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Amen. And amen. And amen. Hey, if you got your Bibles, and I hope you do, we are in week two of this series on first Timothy. The reason we're studying first Timothy and then Titus is because we're in this year where we're calling men to stand firm and act like men. And what's happening here, the reason we showed you that video is cause the Apostle Paul has been called by God. But the gospel is not gonna terminate on Paul. Paul knows that his job, and your job, if you're a Christ follower, is to make disciples that make disciples and make disciples. And one of God's greatest graces in my entire life is that I get to be a very small link in the chain in what God has been doing from generation to generation to generation. And so I praise God and I thank God for Pastor Jerry Sweatt at Beach Church. Without his leadership and his humility and his courage to do what Jesus told him to do, there would be no church of 1122. We would not exist. And what we're doing as a church is not new. It's just our turn. Don't you realize that we right now stand on the shoulders of generations and generations of men and women who have come before us and faithfully preached the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ? And men and women have prayed for revival and God to move in a significant way in Jacksonville and around. And we are just getting to reap the things that they sowed for decades and decades and decades and decades. And you can be a part of that. And I thank God that I get to that God would be so gracious to me and Gretchen that we would get to stay here. Listen, when we were deciding where to go back in 2001, the prayer that we asked, man, we were like, lord, we'll go wherever you want us to go. Now, it didn't hurt that this is the beach and everybody needs Jesus, so you might as well live at the beach. That helped. But we asked, lord, we'll go wherever you want us to go, but could we plant roots there and stay there for the rest of our lives? We just want to be a part of a people forever, you know? And so being able to make disciples right here in Jacksonville for so long, one of the things that I get to see is things like you just saw. Students that I discipled when I was a youth pastor are now discipling my children. And so to every one of you at all of our campuses and locations that volunteer, that serve in kids ministry and student Ministry as a parent who needs a lot of help. Cause you've heard the phrase, it takes a village to raise a child. You don't want the village raising your child these days. You'll have a village idiot. Amen. You need the church. You need the church. And so, on behalf of all the parents, to all you student ministry volunteers and all you kids. Volunteers, and all the people that don't even get to hear me right now because they're over there getting thrown up on. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Amen, church. Amen. And so this is what's happening here in First Timothy. The Apostle Paul meets this young kid in Lystra named Timothy, leads him to the Lord. He's got all kind of things going against him that we talked about last week. He was raised by a single mom and his grandma. He gets real nervous when he preaches. He's way too young for the amount of responsibility it seems that he's been given. He's got all kind of people working against him. And yet the Apostle Paul pours his life out into young Timothy. He teaches in the Word, he helps him walk in accordance with the word of God. And then God does exceedingly more than he ever hoped or imagined in the church that Timothy got to be a pastor of. You see, the reason we call this series a Field Guide for the Family of God is because this book, one Timothy, and then the one that follows it, Second Timothy, and. And then also Titus, these are called Pastoral epistles that Paul, an apostle, planted these churches, and then he was raising up young men like Timothy and Titus to take over as the lead pastor or the lead overseer or the lead elder of these churches. And so these are not just letters from a discipler to somebody being discipled. These are letters to Timothy on how to run that church. And so we can glean a whole bunch of instruction on how we are to do our church here because God has given us his word. Now, again, like I told you last week, Paul leads Timothy to Christ. He begins to take him on mission trips all over the place on his missionary journeys. He begins to see something in Timothy maybe Timothy didn't see in Timothy. One of the things that Timothy was lacking is he had no dad. His dad, well, everybody's got a dad, but it wasn't in his life. His dad has never mentioned my name, only by ethnicity. And Paul begins to see things in Timothy and speak life into Timothy and Disciple Timothy. And then he raises him up. And by the time you get to Acts 20, Paul lays his hands on Timothy. And he says, God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. And the Bible says that they shed tears together. And then Timothy begins to lead this church that the Apostle Paul started. Now, one of the, if you've been around Bible study, you can put this thing together. But we know more about this church that Timothy pastors than any other church in all of the New Testament. We know how it was born in Acts 19. We know how it began to take off in Acts chapter 20. We see the encouragement through the letter to the church at Ephesus that we call Ephesians. And we even see what the result of this church is 40 years later. And listen, man, here at 11:22, things are going really, really, really good. We're 13 years old. It still amazes me, all the people that show up and all the locations and all the people that are getting saved and all of that. And so we've had a very, very strong start, but so did the church at Ephesus. What happened in the church of Ephesus is it began with a riot. That the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ began to infiltrate Ephesus to the point where there were people, there were men and women that were surrendering their life to the lordship of Jesus Christ. And that's what that meant. That meant Jesus was there first and most in their life. And he was not going to be an add on to the other places of their life. But he and he alone was gonna be more than enough. And if you think our world is a little shady today, it's just the same demons in new days. Right in the middle of Ephesus, there was this temple to Artemis. And it is dirty, real dirty. Like Google some stuff there, but you better put your safe shirts on, you know what I'm saying? There were thousands of male and female prostitutes in Ephesus and they would build these idols out of silver and everybody'd run around town with their little Artemis idols