Sunday Sermons: Avoid Foolish Controversies (Titus 3:8-11)

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You're listening to the Preaching Ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an

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Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series.

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Here is Pastor Gabe. Titus 3, beginning in verse 8, hear the word of the

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Lord. The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.

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These things are excellent and profitable for people, but avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.

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As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self -condemned.

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You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to this word this morning,

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I pray that you continue to teach us in the word of Christ, that you grow us and strengthen us as we have considered these things over three pastoral epistles now, as we have learned together what our responsibilities are as the household of God.

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I pray that we, as brothers and sisters in the Lord, look out for one another, that we would grow each other together in this most holy faith, that we all, as said in Ephesians 4, hold fast to the head who is

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Christ, from whom the whole body, when it is joined together, grows with a growth that is from God.

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But we must be careful, for there are many out there who would try to dismember the body.

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There are liars and deceivers and false teachers who want to come in with their demonic doctrines, as Paul had described them in 1

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Timothy 4, and those teachings of demons would even result in parts of the body being cut off, those who follow after them and desire to feed the appetites of their flesh or go after the ways of the world.

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And so, Lord, guard us and protect us from the ways and the schemes of Satan. May we be discerning and wise to his tactics.

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Where necessary, we are warding off those false teachers and still holding fast to the gospel of Christ, that we may grow together in the love of God that has been shown to us in your

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Son. It is in Jesus' name that we pray, amen. There is a very popular

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Catholic priest named Mike Schmitz. He is probably the most well -known

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Catholic priest that is out there today, especially if you are used to seeing Catholic teachings online through YouTube or other things.

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I've seen him in interviews on news shows. He has one of the most popular religious podcasts that you can download anywhere, and that is

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The Bible in a Year with Father Mike Schmitz, is what he goes by. There was a video that I watched of his.

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He will sometimes do a Catholic mass live on YouTube, a live -streaming mass, and I've watched a few of his lessons on there just to familiarize myself with common

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Catholic teachings. We encounter a lot of Roman Catholics in our community, so it's helpful for me to know what is commonly or popularly being taught so when

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I encounter them and I'm having an evangelistic interaction with somebody who is Roman Catholic, I know how to respond to some of those things that they've been listening to.

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In one of those masses that he did online, it was only about a year or two ago that he did this,

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Mike Schmitz had a very interesting admission in this particular teaching.

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He shared this story and he said the following, we run a camp every summer with our junior high students and high school students, and the college students and adults will come and work there and we all work together.

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It's an incredible couple of weeks. It's not a Catholic camp. The camp that we put on is

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Catholic, but the grounds are not. It's run by another Christian denomination, and the way that he was describing it sounded

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Baptist to me, so it's probably a Baptist group that owns this campground and they loan it out for a week to this

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Catholic camp. At one point, Schmitz said, the director of the camp came up to me and he said, yeah, you know,

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Father, the board of directors, we had a meeting and they're really concerned that Catholics are hosting a camp on our campgrounds.

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And Mike Schmitz says, okay, well, how come? What is their concern? And he said, well, one of the members of the board stood up and they said, you know, that they believe, those

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Catholics believe that at every mass, that really is

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Jesus. They worship the wine and the bread as if it is

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God. They're committing idolatry on our campground, in our facility.

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Do we really want people to commit idolatry in our buildings and at our camp?

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And I was like, I told them, no, no, no, no, it's not really that big a deal. But Mike Schmitz looked at him and said, no, he's actually correct.

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Like those are the stakes. You're right. He's right. That's what we do.

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If the wine and the bread are not really Jesus, then we are the worst idolaters in the history of humanity.

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That's quite an honest admission from a Catholic priest. That if this wine and if this bread don't literally turn into the actual body and blood of Jesus, then we as Catholics are the worst idolaters in the history of humanity.

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And this indeed is a central tenet of the doctrines taught by Roman Catholics.

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They take the words of John six, where Jesus said, you must eat my flesh and drink my blood if you were going to enter the kingdom of God.

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They take that to mean we must literally actually eat his real flesh and his real blood to enter the kingdom of God.

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And furthermore, in those doctrines will tell you because you have never actually eaten his flesh and really drank his blood, guess what?

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You don't have eternal life in you. There are many different ways that false teachers attempt to come into the church and lead people astray with wild and crazy fanciful ideas, even staking your eternal soul on the belief of those ideas.

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And the Bible refers to those men as heretics. In fact, that word appears right here, though you may not have noticed it in our reading, it's in verse 10.

