Love, Heart, Conscience, Faith (1 Timothy 1:1-7)

First Timothy chapter one starting in verse one.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the command of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus our hope, to Timothy, my true son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

As I urged you when I went to Macedonia, remain in Ephesus, so that you may instruct certain people not to teach false doctrine or to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies.

These promote empty speculations rather than God's plan, which operates by faith.

Now the goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith.

Some have departed from these and turned aside to fruitless discussion.

They want to be teachers of the law, although they don't understand what they are saying or what they are insisting on.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you so much for this new book that we get to jump into.

Lord, I know you have plans for us as a church.

You have plans for each one of us as individuals.

You have a work that you want to do by your word in each one of us and as collectively as your church body.

So Lord, I pray that you would accomplish everything that you desire to do.

That we would be sensitive to your word, that we would be open, Lord, to places that you want to encourage and build up and places that you want to carve out of our life as well.

So help us to be attentive, to come with open eyes and open ears and open hearts to the things that you want to do inside of each one of us, we pray.

Bless this time in your word, we ask.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So I just wanted to tell you a little bit about where 1st and 2 Timothy hold a place in my heart.

Because they really do hold a very special place for me.

When I first started working in vocational ministry back in 2007, uh when I was 10 years old, I was really.

That was a joke if you struggle with math, but but when I first started in vocational ministry in 2007, I was green.

And for the kids that are in the room, if you don't know what green means, it means inexperience.

Like you don't know what you're doing.

Um, but I didn't think I was green.

I thought I had things figured out.

But let me tell you now, I was very green.

I was only two years removed from college.

Um, the majority of my experience in ministry to that point was leading worship for a college ministry.

That was two people that were my own age, that were in the exact phase of life with similar tastes, similar leanings, similar preferences in life and in ministry and in music and all those kinds of things.

Um, and that seemed to go really well in college for me, but it made me also think that I had kind of had things figured out.

But man, did God humble me in those first two years of ministry.

I needed to learn how to lead multiple generations in worship and how to lead multiple cultures in worship.

The church that we're at to this day, I don't know if I've seen a more diverse congregation as far as uh age and ethnicity.

So those first two years of ministry, they were so difficult for me because God was teaching me some really hard lessons in that time and some really hard things about myself as well.

But he had so clearly called me to that exact position.

That's a story for another day.

You can ask me about it later if you would like to.

But it was through a series of confirmations where there was just no doubt that it's exactly where God wanted me.

But it was so clear to me that that's where God had called me that quitting wasn't an option.

And I know this because I asked God multiple times in those first two years if I could quit.

It's like, Lord, please let me quit.

I'll do anything else, Lord.

Just I just really want to get out of this because this is so hard.

But God kept saying no to me, and he kept leading me back to how clearly he called me to that exact position.

Just over and over.

Every time I asked the Lord if I could quit, he was like, Remember how I called you?

Remember this story, remember how I pointed you exactly to this place.

And it was really God's calling that kept me in ministry.

If it wasn't for that calling to look back on, I probably would have quit and gone back to my painting business that I was doing before I started working at this church.

So in that time, I don't even know how many times that I read through 1 and 2 Timothy, just over and over and over again.

I don't know how many times, but I know it was a lot.

I was mainly in those two books those first two years because it was such a huge source of encouragement for me.

Because here in Timothy, in these first two books of Timothy, you've got this young guy that's clearly called to serve God in this very way that he is.

It was even prophesied over him, what his giftings were and how they were going to be used.

But he keeps getting pushback from within this Ephesian church that he's ministering to.

And apparently they're despising how young he is.

This young Timothy that was trying his best to live out this calling that the Lord had placed him in.

And these people were pushing back and they weren't listening.

And it even says that they were despising his youth at times.

And on top of that, it seems like Timothy was timid and that he was easily discouraged to the point of possibly even having digestive issues, which we'll talk about later.

So we will be seeing Paul encourage Timothy in all of these different ways, going back to his calling and what was prophesied over him and the things that the Lord had gifted him with, and just really telling him, just keep going.

You're doing what you're supposed to be doing.

And this letter, it starts off what's considered the first of three of Paul's pastoral epistles.

So it's 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus.

And they're called that because these letters largely instruct these pastor overseers in Timothy and Titus on what they should be doing, on how people should be acting within a church and how the church as a whole should be organized according to God's will and his plan.

