Godless Teachers and Godly Content

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Please enjoy the following sermon. Well, we are in first Timothy chapter six, beginning in verse two, the second part of verse two.

At least if you have the ESV, you'll see that it's in the next paragraph, beginning with teach and urge these things.

But before we dive into first Timothy six and verse two, I want to reflect for a moment on a passage that we read in Matthew chapter five, beginning in verse seven.

In Matthew chapter five, we come to the beginning of Christ's famous Sermon on the

Mount. It is the longest recorded sermon from the Lord Jesus.

It is, in fact, the longest recorded sermon in all of Scripture. And it is estimated by most, including myself, and I'm sure many of you, to be the greatest sermon ever preached and ever recorded.

I said that last yesterday in our study, and I repeat it. And this is for good reason.

For one, it was preached by the incarnate

Son of God, not a man, a mere man, standing in front of a group of people speaking to men on behalf of God, but a man who was

God speaking to man as God. But if that wasn't enough, it contained some of the most striking and memorable and oft quoted teaching that this world has ever seen or heard.

And if you don't believe me, just consider it for a moment, all that we find in this sermon on the

Mount. It is in this sermon that we find the Beatitudes. It is in this sermon that we find the

Lord's Prayer. It is in this sermon that we find the Golden Rule. It is in this sermon that we find the famed commands to love one's enemies, not just your neighbor, but your enemies also.

To store up treasure in heaven, or as the children sometimes saying, right?

To build one's house, not upon the sand, but upon the solid rock of Christ's words.

And in the midst of the remarkable instruction that we find in this sermon on the

Mount, it's easy for us to gloss over some of the passages that we find, because simply there are just some that stand out and stand up with such height.

But I want to take us to maybe a lesser known section of the sermon on the

Mount in Matthew chapter five, or sorry, Matthew chapter seven. Sorry if I led you astray there, but Matthew chapter seven and verse 15.

In Matthew seven and verse 15, Jesus is teaching his disciples and he warns them about false teachers.

And he says in Matthew 7, 15, Beware of false prophets. Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

Now I don't know about you, but I count it very significant that of all the themes that get airtime in the greatest ever sermon in the history of the world, that the

Lord Jesus Christ devotes six verses, at least six verses, to dealing with the theme and the warning about false teachers.

And the language that he uses is significant also. That he pictures false prophets, not as those who are easily recognizable, but as those who sneak in, who disguise themselves as Christians, who come in the appearance of sheep, who appear at first to be meek and mild and docile and harmless, but who inwardly are ravenous.

Have you ever considered that word ravenous? Who are blood thirsty predators, who want nothing more and nothing less than to terrorize and kill and to devour

God's people. What do you do?

What do you find when you release a wolf in the midst of sheep in an enclosure and leave them overnight?

What do you find in the morning? But you find an enclosure full of dead sheep, false prophets who come dressed as one of the flock, but who inwardly are ravenous wolves ready to devour.

And a question that we might do well to ask ourselves from time to time is this, are we alert to this threat and prepared to defend ourselves against these kinds of false prophets?

I think that when most of us give thought to false teachers, we tend to think about some of the most obvious examples.

Just this week it was a happy coincidence I suppose, but our family was driving in the car and we were listening to, and it might surprise you, but I'm a fan of Christian hip hop, a song by Shy Lynn called

False Teachers. I think my whole family and especially my kids love it when

Shy Lynn gets to the part where he names the names of all of the false teachers.

And I think that probably most of us, if we're willing to admit it, think something like that, that false teachers are those that we can name in a song and they are obvious to us.

My mind goes to men, and I'll name a few names, like a man named Peter Popoff, who if you watch

Faith TV that's broadcast in Canada, he's televised on that channel. And he is a prosperity preacher who makes regular appearances on Christian television to sell, and this is not in any kind of irony, anointed miracle spring water to his followers.

That when purchased and then taken and then held helps to release your faith, these are the words directly from his mouth, bring breakthroughs and promises to unleash career success, financial freedom, and total restoration of the body.

Miracle spring water. And I went to the website this week and had a look at miracle spring water.

I do grant that he doesn't sell it, he simply asks for a donation in exchange for it.

