That You Keep The Commandment

This morning, we're going to be continuing our study of 1 Timothy chapter 6. Last week, we focused on Paul's instruction to Timothy to fight the good fight. What did it mean for him to fight the good fight? We learned that we needed to be doing battle daily with our sins. That if we're not daily making progress against our own temptations and our own lusts, that we're going to be losing ground. We are in a battle. We don't have the option of saying, I'm not going to fight. If you're on a battlefield, as we saw last week, and you refuse to fight, the only choices for you are either death or capture. And so God calls us to fight that we might win. And so if we lose the fight, we don't only lose the battle. We also saw that we lose our souls, that there's a danger that comes not just to our physical bodies, but to our souls. As the hymn, the old hymn, Am I a Soldier of the Cross, says, and we sung last week, sure, I must fight if I would reign. And so we see that our lives as Christians are lives of battle. In this week's passage,

Paul charges Timothy with something very similar. He tells him that he is to keep the commandment. This week we're going to learn what that commandment is and why it was so important and is imperative for Timothy and for us to keep the commandments of God. Would you please stand now for the reading of God's word? In 1 Timothy chapter 6, verses 13 to 16. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the proper time. He who is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion.

Amen. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Isn't that fun? Maybe we'll have a sermon series on all the benedictions so we can... Amen, amen. This is the word of the Lord. The word of the Lord. How many of you realize that it wasn't time for you to say amen? None of you? That's good. I'm glad you said amen. I wish you'd say amen more often and more loudly. So Paul's... Our text this morning starts out with Paul charging Timothy. Now, what is a charge? It's not something that we think about much these days. We've got a wedding coming up, and I typically, in wedding ceremonies, will have a charge, which is different than the sermon. You'll have a sermon. If I do your wedding, you're probably going to get a similar sermon to the ones that have come before you on the purposes of marriage. And then at the end, there's going to be a charge for both the groom

And the bride. And what is the charge? Well, the charge is a command or a requirement. It's something very personal and very directed to the person that's receiving it. It's not general. It's specific. And as I said, it's an order or a command. I require of you that you do this thing. We should note at the very beginning that when Paul is teaching Timothy, he doesn't encourage him. He doesn't suggest to him. He doesn't wonder if maybe Timothy should consider. He charges him. Timothy, do this. He tells Timothy what to do. Now, of course, Timothy could disregard what Paul's about to tell him to do. He could say, I'm not going to do that. But there's no ambiguity about what Paul is doing. He's telling him, I demand that you do this thing. It is of the utmost importance that this thing be done. I'm not suggesting it to you. I'm not submitting it to your consideration. I'm telling you what to do. Do this thing.

And it would be appropriate in our lives that when we have people tell us what to do, whether those be our parents or our bosses or police officers or our pastors and elders, that we listen to them, that we do what they say. Those who are in authority, as Paul is over Timothy in this letter, have a responsibility to Timothy. Paul has a responsibility to Timothy, and that's why he charges them. That's why he speaks the way he does. And those who have that similar authority in our lives, we ought to give. heed to their word. We ought to listen to them. We ought to pay attention, and we ought to obey them, the same way that Timothy ought to obey Paul here. And so Paul says, I charge you, and then he calls in witnesses. He calls in witnesses. So this is not a private conversation. This is not me taking John off to the side and saying, hey, John, there's something that's very important for you to do. It's as if I would call John up here in the front of all of you and say, I want all of you to—no, you don't have to come up.

I'm going to tell you to do something, and I want you to see all of these people hear it so that you have accountability. Now, who does Paul call as witness? Well, he calls God as witness. Now, that's more important and more, that's heavier than you guys being called to witness. We, in many cases, are called to witness things, right? If you have to, if you have to, When you get married, there's a license, a marriage license, and on that marriage license, there's a place for witnesses, people who saw what happened and say, yep, I saw them get married. We have witnesses. Obviously, in a court of law, we have witnesses. That's how you make your case. You say, here's the evidence. Here are the people who saw it. Tell them what you saw. We have witnesses. So Paul here calls God as witness. He says, I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things. And I want you to know that this is something that's commonly done in Scripture, that God is called as a witness between two people when they're making an arrangement or an agreement. When Jacob was with Laban, they called God as witness.

