The Aim of Our Charge Is Love — 1 Timothy 1

0:00 Morning, everybody. I'm excited to talk about first Timothy. When mister Meng told me that... Or asked me to speak, he said that I could talk about anything the spirit leads me to, or we could start first Timothy. And over the course of the past couple of weeks, it's been really cool how the Lord has just led my spirit to just consider just sin and repentance.

0:27 And then we actually went to a conference last week, and they started talking about sin and repentance. And then I started reading first Timothy, and there was one verse that just stood out in the first half of the chapter, and it led me to just consider sin and repentance and the process of just focusing on the Lord. And we even talked about it today. Mister Bingham, don't... Mister Bingham, he brought up today, he was talking about Mark chapter 10, and and it was really awesome throughout the entire worship service how we were just focusing on similar thoughts.

1:00 And in Mark 10, we... He he said the quote, don't be deluded into thinking we are okay, and that's kind of what I wanted to challenge everybody here with, myself included, don't be deluded into thinking you're okay in your daily Christian walk. So it's it's awesome to consider the Lord and consider salvation and what he brought on the cross, but in our human nature and in the flesh, it's extremely easy to get comfortable and complacent and to be okay with sin in our lives, and that's myself included. Right? It's not me throwing out things to you guys.

1:34 It's it's all of us, and I just wanted to address that. So just an overview, if you don't know, and I'm sure all of you do know, but I'll say it anyways. We talked about this. First Timothy is Paul writing a letter to Timothy, and Paul... This this is probably written in the mid sixties a d.

1:55 Right? So Paul is upwards of maybe even 70 years old at this point, and he's been in ministry for thirty plus years, and Timothy is a younger guy that he's just trying to encourage. In first Timothy, we see that he's really laying out the law in regards to the law. I use that word loosely. He's laying out the law in regards to church life and what church ministry should look like.

2:20 So he writes these things to first... He writes these things to Timothy so that he might be encouraged, and he's charged Timothy specifically with staying in Ephesus to encourage the church in Ephesus. So Timothy is encouraging the Ephesians, and Paul is writing a letter to him to encourage him in in the process of his ministry. So with all that laid out on the table, let's just read first Timothy chapter one, and I'm gonna focus on verses one to 11. And again, there was just one verse that really stuck out to me that I want to focus on today primarily after we read this, so you guys can sort of keep an eye out and see if you know which verse it is.

3:07 It's pretty obvious. But first Timothy one, it starts off, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, to Timothy my true child in the faith. Grace, mercy, and peace from God the father and Christ Jesus our Lord. As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

3:48 Certain persons by swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussion desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions. Now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully understanding this that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and the disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, purgers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. Let's just pray before we get started. Heavenly father, thank you so much for your love towards us, Lord. Thank you so much for the cross in Jesus Christ and the fact that your character so perfectly displayed to us through the manifestation of Christ on this earth, Lord, that the word became flesh and we were able to see the flesh as he dwelt among men.

4:55 Praise the Lord for that, Lord. We thank you so much. We we praise you and honor you today in opening up your word, and we desire that it is only your word that we're receiving to our hearts, and it's only your word and your truth that we receive into our lives so that we might be able to serve you and live for you all the all the more on this earth, lord. And even as I stand here today, I take these words into my heart, Lord. Ask that you soften all of our hearts, mine included, that we might be able to receive them, and it might just break our hearts, and we might be rebuilt by you and you alone, Lord.

5:29 And we might be able to live a life that is honoring and glorifying to your name. So praise the Lord for this time, Lord. Lord, we thank you, and we're excited to just read your word and and to delve into first Timothy. In your name, we pray. Amen.

6:17 He's saying that people are teaching endless genealogies, which we don't necessarily talk about today. Myths, we may talk about myths today. And even even just focusing on the law. Right? He goes into that a lot, and he says people are teaching a doctrine that focuses on endless genealogies, on myths, on the law.

6:37 And what I want to suggest to all of you today is that maybe some of that is infiltrating itself into our own lives. Maybe we kind of live by the law even though we don't necessarily acknowledge the law, and all of you here today, if I said, do you live by the law? You would say no. Right? Like, that's foolishness.

6:56 We know that the law is is not is not the way of life anymore, but we live a life of grace. Right? From the Lord Jesus Christ. So we know all the right answers, but I'm trying to dive into issues of the heart. And when I look at my own heart, I notice that, okay, maybe I do live by the law in some sense.

