Heads Up Pastoring

Let me have you guys turn in your Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 4, for our time of study in the word. this morning, 1 Timothy chapter 4. For those of you that are visiting with us, we're doing a verse by verse study through the book of First Timothy. As we continue in our study of this book, we come this morning once again to verse 13.

And my goal this morning is to take another gander at verse 13 and then to go to verse 16. OK, Mike Barry exposited verse 13 with excellence last week. In fact, I would not only say that last week was an excellent sermon. But if anyone comes to Cornerstone and they ask me, what is Cornerstone all about, that sermon last week, that I would give that sermon to anyone who wants to know the heartbeat of Cornerstone.

So that's where that sermon ranks in my mind that our brother Mike Berry preached last week and but what we're going to do this morning is we're going to go back into some of the things that are in that verse because there are some things that we as a staff feel pretty passionate about and I want to elaborate on at least by way of illustration and heightening our awareness of how high the stakes are in these matters and then we'll jump to verse 16. Next week we'll look at 14 and 15 on Timothy's spiritual gift and break that text open and see what some of the lessons are that we can learn from that.

But thematically, verse 13 and verse 16 are related to each other, so we'll treat them together today and the title of the message is Heads Up Pastoring. Heads up, pastoring.

in the first service, nobody was aware of this, but this past week, was actually Heads Up Driving Week. How many of you knew that? OK. like the announcements we do here at Cornerstone.

But no, AAA and some other news agencies cooperated together to get this obviously successful emphasis out, to encourage people to pay attention when they are driving and the, the message that they were trying to convey is stop when you are driving, engaging in distracting behaviors. behind, the wheel and a couple of the articles that, that I came across this week, identified what some of those distracting behaviors are, and here's some of them on a list. This is not all of them.

At the top of the list is texting while driving, and Mike preached a powerful message on texting last week, emailing, receiving, reading, and sending emails while driving.

talking on the cell phone, especially with a handheld, is a distraction. And another thing on the, in the article was getting dressed while driving. or changing clothes. With every head bowed and every eye closed, How many of you would say, Pastor Milton and I have done that while driving?

OK, thank you. You can put your hands down. Also, and they, and they were saying don't do that, by the way, eating while driving, smoking, adjusting the radio dials and fishing for CDs, rubbernecking, in other words, staring at another accident, and therefore you're not paying attention and get into your own accident, putting on makeup, ladies, this is actually, a huge problem, in our culture. In fact, last year, very tragic story.

There, there was a woman in the state of Indiana who was driving her SUV. She had her five year old daughter in the vehicle with her, and she was looking in the rearview mirror as she was driving and applying her makeup and did not see that she was barreling towards a dump truck, slammed into the back of it, and her 5 year old daughter went flying from the vehicle to her death. And so these kinds of things, they're of great concern to insurance companies and health officials.

It costs over $40 billion a year.

When you think of all of the accidents that occur. due to the fact that the drivers of vehicles are not paying attention to the things that they should be paying attention to, and what they're trying to address in a week like this week, this past week, is the fact that the reason they're not paying attention to what they should be paying attention to is because they're paying attention to things that ultimately end up distracting them. And when you think about like just this tragic situation with this mother in Indiana.

that this mother loved her daughter, and would never want anything like this to happen.

But here's the significant thing that I want to drive home. You don't have to purpose to make a tragedy like that happen. You don't have to get up in the morning and say, I resolved to bring about a heartrending tragedy today that will amount to loss of life and the ripping of my heart and you don't have to resolve to make that happen. All you have to do is just not pay attention, and that stuff happens.

And the same is true in the spiritual realm. Nobody ever resolves to have their life end in ruin, and heartache, and in destruction. I have never done premarital with a couple, and I've asked them, What are your goals for your marriage? None of them have ever said 20 years from now, we want to be seething with bitterness.

In fact, we'd like to be divorced at this point. where we can hardly stand to be with each other. No one resolves for that thing to happen. No one resolves to get caught up in a web of sin that they ultimately do not end up getting out of and bringing ruin and hurt to themselves and other people.

All that has to happen for those kinds of things to take place is to just not pay attention. And therefore not only you do not pay attention, but even those that are responsible for you do not pay attention. The people that care for you to not pay attention and be looking out for you. This is the burden that I think Paul has partly in verse 13 and in verse 16, because look at what he says in verse 13.

