This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Lewis
Harold, assistant pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland
County in Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Lewis as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
But we're all in a battle. Whatever that sin is, whatever
that struggle is that you have, that you're still trying to get
victory over, you are in a battle.
It's a spiritual war. And in a war there are many
battles. And thank God He gives us the
strength to win many of the battles.
It doesn't mean sometimes we don't lose some, sometimes we
do. Sometimes things come out of my
mouth that shouldn't. Thoughts come into my mind that
shouldn't. Sometimes I'll lose that battle.
Wow, isn't that the truth? We are all in a battle and
sometimes you lose. One of the best places in the
Bible that we see this played out is in Romans Chapter 7 where
Paul talks about not doing the things he wants to do and doing
the things he does not want to do.
That's a daily, sometimes moment by moment battle.
The point Pastor Lewis will make today is that while you won't
win every battle you face, you need to stay in the battle and
allow the Lord to equip you daily.
Now here's Pastor Lewis in the Book of First Timothy, chapter
one with today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.
And then in verse 15, the best line in this whole Scripture, he
said this is a faithful saying. That means it's a trustworthy
saying and worthy of all acceptance.
That means everyone, everyone should accept this.
It's worthy for everyone to grab hold of this.
What is that word? This is the best news in this
entire chapter, that Jesus Christ came into the world to
save sinners, to save sinners. He didn't come to save the
righteous. He didn't come to save those
whose garments have never been soiled.
He didn't come to save the perfect.
He didn't come to save the ones who had never sinned, those who
were so good, you know, oh, that's a good person.
That's a good person. And God didn't come for you.
God came for us who are messed up, those who were sinful, those
who blew it in the past, those who understand our need for him.
That's who God came for. That's who Jesus Christ came
for. So he said Jesus Christ came
into the world to save sinners. And Paul's acknowledging and he
says, and I am chief, I'm one of the worst.
And when he says that, he's not saying, well, I compare myself
to your sin. My sin is worse than yours.
That's not what he's talking about.
I've even heard that before. People comparing sins, Well, you
should see what I used to do. Paul's saying compared to God,
compared to the standard of God, because we don't compare
ourselves with each other. We don't compare ourselves to
each other. We shouldn't feel good about the
fact that this person did something worse than me.
Sin is sin. Paul's saying compared to the
standard that God has, I am a chief Sinner.
I am a chief Sinner and so am I. And notice he says I am chief.
He didn't say I was chief. He didn't say I used to be
chief. He says I am chief.
Paul acknowledges that he still have some things that he needs
to get victory over, just like we all do.
We still got some things that we struggle with.
We still got some things that sometimes our flesh raises up
and we go the wrong way on it. And Paul said, I acknowledge
that I am chief. I can still be like that old
person sometimes. But the news that he came to
save sinners, not to condemn them, as it says in John 3 and
17, he came not into the world to condemn the world, but that
the world through him might be saved.
He didn't come to condemn us, He came to save us.
And I thank God for that because I qualify.
I am a Sinner and I qualify for
the person that Jesus Christ came for.
And thank God I do and thank God I do because otherwise I'd still
be there. I'd still be there.
He is so good. And I think about my life and
the things I did in my life, and I'm so grateful that he didn't
leave me where I was. I've hit some dark times in my
life, very dark. I used to be angry at one point,
very angry. Went through a lot of different
changes in my life. I used to chase money, thought
it was the most important thing, selfish.
Everything was for me and about me.
Chase positions. I chased opportunities that
would get me more money. I ran the streets.
There was even a point where I got so angry that I actually
owned a gun. And I remember times when I
would be in a room with a bunch of gang members and there was a
time when I was the only one that didn't have a gun, and then
I went and got a gun. So when people say carrying a
gun sometimes don't change you if you're not the right person
to be carrying a gun, yes it will.
Yes it will. Because it made me bold to do
things that I wouldn't do if I didn't have it.
To say things that I wouldn't say if I didn't have it to go
places that I wouldn't go if I didn't have it.
But he saved me. Even in spite of all that, he
still reached down one night and touched my heart and he saved
me. I'll never forget my wife and I
sitting about 5 rows back from the 1st and we're listening to a
teaching of preaching on Proverbs chapter 6.
And we both looked at each other like that's us.
I know it was me. And as he was praying and asked
us to close our eyes and to think about whether or not this
is for us. The scripture is about us.
