It’s great to know about how amazing Jesus is and wonderful to find out that the angels are incredibly powerful creations He made, too. But, where does that leave us?\n\n\n\nbreak.
\n\n## Study Questions\n\n\n\n_The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
\n\n\n\n1. The Milky Way illustration reveals how small we are by any cosmic or historical measure, yet the sermon insists that smallness and significance are not opposites. What does it mean to you personally that God assigns purpose to people who are, by the universe’s scale, barely visible?\n\n2. Paul grounds himself in the command of God and the hope of Christ even as he faces persecution and approaching death. What anchors do you rely on when life’s circumstances threaten to shake your faith, and which truths from 1 Timothy 1:1–2 proved most stabilizing in a difficult season?\n\n3. The sermon describes faith as a “relay” stretching back 2,000 years through sons and daughters in the faith. How does understanding yourself as part of that generational chain change the way you think about your own role in passing the gospel on?\n\n4. Timothy wasn’t Paul’s biological son, but Paul calls him his “genuine child in the faith” and entrusts his mission to him. Who has invested spiritually in your life, and who are you currently investing in? What does that mentoring relationship look like in practice?\n\n5. The sermon contrasts God our Savior with Nero’s claim to be savior of the world. What modern equivalents compete for that role in our lives today, and how do we keep from quietly granting them that power?\n\n6. When the preacher asks “what are we going to do with the charter we have,” he is asking about stewardship of the gospel. How does viewing the Great Commission as something entrusted to you to pass on—rather than something you accomplish for yourself—change your approach to faith and evangelism?\n\n\n\n## Transcript\n\n\n\nThis transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors._\n\n\n\nHow significant is your life? How significant is my life? That’s the sort of question we like to ask ourselves at times, and for good reason. We want to know their significance to what we’re doing. Hi, welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad that you’re here tonight as we’re going to be diving into 1 Timothy chapter 1 together over the coming weeks with this new series, Our Charge is Love.\n\nI found myself asking that question about significance last week when I saw a video. Someone ingeniously decided to size up the Milky Way Galaxy and give us a sense of scale. And so the question was, what would it be like if the Milky Way Galaxy were sized the size of North America? Something that we kind of understand, right? We get a sense of how the states are spread out across the continent and our fellow countries, Canada and Mexico, we get a sense of that. So North America is huge, but we understand the vastness of it.\n\nWell, if North America were the actual size of the Milky Way, what would everything inside the Milky Way be like? What would be the massive thing we call the sun be like? And that’s where the video went. It starts zooming in on the North American-sized Milky Way. And then it’s suddenly showing a city. And it keeps going, looking for the sun. And it keeps going, and it comes down to a neighborhood. And you can see the houses. It keeps going to a park. And you can see a park bench. And you think, how much further do we need to go here? And then it zooms in, and you see the food on the picnic table by the picnic bench. And you say, oh, okay, it’s going to be, you know, a barbecue burger size or something. And then it keeps going, and you see a little bitty fly getting ready to attack the picnic food. Well, now we’ve hit it. No, we go even smaller than that, and there’s this little bitty thing dwarfed by what now looks like a mutant giant fly. That’s the sun, the biggest thing in our solar system, the thing that looks so huge and provides us light all the time. How much smaller is the Earth, then? And you see something like that that just speaks to one aspect of the scale of our position in life and in the universe. Just one little glimpse of that.\n\nWe can also go other directions, like, how do we fit into the scope of human history, for example? And we realize that there’s an awful lot of insignificance in there. But we like to think of our own little moment. We want to think there’s something to it. And the good news is, Scripture says there is something to it. But the key thing, the important thing, is that we actually pay attention to the right stuff, that we understand what really is there, rather than the stuff that we often focus on that isn’t God’s priority. Because when we’re focused on what God says is important, suddenly we’re not just a little bitty subatomic particle on a little microscopic thing next to itty-bitty, almost invisible to the human eye, sun. No, we actually are those who have meaning because our God has called us to do something.\n\nSo that’s what we’re going to be thinking about tonight. Let’s pray and ask God to help us to understand that, and then we’ll dive in. Let’s pray.\n\nFather, thank you for this evening. I want to thank you for everyone who’s here, and the chance we have to start a brand new series, to dig into 1 Timothy 1. As we do, and we think about what it is that you’ve called us to be and to do, would you help us to understand more truly and fully, and be ready to go and do the significant things you’ve called us to do? We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.\n\nHey, as we begin tonight, would you hit that like button, hit that share button, hit the subscribe button to our channel, do all those social media things, because as you do, help someone else who’s looking for significance find a place where we’re going to explore that together, and explore that together in the most important way we possibly can, by going into God’s Word. Thank you so much for doing that.\n\nWe’re going to look, just for starters, at just verse 1 of 1 Timothy 1, if you want to turn there. We see Paul writes, “…from Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the command of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus our hope.” The sort of verse that we just go speeding over oftentimes, because we know, if we’ve read the Bible for a while, that Paul starts letters like this. This is a traditional epistle. And, in fact, it wasn’t even unique to Paul or epistles in the Bible, letters in the Bible, that is. It was the way in the ancient world you wrote a letter. So we just go speeding on.\n\nBut there’s several things we want to note in how Paul talks about who he is and what he’s doing here that deserve attention, that we shouldn’t just go speeding by this. And the first one, I think, that we really want to note, and the key to this, and it speaks to how we understand our own key as well, is that Paul isn’t just a person writing a letter. He’s a person sent with a purpose. He’s a person sent to proclaim the gospel. He’s an apostle.\n\nNow, that’s Paul, and we’ll get to the moment how that has anything to do with us understanding our own purpose. But the starting point is, Paul has a purpose. God has sent him, and God has sent him not just to go visit people, not just to administer the church, but specifically to go and communicate the gospel to people, to point to Jesus, to bring people who hadn’t yet heard into a situation where the Holy Spirit would work and transform them and make them part of the body of Christ, to do that. That is what Paul’s purpose was. That made him an apostle.\n\nAnd in a sense, then, we’re also talking about something very unique here, because Paul isn’t just sent because he felt like he had warm fuzzies for the gospel. No, Paul says here, it’s by command. He was commanded to go do this. And if you know the story of Paul, you know this. Paul isn’t trying to go preach the gospel. In fact, he’s trying to persecute the people of the church. And he has that Damascus Road experience, where Jesus blinds him and sends him into a home of a believer, so someone who is Paul’s enemy at the time, sends Paul into that home, and Paul is transformed. He goes from being a persecutor of the church to the apostle to the Gentiles. Amazing transformation, and one that he knows here by saying that he is by the command of God doing this.\n\nHe didn’t do it by his own volition at all. God said, this is what you’re going to do. And Paul, recognizing that God was working, does say, okay, this is what I’m going to do. And if you were knocked to the ground while traveling, and blinded, and had the voice of God speaking to you, yeah, you would probably take that pretty seriously. But notably, Paul brings that up. He establishes several things that are really important for later in the chapter that we’ll talk about. He establishes that what Paul says is authoritative. It’s not just the musings of a first century man, but rather someone sent by God to communicate this stuff. So it affects how he deals with those who are trying to preach a different gospel, and how we should interact with him today. And so that’s important. We’re going to leave that for another week, but it’s something to keep in mind.\n\nBut it also is what grounds him in everything he’s going to face. Because this is not a promotion, so to speak, for Paul. When Paul was off doing his persecuting of the church, you know what? He was a more important man, by earthly standards. A more admired man. And when we talk about being admired and important, what do we really have our eyes on is, do I have ease, do I have power, do I have success? And Paul had those things.\n\nBy rejecting that life, and actually doing a 180, suddenly preaching the gospel, Paul goes from having those things to not having those things. So it’s not an easy transformation. We know, we just looked at Acts 13 and 14 on Sunday nights, that oftentimes, going and preaching the gospel brought what? Persecution. Rejection. Sometimes it was not just mild persecution, a few insults, someone saying, oh, that’s stupid, Paul, not that kind of thing, but we’d like to take you out and introduce you to some big rocks and see how your head does with them. Literal stoning. Literal threats to life. And of course, most of the apostles ultimately face death. So you really need to be grounded in something.\n\nWhat is it that Paul’s grounded in? Well, notice here what he says as he goes on to the end of verse 1. Of Christ Jesus, our hope. And our hope is a phrase that’s unique here for Paul. He uses the hope of glory in phrases like that. But here, Paul just says, our hope. I think this is a picture of older Paul, more reflective Paul, Paul approaching the end of his life. What it really comes down to is not how much glory is he going to experience, not that it’s bad to speak of the glorification of believers, not even the technical theological transformation that occurs, but the bare, simple, haunting question, what’s going to happen to me? What do I stake my life on as it is getting nearer to the end than the beginning?\n\nAnd Paul says, I have just simply my hope. And by the way, Timothy, it’s your hope, too. It’s our hope. And it’s Jesus. Full stop. I think if we’re really trying to understand how he’s grounding himself here, this is absolutely key to that. Now, we don’t know everything I just said. Paul doesn’t explain why he uses this much simpler phrase here, but I kind of think that has something to do with it. Because the whole letter is about Paul passing on something to Timothy, instructing Timothy as Timothy is going to go and do the work that Paul’s been doing. And it is nearing the time when Paul will lose his life and be in glory. He will be with Jesus, but he’s not going to be in this earthly realm any longer. He’s going to die. And for us, no matter how strong our faith might be at times, that’s an intimidating thing. We don’t know how to understand it. It’s no wonder that those words as Hamlet speaks of the undiscovered country in his famous soliloquy, that sticks with us, because it is the undiscovered country. We don’t know what it’s like. What’s our hope? How do we face it and do what God has called us to do? We trust, and we trust in Him.\n\nNow also, and this is I believe crucial, it’s not just that Paul is making this point, but he’s also making this point in contrast to what the world says. And if you look here, just a little bit further back in verse 1, not only is Christ Jesus our hope, but he says that he’s doing this by the command of God our Savior. And that God our Savior phrase is another unusual phrase, and so it stands out. How is Paul speaking differently in these last instructive letters to his, as he calls him, his son in the faith, Timothy, than he normally speaks? Why say God our Savior? That does sound a little different, right? We’re used to our Savior Jesus Christ, that kind of phrasing, and of course Jesus is God, but why this particular phrase?\n\nAnd it’s thought, again, we can’t prove this. There’s a lot of questions on exactly everything that was behind the motives, but I think there’s something to this. The world was offering a different answer. The emperor Nero had it put out, and he wanted everyone to say that Nero is the Savior of the world. Now of course we know Nero was a very wicked man, and we know the stories about him doing awful things to Christians and people in general. But what he wanted to be is someone who was seen as the Savior of the world, that he was the great hope of the world as the emperor, the Savior of the world.\n\nPaul says, not so fast. There is a Savior, but our Savior is God, not Nero. Our Savior is God, not whatever you and I put our trust in today, or whomever says we should put our trust in him or her today. We have a lot of things today that try to claim to be our Savior, but this is where we need to ground ourselves. And notably, for one, it’s true, and for two, it allows us to endure as we follow our God. And you might say, well, if I’m following Jesus, then I already get the Savior thing. And yet, how often do we as Christians still live as if there are other Saviors? And I’m sure there were some people at that time who wanted to curry favor with Nero, who even wanted worldly success. They said, okay, well, maybe Nero is the Savior of the world, and God is the Savior of heaven or something. But no. You’re looking for a Savior. There’s one Savior, and it’s Jesus. Full stop.