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As for a person who stirs up division, the Greek word that the person who stirs up division is taken from, the

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Greek word is heretics. And it's the only place in the Bible that word appears.

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Now, Peter talks about in 2 Peter chapter 2 that there are false prophets who will come in with various heresies.

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So we have the word heresies that's used there, but the only place that heretics is used is right here in Titus chapter 3 verse 10.

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This being the final warning that Paul gives regarding false teachers.

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We've heard this over and over again throughout the pastoral epistles. There's been this constant contrast between, here's the good doctrine that you've been taught, the doctrine that saves, the doctrine that leads to everlasting life, and then

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Paul setting up, here is the false doctrine that destroys, that will lead to destruction for those who believe and follow after that teaching.

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And so here, after Paul lays out one of the clearest presentations of the gospel that we've seen in the pastoral epistles, that description of who we were before we came to Christ and now who we are in Christ that we read in verses 1 through 7.

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When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us not by works done by us in righteousness, but according to our own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the

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Holy Spirit. We are saved by his grace and have become fellow heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

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After this presentation of the gospel, Paul talks about the fruit that will result from this.

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That's what we have in verse 8. Those who believe in God, may they be careful to devote themselves to good works.

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And then after that, we have the contrast between those who believe good doctrine and those who teach falsely.

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Verse 9, avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law for they are unprofitable and worthless.

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And then finally, what do we do with those false teachers? That's what we have in verse 10.

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As for a person who stirs up division, warn him once and then twice and then have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self -condemned.

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So there is our outline for what we're looking at today. Again, verse 8, the good works that will result from our belief in the gospel.

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Verse 9, avoid these horrible teachings which will lead to ungodly behavior.

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And then verse 10, here's what to do with such a heretic that will not listen to correction.

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So let's come back up to verse 8. Now, the title of the sermon this morning, you may have noticed, was Avoid Foolish Controversies.

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I could just as easily have titled this sermon, Devote Yourself to Good Works, because that's the contrast.

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Devote yourself to good works and you won't be led astray by these false doctrines. So everything kind of heads this passage with that.

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The saying is trustworthy, Paul says, and I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.

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Now, in verse 8 there where it says, the saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things.

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We've seen that periodically throughout the pastoral epistles. In fact, it was one of the reasons why I wanted to go through these three books as my first sermon series as part of Providence Reformed Baptist Church, because we are a confessional church.

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We believe the word, our entire faith is staked upon it. As Romans 10, 17 says, faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

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You came to faith in Jesus Christ because you heard the word of God proclaimed. In the gospel message, hearing about our sin, which we considered a couple of weeks ago in Titus 3, 3, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we have heard about our need for a savior, and then we have come to know that Christ is that savior as revealed in the scriptures.

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And so it was by the word of God that we were convicted of our sin. It was by the word of God that we came to see that Christ is our savior who forgives us of our sin.

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And we as a confessional church have a historic confession of faith. We fix ourselves on those historic confessions, not because we're not smart enough to be able to come with our own confession of faith, but it links us to the

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Christians who throughout the ages have believed these things about the Bible, have believed that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God. And though he is incarnate, he is yet eternal, unmade, and equal with the

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Father. And in our confessions of faith, we make statements about the Trinity, what we believe about the

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Bible, what we believe about the incarnation of Christ, what we believe a Christian's responsibility is who believes in the gospel, our freedoms, our religious freedoms that we may have, or the kind of ways that we interact with the world and even with governing officials.

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Those are just a few of the things that are stated within our confession of faith. So as a confessional people, the pastoral epistles seem particularly relevant because Paul will make these constant references back to these confessional sayings.

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The saying is trustworthy, he says, and that is a reference to some sort of creed or confession that the early church who had come to faith and was being built on the testimony that had been given by the apostles, that early church had a series of creeds and confessions of their own.

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And those creeds and confessions, they didn't have Bibles yet, even the Bible was still being written as these

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New Testament books were being penned and passed around to these churches. So during that time, how do we summarize what it is we believe?

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How do we pass these truths on to somebody else? And they would have various creeds and confessions that they would memorize, some of which would be in the form of songs, we've seen song lyrics even over the course of these pastoral epistles, and others would be simple creeds that would be short confessional statements making declarations on the truth of God that we believe according to the gospel.

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So here Paul makes another one of those references, and this is the last of the references that we have in the pastoral epistles.

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The saying is trustworthy. Now a lot of times whenever we'll see Paul say that, it's pretty easy to know what he's referring to as the saying is trustworthy.