7:14 So Paul is saying here that, okay, the aim of our charge is simply love, love that issues from those three things. Right? And love itself is the fulfilling of the law. So despite the law being true and the law being correct, love is fulfilling the law itself. We read that in Romans 13 that love does no wrong to a neighbor, and we read that Christ himself told us that the law is simply to love your neighbor and to love God.

7:44 Right? So if love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore, Romans 13 says, love is the fulfilling of all the entirety of the law. So with that in mind, we can focus and devote our entire attention to love and and love itself. So all these other things that we consider, even the other things that I was thinking about is we we devote a lot of time, and we know people that devote time to sciences and creation and evolution, devoting a lot of your time to that. It can be easy to focus your time and your attention on that, over focusing your attention on love.

8:22 And the way that we show love is through point number one, a pure heart. Point number two, a good conscience. And point number three, a sincere faith. And that's really what I wanna get to today. And the big question is, what motivates you in your life?

8:40 Is it your faith? Is it a sincere faith? Or is it religion? And I would propose that if we're motivated by religion and the things that we do, we're following the law rather than living by faith. So point number one, a pure heart.

8:55 Right off the bat, a pure heart, the... What is a pure heart and how do we have a pure heart? Immediately in my mind, when I think of a pure heart, I think of all the things that I need to do in order to have a pure heart, which I immediately am faced with this conundrum that I'm living by religion and that I need to make sure I don't do... I don't fall to temptation. I need to make sure I don't sin in order to have a pure heart, and that's completely wrong.

9:23 Right? Because we know clearly from the word a pure heart is not by my own power. A pure heart is from the Lord. That's God's work. A pure heart is God's work, not my own work.

9:34 In Proverbs 20, it's it's specifically asked a rhetorical question and says, who can say I have made my heart pure? I am clean in... From my sin. That's a rhetorical question because nobody can say that. Nobody can tell you I have made my heart pure.

9:51 Nobody can tell you that they are clean from the sin apart from Jesus Christ and the cross. Right? So a pure heart, when you start to talk about a pure heart and the fact that it's God's work, there's two big things that I wanted to point out. A pure heart has only one treasure, and a pure heart a pure heart only has one treasure, and a pure heart is prepared. A pure heart only has one treasure, a pure heart is prepared.

10:16 So when we talk about a treasure... So I I was pretty nerdy growing up, and and to put that into into perspective, like, some of the gifts that I would ask for were super super nerdy, and I'm still really nerdy. So one of the gifts I asked for... And my cool... The coolest magazine I liked was Popular Mechanics, And one of the gifts gifts I asked for was...

10:41 I think I was 12 years old, maybe 11. I asked my dad to get me, like, one to three scale replica of a v eight engine, so I could rebuild it in my So I... That was my gift at 11 years old. And my dad bought it for me from Popular Mechanics, and it was really sweet. But I say that I was really nerdy.

11:00 That doesn't mean I was really smart because I never built that I never built that engine. I think it's still in my room now. I started I started taking the parts off and I realized, oh, There's a sequence to this, and now I don't know what the sequence is. So anyways, another kind of nerdy thing that I did was we would we would travel lots and we would go to national parks. Every time I went to national parks, would just look for shiny rocks.

11:28 So if I ever found a shiny rock, would take it and put it in my pocket and fill up my pockets with rocks, you know. And when I was 11 or 12 or 13 or maybe like 16, I don't know, I thought that was cool. Right? I would gather up rocks, I would take them and bring them home, and I had a box in my closet, and I would put them in the box in my closet. And no joke, fifteen years later, last year, I went back to my house, and I forgot all about those rocks.

11:58 You know? I went back to my house, and I was in my closet. April and I were just visiting, and I opened up my closet and I find this box and I'm like, oh, sweet, my rocks. And like, I grabbed the rocks, right, and I opened it up, and no joke, I was like, what in the world? These are just like dirty rocks.

12:15 Like, they weren't even nice. And I looked it up and 90% of the rocks were quartz. And when I look up quartz, do you know what you find? Quartz is the most abundant mineral on the face of the earth. So I was enticed, and I treasure these rocks, maybe to a fault because I don't think I showed it to anybody because I thought I had real treasures there, but I hid them in my closet.

