"60 Years of Faithfulness" 1 Timothy 6:20 Sunday Morning Worship Service

1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 20 is where we are today, so you can open your Bible there.

1 Timothy 6:20

We'll look just at this phrase.

Chapter 6, verse 20.

Paul says, Oh Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.

Let's pray and dedicate our service to the Lord.

Lord, we are grateful for what you've given to our church.

Through so many decades of faithful men and women laboring for the gospel.

We're thankful to be part of your body here.

We pray this morning as we look into your word, you would take the truths that we discover there, seal them into our heart so that we can better guard the deposit that you've given us.

We want to be found good stewards, good watchmen.

We want to be found as good ministers of Jesus Christ when he appears.

We pray that you use this morning's time and the word to bring that about, and we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Our church began in August of 1964.

It is not coincidental that the beltway, the freeway around DC, was completed in 1963.

It seems hard for us to imagine what life in Northern Virginia would be like without that freeway, and yet I've heard from reliable sources it has not always been there.

I spent some time this week reading news stories from the 60s about the completion of the beltway, and it was quite a thing here.

They did parades around it.

They did walking tours of it.

It was a few days were open where you could, you know, ride your bikes on it and everything.

It was a wonder.

Some of the news stories describe it with this uh kind of optimism that it's going to connect different communities in Northern Virginia together.

Uh it almost it talks about Anandale and Springfield almost like we would describe an unreached people group in the Amazon.

That people in Vienna will discover that there is such a place called Anandale.

People in Alexandria will learn that Springfield exists.

And uh apparently it was effective.

One of the things the Beltway did is it brought a church in Vienna, Faith Baptist of Vienna, together with a church in Alexandria, Calvary Baptist.

Those two churches strengthened their ties with each other, and with the Beltway connecting this part of the city, they uh dedicated themselves.

They decided that they were going to plant a church in the unreached area of Annandale and Springfield.

The two churches partnered together, they funded the project, they sent their own church members, they sent a church planner uh named Rob Anthony, and they planted a church.

This was their target place where Springfield and Anandale meet, and yet in 1964, when they first launched, they met at Lee High School, which is now John Lewis High School.

It's the high school on the north side of the Springfield Mall, just outside the Beltway.

They met there for several years until they moved into their first building, which is off of Braddock now.

Um it's the uh the Oak Ridge School.

You drive towards the freeway down Braddock, you'll cross it with a big wooden playground on the right side there.

That was the church's first building.

Rob Anthony, after pastoring for a year, handed it off to Ollie Goode, who is kind of a um powerful minister in the General Association of Regular Baptists.

He led the church for many years and it grew under his leadership.

He then went to do other uh ministry with Garb out in Michigan and handed the church off to others.

And eventually in the early 80s, the church moved from there to here at Braddock and Backlick.

The church adopted elders.

It seems strange for us now, but back then there were not a lot of churches that were truly elder-led.

I mean, it's the obvious model in the New Testament.

And yet, especially in the Baptist worlds, it was it was very rare.

And this church made the decision to switch to an elder-led church back then.

And when they did that, we built this building and became a manual Bible church instead of a manual Baptist church.

And those first elders kind of crafted a vision for the church.

They wanted it to be a church that was known by strong preaching, uh, quality music that lifted you up and a missions focus.

They wanted this church to be identified as those things, a place where preaching was central, where the music was exceptional, and where missions motivated what the ministry was doing.

Again, those things seem so obvious to us now, don't they?

Like that's just who we are.

But that didn't just fall out of the sky that way.

It was a group of godly people that really poured their lives into building the church, and that's kind of the vision that they set that we are the beneficiaries of so many years later.

We bear the fruit of that.

And these people, they did pour their their life into it.

Uh they they, you know, you saw the video earlier with Tom Joyce narrating, you know, that stay out of no soldier entangles himself in civilian affairs.

When I hear Tom Joyce saying, Stay out of civilian affairs, like that that hits me.

I'll listen to him.

And in that video, you see like the picture of the guys with the shovel.

Do you see the kid yawning behind them?

I love that part of the picture.

That lets you know that wasn't a photo op.

You know, these are people that poured their life into building the church, literally building it with their own hands.

And God was so kind to us for those sixty years.

That to commemorate on this Sunday, my mind was drawn to verse 20 of 1 Timothy 6.

Oh, Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.