He says, Until I come, literally be continuously giving attention. Pay attention, Timothy, and then he identifies what Timothy is to pay attention to. And then go to verse 16 once again. He says, be continuously paying close attention.

And then he identifies two things that Timothy is to be paying attention to and look what he says in verse 16. Pay close. attention to yourself, to literally the teaching, persevere in these things, for as you do this, literally you will save yourself and those that hear you. Timothy, the stakes are high.

We're talking about salvation. We're talking about you yourself and those you minister to being saved from heartache, being saved from ungodliness, being saved from sin, being saved from ruin and destruction. If believers in a local church and If the pastors of those churches are to experience the fullness of salvation, then it is essential that not only all of the believers, but also that the pastors in that local church be constantly paying attention to certain things. The word that is translated give attention in verse 13 is the Greek word pros echo, and that word pros is a preposition that means towards, so it has the idea of facing towards.

It means to turn towards something, to bring oneself to, to turn one's mind, or to have an eye towards something. This word was used to speak of a ship that would identify the port that it was heading towards. It would turn in that direction and it would dock itself there. We would use this Greek word to Describe what happens in a parking lot and you're looking for a parking space.

You identify a spot. You fix your gaze on that, make sure no other cars are going to get in there before you do. You drive towards there and then park there. Part of the idea is, Timothy, park here.

All right, turn, face your gaze in this direction, move in this direction, focus on this, park yourself here and be continuously attentive to these things. And then in verse 16, pay close attention is a similar word. It's the same root word only it's got that preposition epi in front of it that means upon. So rather than looking towards, it has the idea of looking upon to put your focus upon.

And then even when he says persevere in these things, he's saying remain upon these things. In other words, remain with your gaze upon these things that I'm telling you here to be giving attention to. Now when you look at what he says in verse 13 and 16, what we can sweep together are four things that pastors and churches absolutely must be paying constant attention to. This has been a challenge for me.

just focusing on these verses and realizing that, what, the degree to which you experience salvation is partly affected by the degree to which I choose to pay attention to certain things. That's a heavy responsibility. You can apply that as parents that the degree to which your children may experience the fullness of salvation is partly influenced by the degree to which you as a parent choose to pay attention to certain things. Now Paul doesn't just say, Hey Timothy, pay attention.

And then move on. No, they're There are things Paul wants Timothy to pay attention to and let's just focus on these 4 things. the first of these things, and Mike covered this last week, but there's just a few things that I feel an itch to, to express on behalf of the staff, the first thing that Timothy as a pastor of the Ephesian congregation needs to be paying constant attention to is to the practice of reading the text of the Bible and to the text that is to be read. He says, until I come, give constant attention to literally the reading, the reading.

And that word could be understood in a very similar way to the way that we might use it today. For example, let's say this morning I was going to do a dramatic reading. And I'm walking up here to do a dramatic reading and I drop this on the floor on accident and I get up here and I'm like, oh my goodness, where's my reading? You would say, oh, you dropped your reading on the floor.

You would use this word not just to describe my act or practice of reading, but you would use it to describe the thing that's read. You understand that. So what Timothy is or Paul is saying to Timothy is Timothy, I want you to give constant attention to the reading, the practice of reading the scripture privately, publicly when you are gathered with God's people, and part of what that means is also, Timothy, I want you to give constant attention to the text that is read. Make it your focus.

Fix your gaze upon the text of the Bible. Make that your obsession. Give constant attention to The scriptures. There are churches that unfortunately don't do this.

I've mentioned to you guys before that occasionally we'll get phone calls from people wanting to know about Cornerstone and they're coming from other church experiences and One time I got a phone call from a lady and she was asking some questions about our church and one of the questions she asked was, do you guys use the Bible at your church? And I was like, yeah, why, why would you ask that? Doesn't every church? and she says not the one I'm coming from.

And so sometimes we can just get naive and just think, well, everyone does this, but not every believer, not every church is giving equal attention to the text of the Bible. They're drawing their wisdom unfortunately from other sources. But as a pastor, Paul is saying, Timothy, the spiritual welfare not only of you but of those that you are called to oversee and minister to is dependent upon you paying constant attention to the text of scripture. Now what does that mean?