And when you call God as witness, what you're really doing is saying, God, we're calling you down here and we want you to judge between what happens here. We're going to make promises. We're going to make a commitment. And we call you as a witness to determine who's right and who's wrong. If someone breaks the promise, if someone transgresses the covenant, we want you to see it. We want you to judge us for it. So when Paul calls God as witness, he's saying, God, you judge what I'm about to say to him. And if I'm wrong, judge me for it. But if he doesn't do it, judge him for it. That's what it means for him to call God his witness. It's no small thing. That's how important it is that Timothy does what Paul is charging him to do. He has God who gives life to all things, who's given Timothy his life. And having given him this life, he's given him this work, this commandment, this calling. And Paul reminds Timothy, the God who's given you life is witness to this command, that you do it or you don't do it, he's going to see.

Not only does he call God and we presume the Father in the first person, in the second person he calls Jesus Christ and of Jesus Christ who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate. What was Jesus' confession before Pontius Pilate? Did he stand there and did he argue and did he fight back and did he make his case? Well, no, he didn't. It's sort of a strange thing to say that Jesus made a good confession before Pontius Pilate because all he said to Pilate was, you wouldn't have any authority if God hadn't given it to you. And Pilate asks him, are you a king? And he says, yeah, I'm a king, but my kingdom's not of this world. And Pilate says, you're saying you're a king? He says, yeah, it is as you say. I'm a king. And that's all that Jesus said before him. Largely, Scripture describes Jesus' testimony or confession before Pilate as silence. As a sheep before his shearers, he went to the slaughter. He was quiet. He was without a word. So what was Jesus' confession before Pilate? Well, it was his death. That was actually Jesus' confession. There's a reason we're talking about confessions you'll see in a minute.

There's a reason Paul says, and of Jesus Christ, who made the good confession before Jesus Christ. But first we need to establish what Jesus' confession was, his good confession. It wasn't his argument. It wasn't his defense. It was his death. In Philippians 2.8, it says that Jesus was obedient even to the point of death. Obedient to what? What was Jesus being obedient to when he stood before Pilate and didn't speak? What was he being obedient to when he carried his cross out of the city? And when the spikes were driven through his hands and his feet, what was he being obedient to? He was being obedient to the scripture. And more particularly, he was being obedient to the calling that God had placed on his life. And he was faithful to that calling, even unto death. And so you understand that when Paul is telling Timothy, I'm calling Jesus Christ, who made a good confession in the presence of his enemies, even unto death, as witness to the thing I'm saying to you, he's saying to him,

even unto death, as Jesus Christ went before and showed you the way, you have to be faithful. I charge you, the Son of God who came to this world and who bled and who died and who was raised again, who's shown you the path as a minister of the word, he's watching and he's paying attention to you and whether you're going to do the thing, whether you're going to keep the faith, whether you're going to keep the commandment. And so Jesus made his confession in the midst of his enemies, those who had put him to death. He bled and he died. Timothy had also made a good confession. In verse 12, Paul says the same thing of Timothy. He says, fight the good fight just before our passage. Last week we studied this. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. And so Timothy, in some sense, has already made a good confession. What did Timothy confess?

in the presence of many witnesses. Well, he confessed his faith. And he accepted his calling through the laying on of hands when he was set apart. That was when he made his good confession. The thing is, he made his good confession at the beginning of all of his work. And Jesus made his good confession at the end of all of his work. And Paul's calling Timothy, make the good confession you started, carry it on through until it's ended like Jesus. That's why he says, I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Jesus Christ who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate. He's pointing ahead to Timothy and saying, this is the road that you may walk. And if God calls you to walk it, know that you're not the first person to walk a road of difficulty and hardship and sorrow, even a road that leads to death. Be faithful like Jesus was. Make a good confession. And so the lesson to us first is,

