Your Life Matters

All right. Well, we are—we're almost to Second Timothy. Okay. In case you didn't know it, that's where we're kind of heading toward the book of Second Timothy. And in order to get there, I'm trying to hit some of the high spots of First Timothy and some of the things that are focal points that kind of carry their way through that whole letter. And so we're going to look at that this morning. We're going to look at First Timothy in just a little bit. But how many of you watched *It's a Wonderful Life* this year? It's sort of a Christmas staple. Only two. I'm kind of glad to hear that, because if I told you that that movie was the inspiration for Rod Serling's *Twilight Zone*, you'd kind of believe me, wouldn't you? It's not true. But it's like an hour-and-a-half-long *Twilight Zone* episode is essentially what the movie is. But *It's a Wonderful Life*. I ask myself every time I think about the movie, why would you give Uncle Billy the $8,000, right? The guy who's got to have a string around his finger—what if it's that crucial, why would you give that guy the money? Okay, that's my big frustration with that movie. Giving Uncle Billy the eight grand is just, you know. Anyway, okay.

In the movie, as Clarence is talking with George, the thing he tells him is, he says, "I'm giving you a great gift, George. The opportunity to see what the world would be like without you." Right? And then that becomes sort of the course of the rest of the movie as George Bailey gets to experience all the lives that he has intersected with in Bedford Falls and all the ways that he has positively affected that community. And to a certain extent, the lesson that Clarence was trying to show George is a lesson that Paul is trying to get Timothy to grasp—not to see the world as if you, you know, you weren't ever here, but to help him realize that Timothy, your life matters, and the life of the people in the congregation matters because your life and their lives intersect with and affect the lives of so many others. So it's almost as if when you read First Timothy, one of the most important lessons that Paul is trying to get Timothy to understand is almost as if he's saying this: Timothy, what I need you to realize and what I need you to help others in the church see is that how a person lives their life has meaningful, lasting consequences for people all around them. In other words, what I really think Paul is trying to get Timothy to understand is this: that your life matters. So it matters how you live your life. If there was a sort of big idea to this sermon, that's what it is: Your life matters. So it matters how you live your life.

One of the ways your life matters that comes out in this letter is that your life matters because it impacts others. And that's really kind of the connection to the whole George Bailey thing. The church has always been intended to be a single unit comprised of individual members which make up the whole. Paul really drills down into that in his letter to the Corinthian church and also in the book of Romans as well. But the letter to the Corinthian church is where he sort of really tears that idea down to its most fundamental concepts to help the church realize the interconnectedness of all of their lives. You're never meant to live your life like a castaway out on an island all by yourself. Maybe that's a dream of yours, right? If I could just be away from all these people. But that's not how we are meant to live our lives. But neither are we meant to live our lives as these sort of mindless worker bees, all indistinguishable from one another, just working for the good of some abstract collective. That's not how we're meant to be either. Paul describes us as members of one body, but each member having different functions, just like parts of the body. And in First Corinthians, he makes that very clear: how silly it would be if the hand were to say, "Well, you know, I wish I was an eye, and so I'm going to start acting like an eye." That would be a disaster. These different parts of the body all work together in harmony to complement one another and to do together what could not be done independent of one another—each one uniquely gifted—so that when every member of the body, or of the church, is working as God has gifted them, then we are all strengthened and supported. And this comes out in Paul's letter to Timothy as well: that we are designed to be a blessing to one another. We're meant to be here with one another, using what God has given us.

It's easy to think that that's only for the elite, the super-Christians, the really mature—the people that we're like, "Well, yeah, obviously we need them because look at what they do. Look at how gifted they are. Look at how spiritually mature they are." But look at me, you know, I don't think I'm that person. I don't think I'm that useful. How could I be valuable to everybody else? We can convince ourselves that somehow there is a part of us that doesn't measure up. We're not enough of something. We're not the right kind of thing. We're too old or we're too young or we're too this or we're too that. Maybe we're new to the faith. Maybe we still view ourselves as being immature or unsure of what our gifting is, and we don't really know how to help the ministry be more effective or how to impact the lives of the others in the congregation. And so Paul, believe it or not, has to address this very reality in Timothy's life and almost reprimand him a little about this very thing.