on. But when the gospel began to infect the people there, the people began to go and burn their idols and throw their idols in the trash. They began to look at this world and say, I'm not just going to fit my faith into this world, but my faith in Jesus is going to rule my entire world. And because he is Lord, there's some things that I just can't put up with anymore. And they began to throw their idols away and it changes the socioeconomic landscape of Ephesus. This is not Some little dinky city. This is a huge metropolis and there are so many people living by the word of God that one of the primary money makers in town is disrupted and they start a riot. They get together. Cause there's so many Christians not buying their silver idols anymore that they're angry and they start a riot. We don't have a category for this. The only thing I could think of and come up with is, can you imagine if the NFL called me and Roger Goodell said, hey, we got a problem. What's the problem? And he said, nobody's going to the Jags games. I go, I don't think that's my problem. I think you got a staffing issue and a drafting issue, and I'd be happy to help with that, but that's probably not why you're calling. But can you imagine if the word of God so deeply infected so many people in Jacksonville that the stadiums are empty until church lets out and we're all showing up at the second half? And then can you imagine if the NFL actually gave us a Sunday night game so some of us could go to the game after we came and sang praises to Jesus? Now here's the thing. We kind of laugh at that and think that's silly. That's the kind of impact that's happening in Ephesus. This is like. This is like a mega church in this city back in the day, and people are actually walking out their faith. I mean, imagine if the gospel so invaded the hearts and lives of the people of Jacksonville that there were no more strip clubs because there were no more people to go, and that all of the drug dealers had to get real jobs because nobody was there to buy the drugs. You understand what I'm saying? Can you imagine if the gospel gripped us like this? This is the start that the Church of Ephesus has. And they have great enthusiasm as it starts out. We'll talk about that in a little while. Great worship, great doctrine. I mean, everything's going great. In Acts chapter 20, Paul gets Timothy and the other elders together. And again, they're a few years in. They're at least three years into this church plant. And I'm telling you, man, it's like the fastest growing church in that part of the world. They're reaching people. They got one more's got baptism services every weekend. Disciple groups are full. More compassion kids are sponsored by the Church of Ephesus than anybody else. Sound familiar? It's that kind of church. All kind of people showing up. And Paul gives this warning in Acts chapter 20, to the elders, to the overseers, to the staff, to the pastors, he says, hey, pay very, very close attention. You see, the church doesn't typically do very well with success. You realize that success can make a church real lazy. And he says, there's going to be some that rise up from among you. They're going to be wolves in sheep's clothing, and they're going to teach false doctrine. Here's what he says. They're going to speak twisted things. They're not just going to outright lie, but they're going to take truths and they're going to twist them. You see, that's the work of the enemy. Like, the enemy's a twister. He takes a thing that's true, but he twists it into an untruth so it sounds almost believable, but then he twists it. Isn't this what he did in the garden with. When he comes up to Eve and he says, did God really say, you shouldn't do this? And then he just twists it. He says, you see, the real problem is that God's trying to hold something back from you, and he just twists the truth. And so this is Paul's warning in Acts chapter 20. He says, Pay attention to this. Pay attention to doctrine, pay attention to truth, because you're going to have some truth twisters in the church that rise up and teach some weird things. So pay very close attention to this. So when you get to this letter, the first letter from Paul to Timothy after the greeting, which we did last week, after he says, paul, an apostle to Timothy, my son in the faith. And here's what I want for you, Timothy. I want hope and I want grace, and I want. And I want mercy and I want peace. And the first subject that he handles is what? The same thing that he warned the elders about on that seashore that day when he laid his hands on them to commission them to run that church, this is going to be the first thing that he handles. He gives them this warning, the same one from Acts 21st Timothy 1:3, as I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, the reason it says this is cause this is not a fairytale. These are actual events. These are actual people. They actually stood on the beach together when Paul was on his way to Macedonia. He says, as I urge you, when I was going to Macedonia, remain in Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine. You should underline that if you feel weird about underlining it in your Bible, first get over It. Second, use your journal. There are people that teach a different gospel. There are people that teach a different truth. And it's a twisted version of it. And he says, don't let those people teach, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. There's a lot of people in church that will make secondary issues primary. This is what these folks are doing, which promotes speculations rather than stewardship from God, that is by faith. And then he's going to tell us the why behind it. He says, the aim of our charge. This is such a big deal. This is key to understanding this portion of the text. Timothy, the reason that I'm going to warn you against false doctrine is not just because I'm the doctrine police. That's not the point. The reason I'm going to warn you to make sure nobody preaches any other gospel is this. The aim of our charge is love. So the most loving thing that you can do is to correct the church with truth. The most loving thing I can do is share the gospel with you. If you were out of step with the word of God. The most loving thing I can do is help hold up God's word to you as a reflection to you so that you can see where you were out of step with God. It is not love to look at somebody that is out of step with the Lord, which is always going to lead to death and destruction and then somehow say, yeah, who am I to say that to somebody? It's the most unloving thing in the world that you could do to somebody. He's saying, the aim of my charge for you and your church is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these. There's