Amen. Well, if you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn to 1 Timothy, chapter 6, page 994 in your Pew Bible. I apologize. We're at verses 17 to 21.
That's a misprint your bullets in. We're actually, and I say this with some sadness, we're at the end of the book. You know how it is when you've enjoyed a book and you put it up and you feel like you're putting away a friend, you don't know when you're going to see it again. I feel that way, perhaps in part because Paul's writing to a young minister about his ministerial responsibilities and the organization and government and help and doctrine and teaching and worship and prayers of the people of God.
And I've felt personally well, blessed, encouraged, strengthened, instructed, reviewed by this letter. I hope it's going to help to you. Again, let me welcome you through visiting Redeemer tonight. We are a church that believes the Bible.
That believes the Bible is God's Word and that he speaks to us through it. So every week we study a portion of his Word. Tonight we come to the end of this book and we pick up again the theme of money and material possessions in the life of God's people. We want to think about that this evening and what God says to us through this word about our use of both material as well as spiritual blessings.
So here now the Word of God, 1 Timothy 6 verses 17 to 21. As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be hoined nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share. Thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.
O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you, avoid the irreverent battle and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge for by professing it. Some have swerved from the faith. Grace, be with you. Amen.
This is God's Word. Let's look at him in prayer. Father, we pray that your Word would be a lamp to our feet, a light to our path that you would teach us and speak to us by it, mold us and shape us, grant that we would not be conformed to the pattern of the world but that we would be transformed by the renewing of our minds for the glory of Jesus. In His name we pray.
Amen. Is the following statement true? Whoever said money can't buy happiness didn't know where to shop. Some will say it's true.
Things that bring us pleasure can certainly be bought. Some will say it's false. You can buy the nicest things and still be miserable. So which is it?
Paul acknowledges both. There is much enjoyment to be found in good things. He mentions that. We're actually to enjoy the good things.
Wealth provides air conditioning. It puts rib eyes on the grill with a good drink to go with it and it puts you at the lake for an overnight with friends. We call that the men's retreat. We want it unless we get it.
Yeah, Paul says, the riches of this age can't buy you the riches of the age to come. What he calls here, that which is truly life, which alone brings everlasting happiness. Melinis, grandfather, who's now with the Lord used to reflect at family reunions. He did this.
I think almost every time I saw him at some point he would tell his children and his grandchildren and his greats. He would tell them, I didn't get rich, but my sins are forgiven. My family knows Jesus and money can't buy that. How should we as Christian people think about money in possessions?
How should we live as members of God's household, his family's church, when we don't all have the same amount of wealth and possessions? When some are poor and some are rich. This is what Paul is getting at. He's been speaking to different kinds of people and now for 17 he turns to the rich.
He tells them what to tell the rich. This is not Paul saying, now live like this to be saved, but because you are saved. He's not saying earn your salvation by living this way, but express the salvation that is in you. Not make yourself God's child, but rather reflect the resemblance of your Father in heaven.
Because he's made you his child and you belong there. What should that look like? Paul here mentions something to the rich in verses 17 and 18. He mentions something very specific to Timothy as a minister of the gospel in verses 19 to 21.
And then he mentions something to all of us in his benediction at verse 21 at the end. So those three things, first he speaks to the rich in verses 17 and 18. He speaks to the two dangers and the two responsibilities of the rich. And we're going to walk through this in just a second, but before you tune out and say, you kidding me?
Well, this isn't for me. My bank account doesn't show me to be rich and my debtors account shows me I'm in the hall. Before you say that, remember that not a single person Paul is writing to here at that time had air conditioning or an automobile. Not a single one of them owned a bicycle, let alone a bed made of memory foam or an interstrating mattress.
Many Americans are far more materially wealthy and comfortable than the ones to whom he wrote. Not all, but many of us all. And so he speaks to the rich in the first place. And let me point out in the first place as part of a sermon, the two dangers of being rich in material things.
And they are conceit and self-confidence. Verse 17, as for the rich in this present age, he says, what? Charge them not to be haughty. Notice that their hopes on the uncertainty of riches.
Notice in the first place Paul doesn't say, well, here's what the rich need to do. They need to get rid of their riches. They need to flee from them, denounce them. He doesn't say that.
He doesn't say the wealthy should make themselves poor like most other people in their day. He doesn't play the politics of envy here and pit the poor against the rich or try to inculcate dissatisfaction or discontentment. And why? Because the possession of wealth is not wrong.
Wealth is not a bad thing in the Bible. Remember what he said earlier in this chapter? It is the love of money. That is the problem.
