love, or the Good News of the Gospel.

Many of us can quote John 3:16 from memory

John 3:16 CSB

For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

and we forget that John 3:17 says

John 3:17 CSB

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Paul says the law is not the center of our faith. The law on its own does not produce fruit.

And then Paul goes on to say that the law is good - if it is used correctly.

The law is not meant for a righteous person - the law is not meant for those who are in Christ, it’s not meant for those who have received the Good News and have followed Christ, because when we receive Christ, we receive His righteousness, and the Gospel changes us.

Paul then goes through this list of just who the unrighteous or the ungodly are.

He says that the law is meant for the sinful and ungodly, for the unholy and the irreverent, those who kill, those who are sexually immoral, those who trade slaves, liars, and who do everything else that is contrary to sound teaching that conforms to the Gospel.

Paul presents Timothy with this list of things that condemn the ungodly to their sin and to hell.

And a lot of people will get hung up on this list. They’ll say things like God is going to condemn you to hell or God is condemning you to your sin or we should condemn this person because it is morally wrong.

But God is not condemning you to hell or to remain in your sin, God is calling you out of your sin. God is calling you out of condemnation.

The centrality of the Gospel is good news; Jesus came to pay the penalty so that you don’t have to.

If you are a believer in Christ today, then you have been called out of your sin and out of condemnation. If you are not a believer in Christ today then God is calling you out of your sin and out of that condemnation into a new life walking with Him in righteousness.

And then your life begins to conform to the Gospel.

A lot of people try to go and clean up their sin in order to obtain the Gospel of Christ, but Christianity is the only religion where our salvation and our peace and our hope relies completely on receiving His Gospel first and allowing Him to clean us up.

Ephesians 2:8 and 9 says:

Ephesians 2:8–9 CSB

For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast.

We must guard the Gospel because the Gospel is the centrality of our salvation.

Because the Gospel is the centrality of our salvation:

2. We must celebrate the Gospel, vv. 12-17.

Beginning in verse 12 Paul gives his testimony, and it’s relatively short. He starts by giving thanks to God, then he goes right into who he was before the gospel.

Paul says I spoke against God, I lied about who He was, I persecuted and imprisoned everyone who believed in Christ, and I was a proud and arrogant man.

And some of us can read that and say that doesn’t sound so bad. And Paul lists them in this order because He starts with what he now knows was the greatest offense - he was an enemy of God. He realizes as a Christian and a minister of God that he was in his greatest error when he was against God.

Then he says he was persecuting believers in God and the gospel - which, again, sounds not so bad until you realize that this included torture and at least being present as believers are stoned to death in his presence.

Paul says I wasn’t good enough, I had no merit, I did nothing but move farther and farther away from God as I tried to earn my way to Him.

Paul realizes where he was before Christ and then he says “but”. That is who I was, “but”. I had condemned myself; I had set myself on the path by relying on the law, I built up my own self-righteousness, and yet - there He was.

BUT I received mercy, and grace, and faith. I could not know Him apart from His mercy, we cannot know Him apart from His mercy, the good news of the Gospel. By that good news he obtained grace that overflows, or grace that is greater than all my sin past, present and future. Faith and love that I could not understand without Him.

Then Paul summarizes the entire gospel in one sentence.

Verse 15 is the summary of the best news you’ll ever hear.

1 Timothy 1:15 CSB

This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them.

Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.

Sinners like me.

Before I met Christ, I was an enemy of God. I was against anything Christian. I hated Christians. I wanted nothing to do with Jesus or the church.

And I didn’t really think I was all that bad of a person. You know, you hear testimonies from all of these people that have these massive stories where God saved them from this biker gang or from this drug addiction or some other terrible thing.

I was a well-behaved guy. My story isn’t anything spectacular. I had already seen the effects drugs have on the family and through the DARE program of the 80’s and 90’s.

See, my sin was much more subtle. I was a self-righteous guy. I was better than everyone else because I was working my own way to heaven - my heaven. I didn’t need God; I was a good person.

I was a blasphemer, and I was arrogant. I had bought into the lie that I could be good enough to save myself from hell and from my own sin. My hope was in myself.

But somehow, in all of that, God’s mercy and grace got to me, and He saved me. I was invited to church, I didn’t want to go but I did want to please my girlfriend, and not fore good and pure reasons. But I went and after a period of time I was convicted of my sin, and I was saved by Christ - Jesus came to save sinners like me. Like you.

The late Tim Keller once said, “Here’s the gospel: you’re more sinful than you ever dared believe; you’re more loved than you ever dared hope."

We receive this mercy and grace because he loves us more than we could ever imagine.

We receive that so that we can have the hope of God, the hope of eternity with Him, and so that we can share that hope with others.

Paul says in verse 16 we receive this mercy and grace so that through us Christ can show others His extraordinary patience as an example to others to draw them into the hope of eternal life.

And Paul closes with more praise to Jesus, the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God and Paul credits God with all the glory and righteousness.

For us today it can be kind of hard to read the emotions that are going on as Paul writes all of this.

But a believer in Christ can relate to what Paul is saying here.

Thank you, God, for saving me is not just a statement. It’s a very real expression that permeates everything that we know, everything that we feel, it gives us the strength and hope and peace that extraordinarily surpasses our own understanding and leads us to give Him all the praise and honor and glory.

We must celebrate the Good news of Christ because every bit of our hope and our faith and the true love of God is given to us by Him who saves us - Christ came into the world to save sinners.

The third action that we must take as believers in Christ to keep the gospel of Christ centered in our lives is:

3. We must fight for the Gospel, vv. 18-20.

We must fight for the Gospel. In verse 18 Paul says I am giving you this charge, this instruction, in keeping with the prophecy and the calling that God has placed on your life.

And many are going to say yeah, but Timothy was called to be a pastor - and that is true, he was. But understand that just because he was called to be a pastor that doesn’t mean that it is only pastors that are called to fight for the Gospel.

Paul says I am giving you this instruction as a disciple of Jesus Christ through Paul in keeping with the calling God has placed on your life as a believer in Christ so that you can fight the good fight.

What is the good fight?

Go back to verse 5.

The goal of our instruction, the goal of our charge, is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.

Verse 19 says having faith and a good conscience.

Our good fight is to remain faithful to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

he says some have rejected their faith - they have ventured outside of keeping the Gospel central to their lives and to their teaching, and so Paul says I have turned them over to Satan so that they may be taught not to blaspheme.

So, this concept of fighting the good fight - it revolves around keeping the Gospel central to our lives and to what it is we teach and portray to the world.

Our lives should mimic the hope that we have that is found in the Gospel of Christ. If we are living lives that mimic the hopes and desires of the lost or of the world, then we are no different than the world.

If we are teaching that a person must become righteous before we teach them about the love of God and the good news of the Gospel, then we are failing to keep the gospel central.

We are fighting a good fight - a fight that shares the good news of Jesus Christ. This isn’t a fight to make the world righteous by pressing the law or the morality of God onto lost people, this is a fight in ourselves to maintain our faith, to have a good conscience, and to live lives that demonstrate the love of Christ.

How do we maintain our faith? How do we maintain our love for Christ and for others, how do we maintain a good conscience before God?

We must keep the Gospel centered by being engaged in His Word. We must be guarding the gospel by being immersed in the gospel. We must be reading the Gospel in the context it was written in and we must be engaged in discipleship.

That doesn’t necessarily mean being at the church every time that the doors are open, but it does mean gathering together as often as we have the opportunity to, and it means having meaningful, gospel-centered/Christ-centered relationships. Join a small group and let iron sharpen iron, read and study the Word, share the Gospel with others, demonstrate the hope and love that is found in you because of Christ and His Gospel.

But the most important action you must take is to understand that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and that includes you. He came to save you to give you mercy, not because you have earned it, but because He loves you. He came to give you grace, to save you from the condemnation of sin and the world.

And so, today, what is your answer to Him?

If you don’t know Christ today as your Savior, if you’ve never accepted Him as your Lord, would you do that today?

Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world, but to save it. Jesus came so that you could have freedom from the captivity of sin and death and hell.

And the book of Romans tells us how simple it is to turn to Jesus.

Romans 10:9-10 says:

Romans 10:9–10 CSB

If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, resulting in salvation.

Confess Christ as Lord and believe that God raised Him from the dead. That’s it. You don’t have to do anything right now except confess Christ as Lord and believe that He came to save you by His life, death, burial, and resurrection.

You don’t have to clean up your life before you do that. You don’t have to do anything to earn His mercy and grace and love. You just have to come to Him.

In a moment we are going to sing “Turn your eyes upon Jesus”

And the chorus goes like this:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full in His wonderful face

and the things of eart will grow strangely dim

in the light of His glory and grace.

This is your opportunity to know Christ. If you’ll accept Him today, He will change your life. You will have eternal hope. You will have eternal peace. You will experience the love of Christ.

If that’s you today, if today you have placed your faith in Christ, if you are confessing Jesus Christ as Lord and you believe that He was raised from the dead, then we want to rejoice with you. We want to celebrate with you!

So, right now as the music is playing softly and as we sing in a moment, if that’s you, I invite you to come forward. We want to celebrate with you.

If you are uncomfortable with doing that, that’s ok, the other way that you can let me know that you have made that decision today is by filling out a connect card that is attached to the bulletin, and we’ll collect those in a moment when we collect today’s offering.

Or you can text prayer to that number up there on the screen and just follow the prompts as they come up.

If you have made that decision today welcome to the family of God!

Prayer.