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Man, well, it's great to be here once again and to see everyone. This is the first stop on the road trip this year. Last year, you guys were the last stop. And so I was almost dead. I was more dead than alive up here preaching. I was so exhausted from the trip. Now I'm fresh because I just started. We just flew into Pittsburgh yesterday. But it is 7.30 AM where I'm from, so there's that. But I'm preaching this time a series through the Pastoral Epistles. I'm going to be preaching 14 sermons across America. We're driving 6,700 miles. And so I'm going to be going through the Pastoral Epistles. There's 14 chapters, I, II Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. And so today we're in I Timothy, chapter number one. What a powerful chapter as the Apostle Paul is giving instructions to his young protege in the ministry, Timothy. Now he starts out after the greetings in verses one and two. In verse three, he says, as I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine. Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies which minister questions rather than godly edifying, which is in faith, so do. Now the main thrust of this chapter is that the Apostle Paul is warning Timothy about the tendency that a lot of people have to sort of go off on tangents and to get into cute doctrines or gimmicks or just to go off on things that don't really matter. They aren't really important. They aren't really the main thrust of God's word. And to get distracted by these things, and specifically the thing that he's warning Timothy about is the Judaizing doctrine of wanting to go back to the law. And he's going to go on about that in a moment. But he brings up the fables and the endless genealogies. Elsewhere, he calls these Jewish fables. And he's warning about the Jews and their tendency to become legalistic about the Old Testament commands of God. And that's what I'm going to be covering mainly this morning, this idea of being legalistic. Because that's a term that people throw around a lot. And sometimes as an independent fundamental Baptist, we will be accused of being legalistic just because we preach against sin, because we have strict standards, or because we're trying to follow the Bible to the letter whenever we can. And we're really serious about looking at what God's commands are and doing them. People will call us legalistic, right? I'm sure you've been exposed to that. Well, the Bible here in 1 Timothy 1 is actually warning about the real legalism that we need to avoid. Because guess what? Living a clean life isn't legalism. Trying to follow the Bible, trying to follow the commandments of God, being strict on yourself, that's not legalism. That's just called following the Bible. That's called be ye holy, for I am holy. That's what God expects of us. But what is God warning about here? He said here, don't give heed to fables and endless genealogies which minister questions. Rather than godly edifying, which is in faith, so do. Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfeigned. Now what does that mean when he says the end of the commandment? What he means there is the goal of the commandment, right? When we talk about something being a means to an end, we're talking about getting to a certain goal or destination. And what is the goal of the law? What is the purpose of the law? What is the end of the law or the end of the commandment? The end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfeigned. And so those are the things that the Bible should be producing in us. When we go and look to the laws of God and we study the Bible and we try to follow the Bible, the idea is that we would have charity or love out of a pure heart, right? That we would become a loving person, that we would have a good conscience, and that we would have a faith that is real, that isn't fake. That's what the Bible is supposed to produce in us, not just a slavish adherence to rules, to just a list of dos and don'ts. Now does the Bible contain a lot of dos and don'ts? Absolutely. But those dos and don'ts are teaching us to be a better person, to be a loving person, so that we can be a righteous person and have a good conscience before God and live a life of faith that's real. So it's supposed to be something that happens in our heart, not just do this and don't do that. And so we need to remember what is the end of the commandment, what is the purpose of the commandment, not just do the rules and miss the whole point of why those rules are even there in the first place, OK? Let's keep going. He says, that's the end of the commandment, he says in verse 6, from which some, having swerved, have turned aside into vain jangling. And what he's saying there is people have swerved from the end of the commandment. They don't understand even the purpose anymore. They don't even understand the why. They're just obsessed with the rules. And so now there's just all this vain jangling where they're basically arguing about technicalities, about rules, instead of actually trying to get at, well, why did God even give us that rule? What does God want us to do with our lives? What's even the point? And of course, this goes with the idea of Judaizing, because the Jews are experts at this, right? And if you remember when Jesus was on this earth with his disciples, the Jews are constantly confronting them for some violation of not washing their hands or something. And it wasn't even a real violation. It was something that they had made up, because they had just gotten so obsessed with rules, they had missed the whole point. And that's why Jesus told them in his great sermon in Matthew 23, he said, you know, you tithe the mint and the anise and the cumin, but you've omitted the weightier matters of the law, mercy and judgment and faith. These ought you to have done and not to have left the other undone. He's saying, look, rules are good. Follow God's rules. Follow God's commandments. But you guys are missing the whole point. And if you don't have the mercy and the judgment and the faith, it's meaningless to just follow rules for the sake of rules. And so some people have swerved from the purpose of God's law, the actual intent of God's law. And they've just gotten into vain jangling, which is just a bunch of pedantic arguing about minutia and things that don't even matter. They desire to be teachers of the law, the Bible says in the next verse, understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm. Now, if we look at the Pharisees of Jesus Christ's day and if we look at the religion today known as Judaism, they're the same. And in fact, if