Experiencing the Fullness of Salvation

Well, it's great to Oh my gosh. Yeah, I was gonna, man, I didn't know that'd be the first slide. I guess it is the first slide. Yeah, I was just going to share with you guys that I was feeling envious of Alvin because he had a flyer made up for, for the outreach service last week and had his picture with an athletic picture of himself on the, on the front and the back of it.

And I was thinking, when have I ever had a flyer made about myself. So, I gave Steve McCullough a picture from my athletic past and gave him a theme to work with that was humble, yet earnest and And that's the So those flyers will be available for you to pick up if you want to invite people to Cornerstone. Anyway, Say what? Well, I was facetiously saying that we have done that, but I'm, I'm lying.

The theme that I, one of the things I gave to Steve to work with was going to bust you up, but he didn't, we went with Big Dog Unleashed. anyway, for a time of study and the word, this morning. we're going to be, beginning a study of a particular book of the Bible. One of the things that we do at Cornerstone is, is most of the time, well more than, half the time, maybe 60.

percent of the time, 70% of the time, we are, we pick a book to study through and we just work our way through that book of the Bible and go verse by verse, just whatever comes next, that's what we cover and just allow God to speak to us. we also, about, 30-40% of the time. do topical studies, but even those topical studies, all we're seeking to do is exposit the word. We're just not limiting that exposition to a particular book or a particular paragraph or verse of the Bible.

So every message we preach is the goal is to expose it to unfold what God's word says. And, but what we're going to do today, we've done a couple of those topical series, one on evangelism and one on moving forward in community. together, but today we're gonna begin a study of another book of the Bible, and the book we're gonna study today is the Book of First Timothy. And, we're gonna be team teaching this, I and Carlos and Mike, and we'll be working our way through this book in the weeks and months ahead.

Now that raises the question, why First Timothy? Why are we going to study this particular book of The Bible. Let me give you just two reasons. Number 1, because it teaches us very specifically how to do community.

We've been expressing in recent months, how we want to move forward in community with one another. But First Timothy really shows us the logistics of how to make that, that happen. see, the deal is, guys, when you come to faith in Jesus, you think it's just you and Jesus, and, and, he draws you to himself, and you come to the foot of the cross, and you're like, Lord, I believe in you. And, and, and then you, you look up from that prayer, and look around and you find a family that's also gathered there.

There's other people there at the foot of the cross. And Jesus says, those are your brothers and sisters. in, in Christ. And as you look around, you realize, man, so we, we're family, and if we're family, we've got responsibilities.

There's people over here calling themselves my brothers and sisters. And there's a, a guy here who's calling himself an elder and he's trying to Teach me and instruct me and here's a person who's a deacon, that's what he's called and he's trying to serve me and, and there's a widow over here and she's got some needs and she's a believer in Christ and what responsibilities do I have towards addressing, those needs. it's that dynamic that First Timothy is really all about. In fact, if you want to find what I guess could be called the theme verse of First Timothy, you would find it in chapter 3, verse 14 and 15, where Paul very self-consciously states the purpose of the writing of this book.

And if you have your Bible with you, just open it up to 1 Timothy chapter 3. Where Paul says this to Timothy, he says, I am writing these things to you, hoping to come to you before long. But in case I am delayed, I write, so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God. That's it, right there.

Now you guys know what a household is, right? a household is a group of family members that are living together under one roof. That's technically what a household is. I've got siblings.

I've got a brother that lives in Atlanta, Georgia, another brother that lives in Greenville, South Carolina, and I've got a sister that lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. We are family. but we are not of the same household anymore. We're not living together under the same roof.

A household is a group of family members that are living together as one under the same roof. That's what a household is. And so the household of God, when Paul uses that expression here, he's not so much talking about the Church universal. he's talking about the local church.

He's talking about a group of believers that are living together under the same local roof in a particular local church. And he is writing this letter so that a believer will know how he ought to conduct himself as a family member. Living together with brothers and sisters under one roof, which is a particular local church, and in our case, that is Cornerstone. So how do we, how do we live?

