Living on the Edge

Chip Ingram: Today on Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Do you remember that one really good coach you had growing up? I mean, who inspired you, challenged you, gave you confidence, helped you get really better at what you wanted to be? Can you imagine having that kind of coach spiritually, someone who encourages you, helps you to be the kind of Christian that you long to be? Well, stay with me. We’re going to get that today.

Dave Druey: We all want life change, but wanting it and achieving it are two very different things. So what’s getting in the way? And what would it look like if a real permanent change actually took hold? I’m Dave Druey, and today on Living on the Edge, Chip Ingram begins a brand-new series called You Can Make Disciples: Personal Coaching from the Apostle Paul.

Chip opens 1 Timothy and asks, what does it take to step up and live boldly for Christ in a world that pushes back? Well, stay close. Now here’s Chip with the start of a message titled "Step Up."

Chip Ingram: My father was a great athlete. In fact, such a great athlete, when World War II broke out, he joined the Marines. Guam, Iwo Jima, Purple Heart, 50-caliber machine gunner. He goes, "I would set up the machine gun. It would be like mowing grass and killing people." And he said, "In the midst of that, my buddy whose name was Ralph but he went by Reb, my buddy said, ‘Reb, you’re hit,’ and they carried me out." He said, "I’m sure that was the good part except no one of the guys with me made it out."

Looking back now that I’ve been with men without arms or a leg or head trauma from Iraq and Afghanistan, I will apologize to my father because the level of father that he was after what he’d been through was rarest among men. And we have no idea. And so he was a good provider. He was a functioning alcoholic. But I grew up in a home where I had a dad that couldn’t communicate love. I never heard him say he loved me. I know he did.

And so because my dad was a great athlete, when you’re a kid, you want to be like your dad. And so unfortunately I didn’t have his size or his strength, but I was pretty quick and I was pretty passionate and pretty driven. And coaches filled that gap. And I’ll never forget a coach named Neil Lance. Every day all through junior high, three years, at noontime, he would play one-on-one with me. And it was that drive, those coaches that were there for me, my dad wasn’t.

Well, there was a young guy named Timothy who had a big assignment and his life coach was the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul, in the words of Will Durant, who wrote a history of civilization about 26 volumes, an expert, said the greatest intellect of the first century was the Apostle Paul. And what we’re going to learn is Timothy’s life and his job and his role in his city is a lot like what’s happened in the world today. And so what we’re going to get is Paul coaching him.

I look back at that time when Coach Lance helped me, and then it was my high school coach, and then it was my college coach. And those coaches became people who I learned to become a man because of that coach. I learned how to treat women because of that coach. I learned what an arrogant jerk I was from that coach, and he made it very clear. And so what I want to do with you is to walk through life coaching. And the process will be, we’ll hear what did the Apostle Paul say to this young pastor who was in over his head, and then we’re going to flip it and say, what’s in this for us?

Here’s tip number one. Write it. It’s in your notes. Tip number one is everyone needs a coach. You need a coach in relationships. You need a coach in life. You need a coach in your finances. You need a coach for your marriage. You need a coach to be a dad. I mean, everybody needs a coach. Coaches do two or three great things. Number one, they’re older and have lived longer and they care about you. Secondly, they kind of know what’s coming and they’re an objective lens that says you’re good at this, you’re not so good at this.

And good coaches do a couple of things. They put their arm around you and encourage you and tell you you can do it and they inspire you. And they do a little bit of this, they kick you right in the—you can figure out what that word would be—to help you get where you need to be. The hardest things I’ve ever heard from any human beings on the planet have been through coaches speaking about one inch from my face and they were as loud as they could possibly be. And I got the point and I needed to hear it.

We all need people that will tell us the truth. We all need people that will love us when we don’t deserve it. And we need people to give us skills and help us to understand where we’re at in our season to take the next steps. So, here’s the context, the historical perspective. It’s from the Apostle Paul. He’s going to tell this young pastor that he’s left in Ephesus that there’s some false teaching going on and you need to address this false teaching.

It’s in about 62 to 64 AD. The situation, there’s an emperor named Nero. And Nero is a very perverted man. He likes to wrap Christians in wild animal skins and then turn wild dogs loose on them in the Colosseum and laugh and watch them die and get shredded apart. On other times, he likes to impale them and put tar around them and for his cocktail parties they would be burning and be burning to death. He’s an evil, evil man. I want you to keep in mind.

