Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

Stephen Covey is a well-known leadership and management and business expert. He wrote the well-known and oft-quoted books, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. But in 2005, he wrote a second book called The Eighth Habit, moving from effectiveness to greatness. And in that book, he made a statement which has become a well-known quip that he is well-noted for. And that is this. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. That sounds like advice that Paul could be giving Timothy in First Timothy. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. It really is the essence of the message of the pastoral epistles, first and second Timothy. Now two weeks ago, we began a series of messages on those two books, first and second Timothy. We're taking first Timothy first. Did you guess that? Pretty good place to go, huh? Right? So we're taking first Timothy, then we'll move into second Timothy. Actually, those two books are two of three, what we call pastoral epistles. Letters written to young pastors from the elderly, seasoned experience, the Apostle Paul. Paul is mentoring and guiding those young pastors as to how they ought to conduct the business of the Church of God, the ministry of the Church, and how they ought to conduct themselves. So first Timothy is basically, as we have seen, the Church owners manual. The one who owns the Church has given us a manual to guide us in the operation of the Church. And that's what first Timothy is all about. It also is a manual for pastors as to how they ought to conduct their ministries. And at this season in our Church's life, as I move toward the sunset of my ministry, and we look at bringing in someone else to be the senior pastor, this is a very fitting place to find ourselves land. For these next months, we will talk about what God's design is for the Church, and what God's design is for the ministry of a senior pastor. And as I mentioned last week, when I talk about God's role of the pastor, I'm talking about what Paul had envisioned here for the role of the teaching, preaching pastor. Not every pastor is under all of the stipulations of these verses in the sense that he's responsible for pulp ministry and for teaching the Word. Some pastors on a pastoral staff like ours have very specialized roles, and those roles are designed to free me up, to not have to worry about those things, but to be able to focus on the main thing of keeping the Church sound, doctrinally feeding the flock and shepherding the flock as a whole. So that's the role of the senior pastor. We looked last time at the introduction to the book, and we just barely got started. We saw that in introducing this book, Paul is warning Timothy, first of all, and he says, the main reason I left you there in the church in Ephesus, was so that you could correct some false teaching in that church, so that you could deal with some false teaching that had arisen on the part of some leadership in the church. So the first 11 verses are basically a warning about false teaching and how to correct it, and how to get back to making the main thing, the main thing. We looked last time at verses 3 and 4, and what we have seen in this entire passage is that in urging Timothy to look out for heresy, which is another word for false teaching, teaching which deviates from the scriptures. In warning Timothy to urging him to look out for heresy, he mentions three signs that he wants Timothy to look for. Here are the three things, Timothy, you ought to be unguarded for and look for which will be red flags that false teaching is either happening or someone's headed that direction. So the first one we saw last time, and that's in verses 3 and 4, heresy or false teaching includes a departure from sound teaching. In verses 3 and 4 he says, as I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer, or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, such things promote controversial speculations, rather than advancing God's work which is by faith. So we looked at the three elements of a departure from sound teaching. We saw last time that one of those false doctrines evidently there were some leaders in the church, some who were teachers in the church, who were introducing false doctrine. For that reason, Timothy is to be a man who knows the Bible, who knows true doctrine, and can sniff out the false stuff and be able to correct it. So false doctrine was one element of this departure from sound teaching. Second element was myths and wild symbolism. And we saw that what they were doing when Paul talks about that, they were taking Old Testament genealogies, you know, the lists of names, and they would pull a name out and weave some fanciful story about what that person may have done, and what it means to us, or give some symbolic value to that name or that individual, and just go way off on their own tangent of teaching whatever they wanted to teach. That kind of error still happens today where people take an isolated versescripture, or a truth of scripture, and use that as a springboard to teach whatever they want to teach. And often it's wild speculation, a lot of times it happens in the area of prophecy, trying to identify who the Antichrist is, or what role America has in prophecy, or things like that that really catch the years of people and get people excited, but are really not found in the Bible. They're just not there. And so that's the kind of wild speculation and symbolism and weaving myths from little parts of scripture