Let me invite you to take your Bible today and turn to the book of 1 Timothy. 1 Timothy chapter 1 verses 1 to 7 is our text for today. Thank you to all of you who reminded that I was a month early in our series in the book of Jonah with our backdrop here today. but we are beginning a new series in the first epistle to Timothy, starting with the first seven verses today. So with God's help, if you would turn your hearts and direct your attention to the reading of his word. First Timothy chapter one, beginning in verse one. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God, our savior, and of Christ Jesus, our hope, to Timothy, my true child in the faith. Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law without any understanding either of what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions. Let's pray. Gracious God, we bow our hearts before you this day asking for your help as we prepare to open up your word. We pray that you would grant the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, that he would come and illuminate the truth of your word to our hearts, and we pray that you would grant us grace both to believe and to obey the things that we are taught. Lord, I pray for your help in the preaching of this passage, Give an unprofitable servant your power. Lord, grant your people listening ears. I pray that for all of us, the word of Christ would dwell in us richly and that his name would be lifted up in our hearts. And we ask this all in Jesus' name, amen. Well, you can see as you open up this epistle to Timothy that Paul doesn't waste any time in getting down to business. You don't have to read, but just a few verses. into this letter to see that there were some serious problems that needed to be attended to in the church at Ephesus, issues that would require Timothy, a relatively young man, probably somewhere in his middle 30s, maybe 40, a man that we know needed exhortation and encouragement, not to be fearful, not to be ashamed, to openly, boldly use the authority, the God-given authority that the Lord had granted to him shepherd the flock of God, to look over the sheep that the Lord had entrusted to Him, notwithstanding His youthfulness. We find Him here facing some concerns that would require Him to graciously yet courageously step forward and really be bold in the proclamation of the truth and defend what is not truth. see that the church was put into good order. And so it would have been helpful for him to be reminded, as Paul prepares to give some instruction along these lines to Timothy, to command Timothy certain things, that Paul himself is an apostle by the command of God. He too is a man with authority, but also under authority, under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he is a man who is obliged to carry out the will of his master in the same way that Timothy was. Now, Paul is an apostle. He is someone who is personally commissioned by the Lord. He says that it was by the will of God and of Christ Jesus that he was made an apostle. He was not self-appointed as an apostle. Appointed by the church as an apostle, he was personally commissioned by Jesus. It says it was by the will of God and Christ Jesus he was made an apostle. And so he had all the attendant authority of that position that the original twelve had. as someone the Lord Jesus appointed. In fact, Jesus himself said of Paul, he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and children of Israel. So he was Jesus' envoy, a representative of the Redeemer. And so you can think of him as someone who, when he spoke, his words carried all the weight that they would have carried as if they were spoken by the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And he tells Timothy, just a few words into this, we're in this together. Think about God, our Savior, and Christ Jesus, our hope. We share the same certain expectation. When we talk about hope in the Christian experience, it's important to realize that we don't use that word hope at all the way that we tend to use it in our vernacular today. When we use the word hope today, we often use it almost synonymously with a wish or a desire. I hope this comes to pass. I hope things turn out the way that I'd like to see them turn out. That's not the case when it comes to the Christian hope. It's a certain expectation. Now listen to what the old Webster's Dictionary from 1828 says about how it defines the scriptural sense of the word hope. It says confidence of a future event. The highest degree of well-founded expectation of good. the highest degree of well-founded expectation of good as a hope founded on God's gracious promises. So when Christians talk about hope, we're talking about something sure, something steadfast, something utterly trustworthy, utterly reliable. Why is that? Well, Paul tells us here, he says, Christ Jesus is our hope. Our hope, brothers and sisters, is sure. because it is grounded in the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. It's grounded not only in what he has done in dying and being buried and being raised from the dead, but in the promise of his return, the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ in you, the hope of glory is how the Apostle Paul describes it. Our possession of him by grace through faith is where our hope is found. Now, sharing this hope in common, Paul looks at Timothy and he prays that Timothy would know all God's manifold blessings. He says, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus our Lord. The conventional greeting that we have come, many of us, to be so familiar with as we read those New Testament epistles. And you're familiar also with how we tend to pass over what is conventional. If you get on an airplane, the first few minutes, one of the flight attendants is going to come up and grab the microphone and they're going