If you're in First Timothy, just flip to chapter 4. Chapter 4 and look at verse 12. He says this to Timothy: "Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you." (Remember, we talked about that a couple weeks ago in Acts chapter 16.) "Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers."

Look at the things that he says in that. He says, "Set yourself as an example to the believers." Timothy, devote yourself to this. Do not neglect the gifts you have so that all may see your progress. And whether the "let no one despise you for your youth" was just a perception that Timothy had or whether that was really what was going on, either way, Paul's saying that your inexperience in life or in ministry as a young man—and most likely in his 30s, not like 15—he was in his 30s. But that's not an excuse. That's not an excuse to take what you know to be a gifting of yours and to just sort of sit on the sidelines and not use it. You need to be doing it, and you need to be doing it so that people can—Paul even says—see your progress. They need to be able to see that you are growing in the faith, that you are maturing, that you are developing in your ability to use this—there's growth there. So Paul is almost nudging his apprentice and saying to him, "Stop making excuses. Stop wasting your gifts. Stop depriving the church of what has been given to you by God. We need you. The church needs you. Your life matters to the people around you. They need your gift." His gift was preaching and teaching. "They need your example. They need to see how you're living your life. They need to see Christlike conduct in the way that you live."

This is one of the downsides of the hermit Christian, the lone ranger out there just all by himself or herself. Doesn't matter how spiritually mature they are. Nobody benefits from that. Nobody gets to see them live their life that way. Nobody gets to learn by their example. Nobody gets to be encouraged by their spiritual strength. It's all just sort of relegated to themselves. So their opportunity to let their light shine is severely limited. They need to be out there with everyone else. See that spiritual growth. See what it looks like to grow in the faith. That's one of the things I love about the fact that God wants to use us even if we aren't these sort of towering theological giants or we haven't been Christians for 10, 20, 30, 40 years—new believers and people who are young in the faith still. God desires for us to be involved and engaged in ministry and living among one another, sharing with one another, participating in our lives with one another, fellowshipping with one another so that other people can see how you are growing as well and learn from that growth—learn how it is that God is helping you to grow and develop in your faith. So Paul says to Timothy, like, you've got to be out there doing it. You've got this gifting. You know what it is. You're in the church now. Use it. Let people see you. Let people hear from you. Immerse yourself in these things. You need to be participating in the life of the church because your life has a very dynamic impact on the people around you. And what Paul's saying to Timothy is no different than what he could say to each one of us. If you are a believer, you have unique spiritual gifts given to you by the Holy Spirit. They're given to you not exclusively for your benefit. The Scripture is very clear: they're given to you for the benefit of the church. And likewise, other people who have gifts that you don't have are given to them for the benefit of others—you included. So there's this overlapping aspect of ministry. As each is differently gifted, we supply what others are lacking. That's one of the beauties of the church. There's this growth that takes place.

So one of the things that comes out in this letter—we're going to see more of this—is that reality: your life matters because your life impacts other people. So live your life in a way that others can see it, others can benefit from it, others can learn from it. Another thing that he says—and I don't know where I'm at here on my slides. Okay, here we go. Fast forward. Here's another thing he says: Your life matters because it affects the church. And this sounds like that's what I just said, isn't it? Affects the church because we're all part of the church. We'll see that it affects the church in a different way here. There are two common misperceptions about Christian life that have been pervasive for a long, long, long time. They still exist today. One of them says if I have good outward conduct, it doesn't really matter what I know. It doesn't matter if I have a firm grasp of Scripture; good outward conduct can excuse a poor knowledge of Scripture. But the other one is sort of the flip side: if I have a good understanding of Scripture, it doesn't really matter how I live my life because I know the truth. Both of these things can kind of be sustained for a short time, but ultimately they will end up being exposed and sort of collapsing on themselves before too long. But both of them are a spiritual danger to the well-being of the church as a collective and individuals within the local congregation.

