Secrets Revealed  
1 Timothy 1:3-11  
By Pastor Jordan Hines  

Good morning. Could you all stand as I read God's word? We will be in 1 Timothy 1:3-11. As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, remain in Ephesus, that you may charge some, that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith.

Now the purpose of this commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, from which some, having strayed, have turned aside to idle talk, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm. But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which is committed to my trust.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we just thank you so much for this word. And I just thankful for those that you saved, maybe all of us, but there might be some that aren't.

And I pray that today that they just hear the gospel of Jesus coming down from heaven and dying on the cross and paying for our sins and rising from the dead. Heavenly Father, I thank you for the fellowship that we have with one another because of our Lord Jesus Christ. I pray that you'd help us with our worship.

Time to just be glorifying to you, to raise up one another as we fellowship. And I pray that you'd be with Pastor Jordan as he preaches, that he gives a clear message and that we focus on that. I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Thank you for your singing this morning. As we go to God's word, I just want to take some time to review for a moment as we think about where we've been in the study of what is a deacon.

We talked about the office of a deacon and why it was needed from Acts, chapter 6. We talked about the problem. And the problem was that there were too many mouths to feed and some people weren't getting fed.

And the solution was that these men, these godly men, were to be selected among the congregation and be processed as deacons. And the result was that the word of God went out. And then we talked for a couple of weeks in a row about things that deacons are to avoid.

And those messages were harder to hear because it was, don't do this, don't do this. It was hypocrisy, greed, and addiction. And those are powerful things in this world.

And we needed to understand what those things were. We need to do some further study on those things and address the problem in the church and in America. And those sermons were longer because there's a lot to cover in that.

And today we're just going to cover one phrase. It's really just 1 Timothy 3:9. And that phrase in 1 Timothy 3:9 is the deacons are holding the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience.

It's a very important phrase. It's not something we should just read by or just briefly understand. We need to really dig into this, just to understand the way in which deacons are to operate.

So before we dig into that, let's open our hearts in prayer. God, as we go to your word, I pray that we, like these deacons, like these men, would be indeed holding the mysteries of faith, holding the mystery of faith with a pure conscience. God, help us to unpack from your word what that means.

Help us to see what it means to truly walk as a Christian in good conscience in the faith. Help us as a church to be focused and to be disciplined on not just doing the right thing, but doing the right thing with the right motivation and with the right conscience. God, thank you for our time in the word this morning, in your Son's name, we pray.

Amen. Many of you have had a secret to tell before. I think everyone knows now that Jenny and I have had a secret to tell and we were keeping it to ourselves for a little bit and then we decided to share it and that wonderful secret was revealed.

The title of today's message is Secrets Revealed. And really what we're talking about when I mentioned that is that keyword mystery. And really what God is doing is he is unveiling something about himself.

He's showing something about himself to his people. As you unveil the truth, as God unveils the truth in your life, life changes, just as new information should change the way you make decisions. The big idea today is that deacons are to hold the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience.

And we're going to start by looking at really simply what the task is. And that is holding. That first phrase is holding now, a simple enough phrase. And we need to just not belabor the point, but we need to address it.

It's to simply just possess, to bear. You grasp it, you have it. It's something that is identifying you.

It's like if you're holding a guitar, you're a guitar player. If you're holding something from holding this iPad, I'm holding this. It's pretty clear I'm possessing it.

I'm burying it. It means that I'm identified with it. It's a conscious action.

You cannot accidentally do this. You cannot accidentally hold something unless your muscles are spasming and you're out of control. But the idea is that you are purposefully holding this up or holding this forward as something that is valuable.

It's continuous. It's ongoing. So it's not being tricked into doing this.

I can't accidentally do this. I can't fall into doing this. You can't just find.

You don't just find yourself doing this. It's purposeful. You know that you're holding onto something and you're purposefully spending your time and your energy engaging with it.

The question remains after that very simple word, what are we holding on to? What are we holding on to? And that's what I alluded to earlier. But that is the mystery, the faith, these revealed secrets, a divine secret. And if you think through scriptures, you can see how God has been progressively showing who he is.

Psalm 19 talks about creation, revealing who God is. And God's word was spoken through prophets, through men of God. And as God revealed who he was through the law and through the gospel.

And as God has revealed himself to you, you change your decisions based on that new information. This mystery is really not the only time this is mentioned. There's other mysteries or revealed secrets that God has shown us.

One of the ones that we hold dear as a church is the mystery of the second coming of Jesus Christ. Hold to the rapture view in 1 Corinthians 15:51. Behold, I tell you, a mystery.

We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed. You go to 1 Thessalonians 4:13. You can see the events of the rapture taking place. You can see how we will be taken up in the clouds. These mysteries have been revealed to us to show us, to give us hope. 

There's also the mystery that Gentiles and Jews are both united in the body of Christ. Notice that as history progresses, as the early church was expanding, new knowledge was necessary. That's why at that time, priests were given. 

That's why Pentecost happened. That's why God revealed his gospels and the epistles through the Holy Spirit to men of God. Ephesians 3:1-13.