I Tim. 6:13-14 - Bible Lessons from Jeff Gulleson

WHAT MOTIVATES THE CHRISTIAN?

(I Tim. 6:13-14)

Overview of I Tim. 4:1-6:14

4:1-2 How False Teaching Enters the Church

4:3-5 Common Grace

4:6 Word of God in Life of the Believer

4:7a Godliness – Divine / Human Role

4:7b Train Yourself to be Godly

4:7c Spiritual Disciplines (The Word of God)

4:7d Spiritual Disciplines (Devotions, Worship)

4.7e Spiritual Disciplines (Church Attendance, Journaling, Practicing Presence of God)

4:8-9 Why Godliness Has Great Value

4:10 Putting Our Hope in the Living God

4:12 Setting an Example for Believers

4:13 What a Christian Worship Service Looked Like in the First Century

4:14 Neglecting the Spiritual Gift God has Given Us

4:15-16 Getting Home Before Dark

5:1-2 So, How Should We Describe the Church?

5:3-16 God’s Tilt Towards the Disenfranchised

5:3-16 Sorting Out those Worthy of Relief – A Biblical Approach to Social Welfare

5:3-16 The Biblical Rationale for Providing for Relatives

5:5-16 The Tale of Two Widows – A Biblical Approach to Pleasure

5:9-10 The Good Works of a New Testament Woman

5:11-14 The Younger Widows – Breaking Celibacy Vows

5:11-14 The Younger Widows – Gossiping False Teaching

5:15 Satan’s Effort to Keep Jesus from Fulfilling His Mission

5:17-18 Honoring the Work of Elders

5:19-20 How NT Church Discipline Illustrates Cultural Formation

5:21 Partiality – A Christian Problem?

5:22-24 Selecting Church Leadership

5:23 The Christian’s Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Beverages

6:1 Honoring God’s Name

6:1-2 A What In Christianity Undermined Slavery?

6:1-2 B The Evangelical Awakening and Abolition of Slavery

6:1-2 C Masters and Slaves / Employers and Employees

6:3-5 Why Do Some Christians Become False Teachers?

6:6-8 Christian Contentment

6:9-10 For the Love of Money

6:11 Holiness – Living on the Run

6:12 Fighting for the Faith; Holding on to Life

6:13-14 What Motivates the Christian – Part A

But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. 12Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.

INTRODUCTION:

1. The remainder of this letter has Paul issuing five charges:

a. To False Teachers (3-5)

b. To the Christian Poor (6-10)

c. To the ‘man of God’(11-16)

a. The Threefold Appeal

1) The Ethical Appeal – Flee/Pursue (11)

2) The Doctrinal Appeal – Fight (12a)

3) The Experiential Appeal – Take Hold (12b)

b. The Grounds of the Appeal (13-16) –Why should Timothy heed the appeal?

d. To the Christian Rich (17-19)

e. To Timothy (20-21)

Paul’s challenge / charge here doesn’t seem much different from his challenge to Timothy in I Tim. 4:15-16.

Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that

everyone may see your progress. 16Watch your life and doctrine

closely. Persevere in them …. (I Tim. 4:15-16).

THE GROUNDS OF THE APPEAL OR “WHAT MOTIVATES THE CHRISTIAN.”

Christians are motivated to obey God because:

1. We are conscious of God’s pervasive presence

2. He is our only source of life

3. Christ is our example in doing the will of God

4. Christ is coming again

5. Our God is the sovereign power of the universe (the only God, invincible, immortal, invisible, inaccessible)

6. God finds pleasure and joy in our obedience

I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame (I Tim. 6:13-14).

Other translations: “I charge you to obey your orders without fault or failure” (REB) or “Keep this command to the letter. Don’t slack off” (The Message).

“This command” could refer to the whole letter but I think it refers specifically to the charge in verses 11 and 12.

Paul tells Timothy: Flee evil, pursue good character, fight for the truth, take hold / embrace the abundant life. Why? What should motivate Timothy?

QUESTION: Based on our text, I Tim. 6:13-16, what motivates the Christian to obey God.

I. WE ARE CONSCIOUS OF GOD’S PERVASIVE PRESENCE

In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, …

Paul says something similar in I Tim. 5:21, “I charge you in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels to keep these instructions ….”