we were to talk to today's followers of rabbinical Judaism, they'll find out, tell you, that the Pharisees are their spiritual ancestors and that they would look to the Pharisees as great men of God of the past, great rabbis and great theologians of the past that they would base their religion upon. They love the Pharisees. They are the Pharisees. So when Jesus is ripping on the Pharisees, if you're looking for a modern day analog, yeah, you could find other analogs even within Christianity. But the most relevant analog is really just rabbinical Judaism. That's the literal Pharisees, OK? Now, here's the thing. If you talk to them about the rules that they follow, here's what you're going to find out about Jews. Because we all know that the Jews, they don't work on the Sabbath. But it goes so much further than that. They've become so bizarre about this and so pedantic about this that their rules don't even make sense. For example, Jews will unplug the light bulb on their refrigerator on the Sabbath. So when it's Friday night and the sun's going down, they go to their refrigerator and they unscrew the light bulb in the refrigerator. Now, you say, well, why would they do that? Well, because they're not allowed to do any work on the Sabbath. Now, you're sitting there thinking, like, what? What? What? Ah? How does that even make any sense? But this is what it is. Well, because the Bible says that you're not supposed to kindle a fire on the Sabbath. And if they open the refrigerator door on the Sabbath and that light bulb comes on, they've sort of like kindled a little fire there because that light bulb is incandescent and it kind of burns, you know, like it's a burning. I mean, think about how stupid that is. Do you really think that God, when he instituted the Sabbath as a day of rest, was thinking about something stupid like that? Like, how much work is it? You're still opening the fridge door and shutting it. The same thing's happening, but just because that little light bulb doesn't come on, well, you're in compliance. Whereas if the light bulb does come on, you've just kindled a fire on the Sabbath day. Same thing with the elevator. Elevators in Israel go on Sabbath mode where they just run all day. They just run. They never stop, and they open at every floor because nobody can push a button. Because if you push a button, you just kindled a fire because when you push a button, the button lights up. That's a fire that you just kindled on the Sabbath day. So they just have to leave all the lights on, everything just running and just going up and down. So actually, ironically, more work is being done from a physics perspective because of all that weight being lifted up, down, up, down, up, down, but because they didn't push that button. But that is the kind of foolishness from a people talk about missing the weightier matters of the law. The whole law is pointing us to Jesus Christ. Every animal sacrifice, every ritual, every washing, every food and dietary research, all of it, all of it is pointing to Jesus Christ. I mean, you have to be blind not to see Jesus Christ in every page of the Old Testament, constantly foreshadowed, constantly pointed to, and yet they miss all that. And they're arguing about which spoon is for the meat and which spoon is for the cheese. They literally have their kitchen divided in half, the dairy side of the kitchen and the meat side of the kitchen because the Bible says not to see the kid and his mother's milk. So then they won't eat chicken with cheese, even though chickens don't produce any milk. So how does that even work? But it's not like, oh, I can't have a cheeseburger. They literally, once they have put meat on a certain plate, they'll never use that plate for cheese ever again in their lives. Once they dip a spoon in the cottage cheese, that spoon can never come into contact with meat again for the rest of their lives because they're worried about cross-contamination, something that God never cared about, never commanded. It's not even a thing. That not seeing the kid and his mother's milk is something to do with just cruelty. It has nothing to do with God just really hates that pairing of cheese and meat. But today, a lot of people don't even realize that this is how the Jews are. They just think, oh, Jews don't eat pork. Yeah, that's like the tip of the iceberg, buddy, because they have some bizarre rules because they're obsessed and pathetic by rules. You look at the Talmud. Rabbis go on for pages about, well, what if you eat meat and you get a little meat stuck in your teeth? And then three hours later, you eat a quesadilla. What now? And they'll write about this for pages and pages, all the while missing Jesus Christ, all the while missing who God even is, what he's even trying to accomplish, missing the Messiah who's right in front of their faces, but they're worried about flossing between meals so that the meat and the cheese never touch. This is so stupid from a science perspective because everything's part of everything else. Everything's mixed. Everything's in the air. Each piece of cheese is so many trillions of molecules, and it's all floating around. Keeping those apart is a fool's errand. It's bizarre, my friend. But do you see how that's the legalism that God's talking about when he says, look, these people have turned aside from the end of the commandment, charity out of a pure heart, a good conscience, faith unfeigned, and they've turned aside this vain jangling where they're worried about the light bulb in the fridge and the spoons and the plates in their kitchen, all the while they're known all over the world for being rotten people, for being usurers, for ripping people off, for doing predatory lending, for charging people inordinate banking fees. We've all paid them. You know what? There's no point in slavishly following the minutia of God's law if you're going to be a jerk, if you're going to be unloving, if you're going to be unrighteous, if you're not even saved. What is the point? It's meaningless. It's vain jangling. It doesn't mean anything. He says they've swerved and turned aside into vain jangling, desiring to be teachers of the law. Now, to me, when I read that, it sounds like to me it's for their own ego and their own pride, like I want to be a teacher of the law, not because you want to help people, you want to be a blessing, you want to get people saved, you want people to live a better Christian life, you want people to enjoy a better family life, you want people to be blessed by God. No, it's just I want to be a teacher of the law. I want to have a YouTube channel where I talk about observing the