But what stands out to me in these three books is how Paul keeps telling both of these guys to teach the word of God.

I've been going through these three books a lot and just in the last couple months in preparation for this, and it just stood out to me over and over how much he just points them back to teaching and back to the word of God, just over and over and over again.

In Warren Wearsby's commentary, he points out, he says, in the original text, there are 32 references to doctrine, teach, teacher, teaches, and teaching in the three pastoral epistles.

In the early church, the believers were taught the word of God and the meanings of basic Christian doctrines.

That's what they did when they got together.

Churches weren't a show, it wasn't an experience, it wasn't about how they felt when they left, whether they felt good or bad or uplifted or down or whatever it might have been.

They came to worship God, they came to serve each other, and they came to study the Word of God.

And this is exactly what we're gonna see Paul encouraging Timothy to do over and over in these next two books.

So that's a bit about Timothy, but I want to look a little bit at his background now.

Paul refers to him, as you probably just noticed in verse 2, as his true son in the faith.

He was most likely saved when Paul came through Derby and Lystra, and um, and that was Paul's first missionary journey that he was on.

And we know that Timothy was a son of a Greek man, and his father's faith isn't mentioned, so we're not sure where his father stood, but his mother and his grandmother were very faithful women that loved God.

They're mentioned in 2 Timothy 1.5, and I want to pull that up real quick.

It says, I recall your sincere faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois, and in your mother Eunice, and now I am convinced is in you also.

And then in 2 Timothy 3.15 it says, You know that from infancy you have known the sacred scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

His grandmother and mother had faithfully raised him, specifically to know the Old Testament scriptures.

So when he heard the gospel, he responded in faith.

His heart was ready because of what he had been taught as a youth by his grandmother and his mother.

He saw how Jesus fulfilled the law and the prophets and, you know, the whole Old Testament, and he responded to the gospel because of that foundation that had been set in his life.

So I just want to say, parents, I just want to encourage you here.

Know the word first for yourself and then teach it to your children, and then teach it to your grandchildren as well.

Be a eunus and a lois, even if you're a father, be a eunus and a lois, where your kids' hearts are cultivated in God's word in the way that they can respond to the gospel for themselves when it's time.

When they hear it and they fully understand, they can say, Yeah, that's what I want, because their heart's cultivated and it's ready for that.

So just wanted a little side note, be that eunus and lois in your children's life.

Now back to Timothy.

So we know Paul sent Timothy multiple times to be his representative throughout the New Testament.

You know, things like, hey, Timothy, go over to Corinth and serve them because I can't make it myself.

But will you go in my place?

Will you go kind of as my representative?

And it's interesting because Paul mentions that Timothy is with him in six different New Testament letters, just like we saw in 1st and 2 Thessalonians.

You know, it said from Paul, from Silas, from Timothy.

So six different times he's mentioned in that way.

And now we see here in 1 and 2 Timothy that he's pastoring, he's overseeing this church in Ephesus and maybe even some churches that are in the surrounding area as well.

And on top of that, at the writing of this letter, it's estimated that Timothy's in his 30s and that Paul is about 30 years older than Timothy is.

So they already have that age gap of kind of a father and son already.

And I think we can probably argue from what we know that Paul probably poured into Timothy more than any other individual.

You know, all of this is why I think Paul can write this to Timothy, my true son in the faith.

They have that relationship, they have that intimacy that they've been together so much.

Paul has discipled him so much that he's like, yeah, this is my son in the faith.

And as I said, Timothy's in Ephesus.

So I want to talk a little bit more about Ephesus.

Let's pull that map up really quick.

So we can see Ephesus is right here.

It's kind of the west side of modern-day Turkey.

Over here we have Greece and we have Italy.

So just to give you an idea of where Ephesus is, Ephesus is a huge city of over a quarter million people at this time.

Estimated maybe even closer to 350,000 people.

So back then, think of the sheer size of the city.

It's huge.

And it's considered at this time to be the hub of commerce.

So there's tons of traffic that come in from both east and west.

It's considered also the Bank of Asia Minor.

So it's a very wealthy place at all, with all of this trade and commerce and banking that's going on there.

Also, they have the Temple of Artemis.

So this is at the time considered one of the seven wonders of the world.