to begin to say, in the unlikely event of a loss of cabin pressure, and you begin to glaze over And you begin to think, well, I know where this is headed. I've heard all of this before. I know what to expect here. But each of these words that Paul uses is so instructive in terms of what they tell us about man's condition and his relationship with the Lord. They tell us about our need. They tell us about the poverty of our station apart from God And they tell us about where the hope of our help is to be found, where our source is. He asks for God's blessing of grace to be upon Timothy, the Lord's favor toward the undeserving. It's that wonderful singular word grace that sums up all of God's saving activity in his son. all that the Lord has done in Jesus Christ to save sinners for himself. Grace teaches us that the creator of the universe deigns to give rebels what they don't deserve, and that he does so not out of any sense of obligation, but out of the great love that he has for us. He deigns and he delights to show grace. It's the basis by which we are saved. 2 Timothy 1 and verse 9, he saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began. Secondly, there's mercy. That describes his pity and his compassion, his loving kindness, his covenant faithfulness toward those who can do nothing to save themselves, those who can do nothing to help themselves. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And then there's peace. of the peace that God has wrought through his son. He has reconciled mankind through the son to the father so that that broken relationship that resulted from the fall could be restored. He has reconciled us to himself. Grace, mercy, and peace. Each one of these words tells you, dear ones, about your need. Each one of these tells you the most profound realities about who you are and what you need from the Lord. It tells us those things, we should mark it in our minds, not just as sinners separated from God, sinners whose A father is Adam, sinners facing the judgment of God, but also as children of God, facing an ongoing need of God's unmerited kindness. God is the fountain of all of these things, not just to the sinner who's facing eternal punishment in his sin. but to the redeemed, to each one of us who know the Lord savingly. Timothy is the one that Paul is writing to, Timothy. He may be a leader in the church, but he still stands in need of the riches of Christ Jesus. And so do we, brothers and sisters. So do we need God's grace, mercy, and peace in our Christian walk, however far we might've come along. however much we have come to know him, however mature we think we might be. Sometimes we think that these things are things that we receive at the beginning of our Christian walk at conversion, and then you just kind of move on. But that's not the case. Paul doesn't look at it that way. He prays for one of God's servants to know the ongoing communication of the Lord's blessings in Christ throughout the course of Timothy's life and his ministry among the saints there. Oh, we need that still today. We come to the reason for which Paul is writing to Timothy. Timothy had a particular duty that you find laced throughout both of the letters that are written to him, which, to sum things up, is to set in order certain things that were left undone at the church in Ephesus, or which had begun to unravel in various ways along the way. Now, as you read both of those two epistles, this winds up being very helpful to us. It becomes very helpful to a church like ours because as we read Timothy's, or Paul's instruction and his counsel and his direction to Timothy, we get a very clear picture of what a healthy, flourishing, vibrant, faithful church looks like. as we read through these two letters and what the ingredients are for making up that sort of thing in the body of Christ. That's sort of the large heading I want to consider this epistle with you under. What makes for a healthy church? People have all kinds of ideas about that. Maybe they wouldn't put it in those terms. What makes for a good church? What makes for the kind of church I want? What do I want to find in the sort of church I'd like to be a part of? And I think if we're honest with ourselves, we all bring our own ideas and thoughts to the table. Some of those we might not even realize. But what does God say? What does God say about what a faithful, healthy church looks like? I pray that you, I trust that you want to know that as well. I know you. I know that you're people of the word and we want as the body of Christ to know and to aim towards those things as the flock of God. Now, as I said, Paul doesn't beat around the bush. He doesn't waste any time on pleasantries here. He gets right down to business and he says in so many words that Number one, a faithful church, a healthy church, is one where the truth and the purity and the glory of the gospel is defended. The truth, the purity, the glory of the gospel is defended. Look at verse three if you would. As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine. So the church in Ephesus was in danger. And Paul isn't taken aback by that. He isn't shocked by this. He wasn't shocked to discover that certain men had infiltrated the ranks and were disseminating false teaching. In fact, he had predicted it. Several years before Paul wrote this epistle, maybe five years or so, he warned the Ephesian elders about this. in the Book of Acts, he warned them. You remember that heart-wrenching, dramatic scene when they are weeping together, Paul and the Ephesian elders. He warns them that fierce wolves are going to come in, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves, even, will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. So there are going to be men who come both from without and even from within, who are gonna speak these twisted things to draw men away. And here you see, this has already come to pass. So Timothy has work to do. As a shepherd of the church, he has it as his duty to safeguard and protect the flock. Now, how does he do that? Well, in large part, by safeguarding and protecting the apostolic message as it has been delivered to him so that nothing would detract from its purity and its power. He is to defend the good news of the gospel as it was delivered from the apostles, because that is what we cling to. That is our only hope, our only trust. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and so we do not want that tampered with. We do not want that alloyed to anything else. We don't want it perverted or detracted from or any such thing. So this is a vital part of a pastor's or an elder's work to defend the gospel from false teaching and to preserve and maintain its purity so that the people of God, all the people of God can be free to say, far be it from me to boast in anything save the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. I would suspect that there's a lot of people who, when they think of a pastor's work, would immediately associate the promulgation, preaching, and teaching of the truth, the Scriptures, and so on, and that's for a good cause. But there's also this complementary aspect to it, which we're getting at here today in this passage, which is the defense of the gospel. Titus chapter 1 and verse 9 pulls together both of these aspects really nicely, talking about an elder's task. It says this, Titus 1 verse 9, he must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine. That's the setting forth of truth. and also to rebuke those who contradict it. That's the defense of the gospel and what Paul is laboring to impress the necessity of on Timothy's heart in our text today. And you can see what this says about a healthy church. A healthy church is not one where there are never any bumps in the road. It isn't one where there's never a threat or a danger or an error or apostasy that comes in. Paul says later in this book, some will depart from the faith. So a healthy church isn't one where these things are absent, but one where they're carefully anticipated, where they're watched out for, and where they're appropriately and biblically dealt with as they arise. It's where this isn't happening, it's where you have a church that isn't holding firm to the trustworthy word, and it's not rebuking those who contradict it, that you can be sure all manner of falsehood, great and small, is going to creep in steadily, steadily, deceiving and leading astray the vulnerable. And so inattention or just casual dismissal of this sort of thing is extremely dangerous, cannot be tolerated, it's disastrous. So you can see how this very much requires courage, it requires boldness, it requires love for truth and love for the God of truth more than the praise of man. Our allegiance has to first be to God and to the Word of God, not to men. Timothy is to identify the threat, mark where the deviation from the truth lies, and then, quote, charge certain persons. So Paul envisions Timothy standing up and authoritatively opposing false teachers, telling them, you may not teach that. You are not free to promote that kind of position. This is not in accord with the word of God. Command them. The word was used in military context. Here's your command. Charge them. Think about Peter's error when he withdrew from the Gentiles and ate with Jews only. Paul opposed him to his face. He opposed another apostle. Why? Because Paul's allegiance wasn't first to Peter. It was to God. It was to the Lord. He wasn't a people pleaser. He lived for the glory of God. He trembled at the word of God. Now I want you to think just a minute for me about what faithfulness in this area, the defense of the gospel entails, and how this sort of thing is going to be received in our pluralistic, tolerant, live your truth kind of age. And I'm not really even just talking about pluralism or tolerance outside the church, but tolerance within the church, the kind of spirit that says, well, that's just your interpretation. You know, I can read this for myself, or the kind of attitude that says that anyone who takes a stand on anything is just being divisive, just being dogmatic. Brothers and sisters, it is loving to call out error. It's loving to call out error. So you should expect this out of your pastors. You should expect this out of your brothers and sisters around you. Now, what kind of error should we be looking for? Well, just continuing in our text, Paul outlines two major categories that Timothy and others in his position need to be on the lookout for. And the first you can find at the end of verse three, any different doctrine. any different doctrine. This is a kind of catch-all category that serves to describe any kind of teaching that diverges from the faith once for all delivered to the saints. That is something that Jude tells us, Jude chapter, or Jude verse three, must be contended for. Contend, I found it necessary to write to you to contend. for the faith, once for all delivered to the saints. Galatians talks about the danger of deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel. And then Paul is very quick to add there, not that there is another gospel. In other words, not that there is any other good news that has the power to save, that has the power to deliver. Second Corinthians 11, it warns about those who would come and proclaim another Jesus, a different spirit, or a different gospel from the one you accepted. Paul says there that in the same way that the serpent worked to come and deceive Eve in the garden, that different doctrine is still being taught. still goes on. The very same dynamic that happened in the garden contradicting the word of God is still happening today. And he says it