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This one's a little more tricky because we don't know where exactly that applies. The saying is trustworthy, but then when he goes on to say, and I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.

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It may be that what is after his statement of the saying is trustworthy is not the saying.

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It's possible because he gives application, so it sounds like he's giving application to a saying that he's already said.

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But it could also be that the statement, those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works, it could be that that is the confession.

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And maybe the confession was worded in a different way, but it was a confession that gave application to the gospel.

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Paul had just laid out the gospel in verses three through seven, so maybe an application of the gospel, how do we live?

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Well, a person who believes the gospel should devote themselves to good works. So it could be that that's the reference to the saying, or it could also be that the gospel that Paul had just shared was the saying.

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For we see that in one long sentence that goes from verse four to verse seven.

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And so that could have been, that summary of the gospel right there may have been the trustworthy saying.

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Now for our sake, for the purposes of what we're looking at in the next several verses, let's go ahead and consider that gospel declaration once again.

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I'm going to start in verse three. So we hear again who we were before we came to Christ, and now who we are in light of the gospel.

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So in verse three, Paul said, for we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

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Now again, I repeat to you that the reason why Paul had stated that was to remind the

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Christians, remind Titus to teach the Christians there on the island of Crete where he's been sent, that we all were just like them.

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So don't have this attitude of yourself that I'm better than they are, or you're looking down your nose at those who are still lost, because it wasn't by your work or anything that you did that you became unlost, that you became found.

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It is by the work of God. So a reminder of who we were that none of us be puffed up in ourselves.

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All of us were deserving of destruction. All of us had rebelled against God. But then the gospel in verse four, but when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the

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Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

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And it's very reasonable to read that and believe that that's the statement.

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That's the trustworthy statement, that declaration of the gospel. And it was not by our works that we are saved, but by God's mercy.

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We are justified not by our works, but by his grace, that we would become fellow heirs with Christ according to the hope of eternal life.

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The saying is trustworthy, Paul says. That's the gospel.

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We have no reason to doubt it. It is the hope of our salvation.

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Jesus Christ, who died for us as an atoning sacrifice, who rose again from the dead for our justification, even his resurrection was for our justification, as said in Romans 425, so that all who believe in him will not perish under the judgment of God we all deserve, but we will have everlasting life.

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As we had read previously in Titus 2 .14, Jesus gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, who are zealous for good works.

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And so, Paul goes on to say, after reminding Titus of this trustworthy saying, he says,

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I want you to insist on these things, giving exhortation to it.

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So doing more than just standing up in front of church and giving a lecture or an informative speech, there must be action behind it.

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In light of this now, what will you do? So insist on these things that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.

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Now, I want to skip down to verse 14 because I think this ties into what Paul just said there to clarify the statement even more.

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Look at verse 14. And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works so as to help cases of urgent need and not be, what, unfruitful.

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So if they're devoting themselves to good works, they are guarding themselves from falling into apostasy or unbelief or beginning to doubt the things that they believe.

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It has become a very part of their lives. And this goes back to something that we considered at the very start of Titus about how doctrine and life go together.

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What we believe will affect the way we live. And the way we live will affect what it is that we believe.

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Those things go together. Whenever you've been hearing statements today about ex -evangelicals, you know, somebody making a statement about how

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I'm an ex -evangelical, or they will say that I've deconstructed my faith. And they want you to believe that they've come into some sort of intellectual evaluation of common things that evangelical

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Americans have believed for so long. And I've tested and examined those things from a real and honest mental approach.

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And I've come to conclude that a lot of the things that I was taught in my life were actually wrong. So they want you to think that this was an honest intellectual pursuit.

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But when you really look at their lives, what do you find? A person who claims to be an ex -evangelical or claims that they've deconstructed, do you find that person has become holier in their lifestyle?

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Almost never. So they're trying to make excuses for saying, see,

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I've actually, I've gotten better at this. I've really applied my mind to it and have come to understand the

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Bible better than most evangelicals have discovered. But really it's a smokescreen hiding the fact that no, what

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I really wanted was this sin, but I knew that I couldn't still call myself a

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Christian and have this sin. So I'm going to say that I came into this sin through a very intellectual pursuit, which really wasn't the case at all.

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It was completely flesh driven. It was not driven by truth.

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It was driven by a love and a passion for myself, for what

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I want to do, for what makes me feel good. But Paul says in light of the gospel, devote yourself to those things that should be the result of the gospel, that growth in godliness of drawing closer to the people of God, of learning more about the

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Lord and his word, that you may draw closer to Christ. And as a result, even draw closer to his people.

