So you see, part of this passage is that Paul is exhorting Timothy. He is not a fighter, but he has to fight the good fight.
Now, the first thing is chapter 1. I just want to look at a few verses: 1 Timothy 1:18-19.
This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you,
that by them you may fight the good fight,
keeping faith and a good conscience,
which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith.
Now, last time we shared on this matter of a good conscience. If we want to fight the good fight, one of the battle lines that we have to draw is to fight for a good conscience.
There is nothing more blessed in the Christian life than a good conscience. It enables us to serve God. It enables us to come boldly to Him without any fear of condemnation. There are just so many benefits to having a clear conscience that Paul says, “Look, it’s worth fighting for.”
As much as you have to go through the agony of confessing sin, or stopping something that you know you are in, it is worth it to have a good conscience.
Now, what I want you to notice, though, is the second point that I want to talk about. He says in verse 19, “keeping faith and a good conscience.”
Tonight I want to talk about fighting the good fight: keeping faith in the midst of an unbelieving generation.
You do not just get faith like this. It is a gift, but then you have to fight. Once God gives you the gift of faith, and you believe in Jesus Christ, and Jesus comes into your life and begins to work in your life, you cannot just lie down and say, “Okay, God, You are going to increase my faith.”
You have to pray to the Lord and ask for increased faith. You have got to begin to fight this fight to keep the faith.
I want you to notice: turn over to chapter 6 of this same letter. I just want to underscore that Paul mentions it again. Matter of fact, he defines the good fight in verse 12, 1 Timothy 6:12.
Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
There it is: “Fight the good fight of faith.”
Now, the first thing that I want you to notice is the connection between faith and a good conscience. We talked about it last time, but I just want you to see that this letter adds on to the fight.
The first time we said, “Fight for a good conscience.” Now you see, as we have already mentioned, that faith is linked up with a good conscience. In chapter 1, verse 19 again: “keeping faith and a good conscience.” They go hand in hand.
Look at chapter 3 again, and verse 9. Talking about a deacon, this is a qualification for deacons:
Holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience.
You cannot hold the mystery of the faith. You can say you believe, but if you do not have a clear conscience, you will have a problem with your faith.
You see, many of you here come from Christian families. You come from a background where people have always talked about the Lord Jesus—how much they love the Lord Jesus. You have heard preaching and teaching from your Bible.
You say, “Yes, I believe Jesus is coming again. Yes, I believe the Lord is coming. I believe God is holy. I believe God is just. I believe in rewards.” All of these things you believe.
So what is the problem? Because we do not have a clear conscience. We might have faith in the sense of, “I believe, I believe, I believe,” but we do not have faith that operates.
That is what Paul is saying: you have got to have faith that works. It is not just a hypothetical thing. It is not the sort of person who believes everything but does nothing.
You know, the devil is crushing them down, and they are saying they believe everything. “Take me to heaven! I am overcoming the devil!” Yet their life is going down.
Look in 1 John 3, just to see another slant on this whole matter. In 1 John 3, verse 19:
We shall know by this that we are of the truth, and shall assure our heart before Him
in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.
Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God;
and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.
In other words, if your conscience is not condemning you, it gives you confidence before God.
So when we obey God, we come to God and say, “Dear God, we love You, and we thank You for all the blessings. We ask that You do this,” and it is done.
But when our consciences are bad, it undermines our faith. We might say, “I believe in God,” but somehow we just never get around to believing things. We are afraid to do that.
That operational faith—that practical faith that sees things change—is born out of a clear conscience. That is the first thing I want you to see.
The second thing I want you to see is this: why is having faith a fight? “Fight the good fight of faith.” Why is having faith a fight?
Well, the obvious answer—the first and most obvious answer—is this: because faith is believing in things that you do not see. That is why it is a fight.
As you are studying in school, there is a subliminal suggestion that goes through all the science, all the philosophy, and all the psychology. This is the suggestion: you only believe what you see.
Now here you are, up against the Bible that says if you want to please God, you have got to believe things you do not see. The whole worldview is: only believe what you can see.
Look in Hebrews 11, the famous passage on faith, because faith does believe things that are not seen.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
You see, that is part of this thing: not seeing. It is the conviction of things not seen. “I do not see it, but I believe it.”
How do you think? “I just believe God. If somebody asks, ‘How do you know God is alive?’ Well, how can you prove it? Oh, I cannot exactly prove it. I have some clues.”
But that is what they say. Verse 2:
For by it the men of old gained approval.
