Prescribe and teach these things. Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith, attention to public reading of scripture, to exhortation and teaching. Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the Presbyterry. Take pains with these things, be absorbed in them so that your progress will be evident to all. Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching. Persevere in these things, whereas you do this, you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you. Let us pray. Jesus, I pray now that you would simply come by your spirits and open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf so that they might see the great news of your gospel. I pray for those among us who are asleep even in our faith that you would quicken us and make us awake. I pray for myself that you would be in my head and in my thinking and in my heart and in my understanding and in my mouth and in my speaking even now. In your name, we pray all of these things. Amen. Last night, Judy and I watched a movie, U-5571. I don't know if you've seen that. I asked her, said, you want to watch a movie with me tonight and she said, what is it? And I said, U-571, and she said, what is it? And I said, it's about World War II and she said, I don't know. And I said, well, Matthew McConaughey is starring in it and she said, OK, OK. Fortunately, she made note rather quickly that he looked horrible with a shaved head. Of course, the standard has been set so high by this time. How could he? We watched this movie and if you're not familiar with the movie, basically the Germans have encrypted radio signals and they use the machine called the Enigma box. Apparently, this was true that they could communicate with Berlin and between U-boats with encrypted technology that no one was able to break. And so finally, they sent a U-boat was disabled and they sent an American submarine disguised as a Nazi ship to basically hijack this U-boat and take this encrypted box and bring it back to course to military intelligence and figure out and win the war at the end. And that's what they do. And Matthew McConaughey is the first officer on this ship, his name is Tyler. And he has a captain and the captain sends him and 12 other men onto this Nazi ship to recover this box. And it's sort of a coup. They take it over, but while he and his petty officer and several of his men are on the Nazi U-boat, another Nazi U-boat comes and destroys their ship, the ship they came from. And so now, Tyler, Matthew McConaughey and his men are stuck on this Nazi U-boat that they have commandeered and they can't read any German. They don't know how to do anything. And of course, the other German U-boat is now firing at them. And after a long time, they finally managed to escape. You know, or else the movie will be over after 20 minutes. They escape. And as soon as they escape and everyone has time to breathe, all of the men start to lose control. What are we going to do? What are we going to do now? How are we going to get home? How are we going to finish this mission? How are we going to stay alive? We can't read German. What are we supposed to do? Sir, what are we supposed to do? Lieutenant Tyler says, I don't know. I don't know what we're supposed to do. I don't know anything. I can't read German. I don't know what to do. Why do you expect me to know? And a little bit of time passes and he's by himself and Chief Petty Officer Call, Harvey Katel, catches him and he says, sir, do I have permission to speak freely, do? And it's sure you do. Chief, speak freely. And he said, sir, a naval officer is a terrible and a fearful thing. He has to be all-knowing and all-powerful and never be in doubt. And what you said to those boys out there, never say it again. I don't know. He said, those three words will kill a crew every time. Dead is a death charge. They expect you to know even if you don't. Right? That's a tension. Right? People look at the commander of the ship and they expect him to know. Their lives are dependent upon him knowing so at least you better be able to fake it. Right? You know, church is the same way. You see because the pastor, if I said, I don't know, you guys would say what's new. Those words don't really do that much damage in the context of church. But in the context of church, there are three words that a pastor can utter that will kill a church. Dead is a death charge. They end it. It's over. And the three words that a pastor can utter are, I don't believe. I don't believe. Because if the pastor doesn't believe, where does that leave the rest of you? Right? He's supposed to be leading us in belief. And if he doesn't believe, what are we supposed to do? And the way pastors communicate that they don't believe is not so often from the pulpit, because most people are trained and they can speak and they can sort of convince you that they believe. But your life tells a different story altogether. You see, the reason that Paul wrote this letter to Timothy, is because Timothy wanted to quit. Timothy was tired of people in the church complaining. He was tired of people taking shots at him. He was tired of fighting device of people. He was trying to reign in sheep that were going astray. He was tired and