like, we have a new driver at my house. She's 15 years old and she is learning to drive. And there's some swerving going on. You know, you gotta pay attention to where your eyes look, because wherever your eyes go, the whole vehicle goes. Eventually you just gotta get used to it, I guess, you know. But at first it's like, where are we going? Then there's correction and there's overcorrection. Amen. And I've told you the Scottish proverb 10,000 times. For every mile of road, there's two miles of ditch. And so Paul is telling Timothy, man, keep this thing down the middle. What's right down the fairway? What's right down the middle is the gospel of Jesus Christ. Some of you golfers, you know about your swerving Shot, right? You go slice to slice. Soon you're like, I'll fix it. Hook. Out of bounds. Out of bounds. Out of bounds too. I know you don't count it because you're a Christian and you play by grace and not by the rules. That's fine, me too. But you know what I'm talking about here. So you got the people that are swerving from these, they have wandered away into vain discussions, meaningless discussions, desiring to be teachers of the law. Like they're very concerned about their title without understanding either what they are saying or things about which they make confident assertions. The Greek word for that is called Twitter. Now in Timothy's day, the false doctrines and teachings that were coming up, they were kind of pretty consistent in the first century church. One of them he mentions, they're making secondary issues primary. So they're getting obsessed with things like genealogies and things that was one another is what we would call syncretism. That they were just trying, they were adopting myths of that culture and just sticking them on to their faith in Jesus. And he said, whoa, whoa, don't do that. A lot of what we talked about last year in the Galatians series, the Be Free series that was pervasive in the early church was legalism was a works based righteousness that if you don't first do these religious things then you can't be a part of the family of God. And he was fighting against that. But today there are many, many, many people that twist the truth. And again, here's the thing about a twist, here's the thing about a heresy, here's the thing about a false doctrine. There's almost always a nugget of truth in the center of this thing. But again, like my teenage daughter, they swerve one way or the other and end up in the ditch of heresy. And it's dangerous. It's extremely dangerous. I don't have a complete list. These are just the ones I thought of. And again, there's usually a nugget of truth. But when you get home, if you go to all the Christian stations on tv, you are quickly going to find what is known as the prosperity gospel. Now what is the nugget of truth there? Let me tell you a true statement. God is a good dad, he loves his kids, he wants to give good gifts to his kids and he wants to prosper you. So where's the false gospel? The false gospel of the prosperity gospel is if you do X, Y or Z, then God owes you prosperity and prosperity cotton candy and Cadillacs. And then eventually. And essentially what that message teaches is that God is not first. God is not preeminent. I'm first and I'm preeminent. And he has to respond to me. And what I'm actually looking for is not a relationship with him. I'm looking for what he can give me. And that's a lie from the pit of hell. Now, some people hear that and then they swerve way over here. They begin to preach a poverty gospel, that somehow you're more holy than the poorer you are. You dummy. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and he's your dad. You see, you could swerve one way or the other. Another false teaching is legalism. Listen, the nugget of truth here is this holiness matters, that we are called to live holy lives. We are called to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we're run over by the grace train, it changes everything about everything about everything. That's the nugget of truth there. But then what begins to happen with a legalist is a person that believes that God's word isn't enough. So I need to add a few things to it to make sure that I stay holy. And whatever matter of conscience I have been convicted by the Holy Spirit to live my life. I'm going to apply that to you and then measure that to see whether you're saved or not. That's legalism. One of my favorite preachers was talking about alcohol. Ready, Baptist? Get ready. And it's John Piper, and he is a teetotaler. You know what that means? He don't drink anything. I don't think he'd use his mouthwash with alcohol in it. You understand? Never has, never will. Thinks it's dumb. All the things, okay, neat. And he says there are more people in hell over legalism than alcoholism. And it's not even close. Cause if you think now some of you should not touch a drink or even smell it or be near it. Why? Because you catch stupid every time you try something, okay? But then to try to lay something in your own personal life on everybody else as a matter of salvation is legalism. Now, the other extreme is it's called antinomianism. That means no law. This means I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, with whoever I want and just throw up a forgive me, Jesus. And he will listen if you do whatever you want. By definition, Jesus is not your Lord. You are your Lord. I'm just telling you, you're not a Christian, you might come to church and you might even feel the fuzzies when we sing, right? And you might pray the prayers and do all the thing. But for you to be a believer in Jesus means that you. Here's the language we use. I surrender my life to the lordship of Christ. I don't get to call the shots anymore. I'm submitted and surrendered to him. And submission isn't submission until you don't like it. It's not submission when somebody tells you to do what you want to do. You know, if Gretchen commands me to eat a piece of chocolate cake, I want to be like, I'm mutually submitted as unto the Lord. No, no, no, no. It's just convenient. There's a nugget. The reality is that God loves you. No matter who you are or what you've done or where you've been or how many times you've done it, God loves you. You take that reality and that idea and you swerve way over here into this ditch and it's called universalism. And that God loves everybody so much that no matter what you've done and whether you repent of it or not, and regardless of what you've done with Jesus, we're all gonna end up in heaven. The problem with that is the Bible. You're just making some stuff up, man. Like in that moment, what you've done first of all is you have stripped God of being a just judge. You have stripped God of actually loving us because love will produce