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Fighting people who fight you
This morning I want to speak about fighting people who fight you.
Paul is sending Timothy to help the church at Ephesus.
He has told them that there are problem people in the church.
These problem people were deceived and would lie and lacked a conscience.
These people held influence in the church at Ephesus.
Timothy would battle this group of people.
He would be fighting people who fought him.
Their actual battle would not be with Timothy, their actual battle would be with the Word of God and with the Lord.
Paul gives Timothy three keys to ministering to difficult people.
Take responsibility for what you do.
Don’t add fuel to the fire.
Keep your eye on the goal.
What can Timothy do in the face of such opposition?
Timothy could focus on what he was doing, not on what others were doing.
Paul is pretty clear here.
Timothy needed to take responsibility for what he could do.
So many of us look at others.
We want them to do what is godly and right.
If they don’t, we won’t.
I have had people tell me that “no one else is doing it, why should I?” The reason is that if it’s right to do before God then that is reason enough.
No one is going to hold our hand when we stand before God.
Excuses won’t cut it.
Our rationalizations will dissolve.
We need to take responsibility for doing what is right even if there are other influential people who are not.
That is what Paul is telling Timothy.
“You are going to a difficult church.
Do what God has called you to do.”
In your work, your home, your church you need to take responsibility for your own actions.
Live for Jesus first and others second.
Don’t add fuel to the fire.
Paul tells him to let no one despise you for your youth…
How can we stop anyone from despising us?
In truth, we cannot.
People choose not to like us, to put us down, to throw us under the bus and there is little we can do to stop them
Don’t add fuel to the fire
What we can do is make sure we don’t add fuel to the fire.
Fires have a greater chance of dying out of no one adds wood.
Some of these lying, deceitful people were apt to pick on Timothy’s youth.
In that society as it is to some extent in ours, age and experience were preferred over youth.
Young people, everyone may be telling you right now that you are great and exceptional.
When you reach the adult world, you will find that you will need to prove yourself.
People are not going to listen to you because you speak.
You may find people who are going to look at you and the first impression will be negative.
Why?
Because you are young…or, you are old.
How do you deal with this?
First, do what you can do and second, don’t add fuel to the fire.
What do you mean by adding fuel to the fire?
If people accuse you of being lazy because you are young, show up on time and do the job.
That will keep them quiet.
If you show up late and don’t do the work, it adds fuel to the fire that, “you are a young person and all young people are lazy.”
That statement is not true, but you reinforce that perception when you make their statement true.
If someone says to you, “I can’t trust you.
You will gossip.”
The worst thing you can do is to share with anyone else that they said you would gossip.
When it gets back to them it throws fuel on the fire.
What was Timothy to do to combat the youth problem?
He couldn’t help his age.
He couldn’t stop people from talking.
But he could make sure he didn’t add fuel to the fire.
Paul said,
One person pipes up and says, “Timothy is too young, I’m not going to listen to him…”.
Another person says, “He speak the truth.
He lives what he speaks.
He cares about people and is strong in faith.
You may forbid marriage, but Timothy is the pure kind of man I want my daughters to marry.”
We are often ineffective because we are unable to live above the fray and show by example the godliness we want to see in others.
God wants us to take responsibility and not add fuel to the fire.
Paul says this in:
We can’t live peaceable with all.
We can model what we want the relationship to be in a godly way.
We can make sure that we are not as evil as the people who are evil to us.
People like to live in balance.
If they have wronged you, the want things to be in balance.
There are two ways to achieve this goal.
The first way is to put pressure on you to do something bad.
This balances the scale.
The second way is to ask forgiveness.
If forgiveness is given, that balances the scale.
When they choose to put pressure on us to do something bad and we respond to the curse with blessing, when we do good to them after they have wronged us, things are even more out of balance.
They may redouble their efforts to make you sin so that they can say, “See, you have done wrong as well…”.
The problem is that most people don’t say, “You are right,” they turn and say or do something bad to the other person.
Many marriages are in this state of throwing blame and avoiding responsibility for one’s own actions.
If Timothy was going to have any chance to make an impact and bring about change, he not only needed to do what God called him to do, he needed to make sure he didn’t throw more wood on the fire .
He needed to model a godly man.
Romans 2:1 is an important verse for this.
This verse encourages us to look at ourselves before we look at others.
Paul is telling Timothy, “Don’t fall into that trap.
You want to make a difference?
Model godly living.
Don’t do what they do, do what you tell them God wants you to do.”
What would that be?
Keep the goal in mind.
Why was Timothy going to Ephesus?
He was going to set in order the things that were lacking.
He was going to do battle against sin and the false teaching that would ruin the Christians and destroy the church.
Ultimately, he was going to help Christians who were in crisis.
In order to help those in crisis, he needed to focus on two goals.
First, he needed to check himself.
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