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  (1 TIMOTHY) ENTIRELY GIVEN TO THE THINGS OF GOD
  by Brian Brodersen
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Summary: The sermon emphasizes the importance of serving God with joy
and labor, trusting in His sovereignty, and being a good example to
others in our words and actions.

Duration: 46:25 Topics: "Godly Living", "Christian Persecution"

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DESCRIPTION
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In this sermon, the speaker shares the story of a young lady who has
been arrested for her faith in God. Despite having a junior high level
education, she has written over a thousand hymns that are sung by
millions of house church Christians in the country. When asked why she
is in prison, she boldly states that it is because she believes in God.
The speaker emphasizes that the Christian life is not about man-made
rules, but about the goodness, grace, mercy, and love of God. He
encourages the listeners to reject false teachings and exercise
themselves toward godliness, as it is profitable for both the present
life and the life to come. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of
applying the knowledge and information received from the Word of God in
order to make an impact in the world.

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CONTENT
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Let's turn now to 1st Timothy chapter 4 once again, and we'll pick up
again tonight in verse 6, but we're going to make it through the end of
the chapter this evening, and then next week we're going to come back
and spend an extended amount of time on a particular verse, but we'll go
ahead and get through the remainder of the chapter tonight. But once
again, as we pick up in verse 6, Paul says, if you instruct the brethren
in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ and that
these things, of course, are the things that he was previously referring
to instructing the brethren basically in the goodness and the grace of
God, in contrast to legalistic kinds of things, restrictions on what you
can eat and whether you can be married and those kinds of things. Paul
says, no, that's that's not what it's about.

It's not about legalism. It's not about a bunch of manmade rules. It's
about the goodness of God.

It's about the grace of God, the mercy of God, the love of God, all
those wonderful things. And he says to Timothy, if you instruct the
people in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ,
nourished in the words of faith and of good doctrine, which you have
carefully followed, but reject profane and old wives fables and exercise
yourself toward godliness for bodily exercise profits a little bit.
Godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that
now is and of that which is to come.

This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance for to this end,
we both labor and suffer reproach because we trust in the living God,
who is the savior of all men, especially of those who believe these
things command and teach. So remember, Paul is writing this letter to
his protege, if you will, Timothy. Timothy is Paul's disciple.

He's raising him up and he's in the ministry together with Timothy.
Ultimately, he's going to sort of pass the mantle of his own ministry on
to Timothy. But here at this point, he's encouraging him.

And giving him instruction on what it is to be a good minister of Jesus
Christ, he also reminds Timothy that the ministry is about labor, the
ministry is about working hard for the kingdom of God, that is what the
ministry is about. It's. There's labor involved, but, you know, I must
say that there's so much joy in it that the labor aspect to it, it
doesn't really seem like that big of a deal.

You know, so often people will say to me, oh, oh, Pastor Brian, I hate
to bother you with this. You know what? You're not bothering me with
this. This is what we do.

This is what we delight to do. We love to do the things of the ministry.
Yeah, there's labor involved.

There's long hours, a lot of times. And there's, you know, as a true
minister of Jesus Christ, it's twenty four seven. You don't clock out at
a certain time and then say, oh, sorry, too late.

You know, I've already clocked out. You know, you need prayer. Could you
come back tomorrow at nine? That's when I clock in again.

You know, you don't do that in the ministry. Well, some people might,
but you're not supposed to. There is labor involved, but there's so much
joy in the midst of it that it just sort of offsets that whole thing.

I was watching a little presentation last night. On the Welsh revival,
Welsh revival happened back in 1904, and the the real intense period of
that was from 1904 through 1906. And there was a young man who was sort
of the leading figure, humanly speaking, in the Welsh revival.

His name was Evan Roberts. And at the age of 13, I think it was he had
this intense burden for a fresh outpouring of the spirit of God upon his
homeland, Wales. And he began to pray at the age of 13.

Ten years later, God poured out the spirit in an extraordinary way. And
for three straight years, this guy ministered almost daily around the
clock. They would have meetings that would go till three and four
o'clock in the morning.

There were so many people getting saved. And there was such a presence
and a power of God. People just never wanted to leave.

And so for three straight years, there was just this intense labor. But
at the same time, as he would be questioned about, you know, how do you
keep going? And, you know, you need to get rest. And you're you're, you
know, you're you're putting way too much time into this and all of that.

