1 Timothy 1, verse 18, just a few short verses here tonight, 18, 19, and 20.
1 Timothy 1, verse 18.
Kind of some heavy passages again tonight.
We had a heavy passage Sunday and we have a little bit of a heavy passage tonight, but
a good passage nonetheless.
Let's pray and we'll get started.
Father God, we come to you, we thank you for your good word, and I pray, dear Lord,
that we would listen to your word.
God, perhaps sometimes we are guilty of hearing what your word says, but not really listening,
not paying attention, not doing what it says, dear Lord.
So I ask tonight that you would help us not to be hearers of the word only, but doers
of the word, dear Lord.
Your word is good for us and sometimes it's kind of heavy, dear Lord.
Sometimes it's used to correct us and sometimes it's used to encourage us.
Whatever it may be that we need, dear Lord, I pray that we would listen to it.
It's good for us, dear Lord.
We can always grow when we read your word and listen to it.
I pray that your Holy Spirit would be with us tonight, that you would hide me behind
the cross and help me to preach and teach in a way that brings glory to you.
And I ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.
This is still, I guess we could say, kind of an introduction that Paul is giving to
Timothy before he really gets into the instruction that he's about to give him.
And so last week we talked a little bit about, I guess what we would call Paul's testimony,
kind of telling his story that Paul said, look, I was the worst of sinners.
I was the chief among sinners, but God was patient with me and God saved me.
He's an example.
And what a beautiful example that is, that Jesus died on the cross for us, even though
we are wretched sinners, that God is patient with us, that even the worst of us, that the
blood of Jesus Christ can cover our sins.
And so we saw Paul talk a little bit about that last week.
And so tonight he begins here with giving Timothy a little instruction in verse 18.
Timothy, my son, I'm giving you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies made about
you so that by them you may engage in battle, having faith and a good conscience, kind of
reading into verse 19 there a little bit.
So he mentions there about Timothy, he says, prophecies that were previously made about
you.
We don't know much about those prophecies.
We see some examples in the New Testament where sometimes there are prophecies.
There's one in Acts that somebody prophesied about a famine that was going to take place.
And so we see these gifts of prophecy in the New Testament, especially in the time of the
apostles.
And certainly there were some prophecies that came true, things that were prophesied that
occurred.
So whatever prophecy he's speaking of here, I don't think, at least not to my knowledge
or anywhere that I've been able to find, it tells us exactly what that prophecy is.
He just simply says that, hey, Timothy, it's been prophesied about you and this work that
you're going to do about who you are.
And so these prophecies certainly are coming true.
And so he says, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies previously
made about you so that by them, you may strongly engage in battle, having faith and a good
conscience.
Okay.
So Paul acknowledges what Timothy's about to go through.
It's a battle.
In service for the Lord, whether we're in ministry, whether we're a pastor or missionary
like Paul or Timothy, we still go through a battle.
It's a battle to live for the Lord.
It's a battle against our temptation.
Sometimes it's a battle to do the work of the Lord because the people that God calls
us to serve and opportunities that we have, it's not always easy.
Sometimes it's difficult.
We got to battle through the difficulties.
We got to battle through the difficult people that don't want to listen to what we have
to say.
We have to battle through our own temptations and our own bad attitudes.
And all of these things, as we try to live for the Lord, it's a battle.
It's a battle that we face every day.
We have to pray to the Lord every day.
Maybe some days are better than others, but maybe there are other days that we really
struggle and we're really fighting against it and we're really having a hard time serving
the Lord in the way that he's called.
Or we're really having a hard time with a temptation that we are up against.
And so it's a daily battle when we try to do the work of the Lord.
And so Paul tells Timothy, look, he says, so that by these instructions, so that by
them you may strongly engage in battle, having faith and a good conscience.
So Paul wants Timothy to be strong in these battles that he's about to face.
And so he's giving him this instruction.
Now we have a whole Bible full of instruction that helps strengthen us for the battles that
we are up against so that he may strongly engage in battle with what?
Having, excuse me, having faith and a good conscience.
Okay.
So that's important for us.
