SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Webb.
SPEAKER_01: Good morning.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to just take a second and look all across the room.
SPEAKER_01: See all the people that are in this room this morning.
SPEAKER_01: We've had a couple of opportunities to pray, and yet most of you have not been prayed for.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have time up here in the pulpit to pray for everybody and everything.
SPEAKER_01: But you know that everyone here this morning is in need of prayer.
SPEAKER_01: In some way, in some form.
SPEAKER_01: We're all in need of prayer.
SPEAKER_01: So I want to give you an opportunity to pray.
SPEAKER_01: You often listen to us, uh elders and pastors up here praying, but I want to give you an opportunity to pray this morning.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm going to give you some instructions.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to pray for two people.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Here's what we're going to do.
SPEAKER_01: First, I want you to think of a family member.
SPEAKER_01: Just one.
SPEAKER_01: One family member that you will pray for here in a moment.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you have small families, that's easy.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you have really large families, and it takes you a while to figure out which one.
SPEAKER_01: But we all know there's a family member that needs prayer for something in some way for some reason, right?
SPEAKER_01: What you think of that person?
SPEAKER_01: Just hold that hold that person in your brain.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we're going to take one minute to pray.
SPEAKER_01: And I want you to take the first 30 seconds to pray for the person behind you.
SPEAKER_01: Don't look at them.
SPEAKER_01: You may not know their name.
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
SPEAKER_01: You may not know what's going on in their life.
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
SPEAKER_01: God knows, right?
SPEAKER_01: If you're in the back row and there's nobody behind you, then pray for the person in the front row.
SPEAKER_01: You don't know what's going on in their life, but God knows.
SPEAKER_01: So first, I want you to take 30 seconds and pray for the person behind you.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Now take 30 seconds and pray for the family member that you had in mind.
SPEAKER_01: You know what's what's on our on our tongues before we speak it.
SPEAKER_01: You know all the desires of our hearts, you know the needs that we have.
SPEAKER_01: Meet those needs, we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Not not in ways that satisfy our sin or our self-centeredness or our selfishness, but needs that fulfill what is required for eternity.
SPEAKER_01: That is storing up treasure in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your people that have prayed this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Hear their prayers.
SPEAKER_01: And answer, we ask.
SPEAKER_01: For Jesus' sake.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you found that praying very easy.
SPEAKER_01: You found that very comfortable, even, and maybe maybe an exciting opportunity to participate.
SPEAKER_01: There might be some of you that said, really?
SPEAKER_01: Especially for the person behind you, right?
SPEAKER_01: How am I supposed to know what to pray for?
SPEAKER_01: So just out of curiosity, how many of you found it easy to pray for a family member?
SPEAKER_01: Raise your hand.
SPEAKER_01: Good.
SPEAKER_01: Now, how many of you found it easy to pray for the person behind you?
SPEAKER_01: Good.
SPEAKER_01: Not as many.
SPEAKER_01: And that's hard, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Because that makes us think about different things.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we have to remember, okay, well, who's behind me?
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: And then you might feel guilty in the first few seconds because you thought, I didn't notice who was behind me.
SPEAKER_01: And then you might think, who is behind me?
SPEAKER_01: Is there somebody behind me?
SPEAKER_01: Halfway through your prayer, you say, oh yeah, that's who it is, and then you get distracted.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you might feel guilty because there's somebody behind me, but I didn't take the time to introduce myself to them.
SPEAKER_01: They might be new.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, what if they're new?
SPEAKER_01: Lord, forgive me for not meeting the person behind me.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: But you know that we as pastors and elders have that same problem too.
SPEAKER_01: We have roughly 400 people that we have to try to keep track of and trying to keep track of all of those people and what their needs are, how to pray for them.
SPEAKER_01: That's a hard, hard thing.
SPEAKER_01: Especially when we only see some of you once every three months.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, once a month.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for praying.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for trying to pray.
SPEAKER_01: One of the reasons that we have an elder or pastor-led prayer every single Sunday from this pulpit is to help teach us to pray.
SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes we don't know what to pray.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm so thankful, I didn't have any clue how Jeremy and Webb were going to be praying this morning, but I'm so thankful that the way they led us to pray was from Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: God gives us from his word how to pray.
SPEAKER_01: You know, one of the key reasons that we don't pray for one another or don't know how to pray is that we don't know one another.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we we look around and we think, who are these people?
SPEAKER_01: How do we pray for one another if we don't know who we are?
SPEAKER_01: Now most of us, I think, know know the Fladeland family, and we know that that Paul is soon to be called home to the Lord because of his cancer.
SPEAKER_01: We know that.
SPEAKER_01: Do all of you know the Niederworders?
SPEAKER_01: We prayed for four last week, and and Piper, she was going to go through surgery.
SPEAKER_01: If you do know them, then you might know that that surgery did not happen.
SPEAKER_01: It's been postponed.
SPEAKER_01: But do we know these individuals?
SPEAKER_01: If we don't, why don't we?
SPEAKER_01: How do we work to overcome this?
SPEAKER_01: And why should we work to overcome this?
