1 Timothy 6V11-16 - Gareth Skyrme (24th May 2026)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Flee from all this and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the internal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses, in the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who, while testifying before Pontius Pilate, made the good confession. I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time. God, the blessed and the only ruler, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Good morning, everyone. How are you all doing? My name is Gareth. I am one of the leaders here at Turkey Street Community Church. As a church, we believe that the word, the word of God that you have in front of you is God breathed. That is, it is his word where he reveals himself to all people. And we are confident that as the word of God is read and preached, it will correct, train, rebuke. For us, all sorts of things that we need to do in this life for all works, equipping us as his saints. And so as I pray this prayer, we need to come to this word with humble hearts, praying that he will indeed thoroughly equip us for every good work. So let me pray and then I will get through into 1 Timothy chapter 6. Lord God, your word is indeed breathed out by you through your people for us today. And it is useful for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting and training us in righteousness, so that servants of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. And so we ask, would you do that? Would you teach, rebuke, correct, and train us now in Jesus' name and for your glory. Amen. So here we are, uh 1 Timothy chapter 6. And if you look at chapter 6, verses 11 to 16, uh, at the heart of this passage is one really important truth, okay? And you need to get the context. The context, the truth is that we are in a spiritual battle. Now, this battle is not with swords or guns, it's a it's a battle for holiness, it's a battle for truth, it's a battle to keep trusting Jesus when the world around us wants to pull us away from him. And this passage is not gloomy or fearful, it's a passage that should give us joy, it should make us smile, it should get us excited. Because even though there is a battle, the war has been won, yes? Through the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the war has been won, and yet we are still called to fight this battle. And Paul, what he does in these verses, it's like he's seen Braveheart, anyone's seen Braveheart, you know that scene, yes. My brother Colin, my Scottish brother, was sending me some clips this week, so it reminded me of Braveheart. There's this kind of rally cry of Braveheart as he stands with his troops and he and he rallies them, we're gonna fight. And here is Paul with this rally cry to Timothy, and actually to the church that Timothy is leading. Come on, guys, let's fight. There's a spiritual battle. And he refers to, look at verse 11, he refers to them in a very specific way. Now, this should be odd to you as you read this verse. He says, But you, man of God. He calls Timothy a man of God. Now, to us, we probably don't realize that's significant, but to Timothy that would have been hugely significant because he didn't have the New Testament as we have it. His scriptures were basically the Old Testament and a few letters like this, one Timothy. So when he hears man of God, his mind rushes to the Old Testament, to where God uses that phrase to describe men and women of God. I wonder, as you hear that word men and women of God, what comes to mind? Paul says in verse 11 there's some things that we need to know about being men and women of God. So verse 11 he says, but you, man of God, flee from all this and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. When he says man of God, Timothy's mind rushes to Moses, it rushes to David, it rushes to the great men like Elijah. And now Paul says, No, Timothy, you're not in a separate category. You're in the same category. How is that possible? Look at verse 12. It helps us in verse 12. He says, fight the good fight of the faith, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. There were two things you need to pay attention to there. He says, Timothy, you were called, called by God, and you made the good confession. Called good confession. You say it? Called, good confession. Called, good confession. When Timothy made that good confession, that was his baptism. He publicly declared that he belonged to Jesus. Like Colin did just a few weeks ago. He publicly declared in that birthing pool, in that water, I belong to Jesus. That I'm united to Jesus. That by going down into the water, I am dying with Christ to my old way of life. And as I come out of the water, it's like I'm rising to life with Christ. And so what Paul does here is he connects this wonderful gospel truth of baptism and the truth of being in Christ to being a man of God. Therefore, because you, Timothy, are in Christ, called and confessed, you now belong to that great cloud of witnesses, the hall of fame of Moses and David and everyone else that's followed. Now look, this is an astonishing thing here. Because that means that every Christian in this room can say that they are men and women of God. Just turn the page to 2 Timothy 3 16. The verses that I read right at the beginning as we prayed. 