In the Latin, it's Diana, but in the Greek it's Artemis.

So this huge, beautiful temple filled with art and all of these treasures and all of this money and all of these different things.

But when you put all of that together about Ephesus, you end up with this huge, bustling, rich, and idolatrous city.

This city at this time basically had all that the world had to offer.

And with that, think of all of the challenges that's gonna come, both to this church, living in the city, but also to this young pastor that's trying his best to lead this church.

So, with that, let's look at the history of this church a little bit.

All of this is laying a foundation that's gonna really help us understand more of Timothy as we go through it.

But I want to lead you through a very rough timeline, rough being the key here, because we can't nail down these dates exactly.

But I wanted to show you this timeline just so you can kind of see how all these different things fit in with Paul and the letter to the Ephesians and Timothy and all that kind of stuff.

So in AD 52, you can look at this story in Acts.

Paul visits Ephesus briefly on his second missionary journey, leaving Priscilla and Achillah there to continue the ministry of the gospel.

And then between about AD 53 and 56, we can see this in Acts 19, Paul comes through again on his third missionary journey, staying for over two years.

He ministers and he teaches, which leads to this massive church growth that's going on.

The church grew so much that it started causing the idol makers to lose business because people weren't ordering the idols anymore.

And the idol makers caused such a ruckus that it led to a riot in the city and leading to Paul having to leave shortly after that.

So this church was exploding and it was growing and it was affecting the city because of the way that it was growing.

And then in AD 56 through 57, you can find this in Acts 20.

Paul meets with the Ephesian leaders in Miletus to say farewell, uh to warn them about false doctrine and to warn them about false teachers and a couple other things as well.

And then in AD 60 through 62, that's when Paul writes his letter to the Ephesians that we went through not that long ago.

And this was while he was under house arrest in Rome that he wrote that letter to the Ephesians.

And then in 80 62 to 64 is when 1 and 2 Timothy are written.

So Paul's writing to this disciple, this young disciple Timothy, and he had left Timothy there in Ephesus to be an overseer.

And this church, like any church, has their own set of problems, which are very evident.

And if you look just do a quick read-through of Ephesians and then of 1st and 2 Timothy, uh, people wanted to teach that didn't know what they were talking about.

There were some that just wanted to argue about genealogies and the meaning of words and things like that.

They had some that were outright blasphemers that he uh Paul's gonna name by name, like Himenaeus and Philetus and Alexander.

So, how would you like to be in the Bible and mention for those purposes?

Because you're blasphemers.

And then there's some that are mistreating the order that God had set up in the church, and they're mistreating the authority in Timothy that God had set up in this church as well.

And as we look at this letter, yes, it was written to Timothy, but we're gonna see some instances where you can tell that Paul is clearly speaking to the church as well.

So I believe we can deduce that Paul meant this to be for the whole church to be read.

And I think that's why we have it in our hands today.

It got circulated.

It wasn't sp, I mean it was written specifically to Timothy, but it was for the whole church and the surrounding churches to read as well.

So maybe there's a sense of when he's writing this of don't get mad at Timothy if he starts doing all of these things or reinforcing all of these things.

It came from me, and that came from God.

So don't blame it on Timothy.

This is what I'm telling him, this is what God has been telling me.

So that's a bit of an overview.

You made it through.

Good job.

Take a deep breath.

Hopefully that wasn't too much info at once, but that's really gonna lay the foundation for us moving forward in this book.

So, with that, let's start breaking these verses down.

Let's look at verse 1, chapter 1 here, 1 Timothy.

It says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the command of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus our hope.

You know, we just saw when we went through 1st and 2 Thessalonians that Paul wrote to them in a very familial tone, didn't he?

He didn't have to establish his apostleship or his authority when he wrote to them.

He was more of like, hey guys in Thessalonia, like, it's us.

It's me, and it's Silas, and it's Timothy.

We love you guys, you're doing a great job.

It was both of those letters that kind of had that.

But here, he doesn't do that.

This is like establishing authority from the beginning.

And I think this makes sense for him to say, God commanded me to be an apostle.

And he took that tone moving forward of like, hey, this is this isn't just me spouting out things to you because this is my preferences or this is what I want to see happen.

He comes and he says, God appointed me as an apostle of Jesus Christ.

