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Drive Time Devotions is a Saddleback Church podcast. We want to invite you to
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com for locations and service times in your area. Please visit us this weekend.
Welcome to day three of our look together through 1st Timothy chapter one.

Today we talk together about the importance of faith and hope and especially
love and how you and I can learn to love by making the choices that God can
empower in our lives. Today we're going to walk through as we talk about how to
live a motivated life of faith. We're going to walk through with Paul and
Timothy an honest talk about how we wander away from that which is truly
important.

Paul says in verses six and seven of 1st chapter 1st Timothy, "Some have
wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be
teachers of the law but they don't know what they're talking about or what they
so confidently affirm. " In these verses Paul is talking about wandering away
because he just talked about love in the verses just before this.

He's also in many ways talking about what it means to really love someone. What
does it mean to really love someone? It is not love to let someone just wander
away.

Sometimes we think that that's loving. Well, I'm not going to bother them.
They're going to live their life.

I'm going to live my life. The most loving thing to do is just to let them
wander. They'll find out on their own.

It is not love just to let somebody wander into danger. Just as it's not love to
let a young child wander into a busy street, you'd grab their hand and pull them
back. It is not love to let a brother or sister in Jesus Christ wander into the
danger of a false truth.

You don't just let somebody wander away. It is not love to let somebody waste
their life in meaningless talk. Paul talks about that here.

They've turned to meaningless talk. It's not love just to let that keep
happening. It is not love to let someone confidently affirm a lie.

We think, "Well, it's none of my business. " Well, yes, it is. If they're your
brother or your sister in Jesus Christ, it is your business.

If they're talking to your brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, it obviously is
your business because we're one in the body of Christ. We don't have to act in
judgment towards one another, but we do need to act in love towards one another.
Many times when people are wandering, when people are turning to meaningless
talk, when people are confidently affirming things that are not true, we let
ourselves fall into judgment.

We begin to gossip about them. We talk about them behind their back. God through
His grace, through His strength, affirming and encouraging in my life and in
your life in these verses, don't turn to judgment, turn to love.

Don't ignore them, don't gossip about them, love them. Some have wandered away,
some have turned to meaningless talk. He talks in these verses about someone who
confidently affirms a lie.

It's important to remember that just because someone says something confidently
does not mean it's the truth. We get stuck on that sometimes. We have a salesman
who confidently affirms, "This product will do this," and we buy it.

I do, you probably do too sometimes. We're just so sure about it. There's
something about their confidence that draws us in.

It's not the confidence of the salesman that's most important. It is the truth
of what they're selling. And how do you test the truth of what somebody's
selling?

Well, when it comes to the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, you test it
against what Jesus said. You look at what Jesus said, you look at what they're
saying, and that's how you can tell the truth. These people in the church that
Timothy was serving, they were obviously teaching some things that were drawing
people away, and Paul says don't let that happen.

In fact, what they were specifically teaching, we're going to find it in the
next verses, they were teaching that you need to keep certain rules in order to
really get close to God. If you really want to be a godly person, get close to
God, here's my list of rules. You keep my list of rules, and God will love you.

Listen to what Paul says about that kind of way of thinking beginning in verse 8
and reading through verse 11. We know that the law is good if one uses it
properly. We also know that law is made not for the righteous, but for
lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for
those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and
perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers, and for whatever else is
contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel, the good
news of the blessed God which he entrusted to me.

Now, these verses from 1 Timothy, I can't ever read them without remembering a
story a pastor friend told me about reading some scripture verses on Mother's
Day. And if you turn to 2 Timothy chapter 1, there are some verses that write
about these numbers that talk about Timothy's grandmother and mother and how
they had led him to faith. And that's the verses the pastor meant to read, but
instead he accidentally turned to On Mother's Day he read about the ungodly and
sinful, the unholy and irreligious, those who kill their fathers and mothers.

It was not a good day for that pastor. And for many of us, as we read these
verses, it's not a good day for us. I mean, these are tough words.

This is a tough list. Paul is here talking about law. He's talking about the law
and what it means in our lives.

Now notice he says the law here. In fact, in one place, the Greek article isn't
even there. The "the" isn't even there.

He just calls it "law. " He's not talking about laws. He's not talking about the
laws that we need to keep to have a healthy society, the civil laws to keep the
speed limit.

He's not talking about the moral laws that we need to keep in our families and
in our relationships, laws about how you treat other people, laws about murder
and adultery. He's not talking about that. He's talking about the law, capital
L, God's commands in the Old Testament, and the idea that by the keeping of
those commands, I can make myself right before God.

By the keeping of those commands, I can become in good relationship, in good
standing. I can become righteous before God. Now, why did God give these
commands in the Old Testament?

That's what Paul is getting at here, because there were some false teachers who
were saying the reason he gave them was so that you can be righteous before God.
Keep the commands, you will be righteous. Why did God give these commands?

To show us the way to God? To give us a chance to live a perfect life, to make
us righteous? Of course not.