he wanted to quit and he wanted to leave. Remember Paul's first line in this book, Timothy I urge you to remain in Ephesus. Timothy wanted to leave. And by quitting, Timothy would have told his congregation, I don't believe. I don't believe anymore. How does he evidence his belief? Well, he evidence his belief by staying. He evidences his belief by living out the gospel in front of this congregation. And so what Paul is doing, if you remember from last week and weeks prior, Paul is continually trying to encourage Timothy. And that's what he does this week. So basically we're going to look at three things this week. We're going to look at Timothy's mandates. We'll look at Timothy's authority. And we will look at Timothy's objective. Timothy's mandate, what is the mandate Paul gives him in this text? He tells him to do something. In fact, this whole text, it's a very short text of scripture and Paul gives nine imperatives. Nine things Timothy is supposed to do. And in this first two verses, listen to them again. Timothy's mandate, I'm calling them, in verses 11 and 12, Paul says, prescribe and teach these things. Let no one look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love, faith, and purity, show yourself to be an example of those who believe. Timothy's mandate is to show his congregation that he believes the gospel. He believes the good news of Jesus. He believes the promises of God. The first way he shows them is just by what he says. Preach and teach these things. And actually the tense here in the Greek, Paul is saying, keep on preaching and teaching these things. And in fact, preaching is too light of a word. It should be command. Remember the word he used at the beginning, command certain men to stop teaching strange doctrine. So what Paul is saying here is Timothy, keep on commanding and keep on teaching. That's the first thing you do to show them you believe the gospel. You don't stop telling them the gospel, right? And the ones that command, keep on commanding, has a negative connotation and keep on teaching, has a positive connotation. Remember command is toward the negative people, probably. Command them to stop teaching strange doctrine. Command them to stop teaching nothing but speculation. Command them to stop complaining. Command them to start following Jesus. Command them, Timothy, to follow Jesus and not their moralism. Timothy, command them. On the other hand, Timothy, keep on teaching. Keep teaching the people believe the gospel that God will never fail them or forsake them. Keep teaching that Jesus Christ came to save sinners of whom I am the worst. Remember, he says that. Tell them that they're only hope and comfort in life and in death is that Jesus has died to deliver their souls from the evil one. Tell them that, Tim. You keep reminding them that of that. Do that over and over. That is how you show them by your speech. But frankly, that's an easy part, right? To tell you the gospel every week. The harder part is verse 12 is to show them that you believe the gospel by your life, right? He says, let no one look down upon your youthfulness. That's the first part. And if you're a young pastor, many, some of you, I see pastors out here have experienced this, right? I remember when I was in seminary and at least in art denomination, they have this process called canodating, right? Where it's basically like people are trying to hire you. So they'll get your sermon tapes and they like what they hear and so they'll call you and they'll be this sort of competition. And there's this sort of dance you do, right? To see if you want to go there and all these kinds of things. And it happened. I don't know how many times if people would get my tapes and they would hear a sermon and they would say, well, we like that. Let's call this guy and they would call me and they'd say, we really like your sermon. Would you be interested in being a pastor here and wherever, podunk? And I would say, well, I don't know. And they would ask me questions. Do you have any children? Yes, I have children. You know, all of these questions and finally, it's about how old are you? I'd say, whoa, I'm almost 28. And they'd say, well, you know, we're really looking for someone older. Over and over again. People basically hung up when they found that I was 28. And you know what? Now that I'm a little older, I sort of can understand that, right? It was upsetting then. But now I think I wouldn't have hired me either. That's one thing, right? Don't let them look down on your youthfulness. There's a subtext here, of course. The text is Timothy. Don't let them look down on your youthfulness. And the subtext is for the congregation, which is what? Don't look down upon Timothy's youthfulness. Right? Don't look down upon his youthfulness. Don't judge your pastor by his externals, by his youthfulness, or even his personality type. Judge him on his life. And that's what Paul says. He says, Paul, don't, he says, Timothy, don't let them judge you on external. Don't let them judge you by your youth, rather be an example to them. In speech and conduct, I talked about that time. But in love, faith, impurity. Timothy, your job is to model the gospel for these people. Remember, in chapter 