I'm not doing this on my own appointment or even by my own desire.

At least at first he wasn't.

But it says, by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope.

He'll reiterate this in chapter 2, verse 7.

You can look down or turn the page wherever that is in 1 Timothy.

Look at it with me.

He's gonna reiterate, he's gonna say, For this I was appointed a herald, an apostle.

I am telling the truth.

I am not lying.

You see there how he's like, hey guys, listen up.

This isn't even under my own authority.

This is coming by the command of God.

So listen up to what I'm about to say.

And I believe he's setting things up this way because he's about to talk about authority.

He's about to talk about order in the church.

He's gonna talk about how to choose elders and deacons for people of the office of being an elder and a deacon in a church.

He's gonna tell them how to behave and how they should be behaving in a church service.

So he establishes right off the bat and reminds them in chapter two that these things are not coming from his personal preference or from what he thinks is right.

This is coming from the Lord himself.

Look at uh verse two with me to Timothy, my true son in the faith, which we already covered, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

So, right off the bat, we should notice another difference from Thessalonians in Paul's greeting here.

It's a it's something we haven't seen in the New Testament yet, in any of his letters at least.

You know, so far he keeps saying grace and peace in his greeting.

Always in that order, because you can't have the peace of God if you don't have the grace of God.

But here he throws in mercy.

If you underline and highlight, which I highly recommend, do that to that word, mercy right there.

And I want to take a guess at why he adds this.

And it comes in in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus.

I think it's because here you have this young pastor who is struggling with dissension in a lot of different ways.

And Paul says, Oh Lord, have mercy on this young man.

I know he needs it as he's going through these struggles and he needs this encouragement, and all of these outside things and inside things within the church are coming up against him.

So I think that's why we see grace, mercy, and peace for these pastors.

Look at verse 3 with me.

As I urged you when I went to Macedonia, remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach false doctrine or to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies.

This starts off, notice, with I urge.

And if you think about it, that's a lot stronger language than encouragement, isn't it?

He's not like, I encourage you, Timothy.

He's like, No, I urge.

Some translations say, I beseeched you to Timothy, or I exhorted you.

Ours says, I urged you to stay in Ephesus, which makes me wonder if Timothy needed some strong convincing.

Maybe Paul was leaving, he's like, please let me come with you.

Please don't leave me here with these people.

And he's like, No, Timothy, you got this.

You you should stay here.

Paul, please, please just let me come with you.

Don't make me do this.

And it sounds like Paul really had to urge him like, no, Timothy, this is what you're called to.

This is what God's been preparing you for.

Just stay here and continue to minister.

To this church.

So Paul reminds him of this again, right here in this passage, and then tells him why it's still important for Timothy to stay there, to not leave for another ministry or quit altogether.

The purpose is, it says right here, people were teaching false doctrine.

Maybe this is the Judaizers.

You know, they're the ones that would teach that you have to be fully Jewish and trust in Jesus to be saved.

Maybe this is against the Gnostics, you know, those that saw all physical as bad and all spiritual as good.

Um, and therefore you had to have like the secret knowledge and spirituality in order to be saved.

They believed that God or Jesus could not be both God and man at the same time because of that.

How could a God become something physical and all physical as bad?

But they really loved their what they perceived as their elevated knowledge.

And that is what they thought would save them.

We're gonna see actually in chapter 6, verse 20, Paul's gonna tell Timothy, and I believe he's speaking specifically about the Gnostics.

He says, Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding irreverent and empty speech and contradictions from what is falsely called knowledge.

That word knowledge there means it's gnosis, and that's where we get the word Gnostic from.

So I think a couple times in this letter, he's specifically speaking to the Gnostics.

And then he tells Timothy to teach the church to not pay attention to myths.

Your translation maybe says fables or legends.

Remember, this is a very Greek culture.

So you can imagine how many myths are circulated about gods and past stories and things like that within the Greek culture.

They're probably, you know, really taught a lot about Artemis or Diana, whichever way you want to look at that, specifically, because that was a reason so many people were coming into this town, and it was a huge source to their economy and things like that.

And then Timothy or Paul tells Timothy to teach against paying attention to endless genealogies.

That could go back to the Judaizers as well, just saying, Well, I'm an ancestor of David, or I'm an ancestor of Samuel or Moses or whatever it might be.

