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1 Tim 1:12 By Merv Topp

I'm going to get the proper title and send it to Sam, but I want you to read a book.
I'm coming back at the end of October after the holidays.
The title of this book is by John Owen of the 16th century.
It's very important that we read this book because it tells us why we act the way we do.
Hands up all those of you here that have made it.
That's a bit disappointing.
You'd think, one make it at least, wouldn't you Bill?
You see, when the Lord picked up those stones and said to that lady,
those without sin cast a fair stone, all you heard was a plopping of stones to the ground.
Sin, the indwelling sin within the believer is an insidious thing.
We know the Bible and we hear the Gospel and somehow up here we backslide, don't we?
It's in the mind.
Now the title of this book, and I've got to get the proper title of it,
because it's a Puritan title and it's going to be a long winded one, alright?
The mortifying of the deeds of the body.
Any of you heard of it?
Mortifying the deeds of the body.
Now, do you understand what it means at all?
Anybody know?
Put to death sin within ourselves.
That's putting it in sort of simple English terms.
It's a brilliant little book.
It's in modern paperback, just on its own.
Otherwise you have 16 volumes of work to read through it, to get to it.
But it's been simplified in English and it's a very good book to understand
why we act the way we do.
Very important.
I can remember looking back, I've got a photo at home of myself
and remember the day I had to stay, I said, long ago, I was 21.
21.
I was that hard and legalistic, I could walk through an awkward keyhole
without scratching the sides, alright?
And this photos me in a navy blue suit or a dark grey suit at least
and I've got the Bible about there.
It might be there, I don't know, one of the sides anyway.
You wouldn't believe the look on my face.
I really had thought I'd made it.
You ever feel that way sometimes?
Then you go out into the night
and you realise the insidiousness of sin and failure.
And so Paul knew that when he gave this instruction to Timothy, didn't he?
Fight the good fight.
You know, it's so very, very important to fight the good fight.
There's lots of fights we can get into, by the way, you know?
I think I told somebody this trip when I was about 18.
I'm being a mate of mine.
We were in a nursery, we pruned peach trees.
Now I'm telling you, this is what happened.
I've got these big peach switches and we started hitting one another
around the leg, it's Queensland, there's no shoes and no shorts.
We didn't stop.
We belted and belted and belted and belted.
Nobody would cry, stop.
It was me and another bloke like me.
The next day we could hardly walk, hardly walk.
Just if we'd have stopped once would have done, but we could hardly walk.
Sometimes, sometimes in the life of the church,
sometimes we do exactly that to each other.
But we don't use peach switches, we use barbed tongues, don't we?
Now, this is what I want to look at today.
Now we talk a bit from English history this morning, didn't we?
A little blamey.
And he went on to give a kingpin of the Reformation.
Here is a trustworthy saying.
This is important, friends.
Here's a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance.
Full acceptance.
This is our only hope, my friends.
This is our only resolve, this is our only course of action.
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I'm the worst.
Here's this Pharisaical man over here.
Without the law, blameless.
He was a religiousist.
I said this one is a dog got fleas.
He was certainly religious.
Probably correct the King James Bible backwards, I don't know.
But you know what I'm saying?
Do you hear what I'm saying in terms of how religious we can be?
But he was wrong.
He was wrong.
And what happened was the transformation of this man's life.
He no longer became Saul, but he became Paul, the great apostle.
And because of his great ministry, because of his great pastoral letters,
you and I are here today telling out the name of Jesus Christ,
the only one that really saves.
And so as we look at this time of history, it was heady days.
Not like we have today.
There's very little gospel.
No.
This is when the light of the great Reformation truth was beginning to break forth.
And then back at Wycliffe's day, the Bible was unavailable to you and me,
and he wanted it so that even a plow boy can read the Bible and be saved.
He wanted you and me to have the ability to come to God's word
and see under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, lives changed.
I want to ask ourselves tonight, is that our purpose in fighting the good fight?