\n\nOur hope, our Savior. And so Paul is setting this all up so that we understand what we need to be anchored to. And being anchored is so crucial, because the winds of life blow constantly. It sort of feels like the winds around here lately. It’s constantly blowing, doesn’t it? Be interesting in the chat. Wherever you’re watching from tonight, has it been really windy the last few months? Maybe even the last year? Does it kind of drive you crazy at this point? I feel like here in Missouri it’s way windier than normal. And I haven’t gone and looked at the weather data to see if my sense is correct, but it just feels like it’s constantly windy. There’s always a howling wind, or things getting blown down, or what have you. And certainly that getting blown down, getting blown off part is a part of it, right? When it’s blowing really hard, when there’s all kinds of wind, what do we see? We see the things that aren’t anchored properly.\n\nMaybe it’s some decoration in the yard that comes tumbling over because it was strong enough to stay up as long as everything’s still, but not when it’s blowing. Maybe it’s a siding on your house. You lose a piece of it, and it goes blowing off. Maybe it’s something that wasn’t attached properly, or shingles, or whatever it might be, right? We get the sense when the wind’s blowing, what’s really attached, and what isn’t. And here’s the truth about our lives. We’re going to have winds blow against us, and the question is, are we attached or not? And here, as Paul is writing Timothy and setting him up to go do more ministry, and certainly as Timothy is going to continue that into the next generation, it’s all the more crucial because Timothy is going to feel the winds of opposition clearly. Whenever we’re doing what God’s called us to do, we’re going to feel those winds, and the question is, are we anchored properly or not? Because it’s going to show our weaknesses.\n\nAnd if we’re trusting in saviors of the world that are worldly, if we’re putting our hope in the things of the world, those things are going to blow away maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe a few decades from now, whenever it is that death stares us down. But we are going to feel that wind blowing. Are we anchored or not? That’s what Paul’s writing here in verse 1. All that packed in there, a lot packed into that greeting. And I say, well, that’s easy enough for Paul because of exactly what he says in verse 1. Let’s just mention again, what does he say? He says he’s by the command of God our Savior. That’s a pretty good thing to ground yourself in, right? If God goes and tells you audibly and completely disrupts what you were doing and says, this is what you’re going to do now, that’s a pretty good thing to anchor in. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had that? Well, yeah, it definitely would. We don’t all have Damascus Road experiences. And while I’m sure it was terrifying in the moment, I think most of us would say, but I’d really like to have that, because I know exactly what I was doing. I know exactly where God wants me.\n\nAnd since we don’t have that, well, everything we’ve just been talking about, is it not relevant? Sure, that was great for Paul. Good for you, Paul! I wish it were true for me. But it’s not quite like that. As you see here, if we go on to verse 2, Paul passes on the charge. Take a look at verse 2. To Timothy, my genuine child in the faith, grace, mercy and peace from God the Father, in Christ Jesus our Lord.\n\nPaul says, you’re going to be the next generation that carries us on. You are my genuine child in the faith. This piece that I have, because I’ve been anchored, is a piece I give to you, I greet you in, because it’s yours, too. You see, yes, Paul had the confidence of experiencing that, but now it was Paul’s job to give Timothy a Damascus Road experience, not blind him and completely knock him off of his route and say, you know, now you’ll never forget me. No, but to take the confidence that he had, the charge he had, and say, okay, now this is something I am going to give to you. I want to refresh you with the gospel. So Paul’s going to do it. Timothy’s not new to the ministry at this point. He’s been working with Paul. He’s done all kinds of things. But he’s still going to be going into a new phase as he inherits the mantle, as it were. And Paul’s preparing him for that.\n\nAre we doing that? There’s the question, I think, as we start to think about, well, how do I fit into this? What we see here is we see the beginnings of a beautiful, beautiful chain. First, Timothy is a child of faith. Now, that’s a different phrase, right? But what Paul’s saying is, yes, Timothy is not his actual son. But as the one who’s mentored Timothy, as the one who’s prepared Timothy for ministry, as the one who’s then seen Timothy carrying on the mission that Paul’s been doing, Timothy is his son in the faith. And that’s crucial.\n\nPaul wants to encourage Timothy. He loves Timothy. And he wants to see Timothy take what he has and go on with it. And so faithfulness to the command that Paul received is faithfulness by passing it on. It wouldn’t be enough to say, well, you know, Timothy’s not really my son, and I have this special command. I’m going to hold on to it for as long as I can. And then when I die, everyone will say, boy, it sure was nice when Paul was around. Paul wants people to see Timothy is continuing that mission as the inheritor of that command. He wants people to see that, so that that refreshment brews just like you can hear my coffee pot decide to turn on. And I can already imagine the refreshment that’s coming when I get that nice, hot, fresh cup of coffee. I love the sound of a coffee maker, don’t you? It just sounds so good. It says something good is coming up.\n\nAnd what Paul’s saying here to Timothy is, no, it’s not going to be easy, but there’s something good brewing. God is working through you, and I want you to know that this command I have is a command that you continue to carry. And in that sense, if we really think about it, we hear, for those of us who are Protestant, we don’t usually talk about apostolic succession, where the apostles passed on leadership, what we usually associate with how you get bishops and archbishops and cardinals and popes and that sort of thing. But in a very real sense, there is an apostolic succession every time the apostle passed on to someone else the gospel and encouraged that person, passed on the mission that God gave, and that person passed it on to someone else and someone else. And some of them might be the big names that we know or the somewhat well-known names that say someone who’s Catholic and then studies the saints, the figures given the title saint, those figures that are at least somewhat more notable, or maybe some of the more obscure ones, keeps working their way down.\n\nBut apostolic succession is also when you and I are here as beneficiaries of the apostles passing on the teaching of Jesus. They were sent. They communicated that truth to other people, communicated it to other people. And it’s only because of that that you and I are here studying God’s word tonight. There is an apostolic succession. And in that, we see an inheritance, right? We see a family tree, as it were. Timothy, as the son in faith to Paul, passes on to his own sons and daughters in the faith the truth. And on and on and on the story goes for the last 2,000 years until we find ourselves sons and daughters of others in the faith as God works.\n\nIt gives us a little bit of the perspective of how we fit into things. When we’re talking on the scale of hundreds or thousands of years, it sort of boggles the mind at times. I find myself reading a lot of the history of the Hudson Bay Company a few months ago when the company was being liquidated. The oldest company in North America founded in the 17th century, chartered by the King of England to go into that undiscovered territory of Canada and look for furs.\n\nAnd over time, it kept that royal charter and eventually turned into a department store company. Quite a bit different than what the original Hudson Bay Company looked like, perhaps. But the people running it held on to that charter. And they used the royal seal. They were aware of the fact that they had a lineage. It wasn’t just, well, did they have department stores and malls back in the 17th century? Of course not. And yet they still understood that they were part of something that had been passed on and on and on. And it caused a lot of people to reflect their interest in history when suddenly it came to a hard stop. Boom. Some people hadn’t taken that charge seriously enough in the right ways so that it would continue.\n\nAnd so last year, this thing that had been there for longer than any of us, longer than the United States, ceased to exist. And its charter and its seal were put up for auction for whomever wanted to buy it. And a lot of the items associated with that hundreds of years worth of history were bought by a company called Canadian Tire, a discount retailer. You think, wow, that’s kind of weird, isn’t it? What a shame.\n\nHow much more a shame is it if we don’t take serious the charge we have? Because we have a royal charter as well, given by the Messiah, the ultimate king. And it’s been passed down not for three or four hundred years, not even five hundred years, not six hundred or a thousand years, but thousands of years now, God has been relaying this through his people, commanding us to go and to represent to the world his love and his redemption. And so, what are we going to do with the charter we have? Are we ready to pour the coffee and pass it on to another generation? Because we’re with a much older organization and its history is much more important.\n\nIt’s not about meeting prophets or even making memories shopping. It’s about transforming lives and seeing people actually experiencing hope. And our charge, just like Timothy’s, actually comes from the command of God. We don’t have that Damascus Road experience, but someone has passed it on to you. Someone has passed it on to me. And as part of that, the implication is we have a duty to pass it on as well. We shouldn’t let the family tree branch die. We want to pass it on that more would know him. Because we’re not talking about a department store. We’re not talking about just keeping the siding on the house. We’re talking about anchoring ourselves in the hope of Jesus and then seeing other people anchored, too, so they aren’t blown over by the winds of life.\n\nWhat does that say about us and our significance? An itty-bitty speck in an itty-bitty speck? Well, we know every single soul that God has made, he loves. The God of the universe, the one who’s bigger than the Milky Way itself and everything else out there cares about all those little specks. And in his plan, he’s placed you, he’s placed me to carry part of that tree on, that relay, that beautiful relay of faith, of sons and daughters in faith that go from generation to generation helping more people to have hope.\n\nNow, it’s important that we understand and feel a little dwarf, just like we do when we think about a company a few hundred years old. But that shouldn’t lead us to say, well, I don’t have anything significant to offer anyway, but rather why am I so focused on my little speck when I have the opportunity and the calling to recognize one, the beauty of what God’s done so that my little speck actually gets the hope of redemption, but then that my little speck can go and do a mission far greater than my little speck of time would suggest. Hundreds of years from now, thousands of years from now, however long until the Lord returns, as we share the gospel, as we communicate his hope, we’re on a mission by the command of God. There’s a significance and a purpose to that. It’s there today for you, and it’s there today for me.\n\nLet’s pray that we would understand that and proceed with it. Would you pray with me, please?\n\nFather, we do thank you for your mission that you have given us. Lord, we don’t want to just think about brewing coffee. We don’t want to just brew the coffee and let it sit in the pot. We want to pour a hot, delightful cup of coffee for people in need of it, and then teach them how to make coffee for more. We want people to see that faith is so much better than coffee, so much better than a company that lasts hundreds of years, so much better than well-attached sidings, so much better than anything, so much bigger than a galaxy. It keeps being passed on and on and on. And would you, Lord, help us to see those people that you’ve placed in our lives, who are our Timothys, that you don’t want us just to hold on to this blessing that you’ve given us, but you want us to pass it on. Help us to understand that and to do it.\n\nAnd for some of us, maybe we’re more in the Timothy stage of life. We’re just receiving. We haven’t yet gotten to the point to pass it on. And for us, would you help us to be in awe and wonder at what you’re doing and to hold on to that so that as soon as you give us the opportunity, we would anxiously and joyfully pass it on to others as well. We pray these things in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.\n\nSo how do you experience the significance? If you haven’t yet trusted in Jesus, you start by believing in him. And if you’d like someone to pray with you tonight, I’d love to pray with you, our whole online family in the chat. Just jump into the chat. We’d love to pray with you. Or you can text the number you see on screen, 833-356-4032. That’s 833-356-4032. And as you write in, as you chat in on the chat, we can pray for each other, and you’re significant. If you think, well, I don’t have any significance, well, by most measures, none of us do. But God loves you. And so as you trust in him, you get to experience that he takes the insignificant and puts all of us into a beautiful relay. Beautiful, beautiful tapestry of significance. Don’t wait. Do that right now.\n\nAlso, if there’s any way I can be encouragement to you, use that same number, 833-356-4032. Just write in. Love to answer any questions, whatever it might be. And may I remind you that we do have our new series on Sunday nights as well, going through Isaiah, and it’s going to, I think, really be encouraging to us over this late winter and early spring ahead. And so please do make plans. Come and join us, 5:30 p.m. on Sunday. We meet in person in St. Charles, Missouri, and of course online as well. So however you can, please do join us. It’s 5:30 central time. I’ll see you then, and I’ll look forward to seeing you back here next week. Have a wonderful and blessed week.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
It’s great to know about how amazing Jesus is and wonderful to find out that the angels are incredibly powerful creations He made, too. But, where does that leave us?\n\n\n\nbreak.
