No False Doctrine (1 Timothy 1:3-7) | Adult Sunday School

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No False Doctrine (1 Timothy 1:3-7) | Adult Sunday School

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Resurrected, as we will be when he comes.
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I mean, you are the Scrooge, aren't you? Yes, for sure. Females intended would show up.
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She actually projects real well, so. No, we'll set it up.
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Jeremiah, what do we want to do for a piano vocal special up here? You have a stand, mic.
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So are we done until we meet upstairs? No. No? I'm going to go to Sunday school with my wife.
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Okay, cool. Unless you guys know I'm being an idiot here, but yeah. No, I don't think we need to, do we?
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They're pretty basic songs. Especially that last one you sang, so simple. I know. Yeah, exactly.
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Do I practice? We need some spiritual musicians.
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Another stand somewhere.
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I'm thinking this one. There's nothing else in the back.
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But you want this like in your face to sing. Yeah. You're saying just get rid of this one. Hail the day that Christ arose
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Through the skies to worlds unknown Glorious there
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He ever reigns Object of all
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Heaven's praise Lift His hands above See the scars of His great love
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He has conquered death and sin Saving all who hope is on His throne
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His grace will lead us safely home
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On the stars
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His redeemed are on His heart
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Even now He intercedes Jesus cares
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Here's Noel Earth and Heaven embraced
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As a virgin beheld Her newborn babe
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From realms on high To a manger on earth
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Salvation hath dawned in a lowly birth
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Holy Judge, here is my heart What can
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I say to you? Where could I run?
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How could I hide? Darkness is day to you Good morning, everyone.
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Good morning. Good to see each one. We are going to return to our study we began last
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Sunday in Paul's letter to Timothy, the first one, 1 Timothy. So I invite you to open your
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Bibles to 1 Timothy. This morning we'll be continuing in chapter 1, looking at verses 3 through 7.
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Before we do, let's commit our time to our Lord. Boy, there's a lot of people on this side of the church.
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I don't know, is there? It's like it's weighted over here. There's no political connotation or anything else, or moral connotations to that,
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I'm sure. It's not blue, red, or anything like that. Well, let's commit our time to our
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Lord and ask His blessing on our time. Our Father, we know that it is by Your grace that we are able to gather together in the name of our great
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God and Savior, Jesus Christ, and that it is also by Your grace that we can open
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Your Word and teach it and learn it, proclaim it, preach it, and also to worship
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You in spirit and in truth. So we just thank You for the opportunity to be together in fellowship here today.
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And we'd ask Your blessing on our time in Your Word this morning. We ask that You would be our teacher by Your Spirit and that You would accomplish every divine purpose in every heart here through Jesus Christ.
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Amen. Well, last time we introduced our study in 1 Timothy. And, oh yes, thank you.
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By the way, there's a set of notes that if you need a page of notes, Rick has them back here.
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A set of notes such as they are. They got scrambled in transmission.
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Or I guess, what do they say? Some contents may settle during shipment, or something like that. That was my fault.
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I'm going to figure that out, and next week you'll have a better page, and then also the next ones too.
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So I'm not sure exactly what happened. I'm not competent enough with computers and emailing to tell you right off the bat.
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One of you guys probably could, but I'll figure it out. We'll do it by pigeon or something else that works a little better.
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But it'll be a challenge maybe for you to try to unscramble what got scrambled, unscramble the egg there.
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But we'll work through it. And we have the Word of God, and it'll be just fine.
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But last time we talked a little bit about Paul's ministry in Ephesus, and a ministry that he spent tremendous time and energy and effort in investing there.
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And then we saw that he is going to leave Timothy in Ephesus to accomplish further work there that needed to be done.
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And one of the things that he is going to have to deal with in Ephesus in his ministry is false teachers and false doctrine.
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So in our study this morning that I'm just calling House Rules for God's Church, this is rule number one.
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No false doctrine in God's house. No false doctrine. And it, of course, is a massive area of study.
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We could spend weeks and months just studying various false doctrines and false systems of religion and so on.
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But I think it's always in our best interest to focus on the Word of God, and then we'll have a basis for comparison and for judging false teachings and false systems.