2 Timothy 3 16 and 17 says this. So that the servant of God. Pause, what does it have after that? A little A. Go down to the bottom of your Bible page. It's got a little A and it says, so that you, a man or woman of God. Paul is making the parallel that if Timothy is a man of God, we two who are in Christ, who hear God's words, respond in it, we are in Christ too. We are men and women of God who will be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Imagine for a moment, the end of time has come, and there's this great procession of people as they walk into heaven, into the new creation. And in this profession, you've got Abraham, and you've got Moses, and you've got David, and you've got Elijah and Elisha and Gideon, and you've got these wonderful, wonderful people. And there you are at the end of that procession. Men and women of God walking into the new creation. You are in the group. But this New Testament identity isn't just about kind of who you are, it's about what God is doing in you, it's about your maturity. Who are you growing to be as a man and woman of God? That is the church. We are all called to grow in maturity in Christ. Now that's really important. The reason I read these verses about being trained and rebuked and corrected and taught is because sometimes we need to be rebuked, taught, corrected, and trained. The church is not made up of spectators. If this is all you do in your walk in the week, this is not enough. It is not made for spiritual consumers. It is not made up for people merely to attend religious services. The church is made up of men and women of God. Ordinary people, yes, no offense intended there. Ordinary people united to Christ. Ordinary people transformed by Christ. Ordinary people called to live for Christ in the middle of a spiritual battle. Which means this book, 1 Timothy, isn't just for Timothy. It's not even just for the church in Ephesus. It's for all of us, all men and women, all of us who would own that title, I am a man or woman of God. So this is what Paul is trying to point us to there. What does it look like then for men and women of God to live today? Now I want to show you two videos. We're going to read verse 11, and I'm going to show you two videos, and I want you to have a conversation with the people around you about why you think these videos apply to this verse. Okay, here's the verse. Verse 11. But you, man of God, woman of God, flee from all this and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness. Okay, just boys, just at the end, there's a video of a sheep and a child. Okay, okay, go come off it just so people get distracted. Okay, have a conversation with the people around you. How do those videos, you're all looking at me very confused, how do those videos apply to verse eleven, do you think? Have a chat, have a discussion. The worst that's gonna happen is you're gonna get it wrong. That's fine. Well done. I can hear some good conversations there. Tune back in to the front. That's good stuff. Tune back in. Now, here's what I think we need to know. Here's the point I think Paul is making. Being men and women of God means running from evil and running to what is good. You could say, don't be like the sheep, be like the baby. Don't be like the be like the don't be like the be like the don't be like the be like the be like the baby. Be like the baby, don't be like the sheep. Now look again at verse 11. But you, man of God, flee from all this. That word flee is to run, run from something. All this is everything that he referred to in verses 2 to 10. Do you remember 2 to 10 when he talks about false teaching? He talks about pride, he talks about greed, he talks about uh using godliness for financial gain, loving money more than God. You know that song, you know, um Shylin? Do you remember that song I told you about? Yeah? Can you remember it? Did you?

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:44

False teacher. Run from the false teachers. And he names all the false teachers. We could we could sum it up though, all those things, all these things we run from in one word. Evil. We run from evil. Evil is anything that differs from what Jesus teaches through his words. That is everything that is evil. Men and women of God are not meant to be like sheep. They're kind of get out of a sinful situation and find themselves just jumping straight back into that sinful situation, that evil place. Instead, he says, I want you to run from evil and do what? Pursue, run after something else. Let me tell you why that's important. Because if we as God's people spend our whole time just running away from sin, we will literally spend our whole time doing this and running into something else. So we have to pursue something. And what we pursue is what is good. And then Paul gives those six qualities. Remember the six qualities that you can see, starting with righteousness. What do we pursue? We pursue right thinking and right living. That is righteousness. What do we pursue? We pursue godliness. This is a theme here in 1 Timothy where he says, look, you need to live God-shaped lives. Pursue faith, that's a deeper trust in Him, in God. Pursue love, which means a greater affection for God and others. Do you love God? Pursue that love. Endurance. Which means perseverance through hardship. We know what that feels like. Many of us in this room right now know what that feels like. We run from evil, we pursue that endurance, and we run and pursue also gentleness. Here it specifically means kindness towards difficult people. We need that in the church and outside the church. And where do we see all of this most perfectly lived out? In the man of God, who is Jesus. Oh wow, you guys are really excited this morning. This must be the heat. Because when I hear the word Jesus, I think power. I think man of God, Jesus. He's my example. He's your example. So that means that as we run from