It is the craving to get rich. That has caused many to wander away from the faith. But it's not riches in themselves. And so he speaks to the rich.
And he says, now listen though, you're open to two very particular temptations. They are conceit in the first place. Conceit. It is easy if you are rich to grow haughty and proud to think you are better than others.
You have more. God has blessed you more. They might say to themselves. Or they might think, I deserve more than others.
I deserve all this to look down at those who don't have all that they have. And Paul says, don't be conceited. Do you remember who gave you this wealth? It is God who gave you this wealth, he says.
God richly provides us with everything to enjoy. The Deuteronomy 18 says it is God who gives you the power to get wealth. 1 Chronicles 29, 12. Both riches and honor come from him.
So we are not to resent wealthy Christians. We can praise God that there are rich Christians. And if you are rich, give thanks to God for what he has given to you. There's always this temptation to think, you know, I'm entitled to this.
Maybe you received it by way of inheritance. You have always said, I am going to get that money. I deserve that money. It is mine.
And nobody should touch that. I deserve it. Or maybe you think, you know, I got rich because I worked hard on everybody else. I out hustled everybody else.
I did this. I outwitted everybody else. I timed the market at just the right moment. Forgetting that God opened the doors.
Forgetting that God provided the opportunities. Forgetting that God gave you the health of mind and body to work that God gave you the success. We need to be careful if we are wealthy not to become proud, Paul says. It was a wonderful prayer in Proverbs 30 verses 7 and 9.
It's an insightful prayer. Part of it goes like this, give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with a food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, who is the Lord? He knows that if he becomes rich, he might be comprised and think he doesn't even need the Lord.
And this is always a danger. The American Puritan, Richard Mather and his farewell sermon to his congregation made this observation. Experience shows that it is an easy thing in the midst of worldly business to lose the life and power of religion. That nothing of it should be left but only the external form as it were the carcass or shell, worldliness having eaten out the kernel and having consumed the very soul of godliness.
His grandson Cotton Mather seemed the decline of religion from his grandfather's day to his, said religion be gat prosperity and the daughter devoured the mother. This is the problem with getting wealthy. It is a temptation to you to chuck off the Lord. So be careful.
If God has made you or he makes you wealthy. Now maybe in your line of work you thought you would get this kind of success that would make you wealthy and what you have found was failure. And that is a hard thing to live with. But you know what else it is.
It is a mercy. Do you remember when the Apostle Paul got taken up into the third heaven and he saw visions of glory that no man had seen and to keep him from becoming proud what had happened he had been given a thorn in his flesh to keep him from pride. So I say to you don't despise the Lord's disappoint when he humbles you and makes you dependent upon him. That is the best place to be reliant upon your father and heaven.
So he warns us about conceit and then he tells us about the danger of false confidence. He goes on to say instruct the rich not only that they not be haughty but not to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches. But on God he richly provides us with everything to enjoy. Sometimes we put our hope in the wrong place he says.
You remember the story of the rich fool. He was a wealthy man. He was satisfied. He took security in the amount of possessions he had amassed.
He built extra warrants to store all the grain that he had accumulated and that very night his soul was required of him. He had misplaced his hope. Why? Because worldly wealth attempted him to find his security in the here and now in uncertain riches.
And don't you know what he didn't know that riches are here today and gone tomorrow. Isn't that what Job experienced? Job was a man the fabulous wealth. And by the way that's first that you can be both extremely wealthy and godly.
And Satan came and said to the Lord, look, you know, Job follows you because you know you bless him. You take away all his stuff and they'll deny you to your face. And so Satan was permitted by God to strip Job of possessions, of family, of help. But Job didn't deny God to his face.
And why not? Because Job's hope was in God and not in God's gifts. His hope was in the God who gave him wealth, not the wealth that God gave him. So you and I like Job to put our hope in God who richly gives us all things to enjoy and is not wrong to enjoy them.
Every good gift comes from above from the Father of Lights to be enjoyed. So we should proceed with thankfulness. We should enjoy it and we should make sure that we're trusting in God who gave the wealth and not the wealth that God gave. So there were two dangers, there's conceit and there's false confidence.
And then there's two responsibilities. He turns in verses 18 to 19. Two responsibilities of the rich who have material things. Here's what they are to do.
It's not that their wealth is sin, though it can lead to sin. But they have a great responsibility. They are to number one be rich in good works and number two they are to be generous and ready to share. They are first of all verse 18.