has the potential to lead your thoughts away from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. Now how do we know what doesn't accord with sound doctrine? How can we learn to identify different doctrine? The most important thing is by steeping ourselves in the word of God. by being students of the word, by meditating on it day and night, not departing from it, by working to ensure as a church that everything we do is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. You notice that Paul doesn't take a lot of time here to delve into the various permutations of false teaching. He does not go into lots and lots of detail. You really kind of have to surmise what was going on here. He just gives a little bare sketch of what was being taught by the false teachers because his concern isn't that we should know falsehood. That's not what he wants us to be giving our attention to. That's not what he wants us to be studying. That's what needs to be denounced and turned away from. He wants us to know truth and to know and embrace the Christ that is revealed in the word of God. That's what we want to know. So there's this category of any different doctrine, this broad category, which would include false gospels and false Christs and the like. The second category is much more subtle. And for that reason, I would venture to say, much more insidious and potentially more dangerous. He calls Timothy's attention to those who devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Later he refers to irreverent silly myths and says have nothing to do with them. He tells Titus to be on guard for those who devote themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people who turn away from the truth. So here you have a picture of people who are fascinated by what you would describe as extra biblical knowledge. Religious traditions and spiritual folklore that has the potential to capture your imagination but is nowhere to be found in the scriptures. There are a couple of different books from the first and second century that retell the story of creation all the way from the garden to the giving of the law at Mount Sinai and beyond, but with all kinds of details and additions not found in the biblical account. One of them gives all the names of Adam and Eve's children. Do you want to know, for example, who Cain and Abel were married to? You can find it there. You want to know all the names of the 70 who went down to Egypt? They're all listed there. It may be this sort of thing that Paul has in mind. when he talks about endless genealogies, things that fascinate the mind, but they do nothing to strengthen the heart, they do nothing to encourage faith in Jesus Christ. One old writer talks about how some of the Jews would go into great detail tracing their pedigree way back to great, great, great, great, great, great grandfathers, quote, as though the gift of salvation taught in the gospel came down to us by corporal lineage, descending from sundry ancestors and not rather by heavenly goodness poured once on all who embrace the faith of the gospel. What a distraction. What a distraction that is from the free gift of God's grace in Christ Jesus. But you can see how intriguing and how alluring this sort of thing would prove to be. What's so harmful about looking into this sort of thing? What's so dangerous about just exploring other accounts and traditions and theories? Well, the key word can be found in verse four. They were devoted to them. It's not so much that the church had outright rejected the gospel, but rather that they were so taken up with extra-biblical, irrelevant affairs that the glory of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ was being obscured. Their hearts were divided. If you pose the question to them, what is your heart devoted to? They could not answer the Lord Jesus Christ. They couldn't answer Jesus. So in that sense, they were wide of the mark. They weren't absent from worship. They were busy inquiring into all kinds of spiritual things and all kinds of religious questions, endlessly so, but their hearts weren't devoted to Christ. And it's not just the false teachers that were a concern. You remember that this is the church Jesus reproves in Revelation chapter two. He underscores some good things that they have going on for them, their works, their toil, their patient endurance. But then he goes on and he says, but I have this against you. that you have abandoned the love that you had at first. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent, and do the works you did at first. And he says that if they don't, if they don't repent, he will come and remove their lampstand. They will no longer be a true church of the Lord Jesus. Somewhere along the way, the church at Ephesus, their affection for the Savior had begun to wane. They had become taken up with other things, and now their hearts are devoted to other things. They no longer were absorbed with Christ. They were absorbed with other myths, endless genealogies. I wonder if you can see the potential for this. in your life. I hope you can see that the danger that Ephesus was presented with was not something that was confined to the first century. This goes on still today. It really begs the question, what are we fascinated with? What are we devoted to? What are we transfixed by? Is it the beauty of the Lord Jesus and his saving power? One of the ways that you can determine the answer to that question is by looking at the fruit that is produced in your life. take into consideration, first of all, the negative side of things. What do different doctrine, myths, endless genealogies, things along that line promote? Well, Paul says they promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. This is where false teaching leads. This is what it generates. It promotes speculations. or controversies, some