And if God is tugging at your heart, maybe the day is the day
for you to receive salvation. And my wife and I both stood up
together and we got saved. But it was that day when the
Lord touched our hearts. There is a time and we needed it
because we were sinners. I was Sinner, am a Sinner, but
I'm a forgiving Sinner. And then he goes on in verse 16
he says, however, for this reason I obtain mercy, that in
me first Jesus Christ might show all long-suffering as a pattern
to those who are going to believe on him for everlasting
life. Paul says I am now the poster
child of who can be saved. If he can save me, then he can
definitely save you. Paul is saying I'm the pattern
I'm the pattern on those that in other words, he did it in me
first. I love that verse where it says
in me first, Jesus Christ might show long-suffering.
He showed his patience towards sinners in me first because I
persecuted him. I was a direct assault upon him.
And if he saved me, he'll definitely save you.
I was, I heard somebody talking about this when he said, yeah,
yeah. Sometimes when I'm preaching
Christ or if I'm talking to a somebody who's a Sinner and they
say, well, Jesus Christ, well, you know, he'll never save me
because of the things that I used to do.
The guy says that he would always go back to this and go
back to Paul and say, well, wait a minute, did you ever blasphemy
Jesus Christ? Well, no.
Did you ever kill anybody because they follow Jesus
Christ? Well, no.
Did you ever beat people up, drag people out of church
because they. No, I never did that.
Well, Paul did and he still got saved.
But I don't have to go back to Paul and talk about what Christ
did. I can talk about what he did in
me first, what he did in me first.
And so Paul said, I am the pattern.
I'm the prototype. I'm the example of what the
patience of Jesus Christ will do and what grace and His mercy
will accomplish in us. Not only did he save me, He
changed me. Not only did he change me, he
delivered me. This is the power of the gospel.
The gospel is power. That's why Paul says in Romans
116, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it
is the power of God unto salvation.
There's power in the gospel. There's power in the gospel.
It changes lives. It can deliver.
It can set people free. It can save lives.
Thank God. Verse 17 So after Paul says all
that, then he goes into a praise and worship service.
A1 man praise and worship service.
He says now to the king, eternal, immortal, invisible to
God, who alone is wise be honor and glory forever and ever.
Paul's worshiping, Paul's worshiping, and do you ever
think about what God did for you or what he delivered you out of
and you just go and just start worshipping him, that blessing
to just think about, Oh my God, Lord, I can't believe you did
this and just start worshipping. He is king eternal.
He's never, he's alpha and Omega.
There's none before him. There's not going to be any
after him. He's immortal.
That means he's uncorruptible. He's uncorruptible.
He's imperishable. He doesn't decay.
He's immortal and he is the invisible God.
He's invisible. You know, Hebrews says that, you
know, we believe it's through the Word of God that we believe
that things that are seen are made by things that are not
seen. Amen.
He is the invisible God who alone is wise.
And we can say that because He is the source of all wisdom.
He's the source of all wisdom. He is the Spirit.
According to Isaiah Chapter 11 and verse 1, He is the Spirit of
wisdom in the spirit of understanding.
He's the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of counsel and might.
All of that is in Christ Jesus. He is the source of it all.
So he is the only wise God. And to him, yes, be honor and
glory. And you know what?
And so much more is due to him, and so much more.
Honor and glory forever and ever a man.
So be it. Then in verse 18, he says this I
commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies
previously made concerning you. Now these are prophecies.
If we go over to go over to first Timothy chapter 4 and look
at verse 14 and it says here do not neglect the gift that was in
you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of
the hands of the eldership. So you know, we know that when
Timothy before Timothy was called out, there was a laying
on of hands. It was an anointing.
There was that that Commission that came, you know, by the
presbytery, the learning, the laying on of hands by many
elders. And in that according to this,
there were prophecies that was given to Timothy about his
ministry. And what Paul is saying here is
that according to those prophecies that was previously
made concerning you, he says, listen by them, wage the good
war, fight the battle well, fight the good fight with those
prophecies. And we said, you know, and, and
he's saying that to us. He said that to us, fight the
good fight. Hold on to the word of God.
Hold on to the doctrine that is coming to you through this.
Hold on to that. Every day you get up, you are in
a spiritual battle. Believe it or not, we are all
soldiers. That's why, you know, the
Scripture refers to us so much as being like soldiers, so many
military terms, because being in the faith is being in battle.