So Ephesus is this super metropolitan city known for sex of every kind. Temple of Diana, very secular, very powerful. It’s a port where people are coming in from all over the world. Christianity is just getting birthed and Paul has left Timothy there and there are some people with some false teaching. And here is what he’s going to say to him. And notice the tender spirit. Good coaches understand you’ve got to win their heart first.

"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus—and you might underline this in your Bible—who is our hope." Timothy was living in a world like some of you are, where it doesn’t feel like there’s much hope. And so he reminds him first and foremost, Jesus, what he’s done and who he is, is our hope. "To Timothy—and notice notice the heart—my true son in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord."

And now he’s going to turn his tender tone to a little bit of a strong reminder. Like, we talked about this before and I’m going to remind you. "Just as I urged you upon my departure from Macedonia, which is Philippi area, I urged you when I left you in Ephesus so that you would instruct certain people not to teach strange doctrines, nor pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to useless speculation rather than advance the plan of God, which is—and you might put a box around this little phrase, it’s going to come out all throughout the book—which is by faith."

"So I urge you now." So basically what he says is, Timothy, you know how much I care about you. Remember when I left, I said remember to do this? I’m now urging you, you have to address this. In a word, you’ve got to step up. And we know from his background he’s a little timid. We know his mother and grandmother were believers and it doesn’t seem like his father was. So he kind of grew up in sort of a womanly household. And Paul’s inspiring him to say, hey, you’re the pastor now. You’ve been with me. You need to address these issues.

And then notice the contrast. He says, you know, they’ve got all this stuff going on, this false teaching. But the goal of our instruction is threefold: love from a pure heart. That means you care about people and you extend compassion and you love them for where they’re at for the right motive. And then secondly, from a good conscience. In other words, your internal meter that tells you what’s right and wrong, how you’re living and what’s going on inside are telling the same story, you’re not faking it.

And finally, he says from a sincere faith. The word sincere means tested by sunlight. And so what he’s saying is there’s a bunch of junk going on, but the goal of our teaching about Christ is that men and women’s lives would be changed and they would love even their enemies from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. And now he addresses—he’s going to do a little teaching. He’s going to say, let’s do a little brief teaching about what’s going on where you’re at. Look at verse six.

"Some people have strayed from these things." I mean, at one point in time they were on track with us. "Notice they turned aside to fruitless discussion." They just got talking about all kind of stuff. Then he begins to develop, what were they talking about? "Wanting to be teachers of the law," ego, pride, "even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make such confident assertions. But we know that the law is good if it’s used lawfully, realizing the fact that the law was not made for a righteous person but for those who are lawless and rebellious."

And then he kind of gives us sort of a laundry list of various examples of unrighteousness. He says, "For the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy, for the worldly, for those who kill their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave traders, liars, perjurers, whatever else is contrary to sound teaching according to the glorious gospel of our blessed God, which had been entrusted to me."

Dave Druey: You’re listening to Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram, and we’ll continue this lesson in just a minute. If you’ve been blessed by this program and you’d like to discover more of Chip’s Bible teachings, we invite you to check out our YouTube channel. Search "Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram" on YouTube and be sure to subscribe while you’re there. You’ll find full video teaching series, Life Lessons with Chip, and content you won’t see anywhere else. Again, just go on YouTube and search "Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram." Now let’s continue today’s message.

Chip Ingram: And so basically, as you study the scriptures, and this happens in other books, there was a group of people that would kind of follow the Apostle Paul. And for the first 15, 20 years, it wasn’t like Judaism and Christianity. It was Jews who believed the Messiah actually came. So they were just good Jews following the Messiah, Jesus. Well, they get alienated from that. And so some, they were called Judaizers, these Jews would come along and say, you know, Jesus is okay, right? I believe that’s true.

But you also have to keep the law. And they started trying to pull people back away from salvation that is by the grace of God and the work of Christ to you need to be circumcised and don’t eat this and don’t eat that. And they also had some—they mixed it with other stuff like you shouldn’t marry and you shouldn’t eat this and you can’t do this and you can’t drink this. And they were all these kind of roles and rules that gave a lot of control.

And the Apostle Paul basically saying is, Timothy, you’ve got to address this. And you’ve got to think about what it’s like. I mean, imagine you’ve been an assistant coach maybe at a good program and then you get a job at a pretty significant school and you’re young. And you realize, man, you’ve got issues on this team. And you’ve got issues with the boosters and you’ve got issues over here. And guess what? You’ve got to step up and make some really hard decisions. That’s the environment. That’s what he’s dealing with.