And he would say, you know, it's fine. It's the Lord's with me. The Lord
strengthened me.

And God kept him and blessed him through that time. And then at the end
of that three year period, things didn't die down. Actually, the revival
kind of spread around the world.

And then there came a time for him to rest. He just sort of stepped
back. God had done a great work.

And then they just, in a sense, sort of enjoyed what God had done. But
the point is this, even though there was intense labor, the joy and the
peace and the blessing of what God did offset the whole thing. And so he
never thought of it as a laborious thing.

Anybody who thinks of the ministry as, oh, you know, while I'm under
this heavy burden of ministry, they don't really understand the true
nature of the ministry. Now, it is possible to get under a heavy burden
of ministry. But when that happens, you know what you've done? You've
taken on ministry that God hasn't actually put on you, because Jesus
said my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

So when you're under the the yoke of the Lord, the burden of the Lord is
not a heavy, oppressive, laborious thing, his yoke is easy, his burden
is light. But Paul says we labor. And then secondly, he said, and we
suffer reproach because we trust in the living God.

All those who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution, will
suffer difficulty, will suffer opposition. That is part of the Christian
experience. It is part of the experience of those who serve God.

And there's just no way around it. That's the way it is, because we're
living in a world that's controlled by the devil, God's enemy. We're
living in a world full of men and women who are under the influence of
the devil.

And they're under the influence of their own sinful natures and
tendencies and desires and all of that as well. And because of that,
there is going to be times of suffering, times of persecution. As I
mentioned last week, I watched a series of DVDs on the church in China,
the cross, Jesus in China, and much of this documentary deals with the
fact that many of the believers, especially the leaders, have been in
prison for their faith, some of them for 20 years, some of them for less
amounts of time.

Some of them have been in prison numerous times over. What is their
crime? Their crime is simply loving God, worshiping God, telling other
people about God. And I was watching the fourth one in the series last
night.

And there's a young lady who has this unbelievable gift from God to
write hymns. And her testimony is powerful. She has no more than a
junior high level education, but she's written about a thousand hymns
that are sung by the more than 70 million house church Christians in the
country.

And she's been arrested. And when she was she's telling her story about
when when she was first thrown into prison, when she got into prison,
the prisoners said, why are you in prison? And she said, oh, we're here
because we believe in God. And they said, well, you shouldn't be in
prison for believing in God.

We we've committed crimes. We've you know, they've done all kinds of
horrific things. And even the prisoners themselves, they saw the
injustice in it.

But you know what? That's life. That's the Christian life. The author of
this epistle, as you know, Paul, he spent many years himself in prison.

Now, when we think of suffering, when we think of imprisonment, when we
think of persecution, I think for many of us, we think, well, wait a
second, how could that happen? I mean, that doesn't seem right. And, you
know, after all, we have rights and I'm going to go to my congressman.
I'm going to write my senator a letter.

And, you know, a lot of times we think in those ways, we think
persecution is bad. It's horrible. It's wrong.

It should never be the case, but it is the case. And you know what? It's
not always bad. Paul said in writing to the Philippians about his own
experience in jail, he said that it has actually turned out for the
furtherance of the gospel.

He said, you see, my being in chains, what it's done is it's created a
boldness in a lot of other people. They've looked at me and thought,
well, if Paul can go to prison for Christ, we can surely open our mouth
and speak up for him. And people began to speak up for Jesus because
they were emboldened by Paul's situation.

Plus, Paul went on to say that he had an opportunity to minister to
people while he was in prison that he never would have had an
opportunity to minister to otherwise. He ministered to the Praetorian
Guard, which was the elite guard that surrounded the Roman Emperor. And
Paul shared the gospel with them.

We will suffer affliction. That's part of. Our experience as Christians,
we will suffer reproach and we need to get that in our heads because
it's going to happen.

It is happening already. It's always happened. You know, even when a
culture is is very Christianized and Christianity is very accepted in
the culture, even under those circumstances, anyone who was really
serious about the Lord in a deep, devout way always would experience an
element of persecution.

You know, oh, no, here comes the the real, you know, hyper religious
person or back in earlier times, they used to call him the enthusiast.
Now, the ones who called him the enthusiast thought they were Christians
as well. Oh, we're Christians.

We're just, you know, we're normal Christians. We're not enthused or
excited about anything to do with God. We're just Christians.

