So, two weeks into my freshman year of bible college I broke my left leg. Out of compassion, I won’t describe it to you in any great detail now, but suffice it to say it was broke broke. See me after if you wanna know how it happened but I was in the hospital for like a week afterward, and when I got back to the dorm I was on more drugs than almost any bible college freshman ever had been and so I completely forgot that I’d gone shopping the day before the accident. And at that time, I’d decided to get a bunch of fresh fruit to snack on because I was determined to avoid the freshman 15 I’d heard so much about. But while I was in the hospital, my friends had very kindly rearranged my bed so that it was in a place that was easier to get in and out of on one leg. And while that was happening they hadn’t noticed the bag of fresh plums that had fallen off the shelf and under the bed. Well, over the next 6 weeks, I didn’t do a lot of cleaning and we’ll pretend that’s only because I couldn’t walk and so I had no idea that I was inadvertently making wine under my bed. I’d say that bible college was making me more like Jesus already but he made his out of water and on purpose so I’m not sure the comparison holds up.

Well, as anybody who’s tried their hand at amateur fermentation projects will tell you, it’s very tricky to get fruit to go bad in a good way and so, were my accidental science project to have produced a desirable outcome, several things would have needed to be done differently. Not the least of which is that the bag containing the, um… product, would have needed a mechanism for venting the buildup of gas caused by the fermentation. My project lacked such a mechanism. And so in the middle of the night, some four weeks in this thing released a smell that, again, out of compassion, I will not describe to you. Apart from saying it woke me up. Drinkable wine, it turns out, is not the natural result of leaving plumbs in a bag under your bed for 32 days. Turns out that when it comes to making wine, just like aging steaks, or raising kids, time only makes things better under certain conditions. Apart from extraordinary care, time more often results in decay. And even the most careful aging processes ultimately end that way, apart from supernatural intervention. This is a fundamental part of our reality, baked into the laws of physics as much as it is seared into the back of our minds. Everything tends towards decay - entropy always wins.

Now, the world wasn’t designed this way. Time was created to serve God’s creation, not to ruin it. God designed people to grow, to learn, to achieve, to multiply, to become wiser, to live a very very long time and even to get very very old. The thing is, death and decay ruined that process to the point where you can hardly refer to getting older without implying them.  And given that decay and dying is the main problem in the bible, quite a bit of space is taken up in accounting for, dealing with, and living in spite of this process. In fact, you could say that 1st Timothy is even primarily concerned with this reality of preventing decay. However, not purely on a physical level. But it’s because Paul planted this church he’s talking about in Ephesus, which was a very, very hard context for a new religion to spread and maintain its integrity. Planting a church there is like trying to make wine under a college dorm room bunk - from a natural perspective there is very little that can go right with that. 

See, Ephesus is a city full of idol worship among the Greeks and superstition, traditionalism, and asceticism among the Jews. It’s a very oppressive environment to a newer religious movement like Christianity. On the one hand, you have the idolatrous pagans who are saying “no you can just add your God into the pantheon and use him when you need him, and use Artemis when you need her!” And on the Jewish side, you have them saying, “No no, you Christians aren’t reading the Old Testament right, if you want to follow the God of the bible then you need to be circumcised, you need to follow the levitical dietary laws, and you need to even abstain from marriage if you want to please God.” So what I’m saying is that Ephesus is a place where religion quickly sours. Time is not on your side here. Paul planted this little church and left them to go plant other churches, and that’s kinda like leaving a load of laundry in the washer when you go to bed. Where I grew up in Colorado you could save money on electricity by drying your clothes that way. In Florida, that’s a good way to get your clothes to smell like Greek yogurt. So Paul did to Timothy what I often do to my wife and asked him to stay up and change the laundry over. Weirdest church planting metaphor ever.

But he tells Timothy, listen man, this thing is going to try and go bad on you. I promise. In fact, the Holy Spirit explicitly says it will. He says false teachers will creep in and deceive the church, and many will follow them, and you will have to put a stop to that. But you also have to keep a close watch on yourself, because you’re not immune to the effects of sin and decay in Ephesus either. So guard yourself and the teaching. Keep a close eye on your faith and your practice, and by doing so you will save both yourself and your hearers. Time is not on your side - it is conspiring with fallen nature against you. It will erode and decay your faith if you let it, because sin is always working against you. And the only way to counter that process is to devote yourself to the word, and to godliness in your faith, in your love, and in your conduct. And so Paul sets up a contrast in this passage between parallel devotions. A contrast between two opposing forces that will either grow or kill a person’s faith. Or a church, for that matter. And that contrast will be the structure of the message today - a contrast between Sin on the one hand, and the Spirit on the other. So let’s start with Sin.