How do we function as a household? Now any household that is doing things right, they, they've got, someone who's in charge of the household and And the children in that household, they've got responsibilities and they have a role to play and a contribution to make, and, they spend time together and, and even work together to accomplish, things, even economically or what have you. That's, that's how a household functions and the same is true in a church. If we are a household, then we need to figure out how do we relate to one another.

How do we function? what should we do in order to have an orderly and an effective household that is truly glorifying God? One of the things you find in 1 Timothy is a lot of family language. The family is talked about a lot.

in chapter 1, verse 2, Paul refers to Timothy as my true child in chapter 5, verse 1. Timothy tells, or Paul tells Timothy to relate to older men as fathers, and to younger men as brothers, and to older women as mothers and to younger women as sisters. He's saying, Timothy, you've got this family of older and younger people and men and women, and here's how I want you to relate to them. I want you to see them as family and relate to them as such.

So that's the idea of this book. That's the primary agenda. of this book is to teach us how to function as members of the household of God. There's a second reason that we have chosen 1 Timothy.

And that is because it covers a lot of timely and practical, topics. just, there's so many things that we as a staff have felt like, man, we need to go over these things, by way of leading this congregation. And amazingly, so many of those things are covered in First Timothy, and don't try to write. These down.

We're going to be covering these in the weeks and months ahead. We're going to be learning about prayer. We're going to be learning about politics, and the timing of this is going to be perfect. We're going to lead how we need to learn how we need to live in this society and what our responsibilities are towards our political leaders.

We're going to learn about male leadership in the church and in the home. women's dress and appearance, we're gonna be learning about the subject of modesty, women's roles in the church, and the meaningful place that God gives to them, elders, we're gonna learn the qualifications and responsibilities of, of elders in the church and deacons. We're gonna, Paul in this letter speaks of the last days and the appearing of Christ. So we're gonna be learning about that.

We're gonna be learning about the dangers of legalism. we're going to be learning about bodily discipline, which literally in the Greek is bodily exercise. Bodily exercise is actually talked about in First Timothy. We're going to learn about the profitability of godliness that even surpasses bodily exercise.

for you young people, you're going to be learning about being a youth, a young person in the household of God. How should you live as a young person? We're gonna learn about taking care of our family, taking care of widows in the church, providing for the elders, disciplining the elders. If someone comes to you and they've, they're accusing an elder of something, how do you respond, to that?

What if an accusation against an elder at Cornerstone really is true? How should we respond as a church? We're gonna learn a lot about money and how to handle money. and how to lay up treasure in heaven, we're going to learn some very significant dangers that we need to be aware of, in our Christian life.

So these are just some of the topics that are covered in 1 Timothy that we think are going to be a great benefit to all of us as a church. As far as what I want us to cover today, just by way of getting our feet wet in this book. is I want to speak to you guys on the subject of experiencing the fullness of salvation. See, it guys, here's the deal.

Let's make it really simple. If we're going to be the church that God wants us to be, if we're going to be the household, the family that God wants us to be, there's a lot of things we're going to need to know. There's a lot of responsibilities upon each one of us. But here is the fundamental overarching responsibility.

If we're going to be a household of God, that glorifies God, It is essential that every one of us be committed to experiencing our salvation in all of its fullness, that we are walking with Jesus and experiencing this salvation that God has provided for us, and doing so in all of its fullness. One of the themes I would encourage you guys this week, read through the Book of First Timothy, do it once a day. And as you do so you'll start to pick up certain patterns in the book and look for keywords that seem to show up again and again and one of the key words of this book is the word.

That has the idea of salvation.

In fact, in chapter 1, verse 1, the very first verse of First Timothy, we have the word savior. In chapter 1, verse 15, we have the word saved, chapter 2, verse 3, we have the word Savior. Chapter 2, verse 4, the word saved. Chapter 2, verse 5, we have the word in the New American Standard preserved, but in the Greek text, it's the same word for salvation.

In chapter 4, verse 10, we have the word savior. In chapter 4, verse. 16 we have the word salvation. So clearly throughout the book of First Timothy, salvation is a major theme.