We go to church and all of that. But somebody who really loved Jesus,
somebody who took the word seriously, somebody who was wanting to live a
holy life. Oh, they're enthusiasts, they're fanatics, they're
fundamentalists.

So it's always happened, even in a so-called Christian culture. But as
that Christian veneer upon the culture sort of fades, then, of course,
it becomes a little bit different, a little bit more aggressive. And a
bit more challenging, but it is a reality.

I was reading a book this morning and it's a in many ways, it's a good
book. There's a lot of great stories in it about what God's doing all
over the world and so forth. But the premise of the book, I must say, I
completely disagreed with the premise of the book because the author.

He sort of. He has the idea that. The church, rather than just simply
worshiping God and praying and fellowshipping and studying the
scriptures and sharing Christ with people, leading people to Christ, the
church should do that, of course, but that's only part of what the
church should do.

The other thing the church needs to do is seek to bring a Christian
influence upon the culture. The Christian church should. Should impact
the culture to the extent that we turn the culture into a Christian
culture.

And this author put a big emphasis on, you know, not simply sharing the
gospel with people, he said, in a sense, he kind of said, well, you
know, that's OK and we get to do that once in a while and that's fine.
But his point was, we need to go out and invade the academic world and
we need to go out and invade the world of politics and we need to go.
And he actually said he wrote the book as as.

As a means of encouragement for us in this new 21st century to restore a
Christian culture to this country. Now, I this guy's a really brilliant
guy, too, and I can't believe that he doesn't realize that the only
reason we ever had a Christian culture in the first place is because
people originally got born again and influenced the culture. But as time
goes on and that sort of wears off and you have fewer people being born
again and really living the Christian life, that's when things start to
change.

So he almost has this idea that somehow you can turn the culture into a
Christian culture without getting people saved. You see, evangelism is
really the answer, because when people get saved, they work in the world
in a variety of different places and then they go back into where they
work and then their life begins to be a testimony and they have an
impact. And then many times the culture can change if we have, you know,
a large number of people that are doing that.

But as I'm I'm looking at this book, I'm thinking, you know, this is
this is not right. And of course, I understand this person has a
theological background that pretty much teaches that the church is going
to bring in the kingdom of God. We're going to set up the kingdom.

We're going to just have a greater and greater influence as time goes
on. That's what the church is supposed to do. And and we will kind of,
you know, set up the kingdoms ourselves, the kingdom ourselves.

Jesus, of course, will come at the end and say, great job, you guys. OK,
glad you got everything ready for me now. All right, I'll sit down on my
throne, but that's not the way the Bible says it's going to go, is it?
And the reality is this, the Bible never promises.

Never even really hints at the church ever being anything more than a
despised minority in this world. That's the picture the New Testament
gives us of the church. The church is always going to be a despised
minority.

It's always going to be that way. Why? Because the world belongs to the
devil right now. Of course, ultimately, sovereignly, it's God's world.

But how many places in scripture are we told that Satan is the god of
this age, the prince of the power of the air who now works in the
children of disobedience? You see, that's the way it is, and it's not
going to change until what happens until Jesus Christ comes back. He's
going to set up the kingdom. He's going to come back and he's going to
judge a world that's rejected him.

He's going to establish his kingdom. But if we think that somehow we're
going to take over everything, we're going to start running the
governments. We're going to take over all of the media.

We're going to take over the world of academics. We're greatly mistaken.
We're greatly mistaken.

That's not going to happen. It's already laid out for us in scripture,
evil men and evil days are going to get worse and worse. Now, I wish it
was different.

I'm not a sadistic person. I'm not hoping for persecution to come along.
I'm not sitting around saying, man, I can't wait to get thrown in jail
for Jesus.

But I'm looking at it realistically and I'm looking at it scripturally,
the scripture never guarantees that the church will be anything but a
despised minority in the world. That is what the church will be. Paul
says it right here.

We suffer reproach. Why? Because we trust in the living God. We trust in
the living God that the world rejects.

We trust in the living God that Satan is opposing. Now, let's balance it
out. Of course, God's going to win.

He's already won. Principalities and powers have been spoiled by Christ
on the cross. And we are led in triumph always, but it's not the kind of
triumph that we often think of.

It's not a materialistic thing. It's not a physical thing, necessarily.
It's not a visible thing yet.

