When the Dust Settles

It appears we are experiencing a bit of a conundrum, don’t you think?

I like that word - conundrum.

It means “a confusing and difficult problem or question.”

And we’ve got ourselves one.

You know, it wasn’t that long ago that the church could kind of go along to get along.

Everyone was essentially Christian or so it seemed - most people attended some sort of church on a regular basis.

Strange things happened in society and the church saw the changes.

But we did what people do best - we ignored it and hoped it would go away.

But it didn’t go away.

It started decades ago..

There was a song released in 1970 - that is crazy good is Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s, “Love the one you’re with.”

It was released on their “4 Way Street” album and the minute it was released it became the number one album in America.

The message is as ungodly as it can be but was a happy, feel good tune and it rocked a generation.

We may or may not have done what it said, but we heard the message - over and over and over again.

It influenced us - a lot of things have influenced us.

So it’s not then, it’s now and what has happened now?

USA Today released it’s Women of the Year 2022 the other week.

Dr. Rachel Levine is on their list.

Dr. Levine was born Richard L. Levine in 1957.

He went to medical school and married at the end of medical school.

He and his wife had two children.

He was a pediatrician and obviously had political chops as well.

He started visiting therapists in 2001 and let his hair grow out in 2008.

In 2011 at the age of 54, he publically announced that he identified as a woman

He took voice lessons for a year and a half to learn to talk like a woman.

In 2013 he was divorced.

And most recently, Dr. Levine was appointed as a 4 star admiral in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corp and is the Assistant Secretary for Health of the United States of America since his confirmation by the senate in March 24 of 2021.

The confirmation was a party line vote with both of our senators, Mr. Ossoff and Rev. Warnock voted to affirm Dr. Levine.

We have Rachel Levine and Lia Thomas, the University of Pennsylvania swimmer who says he’s a girl, he swims on the girls team and mostly he wears out the competition - although a very few girls have beaten him.

Florida is working to pass a law called the Parental Rights in Education bill and it is strongly opposed by the LGBQTIA community.

The law makes it so parents can sue schools that teach kindergartner's through third grade about gender identity.

Sounds like a no brainer - even Bill Maher said we should let kids be kids.

But Disney, who is big in Florida and you know because many of you go to Disney all of the time.

Disney was criticized for not being openly hostile to this bill and Disney’s CEO felt compelled to explain.

Paraphrased he said, “We can lead change better by including the LGBQTIA agenda in our movies than we can vocally opposing this law.”

Parents, grandparents, that should make your hair stand on edge.

And there is our conundrum.

It’s been easy to ignore what’s going on around us for the last 60 years.

In fact, it’s been easy to adopt some of the thoughts and beliefs we’ve heard over and over - it is easier to go along to get along.

But now your home isn’t a safe space.

Did you know that Toy Story 4, Cruella, Jungle Cruise, Eternals, Onward, the live action Beauty and the Beast, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and Avengers: Endgame, among others had little scenes of LGBQTIA people.

What are you going to do with that?

What do we do with that - with our kids coming home from school with more questions than answers - what do we do with that?

Why talk about this?

Other than all of this is in the news and to ignore it is to ignore reality, there are churches - and a whole lot of them - who accept this and teach this.

A local church states that their congregation “support[s] the full inclusion in the life of the church of all people, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The church at Ephesus was being infiltrated by people teaching that certain genealogies made a difference and that the important thing about being a man or a woman is that you can do whatever you want to do sexually without worries about husbands or wives or kids or anything else for that matter.

The more times change, the more they stay the same.

What if we knew how to deal with the insanity around us?

Well, we can.

In fact, the answer has been here all along - the Lord simply needed to get us to a place where we would hear it again.

The problem of living as Christians in a hedonistic world isn’t nearly as insurmountable as one might think.

Jesus gave us a game plan so we could protect the gospel in our hearts, in our homes and in our Church.

Turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Timothy 6:11-21.

If you don’t have your Bible with you, you may use one of the Bibles in our pew rack.

And if you don’t own a Bible, it would be a blessing to us if you would take one of ours to have as your own.

Listen to the Word of the Lord.