12:37 And we all know this as part of our heart as well, that we sort of treasure these things, and that's that's kind of what a treasure looks like. Right? You you notice it, you cherish it, you love it, and you see it, it's shiny, it's great, and you take it and you hide it away maybe, and eventually, ideally, you would be like, hey, check it out. Like, this is a sweet treasure. Like, I have all these rocks.

12:59 You want take a look at them? They're cool. But in the same sense, the greatest treasure we could ever have been given is from the Lord. Right? So he died on the cross, he gave...

13:10 He showed us grace, and it's a gift that's free. In Romans, it says that the gift of... The gifts of God are irrevocable, so the treasure that we are given is irrevocable. No one can take it away ever. So he's given us this treasure, and we take it, we cherish it, but do I really do that?

13:27 Do I really take it? Do I cherish it? Do I hide it away in my heart? Do I show it to other people? Am I excited about it?

13:34 He gave us this treasure, and without a doubt, he's given us the certificate of authenticity right here, the proof of the treasure and its worth, and its worth surpasses anything that we can think of, any knowledge that we have. The worth of knowing Jesus Christ surpasses it all. So when you talk about a treasure when you talk about a treasure, it's huge. In Matthew 16, we can we can just read Matthew 16. We all know the verses, but I just wanted to shed some...

14:04 Or Matthew six. Sorry. I wanted to shed some light on it. So we all know all... We all know the common verses of, all the treasures that we store up of this earth are gonna burn away, and it's all gonna be gone.

14:25 And Matthew six is really important because it says, don't lay up for yourselves the treasures here on earth. Right? Because moth and rust will destroy, but lay up treasures in heaven. And it says specifically, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. So that's really important because, if we lay up this...

14:46 The the saving grace and Jesus Christ as our treasure, our heart is gonna lie there as well, which means that our our mind is gonna be preoccupied with the treasure because I thought of those rocks a lot, and our heart is gonna be towards... Pointed towards the treasure's treasure, and we're just gonna be consumed by it. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. But the great thing about Matthew six is in verse 24, it says, no one can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. So it's equating a treasure to to your master, which is pretty awesome.

15:27 So the treasure that I I hold away in my heart becomes my master, and it and it rules my life in a sense, you know. And nobody can serve two masters. Nobody can can serve, God and money, it says here. Nobody can serve God and the world at the same time. There's only one treasure, and a pure heart only seeks after one treasure.

15:48 And that's what I want to impress on us today is that the pure heart seeks after treasure that has been given by God's blood alone. You can't purify your own heart. It's a it's a treasure and a gift that's been given to us freely, and we have the proof of it right here. So to understand the worth of the treasure, I didn't really understand the worth of quartz rocks, they're worthless, but to understand the worth of a treasure... Our treasure that we have, you need to know the word, you need to look into the word.

16:42 I don't know if these are weird or funnier, but another weird story is... So these shoes that I have, I literally wear these shoes all the time. Right? I don't know if anybody has noticed, but I only I only have one pair of dress shoes. April just bought me another pair, but I don't want to mess them up, so I never wear them.

17:00 I wear these these pair... This pair of shoes all the time, and I got this pair of shoes for my wedding. They're pretty nice. They're wingtips. So since 2015, I've been wearing this almost every single day because I go to work every single day and then church on Sundays.

17:15 Right? So I wear it every single day. So this year, I started to notice, okay, like, these these kind of from afar look fine, right? Like they're not bad, but close-up, like where I'm standing, I know that they're pretty bad. They're scuffed up.

17:29 And then even worse, I can look at my heels and I know they're super worn down because I I walk super heavy on my heels. And I know all these things, and that's not not enough to convict me or like do anything about it. I'm I'm okay living with that. Right? But the other day, I got to work and that day was raining.

17:49 So so I got to work and it stopped raining right when I got to work, and I was like, okay. Was like, okay, sweet. It stopped raining. I can get out and get to get to the office. So I stepped, I opened the door of my car, and I looked down, and there's like a small puddle, probably not not even higher than the sole of my shoe.

18:06 So so I thought in my head, no worries, like, I'll just stand in the puddle real quick, get the stuff from my back seat, and get to work. So I sit in the puddle, got all the stuff from my back seat, maybe in the span of one or two minutes, and then I walk up and go to work, and then when I sit down and like start logging into my computer, I I feel super uncomfortable because the... My right foot is completely wet, and I was like I was like, okay, this is weird. Like, I wasn't standing in a deep puddle, so this is really really odd. So as I like investigated, I took off my shoe.

