Fight for the Truth

Some of you are ready to jump at the chance, because you love a good fight. You don’t need to know what we are fighting for or against; you just love to jump in and fight.

Be honest, now. Some of you love to watch a good fight on TV. Whether it’s boxing, MMA, or even wrasslin’, you love seeing someone getting punched in the mouth.

For some of you, you don’t just love to watch a fight, you love to pick them too. You know who you are. You absolutely love to debate over which team is the best, which branch of the service is better than the rest, whether iPhone or Android is better, or maybe even the finer points of theology.

By the way, if that isn’t you, then don’t make the mistake of thinking it is always the loud and confrontational. It’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for. They just love to throw out a sentence they know is going to stir the pot, and then they just sit back and watch. It’s like throwing out chum to sharks…you just love to watch the frenzy.

Some of you are on the opposite end of the spectrum, though.

You absolutely cannot stand fights, no matter what. You hate conflict, and you hate having people upset at you. You placate, or do whatever you can to smooth things over with others, even if it throws you under the bus.

Whether you brawl or placate, I want to call you over the next several months to be willing to join me in a fight.

The fight I am asking you to join me in is a battle that has been raging for centuries.

It is a fight that not only changes lives but shapes people for eternity.

The fight that not only I, but God, am asking you to join over these next few months is what Paul describes as, “the good fight of the faith.” (see ; ).

It is a fight to protect the truth from those who would try to distort it.

It is a fight to recognize how deeply our own hearts need the good news, the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is a fight to pray, live, and lead the church in such a way that this group of believers and others around the world like her will hold tightly to the truth, rejecting error even when it is found in the highest ranks of our leadership.

All the while, we will see that our fight for the truth plays out in practical care and concern for the most vulnerable among us.

This same truth will challenge the way we look at what we have, what we do with our bodies, and much more.

So, are you willing to join in with me to fight the good fight?

Let’s start looking at what this will mean.

Go ahead and open your Bibles to .

If your Bible has a bookmark, you may want to go ahead and leave it there in 1 Timothy, because Lord-willing, we will be working our way through this book over the next several months.

Let me give you a little background so you get a sense of what all is going on.

The apostle Paul, who is a huge figure in the early days of Christianity, traveled widely and took the message of Jesus to a lot of places where people didn’t yet know about him.

During his travels, he encountered a young man named Timothy. We are not 100% sure, but it seems as though Paul probably helped Timothy enter into a relationship with Jesus, although his mother and grandmother had a part in laying a solid spiritual foundation for him.

Eventually, Timothy traveled with Paul. At some point in those journeys, Timothy settles in the city of Ephesus to work with the church there. The tone of this letter tells us that Timothy was likely more timid, so he needed encouragement to keep fighting for the truth of the gospel.

Paul, as an older man who is approaching the time when he will be killed for his faith, writes three unique letters over the span of a few years. Two of those letters are to Timothy and one to a man named Titus.

These letters, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, are called the Pastoral Epistles, because they contain a lot of instruction for how to shepherd the church as a pastor/elder/overseer.

However, that doesn’t mean that you get to skip out on church for the next few months since you aren’t a pastor.

As a follower of Christ, you need to know what God says in his Word through Paul about how churches should operate, minister, and fight for the gospel.

Not only that, but this book contains vital truth for all of us as we look at how we live our own lives.

In fact, although this letter was addressed to Timothy, we can tell by the way that it was written with the intent that the whole church would read it.

You see that even in the first two verses. Read with me...

Paul starts off with a somewhat formal introduction, especially given how close he and Timothy were.

There is a possibility that this was just how an older man would have written to a younger man, but it may have also served to validate Timothy to the church at Ephesus.

Since Paul, the apostle who was commissioned by God himself, says that Timothy is his “true son in the faith,” then he must be legit and worth listening to.

After the formalities, Paul immediately gets into his instructions to Timothy.

From the very beginning, we see that there is a conflict in Ephesus.

As we look at that this conflict morning, I want to challenge you to fight for the truth.