And so what I want to do is I want us to sweep most of those passages together and I want us to look at four truths that we must embrace if we want to experience the fullness of salvation. Maybe you're here today and you don't even know Jesus Christ. You've never come to a point where you've believed in Him. This message is just right, for you.

Maybe you are a believer, and you're walking with the Lord and experiencing this salvation. This message will be an encouragement to you. Maybe you're a believer and right now you're going through a season where you would say, I am doing anything but experiencing the fullness of salvation. This sermon is especially for you to be an encouragement to you and a help to you.

Now I know for me when I'm not experiencing the fullness of salvation, I get cranky. And I'm not that great of a member of my own household. And I'm not that great of a member of even this household of God. But man, when we're really walking with the Lord and experiencing the fullness of salvation, rejoicing in that, and that's overflowing from us.

we're radically different people. So here's 4 truths that are taught in 1 Timothy, that we must embrace. If you can embrace these 4 truths, and then base your life upon them, you will be experiencing the fullness of salvation. It will be overflowing from you.

And you will have a meaningful part in helping us as a family of God. to glorify Him. Truth number one that I want us to look at this morning is that God is our Savior. Paul teaches us in this letter that God is our Savior.

In fact, in chapter 1, verse 1, he says, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the commandment of God, our Savior. So we learned there at the beginning of the book that God is our Savior, but that's not the only time that this is stated in chapter 2, verse 3, Paul says, God, our Savior who desires all men to be saved, chapter 4, verse 10, the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers. What's really neat about 1 Timothy is that 3 times in the book, we have the expression, God, our Savior, God, our Savior, God, our Savior.

Now, as a believer, I, there's no way I can do justice to this.

If we get up in the morning and we know, all right, I need salvation today. I need forgiveness. I need release. I need freedom from sin's power.

I've got the world, the flesh, and the devil coming against me. I've got a history of failure. I need salvation. Who will be my savior today?

It's incredibly good news. To hear the words. Today, God will be your savior. God.

will be your savior. That is really Good news. Because this God He is the one who created the heavens and the earth. He is the one who measured the entire universe with merely the span of his hand.

imagine how massive our universe is and God, as it were, according to the prophet Isaiah, measured the universe with the span of his hands. So how massive must God be? God is a powerful God. We see His power displayed throughout creation and the explosions of volcanoes and where does that power come from?

It emanates from God Himself. also, I This, this, this blows my mind. I mention in the Gospel primer that there was a star recently discovered hurtling through space at 1.5 million miles an hour. Well, about a year later they discovered another star that is traveling through space at 3 million miles an hour.

we admire a pitcher in baseball who can throw a tiny little ball, 100 miles an hour accurately. God is throwing these monsters of the universe that are millions of miles in diameter, hurtling them through space at 3 million miles an hour. imagine the power, imagine the force that would be required to send something that massive hurtling through space. I was reading in my daughter's science book a few weeks ago about neutron stars, and without getting into a lot of details, I, I read this and I just began to worship God because one of the things that they said is that as a neutron star is contracting, as the star cools, you can have a star that originally was like 300 million miles in diameter.

That contracts with the force of gravity to just several miles in diameter, and the atoms that compose that star get so densely packed together because the gravitational pull is so intense that in this science book it says that 1 teaspoon, 1 teaspoon of matter in the core of a neutron star, 1 teaspoon, get that picture in your head, 1 teaspoon of matter. And the core of a neutron star weighs a billion tons, a billion tons. And God, according to Scripture, is the one who holds all things together.

He holds the atoms together.

And so imagine the power of this God that can take these atoms and crush them together with such intensity and force that one teaspoon weighs a billion tons. You see why it's good news as we come into a day saying I need a Savior. I need some help here. And you hear the words of First Timothy, God will be your savior today.

That is great news. God also displayed his power in taking the dead body of Jesus after he was slaughtered on the cross and and was buried in the tomb and God, God raised him from the dead, not just the word Jesus was barely resuscitated and, and stumbled around. No, he was raised with resurrection power. And this is the God that we have.