18:39 Right? And I looked inside my shoe and the entire base of my shoe was wet and my sock was completely wet. So I turned around, and I was like, what in the world? There's a hole in the bottom of my shoe. So so I turned around, and I was like, there's a hole in the bottom of my shoe.

18:57 And what I did immediately was I looked up like the shoe doctor, and I was like, how do I get this fixed? Like, how do I get someone to replace the sole of my shoe? I got it all prepared and like, they send you this thing and you fill it out and you send your shoes to them. They like, replace your soles and send it back. But the thing is...

19:17 The kicker here is that a pure heart needs to be prepared. Right? So in order to be prepared, you need to know what the issue is. Right? So I was definitely prepared once I felt a wet shoe, but the the the problem is that...

19:32 Okay. That prepared my heart, you know? It prepared my heart for healing, or my heart can be prepared for healing that prepared me to get my shoe fixed, but no joke, if you look at my shoe right now, there's literally a hole at the bottom of my shoe. That was four weeks ago. I didn't I didn't fix my shoe.

19:53 I'm okay with it because I'm not walking in any puddles. Right? But next time I walk in a puddle, I'm gonna be super excited about trying to fix my shoe, and it probably won't happen again. The same thing happens with sin, right? You literally...

20:05 Our our condition with sin and mine, if it's not yours, is I face sin and I sort of am okay with being broken, and then once I'm broken I'm like, okay, cool. God forgives me. Let's move on. And then I come back to it, I step in another puddle, and I'm like, okay, I'm broken again. Like, let's move on.

20:25 But that broken heart is definitely the first step in preparation for the Lord to work in your life, but it's not the end of it. So one of the issues that I think I have is that I think that's that's the the end of my that's the end of my journey with the Lord a lot of times. I I recognize sin in my life. He points it out, and I feel broken before him, and I might pray before him and ask him for forgiveness, but I don't truly turn towards him. I turn more towards my religion in, okay, like, let's take steps to make this not happen again.

21:01 Like, I won't watch Netflix next week, you know, like, I have a problem with watching too much stuff maybe, and... Or all the... All those basic things, even laziness, procrastination, lust, Netflix, all those things like tons of stuff. But, anyway, so you see, one, a pure heart is... We see that a pure heart is...

21:24 Only has one treasure on this earth, and we see that that treasure is the Lord, and we see that a pure heart is prepared always, a pure heart is always broken, and we can see that really in in multiple places in the word. In James chapter four, we all know this. It says, humble yourself. Right? It says, submit yourself to the Lord.

21:44 Humble yourself. In Joel chapter two, we all know Joel chapter two. It says, rend your hearts and not your garments. So it even relates to this somewhat because I could polish the top of my shoe and it would look fine to everybody else, but nobody knows about the hole that's at the... Well, everybody does now, but nobody would have known.

22:04 Right? So it's... In Joel two, it says, rend your hearts and not your garments. And even in Romans seven, which we're all super familiar with, it says, oh, wretched man that I am. So I so easily come to that point of, oh, wretched man that I am.

22:19 I so easily come to the point of, your heart, rend your heart, and I so easily come to submit yourself to God and humble yourself, and I think we all do. But then that's where point number two comes into play, a good conscience. So the disconnect here is that I think point number two, having a good conscience before the Lord. Point number two, again, is one, our good conscience is fueled only and solely by the character of God and the spirit the spirit working within us. So the trick that we've been led to believe and the doctrine that we've been led to believe, I would say is that shame and guilt can actually fuel a good conscience.

23:23 Romans chapter two, it says, do you not know that his kindness was meant to lead you to repentance? Do you not know that? I ask myself that all the time. Do I not know that his kindness was meant to lead me to repentance? It's not about, oh, wretched man that I am.

23:39 And the beautiful thing is is that if we continue to read all of those all those chapters that we read, we see that, that we just read, we see that it didn't end with, oh wretched man that I am. It continued on to turn towards the Lord. So it's a turning away from sin, but it's also the turning towards the Lord. Right? And if you talk about the good conscience being fueled by the character of God, we can look at Romans...

