Merry Christmas
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Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a great honor to steward the pulpit for the edification of the saints at Durbin Memorial Baptist Church and to say unto everyone this morning, Merry Christmas!
'Twas the night before Christmas, and Bob, armed with a toolbox and a can-do attitude, decided to tackle the challenge of assembling his daughter's dream gift—a majestic unicorn-themed playhouse.
Bob dumped the contents of the box onto the living room floor, feeling a surge of confidence. "Who needs directions?" he declared, waving the instruction manual dismissively. Ignoring the meticulously labeled parts, he dove headfirst into the sea of plastic panels, bolts, and colorful stickers.
With each passing moment, the playhouse began to take shape, or so Bob thought. Walls were upside down, stickers were misplaced, and bolts were used where screws were meant to be. Bob, oblivious to the impending disaster, chuckled to himself, "A little unconventional, but it adds character."
As the playhouse neared completion, a realization struck Bob—the roof was an awkwardly shaped puzzle piece that simply refused to fit. Undeterred, he grabbed a hammer, declaring, "If it doesn't fit, make it fit!"
After a series of ill-fated hammer blows, the playhouse resembled more of a horse with a mohawk than a charming abode for imaginative unicorn play. Bob proudly surveyed his creation, convinced he had outsmarted the instructions.
Christmas morning arrived, and Bob's daughter, Lily, raced downstairs with anticipation. She tore off the wrapping paper, her eyes widening at the sight of the unicorn playhouse. However, her excitement quickly turned to confusion as she circled the wobbly structure.
"Daddy, why does this horse have a mohawk?" Lily asked, a puzzled expression on her face.
Bob scratched his head, realizing his folly. As Lily giggled at the quirky playhouse, Bob sheepishly admitted, "Maybe I should have followed the directions." Sometimes, even the most well-intentioned elves need to consult the manual.
With this being Christmas Eve, I thought an illustration on the importance of directions would be pertinent. You see, for the past few months, we have been looking at the soul of the church. We walked through the first four chapters of the book of Acts and saw that the local church is a gift to believers as a place of unity, power, grace, and care. We have seen the great beauty there is in a church that is burning for the glory of God. We have been challenged to not be be burnt out by the tedious nature of day to day life but instead be burning anew fueled by the power of the name of Jesus Christ. The local church, churches just like here at Durbin Memorial, are a gift to believers. Churches are good things that deserves to be cultivated well.
But if you think back to Bob in our story a moment ago, he had every intention of putting together a great gift, but ended up with something else, something less than it should’ve been. Why? Because he threw out the accompanying instructions. What was originally intended to be a sweet gift for his daughter got off course somewhere along the way.
The same can be true for the church when we neglect the instructional manual. For the early churches formed in Acts, there was no instructional manual. They would gather and be devoted to teaching, prayer, and care but beyond that, there was no formal guidelines given. The sad side to this, is that as you read through the epistles, you are seeing the apostles often addressing churches who have, in just a few short years or months even, gotten off course. Much of what is contained in the letters to the churches in the New Testament is corrective. Correction in doctrine, correction in practice. But there are three letters that are particularly instructive specifically for the functioning of the church. These are the Pastoral Letters of 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. God, in His infinite wisdom and grace, through these pastoral letters, gives the church a manual to follow in practice. If acts shows us the beauty of a church burning for the glory of God, these pastoral letters show us the design of a church burning for the glory of God.
You may be thinking at this moment, Pastor Brad, it’s Christmas Eve! Shouldn’t we be talking about a manger scene or some shepherds? And I get that! But we need to also understand that all of Scripture ties together into one story. In Christmas we celebrate God putting on flesh. Why did He put on flesh? To be the sacrifice that would bring many sons to glory! How does He bring many sons to glory? Through the ministry of the Local church! How do we know all of this? It’s all recorded in the Word of God! It ultimately doesn’t really matter where were diving in to the Word of God because it ties together in a unified story. The order of the church is directly influenced by the incarnate Christ.
So with that in mind, if you have not already, open your Bibles to the book of 1 Timothy. Today we will be looking at the first eleven verses and gleaning God’s Word for the theological foundation and practical application of oder in His church.
