1st Timothy 6 | Guard & Guide: A Father's Day Message (with Jeff Stemple)

He. Yeah.

I'll go ahead and add my Father's Day to those happy Father's Day to those

that have already been extended.

Hey, if you're a dad here.

Heather kind of alluded to this at the top of announcements.

If you're a dad here today, I just want to say good for you.

That is a good, good thing.

If you're a dad that's here with your family, double good on you.

Leading your family in a spiritual way is probably the gateway

to leading anybody, especially your family, in so many other ways.

So if you're a dad here today in church with your family, good for you.

Don't want to call attention to that,

because I think a lot of times it gets overlooked the impact of that.

So happy Father's Day to you guys.

As I was reflecting on not

just getting ready for today, but actually reflecting on Father's Day,

my attention or my mind started to drift back

to a time about 7 or 8 years ago.

Life around my house was much different back then.

We were a full house.

We don't have a very big house, and man, we were packed because,

my oldest two daughters still lived under under my roof.

They have since moved out.

One of them's married now, but at that point, about 7 or 8 years ago,

we were all still packed in there like sardines.

And I just remember, if you're part of the big.

If you come from a big family, you're currently part of a big family.

You know that trying to get anything done when there's that number of people

is next to impossible.

It's just such a challenge

to, to, to to go anywhere, to do anything, to plan anything.

And so, it was one afternoon, maybe it was a morning.

We're trying to get out of the house doing something.

And I was

standing in sort of the kitchen living room area,

and I was probably tapping my watch or tapping my foot or tapping both,

or just wanting to get the show on the road.

And my oldest daughter comes down the hallway and she goes, dad,

I figured out what your problem is.

Now, any time that issue or that or that statement comes up,

you're not really eager to engage that conversation, right?

You're not really. Especially when it's coming from a 17 year old girl.

You're not like, great, tell me what my problem is.

Please.

Because you've got such fount of wisdom in all of your 17 years figured out.

Tell me what?

But I thought, I thought I'll play along. Yeah.

What's my problem?

She says you're addicted to productivity.

So what?

She goes.

You are addicted to productivity.

You cannot relax you.

You can't sit down.

You can't take a break.

You've always got some task or some job you're working on.

You're just even when you do sit down,

the looking on your face is like you're 3 or 4 steps ahead.

And I said, that's ridiculous, but addicted to productivity.

Everybody else in the room was silent.

I, I kind of looked over at my wife and she looked like this.

And I said, well, you think she goes, I'm not getting involved.

And my middle daughter spoke up.

She goes, well, dad, she's not wrong.

And I said, you guys are.

This is this is a dumb, ridiculous argument.

You guys are you guys are way off base.

I'm not addicted to productivity,

but I can tell you we've wasted 5.5 minutes on this stupid conversation.

So everybody get up. We got to get things going on.

Oh, man.

Hey, if we have not met before, my name is Jeff.

I'm on staff here at flip side.

It's been a while since we've gotten to do this.

I can't remember the last time, we got to share a message together.

Pastor Carl is on, a much needed

break in Idaho with family, so he'll be back next week.

Be praying for him for safe travels in a restful time.

But in the meantime, we get to share a message together.

And I am really, really excited.

And, I'm encouraged and eager to to kind of

to kind of unpack this with you guys.

Raise your hand if you're currently working on a towards a goal.

You're not not a someday I'm gone or one day I hope to kind of go,

but you've got like dates on calendars and you're meeting with people.

Raise your hand if you've got a goal like that right now.

A lot

of us, my guess is most of us, if I gave if you if you didn't raise your hand,

if I gave you a few minutes, you probably able

to be able to call something to mind where you're like,

oh yeah, that's, that's that's something that I'm really looking forward to.

Our I'm really kind of, you know, I've got some plans in the, in the works,

something that maybe if it didn't pan out at all, or maybe it

didn't pan out the way you wanted it to, you'd be a little upset.

It'd be a throw you a little off kilter.

Most of us have those desires or those goals or those things

we're working towards.