translations say. In a second letter, Paul says, have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies. You know they breed quarrels. Have you ever known or been a part of a church where foolish, ignorant controversies were going on and quarrels were being bred? Friction, discord, strife, disunity. That is always what you will find when the scriptures are not our sole rule of faith and practice. Speculations, wild conjectures, man-made opinions thrive and controversies ensue. Disunity. so-called Bible codes, the Apocrypha, the Gospel of Thomas, the Jesus Seminar, the Da Vinci Code, private revelations, and countless other fictions. You might even include endless curiosities about the end times that are speculative in nature. In other words, that are not derived from the clear teaching of holy scripture, but instead perhaps use contemporary events as a kind of weather vane by which you try to divine what might be. instead of what we know to be from the word of God. And therefore, it doesn't serve to edify the flock. The gospel isn't what occupies our hearts and minds and so the church isn't being built up and the savior isn't being glorified. That's the rotten fruit that comes when you stop letting the main thing be the main thing in the house of God, when you're no longer determined to know nothing but Christ and him crucified. You begin to wander, you begin to get off into all of these things that are speculative, things that God has not determined in the counsel of his will to reveal to mankind. I think probably most of us can think of individuals that are fascinated with this sort of thing, fascinated with bizarre theories, conspiracies, opinions that have nothing to do with truth, that do nothing to point people to the glory of Jesus Christ. his person and work, his excellency and greatness. People who spend, again, all of their time conjecturing about what might be instead of taking up the word of God and looking at what is. What God in Christ has done to save sinners for himself. And yet we have to say that we don't read scriptures in the main in order to look at what others are doing. about what other people we might know are doing. There is that application here. There are certain persons we're told to watch out for, and that's directed primarily to Timothy as a leader of the church. But as readers of this epistle, it also invites us to consider where our own interests and affections lie. And I trust that Paul had this in mind as well. Because while the letter is addressed to Timothy, he intends the whole congregation to listen in to what's being said. He grants the body permission to eavesdrop, if you will. How do I know that? Well, if you go to the very last line of the letter in chapter six in verse 21, He uses the plural you, where he says grace be with you. Grace be with you all. So it's as if he writes to Timothy, but intends the whole church to listen in and overhear what's being said, which invites us to ponder that question. What captures our attention? What do we find our hearts and minds venturing upon and what does it produce? What does it promote? In the same way that there are two categories of error Paul tells us to look out for, he also outlines two objectives or two fruits, two good fruits he wants to see as a result of sound teaching in the hearts of God's people. And we read the first already at the end of verse four, the stewardship from God that is by faith. This is the good godly alternative to speculations. We are aiming to promote by God's grace the stewardship from God that is by faith. Now stewardship here has to do with the management of God's house. It deals with the way that the Lord would have things ordered among his house, the household of faith. Not this building, but we as a people. God has a plan. for his house. He has a plan for the household of faith. And that's not something we get to determine. It's not something we get to craft our own vision for. Be wary of the language of vision casting by pastors. It is not for pastors to come up with their own vision for the church. God has given us a vision. for the church to go, to preach the gospel, to make disciples of every nation, to shepherd the flock of God, to build one another up in the most holy faith, and so on and so forth. God has given us his way of life, his way that things are to be ordered in the church, and he's given it to us as a stewardship. It's ours to receive that. It's ours to receive that by faith, to take to heart the apostolic teaching and then propound and maintain and defend it. Amen? Secondly, Paul says, so helpfully, so matter-of-factly, the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Now the false teacher's ministry, if you can put it that way, has produced certain fruit. It's produced speculations and controversies. Here's what we labor for, what we purpose to see by the grace of God and the body of Christ, what we want to see flourish, love. This is what we want all of our labors and energy and devotion to engender, love. Love for God, love for one another. And we'll see that as we make our way through this epistle. Love for God, to the king of the ages, Paul says. Immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever, amen. Love for one another. He talks about encouraging older men as you would a father. You hear this household language. Younger men as brothers, older men as mothers, younger women as sisters. I pray that's how you think about your relationships with one another here in this church. Honor, widows, love for God, for one another. On and on it goes, love. It's the practical outworking of our faith. What counts in the sight of God? Faith, working, Through love. It's the greatest commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. and a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." So here is what you