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So that's what we're going to do this morning. And we know that false teachers and false prophets and preachers have plagued
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God's people and God's purposes since that day in the Garden of Eden long ago when
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Satan attacked God's Word. And that's what he always goes after. He goes after the
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Word of God. Up to that point, there had been one voice in the garden, the voice of God, the
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Word of God. And when Satan came into the garden, all of a sudden there's another voice, a competing voice.
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And he tried it out in the garden, found out it worked really well, and he's been doing it ever since. He's twisting
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God's Word, perverting God's Word, going after the foundation of God's program and God's plan for salvation.
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All through the Old Testament, we have the record of false prophets and the record of God's response.
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And in every context where there's a mention of a false teacher or a false prophet, there's always a reference to God's judgment against that false teaching.
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The descendants of Abraham had been set aside by God as a special people to be used by Him to provide a
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Savior through whom God will bless all of the nations. That was
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God's plan of salvation. And God called His true prophets to give His Word to His people, but at every step of the way, in every generation,
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Satan also had his false prophets trying to lead God's people astray and to thwart
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God's plan. And whenever the biblical record talks about those false teachers, again, there's always a mention of their judgment or their end or where they are going.
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In Jeremiah chapter 23, in which God, through Jeremiah, a true prophet,
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Jeremiah 23, 16 and 17, God says this, Thus says the
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Lord of hosts, Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes.
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They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. And later in the same chapter, continuing to speak through Jeremiah, God says, this is verses 25 through 27,
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I have heard what the prophets have said and who prophesy lies in my name, saying, I have dreamed,
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I have dreamed. How long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart, who think to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, even as their fathers forgot my name for Baal, Baal the false god of the pagans.
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So the seed of lies that Satan planted in the garden germinated in the hearts of the false prophets, and they were using them to draw
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God's people away from God to worship idols. And even as we come into the New Testament, we see the never -ending effort of Satan not only to kill
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God's plan of salvation, but to kill his very Savior. He turns his vicious efforts then on the church, again attempting to lead
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God's people astray through false teachers and their perverted doctrines. In the first mention of the church in the
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Gospels, in Matthew 16, 18, Jesus said, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
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That picture of the gates of hell, of course, is a metaphor for entrance into death.
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The worst thing that people think can happen to them is death, and Jesus said, even death will not stop the church because I will build it.
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And Satan is still doing that same type of effort to twist and pervert the truths of the church.
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And part of that demonically generated effort is to assault the church, again, at its very foundation.
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It goes after the foundation. In Matthew 16, 16, we know that the church is built on Peter's great confession that Jesus is the
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Christ, the Son of the living God. It's built not on Peter as a person, but on the truth, that confession.
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So the enemy works to attack the church at the foundational truths, the doctrines or teachings of the church.
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Doctrine is just another way of saying teaching. It's used basically interchangeably in the New Testament. Now you remember as we introduced our study of 1
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Timothy, Paul had worked very hard to establish that church in Ephesus. And about after he had ministered there and worked hard and established relationships and had taught people and trained people, we mentioned this last time, it's recorded in Acts 20, verses 28 through 30, that he met with the elders of Ephesus and gave them this warning.
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We saw it last time, but it's worth repeating. He said, Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the
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Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.
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I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.
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And from among your own cells will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.
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Paul understood the principle. It's true then and it's true now. Persecution comes from outside the church, but perversion comes from within.
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The church is persecuted from the outside, and it has been since its inception on the day of Pentecost, but it's perverted and it rots from the inside out.
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And so not much has changed over the centuries. False prophets of the Old Testament speaking lies, trying to turn
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God's people away from God to worship false gods, and the false teachers of the
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New Testament trying to do the same thing. And it's true right up to the present time, even today.
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Right now, all across this country and around the world, false prophets, false teachers are standing up before people, spewing out twisted doctrines.
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One of the interesting things is not much has changed, but did you notice what the false prophets of the
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Old Testament, where they directed people's worship? To idols, right?
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Like at the foot of Mount Sinai. That God up there, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He's not
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Yahweh. We want something else. And what did they get? They got a golden calf. They got an idol, right?
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But you notice carefully what Paul says, these men will arise speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.
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These people are different. These people that you see that are false teachers, we could all name bunches of them, they're not saying, here's an idol, this is the true and living
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God, follow him, go after this false god right here. They attract people to themselves.