And this is the one who has decided to be our Savior, every single day. Not only is he our Savior, but you get the impression here that he's delighted to be our Savior. 3 times in this book, God says, I'm your Savior. I'm your savior.

I'm your savior. He, he obviously delights in his reputation as a savior. He's not a begrudging savior. He's not a reluctant savior.

Well, you guys need me and you're crying out to me. So, OK. that's not the way God is. God delights in his reputation as a savior.

And he says to Paul, in verse one, Paul, tell him, tell him I'm a savior. Tell him I'm a savior. Paul, in chapter 2, verse 3, God Like, did you tell him I'm a savior? Yes, I did.

Tell him again. Tell him I'm a savior. Chapter 4, verse 10. Tell him again that I am a savior.

God wants us to look to him and to see Him as a savior, a savior who delights. To be our savior. So the first truth that we must wrap our minds around if we want to experience the fullness of salvation day by day, is that God is our Savior. And he wants to be known as a savior.

He delights in his reputation as a savior of his people. I'm speaking at a conference in New York in November, and I got an email from the guy in charge of that conference asking me to write a bio of myself. And which is weird. And, and I just had a few sentences, and I was like, what do I want to say?

What, what do I want to be known for? What do I want the people who read this to think of when they read this bio of me? What adjectives Do I use? Brilliant.

buff, what do, what do I say? do I say those things? Or do I be honest? And, and, and as I write, as I wrote that, I was thinking, what do I want people to think of?

What do I want to be known for? And it was a very challenging thing. But if, if you ask the Lord what he wanted to be known for, to write his bio, he'd say, I'm a savior. I'm a savior.

That's who I am. That's what I delight to be known as. So when you come to God in need of salvation, No, he's not reluctant to save, but he's excited to be a savior and he wants to blow you away with the savior. That he is.

There's a second truth that we must wrap our minds around. And this addresses those who might say, OK, that's great, man, God is awesome. And he delights to be a savior, but who does he want to save? And And, Pastor Milton, you don't know me.

You don't know the things that I've done, the things I've said, the ways that I have failed. If God intends to be a savior, then I'm sure he wants to be a savior of better people than I have been. I've got really good news for you. The second truth we need to wrap our minds around is that God saves sinners.

God wants to be the savior of sinners. In fact, Jesus, when he was on the earth, what he said? He, he said, I didn't come for the righteous. I didn't come for those who don't think they're messed up.

I didn't come for those who think that they have their act together. I came for those who are sick. I came for those that are sinners. And we see this affirmed very clearly in chapter 1, verse 15, where Paul says, it is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance.

Now, whenever Paul says something like that, he's about to state a real doozy of a truth. And he's just warning you, I'm about to say something that I know is going to defy belief. And you are going to have difficulty in believing this. But what I'm about to say is a trustworthy statement.

You can take it to the bank. You can believe it every single day. And it deserves not just acceptance, but full acceptance. So Paul is saying, before I even say this, open your heart wide, open your arms wide, and get ready to fully embrace what I am about to say.

That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That's who we came for. All of us are sinners, are we not? All of us have broken God's law.

Have we not? We go through the 10 Commandments and, and, the first commandment is have no other gods before me. And all of us throughout our lives have placed many things in front of God and have disregarded him. Have we not?

God says in the 10 Commandments, basically, thou shalt not lie. We have all lied and deceived, and even the smallest lie is disobedience to this glorious God that we've been talking about. This God says, thou shalt not murder. And according to Scripture, all of us have murdered because Jesus said, if you hate somebody, if you are angry with someone in your heart, you are guilty of murdering them in your heart.

And his point is, you're guilty of breaking that commandment, even if you've never shot somebody in the head. One of the 10 commandments is thou shalt not commit adultery. Jesus says, if you look with a woman with lust, you've committed adultery with her already in your heart. You go through the 10 Commandments and you find out that all of us have broken the letter or the spirit of every one of God's 10 commandments.