evil and we pursue, we run towards what is good, we're not playing this weird abstract game of spiritual hide and seek. We're not running aimlessly after, oh, I can't find righteousness. Where's godliness? I don't know where it is. We pursue Christ. We are followers of Christ. We run after him. Here's my favourite Bible verse. Are you ready? It's actually a couple of verses. This is what I think I'm gonna have on my gravestone. Actually, I was gonna have it as a tattoo, but the tattoo place broke down the day. I went to get it done, so I took that as a sign not to get that tattoo. Not that I have an issue with tattoos, but yeah, anyway. Therefore, since, he says, since we are surrounded, this is Hebrews 12, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, Moses, David, Timothy, Paul, these other cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles us. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, who is the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith? Church family, are you fixing your eyes on Jesus? Are you running after him? It's difficult, isn't it? So, are men and women of God meant to be like sheep? Are men and women of God meant to be like sheep? No, we run from evil, not like sheep. Are men and women of God meant to be like a baby? Yes, we run from evil. We see it and we're we're going this way. I'm going back to what is good. Being men and women of God means running from evil and running to what is good. Then, Paul tells us something else. He says, being men and women of God means fighting the good fight of the faith. Look at verse 12 to 14. It says, fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who, while testifying before Pontius Pilate, made the good confession. I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now I really need you to focus here. There's a lot going on here which I can't touch on. Now I know I've heard the best way to help people to focus is to get them to stand up. So we're gonna try this. We're all gonna stand up in the heat. I know it's hot. Put your Bibles to one side, don't lose the page. Um, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna stretch up like this. We're gonna stretch. Yeah, that's it. We're gonna fan our faces because it's hot. Okay, just fan our faces a bit. We're gonna fan the person next to us like this. That's it. Let's get a bit flappy. Good, very good, very good. Okay, I'm gonna reach down. Try not to pull a hamstring or anything like that. Just relax, okay, good. Alright, very good. Now sit down again. Okay, just focus your minds again. The blood's moving around the body. Focus your minds. Now in verse 12 to 14, the language that is used here is really military language. Did you pick any of that up? So he says, fight the good fight. He says, take hold. Paul says, I charge you, keep this command. There's a few people with a military background in here, they know this. When you're commanded, you do. He says, Look, when Paul, when Paul says to Timothy, when you were called, you were enlisted into God's army. Now I want us to think about our timeline. I need I need two volunteers. Can I have two volunteers, Eliana? And one other. Yeah, go on in, Elsie. Pains me to have you at the front with those tops on, but we're gonna do it anyway. Okay, if you go and stand by hold that end for me, Elsie, and go right up to the wall. And if you can hold just here, that'd be great. Eliana, just there, that's good. Hold it tight. Now I want you to picture a timeline. A timeline of life. Look at verse 12. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called. So at this end is the moment that Timothy was called by God. That is, he discovered that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Amen. Amen. Amen. Okay, good. Say it like you mean it. Okay, amen, he says. That's what he was called. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and he made the good confession. He was dunked in the water and he was baptized. Beginning of spiritual life. And at the end it says, look down in your in your Bibles at verse 14. He says, to keep this command. Uh where have I gone? Yes, to keep this command without spame spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. So that's the beginning, and this is the end. At some point, the Lord Jesus is going to appear and come back. You get that? At the end, or he's going to die and go to be with Jesus in heaven. That's the timeline. What is going on in the middle? The start, spiritual life, the end, death, or Jesus coming back. What is going to happen when we die or when we go to be with him? Look at verse 13. Right at the end of verse 13, he says this. Keep holding it, you're doing a really good job. Verse 13 he says, I charge you to keep this command. What is the command? In these verses. I told you you have to work hard here. The command is the beginning of verse 12. The command is fight the good fight of the faith. So between this point and this point, God's people, men and women of God, are to fight the good fight of the faith. Okay, you can go sit down now. I don't want to keep you here. I was tempted to keep you longer, but thank you. Give them a round of applause. Very good, very good. Just leave it there. That's okay. Thank you. Now just picture for a moment. If you've been in the forces, you'll know this. You get given an order to go to war. And then you just sit there. And the order goes out again. And you just sit there. And the war rages on, the battle rages, and you just sit there. The Christian life, from being born called by God, until the day you die is not passive. We cannot sit comfortably on the sidelines. We