Dec 31 2017 1 Timothy - How to Fight the Good Fight of Faith

Heavenly Father, thank You for this year – we want to look back and give thanks – help us to be grateful people. It has been a big year in so many ways – but through it all, You are always present with us and Your grace and mercy are available to us. You died on the cross for our sins and we are grateful that we are forgiven – completely clean because of what Jesus did for us. Open Your word and wisdom that we might hear from You – we each have needs and you are able to meet our needs – so speak now, we pray.

Today, we are going to go back to 1 Timothy – and will close it off – and will present the plan for next year.
1 Tim. 6:11 But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
This morning, we will focus on fighting the good fight of faith – and what that means.
This week we went to see Star Wars – the Last Jedi – and we were talking – Henry was reminded of a quote that really resonated. "That is how we are going to win – not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.”
There are so many fights we can engage in. But Paul is saying that there is one good fight that we must be engaged in. There are all kinds of fights Moral/Justice/causes/Theological fights/Political/Cultural/Social Media fights (No one should be involved in those!) –stay away from all of those. We engage in these believing that God is on our side. People always think that.
First – I want to qualify what I am about to say: There are important issues in our world today that we must address, and at times, there are issues that we must take sides in. Can we agree on that? HOWEVER (and I would put HOWEVER in capital letters!)– it is important to understand – and this is just how human nature is – these fights which may be important can cause us to forget the one good fight of faith that is critical.
I have seen it so many times – where people get involved in important stuff – but that stuff distracts them from the one fight that matters most – the fight of faith.
If you have ever read CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters – the enemy’s goal is not to get you to do bad things – but to distract you from the best thing – even with good things. Get their minds off the gospel with seemingly important stuff.
The most dangerous thing – and I think this happens to us unknowingly – Good Christians will take some of these things we might fight about – they tie them with worship and service and devotion to Christ. We take important things and directly connect them to worship and service to Christ. Syncretism – fusing two belief systems into one new one.
I have been reading through Kings – and talking about Solomon – the people
2 Now the people were offering sacrifices at the high places, because in those days a temple had not yet been built to honor the LORD. 3 Solomon demonstrated his loyalty to the LORD by following the practices of his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places. 4 The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for it had the most prominent of the high places. Solomon would offer up a thousand burnt sacrifices on the altar there.
Solomon would offer up burnt sacrifices on the altar – and they had been told to destroy the high places.
Here are a couple examples of high places –

They are basically altars on high hills – where people would make sacrifices to their gods – and Yahweh told them to destroy them all – and they took those places to worship Yahweh – but God was not pleased with that. They were trying to do the right thing by offering sacrifices to God, but doing it in the wrong way. Solomon is basically doing syncretism – melding the ways of the world in his practice of worshiping God.
Jehoshaphat was a great leader in Israel – but look what it says about him:
He walked in all the way of Asa his father; he did not turn aside from it, doing right in the sight of the LORD. HOWEVER, the high places were not taken away; the people still sacrificed and burnt incense on the high places. (1King 22:43 NAU)
Over and over again (88 times?!), as we read through the stories of the kings – HOWEVER, he did not take down the high places… they were mixing their devotion to God with other things.
They were worshiping God by conforming their practices to those around them. When we fuse the world’s things with our worship – they lead to those things becoming more important in our lives.
We do the same thing – we connect other stuff to the gospel. And it ends up with God’s people adopting the practices of the people of the land that God does not want us to practice. We cannot be deceived to think that it can’t happen to us. Even though there are important fights, we can’t allow those to become intertwined in our faith.
Rick Warren – I want to be known by what I am for, not what I am against.
We should be known as followers of Jesus. But so often Christians are known for so many other things.
What is this good fight of faith and how do we engage in it?
When he says to fight – it is like an athletic contest – a great struggle – we are to engage in a great struggle of faith.
There is an atheist Christmas carol album – seems silly to me – the fight of faith is not going out and buying all those up and burning them.
What Paul does in 1 Timothy – he is talking about false teachers, you can go back to the beginning of the book and see what it means to fight the good fight of faith.
1 Tim. 1:4 These things only lead to meaningless speculations, which don't help people live a life of faith in God.
Fighting the fight of faith is keeping the faith - living our lives, being faithful to God’s teaching -theologically, morally, and practically. Fighting the good fight of faith means being faithful to Christ in all that He calls us to do.
5 The purpose of my instruction (goal of our instruction) is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith.
This is the foundation for how we fight the fight of faith. The first foundation – and the one that acts above all else – LOVE – agape love – a self-sacrificial unconditional love for others.
This is the love (Philippians 2 here) that sets aside one’s agenda, privileges, and advantages in order to sacrificially serve others. This is the love Jesus showed in the incarnation – what we just celebrated in Advent and Christmas – to set aside His interests and privileges to sacrifice Himself for us. This is the love God wants in our lives. Our love for people is to be this kind of love – self-sacrificial – setting aside our own interests – that we might benefit others.
In the Old Testament – it was a moral obligation to love one’s neighbor. If you want to talk about morality – fine – we should be moral people – but it all begins by loving others sacrificially. It is immoral to not do that. You are not living up to your moral obligation. Obviously, we are just trying to get there. The love for Your neighbor comes from Leviticus 19 – which is devoted to loving the stranger and alien. In the Law, where He talks about loving your neighbor – he redefines as the stranger and alien and the one who is not like you. To love your neighbor, you must love the one who is not like you.
When Jesus came – He expanded it even more – don’t just love your neighbor, and the stranger – but love your enemy! That is what it means to be like Jesus.
Think of when He went to the cross – they are jeering and beating Him – and He is saying – Father, forgive them. Yes, we are not Jesus, but that is what we are to move toward. We need to focus on what He says.
This is an unbelievable time – if Christians were to pursue living like Jesus – what that would do in our world. The world often does not have much to say – but it if we lived the Sermon on the Mount – it would really turn things in people’s minds.
It is about loving ordinary people in your ordinary life.
At Christmas – superstars – pro athletes, movie stars, and the like – will go to Children’s Hospital – and they will cheer up people’s lives. It is a great thing to do – I’m not against it – but those are like heroic acts of love. When we think of love, we often think of those heroic things. But the Bible speaks of normal loving of your neighbor in your everyday life. The thousands of loving acts that you do for people is what makes up agape love. And then there may be the occasion where you do something heroic. If we do the heroic without doing the everyday, the heroic is being done just to be noticed.
Dallas Willard – “You cannot succeed in being ethical in act or character unless you have abandoned having your way, fulfilling your own desire as the rule of your life. That is the ethical meaning of love in real life as taught and practiced by Jesus.” That is profound. It is really hard. But we are all just taking steps in that direction – but we need to make steps in the process. That is what God is looking for from us.