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Some of you are aware of the news that came about this past week of a famous pastor,

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Steve Lawson, who had committed adultery and has now been considered disqualified by his church and will have to step back from all of the incredible ministries that he had founded and had been doing for decades.

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A pastor friend of mine made a real good point this week in light of all of that. As people are asking questions about it and desiring to know more and thinking about this from a very biblical perspective, how should we process whenever we see things like this?

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A pastor who is so well known and such a public figure, when he falls like this, how should we respond?

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My pastor friend said, the best thing for you to do this week is to go to your church and be with the people of God that you're growing with and listen to your pastor and the two of you grow, or the two of you, the bunch of you, grow in godliness together.

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And that is our devotion to these good works. I mean, there are great teachers online and that's one of the things that I love about the internet age in which we live.

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There are even some sites that I can direct you to that you will find some good teaching on those websites that I utilize on an almost daily basis.

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Weekly, I'm listening to four or five, maybe even a half dozen sermons before I get to the sermon on Sunday.

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It's something that I love about the internet. It can be a pretty destructive place, but it can be a useful tool if you know how to use it properly.

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But nonetheless, these teachers online are not your pastor.

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They don't know you. They don't know what's going on in your life. They can't pour into your individual lives and help to shepherd you and guide you and build you up.

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They're not people that you personally know and are acquainted with. You can't go to that person as you would a friend, as a brother or sister in the

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Lord, and talk about what is troubling your heart, or asking for advice or counsel, or just praying for one another and interceding for each other.

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So though those are good resources that we can utilize and learn more about the

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Bible as we grow, still, these are not persons that we are personally associated with.

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We have to be careful with how we consider those individuals, even in an online setting.

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And as I had said in the very beginning, talking about my own online ministry and how many listeners that I have managed to accumulate to my podcast or watching my videos or something else, there are people that have emailed me and asked me various questions.

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One of the most common responses that I give, if you've listened to Becky and I do the Q &A on Friday, you've heard us do this almost every episode, we will respond to a question by saying, talk to your pastor.

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There are things we're happy to answer, but there are certain things that get really personal, and we can only go so far with the answer that we can give.

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There's somebody in your life who cares about you and wants to pour into your personal growth and your sanctification.

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And that's who you need to ask, and you will get a better answer from that person who personally knows you than you can from strangers on the internet.

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So I go by Pastor Gabe because that is the office that I fill, but I'm not anyone's pastor except for the people in the body that have called me to that particular position.

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So we need to be careful with how we will receive those kinds of messages and who we're looking at online, but we need to be devoted to our own church body, our own congregation.

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And even as Paul is giving Titus this assignment on the island of Crete, it's not an assignment to do one thing in one church, but to do many things in multiple churches.

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As we had considered in the very beginning, the island of Crete had over a hundred towns, a hundred villages on it.

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There could have been a church in each one of those towns. And so Titus is to go to each one of those churches, raise up elders, and even follow the rest of the instructions that we see given here in this short letter in these three chapters that the church may understand how they are to be as the household of God, growing in good works, devoted to the things that will be the fruitful result of the gospel that we have believed in.

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I'm very touched to see that the women's group has taken to calling themselves

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Titus to women. Because in view of the instruction that is given here about how older women are to disciple the younger women, so we have a women's group here in our church that wants to be devoted to that very thing.

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Women training up women and raising each other and sanctifying one another in the

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Lord. And that is a good and godly discipline. And there is no better place that you can find that than in the body of believers that you are committed to be a part of.

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As I've heard Albert Moeller say, the internet is a really bad place to go to church. And yet in 2020, it was like the year where everybody was trying to go to church on the internet.

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And we need to come back to realizing that church, as that word comes from the

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Greek word ecclesia, or a called out assembly of people, that we've been called out from the world to gather, to assemble.

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That's what God has called us to do. It's not Avengers assemble, it's church assemble.

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And that we together protect each other from bad teaching and we devote ourselves to the good doctrine that we have heard and the fruit that results from that.

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These things are excellent, Paul says, and profitable for people who are devoted to the gospel and the good works that we should be doing.

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So that's the first verse, just a reminder to be devoted to these things, to good doctrine and godly behavior.

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But then the warning that comes in verse nine is to stay away from those destructive doctrines that don't lead to anything, but will in fact break a body apart or lead you to ungodliness or worse.

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Verse nine, but avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law for they are unprofitable and worthless.

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You know, this kind of feels like a good bookend to these pastoral epistles, because what did we read right at the very beginning of all of this?