Puritan Thomas Manton said that the church is not the sun, but rather the church is the moon and the stars.

What he meant by that is that the light of the world is Jesus Christ.

He is the light of the world.

It is Jesus who is the hope of the nations.

There's only one light to the world, there's only one hope for the world, and that light, that hope is Jesus Christ.

Jesus, however, is not on earth right now.

He bodily was crucified on the cross, buried, as we read in Ephesians 4 this morning.

He descended into the grave, he rose from the grave and ascended into heaven where he remains right now.

So the light of the world in that sense is gone.

It is nighttime in the world.

Jesus is not here.

The sun has set, the light is gone.

However, you know from your own experience, on nights with the full moon, it can be so lit up, you see everything as if it were day.

It is not the moon's light.

The moon is only refracting the light, it's only reflecting the light of the sun back to us.

That's the church, according to Thomas Manton, in this world.

The sun is set, Jesus is in heaven, but the light of Christ still shines from heaven, and as it shines from heaven, it shines into the world.

It shines into the world through the church.

The church in that sense is the light of the world, like the moon lights up the night.

The church, in that sense, is the hope of the world, like the stars illumine the evening.

The moon is merely passing on a borrowed light.

And so it is with the church.

We are the only light in the world, and we are not the source of the light.

It is Jesus who's the source of the light.

We are just shining.

And that's why on the 60-year anniversary of our church, it is helpful to ask what it is exactly we're doing here.

What is the point of the church?

How is the church shining the light?

That's why I went to 1 Timothy here, because 1 Timothy is an admonition here to a second generation church.

It truly is.

You know, the church was planted by Aquila in the 50s.

Paul then visited it on his third missionary journey and remained there for a while and grew the church, and he handed it off to Timothy.

Timothy is the third pastor of the church.

In many senses, Timothy grew up in the church.

He, you know, his mother and his grandmother were there, and he was relatively young.

By the time Paul is writing the letter of 1 Timothy, the church has probably been around for 25 years or so.

It's a second generation church.

And so Paul warns them to guard the gospel, to guard it.

You see a picture of Ephesus in the third generation in the New Testament, by the way.

Revelation chapter 2 has a letter written to Ephesus.

Revelation 2 · chapter mention

That letter is written around 90 A.D.

So you're in the third generation there.

So you get a full picture of how the church was planted from the book of Acts, how Paul addressed them in his letter to the Ephesians and Philemon, and then here how he addresses the second generation in 1 and 2 Timothy, and ultimately how Jesus addresses them in the book of Revelation.

And we know the temptation.

You understand this in the business world, even.

If you're in the business world, there's an old adage that the first generation builds the business, the second generation expands the business, the third generation complains about the business.

And in a literal sense, that's true with most businesses.

The first generation is probably literally digging the hole to put the foundation in and make the building that will sell their wares.

They're getting up early and they're staying up late and they're pouring their life into it, barely making ends meet.

The second generation comes along on the success and expands the business and is, you know, adding a new office over here and moving the window over there and trying to find some place for four more parking spots, please.

And the third generation comes along and it just rolls their eyes and says, Why are there four parking spots here on the sidewalk?

Why is the office here?

Did you guys not think this through kind of line?

That's the third generation.

Now we know that's not the business world.

The people in the church would never have that attitude, right?

Of course, you know that they do.

The first generation pours their life out, building the church with their own bare hands.

Kids yawning in the background, pouring their life into it, not making ends meet, just wondering what the Lord will do with it.

The second generation comes and literally puts a second story on the building, fills in the courtyard there, and makes it the atrium, gets rid of all the raccoons.

I hear that was quite the ordeal.

And the third generation comes and says, you know, why did you get these kind of chairs?

What's up with the parking lot?

I mean, come on.

There's always that temptation.

The Ephesian church had that, didn't they?

They had all the energy of a new church described in the book of Acts.

Paul's pouring out with tears in an all-night elder meeting in the early days of the church in Acts chapter 20.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

Just weeping over them.

Then you get the second generation here in 1 Timothy, man.

Keep growing, keep pushing ahead.

All the instructions in 1 and 2 Timothy, guard the deposit.

And then by the book of Revelation, it seems like the sun is setting.

They're losing their love.

Let's zero in here on verse 20.

Oh, Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.

That's the main responsibility of the church, right there.