So notice next, he’s going to give a little personal testimony. Don’t coaches do that a lot? But the Apostle Paul is going to remind Timothy that, you know, I’ve been there. I have not always been this confident, driven Apostle who gets beaten up and gets back up and God does miracles through me. Verse 12 he says, "I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has strengthened me because he considered me faithful, putting me into his service even though previously a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor."

How’s that for, I’ve got some issues of my own, Timothy? "Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was more than abundant with the—put a little box around it again—the faith and the love which are found in Christ Jesus." Basically saying, Timothy, don’t look at me and think that I’ve always had it all together. I want to remind you where I came from. And God was gracious to me.

In fact, notice he now is going to sort of squeak in a little theology. He says, "It is a trustworthy statement." This happens three different times throughout the book. And basically by this time, the church is about 30 years old. Now they have codified some of the doctrines, some of the most clarion things that everyone needs to know. "This is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance—and you might underline this in your Bible—that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."

People who’ve blown it. People that have addictions. People that have stolen. People that have murdered. Notice he goes, "Among whom I am foremost." Did you get the tense of the verb? He didn’t say among whom I was. He said, "Man, you don’t understand. I killed a lot of people."

I still remember I came home, I trusted Christ at that Fellowship of Christian Athletes camp and I didn’t know anything. But I will tell you what, I’ve never opened this book in my life. I’d rejected Christianity and never opened this book in my life. And they gave me a pretty easy to read, I think it was Good News for Modern Man or Living Bible. And I turned from my sin and I prayed to receive Christ and I don’t think I really even knew exactly what it was all about.

All I knew was, in morning and at night, I hid that under my pillow. I didn’t want my parents to think I’d freaked out. But I couldn’t put it down. I’d read it and I’d read it and I’d read it. It would be like I thought someone had a tape recorder under my bed. How could anyone know these things that go on inside of me? How lustful I was and what an actor I was and how I posed so much. And how I was this guy and the all-American boy over here and sweet talking the girls over here.

And it was just like, being a follower of Jesus wasn’t trying to be this good person, it was actually receiving forgiveness. That’s why he came for me. And then notice the reason, "Yet for this reason I found mercy," purpose clause, "so that in me as the foremost sinner, Christ Jesus might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in him for eternal life."

He just said, "You know what? Hey, Timothy, I know it’s hard. I know there’s a lot of pressure. I know I’m asking you to step up. I know you’re a little timid. I know you’re struggling. But here’s what you’ve got to understand. Here’s what’s at risk. You can’t let that stuff go on because this is why Jesus came. And these guys are trying to feed this garbage religion. Do this, don’t do that."

I actually grew up where the theology that I got out of my very social, non-biblical church was if it was any fun, God was against it. My image of God was like he had this gigantic ruler and if a thought came to your mind that might be halfway fun, he was just ready to bop you. And you were always just guilt, you’re always messed up, you never measured up. It’s like, I don’t need that because the people that were telling me, they were doing the things they said I wasn’t supposed to do.

And he’s straightening him out. He says, "There’s a Jesus was a God of love and a God of grace. He didn’t minimize things, but he came to rescue us." And then Paul does this—I think he just went off. I think there’s times where he remembers this is where I was. And as he was rehearsing it for Timothy, he just paused and notice what he says: "Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever, Amen."

I think when he realized afresh this is what happened to me and he understood who God really is, he just broke out into praise. I don’t think this was in Paul’s notes. I think the Spirit just moved. And then notice he ends with a charge. "Okay, Timothy, I reminded you what you need to do. We addressed what the problem is. I’ve told you I love you and I’m for you. I’ve talked about where I’ve messed up in the past and what God’s done for me."

Now get this. This is the fourth-quarter timeout speech when you’re down two. And all the guys are looking at you like, "Coach, I’m really tired." "This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight." How? "Keeping—you might put a box around this again—faith and a good conscience." Then notice the bookends: "which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I’ve handed over to Satan so they will be taught not to blaspheme."

I was with a—he’s a good buddy now. I didn’t know him all that well and he was having some marriage problems and he and I were out playing golf. And he played in the Arena League, played as a tight end, and just wasn’t quite good enough for the NFL. He’s playing in the Arena League and came to Christ and was growing. So we’re playing golf. And now he’s got a couple kids and one’s like 11 or 12 at the time and little daughter like 7, 8, or 9.