In fact, one of the warnings that I would say should be attached to this sort of mindset is what Jesus says in Matthew 18: But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be thrown into the depths of the sea. The idea being that you would not want to live your life in a way that's going to tempt other people—specifically those who are less mature in the faith or even unbelievers—into sin. And both of these mindsets can lend the appearance of credibility that can lead immature or unsuspecting persons away from the truth and away from God-honoring conduct. Which is why Paul tells Timothy to keep a close watch on yourself, on your conduct, and on your teaching. Persist in this, he says, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. Both of these things must align: what you believe to be true about Scripture and how you live your life. Your lifestyle alone is not going to lead anyone to faith in Christ or strengthen the church. It must be grounded in something. And similarly, teaching without the conviction of personal application is going to prove to be unconvincing and oftentimes sow seeds of doubt in the mind of skeptics and unbelievers.

And so once again, this is a place where we might be tempted to say, "Well, yeah, that's obviously important for Timothy because he's a church leader and he's somebody who's been placed at this church in Ephesus to help them and to strengthen them and grow them. So obviously it matters for him, but does it really apply to me? Does it matter if my life aligns with what I claim to believe about Scripture and vice versa? Do those things really have to be so closely knit together?" Well, yes, they do. You're certainly right that an elder or teacher does have greater opportunity to sway the convictions of the local church. But don't think that your life has no effect on the church—or, and this is where we get into where this is a little bit different from the first point—to affect what other people outside of the church think about the church.

Let me read from 1 Timothy 3:14–15. In these verses, Paul says this: "I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth." What Paul is saying is, remember, the church is the household of God or the family of God. He's not talking about the building. He's not talking about the organization. He's talking about the people. We are part of the family of God. And he says that the church is the pillar and the buttress or the support of truth. So our departure in life, in conduct, or in theology is going to betray that family, and it's going to undermine the very work the church is supposed to be doing in the world, which is supposed to be proclaiming the truth of God as it's revealed in his word. So instead of being a light that is lighting up the darkness, when we insist that our life does not need to align with the teachings of Scripture or we can get away with just acting like Christians even if we don't believe or profess these things to be true, what happens is all of that becomes eroded and light is covered up. Like Christ's illustration, it'd be like lighting a lamp and putting it under a basket, which wouldn't make any sense. Everything becomes dark.

Turn over to Titus. The book of Titus in many ways has a lot of parallels to First Timothy. Titus chapter 2—I want you to see Paul gives Titus these same two corresponding realities need to be aligned, and he encourages that. Titus chapter 2 verse 1: "But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine." So he's talking about his communication, about his understanding of scriptural truth. He needs to teach in line with what is true. But then look at verse 7 of chapter 2: "Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us." What is he telling Titus? Those two realities must run in parallel to one another: the conduct of your life and your adherence to sound doctrine. You're teaching sound doctrine. If one of those goes off in one direction and the other in the other direction, well then what do we have? Well, we have now created an opportunity so that we can be condemned. Our opponents are not put to shame—those who criticize or slander or would have all sorts of derogatory things to say about Christians and the church. In fact, the opposite. Now we give them grounds for their accusations and their criticism. These things must run in parallel. How we live our lives and what we claim to believe about the truths of Scripture must complement one another, not contradict one another.

There was a gentleman in New London, Connecticut, during the period of the First Great Awakening in America—so we're talking about pre-Revolutionary War, 1730s and '40s. And this gentleman's name was James Davenport, and he was an itinerant preacher. So how he came to be one—well, he was a student at Yale, and he was studying law at Yale, but he wanted to somehow be a preacher. And he sort of randomly turned to 1 Samuel 14 and read about Jonathan and his armor-bearer infiltrating the Philistine camp and then sort of running amok in the Philistine camp. And from that he sort of concluded that he would ride into towns as an itinerant preacher and he would denounce the preachers in that town, calling them wolves in sheep's clothing. And he would even sometimes go actually into the church buildings in the Sunday morning worship service and stand up and start just creating a scene and calling out the pastors and just really sort of these dramatic confrontations was the defining characteristic of his ministry. And he started to gain quite a bit of notoriety because of these antics. And so then he started having these public bonfires and encouraging people to bring all their luxury goods and their lewd books and all this sort of stuff and throw them on the fire and show your devotion to the Lord and make a big spectacle of it. And in one instance, he was prodding the crowd that he had gathered around at this bonfire, and he was challenging them to throw all their fancy clothes into the fire. And to prove his conviction, he yanked his pants off and threw them in the fire. And one woman dashed over and grabbed his pants off of the fire and basically said, "You know, you need to get control of yourself here. You are losing your mind here." And for whatever reason that sort of shook him, and he kind of really changed his tune in the way he was conducting his ministry after that—like, you know, even you can't be yanking your pants off in public and throwing them in the fire. As much of a spectacle as we're drawn to here, we've got our limits. Get a hold of yourself.