We are sinners, 100% condemned under every law of God. When I go through the 10 Commandments, that's there's not even one of the commandments that I can cling to and say, OK, I've obeyed that one perfectly. Not even one. I strike out on all 10.

I am a sinner. All of us are sinners. But God is a savior, and he is the savior of sinners. So the exciting thing is that what that means is that our sin does not disqualify us from God.

Our sin is the very thing that qualifies us for Him, because those are the only people he came to save. Amen. That means that all of us are qualified because we are all sinners. Look at what Paul says.

You might say, All right, Pastor Milton, I am a sinner, but I am convinced I'm the worst sinner in this room. I'm the worst sinner that's ever lived. You don't know the things that I've done. Well, Paul even addresses that.

He says it's a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. God has Already saved the worst sinner that's ever lived. And that is the apostle Paul. All right.

And Paul goes on to say, the reason God saved me was basically to make the point that he can save anybody. God wants to glorify Himself and glorify his grace. So he decided to save sinners who don't deserve that salvation. And to make the point that He can save any sinner.

He 2000 years ago, saved the worst sinner that ever lived in order to make the point that there is no sinner that is outside of the scope of this salvation. No sinner has committed any sin that is so bad that God would not be willing to be that person's savior. Paul ravaged the church before he was saved. He was responsible for the death of Christians.

And even worse than that, Paul, Try to force Christians to blaspheme. Jesus, there's, this, Group of people in our culture today, actually around the world that have really caught on to the idea of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. And it's like every sin will be forgiven, except that one. And so they deliberately willfully blaspheme the Holy Spirit, and they videotape themselves on YouTube.

And I saw one video of a girl who was seeking to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, and at the end, right before she turned the camera off, she said, I'll see you in hell. It's like, what darkness that someone would just, I want to do this. I know it's unforgivable. I will do this, and I'll see you in hell.

Paul Try to force Christians to blaspheme. Jesus Paul committed many, many sins. Serious sins, and yet Jesus saved him and forgave him. The worst sinner who ever lived.

And if he could say Paul, Paul's point in sharing this is he can save you. God is our Savior. God saves sinners, even as a believer, when you mess up so badly that you think, man, I've messed up so badly, even since coming to believe in Jesus that I think God has fed. With me.

He doesn't want anything to do with me. No, you get up in the morning and say, as badly as I've messed up, God wants to be the savior of this center today. This is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance, and we need to believe this. If we don't believe it, we're never going to experience salvation.

And all of its fullness. There is a third truth that we need to wrap our minds around, and that is that God saves sinners through Christ. God saves sinners through Christ. God is our Savior.

He saves sinners. And how does he do that? He saves sinners through Christ. See, if, if, if we're going to get to heaven, A lot of people just have this notion that to get to heaven, all I need to do is pretty much be myself.

And maybe if I've done some bad things, just try to do good things to overcome those bad things. But pretty much it's up to me and my performance to be good enough to get myself into heaven. And when I stand before God, he'll say, What, you were a pretty good person, especially compared to your neighbors, and the people around you, you were better than they were. So what, come into heaven, and they view salvation as something that they earn, that they accomplish.

When the teaching of the Bible is that every human being, is under God's wrath because of their sins. And if we're going to be saved, we need somebody else to do something for us. To rectify that problem that we can't rectify. We're under God's wrath.

We're under his judgment. And there's nothing we can do to get out of that, out from underneath that. So if we're going to be saved, we need someone else to do something for us. And the good news of the Bible is that God saves sinners, and he saves sinners through Christ.

Look at what Paul says in chapter 1, verse 15. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. God is the savior. The Bible teaches, He sent Jesus into the world with this mission to save sinners.

to save sinners. And so Jesus came to the world and he lived a perfect life. He never sinned like we have sinned. He never thought a sinful thought, committed a sinful act, spoke a sinful word.

He was absolutely righteous and perfect in every way. He's the only human being that has ever lived that has been flawlessly perfect and spotless in every way. And he came into the world to live that way, in order to save sinners. You say, so that's all he did is he just lived a perfect life, and that saves me.