We as Christians are making confession of our faith all the time and in every place. You make confession. There's no question or no doubt whether you make confession. And it may be that the only one who sees your confession is the Lord. It may be that you're alone or you're in the privacy of your own home. But you are making confession. Don't believe for a second that you have your own life to live apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. You don't. He sees and knows everything. And you're making confession in the presence of many believers, in the presence of your enemies, at work, at home, online. You're making a confession. And so Paul charges Timothy to make a good confession. And so you make a good confession, a good one. Then he gets to the actual charge. He hasn't charged him yet. He's just told him who's watching. And he's setting the bar. Now, what is the commandment?

Paul doesn't tell us, and do this one thing. He just says, and keep the commandment. And it would be normal for us to ask, well, what's the commandment? What's he supposed to do? The commandment, as Paul's describing it here, is everything that pertains to Timothy's calling. He's been called as a pastor, as a minister. And the commandment is that he be faithful to that calling. And so it's not just one single thing. Many of us, if we could give you one single thing to do and be assured that if you do this one single thing, God will be pleased with you, many of us would be disposed to do it. And we say, I'll do that one thing because then I can have assurance. If I can just do this one thing this one time, even if it's incredibly difficult, I would do it so that I could be assured of God's love and his favor toward me. But that's not what Paul's calling Timothy to. When he tells him to keep the commandment, he's got...

the rest of Timothy's life in view. And he's saying, you have to keep the commandment from now until you die. It's an ongoing thing. And the commandment is all of the stuff that Paul's been writing to Timothy about. Throughout this letter, he's given an extended explanation of what Timothy's job, his responsibilities, the dangers that attend to it. He's described all of that stuff to Timothy. And keeping the commandment means taking heed to everything Paul has said to do it. He's told him that he ought to stay away from foolish and wicked arguments as well as the men that promote them. And not only stay away from them, but sometimes on occasion silence them. Study and show yourself approved so that you can silence those who disregard the gospel, who lead ministry. He teaches him to pray for those who rule over him, that he might lead a quiet and peaceful life. He teaches about men's and women's responsibilities in the church, how to organize the church, what are men supposed to do at church, what are women supposed to do, and why.

There's an extended description of what leadership in the church ought to be like with pastors, with elders, and with deacons, and with their wives. What kind of people do you want leading the church? He warns them not to let his age be an excuse. Don't let the people look down on you because you're young. Show yourself an example. Show them what a Christian life looks like. Don't just tell them, show them. Take care of the widows. Make sure that they don't fall into temptation. Keep yourself free of the love of money. Don't show partiality to the rich or to the poor, to the slaves. Teach the slaves to be content. This is all the commandment. This is the work that Timothy's been given to and called to. And so it's not one simple little thing that he's supposed to do. Paul's saying, take heed to the ministry that you've been given. Fulfill all of that stuff and do it continually. And each of us, like Timothy, have callings on our lives.

And the callings that are placed on our lives are not one simple little thing. Do this one thing and you're going to be fine. No, the callings that God places on our lives reach back into every corner and every crevice of our lives. And God's calling exists there. What does it mean to be a husband? Well, to take care and to provide for my wife. It's true. What else does it mean? Is there any part of your life, if you're a husband, that God hasn't placed a calling on you? Is there any place where you're free of the responsibilities of being a husband or a father? There's not. Is there any time of day or week where you're free from these responsibilities? There's not. What are the responsibilities of a mother? What are they supposed to do? Well, they're supposed to feed and clothe their children and make sure that they're cared for. Yes. And how much of their lives will it take for them to do that? It'll take all of their life and all of their time.

We could go through our jobs and our lives, each one of us, and say, what is it that God has called me to? Your job is to figure out and to know what has God called me to? What can I discern looking at my life and where God has placed me? What calling has he placed on my life? And what does it mean for me to make good confession in that calling as a husband or as a father, as a son or as a daughter, as a child, as an employee, as an employer, as a grandparent? Make good confession. Keep the commandment. Do all the things that attend those callings. That's what Paul is calling Timothy to, and that's what he's calling us to. If you ever think as a husband or a father, I don't have to do that. Are you so sure you don't? More likely, I don't have to do that really means I don't want to do that, or I don't think I should have to do that. I don't think that that should be required of me, and yet it is. What do you do with a sick child? You take care of them until they get better.