Let’s begin with verse 1 and 2.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, To Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
This introduction is similar to many of the other Pauline letters of the New Testament, with its own intricacies.
I would like to briefly point out three important truths contained in this simple introduction:
Why the book of 1 Timothy is important to us today: Well, we see that the apostle Paul is writing to Timothy. There are a lot of people today who try to discount the ministry and influence of the apostle Paul. They want to separate him out and read the New Testament without him. However, this is foolish for a few reasons. The book of Acts highlights the special way in which God chose Paul to be the missionary to the gentiles. The book of Acts is directly connected to the Gospel of Luke. It seems that if you wanted to throw out Pauline theology, you’d have to throw out not only the epistles, but the book of Acts, and if the book of Acts isn’t trustworthy, then you’d also have to get rid of the book of Luke. So wouldn’t you know it, but there goes the very birth of Christ! Instead of going down that slippery slope, we are better served by learning from the Apostle Paul, accepting his writings, and seeing how they are congruent with the rest of Scripture. Paul refers to himself in this introduction as “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our savior and Christ Jesus our hope”. After Paul’s Conversion, the Lord directly said that Paul, “is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.” God chose Paul specifically for establishing the early church. That means that as we read this letter on order in the church, we should do so attentively! This is of immense value. This is instruction from God through the pen of Paul. Christ chose Paul to write these words for the very sake of His name and for the benefit of His church!
A second concept I’d like us to gather from this introduction could be called: The Timothy Principle. Paul refers to Timothy as his true child in the faith. Most believe Timothy was converted while a boy on Paul’s first missionary Journey. Timothy was taken under Paul’s wing and encouraged to be a part of the ministry. Throughout the Epistles we learn that Timothy is young, timid, and had a fragile constitution. From what we read in Scripture, he wasn’t an imposing fellow, but honestly a rather plain, average person with a heart’s desire to serve the Lord. Throughout this epistle we will see that God has given him the tall task of ordering the church in Ephesus, where corruption has begun to creep in. We learn from this and through a survey of history, that God often chooses and uses nobodies! The wonderful thing about nobodies is that they don’t think their somebody! Nobodies depend on God to do what they know they can’t. Oswald Chambers wrote, “All throughout history, God has chosen and used nobodies, because their unusual dependence on him made possible the unique display of his power and grace. He chose and used somebodies only when they renounced dependence on their natural abilities and resources.” You might think that you’re a nobody! Join the club! The great thing for all of us to note as we begin looking at the book of 1 Timothy, is that God uses nobodies!
The third truth I want to bring to our attention from this introduction is that order in the church begins and ends with Christ. Christ is at the center of all things. Notice once more that in verse one God is called “our Savior” and Christ Jesus is “Our hope.” That phrase, “God our Savior” ties directly to the hymn of Mary’s heart after she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. As she anticipated the birth of Jesus, she sang out in Luke 1:46, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” The salvation that Mary looked forward to, Paul knew so well, and that unites the true church together is the Salvation that only comes from God who sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins! Not only has God saved us, but we have hope in Christ Jesus! His resurrection assures all who believe in Him of eternal glory. We care about the church because it is the place centered around doing what the Lord has called us to do. By His grace we have been saved, with His mercy we work for the advancement of His Kingdom, and we have peace through being reconciled unto the Holy God for all of eternity. Because God has done so much for us, He is to be at the center of all that we do and we ought to steward well this gift using the instruction He has provided us.
So in just a simple introduction we learn that this book is written for our benefit, God uses nobodies like us for His glory, and He is to be at the center of everything.
Let’s press on now to the next section.
As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
Here we are introduced to the specific problem within the Ephesian church at this time. If you are familiar with the history of the early church, this would cause you to wonder, What happened? You see Paul spent three years directly ministering to the Ephesian church. They spent three whole years getting teaching directly from one of the most profound teachers in all of human history. In the year prior to this letter, Paul wrote a letter to the church that was full of some of the most glorious truths in all of Scripture. The book of Ephesians highlights the grandeur and glory of God in an incredible way. As Paul leaves, he doesn’t leave this church high and dry, he leaves them Timothy, his protege. By all accounts this church had everything going for it, and now something has changed. There is a problem to be addressed.