• Sin

Interestingly, there is no middle ground presented here - only devotion on either side. Either to the false teaching of demons in verse 1, or devotion to the Word of God in verse 13. So Paul isn’t saying, “The way to preserve your faith is just to maintain it. Just, like don’t do bad stuff and you’ll be fine.” It’s more like clothes in a washing machine in Florida, either it’s running and your clothes are getting cleaner or it’s not and they are headed downhill. Listen, Christianity is not about avoiding sin and hell. It is about knowing and loving Jesus. Sin and hell keep you from him, He keeps you from them. To move towards one is inherently to move away from the other. To devote yourself to one is to reject the other. And I promise you, the people you know and love outside the church do. not. understand. that. They think that Jesus is to sin what they think contraceptives are to sex - just a tool that you can use to do what you want and mitigate the long-term consequences. Church is just fire insurance. But I promise you, devotion to sin and devotion to Jesus are mutually exclusive. One will always kill the other. Let me explain why that is.

I think it’s pretty common knowledge that sin broke the world but I don’t think we often realize to what degree things are broken. When Adam and Eve fell, and they passed sin down to us, they didn’t merely pass guilt down. They passed down a proclivity. A tendency. An inclination. A desire. They passed down a spiritual directionality. Think of it like aging. Adults have babies, who then grow up to become adults, right? Adults don’t have adults, they have babies, and babies are born with a tendency to become adults. Your sin isn’t just a status you are born into, like humanity, it is a tendency you are born into, like adulthood. So humans are born into sin, but then they also grow up into sin. Does that make sense? Salvation is not like putting a corrective device on a child with a disability to curb the direction of growth. Salvation is not a crutch to help you walk better in spite of a limp. Salvation is rebirth. A corrective device works because we are born to grow toward physical maturity, and it can aid us in going where we are already naturally inclined to go. But it can’t make us something different. 

But ever since the fall we are born towards sin. The solution is not corrective action. You might as well be trying to change the gender you were born with - the best you can possibly do in such a case is make superficial external changes that do not satisfy your internal desires. Your sin is not an external status that's assigned to you at birth, it is an innate orientation that you are born with. And the only way to undo that is to be born again. No matter what your sin pattern looks like, if you feel like you were born with the wrong desires you are right. You need a solution that fixes your heart - not just your biology, because no matter what physical or external change you make, your heart will still be inclined towards sin in the long term. And I know that probably feels like an unnecessarily loaded analogy but I don't think it is, because we are truly talking about a problem of orientation. Not just sexual orientation, but theological orientation. I’m not trying to flatten everyone’s experience or equate types of sin, I’m trying to point out a common principle undergirding all our sin and all our experiences as fallen people. 

Think of it in recovery terms, if you prefer. the problem with an addiction is that it becomes the center of your life. The thing you're focused on has a gravitational pull that orients you towards it. Your thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs, all get pulled into an increasingly closer orbit around this singular desire. And since Florida is full of space nerds maybe I can get away with saying it can be an elliptical orbit, meaning it's not a perfect circle and sometimes you pull away for a bit but eventually you always get closer. Like water circling a drain. You're like the moon, always oriented towards the earth. Except unlike the moon your orbit isn't stable - it's decaying. It’s dying. Meaning that no matter how sustainable it feels, or how far away you get sometimes, as long as your orientation is towards that thing, as long as your orbit is defined by that thing, you are headed for an inevitable collision with that thing that will destroy you. If we are talking about planets this is physics. If we are talking about people, this is devotion. And just like the moon didn’t choose its orbit, you didn’t choose yours, and you and the moon are both equally incapable of changing your circumstances on your own.

So what that means is that aging is no longer a fundamentally good thing. Time is no longer on our side. Apart from the grace of God, getting older does not have to mean getting wiser, or kinder, or more loving, because we are no longer naturally oriented toward those things. Sin broke the world, and now “death” is the word we use to describe how it specifically damaged the aging process. What I’m trying to say is that aging is practice. Getting older is practice. It is never not practice. Every moment you live you are always getting better, more efficient, more comfortable, and more familiar with something. Every time you do something - anything, even at a neurological level it gets 1% easier to do, and 1% less likely that you’ll do something differently next time. Your orbit is getting tighter around whatever you are oriented to. Even if you are sitting on your couch watching Netflix, it is practice for doing that. My kids can hardly sit still for 10 minutes of a Bluey episode but by the time they go to college, if they are like me, they’ll be capable of binging a whole season of television in a sitting. That’s practice. 10 year olds don’t cheat on their spouses and destroy their families with affairs but you better believe they start practicing from the first sexually explicit video they stumble across on social media that they come back to later. College and high school students, you might look at some older people you know and wonder how they could be so hateful, so uncaring, so stuck in their ways. But it’s entirely possible they just have more practice at things you’re already doing. Like don't complain about NBA stars playing pro basketball if you're out there shooting hoops in the driveway every night after dinner.

And this is the deceptive thing about age. It’s supposed to mean you’re wiser, kinder, more godly. That’s how people were designed to age - in orbit around God. Devoted to his character. Practicing his ways. But because of sin and apart from the work of Christ, either through sanctification or common grace, it now naturally means you’ve had more time to practice sin instead. To practice being nice while you sin. To practice sinning without people knowing. To practice thinking about your sin in ways that make it seem less bad, or that make righteousness and justice seem evil. You see in Timothy’s day, all the experts were pagans. All of the older, more experienced, more educated people in town were either idol-worshiping Greeks or superstitious and legalistic Jews who denied the gospel. They knew more than him. They have lived longer than him. They had read more books, seen more things, and been to more places. And here comes Timothy, probably a twenty-something-year-old pastor, and he’s going to tell the Ephesian Scholars in the temple of Artemis that they are wrong? Who does this kid think he is? 

But the Holy Spirit says that in the latter days, many will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to false teachers who preach demonic things. So you have people who were once faithful, but fall prey to the degrading effect of sin, turning from Christ, and becoming increasingly devoted to false teaching. Paul even says their consciences are “seared,” but that word is really interesting because in most of the places it’s used in Greek manuscripts outside the New Testament, it doesn’t just mean “seared,” it means “branded.” You know the word branding, like in marketing, comes from the way farmers take metal and shape it into a sort of logo for their family and then they’d heat it up and stick that brand on their animals until it left a permanent scar in that shape. This way they could tell if somebody stole their animals - their logo was seared into it. If you go out and buy a steak, I bet you can tell if it was cooked in a pan or on a grill. If it was on a grill, it’s got grill marks. And the secret to getting good grill marks is patience. The key to getting a good steak is using a cast-iron pan but that’s a different sermon. If, for some reason, you want grill marks, then you have to leave that steak on there - don’t move it. Don’t flip it. Give it time to let the marks set in. 

When Paul talks about these people who have devoted themselves to the teachings of demons, he’s not saying they are like supernaturally possessed. This isn’t the exorcist. These are regular people and they aren’t doing anything all that horrific. He’s just saying he can see the grill marks on their thoughts, on their behaviors, and on their conduct. You become like what you devote yourself to. If you devote yourself to Christ, you become increasingly Christlike. If you devote yourself to the teachings of demons, well that brand gets clearer and clearer the longer you keep touchin it. So it’s not just that these people are teaching wrong doctrine, though they are. It’s not even about how serious the error is, it’s about the source of the error. Because even if the error is small now, if it comes from that source it’s only going to get worse. Time is not on your side. You will continue to grow, to mature, and to practice in that error, and it will progressively choke out your devotion to Jesus. And the solution, interestingly, is to fight devotion with devotion. 

• The Spirit

Part of what’s so destructive about sin is that it counterfeits righteousness. It uses similar processes, similar objectives, and similar language, and it distorts it. Paul’s instruction to Timothy to deal with the crisis of counterfeit discipleship and harmful devotion is not all that fundamentally different at a conceptual level. The solution to the devotion of the false teachers is not that Timothy should be more laid back by contrast, but that he should devote himself to the reading of scripture, to exhortation, and to teaching. He should not neglect the spiritual gifts that he has, but cultivate them. If his opponents are practicing, so should he. If they are growing, so should he. If they are maturing, so should he. But even if the methods are similar, the effects are quite different. In fact, they should be so different that the distinction is visible to anyone who’s paying attention. 

A lot of people mishandle this passage, especially a lot of young people. We younger folks tend to hear this and think Paul is saying, “Don’t let anyone get away with reviling you for your age.” And I think what he’s actually saying is much closer to, “Don’t give anybody an opportunity to revile you because of your age.” In other words, this isn’t a reactive solution, it’s a proactive one. It’s not, “Wait until somebody criticizes your age and be ready with a sharp comeback.” It’s “live your life in such a way that nobody will have any reason to revile you, and if they try to, they will only embarrass themselves because your faith, love, and conduct speak for themselves.” I take it this way because of how similar it is to the language in 1st Peter where Peter says, “in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, halways being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and irespect, 16 jhaving a good conscience, so that, kwhen you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.” 

See how close that is? Paul says don’t let anyone despise you for your age, but rather set an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity. So the contrast is between their despising and your example - not between their criticism and your comeback. Sure, you can offer a defense for the hope that’s in you. Neither Peter nor Paul are saying you necessarily have to be silent and take it, but that if do speak, you would do so with gentleness and respect, in a way that sets an example of love, so that if they are shamed it is by contrast - not by condemnation. And in particular, Paul is urging Timothy to practice for godliness in such a way that the contrast is not only between your words and theirs but between your life and theirs. This is the major theme of the book in my opinion - that the gospel must have a comprehensively transformative effect on your head, your heart, and your hands. Or on your thoughts, your emotions, and your behaviors. 

Remember, as we saw back in chapter 2, there are 3 primary anchor points in this letter. One is in chapter 2, right after that odd verse about women being saved through childbearing - if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with self-control. Then here, Timothy is told to set an example in faith, love, speech, conduct, and purity. Then in chapter 6, Paul tells him to pursue faith, love, righteousness, godliness, steadfastness, and gentleness. In other words, throughout the whole letter, Paul is progressively expounding on the way that godliness should progressively expand throughout your whole life. Yes, guard your doctrine, but not just what you believe, but how you believe it, and how you live it out. And remember, this letter would have been read not just to Timothy but to the whole church. So in telling Timothy to pursue not just right doctrine but right love and speech and conduct, and to set an example in all things, he’s subtly helping the young Ephesian church to grow in discernment.

You don’t just know a false or true teacher by what they teach. Paul wrote this same idea to the Colossians, telling them to be rooted and grounded in love so that nobody may delude them with plausible-sounding arguments. In other words, the sole marker of truth is not, “does it make sense to me?” You know why? Because you and I are not the smartest people in the world! We don’t know everything! And so somebody can make a point that seems correct to our understanding, given our level of education, our level of spiritual maturity, and it can still be entirely wrong and even demonic. Now that’s an unpopular idea in our age because we like to think we can become experts on any subject with an hour of googling. But here’s the problem, false teachers have great SEO. They show up front page on Google. And sometimes they make a whole lot of sense to our fallen hearts that are bent towards sin. And so we don’t just evaluate what they are saying, but how they are saying it. And more importantly how they are living it. So Paul is making a very familiar point here. As Jesus said, “You will know them by their fruits.” 

In other words, it is not accurate to say you will know them by their age. Or know them by their credentials. The Lord did not even say you will know them by how well they can quote Scripture. But rather, you will know them by their fruits. Fruits that are cultivated by devotion to Christ, not just over time spent any old way. Now, make no mistake, a person who has grown old in Christ will have more good fruit and wisdom and kindness and love to show than anyone! In Christ death and decay are defeated, and age is restored to the blessing it was intended to be. This is why, as we will see next week, you should honor older men in the church and older women as mothers - age should be an indication of a person with wisdom, experience, and time-tested godliness that’s worthy of honor and respect. So please don’t in any way hear any part of this message as dishonoring older saints. But what Paul is pointing out is that it is a person’s devotion to Christ that really makes the difference in the end. And age will either magnify a person’s devotion to Christ or it will magnify their devotion to something else. Even a very young person who is devoted to Christ can and should set an example for older people who are not. 

Conclusion

As I wrap up here I want to make a couple quick points of application. If you are young and you’re hearing this then the application isn’t to get ready to fight anybody who looks down on you for your age. It’s to devote yourself to constant training in godliness in every part of your life. Aim for a life that is a better defense than anything you could say. If you are hearing this and consider yourself to be on the older side, let me encourage you not to retire from this training. It’s not like a job that you work until you save up enough to quit and relax the rest of your life. The moment you do that is the moment decay will set in. Fortunately, maturity in Christ is less like a salary and more like an investment account with compounding interest. The longer you let it go the bigger it gets. And Paul says this training is not worthless in the next life, the value carries over in death! Can you imagine how much differently people would treat their retirement accounts if they thought they could take the money with them when they die? They would work themselves to death just trying to get a little more in before the investment window closes. 

But perhaps most importantly, if you’re hearing this and you know deep in your bones that your devotion is not to Jesus, he is not what you are naturally oriented to, and that all the religious stuff you have ever done has been nothing more than external and superficial changes to try and fix an internal reality you can’t quite reach, you must be born again. Jesus Christ is the savior of all people, especially those who believe. What that means is that there is no other name under heaven by which men may be saved. There is not a savior for drunkards, one for liars, one for adulterers. There is not one savior for white wealthy people and another for the others. There is not a savior in every religion that all leads to the same place. There is one savior for all types of people, and it is only made available to those who believe. But don’t let that stop you either, because he came to save us before we believed. So even if you don’t believe, but you want to, he can make that happen. I don’t care how young or old you are, if you look down and see your heart branded with a mark that isn’t from Jesus, go and see him about getting a new one. Quit trying to just quit orbiting sin, replace it with a new and greater devotion by being born again. Turn away from other devotions, orient yourself towards Jesus, and watch him draw you to himself. Let’s pray and ask him for that now.