He is going to go through the whole chapter and talk about men of faith who did great things.
By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.
Oh, wait, wait. That passage says that God created out of nothing. He said, “Let there be earth. Let there be seas. Let there be life. Let there be sun,” and God created out of nothing.
There are a lot of things that you cannot see. Then in verse 6, because he starts to list different men, he adds this little phrase:
And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.
It is impossible. If you say, “I am not going to believe unless I see it,” you cannot please God. It is impossible. For he who comes to God must believe, first of all, that He is. How can you come to God if you do not believe that He is?
You have to believe that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. You think God rewards those who seek Him? It is a matter of faith.
I will tell you, God does reward those who seek Him. I have been a Christian for fifteen years, and God has rewarded me. I have just received and received, and found more and more.
You say, “Well, I want to see God.” You see, God gives us clues all over the place. This is a world that does not just grow. I mean, it does not even move all over the place by accident. There is His power, His majesty, His might, His uniformity, His order, and all these kinds of things.
It ought to open our eyes and start us searching for God. God is not trying to hide. He is trying to lead you. He is like, “Come on. You see?”
God rewards those who live by faith. What an incredible value. We live in God’s presence. “Oh no, that is made up. Hold up—you are not scientific. Hey, where do you see God?”
These great professors of atheism and everything—oh man, forget it. I have gone through so much school, and everything is still coming out of my ears. These guys were so smart, they did not even understand the mystery of birth, and they were saying there was no God.
But in order to be rewarded, you have got to fight against a whole lifestyle that says there is nothing except what you can see.
So there is a fight on your hands. Even though we do not see, we have got to learn. We have got to learn to trust God.
Faith is not passive; it is aggressive. I would like faith to be passive. I would like to listen to something and say, “Okay, God, I want to learn the Bible, so here we go. Meditate it into me.” No.
Faith is not passive; it is aggressive. You have got to go through. Jesus says, “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you say to this mountain, ‘Move,’ and it moves.”
Because you have got to yell at the mountain. You do not yell at the mountain, nothing happens. That is the aggressiveness of faith. It is not passive; it is aggressive.
You have to speak the word. You have to believe, and be willing to take the risk. You have got to be willing to go to a mountain and yell at the mountain. If nothing happens, you look kind of bad. But if you go to the mountain, yell at the mountain, and something happens, your faith increases.
One reason, therefore, that we have a fight is that we do not see what we are expected to believe.
The second reason the fight is this: what we confess with our lips, we have got to fight to live up to in our lives. Look at 1 Timothy 6:12 again.
Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
What do you mean by that? Besides fighting the good fight of faith, you need to take hold of the eternal life to which you were called.
How do you take hold? Somehow, you have got to grab hold of Jesus and bring Him into your life. You have got to eat the Lord, as far as reading the Scriptures goes, and taking it in.
You have got to take hold of these invisible things and begin to make them real in your life. That is a fight.
Furthermore, he said, “You made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” “Oh, Jesus, I believe that You are the Lord over everything. I give You the lordship over my life.”
Then say, “I am sorry for my parents.” Oh, well. Now what am I doing? I am basically not living up to the confession I made. I said, “Jesus is Lord over everything but this matter with my parents.”
The fight is because we make these confessions: “Jesus is my Redeemer. Jesus is my friend. Jesus is my helper. Jesus is my Lord.”
Then, as Paul says, it is in me now to live up to the confession that I made in the presence of many witnesses. “I am going to serve God. I mean, God, I am going to serve God.”
And the devil says, “I want to go.” You know, we want to go. He says, “I cannot, I cannot, I cannot. Remember what you said before two hundred people.”
“I have been called to follow Jesus.” The call of the world looks pretty good. But when you have talked before two hundred people, that confession hangs the fight on your hands.
You cannot say much, because now you are fighting internally to live up to the confession that you made. The Lord will make you live up to that confession, for sure.
You say, “I have really repented of my ways, and I am going to really obey.” You know, the Lord will really make you look at that one way or another.
I have known people who left their homes. They were just straight out of their homes, and then they really came back to the Lord five years later, after they had messed up their lives.
The first thing the Lord worked on was not whether they preached or witnessed. It was, “Go straighten out the mom and dad you cursed, threw off, and said all those things to.”
So, take the confession seriously. You said, “I want to serve the Lord,” and the Lord will bring you to the point where you have to do it.