Torah, Torah observing Christianity, so that basically you can puff yourself up and come at people with some new exotic thing. And this is the idea that Paul's getting at here is that the tendency in Christianity is that instead of just putting your nose to the grindstone and serving God, loving God, working hard, reading your Bible, praying, going soul-winning, living the family life that God wants you to live, instead of just doing the hard work of Christianity is to just go seeking out exotic new gimmicks instead. You know, instead of actually getting in the word of God and saying, you know, your pastor, Pastor Robinson, you know, he comes and preaches here three times a week, right, so what's he doing throughout the week? He's reading his Bible, he's studying, he's praying to the Lord, and he's trying to get the meat of God's word and learn it and study it so that he can get up and deliver you a helpful message three times a week to edify you and build you up. What would be the alternative to that would be for him to just go seeking out cute, exciting new gimmicks to just kind of wow you with some exotic new teaching. And that's why he said, Timothy, command them that they teach, charge some that they teach no other doctrine. Don't let people go off on all these tangents and they get into the fables, they get into the endless genealogies, vain jangling, and they want to be teachers of the law, but they don't understand what they're saying and they don't understand whereof they affirm. So that's what the Bible's warning about with legalism is this idea of getting obsessed with the rules and then missing the point of why the rules even exist. You know, if you look at the rules in the Bible, and specifically the Old Testament, because he's talking about the Judaizers here, think about the rules about leprosy. You know, when God's telling you, hey, the guy who's a leper, he's gotta, you know, ring a little bell and say that he's unclean, he's gotta cover his upper lip, what's God getting at there? Why did those laws exist? What's he getting at? He doesn't want them to spread a contagious disease, right? Hey, you're contagious, so ring a bell and let people know you're coming so they can get away from you. Cover your upper lip so that you don't sneeze or cough on someone or whatever. He's telling them that it's contagious, they're unclean. When he says, hey, if a sick person's on the bed, you know, then wash the sheets and wash your hands with running water. What's he getting at there? I mean, he's getting at, hey, there's germs, you don't wanna spread disease, you wanna be clean, you don't wanna get sick, right? I mean, it all makes sense to me. Leviticus 15 makes perfect sense to me why they need to wash their hands and, you know, if somebody who's sick rides on a saddle or uses a blanket or whatever, hey, let's wash that blanket. Let's wash that food vessel that they ate out of or whatever before we use it for something else. But today, you talk to Today's News, they'll tell you, well, you know, leprosy, back then, the disease that the Bible describes as leprosy wasn't contagious. That's what they'll tell you. I mean, how absurd is that? First of all, how do you even know what a disease was like, you know, literally 3,500 years ago? Because disease are constantly changing, right? I mean, every year, there's a new strain of the flu, there's a new strain of the cold, these things are constantly changing. But they just don't even get it because they want to believe in a God that just makes arbitrary rules for no reason and just says, shut up and do it, because I said so, there's your cheese spoon, there's your meat spoon, and the twain shall never meet in the cutlery drawer, okay? But in reality, God's commandments are not arbitrary, okay? And so they are being legalistic because they don't understand the point, they've missed the point. And hey, obviously the immediate point with the leprosy thing is hey, it's contagious, we don't want it to spread. But if you think about it, there's even a deeper meaning of just being considerate to other people. I mean, if I have a disease, then I don't want to spread that disease to other people, I should keep myself away from people when I'm sick because I don't want to just be like, blah, blah, blah, you know, and just get people sick because I'm thinking about other people. You know, at the end of the day, all of these laws in the Bible, they all are ultimately teaching us to be a loving, kind, righteous person, or they're pointing us to the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior. I mean, that's really the end of the commandment, the end of the law, that we would have faith in Christ, that we would live a good life, that we would be loving, kind people with a good conscience before God. Look at verse number eight. So he said here that these people, they want to be teachers of the law, they don't know what they're talking about. He says in verse eight, but we know that the law is good if a man use it lawfully. Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient. Now, what does he mean there when he says the law is not made for a righteous man? Here's what he's saying is that if you're a righteous person, if you're a good person, if you're a loving person, if you're a kind person, you are going to automatically do the things contained in the law without even having to know them or think about them. They're just gonna come naturally to you because if you live a life of love and goodness and kindness, you're gonna do those things anyway. But the law is there to teach the ungodly how to be godly, to teach the unrighteous how to be righteous. Now, don't kid yourself and think, oh, I'm living a godly, righteous, clean life, I don't need the law, and then your life's not lining up with God's laws because that just shows you haven't done the learning. But what the Bible says is that love is the fulfilling of the law and that all of the commandments, thou should not kill, thou should not commit adultery, thou should not steal, thou should not bear false witness, thou should not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. So therefore, if I just went through life just loving my neighbor and being a righteous person, then I don't even need the law at that point because I'm just doing what's right anyway. The law is added to deal with transgressions. Let me give you an illustration of this to help you understand this, okay? Think about this. What if I went to school and there were 10 rules on the wall, right? And then as a typical kid, I go out and just invent some other mischievous thing. Let's say I put a snake