We want to remain strong as we engage in battle.
Our faith needs to stay strong.
We need to be grounded in our faith.
And what else does he say?
He says a good conscience.
Now it's important for us that we have a good conscience.
What is a good conscience?
A good conscience is when we feel that there's something wrong and we don't do it.
And we all have a conscience, whether we are saved or unsaved, everybody has a conscience,
that voice, that gut feeling, whatever you want to call it.
There's something within us, is humanity, that there's something that when we're doing
wrong it tells us that it's wrong.
It doesn't feel right.
And perhaps we listen to that conscience.
Perhaps sometimes we don't listen to that conscience.
So when we begin not to listen to our conscience, we don't have a good conscience.
And our consciousness becomes seared.
We see that later on in 1 Timothy chapter four, verse two, where it talks about some
who have a seared conscience.
So we must be on guard because we can get to that state where there's a sin that we
just continually give into and give into.
And we know it's wrong and our conscience is strong at the beginning.
But then after we give into it the first time, the second time comes around, we give into
it again, and the third time comes around.
And pretty soon it's really easy to give into that sin.
And our conscience doesn't convict us in the same way.
And when our conscience becomes seared, we're in a bad state.
We're not in a good place when we get in that state.
And maybe some of you have been there before, or maybe some of you are there now.
But it's important for us to really call out to God and say, okay, God, I'm not in a good
place right now.
My heart is beginning to harden.
And that's what happens when we give into our sin and when we don't listen to our conscience.
So what does Paul tell Timothy?
He says, look, you need to have a strong, a good faith, and you need to have a good
conscience.
And so we need to listen to our conscience.
Every time we don't listen to our conscience, it weakens us spiritually.
It weakens our relationship with God.
It weakens our faith.
But the opposite is true too.
If you want to strengthen your conscience, then listen to it.
Next time, no matter how small that little urge, that little sensation, that feeling
may be that this is wrong, then listen to it.
And the more we begin to listen to our conscience, the more our conscience is restored, the more
our faith is strengthened, the more we grow in God.
And so this is a very important command for us to listen to because maybe we do a great
job of listening to our conscience.
But then again, maybe we don't.
Maybe there are some areas we do a really good job of listening to it, but there's one
or two areas that sin that so easily ensnares, as Hebrews would call it.
We all probably have that sin.
You know what it is in your life, that thing that it's easy to give up all the rest of
them, but there's always that one or two things that it seems like it's really hard.
And so we need to ask God to help us to have a good conscience.
And if we don't have a good conscience, we need to call out to the Lord and say, look,
I need you to soften my heart.
I need you to help me, dear Lord, because I'm in a bad place.
And we are in a bad place when our conscience is seared, as Paul would say in 1 Timothy
chapter 4.
All right, so he encourages Timothy to have faith and a good conscience.
And then in the next part of verse 19 there, he says, some have rejected these and suffered
the shipwreck of their faith.
Now that's pretty strong language.
Paul says, look, you need to be strong.
You need to be ready for battle.
You need to have a good faith.
You need to have a good conscience.
He said there are some out there that have rejected these things.
They've rejected their faith.
They're not living by their conscience.
They've made a shipwreck of their faith because they have not been living well.
And so Paul is giving Timothy, I guess we could say a warning here and some encouragement.
Okay, be ready for battle so that you don't fall into this trap.
This is good message for us that we need to be ready.
We need to be ready for the battles that come against us with our sin.
We need to be ready so that our faith will be strong, so that our consciousness will
not be seared, so that we don't make a shipwreck of our faith.
That's a bad place to be.
If you've ever been anywhere close to that place, you know that that's a bad place to
be.
And sometimes we get there, but we don't want to stay there.
We don't want to get there.
But if you're there tonight, then we can only call on Jesus Christ.
That's the only hope we have.
He's the only one who can right the ship.
So when we call out to God, he hears our prayers.
He answers us and he can restore us.
But we really have to be diligent to seek him and show him that, God, we want you.
We want to hear from you.
We want to live by you.
And the more that we begin to live by God and begin to be obedient in the smallest things
and begin to listen to our conscious, then healing and restoration can begin in our life.