that he says, that's a red flag, Timothy, you need to watch out for that. That can lead to false teaching. And he said both of those, the false doctrine, the myths and wild symbolism, that all leads to needless controversies. People arguing about this fine point, splitting hair over this, and that, the other, my interpretation of this, and my interpretation of that, and it just leaves the Bible up for grabs as to what it really means. And he says watch out for that. So Timothy, you've got to be sound in doctrine. And you've got to teach true doctrine so that the church is protected against false doctrine. Now I'm the first one to recognize that doctrine is not real pretty. It's kind of ugly sometimes. I mean sound Bible teaching is not always exciting. It's not the kind of thing that gets your motor really going and you think, wow, that's really changing my life. And I can live by that. And it's not always exciting, but neither is the foundation of a house. You know, people don't live down in that trench where the rebar and the concrete are. That's not very exciting. In fact, it's kind of ugly. Certainly in the living room where you enjoy wonderful times with your family. It isn't the kitchen or the dining room where you enjoy wonderful meals together. Isn't the bedroom where you can catch up on joyous rest and recuperation from a busy week or a busy day. It's not that. It's not seemingly where real life takes place. And that's why a lot of people have problems with about teaching in doctrine. Well, then affect my life and it's not where I live. I'm not getting anything. Well, just take away the foundation of your house and see what you get out of your living room and your kitchen and your bedroom. The foundation is absolutely essential. It doesn't look pretty. It doesn't always give me the willies and the willies and all of that nice feelings. About how I'm supposed to live, but doctrine is essential. It is the foundation that holds up everything else. And so that's the reason why Paul starts out with that. And he says, Timothy, this is why I left you an emphasis. You have got to correct false teaching. So the first thing you watch out for is a departure from sound teaching. But there's something else, Timothy, that we should be a red flag in your ministry. When you see this happening, you better perk up and deal with this. And that is a departure from scriptural priorities. Now this is keeping the main thing, the main thing. This is being able to identify and focus what is the church supposed to be doing. Who are we supposed to be? And when you get that clearly in your mind, that will weed out a lot of other stuff that can crowd in. So here's what Paul tells Timothy. Look at verse 5. Here's the main thing. Here are the scriptural priorities. The goal of this command is love. Pretty simple, straightforward. The goal of this command. What command? The command I just gave you in verses 3 and 4. The command to watch out for a departure from sound doctrine, sound teaching. The goal of that command. In other words, what you're teaching, what you're preaching is to be leading toward, what you are to focus on in order to protect people from tangents that lead to false teaching, what you're to focus on, the main thing is love. It's love. You say, well, it sounds very simplistic, a little vague to me. Does that mean I'm just supposed to coexist with everybody and learn to love everybody and just doesn't matter what they believe or think or practice, how they lived, doesn't matter about sin. It's love, everybody. Well, we are to love everybody. We're to love everybody regardless of what lifestyle or sin may be involved in their lives. But he's not talking about that. He's talking about a biblical kind of love that is rooted, grounded in Jesus' description of what love and the Christian life is all about. Remember Jesus said, everything God expects of us, all of God's standards can be expressed in two basic principles. Matthew 22, he says, love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love others. That's it. I mean, Jesus said, that's the basics. That's it. Everything you're supposed to be and do is summarized in those commands that have to do with love. And so I think Timothy is thinking along the same track. If the goal of Timothy's ministry is to be love, I'm sure he's not thinking of something separate from what Jesus would have been saying our main priority is to love God and love others. That is the focus of ministry. That is the main thing. So Timothy, your ministry is to develop people who love God, who understand that God loves you so much that he sent his son to die for your sins and to be your savior so that your sins could be forgiven. And you could be redeemed brought into his family and into into a family relationship where you recognize his love for you and you love him back. You worship and adore him and love him, which means Jesus said in John 14 and 15, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. So loving God means obedience to him and keeping his commandments and living according to his word. So Timothy, your preaching is to focus on how to get people to understand what it means to love God and to love God. But also to love others. Love your neighbor as yourself. And so that includes loving other believers. That's to be a focus of ministry. We're to love other believers. And if we love each other, as the Bible teaches, that means we'll put each other first. And that involves a whole group of what the Bible refers to as the one and others. You know, we're