some things to be wrathful against. And you've created God in your own image. And you say, well, I would never send anybody to hell. That's cause you're a crooked and depraved egomaniac that just thinks what you feel is the most important thing in the world. You're not a perfect holy creator of all things that decided how the universe works. And so there's one side that is universalism and the other extreme here I know some, what I would call a hyper Calvinist. Some of you don't know what that means and I'm so glad you don't. But this would be people that this would be. It's almost always college guys. By the way, you ever meet like a 20 year old guy that's trying to talk to you about Dominion theology? I'm like, dude, you live in your mom's house. What are you talking about? Dominion theology? Okay. Anyway, this is the kind of person that says, I can't tell a group of people God loves them because God only loves those that he elects. And I don't know who's elected you dummy. You should read you some John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life. A big twisted gospel that is taught today. It's really just kind of this self help gospel. Now what is the nugget here? Here's the nugget. Following Jesus will improve your life. Now I've said this all the time. We don't follow Jesus because he makes life better. We follow Jesus because he is better than life. But I'm just telling you, when you begin to align your life with the word of God, life tends to go way better. Like if you just applied the ten commandments. Like if you only slept with your wife goes better. If you don't lie, if you don't cheat, if you don't steal, life does go, you probably won't get fired. The Bible says don't get drunk on wine. If you quit getting drunk, you got less percentage chance of getting fired from your job. Life tends to go better. But what begins to happen sometimes is that gets the gospel gets neutered and it's just twisted down into a TED talk with here's three ways for you to be a better version of you. Listen, your best life is not now. Unless you don't know Jesus. If you're not a Christian, this is the best your life is ever gonna be. Cause this is as close to heaven as you'll ever be if you know Jesus Christ. I got some great news for you. This is as bad as it gets. This is as close to hell as we'll ever be, man. Okay, so it's not like self help talks. But the other extreme is kind of this religious gnosticism. It's just knowledge for the sake of knowledge. But you don't change anything about the way you act and treat one another. These are extremes that are taught. There is a false gospel that is works based righteousness, that it's not what Christ has done for you, but it's what you have to do to make yourself right before God. This kind of plays out in two ways. Sometimes it plays out in religious activity. These are churches that teach if you don't do these things, get baptized, first communion, take the Eucharist, these kind of things, then you are unacceptable to God. And essentially when you teach a workspace righteousness, what you do is you look at Christ crucified on the cross and you say almost you almost did it. Thanks for getting me almost into heaven and I got it from here. I'm going to do a few religious activities recently instead of religious activity. Works based righteousness has to do with like social justice and those kind of things. Should we fight for justice? By the way, biblical words don't need adjectives like social in front of it. Biblical justice is very, very, very important as a result of Christ infecting your life. When Christ infect your life, you treat everybody the way he treated us. Of course we feed the poor and care for the sick and visit those in prison. Why? Because whatever we do for the least of these, we do unto Jesus and we love him because he first loves us. It is not a prerequisite to salvation. It is a result of salvation. And then the other extreme is just easy believism. Like all you gotta do is pray a prayer at the end of the service and I'm in. Yep, that's it. All you have to do is admit that you're a sinner, believe when Christ died on the cross, it counted for you and confess him as Lord. All you have to do is surrender all of you to all that you know of Him. It's not just this little prayer that you pray and then you gotta go out and do whatever you want to do. That is a twisted gospel. It is not the gospel. A big twisting these days is this tolerance over truth. Now what is the nugget here? The nugget of reality is that therefore now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The nugget of truth is that God is not in love with some future version of you. The nugget of truth is you don't have to clean yourself up before you come to Christ. He's in charge of the cleanup. That would be like waiting for the bleeding to stop before you go to the er. That'd be dumb. That's what it's there for. However, tolerance is not a biblical value. Listen, I've got a possum that lives in my backyard. I tolerate it as long as it stays out of my trash. That is not what we have been called to do. We have been called to love one another and we love one another by pointing each other to the truth, which is Jesus Christ. Now the other extreme there is some people would think that, you know, it's kind of a three strike thing. Like you could struggle with these sins that we don't really consider sins because the staff does a lot of them. So those don't count here at this church. But if you're one of these, like these sins, then you're out and you're not welcome. That is no gospel whatsoever. Probably the most pervasive these days is a message that they wouldn't use these words, but basically what people are saying is I am not who God says that I am, but I tell God who I am. And it is this religion of self actualization and self determination bathed in self indulgence. You see, the problem with every single one of these twisted messages is at the core of it, it's all about self. And if all you do is worship yourself and serve yourself, then all you'll have at the end of your life is just yourself and you can't save you. So what is the gospel that Timothy used to preach? It's very simple, man that God in the beginning, out of an overflow of God's love for God's self, decided to make image bearers. And he fashions together the dust of the earth and he breathes the ruach of life into the very first human being. And Adam opens his eyes and he is face to face with his Creator. And that's what you and I were created for. The beginning of the gospel does not begin with your sin. The beginning of the gospel begins with the reality that you were God's idea and, and you were created by him and for him. And the reason that the temporary things of this world just don't scratch