Live Phil Johnson Guard the Truth (2 Timothy 2:14-26) | Adult Sunday School

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Take this world, my God, to God ♪ ♪

Jesus in His cross, my trust shall be ♪ ♪

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My Lord, I sing, take this world and give me

Jesus ♪ ♪ In His cross, my trust shall be ♪

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the... Talk, talk, talk.

There we go. All right. Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to Adult Sunday School class. If you're out in the foyer, please make your way into the sanctuary. All right,

I will save a longer introduction. I'll save a longer introduction for right before the worship service, or right during the worship service, before the preaching, for our guest speaker this morning.

It is Phil Johnson, the executive director of Grace to You. He was here for our conference on Spurgeon, the life and legacy of Charles Spurgeon, and we were fed well at that conference.

And now Phil is going to give us a lesson today on the subject of Spurgeon and hyper -Calvinism, and what is the difference between Calvinism and hyper -Calvinism.

So Phil has a presentation he's gonna give here that'll last about 20 minutes, and then after that, he'll have an opportunity for a question and answer.

So you will have a chance toward the end of the class to do that. So with that, please welcome Phil Johnson. Well, good morning.

I'll just start right in. Hyper -Calvinism, simply stated, is a doctrine that emphasizes divine sovereignty to the exclusion of human responsibility.

It tends to eliminate the idea of human responsibility, and to call it hyper -Calvinism is a bit of a misnomer because while there are a lot of themes that hyper -Calvinists talk about that are similar to what

Calvinists would affirm, the sovereignty of God and the doctrine of election and all of that, hyper -Calvinism actually entails a complete denial of what is taught both in Scripture and in the major Calvinistic creeds, and it substitutes instead of that a kind of imbalanced and unbiblical notion of divine sovereignty that does away with human responsibility.

It's a sort of mechanistic view to God's sovereignty. I have a document on the web that you can look up.

It's called A Primer on Hyper -Calvinism that's fairly extensive.

It quotes some theological dictionaries that give definitions of hyper -Calvinism, and then

I give my own definition. My own definition of hyper -Calvinism is complex in the sense that I see five different flavors of hyper -Calvinism.

I don't think hyper -Calvinism is simply one idea.

There are about five kinds of it, and they range in a gradient from the worst kind to the best kind, and so I'm gonna give you as simply as possible what those five flavors of hyper -Calvinism are.

You don't need to write this down because you can just Google my name and the word hyper -Calvinism, and you'll find the document where all this is spelled out and explained anymore, but five kinds of hyper -Calvinism.

A hyper -Calvinist is someone who either, number one, denies that the gospel call applies to everybody who hears it.

Jesus says, come unto me, all you who labor and have you laid and the hyper -Calvinist says, that's not everybody.

That's just the ones that labor and are heavy laden. In other words, they've been convicted of their sin.

This is not an open invitation to everybody for salvation. This applies only to the elect, and so they eliminate the general call of the gospel.

That is the most sinister kind of hyper -Calvinism because it utterly destroys evangelism. You can't go out and indiscriminately preach the gospel if you believe the gospel doesn't apply to everyone.

So that's the most sinister kind because it completely does away with evangelism. Only slightly better is number two, hyper -Calvinism that denies that faith is the duty of every believer.

This flavor of hyper -Calvinism says, well, all right, but we're dead in our trespasses and sins, so we're unable to believe, and therefore, faith isn't really my duty.

It's God's decision whether he grants me faith or not. And there's a germ of what sounds like truth in that because Scripture does say that we are dead in our trespasses and sins, that unbelievers are unable to hear or believe the gospel unless God himself intervenes.

Where they get it wrong is concluding that just because they're unable to hear or believe the gospel, it's therefore not their duty to do it.

It's still the duty of the unbeliever to believe, and the reason unbelievers are incapable of hearing or believing the gospel is sin that is their own fault.

So they're responsible for their inability, and therefore, that doesn't erase their duty. But if you do away with the idea that faith is the duty of everyone who hears the gospel, then again, you eliminate the need for evangelism that preaches the gospel indiscriminately.

Third kind of hyper -Calvinism, the person who denies that the gospel makes any kind of offer of Christ or salvation or mercy to the non -elect or that someone who denies that the offer of mercy is free and universal.

You'll easily recognize someone who's flirting with hyper -Calvinism or may be a hyper -Calvinism if they chafe at the word offer in relationship to the gospel.

They'll sometimes say, the gospel isn't an offer, it's a command, but it's also an offer.

It's a call, and in fact, the very closing verses of the Bible portray salvation as living water and offered freely, but the hyper -Calvinism denies that.

I won't go into a whole lot of detail on these, although I'm tempted to do that. Then a fourth kind of hyper -Calvinism is the brand that denies that there's any such thing as common grace.

Common grace meaning the general goodness that God shows to everyone. In Jesus' words, he makes the sun shine on the just and the unjust alike, that God is good to all his creatures.

A hyper -Calvinist would deny that that's genuine, well -meant goodness. A hyper -Calvinist would typically say anything good that happens to a reprobate person, someone whom

God has not elected, anything that's good that happens to them is simply God purposely compounding their guilt, that he has no good intention or well -intentioned appeal to them.

And then, similar to that, variety number five is the brand of hyper -Calvinism that denies that God has any kind of love or any attitude that could be legitimately described as love toward the reprobate, and this you'll find in the writings of Arthur Pink, for example, who opposed the idea of, he opposed the brand of hyper -Calvinism that denied duty faith.

He said, no, faith is a duty, so he opposed that kind of hyper -Calvinism, but he held to this idea that it's inappropriate to speak of God's love for the non -elect, that there's no sense in which

God has any kind of love for the non -elect, that his love is limited to the elect alone.

Now, I would say God's love for the elect is different from his love for the reprobate, just like my love for my wife is different from my love for my neighbor, but it's both, both are a kind of love, and the typical hyper -Calvinist will, again, just chafe at the notion that God loves the non -elect.

He doesn't want the evangelist to say, God loves you, or speak of God's love to people who aren't already saved, because he's not sure that God actually loves those whom he hasn't elected.

Scripture, I think, is clear about that as well, where Jesus says in Matthew 5, love your enemies, and do good to those who treat you badly.

He goes on to say, do this so that you'll be like your Father who is in heaven, and that's when he says,

God makes the rainfall on the just and the unjust, so he's clearly affirming the idea that God's well -meant goodness applies to all his creatures.

There are Psalms that say that as well, that God is good to all his creation, and hyper -Calvinism tends to deny that.

Hyper -Calvinists want to press the logic of a misunderstanding about God's sovereignty to the point where it goes beyond what

Scripture would tell us, and if you have any questions about that, we'll take questions at the end, but I need to move on, because I want to talk about John Gill and Charles Spurgeon and the

English Baptists and hyper -Calvinism. I made this comment this week during our lectures that John Gill is often labeled a hyper -Calvinist.

I would classify him as a hyper -Calvinist. Spurgeon said he's the koryphaeus of hyper -Calvinism, which means the choir leader, and yet he seemed to stop short of pinning that label on Gill.

Now, I want to talk about Gill a little bit and Spurgeon's attitude towards him. Gill was a prolific writer with a brilliant mind.

He had a knack for examining issues in a meticulous detail.

He was thoroughly familiar with all the writings of the church fathers. I mentioned that he also was conversant in the rabbinical literature.

He read in Hebrew the writings of rabbis on the Old Testament, ancient writings.

He wrote a series of commentaries, and if you've ever used them, you know that they're full of references to the patristics and the rabbis, and Gill wrote a defense of the doctrines of Calvinism that was designed to show that all the doctrines of Calvinism, what we call the doctrines of grace, the five points of Calvinism, he had a book designed specifically to show that all five points are specifically taught in scripture and found in the writings of the church fathers.

It's a great book. It's called The Cause of God and Truth, and it's a good resource to have.

So he defends the doctrines of grace from scripture and from the writings of the early church fathers, and that book,

The Cause of God and Truth, was published in 1735 while Gill was still a young man just in his 30s, and it's available today.

You look it up. I think you can download it for free online. I have an edition, a hardcover edition, from the

Baptist Standard Bearer Press, and all the distinctives of Gill's high

Calvinism are found in that book already in his 30s. His magnum opus was the final work he published, which is called

A Body of Divinity, and it's also still in print today. It is, I think, for the most part, a superb and helpful work, but it is tainted, like most of Gill's works are, tainted by the effects of this,

I would call it a kind of incipient hyper -Calvinism. He's just edging into hyper -Calvinist ideas, and it taints what he writes.

And by the way, the sum of Gill's works make an impressive library. I commented this week that nobody in church history has written and published as many words as Charles Spurgeon, no single individual.

Gill would be a close second, perhaps. He wrote more than any one man between Richard Baxter, who wrote a lot himself, and Spurgeon, and in fact, people jokingly called

Gill Dr. Voluminous. He had a friend named

John Brine, who in 1743 published a pamphlet that became very influential in British Reformed circles.

It was called The Modern Question Concerning Repentance and Faith Examined with Candor, and the pamphlet contained a letter from John Brine to a friend in which he explored the question of whether repentance and faith are really the duty of unbelievers.

And Brine's conclusion was that since faith is a gift of God, which we would agree with, faith is a gift of God to the elect in particular, we would agree with that as well, he concluded then therefore it cannot possibly be the duty of those who are without grace and without any ability to exercise faith, it can't possibly be their duty to do that.

Now, you might hear me say several times that this idea actually bears a close resemblance to Arminianism, the presupposition that underlies

Brine's argument is fundamentally Arminian. It's the notion that ability limits responsibility, that you're not responsible for any more than you are able to do.

No one can be justly held responsible for doing anything that they lack the ability to do, but Brine accepted this

Arminian presupposition, and so his Calvinism was driven towards hyper -Calvinism.

And his denial of duty faith was embraced by several leading

Calvinists in John Gill's day. Some believe that Gill himself stopped short of embracing

Brine's rejection of duty faith, and I think it's true that Gill never explicitly agreed with the idea that unbelievers have no duty to believe in Christ, but the influence of Brine's rejection of duty faith becomes clear, nevertheless, in other ways in Gill's writings.

Gill seems to try to explain away or downplay any passage of scripture where unbelievers are commanded to believe or repent.

And by the way, this would be my answer to people who deny that faith is the duty of unbelievers.

They're commanded to believe, right? If God commands you to believe, you have a duty to do it. And the same argument that Brine uses against faith would equally work against the 10 commandments.

I don't have the ability to be perfect as my father in heaven is perfect, but I'm nevertheless commanded to do so, and I'm responsible to do so, and I'm held guilty if I don't.