At great inconvenience and cost to yourself. My daughter's teething in case you guys can't hear her up here. And so each of us have callings on our lives. And there's no place in our lives where we can escape them. We can be unfaithful to them. We can try to escape the callings God placed on our lives by shirking them and pushing them off and burying them and thinking, I'll do it later. But that's not to make a good confession. That's not to keep the commandment. You know in your workplace you have bosses. And you have the bosses that you interact with every day, and then there's the bosses that show up unannounced. And those are the bosses that you really worry about because if they find things that are out of place, then bad things happen, right? Like the boss you deal with every day, well, he knows, and he's got a reason, and you've come up with a way of doing life. But if you're out on a construction job site and OSHA shows up, well, you don't have the relationship with them that you do with your boss.

And trouble can come. When I worked for that tree company right out of high school, we did everything. And I know some of you are familiar with OSHA. Some of you may not know what OSHA is, but their job is basically to frustrate the lives of construction workers. Apparently you guys do know who OSHA is. Well, we were in a very dangerous industry. The only industry that had more people die every year than tree working, which includes logging, is oil work, guys who work in oil refineries and stuff. So it was a dangerous industry. It was our job to do everything OSHA required, which was very difficult to be productive and to get things done. It's very difficult. You can only walk halfway up a ladder, for instance. But it was our company's prerogative to do everything that OSHA said. And when we got visited by OSHA, we made a good confession. They couldn't find anything wrong with anything we had done, and it wasn't for lack of trying to find it. And we did it not knowing when they would come.

And that's the way it is for us when we make good confession. We're wired and we're inclined to do the right thing when people are watching. When we judge that there's a cost to disobeying or to not doing what is required of us. We're always running this math in our heads thinking, will it matter? Does God see? How much do I care? Is a good confession worth it? Is keeping the commandment what I'm about? Or am I just about... doing it when people are watching, when I think that the cost may be higher of getting caught. That's not making a good confession. That's not keeping the commandment. That's hypocrisy. And that's not how Christians ought to live. However you speak and however you act at church ought to be the way that you speak and you act throughout all of your life. As kind and as patient as you are with your children here because other people are watching, that's how kind and patient you should be with your kids all the time. And I say those things because I know that there's this public life and private life.

and it ought not to be that way because God sees both our public and our private life, and there ought to be consistency between them. That's what it means to make a good confession. That's what it means to keep the commandment. If Timothy only cared to do the things that Paul laid out for him because he heard that Paul was coming, he'd be unfaithful. He would not have, as Paul says, kept the commandment without stain or reproach. The commandment would have been covered with his failures. Now is it possible for Timothy to do it perfectly, to keep the commandment without stain or reproach, to do everything right? And of course we know, no, it's not the case. No matter how hard you try as a husband or a father or a mother or a wife or a child or a student or wherever station you find yourselves in, you know you can't do everything right. You just can't. And if you're honest, you look around each day and you go, look at all the work I left undone. Look at the things I didn't do. Look at what I should have done. If we take account of our lives, we say,

I haven't kept the commandment without stain or reproach, and yet that is the goal. And we should never argue and reason in our minds and in our hearts that since we can't do it perfectly, we shouldn't try to do it at all. That's wicked and corrupt logic, and it leads to hell. Do you think Paul doesn't know that Timothy's a sinner? Why does Timothy need all of this instruction? Why does he need all of this encouragement? Why does he need to be quickened by saying, with God as witness, you do the work that God's given you to do? Because he was not a perfect man and he was going to need to be disciplined and instructed in his responsibilities and his duties to the Lord. So do we. And the instruction is, keep the commandment without stain or without reproach. So much as you're able, without stain or reproach. You and I, we represent Jesus Christ in everything that we do. And so everything that we do ought to be done giving testimony and a good confession to our faith in Jesus Christ.

