WWUTT 658 The Teaching that Accords with Godliness?

If a person teaches any different doctrine except that which flows from the sound words of our

Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is a conceited man with a craving for controversy when we understand the text.

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Continuing our study of 1 Timothy chapter 6, I'll again be reading verses 2 through 10.

The Apostle Paul writes, Teach, and urge these things. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our

Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing.

He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.

Imagining that godliness is a means of gain, but godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world.

But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

Essentially what it is that Paul is unpacking for Timothy here is what results in a person's life when they abandon sound teaching.

So again he comes back to the same charge that he made at the start of the letter to teach sound doctrine and not let anyone teach any different doctrine.

If anyone teaches a different doctrine that doesn't agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, if you teach the gospel, if you teach sound doctrine, it produces godliness in the life of a believer.

But if somebody teaches a different doctrine, he's puffed up with conceit. He's just in it for himself.

He's not actually speaking to better his hearers. It doesn't better anybody.

There is nothing substantial in the words that he shares. Maybe they provide some comfort to people for a little bit of time, comfort in the flesh, but they're certainly not words for salvation or for sanctification.

They're puffed up words. They puff up the self rather than point a person toward Christ.

It leads to no understanding, no worthwhile understanding. You could have all the world's earthly wisdom to write the books like Stephen Hawking wrote or to build the hydrant collider, you know, something that would, that would earn the acclaim of the academics, but it would be essentially the same as building the tower of Babel.

I mean, it's, it's nothing. It leads to nowhere except mass confusion when it comes to understanding the eternal things and the things that really matter.

Salvation from death, worship of our Lord God. Any different doctrine apart from the gospel will not lead to anything substantive.

It will be, it will be things that will ultimately be left behind at the end of the world, which is the point that even

Paul makes here, because as he gets to later on, we brought nothing into the world. We cannot take anything out of the world.

Even the knowledge that we have accumulated here, we don't take with us unless the knowledge that we have strived for has been the things that point us to God and grow us in glorifying

Christ with all that we are. Those things are eternally significant. You can be an academic, you can learn, you can achieve doctorates, you can, you can accomplish amazing things in the medical field or for science or biology or any of these other kinds of things.

Climb corporate ladders, be the best that you can possibly be in your particular field.

But I hope that as you apply yourself to those things, what it's doing for you is drawing your attention all the more to Christ.

You are looking through a microscope and seeing the incredible complexity of the cell and going praise

God for the incredibleness of this design. There are so many scientists out there looking down their microscopes and seeing nothing but mechanics moving around, which they think happened by complete accident, though they don't believe the watch on their wrist happened by accident, which is far less complex than the cell that they're looking at.

Yet they think this cell is something that is just a cosmic accident. This is the darkness of the heart that does not want to please

God, that does not want to seek after God at all. This is a person who has suppressed the truth because they love their unrighteousness.

So we can grow in knowledge and an understanding of the world around us, but it should be in light of the fact that God has given us all these things for his glory so that we might praise

God for the amazing blessings that he has shown to us. Those who seek after knowledge that ultimately doesn't point to God are seeking after something that will be lost with the rest of this world when it perishes in fire at the last judgment.

Even the knowledge of the world will be consumed and will be all for nothing. The person who applies themselves to a doctrine that does not give glory and praise to God, that does not point the hearer to Jesus Christ, ultimately craves controversy and quarrels about words.

And what does that produce? Remember the gospel produces godliness. Any other kind of doctrine produces envy.

It produces selfishness. I want this for myself. It produces dissension, division among one another, slander, thinking less of each other and misrepresenting each other, evil suspicions, which goes with thinking less of one another.

You don't think anyone's intentions are really good. They're only showing you kindness because they want something for themselves.

And constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.

They don't have the truth of the gospel. So what it leads to is depravity. The gospel leads to godliness.

A different doctrine leads to depravity. That's what it is that Paul is pointing to here.

They imagine that godliness is a means of gain. Now what does that mean? Because I thought the point was these people are not in fact godly.

Well, they think that preaching God is supposed to turn into health and wealth for themselves.

That's what they imagine godliness is. When I am rich, when I have lots of stuff, when people like me and I'm really popular, when

I'm a strapping person and I have a good bill of health, these are signs of God's blessing upon me.

If you're sick, you're not being blessed by God. You don't have enough faith. If you're broke or you're in debt, it's because you lack faith.

You know that the prosperity gospel is huge in the Western world right now. We have a president in the

White House really big on the prosperity gospel, which is why he surrounds himself with all kinds of prosperity teachers.

