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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.
- Welcome back to our last day of looking together through First Timothy chapter
five, day five.

We're going to look at verses 21 to 25 today. In fact, let me begin by reading
those verses. First Timothy chapter five, 21 to 25.

"I charge you," Paul says to his son in the faith Timothy, "I charge you in the
sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels to keep these instructions
without partiality and to do nothing out of favoritism. Do not be hasty in the
laying on of hands and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure.

Stop drinking only water and use a little wine because of your stomach and your
frequent illnesses. The sins of some men are obvious, reaching the place of
judgment ahead of them. The sins of others trail behind them.

In the same way, good deeds are obvious and even those that are not cannot be
hidden. " These are amazing verses to me about the way that we relate to each
other in the body of Christ. Paul begins by saying, "I charge you.

" So you feel the seriousness of these verses. This is the way to live life.
This is what to go after in life.

When you're charging something, you are going after something. "I charge you,
keep these instructions. " And then immediately he begins to talk about how we
do that in relationship to other people.

In the sight of Jesus and in sight of the elect angels, he says, "I want you to
keep these instructions. " Then he says, "Here's how you do it in relationship
to others. " He says, "Do it without partiality.

" He says, "Do nothing out of favoritism. " He says, "Keep these instructions.
Don't be hasty in the laying on of hands.

Keep these instructions. Don't share in the sins of others. " As you think about
the instructions that God gives to you for living out a faithful life, a life of
purity, you don't live them alone.

In fact, to live a motivated life of faith, you live it in relationship to other
believers. And the way that you choose, the way that I choose to treat other
believers is going to help their faith or hurt their faith. It's going to help my
faith or hurt my faith.

And Paul walks through a list here. He says, "One of the things that hurts both
of our faith is partiality when I show favoritism to someone. " Because all of a
sudden, it confuses everyone.

Everyone begins to think, well, wait a minute, is this the body of Christ or is
this some kind of club where people have to get in and know the right person in
order to get their needs met? Is this some kind of club where if you have enough
money, then maybe your needs can be met? He's going to talk about money in the next
chapter.

So maybe that's what Paul is focusing on here. Is it the partiality of somebody
that I know the best or somebody that can maybe meet the needs of the ministry
the best? Don't do it out of partiality.

Don't do anything out of favoritism related to who you know or to what they have
because that will hurt my faith and that will hurt your faith. Paul also says,
"Another thing that will hurt my faith and your faith is being hasty in the
laying on of hands. " Now remember, we talked about this a couple of chapters
ago.

What does it mean to lay hands on someone? Sometimes we mean, when we say it
today, it means we're going to have a battle with you. Wait till I lay my hands on
you.

No, laying hands on someone in that day was a way of saying, we affirm the gifts
of Christ in your life. They literally would lay hands on someone in praying for
them and affirming God's spirit at work in their lives and God's gifts apparent
in their lives. Lay hands on someone just to recognize that in what they do and
in what they say, they're ready to serve God in a certain way.

Don't do that too quickly, Paul says. If you do, it's going to hurt their faith and
it's going to hurt your faith. It's going to be a struggle for both of you.

God's timing is perfect. Don't rush God's timing. If God has a plan and a
purpose for your life, it's not going to go away.

Now, I'm not saying that we should ignore that plan, that we should go in a
different direction. I'm just saying sometimes we have to wait a little longer.
In fact, most of the time, we have to wait a little longer than we'd like to for
God's plan to come to fruition in our lives 'cause he's growing us on his way to
his plan in his life, in our lives.

So don't be hasty in the laying on of hands. And then Paul really focuses on
this next one. Don't share in the sins of others.

I want you, he says, to live this life of Christ, but you can't share in the
sins of others because we're close to each other in the body of Christ.
Sometimes we can share in the sins of others in the body of Christ. And one way
I share in the sins of others is by doing it with them.