We don't have time to linger over all of this, and Mike even covered some of this last week. For us here at Cornerstone, giving constant attention to the reading or to the thing that's read or to the text of the Bible means that we want to give attention to all of the text, not just parts of the text. So all of the text of the Bible is important because it falls from the lips of God. We also want to give attention to all of the texts, not just what we like or happen to agree with.

Throughout history, there are guys like Thomas Jefferson who just got out some scissors and just cut his Bible to pieces and removed anything he disagreed with. The Jesus seminar has combed through the gospels, and 80% of what the gospel accounts say that Christ did and said the Jesus seminar says, Oh, we don't like this, and so they remove it and when they're done they have stripped everything down to where they have a Jesus that is after their own image. And they ignore anything else and say, well, that wasn't a part of the original story.

These things didn't really happen.

At Cornerstone, giving attention to the text means that we want to give attention to all of the texts, not just what is inside our unfinished theological systems. None of us are done doing our theology, and as we come to every verse of scripture, we want our theology to be dynamic in the sense that it is being altered and further shaped by every passage that we study. It also means that we want to give attention to the text of the Bible. More so than to the theological deductions that we might want to make from the text of the Bible.

There's nothing wrong with making theological deductions from the text of the Bible. We need to do that. But some people get so enamored with making 1234 levels of logical deductions from the text of the Bible to such a degree that they're now contradicting what's clearly affirmed in other texts. For now they're not even interested in looking at other texts in the Bible.

So we want to, we want to stay low to the text, stay tethered to the text of the Bible, and just stick with what the Bible says and not make any deductions from the text that end up contradicting what is clearly affirmed elsewhere in Scripture. Also, giving attention to the text means that we give attention to the text, patiently laboring over the text to discover everything that's in it. We can read through the Bible and say, oh, here's some neat truths that I found in this chapter or in this verse, or we can say, what, I'm going to spend the next 30 minutes or hour just staring at this and breaking it open and seeing everything.

God, give me eyes to see everything that's in this passage of Scripture.

And I don't know about you. I think many of you could testify to this, that some of the most helpful insights that you gain from the text of the Bible, they didn't come in the first one minute of looking at the text, right? You see what I'm saying? But after 30 minutes or an hour, sometimes after years, That upon reading a passage of the Bible for the 100th time, suddenly you see something that you did not see before and it's a good thing you didn't stop giving attention to the text after the 99th reading.

Amen. But instead you So as pastors, we want to do that and not just be content to throw out one or two truths from a verse of the Bible, but to give diligent attention to try to see as much as we can that God would want to give to us from every text of, of scripture. And then lastly we want to give attention to the text rather than to other voices. For us, giving attention to the text of the Bible means turning a deaf ear to the other voices that are clamoring for our attention.

We have to turn away from other voices in order to give due diligence and our attentiveness to the text. Of the Bible and we want to be very careful about that as as a church. Listen to what it says in Proverbs 1. It says, wisdom shouts in the street.

She lifts her voice in the square at the head of the noisy street, she cries out. In other words, here's wisdom speaking, but it's in a noisy environment. There's other voices that are clamoring for our attention and for the attention of our children. But wisdom speaks and so to hear wisdom, you have to turn a deaf ear to the other noises that are out there and tune your ear to wisdom and give attention.

You have to say the only thing I really care about is what does God say to me. If you go through First Timothy, just this book alone, you see this word give attention a handful of times, and there's other things that even Paul identifies in this letter alone that people Give attention to. In chapter 1 verse 4, he says to Timothy, you need to teach certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God.

So there are some people that are really caught up in myths and fables.

And genealogies and these, these yarns that are spun from these Jewish genealogies back in Paul's day and there were people that Timothy was dealing with who were like totally caught up in this stuff. And not only that, but they're wanting Timothy to get caught up in this stuff. Timothy, man, you've got to, you've got to use this in your preaching, man. Listen to this story and look what you can do with this story.

And Paul is like, No, Timothy, I want you to give attention to the text of the Bible. To the scriptures, to what is written. You wouldn't pick this up in the English translation, but in chapter 3, verse 8, we have this word again. He says in verse 8 of chapter 3, Deacons likewise must be men of dignity, not double-tongued, nor addicted to much wine, and that word addicted is the same word that's translated give attention.

In other words, deacons cannot, cannot be people who are turned towards and bring themselves to and have an eye towards much wine, to where that's their go to drug whenever they are stressed or bored. or depressed. Or need comfort that much wine is their solution. It's what they run to.