serve one another, pray for one another, accept one another, esteem one another better than ourselves. And all of us, about 15 or 16 of those one and others. If you love other believers, it means you will practice those one and others that you will live for the building up and strengthening of other believers. So love God, love other believers, love the lost. It means to love the lost. It means that we have a love for those whom God loves across the world. Everyone who needs Jesus as savior. And if we love them, that must call for action. In the Bible, this kind of love is not a feeling. It's an action. It's an attitude and a framework that demands that we move out into the community, into our world to love people enough to take them to gospel. So when Paul uses that word of love, he's summarizing all of that. This is what is the main thing. Love God, love others. Love God, love believers, love the lost. That's it. That's the main thing. And when other things get us all entranced and taken off the main thing, we're missing the mark. So Timothy, your ministry is to cultivate people who understand and practice what it means to love God and love believers and love the lost. But that doesn't come out of a vacuum. I mean, you just don't say, okay, go out here and love God and love the lost. Love other believers. And that's a magic wand that just makes it happen. There are some things that have to happen in our hearts for that to take place. And so Paul goes on to tell Timothy, these have got to be at the root of your ministry in order to produce the kind of people in the church that will focus on love. Loving God, loving believers, loving the lost. What kind of people will do that? Notice Paul tells us the goal of this command is love which comes from. Okay, here's the origin of that love. Here's what develops and builds and creates that love. Here's what enables us to express that love. Love that comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. So in other words, he's telling Timothy, Timothy, you focus your preaching and teaching and shepherding of the flock on developing believers who have those three qualities. And out of that, they will love God, they will love other believers and they will love the lost. So what are those three things that the ministry is supposed to develop in us? First of all, pure heart. What does that mean? Well, obviously first, it means a heart that is free from sin, a heart that has been cleansed from sin. So the first object in preaching is to help us understand how our hearts can be pure, cleansed from sin. And it's not through anything we do. It's not through good works. It's not through things that we stack up and present to God and say, here, look at this. Aren't you proud of me? Look at all that I've done. No, it's through recognizing that we are sinners, that we cannot please God through our own efforts, enough to get into heaven for sure. We can't do that. And so we need a savior. God and His love provided a savior for us, His Son, Jesus, who came to this earth to take our place, to take our punishment, to die for our sins. And having a pure heart is bringing your dirty, sinful heart to God and saying, I need it washed. I need it cleansed in the blood of Christ. That's where it starts. That's where a pure heart starts. Is cleansing from sin through the blood of Christ, but it also means as believers, we understand what it means to keep our hearts clean. Through confession of sin, that we recognize that as believers, our standing before God is settled, our hearts have been cleansed from the judgment of sin through Christ. But we walk through this life and we say and do and think things and have attitudes that are not proper, not pleasing to God. So we get some dirt on us from time to time and we need our hearts cleansed on a continual daily basis. The Bible tells us how we do that if we confess our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive us from our sins and to what? Cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's a pure heart. So when we confess our sins, which basically means to agree with God, the word confession comes from a Greek to Greek words, homologato, to say the same thing. It means to say the same thing about sin. God says to agree with him, to recognize he's right, I'm wrong. And I've done what he says is wrong. I agree with what his diagnosis in the Bible. That's confession. Confession is not some empty ritual that you go through religiously. It is deep down in your heart recognizing that you've sinned and you agree with what God says about your attitude or about your words or about your actions or about your speech. You agree with what God says about that and you admit it to him and you ask for his cleansing and forgiveness. That's a pure heart. So pure heart in the sense of salvation, a pure heart in the sense of cleansing, but there's a third thing that a pure heart means. And that is to be sincere. The word here for pure literally means sincere without mixture is the idea. So it has to do with our motives. You know, preaching what we should do is one thing in obedience to God, but we also need preaching and teaching that helps us to understand why do we do what we do? Why should we obey God? Why should we live a certain way? It is because we are his redeemed people who are to live with a single focus and eye toward pleasing him. And that will control all of our motives for why we do what we do. Now all of that together is a pure heart. And Paul is telling Timothy, that you're preaching is should be