SPEAKER_01: In a few moments we're going to direct our attention to 1 Timothy chapter 3, where the Apostle Paul refers to our gatherings together as gatherings of a household.
SPEAKER_01: Gatherings of a household, of a family.
SPEAKER_01: So I wanted you to pray for one another because we can't in a single time together pray for every single one of us.
SPEAKER_01: But if every single one of us is praying for every single one of us, we can help cover those gaps, right?
SPEAKER_01: But it's also that we don't know one another.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we come every single Sunday to a church service and we don't know the people around us.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know one another's families, we don't know one another's struggles, we don't know one another's joys to give praise to God.
SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
SPEAKER_01: Why is it that we find it easier to pray for our families than for the person behind us?
SPEAKER_01: Well, part of that is because we we don't know one another as well as we know family, right?
SPEAKER_01: But scripture tells us that we are a household.
SPEAKER_01: Together.
SPEAKER_01: We're a family, so why don't why do we struggle so much knowing one another?
SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk more about this.
SPEAKER_01: And I have no idea where this sermon's going now, because that was all off script.
SPEAKER_01: Um be taking a fresh look at our Sunday mornings.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to start with this.
SPEAKER_01: Six weeks from today, we begin our fall Sunday schedule.
SPEAKER_01: That's September 12th, in case any of you are wondering if your planner is to work out that far in advance.
SPEAKER_01: September 12th begins our shift from our summer schedule back to our fall schedule.
SPEAKER_01: Now that should be enough notice for most of you, six weeks.
SPEAKER_01: But we're about to make that adjustment a little more difficult for some of you and a little easier for others.
SPEAKER_01: Because this fall, our schedule is going to look a little bit different than normal.
SPEAKER_01: Starting on September 12th, our Sunday mornings are going to start with a single service at 9 a.m.
SPEAKER_01: At 10.30, we're going to have a combined fellowship time together.
SPEAKER_01: And then at 11 a.m., we're going to go to our faith fellowship groups and our children's Sunday school classes.
SPEAKER_01: And for those of you who came to our regular first service when we had two services, that won't be much different.
SPEAKER_01: You just get to sleep in a little bit longer.
SPEAKER_01: Be a little bit different for those who came to second service, just a little bit of a change for those who came to fellowship groups in second service.
SPEAKER_01: But we're going to try this new schedule for the school year.
SPEAKER_01: We decided that we liked all of you together so much that we want to keep it this way.
SPEAKER_01: That's a joke.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Seriously, though, we do love having all of you together.
SPEAKER_01: It's such a blessing to have everybody together.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I know that there are going to be some of you that are tempted to read between the lines there.
SPEAKER_01: So let me just address that up front.
SPEAKER_01: No, our attendance is not going down.
SPEAKER_01: That's not the reason that we want to stay at a single service.
SPEAKER_01: Our attendance is actually increasing by God's grace.
SPEAKER_01: Now, there's much more behind this shift instead of going to two services of staying at a single service.
SPEAKER_01: See, our pastors and our elders have spent many hours recently taking a fresh look at our Sunday morning gatherings out of a desire to lead and shepherd our family well.
SPEAKER_01: So many of us did not know the people in first service.
SPEAKER_01: First service people didn't know who was coming to second service.
SPEAKER_01: So we have two congregations.
SPEAKER_01: How do we lead those people and shepherd them well?
SPEAKER_01: We've thought through how to make the best use of our time and to ensure that we're pursuing the right goals.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're going to try something a little bit different.
SPEAKER_01: And our Bible passage for this morning from 1 Timothy expresses a good deal of what motivated our thinking and our discussions about gathering as God's people.
SPEAKER_01: So if you have your Bible, I encourage you to take it to 1 Timothy or your device, 1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 14.
SPEAKER_01: Going to read chapter 3, verse 14, all the way through chapter 4, verse 11.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to take the next few weeks and look at all the way through chapter 4, but this morning I want to take a flyover of a large section of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: And since I went so long off my notes, I'm going to give you an opportunity to stretch your legs by doing something different.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your device in your Bible, as we honor the Word of God, would you stand with me as we read God's word, if you'd follow along as I read?
SPEAKER_01: You'll notice verse 16 is all about the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So as we do this, we're honoring him, his word, the incarnated word.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the word of God says.
SPEAKER_01: Apostle Paul writing to Timothy, he says, I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and a buttress of the truth.
SPEAKER_01: Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness.
SPEAKER_01: Christ was manifested in the flesh, justified by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up into glory.
SPEAKER_01: Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.
SPEAKER_01: People who forbid marriage and require abstinence from certain foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth, for everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is to be received with thanksgiving, for it's made holy by the word of God and by prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Timothy, if you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.
SPEAKER_01: Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, train yourself for godliness.
SPEAKER_01: For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, for it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.
SPEAKER_01: The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.
SPEAKER_01: For to this end we toil and we strive, because we have set our hope on a living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe?
SPEAKER_01: Command and teach these things.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like you to think with me about Sunday mornings.
SPEAKER_01: What is important about the Sunday morning gatherings of the church?