Before we get into the specifics of the issues at Ephesus, we all need to note something for practical application. If things can go wrong at Ephesus, they can go wrong at Durbin. If three years under the ministry of the Apostle Paul didn’t prevent them from getting off track, then the preaching ministries of beloved pastors in our past are also no guarantee that we will not get off track. Within 48 months of Paul’s exit from daily ministry in Ephesus, the church was confronting apostasy face to face. In fact, this propensity for straying is not limited to the Ephesians, most of the Epistles were corrective of some kind. Churches would often get off track from the truth of the gospel. This should be evidence enough for all of us this morning that we must be on guard from drift! If the churches started by direct apostolic influence could get off track in a matter of months, we must not be so prideful that we think the same could not happen to us!
That is why we must review and refer to the manual like we are doing here. Going back to God words to evaluate His prescription for how the church ought to be ordered.
So now that we know that the possibilities for problems exists in general, let’s review the specific problem facing Timothy in the church at Ephesus.
The biggest problem addressed here in the onset of Paul’s letter to Timothy is the problem of false teaching it has become evident that at least some of the elders in the churches around Ephesus have drifted from the gospel delivered once and for all and brought in other teaching. They would go beyond the Word of the law, mix in various myths, and end up with something wholly different than the gospel. This is a big problem because as we saw in Acts 4, There is no other name in which we can be saved than Jesus. The gospel does not need our additions!
A major problem I see in the church as a whole today, is that we think our selves so enlightened that we must go beyond the simple meaning of the text to find something “deeper”. We’ve seen this in recent years with new interpretations of David’s sin with Bathsheba. We see this in modern attempts to make the creation narrative an allegory rather than a literal telling of events. The same is done with Jonah. Many folks stare at the pages of Scripture and instead of accepting the plain meaning as God breathed truth, they twist it to their own bent.
While I see this happening in the theological world today, it is nothing new. That is the same problem we are reading about here in 1 Timothy. Some of the elders in their quest to be high fluent and respected teachers, thought it good to go beyond the plain meaning of the text and blend in genealogies and myths. Their teaching resulted in speculation rather than stewardship! While I appreciate challenging our congregation, ultimately I don’t want our services to be concluded with speculation but with stewardship! Teaching in the church is intended to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, but for the false teachers in Ephesus and the deconstructionists of today, they use their platform to promote speculation. Vain discussions. They want to be teachers but have no idea what they’re talking about because they’ve denied the plain meaning right in front of their face. R Kent Hughes shared this about these teachers:
“Their style and approach is timeless. It is spoken softly with a distant heavenly look in the moist eye: “What you believe is good—it’s a good beginning point. But there is more that those of us who have paid the price of meditation and study can reveal to you. Adam stands for the spirit, Eve represents the flesh. One is good, the other is bad.”
And their disciples live on today. Consider the incredible distortions that the number 666 has undergone to spell out the name of every international villain from Caesar to Napoleon to Hitler to Stalin. A few years ago the best-selling book The Bible Code, a tendentious interpretation of the Old Testament, claimed that an Israeli mathematician, Dr. Elijahu Rips, has decoded the Bible with a computer formula, unlocking 3,000-year-old prophecies of events such as the Kennedy assassination and the election of Bill Clinton—“everything from the holocaust to Hiroshima, from the moon landing to the collision of a comet with Jupiter.” Religious novelties abound everywhere—fantastic claims of new truth about everything from raising perfect children to restraining the aging process. The problem is that these teachings and their systems, while not denying the gospel outright, replace it.”
I’ll be blunt with the church this morning. There are a lot of things that we could use our time talking about that aren’t worth a nickel. There are a lot of hills that people want to die on, that are simply personal preference tied in a spiritual bow. For instance, this year there seems to be a resurgence online in arguing about the Pagan origins of Christmas. There are people, in the name of Christ, telling other Christians that they should not be celebrating Christmas at all. Now, I can agree that Christmas has been over commercialized. But many of the “proofs” you will see presented in a two minute clip on Facebook are based on outright lies. As I mentioned in our Christmas Myth’s series a couple years ago, the pagans actually took a lot from Christian ideas! I don’t want to spend too much time here so if this is something you’re interested in, come find me after. But I will say this, there is one Pagan tradition that I hope continues on heartily: Converting to Christianity!