centered around helping people to understand first of all how to get saved, how to have a pure heart in the sense of salvation, how to keep a pure heart through confession of sin. So that means you got to preach on sin, Timothy. You've got to realize, you've got to help folks realize what's sin? What is what is the Bible say about what's wrong and what's right? And then to make sure that our motives are pure before God, that we're doing what we do for the right reasons, not to please everybody else or get the acclaim of people, but to please God and to be able to stand before him someday and hear well done, good and faithful servant. Oh, that's a pure heart. Now when you have pure heart, you're going to love God and love other believers and love the lost from that kind of heart. But that's not all that Timothy's ministry is to address. It's also to address a good conscience. A good conscience. Now God has a place for our conscience to play and interestingly enough in the grow class this past Wednesday night, we were talking about the part of us that is called the conscience and what the Bible means by that and how it's designed to function. And we saw that the key verses is in Romans, Romans 215 where God says the conscience works in conjunction with the heart and the thoughts. So you get a pure heart first. In other words, you get the right information coming into your mind and your heart. And then if you have the right information guiding and cleansing and keeping your heart right with God, then your conscience is free to be the tool that the Holy Spirit uses to convict you to help you see this is wrong. And this is right. And then your thoughts from Romans 215 says either accuse you or excuse you on that basis. Now the conscience has to have the right information being put into it or it's no good. The Bible says the conscience can be defiled by sin. It can be seared or cauterized or hardened by repeated resistance to what the Holy Spirit's telling you to do. So the conscience is not always about a guide unless it has the proper information entered into it. When you've got a pure heart, your life is right with God. You're walking with him. Sin is confessed. You're doing what God wants you to do and obedience to him. Then your conscience can kick in and be used by God. That's a good conscience. It's one that's sensitive to the Holy Spirit's voice. But a good conscience also means that you don't get mired down in guilt over past failure and sin that you have confessed to God. Remember the song that Erica and Karen sang earlier for us. He has separated our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. In other words, an eternal infinite distance. You've heard this before. It's good that God didn't use North from South because you can go North so far and hit the North pole and keep going that same direction and start going South. North and South do meet. There is a place where North ends and South begins. That's not true with the east and west. You know, you can keep going east. And if you hope to ever find a point where you start going west, you just keep going in circles. Because east and west never meet. He separated our sins apart from us as far as our giving an account for them as far as judgment and eternal condemnation. He has taken those away from us as far as the east is from the west. So when you get right with God or when you confess a sin to the Lord that you've committed and He forgives you, believe Him. Trust Him that He has forgiven you and don't continue to be mired in the guilt of that sin that you committed so long ago or maybe yesterday. I think of Peter, oftentimes when I think of this, on the day of Pentecost, Peter preached an amazing, powerful, spirit-filled sermon in Acts 2. And one of the things he says in that sermon is he looks the Jewish leaders right in the eye and he says, you denied the Holy One. Oh, really, Peter? You denied the Holy One? What about yourself, Peter? Six weeks ago, you denied Jesus three times at his trial? How can you tell me I've denied the Holy One? How can you look at me and say, you've done the only way Peter could preach that is because God got a hold of his heart about his own sin. Remember, he went out and wept bitterly the night he realized what he had done. And there was, I am sure heart-wrenching confession, deep sorrow and repentance and Peter trusted that God had forgiven him. It's the only way he could preach. The only way he could preach that message was to not have a guilty conscience to know that God had forgiven him. A good conscience is a conscience that's sensitive to Holy Spirit and knows that it's been forgiven and walks in the light and joy and completion of that forgiveness. So Timothy, your preaching and teaching is to produce people who understand how to have a good conscience, sensitive to the Spirit of God, sin, confess, and forgiven and not way done by guilt to move forward to love God and love others. But there's one other requirement, Timothy, and you're preaching to people you need to focus on. That is sincere faith. The word sincere again is a word which means to be unmixed. It literally is a word which your original word means without wax. And it was a term used in pottery. In pottery making, sometimes pottery makers would make a pot and in the firing process it might crack. And they would seal that crack with wax and then put paint or glaze over that and sell it as a perfectly good piece of pottery. Well, it's not. You can't see the crack but it's there. It's got wax covering it. And that's a