Paul is making sure that Timothy is aware that God is a witness to this charge. Paul, in a sense, is calling God’s special attention to the charge.

This is probably similar to the phrase we use, “Let God be my witness….”

Our daily tendency is to live in a one-dimensional world a “wysiwyg” (what you see is what you get) world. The Christian must continually remind himself that we live in a two dimensional world and all we do is done in the sight of God. God is always in the equation.

Does not He see my ways, and count all my steps? (Job 3:14)

The eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good (Prov. 15:3).

And no created thing is able to escape [His] scrutiny. Everything lies bare and completely exposed before the eyes of Him with who we have to do” (Heb. 4:13 / Weymouth).

For a man’s ways are in full view of the Lord and He examines all his paths and ponders all his goings (Prov. 5:21).

For the Lord sees clearly what a man does, examining every path he takes (Prov. 5:21 / NLT).

Can anyone hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? Saith the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? Saith the Lord (Jer. 23:24).

O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you (Ps. 139:1-12).

ILLUSTRATON: Sarai gave her Egyptian maidservant Hagar to Abraham so that Sarai could build a family through her. When Hagar became pregnant Sarai despised Hagar and complained to Abraham. Abraham told her to do what she would with Hagar. So Sarai mistreated Hagar and she fled. The angel of the Lord spoke to Hagar, encouraged her and gave her a promise for Ishmael, the child she was carrying. Then we read, She [Hagar] gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me [Thou God seest me / KJV],” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” 14 That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi (well of the living One who sees me) …(Gen. 16:13-14). Elizabeth Elliot writes: My great Bible teacher, Mr. L. E. Maxwell at Prairie Bible Institute in Canada, told us that he grew up in a non-Christian home. He said, “My mother taught me exactly four words out of the Scripture, and that was all. We never read the Bible. We never prayed. We never sang any hymns. But I remembered those words my mother taught me: ‘Thou, God, seest me.’ I know He watches me.”

II. HE IS OUR SOLE SOURCE OF LIFE

Actually the verb (zoogoneo), which means “to endue with life,” means in both the LXX and NT (Lk. 17:33; Acts 7:19) “to preserve and maintain life.” (Fee, page 151).

God is the creator of all things, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1) and also God sustains life, “In Him we live and move and exist.” (Acts 7:28).

To the pagan Athenians at Mar’s Hill in Greece Paul said, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth …he himself gives all men life and everything else. …. In Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:24-28)

Men have tried to replicate life on earth … in a small way play God, of course while using what God has created.

ILLUSTRATION: Eight “Biospherians” were sealed into Biosphere 2 in September 1991, their “mission” being to survive in isolation for two full years. This they more or less did, although emergency oxygen twice had to be pumped in as carbon dioxide levels rose. Much of what transpired was replete with irony; hungry Biospherians soon found themselves planting bananas and papayas in what was supposed to be the inviolate wilderness of the rainforest, and destroying parts of the desert to boost oxygen, while the ocean proved impossible to keep clean. As for their fellow inhabitants, the bush babies caught the hummingbirds, and in fact the only birds to survive were unwanted sparrows that sneaked in during construction.

Even biochemist and spiritual skeptic Francis Crick, who shared the Nobel Prize for discovering the molecular structure of DNA, cautiously invoked the word miracle a few years ago (when considering life on earth). “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going,” he said (Case for the Creator, pg. 42).

One expert said there are more than thirty separate physical or cosmological parameters that require precise calibration in order to produce a life-sustaining universe (Case for the Creator, pg. 132).

As Nobel Prize – winner Arno Penzias said about the Big Bang, ‘The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted had I nothing to go on but the first five books of Moses, the Psalms and the Bible as a whole.’ (Case for the Creator, pg. 77)

Scientist and former atheist, Patrick Glynn writes, “Ironically, the picture of the universe bequeathed to us by the most advance twentieth-century science is closer in spirit to the vision present in the Book of Genesis than anything offered by science since Copernicus” (Case for the Creator, pg. 151).