My point here is that we don’t have to move beyond the simple beauty of Scripture. The point of all of that we do in the church is defined well in verse 5
The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
“What is this ‘love’? It is love for God first, and then love for those around us—the classic dimensions of love in the Ten Commandments, as Jesus so eloquently proclaimed: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37–40). Love for others is made possible and is fueled by love for God. As John Piper has said, “Love is the overflow of joy in God which gladly meets the needs of others.”
The false teachers in Ephesus abused the law to drive their own fame and speculations. But the abuse of the law does not mean that it has no use. We study God’s Word every time we come into the church. It is quite good indeed. We see all throughout Psalm 119 that The Law is something to delight in. We see one reason why in our next verses from 1 Timothy.
Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.
The message “between verses 8 and 9 could be summarized in this way: “Because he understands that the law is for lawless people, he uses it lawfully.” In other words, the only person who uses the law lawfully is the one who understands that the law was meant not for righteous persons but for sinners. The law is to instruct ungodly people; it is there to show sinners how to differentiate between good and evil.”
In church we talk about the reality of sin as made known to us in the Word of God. We talk about the reality of sin because it allows us to see the grace of God! The proper use of the law is see how it points us to our need of a Savior!
You see the list here and think that it is describing the worst of the worst, but did you know that each of these groups directly correspond, in order with the ten commandments?
*SHOW PICTURE
When we see this list, not as a parade of the bad guys, but as the labels deserving of those who break the 10 commandments, we see that this list is for us! It shows us that we are disobedient, the ungodly! The Law isn’t intended for us to make endless speculations, but its proper use is to show us our need for salvation!
“But the false teachers in Ephesus were not making proper use of the law. Evidently they were abusing the law by making it out to be a means of righteousness. They represented the law’s standards as humanly attainable as they mixed the law with “genealogies” and “myths” (cf. 1:4). This caused believers in Ephesus to misunderstand and ignore God’s moral demands and, tragically, to abandon the gospel of grace.”
As we think about this for the ordering of the church, we see that a true understanding of the Law and its relation to the gospel is essential for the teaching of the church. God doesn’t need our additions and speculations, He has called us to be a light to the world, not add to the confuse. His Word makes it very clear that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The wages of our sin is death. In our sin we are nothing more than lawless, disobedient, ungodly sinners, some living in profanity, others striking their fathers and mothers, some murderers, some sexually deviant, some practicing homosexuality, some enslavers, a lot of liars, perjurers, doing whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, and all of those are deserving of death, eternal separation from the holy God.
Have you lied, stolen, used God’s name in vain, or lusted (which Jesus said was adultery, Mt. 5:28)? If so, God sees you as a liar, thief, blasphemer, and adulterer at heart. If you die in your sins, you will end up in a terrible place called Hell.
But there is a reason I wanted to preach this passage on Christmas Eve! It wasn’t to bum everyone out on a day we look forward to celebration. I wanted to preach this passage so that we would hear the proper use of the Law, see the reality of our sin, and in turn understand what Mary understood when she gave birth to Christ. You see, I think in fact Mary Did Know, that her baby boy would save our sons and daughters. I think the better question this morning is do you know? Because if you really want to celebrate Christmas, If you really want to appreciate the birth of Christ, that happens by understanding the death of Christ!
Though we broke God’s Law, Jesus paid the fine by dying on the cross: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Jn. 3:16). Then Jesus rose from the dead and was seen by hundreds of eyewitnesses. He fulfilled all the prophecies of the promised Savior. Please, today, repent and trust Jesus, and God will forgive you and grant you the gift of eternal life (Eph. 2:8,9). Then, to show your gratitude, read the Bible daily and obey it, join a Christian church, and be baptized as a profession of faith. We can’t be a church without being centered on this message and we can’t really celebrate Christmas without believing it! Believe and respond today! And Have yourself a Merry Christmas!!
Pray
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