And the same thing applies to faith. And if you don't believe that, then you are going to veer into all kinds of extremes or heresies.

Where was I? So Gill begins to object to terminology then that speaks of the gospel as an offer.

That's another flavor of the hyper -Calvinism that I listed for you. And Gill wrote a preface to a hymn book, and in the preface, he included this disclaimer.

He wrote, whereas the phrasing of offering Christ and grace is sometimes used in these hymns, which may be offensive to some persons and which the worthy author was led to the use of, partly through custom, not having been at the writing of them objected to.

In other words, he's acknowledging nobody'd ever objected to that kind of language before John Brine.

But, and he says, and partly he did this through his affectionate concern and zeal for gaining upon souls and encouraging them to come to Christ.

I can affirm upon good and sufficient testimony that Mr. Davis, that's the writer of the hymn book, before his death, changed his mind in the matter and disused the phrase as being improper, being too bold and too free for a minister of Christ to make use of.

So he's saying in the preface of this hymn book that includes hymns that invite people to come to faith and urge them to come to faith and speak of grace and salvation as an offer, he says, the guy changed his mind before he died.

And in fact, notice some crucial points Gil makes in those words. He virtually acknowledges that his objection to the idea that the gospel is an offer is an innovation.

This is a new idea. Nobody had objected to it before. And Gil and Brine and other high

Calvinists of their era were fully aware that these opinions went further than the magisterial reformers.

Calvin never said these things. And they weren't troubled by that, that they were going further than Calvin because they believed that they were continuing the reformation, refining

Calvinism and bringing greater clarity to the doctrines of grace. But the truth is they were moving into a realm of extremism that had been carefully avoided by the

Puritans and the reformers. Now, I have to keep moving. In the generation after Gil, all of these things became extremely controversial as you would predict.

And Gil's successor in the pulpit, you may remember this from our lectures this week, Gil's successor was

John Ripon, who was a man who clearly did not share Gil's concern about being too bold and too free and proclaiming the gospel as an offer to unbelievers.

Ripon brought Gil's congregation back to a more moderate stance on these issues.

But meanwhile, hyper -Calvinism was being taken to new heights by an eccentric preacher in England known as William Huntington.

Anybody ever heard of him? William Huntington, he went by the name the Coal Heaver. He called himself that, people called him that.

And he liked the name. He was a working man who sort of did hack theology.

He was, I would say, the Arthur Pink of his day. He wrote a lot, and a lot of what he wrote was good, but he had these hyper -Calvinistic tendencies that he pushed to an extreme that would have embarrassed even

Arthur Pink. Huntington was independent, pado -Baptist, hyper -Calvinist, whose chief influence was actually among Baptists, even though he would have been a baby baptizer.

He was a self -educated man who in some ways was a capable expositor.

He liked being called the Coal Heaver. That was a reference to his employment in his pre -conversion days.

And he pushed hyper -Calvinism to an unheard of extreme. He was a prolific author.

His books were well -read all over England. And you can download his works as well,

I think, for free on the internet if you're interested in reading from him. Huntington mingled antinomianism with hyper -Calvinism, and ever since, wherever you find hyper -Calvinism, you're gonna find strains of antinomianism.

Antinomianism meaning if you're elect and if you're saved, it really doesn't matter what you do. And so, hyper -Calvinists, especially hyper -Calvinist antinomians tend to be very careless in their personal lives towards the issue of sanctification.

Huntington's best -known successor in the development of hyper -Calvinism was

John Charles Philpott. He was a Baptist hyper -Calvinist who edited a magazine called

The Gospel Standard. And to this day, wherever you see a publisher or a magazine with the words

Gospel Standard into it, you can pretty much be sure that's a hyper -Calvinist piece.

The Gospel Standard, this magazine became a rallying point for the English hyper -Calvinist

Baptists. And in all of this, there were a few voices of moderation that pushed back, but hyper -Calvinism began to be a dominant force in England in those years.

One of the people who pushed back, in fact, I would say the leading voice of those days was

Andrew Fuller. Fuller stood against the advance of hyper -Calvinism and he called for a return to the

Calvinism of the Puritans. He was a Baptist pastor whose chief polemic against hyper -Calvinism was a tract called

The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, which is a great book, by the way. If you want to read something from an older writer that's really edifying, find

Andrew Fuller's The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. I imagine it's on the web as well.

You can find it. Fuller was unfairly derided by the hyper -Calvinists and called an

Arminian and a Latitudinarian. And to this day, I encounter a few

Calvinists here and there who are reluctant to read Andrew Fuller because they've heard that he's not a true

Calvinist. He's too low in his beliefs. Tom Nettles writes a great book where he explodes that myth.

His treatise on Baptist history is called By His Grace and For His Glory.

Tom Nettles. It's a great, fairly recent history of Baptists and he treats

Fuller in extensive detail and it's really good.

Fuller's works are available today if you know where to look. There's a three -volume set of his complete works that are available from Sprinkle Publication.

I think it's not being printed anymore, but you can find copies of it if you look. Fuller's Calvinism was strongly evangelical, missions -minded, warm -hearted, experiential in the good sense.

When Calvinists used the word experiential or experimental, they meant that it was a kind of practical application of holiness alongside

Calvinism. Now, I wish I had time to cover the history and development of hyper -Calvinism. I don't really.

I'll just say, however, that all of this, this growth of hyper -Calvinism in England set the stage for the launch of Spurgeon's ministry in 1855 when he came to London.

By that time in England, Arminianism on the one hand and hyper -Calvinism on the other hand had so polarized evangelicals in England that it's fair to say that the vast majority of churches and Christians belong to one extreme or the other, both bad.

Arminians on the one side, hyper -Calvinists on the other. Spurgeon, who held

Gil in high esteem, nonetheless warned about the influence of Gil, and I'm glad he did this.

I mean, he was just a young man at the time. It was very perceptive of him to be able to read the dangers in Gil's theology, but as a very young man, and perhaps owing to the influence of his father or his grandfather, he read

Gil with a critical eye, thankfully, and detected in Gil's writings this tendency towards hyper -Calvinism that Spurgeon himself rejected.

He suggested that Gil's ultraism, that's what he called it, ultraism, should be discarded, and he spoke of the, these are his exact words, the decadence of Gil's rigid system.

He wrote that in Commenting and Commentaries, the book he wrote to critique various commentaries, and like I said, he called

Gil the Coryphaeus of hyper -Calvinism, a choir leader, but then he added that if his followers never went any further than Gil, they wouldn't go too far astray, so he thought

Gil still was a helpful resource, but you just have to be careful of his extremes.

I mentioned this week that Ian Murray believes that that's an over -generous assessment, and in Murray's book,

Spurgeon and Hyper -Calvinism, he more or less disagrees with Spurgeon's assessment of Gil and says maybe

Spurgeon's warnings about Gil aren't strong enough. What Murray is saying, and I think Spurgeon actually would have agreed with Ian Murray, is that the strict followers of Gil, people who march lockstep with Gil, are already standing on the precipice of hyper -Calvinism and leaning over.

You read too much Gil, you'll be influenced towards hyper -Calvinism, and in his autobiography,

Spurgeon wrote this, the system of theology with which many identify Gil's name has chilled many churches to their very soul, for it has led them to omit the free invitations of the gospel and to deny that it is the duty of sinners to believe, and Spurgeon hastened to add that there are also many things in Gil's works that are nevertheless out of harmony with hyper -Calvinism, and Spurgeon had encountered hyper -Calvinism as a young man before he came to London while he was pastoring at Waterbeach, and that early encounter with people in the

Waterbeach church who were hyper -Calvinists seems to have prompted him to study the subject, and so he was braced for it when he went to London, and before he'd been at the

New Park Street Church in London for three years, he preached a sermon that was a brilliant attack on hyper -Calvinism.

His sermon was titled Sovereign Grace and Man's Responsibility, and he's defending the idea that God's sovereign grace coexists alongside human responsibility, which is what you have to believe to be a true

Calvinist. If you deny sovereign grace, you're an Arminian. If you deny human responsibility, you're a hyper -Calvinist.

It's that simple. Spurgeon preached that sermon at the Royal Surrey Garden, which is the place where he began to preach after the congregation outgrew the

New Park Street facility. That's where someone shouted fire the first Sunday he was there, and it ended in disaster, but he kept going back to the music hall and preaching to crowds of 10 ,000 people at a time, and you can imagine a sermon on hyper -Calvinism to a crowd of 10 ,000, it's not the kind of thing you'd expect to hear in modern

American evangelicalism, but there it was. Now, I want to read you, what time are we done?

Okay, so I won't go much further. I have a bunch of, no, no, it's okay.

If any of the questions can be answered by this, I'll read these to you. I've selected several excerpts from some of Spurgeon's sermons where he deals with hyper -Calvinism.

I've got like 10 pages of it, so I can't read it all anyway, so we'll just take questions and, there you go.

He keeps making me promise to come back. All right, so we'll take questions. All right, we'll just be dismissed.

It comes and goes, hyper -Calvinism. At the moment, I would say, I don't think there is a severe threat of looming hyper -Calvinist movement anymore.

I would not have said that in the early 1990s when the internet began to foster lots of discussion groups and theological forums, and I hung out on some of them, and they were rife with young hyper -Calvinists.

There's a tendency, I think, for lots of young men who, when they discover Calvinism, to immediately run to an extreme with it and flirt with hyper -Calvinism before they discover the fallacies of that way of thinking and leave it, and so there was a burgeoning online mass of hyper -Calvinists, or actually several little nests of really virulent hyper -Calvinists throughout the 90s on the internet.

I don't see much influence from them anymore. The denominations that tend towards hyper -Calvinist ideas, the outstanding one in the

United States, probably the most influential one, is the PRC. What's it, the

Protestant Reformed Church? Is that what that stands for? PRC. But, and you'll find individual hyper -Calvinists among the

Reformed Baptists and Sovereign Grace Baptists here and there, but I don't know of any,

I don't know of any leading evangelical speakers or figures right now who are pushing hyper -Calvinism.

I think John Gerstner flirted with, I'll get killed for saying this, but I'm gonna say it anyway.

John Gerstner flirted with hyper -Calvinism towards the end of his career.

He, in fact, bought into a lot of PRC doctrines. I think he was influenced by some of the leaders in the

PRC and began more and more to resist the idea that the gospel is an offer or that God loves the reprobate.

He rejected all of those ideas in one way or another. So. Are you, John MacArthur, Grace to you,

Grace Community Church, ever accused of being hyper -Calvinist? Okay, I'm forgetting

I'm supposed to repeat all these questions, so I'll start doing that. He asked whether John MacArthur or me or any of us are ever accused of being hyper -Calvinists.

