The Goal of Our Teaching
Jeffery Anselmi / General
Love / 1 Timothy 1:3–7
Why do we teach what we teach? Are we simply transferring knowledge or are we seeking transformation?
INTRODUCTION
• Are you the type of person who sets goals and makes plans for your life?
• Or are you one of those fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type?
• For example, I have seen many people go to college with no end goal, maybe other than graduating at some point.
• When they started, they did not know what they wanted to do, and as a result of not having a career goal, they would either drop out with a great deal of debt and no degree or they would spend much more time in college than they needed to, resulting in more debt and time wasted in school.
• Sometimes it can get easy to forget why we do what we do in life.
• Why am I married?
• If you forget that one, you will lose half your stuff, and your kids will be put at a disadvantage.
• The person we married and wanted to spend the rest of our lives with becomes just a roommate, and then we allow little things to tear the relationship apart.
• Why do we have a job?
• Our jobs which are supposed to help us to provide a living for the family, can at some point become our life to the point where we forget our family.
• If we are not careful, we can forget why we do what we do.
• This can happen at church or in our personal lives with our faith.
• Why do you come to church?
• Why do you read the Bible?
• Why do you pray?
• When you lose sight of your goal, these things become mundane tasks, not life-changing experiences.
• As a church, we have to ask ourselves, what is the goal of our teaching?
• Why do we teach what we teach?
• Are we simply transferring knowledge, or are we seeking transformation?
• Paul is writing to the young evangelist Timothy in our passage this morning.
• Some folks were trying to promote false teachings within the church.
• People were losing sight of what was important.
• Look at verses 3-4 with me.
1 Timothy 1:3–4 (NET 2nd ed.)
3 As I urged you when I was leaving for Macedonia, stay on in Ephesus to instruct certain people not to spread false teachings,
4 nor to occupy themselves with myths and interminable genealogies. Such things promote useless speculations rather than God’s redemptive plan that operates by faith.
• People were trying to get people to take their focus off what is really important in the life of a Christian.
• These teachers were coming in trying to get the folks hung up on stuff that was not important.
• As Paul contrasts the false teachers' teachings with the real ones, Paul explains that the AIM or GOAL of God's teachings is LOVE!
• When the passage speaks of the AIM or goal of our instruction (speaking of what Paul taught), he explains that love is the proper and expected lifestyle of one who calls themselves a Christian.
• The teaching's AIM, GOAL, or END result is to help one get to this end.
• Contrast that to what the false teachers were doing; they were trying to drag people off that goal to get them to aim at unimportant stuff.
• Real love is doing what is spiritually best for others.
• By the way, this kind of love is NOT dependent on the object of the love; it is entirely reliant on the lover.
• In other words, this kind of love is a matter of the will; we can make it happen with the help of the God we love and who loves us!
• If we think we have the right doctrinal stand on things, yet we cannot love those around us, there is something wrong.
• When we lose sight of our goal, we will go off the path and lose sight of why we are here.
• The focus of the study will be verse 5 of 1 Timothy, so let's begin there today.
• In the passage, Paul clearly lays out three goals of WHY we teach what we teach, and in verses 6-7, a bad result happens when we do not focus on the goal.
• Let's look at verse 5 to see what type of love we aim for.
1 Timothy 1:5 (NET 2nd ed.)
5 But the aim of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.
SERMON
I. Love from a pure heart.
• Those trying to introduce false teaching into the mix were trying to get folks to focus on external or ceremonial purity instead of what was important.
• By the way, it is not always false teaching that can be the issue; it is losing sight of the heart behind the teaching.
• The Pharisees of Jesus day looked good on the outside but were a mess internally.
Matthew 23:26 (NET 2nd ed.)
26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside may become clean too!
• Even when these guys taught technically correct teaching, the goal of their instruction was not pure love.
• A pure heart is the ground from which love must grow.
• In the Bible, the heart represents a person's mind, thoughts, and moral affections.
• What is a pure heart?
• The word PURE originally meant clean as opposed to soiled or dirty.
• Later the word PURE came to have certain most suggestive uses.
• The word pure was used for corn that has been winnowed and cleansed of all chaff.
• The term was used for an army that had been purified of all cowardly and undisciplined soldiers until nothing was left but first-class fighting men.
• The term was applied to something which was without any inferior things added to the mix.
• A pure heart is a heart whose motives are absolutely pure and absolutely unmixed.
• In the heart of the Christian, there is no desire to show how clever one is, no desire to win a purely debating victory, no desire to show up the ignorance of his opponent.
• One's only desire is to help, illuminate, and lead nearer to God.
• The Christian is moved only by love of truth and love for others.
• The pure heart is one whose motives and affections are noble and unselfish.
• We can go to God to have our purify our hearts!
Psalm 51:10 (NET 2nd ed.)