And there's a disclaimer on the website in bright red text, it says, warning, do not drink the miracle spring water.

And I started to think to myself, it's interesting that this spring water can heal anything except the ailment that comes from drinking it.

Jesse Duplantis is another that might come to mind, who famously fundraised a 54 million dollar state -of -the -art airplane.

And during his fundraiser, he said that if Jesus lived today, he would have not come into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, he would have come in a private jet.

And so he needed this for his ministry. Or maybe one of the infamous pioneers of the prosperity gospel,

Oral Roberts, who gave his loyal followers an ultimatum in 1987. He declared that God had showed him that if his supporters did not donate 8 million dollars to his ministry,

God was going to take his life and whisk him away into heaven. And because his people clung held fast to his ministry, if you can read between the lines, this is essentially what had happened.

That Oral Roberts is coming to his donors and saying that I am a hostage being held for ransom by God himself.

And if you do not pay the ransom price, he is going to kill me. And alas, wouldn't you know it, he raised not 8 million dollars, but 9 million dollars.

And the Lord supposedly spared his life. Now I grant that these are downright ridiculous examples.

But the remarkable thing is that these very false teachers amass millions who will go after them.

I was reading one Pew Research study that found that as many as 46 % of American Christians to subscribe to, whether they know it or not, some form of the prosperity gospel.

And when we go to Africa, that number increases to 80%. Now if you are not fooled by these charlatans,

I ask you this, are you able to discern and identify wolves in sheep's clothing when they come in far more subtle terms?

What about those who outwardly hold views of biblical inerrancy, but who subtly tamper with the gospel?

Or as Martin Lloyd Jones once warned, who teach biblical truths, but then place all of their emphasis, all of the emphasis on all of the wrong things because a spoonful of sugar helps the poison to go down.

Or what of those in the reformed movement, and there are those in the reformed movement, in the words of one of my brothers, you probably know his name, he calls it the deformed movement, who are embroiled in a new controversy every single week.

And who are always, always attacking other brothers and sisters in Christ about the most trivial things.

They're the same men who would die fighting to defend the doctrines of grace and get in their interactions, seemingly possess none of it.

I agree with C .J. Mahaney who said, today the greatest challenge facing Christians is not persecution from the world, but seduction by the world.

It is what comes to us, not openly and overtly, but under the cover, dressed as a lamb, but dressed with a lamb with fangs.

Well today, in 1 Timothy 6, Paul does us a great service. He sets before us some of the sure ways that we can identify false teachers, and we need all to be able to do this.

He gives us concrete criteria that we can use to examine teachers by.

And in doing so, he gives us one of the greatest antidotes for their destructive teaching, namely, and it might come as a surprise, contentment, godly contentment.

So if you see, if you're a note taker, you'll see that our outline is two points today.

Two points, and we'll break the first point into a few sub points. But the first that we'll look at is this, how to identify godless teachers.

And we'll look at this in verses two through five. Let's read it together. In 2B,

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

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

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

Now as we come to this section, you will recognize if you've been with us this whole time that this is not the first time that Paul has addressed this idea, this theme of false teachers.

We saw it in chapter one, if you look there with me, beginning in verse three, where he spoke about those who come with different doctrine.

He said, you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, or this fascination that they had with Jewish myths and endless genealogies.

If we fast forward to first Timothy chapter four and beginning in verse one, we see here that he warned again that the spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, and that this would be accompanied by a searing or a seared conscience.

And now for the third and final time, we see him coming back to this theme.

He bookends his letter, in fact, with this idea of being watchful of those who come with different doctrines in chapter one and then again in chapter six.

And so maybe some of you are thinking, we've dealt a lot with teaching, we've dealt a lot with false teaching, but the reason why we need to preach it again is because Paul deals with it again.

And in each time, I assure you of this, that each time we get a different view, a more nuanced view of this concept of false teaching, so that when we put it together, it truly does help us to be fully prepared.

At verse two, as Paul comes here, he says, teach and urge these things. He really does this to convey the urgency of the matter.

And lest you be tempted to tune out, I want you to see this, that he wants Timothy to take and urge these truths amongst the saints who are in Ephesus.