So that's kind of where I want to go today.

How, those pursuits,

those goals, those desires can sometimes become a real problem in our lives.

And it happens in a very slow sometimes and definitely subtle sort of way.

And and if we can get a handle on this now, it can be a game changer.

If you're a young person in here and you can get a handle on this

right now, you can save yourself a lot of time and a lot of heartache.

So we've been in this series.

We're actually wrapping it up today.

We're in chapter six of the first letter of Paul to Timothy.

Timothy is this young pastor.

He's been called a pastor, a church plant in a place called Ephesus.

And Timothy is really kind of trying to build the plane while it's in the air.

He's kind of trying to figure this out for himself as he goes along.

And he's young.

He's got a kind of lot of strikes in his disfavor.

He's kind of

got some things where he's he's been set up to to face some challenges.

And so Paul writes him this letter to address

some of the things that he's dealing with and encourage him at the same time.

We've been talking a lot

about Paul's angle that he approaches us with is from is from two.

It's actually two angles.

It's one is to guard sound

doctrine, guard good teaching,

healthy teaching that goes along with Jesus.

The teachings of Jesus to guard that,

because there's going to be people who come along that want to attack it,

that want to kind of pervert it,

that kind of want to get it to be where it's not really that.

And then the

second angle that Paul is taking is he wants Timothy

to guide people in it, to guide himself in it,

to guide others, and to cut it to be an ongoing thing.

Hey, you're going to spin this up, but you're going to continue to guide yourself

and guide people into this, into this way of living out life,

following Jesus.

So if you brought your Bibles with you were in chapter

six of Timothy, first letter to Timothy.

Carl made it to, I think verse two last week.

So we're going to pick it up at verse three.

And Paul says, if anyone teaches otherwise

and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ

and to godly teaching, they are conceited and they understand nothing.

So Paul is calling out and

calling attention to these false teachers that are in the church.

They're not like the outside, you know, pagan, heathen, whatever.

These are teachers in the church.

And Paul is calling them out, and he's calling attention to the fact

that they're misleading people instead of giving healthy instruction.

That goes along with the teaching in the following of Jesus,

they're picking up at verse four.

They're doing this.

They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words

that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicion, and constant

friction between people of corrupt minds who have been robbed of the truth

and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.

Whenever I read that, that verse or that passage

that my mind goes back to about five years, maybe six years ago,

there were two years back to back where I was the youth pastor.

I was the junior high pastor and the and the high school pastor.

And so on Mondays we would do junior high, and on Wednesdays we do high school.

And I

forget why we were reading this passage, but I read that.

So we had a little, little more background here.

We had,

torn the room apart with one of the games that we were playing on, on nights

when we would do that, you know, there was just everything was just everywhere.

And, the students, they kind of congeal in their own

little groups, whereas no real seating chart or anything on those nights.

And so we had like the freshman boys up here and the senior girls back there,

and right around this area, there was a group of sophomore girls,

and they were a handful the entire year.

They were a handful were a lot of them.

And they were continually getting off the rails.

And I read that laundry list envy, strife, malicious

talk, evil suspicion, and constant friction between people.

And when I read that, one of the girls goes, oh, it's that.

And I actually stopped and I was like, did you want to say something?

And she didn't look at me.

She looked at her friend.

She goes, that's us, you guys.

That's us.

Constant friction. That's us.

And I thought, oh my gosh, that she hit the nail on the head.

I didn't even have to say it. She said it.

She said whatever. Everybody in the room was thinking.

While we laugh at that because it is so indicative

of what it means to be a sophomore girl, I think we could all agree

that constant friction that kind of bleeds its way into our lives as well.

It's like this friction got this friction.

I went to work and there's friction.

Maybe in my house there's friction, maybe with my family, there's friction.

Paul, though, in this specific situation, in this specific instance,

he's talking

about all these negative connotations and how they relate to the area of finances.

I think we'd all agree that that is true as well.

Impure, unhealthy motives in the area of money

do lead to all the things we just talked about, no doubt.

