The Agony Of Conceit - [1 Timothy 6:3-10]

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You know I sometimes get asked, why do you suppose false teachers teach what they teach?
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Why do you suppose they distort the word of God? What would you say if somebody asked you that? I mean that's a pretty tough question.
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Why do they do that? I just did that two week series in Sunday school on the purpose driven life.
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How does he do that? Why does he use the message? How can he be so far off? Someone will say to me, well surely they know better.
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And I usually respond that I can't give a specific answer to a general question.
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If somebody asked me generally why do they do it, I don't know. But I can give a general answer because the
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Bible does. The Bible says that people who distort the truth are motivated by power and they're motivated by money.
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And there is another motivation, one that can afflict us all, pride, arrogance, or as our text tonight in the
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ESV calls it, conceit. I mean can you imagine for a moment somebody having the gall to hold a gospel rally, an evangelism rally at Yankee Stadium and then charging $15 admission?
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Or telling you that you can get tickets at Ticketmaster? Well on April 25, 2009, that is exactly what the smiling guy did, what
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Joel Osteen did. This is one man's preview of the event. I found this online. This is before the event and I found this fun.
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Tickets will set you back $15 each. Go to Ticketmaster .com where you can search the web if you want to pay more.
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The scalpers are profiting from this event. So to enter the stadium for a family of four, $60.
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You'll have to park your car, well it's a special event in New York City, and the garages in the
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Bronx will charge you about $25. Of course it's hard to hear about how great you are on an empty stomach.
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So you've got to get hot dogs and soda and he says, now this is a farce because I've been a Fenway and I know what their prices are, he says hot dogs and soda will set you back $8 per person.
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Probably not. Maybe he meant $8 for each a soda and a hot dog and he said
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I'm being conservative, trust me. And he says, now let's not forget the souvenirs. Sorry mom and dad, since these are hard times, you guys are going to have to bypass the souvenirs but the kids, just think what a hit they'll make on Monday with those
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Victoria and Joel Osteen t -shirts at $20 per. He says, so let's just do the math.
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Tickets $60, parking $25, food $32, t -shirts $40, total $157.
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Then he says, staying home and reading your bible, priceless. I like that.
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Now to promote the show, Joel Osteen appeared on the Sean Hannity show. This was two weeks before the event and it's interesting because during his appearance on Hannity's show, he never uttered the word
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Jesus and he really never got close to the gospel. Sean Hannity said, is worry the antithesis or the opposite of faith?
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If you are a worrier, is that the opposite of faith? Now to me, that's a pretty good softball.
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Ask me what faith is and what can I do then? I can go right into the gospel. Joel Osteen says,
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I think it is. I think worry, fear, you're using your faith in the wrong direction.
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Let that sink in for a minute. You're using your faith, I don't even know what that means. Then he says,
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I think that you can, if you get up every morning and say, this is going to be a terrible day, I'm not going to make it through this year,
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I've got so many bad things, I think you're going to draw in that. You're using your faith in the wrong direction.
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Then Hannity says, where does negative thinking then come from? Is the human soul split in your own mind?
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Is human consciousness sort of like dark forces, light forces fighting and competing for your consciousness or am
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I really digging really into a whole other direction? Joel Osteen, again, I mean this is an easy question to go to the gospel and he says,
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I think it's true. I think there are forces that, you know, that can plant thoughts in our mind.
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I think a lot of times we've just been trained. This is the way we've been raised. Now when
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I think of John MacArthur being on the Larry King show or I think of the many appearances of Billy and Franklin Graham, I was watching
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Franklin Graham not too long ago being interviewed and every single question somehow came back to the gospel.
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They always point to Christ. They talk about forgiveness of sins. They spoke, or they speak of the resurrection.
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Osteen did none of those things. In fact, the only time the Bible was mentioned, Sean Hannity brought it up and Osteen said, well, you know more about that than I do.
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And this guy's charging $15 to go in and see him at Yankee Stadium. So you ask, where are you going?