It's not a letter just for the elders. It's not a letter just for Timothy. It's for everyone who belongs to the church of the

Lord Jesus Christ. And beginning in verse three, Paul lays out more of how we are to identify these godless teachers.

And if you were to create a few sub points, you might say that it begins with the contents of their teaching.

What Paul does here is he gives us three characteristics of these teachers and their false teaching in verse three.

And he lists them, that these false teachers, they teach different doctrine. That's number one.

That number two, they do not agree with the sound words of, or we might say about Christ.

And number three, they teach contrary to that which accords with godliness.

And so it is, as it were, the unholy trinity of false teaching and preaching.

Now I've already spoken on some of this content when we looked at chapter one and at chapter four.

I'm not going to to retrace that ground, but I would encourage you, if you haven't listened to those sermons, go back, listen to first Timothy chapter one and verse three, and then first Timothy chapter four, beginning at verse one.

But I will say this, that when false teachers come, and you can mark my words, they will come with one and probably all of these three things.

That they will come, and when they come, they will bring with them new doctrines, or new doctrinal emphases, that are either off balanced or completely in error.

And I've seen this firsthand for myself. It is almost like the picture of the frog that is placed in room temperature water, and then brought up to a slow boil.

At first, it is always subtle. There's truth, as I said, a little bit of sugar to help the poison go down.

There is truth, but mixed into that truth is a very subtle error. And a discerning person might be able to catch it at the beginning.

But over time, as the person is accepted, and as they grow in their boldness, they become less and less shy about their doctrinal emphasis, until they bring their followers to a complete and disastrous ruin.

I'll get to it at the end, a little bit of an application section. But they're going to come with different doctrines, and we must be ready.

They will always, as Paul inclines us here, always, always, always pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Just like we see in Jude chapter four, where he says, for certain people have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were designated for this condemnation.

Ungodly people who what? Who pervert the grace of God into sensuality, and deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Somehow, some way, Christ will always be minimized in the teaching of these men or women.

We see this everywhere in the prosperity gospel movement, where Jesus becomes not

Lord, not master, as we just read, but butler. I took a quote here from Creflo Dollar, who's a famous prosperity preacher, and he said this, famously.

He said, Jesus bled and died for us. Now up to this point, it sounds rather good, right?

We might, if he put a period at the end of that sentence, we would be inclined to say amen, that Jesus died and bled for us.

But he goes on, Jesus bled and died for us, so that we can lay claim to the promise of financial prosperity.

What is that? Is that really why

Jesus Christ came to die? Is that why

God incarnate, condescended, and came to this world?

And why Christ, my savior, hung on that despicable Roman cross?

And that as he cried out in horror, as the sky grew dark, and his father forsook him, did he do that so that I can have a nicer house, or finely pressed clothing, or a shiny car with gold rims?

This can be nothing other than a denial of our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ, to use

Jude's words. In other cases, however, perhaps more subtle cases,

Jesus becomes, and we've seen this, the model social justice warrior.

He's Lord, sure, but he's my model. And when I go and do my social justice stuff in my black bella clava in the name of Jesus, I'm simply flipping the tables with him.

Elsewhere, he becomes a conservative political revolutionary. And we need to be careful, brothers and sisters, that this view has very much infected the reformed church.

In other instances, he becomes a seeker -sensitive homeboy. They will always, always, always pervert the gospel of the

Lord Jesus Christ, because the focus must come off Christ and must be placed on them.

They always want the place of supremacy. Christ cannot have the primacy.

And we see that their teaching, thirdly, their teaching, because it does not accord with godliness, will always produce more ungodliness.

Carefully watch the followers of any teacher, any teacher, whether good or bad, and you will quickly learn one thing.

There is a principle, it stands. That phrase, you are what you eat, it most definitely applies to Bible teaching.

It most certainly does. Where there is a faithful, godly, diligent teachers to be found, you will find people, it might be slow, it might be painstaking, but you will find people growing in accord with godliness.

But where ungodly teachers are found, you will find people who are growing in accord with ungodliness, and the apple never falls far from the tree.

And so when evaluating then teachers, don't just evaluate their words.