You can even translate the end of verse eight in this way that a deacon should not be paying attention to much wine or sordid game. In other words, that's another thing that people can pay attention to not only much wine or drugs, but also base financial gain. And Paul has to warn Timothy about that. There are people that they take their eyes off the prize and off of the scripture and off of God and off the gospel because they are not so much following false doctrine, but they're following the almighty dollar.

They're chasing. Money and they chase that money to their own destruction. Chapter 4, verse 1, Paul says the spirit explicitly explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits, doctrines of demons by means of the hypocrisy of liars who are seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron. So just reading First Timothy alone, we see that we get an idea of what some of the noise was the Timothy was or that was vying for his attention and the attention of those he ministered to myths and genealogies, addiction to wine, base financial gain, deceitful spirits, doctrines or teachings of demons that come ultimately from demonic sources but are being channeled through lying men who are hypocrites and have seared consciences.

And Paul is saying, Timothy, you need to turn away from all of that and pay attention, pay constant attention to the scripture and to the practice or the discipline of reading that scripture to yourself and to God's people whenever you gather together in community with one another. That cornerstone giving attention to the text of the Bible means focusing on what the scripture says. And ignoring what other voices might have to say to us. what, there's a lot of noise in our day, is there not?

Things that are vying for our attention, that promise us wisdom or entertainment, that take our eyes off of giving attention to The text of the Bible. I remember a number of years ago I never saw this, never watched this show, but I read about a certain dialogue in this particular television series. in a, in a magazine and what, what happened and it was a very popular series, and the, one of the, the gal characters in the series had a boyfriend and they were getting very involved physically and they were starting to talk about Having sex together even though they were not married, but this girl is having some qualms about whether she should do that or not and is this the right time or not.

So she actually on this totally secular pagan Hollywood made television series, she goes to her pastor for counsel.

And she explains the situation and her ethical dilemma. And it's like, I, I, I don't know what to do. should I, should I do this with my boyfriend or not? And listen to the dialogue, Listen to what this pastor says to her.

He says, what does your heart tell you? She laughed and said, it's not my heart I'm worried about. Pastor then said, well, why don't you just pray about it? I'm sure you'll make the right decision.

And whatever you decide, just know that God loves you. Can, can I ask a favor of you guys? Can I? If, if you ever come to me for counsel regarding anything like this, and if, if that's the counsel I give you, fire me, OK?

I would have no business in the ministry. This, this girl in this episode comes to him with a major moral dilemma that God speaks volumes about, and he points her instead to her heart. That is the message that is so prevalent in our culture today. We have people that instead of listening to God's word and reading the text of the Bible which has come from God, they are looking inside of themselves, and they, they believe that there's a treasure.

Prove of wisdom inside their own hearts and minds, and they're trying to figure out ways to plumb the depths of that insight that is inside of them. That is actually the motivation why some people are really into drugs. Aldous Huxley, who I think died in 1963, was an intellectual who had intellectual purposes and And the use of drugs that it wasn't just an escape but it was a way to go deep into the truth and his philosophy was this he said we should give healthy people drugs and they can then find truth inside their own heads.

That through the medium of drugs it enables you to go deep inside yourself and gain insight, find wisdom and insight that cannot be gained through any other means.

That philosophy again is it's telling people to go into their hearts, to go into their minds. That's where they find the wisdom and insight. That's what people in our culture are giving attention to rather than giving attention to the word of God. There's some, even in pulpits across this land who actually would claim to have some degree of respect for the Bible and they would even, in their minds try to treat it fairly, but they don't, they don't listen to what the Bible says.

They don't view the Bible as their authority. In fact, 11 pastor I was reading a number of years ago, He, he was having, there was this forum on homosexuality and there were people in this forum who were saying, well, the Bible doesn't really say it's wrong, and they were twisting the scriptures to, to defend their pro homosexuality position, this guy gets up, the Reverend James Young, and he basically said, Come on guys, let's just be honest. There's no way around it. The text of the Bible clearly condemns homosexual behavior, so let's just Let's just get that out of the way up front.

The Bible is clear homosexual behavior is wrong. But then he said this after acknowledging what the Bible teaches. However, he said there are times when reason and experience overrule scripture. This is a pastor who claims to speak for God, who would actually probably do a decent job of expositing passages of scripture on this particular subject, but then he would say, however, our reason and our experience contradict and therefore overrule what the Bible says.