But it actually points to something that goes a little bit deeper than that.

It actually points to something that's a little more overarching than just that.

And that's what I want to kind of try to get into and address today.

But for the sake of the sake of sticking

with this specific example, I want us to jump down to verse nine,

because Paul really kind of spells out how bad it can get.

He kind of spells it out in some pretty

some pretty, detailed, some pretty gory details there.

Plus this is one of the most misused, misunderstood, misquoted

verses of Scripture in all the Bible to is right in the middle of this passage.

It says in starting in verse nine, for those

who want to get rich, fall into into temptation and a trap,

and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin

and destruction, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

Some people, eager for money,

have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

So Paul kind of spells it out.

He lays it all out and tells Timothy, here's what, Tim, you got a problem?

You got a problem.

Here's what's going on.

And he lays it all out.

It would have been really difficult for me to get this letter

because I'm someone who, if you know, if you've ever,

if you know anything about a primal question,

there's a book written

by a guy named Mike foster called The Seven Primal Questions.

And the premise is that everybody has a primal question.

Well, my primal question is, am I good enough?

And so it would have been really difficult for me to get this letter,

because it would have been Paul

spelling out all the stuff that I probably was beating myself up about already.

And Paul says, hey, you got a problem?

I'd be like, I know, I know, this constant friction.

I get it.

But Paul actually

turns his attention to Timothy and he says, Timothy, let's talk about it.

Starting in verse 11.

He says, but you, Timothy, you men of God, flee from all of this

and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith,

love, endurance, and gentleness.

Fight the good fight of faith.

Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called,

when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

So Paul tells Timothy the same thing.

He's told them in a few spots of some other letters.

What's the word?

What's what is his time to do?

What's the word he uses?

If you remember, top of verse 11.

Flee, flee.

It was funny.

That same youth group that I talked about, we did a lesson where,

Paul tells Timothy, flee six, flee sexual immorality.

And I ask you something.

What does it mean to flee?

Like, oh, well, you kind of you turn the other way.

You want to run?

I said, here's what it means to flee.

And I knocked over the the music stand I had, and I jumped over the whole

first row of tables, and I ran out the door.

Stayed down, stayed, gone for like, five minutes.

I came back and I said, that's what it means to flee.

You get out, you run.

Paul is telling Timothy, Timothy, turn, exit quickly.

Move yourself in a hasty fashion away from all of those things.

Get out. Don't mess with it.

Don't entertain it. Don't ask for permission.

Go! Get away from it.

And then he does an interesting thing.

He reminds Timothy of when he made his confession of faith, calls Timothy's

mind back to maybe something he hadn't thought of in quite some time.

This is a really good encouragement tool if you're not using this,

I want to encourage you to do something like this.

Ministry can get tough.

Ministry can get tough in ways that that that gets weird.

And so one of the things I started doing about

eight, nine years ago and a lot of people on

staff here at flipside do it as well as we keep an encouragement file.

And there's this, the craziest stuff in there that I have

in my encouragement file.

Some of it's like a table napkin with, hey,

I just want to tell you how much I appreciate.

And I and I keep these things.

If you're not doing an encouragement file, do an encouragement file.

Because can we all agree that life sucks sometimes?

Yeah.

And when it does go back to that encouragement file

because the winds are there.

A lot of times when life sucks, you don't see them, you don't remember them.

Paul goes, Timothy, go back to your encouragement file.

Go back and look.

Go back and celebrate the wins.

Go back and remember the things that brought you

to where you are, that are really positive things,

he says.

Fight the good. Fight.

Take hold of the eternal life that you were called to

when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

How many of you guys have ever been to a baptism at Carl's house?

That's what a that's what the baptism is.

It's it's the it's the profession.

It's the it's the hey, I'm on the team.

I'm putting the jersey on now.

Paul tells Timothy, I know things are rough right now, but take heart.

Remember? Remember what brought you here.