I think every Calvin, every true Calvinist is going to be accused of hyper -Calvinism by Arminians.

And some people think they would define hyper -Calvinist as anybody who believes more strongly in the sovereignty of God than I do.

And so it depends on what perspective you're standing at, whether you. But those aren't really serious charges.

I've never had anyone, even Dave Hunt for a while, who despised

Calvinism and wrote a silly book against it and made some false charges.

Among those charges he made against John MacArthur, as far as I can recall, he did not accuse

John of being a hyper -Calvinist. He misrepresented his views and stuff like that, but I don't think he tagged him as a hyper -Calvinist.

But people who follow that brand of thinking, it's sort of the

Calvary Chapel mentality. Calvary Chapel's also turned very hostile to Calvinism in general around the beginning of the new millennium.

They had an author, George Bryson, who wrote a book that, I don't think it's in print anymore, and it wasn't very good because in attacking hyper -Calvinism he defended

Pelagianism, which is a rank heresy. So he got pilloried for that book, which was a bad criticism.

But even they don't usually call us hyper -Calvinists, but it's not unusual over the history of dialogue between Armenians and Calvinists for people who oppose

Calvinism to say, basically, that all Calvinism is hyper. I think, what was his name?

I forgot, the guy that, anyway. Yeah, there have been people who've made that argument, that any kind of Calvinism, if you take it to its logical end ends with hyper -Calvinism.

That's one of the arguments some Armenians like to use. The fact is, that's easily debunked by history.

Most of the very large missionary works, and in fact, the beginning of foreign missions is attributable to men with Calvinistic convictions.

So it's simply not the case that Calvinism historically has turned into hyper -Calvinism.

That's an offshoot that really starts with an Arminian presupposition, as I said.

The idea that you're not responsible to do what you're not able to do. That's the starting point of Arminianism.

And Arminians conclude, if you're not responsible to do what you're not able to do, then therefore you must be able to believe because scripture commands you to believe.

So faith is within the realm of human ability. It's not a gift of God. It's your own doing, which obviously contradicts the whole point of Ephesians 2.

The hyper -Calvinist starts with the same presupposition. You're not responsible to do what you're not able to do, but they conclude the opposite.

Well, therefore, you're not responsible to believe because you're not able to. But it's the same error at the root.

Yeah, that's a good question, and I don't know. I'd have to do a little research to find that out. His question was, when did the term hyper -Calvinism become the term that labels this kind of thinking?

And I'm not sure. Spurgeon used it occasionally. He didn't use it all the time.

And when he referred to Gill, like I said, he called it ultra -ism. But I would say probably sometime towards the end of the 19th century, the later 1800s, people began universally to just refer to it as hyper -Calvinism.

And there are lots of debates, by the way, today about definitions of hyper -Calvinism.

Who gets to define it? And the PRC don't like my definitions.

The five -hole list I gave you is part of an article that I wrote probably 25 years ago, and it was picked up by the

Metropolitan Tabernacle and published in their magazine, The Sword and the Trowel. And so it got quite a bit of exposure, and various hyper -Calvinists, various flavors of hyper -Calvinists worldwide have picked that apart, that article apart, again and again and again, because every hyper -Calvinist wants to define, they all pretty much acknowledge that there is such a thing as hyper -Calvinism, but they want to define it in a way that excludes them.

The PRC are very good at that. They'll deny that they are hyper -Calvinists, but they acknowledge that hyper -Calvinism exists.

Justin, yeah, right.

Yeah, that's a great observation. He's noting the fact that lots of people who buy into hyper -Calvinist theology also lack assurance of their own salvation.

And in fact, I think that's one of the reasons, perhaps, that Spurgeon himself took such a keen interest in refuting hyper -Calvinism, because as you know from his own testimony, he struggled for years before he was saved, but when he was saved, he immediately had deep sense of assurance.

And he was baffled, I think, by the number of people in the church who could not say with confidence that they were saved, not because they didn't believe, they believed, but they weren't sure they were saved because they didn't know how to be certain that they were one of the elect.

And so Spurgeon said, if you believe you are one of the elect, that's the telling signal.

And someone who's very steeped in hyper -Calvinism is gonna resist even that argument.

So yeah, there are other ideas that sort of are connected with hyper -Calvinism that you find in tandem.

As I said, lots of hyper -Calvinists are also antinomians. They believe that the law has no relevance whatsoever to a

Christian, and they're totally unconcerned about their own sin. And it seems almost like the opposite.

On the one hand, you've got people who are not sure they're saved because of their hyper -Calvinism. On the other hand, you've got people who are so careless about their own holiness that they believe that because they're elect, it doesn't matter what they do.

Another idea that goes hand in hand with hyper -Calvinism, and not always, you could be a hyper -Calvinist and not hold this view, but when you find this view, you've located a hyper -Calvinist, is a doctrine called eternal justification, the notion that if you're elect, you're eternally justified so that you are, even if you die before you come to faith, if you're elect, you'll go to heaven because you're elect.

So they don't even seem to connect effectual grace and conversion and repentance with the sovereignty of God and realize that the gospel uses means, that God uses means to draw people to Christ, and someone who has not come to faith can't be regarded as elect, at least we don't know if they're elect, and someone who dies without coming to faith, there's absolutely no reason to think he's elect, but a lot of that is lost on hyper -Calvinists because they're so swept up in the absolute dominance of the idea of divine sovereignty that they're scared of the idea of human responsibility, and so if you say someone must be a believer in order to be saved, you're putting too much weight on human responsibility, so it's a weird view, but yes, yes.

Please answer and put it on the phone for a video.

Okay. Thank you. Do you find hyper -Calvinists more among dispensationalist Calvinists or among covenant

Calvinists? The antinomianism that is inherent with that would seem to suggest that would be more of a dispensationalist approach.

Yeah, good question. He's asking, would you find hyper -Calvinism more among dispensationalists or covenantalists because dispensationalists have a tendency to be antinomian, so does that make them more susceptible to hyper -Calvinism?

The answer is no. It's a different kind of antinomianism, and I don't know of any dispensationalists who, there may be some, but I don't know of any significant voice that comes from dispensationalism that is hyper -Calvinist.

With dispensationalists, the tendency is the opposite. They all tend to be Arminians, and it's rare to find a dispensationalist who really is a solid

Calvinist even, so no, I think the brand of antinomianism that goes hand -in -hand with hyper -Calvinism is a different flavor than the kind of antinomianism you had with Charles Ryrie or whatever.

A typical, to give you an example of what I mean, antinomianism and hyper -Calvinism going hand -in -hand, the person

I would point to who's most contemporary, he's dead now, but would have been John Robbins. John Robbins inherited

Gordon Clark's constituency and perpetually republished

Gordon Clark's works and all that. Gordon Clark was a ultra -high Calvinist. I would classify him as a hyper -Calvinist.

People debate over really whether he was or not, but his brand of hyperism actually fostered an antinomian tendency as well, so are

Arminians saved? I think some of them are, yes, and Spurgeon would have agreed with that, by the way. He defended, say,

John Wesley against people who said, well, John Wesley couldn't be saved because he was an Arminian and Spurgeon was the one who famously said,

Calvinism is the gospel. He would not have agreed with people who wanted to take those words and twist it to mean that if you're not a

Calvinist, you're not really saved because you haven't embraced the gospel. That isn't what Spurgeon meant. What he meant was the core truth of Calvinism is simply this, and he said it in these terms, that the heart and soul of Calvinist doctrine is salvation is of the

Lord. That's a quotation from the book of Jonah. Salvation is of the Lord. In other words, God is the one who saves, and salvation and every aspect of our salvation is his work.

Where's Ephesians 2 again? So salvation is of the Lord. That's the heart of Calvinist truth.

It's also the heart of the gospel message. That is the central theme of gospel truth, that you can't save yourself, it's

God who saves you. So that's what Spurgeon meant, but he had many friends who were Arminians, and in fact, during the downgrade controversy, he addressed that very problem because a lot of his allies in that conflict, in fact, it may be true that more of the people who stood behind him, people in ministry, men who were fellow pastors, who stood behind him and stood with him, lots of them were

Arminians, and he was criticized for that, and some of his critics said, yeah, see, all the

Arminians agree with you, you're Arminian, and so he wrote a piece where he basically said, look, the difference between Calvinists and Arminians doesn't hinge on the cardinal doctrines of the gospel.

There are many Arminians who are saved. I wouldn't say, though, that all Arminians are saved, and I think there's a tendency in Arminian doctrine that we call it

Arminianism, but I think a lot of it is simply Pelagianism. Pelagianism starts with a denial of total depravity and the doctrine of original sin.

The Pelagian says you're born a blank slate, and you either sin or be righteous sheerly by choice.

It totally magnifies human free will, Pelagianism, and a lot of Arminians are actually

Pelagians. That's what I was saying about George Bryson when he wrote defense of the

Calvary Chapel attack on Calvinism. The doctrine he went after was original sin.

Original sin is not a uniquely Calvinistic doctrine. Calvinists believe in original sin, but they're not the only ones, and in fact,

I would say that's a necessary evangelical doctrine so that if you deny the principle of original sin, the idea that Adam's fall plunged us all into a state of sinfulness for which we are held guilty, if you deny that doctrine, then you're not an evangelical even.

You really haven't come to a sufficient understanding of the gospel, so lots of people who we might label

Arminians actually are Pelagians, so the Pelagian ones, no, I wouldn't count them as Christians, but I do know

Arminians who have a sufficient understanding of the gospel and justification by faith that I'm happy to embrace them as brothers.

John Wesley, for example, in his famous testimony, you remember he says his heart was strangely warmed because of what someone was reading the foreword to Luther's commentary on the

Book of Romans, which is a treatise on justification by faith, and when

Wesley preached on justification by faith, he preached a clear gospel presentation.

I'm not a fan of Wesley's. I think he was kind of a creepy guy, and he made it very hard for people to get along with him, and he was cruel to his wife, and there are a lot of things bad about him, but I wouldn't consign him to the ranks of the damned, and in fact, it was his good friend,

Whitfield, or let's say one -time friend. They were close friends as college students and then grew apart theologically, and Wesley treated

Whitfield with absolute scorn, but Whitfield was always kind to Wesley, and someone asked him, do you think

Wesley will be, will you see Wesley in heaven is the way they asked it, and he said, no, I don't think I'll see him in heaven because he'll be so far towards the front, and I'm back here.

We won't encounter each. So he was very gracious towards Wesley, but he believed Wesley was a genuine believer.