He ends up marrying this beautiful cheerleader for the 49ers and got a great job, he’s making a lot of money. And we happened to be playing at his country club, so he must be doing okay. And he’s like 35, 34 at the time. And we’re walking along and he just says, "Well Chip, you know, I just—it’s so hard. I mean, just when I start working at my marriage and then that’s really hard and then being a dad’s really hard. And the mornings I work out and I don’t read my Bible, when I read my Bible then I don’t work out. It’s just so hard, it’s just so hard. I just don’t think I can do it."

And being the soft, tender, loving pastor that I am, I said, "Do you remember two-a-days? Yeah. You remember those quick slant routes? Yeah. And the safety knew it was coming? Yeah. And you catch the ball right here and you bring it in? Yeah. And you see his helmet coming for your helmet right here? That was in the old days when you could do that." He said, "Yeah."

I said, "Did it hurt?" He said, "Dude, are you kidding?" I said, "Well, why’d you do it? You’re telling me that you would go to two-a-days, you’d lift weights three days a week minimum, you would eat a special diet, put up with unbelievable pain to catch a football and be a little bit famous? But it’s really too hard to be a man of God? Oh gosh, I feel so sorry." And you know what happened? He kind of went like, "Ooh, dude, you kind of challenged my manhood here a little bit."

Well, you know what? One of the reasons I rejected following Christ was everybody in the church I was were women. I thought following Jesus was for women and children. And it was going to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes camp, it was the first time I saw grown men who were masculine, who could love one another in masculine, non-sexual ways, that drew me to explore this book. And so what Paul’s actually coaching Timothy to do is the very thing that God wants to coach us to do.

Dave Druey: That’s Chip Ingram on Living on the Edge with a message titled "Step Up," the first part of a new series we’ve just begun called You Can Make Disciples. Each of these daily lessons from Chip can be found on the Living on the Edge podcast. Search for it and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from. And for the full unedited version of what Chip teaches, find the Chip Ingram Sermon podcast.

Paul wasn’t writing a theology textbook. He was writing to a timid young pastor in Ephesus in a world where following Christ could get you killed. And he said, "Step up, fight the good fight, keep the faith." And notice he said the goal of all that teaching is not information, it’s transformation. That’s the gap Chip kept pressing on. We know the goal, we want to change, and yet so many Christians stay stuck.

If that’s where you are or someone you know, then Chip’s book, Yes, You Really Can Change, was written for exactly that moment. It shows you why change is so hard, where the power actually comes from, and how to make it last. And right now it’s a buy-one-give-one offer. Get a copy for yourself and one to give away. Just go to livingontheedge.org/offer.

And you know, programs like this one reach people because listeners like you invest in the work. We’ve made it easy to support Living on the Edge by donating online at livingontheedge.org or by calling us at 888-333-6003. You can also donate through the mail by writing to Living on the Edge, PO Box 3007, Atlanta, Georgia, 30324. Well, today’s message about stepping up in our faith is a great challenge, and definitely not easy. So Chip, reviewing Paul’s words to Timothy, what should we take with us today?

Chip Ingram: Well Dave, the key here is to know the context. Paul is writing this within about a year, maybe two max, of when Nero blamed the Christians for burning Rome. And so it is very, very unpopular. Paul is going to be executed in the very near future. He’s writing to this young, timid pastor who he’s spent all these years with and he loves.

But he knows, even as we’ve kind of taught through this first chapter, he goes, you know, you’re timid, you struggle with some things. And woven all the way through it is, don’t be ashamed, don’t give up. He gives his own example of how he fought the fight, he persevered, he wouldn’t give in. And then he gave a couple of examples of people that flaked out in their following of Jesus.

And so fight the good fight is really about, Timothy, it’s really, really hard to be a Christian in the first century. And I don’t know about everyone else, but there’s a little bit of that that’s kind of today, Dave. I talked about "Step Up" as the name of this message because we have to step up right now, and it’s hard. This is on a journey together where we need comrades, sisters teaming up with sisters and brothers teaming up with brothers and saying, no matter what, we’re going to fight the good fight. We are going to be followers of Jesus no matter what. And that’s what we’re going to talk about. And I think it’s going to be a great time together.

Dave Druey: I’m Dave Druey, inviting you back for more Bible teaching next time on Living on the Edge. Today’s program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.