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(upbeat music) - Drive Time Devotions is a Saddleback Church podcast. We want to
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com for locations and service times in your area. Please visit us this weekend.
- Well, here we are at the end of our study of First Timothy, chapter one, day
five.

These verses that are all about this book, that's all about the motivation for
living the life of faith. And in these verses today, Paul is going to talk to
Timothy very personally. And I pray for you and I both, that we will hear
personally the Holy Spirit speaking to us today.

Paul says in verse 18 and 19, "Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction "in
keeping with the prophecies once made about you, "so that by following them, you
may fight the good fight, "holding on to faith and a good conscience. " Paul is
talking to his son in the faith, Timothy here. And he talks about these
prophecies that have been made about him at the beginning.

That might bring some questions into your mind. What were these prophecies?
Well, they were about Timothy's ministry.

We're going to hear more about them later in this book. But it's important to
understand that they were not a crystal ball kind of prophecy. They were a
telling of the truth.

This kind of prophecy is telling the truth that you see in someone else's life
because they're a follower of Jesus Christ. What he's talking about here is not
so much a prediction of the future as an encouragement looking towards the
future, looking towards the hope that God puts into our lives. And in these
verses, Paul is talking about what does it mean to live a motivated Christian
life?

And he uses a phrase, he uses a phrase I want you not to miss 'cause we're going to
come across it later in these books. You fight the good fight. You want to live a
motivated Christian life?

Here's the phrase, fight the good fight. You know, we often today talk about the
Christian life as a journey, and that can be good. There's a lot of a sense of a
journey and along the way you're growing and learning and meeting new people.

That is one picture of the Christian life, but it can't be your only picture. In
fact, the New Testament more often pictures the Christian life as a battle, not
a journey, as a fight. You're not battling other people.

That's not what he's talking about here. In fact, earlier in this chapter, Paul
had warned against battles with other people. You're battling every day to live
like Jesus Christ.

That's fighting the good fight. It's a good fight. You are battling, you're
battling an enemy who is fighting against your connection with God and your
growth in faith.

You're battling Satan. He doesn't want you to grow. He doesn't want you to
develop in faith.

Now that you're a believer in Jesus Christ, he can't keep you from being a
believer. He can't keep you out of heaven, but he does want to keep you from
growing. He doesn't want to keep you from influencing others.

He doesn't want to keep you from joy because he is an evil one. He is the evil
one. I was reading about 1 Timothy chapter one this week and came across this
sentence.

Someone wrote, "While preoccupation with the enemy "can lead to despair, "to
ignore the enemy invites disaster. " So it's a good fight that you're involved
in. And you keep fighting the good fight.

And some days it is a battle to fight the good fight. Some days it feels like
pure joy, but a lot of days, would you agree with this? It just feels like a
battle.

Feels like a battle to hope. Feels like a battle to love. Feels like a battle to
have faith.

Feels like a battle to resist that temptation. Feels like a battle to choose to
love that person. Feels like a battle to choose to continue to forgive that hurt
that happened in my life.

Paul says, you want to fight the good fight? Here are two key things to hold onto
in this battle. You might call them these two things, the boxing gloves that you
put on in fighting this good fight.

On one hand, you put on faith. On the other hand, you put on a clear conscience.
That's how you fight the good fight.

Faith is a vital part of fighting this good fight. You can't do it on your own.
Whenever you find yourself feeling defeated, one of the first questions you
should ask is, am I doing it on my own?

Am I trying to live this out based on my energy, my strength, myself, what I've
learned? Who is my faith in right now? Is it in me?

Is it in what I've learned? Or is it in Christ? When you find yourself feeling
defeated, first thing you ask yourself, is my faith in me or is it in God right
now?

And the second thing you ask yourself is, is my conscience clear? And we talked
about this a couple of days ago. What is that, a clear conscience?

It is certainly not being perfect. Paul, just a couple of verses ago, called
himself the chief of sinners. So he knew he wasn't perfect.

So if a clear conscience was being perfect, Paul couldn't say he had a clear
conscience. What does it mean to have a clear conscience? It's confessing your
sin as you become aware of it, to God and to others.

It's confessing and not pretending. And Satan, every time, will take advantage
of an unclear conscience. If you've got a hidden sin in your life before God,
you're not confessing it to him, it's something you will not talk about with
God.

God will talk about anything else but that. Let's ignore that subject. Or if
you've got some way that you have sinned against another person, you haven't
cleared it up yet, you hope you never meet them in the street, and when the
phone rings, you hope it's not them calling, you hope you never get an email
from them because you don't want to deal with it.

If you have that in your life, Satan will use it as the evil one. He will use it
to defeat you every time. If you've got an unclear conscience, clear it up.

Clear it up. Don't try to become perfect. Just confess it before God.

Just make it right with the other person. Now, when you make it right with that
other person, they may or may not make it right with you. They may still be
angry with you.

They may still choose to not forgive you, but at least you've made it right with
them. You've done what is right before God. You've got faith and a clear
conscience.