They are to do good to be rich in good works. Wealth at times can make you lazy. It can give you all the time you need to be lazy and it can give you all the tools you need to be self-focused. The Paul says what I want you to do is I want you to use your wealth for good works.
People will say time is money. Time is money, right? Well the opposite is often true. Money is time.
One of the luxuries of being wealthy in that day and in ours is the freedom you have not to spend every waking moment working for a living. The wealth not only gives you wonderful possessions that you can enjoy but it gives you the luxury of time with which to enjoy them and not have to work. What should you do with your free time if you are wealthy? Well God gave to you richly.
He says now be rich in good works. And what might those good works look like? We don't have to go any farther than this book to be reminded of the things that he's already said to us that are good works. He's already said that we should love ours fouls, that we should love our children, that we should be hospitable, that we should take care of the needy in our family and take care of the poor widows in the destitute in the Church of God.
That we should love the Church. That we should provide for the elders. That we should come to the aid of those who are suffering. He said all these things in this book.
These are some of the good works. If we have time the luxury of time to give ourselves to you. Be rich in good works he says. But then he also says be generous and ready to share because you have the resources to do so.
Be like your father in heaven. Manifest the character of your father in heaven. What kind of father do you have? He is liberal.
He is open handed. He is generous. Be a willing and cheerful and self-sacrificial giver. That's one of the great privileges of having extra in your life.
The joy of giving it to others and manifesting the character of your father in heaven to others. Even showing the world what your God is like. He says be generous and ready to share. What does he anticipate will be the result of those good works in generosity and sharing.
Thus he says storing up treasure for themselves is a good foundation for the future. They may take hold of that which is truly life. I think an echo of this in Jesus words in Matthew 6 verse 19. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be all sin. Don't misunderstand Paul or Jesus neither is talking about purchasing eternal life by giving your money away in generosity. But he is talking about setting your heart on that life.
When you have much the temptation is to be bracked by with earthly savings and earthly inheritance and earthly well-being. You've heard the joke about the man who was buried in a Cadillac and as he was being lowered into the grave by a crane seated in the front seat of that Cadillac, someone at the grave side said, man, that's really living. Paul is saying something like that here. He's saying it's possible to look at world of wealth and think that's life and he who dies of the most toys wins and Paul is saying that isn't it at all.
That's your heart on that poverty of soul. That's not wealth. But take hold of the real life, not just that which appears to be life. And you want to know how you know where your heart is in this.
You want to know what somebody really cares about. Don't just ask them instead look at their bank statement. Where does their money go? That's what they care about.
Where your treasure is there will your heart be also and the one reflects the other. What does your bank statement say about you? Are you generous? Where is your heart?
You should set on earthly things that do not last or eternal things that last forever. And we might add to that you want to know what somebody cares about. What does your calendar say about you? Do you use your free time to be rich in good works to build up the body of Christ in all these things?
This is what Paul wants to see. This is the responsibility. Those who have the luxury of wealth and the luxury of time. So two dangers, two responsibilities and then he turns to Timothy at verse 2021.
And again, I think this is part of a theme here. He's talking about the limitations to Timothy. And here it's about the riches of spiritual things. And he tells Timothy how to use those verses 2021.
He says don't waste the wealth of the true gospel. That's the first thing. Oh Timothy verse 20. Guard the deposit entrusted to you.
And he's not talking about money that was given to Timothy. So Timothy could bank it. He's talking about something quite different. It's the language of banking for sure.
Something of value has been entrusted to him. He's not to waste it or neglect it, but he's to guard it and to use it. He's telling Timothy he's got to retain it. He's the it.
What is it he's guarding? What is the deposit? Well, if you just turn over to the next page in your Bible and second Timothy, chapter 1 verse 13, we get this language. Again, Paul to Timothy, follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. What's the good deposit entrusted to you? It's the pattern of sound words that you have been given. In other words, Paul is serious about orthodoxy here.
He's serious about the content of Christianity, the truth, the great truths of the Christian faith have been taught to Timothy at the knee of his mother and grandmother. And then he got to be discipled by the Apostle Paul who heard it from Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, the ascended Lord who appeared to him, and that we have, we have in this book. And he's saying, hold on to this. Hold on to the Word of God.
And he's reminding Timothy here that he didn't invent the faith. He said, we received it. And it has been entrusted to him. He's not the author of the faith or of the pattern of sound words.
But he is its keeper. He's to guard that deposit. I was trying to think of an example of this. The example I came up with is a negative example.