It will manifest itself in the future when Christ returns, but right now
it's invisible and we are a minority rather than the majority. But the
Lord is moving. He's working.

And of course, ultimately, he is going to establish his kingdom. He is
the savior of all men. And one day that will be made crystal clear.

But as you know, as well as I do, there is great opposition to him now.
There is powerful opposition. And as I mentioned, speaking with that
Muslim man today, you know, it was a great time, a challenging time.

It was a but I came away invigorated. But at the same time, I came away
grieved in my heart to have sat and listened to a man blaspheme Christ.
And thinking as he's doing it, that that he's pleasing God, that this is
the position that he's to take.

But it's not hopeless because someone else did that a long time ago.
He's the one who wrote this letter. He blaspheme God, he compelled
others to blaspheme, but he ended up becoming the great Apostle Paul.

So there's hope, but we suffer reproach because we trust in the living
God. He is the savior of all men, especially those who believe Christ
died to save everybody. Every single person that's ever lived, Jesus
Christ shed his blood for that person.

I believe that every person's name is written in the book of life. Jesus
talked in his letter to the church of Sardis, he warned them about
blotting their names out of the book of life. I believe that every man's
name is written in the book of life because every person had Christ's
blood shed for them.

But not every person will be saved, will they? He's the savior
potentially of all men, but he's really actually only the savior of
those who believe. But you see, in the end, when a man perishes, it
won't be because Christ did not provide atonement for him. A man will
never be able to say, look, I couldn't have gone to heaven anyway
because Jesus didn't die for me.

A man will never be able to say that a man who dies and goes to hell. He
goes to hell, trampling the son of God underfoot and counting the blood
of the covenant by which he was potentially sanctified as an unholy
thing. And so when a man goes to hell, he has no one to blame but
himself.

Because Christ died for everyone, but he only can save those that
believe because he will not violate a man's free will. He will not force
us to believe he will not make you believe in him. He'll try to persuade
you to believe in him, he'll give you numerous opportunities to believe
in him.

But at the end of the day, he does not force us to believe in him. We
must make that decision ourself. So Paul said to Timothy, he said,
command and teach these things.

And then he said, let no one despise your youth, let no one despise your
youth. Paul was probably or excuse me, Timothy, that there's there's a
lot of difference among commentators as to as to Timothy's age. Some
have said that Timothy was probably in his 40s.

I don't buy that. In a culture where you only lived, you know, generally
old age was man, if you reach 60. Or 70, you know, as a matter of fact,
the Bible says that.

Three score and 10. That's 70 years, that's about all you get, and if by
some fluke you get a few more. Well, it's it's all just trouble anyway.

But 40 years old, no, I believe that Timothy was probably in his 20s. He
was a young man. And so Paul says to him, Timothy, don't let anyone
despise your youth, he says, but be an example to the believers.

Being example now, remember, Timothy's a leader, he's a young leader,
but he's a leader in the church. And so Paul says to him, Timothy, it's
important that you set a good example. And of course, it is important
that all of us as believers set a set a good example in my text here, it
says, be an example to the believer.

I think in the King James Version, it actually says, be an example of
the believer. Either one, it can be translated either way, obviously,
but I think. Both things are really right, because I can't really be an
example to the believer unless I'm an example of the believer.

I've got to be living the life of a believer and then I will be an
example to the other believers. And then he says to be an example in
word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith and in purity. Now.

I want to save this verse for next week to go into greater detail on it,
so we'll just pass from that and finish up the rest of the chapter. But
Paul goes on to say, till I come give attention to reading. To
exhortation and to doctrine, so this is what Timothy was to be doing in.

The congregational setting. Now, remember, Paul, Timothy is in Ephesus.
A ministry began in Ephesus and Paul has Timothy there in Ephesus,
making sure everything is moving along as it is supposed to.

He's there to stand up against the false teachers that are coming in.
He's there to establish the proper order of the church service. He's
there to give them good, solid instruction so they can have a fruitful
ministry.

So here's what Paul tells him to do. He says, give attention to reading,
to exhortation and to doctrine. You could translate this, give attention
to reading, to preaching and to teaching.

That's what church leaders are to do, among other things. But but as a
priority, church leaders are to read the scriptures there, to preach the
scriptures there, to teach the scriptures. Now, of course, in Paul and
Timothy's day, everyone did not come to church with a Bible like we come
today.