SPEAKER_01: Let's say you were part of planting a new church and you had the opportunity to plan a typical Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not telling, I'm not, I'm not talking here about the parts that happen before you leave home, about yelling at the kids to brush their teeth and finish their breakfast and get in the car.
SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about when when God's people, that's the church, when the church gathers together, what should that look like?
SPEAKER_01: One of our normal characteristics as human beings is that we we are drawn to things we like, right?
SPEAKER_01: To what makes us comfortable, what we find enjoyable, encouraging, uplifting.
SPEAKER_01: So as we consider what is important on a Sunday morning, those elements of comfort are likely to motivate our thinking, are they not?
SPEAKER_01: That's just the way we are as human beings.
SPEAKER_01: And the sad reality is that a lot of people choose to attend particular churches because they they serve good coffee and it helps you get through the preacher's sermon, especially when he goes off script.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they have exciting music.
SPEAKER_01: Or the people are just really nice and warm and welcoming.
SPEAKER_01: Some choose not to attend particular churches because the people don't reach out.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe the people are rude, just uncaring.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe the music is too slow, or you know what, they use that instrument.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe they don't use that instrument.
SPEAKER_01: Those are all decisions informed by our own preferences, aren't they?
SPEAKER_01: We all have them.
SPEAKER_01: Whether we admit it or not, we all have those individual things that we like more than another.
SPEAKER_01: That's normal for most of us.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe in most of life, in much of life, that's an okay thing.
SPEAKER_01: Unless you are a Christian.
SPEAKER_01: Because as God's people, we are to overcome that first natural inclination.
SPEAKER_01: We are called as God's people to direct our minds to think biblically and then eventually to have even our preferences informed by Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't necessarily mean that our preferences will change, but they should be informed by what God has to say.
SPEAKER_01: Our minds, doesn't it say in the book of Romans, our minds are to be renewed so that our spiritual service of worship is done with minds renewed by the Word of God?
SPEAKER_01: You've probably heard of or even experienced worship services in different cultures around the world.
SPEAKER_01: They can be vastly different.
SPEAKER_01: Some are so exuberant in their worship that we Scandinavians start to get a little skittish.
SPEAKER_01: Some cultures have services that go on for hours.
SPEAKER_01: Is that what our Sunday mornings should look like?
SPEAKER_01: No, there are there are no prescriptions in the Bible for the length of a worship service, nor for how long a sermon should be.
SPEAKER_01: Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.
SPEAKER_01: Nowhere in the Bible do we have a list of the number of songs that we should sing on a Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_01: There's no statements on how long a prayer should or should not be.
SPEAKER_01: But God did not leave us entirely on our own to figure things out.
SPEAKER_01: You see, he tells us here that there is a certain way that people ought to behave in the household of God.
SPEAKER_01: That tells us, if nothing else, that there are some boundary lines.
SPEAKER_01: There are some boundaries that are put in place to guide, to direct, to structure God's household.
SPEAKER_01: Now, verse 14 reminds us that Paul and Timothy were separated.
SPEAKER_01: They were often together.
SPEAKER_01: But at this point in Paul's ministry, Timothy has progressed far enough in his apprenticeship with Paul that Paul has left him alone in Ephesus to take care of some very difficult work.
SPEAKER_01: We can go back to chapter 1, verses 3 and 4, where we find that Timothy was under apostolic orders to stay in Ephesus and to confront people teaching falsely while working his hardest to set the church in a right doctrinal direction.
SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, Timothy wasn't going to be there forever, so one of the first things he was to do was to find qualified men to do that work in his and Paul's absence.
SPEAKER_01: That's chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: Now the Apostle Paul here hopes to return to Ephesus.
SPEAKER_01: But it seems as though he had some kind of hunch that something's going to interrupt those plans, so he sends this letter to communicate in part what he would want to say in person.
SPEAKER_01: And what does the Apostle Paul want to communicate to Timothy and to the church in that ancient city of Ephesus?
SPEAKER_01: He makes it very clear.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I want you to know how God's people ought to conduct themselves in the household of God.
SPEAKER_01: Which is the church, the assembly of the living God.
SPEAKER_01: Which is a pillar and a buttress of the truth.
SPEAKER_01: You know those moments on an airplane when the pilot says that that some turbulence is coming, and so he He puts on that fasten seat belt sign.
SPEAKER_01: That's where we are.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to fly over this passage, mostly seeing the big picture, but every once in a while we're going to encounter some turbulence as we dip down to see a few items with greater clarity.
SPEAKER_01: And this is one of those moments.
SPEAKER_01: But before we hit the turbulence, we fly, we see from our flyover that the gathering of the church is not a free-for-all.
SPEAKER_01: Notice the three ways in which the church is described with the apostolic pen.
SPEAKER_01: He says, it is God's house, it is God's assembly, and it's a pillar and a buttress of the truth.
SPEAKER_01: Three very clear descriptions.
SPEAKER_01: Now, where in that verse does it mention Faith Evangelical Free Church of Grand Forks, North Dakota?
SPEAKER_01: No?