1 Tim. 1:18 This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight (he says it again here), 19 keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith.
Love is the foundation of how we fight this fight of faith – and Paul connects it to a good conscience – not just a conscience like Jiminy Cricket – but proper behavior produced by an attitude of love. Behavior should match their faith and love – Live what they believe – look like followers of Jesus. Genuine faith vs. hypocrisy – hypocrisy is standing for the faith – but our behavior being no different. That doesn’t mean we never fail, but always moving forward in faith. Like at work – to not gossip like everyone else. But we are to be wholly different – and that requires us to focus on our inner lives
6:12 is directly connected to 4:16:
1 Tim. 4:16Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you.
In order to fight the good fight of faith – we need to work on our own hearts and souls. We cannot lead others where we have not gone. We cannot help others to be transformed into the image of Christ if that has not happened in our own lives. We need to work hard on our souls. Ask this question for 2018 – and try to get the answer – what are your heart issues? Do you know what that is? Have you identified them specifically? We must do that.
In this context – it was greed – it could be fear/anxiety/lust/selfishness/pride/anger – we all have them – we all have heart issues. To identify them, we must have some self-examination.
Psalmist says – search me O God, and know my heart! God wants us that connected. He knows our hearts – and He wants us to be that connected with the deepest struggles of our hearts. What is it? What must I address in 2018?
The second thing – Confess – to God, and maybe to another person.
Third – understand the underlying causes of the issues. What triggers it? If it is anger – maybe you grew up in a family where there was an alcoholic issue. Boom! There it is! It is crucial to understand the brokenness – and we don’t want to go back to that – but we have to at some point go back to the cause of it – until you go back you can’t go forward. If you have discovered it and gone back –now go forward.
Then we need to remove any kind of trigger that moves ourselves in that direction – whatever tempts us. Don’t set yourself up to fail. Eliminate it. Paul says - Make no provision for the flesh – flee these things. Rid ourselves of whatever it is.
Then create a positive response – Put off and put on. Put off the bad and put on the new. There is no such thing as a void in the spiritual world. We need to find spiritual practices that you can do in your normal routine throughout your day that allow you to enjoy God’s presence.
Develop a training program for this area of your life.
I was talking to someone at lunch who told me – my mind gets distracted at work – and I just go back to the sinner’s prayer – Lord, have mercy on me! Maybe it is a prayer or a song or getting away to focus on Jesus for a time –
It is important to have a morning quiet time – but it is never enough. We must have practices that allow us to do that throughout the day.
1 Tim. 6:12 Fight the good fight of faith; (then he says this curious phrase) - take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
What he is not saying here – we become Christians and if we don’t fight really hard that we will lose our salvation.
And in this phrase, we think of eternal life as going to heaven – but that is only part of what it means. What he is talking about…. We focus on the duration of the life (eternity) – but he is talking about the quality of that life. And He is telling them – when we fight the good fight of faith – the quality of life is to be the quality of life that Jesus lived.
It is good and important to know that when we die, all will be well and we will be with God – but we must ask – is there any good news for this life in our gospel? Is there good news as I live my daily life? When does eternal life begin? Right now! Are we living that life now? In my situation – for my life – what is the quality of life in this circumstance?
And this leads us to our focus for 2018 – we will spend the year focusing on what the Bible calls Wisdom Literature – How to live well in every arena in our lives in a broken world. We will look at all kinds of practical things because wisdom is practical - how to live well financially, at work, in relationships, etc.
We will do Job for Lent. Ash Wednesday is February 14 – Wisdom and how to attain it…
For that – I got a book for you - In the back are Devotionals by Tim Keller – they are $10 – which is a great discount for you! I’m only charging – because I want you to take it only if you are really going to use it!