I kind of take that sort of attitude. You know, Jesus said a mustard seed of faith is sufficient to move mountains and mulberry trees, meaning,

I'm sure, that just the barest amount of faith is enough to begin the process of regeneration and salvation, and so I'm reluctant to say that just because somebody's theology is bad on some peripheral area, that they're not a believer, you'd have to deny an essential gospel truth for me to say,

I doubt your salvation, so my attitude towards Arminians is until they prove to me that they don't believe the gospel,

I'll embrace them as brothers. Well, let's take one more question. Yes, sir. George Bryson.

Yeah. Gloria and I begot Bryson, was he not?

Yeah, that's right. So he's asking about George Bryson and his role with the Calvary chapels, and this isn't really about hyper -Calvinism, but I'm happy to answer the question.

Yeah, the Calvary chapel denomination is a mixture of really good things and some bad things, and one of the really good things is that they always liked biblical preaching.

They wanted the preacher to open the scriptures and teach from it, which is always a good thing, and yet they also favored,

I think, untrained pastors. They didn't send their pastors to seminary or whatever, so a lot of guys who pastored

Calvary chapel churches were just men with warm evangelistic hearts who wanted to teach the scriptures and really weren't trained to do it well, so thankfully, they borrowed material from other sources.

They would actually take sermons from Martin Lloyd -Jones and John MacArthur and people like that and re -preach those same sermons, but the effect of that was

Calvinism began to grow in the Calvary chapels, and Chuck Smith wasn't happy with that, and around the beginning of the new millennium, he ordered a purge of Calvinism from the

Calvary chapels, and it was George Bryson's duty to be the apologist who would undermine

Calvinistic belief among the Calvary chapels, so he wrote this little book. I forget the title of it.

I have a copy of it. It's a horrible little book because he doesn't understand Calvinism, and it came out about the same time as Dave Hunt's book, and they were equally inept.

Hunt didn't understand Calvinism either. In fact, James White used to play two recordings that were made like three months apart, one where Dave Hunt is saying,

I don't know about Calvinism. I don't read the Reformers, and then three months later, he's saying, no,

I've studied the issue, and I know more about Calvinism than the average Calvinist or something like that, so and then he writes this book that totally misrepresents

Calvinism. Bryson's book was even worse, I think, because, as I said, he began his attack with the doctrine of original sin, which isn't a distinctively

Calvinistic doctrine, and ended up, I think, sort of fanning the flames of Pelagianism within the

Calvary chapels, and that bore a lot of bad fruit. That's been a bad thing, so.

Give us a short gospel presentation, a Spurgeon quote, and then close the program. All right, so he wanted a short gospel presentation.

The gospel begins in the Book of Romans and pretty much everywhere the

Apostle Paul goes into details about giving the gospel.

The gospel begins with bad news. Gospel means good news, but it begins with bad news. The bad news is that we are all fallen, sinful, and incapable of recovering ourselves from that condition, so that left to ourselves, all of us deserve punishment.

The wages of sin is death, Scripture says, and it also says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and Paul, in Romans, goes on for three chapters like that, convicting us of sin and convincing us that we are thoroughly sinful and that there's nothing we can do about it.

And when you get to that point, the heart says, how is this good news? How is that a positive thing?

But Paul suddenly shifts in the middle of Romans three and says, however,

God sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins, meaning that Christ took the guilt of our sins on himself, was sent to the cross, and died for our sin.

If the wages of sin is death, somebody had to die, and he did that in our place and in our stead, so that Scripture says, and in the most famous verse in Scripture, John 3, 16, whosoever believes in him won't perish, but will have eternal life, and that's how, because he not only fulfilled the law perfectly in every regard, there was no sin in him,

Scripture says he was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, so he didn't deserve to die, and yet he did die in our place.

He basically traded places with us so that he became sin for us,

Scripture says, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. That's 2 Corinthians 5, 21, and it means that Christ essentially traded places with us so that we get the benefit of his perfect life, and he has already paid the debt of our imperfect lives, and that is the gospel, that whoever lays hold of Christ by faith is united with him spiritually in such a way that we can stand before God clothed in a robe of perfect righteousness, despite our guilt, because the guilt's been paid for, and thereby we have eternal life, that's the gospel.

It's available only in Christ. He is the one Savior whom God has provided as a resource to save us from sins, and anyone who thinks he can save himself or clean up his own life sufficiently to please

God is going to be sadly disappointed, because Scripture says all our righteousnesses, all the good things we do are like filthy rags.

You don't need filthy rags, you need a robe of perfect righteousness, and only Christ can supply that.

A Spurgeon quote, I just got to look for a short one here.

Spurgeon's wordy. All right,

I'll read this. This is from a sermon preached on December 5th, 1858. This is a little bit long.

Called, Compel Them to Come In. He's responding to hyper -Calvinism here. Oh, my brother, I cannot let you put away religion thus.

No, think of what is to come after death. I would be destitute of all humanity if I should see a person about to poison himself, and if I didn't dash away the cup, or if I saw another about to plunge from London Bridge, and I didn't assist in preventing him from doing so, and I should be worse than a fiend if I did not now, with all love and kindness and earnestness, beseech you to lay hold on eternal life, to labor not for the meat that perisheth, but for the meat that endureth to everlasting life.

And then he says, some hyper -Calvinist would tell me I am wrong in so doing. I cannot help it.

I must do it. I must stand before my judge at last. I feel that I shall not make full proof of my ministry unless I entreat with many tears that you would be saved, that you would look unto

Jesus and receive his glorious salvation. But does not this avail?

Are all our entreaties lost upon you? Do you turn a deaf ear? Then again, I change my notes.

Sinner, I have pleaded with you as a man pleads with his friend, and if it were for my own life, I could not speak more earnestly this morning than I speak concerning yours.

I did feel earnest about my own soul, but not a whit more than I do about the souls of my congregation this morning.

And therefore, if you put away these entreaties, I have something else. I must threaten you.

I love that. That's just a sample of the passion with which Spurgeon gave gospel invitations.

And he was criticized by that with the hyper -Calvinists. Let me say, let me read one other thing that I remember is in here.

He says, this is from 1868, about 10 years later. I do not understand how it is that my bidding impenitent sinners to repent should in any way be likely to make them do so.

But I know it does because I see it every day. I love that. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for the free offer of the gospel. We thank you that scripture repeatedly pleads with us, invites us, urges us to come to Christ so that we know the way is freely open.

Thank you for that. And I pray for any who might be here today who have not responded to that plea that your spirit would urge them forward even now.

We give you the glory for that in Jesus' name. ♪ Things are to you, you command heaven ♪ ♪

Creation sings of you, what you do ♪ ♪

Be praised forever and ever, praise

God ♪ ♪

In addition, you sent your son to change our fate ♪ ♪

We were hopelessly imprisoned, he came to take our place ♪ ♪

Glory to the name, glory to the holy saints ♪ ♪

Ransomed the captives, your name is now a mystery ♪ ♪

To fear your children set apart, rose at heart ♪ ♪

Much your spirit now has caused us to no longer doubt ♪ ♪

Your love on us, adopted through your son ♪ ♪

Glory to the name of Jesus, glory to the holy name that saves ♪ ♪

Ransomed the captives, your name is now a mystery ♪ ♪

Glory to your name, glory to your name, glory to your name ♪ ♪

Given as to God through Jesus' name, esteemed

Lord ♪ ♪ This death has been made certain, glory now awaits ♪ ♪

Your glory to the name of that saves ♪ ♪

Ransomed the captives, your name is now a mystery ♪ ♪

Ransomed the captives, your name is now a mystery ♪ ♪

What is seen is no hope at all, our hope is in what is ♪ ♪

Christ coming again to bring us to heaven, a glorious day ♪ ♪

And to our home, the trials we face will fade ♪ ♪

Tears our voice, our hope, the sun is risen, rejoice ♪ ♪

Isn't found in things we possess, nor found in ♪ ♪

We'll see the king rejoice, rejoice, rejoice ♪ ♪

The gospel was promised by sages and prophets ♪ ♪ The scripture spoke of a son, descendant of David ♪ ♪

Yet uncreated, clothed in our flesh he would come ♪ ♪

Predestined to seek us, he took on our weakness ♪ ♪

Indicted death on us, but just as was spoken ♪ ♪

The grave could not hold him, the glorious son of God ♪ ♪

His name is Jesus, his name is

Jesus, his name is Jesus ♪ ♪

See his mercy proclaiming salvation to every nation ♪ ♪

His name, we're no longer strangers for Jesus our savior ♪ ♪

Has come to make us his own, to make his name

Jesus ♪ ♪

His name is Jesus, his name is

Jesus, his name is Jesus ♪ ♪

His name is Jesus, his name is

Jesus, his name is Jesus ♪ His name is Jesus Christ.

It's Jesus. Bless you and praise your name.

Thanks, Lord. We'll meditate. Awesome power, we will tell.

We'll speak of your salvation. And your abundant goodness.

Because you are greater than we can imagine.

You are to be prayed.

Every generation shall sing your word.

We'll sing about the Savior who came to earth.

To bear the sins of those he came to save.

You fill our hearts with wonder. We'll worship you forever.

Because you are greater than we can imagine.

Beautiful for us to fathom. To be prayed.

Worship you forever. Worship.

Worship. You fill our hearts with wonder.

We'll worship you forever. Worship.

Worship. Because you are greater than we can imagine.

And you are too beautiful for us to fathom.

Because you are greater than we can imagine.

And you are too beautiful to fathom.

Oh, you are great and greatly to be praised.

Yes, you are so great and greatly to be praised.

You are so great and greatly to be praised.

We, we are not ashamed. For the gospel is the power of God to save.

Yes, we are to proclaim.

Christ alone, the life, the truth, the way. The bruise of Jesus Christ, the crucified.

Risen, reigning at the Father's side. This foolishness to those who cannot see.

As they have believed. So let the church arise.

Let the anthem, till all the world has heard.

Of Christ the risen King. The song of love redeemed.

Only we shall sing. The hope of all the world.

Is Christ the risen King. Oh, we. And good morning to everyone here.

Welcome to Kootenai Church. If you please, would you stand this morning as we sing. Standing on the promises medley.

Standing on the promises of Christ my King. Through eternal ages let his praises ring.

Glory in the highest I will shout and sing. Standing on the promises of God.

Standing on the promises that cannot fail. When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail.

By the living word of God I shall prevail. Standing on the promises of God.

Standing, standing. Standing on the promises of God my

Savior. Standing, standing. Standing, I'm standing on the promises of God.

What a fellowship, what a joy divine. Leaning on the everlasting arms.

What a blessedness, what a peace divine. Leaning on the everlasting arms.

Leaning, leaning. Safe and secure from all alarms.

Leaning, leaning. Leaning on the everlasting arms.

Are you washed in the blood. In the soul cleansing blood of the

Lamb. Are your garments spotless, are they white as snow.

Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb. I'm standing, standing.

Standing on the promises of God my Savior. Standing, standing.

I'm standing on the promises of God. Yes, I'm standing, standing.

I'm standing on the promises of God. This is my

Father's Word. And to my listening ears.

All nature sings and roundly rings. The music of the spheres.

This is my Father's Word. I rest me in the thought.

Of rocks and trees, of skies and caesars.

And the wonders raw. This is my

Father's Word. The birds their carols raise.

The morning light, the lily white. Declare their

Maker's praise. This is my Father's Word.

He shines in all that's fair. In the rustling grass

I hear Him pass. He speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father's Word. Oh, let me ne 'er forget.

That though the wrong seems all so strong. God is the ruler yet.

This is my Father's Word. The battle is not won.

Jesus tonight shall be satisfied. And earth and heaven be one.

The wondrous mystery. In the dawning of heaven's praises.

Broken frail humanity. This now the light of life has come.

Look to Christ who condescended. Took on flesh to ransom us.

Oh, the wondrous mystery.

He the perfect Son of Man. In His dwelling, in His suffering.

Never trace nor stain of sin. See the true and better Adam.

Come to save the hell -bound man. Christ the great and sure fulfillment.

Of the law in Him we stand. Come behold the wondrous mystery.

Christ the Lord upon the tree. In the stead of ruined sinners.

Thanks no land in victory. See the price of our redemption.

See the Father's plan unfold. Bringing many sons to glory.

Grace of measure, love untold.

The wondrous mystery.

Slain by death, the God of life. But no grave could ever restrain

Him. Praise the Lord, He is alive. What a foretaste of deliverance.

How unwavering our hope. Christ in power resurrected.

As we will be when He comes. What a foretaste of deliverance.

How unwavering our hope. Christ in power resurrected.

As we will be when He comes. You may be seated.

Well, good morning. Your bulletin has a number of pertinent announcements in it, so please check that for some events that are coming up in the next couple of weeks.

There's one announcement that I need to make that is not in your bulletin. This pertains to the Israel trip coming up in February of next year.

If you want to be included in the mailing list, you want to register and reserve space for that, you get $100 off if you do that today.

There is no cost up front to that. The deposit will be much later as we're waiting to see what the news will be on, vaccine passports for that trip later on this fall.

So you can get on the list and get your $100 off if you register today. And if you need information on that, please come and see me afterward.

And our guest speaker today, I will reserve the introduction of him until later on in the service right before the message.

So please turn now, if you will, in your Bibles to 2 Timothy 2. This is the text that we're going to be looking at during the message today.

So you want to find a piece of paper or mark this place in your Bible, 2 Timothy 2. And we're going to begin reading at verse 14, and we're going to read through the end of the chapter, verse 26.

2 Timothy 2, beginning at verse 14. Remind them of these things and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers.

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed. Accurately handling the word of truth.

But avoid worldly and empty chatter for it will lead to further ungodliness and their talk will spread like gangrene.

Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, men who have gone astray from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place and they upset the faith of some.

Nevertheless, the firm foundation of God stands having this seal, the Lord knows those who are his and everyone who names the name of the

Lord is to abstain from wickedness. Now in a large house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also vessels of wood and of earthenware and some to honor and some to dishonor.

Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the master, prepared for every good work.

Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call on the

Lord from a pure heart. But refuse foolish and ignorant speculations knowing that they produce quarrels.

The Lord's bondservant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps

God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth. And they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil having been held captive by him to do his will.

Let us pray together. Our Father, we are so very grateful to you for the many blessings that we enjoy.

We today enjoy the freedom to gather here together and to worship you, to honor you. You have called us out of darkness into light that we may do this very thing.

And we are thankful that you have called us to serve you and to worship this morning. And we pray that you would strengthen us to do that in a way that is in accordance with your will, in a way that honors you as you desire to be honored.

We thank you for the joy that it is to call you our Father and to worship you, our great God. We do so knowing that you are gracious to us beyond what we deserve.

We deserve your wrath, and yet you have extended us mercy. You have granted us the gift of repentance and the gift of faith.

You have opened our eyes to see Christ, and you have made him precious to us. And you have done all of this for your own eternal glory and for the sake of your

Son and yourself. And we thank you for that, our blessed triune God. We thank you,

Father, for sending your Son. And we thank you, Holy Spirit, for opening our eyes to see and behold the Son, that we may give him honor and glory and come to him.

And we thank you, Son, for your sacrifice for us and what you have done to atone for, to pay the price for our sin, that we may know you and honor you and do so eternally.

We praise you, our triune God. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, may you receive glory both now and forever.

Amen. ♪ Please stand.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

The psalmist says in Psalm 25,

Make me know your ways, O Yahweh. Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me.

For you are the God of my salvation, in you I hope all the day. ♪

Speak, O Lord, as we come to you

To receive the fruit of your holy word.

Take your truth, plant it deep in us,

Shape and fashion us in your likeness.

That the life of Christ might be seen today

In our acts of love and our deeds of faith.

Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us

All your purposes for your glory.

Teach us, Lord, full obedience,

Holy reverence, true humility.

Test our thoughts and our attitudes

In the radiance of your purity.

Cause our faith to rise, cause our eyes to see

Your majestic love and authority.

Words of power that can never fail

Have their truth prevailed, Lord, I believe.

♪ Help us grasp the heights for your pledge for us.

Truth unchanged from the dawn of time

That will echo down through eternity.

And by grace we'll stand on your promises

And by faith we'll walk as you walk with us.

Speak, O Lord, till your church is built

And the earth is filled with your glory.

Our conference this last weekend, Friday and yesterday, was a success. Our conference speaker is here to preach for us this morning.

And it has been somewhat surreal, and I've heard this from a number of people in the congregation as well, it's been somewhat surreal for me to hear this voice from behind this pulpit.

I'm used to hearing it in my headphones, out in the yard and driving around. I have been listening and benefiting from the ministry of Phil Johnson now for about 20 years.

I don't think I have missed a single one of the Sunday School lessons that he has taught from the pulpit at the

Grace Life Sunday School class at Grace Community Church since at least 2004.

And I have listened to every address and message that he has given at a Shepherd's Conference since at least that amount of time, and probably going back from before that.

Phil Johnson is the Executive Director of Grace to You, and he teaches the

Grace Life pulpit, the Grace Life Sunday School class at Grace Community Church. He is an elder at Grace Community Church.

If his voice is going to sound familiar to you, it is maybe because you listen to Grace to You, the radio broadcast, and you hear

Phil's voice at the beginning of each of those broadcasts and then at the end of each one of those broadcasts.

Phil was the curator, maybe still is, I guess, of the Spurgeon Archive, and his vast knowledge of Charles Spurgeon was evident over this weekend.

And Phil is here for the first time in this pulpit, though yesterday he made a commitment that he will come back.

So this probably, hopefully, Lord willing, will not be the last time, but since this is his first time, in case

Phil needs a preaching aide to wave around with him, we have a polka -dotted handkerchief for you.

If you need to gesture wildly, this is here for you. And you'll find it on this little shelf underneath here.

Feel free to pull it out whenever you need it. Phil Johnson, please come. Thank you. Well, thank you for that, and I wish it was a tie because when

I packed my stuff to come, I forgot to wear a tie. I never preach on Sunday mornings without a tie, so I feel terrible about it, but, you know, here we are.

The handkerchief, I should tie it up like a bow tie. First time

I ever preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, I forgot to shave that morning, so that was even worse, right?

I'm sitting down there, and they're about to bring me up, and I rub my face and realize, oh,

I didn't shave this morning, so I'm looking like a homeless person. So here

I am again, a homeless person. All right, we read those 13 verses from 2

Timothy 2, and that's what I want to focus on. Basically, the second half of the chapter, 2

Timothy 2, 14 through 26, we'll get there, and I love this text, but I must confess to you that in a very painful and personal way, this, of all the texts in the

New Testament, challenges me and rebukes me, and I'll be honest, this is a passage of Scripture that steps on my toes pretty hard.

So I want to scan the context with you before we get into the text. The most familiar part of this passage is verse 15, where Paul urges

Timothy to be diligent in the quest to present himself before God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

And this is also in verse 17, where Paul compares false teaching to gangrene, and he even names two false teachers by name,

Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth. So he's instructing

Timothy to be faithful in every sense, be hard -working, be plain -spoken, and even be outspoken.

Outspoken because two chapters after this is where he's going to tell Timothy, preach the word, in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort, and do that, he says, even when people are begging to have their ears tickled with a more pleasing kind of storytelling.

And so Paul's final message to Timothy is an extended plea for him to have courage and proclaim the truth boldly and be prepared to defend the truth against those who don't like it.

And he gets right to the point in verses 13 and 14 of the opening chapter of the epistle with this command,

Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me and guard the good deposit entrusted to you.

And then notice in the very next text, the very next verse, verse 15, chapter 1, verse 15,

Paul names by name again two other ecclesiastical miscreants.

This is one of the saddest verses in all of Paul's writings. You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are

Phygelus and Hermogenes. And he tells Timothy, be faithful to guard the legacy

I'm giving you, even if it seems like you're the only one left. And that's his charge to Timothy.

It's an exposition, actually, of the closing exhortation he gave at the very end of his first epistle to Timothy.

1 Timothy 6 .20, O Timothy, guard the deposit that has entrusted to you.

And that remains Paul's main message to his protege all the way to the end of his life.

In fact, all of those familiar pastoral texts about rightly dividing the word of truth, and preach the word in season, out of season, be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry, all of that is an extension and an amplification of his desire to see

Timothy follow the pattern of sound words and guard the good deposit that had been entrusted to him.

It's all basically the same plea to Timothy. In fact, notice that expression, guard the deposit instructed to you.

That is not only the closing admonition of 1 Timothy, it's where Paul starts this epistle in 2

Timothy 1, verses 13 and 14. So he stresses throughout his writings to Timothy that faithfully guarding the good deposit is a continuous struggle.

It's a fierce striving that entails conflict and persecution and perhaps even martyrdom.

And so Paul keeps saying things to Timothy like, share in suffering for the gospel. All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Endure suffering. Ministry involves adversity and trouble. Faithful ministry is nothing less than spiritual warfare.

And both of the epistles Paul wrote to Timothy are filled with admonitions for Timothy to be strong and be courageous and wage the good warfare and fight the good fight of faith.

So this is not a new idea for Timothy, but that is precisely where our chapter starts on a militant tone.

Chapter 2, verse 3, share in suffering as a good soldier. Don't miss this.

Paul is likening pastoral ministry to soldiering, which is just one more reminder to Timothy that ministry involves warfare.