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When we were in 1 Timothy chapter one, this was how Paul started those instructions for Timothy in 1

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Timothy 1, 3, as I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.

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So, by these various different kinds of false doctrines, you don't lead a person to godliness, rather you lead them to ungodliness.

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It will result in a body breaking apart. It doesn't bring us unified together in Christ, but rather chasing after our own various passions and ideas.

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I saw somebody online recently say that Christians sharing their own conspiracy theories is not rejoicing together in the good doctrine of God.

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Amen. So these things are excellent and profitable, but be careful to avoid foolish controversies.

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Now there are certainly controversies that exist that are right and good for us to consider. Like for example,

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I opened the sermon today by talking about a teaching of a false teacher. So if you were to hear that kind of teaching and you might ask, okay, what's the problem with it and how do we respond to it?

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There's a controversy that exists and it is good and right for us to consider that controversy, but to come back to the scriptures to understand what the scriptures say that we may direct a person in the right way to go.

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So there's a right way to handle a controversy. But this talking about foolish controversies, these are just silly inane things that don't lead us anywhere, that don't do any good.

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One of the things that I've seen has been very popular lately among reformed brethren online is to argue about aliens and Bigfoot.

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Now some of those myths that exist, okay, interesting stories, fun to consider, to talk about and whatnot, but when you start putting authenticity of faith on these accounts, like what do you really believe about this according to what the

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Bible says, the Bible doesn't mention Bigfoot. I don't care. So it might be a fun discussion, it might be something to laugh about, but once you actually stake something doctrinal upon it, then you've made it into a foolish controversy.

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The next statement, genealogies, well, that's the same thing that Paul said at the start of 1

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Timothy, avoiding genealogies, what are genealogies? Where do we find a genealogy in scripture?

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We find it all over the Old Testament, referring to the descent of peoples and the purpose for those genealogies is ultimately to point us to Christ.

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The New Testament begins with a genealogy. In Matthew chapter one, we have the genealogy from Abraham to Christ.

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So we see that Jesus is the fulfillment of a promise given to Abraham, a covenant that was made with him, a promise and a covenant that was made with David, and that Jesus is the fulfillment of that Davidic covenant, and he is the one who has descended in the line of David and has the rightful claim to his throne.

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So that's what we understand by that genealogy. And even the genealogies in the Old Testament were listed so that peoples and households understood what sort of land that they were going to inherit as part of the promised land.

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This is the house that I am descended of, so we should be living in this region, in that area of the world that God had given to the descendants of Abraham.

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There is a real and good practical application for those genealogies. Why is

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Paul then warning against genealogies? Because some of these teachers were going into those genealogies and they were finding obscure names that people didn't know who they were, what they were tied to, and they were coming up with these fanciful stories connected with those names.

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Or they might try to make themselves more credible by finding a name in that genealogy and saying, see that name right there?

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That's who I'm descended from. And so you know that I'm more important or I'm more authoritative a person because I'm descended from this person that's mentioned in the

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Old Testament, and so therefore they try to bolster themselves through this connection to a genealogy.

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There's also another one that's interesting to consider is that these genealogies were being treated like horoscopes.

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So just like today, if you're looking up your horoscope in the newspaper, you might know what sign you are, according to what time of the year in which you were born, and so I'm under this sign, and so I'm looking for my horoscope in the newspaper so that I might know who

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I'm supposed to fall in love with or what I'm going to do this week or whatever else. And notice those horoscopes are almost always good news.

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I got to reading the Onion's horoscopes for a while because the Onion was a satire site and so they would come up with horoscopes that were like, you're an idiot and here's why, and I like those better.

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Those were actually much better horoscopes. But the genealogies were being treated in this way.

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So because of being descended from a certain party or a certain person, that it was said something about that person or about their life, and sometimes these teachers would take those genealogies and they would try to teach like a person's destiny according to that genealogy.

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So it had a very horoscope sort of application to it. And these teachers were known from this, especially from among the

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Judaizers, which is why Paul gives this warning. But then he also mentions dissensions.

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So these are people who are just outright rebellious against the word. I don't care what the apostles had to say, listen to what

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I have to say. In Sunday school this morning, I mentioned the super apostles in 2 Corinthians 11.

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These men who were not teaching apostolic doctrine, they were not teaching the gospel as it had been delivered from the apostles, and then therefore the good

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Christian obedience that we should be following as a result, but they were coming up with their own fresh doctrines.

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And Paul even referred to them as messengers of Satan, for even Satan presents himself as an angel of light.