1 Timothy 6:11–21 ESV

But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen. As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life. O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge,” for by professing it some have swerved from the faith. Grace be with you.

This is the Word of the Lord, Thanks be to God.

Our focus today will be on verses 11 - 16.

17 - 21 are snap summaries of the entire letter.

We’ve covered it pretty well so we’ll leave this for another time.

But verses 11 - 16 lay out the game plan, they contain the answer to our conundrum which is, how do we deal with the insanity around us?

Flee

Flee is a good word.

It means to “move quickly from a point or area in order to avoid a presumed danger or difficulty.”

I’ve done this and didn’t know I was doing it.

When I’ve gone exploring in different places and I start to notice that I’m in a rough section of town, I immediately make my way out of the rough area.

That’s what this is saying.

Listen, we’ve got to understand that for the vast majority of us, arguing with people who strongly disagree with us is a losing proposition.

I was listening to a former Scientologist the other day and you could hear that in her explanation.

Those folks are convinced they are right - you’ll never argue them out of it and chances are, you’ll end up questioning yourself more than they question themselves.

Paul says don’t.

Don’t engage in the argument.

Flee controversies.

Avoid teachings from religious people who say they have received a direct message from the Lord that is different from what you’ve heard.

They have a special teaching - like the folks in Ephesus said they had special teachings.

These people are a presumed danger - move quickly away.

Then notice what Paul says to do:

Pursue

And he lays out what we need to pursue.

I’ve heard this a couple of times recently, and it fits.

I’ve been told that people whose job requires them to identify counterfeit money do not study counterfeit money.

They study real money and they study is so closely and for so long that when something comes along that is counterfeit, they know it.

You know how you get a funny feeling sometimes when something doesn’t feel quite right?

That’s because you know what is right, and something you are observing doesn’t fit.

Paul says flee controversial things and pursue real things.

Pursue means to do something with intense effort and with a definite goal.

It means you put some energy into it because, listen, because you expect to get something out of it.

And what you expect is to know the truth.

And when you know the truth, you know how to live.

Pursue righteousness

Yes, you were made right with God when you trusted Jesus as savior.

You were given Jesus righteousness and He took on your sinfulness, but now let me ask you a simple question.

If a person is in prison and is pardoned, when they are released from prison, how do we expect them to live?

If they were a thief, do we expect them to go back to stealing?

If they were a murdered, do we expect them to murder?

If they smuggled drugs, do we expect them to go back to smuggling drugs?

No, that would be ridiculous.

We would expect them to pursue the type of life that would allow them to remain free.

The type of life that made them free.

We were released from prison.

Death was our sentence and Hell was our destination - and we aren’t going there anymore.

What Jesus did fixed that - so what is our response to being released from prison?

Don’t go arguing with people whose destination is prison, pursue the life that you were given.

You were made righteous, learn how to be righteous.

Pursue Godliness

You aren’t pursuing these things to earn anything, you are pursing these things because this is the way Jesus rolls and we want to follow Jesus.

Godliness is having Christian beliefs and devoutly living them.

And this one is harder than it seems on it’s face.

I’m concerned that as our society, as Disney for example, gets more godless, things that we’ve taken for granted, we’ll need to put them away.

And that’s going to be hard because we have been de-sensitized.

We’ve said, I’ve said, since I was a kid, it’s a good book, it’s a good movie, it just has a little language.

And now football stadiums chant a word that once would have gotten us slapped in the mouth.

We’ve become a very coarse society and we are not as protective of our children as we once were.

People used to watch their language around ladies and children and now ladies and children are as coarse as anyone else.

If pursue means to do something with intense effort for a specific goal, we’re going to need to watch our mental and spiritual diets with the same tenacity as an athlete training to win a championship.

Remember what Paul said earlier - physical training has some benefit but spiritual training - that’s how we live.

That how we grow into our righteousness.

Pursue Faith

Yes, faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit but I’m telling you there are times I doubt and times I’m not sure.

And when that happens, I head to to the Lord in prayer.

I read the Word, I talk with other brothers and sisters.

Because their faith stories remind me of my faith stories and that makes my faith grow.

Pursue Love

Work at loving the Lord more.

Look for Him, search Him out in all things.