I was reading some time ago a particular denomination has what they call a quadrilateral of authority. which is scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, and their view of authority is it's not enough for the scripture to say something. It also needs to conform to tradition. It needs to conform to our reason.

It needs to conform to our experience or our interpretation of experience. If those four things line up, then it has authority. But if the scripture alone says it, but our reason doesn't agree with it, then it has no authority. So that's, that's some of the mindset that's out there.

We've got people that have their ears attuned to other things other than the living, vibrant word of God. This past week, our president was honored by his winning of the Nobel Peace Prize, and there's a lot of opinions out there about whether he should have gotten it or not, and I am not going to weigh in on that, OK? but I want a more comment on the The thinking of the committee and the philosophy that they chose to include in their explanation for why they gave him the award, they say this.

They say his diplomacy is founded in the concept.

All right, so let's, let's now lead Barack Obama. All right, and now let's just go inside the minds of the people on this committee. Because this is what they highly value. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.

So in their reasoning, if you want to be a leader, highly esteemed and respected, you need to have your ear tuned to The majority opinion of people in the world's population. When I read that, I was like, really? Really? Barack Obama would not even be president of the United States today were it not for courageous men and women who took a stand against the majority opinion, and they fought against the majority opinion.

There was a day when the institution of black slavery was the majority opinion, and there were courageous men and women who took a stand against that, and they moved the nation in the right direction. Even after slavery was abolished. The majority opinion in our country was that segregation, racism, was acceptable. Separate restaurants for black and white, separate water fountains and restrooms that the majority opinion was that's OK.

That's OK. But there were brave men and women who took a stand against the majority opinion because they were appealing to a higher authority than what the majority believed. And again they moved a nation in the right direction. And Barack Obama is one of the beneficiaries of that.

What we need in the world today are not people who stick their finger in the wind to see which way the winds are blowing. But their ear is attuned to the God of heaven, and they care only about what He says. And if God says something and the majority opinion says something else, then who cares? We're going to side with God because God makes a majority.

We need pastors and pulpits who care about nothing other than what does God say in His word, and we don't really care what anyone else says because God makes a majority. Do you believe that? Do you believe God makes a majority? think about it.

In our universe is a tiny little speck called the Milky Way Galaxy. In that tiny speck is a smaller speck called our sun, and around our sun is a tiny speck called planet Earth. And on planet Earth are tiny little specks called you and I and all of the billions of people on the planet, and they all come together and they have a majority opinion. So put that over here.

Then there is the God of heaven who measured the universe with the span of His hand. That's how big God is. The heavens of the heavens of the heavens cannot even contain this God, and he weighs in and gives his opinion. Who are you going to side with?

You can take all the population of the world and fit them comfortably in a standing position inside the city limits of Jacksonville, Florida. Who cares what the majority opinion is? We have a God who created everything that is and who is massive and who is big, and we as Christians and any pastor that is truly called by God to serve God's people should care only about what God has to say. But there are people listening to other voices.

This is a burden. To us, people sitting in churches that are listening to other voices. Some of you are too young to remember the Reverend Jim Jones. Back in 1978, he instructed his followers who were professing Christians and he was a Christian preacher.

To drink poisonous Kool-Aid, and over 900 of them said, OK, if that's what you want us to do, we'll do that and we'll die because you tell us to do that. Jim Jones was not always that way, and his followers were not always that way. You have to follow me carefully here. When I was in college, we had chapel services and there was one chapel message that just riveted all of us.

The guy who was speaking, follow me. was married to a lady who used to date Jim Jones. OK, you got that? And so she knew a lot about him, and his ministry early on.

And what the speaker was telling us was that Jim Jones early in his ministry was quite fundamental, evangelical, fit into the mainstream of, of Christianity, was, was actually thought highly of by even people in authority, was doing some good things, saying good things in his messages. But there was a point the speaker was telling us where he, there was a turning point and there was a service where he was up front preaching. He had his Bible and he was talking to the people, and as he looked out over the congregation, all he saw was the tops of their heads because all of them were staring at their Bibles.

And that bugged him.

And he grabbed his Bible from off the pulpit and he hurled it across the room. And then rebuked his people and told them, You need to stop staring at that book and look at me. And what? They did what he said.