beautiful picture of what hypocrisy is. Hypocrisy is having cracks that you cover up and seal up and present yourself as not having any cracks, as not having any faults or failures. That's hypocrisy. And Paul says faith is to be faith that is without wax. It's genuine. It's not hypocritical. So when you trust Christ for salvation, it's genuine faith. It's a recognition that you are a sinner in need of a savior. Not just some desire to look good and be a church member and be able to tell people in the community. I'm a church member. That's faith that has a lot of wax in it. It's not genuine faith. It's genuine faith to live the Christian life, to pray and lay things before God and trust him that he will do what's best in responding to those requests. Faith is not the faith that I'll get whatever I ask. It's the faith that I have confidence in him to do what is best. Genuine faith. Those are scriptural priorities. Listen folks, this is what the ministry of the pulpit and thus the church is to be about. Through the word of God, cultivating followers of Christ who have pure hearts, good consciences, sincere faith, and thus are free to move out to love God and to love other believers and to love the lost. That is the main thing. That's the main thing. That's what Paul says. The goal of the command I'm giving you to address all this false teaching. The goal of your teaching, the focus of your teaching needs to be this love that springs from a pure heart of good conscience and sincere faith. That's the main thing. Now Timothy, keep the main thing, the main thing. Why? Here it is. You knew it was coming, verses 6 and 7 because of the departure from scriptural priorities. There are those who do not stick to scriptural priorities and he talks about them in verse 6. Some have departed from these, what he just talked about, and have turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law but they do not know what they're talking about or what they so confidently affirm. Timothy, it is your job to watch out for the departure from scriptural priorities and it comes this way, he makes it very clear. Some people have departed from these. The word depart literally is the word which means to wander away. It's not like I hate the Bible so I'm going to teach false stuff. No, it's much more subtle than that. It's a wandering away. A little bit at a time as somebody gets intrigued with this fancy new interpretation of this obscure passage that nobody else in church history has ever seen. Wow, this new truth. So you gravitate in that direction and a little further, it's a wandering away from the sound scriptural priorities that he's just given us and turn to meaningless talk. What he's talking about there is the desire to push that particular little novel idea and to gain a following around you because of that novel new interpretation of something. In fact, that's what he says in verse 7. They want to be teachers of the law. The word for teacher is the word for rabbi or the idea of a teacher of the law is a rabbi. Now, a rabbi in biblical times, even in New Testament times, was a Jewish teacher who would teach the law and would gain a particular following who would follow his particular slant or his particular ideas of the law, his particular interpretation. That would be a rabbi. So it's a person who gathers a following based on their interpretation and understanding of the scriptures. Paul says these folks that are departing from scriptural priorities want to have that role. They want to be the teacher who gathers a following around them. Listen, what he's saying is be careful of anybody who's trying to gather a following around them, particularly when it comes to some novel, new, exciting interpretation of the Bible. So it's all about a red flag. Nobody in this church, including me, is to be trying to get a following. We are all followers of whom? Jesus Christ. Do you know what's what the word Christian means? Christ theanos. Ianos is an ending in the Greek language, which means a follower of. So a follower of Christ, that's who we're following. We're not following any person and their unique novel interpretation of the Bible. In fact, that ought to create some, that ought to really create some red flags if that happens. I don't know everything in this book. I'm not worthy of any kind of following nor is any other senior pastor. We do our best to understand, explain, and apply what this book says. That's all we try to do. But there's no following being generated here. Nor should there ever be an attempt to do that. A number of years ago, this was back in the 80s when I was pastoring in Indiana. Shortly before I came here, actually, we had a man join our church and. Great guy, seemed and he had his wife. And it wasn't long before I noticed in the vestibule where the lobby after the service, he would be. Back there with a little group of folks around him. And he would have his Bible open. And I thought, yeah, looks a little strange. What what's going on there? Didn't think too much about it. I kept noticing it kept noticing this group kind of hanging around with him a lot and following him a lot. So I dug into it a little bit and I found out what was happening. This fellow was a follower of a particular Bible teacher. And after every sermon I preached, he had found a few friends that he's very influential dogmatic kind of guy. And he found a few friends that he was pulling around him and correcting everything I was preaching based on what this other guy taught. Now please understand, I'm not above correction. I