This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

We want to invite you to one of our weekend services. Visit us online at
saddleback. com for locations and service times in your area.

Please visit us this weekend. Welcome back to our study of 1st Timothy chapter
1, day 2. We're going to begin in verse 3 today.

In fact, let me just jump in and read verses 3 and 4 as we begin our study. Paul
writes, "As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus, so
that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer, nor to
devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies
rather than God's work, which is by faith.

" Paul tells Timothy in these verses that he wants, he wants Timothy's life to
be used to get people focused. First Timothy needs to be focused, but he wants
Timothy's life to be used to get people focused on the truth. There are so many
ways in life, you've seen it in your own life, there are so many ways to get
unfocused.

Now there's just ways that are out in the world. I can get unfocused by this
entertainment, I can get unfocused by this hobby, I can get unfocused by this
pursuit, but most dangerous of all, Paul says, you can get unfocused, you can
get unhinged by these lies that can come into our lives. So at the very
beginning of this book to Timothy, Paul writes and says, "I want you to help
people to focus on the truth, but that means you have to help them to not focus
on the lie.

" In fact, in these verses he says, "I want you to watch out for those things
that promote controversies rather than God's work, which is by faith. " Now you
as a follower of Jesus Christ, or if you're considering being a follower of
Jesus Christ, you can tell in any situation, any church, in any ministry, any
place you walk into, you can tell whether it's a place of controversy or it's a
place of God's work. You can just tell.

It's a place where there's a lot of argument, there's a lot of disagreement,
there's a lot of discussion, nothing ever really happens. It's all about this
gossip about this person, or it's all about this disagreement about this truth,
and that's what the whole place is about. You can feel it when that's happening,
or you can tell when it's all about God's work.

What's God doing in the world, and how can we be a part of it? You can always
tell in any ministry, in any church, even in any family, whether it's about
controversy or it's about God's work. Paul writes here and he says, "Here's what
promotes controversy.

Here are the things that lead us down that road where instead of focusing on the
truth, we're all involved in controversy. " He says there's three things, false
doctrines, myths, and endless genealogies. Now I happen to not think this is an
exhaustive list, but it's a pretty good list of the things that promote
controversy, false doctrines.

Any lie is going to promote controversy. Anytime somebody's telling a lie, it's
going to create the energy of a controversy, because there's someone who knows
it's the truth, there's someone who knows it's a lie, and you get an argument
about that. There are people, we're going to find out as we walk through these
chapters of 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, there are people who promote false
doctrines because it draws attention to themselves.

There are people, whether you've realized this yet or not, there are people who
like controversy, if they're at the center of it, because then they're at the
center of it, and they like being at the center of things. In God's work, in
God's church, there's a sense in which we're all equals. 1 Corinthians tells us
that in the body of Christ, we're all needed, and so there is a focus on this
person at this time, and then on this person, and then on this person, and
really the focus is on Christ and not on any one of us.

The person who is uncomfortable with that, the person who wants the focus to be
on them, they're going to promote controversy, and one of the ways they do that
is by teaching false doctrines. The reason that people teach false doctrines is
a selfish reason. They like people talking about them, false doctrines.

False doctrines are truths that are not from God's Word, taking God's Word and
twisting it. So, for instance, saying that there are many ways to salvation.
When Jesus said, "I'm the way, the truth, and the life," or saying that God's
Word really can't be trusted, when the Scripture teaches us that all Scripture
is inspired by God, so it obviously can be trusted, those are false doctrines.

Paul also here talks about myths. Now, that's not a false doctrine, that's sort
of a false story, something that's not in the Bible, something that is made up
from history or made up from some story from some other country, some fantastic
tale that when people hear it, they think, "Wow, that's really cool," but you
can't prove it. You don't know that it's true, but the person who's telling the
myth, they're the only one who has the myth.

The truth of the Bible, we all have it. We all can share it with each other and
look at it, but if I've got a myth, I'm the only one who has it, and I can share
it with you and I can amaze you with my myth. Paul says, "Don't listen to stuff
like that, it just promotes controversy in the end.

" And then he talks about a third thing, he talks about endless genealogies.
This was very specific to the time in which Paul lived. There were many people
in the church where Timothy served, Church of Ephesus, that had come from a
Jewish background, and genealogies were very important to them.

They told what tribe of Israel you came from, they told something about your
past, which also helped you to look forward to the future. It made great
interest to Jewish people because they felt like genealogies said something
about who you were in God, God's promise in your life. The truth of the matter
is, your past doesn't determine your future.

Your relationship with Jesus Christ determines your future. And the idea of a
genealogy, and if I could just figure out who was in my past, that would really
affirm who I am for the future. Paul says that's just going to promote
controversy because it causes one person to think they're above the other person
when we're all one in Jesus Christ.

"Oh, I had this person as a father. " "Well, I had this person as a father. "
"Oh, I came from this tribe.

" "Well, I came from this tribe. " It just promotes controversy. Here's the main
point here, anytime you see controversy and confusion, you know that some of
these things are happening because people want to focus on themselves and not on
Christ.

As Paul writes about this, he writes to Timothy, not just for his own life, but
for the lives of others. He doesn't just say, "Timothy, I want you not to listen
to false teaching. I want you not to listen to myths.

" He writes, "I want you to command others not to do this. " That's the
difference between following and leadership. You're following Christ when you
choose not to do these things, but you're leading others in following Christ
when you help and encourage them to do the same things.

He says here, "I want you to command certain men not to do this. " And some
people laugh at that and they think, "Is he speaking in code here? What men is
he talking about?