God knows us. And he knew full well when he gave these commands that we are not
able to keep the law. If you look at the history of the nation of Israel in the
Old Testament, they weren't able to keep the law.

If you look at your personal life, you're not able to keep that law. So why did
God give the law? To taunt us?

To discourage us? No. He gave the law to teach us.

To teach us that you and I can't make ourselves righteous, that we need God in
our lives. It's a very simple lesson, but it's one of the hardest lessons of
life to learn. It's one of the hardest things to get a hold of.

In fact, the older you get, it's harder to get a hold of. It's easier for a
child to say, "I need someone else in my life. " The older you get, the harder
this is to remember.

That's why it's always so dangerous to say, "I'm going to wait to someday
develop a relationship with God. " You do it now. Now before we move on, just a
little bit more about the law, I want you to just notice one of those things in
the list that Paul gave us, of those who are lawbreakers.

One of the things he says in verse 10 is that slave traders are lawbreakers.
When we get later into 1 Timothy, we're going to read some words of Paul to
those who were slaves. There are some who think that because Paul had words of
direction to slaves, that somehow he was affirming slave trading, affirming that
there should be slaves.

No, he's just writing to the fact that there are slaves in that society, and
he's telling them how to act, telling them how to serve, even though they were
being sinned against. How do I know that they were being sinned against? Because
right here he says, "Slave trading is a sin.

" Now moving on from that, just that note, back to the law. False teaching about
the law is what Paul is talking about here, and false teaching about the law
goes in one of two directions, either legalism or license. License is the idea
that the law is there to create a relationship with God, and if I keep this
legal list of rules, then I will get closer and closer to God.

It never works. For one thing, everybody has their own list of rules. This
church has this list, this church has this list, this guy makes this one more
important, this guy makes this one more important, this woman says this one's
the most important.

Everyone has their own list. It's usually the things that they're the best at
keeping, and they always keep off of their list the things that they struggle
with. The law is not the way to a relationship with God, because none of us can
be perfect.

The only way to have a relationship with God through the law would be to keep it
perfectly because God is perfect. The law just shows me that I need something
different than the law. Legalism is one way that people can go to have false
teaching against the law.

License is the other way. License is because the law has been abolished by
Christ, then I can just do whatever I want. I can live however I want, and
that's absolutely false too.

The idea that God does not have any moral code for us anymore is absolutely
ridiculous. Jesus very clearly tells us that we're to live out the law of love
the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and the law of
love your neighbor as yourself. In fact, all the other laws are summed up in
those laws.

Everything in the Ten Commandments is summed up in those laws, but you live it
out by the power of God, by the power of Christ, not by your own power. You live
it out as a result of what God's done in your life, not to earn something that
God's going to do in your life. You don't live out the law to try to earn
heaven, you live it out because God's already given you heaven.

He's already given you the kingdom of God because of what Jesus did for you on
the cross. In these verses, Paul is talking about the law, and through these
verses he really is talking about two things that will keep you healthy in your
belief about the law. He says here that the law is good, and he says that the
law is not for the righteous but for lawbreakers.

The law is good. The idea that the law should be thrown out, that's license, and
Paul says, "No, let me speak against that. The law is good.

God has a purpose for it. " It's not the purpose of salvation, but it's the
purpose of leading us to understand our need for God, and then once we come to
know him, of helping us to see in some places of the law how we live out that
relationship with God. The second thing he says about the law is that the law is
not for the righteous but for lawbreakers.

Now, some of us read that and we think, "Well, wait a minute. Aren't we all
lawbreakers? Aren't we all sinners?

" We were all sinners, but God, once you develop a relationship with Jesus
Christ, God gives you the gift of his righteousness, and once you're given the
gift of his righteousness, you no longer need to look to the law as a source of
righteousness. It couldn't be a source of righteousness before you came to know
Christ. So Paul is writing here, "Why would you look to it as a source of
righteousness now that you know Christ, now that you have Jesus in your life?

" He says it's for lawbreakers, because lawbreakers can see in it their need,
but once you come to know Christ, then you have him, then you have his power in
your life. What Paul is saying here is the law can show you your fault, but it
can never give you God's grace, and that's what we need, God's grace in daily
life. So we take a minute to pray together today.

It may seem strange to pray about the law, but I want to encourage you to pray,
"God, thank you for the law. Thank you that you gave the law in the Old
Testament so that I could understand my need of you, so that I could see clearly
what a holy God you are, so that I could see clearly that, God, you want me to
develop a relationship with you and with others that shows in this world who you
are, what you're like. Thank you for the law, but help me not to live with
legalism or license.

Help me not to trust in the law to develop a relationship with you. Help me not
to throw out the law, thinking that it's meaningless now that I'm a believer in
Jesus Christ. I can just live any way that I want.

No, I want to live a holy life, empowered not by the law, but empowered by your
Spirit within me. So Holy Spirit, strengthen me today to live out the life of
God, the life of Christ. I ask for this strength in Jesus' name, amen.

" Don't miss tomorrow. We're going to take a look together at Paul's Simply
Honest Confession of Faith.