SPEAKER_01: Where does it mention us as believers in Christ today?
SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe in the in the one?
SPEAKER_01: How one ought to?
SPEAKER_01: Let's point out the obvious first.
SPEAKER_01: We aren't mentioned directly, are we?
SPEAKER_01: We're only mentioned maybe by implication.
SPEAKER_01: If we belong to Christ by faith in his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension to the right hand of God the Father, then we are part of God's household.
SPEAKER_01: We are part of the assembly of God and therefore part of what upholds truth.
SPEAKER_01: But that's only by implication, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: We are not the priority.
SPEAKER_01: What is the priority?
SPEAKER_01: God?
SPEAKER_01: God.
SPEAKER_01: And truth.
SPEAKER_01: There's your priority for the local church.
SPEAKER_01: God's household.
SPEAKER_01: It is God's assembly.
SPEAKER_01: And by God's design, it is to be upholding his truth.
SPEAKER_01: A month ago, almost exactly, we had a bunch of kids out on the lawn out here during vacation Bible school, with some of our very dear volunteers trying to coax those kids into playing games.
SPEAKER_01: I say coax because the littler the kids are, the more it's like trying to herd cats.
SPEAKER_01: Boundary lines are set out on the grass, on the lawn, right?
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes those are with cones, sometimes with some lines on the ground.
SPEAKER_01: Instructions are expressed to the kids, and then the craziness begins.
SPEAKER_01: At points it has the feeling like it's a free-for-all.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes, thankfully not at our fellowship, but sometimes Christians treat regular gatherings of God's people in similar ways.
SPEAKER_01: Only we do it as adults with little faith rather than little children with no impulse control.
SPEAKER_01: But notice what we see in our flyover.
SPEAKER_01: Upon trust in Christ, we enter God's household, God's assembly, and God's truth.
SPEAKER_01: We, each of us, as individuals in God's household, as in our preferences, our desires, our emotions, those all become submitted to God, God, and truth, right?
SPEAKER_01: In recent months, our family has been graciously cared for by other believers.
SPEAKER_01: In a couple of situations, we were invited to stay in someone else's homes, all to ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: One situation we didn't even know the family, never heard of them before, and they graciously opened their home for us to come and stay in.
SPEAKER_01: And the other person we knew, spent a week there in someone else's home, and while they're while they're gone.
SPEAKER_01: Being told you can have free use of whatever you find here.
SPEAKER_01: Now, do you think it would be appropriate for us to spend a week in your home or in someone else's home and come in and open the cabinet doors and the closet doors and say, What are they doing?
SPEAKER_01: And start to reorganize everything?
SPEAKER_01: Do you think that would be appropriate?
SPEAKER_01: We might want to.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: But do you think that would be appropriate for me to come into your home and say, no, that's not the way you do it.
SPEAKER_01: You need to change up everything, and I do that, so that when you come home, you're opening the doors and think, what happened?
SPEAKER_01: You might feel as though you never want to talk to me again.
SPEAKER_01: See, that neither is that the way that we should approach God's house.
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean that there isn't a level of freedom within the household.
SPEAKER_01: It means rather that our freedom, our rugged individualism, our way of doing things, the things that are preferential to each and every one of us have boundaries now because the home belongs to someone else.
SPEAKER_01: So when we try to take a fresh look at our gatherings together, we start with what the head of the household has already established for the home.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the Apostle Paul told Timothy.
SPEAKER_01: He essentially writes this is the home paraphrase.
SPEAKER_01: Things are running amok there in Ephesus, Tim.
SPEAKER_01: Tell those people there that God expects certain things from his children and their gatherings.
SPEAKER_01: God has expectations, he has boundaries.
SPEAKER_01: Communicate those boundaries.
SPEAKER_01: So what is it that creates those boundaries?
SPEAKER_01: What sets the lines, the traffic cones in place?
SPEAKER_01: It's God's truth, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: When we gather as a household of God, we do not base it on our preferences, on our perceptions, or on our feelings, but on the foundation of the revealed truth given from the one who is the truth.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 16 records what many scholars believe is an ancient creed, a doctrinal hymn.
SPEAKER_01: Every statement here taken from another passage of scripture in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Christ was manifested in the flesh, John 1.14, justified by the Spirit, Matthew 3.16, Luke 3, seen by angels, Luke 22, Matthew 4, so on and so on.
SPEAKER_01: All about the person of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He is truth incarnated.
SPEAKER_01: This is his truth enscripturated.
SPEAKER_01: It becomes the boundary lines upon which the household of God, the assembly of God, now begins to function.
SPEAKER_01: It's where the church begins.
SPEAKER_01: And so we start with the knowledge that we are not our own, that we've been bought with a price, and in that purchase we have been adopted into the family of God so that what our Father says is what guides what we do.
SPEAKER_01: That's very important because of the next item we see in our flyover in this text.
SPEAKER_01: God's expectations for his church are necessary.
SPEAKER_01: They're vital.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because people do crazy things.
SPEAKER_01: Seriously.
SPEAKER_01: People do crazy things.