in someone's locker or something. Now there are 11 rules, okay? And again, this is where rules come from. I did put a snake in a kid's locker when I was 12. That's why I brought that up. But anyway, it wasn't a poisonous snake, folks, all right? It was just a garter snake. But anyway, the point is that as sins are committed, new rules keep having to be added. In our homes, right, we have certain rules, and then as the kids do things wrong, they dream up wrong things to do, then we have to keep adding rules, right? But think about it. If you were dealing with mature Christian adults, you wouldn't really need a lot of rules, right? I mean, a nation filled with godly Christians wouldn't have to have a bazillion statutes and ordinances and laws and rules. But the more ungodly people are, the more rules they're gonna need. I mean, where do you think more rules exist? In prison or, say, at your job? Because obviously prison is gonna have a lot of strict rules because they're putting a lot of people there who are known for doing wrong things, and so they need a lot more rules to keep them under control. The more righteous and godly you are, the more freedom you can have, and the less you need to have rules. Now, here's the thing. It's not that you're, when I say less rules, it's not that, oh, you're just doing whatever you want. What I'm saying is you're automatically, like, you don't need someone to tell you not to throw your trash on the ground. Like, what if in Tempe, Arizona, they just changed the law tomorrow and said littering is now allowed? You know, we had a law against littering. We don't have that law anymore. Would I start littering? Would you start littering? If there was no law against littering, would you litter? Would you just throw your trash on the ground because, well, it's legal? No, because every person with decency and class would not litter anyway, and we don't need that law. Why does the law against littering exist? Does it exist for people like me? Does it exist for people like you? No, it exists for derelicts who just throw their trash out the window and just don't care about anyone else, don't care about the future, don't care about the town, don't care about anything. They just throw their trash. That's who the law exists for. It doesn't exist for someone like me who wasn't gonna throw my trash on the ground anyway. Does everybody understand? And so laws and rules exist to reform people who don't know how to behave, okay? Now, again, all of us, to an extent, need rules in our life because none of us is perfect. We're all sinful. We're all living in this sinful flesh. And so all of us obviously have growing to do and learning to do and so forth, but in general, the law is not supposed to be used to beat a righteous person over the head with because they didn't cross some T or dot some I when they're fulfilling the spirit of the law. Meanwhile, you got a guy over here who doesn't care about the spirit of the law at all, but he's crossing every T and dotting every I, and he's got all of his Talmud teachings about how to slavishly follow every command times 1,000, even to the point of absurdity. And so he says, knowing this, verse nine, the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for man-stealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine. He's saying, that is why the law exists. It exists to straighten people out who are profane, they're ungodly, they're sinful, they're murderers, they're engaged in all of these wicked things. The law's not made for a righteous man, okay? It's made to reform the wicked. That's what the Bible's saying here. And of course, again, none of us perfect, but obviously, some people are in general living a righteous lifestyle, like for example, God will point out certain people in the Bible, like Noah, and say, hey, Noah, thee have I found righteous in this generation. Not to say that Noah never sinned or never made a mistake, but in general, Noah was a righteous man. In general, Abraham was a righteous man. In general, Lot was a righteous man, according to the Bible. You know, the Bible will refer to people who are somewhat living right as being a righteous man. And so the law is not made for those people, it's made for the wicked, it's made for the ungodly. So think about ways that you could be legalistic today. Obviously, it's easy to pick on the Jews because their religion is so absurd, but think about today, I remember one time I was staying with a missionary, and his wife just sat and watched soap operas all day. You know, she's just sitting there watching all this junk, and just watching all these stupid soap operas all day, but then she was condemning going to the movie theater for any reason to see any film, okay? Not like to see a specific film, or, you know, oh, it's R-rated, or, no, I mean, she just said, like, never go to the movie theater for any reason, it's wrong to go to the movie theater, and then she's just watching all these sleazy soap operas all day where everybody's fornicating and committing adultery and doing all this stuff. But, all right, I lost my train of thought, nice. Do you see how she's kind of missing the point? But I remember, I've been to a lot of independent Baptist churches where they'd have these kind of rules, they're just arbitrary rules, and as long as they check a box and say that they're following the rule, they're good. If you break the rule, you're bad. If you follow the rule, you're good. Not actually getting at the point. And I told this woman, I said, I'm pretty sure that the problem that people have with the movie theater is not the popcorn, or those seats that pop back up when you get out of them, or the jujubes that cost, like, five times as much as they should and come in a square box. You know, you can get a square box of Skittles instead of a round bag of Skittles. I don't think that, it's not the carpet on the walls that's the problem. I'm pretty sure people are upset about the content of the films that are being played, and so if you're gonna watch the exact same thing at home, what is the difference? What's the difference, my friend? You know, either do both or do neither. But don't come at me with this stupid rule that's gonna say, well, you know, we'll never go to the movie theater. Oh, here we go, our shipment from Blockbuster Video just showed up, you know? Our shipment from Netflix just showed up, or whatever. Didn't Netflix used to, like, mail you people a DVD? I mean, I never did it, but didn't they, like, yeah, isn't that hilarious? So the point is that legalism is when you start just getting obsessed with the rule, you start focusing on the