You need to listen to me, you know, for that reason.

So that's you know, kind of some of the things I think that that Timothy's coming up against, that Paul is urging him to do and not do, and things to say and and the people to tell to settle down.

But I think when we look at this, we have to ask ourselves, like, how do we do this today?

What are some of the influences that might be coming into the church that we need to speak against, just like he's telling Timothy to, because we don't have a ton of Gnostics in here that I know about.

So I don't think we need to technically teach against that.

But I think there's things that have infiltrated the church as a whole, but also can infiltrate us because of the access that we have to so many different teachers and so many different podcasts and videos and all that kind of stuff.

I think one of the main things that we need to be careful of and that we need to teach against is the health and wealth movement.

You know, those teaching that if you're really following Jesus and you really have faith, you're gonna be rich.

Or if you're really following Jesus and you really have faith, you will never get sick again.

Yet those people keep dying.

That teaches that, you know, it's like run from that theology.

That is so not biblical.

You know, Paul had a thorn in his flesh that he prayed three times for the Lord to remove from Paul.

He had this physical ailment, and he asked God three times to remove it from him.

And God said, No, my grace is sufficient and my power is perfected in weakness.

Sorry, Paul, but it's not going away.

I'm actually using this in you for my purposes, but my grace is sufficient, and my power is perfected in weakness.

So we need to teach against these doctrines because we kind of like to believe those things.

Like, I don't ever want to be sick again.

And oh, God wants me to be rich?

Sweet, that sounds awesome.

Like, it's easy to go down those paths, but that's not biblical.

God does call some people to be rich, he does call some people to just scrape by.

And we just have to trust he knows exactly what he's doing, and whatever he's doing is what's best for us.

So we I really think we need to teach against those things that are gaining traction in the church that just aren't found in our Bible.

So before you jump into anything that that just sounds good, look in your Bible and say, is this really coming from the Lord?

Just like the second half of verse uh four says, these promote empty speculations rather than God's plan, which operates by faith.

Think about that.

God's plan operates by faith.

And faith often operates when we don't know all the answers, doesn't it?

That's where faith is required when we don't know all of the answers.

So I think he's saying, why endlessly argue and speculate over things that cannot be defined or um definitively proven?

Don't waste your time on those things.

Instead, and this leads us to really what I think is the thesis statement of this book, where all the rest of the book is gonna point back to this.

Instead, here's what we should be doing.

Here's what Paul's gonna be encouraging for the next six chapters, verse five.

Now, the goal of our instruction is love, and not just plain old love, but love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.

That's where the love needs to come from.

And I really want you to let that sink in for a minute.

Read that over a couple times right there, because it's so important to the context of this book.

It says, instead of endless arguments and speculation, verse 5, he says, the goal of our instruction, everything to come from here, the goal is love that comes from a pure heart, love that comes from a good conscience, love that comes from a sincere faith.

God wants them to love each other, not fight and argue is basically what this comes down to.

So I want to break this apart since this is such an important verse to us.

I want to break this apart.

Love that comes from a pure heart.

Well, we know a pure heart, a truly pure heart, can only come from being washed by Jesus, right?

But this word pure here, it's used for cleansing by fire throughout scripture, like with a metal.

And it's also used for pruning.

Like when Jesus says in John 15, he prunes every branch that produces fruit, so that it will produce more fruit.

You are already clean, that's our word here, because of the word I have spoken to you.

Meaning we allow Jesus to remove the things in our life that are not honoring and blessing him, like on a continual basis through our growth and maturity in Christ.

We allow him to actually remove some good things in our life that are sucking energy from the best things that he has for us.

And this pruning and this cleansing and purifying comes through obeying his word.

So when we see love that comes from a pure heart here, think of love that is born out of a pure heart, that is both washed by Jesus and that's continually being pruned by Jesus as well through his word.

I think that's the whole of what we're looking at here.

Then it says the next goal of this instruction is love that comes from a good conscience.

Now, the conscience is the inward faculty of distinguishing right and wrong.

I think we all kind of have a good idea of what our conscience is.

Paul's gonna talk about this a couple more times in Timothy, and he's gonna talk about it again in Titus.

In verse 19 of our same chapter here of 1 Timothy 1, he says, having faith and a good conscience.