The main mission of the church, the second and the third generation church, the main mission is to guard and proclaim the truths of the scripture.

That's it.

That's job number one.

Guard the doctrine.

Guard the truths of the scripture.

Proclaim them.

The word that's translated there, deposit entrusted to you.

It's one Greek word.

It's rendered there in two English words.

This is one Greek word.

Peratheke, which is kind of a cool Greek word.

It's a legal term, according to the Greek dictionary.

It's a legal term of when something is given to somebody else, but the legal responsibility for guarding it and protecting it is also transferred to that person.

You know, so if you just have a friend hold something for you, they're not legally responsible for it.

They're just holding it for you for a second.

But you understand that's different than if you are depositing money in the bank.

The teller is not just holding your money for a day or a week for you.

The teller and the bank is now responsible legally for that money.

It's been deposited there.

That's why deposit is a very good translation, because it matches that English concept that we are giving something to the bank, they're now responsible for it.

If the bank gets robbed, they have to still find a way to give you your money.

If the bank makes a bad investment and loses money, they still have to figure out how to pay you out.

You can't show up to get your money out of the bank next week and they say, Oh, I'm sorry, we only have 80% of it because we made a bad investment last week.

No, they're responsible for protecting and guarding what you put there.

That's this word.

When you get a rental car, you know, you become legally responsible for it.

You fill out the 27-page contract, initialing a thousand times.

If that car goes out and does crimes, you're responsible for that car.

They're not going to go after an enterprise, they're going to go after you.

That's the word here.

That you have been entrusted with something.

It's been deposited to you.

You're legally now responsible for it.

So what is it in Paul's mind that the church has been entrusted with?

What's been given to them?

What's the deposit that we have?

Well, this word is also used in 2 Timothy, where Paul goes into more detail there in chapter 1, verse 14.

There he calls it the good deposit the believers have, and he says, it is held in heaven but entrusted on earth.

It's an odd turn of phrase.

If it's been given to you and entrusted to you, how is it held in heaven?

As you read from 2 Timothy 1, you understand Paul's talking about the gospel in a very literal sense.

That Jesus died on the cross, buried in the grave, descended to Sheol, rose, and ascended into heaven where he's physically there right now.

But his gospel is present on earth through the church.

The church is his body.

The gospel of Jesus Christ, the body of Christ in that sense.

Jesus is physically in heaven, exalted, resident in heaven, and yet through the church he remains on earth.

Jesus isn't physically on earth, but he's corporately on earth.

His body is here.

Every believer is a member of his body.

This is why in the New Testament, when somebody gets saved, they're immediately part of the church.

Because it is the church on earth that is glorifying the Lord.

Ephesians 3, the very last verse of Ephesians 3, by the way, says, so that God would be glorified in the church.

That leads in chapter 4, verse 1.

So walk in and are worthy of the calling.

With humility and love and gentleness and all that.

The verse we read first scripture readings today.

That's after the last verse of Ephesians 3, which says, so that God is glorified in the church.

When people get saved, they're added to the church, they become part of the body of Christ, which is all of the different local churches.

The body of Christ.

Each member having a part to play as they glorify the Lord.

Somebody might say, Oh, but the Ethiopian eunuch, he got saved and he wasn't part of a church, yes, but he went straight away to Ethiopia to plant a church, okay?

That's the New Testament pattern.

Believers are part of a church which is the body of Christ.

Earlier today we sang, these are the days of Elijah.

What a great song.

What a blast from the IBC pastor right there.

Think of the word pictures in that psalm about the church.

The church is a family, the church is a bride, the church is branches, the church is a kingdom.

You know what's cool about those word pictures?

They're all true about Israel.

They are all true about the days of Elijah.

In the Old Testament, Israel is called a family with God as their father.

In the Old Testament, Israel is the bride of God, in Ezekiel, for example.

In the Old Testament, Israel is the branches in Isaiah chapter 5, for example.

Isaiah 5 · chapter mention

In the Old Testament, Israel is the kingdom of God.

It will be a kingdom of priests in Deuteronomy.

All those word pictures are true of Israel.

But do you know what one word picture of the church is only of the church and not of the Old Testament?

The church as the body of Christ.

That's unique to the New Testament.

Jesus is our head and he is in heaven.

We are his body on earth.

We are all members one to another.

The body protects itself, the body serves itself.