rule itself, instead of getting at the spirit or the purpose behind the rule, instead of actually striving to be a godly, righteous, loving, kind, good person. You know, we as Christians should be good people. You should be a good person. Now, look, I'm not just saying that you tick all the boxes of I go to church, you know. I mean, this is what the Pharisees would say, you know, well, I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I possess, and he's checking boxes that say I'm a good person because I did this, I did this, I did this. You know, I read my Bible, I prayed, I went to church, I went soul winning, I paid my tithe, therefore I'm a good person. Wrong, because you could do all those things and still be a rotten person. And you know what, if you're a bad husband, you're a bad father, and a bad, excuse me, if you're a bad husband, I got ahead of myself, if you're a bad husband, you're a bad Christian. If you're a bad father, you're a bad Christian. If you're a bad son, you're a bad Christian. If you're a bad worker at your job, you're a bad Christian. If you're a bad boss at work, you're a bad Christian. If you're a bad mother, you're a bad Christian. If you're a bad wife, you're a bad Christian. If you're a bad daughter, if you're a bad whatever, if you're a bad friend, hey, you're a bad Christian. I don't care how many times you go to church or read your Bible or pray or go soul-winding and do those things because just slavishly following a schedule or rules doesn't mean that you have charity in your heart and that you love someone. It doesn't mean that you love God because look, there are people who spend hours and hours a day staring at the Old Testament until they're literally blinded and have to wear Coke bottle lenses in their glasses and they don't love God, they don't even know who God is. They're called Jews, they don't love God. They don't know God, they're gonna go straight to hell when they die and yet they spend hours and hours reading the word of God. I mean, look, the Jews have the same Bible that we do when it comes to the Old Testament, am I right? Same 39 books that you have, that's the same thing that the Jews are reading, the same version. They're not doing the Septuagint, they're not doing the Vulgate, no. The Hebrew Bible that the Jews read in their synagogue is the same Hebrew Bible that was translated into the King James Bible word for word, book for book, chapter for chapter, it's the same thing. So what they have down at the synagogue is the true word of God and they read it, they study it, they put in the time, they show up on a weekly basis and they do not love the Lord at all. Some of them even hate the Lord. But folks, they're not saved, they don't love God. So does you reading your Bible as a Christian just automatically mean that you're a great person and that you love the Lord and that you're godly and that God is pleased with your life? Not necessarily because you could just be going through the motions, you could go through the motions of reading and praying, writing a check to the church once a week doesn't necessarily prove anything about who you are on the inside. And just going through the motions and following rules doesn't make you a person with charity out of a pure heart. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have a good conscience and it doesn't necessarily mean that you have faith on faith. Look, there are people out there who live a much stricter life than I do. I don't live a super strict life, but there are people today they're living in monasteries, they're living in places where they sleep on a cot and they just study all day and they don't, forget looking on a woman to lust after, they've just isolated themselves where they're in a men's only monastery. They haven't even seen a woman in months. I've talked to people in these monasteries and they were told that at a Greek Orthodox monastery outside Phoenix, Arizona, a guy went there and spent a few months there and he was told, hey, if you ever think a lustful thought toward women, beat yourself with a whip. And they would literally whip themselves and beat themselves just for thinking a wrong thought, okay? And they're just totally isolated. You think they're in there watching Hollywood movies and partying and drinking and taking drugs. No, I mean, they're living a really strict ascetic life. Does that make them godly? Does that mean they're righteous? Friends, they believe in a false gospel. They don't love the Lord. They don't love Jesus Christ. They don't love the Bible. They love themselves. They're so prideful in the fact that they are this ultra-godly monk and they're an ultra-godly priest and they're so separated and they're so special. Look at me, man, I'm beating myself here. Hey, I don't need to beat myself because Christ already took a beating for me 2,000 years ago. Amen. And you know, those who actually love Christ understand that. And look, my friend, beating yourself with a whip doesn't prove anything. It just proves that you're stupid, okay? I mean, think about it. There are all kinds of people out there who have fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. Gandhi, for example. Does that mean that he is a good person? He's burning in hell right now, my friend. He did not love God. He did not love Christ. He was not a righteous person. He was not even a good person. He was a hypocrite and a wicked person. So we need to understand as Christians that our life following Christ is not about checking boxes or ticking boxes. It's about actually being a person who cares about other people. The Bible says, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, to esteem others better than ourselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Hey, if I go through life putting other people first, loving other people, being kind to other people, doing the best that I can to follow God because I love God and doing the best I can to be right by other people because I love other people. And if I go through life being a good person, then I am fulfilling the law by doing that. Now, if somebody says, oh, well, that's the program I'm on as they're fornicating with their girlfriend. Oh yeah, yeah, that's me as they're getting drunk. Oh yeah, I'm doing that. No, because you're proving when you're violating the laws of God, you're proving that you don't understand what it means to be a good person, or you're just proving that you're not a good person. Right, the Bible exposes our sinfulness. The law of God exposes our sinfulness. You can't just go and steal and you say, well, I'm a good person because I love other people. No, you