They stopped looking at the Bible. They stopped giving attention to the text and started giving attention to him, and one thing led to another until he was saying, Drink this poisonous Kool-Aid and die. And they drank the poisonous Kool-Aid and they died. How does that happen?

It happens because even God's people stop giving attention to the text of the Bible. I would challenge you guys that even when Carlos, Mike, and I, or anyone else who's up here preaching, we like to see the tops of your heads, OK? Some of you have more hair than others, but we It's OK. We like seeing that because it is a noble thing when we are up here preaching to see you searching the scriptures yourself to see if what we're saying is indeed so.

It's critical for us to give attention to the text of the Bible. We want you to do the same thing as well. That's the only way we're going to be protected from destruction. That we're going to be a spiritually healthy church making an impact that God wants us to make.

And Paul is saying, Timothy, your salvation, the salvation of those that you minister to, depends upon you as a pastor paying attention to the practice of reading the scripture and to the text of scripture that you read and giving perpetual constant attention to the text of the Bible. That's 1 point out of 4, and we're let's, these will go fast, OK. A second thing that Timothy is to be giving attention to as a pastor is to the practice of the preaching of the text of the Bible to others.

Give attention, he says, to the public reading of Scripture.

2, exhortation. Mike opened this up for us beautifully. Exhortation speaks of preaching. Counsel, help, encouragement, comfort, challenge.

This word is used in all these ways, meaning it, it includes especially what someone does behind a pulpit like I'm doing now, but it also includes all of those settings, even one on one, where a pastor is delivering encouragement or comfort and help or challenge to the people. Of God, and he's telling Timothy as a pastor, I want you giving constant attention to this aspect of your ministry of preaching and exhorting God's people from the text of the Bible. Don't let anything distract you away from making this a fundamental priority in your life and in your ministry.

There is a third thing that he tells Timothy to give constant attention to, and that is to the practice of teaching the text of the Bible to others.

And this teaching that he's talking about at the end of verse 13 is more like explaining to people what the text of the Bible is saying, what it means by what it says, doctrinal truths that We can wrap our hearts around as a result of what the Bible itself says, teaching largely informs the mind. A mindless church in a doctrinal sense will eventually become a spineless church. a pastor whose ministry is mindless in the sense that he's not instructing the mind in sound doctrine is a spineless ministry.

He's a spineless pastor.

We need to be built solid on sound doctrine that emerges directly from the text of the Bible and as pastors, you need your, your salvation is partly influenced by having pastors who give. Attention to the scripture and to preaching that to you and teaching that to you. The salvation of your pastors and of you is partly influenced by them doing this. Paul in 2 Timothy 4:2 tells Timothy, preach the word, be ready in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and teaching.

he says, Timothy, I want you to constantly give attention to these things, to the scripture, to the preaching of it, the teaching of it, and that's present tense. So I want you to do this continuously. It's easy for some to like be faithful, man, I'm teaching, I'm preaching the word of God, but I'm not seeing the changes that I want to see. And so then some seminar comes into town and they're saying, hey, check out this.

It has nothing to do with the gospel, and they're like, Oh man, that's what I need. I'll start teaching and preaching that. Paul saying to Timothy, No, no, keep, stick with the preaching of God's word, the teaching of God's word. Do it with great patience, alright?

It's not going to happen overnight. You're not going to see radical changes instantly in the life of every person. It's a slow process many times as theological. Connections are made in the lives of people and then their lives and their marriages can begin to change.

You need to be willing to slug it out with them step by step and to be preaching and teaching the text of the Bible with great patience over a period of time. And don't stop doing this. By the way, the teaching that he refers to, he says to the exhortation literally and to the teaching is what he says, what is the teaching? What is the core of the teaching?

It's the gospel. It's the gospel. Back in 1 Timothy 1 at the very end of verse 10, he speaks of sound teaching, and then he says, which is according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God. Sound doctrinal teaching is at its core gospel teaching and then teaching doctrine, beliefs, practices that emerge from those gospel truths.

of Christ and his work on the cross. Timothy be giving constant attention to these things. Then going down to verse 16. He says, be continuously paying close attention to yourself and literally to the teaching.

And we've already talked about the teaching. So all we're going to focus on here is the 4th thing Timothy must give constant attention to, and that is himself, himself, Timothy, pay attention to God's word, pay attention to your ministry of preaching God's word and to your ministry of teaching God's word. Timothy, also pay attention to yourself. In saying that, what he's saying is, Timothy, I want you to be focused on your personal need to believe and practice.