Members of the body serve one another.

No member of the body would be after its own interests.

That would be a disease.

But the members of the body are the body of Christ.

That's why Paul says in Ephesians 3, now to him be the glory in the church.

The church is the place where glory comes to live.

It's the place where glory abides.

It's the place where the deposit is entrusted.

Jesus is in heaven, but the gospel is entrusted to us as the body of Christ here on earth.

That's why the sun shines through the church.

The church is not the sun or the moon, but the light of it shines through us to the world.

And what are we supposed to do with that deposit?

Look at verse 20 again.

Guard it.

That word guard is a really cool Greek word.

I chased it down this week.

It's a fun word.

It means to actively protect, actively defend.

Sometimes it can mean to hold on to, to grip onto, but always it has this active, like hands-on flavor to it.

So guard is a very good word, although I feel like the word guard is getting softened in modern English right now.

Like a security guard, you know, is almost more of a watchman now, isn't he?

Like if he sees a crime, he might call it in.

He's not going to get hands-on.

He could lose his job.

This Greek word is the kind of security guard that gets hands-on, that grapples with what's in front of him.

One of the first uses of this word in the New Testament is the word for the shepherds, keeping watch, is how it gets into English, over their sheep at the birth of Jesus.

The shepherds were keeping watch on the sheep.

That's this word.

They were in it with the sheep.

The word is used of the guards guarding Paul in prison in Acts chapter 12.

Acts 12 · chapter mention

A funny use of the word is the rich young ruler, where he asks, What must they do to have eternal life?

And Jesus tells him, What does the law say?

You know, what are the Ten Commandments?

And the guy says, All of those I have kept from my youth.

That should give you a good eye roll, shouldn't it?

He's kept the Ten Commandments.

Yeah, right.

Here's a really good use of it.

John 12, verse 24.

John 12:24

Jesus says this whoever loves his life will lose it, but whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

That word, keep it there, that's the same word.

You want to hold on to eternal life?

You deny yourself, you pick up your cross, you love the next world over this world.

That's how you keep your life.

But my favorite New Testament use of the word is in the book of Jude, where God says that He is guarding our salvation in heaven.

It's kept there for us.

Well, in 1 Timothy 6, it takes some kind of a banking flavor, doesn't it?

Guard the good deposit entrusted to you.

That's the command of the church.

We're the body of Christ, and we, as every believer in the church, is supposed to guard what God has given us.

He's given us the gospel.

You're supposed to get hands-on with the gospel.

You're supposed to protect the church by protecting the members of the church.

By lifting up Jesus Christ.

Here's the full word picture, as I understand in verse 20.

The gospel is like the treasure deposited in the bank for safekeeping.

The church is the bank, and you are the guard.

The gospel is the treasure, the church is the bank, and you're the guard.

That's what Paul's communicating to Timothy.

So guard what God has given you.

The gospel is not something just to be worked out by the elders of the church in a private conversation.

It is deposited in the church, it is shared corporately among the members of the church who all have the responsibility to guard it and keep it.

So, how do you guard the gospel?

That'll be our outline in the time that remains.

How to guard the gospel.

I have five points, and I don't get to all five of them.

There's always the evening service.

How do you guard the gospel?

Well, you could almost just look at verses 11 and verse 12 and take a three-point outline from there where Paul tells Timothy, O man of God.

See that same word there?

It is a Greek word, O man of God, and verse 20, O Timothy uses the same phrase there.

So when he says it in verse 20, your mind would go back to verse 11.

Flee these things, pursue righteousness, fight the good fight, flee, pursue, fight.

That's a good way to guard the gospel.

But when you zoom out to all of Paul's instructions through the book of Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Revelation, you can come away with five other ways to guard the gospel, and I'll give you those five.

Now, first, you seek to please God, not man.

You want to guard the gospel?

You seek to please God and not man.

Paul in fact tells the Thessalonians, not Ephesus, but the Thessalonians, something very similar.

He says, speak the gospel with boldness.

Because your goal should be to be pleasing to God, not man.

And then Paul adds in 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 4, that God will judge your heart.

1 Thessalonians 2:4

God knows your motives when you're speaking.

God knows your motives in ministry.

He knows if you're in ministry to please him or to please others.

He knows if you're doing the work of the church to please men or to please him.

And that ultimately is what got the Ephesian church in trouble.