It's a battle. It's an unrelenting battle to proclaim and preserve the truth in a context where the truth is often met with animosity and opposition.

And it's not just the unbelieving world, but quite often and more and more often nowadays, even large segments of the visible church react to unpopular or inconvenient truths with overt hostility.

The time has come, as Paul said it would, when people will not endure sound teaching, but they have accumulated for themselves teachers to suit their passions.

They've turned away from listening to the truth, and they've wandered off into myths. And Paul is telling

Timothy, and by extension, he's saying to all of us as well, because we're all hopefully involved in some level of ministry.

Paul is telling Timothy, if you cater to that, if you're not engaged in the fight to guard the good deposit that's entrusted to you, then you're not being faithful to your calling.

Jesus said, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Remember that word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they'll also persecute you.

So Jesus says the same thing Paul says. All who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.

And here in 2 Timothy 3 .12, Paul tells Timothy that very thing.

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life will be persecuted, while evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse.

In other words, if you're looking for a career in a context where you never get any pushback, don't go into ministry.

You can't avoid conflict and be faithful in ministry. It was the Apostle John who was known as the apostle of love, who said, don't be surprised, brother, that the world hates you.

If you're so eager to be liked and affirmed, that you can't bring yourself to refute lies or refute false teaching, or do anything to reprove or correct or fend off the savage wolves that seem to roam in and out of the church these days in large hungry packs, if you're not willing to do that, then you have abdicated one of the main duties

Christ has given to all of his disciples. In fact, let me be totally candid. If you are so averse to conflict that you're unwilling to refute error or to correct the bevy of bad beliefs that Christians are currently experimenting with, then you're not fit to be, to call yourself a follower of Christ.

Because the qualifications given in Scripture for anyone who follows

Christ, and particularly those in church leadership, involve at least two duties.

The elder of the church must be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to refute those who contradict it.

And elders are simply a pattern for how the rest of us should be. That verse

I just quoted is Titus 1 .9, and Paul goes on to tell Titus, there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, and they must be silenced.

That's politically correct these days, isn't it? In fact, I like the more picturesque phrasing of the

King James Version. Their mouths must be stopped. And that's not an isolated or infrequent theme in Paul's pastoral writings.

His message to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20 was a charge for them to be alert, because grievous wolves were going to try and tear their flock to shreds, and Paul knew it, and he warned them, even from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.

Now think of that, he's speaking to the elders of this church, arguably one of the most important churches in the first century, if not the most important church in the first century, the church at Ephesus.

And he tells them, he's speaking to a group of elders, and he's saying, from among you is going to arise people to speak twisted things.

This is not exactly a winsome message, but it was a truth they needed to be told, and Paul wants

Timothy to be like that, to stand boldly for the truth. His opening admonition in his first epistle to Timothy is a directive telling

Timothy not to tolerate false teaching, and he makes it clear that this wasn't the first time he had talked to Timothy about this.

1 Timothy 1 verse 3, As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine.

I think Timothy knew who those certain persons were. My guess is Hymenaeus was one of them, because he keeps coming up.

But the apostle clearly wants Timothy, and not only Timothy, but every elder in that church, to be steadfast in exposing and refuting and silencing those who were trying to peddle false teachings within the church.

In other words, be faithful to guard the truth, and be faithful to guard the flock that God has entrusted to your care, and be faithful to guard the whole church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

But, in addition to all of that, he says, Be faithful to guard your own heart and mind and passions.

And that's the point at which this duty gets most personal. And Paul says it in a single sentence to Timothy in 1

Timothy 4 .16, Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching.

And notice the order. Watch yourself and guard the teaching. You want to be a guardian of gospel truth?

You first need to set a watch on your own heart and your tongue and your affections and your attitude and your mind.

And in short, guard your labor and your love for Christ. Verse 22 of our text,

Flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the

Lord from a pure heart. And that's the key verse of our passage. And this expression, youthful passions, actually covers everything from fleshly lusts, sexual lusts, to that pugnacious adolescent itch to argue and quarrel about everything.

Guard against that. In fact, that's the real point of this passage. And it's remarkable because it comes in this context where Paul is telling

Timothy to be courageous and be a good soldier and guard the deposit of the truth and not shy away from proclaiming and protecting the truth all in the face of guaranteed hostility from the enemies of truth.

But then, right in the middle of this epistle, we have this section that starts in verse 14 and goes to the end of the chapter.

And the message from verse 14 through the end of the chapter is a rebuke and a corrective to those of us who may find it a little too easy to be contentious.

And remember, this is where Paul urges Timothy to do his best to be a worker who doesn't need to be ashamed.

And he describes how to do that by handling the word of God rightly, by fending off those whose irreverent and erroneous talk is like gangrene, and by cleansing himself from that which is dishonorable, and by correcting his opponents.

And all of those things are aspects of the spiritual warfare that we are called to serve as soldiers in.

So he's not for one moment backing off the command to be a good soldier for Jesus Christ, but he is describing what a truly good soldier is like.

And this is what stands out so starkly in our passage. Paul begins and ends with admonitions reminding

Timothy not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers, but rather to be kind to everyone, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

And he tells Timothy not to engage the purveyors of verbal gangrene in empty chatter, he says.

And the ESV says, irreverent babble. And the NIV says, godless chatter.

And the Phil Johnson paraphrase might say, fruitless Twitter battles. I told you this text steps on my toes pretty hard.

So it's an appeal with instructions on how we are supposed to do discernment and theological polemics.

Being pugnacious, that is, looking for and loving all those all -out theological bar brawls.

That's a disqualifying characteristic for leaders in the church. We must be faithful to guard the truth, but here is how we must do it.

Verse 24, be kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil.

Now, one more word about the immediate context, and then I'm going to read the whole passage again.

In the first half of this chapter, Paul has employed three metaphors in quick succession.

The soldier, verse 4, the athlete, verse 5, and the farmer, verse 6.

And Paul deliberately mixes those metaphors in order to highlight three characteristics of faithful ministry.

And so taking them in reverse order, you have the virtues of hard work, symbolized by the farmer, determination, exemplified by the athlete, and readiness to fight, which is represented by the soldier.

Those are essential qualities that he's going to bring up again in our passage, which is the second half of the chapter.

And by the way, what Paul commends about the soldier is not a combative nature, not a love of warfare.

This is about readiness, focus, faithfulness, endurance, a willingness to suffer, and a love for and a devotion to the cause for which he fights.

That's what's noble about a soldier. Paul is not commending brutishness or venom or malice.

He's not suggesting that every disagreement needs to be answered with sharp -tongued severity and snark.

He's not urging Timothy to deal with the gangrene of Hymenaeus by amputating the infected part of the body with a battle axe.

He's not calling Timothy to war against every member of the flock who simply doesn't get it.

On the contrary, he's going to say in our passage that we as ministers are not lords over the flock, much less are we warlords under orders to be constantly on the attack.

We're the Lord's servants, and therefore the default response to our opponents should be

Christ -like gentleness. Remember that Jesus did say of himself, I am gentle and lowly in heart.

So now look at verse 11. And here Paul seems to be quoting something that would be familiar to Timothy.

He calls it a saying. It's a reliable saying, he says, trustworthy. It's arranged in poetic fashion, so this is probably a hymn or a portion of a hymn about martyrdom and the blessing of suffering for Christ's sake.

I'm guessing this is probably a chorus that was sung in worship in the first century churches. If we have died with him, we will also live with him.

If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he will also deny us.

If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. You see how poetic that is?

It'd make a great worship tune. One of you musicians should set it to music, and we can sing the last verse twice.

I'm kidding. But that little poem, that little hymn, is the lead -in to our text, and it's a hymn that would have made a great theme chorus for this week's conference, because it's all about faithfulness, and not only both the enduring faithfulness of God, who remains faithful even if we are faithless, and the hymn also celebrates the rewards of living faithfully.

If we endure, we will reign with him. And we've talked about Spurgeon. He's pretty much the embodiment of that.

And a good example of what this text calls for. And right after that hymn, then we have our passage.

And I'm going to read it again, this time from the ESV. Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words which does no good, but only ruins the hearers.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene, among them

Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened.

They are upsetting the faith of some, but God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal, the

Lord knows who are his, and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.

Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable.

Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.

So flee youthful passions, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace, along with those who call on the

Lord from a pure heart, and have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies. You know that they breed quarrels, and the

Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses, and escape from the snare of the devil, being captured by him to do his will.

Now that passage is in effect Paul's own commentary on 1

Timothy 4 .16, which is where he told Timothy, keep a close watch on yourself, and on the teaching.

Here he's simply expounding on that simple two -pronged command. How can we guard ourselves, and guard our teaching?

How do we do that? Our passage is a fairly comprehensive answer to that question, and it's a three -fold answer.

Paul says, first of all, verse 15, be an approved workman. Guard your own teaching.

Second, be a sanctified vessel. Guard your heart. And third, be a humble slave.

Guard your attitude. It's all right there in this passage, and we'll look at these one at a time. So here's how to be a faithful guardian, in three points, if you want to take these down.

First of all, be an approved workman. Guard your own teaching. And one intriguing fact that is obvious from even a cursory study of Paul's New Testament epistles is that the early church was beset with heretics and false teachers from the very beginning.

In fact, all of Paul's epistles, except Philemon, deal with problems that stemmed from false teaching in the church, all in the first century.

And the apostles John and Peter, likewise, had to address and correct significant doctrinal errors in every one of their epistles.

Jude, you could throw in there as well. And even in Christ's letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, a major recurring theme throughout

Christ's letters to the churches is the damage that has been done in those flocks by heretics and false prophets and unorthodox teachings and antinomian behavior and even rank apostasy that had already affected those churches from within.

And one other thing the New Testament stresses is that false teaching from within the visible church is a far greater threat to the spiritual health and well -being of the church than all of the combined persecution, antagonism, ridicule, or any other kind of opposition from the world.

Satan's primary attack on the church is not being carried out by atheists to openly despise

Christianity and deny the truth of Scripture. But the most relentless and effective assault on the body of Christ is an attack that comes from within the visible community of professing

Christians. The devil disguises himself, Scripture says, as an angel of light.

2 Corinthians 11. That's verse 14. Here's verse 15 of 2 Corinthians 11.

His servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. In other words, they come into the church and they inject false beliefs and corrupt teachings that, here

Paul says, they spread like gangrene. That's an awful picture. And Paul even names these two examples.

Verse 17. Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth saying that the resurrection has already happened, they are upsetting the faith of some.

Now let's talk about this guy, Hymenaeus especially. He was a real rogue. He was the

Rob Bell of the first century. He never met a heresy he didn't like.

Paul mentions him the first time in 1 Timothy 1. Verse 20.

