Please turn with me in your Bibles to 1st Timothy chapter 6 verses 10 through 16.

This is the text from which Pastor John will be preaching on this morning.

The love of money is the root of all evils.

It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pains. But as for you,

man of God, shun all this. Aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.

Fight the good fight of the faith.

Take hold of the In the presence of God who gives to all things and of Christ Jesus who in his testimony before

Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment unstained

and free from reproach until the

appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this will be made manifest at the proper time

by the blessed and only sovereign, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who alone

has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see. To him be honor

an eternal dominion, Amen. Some of the things that the Apostle Paul writes to Timothy and his two letters are intended only for pastors, but not verse 12 of 1st Timothy 6.

When Paul says, fight the fight of faith, we can be sure that he is not giving counsel just to pastors, even though he's

writing to one. There are two ways that we can know that.

One is that faith concerns all Christians.

It is not simply pastors who must be concerned about their faith.

It's everybody's business and therefore when he

admonishes a Christian who happens to be a pastor to fight that fight, we may be

sure it's intended for us. And the other way we may be sure is that in the very next phrase of

the verse it says take hold on eternal life to which you are called. In other words

by fighting the good fight of faith Timothy must lay hold on eternal life.

...