don't, because if you really loved other people, you wouldn't be killing, you wouldn't be stealing, you wouldn't be committing adultery, you wouldn't be bearing false witness or coveting or doing these things. And so I hope that this helps you understand what our relationship with the law of God should be. What is the end of the commandment? What is the point? And we should always ask ourselves, what is the point? That's why if your ox or your ass falls in the ditch on the Sabbath day, you go in and you pull it out. You don't just be like, nope, I'm more godly, I'm more righteous, I'm just gonna leave it there. Right, that's why the Jews were angry at Jesus for healing people on the Sabbath day. They didn't have any love or care or concern. That didn't have anything to do with what God intended when he instituted the Sabbath. I mean, how hard is it for Jesus to say to some guy, stretch out your hand? And the guy stretched out his hand and said, oh, you just worked, you just did work on the Sabbath. Stop, he's working! That's foolish. What in the world? And that's why Jesus said, was it lawful to do good on the Sabbath day or to do evil? Is it lawful to save lives on the Sabbath or to kill people? Because here's the thing about that, is that would you say that if an emergency happened during church and someone were dying and they needed to be rushed to the hospital, would you say like, nope, I gotta be in church? And just leave the person bleeding and dying by the side of the road, gotta get to church. I'm free to thrive, brother. I gotta be there, I can't miss. You know, we would all, I would think, if we saw someone literally in an emergency like that, we would drop everything, we would miss church, and we would get them to the hospital because God is not looking for just a slavish adherence to a schedule. Yes, the rules exist for a reason. Yes, we need to be following the rules. I'm not saying don't follow the rules, my friend. But number one, follow God's rules, not man's rules. And number two, follow God's rules so that they can teach you to be a better person. You see, being a Christian should make me a better person. If I spend five years, let's say I was living out in the world, right? And maybe this is even some of your testimony. Let's say you've been living out in the world and then you spend five years at an independent fundamental Baptist church, right? You've been out just living a worldly life, you weren't Christian, and then you got saved, and then you join an independent fundamental Baptist church, and you're going to church and you're learning all these things, right? You're learning the Bible, you're learning rules. You're learning, hey, this is what we should do. You go to church on Sunday morning and the pastor gets up and he's preaching, don't steal. And you're like, yeah, I need to be honest and not steal, right? You come back on Sunday night, it's like, tell the truth. You're like, hey, I need to quit lying. You come back on Wednesday night, don't fornicate. You're like, okay, I'm gonna be pure until I get married. I'm gonna be a virgin, right? And then you come to church the next day, it's like, read your Bible. And you're like, oh, okay, every morning I'm gonna read my Bible. And you're learning these things, right? You're learning rules that say, hey, go to church, read your Bible, go soul winning, pay your tithe, right? And you're hearing all these things. After five years of that lifestyle, you should be a much better person. If you're not, something went wrong. You know, oh, so you did that for five years, now you're a worse husband. Something went wrong. You're a worse wife, you're a worse worker on the job, you're a pain in the neck neighbor, right? You're a jerk to the people you come into contact with. You're not a good friend. Didn't something go wrong? Because as you learn these rules about what you should and shouldn't do, as you follow those rules, the point is that you're becoming a better person and you're approaching that end, you're approaching that goal of charity out of a pure heart, out of a good conscience, out of faith unfeigned. You see, if you go through life following the Bible, you should be a kind and loving and good person. And that's why Christians, and look, I find this to be true in general, that Christians are way nicer people than non-Christians. You know, they're better workers than non-Christians. I mean, I find that to be true, but if it's not true, then something's wrong and we need to fix it. Because if you're just following, but then look at the Jews, right? They followed a lot of rules, but were the Pharisees good people? I mean, the Pharisees are devouring widow's houses, but for pretense, they made long prayer. So they're very spiritual as they devour widow's houses, very spiritual as they do predatory lending, very spiritual as they corrupt other people, very spiritual as they hurt people and abuse people and rip people off. They've missed the point. God forbid that we as Christians would go down that road where we just get more interested in checking boxes and following rules than in actually being a good person. You know, we should never forget why we're doing what we're doing. Why are things the way that they are? What is the reason behind it? And so that's why he says the law's not made for a righteous man, because righteous people don't need a bunch of rules. It's unrighteous people that need rules. Now, all of us have unrighteousnesses in our lives, and so that's why we all need rules to govern us and so forth, but as we follow those rules, hopefully we're just becoming a better person to where we end up not thinking so much like, oh, I better not do that because God said no. Sometimes it's just like, well, I'm not gonna do that just because that's a hateful thing to do. That's a wicked thing to do. That's just a mean thing to do, you know, because hopefully God's laws have just taught us to be a considerate, kind, loving, good person in general. So he says in verse 10, For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for men-stealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust, and I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, who was before a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious, but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly and unbelief, and the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus. He's saying, look, I used to be a bad person. I used to be a blasphemer. I used to be injurious or hurtful to other people. I used to be a persecutor, but he said, I've obtained mercy. You know, now that Paul's saved, he's a better person because