And for this reason, he was shown mercy.
How marvelous is this?
I can never get away from this great fact.
He was shown mercy, just like you and I have shown mercy.
I've got two favourite hymns, you know.
Love lifted me and took a miracle.
You know why.
You see, God and his grace can come into our lives and change our lives.
But, dear child of God, it must continually change our lives.
We've got a great word that is...
I get very disappointed how it's bandied around.
The word is, are you reformed?
I don't like it anymore.
What Richard Baxter meant by being reformed is constantly being renewed
by the washing of the water of the word.
It was not some stale navy blue position we come to, and that was the end of that.
God must be at work in our lives all the way through
until at last we're caught up to glory and our bodies have changed,
our vile bodies have changed into his glorious body, like under his.
Blainey died at the stake for what he believed.
I've got to tell you something.
When I was about nine, I had to do the milking.
I had a retarded... I have a retarded sister at the same time.
She had to be looked after.
I was down feeding the pig pen, in the pigs.
I reached into a box of wind resistant, brightened those matches,
and they exploded in my hands.
It burnt that nail off, half of that thumbnail, and that and all that.
Pain I never realised could possibly exist for that burning.
My uncle looked for somehow to help me.
I was screaming at the agony just at that match on those three fingers.
My uncle screwed me up and stood me in a 44 gallon drum of curds.
I can always tell him when milk is off to the right to this very day.
Thank you.
To give ease as quickly as possible to the burning hand.
I know what it's like, partially.
There's another man, the name of Latimer.
He is easily the most popular reforming preacher of his day.
He preached on justification by faith, alone.
But he also preached that justified man will need to show it in the way he lives.
Now do you understand what I'm saying?
We love the great truth of justification by faith.
But friends, we need to live it.
We need to show it.
We need it in the reality of our lives,
that we are justified people standing in the newness of Christ,
not to the dead letter of the law.
I look back on that phone now with intrigue because you look at my face in that letter 21 years ago,
you could strike a match on it.
I wasn't at all happy.
I'm totally thinking down there.
You look like somebody has struck a match on his face.
I don't know.
But you know how God can change your lives?
He believed the justified man, let me say it, will show it by the way he lives.
The way he lives.
I've got something I ought to read to you.
I've had it for years.
And I've got a copy of it today.
Again, after all these years.
I got this probably 40 odd years ago.
I've never had it complete in my hand for years.
I want to read to you.
I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day.
I'd rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way.
The eyes are better people, more willing than the ear.
Find counseling and confessing by examples always clear.
And the best of all, the preachers, are the men who live their creeds.
And we see good put into action is what everybody needs.
You see, it's possible to hold to the Heidelberg Catechism, the Cannons of Dort,
Westminster Confession of Faith, 1689 Confession.
I don't think I've left any out.
There's a couple others there, but they're all part of it.
Right?
For example, a poor life before God.
It's only intellectual assent without living out the great truth.
There's more to this piece of part of it.
I might understand you and the high advice you give,
but there's no misunderstanding of how you act and how you live.
Dear child of God, what we want in the Christian faith
is a faith that connects.
Not just to learn about justification of faith,
but a man that lives or a woman that lives by justification of faith.
You see, that's what changes people's lives.
That's what affects people.
On one occasion, Latimer was invited to preach at Hampton Court before Henry VIII.
Now, you remember, he had about six or eight sharp axes.
Don't you remember that, don't you?
I wouldn't like to preach before him with all those he put to death.
He predictably offended the king.
It wasn't hard to do that either.
Henry commanded Latimer to preach again the following Sunday.
Just imagine how he would have felt.
Thought he'd gummed it up the first time, he'd got to go back and do it again.
And the following Sunday, and make apology, defend of the king.
Latimer addressed himself as he began to preach.
To you, Latimer, he says,
Dost thou know before whom thou art this day speaking?