Earlier in the service, we sang the Getty Town in him in Christ alone. You may have heard that in the last couple of years, the old mainline Presbyterian Church USA had a committee to form, or form a committee to collect new hymns, to add to their hymnbook to create a new hymnal. Well, the majority of the committee members were offended by the line in Christ alone that says, till on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied. The idea of God being a God of wrath had been lost to the minds of this committee, or at least the majority, so that they couldn't abide a hymn that would speak of the satisfaction of the wrath of God.
But when you lose that, you lose something that makes the gospel itself so sweet. Because the good news is that Jesus satisfied the justice of God and turned away God's wrath from us by receiving that wrath upon himself, satisfying divine justice and rescuing us, releasing us. So of course the Bible says a lot about the wrath of God. It's not a pleasant subject.
But the good news is that the love of God set the Son of God to bear the wrath of God for the people of God for all who trust in Him. That's great news. So there were free and there's no condemnation in Christ Jesus. And we're welcomed and we're accepted and we can experience the mercy and the kindness and smiling face of our Lord.
Paul's point is here. You've got to guard the deposits of sound words. You can't let it go or slip out of your hands, ignore it or not use it. None of us are free to do that.
What if he gets doers? Paul says you've been given riches in Jesus. Hold out of these things. And his point here isn't so that you can be right and others can be wrong and you can tell that they're wrong.
His point is pastoral. His point is that it's good for the soul to know that it's free before it's God in heaven. You've got to hold out of these things for the sake of those souls. And if you don't, people live in fear, or in ignorance.
So he says, don't waste the wealth of the true gospel. And he says, don't waste your time on false gospels. Verse 20, the end of it. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge for by professing it.
Some have swerved from the faith. This is the fifth or sixth time in this book. Timothy has been warned about false teaching and false teachers. And in none of them is Paul talking about people who are outside the church living in the world who hold the different religions.
Paul, in none of them, is talking about people who are Muslim or Hindu or atheist. He's talking about people in and among the church of the Lord Jesus Christ who have different ideas than what has been received from Jesus in the Apostles in the New Testament. And they are propagating those among the people of God, which means our biggest threat to our faith isn't a Muslim neighbor. And it isn't a Hindu neighbor.
It isn't a atheist neighbor. But it may very well be somebody who comes to us in the name of Jesus claiming to teach Jesus word to us, to speak a word from him to us, who's got it all twisted and confused. And Timothy is told to avoid any so-called knowledge of God that's out of accord with the word of God as it has been received. And so this book ends with the dangers and responsibilities of the materially wealthy and of the spiritually wealthy.
The dangers and responsibilities of those who have God's good gifts to be enjoyed on this earth and God's gospel to give us everlasting enjoyment with him. Now how do any of us avoid the dangers? And bear the responsibilities he mentions here. Let alone all the things that he has exhorted us to across the entirety of this book.
How do any of us do that? Well he has a word for you at the end. It's called a benediction and it goes like this. Grace be with you.
It's a closing benediction of the blessing from God's, but it's not just for Timothy. You can't see it in your English translation, but the you is plural. Grace with you all. Whereas my friends in the South taught me to say, y'all.
Grace with all y'all. They'd say, that's what he'd say. Grace with all y'all. Grace is God's favor in Jesus Christ to the undeserved.
Grace is God's blessing to us, purchased at the cost of the death of his own dear son that we might receive the favorable acceptance and approval of God and blessing of God. And why do we need that grace? Well think of the themes of this letter. I mean if you've been with us and I apologize if you haven't.
Just think of some of the themes of this letter. It takes the force of God's grace working in us and through us to hold on to the truth of the gospel. To stand against false teachers. To give ourselves to the worship of God.
To pray as holy men lifting up holy hands chapter 2. Or to govern and serve the church. How do we do that? Or to pursue godliness in life and care for widows and respect elders and to be content with what we have and to resist the love of money and to not be conceited if we're wealthy or to put our hope and stuff and instead of God.
And to enjoy God's good gifts without abusing them or making them our God. Or to do good works or to be generous. Or to live together as the household of God which is the point of the whole book. If you any of these things we can't do it without God and his grace.
And so he says grace to all y'all. A dust and rightly pray command what you will and give what you command. Tell me what to do. And enable me to do it.
May that be our part. Father in heaven we need you more than we know. Humble us because you oppose the pride that are gracious to the humble. Humble us and be gracious to us and strengthen us.
That we would have hearts that desire to walk in your ways. That our lives would be more and more conformed to the image of Christ. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
Let's stand in response to the Lord.