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Well, we're going to First Timothy and I invite you to open your Bibles to First Timothy. This is all pertinent.
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And I'm kind of setting up the sort of mindset of some of these people who distort and twist
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Scripture and why they would do it. To just kind of bring us up to where we are in the book as we get into chapter 6.
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The Apostle Paul wrote this letter to Timothy, his disciple, his son of the faith, after he dispatched him to Ephesus.
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He sent him to Ephesus to set things right, to straighten out the church. And he told Timothy right off the bat, right out of the gate, to shut down the false teachers.
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There were false teachers in the church and he told them to stop them from speaking. And the rest of the letter, the
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Apostle provides Pastor Timothy, the young pastor there, a framework for the operation of the church of Christ.
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And in chapter 5, in the beginning of chapter 6, he told Timothy how the church could avoid bringing shame upon the name of Christ and their dealings with different groups of people, namely the elderly, widows, elders and pastors, and even how
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Christians should behave at work or in the working environment in a slave master relationship.
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And so we come to verse 3 of First Timothy chapter 6.
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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, 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 envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.
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Imagine that godliness is a means of gain. Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into this world, into the world, and we can take nothing out of the world.
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But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.
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But, verse 9, 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.
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For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.
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It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
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Now tonight I want to draw your attention to four conclusions about conceit, four conclusions about conceit drawn from our text so that you will grasp both the danger and the solution to conceit, to arrogance, to pride.
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Four truths about conceit so that you will both see and flee from false teachers and guard your own heart from the pitfalls of pride.
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Our first conclusion about conceit is that conceit leads to spiritual blindness.
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Conceit leads to spiritual blindness. How do false teachers arrive at their errors?
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Well, I'm going to start in verse 4, by the way, in case you're wondering. Right there in the middle of it. How do false teachers arrive at their errors?
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Look at verse 4. He is puffed up, talking about those who are mistaken here.
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He is puffed up with conceit. And we're going to back up and get the rest of verse 3 later on.
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But this is a fascinating verb, and this is where I want to start out with. It's a fascinating verb. It's a single word of the
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Greek that occurs. I mean, we see he is puffed up with conceit, and we go, surely that must be 4, 5, 6 words.
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No, it's one word. And it occurs only three times in the
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New Testament, and every single one of them are in the pastoral epistles, in the epistles 1, 2
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Timothy, and Titus. 1 and 2 Timothy. I almost, you know, 1 and Timothy. Well, anyway.
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1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. In 1 Timothy 3, in verse 6, it appears, and it says this, talking about the qualifications for elder, for spiritual leadership.
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It says this. He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.
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So in order to avoid getting an elder who would be full of himself, who would be prideful, arrogant, you don't want to get a new convert.
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2 Timothy 3, verses 1 to 4. Don't turn there. I'm just going to be there briefly.
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But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.
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For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self -control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit.
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Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Now back in 1
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Timothy 6, verse 4, that verb there is a perfect participle.
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It indicates that they are in an ongoing, permanent state. It is part of who they are.
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It's the warp and woof of their being. You would be accurate in describing this person as conceited, as filled with themselves.
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Now the word, the verb literally means to be wrapped in smoke or wrapped in clouds.
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So it would give us the idea of somehow being just kind of, I think one translation has it, be clouded.
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So you're just kind of encased in this cloud. Some writers say that it means to be foolish or stupid or even to go insane.
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But here it simply means that they are self -inflated. They've puffed themselves up with their own ego.
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And what happens or what has happened to them is that there is quite clear that they've tried to improve on sound doctrine.
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They've heard the word and they don't agree with it. They're going to change it. They're going to transform it. Look back at verse 3 now.
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If anyone teaches a different doctrine. Now again, consider the context.
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This is Paul telling Timothy how a church should operate. So this is a warning that there will be those who will arise in the church and they're going to teach heterodoxy, a different doctrine.
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And by the way, people say, well, I don't like to get all hung up on doctrine. You say tomato,
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I say tomato. It's not tomato and tomato. This is one of the first concerns
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Paul had. Paul expressed in this entire letter, as I said before, when he told them to shut down those who were teaching falsely.