And then it's interesting, Paul, kind of like,

I would imagine, kind of like,

turns his face to the window and he starts reflecting on his own walk with God.

In verse 13.

He says in the sight of God who gives life to everything,

and of Christ Jesus, who, while testifying before Pontius Pilate,

made his good confession, the good confession I charge you.

Keep this command

without spot or blame, until the appearing of our Lord

Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time.

And then Paul kind of turns off into kind of like a worship song

says God the blessed and only ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords,

who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom

no one has ever seen or can see to him be honor and might forever.

And the church said,

Amen.

Paul is really using some intense inflection here

to to to speak to Timothy.

I think it's lost

that the urgency is lost a little bit if we let it go.

He's saying, God, Timothy, I command you.

I'm charging you.

Do these things, remember these things,

put it into action.

And then he says, Amen.

And we think we're done.

But then Paul has one of those moments like, oh, wait, what was that show?

Columbo was a Columbo where he said, wait a minute, one more thing, one more thing.

So Paul says, one more thing.

It's almost like he's like, speaking of commands,

I want to come back to this issue of finances.

I want to address the other side.

He says, command those who are rich in this present world,

starting in verse 17 is where I'm at command.

Those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant,

nor to put their hope and wealth which is so uncertain, but to put their

hope in God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

Again, the way he started out, verse 17 is the way he starts out.

Verse 18 command them to do good,

to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.

In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation

for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.

So Paul unpacks the problem,

and then he tells Timothy to do these things command you a charge.

You do it in your own life.

Encourage others to do it.

Instead of falling into these traps and these temptations.

All this infighting and backbiting, acting like these sophomore

girls don't do that.

You do it for yourself and command others to get this stuff, to get it right

and to get it straight.

Now, I didn't know Timothy.

He didn't know me.

Maybe Timothy was like, fantastic, Paul.

That's just the pep talk I needed.

I've been kind of a been kind of, you know, dragging my feet here.

But man, now that your letter has come, I'm ready to rock and roll.

Let's let's do it. I'm ready to get it done.

Maybe that was Timothy.

Or maybe Timothy at this

point was a little like me, where I'm left with a question.

And I think a lot of us are left with the same question

when there's this problem that's been spelled out in all its gory details.

And then there's this charge to action, this command.

Let's get it done.

In the middle of those two things, there rests

a great big old fat question that a lot of times I'm left with.

And I'd be willing to bet you're left with two.

That question is this.

How how

great. Paul. Wonderful.

Fight the good fight. Commend myself.

Pull my self up by the bootstraps.

Command others to do it. Great.

This actually gets people in a lot of hot water

when they get the problem spelled out, and they get the charge,

or they get the command and they go out and they haven't answered this question.

You get in some really hot water.

How how do you want me to do this?

I'm new at this.

I got people breathing down my neck.

I go into meetings and I'm like, hey, everybody, let's do this.

And I in the back of my mind, I'm like,

I really don't even know how it's going to pan out myself.

Timothy could very well

have been asking this question, Paul, how I acknowledge there's a problem.

It's bad enough for you to have written a letter to me that made it into the Bible.

I want to put this stuff into practice in my own life.

I want to command and charge and encourage others to do the same.

But how?

Thank God he gives us the answer.

You remember those verses I skipped over?

We started in verse six. Let's go back up.

If you if you.

I don't know how your Bible is structured,

but you might have to go to the left and back or both.

Verse six Paul gives us

the answer to that question.

But godliness with what

church and godliness with contentment is great gain,

for we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.

But if we have food and clothing, we will be what

we'll be content with that.

The answer to that question, the bridges.

That gap, is one word content.

Be content.

One of the things about contentment

that is so interesting and that I love about contentment,

is that none of us are born with it.

It's not like, oh, I'm

sorry, you're just not a content person.

Good luck.

You know, wander the earth like Cain or whatever.

It's an actual learned thing.

And that's good news for us today because that means we're it's within our grasp.

We can actually learn to be content.

There, I say contentment can be the answer

to most of the problems in the challenges that we face in life.