24:06 Or we can look at James chapter four. It says, submit yourself to God, but we all know the second half of it. It says, and he will exalt you. Right? So he lifts you up.

24:16 So the purity of your heart and and the perfectness of your conscience isn't about you exalting yourself and coming back into right relationship with the Lord. It's about him exalting you and him cleaning your heart. So in Joel chapter two, it says, rend your hearts and not your garments, but it continues and it says, return to the Lord your God for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and bounding in steadfast love. So the repair of your heart and the... And your repentance, you're truly repaired only by his character, by who he is, by his steadfast love towards you, by his mercy towards you, by his grace towards you, and even the thought of his judgment, which is true, but his judgment that was poured out on Christ and not me.

25:02 So focusing on that over focusing on, oh, wretched man that I am. And even if you continue in Romans chapter seven, it says, wretched man that I am, but the next line in that sentence is, who will deliver me from this body of death? So it's, oh wretched man that I am, and then it's not, oh wretched man that I am, and move forward from that, and try to live a life that's glorifying to the Lord. It's, oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death? And we know that from Romans chapter eight that...

25:36 We can turn to Romans chapter eight. Everybody knows these verses. Romans eight says, there's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So in in seven verse 24, it says, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Verse 25, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

26:00 So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. So we even talk... We talked about this and Romans six, seven and eight has been on my mind for a really long time because it seems like the perfect sum up of the progression of Christian faith and Christian maturity, I would say. So we talked about this at the conference that we were at, actually, surprisingly, which was confirmation from the Lord to me of the thoughts that I had been having of these chapters, and you really see that in Romans six, say, what shall we say then?

26:45 Shall we sin so that grace may abound? You see that somebody really struggles with sin, and continuing in that cycle of sin might cause you to just take advantage of grace, and eventually you realize, okay, I shouldn't take advantage of this grace. The grace that was shown to me is great. And then eventually you realize that, even if you do sin, there's therefore now no condemnation in Christ Jesus. So in Christ Jesus, you have this love that sort of compels and constrains you, and it it delivers you from the body of death.

27:17 So this love is powerful that Christ shows us through this, and we see that it's that through the spirit of life, we have been set free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. And we see that our good conscience is really fueled by knowing the character of God and knowing who he is in our lives and and who he has been, as Devin was saying, for all of time, he's been the same. And a good conscience is also fueled by the spirit, which we see here that we can have a good conscience because we've been set free by the spirit of life from the law of sin and death. So the struggle really for me and for for many of us, think, is we still live by a law of sin and death in a sense, in which we we may fall to sin, we may struggle with something or face something. We think that there's things that we have to do in order to get back in a right relationship with the Lord, but it's never been about our ability to to pursue the Lord or our ability to to get to him.

28:20 Right? It's always been about his closeness to us, his nearness to us, and his pursuit of us over our pursuit of him. So the focus, really, I desire for it to shift in my heart and in everybody's heart in the fact that God is really who he says he is. And I want us to focus on the fact that... And believe on the fact that he...

28:43 That Jesus Christ is really the son of God, and that he died on the cross for our sins, and the same spirit that that raised him from the dead is living inside our hearts right now. And if we have a focus on that, then we won't be stuck in this cycle of of sin, or we won't be fooled by different doctrines, or we won't be devoted to things that are meaningless. We'll treasure up the Lord and we'll treasure up the things of heaven rather than treasuring up the things of this earth. And ultimately, it leads to the final point of a sincere faith, and that's really what I desire us to get get to a sincere faith because sometimes I think even if I search deep down in my heart, sometimes I might do things in this life or on this earth simply because I I know that's what is required by the Christian faith. So I might be nice to somebody because that's what's required rather than having a sincere faith and a sincere heart towards that person.

29:44 In Philippians, Paul Paul says that he has love towards the brothers like Jesus Christ. I wish that in my own life that I would have love towards my brothers and sisters in that same way, and that I would even have a treasure that excites me so much that I would have love to people who don't have that treasure. I would have enough love to show them the treasure and tell them about it. But in... For a sincere faith, Devin...

31:06 So it's about the one who promised and the one who promised is faithful, And by that, we can live a life in which we're sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our hearts are pure, and we can live a life that would honor him. In first John five, it says, for everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. We can turn to it actually. It says, for everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. It says, for everyone who has been born of God has overcome the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith.