that itch deep down inside of you is cause you were created for eternity. It's been imprinted on your soul. And so then he looks at the man and says, it's not good for man to be alone. He gives him his wife Eve and it goes super good in my Bible for almost half a page. And then before you know it, Adam and Eve have rejected God. So forget you God. We do what we want with who we want, when, when we want. And they take of the forbidden fruit. And then instead of running to him, they run from him. And they think by the works of their own hands they can cover over their own sinfulness. And the very first religion is born. And this is sin. We all reject God. Some of us through rebellion and some of us through religion by the works of our own hands. We try to cover our sin in shame. And because God is a just judge, he kicks them out of heaven. And then all throughout the Old Testament he begins to point to and he has already made a way where his rebellious children could be reunited with him. The temple system is set up every year. They would Sacrifice a lamb. They would spread the blood of the lamb on the ark of the covenant, the broken law of God. They would do it year after year after year. And all of the old covenant, all of the prophets, all of the law pointed to one day. This announcement that John the baptizer makes in the Jordan river. Jesus of Nazareth shows up on the scene and he says, there he is. Behold, the lamb of God has come to take away the sin of the entire world. That God created you out of the overflow of his love for himself to be in relationship with him. Sin breaks that relationship. But God does not look at you and say, get your act together and then maybe you can be in a relationship with me. No, he does better. He sends his only begotten son on a rescue mission for you. And for. And Jesus shows up on the scene. He lives a perfect life. He fulfills every promise and prophecy of the old covenant. Then he is arrested, tried. He goes to the cross with a perfect record. He goes to the cross not simply to die for you, but to die instead of you. He takes our place on the cross. He pushes up on his nail pierced feet and he says, this tetelestai paid in full. It is finished. But he wasn't finished. He's dead. They bury him in a borrowed tomb. And the reason it was a borrowed tomb is because he only needed it for the weekend. Because on that Sunday God breathes new life into his resurrected son and he is resurrected from the grave. And all who believe or trust when Christ died on the cross, somehow that counted for me. Then Jesus is the prototype, the proto toco from the dead. And just like he has been resurrected to eternal life with God the Father, you and I will be resurrected with him. This is the gospel. The life, death, resurrection and one day return. And this is the gospel that Paul is saying. Stay right there man. Stay right there. Don't swerve from this message. Why? Here's why. Because the aim of our charge is love. The reason God made you is cause it's an overflow of God's love for God's self. The reason that God sent his son Jesus to die for you and me is. Is God so loved the world. The reason that he calls you unto himself to forgive your sin and make you a part of his family is because he loves you. He wants you. And the reason that we guard our doctrine and we don't swerve, the reason that we don't twist the word of God to make it about us, the aim of that is love. That Issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. You see, the reason doctrine matters, staying true to the gospel matters, is because without it, we can't love God with a pure heart and true faith. Think about this. This lawyer comes up to Jesus and he's trying to jack with him because that's what lawyers do. And he says, alright, of all the commandments in the Bible, what's the most important on gifted class? You know this one, it's the Shema. He says this, easy man, there's 613 laws. And he says, you can boil it all down to this. Love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. And the second commandment is because of that love that you have for God, because he first loves you, it does not terminate on you, but you're a conduit of that love. And love your neighbor as yourself. He, he's like, the whole thing is about this. Love God and love people. As Paul is instructing Timothy, as he pastors this church, he's like, hey, watch out for this. Let me tell you, Let me tell you why you need to watch out for this false teaching. The reason I'm telling you to watch out for this false teaching is this is my charge to you, is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Well, so how did it go? Well, well, here's what's crazy about the church at Ephesus. We know how it went. You could turn to the back of your Bible if you see maps or definitions, go a little bit left to the book of Revelation. And in the book of Revelation, the Apostle John, they tried to kill him. They couldn't kill him, they boiled him. How about this? They boiled him in oil. And he came up out of there like, no, I ain't done. Now this is speculation on my part. I can't prove this whatsoever. But do you remember what Jesus said? John's assignment was from the cross? He's like, hey, take care of my mama. And if God wants you to keep you around long enough to take care of his mama, then you can't kill him no matter what you try to do. Okay, so anyway, they can't do anything with John, so they sent him to the isle of Patmos. It's like a prison island thing. And he gets this revelation through a dream. And the way this whole thing kicks off is that Jesus is the author of this revelation to the Apostle John. By the way, the Apostle John was an elder at a local church. Guess what church? He was an elder at the church at Ephesus. So he knows Timothy. He's, like, been in meetings with him, led Bible study with him, went on a mission trip with him. He knows his kid. Amen. The crucified, dead, buried, resurrected, ascended to the right hand of God the Father. Jesus, in his glory, shows up. When John sees him, he falls on his face, thinks he's gonna die. And when you read that, you're like, hey, man, this is your fishing buddy. Don't you remember? You like to tell everybody he loves you more than everybody else. That's your guy, right? But this wasn't fishing, buddy. Jesus. This was glorified Jesus. By the way, church, when we sing right now, we don't sing to a baby in a manger. We sing to a glorified Christ when we pray right now, we ain't praying to some carpenter son back in the Middle East. We're praying to a glorified Christ who holds the stars in his hands is what the Bible says. And so he says, john, I got some letters I need you to send to my churches. And he sends seven letters to these seven churches. And the first letters goes to our church that Pastor Timothy is pastoring, that Paul is encouraging Timothy with. And here's what he says. He says to the angel at the Church of Ephesus, right? The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. That's a long introduction. This is Jesus writing the letter. And here's what he says. I know your works, your toil, and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not and found them to be false. In other words, what Jesus is saying is you did the thing Paul warned about. Congratulations. You have orthodoxy. You have right belief. You did not allow unsound teaching in your church. Congratulations. He keeps going. I know you are enduring patiently. This church was being persecuted, and yet they don't give up on their faith because people kick down the doors and try to put them in jail. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. Jesus is going, great job. You believe the right things and you're doing the right things. Now, at this point, when I hear this about the church at Ephesus, I'm thinking, this is the kind of church I want to be a part of. They have Orthodoxy and orthopraxy. They're not just doing Bible study. Together and just not taking care of things outside of the walls. They're doing that. And they're also not believing some weak, watered down Bible message that just tickles their ears. They're running off false teachers. You're like, man, that sounds sweet. Maybe I'll apply to work at this church. But, uh, oh, here it comes. I mean, it's a scary thing for the first words out of Jesus mouth to the church is, I know what you're doing. That's what he says. I know your works. I mean, think about this. Right now, those of you that are thinking, when is this gonna be over? I gotta go. He knows right now. He knows what you're thinking. Those of you that are like, this is so good. The Lord's just speaking to me. He knows that, too. He knows. And so this church, man, they think right? And they do, right? There's only one problem. There's only one problem. I have this against you. You have abandoned the love you had at first. You missed the whole point. Jesus said it's the most important thing you could do with your whole life is love God. And because you know God loves you, you love people. And Paul warned you. He warned you about doing the right thing. He warned you about believing the right thing. But you got caught up in the doing and you fell in love with the process. And you forgot the end goal, the destination. The whole point of the gospel, the whole point of good doctrine was so that it would produce love for God and love for others. And you have abandoned. You have walked away from. Boy, it's so easy to get distracted when it comes to love, isn't it? Anybody? Anybody been married a minute? You ever neglect your marriage into a deep and abiding love relationship? I hear testimony here on the front row from one of our staff wives. That's good. Yeah, man. Man, it takes a lot of work to have a really healthy garden, does it not? I mean, only God can make the fruit and vegetables grow, but the farmer's got to do some work to create those kind of environments. Same thing is true in our relationship with Jesus. Paul's warning the church at Ephesus through Timothy, and I'm warning the church of 1122. Man, things are going real good. I mean, look around. What are all you people doing on Thursday night? Everybody in the country I talk to, they're like, you can't do church on Thursday. Nobody's gonna come like, okay, well, we ain't got no room on Sunday. What we gonna do? Look, and don't tell me Big churches don't worship man front. This is the biggest choir in America right here. Well done. Good job. Good job, man. Praise God. Yeah, I don't know if you're clapping for you. We might need to do a humility talk next week. But still. But we could, man, we could sponsor the most kids, we could have the most baptisms. We could be the fastest growing church in the world. But if we don't love God, we missed the whole point. This church starts out with a bang. I mean, we renovated a Walmart. Woo hoo. They renovated a city. And about 40 years after they launched, about 40 years into the life of this church, Jesus says, there's just one problem. You abandoned the love you had at first. You walked away from me. Is he still your first love? Or are you trying to use him to get what you can get out of him? Or has it just become rote? Cause it'll happen. It'll happen even if you don't mean to. If you're just checking the boxes and you don't check yourself, all of a sudden, man, you're just going through the motions. But you don't love God. Everything we do here is to try to stir your affections for the living God because he loves you. And if you don't pay attention, one day you'll just go through the motions and go through the motions and go through the motions. And your heart for the Lord will shrink and shrink and shrink. Because there's nothing in this world that's gonna grow your heart for the Lord. And this is where they are. But there's hope. And the reason is there's hope. He's like, all right, so here's what to do. Here's how to get it back. Here's how to restore the that love for Jesus. Remember therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. He says, remember, repent and repeat, Remember. Don't you remember what it was like when you first got saved? When I get all choked up out here, man, when I say I can't get over the gospel, my mind automatically goes back to Camp Pine Hill when I was a teenager and my whole life was a train wreck. And my home life was worse. It was bad, man, it was bad. And I was overwhelmed with. God would love me and choose me and save me. Are you kidding me? And if you ever forget what you got saved from, it's over, dude. Cause then you'll actually think you bring merit to the equation and God owes you something. Don't forget Remember and repent. Metanoia means change your mind. You see, what began to happen is over time you got in some ruts and you forgot that God loves you and saved you. And so you gotta rewire your mind to make sure that he is first and then do redo the things you did at first. And it's not because if you do these things, then God will be impressed. No, no, no. These things you did at first, that they were expressions of your love for God. And so if you start doing those things again, then it'll help fan the flame of the spirit of God in you so that you can love him. Listen, if you're in a loveless marriage, do the same thing. Remember. Do you remember what you went through to get her to go out with you? I mean, I see you men, I know that James says, the prayers of a righteous man availeth much. And I can obviously tell that you must be a praying God. Cause you got her to say yes. But remember how you pursued. Remember