So whether we're celebrating Christmas or whether we're wearing face masks or whether we're driving in traffic and no one's in the car with us, we ought to keep the commandment without stain or reproach because God is watching and does see. He tells us that we're to do this until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is to say you can't step out of the callings that God's placed on your life when they become hard or boring or challenging or pointless. You can't quit when you become weary or angry or scared or worried. Which one of us thinks that we can stand before God and say, well, I was scared. That's why I was unfaithful. You remember last week I told you guys about, what was his name? Thomas Cranmer. I was thinking of the other guys. And he was the one who recanted all of his writings because he thought he would save his life. And then he got put to death anyway.

Mary Tudor put him to death anyway. And at the very end when he was speaking, he said, I was wrong and I repented because I recanted all of what I believed to be true in an effort to save my life. And you know what I think? I think God was kind to Thomas Cranmer to put him to death because it led him to repentance. And I don't know that he would have repented if his life hadn't been taken from him. And we'd all like to think that we would repent without discipline, but the truth is we don't. We're all quick to step out of our responsibilities and out of our burdens when they get hard or we get weary. And it is true that they are hard, and it is true that we get weary. But we're to be faithful in them, whatever kind of fools we look like to the world, until the Lord Jesus returns, until his appearing, until we go to meet with him.

We accept by faith and believe with our whole hearts that when that day comes and all of the sufferings and all of the burdens and all of the weariness and all of the exhaustion, may it be said of us that that's the condition we'll be found in when we go to see Jesus Christ, that we won't have saved up and stored up all of our energy and all of our resource for heaven, that rather we'd be poured out like Paul says, like a drink offering, that when we go to be with Jesus, we'll be ready to rest because we will have done our work. We're to do that work until the Lord Jesus appears. Not in fits and starts, not when it's easy, not when people are looking. Steady until he appears. You'll remember that the virgins, the parable of the virgins that Jesus told, half of them thought, we don't need to prepare. Or preparing is not as important to me as it is to others. And then when the bridegroom came, what was the calamity? Well, we have no oil for our lamps.

Why don't you give us some of your oil? And the virgins who had prepared rightly said, that's your problem. That's not exactly what they said, but that's what they said. They said, if we give you our oil, then we won't have any of our own. And what they were testifying to was each man will be judged according to his deeds, according to the works that he's done. We've done our work. We've made good confession. We've kept the commandment. It's not even in our ability to give to you what you haven't done. And so our faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ is something that is supposed to be from now until we stand before him and until we meet him. And the trajectory of our lives should be straight in the direction of greater obedience and holiness to him. And I say that having you guys, I'm looking at your faces and you're all being like, I can't do that. And you're all depressed and discouraged. And you shouldn't be.

Because I'm not telling you to do it in your own strength. You can't do it in your own strength. Paul's not telling Timothy to do it in his own strength. He comes after this and he encourages him with what should encourage us. How much more can you be patient? How much more can you be gracious? How many more times can you forgive? Wouldn't it be better if you didn't have to do that anymore? Wouldn't it be better if Jesus would just return and be done with it? Make you perfect. He'll come when? At the proper time. Jesus will come back at his proper time. You'll be made perfect at the proper time. And so the burdens that you bear and the trials that you endure will come to an end at the proper time. And God's the one who determines that proper time, not us. Think of it this way. When do pregnant women get antsy about their pregnancy? Third trimester.

In case you don't know, it's the third trimester. And the closer they start counting in weeks, and they start out, and they're like, oh, my baby's this big, and it's this big, and they put little things up, and they're all excited. Now, why do they do that at the beginning but not at the end? Why don't they care when their baby's the size of a cantaloupe? Well, it's because they know that the time is coming, and they're patient at the beginning when they know it's not time yet. Are they uncomfortable in the first trimester? Yes. The answer is yes. So why are they more impatient in the third trimester than in the first trimester? I would submit to you that it's simply because they know that the first trimester is not the end of the thing. And so they're patient because they know they've got six to nine more months of this, depending on where they're at. But let it come to the end of the pregnancy, and they're counting the days, and they're counting the minutes, and I'm 38 weeks and four days long, and they have all these things. Why? Because they're impatient.