31:46 I was talking to brother Christian, and we talk a lot about eternal life and what the Lord achieved for us on the cross. Right? But the fact is that eternal life is right now, and we're living it right now. So overcoming the world and our ability to live victoriously on this earth is is possible, and it's by our faith. So it says, for everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith.

32:11 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the son of God? So sincere faith is true belief in the fact that Jesus is the son of God, and he is he is who he says he is, and he did what he... What it says he did on the cross. And believing in that just enriches our life to to live more by faith rather than living by religion. And that's what I desire for my own heart and for my own life that I would live by faith and not just by religion.

32:41 And you kinda see that happening because Timothy is charged with the church in Ephesus. And from Roman... Or from Revelation, we know that the church in Ephesus, what do they do? They forgot their first love. They were doing all the right things.

32:55 They were they were had all the right religious stuff going on, but they forgot their first love. And and I've sort of felt that in my life in a sense where the Lord called me and I felt super called to ministry and just working in a way that would honor him always, but sometimes I forget my first love and I forget the fact that faith in him and knowing him is the surpassing worth that I desire, not in achieving or being able to speak well or being able to serve others well. It's it's just by knowing him. And the caveat is that by knowing him, by having a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith, you would just automatically be able to love others. Right?

33:36 Those other things would sort of just flow from your heart and flow from you. If you... Kinda like, if you treasure something with your... All your heart, you're not gonna be able to shut up about it. You're gonna you're gonna have to tell people about it, you're gonna be excited to tell people about it, like, hey, look at this treasure that I have, because it's a treasure that you can have too.

33:54 Right? So even even for those who don't believe, it's extremely important because we do have a treasure, a treasure that can be cherished, a treasure that's powerful, a treasure that's proven in the word, a treasure that surpasses all worth, and, you can have that treasure too. Right? And that treasure is in believing that Jesus Christ is Lord, believing that he's God, and believing that he died for our sins, and just trusting that he died for your sins too, you know. But I really just...

34:58 This is this is the thoughts that David had, and you can sort of see there's some things in here that, relate more towards a life before the period of grace, but, we don't have to talk about that. But we'll read, verses one to 17. It says, have mercy on me, o God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. And this is more like we're we're immediately looking at, oh wretched man that I am. Right?

35:29 Have mercy on me. Oh wretched man that I am. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Against you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. So again, like we are reading first Timothy, it's important because the law is not meant to redeem us or save us.

35:50 Right? The law is meant to reveal sin, and that's what it's done. It's already done that in our lives. We don't have to live by it anymore. It's to reveal sin.

35:58 We've realized it for those who believe, and we've asked for salvation from it. So we've been saved by this body of death, by this law of sin and death, and we've been made free by the spirit of life. Right? So he's saying, for I know my transgression transgressions, verse three, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

36:24 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness.

36:39 Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, o God. And this is big because after, oh, wretched man that I am, I don't know how long I last in the the mode of creating me a clean heart. I move more towards the mode of, Vinay, come on, let's create a clean heart so that we can be pleasing to the Lord.

37:04 But that's kind of backwards. It's about the Lord creating a clean heart in you. Come to him in brokenness, come to him with with a contrite spirit, and he will honor that, and he will create in you a clean heart. Right? We know Romans 12 verse one, that we're transformed by the renewing of our minds.

37:21 We're not conformed to this world, but we're transformed by the renewing of our minds, and that happens through the spirit within us, not through anything else. But verse 10, create in me a clean heart, o God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy spirit from me. We know that's not possible at this point. The holy spirit can't be taken from us as it's a seal of our salvation and the proof of it within us.

37:49 Verse 12, restore to me the joy of your salvation, uphold me with a willing spirit. Even that phrase there, restore to me the joy of your salvation. I don't know if any of you have experienced the fact that in your sin, your joy is sort of robbed, you know. In in these things, when we pursue anything besides a good conscience, pure heart, and sincere faith, your joy... Your true joy is robbed and it's robbed...

38:17 It's really robbing your understanding and your excitement about his salvation, about the treasure that we have. Verse 12, and uphold me with a willing spirit, then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you. Deliver me. That one's really important because it's kind of what we're learning in first Timothy because the Lord draws us to him and we repent, we redeem, and then we're we're... We desire to love others.

38:46 Right? We desire to pursue others and teach them and to love God. He says, then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you. We can do that, by following those three things. Right?