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That is more satanic than moving people to worship a false idol. Why? What does
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Satan want to do? He's the antichrist. He wants to displace the worship of Christ with himself.
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He wants to place himself in between you and the true and living God. And this is what these people do.
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They draw people after themselves. We also saw last time that when you take these two letters, first and second
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Timothy, and you go through them, you can come up with a list. And there's various lists you can find, different commentators have different lists, but if you boil all that down, you come up with four basic categories.
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Paul tells Timothy, be faithful to guard, teach, and preach God's word.
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He says, keep your own walk with Jesus Christ pure so you will be an example to others.
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He says, third, be willing to patiently suffer hardship and persecution for Christ's sake.
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And then fourth, boldly confront and correct false doctrine.
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Now you can even, if you want just two categories, boil it down to how you deal with the church and how you deal with yourself.
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And that's a pretty basic way to understand what's going on in these letters, these pastoral letters as they're called.
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Now it's the last category here that we're going to deal with this morning. This will be the first of a series. Just gonna call it
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House Rules for God's Church based upon that chapter three verses 14 and 15 where Paul said
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I'm going to, if I delay coming back, I want you to know how to function within the church, the household of God.
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And every group of people that wants to be effective has some kind of operating rules for their operation, do they not?
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I mean a military unit needs to have marching orders, they need to have a mission, they need to be trained and know what they're going to do.
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A football team or a baseball team, they obviously have a game plan, they have rules they need to play by, they need to be trained and equipped for the mission.
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If it's a business like a corporation, they're going to have some kind of business plan if they want to be successful.
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There's going to be some kind of mission statement, they're going to have to operate under laws, corporate laws and so on.
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Even the home, the home ordained by God and he sets the rules even for the administration of the home and the operation of the home, does he not?
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The Bible comes with its own set of operating rules, even its own set of rules for interpreting itself, it just doesn't leave it up to us to try to figure out how to do these things.
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And some homes under the sovereign lordship of Christ and the loving headship of the husband and father, there may be a set of rules in that house that usually they're called mom's rules, you know.
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I've never seen a list of dad's rules, but usually this list, mom's rules, are in the kitchen or close to the kitchen someplace.
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You can find these rules all over the place. I found a few. I want to share them with you here. And a couple of them you're going to hear, they're a little dated, okay, because, well, you'll see, it's before the age of cell phones and personal computers.
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But here's one. It's kind of a list that's on the wall in the kitchen. Mom's rules of the house.
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If you sleep on it, make it up. If you wear it, hang it up. If you drop it, pick it up. If you eat out of it, wash it.
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If you spill it, wipe it up. If you turn it on, turn it off. If you open it, close it.
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If you move it, put it back. If you break it, clean it up. If you empty it, fill it up.
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If it rings, answer it. If it howls, feed it. If it cries, love it. Here's another one, just a banner on the wall, simple banner, mom's rules.
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If I cook it, you eat it. If I buy it, you wear it. If I wash it, you put it away.
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These also would apply not to children too, but just husbands too, right? Ladies, amen, right? If I clean it, you keep it clean.
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If I say bedtime, you say goodnight. If I say get off the phone, you hang it up.
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If I say no, you don't ask why, because I'm the mom. One more, couple more, this is a short one.
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This is the shortest one of all. Kind of a little sign on the wall in the kitchen that says mom's rules. There's only two of them.
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Number one, mom's the boss. Number two, see rule number one. And maybe my favorite, this is the last one.
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On the wall in the kitchen, a banner. I love hugs, and I love kisses. But what
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I really love is help with the dishes. All God's mother said, amen. Well, those are just several examples from mom's rules for the house.
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They're designed to be, you know, they're seasoned with lots of love and with a touch of humor. But when it comes to house rules for God's church, there's a lot of love built into those.
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Obviously, it's one of the ways God expresses his love to the church, his beloved church. But there really is no humor because God is very serious about his church.
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Very serious. He is, how it is to operate, and after all, it's his church.
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Remember, Jesus said, I will build my church. It belongs to him. And so he provides the rules for the operation of his church.
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And it's also a church that he purchased with his own blood, did he not? And unfortunately, it's become popular in recent decades in our country and elsewhere for entrepreneurial church leaders and church planters to plant churches and using not the biblical model for what a church is, but to bring in novel ideas and new things that are very far from what
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Scripture has commanded us to do. And this has created a need for us, of course, to go back and understand what
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Scripture says to us. So this morning, we're going to look at rule number one in the church, no false doctrine.