When you go to Revelation 2, that's where the wheels started to come off.

That third generation comes along and they are not loving God as much as they are horizontally loving and are concerned about what people think.

They've lost their first love in Revelation 2.

That's what Jesus tells them.

Did the church in Ephesus tell them this?

I know your deeds.

You've been persecuted.

These guys were persecuted.

They're the best of the churches in the New Testament.

Jesus knows that.

And he says, You've been persecuted.

You've gone through the ringer.

Jesus knows that.

But then he says, I have this against you.

You've lost your first love.

You used to labor for God, and now you're laboring for man.

You're more concerned about what people think than what God thinks.

You've lost the first love.

How, as a church, do you forget your first love?

But again, you understand it's so easy.

You start to take things for granted.

You start to just take on the assumptions of all the work and labor that went for generations before you, and you come in and you're just, you're, you're, you don't remember the urgency about the gospel, the urgency about the preciousness of Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection that used to drive everything.

And it fades, and you get more driven by the people around you than you do by serving the Lord.

It's losing your first love.

And when that happens, by the way, what good is a church?

It's interesting in Ephesians or in Revelation 2, the analogy of a lampstand is even used.

Remember in Revelation 1, Jesus is, you know, he's the fire, he's the light, he's the sun.

But the churches are the lampstands.

It's kind of like the moon analogy.

The church is the lampstand.

So I was studying for this last night.

The lamp in our living room broke.

It's this lamp has been my nemesis forever.

It never really works right.

So we have a two light switch that turns it on and off, and it's just that lamp bugs.

It's my nemesis.

And last night it finally gave up the ghost.

And I'm studying and the light won't come on, and I tell DJ, this thing's got to go to the trash.

Let's be done with this thing.

And it won't even fit in our trash can.

That ridiculous lamp.

So I'm mad at the lamp and I go back and sit back down and go back to Revelation 2, where Jesus tells the church at Ephesus, if you don't get back your love for the Lord, I will take your lamp and throw it in that green Republic trash can dumpster outside right now.

The church has a borrowed light.

And that light only shines when the love of the Lord is first, before love of others.

Paul tells Timothy the same thing in 2 Timothy.

He says, the time is coming when people will itch each other's ears, which is a negative way of saying it.

But you can kind of turn that to understand it, where the time is coming where you will care more about what people around you think than what the Lord thinks.

You'll be motivated by pleasing other people.

Nobody starts by saying I'm going to tickle people's ears.

No, what happens is you say, I care more about what the people around me think than what the Lord thinks.

And Paul then describes that.

What does that look like?

When you start caring more about what people think than what the Lord thinks, let me tell you what a church tolerates.

It tolerates people who love money.

It tolerates people who are slanderous of others.

It tolerates people who gossip, he says in 1 Timothy 4, or 2 Timothy 4.

It tolerates people who make factions.

Paul, in fact, says they're going to make factions because of their slander, and they will by their slander capture weak women.

They'll corrupt others, they'll oppose the truth, they're corrupted in mind, disqualified in the faith, and their folly will be plain to all, he says.

So why isn't anybody dealing with it if it's plain to all?

Because they care about each other's ears more than serving the Lord.

So Paul warns them.

Warns Timothy.

He says, you know what?

Those people have the appearance of godliness, but they deny its power by heaping on slander and gossip.

So stop advancing yourself.

Stop creating factions.

Stop pleasing people.

Stop worrying about what people think and feel.

Stop doing church on a horizontal level and get back to the energy of striving to please the Lord over caring what the people around you think.

Seek to please God, not man.

Secondly, study to show yourself approved.

Study to show yourself approved.

This is another common refrain to Timothy.

He says it in so many different ways.

He tells the Ephesian elders in Acts 20 that he labored night after night, day after day, in and out, so that they would understand the whole counsel of God.

He tells Timothy, 1 Timothy 4, verse 13, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

1 Timothy 4:13

Devote yourself to the teaching of God's word.

That's not merely for pastors.

That's corporate.

The whole congregation, the reason pastors are supposed to have the worship service devoted to the reading of Scripture, the preaching of Scripture, the teaching of Scripture, the motivation.

The service should begin with the reading, have the exhortation in the middle, the preaching there, at the teaching at the end of that in 1 Timothy 4.13.