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In 1 Timothy 1, verse 3, he 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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Nothing different than what I have taught you. Than what you already know is the truth.
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Later on, he's even going to encourage at the end of, I think even at the end of this book and then again, he says to Timothy what?
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He says, guard the truth, protect it. Doctrine matters. Truth matters.
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If it didn't, he wouldn't be so emphatic about it over and over again. History is filled with assaults against sound doctrine.
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Sometimes it is subtle. Sometimes it's flagrant. Why does the truth matter?
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Why is it so important? Why does Paul stress it over and over again when he's talking to these two young pastors,
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Timothy and Titus? And actually, you can argue again and again throughout the Bible why is it so true or why is it so important.
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Because if Satan can use these men, these teachers, that Jude would say they kind of crept in unaware, if he can use them to lead the church away from the truth, then darkness descends.
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You have another dark ages, another middle ages where the truth is stamped out, where for centuries, emissaries of Satan, bearing the name of Christ, would run around putting people to death who dared to teach the truth.
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That's what happens when doctrine becomes unimportant. And it starts with a puffed up, arrogant man who teaches a different doctrine.
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As I said before, the word is heterodoxy. It's the opposite of orthodoxy.
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And we would understand that, hetero, if you say you're a heterosexual, that means you like people of the opposite sex, which is a good thing.
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In this case, it's not so good to be heterodox, though. That's a bad, bad thing.
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It is a big deal. It is something to divide over. In fact, may
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I say that to go so far as to say that doctrine doesn't matter, it's one of two things.
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It could be just ignorance, and it could be a matter of conceit or arrogance where you say, that doesn't matter.
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All I want to know is, Jesus loves me, this I know. Well, that's not enough because people will say that and then empty even that simple statement out of all of its meaning.
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In fact, I wrote here, I said, may I go so far as to say doctrinal indifference is a form of conceit?
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Well, yes, I can and I will. Look again at 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. In other words, you can't have an indifferent Christian.
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If you agree with the sound words of the Lord Jesus Christ, you're not on the fence.
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And Christians agree with Jesus. That's what makes us Christians. We follow Jesus.
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I've been accused from time to time of being harshly critical of those who diverge from sound teaching.
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I'm guilty. I'll say I'm guilty. Paul says that those who teach other, different doctrines disagree with Christ.
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I think I'm in pretty good company. How would you like to be known as the guy who teaches doctrine that opposes that of the
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Lord Jesus? His sound words. Now the verb there in verse 3, translated does not agree, is literally to move to or to come to.
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And here's the picture. The picture is this person sees the sound doctrine of Jesus Christ, the sound words of Jesus.
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He looks at it and he refuses to come to it. He refuses to come alongside that teaching.
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He's going to stand on his own. The idea of sound is from the same
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Greek word from which we get our word hygiene, clean. So sometimes it will be translated sound or sometimes healthy.
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But it has to do not only with its truthfulness, but on the impact that it has on hearers.
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When you hear sound words, when you hear healthy doctrine, healthy teaching, what does that do?
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It's like you have a choice. You can either take the vitamins or you can take the arsenic. You're going to take the vitamins.
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You want to be healthy. I recently answered an email to the radio show.
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The listener wanted to know how to pray for false teachers in light of something that we said on the radio and how to avoid hating them.
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And I said, you know,
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I'm not going to quote exactly what I said, but I want to be clear. I hate their teaching, their error, their deviation from the truth.
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They disagree with the free from error, perfect word of God.
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In fact, when it says the sound teaching of Jesus Christ, whenever you see those words, you know, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Well, you have to wonder, is he just talking about the red letters? He's not. Everywhere that's said, it's not just the red letters, it's also the black letters.
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You know, was Jesus somehow, when he spoke in the red letters, were they more inspired than the black letters? The triune
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God is behind the whole Bible. So that's a false bifurcation there. But I hate their teaching.