what you did? You would ask her out, you would call and just like breathe on the phone for. Hey, you know, you'd watch the dumbest movies. Who wants to see the Notebook? Ain't a grown man ever been like, I got an idea. Let's go watch that movie. Nah, man. Eating frozen yogurt and acting like you liked it ain't a grown man. It's like, I love me some mojo. What is this? Eat them little fish ball things that blow up in your mouth. You did whatever it took to be near her. And if you're in a loveless marriage, it's cause you quit doing that stuff. Gretchen and I, we'll celebrate 25 years of marriage next month. Okay? And I'm telling you, I love that girl so much. Ooh. If I talk about her too much, I'll get a little weepy up here. All right, I love her, I love her, I love her. But here's the thing. I just never stopped. We have date nights. Do all the things, chase her around, you know, go to the restaurants, wear a shirt without a team logo on it. Get some food that doesn't come from a clown through the window. Go to a place you gotta sit down, put my back to, sports, center my face to her. Why? Cause I'm son of marriage expert. Nah, man, it's cause I remember. I love that girl. I gotta make sure my mind stays wired the way Christ tells me to. To love her like he loved me. And he pursues me and then just keep doing the things. What's Great about this is. You don't have to guess at what the church of Ephesus did at first. You can go back to Acts, chapter 19, when they were birthed, and here's the things they did, it says. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, and fear fell upon them all. And number one, the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. And many of those who were now believers, Number two, came confessing and divulging their practices. And the number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together, and number three, burned them in the sight of all, and they counted the value of them and found that they came before 50,000 pieces of silver. So number five, the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. So he's going do that. Do what? Number one, they worshiped. They extoled the name of Jesus. Worship matters more than I can explain. It's a supernatural event where. Where you partner with the spirit of God in you to the name of Jesus, unto the glory of the Father. And stuff stirs up in there that you can't stir up from a talk. I'm telling you, man, worship is war. If your heart has been growing cold for the Lord, try worshiping. And if you're one of these, try this. I mean, I don't care. Fake it till you make it. Blame it on me. Tell the Lord. I don't know what this is all about, but it's unbelievable when you put your body in the posture that you want your heart and mind to be towards God. You know why we raise our hands when we win? We do that, right? Touchdown. Woo. You do it. We don't get to do it a lot in Jacksonville. It's gonna get better. I believe when you were in school, you raise your hand if you knew the answer. You're like, ooh, I know. You might know the answer is Jesus. That's what it is. Parents, remember when your kids were little and you come home and your parents would be like, oh, hold you. That's what it is, Abba. Father, for some of you, this is really gonna remember this. All right, I give up. That's worship, man. All right, you got me. Worship. The second thing they did is they came together. They came together. You can't do this by yourself. Christianity is a team sport. We're in this thing together. And when they came together, they divulged their evil practices. That means they didn't fake it. There were no unspoken prayer requests in their group. They just said it out loud. I've been doing witchcraft. Like what? I went to the Temple Artemis the other day. What? You're only gonna be as free as you're willing to be honest. And the fake you is doing just fine. And if you feel like you gotta fake it, it's cause you don't understand the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The fact that we worship under an empty cross. The cross is out in every single one of us. And I am a great sinner, but I have a greater savior, so I don't have to be ashamed of the things. And gross stuff grows in the dark. And. And if you fight the devil in the dark, you're gonna get your butt kicked. And that's why you're getting your tail kicked. You gotta drag some of that and you don't have to put it on Facebook. Good gracious. You just get in a group of trusted believers, say, I need some help. And the gospel's gonna say, ooh, ooh, I know, I know. You see, when you really believe the gospel, when you really trust the gospel, you go, I've screwed up. I need my dad. When you don't believe the gospel, you say, I've screwed up. Don't tell dad. Listen, man, the fake you is doing just fine. If you need to fake it, please don't. They came together and they didn't fake it. They were real and they didn't flirt with sin. They killed it. They took these books that they got at the Temple Artemis that were very, very valuable. And instead of saying, I'm just gonna put that on the shelf and avoid it, they said, I can't do that. That's like having an apex predator as a pet. It's going to kill you. I know you named it Fluffy and your body bottle fed it for a while, but I'm just telling you, one day the thing's gonna kill you. And sin. You'll either be killing it or it will be killing you. And so they did what it took to put sin to death. There was sacrificial giving. I mean, they count up the value of these things. It was 50,000 pieces of silver 2,000 years ago. This is millions of dollars. Basically, they said, God, I love you more than I love the stuff of this world. Jesus says, no one can serve two masters because you'll be devoted to one and you'll hate the other. And then he says, nobody can. Nobody can serve both God and money. He also says, where your treasure is, your heart will be also. You want to Love God. Aim your resources at him and watch your affections and your love follow. I didn't make this up, man. These are Jesus words. So they worshiped like crazy. They came together and they didn't fake it. They didn't flirt with sin, they killed sin. They were sacrificial in their giving. And lastly, it was all rooted in God's word. It was all rooted in God's word. The word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. Jesus says that this church, when they've abandoned their first love, he goes, remember, Remember when it was like when you were overwhelmed with my grace because I saved you. Don't forget and repent. Quit doing the things the way the world says to do them and redo. Act the way you acted back then. Act like you love me again and you watch your heart begin to grow and grow and grow. Church the thing I want for you