The Charge
The Church: Standards and Leadership • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 43:52
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Sincerity over Speculation
Sincerity over Speculation
Sincerity over Speculation
We all long for sincerity but even sincerity can be sincerely wrong. The basis of our sincerity is what matters. Are my convictions built on truth or a lie.
I can sincerely believe that I can fly and go outside jump into the air and find that one of things is true. On one hand some will say that I lack faith. On the other hand, God created gravity and seems to approve of its function. As the embodiment of Truth, it is unlikely that my will is going to overcome that which God has established as Truth.
Last week we discussed how false teaching based in myths which are the spectacular and genealogies which are mundane traditions can lead us away from God’s will.
Our focus was to avoid speculation and embrace the stewardship . . . the care of what God has given us by faith.
By this we can avoid the traps that send us running after ungodly spectacle or sitting complaisant in our traditions and memories of days gone by.
Our goal is to stay in the center of God’s will and we can only do this as we remain faithful to the Truth.
Paul wrote to Timothy instructing him to charge certain people to not teach these falsehoods.
Today we look at the heart of that charge. As we do, God will challenge us to search our own hearts and motives to see if we are being good stewards who walk by faith.
Let’s pray and ask God to bless our time in the Word.
PRAY
READ
3 As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine,
4 nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.
These verses were the focus of last weeks message. Notice in verse 3 that Timothy is to issue a charge:
3 As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine,
A charge is issued in authority as the leader of the church. This can be done well, or it can be done poorly. A charge can be received well or received poorly. With so much risk of conflict, why would we do it. Why not just let these errors and speculations slide. What will it hurt?
Paul gives us the answer:
5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
6 Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion,
7 desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
The Goal
The goal is love. As with everything in the church we begin here.
Jesus said:
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
38 This is the great and first commandment.
39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
He would go on to teach his disciples:
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Paul would write to the Corinthian church:
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
How important is the motive of love?
What if they are wrong?
15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.
1 Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.
The goal is always love. At times it requires a firm word, a charge, or even discipline . . . but it is always done in love.
How do we insure that we tackle these differences well:
5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
It comes from a Pure Heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.
Jesus gives us this picture:
1 “Judge not, that you be not judged.
2 For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.
3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?
4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye?
5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Where does the pure heart come from. Confession of your sin first. Never take the confrontation of a fellow believer lightly. We must guard against pride and its destructive tendencies.
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
What comes next?
5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
A good conscience.
I have checked my motives.
3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
The last one:
5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
A sincere faith.
This is the part of us that reminds us that Truth is worth standing for. That the cost of standing for truth will be sorted out by God.
19 But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge,
20 for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”
Look at the example set by these men who faced possible death but they spoke the truth by faith.
11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,
12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,
14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,
16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
This is the core of who we are as Christians.
We speak the truth in love.
6 Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion,
7 desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
When we swerve away from our commitment to a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith we can no longer serve the body.
We become a poison. A source of division and our selfishness leads others away from the truth.
So what is your motive?
As you see your role in this church, what guides you? Is your love focused on others through your faith in Christ.