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What Paul had prophesied to the Ephesian elders that day on the beach, probably about five years before he wrote this letter, that there would be teachers coming into the church and coming from among your own selves teaching twisted things.
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It's no longer a threat to watch out for at this stage. It's a reality to be confronted.
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And so we're going to see, and it's on your outline there, I think it made it onto your outline, the problem at Ephesus.
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What was the problem? Well, the problem is in verse three. And I'm just going to read through this, and then we'll just walk right through here.
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Paul says, 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.
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The theme of false teachers and their false doctrines is a major theme in this letter.
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Some today would have us think that doctrine or teaching is not important at all. We don't need sound doctrine.
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We don't need that. In fact, for about the past three or four decades, the very popular seeker -sensitive movement, very common to hear people say,
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Well, I don't want doctrine. I want something practical. Have you heard that? It's almost a theme in those groups of people.
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And they usually get what they ask for. I can't think of anything less practical than something for your spiritual life or for the life of the church that is not built on sound doctrine.
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How can it possibly be practical for your spiritual life? But that is a very common thing.
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The Apostle Paul wants Timothy to confront the people that are teaching unsound doctrine.
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He leaves him in Ephesus, and he's going on up to northern Greece, Macedonia, and he wants him to charge certain people not to teach any different doctrine.
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This word charge is sometimes translated command. It's used multiple times in Scripture. And just in this letter, chapter 1 verse 3 as we have seen, chapter 4 verse 11, the
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Apostle Paul says to Timothy, Command and teach these things. In chapter 5 verse 7,
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Command and teach as well so that they may be without reproach. Again in chapter 6 verse 17, he tells him as far as rich people in the church,
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Charge or command them not to be haughty nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches.
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So this is essentially thematic in this letter. Charge or command people. That often doesn't go over real well in contemporary modern churches where people want to kind of do their own thing.
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They don't want to be compelled to do anything. It goes against the flesh, does it not? But Paul tells
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Timothy, and the first thing he wants to do is to charge Timothy because he's going to be left alone in Ephesus, and he needs to know what his marching orders are.
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The false teaching that he needs to confront. What was it? Well, very simply he says,
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I urge you to charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine.
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Very simply, and the word itself in the Greek, it just simply means to teach a different doctrine.
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So there's the simplicity of it. Is it different than the Bible? If the answer is yes, it has to be confronted.
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Don't teach it. And of course we can take all different kinds of false teachings and false systems and we can analyze them scripturally and show exactly why they're not biblical.
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That's fine. But at the very simple level of understanding what is a false teaching, it's different than the
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Bible. Different than the Bible. It might even be something very good. Many of those churches have programs that do really good things, right?
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But it's not biblical, and if it's not biblical, then it needs to be confronted. The church needs to be fed the scriptures.
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Oftentimes it's just something new, something novel. You know, this is not your grandfather's church.
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It's different, and we're doing things differently. Doesn't mean every church has to be a cookie cutter kind of situation.
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There's always stylistic differences and stuff. That's part of the genius of God's plan down through the centuries and across very diverse social, economic types of situations.
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The word of God is relevant, but it's always the word of God. This false teaching, and scholars really aren't sure what it was.
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It's probably some kind of a hybrid of Judaism and also an early form of Gnosticism.
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Some scholars have come up with what they think it is, but it's probably some kind of a mixture.
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It's really tough to say for sure. Some of the Judaizers were involved in the detailed study of Old Testament genealogies, but they were using them to produce all kinds of allegorical, mythical, religious systems.
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Of course, since it was their system, you had to go to them to find out what the system said or meant, so that they were the people in the know.
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You had to go to them. This again fit right into an early form of Gnosticism. You've probably heard of this based on the
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Greek word gnosis or knowledge. Now this is where it gets really strange.
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Some of these things in this amalgam believed that since God is holy and pure, but that matter was evil, they created a false dichotomy and probably influenced a lot by Platonic dualism, but they essentially said anything that's material is evil.
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Then how could God make an evil universe? They came up with this idea that there were these beings that emanated from God that they called aeons.