can expect to find. Here's the fruit that you will find wherever the whole counsel of God is preached and the people of God are receiving it by faith and seeking by God's grace to obey. Paul says this, It says as much in what follows, there's going to be this visible, observable, demonstrable evidence of genuine faith, the inner working of God's Spirit. Where does it come from? He points to three things. It comes from a pure heart. You see, you cannot do this if God is not at work within you. We're not talking about outward ritual purity, God's work within the inner man. Love springs from one who has been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, redeemed from all lawlessness. People who are zealous for good works. Now, if love is the fulfilling of the law, what is chief among good works? It's love. Love is the fulfilling of the law. There's a good conscience. Now, why is a good conscience integral to love? Well, a good conscience means you have the freedom to be able to stand before the Lord knowing that it is in him you stand before him. You don't earn that. And at the same time, you know what he is required of you. And so by God's grace, you seek to love him. You seek to serve him. That's in contrast to having a seared or an evil or an unbelieving or a defiled conscience. A good conscience is a conscience that has been cleansed by God, and so it condemns what is wrong, and it commends what is good. And therefore, it approves and pursues love. Luther makes a helpful observation here. He says, the aim of our charge is not to increase questions and leave consciences unsure after all their difficulties, but to bring consciences to the point that they know this, that love is our aim for sure. And then there's a sincere faith. You hold to Christ without guile. You don't have a perfect life, but you have a real loving trust in a perfect Savior, a Savior who died to redeem you of your sin, to make you a new creation. Does Paul's aim challenge you? Does it challenge you as you think about how we're to live as Christians? It challenges me. It challenges my heart. What happens when you begin to get away from this? Again, you see what he says in verse six, certain persons by swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussion. He cycles back to what he said in verses three and four. You begin to swerve, you begin to wander off into vanity, meaningless talk, heated exchanges, about trivial, inconsequential, tertiary matters. It may look very heady. It may look very sophisticated, these kinds of conversations. It may wear the garb of knowledge. Later, he talks about those who possess what is falsely called knowledge. But when Christ is not at the center, when we find ourselves majoring on the minors, Paul says that it's all a waste of time. It's vanity. Let that be impressed on our hearts and minds today. Verse seven. really serves as a segue into the next section. Paul looks at the purpose of the law, and Lord willing, we will look at that together next week. But I want you to notice here what he says about these men. It says that they desire to be teachers. What a double-edged sword that is. In chapter 3, Paul says that if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a good thing or a noble task. He's talking there in general terms about someone with a sincere heart who wants to serve the Lord and serve the church of Christ. But anyone who has that desire, a desire to teach and isn't daunted by the responsibility of handling the word of God and who doesn't tremble at the prospects of being held to a higher degree of accountability, they just want to be teachers, that's a very dangerous position to find yourself in. I remember being a part of a service many, many years ago that had to be delayed because the preacher who was giving a sermon ahead of their ordination was in the bathroom vomiting, so overwhelmed by the immensity of the task that was set before them. That kind of trepidation is not all bad. In Ephesus, these men craved the position. And they did so from this position of absolute ignorance. It says they don't understand what they're saying or the things about which they're so confident. So you can see there that ignorance and confidence come together and say, I want to be a teacher. This is one of the reasons the Bible gives us so many warnings and cautions about not being hasty in the laying on of hands, not to install new believers to positions of leadership, period of testing is appropriate and called for. You can have an internal sense of calling, but that needs to be tested and proved by the church. By God's grace, may we be a people who glory in the truth, who glory in the gospel that has been once for all delivered to the saints. Let's pray. Father, we love you. Father, we are so thankful for the simple message of the gospel, that sinners can and will be saved. simply by trusting in the merit of Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified, buried, and risen for us. Lord, I pray that nothing would detract or distract us from that. I pray that our hearts would be set on the hope of his return, that the fruit of our lives would make it clear that he is the object of our devotion, that our interests and our affections would be for Jesus. and for him alone. I pray, Lord, that the word we have heard today you would use to bring forth good fruit in our lives, that you would help us to consider how to stir one another up to love and good works. Love for you, love for the body of Christ. Give us courage to contend for the faith. Lord, I pray for our leaders. I pray for our leaders still to come, that we would be faithful to the great shepherd of the sheep. Lord, our desire in all of this is that Christ's name would be lifted up, that he would be glorified to the ends of the earth. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.