No, that's not all that he did. we know from elsewhere in 1 Timothy, in this book that we're going to be studying, look at what Paul says in chapter 2, verse 5, there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all. What he's saying is Christ came into the world, lived in this world, lived a perfect life. And at the end of his life on earth, he gave himself as a ransom for all.

In other words, he laid down his life, he gave up his life on the cross. He was crucified outside the city walls of Jerusalem. He gave Himself in crucifixion as a ransom for us. We were being held hostage underneath the wrath of God.

Jesus did what we could not do. He gave himself, and he was sacrificed on the cross as a ransom that now can deliver us out from underneath the wrath of God. And look what he gave, he gave himself. That is an infinitely righteous and glorious donation to our salvation.

We were under God's wrath, could not deliver ourselves, could not even make one iota of a contribution to our salvation. And so we needed someone else to do that for us. And so Jesus says, I will donate myself, his infinitely glorious and righteous. Lovely self, Jesus contributed himself in death, so that on the cross, he could take the wrath that we deserve for our sins.

So that now if we would believe in Jesus, we would be delivered out from underneath God's wrath. And be saved. God is our savior. We must begin our train of thought with this.

Guys, when you get up in the morning, don't start your train of thought with yourself. Don't start your train of thought even with your past., my past, it's full of failure, and I know I'm going to fail again today. No, start with God. Who he is, his power, his love, God is my savior today, and he saves sinners, and he saves sinners daily through Christ.

We must wrap our minds around these three truths, if we're going to walk in the fullness of salvation. But there's one final truth that we need to embrace. And that is that God wants us to be aggressively engaged in this salvation. I, I, I really struggled with how to word this., God wants us to be actively engaged, obsessively engaged, aggressively engaged in this salvation.

See, God doesn't want us to say, OK, you're the savior, you save sinners, you save sinners through Christ, I believe in you. I'm now saved. All right, great. Now I'm going to move on, and I'm going to focus on whatever else I need to focus on, and I'm just going to live my life, and know that all of this is taken care of.

God would say not so fast. What I want you to do is this, yes, I'm your savior. And I have saved you through Christ, but I want you every day to be obsessed. With this salvation.

Be obsessed with it. We have this so clearly communicated in 1 Timothy. Look at what Paul says in 1 Timothy chapter 4. He says, literally in the Greek text, exercise yourself for the purpose of godliness.

And that word exercise is the Greek word we get our English word gym or gymnasium from, which is actually from the Greek word that means naked. All right, a gymnasium today is a place where people go and they wear less clothing than they would out on the street so that they're not as inhibited as they engage in something athletic, right? If you watched any of the Olympics, I had to be extremely careful about what I could let myself watch because these athletes sometimes wear very little clothing.

So as not to hinder their movement, but their, their goal is to strip themselves as much as they can so that they don't even get slowed down 1000 of a second in a race that they might be in, because split seconds matter, and Paul is saying here to Timothy and to all of us, God is your Savior.

He saves sinners. He saves through Christ. But here's what I am calling you to do. And that is exercise yourself for the purpose of godliness.

Just strip your life bare, anything that's in your life that would slow you down and being as godly as God wants you to be, get rid of that, so that your life is pruned and streamlined. And only befitting for the things of salvation. Exercise yourself continuously for the purpose of godliness, for godliness holds promise for the life to come. Verse 10, it is for this that we labor and strive, and that word strive is the Greek word we get our English word agony from.

It is for this that we labor, and we are continuously striving. Why? Because we fixed our hope on the living God who is the savior. Isn't that interesting to you?

you would think he would say, well, God is our Savior. So we just let go and let God, and we don't do anything. No, Paul is saying, our hope is so fixed on God, who is our Savior, that we strive, and we labor, we are aggressive. And what he's saying is not we aggressively are trying to save ourselves.

His point is we are aggressively striving and laboring in order to Appropriate the fullness of this salvation into our practical daily experience. In verse 13, he says to Timothy, give attention. To the reading, to the exhortation, to the teaching, which is the teaching of the gospel. Do not be neglecting the spiritual gift, which is in you.