\n\n## Study Questions\n\n\n\n_The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
\n\n\n\n1. The preacher compares spiritual focus to a tired mind losing concentration—what are some modern “noises” that pull your attention away from the gospel, and how do you notice yourself drifting toward them?\n2. Paul commanded Timothy to stay and guard against false teachings rather than just suggesting it. What does the difference between a suggestion and a command tell us about how seriously we should take guarding doctrine today?\n3. In what ways might modern Christian discussions about end times, spiritual gifts, or secret biblical meanings parallel the “myths and interminable genealogies” Paul warns against—and how do you discern between a doctrine worth defending and a speculation worth setting aside?\n4. The operating room illustration suggests that context determines where focus belongs. How should Christians think about the difference between discussing truths that are interesting and pursuing the essential truths that actually save?\n5. What practical steps can your church or small group take to help one another stay focused on God’s redemptive plan without becoming rigid or judgmental toward those with different theological emphases?\n\n\n\n## Transcript\n\n\n\nThis transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors._\n\n\n\nGood evening, and welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be with you on this Monday night as we continue our new series, Our Charge is Love, in 1 Timothy chapter 1. Last week, we looked at the first two verses, examining where Paul’s calling came from and then how he was going to pass that calling on to Timothy. Tonight, we look more at what that calling is about.\n\nIt’s hard to stay focused. It’s been a busy planning period as we lead up to our annual meeting. I know some of you are excited about such things; others of you, maybe annual meetings aren’t exciting, but they certainly do require a lot of planning because you need to do good work to be transparent and help everyone understand what’s going on in the church. There’s been a lot happening. I was working on part of it over the weekend and got to the point where I had to keep going back and reopening something because my mind was just exhausted. I was having a hard time focusing.\n\nI think we’ve all been in that place on different things we’ve worked on, where we’ve been working on something and at some point, we notice that the amount we’re able to accomplish starts to diminish because we’re just tired. Then we think, well, I’ll get some good rest, get back to work, and I’ll be focused again. Maybe that’s how we generally think about life—that if we just have some rest, a good cup of coffee, and a clear plan, we’re focused.\n\nBut in reality, our approach to life in general is a bit more like how we are on specifics when we’re tired. We may not realize it; we may feel like we’re focused, but so often, we find ourselves drifting off where God has called us to. As the church, we’ve done that over and over again over these two millennia since Jesus came into this world. We need some help. We need someone to say, “Yeah, you’re kind of getting off course here,” someone who says as we get a little slow in our reaction, “Hey, you need to wake up,” or someone to help you drive or whatever it may be. We need that refocusing because without careful guarding, it’s going to happen. We’re going to go off course, and we’ll lose grasp of the truth.\n\nBecause when we’re really tired, whatever makes the most noise, whatever is flashing the most, whatever is just in front of us at the moment—that’s what we’re focused on. If you’re trying to read through something really long and there’s noise around and you’re tired, you’re going to keep thinking about those noises. Well, there’s a lot of noise in life, and the truth is often quiet in comparison. But it’s more important because the noise, well, sometimes it’s harmless, and sometimes it’s actually actively harmful.\n\nAs Paul is handing off this charge to Timothy, and that’s what we’re going to see tonight, one of the crucial things Timothy needs to keep his eye on and help others keep their eyes on is staying focused on the truth when there’s all this noise calling us all, especially those who are tired in life, those of us who are spiritually exhausted. Let’s pray that God would give us that focus and refresh us so that we’d be spiritually alive and energized with the truth.\n\nWould you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your word and how you use it to guide us and sharpen us and focus us. Lord, would you help us with that this very day, that we would stay focused on the truth, ready for the truth, that we would always run towards it and not to other things. We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.\n\nWell, like I said, we’re going to start in verse 3 tonight if you want to turn there. Paul says, “As I urged you when I was leaving for Macedonia, stay on in Ephesus to instruct certain people not to spread false teachings.” What’s Paul talking about there?\n\nPaul and Timothy are traveling and ministering together, and Paul is going on to this next mission. He’s speaking of something that they experienced together in the past, and he said, “I urge you to stay.” In fact, the term could be translated as “commanded” Timothy to stay. So what’s going on there?\n\nFor one thing, initially, the simple part of it is Paul knew there were needs in the city they’d been ministering in and he needed Timothy to continue ministering to these people once he was gone. But the terminology he uses is really interesting because last week we talked about how Paul said he wasn’t just an apostle because he wanted to be or because some people wanted him to be, but he had been commanded—he’d been charged by the Lord himself to go and do the work he was doing. He had, you might say, been commissioned as an officer, if we wanted to speak in military terms.\n\nHere, the language Paul uses encourages us to continue playing with that metaphor because the term he uses towards Timothy is a term you’d use when an officer would pass on to those in his charge a command that he himself had received. So he’d say, “Okay, we’re going into this battle, and I’m commanding you to do these certain things.” It may not be that the officer making the command was the one coming up with it, but rather he’s passing on that command. And that’s the language Paul uses when he tells Timothy to stay: “I command you.” In other words, he was passing on this mission received from God and saying, “Timothy, you need to stay and do it.”\n\nNow, what was it that he was so concerned about that he felt Timothy needed to stay there? There’s a lot of speculation on this. Ironically, right? We’re supposed to avoid idle speculation. Paul’s concerned about that. So here we are speculating, but it’s not idle. We’re trying to understand what the possible dangers are that we need to guard ourselves against. It could be what’s called Gnosticism. You may have heard of it. If you’ve been studying through the Bible, you run into these movements outside the church called Gnostics. They were a Greek movement playing with certain parts of Plato’s theories and other related things, creating this whole sense of an evil material world and a realm that was good—that was spiritual.\n\nWhile that could, in a sense, be incorporated into a biblical worldview to a degree—because we agree there’s a fallenness to this physical world—the idea that the physical world is inherently bad and the spiritual world is inherently good is so contrary to the idea of God as creator and creating a good world. Nonetheless, some Christians were intrigued by it. The Gnostics were very interested in secret knowledge and passing it down and genealogies that they could speculate on. So all this stuff that Paul has in mind here, it could be that that’s it.\n\nMany commentators actually think that what Paul has in view here isn’t something far afield, but rather some of the speculations that different Jewish teachers of the time would have done. Keep in mind Paul himself is a Jew, and many of the early Christians were Jews. In other words, he’s talking about the in-house people—the people who maybe are a little interested in Jesus, maybe they’re even coming that direction or have fully said that they believe Jesus is the Messiah—but there’s still interest in some of these mystical movements in Judaism as part of that. Maybe they’re trying to figure out who has the best genealogy, which somehow could be helpful to spiritual enlightenment or something of that nature. We actually see that very clearly in Titus 1, verse 14. (There isn’t a first Titus, so if you find it, you’re probably looking at some idle speculation.) But in Titus 1:14, Paul explicitly calls out certain Jewish mythologies. Is that what he has in mind here? Possibly.\n\nThe big thing though, and this is what Paul makes a big deal of, notice, is he says, “What are they teaching?” False teachings. In other words, not the things Paul was teaching, which he had been given by Jesus, not the things that Peter was teaching or James or any of the other apostles, but something false, something that distracts from who Jesus is and what He does. That’s what he’s concerned about, as we should be.\n\nIt’s one thing to have certain theological disagreements. Everyone here tonight probably agrees on everything theological. I know many of you have different theological viewpoints on certain things, but one of the reasons it works for us to study together is we understand what the heart of it is. We understand the focus on the gospel. But if we get too into any kind of speculation that’s beyond what we can firmly say in Scripture, what happens? Even if it might ultimately be true, we become more interested in the speculation about it than the reality of what we know is true in Jesus. That seems to be what’s happening here.\n\nSo Paul says, “That command that I’ve been given, I, Paul, I’m commanding you now, Timothy,” or “I did,” and so he’s reminding him of that past time but then using that to speak of what Timothy is generally commanded to do, which is to continue to protect the gospel. That’s a real part of what we do. Not in the sense that it all depends on us, that God can’t somehow protect it Himself, but rather in the sense that God actually wants us to care about it, and He wants us to do the work of speaking the truth and speaking the truth against those things that are untrue.\n\nThere are so many people who get so into different things. Maybe it’s speculation about when the end times will happen or some charismatic gift that people get really focused on, or some passage that allegedly has a secret meaning that we didn’t previously understand. These things happen. What we really need to ask is, is it pushing us toward affirming and focusing on what really matters? That we guard genuine doctrine, guard what Jesus did, what the gospel is ultimately about, and we’re not getting so distracted by these other things that we’re essentially leaving the door open to the gospel itself either getting ignored or corrupted.\n\nWe understand the need to guard against such things with far lesser things. For example, if after Steadfast you decide to go on eBay and look for a baseball card coming up to pitchers and catchers reporting, it won’t be long before we have baseball season again. You go on eBay and pick up a baseball card, maybe a hockey card, some kind of collector’s card like that. Well, there are a lot of authentic ones with authentic signatures and a lot of counterfeit ones. So what if places like eBay did a certification process to certify whether something is genuinely authentic, likely genuine, or they just choose not to do that at all and probably sell it for a lower cost because they haven’t proven that it’s real?\n\nWe understand with something we might want to collect, it’s important to know if it’s real or not. Well, how much more important is it to know when we’re talking about the truth of eternal life whether what we’re talking about is true or not? If we’re sticking to what the Bible says, well, that’s a really, really safe place to be. It’s better than one of those certifications, which itself surely could be fooled.\n\nWhen we start to speculate, we start to go off into these different paths that get us away from the core of what Scripture is teaching. There’s a greater and greater chance we start to accept counterfeit material, while saying, “Timothy, your charge is to guard against that.” Those people around you that want to encourage that, you’re to guard against them because they’re doing great harm to the church. They’re distracting the church. They’re causing the church to worry about the wrong things. You don’t want to let that get out of hand.