But our weapons of our warfare are not carnal.
That's all. But we are in a spiritual
battle. Some of us are in a battle
against our flesh, somewhere in the battle against the world,
somewhere in the battle against Satan every day who's constantly
accusing you before God and man. But we're all in a battle.
Whatever that sin is, whatever that struggle is that you have,
that you're still trying to get victory over, you are in a
battle. It's a spiritual war.
And in a war there are many battles.
And thank God He gives us the strength to win many of the
battles. It doesn't mean sometimes we
don't lose some. Sometimes we do.
Sometimes things come out of my mouth that shouldn't.
Thoughts come into my mind that shouldn't.
Sometimes I'll lose that battle. Like the time I told you I was
riding my wife and something happened and the spirit said
don't say it. You go out.
You're about to say I told you so don't say it.
Don't say it. I lost that battle because I
said it. You know, those are spiritual
battles, though. Those are spiritual battles.
We win some and some we lose, but we fight the good war, we
fight the good fight all the time, every day.
We get up, we're fighting the good faith, fight off the good
fight and then 19, he says. Having faith and good
conscience, that means you have your testimony of what you
believe, your proclamation of what you believe.
You believe that Jesus Christ came and died for your sins.
You believe that Jesus Christ was buried and you believe that
he rose again on the third day. You believe that he ascended
into heaven. You believe that he's coming
back. Our faith is in that, our hope
is in that. And we keep that with us having
that faith and we believe in the word of God and everything
that's in this word. We keep that with, we hold this
in front of us, not behind us or in or beside us.
We got to keep this in front of us.
Paul said you were to always keep in front of me, always
before me, so that I might not send against you.
So we hold on to those things. And the good conscience is just
walking out our faith. It's just walking out our faith
or living out our faith. We don't have to live with a
condemned conscience. We're not being hypocritical in
our faith. We're not living double lives.
We're not allowing the enemy to try to make us feel guilty or
make us feel condemned about anything.
Look, if I sin, I repent, I'm restored back to the Father.
He's not going to hang that over me all the time.
I have a good conscience. I have a conscience toward God.
So I'm always trying to always think about the things of God.
And then he says here, which some having rejected, some
rejected the faith and they rejected their good conscience,
some having rejected that concerning the faith and
suffered shipwreck. I think he goes from the army
now to the Navy. You know, he, he suffered, you
know, the example now is a Navy exam.
Now you suffered shipwreck. You know, we're talking about
battling now we're talking about shipwreck.
And it's like that sometimes, you know, when we're in that
battle, if we give up and we turn our conscience, you know,
we, we, we ignore our conscience or we ignore the faith or we
reject the faith, it will shipwreck our lives.
It will lead to sin. There's no question about it.
It will lead to disobedience, lead to sin.
Verse 20, and we're going to close here.
And in verse 20, he says of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander,
whom I delivered to Satan, that they may learn not to blasphemy
Hymenaeus and Alexander. These are two men that you've
read about in the book of Acts at some point.
These are men who were associated with Paul, was
walking with Paul, but they decided that they'd rather have
the world instead. When he talks about Jimenez,
Jimenez was a man who actually begin to teach that the
resurrection have already come. He started teaching that the
resurrection had already come, totally contrary to what Paul
was teaching, contrary to the letters that Paul has sent.
So he says the resurrection has already passed and he calls some
to stumble in their faith as a result of that.
And then there's Alexander. Alexander, he greatly resist or
he opposed Paul's teaching. And Paul says as a result of
that, that they all need to be delivered into Satan.
Now, that doesn't just happen because they did it once.
That's not what he's talking about.
Obviously, when that had happened, he warned them, he
went to them, he talked to them. You can see almost a very
similar account of this discipline and how the process,
the discipline works back in First Corinthians chapter 5,
when the gentleman who had sinned, you know, they had gone
to him and they had talked to him and, and just did not
repent. And that's what he's talking
about with these guys. He did not repent earlier.
While at the end of chapter Second of Thessalonians, at the
end of that, it talks about the church discipline and how we
withdraw from people who are sinning openly sinning and not
repenting, not repenting. But the purpose of that is not
that. Again, I want to repeat this.
The purpose of that is not to throw people away.