Keep your eyes open for God moments.

Try something knew in your Bible study.

I heard Jen Wilkins say she started reading the Bible out loud, I’ve modified that a bit.

I listen to the Bible every morning now and you know what?

I’ve had to limit the amount I listen to.

It takes on a whole new flavor and I hear things I don’t hear when I read.

And it’s weird, in the telling of the story, I hear how God works.

I started at Genesis 1:1 and I just finished with the Israelites crossing the Red Sea and Pharaoh's army getting destroyed.

And you know what I heard?

I heard the people terrified and not knowing what to do in a situation -

Dig this - in a horrible situation that God put them in.

And why did He put them in it?

So He could deliver them.

So they would know who He is and know His power.

So they would rejoice that He is for them.

The Israelites grew to love the Lord more.

Do you hear?

We go through hard times all of the time.

God allows it and sometimes He causes it.

Why?

So we can see Him deliver us, we can know Him better and we will love Him more.

Pursue Steadfastness

Steadfastness means we bear up under difficult circumstances.

Times are difficult and I’m not sure we’ve begun to see the worst of it.

Ephesians 6:13 ESV

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.

That’s what we want.

That’s what I want.

When we have done everything we can do.

When the enemy has thrown everything he can throw at us.

When the dust settles from the battlefield and the smoke blows away, there we will be.

Amid the destruction and the chaos and the mayhem.

There we are - standing boldly, firmly, resolutely for the truth.

Pursue Gentleness

The world is coarse.

Don’t us be.

The world is harsh.

Don’t us be.

The world will cancel you in a New York minute.

We don’t cancel.

Because we know what it’s like to be lost.

And we know what it’s like to be found.

And we want even our worst enemies to know what that’s like too.

1 Timothy 6:12-15 “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time...”

To quote a line from a Disney movie:

Remember who you are

You made a profession of faith.

You may have been young, so young that you didn’t know the in’s and out’s of everything.

But you knew enough to know that you were broken.

And that you needed a savior.

And there is only one who can fill that prescription.

You knew you needed Jesus so you trusted Him to save you then.

Trust Him now.

Paul says, “Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called....”

Do you know what it means to be called?

Sure you do - people have been calling you all of your life.

When the phone rings, they are inviting you into their life - in fact, they are wanting you to answer so you can be a part of their life.

Calling here means to be urgently invited to accept responsibilities of a specific task.

That task is to trust Jesus and be irrevocably changed.

And know that you are irrevocably changed.

And don’t follow Him until you are ready to be irrevocably changed.

Just as Jesus stood firm before His crucifixion, you stand firm too.

And you keep standing firm.

Unstained - morally spotless.

Free from reproach - pursuing the Lord in such a way that we cannot be criticized for how we are doing it.

Because the one we are following - no one can truthfully criticize Him.

1 Timothy 6:15-16 “—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.”

It feels like we are swimming upstream

I don’t know if you’ve ever done that or not.

I’ve rafted down the Chattahoochee River a number of times.

And we’d get out and play in the water.

And if the raft got ahead of you, it was no big deal - you could swim and catch up pretty quickly.

But if you got ahead of the raft, swimming back was a chore.

And mostly what you did was, you tried to swim the speed of the current so you’d stay stationary relative to the shore.

And the raft would catch up with you.

I hope you’ve had a chance to do that at some point.

Listen, what is going on now is not a surprise to God.

He’s put us here and as hard as we swim, it seems we aren’t moving.

But we have to remember, we were called for just such a time as this.

Just like the Lord appeared to put the Israelites in harm’s way so they would be sure to see His deliverance.

The Lord is doing that with us right now.

It feels like we are powerless and helpless in the face of this insanity.

And we are - for a purpose.

The Lord is going to show off and we will be amazed.

In the mean time, remember who you are.

Eugene Peterson in The Message Translation ends 1 Timothy this way:

20-21 And oh, my dear Timothy, guard the treasure you were given! Guard it with your life. Avoid the talk-show religion and the practiced confusion of the so-called experts. People caught up in a lot of talk can miss the whole point of faith.

Overwhelming grace keep you!

The point of our faith is Jesus.

Proclaim Him.

Protect His Word.

Stand.