SPEAKER_01: The Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teaching of demons.
SPEAKER_01: To the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.
SPEAKER_01: They forbid marriage, they require abstinence from certain foods, so on.
SPEAKER_01: Now the crazy kinds of things that Timothy faced were a little bit different than the crazy kinds of things that we face today, not in every situation.
SPEAKER_01: There were people teaching that marriage was bad.
SPEAKER_01: Certain foods were bad.
SPEAKER_01: But old wives' tales were on par with scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Those things weren't true.
SPEAKER_01: But people in the church were beginning to believe them because they trusted the people saying those things.
SPEAKER_01: Now notice, notice that we've shifted here from how people ought to behave in the church of God, in the household of God, to how people ought to think in the household of God.
SPEAKER_01: He's made a shift here.
SPEAKER_01: That's important because, well, we act by how we think.
SPEAKER_01: That's why Scripture tells us to have our minds renewed by Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Because what comes into your head and reforms your head begins to live itself out in daily life.
SPEAKER_01: Now, our temptation in this flyover is to let ourselves off the hook.
SPEAKER_01: As we look out our little plane window down on the ground far below, we see things like deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons and think, wow, glad we've escaped that.
SPEAKER_01: But have we?
SPEAKER_01: Have we, or are we just trying to let ourselves off the hook?
SPEAKER_01: Are you buckled in?
SPEAKER_01: Time for some turbulence.
SPEAKER_01: Going to dig down a little bit deeper for a moment.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: Through the insincerity or by means of the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the Apostle Paul doesn't tell us how their consciences were seared.
SPEAKER_01: He merely says that they were.
SPEAKER_01: But what does it mean to have your conscience seared?
SPEAKER_01: When I hear the word searing, my imagination automatically goes to the nice crisp searing of a steak on my grill.
SPEAKER_01: Is that what he's talking about?
SPEAKER_01: I just made you all think about lunch, didn't I?
SPEAKER_01: Craig Keener in his Bible background commentary suggests that this term was often used to refer to a branding iron used on livestock.
SPEAKER_01: That kind of searing.
SPEAKER_01: And when that kind of searing on an animal was used, it was used to mark an identifier.
SPEAKER_01: To say, this cow, this sheep belongs to this person.
SPEAKER_01: So the implication may be that the people Timothy was to confront in his church had turned against the truth of God, and their consciences were no longer being informed by the truth of God, but now being influenced by demons.
SPEAKER_01: And the branding of their consciences identifies them now as belonging to or being controlled by demons rather than the true God.
SPEAKER_01: That's very similar to what the way Jesus describes the Pharisees at the end of Matthew chapter 12.
SPEAKER_01: He says, You've so far turned away that you are now not able to be forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: Now watch what happens.
SPEAKER_01: These demon-informed, infused folks participate in the gatherings of God's people.
SPEAKER_01: And as they do, they spread lies.
SPEAKER_01: What kind of lies?
SPEAKER_01: Well, lies that appeal to our humanity in some way, to our fleshly nature, lies that make some kind of sense to our worldly way of thinking, but they are lies that contradict the revealed truth of God.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Satan does.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, if Satan can't take truth away, he works to undermine it through counterintelligence.
SPEAKER_01: He seeks to convince people that something that looks like truth, that sounds like truth, maybe tastes like truth, is in reality deadly poison.
SPEAKER_01: And it will kill you.
SPEAKER_01: That leads people away from the faith.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way of demons.
SPEAKER_01: It's the way of demons.
SPEAKER_01: Work your way into the house of God by looking, sounding, and smelling like one of God's children.
SPEAKER_01: Then start your work slowly at first, carefully, and sinners early.
SPEAKER_01: Just every once in a while, question scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Question this idea of truth.
SPEAKER_01: Appeal to people's senses and rationality and humanity instead of appealing to Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: That's how you undermine the foundation and the buttresses of truth in God's household.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not the way it should be in God's household, is it?
SPEAKER_01: In God's house, his truth establishes the boundaries, the patterns, and the regulations.
SPEAKER_01: So if we are to ever take a fresh look at our gatherings, we must do so knowing that our natural preferences may be influenced by things that move us closer to God's enemy than to God's truth.
SPEAKER_01: The only thing that we know, without any question, that is good and healthy for God's people is what God Himself has established.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Paul says next to Timothy in verse 6.
SPEAKER_01: If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good, the healthy teaching, doctrine that you have followed.
SPEAKER_01: My friends, God's truth must be the greatest priority of God's people.
SPEAKER_01: If you're going to be in God's household, if you're going to be among his assembly, then his truth must be your greatest priority.
SPEAKER_01: Most of our translations add a word to the English to just make it a little smoother in our English language.
SPEAKER_01: They add the word if.
SPEAKER_01: In the English Standard Version, it's the very first word of verse 6.
SPEAKER_01: If you put these things before the brothers.
SPEAKER_01: But that modifies the meaning just slightly.
SPEAKER_01: The Apostle Paul didn't use the word if.
