All right, good morning and welcome to our second service. We're going through First Timothy,

verse by verse, and today our text will be chapter 1, verses 17 through 20. We're glad that you're

joining with us online. For those of you that are here locally, I'll ask you to stand after you've turned there in your Bibles.

If you're able, if not where you're seated is fine, you can follow along for the reading

of God's word.

The Apostle Paul, by the Holy Spirit, is writing to Timothy, a young pastor, and says, verse 17, now to the king eternal, immortal,

invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Man, you can just end right there, but he doesn't. Verse 18.

Timothy, my son, I am giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you so that by recalling them you may fight the battle well, holding on to faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected, and so have suffered

shipwreck with regard to the faith. Among them are Hymenius and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme.

Wow. Let's pray if you would join with me. Father in heaven, thank you so much for your word and

this portion that we have before us

here today in your word. Lord, we need for the Holy Spirit now to get our attention and

keep our attention so our minds don't wander. We don't want to be distracted and miss that which you have for us today

here in your Word. Lord, I know that you're going to speak. You always do. You're always so faithful to.

So, Lord, speak into our lives clearly, personally, if need be, very personally. And Lord, when

you do, we want to have ears to hear and hearts to receive. So Lord, speak. Your

servants are listening. In Jesus' name. Amen. And amen. You can be seated. Thank you.

So I want to talk with you today about how it is and even why it is that we can trust the Lord to get us through this crisis that we find ourselves

facing today. Here in the text before us, the Apostle Paul is telling Timothy how to, in effect, get through the difficulty

and the crisis that he faced while there in Ephesus. As we talked about last week,

he didn't want to. He wanted to leave. Paul commanded him to stay and deal with these people that were there and Timothy

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