1, Paul says that Jesus chose me for this very reason that I might be an example of the perfect patient of Jesus with a sinner. That I'm standing in front of you, not because I'm the greatest, most moral person in the world, but probably I'm standing here because I'm the biggest screw up in the world. That God has brought me to put me in front of a congregation. He's brought Timothy. He's brought every pastor, not because they're good, but because he has chosen them to be an example of his mercy. And he says, Timothy, you are to be an example to them of love. What is love but self-denial? That's what love is. Timothy, you're to be the chief self-denier in the congregation. What is faith, faith means to believe the promises of God. Timothy, when no one else believes the promises of God, that's your job. Some of you were here when we first started the church. It's an interesting thing that I've noticed when you start a church, we started with four or five people. And at the very beginning, you get this great sense that people aren't necessarily trusting Jesus, but they trust you. Let's see if you can pull this off. You know what the Bible says? That's not totally invalid. Remember Paul says over and over again, imitate me as I am to take Christ. And he's saying, Timothy, you, you lead them in faith. You believe the gospel on their behalf sometimes when they don't have what it takes in the finalist purity. Timothy, you need to have integrity. You need to be above reproach. Remember we taught about elders. Now the question is, what is Timothy get all this stuff? Timothy, you're to be an example of love and you have none. You're to be an example of faith and you have none. You're to be an example of purity and you are not. In the answer, of course, Timothy, Tommy, everyone here, you get that love, you get that faith, you get that purity in one place, you get it across of Jesus. The Timothy, you love because God loved you first. And he showed you his love and that he died for you on the cross and he rose again. You're able to have faith because you can deal with hard things in your congregation and you can deal with suffering in the same way that Jesus dealt with them. There was, it says in 1 Peter that Jesus, when he was being scorned and spat upon and crushed, entrusted himself to him who judges justly. That Jesus believed the promise of God that God would not let him go. And because of that, he was able to make it Timothy, you're to model that. And finally, through purity, Timothy, you have no purity but guess what? Jesus has given you his very purity. At the cross, he took all of your sins and he gave you all of his righteousness and now you need to just live it out. You need to be able to struggle with your sin in front of the world and you can now. Now, the question that is begged here in this text is if this stuff is so great that Timothy is supposed to show them the gospel by what he says and by what he does, why in the world would some people complain? Why would people complain about Timothy's youthfulness? Why would people complain about their pastor? Why would people complain about their community group leaders or other leaders or anything for that matter? The president of the United States, what is the root of complaining? What is the root of us sort of looking down and sort of holding our self at a band? And the answer is simply sort of dissatisfaction and anger. Remember, anger, the root of anger is that you think you got something that you didn't deserve or you think you deserve something that you didn't get. And when that either one of those two things happen, you get angry and frustrated. Now, the question you have to ask yourself, if you're not a Christian, is that there's no one who's ultimately in charge, why are you unhappy with anything? If no one's in charge, just you should sort of be happy with whatever you get. Like that everything that comes your way that's good, you ought to just, I guess, be thankful. I don't know to whom, but you should be thankful. And not complain about the bad stuff because it just happens, right? On the other hand, if you're a Christian, if you trust Jesus, you have to ask yourself, why do I complain? God has promised me that He would never fail me or forsake me. And so even if something bad is happening in my life, I have to believe that this is for my good. That's what He promised. So why am I complaining? You see, the problem with complaining ultimately is not with your pastor. It's not with your leaders. It's not even with the president or your spouse. It's with Jesus. It's Jesus going to be faithful to you or not. And if He is, there's sort of no room for complaining. There's room for crying out, maybe. There's room for shouting for help. But sort of bitterness is removed, removed by the cross. That's what Timothy was supposed to show these people. Now the next question is, where does he get authority for this? Right? Timothy, here's your mandate. Show them by your life and by what you say, the gospel. Now, where's the authority for Timothy to do all this? And that's the next two verses. Look at Timothy's authority. Verse 13 and 14, he says, until I come again, give attention to the public reading of scripture to excertation