At the inauguration of Donald Trump a little over a year ago, Samuel Rodriguez, one of the prominent voices in the new apostolic reformation, was one of the speakers at that inauguration.

You had Paula White Cain, Paula White Cain, is that her last name now? She married one of the

Journey guys. Anyway, Paula White, she's one of the biggest televangelists that are out there. Also Wayne T.

Jackson, he spoke at the inauguration, but he's not a name that is as well known. Wayne Jackson told this to his congregation,

Donald Trump is an example of someone who has been blessed by God. Look at his homes, businesses, his wife, and his jet.

You don't get those things unless you have the favor of God. Folks, I tell you that the sign of God's blessing is that you have repented of your sin and you follow

Jesus Christ. That's the sign of God's blessing, and that is not any kind of sign that we see in the life of Donald Trump.

He loves the prosperity gospel, surrounds himself with prosperity teachers, Ken Copeland being another one of them, and then there are other teachers that just kind of get sucked into that black hole of prosperity theology that he's developed around himself, who themselves may not be prosperity teachers, but they lack discernment and don't know better.

Some of those would include Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, and Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.

Even though these men are themselves not prosperity teachers because of their close proximity with the president and their unabashed support for him, no matter what,

Robert Jeffress just said on Fox News a couple of weeks ago that there is nothing, well, this is about a month ago now, but there is nothing that the president can do that would lead to him not supporting the president anymore, and this was in the context of the whole

Stormy Daniels thing that was going on. So even in the midst of an adulterous scandal,

Jeffress would still be there supporting the president, and for that, because of that, because of his close proximity with the president, he's unaware that he's exposing people to such false teaching, not just prosperity theology, but also antinomianism, the idea that you can sin however you want and God's grace is just going to forgive you for it no matter what.

So as long as you believe in Jesus, sin all you want and you're still going to be able to get to heaven, which is a false doctrine that Paul directly confronted in Romans chapter six.

If you're still enslaved to sin, then you're not saved. You're not walking in the grace of Christ.

You're still walking after the passions of your flesh. You might acknowledge him with your lips, but your heart is still far from God.

And that's exactly Donald Trump, who has said in a conversation with Frank Luntz a couple of years ago, he's never asked

God's forgiveness for anything and doesn't think that he needs to. And it was in that same conversation, he said the most influential pastor that he had growing up was

Robert Schuller, the host of the hour of power. You talk about somebody who is a poster child for prosperity doctrine and Robert Schuller would be your guy.

So right there in that conversation, you had Trump espousing both prosperity theology and antinomianism.

And teachers that would otherwise not teach those things and would probably even teach against those things from their pulpit exposes people to those false doctrines because they would align themselves with those kinds of teachers.

They have cravings for controversy and quarreling over words which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions and constant friction.

It basically just leads to division. And this is the kind of people that we were before we came to Christ.

As Paul talks about with Titus in Titus chapter three, you were once hated by others and hating one another before God, our savior appeared and washed us by regeneration through the

Holy Spirit. We were divided from one another, but in Christ, we're reconciled to God and we're also reconciled to his people.

Right now going on in Memphis, Tennessee is the Martin Luther King Jr. 50 conference that's being put on by two gospel organizations, the

Gospel Coalition and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Now, on the surface,

I appreciate what it is that they're trying to do. They are trying to mend racial divisions and and some of the racism that does still exist in the church, even in the

Western world. Unfortunately, they have named this conference after a man who denied essential aspects of the gospel, including the incarnation of Christ, the

Trinity of God and the bodily resurrection of Christ from the grave. And this is according to King's own writings, writings that were submitted by his wife,

Coretta Scott King, for something called the King Papers Project. Now, there are defenders of Dr.

King who will say, well, those were things that he wrote when he was in college. He was like 20 or 21 years old.

What kinds of things did you believe when you were 20 years old? There's no telling that he continued to cling to those false doctrines into later adulthood, especially when he was the spokesperson for the civil rights movement.

Well, are there any writings out there that show that King had an orthodox view of the

Trinity and the incarnation and the resurrection of Christ from the grave? In fact, we've got a sermon from Easter Sunday in 1959 where Dr.

Martin Luther King said the following, whatever you believe about the resurrection this morning isn't important.

And again, that's Easter Sunday that he was preaching that sermon. He went on to say the form that you believe in, that isn't the important thing.

The fact that the revelation resurrection, I think he just miss misspoke there because this is a transcript that I'm reading from the fact that the resurrection is something that nobody can refute.

That is the important thing. Some people felt the disciples felt that it was a physical resurrection, that the physical body got up.

Then Paul came on the scene who had been trained in Greek philosophy, who knew a little about Greek philosophy and had read a little probably of Plato and others who believed in the immortality of the soul.

