Sermon Tone Analysis

I. The Reading

This is God’s Word, Amen.

II.

The Exhortation

This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the Christmas season, where we remind ourselves every year of that great doctrine of incarnation, how God became a man — Immanuel, God with us — to save us from our sin.

Ushering us into the Advent season was this past week of Thanksgiving.

Let’s not move on too quickly from the subject of thanksgiving.

Giving thanks is a lifestyle for the people of God.

God’s Word tells us that giving thanks is God’s will for us in Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:15-18 —

As we consider out text in 1 Timothy 6 this morning, may I ask us a thanksgiving question for honest reflection?

Which is it —

Is it God’s will that our circumstances change, so that we may then give thanks?

Or, is it God’s will for us to give thanks no matter our circumstances?

[ Repeat ]

Is it God’s will that our circumstances change, so that we may then give thanks?

In other words, does God will for our circumstances to change?

Or, is it God’s will for us to give thanks no matter our circumstances?

Which one is God’s will for us?

Which one is God’s will for you?

God’s Word says:

God’s will is for us to give thanks in everything — in every circumstance!

Not BECAUSE of everything.

But IN everything.

So what does this tell us then, about our circumstances?

Brothers and sisters —

Our circumstances may not change, yet by God’s grace we may still give thanks in them.

This is God’s will!

There are false gospels being preached that tell us that Christ changes our circumstances.

Maybe He does.

Maybe He will.

— But maybe He won’t?!

Does that change what God has done for you?

Does that mean you are going to throw off Jesus and abandon the faith because life doesn’t look like what you thought it would as a Christian?

Think about a man in prison, who is serving a life sentence.

Assume with me that man goes into prison as a sinner, living for himself, a man of lawlessness, a rebel, an enemy of God.

But by God’s mercy, while in prison, that man hears the Gospel of Jesus Christ, receives that Gospel by faith, repents from his sin, and by God’s grace is born again, washed by the Word, cleansed by the blood of Jesus, and is forever changed!

The sun sets that evening in prison, the man goes to sleep in his cell, and in the morning he awakes as a believer - still in prison.

Still surrounded by concrete and iron bars.

What changed for that man?

God changed his heart, but did God change his circumstances?

Isn’t that man still in prison, still serving a life sentence?

He’s still there.

So what changed for him?

His circumstances have not changed, but his mission has.

Overnight, that man has been commissioned as a missionary for the King eternal in that prison.

Many people have to go in to prisons from the outside to be witnesses for Jesus on the inside, but this man is now able to to be a witness for Jesus from within.

This man’s condition did not change, but his commission did!

And perhaps there will be no better witness in that prison to other prisoners than that man, who is also a prisoner.

Let’s talk about contentment for a minute.

What do we make of someone like Paul who wrote in Philippians 4:11-13 —

Was Paul content because of his circumstances?

— No!

Not because of his circumstances.

Paul learned to be content “in whatever circumstances I am” through Him who strengthens me.

That is, through Christ.

Someone may come to faith in Christ, and be a member of Christ’s church, and still have a bad boss, and still have a dysfunctional family, and still have challenges ahead of them.

They may still be carrying a burden of suffering.

These conditions and circumstances may not change.

But what does change?

And the answer is grace!

The answer is Christ!

God gives His people grace in Jesus Christ not to change our earthly circumstances, but rather to honor God in them, no matter what those circumstances are.

And this brings us to a real challenge in our faith.

What happens, brothers and sisters, when our spiritual condition is in conflict with our social condition?

What happens when Monday doesn’t look like Sunday?

When on Sunday, we are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, clothed with Christ.

So that —

But on Monday…well let’s just say, “We aren’t in Church anymore.”

What happens when we aren’t in Church anymore, and the spiritual promises and blessings that we KNOW we have in Christ, that we KNOW we share in the fellowship of the Son, that we KNOW belong to us as children of God on the authority of God’s infallible Word IN HERE — aren’t manifest in the relationships and circumstances of life OUT THERE!

What happens when our spiritual and social conditions collide and conflict?

This is a very real problem for us as Christians: How to deal with hypocrisy and inconsistency as we live out the faith in a lost world.

How do we go back OUT into the world from the comforts of the Sanctuary and live as witnesses for Jesus in different social conditions that do not reflect our spiritual condition celebrated within the Christ community?

May God give us grace and understanding as we hear from His Word.

III.

The Teaching

1 Timothy 6, Verse 1, begins this way:

6.1a

1 Timothy 6:1 (NASB 95)

1 All who are under the yoke as slaves are to regard their own masters as worthy of all honor...

Who is this instruction given for?

This instruction is given for members of the Church who find themselves in a specific condition.

Notice the opening words: “All who are…”

All who are … this instruction is not addressing everyone.

The Church of Jesus Christ consists of a variety of conditions and circumstances.

Not everyone in the church is an older man, or young men, or older women, or younger women.

Not everyone in the church is a widow, and not all widows are “widows indeed.”

Not everyone in the church are elders.

And not all elders rule well, or work hard at preaching and teaching.

This instruction of Chapter 6 verse 1, while it benefits all who hear God’s Word, it is given for those in a very particular condition.

This instruction is given for “All who are” … what?

The text says —

“All who are under the yoke..”

A yoke is a bent frame of wood meant to control working animals bearing a burden (see BDAG).

That’s the imagery.

So a person “under a yoke” was a person under the control of someone else.

Bearing a burden for someone else.

Jesus said:

The apostle is not writing to Christians under Christ’s yoke.

For the text qualifies their plight further —