To the high and mighty monarch of the king,
the most excellent majesty, who can take away thy life, if thou dost offend.
I really butter him up a bit, don't you?
He dost offend.
Therefore, take heed what thou speakest.
Not a word that may displease.
Just imagine.
But, he says, consider well, Hugh, dost thou know when and whence thou come?
Upon whose message thou art sent?
Even by the great and mighty God, who is all present?
Who upholds all the ways and who is able to cast thy soul into hell?
You see, here's the challenge.
This is what Paul is getting at Timothy now, to encourage him to.
What a man of God that you, Latimer, was.
Thomas Blaine, all those, fought the faith, the apostolic faith with steadfastness.
Friends, I want to ask you today, how do you stand before God in terms of where you stand in relation to your faith?
Do we give head accent to something we've heard?
You know?
Sometimes we do.
Paul calls Timothy back now.
He wants to encourage him.
He wants to lift him up.
A charge to fight well.
But it's the faith that he's talking about.
It's that commitment.
The faith once delivered to the saints.
The faith that is alive.
The faith that changes.
The faith that moves people along by example.
He preached with that energy.
He preached faith.
He went over the same servant.
How amazing.
There he is.
Fighting the fight.
He fought well.
Steadfastness.
Forthrightness.
Courage and ability.
Out one's task to finish well.
See, the Lord has put his love upon you.
He set his love upon you before the foundation of the world.
Do you believe that?
If he set his love upon you, he's called you.
He's commissioned you.
He's asked you.
He invited you into his kingdom.
He's given you a charge.
Each one of us a charge.
If you're a child of God, this letter will apply as much to you as it does to me and to everybody.
It belongs to him.
This is the challenge.
You know?
Poor wish for this shy young fella, Timothy, when he gave it to him, this fabulous charge.
Timothy, my son, that he might fight the good fight.
You know, isn't he calling for steadfast commitment to the Lord in the face of all sorts of things?
No?
For this reason I remind you to fan the flames, the gift that God has given you.
Remember many years ago, I watched the Aboriginal man start his fire in the old traditional way.
He had a stick that was like this and he was replicating.
He kept putting very fine pieces of grass over it.
What I didn't know, he was going like this.
He was breathing down on that grass until it flamed.
And he lit a fire with it, kept putting pieces of grass.
We had a fire to cook the hot water for the cup of tea.
Mind you, I had one other Aboriginal fellow say to me too, he's a good friend of mine.
He said, do you want to see an Aboriginal light of fire?
And I was thinking he's going to show me the same thing.
He's got the bundle of sticks together and I didn't see it.
He handed me a cup of kerosene and he threw a match in the flame.
He said, well I was Aboriginal, I started the fire.
God gave me the court.
God doesn't give us such a spirit of timidity.
Sometimes we feel this way.
You might find it extremely hard to realise that I too at times feel terribly shy, self-conscious.
I asked Elizabeth the first time we took her out.
We're going up through the hills.
Here I did a truck driver a million miles.
I'm driving along with her the first time out.
It's all good I feel.
Didn't know how to say anything.
And we're getting along the windy road up through the denims.
Elizabeth said to me very calmly and very quietly, isn't there something wrong with the car?
Now you've got to remember I did a million miles.
I thought I realised.
The front wheel goes boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
I said, yeah there is.
Pulled up.
Biggest piece of tube that was in the tyre left was about that square round.
I'd driven that.
I was so tensed.
So shy.
So timid.
I didn't realise the tyre was slowly chewing itself to pieces.
I can still see Elizabeth standing on the side of the road.
You'd driven a million miles and you didn't know the flat tyre was there as I changed the tyre.
Yes, sometimes we can be self-conscious about things even of the Gospel.
Can't we?
But you see, it's not time to be timid.
It's not time to be shy.
Paul wanted him to wage him to fight the good fight of faith.
To lay hold of eternal life which you've been called and you've made a good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
It says in 6 and verse 12.