It may be kind of an extreme example, but of somebody whose practice does not align with their professed goals and beliefs and as a result ends up creating all sorts of havoc and being counter to what they claim to be trying to do. So there was all sorts of damage wrought by this man's actions. Extreme example. Some of you in this church have been here long enough to remember times in this congregation where there have been damage wrought by influential people that led to a painful church split that unfolded over a long period of time and created a lot of not only conflict here but damaged the reputation of this church in the wider community for a long time. Your life affects the church, and your life affects what people understand to be true about the church and what they understand it means to be a Christian and to be a part of a Christian community. Whether you're front and center in ministry or you're in the background, what you do and what you believe affects the health of this congregation, but it also affects what people believe about what it means to be a Christian, about what it means to be a part of a church. In other words, your life testifies to that. It affects how the unbelieving world perceives the family of God.

There's another area where Timothy is sort of educated by Paul about the significance of our lives: that our life matters because your life represents the truth. And these things are all interwoven, which is why there's such similarity and overlap. But I would encourage you to turn to 1 Timothy chapter 6, verse 11. "But as for you, O man of God"—so he's still talking to Timothy. He's just addressed sort of the danger of the allure of love of money and avarice, that sort of thing. But he says, "As for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses." So once again, the same idea that what you profess to be true and how you live your life—those things need to be in alignment. In verse 13: "I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen."

Keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach. In other words, what he's saying is, Timothy, when your life is inconsistent with what you teach, then you open this door for the very truths of Scripture to be maligned and to have reproach heaped on them. If you were a Christian teenager in the 1990s—okay, so that severely limits the number of people to whom this applies—but you are familiar with this quote right here: "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips but walk out of the door and deny him with their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable." Now, that quote was in Brennan Manning's book *Ragamuffin Gospel*. It's not an endorsement of him, but the quote was really made famous because it was the opening lyric to the DC Talk song "What If I Stumble?" And so all sorts of teenagers during that time were really sort of challenged to think about: Is what you profess to be true and how you live your life—are those things aligned? Because if they're not, then it opens the door for unbelievers to discredit anything you claim to believe, anything that you claim the Scripture says is true—because if you believed it was true, then you would live as if it was true.

One of the aspects of the Great Commission that often probably is overlooked is the last statement of that, where Jesus commands us to teach them to observe everything that I've commanded. We tend to focus on the "make disciples," which is evangelism, and the "baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." But then Jesus says, well, what do you do after that? Well, you teach them to observe everything that I commanded. Teach them to live in accordance with the claims of Scripture. And we have sayings in our lives—I mean, throughout history, people have come up with clever ways to address this very reality. We say things like "talk is cheap," right? Or we say things like "actions speak louder than words," right? Or "don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk." There's all these sorts of things where even in the wider context of our culture, we understand that if you're going to claim certain things, claim to believe certain things, claim that certain things are true, but then you don't live as if they are true, well then it doesn't really seem like you believe they're true. And how you live reveals what you believe to be true.

So what that means—what Paul is saying to Timothy here in 1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 14, where he says that you have to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach—the commandment (singular) really is a summing up of all that Paul has instructed Timothy and really it extends to Scripture: all that Scripture commands us. How you live reveals whether or not you believe this is true—so much more than you just saying you believe this is true—because it's really easy to say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe this," until there is pressure or temptation or whatever, and in that moment it's almost as if you're saying, "Well, actually right now I believe something else is true. Something else is better. Something else is more right." Verse 14—Paul's saying to Timothy, it's so important not only what you teach, but how you live. Because that's going to communicate to this community in Ephesus more about what you believe is true than if you just talk louder and longer.