But Paul tells Timothy, hey, some haven't followed this advice.
Some haven't kept the faith.
And some haven't had a good conscious and listened to their conscious.
And as a result of that, they've made a shipwreck of their faith.
Continuing on in verse 20, he says, hominias and Alexander are among them and I have delivered
them to Satan so that they may be taught not to blaspheme.
So not only does he give him some warning and some instruction and encouragement here,
but he also gives him an example.
He doesn't just say, hey, watch out for this.
He says, oh, and by the way, here's a couple of people that you know and these people are
guilty of what I've just told you about.
They have not kept the faith.
They have not had a good conscious.
They have made a shipwreck of their faith.
And he lists these two characters, hominias and Alexander.
Now we know a little bit about hominias from later on in the book, some of the things that
he does as we read on into 1 and 2 Timothy.
It's hard to know about this Alexander, who he is, or several Alexander's mentioned, but
regardless of who they are, it doesn't really matter.
But what we see is the shape that they're in.
And what we see is what Paul says that he's doing to them here.
And what does he say?
He says, I have delivered them to Satan so they may be taught not to blaspheme.
What does it mean that he delivered them over to Satan?
Does it mean that they're done, that they're hopeless?
Well, I don't think so.
I don't think that's what Paul means because he uses similar language in 1 Corinthians
chapter 5 verse 5.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 5, there's a situation going on in the church where there's
somebody caught up in sexual immorality.
And Paul's giving some instruction to the people of Corinth on how to deal with this
person.
This person is professing to be a believer.
They're in the body of Christ, but yet they're living in this sinful way.
So Paul says, look, you need to deal with this situation.
They don't need to be part of the fellowship.
And what he says in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 5 is he tells the people of Corinth,
turn that one over to Satan for destruction of the flesh.
Okay, so very similar language there.
The idea that, hey, this person, they claim to be in the body of Christ, but they're not
living like they're in the body of Christ.
So there needs to be some discipline here.
You need to turn that one over to Satan.
You need to say, you're not part of this fellowship.
You want to live for the world, then I'm giving you back to the world.
I'm giving you back to Satan.
I'm giving you over to your sin because that's not good for a brother or a sister in Christ.
Someone who professes to be a Christian, but is continuing to live in blatant, unrepentant
sin, Paul says you cannot allow that to take place.
You have to deal with it.
So he says in this case, you need to turn that one over to Satan.
Same language we see here in 1 Timothy.
But what does that mean?
Well, I don't know exactly what that means.
I don't think it means in a physical sense, like Satan's going to come up and grab them,
but there's some idea of separating them from you, sending them back to their old ways.
If they want to live in sin, then so be it.
Separate from them and let them go back to the ways of the devil.
I think maybe what he's saying there.
But he doesn't end there.
Now in the Timothy passage, he kind of ends there, you know, I'm going to turn this one
over to Satan so that they, so that they learn not to blaspheme.
But in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, he continues on and there's a little bit after that.
He says, turn that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit
may be saved in the day of the Lord.
Okay.
So that's a little more encouraging there.
There's some hope there.
It's not encouraging that someone has to be turned over to the devil.
But it is encouraging that Paul has a purpose here.
He's not just saying somebody is really sinning and they're sinning bad.
So I'm done with them.
I'm done with them.
Send them away.
That's it.
Instead, Paul has a purpose.
He says, you need to send them away.
You need to turn them away to Satan.
And what's the purpose?
The purpose is so that they would be restored so that their spirit would not be destroyed
in the day of judgment.
So hopefully the act of saying, you can't claim to be a Christian and be part of this
body of Christ and live this way.
You've got to repent.
You've got to turn from your ways.
And hopefully in telling them that and saying, you have to separate from us.
We have to separate from you.
This is not right.
Hopefully in that action, Paul is hoping that they are going to repent, that they're going
to learn error of their ways, that they're going to see their sinfulness and they're
going to repent of it so that their spirit is going to be saved.
And so there's some discipline that is taking place here in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse
5.
And I believe that's probably the same type of thing we see in 1 Timothy.