Not everyone had a Bible back then, because, of course, there were no
Bibles in the sense of a book. There were the scriptures and many of
them were still in the process of being written. There were the Old
Testament scriptures and some of the other epistles that had already
been penned.

And perhaps some of the gospels at this time had been penned. But what
would happen is the churches themselves, they would have copies of the
scripture. And so the people would come to church for the very purpose
they would they would come to this gathering for the purpose of having
the scriptures read to them.

So that's why Paul says to Timothy, read them now, you have your own
Bible today. And so we can say to you, OK, your job is to read the
scriptures. And then, of course, you come to church that we might preach
the scriptures and teach you the scriptures.

But this is the means by which God feeds his people. He feeds them
through his word. Jesus said man cannot live by bread alone, but by
every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

So we read the word, we preach the word, we teach the word. This is how
God does his great work in our lives through his word, he does his work
in our lives. It's a supernatural thing.

You can't explain it. Scientifically, it's a miraculous thing. God's
word comes into our lives as we read it, as we hear it preached, as we
hear it taught, and it does something glorious in us.

It transforms us. It changes us from the inside out and makes us into
the people that God wants us to be. But for Timothy, he's to read them
the scriptures, he's to preach to them and he's to teach them.

What's the difference between preaching and teaching? Well, oftentimes
the difference is stated to be that preaching is for unbelievers and
teaching is for believers. There's some truth to that, because to an
unbeliever, you preach the gospel to them. You proclaim the gospel to
them so they can get saved.

But you preach to believers as well. Paul, he's going to visit Rome. And
he says to them in writing to them in the very first chapter, he talks
about how he's desiring to come to Rome.

That he might preach the gospel there also, he said, for I am not
ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God and
salvation to everyone who believes. Paul says, I want to come to Rome
and he's writing to Christians. He says, I want to come to Rome and I
want to preach the gospel to you.

Now, why would Paul want to preach the gospel to people who are already
believers? We see Paul understood preaching to not mean merely relating
certain historical facts about Jesus to unsaved people. He understood
preaching to be imparting to believers the full implication of what
Christ did. Through his death and resurrection.

So Paul says to them in Rome, I want to come to you believers. I want to
come and preach the gospel. I want to come and fill you in on all of the
implications of what the death of Christ is all about.

What is resurrection is all about. And preaching has this element as
well. In contrast to teaching, preaching has that an exhortive element
in it.

Now, you see, teaching, on the other hand, is it's instruction, it's
imparting information. Teaching gives you the information you need.
Preaching gives you the motivation to apply the information.

So you can get out there and live the life you see, if if you're just in
an environment where you're simply being taught without being preached
to. In in the most positive sense, I'm using that term, you know,
sometimes say that guy was preaching to me, I don't like that. Well,
there's a good there's a good aspect to being preached to.

It's helping you to apply what you've been taught. If you're simply
soaking in information and never being given the application of the
information, what happens? You get stagnant. You start to stagnate
because the information that comes in, it's got to go out.

If it just comes in only year after year after year and it never gets to
flow out, you have a stagnation problem that occurs. Now, I fully
believe that especially for, you know, new Christians and so forth, when
you come initially, there's a time you just need you need to soak as
much as you possibly can. And of course, God will lead you to have an
outlet for that as well.

But you know, what happens is that people get into sort of a mode of
just sitting and receiving. You're just hearing over and over again the
same information. If you don't get out and apply that information in
your life, you're going to become stagnant.

You see, the end of the ministry in the church is not to have a Bible
study. The Bible study is the means to the greater end of serving
Christ. If I think that everything is about the Bible study, as long as
you're at the Bible study, that's all that matters.

The Bible study is important. But the Bible study is really the place
where you get informed, it's where you get the information, you get the
right information, and then the pastor, the teacher. Is to then preach,
and it's really a combination, it kind of the the gifts go hand in hand
together to to motivate you now to get up and do something with the
information you got shows you how to apply.

And that's such an important thing. There are certain people and I've
listened to people over the years who they refer to themselves, they
say, well, you know, I'm just a teacher, I don't want to tell anybody
what to do. And, you know, they can pass on a ton of information.

And I've met their disciples. There are people that have tons of
information. They've got more information than they can ever use.