and teaching, do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through the prophetic utterance with the laying on of hand by the Presbyterian. Basically, Timothy has two sources of authority, or is authority derives from two places? The first place that his authority derives from is the Bible. Scripture, is the Christian Jewish, for Timothy, would have been the Jewish scriptures and Paul's letters maybe, and to the community would have seen that as authoritative. In other words, again, if you're not a Christian today, don't hear me saying that the Bible is authoritative. You ought to do this. The Bible is authoritative in the context of the community that holds it to be authoritative. Now, you got to deal with it if you're outside. That's fine. But if you're inside the community, Paul is reminding Timothy, Timothy, when you speak the words of God, when you preach, when you read the scripture, when you preach it, and exhort people, and when you teach them, you are speaking my words. You are speaking the very words of God. In other words, when you preach the Bible, you preach the scriptures you are speaking on behalf of God. So on one hand, that should have encouraged Timothy, right? I speak for God this morning. On the other hand, it should give the congregation pause, shouldn't it? Timothy speaks for God. Maybe I better listen to what he is saying this morning, right? The other thing that the way that you see the authority is that the authority not only derives because it's the gospel, the Bible, and that the community has given it, it's because all of the Bible points one place, and that's to Jesus and his authority, right? Some of you might sense a disconnect because on one hand, for the first three chapters, Paul seems to keep telling Timothy, preach Jesus, preach Jesus, preach Jesus, and here, he's saying, preach everything. Read all the scriptures publicly, right? All of the Old Testament, all of this. So how is Timothy supposed to preach Jesus continually, but preach all of the Bible at the same time? And the answer is found in the fact that all of the Bible bears witness to Jesus from the very beginning to the very end. And it all bears witness to his authority that he has come as the King, the last Adam, to come and renew all of creation and to take it back under the reign of God. Remember in John, I think it's chapter 5, maybe it's John 8, the Pharisees, religious leaders were arguing with Jesus, and Jesus basically said, follow me, and they said, we won't follow you because we are followers of Moses. And Jesus said, you know what? You don't know God ends, you don't understand the scriptures, and they said, why? What do you mean by that? He said, you see, Moses was writing about me, so it won't be, I won't stand up to condemn you before God. Moses will because Moses was writing about me, and if you really understood Moses, you would follow me. You see, Jesus is constantly begging the question, will you submit to my authority? Follow me. That's a command. Will you follow me? Now, the question is why don't people submit to authority? Why don't we submit to authority? Everyone in this room, just statistically, has an authority problem, right? At one level or another. And for that reason, you're miserable, right? Our authority problem is the source of our misery. What do I mean by that? Basically, the roots of authority, we tend to think that when we yield authority to someone, whether it be Jesus or anyone else, that we are somehow giving up our freedom. And in fact, just the opposite is true. I read the jungle book to my girls this week, the real one, purging the Disney Heresy from their minds. I read your kippling jungle book to them this week. And if you remember in the jungle book, it's about this, about a man cub, Mugly, who was raised by a pack of wolves. And Mugly is taken in by a pack of wolves. And he's also befriended by a kella, the leader of the wolf pack. And the thing about wolves, at least in the jungle book, is they follow the law of the jungle. And because they follow the law of the jungle, they are the most noble of all the jungle peoples. They are the most clean of all the jungle people. They are the most ordered. They are the most happy of all the jungle peoples. And Mugly is taken in, adopted by a kella and Chericon. Remember the tiger with a limp comes. And he tells all the young wolves, why do you follow a kella who is given over this pack to that man cub, the hairless beast? And all the young wolves start screaming out, yay, why follow your authority? Why follow the law? We follow ourselves. And they depose the kella and banished Mugly, the man cub with no hair. Mercy's quick to the point out that he had no pants as well. Later on in the book, we see what happens is Mugly defeats Chericon. He destroys the evil one. He crushes this tiger. And he skins him and he brings his skin to council rock and a kella comes back. And he cries out to the wolves, oh pack, come and hear me. And the pack just comes out of intuition because it says some of the pack when they came back, they were lame for being caught in traps. And some of them were shot. And some of them were mangy for they had no food. And many, if not most, didn't even show up