See, he wants you to run the race with completion.
He wants you to go out before him and trust him for the big picture for all that's to come.
Whatever you do in the church, however God leads you, you know, fight the good fight.
Remember the prophecies Gilead then carried out the command and so doing fight the good fight.
It takes us back to when God first called him to himself.
And sometimes we need to be reminded that God has set his love upon you before the foundation of the world.
To be his child.
To live out the life of the Gospel here.
To represent the kingdom of God here on earth now.
And tell others that are on the road to a life's eternity.
Dear child of God, we have an awesome job, we have an awesome God, we have an awesome message.
He saw the flame, he cheered you on, played even harder.
Ultimately, we see the charge, that is all for us.
Regardless of our place and calling in life, we are to fight the good fight and not turn back.
People need to hear about the Gospel, people need to hear the Lord.
You had a trip out to Gilgander, didn't you?
Four people out there.
I think there's a fifth one now.
And twenty-six or thirty kids along to a meeting.
They were struggling.
They haven't got all the luxuries.
Right?
That's all they got.
And if there's another church in town, there's only about twelve in that.
And that's it.
Here's the challenge.
The quick demotivation of other expectations upon our lives to be encouraged to single down to what's important is the Gospel.
How we communicate it.
Let me say a word for those who are ripening ears according to Angep and Preb.
Nice way of saying it.
Ripen ears.
You should be encouraging.
There's a great crowd of witnesses cheering the young people on in the event like the Olympia of the early years.
Come on kids, let's do it.
Huh?
You know, there's all sorts of things that come and discourage us.
Let me share one of the things that happened to me and Elizabeth.
This is years ago.
We were working with young people.
We met about seventy.
We started with six.
We got out to about seventy and they started coming out and some of the older ones got indignant because they sat in the meeting with just thongs on.
Right?
Just thongs.
And we come in one day and the old fellow that sort of built the hall sort of seemed like he owned the hall.
And he grizzled about, here's the young people going out for a date.
I just mowed the lawns, he said.
I put my hand on his shoulder.
On behalf of the steering committee of the women's auxiliary, you are doing a good job.
Keep up the good work.
I didn't want the young people encouraged.
Discouraged, I should say.
And as it led on, another elder come to me.
Now we were right in the middle.
We'd have liked to have had four children.
Four girls and I'd have spoiled them.
Four boys and you'd have been at it.
Right?
But we were not able to have children.
And this elder said to me,
You have no children.
This is an eldership in a church, right?
It's a good church.
You have no children, you shouldn't be working with children.
With young people.
You know what that felt like?
The daggers were here. I stopped immediately.
I stopped immediately.
Friends, that sort of discouragement just kills the spirit.
Just like that.
It's very interesting that many that I've worked with
are now my daughters and sons and so forth and they're all in their 40s.
They're still my friends.
In fact,
one of my daughters rang me up today and said,
Hear from Elizabeth.
In Smithfield, I'm just praying for you.
There you are.
Friends, lest we fail to encourage one another,
lift one another up,
we destroy one another with a word.
Easily so.
A word spoke at random.
Slays.
How about we cheer the young people on?
We are to fight the fight.
It's a Christian warfare.
Why do you think Paul in Galatians gives us the whole armour of God?
So we can do all fanciful things in our head with it? No.
It fits us for battle.
Fits us for a spiritual warfare.
It's a spiritual warfare that we're engaged in.
And we're going to be engaged in it
till taken to glory.
And that's the important bit about it, isn't it?
What happened with Latimer?
Can anybody remember?
See, he recanted earlier
and turned his back
and was faithful to God.
It's incredible, isn't it?
Now,
I gave you the illustration.
Now I know what it's like to burn me fingers.
Latimer went to the cross.
And he stood
and put his hand
in the fire first
until the hand
was burnt
to a crisp.
You woeful hand.
You have offended
the Lord Almighty.