But another way, a much more common way is by just accepting the fact that that
sin is in their life and not saying anything about it or doing anything about
it. So Paul says, instead of this, live a life of purity. Keep yourself pure.

And then that verse, verse 23, that makes many of us scratch our heads. Why does
he say all of a sudden, say, stop drinking water, use a little wine, because
you've got indigestion. You've got frequent illnesses, something with your
stomach going on, Timothy.

Why does he put that in there? Well, I believe he puts it in because he's just
said, I want you to keep yourself pure. But Timothy maybe, and apparently here,
is going overboard with this thing of purity.

And he's saying, OK, to really be pure, I can only drink water. And Paul is
saying, that's not purity. That's just some false purity that you have in your
mind.

Don't just drink water. Drink a little wine for your stomach. Now, remember in
that day, wine was not used as it's used in America today.

Alcohol in America today is used most often to escape. And not always, but way
too often. Used many, many times as a way of getting a little tipsy or even
drunk.

In that day, it was very watered down version. And Paul says, the water that
you're drinking maybe has some things in it that are making you sick. You need
to drink a little wine that's been fermented and doesn't have those things in
it.

It's going to make you feel better. Now, this is not a command to drink wine. In
fact, in our church, all the pastors have chosen not to drink wine.

Not to drink any alcohol at all, because we have so many people that come out of
Celebrate Recovery. And they're recovering from an addiction to alcohol. We
wouldn't want them to see us even drinking a glass of wine in a restaurant.

And somehow, that makes them fall back into that sin. So we've just chosen not
to do that. But not because God's commanded you can never have a glass of wine.

In fact, the very opposite is here. Some people feel uncomfortable with this.
They want purity to be a list of rules.

Tell me I can have wine or I can't have wine. It's got to be an exact list. What
I can do, what I can't do.

If I keep the list, I'm pure. If I don't, I'm impure. Well, purity is not about
a list.

It's about following the commands of God from your heart, from the depth of your
heart. The Pharisees reduced it to a list. And Jesus reserved his most scathing
remarks for the Pharisees and their faith and the way they misled men and women.

And so it's not a list. It's my heart. My heart to live with purity.

And if I have a heart to live with purity, I have to watch out for what Paul
talked about here. And that is the sins of others. If I get caught up in it, I'm
just around it.

Maybe I'm not doing it, I'm just there. If I don't say anything about it, my
tendency as a human being, whether I want to admit it or not, is to get drawn
into it. I don't want to admit that about myself.

I don't want to think I'm always going to be perfect. But my tendency as a human
being is to get drawn into sins. So Paul writes very honestly about this.

And he says, look, other people's sins, some of them are obvious. You see them
right there in front of you. Others, they trail behind them.

Selfishness, for instance, that's an obvious sin. When somebody's, it's all
about them and everything has to be for them and the spotlight always has to be
on them. And someone else starts to talk and they always turn the spotlight back
right on them.

You can tell. But there's other sins that aren't so obvious. Maybe pride being
the motivation.

Sometimes people serve others and the only reason they serve, maybe in that soup
kitchen, the only reason they serve maybe in that urban setting, maybe the only
reason they serve and go on a mission trip is because they have pride. They want
to feel better about themselves. They want people to applaud them.

Maybe even they want to attract this person or that person because they are so,
they are so much a servant of God. That kind of sin follows behind you. May not
be so obvious, but it's going to be seen at some point.

Paul says, watch out for that. When you see it, when you know it, confront it in
your own life and then develop a relationship with that brother, that sister in
Christ, where you can also talk to them about it. You don't confront it in a way
that's not relational.

You develop a relationship so you can confront it because you care about that
person. Now, I want you to notice here that Paul says as he's talking about
relationships that sins are obvious, but also good deeds are obvious. That's
what he says at the end.

In the same way, good deeds are obvious. That's the positive influence that we
have towards one another. Now, someone on our research team asked, I thought it
was a great question.