A lot of times they don't even use the information they've got other
than to argue with people here or there and say, wait a second, you're
wrong. I know, you know, the details about that prophetic scenario right
there or whatever. It's not for that.

That information is to go into my heart and change me and then work
itself out into my life. So Paul says to Timothy, this is what you do.
You read in the scriptures, you preach the scriptures to him and you
teach him the scriptures.

That's what pastoral ministry is primarily about. And you do that
collectively for the congregation. You do it individually as well.

We minister the word not just to groups of people, but we minister the
word to individuals as well. You know, we refer to counseling here at
the church. If you have a problem, come on in for some counseling.

Well, I'll tell you right now, you know, a counseling is. We're going to
preach to you. We're going to teach you the scriptures.

We're going to tell you what God says to do about the problem in your
life. That's what we're supposed to do. If you've got the idea that
you're going to come in and we've got a couch for you, you can lay down
and we're going to take you all through your life, you know, tell me
about this.

And how did your parents treat you? And what was it like, you know,
remember back in your crib, you know, what was it like back there? You
got the wrong idea. We're not going to do that. We're going to say, hey,
look, this is what it says right here and we're going to do it, of
course, lovingly and patiently.

But we're going to point you back to the word of God. I had an
appointment this week and a person came in, they've got some huge
problems in their life, huge. But in the end, I said, you know what,
let's let's forget your problem right now, let's take your problem, set
it right over here, because it's really a secondary issue.

The real issue is you and God. And this problem exists because you are
not right with God. So you got to get right with God.

That's what counseling is all about right there, so preach. To them,
teach them, read to them the scriptures, he says, do not neglect the
gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying
on of the hands of the eldership. Now, remember, he's talking to
Timothy, says Timothy, don't neglect the gift, Timothy, evidently, from
what we can get.

You know, you have to read between the lines in a sense, but Timothy was
somewhat of a timid young man. He was a person who tended to probably
shy away from challenging things and so forth. So Paul says, no,
Timothy, you've got to you've got to stir up that gift, he would tell
him that at a later point, but he says here, do not neglect the gift
that that was in you, that is in you.

And it was given to you by prophecy with the laying on the hands of
laying on of the hands of the eldership. And then he said, meditate on
these things. Meditate on these things, Timothy, give yourself entirely
to them that your progress may be evident to all.

Give yourself entirely to them, a minister of the gospel is to give
himself entirely to the things of the gospel. You know, I don't have
time for a million other things. There was a time in my life as a
minister of the gospel when I was seeking to minister the gospel and do
a bunch of other things also.

You know, I don't know if it's just getting older, maturing or whatever,
but. I just I don't have time for any of those things anymore. They're
not bad things, necessarily, other people might have time to do them.

I just frankly do not have the time I want to give myself entirely to
these things. That's my calling. That's my responsibility.

That's the responsibility of everyone who's in Christian leadership,
pastoral ministry. He says, meditate on these things, give yourself
entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all. You see, as
people see the leadership, loving God, growing, being faithful, it
inspires others as well.

You know, I want to say something, it's kind of on a personal note. My
wife, you know, she teaches the ladies study here on Fridays, most
Friday mornings now helping out her mother. And I meet ladies and maybe
I've talked to some of you everywhere I go, I meet ladies.

Who tell me how God is touching their life through through Cheryl's
ministry. And a lot of times they're just saying, where does she get
this stuff? I've never heard. And, you know, they're just talking about
the blessing of this fresh word that's coming from God.

I will tell you right now how she gets it. She gives herself entirely to
these things. I don't know a person myself who is more devoted to
meditation on the scriptures than my wife.

She absolutely blesses me in that area. And all those Bible studies she
gives the ladies, she gives them to me before she gives them to them. I
steal a lot of those Bible studies, so I have something profound to say.

But the progress is evident. You know, Cheryl left here, she left this
church when she was, let me think, I was twenty six. She was twenty two
and a half years old when she left here.

She was gone for over 20 years, about 20 years, and she's come back.
And, you know, a lot of people remember her. Little Sherry.

Oh, yes. Little Sherry. I remember her.

And now she's you know, she's a grown woman, obviously, and people
marvel. Where did little Sherry get all this wisdom? Well, she's given
herself entirely to these things. But, you know, guess what? God will do
that for anyone who will give themselves entirely to these things.