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They are so arrogant that they refuse to come to the truth. They see it, and they refuse to go with it.
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They refuse to teach it. But I don't hate them. I don't have that right.
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We ought to pray for every false teacher knowing that apart from the grace of God for his efficacious grace toward us, we'd be exactly in the same boat.
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But apart from divine intervention, their end is sure. What are they going to hear?
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Depart from me. I never knew you. And they're going to be the ones standing there going, but didn't we do this,
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Lord? And didn't we say that? And didn't we bring this and do that? And it's not going to matter. These are not misguided
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Christians. They're not off just a little bit. They hear the sound words of Jesus, and they say that's all well and good, but I have something better.
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Their teachings are, as it were, unhygienic. They're unclean. They're unsound. They are, in fact, poisonous.
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We have some teachers today who profess a hermeneutic of humility, which is to say that, you know,
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I'm too humble to make any kind of pronouncement over what the Bible says. A lot of places,
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I don't think, in fact, I'd say 99 .99999 % of the time, the Bible isn't all that confusing if you study it, but in this hermeneutic of humility, you don't really want to make a pronouncement about much of anything, especially not controversial issues like homosexuality.
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So maybe you just take a five -year cool -down period. You consult with some psychologists, community leaders, social workers, leaders in the homosexual community, leaders of different religious communities, and maybe even throw in a couple of lawyers.
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I mean, who are we to judge? We are, I think, at a dividing point in the church.
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I think this has really come to a head over the last couple months, again, and it will again and again and again, but there's going to be a group who will adhere to the sound words of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, the whole counsel of God, and those who will not.
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People will say, too, sometimes, you guys at BBC are so black and white. Why is that?
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Because truth and error are not multiple -choice questions. You can't go, well, it's
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A, B, and D. No, it's either A or B. It's one or the other. It's true or false.
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It's black or white. And we are at a dividing point in our text.
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There are only two roads. Only two roads. Again, look at verse 3. The teaching that accords with godliness, or the second option, is the result of not agreeing with such teaching.
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You can only go one of two ways. You either agree with the sound teaching of Jesus, His sound words, the teaching that accords with godliness, or you go your own way.
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The King James Version is spot on here. It says, I mean, this is almost literal, word for word, the doctrine which is in accordance to godliness.
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There is doctrine that accords with godliness. Agreement with the teaching of Jesus, sound doctrine leads not to pride, but to godliness.
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One writer put it this way. He says, truth, properly taught and believed, radically transforms both the teacher and the disciples.
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Believers must both know and do the truth. Having knowledge alone doesn't make you any better than the person who sees the truth, sees the sound words of Jesus, and then goes the other way.
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So that's our first conceit. Our second one is conceit, or our first conclusion about conceit.
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Our second is that conceit leads to stupidity and division.
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Conceit leads to stupidity and division. When those who intellectually know the truth turn from it, and no,
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I'm not saying that every false teacher knows the truth, but many of them do, this passage is like a two by four right between the eyes.
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Look at verse four. They are devoid of knowledge, stupid, stupid, stupidity.
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Devoid of knowledge, verse four, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. Understands a little bit?
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No. A false teacher has a hyperinflated view of himself. He thinks he knows a lot.
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He thinks he has some special insight, a gift from on high, that he has something better to offer than all of his predecessors.
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He's not just careless or shoddy with the word. He believes his own press clippings.
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But the truth is he has no capacity to grasp truth. He has an ongoing inability to get spiritual truth.
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He understands nothing. Not a little something, but nothing. There's an old
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Arab proverb that says this, and I like this one a lot. It says, He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool.
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Shun him. He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, he is a fool.
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Shun him. Well, Pastor, don't you think he knows the truth? Well, he may have some facts rattling around his cranium, but he's long past caring about the truth.
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He is more concerned with himself and what he wants, and we will see that. What does he want?
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He wants to sow discord. Look at verse four. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words.
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Unhealthy craving is literally sick. He's got a sick sickness.
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He desires this craving for controversy is just so strong.