And he tried to synthesize the Greek doctrine of the immortality of the soul with the Jewish Hebrew doctrine of resurrection.

And he talked, as you remember, and you read and you read it about a spiritual body, a spiritual body, whatever form that isn't important right now.

The important thing is that the resurrection did occur. Important thing is that the grave was empty.

Important thing is the fact that Jesus had given himself to certain eternal truths and eternal principles that nobody could crucify and escape.

So all of the nails in the world could never pierce this truth. All of the crosses in the world could never block this love.

All of the graves in the world could never bury this goodness. Jesus had given himself to certain universal principles.

And so today, the Jesus and the God that we worship are inescapable.

So there Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is saying that the resurrection is just a concept or an idea and whatever you believe about it isn't important.

Whether it was a bodily resurrection or a spiritual resurrection doesn't matter. And Jesus submitted himself to certain ideas that are immortal.

Notice he doesn't say anything there about Christ's divinity, his ability to lay his own life down and take it back up again.

Rather, Jesus submitted himself to an idea that couldn't be crucified. My friends, this is false doctrine.

This is King denying the bodily resurrection of Christ and that it has any importance to the

Christian faith whatsoever. And this was preached in an Easter Sunday sermon. Yet Paul has said in 1

Corinthians 15, 17 that if Christ did not rise from the grave, bodily from the grave, then you are still dead in your sins and you are not saved.

And because Dr. King did not believe these essential doctrines of the gospel, the good news that Jesus, who is

God, laid his life down for us, dying on the cross for our sins and rose again from the grave so that all who believe in him will have eternal life.

Essential truths of the Christian faith because Dr. King didn't believe it. What this produced in his life was an immoral lifestyle.

This was a man who loved women and had multiple adulterous affairs. Not allegedly, he did.

Close associates of his who affirmed that he did. There was a woman who served in the

Kentucky State Senate at the time of the Civil Rights Movement who came out and said she was one of Dr.

Martin Luther King's mistresses. And these things were going on while he was preaching throughout the

Civil Rights Movement because he did not hold firm to the true doctrines of the

Christian faith. He became one who was depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.

And so here's my concern. Here's my concern with with the Martin Luther King Jr. 50 conference going on right now in Memphis, Tennessee.

I love and I appreciate what it is that they're trying to do. And I don't doubt that the gospel is going to be preached at this conference indeed.

But they have put at the forefront of this conference and as the speakers are standing there on the stage speaking behind them is a giant picture of Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. They have put on the forefront of this conference a man who denied the gospel and lived immorally.

And I just don't think it's going to accomplish what they hope they can accomplish with this conference.

Because instead of putting the gospel forefront, they've put an immoral teacher forefront.

As great as Dr. King was for the Civil Rights Movement, I just don't understand why they feel like they have to invoke his name for this conference.

A man who was wrong on the gospel and lived an immoral lifestyle. And I've already seen fights and squabbles over the things that he taught and the things that he did, leading to exactly what

Paul is warning about here in 1 Timothy 6, an unhealthy craving for controversy, for quarrels about words, producing envy, dissension, slander and evil suspicions.

I just don't think this is going to have the effect that they want. It's going to have a negative effect rather than a positive one.

That's my concern. I would be more than willing to eat crow if I'm wrong.

But according to what Paul is saying here, this is what happens with a person who teaches a different doctrine.

They are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth. Imagining that godliness is a means of gain, that racial reconciliation is a means of gain, that friendship with the president is a means of gain, that health and wealth is a means of gain, but only contentment in the sound teaching of the true gospel of our

Lord Jesus Christ is great gain. And that is what I pray for you, that you continue to cling to the gospel and that it develops in you godliness, sanctification, growing in holiness, maturity in the faith as you continue this walk while we are in this world.

Let us pray. Our Lord God, we thank you for the salvation that we are given in Christ our

Lord, that you have given us hearts that desire you, that believe in the gospel that we hear, that mourn over our sinfulness and a desire to be purged of this sin, that we might walk in holiness, acceptable and pleasing before you, submitting our entire selves to God as an acceptable act of worship and that we would not conform to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind so that we may see your will, your good, pleasing and perfect will.

Whatever we ask of you, according to your will, you will give to us as promised in your word.

And so Lord, we ask that you forgive us our sins and lead us in paths of righteousness for your namesake.

May we be gracious to one another in the faith, showing grace to each other and also to those who are outside the faith, our speech seasoned with salt so we know how to answer each one with the hope of the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the power of God for salvation to all who believe.

In this we ask in Jesus name, Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the

Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study.

Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.