I want to give you a pointer, and I think this is very evident in the social media world that we live in.

Don't just evaluate their words, but evaluate the fruit of their words. Evaluate the fruit of their life, and evaluate the fruit of their ministry.

Is this not why the Bible gives us elder qualifications that stipulate how qualified elders' children are to behave?

It is because there is a principle. It is because the student will always become like his teacher.

That's why when I go and I see these reformed guys, to pick on reformed guys for a moment, on social media, and I see them act the way they do following the conduct of their teachers,

I cannot run fast enough in the opposite direction. I think

I said a number of months ago, maybe a year and a half, two years ago, after Elon Musk bought

Twitter, I thought, oh, maybe it's safe. I'll go on Twitter. I have deactivated my Twitter account because I cannot get far enough, fast enough from reformed

Twitter. And I've said this in the past. If you are to pick up on these details, these subtle doctrinal emphases, these perversions of the gospel, the unhealthy fruit, we must, must, must be people who know

God, who know God's word, who treasure the unadulterated gospel so that no one, we will never allow anyone to touch it, people who are growing in the likeness of Christ and growing in the likeness of Christ in union with Christ.

My beloved brothers and sisters, our goal as elders, I think

Sam, I didn't consult with him, but I think he would agree with me, our goal as elders without apology is to feed you so well and to shepherd you so capably by God's grace that it utterly destroys your appetite for anything less than a biblically healthy, solid, faithful church that is characterized by elders who engage in a faithful ministry of the word and prayer.

Frankly speaking, and I mean this with all my heart, I want every single elder who is appointed in this church to be just a little bit afraid.

Maybe a better word is this, to be a little bit intimidated at how well studied you are, at how rich in the word of Christ you are, in how sharp your skills of discernment are, in how godly your ambitions are and your desires to be more like Christ, with how close your walk with the

Lord is. I want to make it impossible for any false teacher to ever set up shop in this church simply because the church, let alone the leaders, will not allow it.

But as elders, we cannot do this alone. This takes great diligence on the part of the whole congregation that you would be able to discern this truth from error.

Now, as we get into verses four and five, we see that there are other characteristics that help us to identify these godless teachers.

Paul writes that they are puffed up with conceit and an interesting paradox, and yet they understand nothing.

What a remarkable thing that those who have a great deal to be humble about are those who lack the most humility.

It is a man full of conceit and bravado, but when you peel back the layers of his disguise, he possesses no actual substance.

And this gives us, I think, if you want, you know, there are those mystery

TV shows where they try to get into the mind of the criminal, right? The criminal mind psyche type of thing.

Let me take you for a moment into the psyche of the false teacher. We saw that psyche, if I can say it that way.

It is the Greek word from which we get soul. And so it's a safe word to use. I'm not using pop psychology here.

But in 1 Timothy chapter four, that they are able to continue on in their false teaching.

Why? Because they have seared consciences. But I want you to see something else with me here.

Here Paul adds that false teachers can continue in their false teaching. Yes, because they have false consciences.

But number two, in verse four, because they understand nothing.

You know, I think that sometimes we give false teachers far too much credit. That we assume that they are somehow the masterminds behind some great ploy to lead people astray and to deceive the whole world when in reality they are actually spiritual novices who don't know

God and simply don't know his word. They are men who have not given themselves to study.

They are men who have not prepared adequately for the sermon that they're preaching on Sunday, let alone for all the sermons that they prepare.

They go into the pulpit and they wing it and they lead people astray. Or they repeat what they've heard someone else say once before.

They are characterized by an inability to rightly handle God's word.

And I like what Matthew Henry says. I think he's right. He says, commonly those are most proud who know least because they do not know themselves.

That how true that is. And for anyone who's here who has given yourself to studying

God's word, you know this, that it seems to be that the study of scripture and humility, they are, they must, and they usually are,

I'll say this, typically connected. So the more that we study in earnest before the face of God, the more we realize how little we know.

The more you think about it, right? When you were a new believer, I remember being a new believer.

I had a Bible for less than three months. I had never read the whole thing and I knew everything in that Bible.