need correction because I don't always get it right. That's not the issue. And by talking about this, I'm not at all saying that I am the authority on everything. But whenever someone starts gathering a following around them to oppose the teaching of the Bible, that leads to trouble. And sure enough, it did. Just after I came here to Johnson Chapel, in fact, that man took those families out of the church and started a little church in their home, which now is defunct. But for a while, was teaching all kinds of false doctrine. Paul's telling Timothy, watch out for that. Be careful about people who want to be, he says, they want to be rabbis. Teachers of the law with their own interpretation, their own take on things. And may not know what they're talking about or what they so confidently affirm, but they're going to gain a follow. They're pulling people behind them. Watch out for that. Paul tells Timothy. People who depart from sound teaching. It is the role of a senior pastor to address that. And that's not always easy. I'm not a confrontational person by nature. I'm more like my dad. And I'm not a confrontational person by nature. It's very difficult for me to do that kind of thing. But occasionally, you have to. We had a man come to our church here at Johnson Chapel some time ago. And it's not the man you're thinking of it's someone else. Learned that from preacher Jimmy. He began trying to introduce seventh day Adventist doctrine into our church. That we were supposed to be followers of the law that we were supposed to worship on Saturday, rather than Sunday. And I noticed the same thing happening in the lobby. And so I confronted him and found out what he was doing. I warned him not to do it. He continued to come and continued to do that. And so I just so happened that I was I was in a series of messages on the 10 commandments at that time. And I preached a message on the Sabbath. And and made it very plain comparing a lot of scriptures. The difference between the Sabbath intention for Israel and the Sabbath rest that continues for believers today. And that the Sabbath was not for the church. It was for Israel. Well, he met me in the lobby after that sermon. Red faced veins popping out. He was livid and went after me. I thought he was going to hit me. So I calmed him down, told him to leave. And that week I wrote him a letter. And I quoted Titus 310. And I told him I said, listen, Titus 310 says that after the first and second admonition of a heretic, you're not to have anything to do with him. So this is my last word to you. You are not welcome back at Johnson Chapel. Now that is not easy for me to do. I want to be welcoming and open to anybody. But someone who comes in starts teaching false doctrine, passing out literature, getting a following behind them. It is the senior pastor's responsibility. According to what Paul tells Timothy, don't let that happen. Don't let that happen in the church or you'll find all kinds of trouble related to false teaching. The departure from scriptural priorities. But quickly there's one other thing that Paul says you need to watch out for when you're talking about sound doctrine or a departure from sound doctrine. That is departure from sound teaching, the departure from scriptural priorities. Heresy may also include and often does a departure from the primary purpose of the law. Every cult and major world religion apart from Christianity is an error in this particular area of the purpose of the law. So Paul wants to make clear to Timothy where to stand on this. Let's see what he says. Verse 8, he says, we know that the law is good if one uses it properly. So he's not saying because these people back in verse 6 and 7 want to be teachers of the law. He's not saying the law is bad. And he's talking about the law of Moses here, the Old Testament law of Moses. You're not saying that's bad. It's good. It has a good purpose, but you've got to use it properly. So what is the proper use and what is the improper misuse of the law? Well, he details this verse 9. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous. So the law of Moses was not for the righteous. First of all, it is not given to make you righteous. You cannot become right with God through keeping the law. That's not its purpose. Did you know that was not the purpose of the law even in the Old Testament? Nobody was ever made right with God or had a clear standing before God. No one was ever justified or saved by keeping the law. The law was designed to keep the nation in a covenant relationship with God. It was like a constitution. And it was also designed to help understand how to personally walk with God and live as he wanted you to, but it was never designed. Never has been designed to save anybody. And for us today, it's not designed to help us live righteous lives before God or to be more spiritual. You don't get more spiritual by keeping the law. The law is not made for the righteous. Well, then who's it for and what's it for? He tells us, look, verse 9. We also know that the law is made not for the righteous, but for. And he lists 13 kinds of sin. Let me just give them to you quickly. Lawbreakers are lawless people who ignore God's word and do as they please. Then he mentions rebels who want no control or standard on their life imposed on them. No authority. I will do what I jolly well, please. Nobody's going to tell me what to do. That's a rebel. And then he mentions, notice the next word. The ungodly. Ungodly as a person who has no reverence for God, no regard for anything