" Well, he's going to name some of them later in the chapter. I think there's a
pretty long list of them. That's why he doesn't name them all here.

The truth is, Paul and Timothy knew who he was talking about. And Paul and
Timothy knew that some leadership was needed so that the controversy ended, the
confusion ended, and the focus could be on the work of God through the church.
Now, Paul is encouraging Timothy here to be a leader.

And maybe one of the questions you have in your life is, "How do I know? How do
I know if I'm ready to be a leader? How do I know if I'm ready to confront false
teachers, false teaching?

" You look at yourself and you think, "I don't know all of the truth. I look at
myself and think I don't know all the truth. " You think about how much you have
to learn.

Listen, here's how you know when you're ready to confront a false teacher. As
soon as you recognize the lie, as soon as you see that something is a lie, it's
not from God's Word. Something is a lie.

It's from outside of God's Word. And people are hanging their spiritual hat on
it, so to speak, to say, "This is how we should live our life. " With patience
and with love, you simply say the truth.

Well, here's the truth as I've heard it. Here's the truth that I see. The truth
always defeats a lie.

So Paul is saying here, instead of following after controversy, instead of
getting caught up in that and that energy, energy that goes nowhere, let's
promote God's work. Let's promote God's work, which is by faith. And having said
that, then comes verse 5, one of the most exciting verses in this whole book.

Verse 5 of chapter 1 says, "The goal of this command is love, which comes from a
pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. " I love this verse
because it tells us about love. And it tells us that the goal of helping people
not to do false teaching, not to promote false teaching is not so that you can
be right and they can be wrong.

It's love. The goal of everything that we do is love. And when you do something
with love, out of that goal, it's going to be received in an entirely different
way.

Maybe not by everybody, maybe not by the false teacher, but certainly by
everybody else who's listening. 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that there are three
things that now abide, faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.
And what I love about verse 5 here in this chapter is that it tells us where
love comes from.

You ever think I'd like to love more, I'd like to love in a better way, I'd like
to strengthen my ability to love God and to love others? This verse tells us
how. It tells us that love comes from three things, a pure heart, and a good
conscience, and a sincere faith.

So you want to love more. Three choices you have to make, choose to have a pure
heart. Now a pure heart, the word pure has the idea of unmixed.

As human beings, we all struggle with mixed motives, all of us. Purity of heart
is simply admitting that, it's not acting like you're perfect. It's being
unmixed enough to admit that I struggle with mixed motives sometimes, to admit
that I'm a human being, to admit my faults and to ask God to strengthen me in
those things.

A pure heart is not pretending before God. A pure heart is being open before
Him. A pure heart is letting Him begin to grow you and change you because you're
open before Him.

A pure heart, that results in love. A good conscience also results in love. Now
we're going to come across that phrase and talk about it more later in the
chapter.

The idea of a good conscience is not, again, that I'm a perfect person.
Absolutely not. No such thing as a perfect person.

But the idea of a good conscience is that my eyes and my heart are open before
God and before others. I'm not hiding things. I'm able to say openly, here are
the things that I struggle with, here are the places that God has forgiven, I
keep short accounts on my sins, which means as soon as I recognize that I've
sinned, I go to God with it and I've sinned against another person, I go to them
about it.

There's nothing that when I lay my head down on the pillow at night, I'm
thinking, "Oh, I hope this person doesn't find out. " Oh, I've never talked to
God about this. A good conscience.

That promotes love. And a third thing that promotes love is a sincere faith. Not
a faith that's just words, but a genuine desire to live out the life that Christ
has given.

Someone on our research team wrote about these verses, "In the past, I've hidden
sins from others and tried to hide them from God. " That's an impure heart. "I
let these sins pile up to the point where they did not seem quite so bad
anymore.

So then I had a seared conscience. And in letting that happen, I could not have
the testimony for God that I should have had. So I had an insincere faith.

It was a progression and all these things worked together. " That's how it
happens. But it can also work the other way.

When you decide to have a pure heart before God, the result of that is going to
be a good clear conscience. Because you're going to confess to God. You're going
to confess to others.

You're not afraid to do that because you know that God, by His forgiveness in
Jesus Christ, has given you the power to do that. And out of that pure heart and
good conscience is going to be a strength and sincere faith. And the result of
all three of those is love.

The goal of this command is love. So as we close today, I want to pray for love.
Let's pray for that together in Jesus' name.

Jesus, help us to love you. Strengthen us to love others. And Jesus, I pray that
instead of that just being a nice thought in my mind, that I would decide to do
the things that you say promote love in my life.

God, help me to live with a pure heart before you. And where I'm not, help me to
choose today to begin to confess my sins to you and to others and ask you to
grow me to be more and more like you. God, help me to live with a good
conscience.

Nothing between me and you, nothing between me and others that hasn't been
talked about. And God, help me to live with a sincere faith. Not words that make
others think I'm a good Christian, but a life that's lived out in the joy of
knowing who you are.

Lord, I want to love you, I want to love others. But I hear you saying to me
here, there's some choices I can make that can strengthen that in my life. Help
me to make those choices today, Jesus Christ.

And even in asking for this, I realize that a pure heart and a good conscience
and sincere faith, they don't come from me, they come from you, they're gifts
from you. So Lord, give these gifts into my heart today and let me live these
gifts out through my life today. I ask this, Jesus, in your name, amen.

See you back tomorrow. We're going to talk. We're going to talk about our
tendency to wander away from that which is really important.