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It's really, it is the word sick, and it pictures almost a junkie who longs for another fix.
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Those who reject sound teaching, Paul pictures them like drug addicts, except what they want is controversy.
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They pride themselves in asking uncomfortable questions, stirring the pot, pushing the envelope.
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Nothing would make them happier than to embarrass a true teacher by asking some irrelevant, impertinent question.
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They also want quarrels about words or literally word battles, and we're not talking about Scrabble.
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We're not talking about, I don't know, what's the Wheel of Fortune. We're not talking about anything like that.
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They want to fight about words. They want to fight about doctrine.
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They want to fight about the Bible. How would you even start something like that? Well, you could say something like, has God really said, has
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God really condemned homosexuality? Did Jesus really say it was a sin? Such a person is apt to look for new frontiers, to push aside traditional thinking and look for never -before -seen nuances of words, seeking to overturn all godly teaching, all the men that God has gifted throughout the ages to teach
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His Word. Of course, when Paul wrote this, such men that he would be looking to overthrow the teaching of would be
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Jesus and the apostles. But he not only wants that controversy, the fighting over words, but he also produces ungodly fruit.
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Looking in at verse 4, which produce? We're going to go through a list of just ungodly fruit.
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I mean, this is like, you know, Galatians, we like to talk about the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, but right before that, there's the fruit of the flesh.
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And this kind of reads like that sort of list, which produce envy. Now, one who is proud cannot abide the success of others.
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You might say, well, why is that? Because that person might become a threat.
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Or worse, they have a position that the conceited man, the proud man, the arrogant man, believes he himself ought to occupy.
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A prideful person without an audience of adoring fans has nothing. So instead of supporting others, kind of pushing them forward, giving them opportunities, he works to tear them down.
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Instead of supporting a ministry, he's working in the background to tear it down, to backbite.
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We get to that next point here, dissension. It's defined this way, engagement in rivalry, especially with reference to positions taken in a matter.
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Let's be plain. The conceited man is not content to serve. He's not here to just be in the body and to function in the body and to exercise his spiritual giftedness in the body because he doesn't have any spiritual giftedness other than to cause trouble.
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He's here to push aside the established leaders and to raise a ruckus.
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And his mentality would be, well, you know the old saying, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
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That's just how he thinks. So he'll look for openings to divide the flock, to separate from leadership on issues that appeal to the flesh.
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If he can identify a large group of the church, which he can kind of manipulate and get into and sort of take over, he'll go right over there.
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He wants to establish the fact that he is a man of the people. He's not like the leadership at the church.
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He's also a man of slander or literally blasphemies. The conceited man doesn't hold anything back.
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Don't cross him and expect that you won't hear about it. He's smarter than you are. And if you question him or question that premise, he'll put you right in your place.
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I term this next one paranoia. It's evil suspicions. But the conceited man is full of himself, but he knows that his rightful place is always being plotted against.
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There's always somebody out to get him. He might even make stuff up just to keep people off balance.
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This is a guy who likes to strife and disharmony and discord. He also likes an atmosphere of anger.
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Look at verse 5. And constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.
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He wants to wrangle, to argue. This is a group of people that he's gathered unto himself who are just like human sandpaper wearing one another down, getting on each other's raw nerves, and they're getting rarer and rarer.
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John Stott says this, when people's minds are twisted, all their relationships become twisted too.
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They don't know what it's like to love someone, to be selfless towards someone. And all these are the results.
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All these little, these five different, this list of the results of how they behave are just the result of them being morally depraved and completely lacking the truth.
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The truth has been taken from them, the text would tell us. So our first conceit is, conceit leads to spiritual blindness.
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Our second one is, conceit leads to stupidity and division. And our third conclusion about conceit is that conceit springs forth from greed.
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What is it that drives people away from the truth? What is it that makes these arrogant people who they are?
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What so motivates them that they're willing to live in these disastrous conditions?
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In a word, greed. Look at verse five. Imagining that godliness is a means of gain.