sacred. And then the next kind of sin is just sinful, but it has particular idea, no regard for God. So you oppose him and his word. You arrogantly reject the word of the God who created the universe. That's what this word sinful means. And then unholy, it means you care nothing about accountability to God. So you have no care for your spiritual life. That's what it means to be unholy. You have no, you know, you don't care anything at all about standing before God someday to give an account to him. So you don't want to address your spiritual life in any way. You need before God. That's unholy. And then the next word is irreligious. That literally means to trample on holy things. In other words, to be irreverent and proud of it. That's irreligious. And then he says for those who kill their fathers or mothers, interesting word here to kill father and mother literally means to strike or to smite. It really means to hit father or mother, which was a sign of dishonor and disrespect. So in the larger sense, it's talking about any disrespect or dishonor to parents. But the word means to strike in a destructive way, which probably means the extreme dishonor of taking the lives of your own parents. And then notice the next kind of sin he points out is murderers. That's pretty self explanatory. And then for the sexually immoral in verse 10, that's a word which literally means generally any kind of immorality, any sexual activity outside of marriage Greek word, poor, naia, we get our word pornography from it. It's any sexual activity outside of the marriage bond. Paul is describing different kinds of sins that the law addresses here and he's saying any kind of sexual activity outside of marriage is a sin. And then he says for those practicing homosexuality, I know some of you have a translation. In fact, the older in IV has the translation perverts. Let me tell you what the word actually means. It's made up of two words, two Greek words. The one word is the word for male. And the other word is to lie in a bed as the word for the marriage bin. So just literally on the face value of the words, it's males lying together in the marriage bin. It is talking about practicing homosexuality. And that's exactly the translation here in the NIV. Good translation. Now is homosexuality a sin? Yes. Is pornography a sin? Yes. Adultery a sin? Yes. Is being ungodly and not caring about your spiritual life a sin? Yes. Don't think that homosexuality is the only sin or the worst sin. All of these things are sinned. They're violations of God's standard. But God's very clear on that. And then he says notice for slave traders, that's interesting. The word is actually where it means to kidnap. But it was always used in the first century of to kidnap for the purpose of selling into slavery. So it has to do with slave traders. Sometimes the Bible gets criticized for not being harder on slavery. And why doesn't Paul just condemn slavery right out and say Roman Empire is wrong? Well, here he does. The Bible does call slavery and slave trading sinful. It's part of what the law of God is against. You have to understand that Paul was not trying to overthrow the Roman Empire. He was not going to spend his whole energy and focus on trying to revolutionize the Roman Empire through social means and political means. That would have gotten him off. Remember the main thing, which is to deal with the word of God, which helps people to love God, love others. Paul could have been a social activist, but that wasn't his purpose. That wasn't his ministry. So what he did in the context of a Roman government, which had 60% of its population as slaves, he taught people how to negate that system in that context. Yes, he did address slave owners and slaves, but he taught them how to live in such a way that slavery was literally practically for all intents and purposes obliterated in their household. And here he calls it sin. It's sin. So the Bible is clear on that. And then liars and perjurers, liars are just people who are dishonest. A perjurer is someone who's dishonest under oath. In other words, has no intent to keep their promises. And it doesn't have to be in a court of law. Make a promise all the time, you know, fingers crossed behind your back, that kind of thing. No intent to keep that promise. Just doing it to get whatever you want to get, but no, that's a perjurer. Now, there are 13 kinds of sin mentioned here. And my point is this Paul says the law is given for centers. And maybe your particular sin wasn't mentioned here. It's not the point to cover all the sins. This message would take a little bit longer if we did that. But the point is to give a representative sample of the kinds of things the law was meant to address. Now, what does the law do in addressing sins? How does it address sin? It points out our sin to us and makes us aware of the fact that these are against God's standards. And thus they are sinful. Look how Paul clearly makes this point in Romans chapter three, these verses are on the screen for you. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law. In other words, no one ever gets saved by the works of the law. But rather through the law, we become conscious of our sin. That's the purpose of the law. The purpose of the law is to point the finger at us and shut our mouth about any excuses before God to point our finger at us and say, you're a perjurer, you're a liar. You're practicing sexual sin. You are guilty of an unholy attitude toward your life. The purpose of the law is to point out our sin to us to show us that we've sinned. The purpose of the law is never to save us or to clean up our sin. It's just to point out our sin. And Paul graphically makes this point in Galatians three. Look at these verses. Why then was the law given at all? This is in a book where he's saying the law is not there to save you or to make you more spiritual. Why was it given then? It was added because of transgressions. You notice the progression there? Transgression came first, sin came first, and then the law was added to show us, hey, by the way, what you just did, that's sin. It was added because of transgressions until the seed to whom the promise referred to come. That's Jesus. The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator. And then, in verse 23, he expands on this a little bit. He says, before the coming of this faith, faith in Christ for salvation, we were held in custody under the law locked up. Oh, that's graphic terminology, but so, so appropriate. It was the law that arrested us and said, you have sinned. You violated God's standards. Now, you're getting locked up and there's no way you can get out. You're guilty. That's what the law does. But it's that it does that until the faith that was to come would be revealed. So the law was our guardian, literally a schoolmaster teacher, to help us understand our failings, our faults, our sins until Christ came so that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we're no longer under a guardian. The law is not designed to help us live for Christ or to grow spiritually or to get right with God. It's purpose was to show us we sinned. I was driving home the other night from being somewhere. I was on a stretch of road that was kind of out in the middle of nowhere. It was very dark and and all of a sudden I drove into a little town. First of all, came up to a stop traffic signal. And and when I came up to that light, I was amazed at what I saw on the screen or on the windshield. And it was all kinds of bugs and insects and dirt and body parts. And I don't know what I was on there. It was all kind of mess on on the windshield of my car. Now when I was in the dark, I didn't even see that. I thought windshield looks great. But when the light hit it, it revealed all that dirt and those bugs and insects and guts and everything. It was just terrible all over the windshield. That's exactly what the law does. You see as long as we're in the darkness, we don't see that stuff. When the light of God's law shines on the windshield of our heart, then it shows up all the muck and the insects and the bugs and stuff on the windshield. Now that light didn't clean my windshield for me. Isn't that the purpose of that light? The light just showed me what was there. There's something else that's needed to clean that windshield. And the law's purpose is just to show you the bugs on the windshield of your heart. It's not the law's purpose to save you or to cleanse it. That cleansing comes through the blood of Christ through what Christ did for you on the cross. That's how you get the clean heart. It's not through the law. The law just shows the bugs on the windshield. That's the purpose of the law. And when people start trying to say the law has other purposes like to save you or you got to keep this code of conduct, you got to follow these old Testament regulations. That's going exactly against what Paul's teaching. And you're saying Timothy, watch out for that. Watch out for that. So Timothy, it is your job as the pastor of the church in Ephesus. It is your job to look out for heresy, to watch out for false teaching. And what you ought to be seeing as red flags that would cause you to say, okay, I better watch this. I better look out for this. Is any departure from sound teaching? Any departure from scriptural priorities, people who are kind of wandering away from the real business of the church, loving God and loving others and doing that from pure heart, good conscience and seraphate, when people start wandering away from that. Be careful because that's going to take them to a bad place. And then the other thing you need to be looking for is a departure from the primary purpose of the law, which is to show us that we're centers in need of a savior. That's it, Timothy. That's what I want you to do. It's what I left you in Ephesus to do. And that is one of the main responsibilities of a senior pastor. So as we look at what God wants the church and the pastor to be, let's make sure we're refocusing on what the Bible teaches. And not what cultural standards say, not what this fellow in this book says, the church ought to be or the pastor ought to be. Let's look at the owner's manual and see what God wants us to be. Would you pray with me, please? Father, thank you for your manual for us, your word for us, your truth for us. In these very important days, as we seek your direction about the future of our church, keep us grounded, keep us solidly placed on that foundation of biblical teaching. And especially the instructions you give us about what the church is to be and what the pastors to be. Keep us mindful of that, focused on that. But Lord, this morning I also asked that if there's anyone here that has never realized their need of the savior, maybe they felt that through keeping certain laws or being good people or being in a church, that would get them to heaven. Lord, I pray that they would turn from all of their rulekeeping, turn to you in faith and trust the provision you made through the death of Jesus for their salvation. It's in His name we pray. Amen.