That is the first aspect of fighting the good fight: fighting against false ideas and those who teach them, and fighting to defend truth, allowing it to transform our lives.

By the way, there is at least one verse in the middle of this passage that should sound incredibly familiar to you.

My hope is that, as we see our church’s key verse in its context, you will gain an even better appreciation for it.

Let’s read, then verses 3-11.

So, how do we fight for the truth?

A good

1) Avoid worthless teachings.

Right off the bat, we see that there is obviously a group of people in Ephesus who are teaching false doctrine.

“Doctrine” is a church term for a belief about something, so “false doctrine” are people teaching things that are wrong.

We don’t know exactly what the false doctrine was these people were teaching, but I think God did that on purpose.

If he had been too specific, it would have been easy for us to say, “Well, this doesn’t apply to us.”

However, by leaving it a little more vague, we see the principle that we are to avoid any teaching that doesn’t line up with what God says in his word.

There are a few indications about this heresy that indicate that it was rooted in the Jewish law, which was fulfilled by Jesus.

J.D. Greear says it this way:

Christians teach that every old covenant law finds its fullest expression in Jesus: the ceremonial laws pointed toward his life, death and resurrection; the civil laws created the nation and the religious mindset out of which salvation could emerge; the moral laws depicted the righteousness he would fulfill and find their purest expression in his life.[1]

Because Jesus fulfilled the pictures of the ceremonial laws, Christians were no longer bound to them.

However, as we will see towards the end of this section, the moral law still serves a great purpose in our lives, even though Christ was the only one to truly fulfill it.

That point was getting lost in the false teachings that had everyone focused on tracing their lineage through endless genealogies and getting caught up in worthless debates.

In our day, the false teachers and the doctrine they teach may not look exactly the same, but the end result is the same as what we see in verse 4.

In getting caught up in teaching things that are either outright wrong or at the least distortions of the truth, they distract us from living lives according to the plan of God.

Living in the plan of God, fighting the good fight, means that I am going to hold on to truths when things don’t make sense.

False teachers often package things entirely too neatly. If you ever hear a preacher or teacher selling you the secret to a happy, healthy, easy life, be on your guard.

Often, those teachers are over-simplifying what it means to follow God.

They make life and following God about you and what is in it for you, completely neglecting the fact that you and I exist to bring honor and glory to the God who made us.

As we see, we do this by following him in faith, believing he is good even when things don’t make sense!

False teachers in our day tell you that all you need to do is believe in yourself strongly enough and you can live your best life now. Cut out all those toxic people from your life and claim your positive reality. Print out your dream board and speak those things into your life.

None of that is in line with what we see in Scripture about what a life of following God looks like.

Guys, if we are going to fight the good fight, we need to stand up an boldly say that this isn’t the truth of the gospel or of God’s Word.

The truth of the matter is you are worse than you realize. Your heart and my heart, apart from Christ, are filthy and stained with our own sinful selfishness.

We will see this even greater next week, but for this week, know that anyone who points you anywhere but Christ as the ultimate source of life, hope, joy, and purpose, is teaching falsehood.

By the way, don’t make the mistake of thinking I am just talking about TV preachers. Although you need to be cautious about what you hear and listen to from teachers on stations like TBN, you need to make sure you are just as cautious, if not more so, with what blogs and magazines you read. You need to be careful what shows you spend your time watching and what podcasts you consume.

You even need to take everything you hear in Sunday School, small groups, and worship services here and make sure it lines up with God’s Word. We strive to teach the truth, but it is possible for us to go into error if we are not careful.

Fight the good fight by avoiding worthless teaching.

Watch out for popular, good-looking and smooth talking people like Oprah, Rob Bell, and Jordan Peterson. These people have huge followings and often have wonderful things to say, but ultimately, they are promoting empty speculations about what they think is right and what they hope to be true.

They are what we find in verses 6-7, having departed from the truth and think they have something to teach, but ultimately they don’t understand what they are talking about.

Fight the good fight by avoiding worthless teaching.