ILLUSTRATION: Story about atheist who was in a contest with God and was going to prove that he could also create life. They were to start with nothing. When the contest began the atheist picked up a handful of dirt. God responded. That is not allowed. This is my dirt.

To all life Thou givest, to both great and small,

In all life Thou livest, the true life of all.

We blossom and flourish like leaves on the tree,

And wither and perish but not changeth Thee.

APPLICATION: If a doctor or an individual saved our life we would feel indebted and certainly make every effort to repay that individual.

Timothy could repay God by Fleeing, Pursuing, Fighting, Grasping the abundant life.

III. CHRIST IS OUR EXAMPLE IN DOING GOD’S WILL

Jesus, in a sense, is God’s “fair-haired boy.” …. The perfect example for everyone. We are commanded to follow His example in suffering (I Pet. 2:21), follow His lead in servant hood (John 13:15-16), have His attitude (Phil. 2:5) and be conformed to His likeness (Rom. 8:29).

The command, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48) is clear and plain.

“The command ‘Be ye perfect’ is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command” (C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity).

QUESTION: What was there in the testimony Jesus gave before Pilate that Timothy was to emulate? That would motivate Timothy to flee, pursue, fight, grasp?

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.” “You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” (John 18:36-37).

“Where do you come from?” he [Pilate] asked Jesus, but Jesus gave him no answer. “Do you refuse to speak to me?” Pilate said. “Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” Jesus answered, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above. Therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin” (John 19:9-11).

QUESTION: What adjectives would you use to describe Jesus’ testimony before Pilate?

We could say that Jesus was determined, unwavering, undeterred, steadfast, undaunted, unfaltering, resolved, single minded, unflinching, courageous.

You read in Isaiah 50:7 that Jesus “set his face as a flint” and we read in Luke 9:51, “As the time approached for Him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.”

For New Testament Christians, Christ’s unfaltering resolve and determination to do the will of God, even when challenged by the Roman governor, was an inspiration and a means to challenge them to fully do the will of God.

With Christ before Pilate there was no cowering, no pleading for mercy, no second thoughts, no hesitation … only unflinching determination to do the will of God.

IV. CHRIST IS COMING AGAIN

In Scripture we see the explicit truths but sometimes miss the implicit truths. At the very least Paul is implying that he must Flee, Pursue, Fight, Grasp because Christ is coming back.

Many other verses about the Second Coming focus on motivating us to holiness in the light of Christ’s soon return.

He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ (I Cor. 1:8).

Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:6).

So that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ (Phil. 1:10).

May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones (I Thes. 5:13).

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (I Thes. 5:23).

These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed (I Peter 1:7).

Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure (I John 3:3).

ILLUSTRATION: Jesus, talking about the Second Coming: “Who here qualifies for the job of overseeing the kitchen? A person the Master can depend on to feed the workers on time each day. Someone the Master can drop in on unannounced and always find him doing his job. A God-blessed man or woman, I tell you. It won’t be long before the Master will put this person in charge of the whole operation.

“But if that person only looks out for himself, and the minute the Master is away does what he pleases– abusing the help and throwing drunken parties for his friends– the Master is going to show up when he least expects it and make hash of him. He’ll end up in the dump with the hypocrites, out in the cold – – shivering, teeth chattering (Matthew 24:45-51).

One great Bible verse spoken by Jesus is, “I have brought you glory on the earth by completing the work you gave me to do” (John 17:4).

SO WHAT?

What will my life look like when He appears? What would I do right now to put my life in order, what would I change in order to be prepared for His appearing?

1. God is pondering our every step. As far as He is concerned we are living in a fish bowl. When was the last time we repeated the phrase, “Thou God seest me?”

2. God is the giver of life. Every breath we take is due to His grace and kindness to us. Are we focused on giving back to Him our lives for all of His good gifts to us?

3. Jesus was unflinchingly determined to do the will of God even if it meant death on a cross. Does His example of steadfastness motivate us to FLEE, PURSUE, FIGHT, GRASP?

4. Are we ready for His coming? Will we be able to say to Him, “I have brought you glory on the earth by completing the work you gave me to do”?

V. GOD IS THE SOVEREIGN POWER OF THE UNIVERSE

God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 1who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen (I Tim. 6:15-16).