SPEAKER_01: He simply said, putting these things before the brothers and sisters in Christ, you will be a good servant.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, he's saying, I'm assuming that you're going to be doing this, Timothy.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't, you better watch out when I get there.
SPEAKER_01: Timothy is supposed to be Paul's presence there, right?
SPEAKER_01: He's supposed to be putting these things before the brothers because putting the truth before the brothers means identifying the work of Satan versus the work of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The truth of God versus the poison of Satan.
SPEAKER_01: These things take us back to verse 14.
SPEAKER_01: I'm writing these things to you.
SPEAKER_01: It takes us forward to chapter 4, verse 15.
SPEAKER_01: Practice these things.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 11 of chapter 4, command and teach these things.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 5, verse 7, command these things.
SPEAKER_01: He's talking about his whole letter.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Timothy, this is your guidebook for the church at Ephesus.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the boundaries.
SPEAKER_01: Here are all of the things needed to behave properly in God's household.
SPEAKER_01: These things are the words of the faith.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 6.
SPEAKER_01: These are the things that are healthy teaching, the good doctrine that's been followed.
SPEAKER_01: Healthy doctrine is the antidote to liars with seared consciences who teach and lead by the doctrines of demons that sound good, feel good, and appeal to human senses.
SPEAKER_01: Every week, every week we we print and distribute a bulletin for you that has our mission statement printed on the front.
SPEAKER_01: What do we do?
SPEAKER_01: When you come in these doors and you come into this room on a Sunday morning gathering, what is it that you should expect of us?
SPEAKER_01: What's the very first thing?
SPEAKER_01: We declare the word of God.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_01: We declare the word of God, we make disciples of believers, and we move them to greater maturity to become devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Why do we not begin in our mission statement with a welcoming atmosphere?
SPEAKER_01: Or inspiring music.
SPEAKER_01: Or anything like that.
SPEAKER_01: It's not that those things aren't good or that they don't have a place.
SPEAKER_01: It's because God has already set the boundaries, hasn't he?
SPEAKER_01: It's like me coming into your house and saying, okay, this is how you live.
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm going to seek to conform myself to your patterns.
SPEAKER_01: God says, This is my household.
SPEAKER_01: Here are my patterns.
SPEAKER_01: Here are my boundaries.
SPEAKER_01: We start with declaring the word of God because our Father, in whose household we exist, has set an unchanging boundary for the assembly of his people.
SPEAKER_01: That unchanging boundary is the spirit-revealed truth of God.
SPEAKER_01: Notice the first words of chapter 4, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: The Spirit expressly says, it's not uncertain there.
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty defined.
SPEAKER_01: This foundation not only upholds the household, it protects the assembly of God's people from the enemy's lies.
SPEAKER_01: It moves God's children into greater maturity, being trained as servants of Christ who are devoted not to the doctrines of demons, but to the good teachings of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And as we then scatter as God's people, we're taking out into our world, into our homes, into our communities, into our workplaces, not the doctrine of demons, but healthy teaching that points people to Christ, manifested in the flesh, justified by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed in the world.
SPEAKER_01: So from God's viewpoint, our flyover looks like this.
SPEAKER_01: God rescued his people who flaunted their sin in his face.
SPEAKER_01: And in rescuing them, he exchanged their hate for him for love for him.
SPEAKER_01: He adopts these sinners as his sons and daughters, and he puts them together in his house.
SPEAKER_01: And he tells them the first and unchanging foundational principle for his house is his word.
SPEAKER_01: It's no different than the very first husband and wife placed in the boundaries of the garden.
SPEAKER_01: And God said, Here's my word, live by it.
SPEAKER_01: Through that word, he grows us, he challenges us, he protects us, and he propels us.
SPEAKER_01: And our flyover has to take us still further.
SPEAKER_01: I'm moving fast, folks.
SPEAKER_01: God's people need to completely avoid worthless and silly things that masquerade as truth.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's all good and fine until you stop telling people you can't do that.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 7, have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths.
SPEAKER_01: The verb here, have nothing to do with, is a is quite a strong word.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a word that expresses a simple choice, like, no, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it, but no, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what he's saying.
SPEAKER_01: It's a word for rejection.
SPEAKER_01: It's a word translated elsewhere in the pastoral epistles as refuse something or to reject it.
SPEAKER_01: To say absolutely not, that will not come in here.
SPEAKER_01: This reminds us of chapter 4, verses 1 through 5, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01: People are going to do crazy things.
SPEAKER_01: And they're going to believe crazy things.
SPEAKER_01: And they're going to teach crazy things.
SPEAKER_01: Only they won't seem crazy to everyone.
SPEAKER_01: Because some people are going to buy into the crazy.
SPEAKER_01: If such things were crazy to everyone, then no one would believe them.
SPEAKER_01: Worthless and silly things are going to look and sound different in every single generation, with every era of history, and even within different cultures living at the same times.
SPEAKER_01: But see, here's the problem.
SPEAKER_01: If our focus isn't rooted clearly and firmly in what the Spirit expressly says, then the non Spirit revealed things will seem not so worthless anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe even worth looking into.