Paul gives us similar discipline in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 verses 14 and 15.
And if anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take note of that person.
Don't associate with him so that he may be ashamed.
Okay, now that's pretty strong language.
Now Paul gives us some instruction here for church discipline.
We probably don't like these things.
We see passages like these or we see people maybe that are really involved in some unrepentant
sin and we say, well, who am I to judge?
You know, I'm a sinner too.
But nonetheless, Paul gives instruction and he says, look, there are situations sometimes
that have to be dealt with.
They have to be addressed.
And in the verses prior to the verse we just read in 2 Thessalonians, one of the problems
Paul had just talked about is there were some who were not working, but yet they wanted
to freeload off of everybody else.
And Paul says in the verses before, he says, if there's any among you who will not work,
that person should not eat.
And then he proceeds to say what the verses we just read, you need to separate from that
person.
They need to be ashamed.
They need to realize that what they're doing is not acceptable.
Now, again, this is pretty harsh language that Paul is saying and something that's probably
difficult for us to do.
And perhaps it should be difficult for us.
We shouldn't be willy-nilly just happy to see one person do one little thing and run
them out of the church.
That's not the way it should be.
We should get no joy in that.
Our real goal should be restoration.
And I think that's Paul's goal.
And we see at the end of that passage that I just read from verse 14, he said, don't
associate with that person so that he may be ashamed, but listen to what he says in
verse 15.
Yet, don't treat him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.
So these actions that Paul is giving instruction to, to the people of Thessalonica, to the
people of Corinth, and here to Timothy, is to try to get the attention of these brothers
or sisters in Christ, whoever it may be that sent him, that they would come to their senses,
that they would, that they would be restored, that they would come back to a good faith
and a good conscience.
Now, maybe today some of us need to be restored.
Maybe we read this story about Hymenaeus and Alexander, and maybe we can look at our life
and say, my life is shipwrecked or it's on, it's on course to be shipwrecked.
But we need to follow the instruction of Paul.
We need to know that the battle of Tuck is tough, and maybe we've lost some of our battles.
We need to pray tonight that God would help us to be strong in our faith and to have a
good conscience.
And if we haven't been listening to our conscience, then we need to ask God to help us to be strengthened
in that area, that we would begin to listen to our conscience, that we would begin to
listen to the Holy Spirit, that we would begin to say yes to God and no to sin, so that we
don't find ourselves in this shape, so that we don't find ourselves in a situation where
discipline is necessary, where we have to get to a spot where we're so low to feel so
ashamed to realize where we are.
Let us learn those lessons before we get to that spot, that our faith may be strengthened,
that our conscience may be good, and that we may be ready for battle in Jesus Christ.
Let's pray.
Dear Lord, we thank you for these good words, and they are pretty heavy in a sense, but
in a way they're real, dear Lord.
Perhaps for some of us they're more real than for others, God.
Maybe some here tonight that are struggling, and maybe tonight they feel as though their
conscience is seared.
Maybe tonight they just want to call out to you, and I pray that they will, dear Lord,
if your word is spoken to them, if your Holy Spirit is spoken to them.
I pray, dear Lord, that we would call out to you, dear Lord, if you've called out to
us in your word.
Dear Lord, I pray that we would be those who would strive to have a good conscience, that
we would be those who strive to be strong in the faith.
God, if our faith is weak tonight, I pray that you would strengthen it.
God, I pray that you would help us to be ready to engage in the battles that we engage in,
that you'd give us strength, dear Lord, because we cannot battle any of the battles, and we
cannot overcome any of the temptations without your strength, God.
So I pray for restoration, dear Lord, if there are any that need restoration tonight.
I pray that they would come to you and find it in you.
Dear Lord, maybe there are some in here tonight, and they're doing really good.
I pray that even these words would be a good warning and encouragement to them, dear Lord,
that we would listen to what your word says, that we would strive to be strong in the faith
and continue to grow, and listen to you, dear Lord.
Be obedient with what our conscience says, dear Lord, so that we would be strengthened
and not weakened by the choices that we make.
And I ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.