But then you read that Bible five times, 10 times, 15 times. You study it in depth and you realize how little

I actually know. That's why

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8 too, if anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.

Or to quote from one Puritan, a man named Simeon Ash, he said, error is a spiritual bastard.

The devil is the father and pride the mother. You will never find a man in error who is not also a proud man.

And yet Ash, as he is writing, he describes how this is actually a grace of God. And why is that?

Because as they wear their error in their pride and arrogance, it's like one of those bicycle flags that's on a little child's bicycle on the street in the cul -de -sac.

It alerts everyone. This man is proud. This man is arrogant. He does not know as he ought to know.

It actually informs God's people, look out for this man. And we must understand the inherent danger that comes with those who do not know what they are speaking about.

It is like a blind man leading the blind. It is like a drowning man in open water.

If you get close to them, they will drown you too. And we see

Jude speak about this. If you're thinking about false teachers, 1 Timothy is an excellent book.

2 Peter is an excellent book. The book of Jude is an excellent book. And Jude 10, he says this, but these people blaspheme all that they do not understand.

Now you might say they don't understand. I mean, what could the consequence be? They blaspheme all that they do not understand and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

Woe to them for they walk in the way of Cain and abandon themselves for the sake of the, sorry, the way of Cain and abandon themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion.

These are hidden reefs at your love feast. Think of a boat coming into shore, hitting a hidden reef.

It's going to take the boat with it as they feast with you without fear.

Shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame, wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.

It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying,

Behold, the Lord comes with 10 ,000 of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against them.

These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires.

They are loudmouth boasters, showing favoritism to gain advantage, and they are coming for you.

This is why it is vital that we must not, we don't ship it out to the seminaries.

Why we must, as a local church, prepare men for ministry adequately and that we understand that we cannot, under any circumstance, rush men along for the sake of efficiency or for some pragmatic reason.

We need three elders to have a board. Well, we need to appoint a man who can be an elder. Absolutely not!

He will be like a hidden reef in our love feast, and knowing nothing, he will lead people astray after himself.

Men who aspire to ministry, oh, you must be diligent students of God's Word long before you seek to be a leader in the church, whether it be formal training or whether it be intensive training in the local church under the guidance of the elders.

When you come to, this is something we must understand. Men who are experienced in preaching understand this, that it's not enough when you come to a passage of Scripture.

Today we have verses 2 through 10. It's not enough to know what verses 2 through 10 say.

It's to know what verses 2 through 10 say in the context of the paragraph, and then in the context of the chapter, and then in the context of the canon, and how all of these things work together.

So brothers, the thing, if you aspire to ministry, the best counsel I can give you is get a good, durable

Bible and master that Bible and be mastered by it. And this is why we must publicly examine men before they become office bearers in the church.

I said it a few weeks ago that it should not be impossible to be an elder in the church.

At the same time, it should almost be like belonging to the Navy SEALs, that the best of the best of the best, they will serve the church in this way.

And as Paul goes on in verse 4, he adds all that these false teachers evidence as they live, an unhealthy craving for controversy and quarrel, quarrels about words.

This word quarrels about words is a compound word that means literally word fights or word battles.

And this is characteristic of false teachers. They gravitate towards controversy and quarrels.

That's why I despise it when I see men who are speaking the truth with a quarrelsome spirit.

I think you can understand there are some men, probably name some names who are very capable men, who understand the word of God.

And you look at them and you go, but you are so incredibly quarrelsome. I cannot hear a word from your mouth.

You'll have to reach your own conclusions or ask me after. Paul addresses this in 1st

Timothy 1. He addresses it again in 2nd Timothy 2. He says, remind them in verse 14 of these things and charge them before God, not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearer.

He says it again in Titus 3. If you find me a false teacher,

I will find you a quarrelsome man. But it must never be this way amongst the faithful teachers of God's word.

Paul tells us in 2nd Timothy 2 in verse 23, 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.

Can you believe this? That the model of being well studied and capable in the scriptures is not being proud and arrogant and brash and quarrelsome, but to be kind to everyone and to teach patiently, enduring evil, correcting opponents with gentleness, that God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.