Dear child of God,
we might have the gifts
some of the gifts of the Spirit.
We may not.
One of the gifts
we don't definitely have
is the gift of immaculate perception.
Right?
We're all on the journey,
all on the road, aren't we not?
We're all travelling to glory,
marching to Zion,
the beautiful city of God.
And so, you see, Latimer
burnt his hand first
before he was tied to the stake
and burnt completely.
I was told that
I was teaching some church history with the Aboriginal people
up in Halls Creek and
of course that happened in Smithfield
in England.
And eventually I was coming down here for
Peter's induction, and this Aboriginal bloke came,
oh don't go to that Smithfield, they're burning proper Christians.
He was really worried that I was going to go to a place
that was going to burn the proper Christians.
But I had to assure him that
it was a separate place.
And so, you know,
the conflict in spiritual warfare
needs to be proven.
How to fight,
the question becomes.
You know, back in the last
century, there was a man
in America, the Presbyterian
church in America, had become
utterly and totally liberal.
How can that happen?
They had the Westminster Confession of Faith, goodness
why didn't they stick to that?
All the confessions
in the faith
do not stop you
going off into
central error.
And so Gresham Machen stood up
and he wrote Christianity and
liberalism, you should all read that book.
And he stood up against the only one
that stood up and started again.
And that's why we've got Westminster Theological Seminary.
He's a man
that stood completely
against the tide.
Maybe you've got to
start to stand against the tide
in your life and faith and practice.
Fight the good fight.
You know?
Fight the good fight.
Scott points out that
he compares
this comparison.
Scott points out that it contains
both objectively
and subjectively
the necessity to fight the good fight.
You know?
You should defend at all
possibility
the flock that God has given you
God over.
Because we're all
at various stages of growth and development.
Right?
You haven't arrived.
Only through the
word of God, preached faithfully
at Lord's Day by Lord's Day.
Only by the word of God read
you reading the Bible
that cost a man
to give.
Study the word to show you
to be approved under God.
This is the instruction to Timothy.
You see what is needed is
the apostolic faith is
on one hand we must hold
the fight
a type, the subject of the good
conscience.
We need to have a good conscience in relation to things
and realise that we're all
on the stages of growth.
A deeper knowledge of
how infinite, loving, merciful
glorious God, holy God
a deeper love will
will become even more
helpful for us.
I was talking to Sam
and they've got a series coming up on Holiness by
R.C. Sproul.
I had the joy of looking through that
stuff about 15 years ago.
Get the
workbooks on Holiness by
Sproul
and watch those tapes.
They are brilliant.
It talks about what we should be.
And lays the foundation
for how God can work in our lives.
Read Bishop Ryle's book on
Holiness. There's a couple others
but I've got your whole already got a library
recommended here.
We languish
because of lack of knowledge of it.
We do things because
we don't know the word of God.
And we fumble around
because we only have
partial knowledge.
But we need
to cast ourselves back upon the word of God.
See
if we're in the truth.
Believe what it's doing.
The sad
truth is for so many Christians
is that they, their love
for God languishes
due for their lack
of knowledge of it.
Here's another book
for you. Knowledge of the Holy by Tozer.
I try and read that through every couple
of years. Brilliant book
Knowledge of the Holy.
The first camp I did
back Creek
Yakandanda
was on the knowledge of God.
Yeah there's a bit of memory for you
I didn't think I forgot about that
but there are transparencies for it.
My concern
was that
we're to know our God.
If God is sovereign
and we hold these great truths
isn't it due for us and responsible for us to start
turning them, reading the words of God
and seeking these things out?
Our
relationship
of him being
studded by our ignorance of him.
It's true.
We are
to love God
as we ought.
Dear child of God.
That's the importance bit.
We must know
more of the doctrine of God, the doctrine
of Christ, the doctrine of salvation
but the knowledge that comes from a textbook
from dogmatics
but it must come from the Bible.