If we can get a handle on this idea of being content.

Man, what an awesome thing.

Contentment may be the single most important thing

that we learn, that we learn in our lifetime.

It's one of those things that transcend space and time.

I, Timothy, was dealing with a lot of the same types of stuff

we're dealing with now.

I would even venture to say the challenge to contentment

in 2025 is probably worse than it's ever been.

In the history of human existence.

There are entire sections of marketing industry that are set up

to make me and to make you as discontent as we possibly can, so that we will

buy their stuff.

A whole industry set up with

the aim of making people discontent.

Things like media,

technology, all of that stuff is set up

to encourage discontentment.

The thing about discontentment,

there's there's there's actually three aspects to discontentment.

Biblically speaking.

This is not like, you know, some Ted talk.

This is biblically speaking, there's three aspects to discontent.

Number one,

discontentment distorts the past.

It plays.

It wreaks havoc with your past.

Because a lot of times we fall into the trap of the good old days.

Everything's the good old days.

Back when I was single, back before I had kids.

Back before I had this stupid job.

Back before when I was still in school.

It distorts the past.

You're fooled into thinking, man, that was fantastic.

Oh, do you remember that?

But you're so discontent here.

That looks real good.

There's a wonderful story in a book in the book of Exodus,

second book in the Bible, and it chronicles the the people of God,

the Israelites, and their journey out of slavery in Egypt.

They've been freed from slavery.

And they get into the desert and they get discontent.

And the first thing they do is they go, oh, if we could just go back to Egypt.

Are you kidding me?

You are a slave in Egypt.

But the past is distorted, so man, that looks really good.

The food was good back there.

The bed was soft, fluffy pillows, but that didn't exist.

But man, the past is distorted.

Discontentment distorts the past.

Number two, discontentment ruins the present.

They were walked into a room and there's something going on there.

Boy, that's sure ruin the mood.

This contentment ruins the here and now.

We're never able to enjoy it because it's never good enough.

This contentment ruins the present.

Always looking for the next thing.

The last thing discontentment does is it

robs the future, robs it, steals from the future.

At least the abundant life that Jesus talks about just robs

that when we're discontent.

It's the destination that we never get to.

It's a future that we never reach when we're discontent.

There's a book in the Bible called, Ecclesiastes,

and it's written by the smartest, most wealthy,

prosperous, successful guy ever to walk the face of the earth.

His name was King Solomon.

And if you've ever read the book of Ecclesiastes, it chronicles

the life of a discontented guy always looking for the next fix.

That that is the Cliff notes version of the book of Ecclesiastes,

because Solomon is like, you know what?

Pretty smart now.

But I'm going to I'm going to just get so much wisdom.

I'm going to be the smartest guy ever. And then he does it.

He's like, yeah, that wasn't all I thought it was going to be.

What about what about, pleasure.

I'm going to have, you know, 8 million concubines and twice as many wives.

How about that? That's good.

And then that doesn't that doesn't satisfy him.

And so he moves on to success, then to build buildings.

And I'm going to make there all this stuff in that that doesn't satisfy.

And so it's continually robbing his future.

If you've never read the end of the book of Ecclesiastes, do that.

I think there's 11, maybe 12 chapters.

His answer

to this question of discontentment is great.

If you ever had the opportunity to go back and read that.

So it distorts our past, ruins our present.

It robs our future.

So in light of all this, in light of all this stuff,

what can we do here and now today?

Because after all, it's learned, right?

And I just born with it.

Got to learn it.

What does it look like for us tomorrow

and the office on the ball field, maybe even before you hit your car

in the parking lot, scrolling through social media.

What does it look? What does it look like?

The interesting thing about contentment

is for some people, it's eternity that hangs in the balance.

So the first practical

step towards being content, if you're here this morning

and you have never put your faith in Jesus as your personal Savior,

if you've never bowed your heart and said, Jesus, I admit it, I am a sinner.

I need your forgiveness.

I accept your death as payment for my sins,

and I ask you to be my Lord and Savior.