now he's following Christ, and he says the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant. What does grace mean? Getting something that you don't deserve. He's saying, look, I was a rotten person. I didn't deserve to be saved, but God showed me mercy even though I was a rotten person, and then I got saved. I believed on the Lord Jesus Christ my Savior, and then I became a better person. That's what should happen. It's not becoming a good person that gets you saved, and by the way, getting saved doesn't automatically make you a better person. A lot of people have this doctrine, hey, you know, if you really believe in Christ, we'd see you being a better person. If only that were true, I wish that were true. That'd be great. You know this stupid doctrine that's just like, well, if you believe in Christ, you're gonna have works. Man, I wish that were true because then churches would be filled with a bunch of people doing a bunch of great works for God. But what I see is gigantic do nothing, be nothing churches packed with people, and I see the people who are actually out there doing works for God, and the church is running 100, the church running 200, 300, 400 people. Meanwhile, the do nothing church has 20,000 people in it. And when we go out knocking doors, we run into person after person after person who is saved, who believes on Christ. But when it comes time to evangelize this world, less than 1% of people are showing up. When it comes to actually following Christ and actually doing the works, it's a tiny percentage. So this doctrine, it doesn't even match reality because we all know saved people who do nothing for God. Oh, well, those people just really aren't saved. No, they are saved, because guess what? I bet all of us here, or at least most of us, or a bunch of us that are saved, there were times during our Christian life when we weren't doing anything, where we were just, I mean, look, I got saved when I was six years old. Man, there were times when I was a teenager that I would go a whole week without even thinking about God. You know, and I'm ashamed to say that, but it's true. You know, I mean, I would think about God on Sunday, and then the rest of the week, I'm just thinking about all of the cares of this world. Not working for God, I was out working for myself. And let me tell you something, that's where most Christians are at, unfortunately. I wish that myself personally, that when I got saved, God all of a sudden just made me automatically just this awesome Christian. And I was just, you know what I mean? Like, I wish that when I got saved when I was six, it was just automatic. And I was just, ever since then, I've just been the man, you know, spiritually. That'd be great, but here's what I've found, okay? In the last 35 years that I've been saved, you know what I've found? A daily struggle to do right, a daily struggle to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Nothing's been automatic. Nothing has been automatic. It's all been through the effort of taking up the cross and following Christ and putting on a new man and mortifying the flesh. Every day I had to deny self and take up the cross. I never just woke up in the morning and the cross was already attached. And I'm just like, where's self at? You in there, self? Where's the flesh at? Whoa, I don't even want ice cream. I don't even, you know, I just want to just serve God all day. Folks know the flesh has been with me every step of the way. Every day I have to grab the flesh and die! And then I go live for God that day. But then the next morning he's like, remember me? I'm back, and I'm like, no, die! You know, wouldn't it be great to just get rid of him one time? Right, just call upon the name of the Lord and the flesh is just kind of like disappearing and fading away and you're just like, see ya, sucka! Never gonna see you again. That's not the way life works. He's back and he's back and he's back again. You know, he entered that code, up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start. He's got unlimited lives. He keeps respawning, he comes back. He's never got, until we go to be with the Lord in heaven, he'll always be with us. And we have to fight that battle every single day. It's not automatic, but it should be what we do though. Like, here's what we need to understand. Nobody's saying that being a Christian automatically makes you a good person. If that were the case, this sermon would be meaningless. What's the whole point of the sermon? Hey, if you're a Christian, I hope you're becoming a better person. I hope you're becoming a better human being. I hope you're becoming a person with charity out of a pure heart and a good conscience and someone who has faith on faith, not just that you're better at following the rules than you were last week. Because you know what? I remember when I was a kid in school. School started, we got the handbook. We got the rule book at our Christian school. It was like 75 pages long. And my mom walked by me, and I'm sitting there reading every word of it. Why would a 13-year-old read every word of that rule book? Well, I was just a really conscientious boy. No, that's not true. My mom literally, she walked by and she said to me, she said, I know exactly why you're reading that book, Steven. She said, you are reading that book because you are looking for the loopholes of everything that you can get away with at that school and technically not get in trouble. And my mom called me out on that, and she literally just, I didn't even say, I'm just sitting there minding my own business, being a good little boy, reading my book, and she literally walked up and she said, I know why you're reading that book. Why would you be sitting there and just poring over the handbook? Because you're looking for the loophole. This is why lawyers study the law all day. Lawyers study the law all day because they're trying to get their defendant off the hook. You know, and I've been to court before, and not as much as Pastor Shelley, but I've been to court before. Dude lives in court. But anyway, I was a defendant in court for that whole border patrol thing. Like what, how long ago was that? 14 years ago or something? Long time ago. But I remember sitting there in that courtroom, and I ended up being declared not guilty. But you wanna know how I was declared not guilty? On a technicality. I got off on a technicality, right? And it's the lawyer's job to find that loophole to get you off. Obviously, I was innocent. I didn't do anything wrong. But that's not necessarily the way everybody's gonna see it. And so the lawyer explained to me, they said, look, it doesn't