And what do they want to know more than anything? When's the baby going to come? Sometimes you do know when the baby's going to come. But I'd submit to you that not knowing when the baby's going to come is good for your soul. Because it makes you trust God and wait on him. And there's a good spiritual lesson in there, the same one that Paul is trying to teach Timothy. Keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the proper time. And you say, but it hurts and I'm scared and I'm worried and I don't know how it's all going to end up and what if and what if and what if? And I say, aren't these the difficulties of our lives? The unknowns. What's going to happen if I do this? How's it all going to end up? Won't it all just fall apart? God will bring about our perfection and our deliverance from all of the burdens that we carry at the proper time. And so we have to trust God with his timing. And if we're willing to wait during pregnancy and go, you know,

it's not time to have a baby yet, then we ought to wait in this life saying, it's not time for me to be delivered from these things yet. God will deliver me from them in his time. So God knows our weakness and Paul does too. And so he reminds Timothy and us of Jesus' power and his authority over all things. He describes him as being the blessed and only sovereign, the king of kings and the Lord of lords. I think too often in our trials and the burdens that we bear in our lives and the hardships that we endure, in the places that God's called us. We think God is disinterested. He's abandoned us. He's left us. He doesn't care. Or he's not powerful enough to change it. Either he's unwilling or unable. In some way or another, these are the things that plague us. Why do I have to suffer the way that I do? And we teeter on the edge of despair because we don't know where to turn. Paul reminds us that Jesus is blessed.

and he's the only sovereign. Now, what does it mean for him to be sovereign? Well, it means for him to be over all things. Paul describes it as being the king of kings and the lord of lords. To you, I would say, he's the president of presidents and the governor of governors. The things that you get frustrated about and up in arms about and worry about, don't live as though Jesus isn't perfectly in control and over all of those things. So much of our lives and the things that we see around us are people trying to throw off God's yoke. He's placed callings on our lives, whether I'm talking about you and me and its husband and wife, or whether it's civil rulers. He's placed callings on their lives, and with those callings come commandments to keep. And it's often, whether we're speaking of ourselves or whether we're talking about kings and rulers, presidents and governors, it's typical for us to think that we can do what we want without consequence. And we chafe hard when we think that's what others are doing. When we see injustice and we go,

How's that going to be made right? Well, it's going to be made right by the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Those who try to throw off God's yoke will never be successful in doing it, no matter what our eyes tell us. Jesus Christ is King of all creation. And of every man and every woman and every child and every ruler and every president and every governor and every lawyer and every judge and every police officer and every mayor and every health department. He's blessed and the only sovereign over all of those things. And all of them, whether they accept it or reject it with every fiber of their being, will be subject to Jesus Christ and will give an account for the things that they do and the things that they do well and the things they do poorly. They can't throw it off. And it's in every one of our natures to want to throw off God's sovereignty and his lordship over our life. We very much would like to be our own lords.

We think, well, if I was the Lord, I would do it better. And I'd say the problem is that you think like that. If I were the Lord, I would do it better. Just as a small example, it's interesting, it's fun to me, I chuckle in my head, I know Dan does too, when we see young people be frustrated with other people's young children. And they get this look on their face like, and I laugh, I just laugh, I just go, your day's coming. I hope your day's coming. Because you know better. You think you know better. You'll do it all better. And we'll see. But I suspect that in a couple of years you won't be looking at your neighbors going, you may go to them and say, that's not a good thing and I think you should do something about it, but I know it's hard. But you need to do it. Keep the commandment and all that. Be faithful, mom, dad. But that sort of scoffing is in all of our hearts. And we despise it in other people, but we cultivate it in ourselves. And Jesus is king of all of it.