In chapter 3, he's gonna talk about a clear conscience.

In chapter 4, he's gonna mention a seared conscience.

In Titus 1, he's gonna mention a defiled conscience.

So he has all of these definers for where our conscience can be.

Paul also writes to the Romans about the conscience as well.

In Romans 2.15, he says, they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts.

Their consciences confirm this.

Their competing thoughts either accuse or even excuse them.

The whole idea is that the conscience is built in.

Everybody is born with a conscience at birth.

And everybody's born, I truly believe, with a good conscience at birth.

But then there's something that happens to our conscience.

Some consciences end up getting seared because they've committed a sin repeatedly, over and over and over, so many times that they don't feel wrong.

Their conscience no longer accuses them in committing that certain sin anymore.

Some consciences end up being shaped by evil because they were told at a very young age, right from wrong, from somebody that had a corrupted conscience.

And then we can go on the total other side of the spectrum.

Some consciences become shaped by legalism, either by being raised in it or following their pride down that road, because legalism makes them feel superior to other Christians in some way, which leads to their conscience being overactive and then accusing them of things that are totally fine to do biblically.

But they actually like having those extra things because it makes them feel better about themselves and in comparison to other Christians.

I believe every one of us, by a young age, has a corrupt conscience to some extent.

Because we're fallen, we're raised by people and taught by people that are fallen as well.

Each one of us has been seared or corrupted or shaped by evil or legalism to some capacity.

So the question becomes for us: how do we fix this?

How do we correct a corrupt conscience?

And the answer is the same as the one before.

It's God's word.

We have to allow God's word to shape our conscience and to change it to be a biblically correct conscience.

We have to allow God's word to do that.

We have to align it, our conscience, with God's word.

Wherever, whether we're corrupted or where um if we're on the legalistic side of things, we have to allow God to be able to correct that by his word.

So the first two, the answer is God's word.

Now look at the third thing.

It says, love that comes from sincere faith.

You know, our current memory verse that we're going through right now, it starts with let love be without hypocrisy, doesn't it?

That's the same Greek word as sincere here.

Some translations start off our memory verse with love must be sincere.

And I wanted to even mention that because in 1 Timothy 5, um, it says a, or uh it says a sincere faith is one without hypocrisy.

So a hypocritical faith would be to say one thing and then to do another.

Kind of following along with last week's sermon on worship.

If we sing one third one thing in here and we do another thing out there, that's the definition of hypocrisy.

We we sang some serious stuff here this morning already.

We better be willing to say, I give my hands to you, I give my eyes to you.

In all of those different ways, we need to be able to not just sing them here, but to live them out.

That's what it means to not be a hypocrite.

That's what it means to be sincere in our faith is that what we're saying is what we're doing, and what we're doing is what we're saying.

Those two things match each other.

Now, with all of that, I want you to look at verse 5 again.

It says, now the goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.

So if some new age hippie tries to tell you, all you need is love, man, you can tell them, yes, as long as it comes from a pure heart that's washed and pruned by Jesus.

As long as it comes from a good conscience that's shaped by God's word.

As long as it comes from a sincere faith in Christ that is lived out, then yes, all you need is love.

He'd probably tell you at that point your harshen is mellow.

But it's the truth, isn't it?

That's the truth.

That's where true love, biblical love, comes from.

Now look at verse 6.

Some have departed from these and turned aside to fruitless discussion.

I love the King James version of this.

It says, um, from which some having swerved have turned aside into vain jangling.

And I I don't know, I really like that.

I mean, if you know somebody that has nervous ticks and they jingle their keys or they jingle chains in their pocket, people don't even have chains in their pockets anymore, you know, uh, or something like that.

If you've ever been in a meeting or in church and somebody's clicking their pin and they don't even know it.

They're just sitting there doing that as a nervous habit.

Think that's like vein jangling.

But when I think of fruitless discussion, as it says in the CSB, I think of it this way.

Think about it in terms of a tomato plant.

You have you ever heard of somebody intentionally planting a tomato plant that was bred to not produce fruit?

Why on earth would you want to plant a tomato plant that doesn't produce fruit?

Why on earth would somebody breed that in the first place to have an ornamental tomato plant?

You know, we have tomatoes in our garden, uh, and I don't plant them because I think the plant's pretty.

I don't plant them because I think it smells good.