at all. And the kella says, here is your dead leader. What have you? And one of the leaders, one of the wolves cries out, oh a kella, oh man cub, please lead us. But we are without a leader and without a leader and without the law, we are no longer a free people. You see without authority, you have no freedom. Ask yourself this. Turned over to yourself, left to yourself, are you really free? Are you free from your guilt? Are you free from bitterness? Are you free from evil? Are you free from other people doing stuff to you? Are you really free? The answer my guess is no. The reason we are so miserable is because we have, we have book authority. Now the other thing, the other problem with authority by bucking it is you end up not only miserable, but you end up lonely. Most people are lonely because they have an authority problem. You see most people long to be known, but they are too afraid to be known. Most people need to be confronted, but they are too afraid to be confronted. And unless you are willing to grant a person some amount of authority in your life. You can't be known and you can't be confronted and you can't grow. Period. And so most people are lonely. Our church is full of singles and I know people are lonely and they are sort of reaching out and drawing back. They reach out and draw back. Just when someone is about to know, then they pull back because they are afraid. You are afraid that your flaws are going to be revealed and your sins are going to be seen and people are going to really know who you are and they are not going to want you anymore. Well the remedy to your loneliness is the same as your remedy to your misery. And that is the gospel of Jesus. That is his cross. You see at the cross Jesus bore all your misery. At the cross he bore all the things that make you miserable. That is namely your sin and your brokenness. He took it away from you and it gave you all of his righteousness. You don't have to be miserable anymore. You don't have to be bitter. The only way thing you have to do is you have to submit to his authority. Now the great gospel irony is that the authority of Jesus is grace. Right? He said, Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Follow me for I am gentle and humble in heart and I will give you rest. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. In other words the gospel calls you to turn over to Jesus sort of your burden of guilt and your burden of lawlessness and your burden of self and take from him this burden of grace, this burden of mercy, this burden of unconditionality. Take it upon you. But it also fixes your loneliness because when you really deal with Jesus you realize that he knows you. You can't hide. He knows who you are. Many of you have heard me do weddings and I use Jeremiah 179 and I tell people this ought to be your favorite verse of all time. It's the hardest deceitful, beyond all cure and who can understand it. Why should that be a favorite verse? The answer is simple because you don't have to fake it. You don't have to fake who you are before Jesus. And once you know that you don't have to fake who you are before Jesus and that he has embraced you and he will never let you go, then you can begin entering into relationships with other people because even if they let you down Jesus won't. That's the promise of the gospel. So that's Timothy's authority. We look at Timothy's mandate. We look at Timothy's authority, the problem with authority. And the final thing I'll look at quickly is simply Timothy's objective. What is Timothy's objective here? Verse 15, Paul says, take pains with these things. Be absorbed in them so that your progress will be evident to all. Pay close attention to yourself and your teaching persevere in these things whereas you do this you will ensure salvation both through yourself and those who hear you. What is Timothy's objective? Truly twofold. The first objective is simply progress. That's it, progress. Timothy, take pains, be diligent in these things. That is the gospel. Be absorbed in them which is very unbalanced by the way. I hear people talking about an American culture all the time trying to find balance in life and if you look at the gospel there's no balance or ever almost. It's all about being poured out and being absorbed in one thing. And that's Jesus' news that he has come to deliver you from your sin and he has made me all things new. He says, Timothy, be absorbed in this and you make progress by being absorbed in the gospel and not neglecting your spiritual gift, right? Timothy, do not neglect the spiritual gift that is within you which by the way I forgot is the second means of his authority which is the laying on a hand. People recognize his authority. Timothy, you will make progress by being absorbed in this thing called the gospel and living out your calling. In other words, Timothy, you will make progress by making progress, you will make progress by trying. Most people have ever asked yourself the question because I know some of you are in here. Some people, and you look at the churches across America, people have been Christians the whole life and have never made progress. Spiritually speaking, they've been Christians forever and they wonder why