False Teachers

I invite you to turn in your Bibles to 1 Timothy 6. If you are visiting with us, we are preaching verse by verse through the book of 1 Timothy. We are in chapter 6, now focusing this evening on verse 3 through 5. 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 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. Heavenly Father, we do ask that you would give us eyes to see this evening as we go into Paul's final warning here on detecting false teachers that have seeped into the Church. We pray that we would love the truth as Paul has, that we would cherish this Gospel message that you have given us as it has given us eternal life. We pray that we would write this truth on our hearts, that we would love it, preserve it, guard it, and that it would be the foundation of our Christian lives. Guide us by your Spirit this evening as we go into your Word. Dear sons, let me pray. Amen.

Please be seated. As I said, we are continuing in 1 Timothy, now in chapter 6. We're looking now at identifying false teachers. As we know from chapter 3 that this book is about how we are to conduct ourselves in the household of God, we are now looking at how we are to detect, how we are to identify false teachers. Paul is bringing this up for a third time in this book. If you've been with us, Paul is pleading with his son of the faith, Timothy. Preach a faithful word, Timothy.

He ends this letter in verse 20, O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. I think about that all the time. In a hundred years we'll all be dead, and I hope that Grace Church will continue to be a place where the Gospel truth is communicated weekly. That is what Paul wants.

That's what I want. That's what I hope that you want as the faithful church is that one day we will die and we will be with the Lord, but that life-giving Gospel message will continue to be present at Grace Church in Harrisburg, North Carolina. The truth is what we have. The Gospel truth is the foundation of our faith, what we believe as the church. Jesus said in John 8, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. I want the church to stand on the truth above all else.

It's the only thing that we can stand on. Matthew 7 warns us that we can stand on the rock or we can stand on the sand, and the sand is shifting and it's slipping out from under our feet. We must stand on the rock of salvation that is provided only in Christ. And a way to do that, a way for you and I to preserve the truth here at Grace Church, the way that we can guarantee that the Gospel will be proclaimed throughout our nation and throughout the world, is that we are extremely careful about what is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And as we know the truth, and as we analyze the truth, and as we consider these things from God's Word, the hope is that this doctrine will form a foundation for our Christian living. People think the doctrine is this high-minded thing that theologians do. No.

R.C. Sproul wrote the book, Every One a Theologian. I was so thankful to see that because every single one of us, if we want to thrive in the Christian life, we must study and know who God is. We must study and know the will of God and how to live in light of these truths. Charles Spurgeon once said, those who do away with Christian doctrine are, whether they are aware of it or not, the worst enemies of Christian living, because the coals of orthodoxy are necessary to the fire of piety. If you want to love God, if you want the love of Christ to be pouring out of you, that there is a real flame and real zeal for Christ, beneath that flame is coals burning of truth and facts and knowledge about who God is. That is what guides us and directs us every morning knowing that God is a sovereign God that rules in heaven, that he provides salvation to all those that might believe in him. Christian doctrine, whether we like it or not, fuels our Christian life. If we want to thrive, we must go to God's Word, know him, and let that motivate our obedience to Christ.

In light of the reality of salvation by grace in Christian doctrine, we want to live in a way that honors the Lord, and so we must commit to God's truth. Here Paul is addressing false teachers. He's talking about the counterfeiters out there. What immediately comes to mind, I think of the FBI. They have men that work in the FBI that can detect a fake dollar bill. They don't analyze all the false dollar bills out there. What they do is they commit themselves to really knowing what a $20 bill, $50 bill, $100 bill looks like. They study it. They analyze every single angle to the distinguishing marks of a dollar bill. So when they see a false bill, they immediately can detect it because they know it's not the real thing.

They touch it. They have intimate knowledge of the dollar bill. That's how they can see what else is false in the world. I'm telling you that's how we need to be as Christians, not to be an expert in every other religion in the world necessarily, but to know the truth and to write this truth on our hearts. There are false teachers today that are sneaking into the church, and it happened back in the day of Jude. He talked about false teachers creeping in unannounced. They're not out there in the world oppressing us, but they are infiltrating into the church. Paul is saying that if we're to deal with these false teachers, start first, give a priority to sound doctrine. The first warning of this was back in chapter one. Feel free to turn there. He's got to get it out.

He quickly gives greetings and salutations. Verse three, he charges right into it. I urge you when I was going into Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine. Verse four, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. There was a temptation back in the early church. Many Jewish Christians still wanted to hold on to their Judaism. They wanted to hold on to their ethnicity and their lineage. Going back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they wanted to say, yes, you Gentiles are Christians technically, but we're Jewish Christians.

We're the real deal. They're holding on to their genealogy, their ethnic lines going back, their heritage, the territorial rights that you might get within the church, citing this heritage. Paul is saying, no, this promotes speculation rather than us protecting the stewardship that God has given us.

It continues in chapter one, verse five. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. That's the result of faithful teaching. Sound doctrine that Paul is insisting on is that we have love from a pure heart and a sincere faith. A love that is coming from a heart that has been cleansed of all other idols and affections, a heart of good conscience, a heart that has no other competitors for the love of Christ.