I think they kind of smell gross, the plant itself.

We grow tomatoes for the fruit.

Paul is saying, don't have conversations that are fruitless.

Don't enter into these endless debates that don't edify anybody.

You know, fruitless and non-edifying debates look and smell like an ornamental tomato plant.

That's how I think about it.

It's like nobody would do that.

Like they just don't produce anything that's of use.

Now, I really believe we can have great and wonderful and edifying conversations about end times and about Calvinism versus Arminianism that are fruitful, that where we learn things and we can have these great discussions and kind of see different points of view and how different interpretations work in the Bible and stuff like that.

But if we're just yelling at each other and there's no fruit, you know what that is?

Over and over and over.

That's what I think that's really what it's saying here.

It's just that vain jangling that's going on.

Like, what's the point, guys?

So I really think Paul's just saying, do not engage.

Like, have fruitful discussions, that's wonderful.

But if you're just sitting there and arguing and nobody's edified, Timothy, just put a stop to those things within the church.

Look at verse 7.

They, so these fruitless discussion people, want to be teachers of the law, although they don't understand what they are saying or what they are insisting on.

This is the worst kind of false teacher, in my opinion.

You know, those that become dogmatic about something and they don't even understand what they're insisting upon.

They just like to be heard.

They like to appear like they're smart.

But do you remember what I read to you about Timothy earlier?

That his mother and grandmother had been teaching him from infancy the sacred scriptures.

The law, the Old Testament, since he was his infancy.

Think about that.

I think Paul's trying to tell Timothy here, give him a little bit of confidence.

You know the law, and you know it way better than these guys that are claiming that they do.

He's like, so Timothy, don't let them intimidate you.

They don't know what they're talking about.

You know what you're talking about.

Like, step in.

Don't allow these fruitless discussions to continue.

I think it's kind of Paul just being like, You got this, Timothy.

You know what to do.

You know when you hear bad doctrine, you know when people are blowing smoke.

Now stand up and do something about it.

Call them out with confidence.

Don't let these teachers keep teaching.

I think this is part of why Paul lays out the qualifications of an elder in the way that he does, uh, which is coming up in the book.

Like have to be able to teach.

They have to be mature, they have to prove themselves over and over in different ways to make sure that people like this don't end up teaching and influencing the church.

And we're gonna stop there after verse 7 for today, but this passage, you know, was largely laying the foundation for this book for the sake of doing an intro that's gonna help us week after week after week.

But there are some things that we can take home with us today.

One is we can ask ourselves, are our discussions being fruitful?

You know, are they for the kingdom of God?

Are our discussions edifying to one another?

Are they just in vain?

Like, do we just like to argue?

Do we like to appear smart to everybody else?

My teacher in high school, uh English teacher, had this thing on her wall and it said, uh, it's better to sit and appear stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

It's great to have in a in a high school uh English room.

Um, but I I always think about that.

Like if we don't know something, it's totally fine to say, I don't know, but I'll dig into it and I'll find out, you know, whatever it might might be.

Um but I think you know that's a great question to reflect on.

Our discussions, are they being fruitful?

Are they being edifying to one another?

And then a second thing is to ask us regarding verse five, you know, what is our love based in?

Is it based in loving from a pure heart?

Is it based in loving from a good conscience?

Is it based in loving from a sincere faith without hypocrisy?

Because that's where God wants our love to be generated.

And we're gonna pick up next week in verse 8, and we're gonna be talking more about the law that Timothy, you know, knows so well.

So we're just gonna stop there and we'll pick up on that.

But ask yourselves these questions.

Are discussions being fruitful and edifying?

And what is our love based in for one another, for God Himself?

Would you please pray with me?

Lord, thank you so much for your word.

Lord, I'm excited for the the weeks to come and the things that you have for us.

God, I pray that you would continue to mold us and shape us by your word, that you would continue to do your work uh in us, that you would show us how to become more like Jesus on a daily basis.

Lord, help us to know the word, to stay in it, to allow it to shape us, um, to show us how to love.

Lord, help our discussions to be intentional, Lord, to to be edifying, to lead people to you and to lead people that already know you to a deeper relationship.

Um so show us how to do that well, we pray, as we go out of this place and uh and into our community.

Show us how to to bless people with the light of Jesus Christ, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.