am I so miserable? Why am I so lonely? Why am I now moving forward? And the answer is simply this, you don't understand the gospel, either that or you don't believe it. And Paul is telling Timothy, Timothy, be diligent in this, be absorbed in this. Don't neglect what God has given you. You see, you only make progress by making progress. You only make progress by stepping forward. Mortimer Adler wrote a book called How to Read a Book. And the thesis of his book was that you can only become smarter by reading books that are too hard for you. If you only read easy books like our girls yesterday started this reading program for the library where every 10 books you read you get a star. And I came home and they read 20 books. And I said, which books did you read? And there were all these little golden books. As a plan, you think that was the intention of the librarian to see how many books you could read? I don't know. Your face betrays you, my daughter. Yes, you do know. Pick up the hobbit and go to your room. The point is most of us go through life, sort of like that. We know there are these sort of Christian things we're supposed to do until we just do them. We go through the motions and we sort of read the easy books and we get the star we think and then we go through life and we're fine. But that doesn't challenge you and you don't grow. And what Paul is telling Timothy, be absorbed in these things so that your progress may be evident to all. The only way you're going to make progress Timothy is stepping out in some place that's not safe. And the only way any of you are going to make progress, the only way I make progress is stepping out someplace where it's not safe. What you need in order to do that is the second thing Timothy is told, and that's perseverance. Look at verse 16, and I'll close with this. He says, pay close attention to yourself and you're teaching. Persevere in these things. Whereas you do this, you will ensure salvation both for yourself and those who hear you. What does Paul mean here? Just pay close attention to yourself. Okay, I can get that. You know, don't step out of line. Don't do anything wrong. And persevere in these things. Don't give up. Why? Is he saying Timothy, if you give up, you won't be saved. Not at all. At least theological the way I understand. He's saying Timothy, evidence your salvation by your persevere. Timothy, you, of all people, got to hang in there because by you hanging in, you will give your people the courage to hang in. Timothy, when you persevere, you're people persevere. Timothy, the way you persevere is understanding the perseverance of Jesus, that he will never fail you or forsake you, that he has taken a wail your sins, he has risen from the dead, he has embraced you by his spirit, he dwells within you, and he will never leave you or forsake you. Timothy, if you persevere in these things, you're going to save yourself and your ears. It's sort of like this in this Scott Tarot novel presumed innocent. Remember the prosecutor Rusty? He's explaining how, what his job is as a prosecutor, how he goes about it. So see, the first thing I do is I walk out in front of the jury. And I tell the jury, I am a prosecutor. Today, I will present you evidence, and you will either acquit or convict on the basis of that evidence. He says, I look at the jury in the eye and say that. He says, and then I look at the defendant, and I look him in the eye. And I extend my hand far, and I point my finger right at the accused, and I say, and this man. And the reason I do that, the reason that I look him in the eye, and I point at him, is because if I don't have the courage to look him in the eye and point at him, the jury will not have the courage to convict him. And that's what Paul is telling Timothy. Timothy, persevere. You know what your job is, pastor? Your job is to look Jesus in the eye and point at him. In fact, it's bigger than that. It still takes the cross, and point at the cross, and look at it in front of your congregation. And you say, this man stands accused of all of my crimes. This man is bearing the justice of God on my behalf. This is my only hope and comfort in life. And you can either come with me in following him or you get left behind. But either way, that is where I'm going. And to the extent that the pastor has the courage to point at that man, Jesus, and accuse him of his sins, is the extent to which the congregation will be able to convict and have the courage to convict. So the question is, will you convict Jesus today? Will you convict him of your sins? He's open. Think about that. Let us pray. Father, I thank you that you have seen fit to draw people unto yourself from every tribe, tongue, and nation. And I thank you that you have given not only Timothy, not only pastors, but every Christian, the mandate to live out the gospel by what they say and by what they do. And we also thank you that you have not left us alone. You have not left us without your spirit to accomplish these things. And I pray that you have made grace Seattle and every church in Seattle a place where the gospel is not only preached but is lived out in front of the world. And so we thank you for all of this and your name we pray. Amen. Amen.