10 Create for me a pure heart, O God. Renew a resolute spirit within me.
• A pure heart will allow us to love even when we receive nothing in return!
• Let's go back to verse 5.
1 Timothy 1:5 (NET 2nd ed.)
5 But the aim of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.
II. Love from a good conscience.
• A good conscience is another area from which our love must flow.
• What is a conscience?
• Technically, it is an innate (inborn) faculty that prompts one to do what one thinks is right and criticizes when one does what one's mind thinks is wrong.
• When our standard of right is violated, the conscience produces guilt, shame, doubt, fear, remorse, or despair.
• Some people do good things because of a guilty conscience, but doing good is not normal for them.
• Loving the hard-to-love is not something they normally do.
• Timothy was told that God desires Christians to live a lifestyle that does not result from a guilty conscience.
• A blameless conscience is one free of offense against God and man.
• A good conscience produces peace, confidence, joy, hope, courage, and contentment.
• If you are not experiencing these things and are experiencing the things from the list of guilt, shame, doubt, etc...… then it would seem that God is trying to get your attention!
• When we are immersed in Jesus, we are given a good conscience.
1 Peter 3:20–21 (NET 2nd ed.)
20 after they were disobedient long ago when God patiently waited in the days of Noah as an ark was being constructed. In the ark a few, that is eight souls, were delivered through water.
21 And this prefigured baptism, which now saves you—not the washing off of physical dirt but the pledge of a good conscience to God—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
• Our conscience can be trained (1 Corinthians 8:7-12), it can be calloused over and hardened.
• We have to be careful with our conscience because, over time, if we constantly ignore what it tells us, we will eventually burn it out.
• Some folks do not want to change or listen to God, so they ignore the conscience long enough to eventually dull it and retrain it to the new standard we set for ourselves, which leads to eventually killing it.
• God's Word guides a good conscience; the blood of Jesus cleanses the conscience.
Hebrews 9:14 (NET 2nd ed.)
14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our consciences from dead works to worship the living God.
• We are called to love from a good conscience; we are not called to love driven by guilt and shame.
• Let's look at verse 5 again.
1 Timothy 1:5 (NET 2nd ed.)
5 But the aim of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.
III. Love from a sincere faith.
• A sincere faith is a faith that is real and true; it is literally a faith without hypocrisy.
• A sincere faith is a faith that needs no mask to hide its' insincerity or inconsistency.
• People with a sincere faith do not need to put on their "game face" when they come to church or hang out with other Christians.
• One of the big things that drew me to Jesus was seeing the sincere faith of Robyn's friends.
• They were by no means perfect, but you could see their faith was real.
• King David had a great faith even though he was a very flawed individual.
• When David realized he stepped out of line with God, he quickly got back on track.
• David did not gloss over his issues by saying he would deal with God later; he repented and cleaned up the problem then and there.
• A sincere faith spring forth from trusting God.
• Too often, we do not trust that God will help us or that He is powerful enough to change a life.
• A sincere faith is needed if real love is going to happen, a faith that trusts God enough that we will love as He commands us to do!
• Let's turn to verses 6-7 for a final thought!
1 Timothy 1:6–7 (NET 2nd ed.)
6 Some have strayed from these and turned away to empty discussion.
7 They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not understand what they are saying or the things they insist on so confidently.
IV. Love without aim.
• When we miss the goal or miss our mark, we will hit something, but it will be something we do not want to hit.
• Our faith and teachings aim not to lead to empty discussions but rather life-changing, life-enhancing experiences!
• Some had STRAYED away from the beautiful message of verse 5.
• The word STAYED means to MISS THE MARK OR GO BEYOND THE GOAL.
1, 2 Timothy & Titus (A. The Charge and the False Teachers (1:3–7))
The false teachers have missed the mark set for them by a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.
Instead they have turned to empty discussion.
“Empty discussion” represents a single word in the original which could literally be rendered “empty or useless discourse.”
All of the talk of the false teachers leads nowhere.
It may draw some followers, but it does not produce the godly life.
• Our goal is transformation, not simply a transfer of knowledge!
1, 2 Timothy & Titus (A. The Charge and the False Teachers (1:3–7))
These false teachers want to be known as “teachers of the law.”
Like many of the Jewish rabbis of the day, they suggest extravagant interpretations of the Old Testament stories and laws pretending to be scholars.
These men have no real grasp of the intent of the sacred Scriptures and little concern with regard to the gospel’s implications for Christian living.
CONCLUSION
• Our teaching aims to build love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.
• When we teach, we are seeking transformation, growth, and change.
• We seek to help people be more Christ-like, not pass on knowledge for strictly educational purposes.
• When we can help people grow, we will reach more people for Jesus, and all we reach will grow in their love.
• We are seeking to raise a new generation of Christian Pharisees.