can't kind of drift from this point to this point aimlessly. We are called to fight. To fight sin in our hearts. To fight the temptation as the devil tempts us away from the Lord Jesus. To fight false teaching when people say things that are not true to the gospel. To fight for the truth. And to keep trusting Jesus to the very end. But then also notice something really important. Now, this is so important. Verse 12. Fight the good fight of the faith, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In this fight, there are, as it were, hundreds of thousands of orange ropes representing hundreds of thousands of God's people, men and women of God standing side by side with you, who are running the race, who are working and fighting the fight. And these many witnesses, they were there when you made that promise. You confessed Jesus as Lord that you were going to follow him all the days of your life. And in those moments when you're struggling to fight, you need those people, those people, those witnesses, to get alongside you and say, Come on, keep fighting. When was the last time you encouraged someone to keep fighting? When they feel weary, I'm so grateful for you as a church. You have encouraged me in the time in a season of difficulty to keep fighting. We have to do that for one another. You see, our faith is not private. Our faith is very public as we fight side by side with one another. Now, here's something I really want to dig into here. You still with me? Yes? Still some nodding? I saw some eyes going then, so I'm just re-engaging you with the front. Yeah, I can see you all, all with your eyes. Don't let those eyes droop. Okay, now it says, look, there's a danger for all men and women of God, and this is a challenge. Okay, I found this hugely challenging here. Sometimes Christians think maturity is just knowing more Bible, it's knowing theology. But Paul, Paul never ever does that. Paul always, always keeps doctrine, that is the gospel and life together. Chapter 4, verse 16, he says to Timothy, watch your life and your doctrine. Watch them closely. Truth must shape your living. Live out the truth. Now, last week I went to a conference, and one of the speakers at this conference was an Australian guy. Okay? Now, if you know anything about Australians, they're very straight to the point, they're very brash, so they don't beat around the bush, as it were, beat around the bush. They're straight at you. And this guy was at us. And he was talking about how the New Testament defines Christian maturity. How we grow as men and women of God. Who here wants to grow as a man or woman of God? Okay, good. That's with your hands down. Okay, now I'm going to sum up the whole of what he said in an hour in three words. You ready? Head, heart, hands. Head, heart, hands. He said first, head. Biblical maturity is not just about what you know in your head. Heart. Biblical maturity means you have a growing affection and devotion to God. Head, heart, hands. Biblical maturity will be seen in what you do. Faith and deeds. Now that is a huge, huge challenge. I realized this year that I've been a Christian for 27 years. 27 years I've been a Christian. And I thought there were times where I thought it's just about filling my head with knowledge. It's not just about that. It's my head, it's my heart, it's my hands, and it's the same for all of us. How mature are we? How mature am I if Jesus commanded us to make disciples, but I don't speak about him? And I don't make the best of the opportunities like the Go Saturday to go out and speak to people about Jesus. How mature am I? How mature are we? How mature am I if I know that prayer and scripture are essential, yet I neglect them with endless scrolling on my phone? Or there's this regular habit of going to Grow Group or going to church when I can probably make it, but I don't. How mature are we? What good is it for a soldier to know every battle strategy to win a war but never steps onto the battlefields? There's a guy called Philip Riken, and he said this. Doctrine, that's the word of God, without life, is dead orthodoxy. Life without doctrine is reckless faith. You must do both. So when truth and when obedience they come together, what you see is authentic Christianity, men and women, what are we doing in that moment? We are fighting the good fight as we head towards the Lord Jesus and He's appearing, or when we go to be with Him in glory. Now look, somebody asked me what we could pray for before I preached today. And I said, Look, I just want people to hear the Word of God, but I don't want to feel I've got my Bible and I'm just whacking you around the head and just saying, Oh, you're rubbish Christians, we're all rubbish Christians. Oh, I'm just gonna give you the guilt trip. That's not what I'm doing. I'm teaching you the word of God, and this is what it says. And one of your reactions, part of you may be like, I felt a little bit this week. Look, oh Lord, but Lord, I want to do that. I want to fight the good fight, but I am just weary, I'm battle weary. Look at verse 13. Is the answer then just to look inside ourselves and then just pull out some extra strength from somewhere? No, verse 13 says, In the sight of God, what does he do? Who gives life to everything? And of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep this command. Now just just think about that. It is God who gives life and breath and strength to everything and everyone. Whether you're a believer or not, you're alive today because God allows you to live. Now I'm pretty sure that Timothy already knew that. I mean, he'd spent lots of time with Paul. That