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The first one was just slightly less holy than God, but then another one came from him who was less holy than the one before, and so on down the line, until finally there was this being that was evil enough and far enough away from God that he could create the universe.
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I told you it was weird. Basically what they're doing, of course, is denying the creation story from Genesis 1.
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They had rejected the word of God and they're concocting their own system, and they were the ones you had to go to to sort through all these genealogies and so forth.
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Now depending on which New Testament scholar you read, it's either called Jewish Gnosticism or Gnostic Judaism, but whatever you call it, it is not scriptural and it needed to be condemned.
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Verse 4 says, not to teach any different doctrine, from verse 3, that's what he has to tell them not to do, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies.
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So they had all this genealogical structure to this. And what does it do?
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It promotes speculations rather than stewardship from God that is by faith.
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It just created an endless series of questions. They could not be certain about anything.
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And this is true in much of the false teaching today. Have you ever heard of the emergent system? Those people are real big on telling people in the church, you can't know what the
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Bible says. You can't be certain of that. If you're certain or dogmatic in any way about what
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Scripture says, you're arrogant. We can't do that because we just can't know. And so that, of course, is false teaching in and of itself.
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Read 1 John 5. Apostle John's real big on certainty. In chapter 5, he just says, that you may know, that you may know, that you may know, all the way down through there.
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So the Bible tells us we can know. That's what it's for. It's to teach us.
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It is revelation. It's not designed to be some super secret system that only a few people know.
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It is public. It is designed by God to reveal himself, his
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Savior, and his salvation plan. The stewardship that is from God, that is by faith.
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Paul is simply saying, the stewardship, this is from a word group, but we get the word household from, or house. Paul is using that metaphor through his teaching here.
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It's a house, and God has a plan for that house. He has an operating system, if you would like, for that his own house.
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It is his plan of salvation. And if you get all caught up in these false teachers and these endless questions about genealogies, you are going to neglect
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God's plan of salvation. And this is what they did. False teachers in the church always teach something other than God's truth and God's gospel, and they do it to lead
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God's people astray. That's their purpose. But that's not
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Paul's purpose, which we're going to see in Roman Numeral 2, the purpose of Paul. Before we do, do you have any questions about what we've seen so far?
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From Roman Numeral 1? Sure.
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Timothy is under command. That's part of the first thing he does when he asserts his apostolic authority.
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We saw that last week. He does that for a couple of reasons, we saw. Number one, he wants Timothy to know, this is a charge
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I'm giving to you personally for your ministry. Ephesus was a tough place. Ephesus was a pagan city.
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It had the Temple of Artemis there. We're going to talk about that in a couple of weeks. It would have been a dangerous place for a young man, a young Christian man, to be, and so he has to know he's under the apostolic charge of Paul.
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Also, Paul needs to know, since he's there by himself, to have
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Timothy certified as an apostolic representative. He's going to go in these churches, probably smaller house churches, and he's going to confront false teachers.
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Many of them may look at him and say, who do you think you are? He's going to say, well, I'm Paul's representative here.
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Here's the truth. That is the second main reason, but also for our sake.
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What we teach is apostolic doctrine. We don't teach new things, new philosophies. I like the saying, you know, in the church today, after 1 ,900 plus years of church teaching, if it's new, it ain't true.
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Now, you might find some exceptions to that, but that's kind of a good place to start. If somebody has some novel teaching, hey, no one in the history of the church has ever discovered this in Scripture, but I'm here to help you out with that.
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Probably not going to be true, and the reason nobody's ever discovered it in the history of the church before, when you boil it all down, it's because it's not there.
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So be very wary of somebody with a novel teaching, not a clarification of what is already there.
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That's not what we're talking about. This has gone on a lot. That happens to us personally, right? Because we all have areas where we don't understand
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Scripture, areas of blindness. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a novel doctrine, a new doctrine.
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A good example might be, have you ever heard of N .T. Wright? N .T. Wright and he and other scholars, and he's written some very helpful things.
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But he and some other scholars a few years ago got together and said, well, you don't really understand. The church has really misunderstood the doctrine of justification by faith.
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And they went through and came up with a whole new system of justification based on their study of extra -biblical sources, and basically came up with a new understanding, according to them, of justification by faith.
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Well, that is a novel teaching, and it's very powerful and influential because he is a very well -noted scholar.