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And so his messengers present themselves as the same way. So these are people who are sowing dissension.

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The apostle John even talks about this in one of his letters, this man by the name of Diotrephes. And Diotrephes is ignoring everything that the apostles say.

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And John says, well, we're going to deal with him when we get there. That threat was always fascinating to me.

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What was John planning exactly when he got there? But that was a warning that he gave against a particular false teacher, called him out by name, and said that he opposes us, and so we're therefore going to deal with him when we arrive.

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And then Paul mentions quarrels about the law, and that happens a lot even in our churches today.

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Among the discussion that you have probably come to hear labeled theonomy, like what kind of role does the law have in our governing bodies that we should be living according to, that we should therefore be applying to our own government's laws and living according to those things.

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And you'll see arguments among Christians regarding this, about how much we should be affixing ourselves to the law and then applying it to our own governing laws that exist.

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And this is largely when you listen to those kinds of discussions, it's a quarrel over the law. It really doesn't result in anything fruitful.

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Can be a good discussion, but it also divides people. And so these are the things that Paul warns about.

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They are unprofitable, he says, and they are worthless. Even on the most gracious level that we might give to any of these particular discussions, even in the most innocent basic way in which these kinds of things would be talked about, they don't really grow us toward anything.

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They don't make us more godly. They don't lead us in a Christ -like manner. They don't point us to the gospel.

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They don't direct us in godliness, but they're just idle chatter.

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They lead nowhere. And at worst, in the worst case scenario, they will lead us ultimately to our destruction.

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As I asked you early on, as we were going through these epistles, do you believe that there is a doctrine that when you believe it, it leads you to eternal life?

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Yes. Do you also believe that there is a doctrine that those who believe in that, it will lead to their destruction?

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Yes. So what we believe can either save or destroy us.

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It's that important. It's not just a matter of tolerating one another.

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It's knowing the truth. And as Jesus said, it is the truth that will set you free.

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So beware of these things that are unprofitable and worthless, Paul says. So first of all, we have believe the trustworthy sayings, hold fast to the good doctrine, and devote yourself to the good works that should result from that.

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But then in verse 8, or verse 9 rather, avoid foolish controversies.

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Avoid those doctrines that are unprofitable and worthless, that don't lead anywhere, and especially don't grow us in Christ.

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And then finally, what about those persons who are teaching these things that cause division?

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They are actually heretics. Again, as I mentioned, as they are described. Verse 10, as for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self -condemned.

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Now, one of the things that is important to remind you of as we look at the first part of that phrase, as for the heretic, as for the person who stirs up division, remember that as we have considered these false teachers over the course of this series, we are often of this opinion that the false teacher is going to be obviously a wolf, that he's going to show up as a wolf, that he's going to be like the villain in those old westerns, wearing black and having a black hat.

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So we'll know that's the bad guy, and all the heroes are dressed in white. But remember that Jesus said in Matthew chapter 7, that they are wolves in what?

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Sheep's clothing. They look like us. They will act and, in some cases, behave like us.

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They know the right words to say. They will speak in a certain way that will try to convince you that they belong among you.

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And that's really one of the issues with the exvangelical movement or the deconstruction movement.

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They don't want to say they're not Christians because then they can't subvert the church.

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If I just tell you I'm not a Christian anymore, if I just call myself an atheist or an agnostic, then you will know right away that you should not be listening to what

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I have to say. But if I continue to call myself a Christian, but I've just come to this higher knowledge through this deconstruction method or whatever, then it's going to be more likely that you as a

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Christian will listen to what I have to say. You'll see that we share a lot of the same verbiage. I've just come to a different conclusion than you have.

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There's a group out there too that's kind of growing in popularity that's called the New Evangelicals.

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That's what they call themselves. But they are LGBTQ approving. They deny the inerrancy of Scripture.

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They even have doubts about many of the miracles that are talked about in the Bible. Those things may not have really happened, nor is it necessary for you to believe in any of them, but they still call themselves

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New Evangelicals. They basically have a doctrine that is every bit as comparable to an atheist or an agnostic.

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Why do they still call themselves evangelical? Because they want to fool you into thinking that what they believe is actually something that can be called

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Christian. And these are who these false teachers are. They may think of themselves even as being sincere and authentic in their belief.

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Their motivation may not be to swindle people, to break apart bodies.

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They might even think that what they are doing is helpful to the church. They may have good and sincere intentions, but the road of good intentions leads where?

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To hell, as the old saying goes. I remind you of a quote that I mentioned a couple of months back when we've been talking about these things over the pastoral epistles.

