Latest / Tabernacle Talk - A Bible Study Podcast with Pastor Bryon Self / 1 Timothy 1:1-11 - The Purpose of the Old Testament

Transcript

1 Timothy 1:1-11 - The Purpose of the Old Testament · Tabernacle Talk - A Bible Study Podcast with Pastor Bryon Self

• 0:00
  Welcome to Tabernacle Talk. Tabernacle Talk is a Bible study
• 0:03
  podcast brought from Tabernacle Baptist Church in Essex, MD.
• 0:07
  I'm your host, Brian Self. We hope this podcast encourages
• 0:10
  you to know Christ, grow in his word, and show his love to
• 0:14
  others. Let's dive right in.
• 0:15
  Welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. Today we are back in the New
• 0:18
  Testament and I was looking just before recording and it has been
• 0:23
  167 days since we last had a Tabernacle Talk episode from the
• 0:29
  New Testament. So we have been in Book 5 of
• 0:32
  Psalms for a very long time. And so I am super excited to be
• 0:38
  back in the New Testament with you all.
• 0:40
  And we are going over the book of First Timothy.
• 0:43
  First Timothy. Now we went over Second Timothy
• 0:47
  last, I believe it was February through April in our Tabernacle
• 0:52
  Tidbits. And so that was one verse at a
• 0:54
  time. And my goal was to shoot for 5
• 0:57
  minutes or less. Really, it was between 5:00 and
• 1:00
  7:00 minutes every episode. And that was audio only.
• 1:04
  And so you can go back and look at that.
• 1:06
  You can go to tbces.sex.com/two Dash Timothy, so tbcsx.com and
• 1:14
  then forward slash 2 dash Timothy and you can look at a
• 1:19
  bunch of resources on Second Timothy and get to look at every
• 1:25
  single verse that I did a Tabernacle talk episode on from
• 1:29
  there. Timothy was Paul, the apostles
• 1:34
  protege, his son in the faith. He had come to faith in the Lord
• 1:40
  through the testimony of his mother and his grandmother.
• 1:44
  Timothy was half Jewish. He was Jewish on his mother's
• 1:48
  side. His dad was a Greek who did not
• 1:52
  believe in the Lord and who did not teach him what the Scripture
• 1:56
  said or teach him to follow the Lord in any way.
• 1:59
  And so Timothy came from, if you will, kind of a split faith
• 2:04
  home. And so maybe if that's your
• 2:06
  background where you didn't grow up with two believing parents
• 2:10
  who taught you what it looked like to have a Christian
• 2:13
  marriage or what the Bible says, I want you to know you are in
• 2:17
  very, very good company. And the Lord incredibly used
• 2:21
  Timothy and Timothy's was from the city of Lystra.
• 2:26
  Paul met up with him there. A Lystra was actually where Paul
• 2:30
  was stoned for his preaching in Jesus during.
• 2:35
  I forget if it was missionary journey one or two.
• 2:37
  I'm going to say it was probably missionary journey 1 though.
• 2:41
  On the second missionary journey through Paul picked up Timothy
• 2:45
  and Timothy became a part of Paul's like companions and his
• 2:50
  group of believers that traveled with him in about preaching the
• 2:55
  gospel and writing letters and doing all sorts of stuff.
• 2:58
  And so Timothy was dearly loved by the apostle Paul.
• 3:04
  And in the letter of first Timothy, Paul is writing from
• 3:09
  Macedonia, which is north of Greece.
• 3:13
  I actually can't remember right offhand as I'm recording if
• 3:16
  Macedonia is still a country today.
• 3:18
  I think it is. And so Paul was writing a letter
• 3:22
  to Timothy because he had sent Timothy, or he had left Timothy
• 3:26
  in Ephesus for a particular reason.
• 3:30
  So there was the Ephesian church.
• 3:34
  Ephesus was a huge bustling city in the 1st century AD, and it
• 3:41
  was a place of incredible idol worship.
• 3:44
  It was a place of great architecture.
• 3:48
  It was a huge like port of commerce for a ton of people,
• 3:54
  and so Ephesus was a really important place.
• 3:58
  It was from there in Ephesus, that central hub, that many
• 4:02
  people accepted the Lord and then went out to different areas
• 4:06
  and took the gospel message from there.
• 4:09
  If you will. Think of it like someone going
• 4:12
  to New York City and preaching the gospel there.
• 4:15
  People get saved there and then from New York, perhaps they go
• 4:19
  to London or they go to Tokyo or they go to the Midwest and they
• 4:23
  take the gospel that they heard in that bustling city and it
• 4:27
  goes from there out to a bunch of different places.
• 4:30
  And so Paul spent three years in Ephesus.
• 4:34
  It was one of the longest times, one of the longest stays that he
• 4:38
  had in his missionary journeys. And while there he preached the
• 4:42
  gospel. He planted the church that was
• 4:44
  there. He had some of the first leaders
• 4:47
  of the church that he established there.
• 4:51
  It was a place that he would often come back and visit.
• 4:55
  Some of the greatest portions of Scripture that we have that
• 4:58
  detail what the work of elders or pastors is, comes from what
• 5:03
  Paul tells the Ephesian elders in Acts 20.
• 5:08
  Ephesus was also a a place, and the Ephesian church was a church
• 5:14
  that received much of the New Testament because so many of the
• 5:20
  writers of the New Testament were intricately tied in with
• 5:24
  the believers in the church there.
• 5:27
  So Paul plants the church here, Timothy, he pastors the church
• 5:33
  or he leads as one of the elders in the church, if you will.
• 5:38
  He had kind of a, I'll call it a senior pastor role, quote UN
• 5:42
  quote, or a lead pastor role in that he was guiding what the
• 5:47
  church ought to be doing, especially in regards to
• 5:52
  nominating new elders. And so Timothy had that role
• 5:58
  there. We know that John the Apostle in
• 6:00
  his later years would also be one of the elders there in
• 6:06
  Ephesus. And actually he would be
• 6:08
  afforded a lot of authority as people were like man, this
• 6:12
  person actually walked and talked with Jesus.
• 6:16
  And so all of the writings that we have from the Apostle John,
• 6:20
  whether the Gospel of John, the letters of first, second and
• 6:23
  third John and the the Revelation were all writings
• 6:29
  that would have found their their home within the Ephesian
• 6:34
  church in the city of Ephesus. And we also have another letter
• 6:38
  by Paul that we know as the letter of Ephesians.
• 6:41
  That was actually the last New Testament book that we were in
• 6:44
  back in September. And so the Ephesian church was
• 6:49
  given some rich blessings, but the Ephesian church was in deep
• 6:56
  trouble. And that's why Paul writes this
• 6:58
  letter to Timothy, because the church was in trouble.
• 7:01
  So Paul had left Timothy there to do some things, to say some
• 7:06
  things, to protect some things that we're going to look at.
• 7:10
  And so it was super, super important for Timothy to be
• 7:14
  there. And what we'll read this is a
• 7:17
  letter from, if you will, a church planner, the guy that
• 7:20
  started the church to now this other guy who is leading the
• 7:25
  church at this moment. So it's a letter from a founding
• 7:27
  pastor to another pastor of the church, but it is also a letter
• 7:32
  from the heart of God for his church that we would know what
• 7:37
  we should do and how we should behave in relation to one
• 7:42
  another as the body of Christ. And Paul says that very
• 7:45
  specifically to Timothy. And it's either chapter 3 or 4.
• 7:50
  So today we're going to go over verses one through 11.
• 7:54
  I was planning it. I was plotting it out or
• 7:57
  planning it out a couple days ago.
• 7:59
  I think we'll have about 15 to 20 episodes through first
• 8:04
  Timothy. And so that'll take us through
• 8:06
  about 3 or 4 weeks together in this book of Scripture.
• 8:11
  Let's begin reading in chapter 1 and verse #1 I'm going to read
• 8:15
  through these first 11 verses. Paul, an apostle of Christ
• 8:19
  Jesus, by the command of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus our
• 8:22
  hope to Timothy, my true Son in the faith, grace, mercy, and
• 8:28
  peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
• 8:32
  Notice they're even right there in the beginning.
• 8:35
  Paul says, here's why I'm writing because I'm an apostle,
• 8:38
  because Jesus has given me a mission, He says, by the command
• 8:42
  of God our Savior. If you remember, Paul was the
• 8:45
  persecutor. But on that road to Damascus,
• 8:47
  Jesus said, Nope, you're not playing for Team Satan anymore.
• 8:51
  I am moving you by force to Team Jesus.
• 8:54
  And what a joy that that is. So Paul says, listen, I'm an
• 8:59
  apostle. It's not because anyone said,
• 9:02
  oh, Paul, such a great guy. I think he needs to be an
• 9:04
  apostle. He says, no, it was Jesus
• 9:06
  himself, the the Christ who is our hope.
• 9:10
  He's the reason that I have this mission.
• 9:13
  He says it's to Timothy and Timothy, you are like a son in
• 9:16
  the faith to me that I watched you grow in your faith in Christ
• 9:21
  Jesus. And I am so proud of you here.
• 9:24
  He says my true son in the faith and then he gives that common
• 9:28
  greeting grace. Curious this would be or sorry,
• 9:31
  not curious Carice. This would be the common Greek
• 9:35
  greeting grace to you. And he says mercy.
• 9:39
  That is God's love, His care, his compassion for us, and he
• 9:44
  says and peace. Or you can think of the Hebrew
• 9:46
  greeting Shalom. It's grace, mercy, and peace
• 9:50
  from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord to Timothy, who
• 9:54
  is encountering a church in turmoil that we're going to look
• 9:57
  at in one second. He would need all three of these
• 10:00
  keys. Verse #3 As I urged you when I
• 10:04
  went to Macedonia, remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct
• 10:08
  certain people not to teach false doctrine or to pay
• 10:12
  attention to myths and endless genealogies.
• 10:15
  These promote empty speculations rather than God's plan which
• 10:20
  operates by faith. Now the goal of our instruction
• 10:23
  is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a
• 10:27
  sincere faith. Some of departed from these and
• 10:31
  turned aside to fruitless discussion.
• 10:33
  They want to be teachers of the law, although they don't
• 10:36
  understand what they're saying or what they are insisting on.
• 10:40
  But we know that the law is good, provided 1 uses it
• 10:44
  legitimately. We know that the law is not
• 10:48
  meant for a righteous person, but for the lawless and
• 10:51
  rebellious, for the ungodly and sinful, for the unholy and
• 10:55
  irreverent, for those who kill their fathers and mothers, for
• 10:59
  murderers, for the sexually immoral and males who have sex
• 11:02
  with males, for slave traders, liars, perjurers, and for
• 11:07
  whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to
• 11:10
  the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God which was
• 11:14
  entrusted to me. Now that is a long sentence
• 11:19
  because that's the only way that Paul knows how to write.
• 11:22
  So let's begin in verse #3 Why did Paul leave Timothy there in
• 11:28
  Ephesus? He says so that you may instruct
• 11:31
  certain people not to teach false doctrine or to pay
• 11:35
  attention to myths and endless genealogies.
• 11:39
  The problem that Paul sent or that Paul left Timothy in
• 11:44
  Ephesus 4 was that there were people teaching that should not
• 11:49
  have been teaching, and there were people teaching things that
• 11:52
  they should not have been teaching.
• 11:55
  So he he describes this false doctrine that says this is not
• 12:00
  in line with the gospel, and then he describes it a little
• 12:03
  bit. He says don't instruct them not
• 12:05
  to teach false doctrine or to pay attention to myths and
• 12:10
  endless genealogies during the intertestamental period, which
• 12:16
  I've talked a little bit about even recently.
• 12:18
  So between when the Old Testament was completed and when
• 12:23
  Jesus and the apostles came on the scene, there were a lot of
• 12:27
  speculations and wanderings and guessings about things in the
• 12:33
  Old Testament. And so people created large
• 12:37
  bodies of writings in dealing with things that the Old
• 12:41
  Testament just didn't talk about and did not give specific
• 12:45
  details on. So you can think about Genesis 6
• 12:48
  and the sons of God and the daughters of man and the
• 12:52
  Nephilim, the fallen ones that came from that union that God
• 12:56
  then sent the flood. Well, many people have had a lot
• 12:59
  of questions on what all of that means and what it entails.
• 13:03
  And so people in the intertestamental period, they
• 13:06
  wrote a lot about those types of things.
• 13:10
  However, God had not given in His inspired word what
• 13:15
  specifically happened or what the names of fallen angels were
• 13:20
  or what the names other than Gabriel and Michael, He did not
• 13:26
  give a lot of names of the angelic beings.
• 13:29
  But the people between when the Old Testament ended and when the
• 13:32
  New Testament started, they were really curious about angels and
• 13:38
  Angel angelology and demons. They were curious about the
• 13:43
  different people described in Scripture and the lives that
• 13:52
  they lived, their sins, their lack of sins, the conversations
• 13:57
  that they had. And so there was just a lot of,
• 13:59
  I'll call it fan fiction that was written.
• 14:03
  And so a danger in the 1st century would be for teachers to
• 14:06
  use not the Old Testament that the Holy Spirit had inspired the
• 14:11
  prophets to write and to not use the writings that were already
• 14:15
  there in the New Testament or to rely on the testimony and the
• 14:20
  word of the apostles. The temptation would be to
• 14:25
  utilize these fan fictions that have myths and genealogies and
• 14:31
  things that God had not said. Let me bring it down for you
• 14:36
  guys because I, I doubt actually no, it, it is making a
• 14:42
  resurgence online, even with TikTok and Instagram reels and
• 14:47
  YouTube shorts, all that kind of stuff.
• 14:50
  It it is popping up more, don't obsess about the things that God
• 14:55
  has not clearly defined for us. I'm a big fan of Bible prophecy
• 15:01
  of the end times, but I cannot and ought not spend all of my
• 15:07
  time trying to look for certainty, in particular signs
• 15:12
  and great indications of Jesus's return, because God has not set
• 15:17
  that up in His Word. In the same way, many people get
• 15:21
  totally distracted and they get turned away from the focus on
• 15:25
  Jesus because they obsess about the things that Scripture has
• 15:29
  not made clear. Or they get needlessly semantic
• 15:35
  and down into the weeds and obsess over particular words in
• 15:41
  Scripture to say, oh, I interpret this word to mean this
• 15:45
  and therefore this must be true. And I found something that no
• 15:49
  one else has ever seen before, or a line you will often hear.
• 15:53
  I have never heard anyone else ever say this before about
• 15:58
  Scripture. That is often a sign that
• 16:01
  there's a problem there, that this is not good.
• 16:06
  The just because something has been taught for a long time
• 16:09
  doesn't necessarily mean it's right.
• 16:11
  But if something has never been taught before, that is often a
• 16:14
  great indication that such a thing could be wrong.
• 16:17
  So Paul tells Timothy there are people that are obsessing about
• 16:21
  myths and endless genealogies and they're teaching false
• 16:24
  doctrine from these things. And so this is not good.
• 16:29
  He says these promote empty speculations rather than God's
• 16:34
  plan which operates by faith. Faith says I don't know
• 16:38
  everything, but I can rely on what God has told me and so I
• 16:43
  can operate that way. Your empty speculations is
• 16:47
  there's no way to empirically prove or not prove this.
• 16:51
  And so it does nothing for my life.
• 16:53
  It will not help me to become more like Jesus.
• 16:56
  It will not help me to evangelize others.
• 16:58
  It will not help me be kind. It will not help me exercise
• 17:02
  self-control. This is just to like puff my own
• 17:06
  brain up. Don't follow empty speculations.
• 17:11
  Instead, follow God's plan which operates by faith.
• 17:15
  Then he gives instead of empty speculations.
• 17:18
  Here's what God's Word is supposed to do for you and for
• 17:21
  me. He says the goal of our
• 17:22
  instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good
• 17:27
  conscience, and a sincere faith. If I know so much about the Word
• 17:35
  of God, but I am unloving and I'm unloving to you all, I'm
• 17:39
  unloving to Samantha, I'm unloving to my kids or to people
• 17:43
  in my church, then I am not receiving the goal.
• 17:48
  I'm not hitting the goal of what God's Word wants to do in my
• 17:52
  life. The goal of God's Word is not
• 17:54
  for me to be puffed up with knowledge.
• 17:56
  The goal of God's Word is that I would love others with a pure
• 18:00
  heart. That's sincere motives with a
• 18:04
  good conscience that when I am doing and saying things that my
• 18:09
  conscience isn't saying, Nope, that was wrong, that was not
• 18:12
  good. You shouldn't have done that.
• 18:13
  You shouldn't have said that, that my conscience is going,
• 18:15
  Yep, you were in the right. They might not be happy with it,
• 18:18
  but you were in the right on that.
• 18:19
  And then a sincere faith that I'm not doing anything that I'm
• 18:23
  doing to get applause. I'm not doing it to seem
• 18:26
  religious to other people. I'm not doing it for a paycheck,
• 18:29
  but that the life that I'm living, the faith that I am
• 18:32
  exercising is real and legitimate.
• 18:35
  It's from my heart. And so that is the goal of the
• 18:38
  word of God, love, pure heart, good conscience and sincere
• 18:43
  faith. But in verse 6, Paul says some
• 18:46
  have departed from these and turned aside to fruitless
• 18:50
  discussion. We do not yet know everything
• 18:54
  about heaven. And so there's a good amount of
• 18:57
  discussion that leads us towards holiness.
• 18:59
  That I want to live right in light of that day, that I want
• 19:02
  to look forward to being with my Savior.
• 19:05
  I am rejoicing about the new creation that God's going to
• 19:08
  bring. But I can spend, I can be
• 19:11
  tempted to spend too much time talking about things that the
• 19:15
  Bible just doesn't say about heaven or perhaps about, you
• 19:19
  know, various things in the Bible.
• 19:21
  I know a lot of people spend a lot of time arguing about things
• 19:26
  that Scripture doesn't make explicitly clear.
• 19:29
  Scripture doesn't say the Earth is exactly 7000 years old or the
• 19:35
  Earth is exactly 14 billion years old.
• 19:39
  And so that doesn't mean that we cannot have convictional beliefs
• 19:44
  based on on our understanding of the Word of God.
• 19:47
  But some people put so much time into things the Bible doesn't
• 19:51
  explicitly say that they lose out on the goal, which is love,
• 19:56
  faith, a good conscience, and a pure heart in relation to
• 20:00
  others. Then in verse #7 these false
• 20:05
  teachers that have fruitless discussions and empty
• 20:08
  speculations. He says they want to be teachers
• 20:11
  of the law, although they don't understand what they're saying
• 20:15
  or what they're insisting on. So as was often the case, and
• 20:19
  those that Paul was writing against, these were trying to
• 20:23
  say you need to obey this from the Old Testament law or you
• 20:28
  need to obey this from some of these intertestamental writings.
• 20:32
  And so Paul says they want to teach the law, but they don't
• 20:35
  know about the law. You can think of what Jesus says
• 20:37
  to the Pharisees that he says you search the Scriptures
• 20:41
  because you think in them you have eternal life.
• 20:44
  But they are he says but the Scriptures are talking about me.
• 20:50
  He says if you want to know how to get eternal life the answer
• 20:53
  is not find ancient texts. The answer for where to find
• 20:58
  eternal life is in Jesus Christ the Son of God.
• 21:00
  Now the scriptures are talking about the Son of God.
• 21:04
  But if your idea of eternal life is I'm just going to follow all
• 21:08
  of the do's and I'm going to avoid all the don'ts that are in
• 21:11
  the Bible. You are missing the point.
• 21:14
  You can follow all of the Levitical laws and at the end of
• 21:17
  your life you will be separated from God forever in the lake of
• 21:21
  fire. That's just what Scripture
• 21:24
  entails. Romans 3 tells us that by the by
• 21:27
  the deeds, the works of the law, no one will be justified in the
• 21:30
  sight of God because Jesus was the sacrifice that was needed.
• 21:35
  And so it is by faith and belief in Jesus Christ as preached
• 21:39
  about from Leviticus, from Genesis all the way to
• 21:43
  Revelation. It is through belief in Jesus
• 21:46
  that we find salvation. So Jesus is the point.
• 21:49
  It's not the fruitless discussion and empty
• 21:52
  speculations. Verse #9 Paul says we know that,
• 21:56
  oh, sorry, verse 8, but we know that the law is good, provided 1
• 22:02
  uses it legitimately. There is an illegitimate way to
• 22:06
  preach the Old Testament law. There's an illegitimate way to
• 22:09
  teach the Scriptures. There's a right way and there's
• 22:13
  a wrong way. I don't have time to go into all
• 22:15
  of that. Just know that that is the case.
• 22:18
  My hope and my prayer would be that even as you listen to
• 22:21
  Tabernacle talk or as you listen to other faithful Bible teaching
• 22:24
  things, that you will get an idea of what it sounds like for
• 22:28
  something to be biblically sound that someone says.
• 22:32
  This is what the Bible says. Here's how it points to Jesus,
• 22:35
  and so here's how it applies to us.
• 22:37
  That is the Scripture rightly used verse #9 Paul illustrates
• 22:44
  what does it look like for the law to be used legitimately?
• 22:48
  He says we know that the law is not meant for a righteous
• 22:51
  person. The Old Testament is not given
• 22:55
  so that we would follow as New Testament believers each iota.
• 22:59
  There are many people today that get that wrong and they think
• 23:02
  that they need to follow the Old Testament or they need to follow
• 23:06
  like a third of the Old Testament laws.
• 23:09
  You know, the, the, I think they normally split it out the civil,
• 23:12
  the ceremonial and the sacrificial law.
• 23:16
  And so they say, OK, well, the ceremonial and the sacrificial,
• 23:19
  like that's gone, but we still need to keep all of the civil
• 23:22
  law commandments. But that's not the purpose of
• 23:27
  the Old Testament. The purpose of the Old Testament
• 23:29
  was we are incapable of following all of these things.
• 23:34
  And while this would be an ideal, this would be what it
• 23:37
  would look like for a person to be perfect in God's world, we
• 23:42
  cannot do that. And so there's almost an idea
• 23:46
  that's given throughout Paul's writings and through Jesus is
• 23:50
  preaching against the Pharisees that they say the point is not
• 23:54
  live up to this perfect standard because none of us can fit that
• 23:58
  perfect standard. Instead, Jesus is the perfect
• 24:02
  standard. And our call is to walk with
• 24:05
  Jesus and to live in the fruit of the Spirit.
• 24:08
  And so all of the minutia that was commanded in the Old
• 24:11
  Testament, Jesus fulfilled. Jesus did it perfect.
• 24:15
  And so our call is not to live in the Old Testament law, but to
• 24:18
  live in the person and character of Jesus Christ.
• 24:23
  So I don't have time to go further into that today.
• 24:27
  Verse #9 We know the law's not meant for a righteous person,
• 24:31
  but for the lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and
• 24:35
  sinful, for the unholy and irreverent, for those who kill
• 24:38
  their fathers and mothers from murderers, for the sexually
• 24:41
  immoral and males who have sex with males, for slave traders,
• 24:45
  liars, perjurers, and for whatever else is contrary to the
• 24:50
  sound teaching that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory
• 24:53
  of the blessed God which was entrusted to me.
• 24:56
  So here, as Paul writes through, I haven't looked exactly to see
• 25:01
  if this lines up perfectly with the 10 commandments, but a lot
• 25:04
  of them do. So as opposed to those that
• 25:07
  would follow the first commandment to have God alone,
• 25:12
  there are those that are lawless and rebellious.
• 25:13
  They are their own gods instead of those that would not make
• 25:17
  idols and those that would not you misuse God's name.
• 25:21
  There are the ungodly and sinful and the unholy and irreverent.
• 25:25
  Those that would worship or serve other gods.
• 25:31
  Those that would misuse the name of God take his name in vain,
• 25:34
  and those that would profane the the Sabbath, the the holy day of
• 25:39
  God. Those are the ungodly and
• 25:41
  sinful, the unholy and irreverent, those that would
• 25:44
  dishonor their father and mother and those that would murder,
• 25:48
  murder. He says here those who kill
• 25:50
  their fathers and mothers for murderers as opposed and then
• 25:54
  for those that would commit adultery.
• 25:58
  Here Paul phrases it for the sexually immoral and males who
• 26:02
  have sex with males. This would be very common traits
• 26:07
  of those that would be sexually promiscuous or those that would
• 26:12
  engage in intimate relations outside of marriage or in
• 26:16
  addition to their marriage. This would have been very
• 26:20
  commonplace in the 1st century. ADI, think I've mentioned before
• 26:24
  on here, the Roman Emperor Nero, who would be the emperor that
• 26:28
  would get Paul killed, had a eunuch in his court that after
• 26:34
  Nero's wife died, he made the eunuch, the young boy castrated.
• 26:43
  He had him dress up like his dead wife and he had a quote UN
• 26:48
  quote marriage ceremony and treated this young slave boy
• 26:54
  like his spouse. It's just a deeply, horrifically
• 26:59
  evil 1st century. And so this was commonplace.
• 27:02
  And so Paul says the law tells us what is right and what is
• 27:07
  wrong. It is not for us to be able then
• 27:11
  to go, all right, I guess I got to keep, you know, all 613
• 27:14
  commands or I got to keep 200 of these commands.
• 27:18
  That's not the point. The point is not, let's go
• 27:20
  through Leviticus and not touch chameleons and make sure that we
• 27:23
  wash our hands after we touch, you know, a pig.
• 27:28
  That's not the point. The point is we are flawed and
• 27:31
  imperfect and sinful. Every single one of us and all
• 27:34
  of us in looking at the Old Testament law can go God's
• 27:38
  really perfect. I'm really not perfect.
• 27:41
  How do I get to God? It's not become perfect.
• 27:44
  The answer is the perfect one has come for us.
• 27:49
  So that's verse 10 with sexual immorality, the thou shalt not
• 27:55
  committed adultery would be the 10th, 10th commandment.
• 27:59
  And then you have for those that are stealing or lying or
• 28:01
  coveting commandments 8-9 and ten.
• 28:03
  He says for slave traders, those that would steal men, liars,
• 28:07
  perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching.
• 28:11
  He says that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of
• 28:14
  the blessed God. The Old Testament is meant to
• 28:17
  show us God is great and good and glorious and perfect and he
• 28:20
  is nothing like us. We fail, we sin.
• 28:25
  We are those within this list. Now hopefully most of us haven't
• 28:29
  committed every sin that is on this list.
• 28:32
  But for those of us who are, who are flawed and fail and have
• 28:36
  sinned in countless ways, we have a glorious, blessed God who
• 28:42
  took our sins on himself on the cross so that we could be
• 28:46
  completely forgiven and free forever.
• 28:49
  And so because of God, we live our lives.
• 28:52
  Because of God, we can have love and faith and a good conscience
• 28:57
  and a pure heart, as opposed to those that just want to be
• 29:01
  religious and have giant lists of do's and don'ts.
• 29:05
  It's minutiae that you have to do right now is even kind of the
• 29:09
  season of Lent. And so there are people that
• 29:12
  take this time period to devote their hearts to the Lord.
• 29:15
  There are other people that kind of just have this as a religious
• 29:18
  do's and don'ts time period. And maybe if you eat meat on a
• 29:22
  particular day, oh man, you're really letting God down.
• 29:27
  And and those things, they're just religious, but they're not
• 29:30
  from the heart of what God wants to do in and through us.
• 29:33
  It's not about the minutia, it's about the heart.
• 29:36
  It's not about the procedures and protocols.
• 29:39
  It's about our personal walk with God and our love for
• 29:42
  others. So the rest of the book
• 29:44
  continues on in looking at what does it look like for us to live
• 29:49
  in light of the gospel of Jesus? And what were some of these
• 29:54
  false teachers like specifically saying and doing.
• 29:58
  And that's a super, super interesting study.
• 30:00
  I'm really looking forward to it.
• 30:02
  Thank you for tuning in to this episode today.
• 30:04
  I know this first one was a long one.
• 30:05
  I promise the others will not be as long, but looking forward to
• 30:10
  more time together. God bless.