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But it is not true. So what is the purpose of Paul? Paul wants to say in verse 5 what his purpose is.
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He says the aim of our charge is love. But not love defined by the world, not love defined by you or me.
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It's love that is defined by God and produced by God. Where does that come from?
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It's love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
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Paul knows that there is a progression in salvation. You can see it, and I put several passages there in your notes and it kind of got scrambled.
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But what I was trying to point out there was that when people hear the gospel and they are saved through faith in Christ alone, there is a progression that moves toward love, and that love is a fruit of the
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Holy Spirit. You can't produce it, and I can't produce it. It is unique to God himself.
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But that's where salvation always winds up. John 17, the high priestly prayer of Christ, John 17, 14 through 26,
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Christ speaks about the word being given to his disciples, how they are sanctified, and how there is then unity among those people, and that produces love.
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Day of Pentecost, gospel was preached by Peter. People were saved and added to the church.
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And what's the first thing they did? They devoted themselves steadfastly to the apostles' doctrine or teaching.
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And the purpose of that? They were going to have their minds renewed. And as you read down through there, what happens? There is unity and fellowship and love in the church.
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And you can just see that in multiple passages. Wherever anybody is saved, and it may take somewhat different forms, but there will always be as the end product of that, the love of God in the church.
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It can be faked, it can be phoned up, but unless that church is made up of saved people, it's simply an emotional response.
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And people might say, well, our church is really loving. Well, it may be loving on a human level, but it can't, it is not loving on this level.
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And the way you test that is, you just bring the word of God into it. I have seen churches that had a history of not being built on the word of God.
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But these people were very loving, very kind, it was a real social event when they got together.
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They got a new pastor who came in and started teaching and preaching the word of God. In six months, that church blew up like a hand grenade.
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Why? Because they were not united in the truth, in pure doctrine. They were united emotionally.
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And that's not what Paul is looking for. His goal is the love that is produced by God.
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A true love comes from a pure heart, good conscience, and a sincere faith. Basically what he does, he just kind of flips the progression around and says, here's the end product we're looking for.
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But here's where it has to come from. It can't come from the world's definition of love. It can't come from that great philosopher and songwriter of the 1960s,
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John Lennon, you know, all you need is love, all you need is love. Love is all you need.
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You use the world's definition of love, you're going to wind up with two men on a wedding cake. You just will.
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That's where that comes from. And you've heard it. Well, as long as two people love each other, by whose definition?
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If they loved each other based on God's definition, they would not want to engage in behavior that was debased, degrading, perverted, and which
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God has routinely, cover to cover in scripture, condemned as being an abomination. That's not love.
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You would not want to do that with somebody if you really loved them, according to God's definition of love. So, Paul's purpose, he wants to see the love that is produced by real salvation.
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That's what he's charging Timothy with. And that brings us to the product of their error.
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There's always consequences, there's always some kind of product.
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You just can't sin and have it not have consequences.
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There always is. Verses 6 and 7, the product of their error, certain persons, and he uses it twice, certain persons.
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Jude uses this little phrase, certain persons have crept in unawares into the church.
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Jude is also talking about apostasy and false teachers. He says, certain persons, by swerving from these, what's the these?
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Well, that would be what he just said, pure heart, good conscience, seer faith, in other words, true salvation, they have wandered away into vain discussions, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
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Confident assertions. God's work of regeneration produces a heart and a mind that is focused on God's word.
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And these people don't have God's word because they don't have the spirit of God, so they have no doctrinal anchor.
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If you like the metaphor of a ship anchored in a bay, when the storm comes, that ship is stable.
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Or maybe you like the metaphor of a building built on a foundation. Would you ever build a house without a foundation or a building?
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You wouldn't do it. You know what would happen. That building wouldn't last very long. I wasn't here when they built this building, but I bet you there's some significant concrete underneath this building, and the engineers that designed it had to take into account the snow loading on the roof, and you know, even a small breeze is going to create tremendous lateral stress on the sides of this building.
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They have to take that into account. It has to be anchored to a sound foundation if you're going to expect it to last.
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These people have no doctrinal anchor. That's their problem. In other words, they're dead in their sins.
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Jude goes on to talk about this apostasy, and he uses a little term, they are devoid of the spirit.
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They don't have the spirit of God. People who reject the truth aren't spiritual, even though they might say they are.