What you read, preach and teach to other people. Don't bypass yourself and focus on other people and give them the truth and call them to believe in the truth and to obey God's word. You first apply it to yourself. Give attention to yourself and your issues of sin in your own life, areas where growth is needed, areas where your knowledge is not complete, and as you study God's word, your thought is to Feed and nourish your own soul, to educate yourself and to see your own life being transformed by the teaching of the Bible.

Let your life be molded and shaped, and your theology molded and shaped as you are in the text of the Bible. And then you go to God's people, as you're doing that and deliver. That truth to them. Some people have said to us, like, Man, it must be nice being a pastor.

You can just sit around and study the word. And I'll just respond to that briefly by saying, you'd be amazed at how many other things end up vying for our attention, even good things that can leave us with less time to do that than we would like. But then secondly, even when we do that, It is so easy to go to God's word and study it in order to teach it. Not study it for our own benefit.

In fact, Charles Spurgeon was in his lectures to my students. He was speaking to some men that he was training for ministry, and he warns them of a number of dangers that people in the ministry encounter and of all the dangers, he says the biggest danger is ministerialism. OK. How many of you have ever heard that word?

I never did until I read this ministerialism. Here's how he describes it. It is to read our Bibles as ministers, to pray as ministers, to get into doing the whole of our religion simply as ministers and not for ourselves personally, where that, that whole step is bypassed and we preach truth to other people that we ourselves are not believing. We are preaching practices, godly practices to other people that we ourselves are not practicing.

It's easy for us as parents to teach our children truth that we ourselves are not believing. To teach them practices that we ourselves are not practicing. And Paul says, Timothy, you give attention to yourself. God wants a clean vessel through which his gospel will pass.

If you're a pipe that is full of rust and lead and all manner of corruption because you're not giving attention to yourself, then even when God's pure gospel passes through you to other people, it gets corrupted by it. And God's people are now getting water that is tainted. And not pure because of you, the vessel through which it passes. We must be careful to preach God's truth to others, but as we do so, and as we study God's word that we give attention to ourselves.

Let me close with this, give you the example of Ezra. The scribe in the Old Testament. Look at what he purposed in his heart to do. It says the good hand of his God was upon him.

Verse 9, and then the next verse, because Ezra had set his heart to do three things. Number 1, to study the law of the Lord. Number 2, to practice the law of the Lord. And number 3, to teach his statutes.

And ordinances in Israel. You see the order there? I want to study God's word. I want to practice God's word, and I want to teach God's word to other people, not I want to study it and then teach it.

I want to study it, practice it, and teach it. That's what Paul is calling on Timothy to do and he's telling Timothy, your salvation and the salvation of those you minister to is heavily influenced. By your Decision to pay attention constantly to these things. Let me ask you to bow your heads.

I hope that as you hear These things that you will have a healthy concern for your pastors. And be motivated to pray diligently for them. We need your prayers. but also you are pastors in various ways.

Any, any one of you in this room that's a parent of children? That's a husband to a wife, that is a Sunday school teacher, ministry leader, or you're involved in anything in any way, shape or form wherein you are seeking to influence other people for Christ. This applies to you also. So let us take this challenge to heart and be a people that are alive to the book.

We are alive to God's word because we love Him. We cherish every word that falls from his lips, and we want to give ourselves to teaching it, speaking it to others, applying it to our own lives. To where we are teaching not only by the words we speak, but by the example we set. Let's commit ourselves to do that.

We're going to take up an offering here in just a moment. We would encourage you to give as God leads you to give as a part of your worship to Him. And let's pray and ask God's blessing on, His word and this offering. Lord, we thank you for your word, how it speaks to us.

There's so much here just in these verses, not to speak of the others. Lord, we have so much to learn. We have so many ways that we fall short of, of giving due attention to these things. So can you grow us, Lord, by your grace?

That we would be alive to you and to your words and that the pastors of this church would be the same. Because the stakes are high, our salvation. is impacted By our faithfulness in this area. Help us to do this, that our church culture would be impacted by it and hence we could make an impact to the world and have a message from the God of heaven to give to the world.

We thank you for the opportunity to give to you this morning, Lord. What a privilege this is. Receive what we give, along with our hearts that we give in Jesus' name. And all God's people said,