The way the service should be bracketed that way, so the congregation is constantly brought back to the Word of God.

In 2 Timothy 2, verse 15, it says, Do your best to present yourself to God as a worker who's approved, who doesn't need to be ashamed because he rightly handles the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2:15

We'll talk about more about that tonight.

But for now, understand the study of the word is what feeds your mind.

Notice the hierarchy here.

You're seeking to please God, not man.

As evidence of that, you're devoting yourself into the study of the word of God.

As you're going deep in the word, you're learning what pleases God.

How could you seek to please God if you're not going into his word?

Number three, you walk in humility and love.

This is probably the main teaching in the book of Ephesians, when chapter 4 starts about how God is going to be glorified in the church.

It starts with walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, with all humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love.

Eager to maintain the unity of the bond of the spirit, eager to maintain the unity of the church.

The church needs to manifest the unity of the gospel.

We need to be one.

We need to display the unity we have in the spirit, and that unity is produced by love.

When you love each other, then it produces the unity.

But notice it's a rightly ordered love.

If you start by saying, How do I love each other?

you're off the tracks.

That's the Ephesian church in Revelation.

You can't start by saying, How do I love each other?

You start by saying, love God, now into his word.

The fruit of that is keeping the bond of unity through love on the horizontal level.

You do love each other.

You walk with the unity of the Spirit.

That's because you love the Lord more.

I mean, listen, that produces humility in you.

And only humble people love the right way.

Only humble people can love.

Because you have to consider one another more important than yourselves.

You understand this in marriage.

If you want to love your wife, you consider what she wants as more importance than what you want.

Wives, if you want to love your husbands, you consider what he wants as more importance than what you want.

And when the two of you are operating like that, you both have humility and it displays love.

You have a unified spirit because you are pursuing each other over yourself.

Only humble people love.

Only the meek can love.

Strength under control.

You reign yourself in, you can love people.

Forbearance with one another is what produces love.

Patience.

Bearing with one another.

You know, some of you in the church are wrong about some things.

I'm glad you're sitting down for that.

It's the right way to handle that.

You let love cover those things.

You walk backwards with the blanket.

You don't expose.

You don't shine a light on people's weaknesses.

You let love cover.

That's the unity of the spirit.

That's deference.

You prize unity over division.

Unity over secondary and tertiary issues.

That's what Paul tells the Ephesians to do.

Don't create divisions by preferring yourself over each other.

Have patience with one another.

That keeps the unity.

Number four.

You share your resources with the church.

You share your resources with the church.

Another common refrain to Timothy in both 1 and 2 Timothy.

You have to have buy-in with the church.

You know, he tells Timothy, you want to pay the pastors.

You don't muzzle the ox when it's threshing on the floor.

You pay them.

You find the people in physical need in the church, the widows, and you enroll them in some kind of program so you can take care of their needs.

It's requiring getting the resources from the church together.

You're taking a collection for the poor in Jerusalem.

You're pooling your money for the church's needs into advance missionaries around the world.

That's what's happening with the resources of the church.

Do you want to have the unity of the church?

You have giving to the church.

Because where your money is, there your heart will be also.

And when Jesus says that, by the way, he doesn't mean that in a negative sense.

It's tempting for us to read that where your money is, there, where your treasure is, there your heart will be, and we think, okay, so I gotta disconnect those two.

Well, no, you can't disconnect them, but they're the same thing.

The money is just an expression of what's in your heart.

But you understand practically, when you give money to something, your heart follows after it.

You know, you give to some ministry that you don't know much about, somebody asks you to give to it, you give to it, suddenly you realize, like, oh, I'm taking an interest in that.

I'm reading their prayer letters now, I'm praying for them more.

You start to become more excited about it.

You give them more money, the more it's a snowball effect.

The more you give, the more you care.

The more you care, the more you give, and you find yourself wrapped up in them, praying for them, and you get joy from what they're doing.

And that's just true at everything, you know?

In the sports world, you buy the jersey and you start rooting for the team, kind of thing.

At the spiritual level, you should be giving to the church.

That's a demonstration of the unity of the church.

I'm not telling you that because we're like falling behind in giving or we need money or anything, but I know so many people have joined the church since COVID.

We've grown so much since COVID.

We don't pass the plates, the boxes are in the hallway, and I've just- I've I fear that there are many people who have joined that just come with their bodies and not their wallets.