\n\nOur calling as Christians is to be a people of discernment who encourage people to be discerning. Now, we don’t always want to be because discernment means sometimes looking at things that we find appealing and saying, “Well, maybe that isn’t really of God,” or at least we can’t say for sure that is of God. And everyone else wants to. And sometimes for ourselves, that’s not very pleasant.\n\nEven more so when we start to stand for the truth, we do what Timothy was called to do because we’re all called to be people who champion truth. We can make people mad at us because they say, “Well, I like this. How dare you not like this? How dare you say this might not be true?” And even if we say, “Well, let’s look at the Bible,” how often do people—even people who say the Bible is the source of authority—get offended when you say, “But this viewpoint you’re espousing and trying to focus all this attention on isn’t necessarily what Scripture insists upon. It might even be contrary to Scripture, but certainly, even if it’s possible, it isn’t required by Scripture, and it certainly isn’t the sort of thing we should allow ourselves to waste energy on when there are things that bring us together as believers.”\n\nSo Timothy was called to defend truth and so are we. Part of that is not just saying, “In principle, doctrine matters,” and we should defend it, but also focusing on doctrine matters, focusing on the truth matters, because even if we say, “Okay, I’m not going to put too much at stake in all these other things,” it still can be that we just aren’t keeping our focus where it’s supposed to be. And this seems to be the second half of that.\n\nLet’s take a look at verse 4. Paul says, “Nor to occupy themselves with myths and interminable genealogies. Such things promote useless speculations rather than God’s redemptive plan that operates by faith.” This pretty much sums up the things I’ve been mentioning about how a diverse group of believers with different church backgrounds and different ways of approaching many different parts of the church can have all that and still be together as Christians because we focus on the things that anyone confessing Christ and really wanting to seek after the Lord can agree on.\n\nIt doesn’t mean we’re going to immediately come to perfect agreement, but it means we can be gracious with each other even when we realize we don’t fully agree on something. That’s that focus. I don’t come to this passage to say, “We’re not doing a good job,” or to rebuke us for not, but rather I think it’s a caution—even for us—because just because we’re doing okay right now, we’re together, doesn’t mean next year we won’t be divided over some theological issue. Then we want to see, are we being discerning and standing for the truth, or have we lost our focus on what really matters? We don’t want to do that.\n\nOften in the church there have been movements to try to bring Christians of various denominational or non-denominational backgrounds together, and it works for a while until some issue becomes the catalyst for division and it just explodes because suddenly, “Well, this is important!” We always need to ask ourselves this: are we into useless speculations rather than God’s redemptive plan that operates by faith? The work of God, essentially, is how we could say that.\n\nA lot of times, the things Christians argue over aren’t really forwarding the work of God. It might forward something that’s of interest to God’s people but isn’t actually helping anyone believe. So we always need to ask, “What are we focused on?”\n\nI like what one commentator said. He said, “By faith we stand, not by weaving webs of whimsical fancies.” Kind of a fun phrase, but it’s right at the heart of it. Those things that frequently divide Christians are whimsical fancies. They’re the latest trend—or the rejection of the latest trend—rather than asking, “Are we focused on Jesus and how He died for us and how He’s called us together to be brothers and sisters in Christ?” And yeah, we don’t get everything the same, but we get the thing that means we’re going to be brothers and sisters in Christ together in eternity. We get that the same because we believe in the same Lord. An important thing to ask.\n\nAll the things that call us away from focus—the noises that when our concentration is already frayed just pull us away from what we’re working on—the different idle amusements, whether they’re cast in sort of Christian terms or not that we find in the world, are very loud and very good at calling us away. God’s mission is often that quiet truth. That’s why Timothy needed to be commanded, “You’re going to stay in Ephesus and you’re going to do this later on as you continue the work after I’m gone,” Paul says. “You need to stay focused and, crucially, help other people, because this isn’t a one-time thing. It’s going to continue for as long as the world goes on.”\n\nSo we all need to be part of the team together that helps each other to focus—focus on what matters, value what matters, defend what matters, but stay focused on genuinely what matters. There are a lot of things that might even be good that simply shouldn’t be focused on in a given moment.\n\nFor example, consider if you were lying on the operating table and, unfortunately, maybe the anesthesia doesn’t fully kick in right away. You’re lying on the operating table, and you hear the surgeon talking to some of the assistants. They’re talking about really important matters—really important matters of global economic policy. What kind of trade policy should we have and what kind of wars are going on around the world? All very important things, matters of life and death.\n\nHowever, in that moment, you would probably feel panic because you think those might be important things, but they’re not the important things you need to focus on right now. You need to be focused on where you’re going to cut me and whether you’re going to take out the right organ or operate on it or do whatever, not talking about what’s going on in the Middle East right now or what’s going on in seafaring lanes around the world. You need to stay focused. We’re talking about me here on the operating table.\n\nWhy? Because our lives are important to us and we’d say those other things—I’m not denying they’re important—but let’s stay focused. Focus on operating right now. You go to dinner afterwards with your doctor friends, fine, talk about whatever. Right now, let’s stay focused. That’s sort of what Paul’s saying to Timothy. He’s not saying nothing that’s ever brought up from these speculations is ever important, but when we’re doing the work of God, we need to stay focused on what really matters.\n\nEven other truth that isn’t actually helping people know Jesus and walk in the path Jesus has called us to might be interesting. But as we do the work of the church, it shouldn’t be what focuses us, what we’re driving toward. We need to seek after God’s truth, not just kind of aimlessly wander.\n\nWe might say, “Let’s talk about these other things. Focus on them for a while because they’re important to our world.” But when we start to do that, it’s a very quick road to, “Let’s talk about what amuses us, what entertains us, what’s just fun.” And I’m not saying we shouldn’t have some fun—I enjoy having fun. I gave an illustration a few minutes ago about baseball cards because I’m looking forward to the new baseball season. Baseball, seriously, as fans, those of us who are Cardinals fans, is not genuinely life and death. That’s true.\n\nI’m not saying we can’t ever have fun or talk about other things. But we need to make sure it’s not becoming a distraction. The moment we start to miss what we should be focused on about the Bible because we’re busy thinking about baseball instead, that’s a problem. The moment we lose an opportunity to share the gospel with someone because we argue with them over politics instead, that’s a problem. Because baseball is a wonderful sport—in my opinion—but it’s not what saves people.\n\nPolitics affect us. They change how we live in the world. It does matter. But no one’s going to be saved by politics, as much as you’ll hear people protest that. It’s not what saves. Jesus saves. And someone unaware of politics, someone who has the opposite political view of you but knows Jesus, is far better off than someone who agrees with you 100% but doesn’t know Jesus. We need to make sure we stay focused even when things matter.\n\nIsn’t it funny how, when we don’t, we get further and further caught up in these things? What Paul saw in the first century is true now, too. We haven’t changed. We’re still human beings. We still have very much the same weaknesses. There’s something that matters so much from our God. Think about that. More than the person on the operating table being operated on, because that’s the person’s body for a few decades. We’re talking about a person’s eternal life. Much more important.\n\nWe’re staying focused and making sure we’re holding to the genuine truth, caring about it in the sense that we’re focused on spreading the gospel. That’s what matters. May we do it.\n\nFather, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your word. Would you help us to do what you’ve called us to do, to focus on what matters—not because there are a lot of interesting things to study in this world or even that it’s bad to know any of them. It’s not that. But what you were guarding against here in the first century was stopping people from using that as a way that got in the way of communicating the gospel. You’re calling us to the same careful, measured attitude today. We make sure we keep what matters most first, that we wouldn’t let the other things get in the way of it. Lord, would you apply that truth to us tonight, that what truly matters is to know Jesus. If someone’s here tonight and hasn’t ever come to know you, Lord, may tonight be the night. Then may we all together help each other to stay focused, focused to run the race, to proclaim the gospel, to celebrate in your presence. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.\n\nWell, thank you for being here tonight. It’s always a joy. As always, please give us a like, share, subscribe to the channel—all that stuff. Would you please do it? And do it right now. It really does make a difference, and it lets us reach more people. We’ve been doing some really interesting Facebook advertising, and it allows us to reach people. But you know what helps us reach people even more effectively and for free? When someone who appreciates the message that we’re studying, appreciates what we’re doing as a church, just shares it, and a few other people watch, a few other people hear the word of God, and maybe decide to come to church, maybe decide to join us on Monday nights, maybe ultimately end up at a different church but know Jesus. That’s what matters, and that’s what we want to do. You really do make a difference.\n\nIf you have any comments, questions, prayer requests, you can always use the information you see on screen: 833-356-4032. That’s our texting line. 833-356-4032. Text in a question or prayer request or use the comments in the video page. Just go down below this video and leave a comment there, and our church family would love to pray with you or talk about stuff together. It’s always great when we do.\n\nThen, speaking of our church family, let me just mention that we have a few things coming up that I highlighted last night and want to highlight again. We have Ash Wednesday service coming up in just over a week, so not this Wednesday but the following Wednesday, 7 p.m., in person and online. Looking forward to sharing that with you, and I do hope you’ll make plans to join us.\n\nBefore that, we have our church annual meeting. If you’re part of the Little Hills family, I so hope you’ll join us after service next week. It’s a great way to know what’s going on and celebrate God’s faithfulness. Also, if you’ve been kind of following from a distance and trying to figure out if maybe this is a home for you, it’s a great way just to hear a little bit more about what’s happening. Of course, you can ask questions or just take it in without saying anything, whatever you’d like. It’s open to the public, and that is this Sunday. So I hope you’ll take advantage of both of those opportunities.\n\nI hope you have a wonderful and blessed week in the meantime, and I’ll see you again next week.\n\n\n\n
There are two different charges vying for our attention: love and pride. Which one will we answer to?\n\n\n\nbreak.