I do not want to discard my brother because he slipped or my
sister because she slipped. The purpose of withdrawing from
that brother or sister is so that they will have an
opportunity to either hear God or they end up giving themselves
over to Satan. And if they give themselves over
to Satan, they'll be, they'll become afflicted and they'll
come to a point like I was come to a point where I can now hear
God, 'cause I'm at my lowest and I'll give myself thin to
repentance. I repent because I realize what
I've done. And he's saying that this is
what the goal is for them to learn not to blasphemy.
That's what church discipline is for.
It is not to just kick somebody out of church.
It's for the purpose of restoration.
It's always for the purpose of restoration.
We have to get better. The church itself has to get
better at walking with people who fall, who slip.
We got to get better at that. There are some people who
believe that the church is the only religion that shoot is
wounded. We got to get better at walking
with people to victory over whatever it is that they're
dealing with. My heart breaks when I hear
about pastors who have fell off. Maybe they fell off into some
sin. My heart breaks because what
that's telling me is that you mean they had nobody that they
could have reached out to before it get to this point?
Nobody that they could sit down with over breakfast like my
brother and I did the other day. Sat down over breakfast and just
talk with each other. Yeah.
Nobody. He could share that he's
struggling with a with a sin or the thought of a sin.
That's sad. I pray that that doesn't happen
here. I pray that if someone is
struggling, that there's someone in here that you can reach out
to. It doesn't have to be me,
doesn't have to be Clark, but that there's somebody that we
can reach out to and say, you know what?
I'm struggling in this area. So Satan can shine the light on
you and show how weak the church is.
All that's exactly what he wants to do.
Tear up your testimony. Let's do it before it gets to
that point. So Hymenaeus and Alexander, they
went shipwrecked, but he turned them over to Satan so that they
would learn to not blasphemy. Listen, the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ is abundant. And maybe there's someone here
who have been overtaken by sin, someone who's walking and sin,
someone who's never given their life to Christ, never, someone
who's never believed in Jesus Christ for their salvation.
There is no reason. Now we know that there's going
to come a day when judgments going to come and all those who
are disobedient, all of those who have refused to believe on
Jesus Christ will suffer the wrath of God.
I mean, it's in the word, it's going to happen.
Nobody here today has to suffer that you can either right where
you are, confess that you're a Sinner and that you're in need
of a Savior. Doesn't have to be something
that it's public or public and everything.
And a few people here would pray with you, talk with you.
No one has to leave here today. Hell bound those of you on TV.
If you're watching today, you can give your heart to Jesus
Christ and repent and receive His salvation.
His grace and His mercy is abundant.
It's abundant. He had enough for me, He'll have
enough for you. He had enough for me.
He'll have enough for you or you or you or you.
No respecter of persons. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you for your sacrifice.
We thank you for your love. We thank you that you sent your
son Jesus to die for our sins. Lord, we thank you for the grace
and the mercy that you have in abundance.
Father, we just want to thank You that You would press it upon
our hearts always, Lord, to remember, to remember that
sacrifice, Lord, that you made so that as sinners we can come
to You. We can still ask for Your
forgiveness. Lord.
We thank you, Lord, that we can be saved by grace through faith
and not by accomplishing the works of the law.
Father, we pray that You will always allow us to remember and
to commemorate what you did on that cross, Lord, when you
defeated sin, Satan, and the great.
We thank you Lord, that we now have eternal life because of
that sacrifice and we remember that in the name of our Savior
and our Lord, in Jesus name we pray.
Amen. You've been listening to Pastor
Lewis Harrell here on Living Waters of Grace.
We're digging into all that Paul shared with Timothy in the books
of First and Second Timothy. Timothy was commissioned to do
the following fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on
eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed
the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
Timothy would be carrying on what Paul had taught him and
continuing on in ministry, even though Paul knew that more
hardships would come for Timothy.
This is the Christian life. It's not glamorous, it's not
some celebrity status. It's hard fought, it's gritty,
it's unpopular, but it's worth it.
Can you believe that today? Are you willing to fight the
good fight even at the cost of earthly pleasures?
Living the life of a follower of Jesus will have its heavenly
rewards. To be a part of a community
that's looking forward to that heavenly reward, we invite you
to join us at Calvary Chapel Westmoreland.
If you're in the Greensburg, PA area, come be with us this
Sunday at 10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St.
Ste. 6B. Check out Calvary Chapel
online.com For more information on directions and any other
details you might want to know. You can also download our mobile
app from our website thatscalvarychapelonline.com.
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