was his mentor. I reckon this is not the first time that Paul, uh Timothy hears this. Why? Because Timothy always needed to be reminded, just like me, of wonderful big truths and things like this. We always need to be reminded that our strength comes from God. And in verse 13, it says that as you think about this strength, remember the Lord Jesus, the confession that he made. Before Pontius Pilate, he stood there faithful under pressure. He stood there and endured suffering. He went to the cross, and now he is the risen Christ who is seated at the right hand of the Father. And what he does is he strengthens his people for the battle. Fight the good fight. It's not about trying harder in your own strength, it's about relying upon him, the risen conquering king. And finally, and much more briefly in four and a half minutes. Being men and women of God means singing the victory song. Who here listens to music when they're kind of doing jobs? Anyone listen to music? Yeah. Does anyone work out and listen to music? I know some people in the room definitely work out, some guns out in the room, I can see some of them. You listen to music, don't you? You're training, you're kind of, yeah. You listen to music, it's important. It's part of what motivates, it helps remind us of things that motivate us. And Paul here in verse 16, end of verse 15, beginning of verse 16, what he does is he he teaches Timothy a song. It's what's called a doxology. And what he's trying to do here is he's trying to say, look, the wonderful thing about when you listen to a song is it it focuses your attention on something else and not the pain that you're going through in your training. And here he says, Look, Timothy, I need you to take, when you're fighting, take your eyes off of the situation and off your frailty and off your inadequacy and off your tiredness, and fix them on the throne of heaven. And sing this song. Here's the song God, the blessed and only ruler, the king of kings and the lord of lords, who is alone is immortal, and who lives in unapproachable light, who no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen. Now we could do a whole sermon on that song. In fact, we could do more than one sermon on that song. In a nutshell, this is what you need to know, okay? This is a doxology, that is a glorious hymn of praise. And this uh this song is reminding him that in the battle you just need to lift your eyes to God, lift it to Jesus because he's not dead anymore. Who is he? He is the Lord of lords, he is the king of kings, he is the one who's defeated sin, he has conquered death, he has crushed Satan. And now we fight as we sing. Who is he? He's the blessed and only ruler, King of kings, Lord of Lords. No government outranks him, no earthly power threatens him, no enemy can overthrow him. One day Jesus will appear in glory again. Now, here's something I need you to really get this, okay? Do you get this? Here it is. Men and women of God, we fight, we do not fight for victory. Do you understand? We don't fight for victory. Jesus has already done the victory. We fight from that victory. We're not fighting to win the battle, it's done. The war is over. We fight from the cross with the power of the cross and the resurrection as we fight the battle, we fight from it. It's a very different thing. So when you're suffering and when you're tempted, you will stand firm and you will serve when life in ministry is hard. There's a song that um Isaac used to sing. I didn't tell him I was gonna do this, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. Isaac's my eldest son. And uh when he was younger, he used to sing, he loved this song.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

I will never march in the infantry, fight with the cavalry, zoom on the enemy, I will never shoot the infantry.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

Shoot like the infantry. I'm in the Lord's army. There you go. He sang this song and he used to say over. You know when kids would get hold of a song over and over again. It was a great reminder to me that he was reminding him himself and me that we are in the Lord's army. I may never go and fight in infantry or fire some cannons, or I may never zoom on the enemy, but I am in the Lord's army. And I fight in this battle. I cannot be a spectator, nor can you. So, men and women of God, will you run from evil and do what is good? Will you fight the good fight of the faith? Will you sing the victory song to yourself and to others? And here's as we finish, just go to 2 Timothy again, just cross over the page. Key verse. 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 16. All scripture is God breathed. So if you want to be a godly man and woman, you've got to come to God's words because it's useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so you might fight the battle, so that the servant of God, the men and women of God, may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. If you want to be thoroughly equipped to fight the battle, you've got to come to God's words. You've got to listen to what the word tells you and put it into practice. You see, the word doesn't just expose us, it equips us. Do you get that? So now we're gonna have a time of doxology. We're gonna have two songs. And these songs, first and foremost, do what Paul did and focus on God, who is immortal, who is amazing, who is has dominion over all powers. And then we're gonna sing of O church arise, which is that call that we're gonna stand up and we're gonna fight together. So will you stand with me and sing this wonderful mini doxology together as we finish.