SPEAKER_01: Before you know it, we buy into a worthless thing that sells itself as truth.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna give you an innocent example.
SPEAKER_01: I love fresh peas right right off the vine.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Aren't those aren't thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
SPEAKER_01: Now you're thinking about lunch again, aren't you?
SPEAKER_01: I'll quit soon, I promise.
SPEAKER_01: As a little kid, we had these these bushes.
SPEAKER_01: I I guess I don't know, I don't know exactly what they're called.
SPEAKER_01: I see them on my way to church every day.
SPEAKER_01: That I don't know, they stand, they grow maybe 10 feet tall at the tallest, and they have these little yellow flowers on them, and then those yellow flowers turn into these pod-like things that look like little little peapods in miniature.
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
SPEAKER_01: Some of you know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_01: Well, as a little kid, I was always fascinated by those little peapods.
SPEAKER_01: So I'd I'd pick them off the bush and you know, I'd dissect them, tear them apart, and huh! Inside are little peas.
SPEAKER_01: It didn't take me long to decide I need to taste these.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't taste the whole thing.
SPEAKER_01: I tasted the little peapods inside.
SPEAKER_01: My parents didn't know, otherwise it might not have happened.
SPEAKER_01: They were very bitter.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't make me sick or anything, but they were they did not taste pleasant.
SPEAKER_01: See, that's the way the doctrines of demons is.
SPEAKER_01: Something that gets you started and gets you thinking, and maybe that's not such a bad thing.
SPEAKER_01: And then you start taking it in, and it's not so good.
SPEAKER_01: When that occurs, when we start going down that track, the foundation cracks.
SPEAKER_01: The buttresses begin to weaken.
SPEAKER_01: As ideologies and worldview filled with error creep in and people are led to the doctrines of demons instead of the words of the faith and healthy doctrine, the household begins to shift and move and shake.
SPEAKER_01: Our flyover now needs to move over the Olympics.
SPEAKER_01: If you pay any attention to the Olympics, it won't be long before you hear about the kind of training that athletes put themselves through to be at peak physical condition.
SPEAKER_01: This is why I'm not a professional athlete.
SPEAKER_01: I am not willing to do that.
SPEAKER_01: There is little.
SPEAKER_01: There is value in that kind of exercise, the Apostle Paul says, verse 8.
SPEAKER_01: Bodily training is of some value.
SPEAKER_01: But it's a limited value.
SPEAKER_01: Not limited necessarily in what it does to your body, but limited in that when you die, it comes to an end.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever efforts you put into your physical body only has value for this life.
SPEAKER_01: And so the Apostle Paul says it's more important to put effort into your eternal life.
SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, this is the very first command given to Timothy in this letter.
SPEAKER_01: We're two-thirds of the way into the letter.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the first command given to Timothy.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, train yourself for godliness.
SPEAKER_01: Now remember, this flight is all about behaving in the household of God.
SPEAKER_01: It's about functioning as God's assembly, as God's church.
SPEAKER_01: This is about being a son or a daughter of God and assembling together as God's children.
SPEAKER_01: Being God's household.
SPEAKER_01: Being God's assembled people requires training because the enemy is at work to confuse, to confound, and to corrupt the foundation of God's truth.
SPEAKER_01: Staying on task requires exertion.
SPEAKER_01: It requires agony.
SPEAKER_01: Literally, that's the Greek word mentioned here.
SPEAKER_01: Not in physical effort, but in spiritual effort, focused not on ourselves, but on the living God.
SPEAKER_01: See that that parallel, verse 15, the church of the living God, and this living God in chapter 4, verse 10, is the one on whom our hope is set.
SPEAKER_01: Beloved, you have an enemy who seeks to devour you.
SPEAKER_01: How much effort do you put into your spiritual life, training yourself to face that?
SPEAKER_01: And this is what Timothy is commanded to preach and to teach.
SPEAKER_01: Command and teach these things.
SPEAKER_01: This is what we are to command and teach as local gatherings of God's people.
SPEAKER_01: It's serious stuff.
SPEAKER_01: Our gatherings refocus our attention on the living God who made us his own.
SPEAKER_01: And then they help prepare us for the spiritual battle of life.
SPEAKER_01: God established what it takes to do this, He set the boundaries for it.
SPEAKER_01: And our responsibility is to seek to work that out in our time and place.
SPEAKER_01: I said earlier that our pastors and elders have been taking a fresh look at our Sunday mornings.
SPEAKER_01: We've wrestled with what God says are non-negotiable parts of God's gathering for his people.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't say much that night when we sat for several hours around a whiteboard downstairs.
SPEAKER_01: The air conditioning wasn't on much.
SPEAKER_01: It was hot and sweaty.
SPEAKER_01: But hearing those men wrestle with scripture and wrestle with what God says is a non-negotiable.
SPEAKER_01: That was sweet.
SPEAKER_01: We established the biblical non-negotiables, things like preaching and teaching and the reading of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Singing as God's people, praying, fellowship, elements like participating in the Lord's table and baptism and even giving.
SPEAKER_01: All of these are essential items.