matter how we win, and again, not saying to do something unethical or immoral, but they just said it doesn't matter whether we win on a technicality or whether we win on the actual substance here. What matters is that we win. And so lawyers, they'll find whatever the technicality to get you off. I'm reading that rule book as a 13-year-old trying to get out of things on a technicality. This is just ammo that I can throw back in their faces or whatever if I get in trouble. I can be like, well, according to subsection three, paragraph four, I'm in compliance. But the point is, is that how we read our Bibles, though? Is my mom gonna walk by me reading my Bible and say, I know why you're reading that Bible. Because you wanna be a Pharisee who is slavishly following the rules, even while being a total jerk to your neighbor, a jerk to your loved ones, even as you don't actually love God or actually care about what's right. You're just interested in following rules for pride. Look at me, I'm better. Oh, I thank you, God, that I'm not like other men. I'm not like this stinking publican here. I fast twice a week, I give tithes that I possess. What a rotten person. I mean, here's a publican, he's on his face praying, and he's beaten his breast praying to God, and he doesn't even know the guy, and he just automatically is just condemning the guy, without even knowing him, right? The Pharisees are constantly condemning the disciples of Jesus, and Jesus says, well, if you would know what that meaneth, I would have mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless. You would have known that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient. And so he says, in verse, I'm gonna hurry up and finish here, he says, the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant, verse 14, with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting. And again, there we see, how do we get saved? Believe on him. Believe on him to life everlasting. Faith in Christ is what saves us, not works. Now unto the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory, forever and ever, amen. Discharge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience, which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck. Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I've delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme. He's saying, look, be a good soldier of Christ. Obviously soldiers have rules. Obviously there are policies. But at the end of the day, be a good soldier of Christ. Do what's right out of a pure heart because you want to please God, because you want to do good unto others because you love people. Yes, go soul winning because God told you to go soul winning, but how about going soul winning because you love people and don't want them to go to hell? Amen. I mean, how about doing what's right in the Bible because you want to be good to others and because you want God to be pleased with you and you don't want to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, right? So he's saying, don't be like these other people, the Hymenaises and Alexandros of this world. They've swerved off of the right path. They've gotten too caught up in the minutiae, the legalism, vain jangling. They're really into the law. They want to just drill down on the law and they actually don't even understand what they're even talking about because they've missed the point of the law, the end of the commandment, which is charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and a faith unfeigned. That's why he says in verse 19, holding faith and a good conscience. Holding faith and a good conscience, which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck. Now, how can I have a good conscience? Obviously, if I'm stealing, killing, committing fornication, drinking, I'm not going to have a good conscience because those are things that are explicitly forbidden in the Bible. So don't walk away from the sermon and misunderstand and say, well, Pastor Anderson's not into rules. Pastor Anderson thinks that we should just follow our heart and we should just kind of just go out there and just be good, be nice. Just go out there and just be a nice person. Here's the thing. I do believe we should go out there and be good and be nice, but who decides what good is? This book defines what good is. Who defines what it means to be nice or to be kind or to be loving? I mean, look, there are people out there today that would call this a hate gathering. They would literally see this gathering right here and say, that's a hate group. Like, we're just getting together and we're just like, ah, yah, you know, like we're just these monsters. You know, I'm considered a hate preacher. This is a hateful organization. But hate is in the eye of the beholder. You know, I would say this is a love organization. I'm a love preacher. And here's the thing about that is that God is the one who defines what love is and what hate is. What does it mean to be good? So look, yes, I'm saying all you need to worry about is be good, be kind, be righteous, love God, love your neighbor, that's it. But here's the thing. The Bible is the litmus test to see whether you're actually doing that. But look, it's not about the test though. It's about whether you're actually doing that, okay? So if you can find a way to kind of cheat the polygraph of God's word and pass the test on paper, but if you're lying in your heart, passing a polygraph test doesn't really mean anything, does it, in the eyes of God? He knows if you're telling the truth or lying, even if you can fool the polygraph technician, okay? Well, guess what? Just checking a bunch of boxes doesn't mean that you're a good Christian. But I'm all for checking boxes. Check the boxes to help you learn how to become a good Christian. Check the boxes and hopefully those boxes being checked is making you a better person. If it's not, you need to evaluate where you're going wrong. Let's probably just have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord. Help us not to be legalistic. Help us not to become obsessed with rules and our heart just gets harder and harder and we become less loving toward you, toward less loving toward our neighbor or toward our loved ones, Lord. Help us to be good people. Help us to be people who love each other and love you and love the lost and not just people who on paper look good but people who actually in the fleshy tables of our heart actually have your word dwelling in all richness, Lord, and that we would actually be the right kind of people that would honor and glorify you. And in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen.