In the 1850s, it was made known that lead was harmful to human beings. That if they were exposed to it or if they consumed it, it would lead to death and defects. Up until this time, lead was in many products. It was in paint, it was in toys, and it was even in pipes. Lead pipes were used in many cities in the 1800s because mainly it was cheap. Secondly, it seemed to work fine. But over time, the truth was uncovered that lead was contaminating the water supply. The water that came out of lead in pipes looked like water, smelt like water, even practically quenched thirst like water. But if left untreated, it would lead to sickness, people would get bodily defects, and even lead to death. Charles Spurgeon in his book Lectures to My Students likens false teachers to lead in pipes. They present what sounds like the Bible, it might even sound like the Gospel, but what they communicate is contaminated. Like dye and water that drops in and you start to see it swirl, so too is lead in water and contaminated Gospel. It slowly permeates through its proclamation. This corrupted Gospel harms the teachers and their hearers. In the case of Ephesus, this was leading to legalism. And as John pointed out, even a false belief in genealogies, thinking that they could somehow be in God's good graces or in his good books by merit. And as John reminded us last week, Paul corrects this teaching by giving a correct use of the law. That the law was given to lead us to the Gospel, showing us our need for a Savior. But also how the Gospel leads us to the law, that once we are saved, we are given God's Spirit so that we can obey God from the heart. Not to earn anything from God, but to live lives that please Him. And this is part of the antidote for a leadened or corrupted Church. Paul in these verses tells us to have a pure Church, we need a pure Gospel. And he articulates this in his gratitude for the Gospel and his commission towards Timothy to wage good warfare for the Gospel. And so this will serve as our outline this morning. Point one, gratitude for the Gospel. Point two, good warfare of the Gospel. Let's look at our first point, gratitude for the Gospel. Paul's antidote began with correction in verses 1 to 11. Now he turns to praise. In this worshipful recounting of his testimony, Paul presents the truth about God's grace, about the Gospel itself, and God's glory. He tells us in verses 12 to 14 that God's favor cannot be gained. It only comes by grace. In verse 12, he begins with a threefold thanksgiving to Jesus Christ, forgiving Him strength, for judging Him faithful, and appointing Him to service. If you read that verse outside of the context of the verses that come before it and the verses that come after it, it sounds as if Paul is thanking God for what he has gained by merit. That's simply not the case. Paul is speaking to God's equipping, God's entrusting, and God's enlisting. Not something that is tied to his works, but tied to God's work. Paul makes clear what qualified him into God's service is only his sin. We see this in verse 13. He tells us that he was a blasphemer, a persecutor of the church, an insolent opponent of the faith. And for those of you who maybe are unfamiliar with the Apostle Paul, what he is doing here is referring to his life prior to his conversion. And we can read about this in the book of Acts from chapters 6 to 9. Paul was a zealous Jew, seeking to fulfill the law in all respects. So much so that in his ignorance, he did not see the coming of Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures. Instead, he saw it as a mockery. In his unbelief, he sought the approval of the Jewish leaders of the day so that he could detain and kill Christians for what they believed and what they were teaching. For Paul, it was his religiosity that led him to such ruthlessness. It was his own false view of the law and the gospel that led him to such actions. And in this, Paul speaks correction to these false teachers from firsthand experience. In Acts chapter 9, Paul has an interaction with the resurrected Christ where Jesus asks him, Paul, why are you persecuting me? And this marked the turning point for Paul, where Paul turns from being a persecutor of the church to being a proclaimer of God's mercy and grace. Paul came to see that the whole Hebrew Bible pointed to Jesus Christ, that the law was given to point out our need for a Savior, and that the prophets spoke of a Messiah who was to come to save the world from their sin. Their sin. And this Messiah, his name was Jesus. This is not something that Paul could come to on his own. It was the grace of God that gave him faith and love in Jesus. That's what he says in verse 14. It was the working of God's unmerited favor for Paul to repent from his wicked ways and to believe in Jesus and to love him. To go from a person who did not believe that Jesus was God, who is hating Jesus and his followers, and sought to kill them for their faith, and then to become a person who proclaims Jesus is God, who loves him, and his people, and at the end of his life, be killed for this faith, shows us a man who's had his heart changed by the grace of God. It's nothing that he could merit God's favor. If anything, by that standard, we would say that Paul is in no way a person that should be saved. But he came to know God's grace. He came to know God's divine favor, and this changed him from the inside out. In Paul pointing out this work of God in his life, he reminds us of our complete inability to save ourselves. Paul and his religious rigor stood condemned, not justified. So too, with any of us who think that we can make ourselves right with God, whether you are a legalist or you are a licentious, you, like Paul, stand condemned, and you can only come to right relationship with God by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ. We have seen that Paul's testimony reveals God's grace, but also it reveals the gospel. In verse 15, we are given a trustworthy saying, unlike the lies of the false teachers that Paul articulated in the first few verses, he presents truth here, something that is trustworthy, something that is worthy of full acceptance. And it's this, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. This is one of the most succinct ways that the gospel is presented in the New Testament, and that word gospel means good news. Jesus Christ, the second person in the Trinity, came into the world, put on flesh to save sinners. This is why Jesus came. He came to save sinners, those who break God's law, which is all of us. Paul, in his attempt to keep the law, broke the law. And there are many of us who walk contrary to the law and continue to break the law. None of us can keep the law perfectly. Only Jesus did. He lived a sinless life and died the death for sin so that anyone who believes in him would have eternal life. Christianity is the only religion that teaches the truth, that humans cannot somehow earn their way to God or get their way to God. One preacher put it this way, every other religion puts God at the top of the mountain and teaches that if you do the right things, if you say the right words, he'll give you the path and you can somehow meet God at the top of the mountain. But Christianity is the only faith that teaches you that you cannot do right, that you are innately sinful, that you are people bent in on yourselves, and even your best works are stained with sin and selfishness. That even when you do these good works, you're probably living in a posture of trying to absolve yourself or make yourself look better than others or simply feel better about yourself. Christianity teaches that you cannot make it up the mountain. Instead, God came down, that Jesus comes to earth so that we would know him and be saved by him, that he was born a baby in Bethlehem so that sinners like you and I would be saved if we put our faith in him. Like I mentioned earlier, to even respond in faith to the work of God's grace is something that God must produce in us. And many of us in this room have experienced this grace that God has given us faith in him. And may today serve as a reminder of God's work in your life, that he has changed you, that he has given you faith to believe in him. For others of you, you have yet to respond in faith. But may this proclamation this morning be God's grace towards you, that you would hear, that you would know, that there is no way for you to save yourself. You cannot do some works to somehow get to God. God came down in the person of Jesus to live the life that you could not live, to die the death for sin that you deserve, and was raised to newness of life so that you can know eternal life. Paul, as the foremost of sinners, is an example to us of God's gospel of grace at work. That we have a God that is so patient with humanity's failures that he makes a way to himself. The salvation and testimony of Paul shows us how God is long suffering with sinners. If God can take a blaspheming persecuting opponent of the faith and make him a worshiper, how much more could God do in those who stand in opposition to him today? There are many who are stuck in their sin who think that church is not for them. They say things like, if I even walked into that building, I'd burn up. And that's simply not true. And that's simply not true. Paul here refutes such thoughts and statements with his testimony, with what he's saying here. He says that the church is for sinners because Christ Jesus came for sinners. In Paul's testimony here, we see that the ardent legalist and the most licentious can come to know God's grace. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners like you and me. And the apostle Paul is an example of that. He is an example of God's patience towards sinners. It's as though that the apostle Paul is like this large billboard telling us in large blinking lights, God saves sinners. There is no one too far or too lost for our God. And God will save anyone who turned to him by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Paul shows us here that Jesus came to save those who are sinful and broken, those who are proud and self-sufficient. He came to save those who the law condemns, which is each one of us. And this example is given so that we would believe, so that we would see God's grace, his mercy, his kindness, and no eternal life. That ultimately that we would see God's glory. Paul, as he concludes his statements of gratitude for the gospel, simply moves to song. He praises God for who he is. He says this, that he is the king of all time, the only sovereign one over creation, that he is immortal, that our God is not dead, that he is invisible, hidden in heaven, that he is the only God, not one of many gods, the one and true God, to whom belongs all glory and honor. This testimony of Paul, even as he concludes here, instructs us why we would sing hymns and songs, not as a command, but shows us that this is the right expression of gratitude for the gospel, that one should sing. In verse 17, Paul shows us where the reflection on the gospel should lead us. It leads us to praise God, to glory in God. And if that is not where you find yourself today, we must be asking the question, what might be contaminating us? There are many ways that our gospel reflection or the gospel itself can be contaminated. For some, it's the belief that merit has somehow seeped into your gospel reflection. We're diminishing the work of Jesus Christ, thinking that you somehow have contributed to your salvation, thinking that you did the right things or you followed the right law, that you tried just a little bit harder than the other guy, and that made the difference, as if it was your closed fist fighting opposed to the opened hand receiving. Others think that somehow the gospel is basic, and so they forego it, thinking that they should know some newer or cooler doctrine. Don picked up on this, that the church can be so preoccupied with novelty that it draws them away from the truth. Some are distracted. There are pleasures of this world that have captured your hearts and your minds that lead you away from the glory of God and to maybe glory in self or some other created thing. Or maybe it's unconfessed sin, where you are presuming on God's grace and using his forgiveness as license to sin. The list goes on. There are many ways that we can fail to see God as glorious. And if that's where you are today, don't let that persist. Confess whatever contaminant or barrier exists in your praise. God can take it. The good news is that Jesus Christ came to save sinners. And that truth should lead us to praise. And if it isn't, you should be asking, like I said, what might be contaminating your lack of worship? The pure gospel leads to a pure church who rightly praises God for the work of Jesus Christ in the gospel. If corrupted or contaminated, it will lead to death and decay in the church. We will be a distorted and defective people. And so through Paul's gratitude here, would we see the truths of the gospel of fresh that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners and that it's only by grace through faith in him that we can know God, that we cannot earn salvation by merit. And that glorious truth should lead us to love and to praise. Before we move on to our second point, Jesus Christ in the book of Revelation writes to the church of Ephesus. What he says to them is that they knew the right things. They corrected the false teachers, but he has one thing against them that they had forsaken their first love. And there should stand even as a warning to us that we might get the truth right. We might be great confessionalists. We might preach the gospel, but our guilt of sin should lead us to know, yes, we need a savior. And that only comes by grace. And it should ultimately lead us to gratitude. Just as the apostle Paul here, it should lead us to a point of praise, love and affection. And church, I know my own heart, I don't know yours, God does, but I know this praise and gratitude can so easily be lacking. But I can forsake my first love. May we be a church that not just knows the right truths, but instead would those truths transform us and change us, that we cling to them and have joy in them. Let's now look at our second point, good warfare of the gospel. After providing the anti-geo of the pure gospel to be a pure church, Paul moves to telling Timothy of the application, and it is in good warfare. In Ephesus, there are real opponents to the gospel as there are today. For Timothy, however, these people were within his church. Commentators believe that Hymenaeus and Alexander were leaders, most likely elders, in the church. And they were teaching falsities to the church. And unlike Alexander Hymenaeus, who shipwrecked their faith by abandoning the gospel and having corrupt consciences, Paul commends Timothy to keep the faith and fight the fight against these falsities in his own life and within the church. And the weapons of his warfare were holding the faith, which is the gospel, the right application of the law, and not moving towards myths. And secondly, his tool was having a good conscience. It is by abandoning the truths of the faith and not being able to correctly discern right and wrong that people have abandoned the faith. Because our sermon last week and even our first point explored the truth of the faith that should be held by Timothy, I want to look particularly at the second weapon that Paul gives to Timothy, a good conscience. The conscience is a large idea in Christian theology, but often we don't think about it or hear about it. The word conscience is listed and mentioned 27 times in the New Testament, and four of those are in this letter alone. To Paul, there are three states of conscience, or three states that your conscience can be in. You can have a good conscience or a clear conscience. You can have a bad conscience or seared conscience, and lastly, you can have a weak conscience. The last state, a weak conscience, is not found in this letter, but it is mentioned in 1 Corinthians chapter 8 if you want to look there later. The conscience is the moral seat of the soul. It is by our conscience that we know right and wrong. It is the conscience that either condemns us or the conscience that excuses us. It is by this that we know right and wrong, that we can either rightly confess our sins to God or we can rightly freely obey Him. And if our conscience is clear or good, we will know what is right and wrong accurately. We will know what God's word says is lawful and not lawful, and thus order our lives accordingly, living free from guilt and shame and enjoy the life that God has given us, and order our lives according to His design. If our consciences are seared or bad, they have become callous to sin. We will call evil good and good evil. The same way that a scar tissue builds over a wound, and it leaves that area desensitized, is the same way a seared conscience works. By sinning perpetually, one is desensitized to evil. Thus, they walk in sin without any sense of wrongdoing. To have a weak conscience is to feel guilty for something that's actually not sinful or unlawful. The person with a weak conscience is not rebellious like the person with a seared conscience, but they are immature. Both the weak and seared conscience can make a person prone to making excuses or feeling condemnation, for there is none. And what we see here is later in the book of 1 Timothy in chapter 4, these false teachers have a seared conscience, and what they're doing is forbidding marriage and forbidding food because they do not know how to discern right and wrong. The conscience is the experiential faculty that tells us what is right and wrong in accordance to Jesus Christ and his law. If our conscience is not good, we will walk in obstinate rebellion to God or be overburdening ourselves thinking that this is what God requires. The conscience is like a compass that if our true north is not Jesus Christ and his word, it will lead us astray from God, his word and his people. It will lead us into sin and falsities just like Hymenaeus and Alexander, who by having their distorted compass shipwrecked their faith. There are many pastors, elders and congregants who by having a corrupt conscience have given themselves into the sins of blasphemy, adultery and many others. The list goes on. It is by rightly wielding the gospel and a good conscience that we can guard ourselves and the church. If we forsake these weapons, we will fall away from the from the faith. We will lose the purity of the gospel and the church. Earlier in this point, I said that these are the tools to fight falsities in our lives and in Christ's body in the church. It is these tools that Paul says that Hymenaeus and Alexander abandoned and because they did, he put them under church discipline. The phrase being handed over to Satan is a phrase that Paul said to the church. It is a phrase that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 5, to speak of excommunication. Excommunication is the final and most extreme act of church discipline. By it, by that action, what we are saying is that this person is not a Christian because of their testimony and their unrepentant sin. In accordance with Matthew 18, we begin church discipline with warning saying, brother or sister, you are in sin. Repent. And if they do not listen, then we'll lead to suspension from the Lord's Supper. And if they persist in sin even further, it will end in excommunication where this individual is removed from the church. In biblical theology, the church is viewed as a holy space under God's protection, while the outside world is viewed as the dominion or realm of Satan. And so, by excommunicating someone, poetically what Paul says here is that we are handing them over to Satan. This action is not simply punitive, it is to be restorative. We see that even at the end of verse 20, Paul hopes that Hymenaeus and Alexander would learn not to blaspheme. He hopes that this action of casting them out of the church would lead them to repentance for their sin. All actions of church discipline are done with the hope of restoration in mind. But if an individual does not repent, it does reveal that they have denied the faith. If someone is in unrepentant sin, it is the job of the church, specifically the elders, to pursue the process of church discipline. It is the work of wielding the gospel and a good conscience that we work towards having a pure faith and a pure church. As I say this, these are not actions that we enter into lightly, but we do when it is necessary. According to 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 18, Hymenaeus was blaspheming because he was denying the bodily resurrection of believers. And to deny the scriptures and to teach others to do also, or to live in blatant sin without any sense of repentance, the church must intervene. They must correct these individuals, and if they do not listen, then they must remove these individuals so that they do not corrupt the church any further. You can choose your metaphor, bad company corrupts good morals, or a little bit of poison will poison the well. If you do not cut off a dying part of the body, it will infect the body, leading to sepsis and even death. To not carry out church discipline would lead a church to corruption and death. But we still hold out hope that those individuals who have been disciplined would repent, that God would use that as a means of correction to call them back to himself. Paul here throughout this section has reminded us that the gospel is glorious and that sin is devastating. And for this reason, we are to strive for purity in our gospel proclamation, but also in our church. And so like to Timothy, the application for you this morning is to hold the faith and a good conscience. Do not leave yourself to a corrupted gospel or a false understanding of right and wrong. However, if you have swerved from this faith, there is still hope for you just as there was for Hymenaeus and Alexander. Turn and repent today that you would know the pure gospel near pure church once more. This text serves both as an encouragement and a warning. But the message of the text on either side of that is unified in this, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Sinners who have never held the faith Sinners who have swerved from the faith or sinners who have shipwrecked their faith. There's hope for those who have a bad conscience, a good conscience, or a weak conscience because Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of all varieties. And to that end, would we turn to Him, believe in Him, and thus live with Him. Our church, may we do this, we pray.