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I have one grandchild and maybe another one by now, who knows? You know what you love to ask little kids is what?
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What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be an astronaut. You know, all those kind of things.
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You know, I want to be a cowboy. I once had a child tell me they wanted to be George Custer.
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I don't know about that one. But kids say different things. Now imagine that. You know, you're asking some child and he says, when
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I grow up, I want to be a televangelist. Why would you want to do that,
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Timmy? Is Tim here? No. And he says, so I can fleece poor people out of their money.
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You know, that would never happen in a million years. You'd go, okay, we got to do something with this kid.
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That would be terrible. Imagining that godliness is a means of gain.
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You think that would never happen. Keep your finger on 1 Timothy and let's look at Acts 8, where we were this morning.
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Acts chapter 8. We're going to see an example starting in verse 5 of that exact thing.
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Acts 8, verse 5. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed to them the
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Christ. And the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip when they heard him and saw the signs that he did.
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This was fascinating to them. And the signs really helped facilitate the message.
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Listen. Verse 7. For unclean spirits crying out with a loud voice came out of many who had them, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed.
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This is like a Benny Hinn thing, only real. There's no fakery here.
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Verse 8. So there was much joy in that city. And then notice the next word, but.
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Everybody's happy, but. There was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria.
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He had a pretty good thing going for himself, saying that he himself was somebody great.
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They all paid attention to him, from the least to the greatest, saying, this man is the power of God that is called great.
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And they paid attention to him because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic.
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But he never did what Philip did. Verse 12. But when they believed
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Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women.
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Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized, he continued with Philip.
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He wasn't saved, as will become evident in a moment. And seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed.
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Even the great magician was amazed. Verse 14. Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them
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Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the
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Lord Jesus. They hadn't been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Verse 17.
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Then they laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the
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Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them the apostles' money, saying,
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Give me this power also, so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the
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Holy Spirit. But Peter said to him, May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money.
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You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God.
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Save people you can't say that about. Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the
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Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.
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And Simon answered, Forgive me, for I have sinned. Pray for me to the
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Lord, that nothing of what you have said may come upon me. He didn't believe.
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He just didn't want the judgment that Peter spoke on him. But what did he want? Ultimately, he wanted the power of God, because he saw it as a means to increase his market.
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He probably had a pretty good market share before those guys showed up. Now he lost a bunch of it. And he wanted it back in spades.
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And he was willing to pay big money for it. Okay, let's go back to 1 Timothy. Excuse me.
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Simon wanted to be able to do what the apostles had done, because he viewed this as a way to even bigger crowds, bigger revenues.
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You know, someday he might even be able to charge $15 to get into the Yankee Stadium. He had a goal.
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He set the sides high. He imagined that godliness was a means of gain.
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Verses 9 and 10. I'm going to skip over 6, 7, and 8 for a moment. 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.
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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.
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The text could not be clearer. It's not declaring wealth to be a sin.
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Christians can be wealthy. Wealthy people can become Christians. However, the
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Greek, again, is very interesting. Desire, for those who desire, is a present participle.
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Again, when it's a participle, it means it's part of their inheritance. It can be said of them in a single word that this person is desiring to be rich.
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It's that much a part of their being. They wake up in the morning, and their first thought is,
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I want to be rich. They go to bed at night. Their last thought before they go to bed at night is,
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I want to be rich. And during the middle, when they're not sweating and doing something else, when they're not working, if they're on coffee break, whatever, they're thinking about getting rich.
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That's how possessed they are by this idea. It's all -consuming. It's 24 -7. Not only is it all -consuming, but it is repetitious.
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Look at verse 9. They fall over and over into temptations. Their motivation to become rich causes them to ignore some of the most basic, common -sense things that your parents taught you, like if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
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They can't help themselves. They will fall for schemes or become entangled in scams because they know, they're confident that sooner or later, their ship is going to come in.
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They go through money the way some women go through chocolate. I couldn't resist.
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You should see my refrigerator. Okay. And they don't learn.