\n\n## Study Questions\n\n\n\n_The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors._\n\n\n\n1. The pastor describes three interconnected anchors: a pure heart (foundational knowledge of God’s word), a good conscience (moral application of that knowledge), and sincere faith in Jesus. How do you see these three working together in your own spiritual life, and which one do you find yourself neglecting most?\n\n2. The sermon uses the metaphor of swerving on black ice to describe how we drift from God’s path without intending to. What are some “patches of black ice” in your own life or in our culture that cause people to swerve unintentionally, and what habits help you stay alert to them?\n\n3. Paul warns about a seared conscience—one so accustomed to sin that it no longer feels conviction. What are the warning signs that a conscience is becoming dull, and how can regular self-examination and prayer keep us sensitive to God’s leading?\n\n4. The pastor contrasts the false teachers who sought status and recognition with the disciples’ later transformation through following Jesus. Where do you see the temptation to prioritize being seen or respected over genuinely loving and serving others, and what does the disciples’ story offer as encouragement?\n\n5. The sermon challenges us to resist both digital and social algorithms that reward anger and a sense of superiority. What practical steps can you take this week to shift from engaging with rage-inducing content toward interactions and conversations that reflect God’s love as described in John 3:16?\n\n\n\n## Transcript\n\n\n\n_This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors._\n\n\n\nWell, good evening and welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be with you tonight. As we continue our series, our charge is love. How often is it that we think we know where we’re going, we think we know what we’re doing, and things swerve in a different direction? I’ve been thinking about that this past week, because I think about that it’s been a year now since my back flared up, and I know many of you have been praying for me. I thank you for that over this past year, and it’s been an interesting journey.\n\nBut it all started with shoveling the driveway and not doing what you might think, picking up too much snow in the shovel or something along those lines. No, it was finishing the driveway and then slipping on a patch of ice afterwards. And suddenly, not paying attention because the work was done, I swerved in a different direction. I went someplace I didn’t think I was going. And that’s the challenge when you think about swerving.\n\nWe don’t swerve intentionally. We swerve unintentionally. We’re not expecting it. We don’t know it’s coming, and all of a sudden it hits, and we’re going a different way. How do we deal with that? Well, we need to keep our eyes on the path that’s actually safe, the path that we’re supposed to be on. If I had been watching the ground for black ice as I walked up the driveway, I wouldn’t have fallen, and I probably wouldn’t have hurt my back.\n\nWhen we’re talking about doctrine, when we’re talking about being faithful to our Christian commission that God has given us, likewise, we need to keep our eyes fixed on him and his word. Because when we lift our eyes up and we’re looking other directions, we step on the black ice of sin and the forces of evil calling us in different directions. A lot of times it’s internal. Sometimes it’s the external pressures. But the problem is the same. There are a lot of things that want to make us swerve, including often our own hearts. And when we’re not paying attention, we’re prone to do it.\n\nLet’s pray tonight that we wouldn’t do that, but that we would stay fixed on God’s safe path. Would you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your word. And as we think about what it is to be charged with the love that you have shown us, be charged to show that love, would you help us to be those who don’t swerve, but stay fixed on the path that you want us on? Would we pray this in Jesus’ precious name? Amen.\n\nLet’s go ahead and turn to verse 5. “But the aim of our instruction is love,” or maybe better translated, “But the end of our charge is love, that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.” I like that alternative translation. It really captures the sense of the words and picks up on that theme that Paul keeps coming back to of a command being passed down from officer to officer. That’s our purpose.\n\nWhat does it mean to have a charge of love? What does that mean? What does it mean for that to be the end? Well, we’re going to explore that, but first we need to think about how we get there. And that’s what Paul starts with here. He says there’s three things that we need to be concerned with. We need to have, if you just look back here again, just look at these now. Where’s this charge coming from? It’s from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.\n\nSincere faith, that’s a bit clearer. It’s a bit more obvious how that is different. But what about those other two? Well, when we think about the heart, the heart is where we store up God’s word. And commentators think, and I think this is really kind of helpful to make the distinction here, that with the heart, Paul is talking about that Old Testament sense of storing up God’s word in our hearts and following him. In other words, what we’re really talking about there is the foundation. What do we build everything else on? If we’re going to follow Jesus, if we’re going to believe in him, first we need to know who he is, what he does for us. We need to have that foundation in our hearts.\n\nSo then what’s the conscience? Well, the conscience is really the application of that. It’s a much more Greek concept, but one where Paul, as he’s speaking to both Greek and Jew alike, Jew and Gentile, he’s pulling these both in and saying, well, they both describe an aspect of what we’re supposed to do. And that second one is that we actually have that moral sensibility of how we apply what it is that we have in that foundation. We can know all kinds of stuff about God. Satan himself knows all kinds of stuff about God. But do we just know stuff or is it actually changing us? Is it actually alive in us?\n\nAnd critically here, Paul wants us to keep in mind that this is something that we need to tend and take care of, by God’s grace, of course, but we need to be aware of it. For example, if we looked just a little further in 1 Timothy chapter 4, verse 2, Paul talks about those who have had their consciences branded or seared. And there it seems like he has this idea of a conscience that’s so inclined to do evil because it just keeps doing it. Maybe at first it felt bad about it, but it keeps doing it to the point that it no longer is even aware of it. It has a scar there and it just doesn’t even feel anything. It’s just seared.\n\nAnd Paul says we need to be aware that that can happen. We need a healthy foundation and a healthy conscience to implement that. Lots of the people throughout scripture knew what they should do and didn’t and so it is today with those around us and, painfully to admit, with us. How often is it that we know what we should do and we don’t do it? We don’t want our conscience seared or branded by sin. So that’s the second part of fulfilling this charge of love.\n\nThe third is a sincere faith because everything we’ve been saying up to this point, it could be this really nice little legalistic package. No good laws. Do those good laws and you’re set, right? No. You need to have a sincere faith. And this is what controls everything else. What do we mean by sincere faith? Does that mean I have a faith that’s strong enough that I’ve built it up well? No. What it means is that I actually believe in Jesus. I don’t just believe that God’s law is a pretty good law that makes people good. I don’t just believe that some of the things in it are things that I want to do and I am doing and I feel convicted by my conscience to do. But that this is all guided by the fact that I believe in Jesus, that he is my Lord and my Savior. And if I have that, then those other two are going to be empowered by that. So they’re interconnected.\n\nThese are building pieces, but really that capstone of a sincere faith strengthens and enables those first two. And you have all three of these together, then understanding of what God teaches in his word, a desire to actually do it, and that all empowered by our Lord and Savior and the gift of the Holy Spirit that he gives us, empowered there, then we can go and fulfill our charge.\n\nAnd crucially, that last part, the sincere faith, is what helps us to understand that charge because that charge is God’s love, it’s to show love, and how do we do that unless we understand that God loves us and just how much God loves us? After all, remember John 3:16, “For this is the way God loved the world. He gave his one and only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.”\n\nWe know that verse, it’s a very familiar verse, but how often do we really live that verse? This is the reality of what God’s done for us, and so this is the reality of how we want to live towards others, that we love others so much that just as God loved the world enough to do this, that we love the world enough because we want to love as God loves that we would do the same.\n\nOf course, we can’t save anyone by giving up ourselves, but we can tell people about the one who can save them, and we can love them enough that even when it’s inconvenient, even when we disagree with them, even when we just don’t want to, that we still say, but God loves that person, and that person needs Jesus just as much as I do. Not more in the sense that I say, well, you know, yeah, they need a lot of Jesus, unlike me. No. We all need Jesus just the same. We’re all loved by God, and do we see that, do we understand that’s the mission that God’s placed us on, to go and love, that that’s what we want to have our lives be about, and that’s what Paul’s talking about here.\n\nWe need all three of these. If we love Jesus and we want people to know about Jesus, but we have no idea who Jesus is, we have no idea what he’s done for us, we have no idea about God’s law that we haven’t been following rightly, it’s going to be very hard to convey God’s love to people. If we know God’s law and we love Jesus, but we don’t have any desire to do his will, well, actually it’s kind of hard to understand if we really love Jesus then, right? Not saying we always do God’s will, but if we don’t desire to, if our conscience isn’t screaming when we don’t, there’s a problem there, right?\n\nIn other words, what Paul’s saying here is you need these three pieces, not because we’re going to do some works to save ourselves, but because to be effective as Christians, we need the whole fleet going in the right direction, not swerving around in different directions.\n\nA video went viral last year of someone who really knew where he or she wanted to get off, but missed it. We’ve all been in this situation. This is an Ohio Department of Transportation video, and you’re about to see what we’ve all done. We’re driving down the road, we’re going along with the traffic, and we realize we’re not over for our exit.\n\nAnd so you can see this vehicle just says, well, I’m not going to miss it. I’m not paying attention to how everyone else is driving, how I’m supposed to be driving, how the traffic’s flowing. I just want my exit. And maybe the driver was looking at that traffic going the other way. It seemed inconvenient to keep aligned with the traffic and maybe it kind of works that vehicle to get off, but look at what’s left behind here. There’s a pileup here, people who are going to lose a lot of time and go through a lot of suffering because one part of the flow of traffic wasn’t going as it was supposed to.\n\nFor a highway to function, we all need to be going in the same direction, right? We all need to be going towards the goal of that set of lanes. And likewise, when we think about ourselves, we need to have a heart that’s going towards God. Our conscience is going towards God and we need all that directed by the only thing that only one who can truly direct it, God’s spirit. We don’t have those three things all moving in the same direction, but we’re saying, why am I not an effective Christian? Why am I not doing what God’s called me to do? Or, or why isn’t the church?\n\nWell, those are the things we should be looking at. Do we love what God loves? Are we seared in the conscience where we’ve become dull to it? And are there places we need to pray, God, show me where, where I’m missing your goal where I just don’t even care anymore? And most of all, are we just going through the motions or do we love Jesus? And that’s why we’re doing it.\n\nThese are the things we need to make sure are coming back together. Everything’s going in the right way. One of those is off and there’s going to be a bunch of accidents.\n\nNow I want to be utterly clear, Paul isn’t saying, and I’m not saying that if we don’t always do God’s law, we’re not going to be saved. Or if we don’t always understand God’s law that we’re not going to be saved. This isn’t about salvation. This is about actually going a step further and saying, okay, now that I’m saved, how do I do what I’m supposed to do? How do I fulfill my purpose? That’s what he’s instructing Timothy on. How does the church fulfill his purpose? And we need everything going in the right way so that we go a step further beyond I’m saved to I’m living as God wants me to live. And I’m actually able to rejoice in that because now I’m doing what I was made to do.\n\nWe’re going to swerve. But if we’re anchored well, it’s like putting those ice cleats on the bottoms of your shoes so you don’t slip. When we’re looking at God’s word and soaking in his law, when we’re constantly praying and asking God to help us not to be seared in the conscience, when we’re focused on loving Jesus, are we still going to make mistakes? Yes. Can you do everything possible right to avoid slipping on the ice and still fall? Yes. But are you going to fall as often? No.\n\nNow, this is in contrast to the people that are Paul’s opponents. And if you turn to verse six, some have strayed from these and turned away to empty discussion. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not understand what they are saying or the things they insist on so confidently.\n\nPaul’s saying, you can see these teachers over here and over here, and they’re all calling at us saying, you should follow us. He says, but look at what they’re actually trying to do. What is their purpose? Well, he says it right in verse seven, their purpose is they want to be teachers. They want to be recognized for what they do. This is something we should fear in ourselves and when we see it in other people, when their main reason for doing something is they want to be seen doing it, be known for it.\n\nUnless what we want to be known for is loving people, loving God. If that’s our goal, then that’s a pretty good goal. But if our goal is, I want to be seen as an important teacher of how to love God, or I want to be seen as someone who is a really good, civic-minded person that everyone respects or something, that’s not what we’re supposed to do.\n\nAnd the problem is when the status, how we’re recognized, becomes our focus, our charge isn’t love, but pride. And oftentimes that pride covers up a huge problem, which is what Paul identifies in these teachers he sees all over the place in the church as he instructs Timothy. They don’t understand. They don’t actually have God’s law soaked up in their hearts. Their consciences are seared where they can’t see when their pride is what’s driving them. They can’t see when their other sinful desires are what’s driving them and allowing them to distort God’s word. And really they’re not about loving Jesus, they’re about loving themselves.\n\nSo those three key members of the fleet of purpose, well, they’re swerving all over the place in them because they’re not about actually being focused on God’s direction, the right lanes of the road. They just see the exit they want, importance. And sort of like the exit ramp, you think about it, if you actually do what God’s called you to do, you may never have recognition. You may never be important. But there may be times where other people recognize it and you do become important.\n\nBut the more we focus on that exit and not just staying on the right part of the road, the harder it is actually to get to the exit and the more wreckage we cause as we try to do so. These people are known to be teachers because they chatter, as Paul says, but it’s a meaningless chatter. Maybe they have these big, long, obtuse arguments about theology and, you know, it sounds impressive. Sounds really impressive. Other people say, wow, look how smart these people are. I feel smarter just listening because they sound so smart. And those teachers walk home at night and they feel pretty good about themselves. Why? Because they’ve said impressive things. Who are they trying to impress? Well, themselves. People around them, not God. So they’re not worried about actually saying what’s true.\n\nAs one commentator put it, they have met their own intellectual satisfaction. They haven’t been loving. It’s not loving to say things that we make confusing just so people find us impressive. It’s not loving to say things that distort God’s will because it somehow affirms us or other people. Not loving. They’re not focusing people on the true Savior.\n\nAnd so they might gain a following. They might have status. They might even have more status than the people that do what God’s called them to do. But they’re causing wreckage in people’s lives. The cars are just swerving around.\n\nThink about the disciples. Think about them for a moment. They’re like this early on. They’re like this when we see them in the Gospels. In a place like the Last Supper, take a look at Luke 22:24 to 27. “The dispute also started among them over which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. So Jesus said to them, the kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. Not so with you. Instead, the one who is greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is seated at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is seated at the table? But I’m among you as one who serves.”\n\nJesus says don’t be focused on status. And keep in mind here, the disciples, this is the Last Supper. We’re going to get to Holy Week in a few weeks, and we think about the solemnness of this and the darkness of that night and so on. And what are the disciples doing? They’re arguing over, well, am I the greatest? Is he the greatest? Who’s the greatest? Who’s going to have the most status? They’re doing what Paul’s talking about here.\n\nBut crucially, they don’t stay there. Through the help of the Holy Spirit, through God working in them, through following Jesus, what happens? That’s not the way the disciples end. We look at their stories, we look at their, many of them being martyred, all of them giving up normal lives to go and proclaim the gospel. What do we see in them? We see a totally different attitude than what’s there at the Last Supper, because the Spirit transforms them.\n\nAnd that should give us some hope if we see some of ourselves in these false teachers. And if we’re really allowing God to probe our conscience and to point out those seared places, we’re going to, because we’re not perfect. There is hope, because we see as God works in our lives, we don’t have to stay there. What Paul’s saying here is understand what’s really important and keep yearning for that.\n\nAnd I think that’s the thing we see: the disciples watch Jesus go to the cross and triumph over death and afterwards, and then come back and commission them and send them off and they start to be led by the Spirit. They don’t get it all at once, but as they seek after Jesus, what do they get? They want to be like him. Even when they’re not, I know they’d say, I’m not like Jesus. I’m not like my Savior, but I sure want to be, and Lord help me to be. We can do the same.\n\nI think a starting point is to refuse to participate in the things that we all want to participate in in our culture that are not like Jesus.\n\nAs this ends, more than likely, whichever streaming service you’re on, I know certainly YouTube and Facebook both are going to try to put you in another video. They might kick you off into reels on Facebook, and if you’ve been watching some Bible teaching videos, you may very well get kicked off into a reel on Bible teaching. That Bible teaching video might be great. I have no idea where it’s going to send you, but it also might try to be one of those videos.\n\nThere’s a lot of them, and they go over really well on reels where someone’s talking about all the things that are bad about other people that the Bible condemns. And let me be clear. We should teach God’s law, and we should insist on his moral standards. We should do it in the right way, and these videos are framed in a particular way. It makes us mad. It makes us give a like and a heart and a comment that says, look at those awful people. And it does that because the algorithm, the thing that decides what we see on these social networks, knows that if we’re angry, we’re going to click more. We’re going to watch longer.\n\nIt’s really just a disturbing but true insight into our human psyche, that we like being superior feeling, that we want to be those who can rage at others, not those who are raged against. We want to be those who can point out the flaws in others, not those who run into the flaws in ourselves. And guess what? That’s exactly what the people Paul is talking about as being false teachers liked in their own time too. It hasn’t changed.\n\nThey may not have had fancy computer algorithms, but when the social network was people standing in the town square talking, the encouragement was the same. You rile the people up against the other, and yeah, they’re going to get mad, and they’re going to like you because you’re helping them feel important too. You tell them about how they need to be convicted in their own hearts and minds and be transformed and be more like Jesus, and they’re going to do, well, what, for example, the town council did when John Calvin’s reformation in Switzerland started. They kicked him out of town. Why? Because we don’t like hearing about how we need to reform.\n\nThe algorithm of our lives and online encourages us to act like these false teachers. But if we say, but Jesus, I don’t want to be like this anymore. I want to be like the disciples later in life when they actually were following you. Well, what we can say is, I don’t want in on their algorithm anymore. And when we feel that building up in us and we feel important, we say, God, I don’t want to be important. I want to be like you.\n\nThe teachers, they were confident and bold. It feels good. But they were wrong. They were getting built up, but they weren’t building up others. They had other people following. Those people felt important too. They say, ah, they’re being built up. They’re being built up in a way that caused more swerving. So not really built up. And ultimately not really focused on God.\n\nIf you just look in the church today, a significant portion of the teaching that we will hear online and books is about doing the exact same thing today. The challenge hasn’t changed. That’s why Paul gives us this timeless charge that he passed to Timothy to be passed on to generation after generation all the way to us.\n\nWe need to remember that our charge is love. Yes, we see the sin in the world. And what do we do about it? Our goal isn’t to make people really good legalistic atheists, or at least functional atheists, where they don’t really know Jesus, but they do the right thing. Our goal is to have people meet the living Savior. And as they meet him, yeah, he’s going to change their lives. But what we want is for people to know Jesus.\n\nIs that what we’re focused on? Do we care more about how our culture looks, how the people around us look and sound? Or do we care more about everyone that we encounter actually knowing Jesus? That’s our charge.\n\nEvery time we start to swerve, here’s what we need to go back to, John 3:16. What did God do for this world? He loved it so much he gave his one and only Son for us. If every time we want to be angry and rage, we say, well, God had a whole lot more reason to be angry. God could look around this world and see all kinds of reasons to rage, and he didn’t need to build up a group of people that affirmed him. He could just wipe out the current people and make new people. What did God do? He loved.\n\nOur charge is love, and our charge is clear because God has shown it to us. And in this hurting world, may we be those who show it to others. Would you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for your love. Thank you for showing us what it means to love. And thank you for transforming us through that love, giving us the hope of salvation through that love. Lord, would you help us to cling to that? Would you help us to turn down the rage and the anger and the self-building up and be about the business of showing your love? Would you help us to be people that if someone else were asked to summarize what we talk about and what we care about, they’d be about how much God loves the people he has made, not all the other things that they probably would list, that we’re all guilty of leaning into rather than into your love.\n\nWould you make us a people of love, fulfilling the charge whose end is love? We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.\n\nWell, I hope this has been an encouragement to you, and if it has, I sure would appreciate if you’d give us a like and a share. Yes, I know I just talked about algorithms. Let’s pervert that algorithm. Let’s do what it doesn’t intend to do. Instead of promoting rage and engagement and more and more of the same bad things, let’s actually fool it into promoting something that’s about God’s love. We can do that right now. Click like, click share, leave a comment. All those things make a difference, and it says we care more about something other than just being angry. We care more about God’s truth, that foundation, that conscience, and the Savior whom we have faith in.\n\nThank you for helping to do that, and it’s not just about social media. We need to go and do that this week. Let’s pray about how we do that. One way might be to invite someone to a service where we get to reflect on where we fall short and where God picks us up and transforms us, and that’s Ash Wednesday. I hope that you’ll come and join us for Ash Wednesday. It’s this Wednesday, 7 p.m. Central Time. We would love to have you.\n\nAnd I realize some of you, maybe you feel great about Ash Wednesday. You’ve grown up with it. You’ve always gone to it, and some of you might be thinking, what is this thing? Is it some kind of magical thing with ashes? What in the world is it that we’re talking about here? It’s really just a time to reflect and repent on our failures and to see the mercy and the love of God and to experience it and to prepare our hearts for the celebration of Easter through that. It’s an incredibly biblical thing to spend time repenting, and that’s what we’ll be doing.\n\nBut it’s also a time to consider inviting someone else, someone who maybe doesn’t normally come to church but feels like Ash Wednesday is something that he or she doesn’t want to miss. It’s a wonderful gospel opportunity. Invite that person. Hey, come with me to Ash Wednesday service, and we’ll soak in the gospel together.\n\nIn the meantime, any way I can be praying for you, please do text us at 833-356-4032. That’s 833-356-4032, or leave a comment in the comments below. I would love to pray for you and encourage you in any way I can. As we do that, what happens? Well, we can encourage each other. If you’re feeling discouraged, just text that line, 833-356-4032. Or if you’re willing to share it, leave it in the broader group, and when God’s people come together, we strengthen and build up each other. That’s what our calling is.\n\nHope you have a wonderful and blessed week. I’ll see you hopefully on Wednesday, and again right back here next Monday.\n\n\n\n
Teachers are sometimes elevated too much while sometimes teaching is held with too little regard. God calls us to something different.
There are two different charges vying for our attention: love and pride. Which one will we answer to?\n\n\n\nbreak.