SPEAKER_01: Now, how do we do all of that on a Sunday morning and do it well?
SPEAKER_01: If you figure it out, please let me know.
SPEAKER_01: We ask questions like do we do these things well?
SPEAKER_01: How do we fit these things in?
SPEAKER_01: Is there a better way to structure our weekly gatherings to better fulfill these requirements as the household of God?
SPEAKER_01: Now, until the Lord returns, there's always room for improvement.
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to be perfect until we see him as he is, right?
SPEAKER_01: Our conclusion is that we do some things pretty well.
SPEAKER_01: We do some things moderately well, sufficiently.
SPEAKER_01: There are some things that, well, we don't do so well.
SPEAKER_01: But we want to improve in all of these areas.
SPEAKER_01: That's part of being God's people.
SPEAKER_01: Problem was that as we considered how to improve as God's assembly, we determined it's really not realistic to do in our normal two-service schedule, just the way things work right now.
SPEAKER_01: So we're going to try to do something different.
SPEAKER_01: Now we don't want to do something different just for the sake of being different.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to move your cheese, as Scott likes to say.
SPEAKER_01: Going to make you uncomfortable, yes, but that's not just to make you uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_01: We're seeking to be obedient.
SPEAKER_01: We're asking the question: how do we live out being the household of God and do that well?
SPEAKER_01: We don't have the answers.
SPEAKER_01: But we do know that we want to put effort into the essentials of gathering together.
SPEAKER_01: And our normal school year pattern of two services with a fellowship group and Sunday school time in the middle, that just makes that really hard.
SPEAKER_01: Next week's a perfect example of this.
SPEAKER_01: Next week is a Sunday morning that I hope you all come back for.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be a great Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_01: But it's a Sunday morning that we just can't pull off in a two-service schedule.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to have a missionary speaker.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to expound the Word of God to us.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to fill us in on his ministry later on in the afternoon.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that we do during the summer that we constantly hear that you love and we love too is read through an entire book of the Bible together.
SPEAKER_01: That's so precious.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to do that next Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to take the Lord's table together.
SPEAKER_01: Scott and Kelly are going to feed us one last time this summer.
SPEAKER_01: How do we do all of that in a normal two-service schedule?
SPEAKER_01: That's mostly impossible.
SPEAKER_01: There are genuinely more negatives to being divided into two congregations than it is worth right now.
SPEAKER_01: Take, for example, how hard it was for you to pray for the person behind you.
SPEAKER_01: What if that person went to first service and you went to second service?
SPEAKER_01: How would you then know, even more than you do now, how to pray for them?
SPEAKER_01: So we're going to try, continuing with a single service, as we enter our return to the false schedule.
SPEAKER_01: It may not work.
SPEAKER_01: We're humble enough to recognize this, this may flop.
SPEAKER_01: And if so, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01: We'll do something different.
SPEAKER_01: We're trying to follow what God says and to do it better.
SPEAKER_01: And we hope that you will join us in that.
SPEAKER_01: Adjusting your schedule.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we know.
SPEAKER_01: It's hard.
SPEAKER_01: As a household, can't we do that together?
SPEAKER_01: We hope we can.
SPEAKER_01: So on September 12th, we're going to have our worship service at 9 a.m.
SPEAKER_01: After the worship service, we're going to have a fellowship time and follow that with fellowship groups and Sunday school.
SPEAKER_01: So the morning, mornings are going to begin then with all of us together.
SPEAKER_01: Our family, our household, together, assembly, focusing together, united as God's house.
SPEAKER_01: Focusing our attention on the living God.
SPEAKER_01: And the rest of our morning, our fellowship and everything else is going to be fed from that time together to train us, to equip us, to go out into a world that needs the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: It may be bumpy.
SPEAKER_01: There may be some turbulence.
SPEAKER_01: And after trying it for a season, we may decide it was a failed effort, but that's okay.
SPEAKER_01: How things come together can vary a bit.
SPEAKER_01: God doesn't say this is how you have to order your service or your Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_01: But we realize we can do some things better.
SPEAKER_01: We want to know one another better.
SPEAKER_01: We want to fellowship with one another more fully, more deeply.
SPEAKER_01: This hopefully, Lord willing, will enable us to do that.
SPEAKER_01: But as Paul told Timothy, we want to do this by keeping the main thing, the main thing.
SPEAKER_01: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, help us.
SPEAKER_01: Help us because we are we're so used to the way we do things, and we may not even realize sometimes that there's a better way.
SPEAKER_01: We may not even realize that our way can improve.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe that, maybe even you will you will show us that, you know what, what we've got is really good.
SPEAKER_01: We should stay there.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, make that clear to us.
SPEAKER_01: But I pray that most of all you would take the people that call this gathering, their home, their church family, that we would, by the work of your spirit, be bound more tightly together, that we would be drawn more deeply into your truth that is our foundation, and that we might be challenged to take it more to those who need it.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, enable us to be that light on a hill that can't be extinguished.
SPEAKER_01: Our world is getting darker.
SPEAKER_01: May we shine brighter for your good and your glory.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.