And we're all accountable to him. And whatever we think we can do to get free from him is futile. When the men gathered together and decided they wanted to build a tower up to heaven so that they could displace God and become like him, God said, nope. And he confused their languages. I mean, honestly, who could have thought to do that? I mean, you'd think he'd send a storm or a natural disaster or some sort of a calamity to destroy the tower or kill all the people. And all he does is confuse their languages so that they look stupid. And he looks wise. And so there's all kinds of things that go on in our society and go on around us. We tear down statues and we remove prayer from school and the Ten Commandments from public monuments. And I would tell you that all of the work that sinful men do to erase the sovereignty of God in this world It's all for naught. They don't reduce it in the least bit. So that should strengthen us and it should warn us. Jesus Christ is king over all things and all the injustices that Timothy would see and all the failures that he would perpetrate himself and all the suffering that he would endure. Jesus Christ will make a reckoning and straighten all that out in his time, at the proper time.

Because he's the king of kings and lord of lords, and there's no man, there's no woman, there's no institution, there's no country that can free themselves from his lordship. Paul also tells us that he, Jesus Christ, he alone possesses immortality. What is the pursuit of immortality? It's the pursuit of life, right? Life forever, that's what immortality means. So why do we pursue it? Why is it important to us? Well, because death is the other option, and we don't want that. And so Paul tells Timothy, if you want life, remember that God, who gives life to all things, the only immortal one, this is the only source, the only place that you can go to find immortality. Eve thought that life would come through eating the fruit. She was wrong. And we replicate her failure and Adam's failure every day in our lives, thinking that life will come from some other place. Adam and Eve had immortality. They traded it for death.

And they traded life for death in the pursuit of what? Life. Sort of backwards, isn't it? And yet this is what we do. We try to avoid death thinking we're pursuing life when what we're doing is getting rid of life and taking hold of death. So Paul tells Timothy, Jesus Christ alone possesses immortality. No makeup, no surgery, no diets, no laws are going to give you life. No amount of money will bring you life. The Apostle John, at the very end of his gospel, Says this, he says, therefore, many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these. So he's saying, I wrote you a summary. I didn't write down everything. But these things I have written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. When Jesus asked the disciples, will you abandon me too? They respond and they say, to whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life.

And so life and immortality flow and come just from Jesus, not from anywhere else. You won't find satisfaction and contentment and joy and God's blessing in any other place other than in the cross and in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You just won't. You'll find death instead. Your eyes will lie to you. Your heart certainly will. This world will. But God won't, and he hasn't. So if you want to live and you want to have life and you want to be blessed, Then come to Jesus Christ and keep the commandment that he's placed on your life. And when hardship comes and sorrow comes, when you see it on the horizon, don't run from it. Paul tells Timothy in another place to be absorbed in his calling. Be absorbed in it. And it made me think of the bounty paper towel commercial. And you're like the spill. And God's calling is like the bounty wipe. Be absorbed in it. Have every part of your life given.

to keeping the commandment of God without staying a reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will accomplish at the proper time because he alone possesses the life that you seek. You won't find it anywhere else. You'll waste your life and your soul in pursuit of it. He alone has it. And so seek him. None of us have seen him. The scripture tells us we can't see him. Not now. But one of Paul's greatest encouragements and things he looks forward to is the day when he will see what he's believed. And so this is our calling. This is what we're supposed to do. And it really is the lever that's supposed to get you to stop sinning. It's supposed to help you do that. This is not all a mental exercise. This is meant to get you to keep the commandment, as Paul charged Timothy in the presence of God, to do. You haven't seen God, but you will. And so he ends with a benediction, a good word, to him be honor. Where's that honor supposed to come from?

It's not going to come from the world, is it? No, it's supposed to come from his people. It's supposed to come from us. We honor God in the same way that children honor their parents by keeping their commandment, by obeying them. And so if you have hardship and trial in your life and you're weary and you go, I don't want to do that, give honor to Jesus Christ. Give glory to him and do what he's called you to do. And do it well. And do it consistently. And do it for your whole life. That's what it means to give him honor. Let's pray.