I fear that sometimes, whether it's in the pursuit of entertainment or of clickbait or whatever it is to massage the algorithms of the

Christian internet or whatever it is, that we need to be combative and rude and harsh, when in reality, a true teacher will be kind and gentle and patient.

And that the character of Christ is manifested in them. And then this heart, the heart of this ungodly and false teacher will produce five other hideous byproducts.

Envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicion, and constant friction.

Because we're told they are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth and they are discontent.

When Paul speaks about being deprived of the truth, it means that the truth has almost been defrauded of them, stolen out from under them.

And we see that what will always characterize or what will also, I should say, characterize false teachers, ungodly teachers, is that they imagine that godliness is a means of great gain.

With greedy intent, they act godly in order to make a profit.

And we read about this in 2 Peter 2 and verse 3. And in their greed, they will exploit you with false words.

Their condemnation from long ago is not idle and their destruction is not asleep. Or to be framed positively,

Peter says in 1 Peter 5, shepherd the flock of God that is among you, not exercising oversight under, not under compulsion, excuse me, but willingly as God would have you to do, not for shameful gain, but eagerly.

The false teacher, one commentator writes, commercializes religion. He is out for profit.

He looks on his teaching and preaching not as a vocation, but as a career. He concludes, one thing is certain, there is no place for careerists in the ministry of any church.

The laborer is worthy of his hire, but the motive of his work must be public service and not private gain.

His passion is not to get, but to spend and be spent in the service of Christ and of his fellow men.

So brothers and sisters, watch for these men. Look at their mindset about money. Look at their mindset about possessions.

Look at their contentedness. What makes them content? Because that ultimately will give you a clue as to where we're going.

Is there God? That Shy Lin song, to quote from a modern poet, he says, if you come to Jesus for money, then he's not your

God, money is. Now, how do we escape these false teachers?

Certainly, we need to understand them. We need to get into the mind of the false teacher. But Paul doesn't stop there.

He carries on into verse six. And this, we'll look at the second part, which is this, the benefit of embracing godly contentment in verse six.

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.

But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

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

Now, I fought tooth and nail with whether to divide these two.

But it became increasingly clear to me that in order for me to properly apply the first half, we needed to look at the second half.

Some commentators have looked at this passage and said, here, all that Paul is doing, he's coming to the end of his letter, and he's just, he's throwing spaghetti at the wall.

And whatever sticks, that's what's going to stick there. And so we've got this idea, smattered with this idea, and this idea.

I do not think that's what Paul is after here. That there is a very natural progression from verse five to verse six.

That what characterizes these false teachers is that they consider godliness to be a means of gain.

They commoditize, or commoditize, I'm not sure how that goes. But they turn their religion into a commodity.

Their godliness into a commodity to sell and to make a gain. Whereas as Paul goes into verse six, he says, no, no, no.

But godliness, godliness with contentment is great gain.

And I want you to see this with me. That one of the very things that fuels false teachers is this discontentment.

And one of the very things that will protect us from these false teachers, one of the antidotes to these godless teachers is the embrace of godly contentment.

It is the embrace of a true contentment that is found in God, and not in whatever this false teacher is peddling.

Prosperity preachers, I want you to see this with me if you don't believe me. Prosperity preachers capitalize on a discontented desire for more health and wealth and prosperity.

And capitalizing on that discontentment, they pounce, they strike, and they lead people astray.

Attractional preachers like to capitalize on discontented hunger to be constantly entertained.

And so when you come into the church, it's jumpy castles for Jesus. And it is like, some of you

I know are familiar with this. It is the most shocking thing. Someone sent me a video during Super Bowl of a church that had a

Super Bowl halftime service. And do you know how they began the service?

With a kickoff. But it was not a football. They kicked a Bible across the stage and into the pews.

Because people are not content to hear the Bible. They're content to see the get kicked for their enjoyment.

Christless, I can say it this way, Christless conservativism preachers appeal to your political discontent.

Find the discontentment and a false teacher can find a way to lead you astray.

It's just true. So brothers and sisters, the antidote then is to find contentment.

But what is this contentment that Paul is speaking of? There's a great book that I would commend to you.