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They're slow on the uptake. It's from one disaster to the next, and they're going to take some others down with them.
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Even those who strike it rich, even those who are very rich, are never satisfied. They have an unquenchable thirst for riches.
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One man said, gold is like seawater. The more one drinks of it, the thirstier one becomes, and they can't get enough.
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And it is in this blind pursuit of wealth that we come to verse 10. Note well that money, it's not money that is evil.
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Money has no morality. It is neither good nor evil. It's not good or bad. Their problem is blind avarice, the love of money, greed, and it is a root of all kinds of evil.
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You know, the problem with saying it is the root, well, can you think of other roots of evil? I mean, just name a few.
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Envy is one. I mean, when Cain killed Abel, it wasn't out of greed.
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It was envy. Anger is another one that people sin in, and it's the root of all kinds of evil.
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Terrorism doesn't happen as the result of greed. I mean, they're all a matter of sins that happen that have nothing to do with greed.
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But here's the key. Look again at verse 10. It is through, it is via, it is by means of this craving.
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A moment comes for these folks. They hear the truth. They hear the sound words. They sit under the voice, but they hear another voice, an irresistible siren as it were.
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They have to make a choice. Be content with what the Lord has granted them or knowing better, believing that they deserve better, being puffed up with conceit, knowing that they deserve their best life now, they give in to that inner gnawing, that craving.
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And as a result, they impale themselves with many mental distresses.
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Getting rich or getting richer, which consumes their every waking moment, does not bring them the result they think it will.
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Money doesn't really bring happiness. Instead, their lives are painful.
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They impale, the text says that they pain themselves. They bring pain. I mean, the idea is that they're literally stabbing themselves.
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It's not a physical thing. It is mental, but it's that idea. They're in pain and they're causing it.
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Greed, a sin, gives birth to pride. Why is that?
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Because the Word of God is very clear that greed is a sin.
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Being dissatisfied, being not content with what God has provided, and then determining that you are going to live a life bent on obtaining riches.
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To do that, you have to say, I'm going to ignore the sound words of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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You have to explain that away. You have to distort it. You have to demand your best life now.
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You have to do that kind of thing to get there. They chose this.
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They wanted this. They turned their backs on Christ to pursue wealth.
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And finally, our last conclusion about conceit is the antidote to conceit, contentment in Christ.
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Contentment in Christ. Contentment springs forth from, well, if discontentment or greed springs forth from pride, or vice versa.
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Let's put it this way. If contentment and humility go hand in hand, then greed and pride go hand in hand.
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What makes someone humble? That word's not even here in our text, but if you look back at verse 3, these are the people who do agree with the sound words of our
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Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness. There's a fork in the road. Some people don't agree with that.
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These false teachers don't. But the people who do, they take an entirely, completely different path.
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The word of God produces godliness. That is to say, again, that sound doctrine, truth distilled from the
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Bible, received by a person indwelt by the Holy Spirit, will produce a transformed life.
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It may not always be perfect. There may be stumbles and falls, but it's the direction and not the perfection, but what you take in impacts what comes out.
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Look again at verse 6. Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment.
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The Greek word contentment refers to self -sufficiency, a sought -after virtue among some
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Greek philosophical groups. But Paul never suggests that he is self -sufficient, but that he lacks for nothing because he has an all -sufficient
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Savior. I can go to other passages, but I'm not going to. Knowing God has granted us
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Christ, the Holy Spirit, forgiveness of sins, eternal life, that ought to give us the assurance that he'll grant us our daily needs.
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If God cares for sparrows, will he not care much more for us?
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Jesus said that. And to emphasize that Paul's not talking about some
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Oprah -like version of contentment, self -fulfillment, Paul reiterates the first truth written in the book of Job.
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He kind of says it in his own words, but it's the same thing. You can almost hear Job saying this. For we brought nothing into the world.
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Verse 7, we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world. These men, these false teachers, these men of avarice, these conceited men, spent all their time pursuing things that moths and rust will destroy, things they cannot take with them.