more than anything else is I just want you to love God. Of course, I want you to be in a disciple group and go on a mission trip and all the things. But all of those are just vehicles towards this thing. You know, it's very interesting. The whole point is love. Jesus says it. Love God, love people. Paul says it, 1 Corinthians 13. Without love, man, you're a waste of time. John, same guy who was an elder at this church, he wrote three letters. First, second and third John. They weren't very creative with their titles of their letters back then, but an elder who knows Timothy and knows this church really, really well with sound doctrine and right activity. People are checking the boxes and here's what he says. Beloved. Think about that. The title that the apostle John declares over us from God the Father is that God calls you beloved. And I'm telling you, if we could be loved, then we would love. He says, beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God. And whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. And anyone who does not love does not know God. Think about this. In the church of Ephesus, you're doing all the right things. Only one problem. You don't love God. And they know all the things about him, but they don't love him. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. And then here's the biblical definition of love in this is love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sin. Let me ask you this. Do you love God? The only way you can love him is cause you gotta realize he first loved you. It's not clean yourself up so that you will be lovable. It's even in our own sin, before he ever did anything to move in his direction, God has already demonstrated his love for us. And that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And the reason that we can love him back is because he first loved us. When we ever take our eyes off that, then our love for God will diminish. In other words, when you take your eyes off of the gospel of Jesus Christ, God's love poured out for us through the person and work of Jesus Christ. And he wants you and he calls you and he draws you to him. Like even in this moment right now, he's drawing you to him. Not because you've mustered this feeling towards him in your heart, but he first loved you and he sent His Son as the propitiation for our sin. That word, propitiation means a payment that satisfies. A payment that satisfies that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, he satisfied the law of God, the justice of God, the holiness of God, the perfection of God. And God offers you and me this deal. For whoever would believe would receive the right to become a child of God, that God made him Jesus, who was without sin, to be sin on that cross. And that whoever would believe, we would receive the righteousness of God. And because Jesus is the payment that satisfies, check this out. If you are in Christ, he is not dissatisfied in you. And if you say, oh, you don't know what I've done, then you don't know what Jesus did for you on the cross. There is more grace in him than sin in you, I promise you. And if you forgot that, remember, rewire your mind and start doing the things that stir your affections for him. And if you didn't know that, if you heard some kind of twisted message like, God is good, you're bad. Try harder. See you next week. That ain't it. That God so loved you that he sent His Son to be the payment to fully and finally satisfy your sin debt against God. And if you would believe that you would receive the love of God and be adopted into his family. And may we never, ever, ever forget it. If you've never put your faith in Jesus, today could be the day. Like this moment right here could be the day where you believe for the first time. It counted. For me, that when he pushed up on his nail pierced feet and he says it is finished, that somehow it counted for me. And if you've been a believer for a long time, and I know many of you have, would you just remind yourself that it counted for you and let that love drive you to act like it every day of your life? But some of you, for the very first time, I want to give you the opportunity to admit it. I'm a sinner in need of a savior. And for the very first time, you realize, I believe that when Christ died on the cross, somehow he counted for me. And if that's you, the Bible says all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved. Again, you're not just saying, I got feelings right now. You're saying, I'm submitting and surrendering my life to you as my Lord. And that is a prayer to say, lord, save me. That is a prayer he answers 100% of the time. So would you bow your heads? Would you close your eyes? And if you are ready to put your faith in Jesus Christ for the very first time in your life, to admit that you're a sinner in need of a savior to believe on Christ for your salvation. And if you were ready to call on the name of the Lord, would you lift your hand right where you are and you just confess, lord, save me. And I promise you that is a prayer that he answers 100% of the time. Our good and gracious heavenly Father, Lord, we praise you and we thank you that you are love, that you love us, that you first loved us. And because of that, we could you, God, we really are trying in this church to do it right, to be in accordance with your word and preach the good news and love people well and stand for truth in a crazy way. And God, we're trying to put to death sin and do groups and mission all the things, God, all the things that you've called us to do. But may we not lose the most important thing, which is love. God, may we cling closely to our first love, which is you, because you are first and you love first. And you went first. And so God, may we love you back as first in our life. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Church, would you please stand as we respond? I want you to do these things, like the things the church of Ephesus did. They worship and I dare you, man, if this stuff makes you uncomfortable, you should do it. You should do it. Test them and say, lord, here we go. Okay, we should give sacrificially. We should be honest. Maybe you need some significant prayer. This would be a great week to not do it alone, Maybe to come together, to grab somebody and be like, man, I got some serious demons I'm fighting right now. Will you come pray for me? And say them out loud? Because you've been trying to fight them in the dark. That's why you're getting your tail kicked. Shine some light on that. That we would give generously. We said, lord, this world isn't gonna tell me what's most valuable to me. I'm gonna take what's valuable. Cause you're most valuable, and I'm bringing it to you. So let's sing, let's bring, let's pray, let's respond.