Be careful before you share something on Facebook. Make sure you know where it is coming from.

Not only do you need to avoid it on your own, you need to be willing to help others see their need to stop preaching and teaching those things as well.

I know that I have been very direct here, but guys, that’s what the Bible tells us to do.

I am not saying this because we are smarter than any of the people or have any greater righteousness in ourselves than they do.

However, part of my calling as your pastor is to equip you to fight the good fight, which means you have to pay attention to what you listen to, what you share, and what you teach.

So far, though, this part of the fight is largely a defensive move…dodge the bad teaching.

However, you can’t win a fight by simply bobbing and weaving; you have to throw punches.

So, what are we supposed to do?

2) Aim for love.

Now, we want to see what we are trying to accomplish positively.

There are false teachers around us whose goal is to sound important, even though they have no idea what they are actually talking about.

They are simply leading people into empty, worthless discussions by teaching them to trust in everything but Christ.

However, we are not going to be that way.

Look at verse 5...

This is the theme verse for our church, so let’s look at it.

What is our goal of love being contrasted against in verse 4?

Empty speculations that have nothing to do with God’s plan of following him in faith.

Our goal is not to have a lot of empty discussions, chasing after what we think is right or wrong.

Our goal is that, as we fight for and learn the truth of the gospel in greater and greater ways in our own hearts and lives, then that will produce in us a love for God and for others that makes a lasting impact in pushing back the darkness and bringing more lives in line with the way God’s kingdom should work.

It isn’t a love of warm emotions, it is a love of sacrificial action to do good and share Christ.

That love doesn’t come from empty speculations or chasing after myths or by observing the Jewish ceremonial laws; it only comes from a heart that has been made clean by Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.

You see, that’s what the law is all about for us.

Look back at verses 8-11...

The law is good because it shows us just how filthy our hearts are.

Look at that list again in verses 9-10. Let’s walk through them.

Lists like these that summarize some of the commands in God’s law show us just how sick our hearts really are.

We fall so short of who God created us to be, and we cannot do this on our own.

The law isn’t there to make us righteous, because none of us could live up to its standard. Instead, it is there to show us our guilt so we will cry out to God for grace and forgiveness that he offers through Christ.

Again, Paul is setting the ball on the tee for the next section that we will see next week, but here’s what we find from this: our lives don’t conform to God’s law, so he gave himself to save us from our sin and give us his righteousness.

He is the one who showed us what love was, not Oprah. He was the one who can make a heart clean. We don’t become clean by speaking our reality into existence, we are made clean by the blood of Christ that was poured out for us.

Instead of giving empty speculations, we fight for the truth by being willing to point to God’s word and help people see in the mirror it provides that they desperately need Jesus, just like we do!

That’s the goal of our instruction: for you to know God’s love and learn to give it back to him and others.

This comes out of a heart that has been made clean by Christ’s sacrifice.

It comes from a clear conscience, because we sincerely minister and teach so we can live God honoring lives and help others find the hope we have.

Instead of trusting in our understanding of genealogies and myths and speculation, we cry out, as verse 5 says, in a sincere faith that believes God is worthy of trust and obedience.

I know some of you are still sitting here, worried about how judgmental all this sounds.

Please, please come back next week. I promise you that our heart is not to condemn anyone; it is to warn them like someone warned us.

We are called to fight the good fight, which means we are going to fight for the truth.

That means we will avoid false teaching. We must have difficult conversations with people when they are teaching or sharing something that doesn’t line up with what we find in God’s word.

As we do that, we need to aim for love. Love doesn’t mean that we are sentimental and weak; instead, love means sacrifice. We love in response to God’s love for us, where he made our heart clean through his death, burial, and resurrection. We need to have a pure heart, a clean conscience, and walk with God daily in faith.

Are you willing to join in the fight with me?

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Endnotes:

[1] J.D. Greear - https://outreachmagazine.com/resources/books/christian-living-books/42047-irresistible-dialogue-andy-stanley-and-j-d-greear-part-1.html. Accessed 4 May 2019.

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