This fight has been around for a long time. It is nothing new. The men and women in the Bible have been fighting the fight of faith for a long time.
We are going to talk about some of the characters. Here is the story tonight: I am going to look at Bible examples, and I want you to tell me whether they won the good fight of faith.
As you are fighting the good fight, you are Christians now. You believe in Jesus Christ. Now, where do you have to fight? What are some areas where you have to fight?
As I mentioned earlier, in school you have the pressure of your teachers in science classes and whatnot. You have the pressure of your peers who are not following the Lord, and they are saying there is no God to believe in.
You have people who tease you. How many of you, as Christians, have been teased about your faith, even to the point of people being malicious?
It is funny how the world really turns on Christians. I mean, you can believe all kinds of crazy things, and they do not seem to mind that. But Christians are somebody to be attacked.
If you have a fight, you have a fight. It involves you being able to stand against them and still stand.
It is no harder today than it was before, but it is no easier today than it was. Back in the old days, you might say, “Well, it was easier,” but it takes the same grace to stand up today in school and among your friends.
This is where you have to begin. I bet there is somebody in this room who is a Christian, and you have been back in your fellowship with your teachers, yet you have never witnessed to them at any time.
You need to fight the good fight.
Some of you have fellowships where you have faith. When you are out on the street or at work, nobody knows. There might be a moral life, which makes some people suspicious, but as far as actually standing up, you do not say anything.
Faith is a fight. It is worth fighting for, and it is worth the expense and cost.
A second area of actually fighting the good fight of faith is this: most Christians have a definition of Christianity that is basically negative.
Most people’s Christian testimony is this: “I have been saved by the Lord Jesus. Now I no longer smoke, drink, dance, or chew, or go out with girls that do.” But that is not being a Christian.
You see, some people say that is Christianity, but it is only negative. Now, it is important. As a teenager and as a Christian, what are you doing to stand up? What are you doing to serve God?
It is true that to be clean and moral in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation is doing something. I do not want to take away from that whole life, because part of our lives is to be separate in these areas of temptation and destruction.
But that is only part. Now, what are you doing?
Some people here have accepted Christ as Lord, have been baptized, and go regularly to meetings. Yet a long time has passed as a Christian, and you have never contributed in a meeting.
Two years, four years, five years, and you have never offered a prayer. You need your time. It is interesting to be possessed.
Now, I am not suggesting that you need to take over some meeting where you are and just begin to share anything. I am not saying that we even have to do something every week.
But you need to fight. You know, it burdens me where I live because you have Christian teenagers who really love the Lord, yet they do not speak out, even in a meeting with other Christians.
When there is an opportunity given for prayer, they do not ask for it. When there is an opportunity to say, “Who will come and serve the Lord?” they will not go out. When there is an opportunity to be part of the service, they do not want to.
If you want to fight the good fight of faith—without faith it is impossible to please Him—if you want to please God, you have got to start taking this seriously. You have got to begin to serve in the body of Christ.
I am not talking about some big thing. I do not want to scare anybody and say you have got to preach. I am just trying to say there is a fight. Have you ever really taken up that one? Some of you have even been given spiritual gifts.
The devil can destroy us by making us passive. We can go to school and just be equipped: “Oh, I need a job, raise a family, make money.” Enough.
As soon as you do, you are going to be blessed. As soon as you do, your life is going to be an issue. What are you going to do? Is it going to be the immaturity of a welfare scene, where you just take and let everybody else do it? Or are you going to start to take your time?
How are we going to have more people with an anointing? How are we going to have others who can expand that ground? It has got to be the young person who says, “I want to serve the Lord, and I feel the calling. I am willing to take the risk to stand up and serve.”
Now, when we serve the Lord, we make some mistakes. We do something wrong. But that is the way, you know.
When I came to the Lord, I had been raised in the church. When I came to the Lord, I thought that if you got saved, you were forced to serve the Lord.
There was a man who brought me to the Lord and had a lot of wisdom. As soon as I became a Christian, he started taking me out to places where I could witness.
By the time I had been a Christian a month, I was sharing my testimony and witnessing. So I thought, “That is what every Christian does.”
Later on, I found that some Christians were supposed to sit back and do nothing, and there were only a couple of stations to serve. But how come I speak today? It is because I took a step right back then.
I can spot people out because I know exactly. I know why you do not contribute in the meeting. Not that you do not really love the Lord, but I know a lot of my shares, especially.
I will give you that example. I can spot people out because I know exactly. You answer the questions that I ask.