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This is from Martin Lloyd -Jones. He said, the heretics were never dishonest men. Now, when he says that, he means they weren't dishonest in the sense that,

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I'm going to tell you one thing, but my intention is actually to do something else. They may have been upfront and honest as far as they were concerned in everything that they said.

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They thought that the bad doctrine that they were coming into the church with was actually something that was going to be helpful to the church.

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And so, Lloyd -Jones says, they were never dishonest men. They were mistaken men. They should not be thought of as men who were deliberately setting out to go wrong and to teach something that is wrong.

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They have been some of the most sincere men that the church has ever known. What was the matter with them?

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Their trouble was this, they evolved a theory, and they were rather pleased with their theory, and then they went back with this theory to the

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Bible, and they seem to find it everywhere. Just like the statement that I said before about Mike Schmitz and their interpretation of communion.

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They might be sincere. They might truly believe that this is the way to eternal life, but Mr.

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Schmitz seems to not want to consider the outworking of that statement that he made in his own admission.

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That if this is not true, what we are doing, we are the worst idolaters in the history of humanity.

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And that's the thing that even the most sincere heretic will not consider. What if I'm wrong?

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What if I have this wrong? What if the way that I am interpreting this is not actually what the

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Bible says? And they will continue to sincerely believe something they think is true to their destruction.

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And this is why we say in our confessions that not only must a person read the

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Bible and believe it, but we come to understand that any person's ability to read

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Scripture and understand it comes not from themselves, but comes from God.

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In 1 Corinthians 2, the apostle said that when we read the

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Word of God, we are reading spiritual truths to spiritual people. And so they are understood by the

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Spirit of God that illuminates them to us. In verse 14 there of 1

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Corinthians 2, Paul says, the naturally -minded man cannot discern the spiritual things that are given from God because he is naturally -minded.

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So he thinks only of the natural, only what a person may experience in their flesh and not what is supernaturally revealed by the

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Spirit of God through His Word to us. Paul also warns the

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Corinthians in a couple of chapters later, 1 Corinthians 4, he tells them there, don't go beyond what is written.

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So there's the temptation for us to look at something in the Bible and think, well, that is a deep truth.

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I wonder if there's more to that. And we start reading things into that statement that the statement doesn't say.

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But we try to justify what it is that we believe and are reading into the Scripture because the

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Bible says it there, so it could mean this. And hence, that warning, Paul says, don't go beyond what is written.

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If it has been written down for you, if it has been recorded through the

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Spirit of God to His prophets and apostles that He gave these things to be written down for God's people that we may know them and believe them and grow according to them, don't go beyond that.

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Don't get into the silly myths and controversies, into those extra things that lead nowhere except to a person's own destruction.

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But devote yourself to the good word that has been given. When a person deviates from the gospel of Christ, what is the result?

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The result is destruction. And so, taking seriously that eternal souls are at stake,

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Paul says, of those who stir up division, warn him once, warn him a second time, going once, going twice, and if he will not, listen to correction, have nothing more to do with him.

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Knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self -condemned.

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So, if it has to go as far as excluding him from the body because of the false things that he believes and he therefore has to be removed, don't think to yourself and wonder, did we do the right thing?

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I mean, we cut him off from the church. How else is he going to know the words of eternal life if he's not with us?

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Paul gives this assurance, it's not your fault. He's self -condemned.

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He has chosen to go this way, to believe those things and repeat those things that are not of God.

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Now, one of the scripture readings that we heard this morning as Pastor Allen read it to us was from Matthew 18, where Jesus gives instructions concerning church discipline.

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I don't have a lot of time to go into this today, but we find various passages in scripture that talk about the ways in which discipline would be practiced.

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Matthew 18 is the most basic one, and that's what we read as a four -step process. As we heard in that section beginning with verse 15, if a brother sins against you, go and show him his fault between you and him alone.

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If he listens to you, you've won your brother. That's step one. But if he doesn't listen to you, bring one or two others along that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

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That's step two. If he won't listen to them, you tell it to the church.

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That's step three. And if he won't listen even to the church, let him be to you as a

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Gentile or a tax collector. In other words, he's an outsider. He's behaving as the world. He is not showing himself to be one who is a faithful believer and follower of the gospel of Christ.

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So that's step four. That's the four -step process of church discipline that we're given there in Matthew chapter 18.

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What we read here is a three -step process. This is a little bit different than that disciplinary process we saw in Matthew chapter 18.