He goes on to say, take pains with these things that I'm telling you about in this letter, the things of salvation, take pains with these things. And the expression take pains is used elsewhere in the Bible. It's used in Mark 13:11, where Jesus says when they arrest you and take you to court, he says, Don't worry beforehand about what you're going to say. And one translator translates it as, Don't rack your brains over what you're supposed to say.

how we might do that, man. I've got to speak and what am I going to say, and we can obsess and rack our brains about it. Paul says, I want you in this context to rack your brains about this salvation, take pains with these things, meditate upon these things, think upon these things. And this is present tense.

So continuously be thinking on meditating. on these things. He then says, be absorbed in them, so that your advance may be evident to all. what, if you want to advance in your Christian life, in the things of salvation, you must be absorbed in these things.

He then says, keep a close watch on yourself. And on the teaching, persist in this for by so doing, you will save both yourself. And your hearers. There's that word safe again.

Yes, salvation is all of God. He is the savior. We are not the savior. But this salvation involves our active participation.

It demands our full absorption. In these things. In chapter 4, verse 6, Paul says to Timothy that he says, I want you to be constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of sound doctrine. I want you to be in a constant state of nourishment.

I want you to be feasting all the time to where you are always nourished. With sound doctrine, the gospel, the things of salvation. And I would ask you this morning, do you believe that God is the savior? Do you believe that he saves sinners?

Do you believe that this salvation is through Christ in Him alone? And do you understand that to experience the fullness of this salvation, You must let, Yourself be fully absorbed in these things. Meditating, reading your Bible that speaks to you of these things of God, and His love for you and how he has saved you. Are you constantly nourished on the words of the faith?

End of sound. Doctrine This is one of the messages of First Timothy that we're going to see and come back to again and again, that if we're going to be the household God wants us to be, if we're going to be a good family, and good family members to one another, if God's light is going to shine from this church, then we need to be a church full of people that are walking in the fullness of this salvation. Me ask you to bow your heads. God is good.

To give us his word, To tell us about himself. His love If you're here today and you've just, you've never maybe heard what we're talking about this morning and you're like, I didn't know I was a sinner, or at least I didn't know my sin was this bad. I didn't know I was under God's wrath. But I understand it because I have sinned.

And maybe you've never realized that before and then you've never responded by saying, all right, for me to be saved, I need someone else to do something for me because I can't save myself. And maybe you've never taken your eyes from yourself and put your eyes on Jesus and said, all right, Jesus. I'm going to believe in you and not me. If you've never done that, just before you move an inch, do that where you're seated.

Just put your trust in Christ. I call upon Him to save you, and he will. Jesus says, Anyone who comes to me, I'll never cast them out ever. what?

There's so many of us in this church who are believers, Who are Christians, but we're not walking in fullness. And we're going to learn how to do that in this letter. And we got a good start today. Let us be committed to living this week with our eyes on God, our Savior, on Christ our Savior, and being absorbed.

In This salvation. Letting it absorb us, taking pains with these things, meditating, constantly nourishing ourselves on these things. That is the only way we will advance, Into the fullness. Of the grace and the salvation God has for us in Christ.

Let's bow our heads together and let's pray. Lord, I just, want to thank you for your presence in this room. I thank you for speaking to us. Thank you for the Book of First Timothy.

And we thank you now for all that you will teach us as we take this book a verse at a time and let it unfold before our eyes. And before we even begin going verse by verse, we join our hearts together as a congregation. And we say, speak Lord. For we, your servants, are listening.

With the intention Of obeying We just commit ourselves to You, Lord, with thankfulness in our hearts. In the name of Jesus, and all God's people said, Well, before you guys are dismissed, just a few announcements that, we want to bring to your attention. Care groups do begin today. If you signed up for a care group, I sure hope what care group you're in.

if you did sign up for a care group and you have not heard, see me afterwards. I would like to know that. And then we could direct you to the, the group that you are in. also, let's see, Sunday school, look at your bulletins.

There's information about our Sunday school, ministry that, is going on during the second service and there's a selection of classes,