It's by Jeremiah Burroughs, an old Puritan, the rare jewel of Christian contentment.

He defines it this way. Christian contentment, he says, is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, freely submitting to and taking delight in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.

Or to translate it, contentment comes from understanding that we have a wise and sovereign

God who decrees and brings about everything according to his plan.

And contentment is simply resting in his providence, whatever it might be.

Whether it is disease or health, whatever, whether it is riches or poverty, whether it is fame and acclaim and success or being the lowest man on the social stratum.

Contentment is understanding that God is in control and I am exactly where I need to be.

Maybe not where I would want to be, maybe not where I pictured I would be, but by God's grace

I am what I am and I am where I am by his good design.

And it's interesting that this is why I think it's so helpful to get into the original languages and to look at this carefully, because I want to translate verse six almost exactly, just hyper literally, woodenly liberal.

He's saying here, but godliness with enough is great gain.

And what's happening here is that word for contentment or godliness with contentment in verse six is actually a word that in his day, in Paul's day, it was used very often by stoic philosophers.

And stoic philosophers would use this word to speak about, and this is coming from one historical commentary, a complete settledness, an anchoredness, an unmovedness by external circumstances.

John MacArthur, he calls it an unflappable, unmovable -ness by external circumstance.

And what's amazing is this, that it is almost unanimously understood amongst Bible scholars that what

Paul is alluding to is not that the believer's total sufficiency in circumstance, but their total sufficiency, total contentment in Christ.

That godliness with contentment in Christ is all that we will ever need.

Paul uses that the root of this word in 2 Corinthians 12 when he says, my grace, speaking on behalf of Christ, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

R .C. Sproul says, Christians can be content. Why? Because their needs are met by Christ.

John Stott, he says, the genuine contentment, this genuine contentment is not self -sufficiency, but it is

Christ sufficiency. It does not matter whether we have all that we want in this world.

If we have Christ, we have all that we need. Take everything, take everything, but leave me

Christ and I have all that I will need for eternity.

That is what Paul is getting at here. We sang these words, maybe you were paying attention to it, when we sang,

I will glory in my redeemer. And in verse two, the words that we sang were these.

I will glory in my redeemer, my life he bought, my love he owns.

I have no longings for another. I am satisfied in him alone.

We sing these words, but when we sing them, do we mean them?

Jesus Christ must be our all, or we will always be searching for the next thing.

I'm not going to speak at length today about seeking riches. We'll look at that when we get a little bit further on into first Timothy, but I will tell you this, the antidote to continuously seeking riches is knowing that you have all you need in Christ.

The next possession, the next paycheck, the next dopamine hit, whatever it is, you don't need it if you have

Christ. In our restless culture, the secret to rest, the secret to peace, the secret to contentment is

Christ. This is why Paul could say, and I'm going to quote this passage in its context, maybe for the first time you have ever heard it in its context, when he says,

I know how to be brought low. I know how to abound in any and every circumstance.

I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. Paul, tell us your secret.

It's the verse that gets misquoted at every football game and in every event where someone needs some kind of strength to draw from.

He says, I can do all things through him who strengthens me. It is through Christ that we find our contentment and peace.

It is through Christ. I don't use the pulpit to rehash things that have gone through my life during the week.

I remember watching a, there's an old 90s show called Seventh Heaven. I don't know if anyone ever watched that, but it's this cheesy show where the father is the preacher.

There's the storyline happens throughout the week and then every Sunday it shows up in the guy's sermon. And it's just the debrief of his week.

I never do that. But this week I can't think of a way around it.

Some of you know that I had a friend, I'll say more of a distant friend. He was a friend, a coworker, and we grew apart, who was blind in one eye and partially blind in the other.

And he lost sight in that eye. He developed diabetes and he developed a thyroid issue.

And he went to the doctors. They wrote him the prescription and he killed himself on Friday. Our medical system put him to death like a dog.

And one of the things that he said on a couple of different circumstances was this.

He spoke about circumstantially his illness. He spoke about how he just wanted peace.

He kept saying that, I just want to find peace. I just want to find rest.

And this week I wrote him a letter and I said to him, my friend, you will not find rest in death apart from Christ.