You find him linked up with Alexander and apparently that's the same

Alexander the coppersmith mentioned in 2 Timothy 4 where Paul says, he did me great harm.

So whatever Alexander was doing was destructive both to faith and to morality.

He was probably teaching a blasphemous corruption of the principle of grace that fostered some kind of lewd or lascivious behavior because Paul says

Alexander and Hymenaeus had abandoned both faith and a good conscience and made shipwreck of the faith.

And he says, I have handed them over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme. And what

Paul is saying is there that he was using his apostolic authority basically to excommunicate them from afar.

But Hymenaeus is still troubling the church and now he has a new partner.

He's linked up with Philetus and together they're peddling a preterist view of New Testament eschatology.

In other words, they're claiming that all the end times prophecy that really matters has already been fulfilled up to and including the resurrection of the dead.

That's already happened. That's preterism. And this of course was a full frontal attack on a cardinal doctrine of the

Bible that Jesus himself had promised the resurrection of the dead in John 5, 25.

Truly, truly I say unto you an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the

Son of God and those who hear will live. And I think Hymenaeus was probably telling people that the resurrection was only a spiritual rebirth not a literal bodily reality.

He might have even been quoting Paul's words from Romans 6, 11. Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God through Jesus Christ.

In fact, there were half a dozen ways these guys might have tried to justify this heresy.

We know that because there are people today teaching that. The same techniques that heretics today use to try to twist the scripture.

And I expect that Hymenaeus and Philetus were a whole lot like the hyperpreterists that we have today.

All of them are quarrelsome and arrogant and trying to pass themselves off as imminent scholars.

Always spoiling for an argument and convinced that the only reason anyone would ever refuse to debate them is that their arguments are just unassailable.

I don't know if you've noticed the people who peddle those doctrines today. They always seem to be brimful of bombast and intoxicated with their own fleshly arrogance.

And Hymenaeus had to be like that. Because Paul had already turned him over to Satan and now he's back with a new sidekick still enticing people to stray from the truth.

And the error here was toxic and spiritually significant.

Something about this particular heterodoxy had a peculiar tendency to foment debauchery and destroy genuine faith.

According to verse 16, these guys were leading people into more and more ungodliness. And even verse 18, destroying the faith of some.

Which is exactly what preterism tends to do. And so Paul names these men and he singles them out for public disapproval.

And he says precisely what their basic error was. He likens their influence to gangrene.

And it's clear that these guys posed a profound threat to the church having already overthrown the faith of some,

Paul says. So you might expect him to mount a vigorous and detailed argument against their aberrant doctrine.

Let's answer it. In a different context, 1 Corinthians 15, that's exactly what

Paul does. Meticulously refuting the notion that you can be a Christian and not believe in the doctrine of bodily resurrection,

Paul refutes it. But here, notice, he doesn't do that. He just scorns the pretense of their enlightened scholarship by calling it profane and vain babbling.

He says it's vacuous, it's superficial, it's frivolous words to no prophet whose only fruit is the ruin of the hearers.

And he simply tells Timothy, don't waste your time quarreling about this stuff. Now, clearly,

Paul does not mean that they should ignore it. Paul himself doesn't ignore it. He names it, and he simply dismisses it for what it is.

And he's signaling everyone on all sides that this is a bad doctrine, and it doesn't deserve to be treated with any kind of scholarly gravitas.

And again, bodily resurrection is one of the core issues of Christian conviction.

And so the doctrine that was at stake is by no means a trivial thing. Paul declares its importance in 1

Corinthians 15 where he says, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.

So he wouldn't say this is a trivial error, and he shows his commitment to the importance of this doctrine by painstakingly answering it in that epistle to the

Corinthians point by point for the sake of the people in Corinth who were confused by it. So what's the difference here?

Why doesn't he do that here? Well, it's simple. Here, the question is whether he should engage people like Hymenaeus and Philetus in a prolonged debate about the issue.

And Paul says, no. Charge your people before God not to quarrel about words.

He's not saying that words are unimportant, especially matters of faith and doctrine. As a matter of fact, words are vitally important.

Don't forget that in chapter 1, Paul had told Timothy, hold fast to the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me.

Guard those words. But here in our chapter, he's not saying not to get in, he's not saying let the words, ignore the words.

He's saying just don't get into a protracted argument with somebody who has already refused correction because verbal sparring with someone like that is a worthless waste of words.

It's just words. So chapter 1, verse 13 says, hold fast the pattern of sound words.

And this verse means don't get drawn into arguments over mere words.

So that the person devoted to propagating heresy isn't going to gain anything from your squabbling over words anyway other than a widening of his own audience.

Verse 16, it will just lead people into more and more ungodliness and their talk will spread like gangrene.

And by the way, Paul is going to return to this point in verse 23, have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies.

So then the question is, what is the best response to a deadly error, even a damnable heresy like the hyper -preterism of Hymenaeus and Philetus, what should people do instead of quarreling about words with people who have already swerved from the truth and overthrown sound words with unsound ones.

What do you do? Paul's answer to that is the familiar command of verse 15, do your best to present yourself to God as approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed rightly handling the word of truth.

Now, so many people have done wonderful expositions of that verse that I don't need to belabor it here, but you know,

I'm sure that the English expression accurately handling or rightly dividing the word, it's translated from a single

Greek word ortho tomeo which literally means make a straight cut, cut it straight.

Paul is telling Timothy handle God's word carefully, interpret it correctly, cut it straight, teach it plainly without revising it, without adding to it, without taking away from it, without twisting it.

You're not working with God's approval if you're not doing that. And if you're not doing that, he suggests, you ought to be ashamed.

But in this context, he's also making a bigger and even more specific point. He's telling

Timothy that the optimal and most important and most consistently effective way of being faithful to guard the good deposit that's entrusted to you is to devote yourself to the diligent study of God's word, to handle it correctly and carefully, and to do all of that as unto the

Lord for his approval, and that's the actual point, be an approved workman and work hard to guard your own teaching from error.

And in the process, you'll do more to preserve and propagate the truth than you ever could do through a purely polemical, argumentative approach.

Instruction is a better way to deal with error than taunting and insults.

And now, he's not saying, like some people do today, that we should never engage in any kind of argumentation about doctrine, because this is after all the

Apostle Paul, who was by no means averse to pointing out heresies and refuting them, as I said earlier in all of his epistles, and in fact virtually every one of the

New Testament epistles, no matter who's writing, you have doctrines, false doctrines, exposed and debunked carefully and emphatically and uncompromisingly.

And Paul did it with more relentless intensity and energy than anybody else. Read the book of Galatians, which is an extended attack on a false doctrine.

And so he's not telling Timothy to do something different than that, because no one hated false doctrine with more passion than the

Apostle Paul. And he had it all the time. False teachers stalked his trail, sowing confusion in every church he ever planted, speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after him.

There's just no way Paul would have discouraged Timothy from refuting the error.

But here's what I want you to see. How we refute error is vitally important. Paul did not aspire to be a full -time polemicist, and nor did he want that for Timothy or any other church leader.

In Acts 20, when he tells the Ephesian elders, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

He then says, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock. In other words, he's saying don't get so fixated on the wolves that you lose focus on yourself or your own teaching or the flock that's been put in your care.

And in the sentence that immediately precedes that command, he reminds them what his own style of ministry was like.

He says, I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God, doctrine and training in righteousness, as well as reproof and correction.

Paul's reproofs and rebukes and exhortations were always tempered with complete patience and teaching, and that's precisely how he wants

Timothy to teach. Now Paul, of course, was capable of sharp rebukes and stern warnings and harsh words and even biting sarcasm.

There are occasional examples of all of those things in Paul's writings, but they're fairly rare, and the point is that was never his default tone.

1 Thessalonians 2 .7, he says, we were gentle among you like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.

And what gave Paul the ability to remain both dignified and gentle even when the most gangrenous kind of false teaching reared its ugly head was his unshakable confidence that God is sovereign and God is steadfast in his faithfulness.

Notice verse 19, right on the heels of describing the destructive impact of Hymenaeus and Philetus, he says this, but God's firm foundation stands bearing this seal, the

Lord knows who are his and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.

Two statements, both of them borrowed by Paul and paraphrased, but they're right out of Numbers 16.

The Lord knows those who are his, let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.

Interesting that the two statements also emphasize one of them, divine sovereignty, the other, human responsibility.

And again, Numbers 16, that's the passage that tells about the rebellion that was led by Korah, where the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the rebels, and the point

I think Paul is making here is that if we stand for the truth and speak up for the truth and proclaim the truth in the face of error,

God himself will humble the rebels. And that part isn't really our job as guardians of the truth.

We're not called to be God's avengers. The real challenge for us is to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time, he may exalt us.

And one thing is clear, Paul did not share the combative temperament that so many people today associate with discernment.

He was nothing at all like those podcasters who say they're doing discernment ministry when they just seem to relish the conflict.

I know you've seen them. Their native mode of expression is harsh and caustic and hypercritical and always bitterly sarcastic, always cantankerous, constantly quibbling.

That attitude disqualifies a man from eldership in the church. 1 Timothy 3 .3

says an elder can't be a drunkard and he can't be a lover of money and sandwiched right between those two disqualifying statements is this one.

He must not be pugnacious but be gentle, peaceable. After all, true discernment is motivated by the

Holy Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.

There is not a hint of bellicosity anywhere in that list. So by all means, guard the truth, but start by guarding your own teaching, including the tone and the temperament with which you teach.

Does it make you uncomfortable for me to dwell so long on that particular point? Because it makes me uncomfortable.

Doubtless, you will quote to me this proverb, Physician, heal yourself. If you want to point out that there have been a few times when

I might have seasoned my own words or salted my blog posts with a little grace,

I'll hang my head in remorse and plead guilty. I've already admitted that this section of Scripture convicts me, but notice how prominent this theme is in our passage.

It's where Paul starts and ends. Verse 14, don't quarrel about words. Verse 23, have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies, because you know that breeds quarrels.

And then from that verse to the end of the chapter, he keeps stressing the need to be gentle and patient rather than harsh and pugnacious.

So we're not yet done with this point. We need to come back to it again before we finish this text.

But that's the first thing we have to do in order to be faithful guardians of the deposit we're called to steward.

Resist being quarrelsome. An ill -tempered, contentious spirit is the log in the eye of everyone

I've ever known whose only real passion is to call out the errors of other people. And if that's your approach to discernment, if your polemical style looks and feels like gamesmanship, you're doing it wrong.

Paul says it like this, be an approved workman. Guard your teaching. Guard your own teaching first of all.

Here's a second duty for the faithful guardian. Number two, be a sanctified vessel. Guard your heart.