And if it's just your body here and not your wallet here, it's just your body here and not your heart here.

Give to the church so you don't are so you participate in the joy.

I mean, ultimately we're after the joy of what the church is doing.

We have this joy that is brought together, and we want the joy to be what is front and center of here.

As you give to it, you start to participate in the work of the ministry, and your heart follows after, and you have joy with what is happening in the church.

The goal is that you not just give money, but you give yourself.

The goal is that you not just give yourself, but you give yourself and your money.

If you're Christ, you join Christ's people and you give yourself to him by giving yourself to them, to the people.

If you want buy-in in the church, you have to have buy-in in the church.

And you'll find that as you give financially the church, your joy and love for it will grow even more.

Number five.

You turn away from irreverent babble.

You turn away from running your mouth.

That's in fact in verse 20.

Avoid irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called.

That same phrase, by the way, is repeated in 2 Timothy.

So Paul ends 1 Timothy with it, starts 2 Timothy with it.

It's not one of all the commands he's throwing out there.

He's closing out the first one and starting the second one with it.

Watch your mouth.

There are more cool, cool Greek words, by the way, that was the one that's translated irreverent there.

It's kenophonia, kenoph being empty, phonia being phonetics, you know, sound wave.

It's empty sounds.

It's translated irreverent there, which maybe is unfortunate because it can sound like an off-color joke or something, but no.

Kenophonias mean like it's words that don't mean anything.

It's just noise filling the air with no significance behind them.

It's talking about things that don't matter.

It's words that are just said and gone.

And the second word that's translated babble here.

You know what that Greek word is?

It's a fun Greek word.

Easy to learn.

You know what the Greek word is?

Babble.

Really easy to learn.

It's kind of onomatopoetic.

Baba.

Avoid just running your mouth with empty speech that doesn't mean anything.

You view your conversations and your relationships with church as an opportunity to leverage them to further strengthen the gospel, to build each other up in love.

How tempting is it just to talk about things that don't matter?

I know this, you know, there's the flip side of this.

You're building your life with one another in the church.

When you're building lives with each other in the church, you're gonna talk about your lives, you're gonna talk about things that aren't that significant in your life.

That's part of relationships in the church.

I know, you know, I'm talking to the guys here.

Guys, part of your friendship is gonna be talking about the sports and how the Yankees can't field and the fifth inning from oh my goodness and all that, that's gonna be part of your friendships.

I'm not suggesting your friendship would be stronger if you never talked about the Yankees fifth inning.

But if the normal tone of your conversation is things that don't matter, ask yourself are you guarding the gospel?

Are you strengthening those relationships?

Be careful what you talk about.

Avoid empty chatter.

You know, IBC does these really, really well.

As I look at this list, I look at the third one, walk in humility and love, and that's probably our church's strongest point.

I mean, the thing that separates our church from someone not all of you have only been at Emmanuel, not all of you are Stephen Kathy Hawley, you know.

You've probably been at other churches.

And what makes Emmanuel special is the way people here love each other, isn't it?

Like it's written on everything we do.

Our lives are interwoven, we love each other and we care for each other so much.

Excel still more in these things.

You want to guard the gospel that's been entrusted to you?

Seek to please God, not man.

Study to show yourself approved.

Walk in humility and love, not dividing the body, but keeping the unity.

Share your resources with the church.

Turn away from Babel.

If you do all that, you will effectively guard the deposit entrusted in you.

And that's the kind of thing that has made IBC such a special church.

Is IBC a perfect church?

No.

You know why?

Because you're here.

Charles Spurgeon said this.

Quote, if I had never joined a church till I had found one that was perfect, I should have never joined one at all.

And the moment I did join it, if I had found one, I should have spoiled it.

For it would not have been a perfect church after I became a member.

Still, imperfect as it is, our church is the dearest place on earth.

God, we're so grateful for this church.

It is to us the dearest place on earth.

Bought with your own blood.

We've, of course, had building campaigns through the years, but we know it was purchased not with silver and gold and treasury bonds, but it was purchased with your blood.

This is your body.

It is yours.

We are your people.

This place is special to us.

It is the dearest place on earth.

We love it so much.

We pray that if you tarry and six decades from now, we will be found as faithful as we are now.

Help us excel still more.

We long for your return, Lord Jesus.

We give you thanks in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.