If you've never done that, plug your ears for the rest of the other two

that I'm going to talk about, because that one thing

if you've never done that, you'll never experience

true biblical contentment like we're talking about here today.

That is step one.

If you haven't done that, talk to me after service.

Talk to one of our staff people who are here today.

We'd love to talk to you about that.

If you have put your faith in Jesus.

There are two very,

very practical things you can do to start to learn to be content.

Sort of like the lab work of of contentment.

When you walked in, there were thank you cards on the chairs.

If you sat in chair that didn't have a thank you card, I believe we have extra

as you walk out the back, they're stamped for you.

We've already paid for the stamp for you.

It's your job to.

If you're really young, you'll probably need to Google

how to fill out the the envelope and mail it.

And I want you to write a

thank you card to someone if you still know the person

that is the reason you became a Christian, write them a thank you card today.

The two G's are what I call it giving

and a gratitude and giving in this first very

practical step is just giving thanks.

Just being thankful.

Thankful for where I am right now, thankful for where I what I'm doing.

And I don't want to.

I don't want to make light of some of the sucky things that can be happening,

but contentment will shed a hold.

It's called perspective.

It'll shed a whole new light on those things.

And giving thanks is one of those things that kind of,

it's one of those things that kind of does it.

It's a byproduct.

Contentment is a byproduct of being thankful.

It's almost like it's what you get as a bonus for doing it.

And then the second thing is giving.

If you're not

tithing your income, tithing means a 10th.

If you're not giving a 10th to your local church.

I want to really encourage you here today.

Maybe some of you have heard about what that means or heard about it.

It's a 10th of your income.

Giving is probably the best way I know of

to break a cycle of discontentment.

One of the things my wife and I did a few years back is we,

we we led the class while we were taking class,

Financial Peace University.

And that was so interesting to see how

when we started doing that with our money,

contentment kind of came as a like,

whoa, that is interesting.

There's a certain peace, there's a certain contentment that I'm feeling right now.

When you tell your money what to do instead of your money

telling you what to do, there's this contentment that comes.

And giving tithing is a is a wonderful,

practical step towards

bringing contentment into your life.

In that way.

I want to close today

because we are at the last chapter of Paul's

letter to Timothy, and he closes with some really great words.

Starting in verse 20.

He says, Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care.

Turn away from godless chatter

and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge,

which some have professed, and in doing so have wandered from the faith.

Grace be with you.

Flip side talked a lot

about some really practical ways throughout the series, not just today.

Let's be a church that is full of passion.

Charged charge into it all,

guns blazing, gung ho, get it done, have goals.

You have desires, have pursuits, and go at it with all your might.

But never forget to give thanks and to be content with where you are right now.

It can be the difference maker because like Paul said, the

when we get off on this, on this path of discontentment, it's like wandering.

He used that word twice here.

You wander, you're like you end up somewhere

and you're like, how in the world did I get here?

I've been pissed off for five years.

What's going on?

Well, then, discontent.

Get after it.

Pursue it, command others to do it.

And at the same time,

let's be content

and invite the worship team up right now.

And I'm going to I'm going to pray this out.

God, thank you so much

for your word, for how it encourage us, encourages us.

I pray that as we go back into the places you've called us to be this week,

when we're faced with the inevitable situations

that we know we're going to face this week, that's

that's just going to be such a challenge to throw us off

kilter and make us discontent and help us to help our minds,

to come back to this place where we are right now.

Help us to remember

that you've called us to, to to give thanks to gift, be a people that,

that live outside of ourselves sometimes.

God, it sounds so can it feels and sounds so counterintuitive

that that contentment could come from those things.

But God help us to have the faith that's really what this is all about.

This contentment issues, this reason.

It's so difficult.

It's because it requires faith.

But your word tells us without faith it's impossible to please you.

And we do want to please you. God.

So we ask you to be with us this week

and the weeks after those to put this into practice in our lives.

Jesus, we love you.

Help us to love you more.

In your name we pray. Amen.