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Rejection of the gospel creates a spiritual vacuum, and that spiritual vacuum is always filled up by lies.
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There's an old saying, you know, nature abhors a vacuum, you know. Well, the spiritual world loves a vacuum.
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Any kind of teaching or ministry or philosophy that says, well, you just need to empty your mind.
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Take less time for some than others, I grant, but empty your mind, and then listen for the voice of Jesus.
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Well, that isn't in any place found in scripture. We're not told to empty our minds. We're told to feed our minds, renew our minds on the word of God.
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The spiritual world loves a vacuum, right? And something's going to get in there if you empty your mind, as some of these teachings say.
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The result of that, their product is vain and empty discussions.
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They swerve from these truths and have wandered away into vain discussion.
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A little grammatical thing here. Swerving is an active word.
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It's active. They actively swerve from these truths. Have wandered away.
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It's passive in its voice. In other words, the English sounds like, well, they just go about wandering away.
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It says they will be led astray. If you reject the word of God, you will be led astray.
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Not maybe, you will be. Paul says very much the same thing to Timothy. If you would, turn in your
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Bibles to 2 Timothy. Just jump ahead to 2 Timothy chapter 4. Paul says basically the very same thing to Timothy as he charges him in his last words to Timothy, his last letters to the church, to preach the word, 2
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Timothy 4 .2. Very powerful imperative there. Preach the word, he tells him.
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Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.
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Why? Why should he do this? For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.
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Remember what Jeremiah said? Where does it come from? It comes from their hearts, it comes from their minds. And here it is right here in verse 4, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
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Here again, turn away, active, active voice. They actively turn away from God's word, and that wander off, passive voice.
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They will be led astray. It's a future passage. It doesn't mean that they might, or you stand a pretty good chance of someday if you reject
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God's word of being led astray. It says they will be led astray. May not happen next week, may not happen next month, but it is going to happen.
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It's inevitable. If you reject the word of God, that person will be led astray.
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Paul's own words to Timothy, and it's charged, and that's why it's so important that he teach and preach the word of God.
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These people have no doctrinal error. They're just blown all over the place. To use another metaphor of Paul, to the
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Ephesians, like a leaf in the wind. Right? Well, what else do they have? They have false ambition. In verse 7 it says, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
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These are probably leaning more toward the Judaizers. They wanted to be the authority, the teachers. They wanted people to come to them and say,
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Rabbi, what about this? What about that? And they wanted to be the profound teachers of people.
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They want to be teachers of the law, but like all false teachers, they have no understanding.
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And here's a great combination, okay? They have no understanding, but they make confident assertions.
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That's a bad combination, right? There's only one thing worse than someone who sets himself up and promotes themselves as a teacher of God's law.
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It's when they proclaim their false teachings with confident or bold assertions. And this is what these people do.
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It would be one thing if they were false teachers on a different topic, you know, like how to grow roses or something.
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But these are false teachers in the church and they're extremely dangerous. Desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they're saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
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So that's the problem at Ephesus. Timothy's got his work cut out for him. The false teachers, their false teachings, they're not accomplishing the purpose of God's Word through Paul as he taught.
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And the result of their error, they're just blown all over the place like a leaf in the wind doctrinally.
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They have no foundation. They have false ambitions and they have no understanding. And Timothy is sent there to kind of try to straighten that out with the
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Word of God. So do you have any thoughts or questions about what we've seen so far? Okay, next time we're going to look at rule number two, use the law properly.
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And it just naturally follows, right? If you have these false teachers who are twisting and perverting God's law,
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Paul's now going to teach Timothy and exhort him to teach the people at Ephesus to use the law properly.
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And we'll see that next time. Let's pray. Our Father, we do thank you for your
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Word today. Thank you for your grace in our lives. Thank you that we have this tremendous gift of your
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Word and your Spirit to be our teacher. Help us, Father, to be able to accomplish what you would have us accomplish in your church in our time.
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Help us to be faithful stewards of what you have given to us. And now, Father, as we gather to worship you, we pray you would be pleased that you would be glorified.
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Thank you for each one who will lead us and teach us and preach and lead us in worship. Bless them and give them great encouragement, joy, and strength in their ministry.
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And we just thank you for your grace in our lives, in Christ's mighty name. Amen. . .
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. . . . . . .