You don't have to be a pastor, a missionary, an evangelist. You don't
you don't have to have some recognized position in the church to get the
blessing of God in this area. And just give yourself entirely to these
things.

Meditate on these things and God will work a powerful work in your life
and through your life as well. And, you know, as wonderful as it is to
have great teaching from a pulpit in a church, we need thousands of
people out in the community that can take that and pass it on to other
people around them because that's where the centers are. We've got to
connect with them.

And so Paul says, finally, we'll close with this. He says, take heed to
yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this, you
will save both yourself and those who hear you.

Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. You know, we could there's a
lot that could be said about these things here and we don't have time
for it tonight. We are all to take heed to ourselves first.

And especially those in ministry, it's easy for a person in ministry to
take heed to everybody else. It's easy to read your Bible so you can get
a great sermon to give on Saturday night. But you know what? If I do
that.

It won't be long before it becomes evident that I'm not taking heed to
myself, I've got to take heed to myself, I've got to make sure my own
spiritual life is in order, I've got to tend to my life spiritually
myself. No one else is going to do that for me. I alone can do it and
I've got to do it.

I've got to take heed to my life personally, and I've got to take heed
to the doctrine, the word of God. I've got to pay attention, close
attention, because here's the promise. When I continue in these things
faithfully by doing this.

I will save both myself and those who hear me now saving myself doesn't
mean that I'm actually my own savior, doesn't mean that I worked my way
to heaven. Remember, Paul's talking to Timothy's already saved. What
he's talking about is Timothy, you'll save yourself from shipwreck,
you'll save yourself from disaster, you'll save yourself from going off
the rails somewhere down the line, which others have done.

But not only will you save yourself, you'll save those who hear you as
well. There's a great responsibility upon church leadership, and it's
the responsibility to make sure our own lives are right with God so that
we can be an inspiration to others. And we need the grace of God to do
that and we need your prayers.

And I know you do pray for us and all of us here that are ministering
the word to you. We all greatly appreciate that. And we hope in turn
that we are being a blessing to you.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you. That your word is laid out so clearly
for us, the things that those who represent you are to be.

The character, the lifestyle, Lord, but all of us, really, you've called
us all. To take heed to ourselves and to your word, you've called us all
to meditate on the scriptures and give ourselves entirely to them. And
so, Lord, may that be our manner of life in these days, Lord, as we look
around us and we see the world just on the fast track to hell.

We're never going to impact it by sitting around watching TV, by just
being caught up with what everybody else is doing. We're never going to
make a difference. So, Lord, liberate us from those.

Worthless things that so often preoccupy us, distract us and help us,
Lord, to give ourselves entirely. To these things that our progress may
be evident to all and that we, Lord, whether we're teaching a Bible
study or working on an assembly line or standing in a classroom or
having coffee with a neighbor. Lord, that we will be reflecting Christ
and his glory to others.

We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. Let's stand together.

If you need prayer tonight, these guys up here would love to pray with
you. I'd love to pray with you. I'll be up here as well.

And I'm sure people around you would like to pray with you, too. So take
your pick. There's a lot of different ways to get prayer tonight.

Just want to encourage you to stir up the gifts that are in you. Provoke
one another to love and good works. Encourage one another, be a blessing
to one another.

And let's just seek the Lord in these days. Let's really let's just go
for it and see what God will do. I'll tell you guys this.

The Muslims are zealous. This young guy that we talked to today, he met
with us with the hope of converting us to Islam. That was why he met
with us.

And we thought he was meeting because he wanted to become a Christian.
He made it clear, oh, no, I'm not interested in that. I want you to
become Muslims.

And they're zealous. And not not just the Muslims. But all of the other
isms out there are quite zealous.

And as you've noticed, probably the the godless world around us, so
they're quite zealous as well. They want us to embrace their ideas. They
accuse us of trying to shove stuff down people's throats.

They're the culprits. But the point is, man, they're they're out there,
they're passionate, they're they're spreading their ideologies, they're
preaching their messages. And it's all lies, it's all destructive, it's
all ultimately going to destroy us.

Damn people, we've got the truth, we've got the gospel, we've got the
good news. God, help us to have that kind of zeal and even greater than
they do to impact the world while we have time. God bless you.

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Audio: https://sermonindex1.b-cdn.net/11/SID11999.mp3
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/brian-brodersen/1-timothy-entirely-given-to-the-things-of-god/
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