You will not find peace. It's not death that promises rest and peace.

It is who? It is Christ who promises rest and peace. It is Christ who promises contentment.

It is Christ who solves every one of our issues. You can be blind.

You can have every ailment under the sun. You can have diabetes. You can have hyperthyroidism.

You can have cancer. You can have leukemia. You can have one month to live. You can have one day to live.

If you have Christ, you have it all. And conversely, if you have not

Christ, you have nothing. So that if you have life and health and possessions and wealth and riches, but Christ at the end of it all, you and I both go into the ground in a casket.

That's where Paul's going here. We came from dust and to dust we will return.

If you have not Christ, you have nothing. He says in verse seven, for we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world.

Here he's alluding to Job chapter one and verse 21, naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I shall return.

Matthew Henry says a shroud, a coffin, and a grave are all that the richest man in the world can have from his wealth.

That there are men and women riding in $400 million yachts right now somewhere off the coast of the

Mediterranean Sea. And one day they will be in a wooden box like everyone else.

If you have not Christ, you have nothing. And then

Paul goes on in verse eight, if we have food and clothing with these, we will be content.

And then he warns in verses nine and 10, that those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

I want you to think about this. Think about from time to time, how often you think about wealth.

How often you think about the desire for the things that come from wealth. You know, you go and visit someone's beach house for the weekend and you go, oh, wouldn't it nice to have a, be nice to have a beach house.

I wonder what I could do to attain to that kind of status or to ride in someone's nice car.

Or I remember just a few weeks ago, going to someone's home after my brother's baptism, looking around and going, this is one of the most beautiful homes

I've ever been in, in this part of the world. Just remarkable. And we see the things that they have and we want them.

And we begin to reach for them. It happens to the best of us.

But what does Paul say? That those who desire to be rich they fall into temptation.

Into what? In a snare. Into a trap.

An open and baited trap that is waiting there for us to step into it so that it can snap closed and take our life and our souls from us.

And that's why Paul says then in verse 10, that the love of money, not money itself, but the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

Literally a love of silver or the friend of silver. Paul here might be alluding to an ancient proverb that read like this, the love of silver is the capital city of all evils.

Brothers and sisters, I want you to see this with me. That there are false teachers in this world that do want to lead you astray.

There are false teachers in this world. They are leading themselves astray and they don't even know it.

And they want you to reinforce their delusions. There are people in this world and there is a devil who prowls this world like a roaring lion ready to devour

God's people. And the secret to our preservation is our contentment in Christ.

It's the same answer that I gave my friend this week. You don't need health.

You don't need your eyes. You don't need anything save Christ.

And if you have Christ, you have it all. And perhaps even sometimes it is in losing these things that we truly discover that Christ is our all and must be our all.

There's a story from Charles Simeon. Some of you might know the

Charles Simeon Trust. He was known. Charles Simeon had a remarkable story as a preacher.

When he started in one of his pastorates, he showed up. And if I remember the story correctly, they had pew rents.

So you had to pay for your pews. And so this is back in the day when people wanted to sit front and center.

And so people would pay their pew rents. And he said, we need to do away with this.

And so he did away with the pew rents. And what did they do? But some of the power brokers within the church said, well, if he's going to do away with that, he's going to preach at our backs.

And they turned their backs to him when he would get up to preach a sermon. And he preached to the back of people's heads for years.

Well, one day he interacted with, he came across this group of blind men and they were weaving.

This was their trade. Imagine that your job is to sew, to weave without vision.

And as he spoke to one of these blind men, he said this, I never saw till I was blind, nor did

I ever know contentment when I had my eyesight, as I do now that I have lost it.

I can truly affirm though few know how to credit me that I would on no account change my present situation and circumstances with any that I ever enjoyed before I was blind.

And Charles Simeon saw this and said, I never want to forget this, that if I have

Christ, I have everything. And so if the Lord has given you a providence that has caused you to be content so that you see the circumstance and you feel the feelings of discontentment to take it from the

Lord, to be a gift that your contentment was never meant to come from circumstance, but from Christ.

Let's pray. Thank you for listening to another sermon from Grace Fellowship Church.

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