That's what you hold on to in this battle. Now, Paul, as he talks about this
battle of faith, goes on to talk to Timothy about some people who were losing
the battle. He says in verses 19, the last part of that verse, through verse 20,
"Some have rejected these, "and so have shipwrecked their faith.

"Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, "whom I have handed over to Satan "to
be taught not to blaspheme. " He talks about two men who had rejected faith and
a good conscience. And so their faith is up against the rocks.

They are going nowhere. Now, what does it mean to have your faith shipwrecked?
Well, if you think about a ship, the picture is it's not going anywhere.

It is grounded. Some people try to make this very theological and talk about,
well, what does it mean about whether you still have salvation or don't have
salvation? What's God doing in your life?

I believe without a shadow of a doubt that once you have salvation, you're not
going to lose that salvation. There are some people who think they have salvation
because they prayed a prayer once. They didn't really believe.

They don't have a true salvation. But those who truly believed are not going to
lose their faith, but you can become shipwrecked. Anybody can become
shipwrecked.

Your faith is going nowhere. Your life is going nowhere. And Paul says because
of this, there's this phrase here that confuses many of us.

He says because they have rejected faith and a good conscience, because they've
gotten caught up in false teaching so the attention can be on them. Because this
has happened, he says, "I have handed them over to Satan. " That's quite a
phrase.

And we read this and we think, what is he talking about? And some of us ask,
now, if God had shown Paul mercy, we just read about that a few verses ago. If
God had shown Paul so much mercy, why didn't Paul show these guys just a little
bit more mercy?

I mean, handing them over to Satan, what does that mean? Let me remind you that
God's mercy is shown in some amazing ways. Remember that God showed Paul his
mercy by blinding him on a Damascus road.

That had to be frightening at the time. That had to not feel very merciful at
the time. But by that blindness, Paul saw, he saw that he didn't see.

He saw the depth of his need. When Paul writes here about handing them over to
Satan, he's not talking about their eternal destiny. I don't believe that's what
he's talking about.

He's talking about their daily experience. He's saying, I want them to know what
it's like to not know God, to be apart from God's people. This phrase used by
Paul, handed them over to Satan, has the idea of put them out of the church so
that they can experience Satan's world and not God's world.

That's what it means. It doesn't mean I'm handing them over to hell. I want them
to go to hell.

It means put these people out of the church so that they can experience what
it's like. Satan is the prince of this world. He's the ruler of this world.

Jesus is the leader of the church. He's the head of the church. So Paul is
saying, let's put them out there.

You see, the family of faith, the church, can sometimes be so supportive that I
can fool myself into thinking that all is well when I'm tearing apart my life
and the life of people that I love, when I'm hurting other people. Not to use
the church as a place to get their own selfish needs met, but to realize that
the church is a place where Christ meets all of our needs together. Now, as we
end this chapter, I just can't help but take a look back at verse 17.

You might have noticed that I skipped past it yesterday. Didn't have enough time
to cover it, but it's a great way to end this look at chapter one. Verse 17 is
this spontaneous prayer of Paul.

He says, now to the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor
and glory forever and ever. Amen. What a prayer.

The King, we look at him, the King, the Lord Jesus Christ, the only God,
eternal, immortal, invisible, to him be honor, to him be glory, not just now,
but forever and ever. Now, that is the way to live a motivated Christian life.
That is the motivation for living the Christian life.

It's not found in me. I'm just going to be on this earth for a short time, and my
emotions go up and down. You want motivation that lasts?

You look to the one that lasts. You want motivation that's never going to fail you?
You look to the one who's never going to fail you, the King, eternal, immortal,
invisible.

Let's look to him right now. Our Father, we thank you for who you are. Instead
of trying to motivate myself one more day to live a better life, to live a
better faith based on who I am, oh Father, I pray that today you'd strengthen me
to look to who you are, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, and let that
motivate my life today.

Let who you are motivate my life today. I ask for this in the name of Jesus,
amen. I'm looking forward to chapter two of First Timothy next week.

Make sure you join us next week as we continue our study in this great book. Oh,
and let me just say one more word to those of you that are involved in the
Life's Healing Choices study here at Saddleback Church and in churches all
across the nation. This is a study of how, through the Beatitudes, Jesus teaches
us how we can make healing choices about our life to begin to live out his life
in us.

And it fits with First Timothy 'cause it's about how to put off the past and
look forward to the future. And let me just encourage you right now, as you're
going through this study, I know that as you hit the second and third week of
this study, which might be right about where you are right now, it can be a
little bit scary. The clear conscience that we've talked about in this chapter,
living with a pure heart that we've talked about, it can be scary sometimes to
admit the sins from my past.

There's something about it that makes me feel like I'm going to be diminished.
God's not going to use me. I just want to remind you that as we looked at this
chapter, as we looked at the Apostle Paul, there's one of the men that God used
in the greatest way in the kingdom.

He is a man who admitted his need for a pure heart. He is a man who admitted
that he was once a blasphemer and a violent man. As you admit these things in
your life and you admit that you're not in control, but God is in control, God's
not going to stop using you.

It's going to open up the door, just as it did for Paul, to incredible things that
God wants to do in your life. That is part of life's healing choices.