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However, Christians understand that this world is temporary and so are the things in it. Everything in creation will one day be destroyed, and yet they're going to spend all their time chasing it.
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Every thought, every moment of every day, they're going to be after getting more.
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And knowing this truth, that everything's going to come to an end, believers are content with whatever state the
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Lord has them in, whether they're married, all those things that were in 1
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Corinthians, or with whatever riches he has given them. Look at verse 8. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.
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And the word for clothing, by the way, in case you're just kind of thinking, well, is this a homeless person? It can also cover shelter.
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So we could put it this way, if we were going to do the message, which we won't, if we were going to do kind of an expanded version, we could say, if we have all of our physical needs taken care of, we're content.
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And we know that God will do those things. And if we have that kind of mindset that with these things we are content, then the focus on the world, all the things that are so consumed, these conceited, arrogant, prideful, greedy people, they all fade in the background, and we just focus on Christ.
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We're content with what he has given us, and we're content to know where we are going. Just a word of practical application.
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As I studied this, all I could think of was wanting to examine myself, wanting to track down any bit of discontentment in me and eradicate it, lest it lead to greed, which gives birth to pride.
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You need to practice contentment. I mean, when you wake up in the morning, instead of thinking, what am I going to do to further my pursuit of riches?
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We need to just kind of calculate the riches that we have in Christ, all the ways that he has blessed us, all the things that he has given us and stopped us from doing, stopped us from squandering.
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Left to our own devices, we would surely be like the prodigal son, just having spent everything that we had, wasted our life away.
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Indeed, I would ask you tonight, if you were left to your own devices, with nothing but your own intellect and desires, if you didn't have the sound words of Christ and the
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Holy Spirit had not convinced you of those truths, where would you be now? Beloved, the gospel does not call us to think highly of ourselves, to have some kind of puffed up, arrogant, conceited view.
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In fact, the Bible is quite clear that that causes pain, causes self -inflicted wounds.
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The Bible calls us to praise our Savior and to be content with what he has done for us.
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God never praises teachers for their innovation. 1 Timothy chapter 7, thou shalt innovate.
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It never says that. We are not to vary the message.
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We are not to change it up. We are to teach sound doctrine. Now, real quickly, how do
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I know that at the root of Joel Osteen's problems is pride? Listen to this from page 40 of Your Best Life Now.
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I love the scripture that says if we belong to Christ, we are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise.
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That means that we can experience all the blessings of Abraham. If you study Abraham's record, you'll discover that he was prosperous, healthy, and lived a long, productive life.
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Even though he didn't always make the best choices, he enjoyed God's blessing and favor.
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Implication. I get all that stuff too. One more, and this is really great because he says that he's being humble when he says it.
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Consequently, and I say this humbly, I've come to expect to be treated differently. I've learned to expect, and this was, by the way, his interpretation of a psalm.
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I've come to expect to be treated differently. I've learned to expect people to want to help me.
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My attitude is, I'm a child of the Most High God. My father created the whole universe. He has crowned me with favor.
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Therefore, I can expect preferential treatment. I can expect people to go out of their way to help me.
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If that doesn't sound puffed up, self -involved, self -inflated,
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I don't know what does. Let's pray. Father in heaven, you are the
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God of the universe. The creator and sustainer of all things. Father, you have blessed us with the things that we need to sustain life.
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Father, we should be pleased with that. Lord, that you would grant us forgiveness of sins, reconciliation, redemption, regeneration, all the words, all the truths.
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If you would grant us all these things in eternal life, in spite of all that we have done.
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Lord, knowing that we bring nothing good to the table, that left to ourselves, we would surely turn from the sound words of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. We would reject him. Our focus, morning, noon, and night would be on the things of this world.
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Father, would you teach us to guard our hearts, to understand that pride can start out as a small thing, and then consume us.
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Lord, I pray that you would keep us all humble in light of the cross, that we would recognize we have a great savior because we are great centers, and a great salvation because we have a great
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God. Would you bless each one here, we pray. In Christ's name, Amen.