\n\n## Study Questions\n\n\n\n_The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors._\n\n\n\n1. The pastor describes three interconnected anchors: a pure heart (foundational knowledge of God’s word), a good conscience (moral application of that knowledge), and sincere faith in Jesus. How do you see these three working together in your own spiritual life, and which one do you find yourself neglecting most?\n\n2. The sermon uses the metaphor of swerving on black ice to describe how we drift from God’s path without intending to. What are some “patches of black ice” in your own life or in our culture that cause people to swerve unintentionally, and what habits help you stay alert to them?\n\n3. Paul warns about a seared conscience—one so accustomed to sin that it no longer feels conviction. What are the warning signs that a conscience is becoming dull, and how can regular self-examination and prayer keep us sensitive to God’s leading?\n\n4. The pastor contrasts the false teachers who sought status and recognition with the disciples’ later transformation through following Jesus. Where do you see the temptation to prioritize being seen or respected over genuinely loving and serving others, and what does the disciples’ story offer as encouragement?\n\n5. The sermon challenges us to resist both digital and social algorithms that reward anger and a sense of superiority. What practical steps can you take this week to shift from engaging with rage-inducing content toward interactions and conversations that reflect God’s love as described in John 3:16?\n\n\n\n## Transcript\n\n\n\n_This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors._\n\n\n\nWell, good evening and welcome to Steadfast. I am so glad to be with you tonight. As we continue our series, our charge is love. How often is it that we think we know where we’re going, we think we know what we’re doing, and things swerve in a different direction? I’ve been thinking about that this past week, because I think about that it’s been a year now since my back flared up, and I know many of you have been praying for me. I thank you for that over this past year, and it’s been an interesting journey.\n\nBut it all started with shoveling the driveway and not doing what you might think, picking up too much snow in the shovel or something along those lines. No, it was finishing the driveway and then slipping on a patch of ice afterwards. And suddenly, not paying attention because the work was done, I swerved in a different direction. I went someplace I didn’t think I was going. And that’s the challenge when you think about swerving.\n\nWe don’t swerve intentionally. We swerve unintentionally. We’re not expecting it. We don’t know it’s coming, and all of a sudden it hits, and we’re going a different way. How do we deal with that? Well, we need to keep our eyes on the path that’s actually safe, the path that we’re supposed to be on. If I had been watching the ground for black ice as I walked up the driveway, I wouldn’t have fallen, and I probably wouldn’t have hurt my back.\n\nWhen we’re talking about doctrine, when we’re talking about being faithful to our Christian commission that God has given us, likewise, we need to keep our eyes fixed on him and his word. Because when we lift our eyes up and we’re looking other directions, we step on the black ice of sin and the forces of evil calling us in different directions. A lot of times it’s internal. Sometimes it’s the external pressures. But the problem is the same. There are a lot of things that want to make us swerve, including often our own hearts. And when we’re not paying attention, we’re prone to do it.\n\nLet’s pray tonight that we wouldn’t do that, but that we would stay fixed on God’s safe path. Would you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for your word. And as we think about what it is to be charged with the love that you have shown us, be charged to show that love, would you help us to be those who don’t swerve, but stay fixed on the path that you want us on? Would we pray this in Jesus’ precious name? Amen.\n\nLet’s go ahead and turn to verse 5. “But the aim of our instruction is love,” or maybe better translated, “But the end of our charge is love, that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.” I like that alternative translation. It really captures the sense of the words and picks up on that theme that Paul keeps coming back to of a command being passed down from officer to officer. That’s our purpose.\n\nWhat does it mean to have a charge of love? What does that mean? What does it mean for that to be the end? Well, we’re going to explore that, but first we need to think about how we get there. And that’s what Paul starts with here. He says there’s three things that we need to be concerned with. We need to have, if you just look back here again, just look at these now. Where’s this charge coming from? It’s from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.\n\nSincere faith, that’s a bit clearer. It’s a bit more obvious how that is different. But what about those other two? Well, when we think about the heart, the heart is where we store up God’s word. And commentators think, and I think this is really kind of helpful to make the distinction here, that with the heart, Paul is talking about that Old Testament sense of storing up God’s word in our hearts and following him. In other words, what we’re really talking about there is the foundation. What do we build everything else on? If we’re going to follow Jesus, if we’re going to believe in him, first we need to know who he is, what he does for us. We need to have that foundation in our hearts.\n\nSo then what’s the conscience? Well, the conscience is really the application of that. It’s a much more Greek concept, but one where Paul, as he’s speaking to both Greek and Jew alike, Jew and Gentile, he’s pulling these both in and saying, well, they both describe an aspect of what we’re supposed to do. And that second one is that we actually have that moral sensibility of how we apply what it is that we have in that foundation. We can know all kinds of stuff about God. Satan himself knows all kinds of stuff about God. But do we just know stuff or is it actually changing us? Is it actually alive in us?\n\nAnd critically here, Paul wants us to keep in mind that this is something that we need to tend and take care of, by God’s grace, of course, but we need to be aware of it. For example, if we looked just a little further in 1 Timothy chapter 4, verse 2, Paul talks about those who have had their consciences branded or seared. And there it seems like he has this idea of a conscience that’s so inclined to do evil because it just keeps doing it. Maybe at first it felt bad about it, but it keeps doing it to the point that it no longer is even aware of it. It has a scar there and it just doesn’t even feel anything. It’s just seared.\n\nAnd Paul says we need to be aware that that can happen. We need a healthy foundation and a healthy conscience to implement that. Lots of the people throughout scripture knew what they should do and didn’t and so it is today with those around us and, painfully to admit, with us. How often is it that we know what we should do and we don’t do it? We don’t want our conscience seared or branded by sin. So that’s the second part of fulfilling this charge of love.\n\nThe third is a sincere faith because everything we’ve been saying up to this point, it could be this really nice little legalistic package. No good laws. Do those good laws and you’re set, right? No. You need to have a sincere faith. And this is what controls everything else. What do we mean by sincere faith? Does that mean I have a faith that’s strong enough that I’ve built it up well? No. What it means is that I actually believe in Jesus. I don’t just believe that God’s law is a pretty good law that makes people good. I don’t just believe that some of the things in it are things that I want to do and I am doing and I feel convicted by my conscience to do. But that this is all guided by the fact that I believe in Jesus, that he is my Lord and my Savior. And if I have that, then those other two are going to be empowered by that. So they’re interconnected.\n\nThese are building pieces, but really that capstone of a sincere faith strengthens and enables those first two. And you have all three of these together, then understanding of what God teaches in his word, a desire to actually do it, and that all empowered by our Lord and Savior and the gift of the Holy Spirit that he gives us, empowered there, then we can go and fulfill our charge.\n\nAnd crucially, that last part, the sincere faith, is what helps us to understand that charge because that charge is God’s love, it’s to show love, and how do we do that unless we understand that God loves us and just how much God loves us? After all, remember John 3:16, “For this is the way God loved the world. He gave his one and only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.”\n\nWe know that verse, it’s a very familiar verse, but how often do we really live that verse? This is the reality of what God’s done for us, and so this is the reality of how we want to live towards others, that we love others so much that just as God loved the world enough to do this, that we love the world enough because we want to love as God loves that we would do the same.\n\nOf course, we can’t save anyone by giving up ourselves, but we can tell people about the one who can save them, and we can love them enough that even when it’s inconvenient, even when we disagree with them, even when we just don’t want to, that we still say, but God loves that person, and that person needs Jesus just as much as I do. Not more in the sense that I say, well, you know, yeah, they need a lot of Jesus, unlike me. No. We all need Jesus just the same. We’re all loved by God, and do we see that, do we understand that’s the mission that God’s placed us on, to go and love, that that’s what we want to have our lives be about, and that’s what Paul’s talking about here.\n\nWe need all three of these. If we love Jesus and we want people to know about Jesus, but we have no idea who Jesus is, we have no idea what he’s done for us, we have no idea about God’s law that we haven’t been following rightly, it’s going to be very hard to convey God’s love to people. If we know God’s law and we love Jesus, but we don’t have any desire to do his will, well, actually it’s kind of hard to understand if we really love Jesus then, right? Not saying we always do God’s will, but if we don’t desire to, if our conscience isn’t screaming when we don’t, there’s a problem there, right?\n\nIn other words, what Paul’s saying here is you need these three pieces, not because we’re going to do some works to save ourselves, but because to be effective as Christians, we need the whole fleet going in the right direction, not swerving around in different directions.\n\nA video went viral last year of someone who really knew where he or she wanted to get off, but missed it. We’ve all been in this situation. This is an Ohio Department of Transportation video, and you’re about to see what we’ve all done. We’re driving down the road, we’re going along with the traffic, and we realize we’re not over for our exit.\n\nAnd so you can see this vehicle just says, well, I’m not going to miss it. I’m not paying attention to how everyone else is driving, how I’m supposed to be driving, how the traffic’s flowing. I just want my exit. And maybe the driver was looking at that traffic going the other way. It seemed inconvenient to keep aligned with the traffic and maybe it kind of works that vehicle to get off, but look at what’s left behind here. There’s a pileup here, people who are going to lose a lot of time and go through a lot of suffering because one part of the flow of traffic wasn’t going as it was supposed to.\n\nFor a highway to function, we all need to be going in the same direction, right? We all need to be going towards the goal of that set of lanes. And likewise, when we think about ourselves, we need to have a heart that’s going towards God. Our conscience is going towards God and we need all that directed by the only thing that only one who can truly direct it, God’s spirit. We don’t have those three things all moving in the same direction, but we’re saying, why am I not an effective Christian? Why am I not doing what God’s called me to do? Or, or why isn’t the church?\n\nWell, those are the things we should be looking at. Do we love what God loves? Are we seared in the conscience where we’ve become dull to it? And are there places we need to pray, God, show me where, where I’m missing your goal where I just don’t even care anymore? And most of all, are we just going through the motions or do we love Jesus? And that’s why we’re doing it.\n\nThese are the things we need to make sure are coming back together. Everything’s going in the right way. One of those is off and there’s going to be a bunch of accidents.\n\nNow I want to be utterly clear, Paul isn’t saying, and I’m not saying that if we don’t always do God’s law, we’re not going to be saved. Or if we don’t always understand God’s law that we’re not going to be saved. This isn’t about salvation. This is about actually going a step further and saying, okay, now that I’m saved, how do I do what I’m supposed to do? How do I fulfill my purpose? That’s what he’s instructing Timothy on. How does the church fulfill his purpose? And we need everything going in the right way so that we go a step further beyond I’m saved to I’m living as God wants me to live. And I’m actually able to rejoice in that because now I’m doing what I was made to do.\n\nWe’re going to swerve. But if we’re anchored well, it’s like putting those ice cleats on the bottoms of your shoes so you don’t slip. When we’re looking at God’s word and soaking in his law, when we’re constantly praying and asking God to help us not to be seared in the conscience, when we’re focused on loving Jesus, are we still going to make mistakes? Yes. Can you do everything possible right to avoid slipping on the ice and still fall? Yes. But are you going to fall as often? No.