In verse 20, Paul employs an analogy that was never far from his mind, and it's the idea that human beings are vessels made by God for His own infinitely wise and sovereign purposes.

Some for honorable uses, some for dishonorable. So that while they're all useful, they're not all equally honorable.

Their dignity is determined not by what they're made from, but what they're made for.

For example, you might have a spittoon of solid gold, but it's still just a thing to be spit into.

On the other hand, you might store jewels and money in a container made of clay. That is a vessel for honorable purposes.

And by the way, Paul borrows this analogy from the Old Testament. It's a famous one rooted in Jeremiah 18, where God is the great potter.

It's the same word picture that's mentioned in Isaiah 29, 16, and also the book of Lamentations.

Here's Lamentations 2, verse 4. The precious sons of Zion, worth their weight in fine gold, how they are regarded as earthen pots.

The work of a potter's hand. Earthen pots, worth their weight in fine gold, but that's not because of anything intrinsic in them.

Their immense value is owing to the purpose that the potter has designed them for. And Paul uses exactly that imagery in 2

Corinthians 4, 7, where he says this about being entrusted with the truth of the gospel.

We have this treasure in jars of clay. Treasure in clay pots to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

So that we, that's you and me, we're like jars of clay. We're crude. We're inconsequential.

We're without much intrinsic value or true beauty. And whatever beauty or value we have is fading.

But we are useful to the Lord for a holy purpose that gives us inestimable worth and dignity.

And therefore, Paul says, it behooves us to keep ourselves pure. Be a sanctified vessel.

Guard your heart, verse 21. If anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.

Now notice, this is our duty. God's sovereign will to save us from our sin doesn't nullify our duty to mortify the sin.

And in fact, look back at verse 19. These two statements that are adapted from number 16 expressly affirm, as I showed you, both divine sovereignty and human responsibility.

The Lord knows who are His. That's God's sovereignty. And let everyone who names the name of the

Lord depart from iniquity. That's human responsibility. And in verse 21, Paul is merely expounding on that duty.

He's stressing the principle of human responsibility. So verse 19. Depart from iniquity.

Verse 21. Cleanse yourself from that which is dishonorable. And here's how, verse 22.

Flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace, along with all who call on the

Lord from a pure heart. So flee what's unholy and follow what's holy.

And of course, the context, as we've already seen it, makes it clear that one of the youthful passions that we have to flee is that sort of biting combativeness that young men are especially prone to.

Flee that. He's not just talking about sexual lusts. He is talking about that, but more.

And it's clear that even that isn't all he has in mind. The Greek term epithumia speaks of evil desire.

That's all it is. Any evil desire. The NIV says the evil desires of youth. And the term is just that broad.

It signifies a covetous craving for something that cannot be righteously or lawfully obtained.

And that covers everything from the arrogant, pharisaical sense of superiority to any other kind of fleshly self -gratification.

Most translations say lust, and epithumia is often used for that to signify concupiscence, sexual lust.

In 1 Peter 2 .11, Peter uses this same word, epithumia, when he says the passions of the flesh wage war against your soul.

And that is true of all youthful passions, including the proud, youthful arrogance as much as the burning sexual lust.

All of those things wage war against your soul. So guard your heart and mortify those dishonorable passions because, verse 21, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.

So to review, verses 14 -19, be an approved workman, guard your teaching.

Second, verses 20 -22, be a sanctified vessel, guard your heart.

And now third, verses 23 -26, be a humble slave, guard your attitude.

Notice, verse 24, Paul calls Timothy the Lord's servant, and the

Greek word there means slave. This is talking about someone who is literally owned by his master, an abject slave.

It's not a server in the restaurant, but an abject slave. 1 Corinthians 6 -19, you are not your own, you were bought with a price.

A slave. And that's how every Christian ought to self -identify. And pastors in particular, the pastor is not the

CEO of the church. Even the pastor is the Lord's servant, and the task he has been given involves shepherding and teaching.

And Paul is speaking to Timothy here as a pastor and saying your work involves leading but not lording it over those who are allotted to your charge.

Jesus said if anyone would be first, he should be last of all and slave of all. So cultivate the attitude of a slave, and not the arrogance of a

Pharisee. You know, Paul himself had been trained and lived for years as a Pharisee, a pedophagic non -theological nitpicker.

Passionate about ceremonial orthodoxy. Literally to the point of violence.

Here's Paul's own testimony about that. Acts 26 verses 10 -11 I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death,

I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in all the synagogues, and I tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them,

I persecuted them even to foreign cities. Chasing believers all around the

Roman Empire just to persecute them. That was Paul's full -time occupation prior to his salvation.

Jesus represented the polar opposite style and temperament. Matthew 12 verses 18 -20

He will proclaim justice to the Gentiles, but he will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.

A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory.

So Jesus put the Pharisees to shame, but he did it chiefly by his teaching.

He didn't chase them around, carping at them about their theological errors.

They did that to him. And he answered all their challenges. And he admonished his disciples about the evils of the

Pharisees' hypocrisy. In a long discourse in Matthew 23, and that discourse is filled with stern, plain -spoken words of woe and warning.

It actually makes seven formal pronouncements of doom against them. Woe and condemnation.

But he was never unkind or abusive. And significantly even when he stopped

Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road, it was not with harsh words of condemnation, but rather a tender appeal.

Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And that encounter changed everything about Paul, including the ruthless way he handled his theological opponents.

His attitude after that was markedly different. As I said, he used both stinging sarcasm and severe words of condemnation about the

Judaizers because of their relentless efforts to confound the gospel and mix it with law.

And all of that was leading the Galatians astray. And Paul also told Titus that the lazy

Cretans needed sharp rebuke. In Acts 3 .10, he speaks directly to Elimus, the magician.

And he says, you son of the devil, enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the

Lord? That is a sharp rebuke, right to his face. And as we've seen, sharp rebukes are sometimes necessary, but not all the time.

And sometimes, even in the face of gross evil, a sharp rebuke is inappropriate.

On one occasion, Paul gave a sharp rebuke to the high priest, but he apologized when he realized whom he had rebuked.

His fierce cruelty and that brutal callous, savage zeal for condemning and punishing all of his adversaries is utterly gone in the born -again

Paul. And you see that most clearly right here in our text. He tells

Timothy, verse 24, the Lord's servant must be kind to everyone, patiently enduring evil.

I think he means it. In fact, there's no doubt he means it. This final paragraph of 2

Timothy 2 returns to the theme that ties this whole passage together, and now he summarizes the point as plainly as possible.

Verse 23, have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies. You know that they breed quarrels.

Now obviously, not every controversy can be classified as foolish and ignorant.

I'll say it again. Paul himself was at the vortex of controversy throughout most of his ministry.

Throughout all of his ministry, really. And it was controversy over key tenets of gospel truth.

He wasn't, Paul wasn't arguing with fresh seminary graduates over the fine points of Clarence Larkin's dispensational charts.

Maybe if he saw those charts he would, but he didn't. He was defending core truths of the gospel.

But sometimes controversies over those cardinal doctrines can become foolish and ignorant as well.

Remember, Hymenaeus and Philetus taught a doctrine that in effect denied the future bodily resurrection of the saints, which is no trivial error.

But Paul doesn't engage them in controversy, and he doesn't want Timothy to do that either. Hymenaeus' well -established unteachability made controversy with him useless and therefore foolish.

Paul would have no doubt patiently instructed anyone who was merely confused by that error, the way he did in 1

Corinthians 15. But he was not going to legitimize Hymenaeus by engaging him in a dispute.

The apostle Paul was nothing like those people whose chief ministry is using the internet to maximize the scandal of every doctrinal error they can find.

Paul rejects that kind of controversy -mongering because it engenders strife.

It breeds contentiousness and more and more quarrels among foolish, unlearned people whose passions are fueled more by their own ignorance than by their understanding of Scripture.

Insults and derision are of no help to people who are merely confused.

An unkind and abusive polemical style can literally drive people deeper into error.

Proverbs 26 .21 As charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife.

Proverbs 15 .1 A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

Romans 12 .21 Overcome evil with good. The brutal arrogance that you see so often in online discussion forums is clean contrary to the true aim of a godly teacher.

Verse 24. The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, and given the context here, he means gifted and eager to teach rather than always itching to dispute.

But gifted, eager to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

That's the actual goal. Not to condemn people, but to deliver them from the strongholds of error.

God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil.

That's the goal. Paul's words to Timothy about this are simply too numerous and too emphatic to just brush them aside.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God does not consist in endless disputation, and the weapons of our warfare are not carnal.

In fact, let me say this as candidly as possible, and I'll point this at some of my brothers out there who may hear recordings of this, who think themselves especially gifted in the realm of discernment or polemical theology.

If you want to be a guardian of the truth, but you consistently ignore or even throw scorn on the clear message of this text, you sacrifice a significant amount of credibility in everything else you say.

Rational people won't take you seriously, nor should they. And if you really want to be a faithful guardian of the truth, you need to guard your own heart against any temptation to ignore or downplay or explain away or minimize the truth of what

Paul is saying to Timothy in this chapter. Now, I hope if you know me at all, you know

I believe with all my heart that error must be candidly and clearly confronted and corrected, and by all means, put away falsehood and let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, but while you're doing that, also let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander also be put away from you, along with all malice.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you, and speak the truth in love.

That's how to be faithful as you guard the truth. Be an approved workman.

Be a sanctified vessel. Be a humble slave. In other words, keep a close watch on your own teaching.

Diligently guard your own heart, your imaginations, your thought life, your passions, your personal purity, and while you are at it, keep careful control of your attitude.

Wage the good warfare, having faith and a good conscience. And hold fast the faithful words as you have been taught, and you will be able, by sound doctrine, both to exhort and to convict those who contradict.

And if all of those things are in order, you will be a good soldier of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, give us firm hearts with regard to the truth.

Give us loving hearts for those whom you have placed in our pastoral care, in the circles of our friendship.

Give us generous hearts towards brethren with whom we may disagree, and give us tender, caring hearts for those in our world who are held captive by the lies of the devil.

May we always speak the truth in love, and may we be passionate for the truth, but may that passion always be tempered not by fleshly arrogance, but by the meekness and humility of Christ.

For his sake and in his name we pray. Amen. Let's stand and sing together

Jesus' name above all names. Let's sing it again.

us. Name above all names.

Beautiful Savior. Glorious Lord.

Embed me well. God is with us.

Blessed Redeemer. Give me rest.

Now before we leave, we're going to sing the Doxology a cappella. Praise God.

Have a great week.

Let the joy begin.

Let our songs ring out. Let our hearts be glad.

Love has banished doubt. See the empty cross.

All our debts are gone. Only grace remains.