Aren't good deeds supposed to be hidden? I mean, didn't Jesus say, don't let
other people see your good deeds? Let's be very clear here about what the Sermon
on the Mount said.

In chapter six, Jesus does say very clearly, don't do your acts of righteousness
before men in order to be seen. And then he talks about things like prayer and
fasting. Those are things that are my personal, private, spiritual life before
God.

And Jesus says, don't flaunt those things. Don't pridefully flaunt the fact, oh,
I prayed this morning for an hour. It's okay for people to know that you pray,
but when you say, I prayed for an hour this morning, you're pridefully flaunting
that.

You're not to do that, Jesus said. But what about the good things that I do for
others? Are those supposed to be hidden?

Well, let me ask you a question. How can they be? I mean, if I'm doing something
good for you, you're going to see it.

So the idea that every spiritually good thing that I'm supposed to do is
supposed to be hidden somehow, no one's supposed to know about it, that would
mean I could never go on a mission trip, I could never serve someone in need, I
could never let somebody else know, would you come help me serve this person in
need? When you think about doing good deeds, you don't think about Matthew
chapter six, you think about Matthew chapter five, where Jesus said in the
Sermon on the Mount, let your deeds of righteousness, the good things that you
do, let them be seen so that men may give glory to God. And remember he gave the
picture, it's like a light on a hill.

Let your light shine, he said. Don't put it under a lamp's cover where nobody
can see it, put it up on a hill so people can see it. Let your light shine
before men so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is
in heaven.

So good deeds are to be seen, not in a prideful way, but in a way that helps
people to glorify God. Wow, they did that because they love Jesus. That's it,
that's it, that's what glorifies God.

They did that because they love Jesus. I'd like to have that kind of love for
Jesus too. It can motivate me to serve other people.

Now that is the positive influence that we have towards one another. These are
principles in these verses about living a motivated life of faith. And if you're
going to do that, you're going to realize the powerful influence that we have on each
other.

You have to remember that favoritism clouds the air of our influence. You have
to remember that the sin of those that we are close to will influence us for
bad. It'll influence you for bad.

It cannot help but do that. And you have to remember that good deeds that result
from faith, they're like a beacon of light to the church and the community.
Let's talk to Jesus for a minute together.

Jesus, thank you. Thank you for who you are. And thank you for being honest with
us in your word, for letting us know that to live the life of faith, we've gotta
have the right people around us, the right influence in our lives.

So help us to spend time with people who want to be more and more like you, with
believers, so that we can let the world see the light of Christ in us. And for
those who do not want to be like you, I pray we build enough strength into our
lives, enough relationships that we could reach out to them too. But Lord, if
we're being taken down in a relationship, taken away from faith in you by a
relationship, God, give us a moment of clarity right now.

Help me to see that, to be honest about that. And then give me the courage to
cut off that relationship and to develop other stronger relationships in my
life. I pray, Jesus Christ, that you would give us the wisdom and strength to do
this.

Help us to see the way, in your name, amen. I'm so glad you were here for
chapter five of First Timothy. Next week, chapter six.

And chapter six has a lot to say about how important the way we handle material
things is to living a motivated life of faith. And let me just say, before we
leave this chapter, something to those of you who are going through life's
healing choices, whether it's Saddleback Church or another church right now.
These verses have so much to say to you about the importance of relationships
and God's healing in your life.

You've gotta get the right relationships into place in your life. And you gotta
realize that the wrong relationships are going to get you out of place in your
life. You've gotta realize how important the way you treat others is to your own
healing.

You can actually treat others with spirits of judgmentalism or favoritism that
are going to steal the healing from your life. And you gotta realize how important
it is that you surround yourself with people who are allowing Christ to work in
their lives in a way that they do good deeds, just because they love Jesus.
Motivated by the fact that they love Jesus.

That is infectious. So for life's healing choices, you gotta have life's healing
relationships in place in your life.