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For Paul says, you warn him once, that's step one. You warn him twice, that's step two. And then after that, you remove him.

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Step three. So there's one less step in this process. Why is that any different than what we saw before?

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Because this is concerning a teacher. This is concerning somebody who is teaching falsely.

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This is concerning somebody who is spreading bad doctrine among the brethren. So this is not a sin between you and another person alone.

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This is something that's a little bit more public. So it's going to be handled in a little more different way. And what he is teaching and what he is spreading would even cause division.

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As we have seen previously in 2 Timothy, when Paul had talked about the false teaching of Hymenaeus and Alexander, he said, it was spreading like gangrene.

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It was causing parts of the body to rot and fall off. And so I have turned them over to Satan, Paul said, that they would learn not to blaspheme.

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So there is a more direct process that we take with a person who is a false teacher.

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There's other sections of scripture that we see discipline handled in a certain way. We had seen in 1

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Timothy chapter 5 that regarding a pastor who will not listen to correction, his rebuke and his removal must be public so that the rest stand in fear.

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There was an elder that we had to discipline at my church in Kansas several years back, and his wife really protested the manner in which we were going about his discipline.

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And she said, you have never dealt with anyone else in the church like this before. I've never seen you deal with somebody in sin like this before.

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And we had to tell her, it's because he's an elder. It's different when the person is a teacher and we're going by what scripture says about him.

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It's not that process that you see in Matthew chapter 18 where if you're able to win a brother between the two of you alone, there's no reason to involve more people in that process.

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You've won your brother. Praise be to God that he was convicted over his sin and he repented and the two of you and your brotherhood have been restored.

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But when you're talking about a teacher who is demonstrating himself in a certain way that is contrary to the gospel or he is teaching things that are contrary to the gospel, that's something that needs to be handled in a different manner and is going to be dealt with on a more public platform.

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He is warped and sinful if he will not repent. He is self -condemned. I remind you of these words that Paul wrote to Timothy in 1

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Timothy chapter 6, and I'm reading here beginning in verse 3. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our

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Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness. So remember, we're talking about the doctrine that saves and its doctrine that produces godliness.

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If somebody is teaching something different than the gospel that saves and leads to godliness, then he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.

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He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words which produce.

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What do those things produce? It produces envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.

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And Paul says, have nothing to do with that. These people who are going astray from the sound gospel and that which accords with godliness will lead people to their destruction.

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They, too, are self -condemned. And we must do what is necessary to make sure that they are not leaving anyone else into condemnation with the false doctrine that they teach that divides.

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We've seen these constant reminders over the course of these epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, that we would be devoted to the sound teaching of our

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Lord Christ and that which accords with godliness. And so we have even considered today the trustworthy saying of the gospel that has been given to us, and the result of that, and what it should be, that we would be devoted to good works which are excellent and profitable for people.

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They are good in that they are God -glorifying, and they are profitable in that they grow us in godliness.

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But, Paul says, avoid foolish controversies. Avoid those things that sow division rather than unity.

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Dissensions, genealogies, quarrels about the law are just a few example of these things, for they are unprofitable and worthless.

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And then regarding those who would deal in these kinds of teachings, as for a person who is a heretic, someone who sows up division, someone who goes contrary to the gospel, and contrary to the godliness that should result, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person, he is warped.

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He is a twister of the word. He is sinful. He loves the world and his own fleshly desires.

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He is, as Paul warned, self -condemned. And so it is good for us that we are continually examining our doctrine and the way of life that results from that.

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We have heard the good gospel that we believe in. Keep yourself in constant check that what

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I am believing in is not deviating from the gospel into wild and fanciful ideas that I just found to be more fascinating to me than the good and glorious gospel that was first declared to me.

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And then also reading into that all these other extra works that I think are better for me than what

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God has said is for me. And we examine all these things by constantly coming back to the scripture.

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The scripture is the word of God. It shows us God. As we've considered, it shows us ourself, our sin and need for a savior.

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And points us to Christ, who is that savior. Let me hide myself in thee, let the water from thy wound inside which flowed.

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Be a sin, a double cure. Save from wrath and make me pure.

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Not the sin of the world. My hands. Good. Oh, good.

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Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, oh,

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When my eyes shall close in death,

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When I soar to worlds unknown, See beyond thy judgment throne

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Rock of ages, rock of ages. Left for me, let me hide myself in thee.

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You've been listening to the preaching of Pastor Gabriel Hughes. A presentation of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.

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For more information about our church, visit our website at ProvidenceCasaGrande .com

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On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, thanking you for listening. Join us again