The Goal Of Our Teaching

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.