That's God's word, breathed by the
Holy Spirit.
Textbooks help us
right?
But they're not inspired, they're God's
men who are dead preaching to us
still and you can get some great
help. Knowing God
by Packer, if you've never been through that
anybody know that book?
Knowing God by Packer. Excellent book.
Huh?
Just imagine
you get to the heavens.
Glory.
You know the
most damning words in the Bible?
I
never
knew you.
Just saying
will give you willies, doesn't it?
Shiver up the spine.
I never knew you.
So, dear child of God
we need to come to a place in our
lives where we grow.
We need to have a good conscience
a clear conscience.
We've done all to do
to fight the fight.
Huh?
So as we look on
fight the good fight we must do.
And so
we move on to this whole thing.
The rest of the New Testament testifies Paul's
impairment
through the good conscience.
Paul vowed his amazing
affirmation of the love of his people
as a true
because he was spoken with a clear
conscience in Romans 9-1.
He spoke with a clear conscience.
He presented to his people the clearness
his
burden for the Jew
with a clear conscience.
Can you present your
testimony to the dying world
with a clear conscience?
Dear child of God
Oh, let us keep
moving on.
Let us fight the fight.
Let's push on
to that eternal weight of glory.
Let us look
the author and finisher of our faith.
Huh?
Necessity for a
clear conscience
because sheer disobedience
will kill
the spiritual life.
You know,
obedience to Christ
to Christ
appears
a
good conscience
is the mother
of sound faith.
I fought the fight.
We might
stand up sometimes of
substantial pressure
and so forth
but a clear
conscience
is no power to
without a clear conscience we have no power to
endure the rest.
You know,
it's just amazing
as I remind you already that
after he'd come back to
faith in Christ
he had a clear conscience
and put his hand in the fire.
I wouldn't like
to think doing it
but his conscience was then clear.
He went
on
to his eternal reward.
Dear child of God
you know
let us move on
in the power of this great faith
that we've been talking about.
My desire has been to encourage you
to strengthen you to give some tools to you, to go past all those things.
Alright?
Our warfare is far less dynamic you know.
We do fight against blood and flesh against wicked powers and so forth and heavenly places.
No?
But God's word holds true.
Holding on to the faith objectively the deposit of the apostles faith subjectively treasure of a holy life.
And that's what we're going to strive through all the days of our life.
There's the challenge, is it not?
There's the encouragement to fight the good fight of faith.
My trust is we go away from here tonight.
One you might be strengthened encouraged lifted up and our desire is to exhort you and encourage you.
There's a little word of warning of those who didn't fight, isn't there?
Some rejected these so and have made shipwreck their face.
There are a lot of shipwrecks down through the hand of time.
It's very interesting to hear the testimony of a man that started at the same time as Billy Graham and turned his back on the authority of scripture.
He's died an angry unhappy man.
Then I read the last book of Billy Graham and just recounts his journeys.
It's so pleasurable to read it.
Shipwrecked the faith.
I mean this in Alexandria.
He said I've handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme.
Now I'm going to tell you I don't fully understand what's meant what Paul means by this handing over to Satan but it has several interpretations.
Sometimes you can't do anything with a couple of fellas like this but hand them over to the Lord.
Hand them over to God to deal with them.
Dear child of God let us run with certainly the race.
Let us have encouragement.
The author and finisher of our faith.
Oh that you might be lifted up.
I'd go from this place just knowing that you've been encouraged.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus.
Look full in his wonderful face.
And the things that were worth grow strange with him in the light of his glory and grace.
The Aboriginal put another chorus to it.
Keep your eyes upon Jesus.
Let no other take your place.
Right?
I just trust that like the compass that always paces north you pull out the compass and fix it and it goes whoosh, bing, north.
We might set our eyes on the author and finisher of our faith in the days to come.
And the things around us will grow strange with him.
Thank you.
What hymn are we going to have?
I don't have it.
Okay.
Alright.