\n\nNow, this is in contrast to the people that are Paul’s opponents. And if you turn to verse six, some have strayed from these and turned away to empty discussion. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not understand what they are saying or the things they insist on so confidently.\n\nPaul’s saying, you can see these teachers over here and over here, and they’re all calling at us saying, you should follow us. He says, but look at what they’re actually trying to do. What is their purpose? Well, he says it right in verse seven, their purpose is they want to be teachers. They want to be recognized for what they do. This is something we should fear in ourselves and when we see it in other people, when their main reason for doing something is they want to be seen doing it, be known for it.\n\nUnless what we want to be known for is loving people, loving God. If that’s our goal, then that’s a pretty good goal. But if our goal is, I want to be seen as an important teacher of how to love God, or I want to be seen as someone who is a really good, civic-minded person that everyone respects or something, that’s not what we’re supposed to do.\n\nAnd the problem is when the status, how we’re recognized, becomes our focus, our charge isn’t love, but pride. And oftentimes that pride covers up a huge problem, which is what Paul identifies in these teachers he sees all over the place in the church as he instructs Timothy. They don’t understand. They don’t actually have God’s law soaked up in their hearts. Their consciences are seared where they can’t see when their pride is what’s driving them. They can’t see when their other sinful desires are what’s driving them and allowing them to distort God’s word. And really they’re not about loving Jesus, they’re about loving themselves.\n\nSo those three key members of the fleet of purpose, well, they’re swerving all over the place in them because they’re not about actually being focused on God’s direction, the right lanes of the road. They just see the exit they want, importance. And sort of like the exit ramp, you think about it, if you actually do what God’s called you to do, you may never have recognition. You may never be important. But there may be times where other people recognize it and you do become important.\n\nBut the more we focus on that exit and not just staying on the right part of the road, the harder it is actually to get to the exit and the more wreckage we cause as we try to do so. These people are known to be teachers because they chatter, as Paul says, but it’s a meaningless chatter. Maybe they have these big, long, obtuse arguments about theology and, you know, it sounds impressive. Sounds really impressive. Other people say, wow, look how smart these people are. I feel smarter just listening because they sound so smart. And those teachers walk home at night and they feel pretty good about themselves. Why? Because they’ve said impressive things. Who are they trying to impress? Well, themselves. People around them, not God. So they’re not worried about actually saying what’s true.\n\nAs one commentator put it, they have met their own intellectual satisfaction. They haven’t been loving. It’s not loving to say things that we make confusing just so people find us impressive. It’s not loving to say things that distort God’s will because it somehow affirms us or other people. Not loving. They’re not focusing people on the true Savior.\n\nAnd so they might gain a following. They might have status. They might even have more status than the people that do what God’s called them to do. But they’re causing wreckage in people’s lives. The cars are just swerving around.\n\nThink about the disciples. Think about them for a moment. They’re like this early on. They’re like this when we see them in the Gospels. In a place like the Last Supper, take a look at Luke 22:24 to 27. “The dispute also started among them over which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. So Jesus said to them, the kings of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. Not so with you. Instead, the one who is greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is seated at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is seated at the table? But I’m among you as one who serves.”\n\nJesus says don’t be focused on status. And keep in mind here, the disciples, this is the Last Supper. We’re going to get to Holy Week in a few weeks, and we think about the solemnness of this and the darkness of that night and so on. And what are the disciples doing? They’re arguing over, well, am I the greatest? Is he the greatest? Who’s the greatest? Who’s going to have the most status? They’re doing what Paul’s talking about here.\n\nBut crucially, they don’t stay there. Through the help of the Holy Spirit, through God working in them, through following Jesus, what happens? That’s not the way the disciples end. We look at their stories, we look at their, many of them being martyred, all of them giving up normal lives to go and proclaim the gospel. What do we see in them? We see a totally different attitude than what’s there at the Last Supper, because the Spirit transforms them.\n\nAnd that should give us some hope if we see some of ourselves in these false teachers. And if we’re really allowing God to probe our conscience and to point out those seared places, we’re going to, because we’re not perfect. There is hope, because we see as God works in our lives, we don’t have to stay there. What Paul’s saying here is understand what’s really important and keep yearning for that.\n\nAnd I think that’s the thing we see: the disciples watch Jesus go to the cross and triumph over death and afterwards, and then come back and commission them and send them off and they start to be led by the Spirit. They don’t get it all at once, but as they seek after Jesus, what do they get? They want to be like him. Even when they’re not, I know they’d say, I’m not like Jesus. I’m not like my Savior, but I sure want to be, and Lord help me to be. We can do the same.\n\nI think a starting point is to refuse to participate in the things that we all want to participate in in our culture that are not like Jesus.\n\nAs this ends, more than likely, whichever streaming service you’re on, I know certainly YouTube and Facebook both are going to try to put you in another video. They might kick you off into reels on Facebook, and if you’ve been watching some Bible teaching videos, you may very well get kicked off into a reel on Bible teaching. That Bible teaching video might be great. I have no idea where it’s going to send you, but it also might try to be one of those videos.\n\nThere’s a lot of them, and they go over really well on reels where someone’s talking about all the things that are bad about other people that the Bible condemns. And let me be clear. We should teach God’s law, and we should insist on his moral standards. We should do it in the right way, and these videos are framed in a particular way. It makes us mad. It makes us give a like and a heart and a comment that says, look at those awful people. And it does that because the algorithm, the thing that decides what we see on these social networks, knows that if we’re angry, we’re going to click more. We’re going to watch longer.\n\nIt’s really just a disturbing but true insight into our human psyche, that we like being superior feeling, that we want to be those who can rage at others, not those who are raged against. We want to be those who can point out the flaws in others, not those who run into the flaws in ourselves. And guess what? That’s exactly what the people Paul is talking about as being false teachers liked in their own time too. It hasn’t changed.\n\nThey may not have had fancy computer algorithms, but when the social network was people standing in the town square talking, the encouragement was the same. You rile the people up against the other, and yeah, they’re going to get mad, and they’re going to like you because you’re helping them feel important too. You tell them about how they need to be convicted in their own hearts and minds and be transformed and be more like Jesus, and they’re going to do, well, what, for example, the town council did when John Calvin’s reformation in Switzerland started. They kicked him out of town. Why? Because we don’t like hearing about how we need to reform.\n\nThe algorithm of our lives and online encourages us to act like these false teachers. But if we say, but Jesus, I don’t want to be like this anymore. I want to be like the disciples later in life when they actually were following you. Well, what we can say is, I don’t want in on their algorithm anymore. And when we feel that building up in us and we feel important, we say, God, I don’t want to be important. I want to be like you.\n\nThe teachers, they were confident and bold. It feels good. But they were wrong. They were getting built up, but they weren’t building up others. They had other people following. Those people felt important too. They say, ah, they’re being built up. They’re being built up in a way that caused more swerving. So not really built up. And ultimately not really focused on God.\n\nIf you just look in the church today, a significant portion of the teaching that we will hear online and books is about doing the exact same thing today. The challenge hasn’t changed. That’s why Paul gives us this timeless charge that he passed to Timothy to be passed on to generation after generation all the way to us.\n\nWe need to remember that our charge is love. Yes, we see the sin in the world. And what do we do about it? Our goal isn’t to make people really good legalistic atheists, or at least functional atheists, where they don’t really know Jesus, but they do the right thing. Our goal is to have people meet the living Savior. And as they meet him, yeah, he’s going to change their lives. But what we want is for people to know Jesus.\n\nIs that what we’re focused on? Do we care more about how our culture looks, how the people around us look and sound? Or do we care more about everyone that we encounter actually knowing Jesus? That’s our charge.\n\nEvery time we start to swerve, here’s what we need to go back to, John 3:16. What did God do for this world? He loved it so much he gave his one and only Son for us. If every time we want to be angry and rage, we say, well, God had a whole lot more reason to be angry. God could look around this world and see all kinds of reasons to rage, and he didn’t need to build up a group of people that affirmed him. He could just wipe out the current people and make new people. What did God do? He loved.\n\nOur charge is love, and our charge is clear because God has shown it to us. And in this hurting world, may we be those who show it to others. Would you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for your love. Thank you for showing us what it means to love. And thank you for transforming us through that love, giving us the hope of salvation through that love. Lord, would you help us to cling to that? Would you help us to turn down the rage and the anger and the self-building up and be about the business of showing your love? Would you help us to be people that if someone else were asked to summarize what we talk about and what we care about, they’d be about how much God loves the people he has made, not all the other things that they probably would list, that we’re all guilty of leaning into rather than into your love.\n\nWould you make us a people of love, fulfilling the charge whose end is love? We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.\n\nWell, I hope this has been an encouragement to you, and if it has, I sure would appreciate if you’d give us a like and a share. Yes, I know I just talked about algorithms. Let’s pervert that algorithm. Let’s do what it doesn’t intend to do. Instead of promoting rage and engagement and more and more of the same bad things, let’s actually fool it into promoting something that’s about God’s love. We can do that right now. Click like, click share, leave a comment. All those things make a difference, and it says we care more about something other than just being angry. We care more about God’s truth, that foundation, that conscience, and the Savior whom we have faith in.\n\nThank you for helping to do that, and it’s not just about social media. We need to go and do that this week. Let’s pray about how we do that. One way might be to invite someone to a service where we get to reflect on where we fall short and where God picks us up and transforms us, and that’s Ash Wednesday. I hope that you’ll come and join us for Ash Wednesday. It’s this Wednesday, 7 p.m. Central Time. We would love to have you.\n\nAnd I realize some of you, maybe you feel great about Ash Wednesday. You’ve grown up with it. You’ve always gone to it, and some of you might be thinking, what is this thing? Is it some kind of magical thing with ashes? What in the world is it that we’re talking about here? It’s really just a time to reflect and repent on our failures and to see the mercy and the love of God and to experience it and to prepare our hearts for the celebration of Easter through that. It’s an incredibly biblical thing to spend time repenting, and that’s what we’ll be doing.\n\nBut it’s also a time to consider inviting someone else, someone who maybe doesn’t normally come to church but feels like Ash Wednesday is something that he or she doesn’t want to miss. It’s a wonderful gospel opportunity. Invite that person. Hey, come with me to Ash Wednesday service, and we’ll soak in the gospel together.\n\nIn the meantime, any way I can be praying for you, please do text us at 833-356-4032. That’s 833-356-4032, or leave a comment in the comments below. I would love to pray for you and encourage you in any way I can. As we do that, what happens? Well, we can encourage each other. If you’re feeling discouraged, just text that line, 833-356-4032. Or if you’re willing to share it, leave it in the broader group, and when God’s people come together, we strengthen and build up each other. That’s what our calling is.\n\nHope you have a wonderful and blessed week. I’ll see you hopefully on Wednesday, and again right back here next Monday.\n\n\n\n