38:57 By having a pure heart, a good conscience, sincere faith. It says, deliver me from blood guiltiness, o God, o God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. And this is what happens in true repentance. Your tongue will sing aloud.

39:15 Your mouth will declare his praise for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it. You will not be pleased with the burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, o God, you will not despise. So again, we see that nothing has changed. The sacrifices of God, he delights in a broken spirit, a contrite heart, even in Matthew Matthew six or seven, a chapter there, maybe Matthew nine, but it says that he delights in over over burnt offerings.

39:47 He delights in mercy. Right? He delights... And then you... If you go into Hosea chapter six, it says that he delights obedience over sacrifice.

39:57 He delights he delights in knowledge of him over burnt offerings. Obedience and knowledge and contrite spirit, those things are sacrifices to him, and it's it's your love fulfilling the law. But those chapters... The chapters that I've read, I've thrown out a lot of chapters, and you should go back and continue to read through them because there's a lot a lot more there than what we talked about. And really just having a sincere faith for the Lord is is an opportunity to to just have a powerful testimony on this earth rather than having the desire to go out and do the religious things.

40:37 Just being sincere in your heart towards the Lord is a much more powerful testimony and it's a much more powerful opportunity for your own personal sanctification than all the things that you could do for the church or anything, and I would suggest that those things would ultimately lead to to the church being built up in a much more powerful way than we we can see or imagine. But the question that I leave you with really is, what motivates you really? Is it complacency? There's this... The idea of time heals all wounds, and as we know from my shoe that time does not heal all wounds.

41:33 Right? Not a wounded life, not a life that's, in struggle or anything like that. So don't be taught to live with your wounds and even worse than that, time also, forms forms more wounds, I would describe as bad habits. Time doesn't heal wounds. Address anything in your life that the Lord might need might need to you to help you with as I will, and allow that to be the motivation to just serve him more.

42:07 And then what motivates you? Does shame motivate you? That's a foolish thought that shame would motivate us to serve the Lord more. I lived a lot of my life thinking that shame was motivation and guilt was motivation, and I I experienced the fleeting the fleeting feeling of, redemption that comes from shame. There is no redemption that comes from shame or guilt.

42:30 All of that was already born on the cross for us. So you can live a victorious life, that... All that to say don't take advantage of sin. Right? We know that from Romans six, seven, and eight.

42:39 Don't take advantage of sin, but live a victorious life in the fact that there's no condemnation in those that that are found in Christ Jesus. And then what motivates you? Does just religion motivate you? Just... Have you been caught in, this life of doing these things, and it's just part of your life, and you've just been motivated by religion rather than sincere faith, or even obligation.

43:03 Do you have to do something and you're just obligated to do it because of what other people would think about you or anything like that? Is that what motivates you? At the end of the day, I would want our motivation to be simply from a pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith. And if you think about those things, they're all tied together, and they all work intertwined. So I've never, and I don't think I ever can meet somebody that has sincere faith, who doesn't have a pure heart and a good conscience, or somebody with a pure heart that doesn't have sincere faith or or a good conscience.

43:38 You know, they all work hand in hand, So your pursuit of one of those things is going to build up your love for others, and you're gonna be able to live a life here on this earth in which you truly love other people. You're gonna devote... You're gonna be able to devote your life to love, and that love will just be an example of him on the face of this earth, and it'll be the fulfilling of the law, which which is a powerful thing. So just, let your motivation be your treasure and treasure the gift that the Lord has given you. Let's just pray.

44:15 Heavenly father, thank you so much for a wonderful day, Lord. Thank you so much for the the truth of the word, Lord. We thank you so much that you've given us wisdom to just seek you and know you and to love you, and please give us a heart to just desire that above all else on this earth, Lord. Give us a heart to desire a knowledge of you, Lord. A heart to desire, a love for you, an obedience for you...

44:40 To you, Lord. And please allow that heart and that treasure to just direct our lives so that we might devote ourselves to being a light to you on this on this earth, Lord. Please, give us wisdom and discernment from the spirit to just know when we're being, directed or swayed by other doctrines, Lord, that might ask us or require of us more than, just love, Lord. And we thank you so much for, displaying love and showing love to us and describing it and documenting it here in the word so that we might know what it is and we might be able to show it to others, Lord. I pray that you just change your hearts.

45:20 You change my name. Amen.