In our bylaws and on our website, we have this statement that says this: Scripture is without error, unfailing, authoritative, and complete. We believe the Bible is the supreme revelation of God's will for mankind and constitutes the only infallible guide for faith and life. We could put that everywhere. We could plaster that on the front of our building. We could get bumper stickers and put it on the back of our cars. We could tell people, "Oh yeah, you know what we believe about Scripture? It's without error. It's unfailing. It's authoritative. It's complete. It's the supreme revelation of God's will for mankind and constitutes the only infallible guide for faith and life." I mean, we could have that memorized. We could be able to recite it in our sleep. We could really just drum that up. But if we don't live in accordance with it, if we don't obey it, if we don't look to it as a guide for faith and life, if we take it as optional, as suggestions, well then it doesn't matter how many times we recite that or where we publish that. It would be completely—in fact, it would probably be better if we didn't say that at all. If we believe that our lives put on display what we are confident in and what we claim to be trusting in and living in accordance with, then our lives should be lived in accordance with that standard. What's found in this book should be directing us.

Now, I've got to shift gears a little bit here because in all these things that I've been talking about—that the way you live your lives affects the people in the church, the way you live your lives affects what the world believes and sees about in relationship to the church, and now the way you live your life affects what people believe about the truth that we claim to be living according to—it can seem like there's no place for anyone to make any mistakes and that if you have sin in your life or you haven't lived in complete conformity to the standards of God's word, that you're in big trouble, that you've messed it up for everybody, that you've ruined the whole thing, that somehow the Christian faith has no room for people diverging or erring in any way. The Bible is so, so, so clear: Christianity is a religion that is rooted in grace. The whole idea of salvation is rooted in God's grace being poured out to sinners—people who make lots of errors, big ones, little ones, medium ones, all over the place. And in fact, the Bible is from start to finish full of stories of people who messed up big time, who should have known better. I mean, the very first story: Adam and Eve—who should have known better than them? They of all the people, you're like, certainly they wouldn't sin because they got their messages straight from God. You know, they were born into this perfect world. And then just every single person from then on until this one guy, Jesus—it's mistakes and errors and mess-ups and sins and catastrophes all over the place. That limitless grace of God is extended to us on the cross in the most vivid way.

And this ultimately is what Paul is wanting Timothy to lift up, wanting the church to lift up, wanting all of us to live out: that we are not perfect, that we still—as Paul says in Romans—stumble in many ways, and he even acknowledges his own failings and his own frustrations with his inabilities to do what he knows to be right and yet he finds himself doing what's wrong. And there's that wrestling that he has and frustration with his own ongoing sinfulness and battle with it. But that limitless grace of God that's extended to us at the cross should be motivation to let our lives support the truth that we claim to believe—even when we mess up. And that maybe is the most dynamic way that we can show we truly believe: that when we fall, when we fail, when we do succumb to the temptations, when we do act in ways that we know are contrary to what we claim to believe, and then we fall on the grace of God—that we confess and we understand that he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness—that we live out that. That's a better testimony than trying to hide all of our sins and our failings and act as if they never happen. To be honest about our standing before God, to show that when we fail, when we fall into temptation and sin, God doesn't all of a sudden snatch our salvation away from us and turn his back on us. But his love and compassion is still extended toward us. We can have a powerful impact on the people around us, on what they perceive to be true about the church, and what they perceive to be true about the truth of the gospel revealed in the word of God.

So I would just give you this encouragement: Your life matters. It matters because God cares about you. It matters because he cares about the church. It matters because he cares about everyone in the church. It matters because he cares about his glory. He cares about his reputation. He cares about the truth. He cares about his word. He cares about unbelievers. He cares about the whole world. So you and I should live our lives as if these things matter to us as well.

Let's pray. Dear Lord, I thank you so much for Paul's encouragement to Timothy about the importance of a consistent life that is lived in support of and in accordance with your word. We thank you for his patience with Timothy even as he understands some of Timothy's struggles—those struggles that are going to be addressed more directly even in Second Timothy. We thank you that this isn't just something for Timothy, but it's something that every one of us can learn from and can be challenged by. We do ask that you would help us to be men and women who are devoted to knowing and understanding your word, but that knowledge would be translated into living in accordance with it and that our understanding and our lives would complement one another and not be these contradictions that cause everything into question for the people who know us and observe us. May we live in a way that benefits those around us both inside the church and outside the church and ultimately to glorify