Paul is calling us back, you and I, to our first love, our love for God, that we would see how Christ has washed us and purified us of sin and that we would love Christ. In Matthew 5, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Sadly in verse six, certain persons swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussions desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they are making confident assertions.

These false teachers are confident in their ignorance. But they are seen again, they are warned again in chapter four. The Spirit expressly says in later times some will depart from the faith devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, forbidding marriage and requiring abstinence from foods that God has created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. Again, this creeping in of the Jewish dietary laws limiting food. Christ has fulfilled this. Christ has spoken clearly in Acts chapter 10 that this doesn't apply. Their consciences are seared to the truth.

We see this asceticism, that is limiting oneself and limiting indulgence here, that we're not to warmly embrace food and good things that God has given us. So the warning goes out again. This is the third time here in chapter six.

One more time for Timothy. Anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ because that's who we're representing by the way. Not ourselves, not the presbyterian church in America. We are representing Christ. That is the one that we are to represent here primarily.

Yes, we're in the PCA. Yes, we have commitments as a church, but what I'm saying is our primary role is to represent Christ and the way that we do that is teaching doctrine that accords with godliness according to God's Word. Teaching that does is the kind of teaching that God blesses. But here we see that this is a different type of teaching.

This is teaching that does not line up. It is a sort of Judaism that is creeping into the church. Paul being a former Pharisee himself, he's trained by Pharisees to be an up-and-coming Pharisee and he's converted. So not only does he know what Christian doctrine is, he knows what solid Jewish teaching is. So as these false teachers are coming in, on two different levels he can say that they're false teachers. He's saying to them, you're not even teaching faithful Judaism, let alone faithful Christianity. And yet you want to merge the two into this new innovative teaching and claim many followers ultimately leading them down a path of destruction. This is throughout the history of the church.

There's nothing new under the sun. This is going back in Paul's day. This is going on in American history. We have David Koresh of the Branch Davidians, Jim Jones of the People's Temple. We have Jehovah's Witnesses in our nation. Charles Russell is just repackaging a fourth century heresy called Arianism that limits the divinity of Christ, saying that he is not equal to the Father. Eugene just read from the Gospel of John very clearly that Jesus is claiming to be one with the Father. John 5 saying he is equal with the Father.

The Pharisees in John 8 pick up stones to kill Jesus, not because they were confused, but because he was crystal clear in what he was claiming to be, equal with the Father. But again, this cult, this American cult is denying the triune nature of God and the full quality that Christ has with the Father. Joseph Smith of Mormonism, same thing. He felt torn between two different denominations and he created a false religion.

Claiming divine revelation from God, he basically says that God the Father is a God among many gods and that Jesus is brothers with the devil. This is Mormon teaching. If you go back to the original sermons of Joseph Smith, it was a requirement to be a polygamist to go to heaven. These are not confused brethren, though I have heard a Mormon say to me, I am a Christian. I'm just simply a Christian of Latter-day Saints. No, you are not. I love the truth and therefore I hate false doctrine.

I can't stand it. We as the church want to express the love of Christ to everyone everywhere and point them to salvation by grace through faith in Christ. It's all of God. I'm telling you as we start with our interaction socially, we must be crystal clear as the gospel is being claimed by others that are ultimately in a deceptive cult. The World Mission Society Church of God.

This is in Charlotte. I was in the freezer section. I saw a guy kind of eyeballing me and I got to the fruit and picking out bananas, this guy comes up in a suit and says, do you know about the mother of God?

And I'm going, no, tell me about it. They go to Genesis chapter 1 verse 26. God says, let us, plural, right? Let us make man in our image after our likeness.

For 2000 years, it has been absolutely crystal clear. The us there is referring to our triune God. The spirit of God is in creation hovering over the deep. John chapter 1 tells us that in the beginning was the word. The word was with God. The word was God that is Christ. The word dwelt in flesh and dwelt among us. He tabernacled among us. John chapter 1 verse 14. Christ is the word with the Father, with the spirit. Let us make man in our image is our triune God. But they believe that the us here is God the Father and God the mother.

But it gets better. The mother is actually still alive. She's 73 years old.

She lives in South Korea. She still exists today and this is a quote from their website. An Song Hong should be regarded, this is the founder before the church split. He should be regarded as Jesus Christ, should be titled Christ on Song Hong and then pursuant of traditional Trinitarian view of Christian hypostasis on was consequently also the Holy Spirit, God the Father and thus God.

So this false teacher is Christ they say and because Trinitarianism is a thing going around will make them the Father and Spirit because why not. Zhang Gil Jia, the woman who claims to be God the mother. She's called Mother Jerusalem.

She's called New Jerusalem Mother or Heavenly Mother. These people are claiming to be God and there's three church plants within Charlotte, North Korea. Thankfully the National Council of Churches in Korea has boldly declared that this is a blasphemous heretical group.

But what do we see common among false teachers? They see this as a way to gain power, to gain wealth. They take God's Word. They're claiming the Bible. They're claiming scripture but they twist it.

They manipulate it. This is fundamental to all false teachers. It's a compromise of the person and work of Christ. They do not preach clearly the full divinity of Christ. No, they claim themselves to be Christ just as David Koresh claimed to be the Lamb of God. These are false teachers.

They have an unhealthy craving for controversy. They come into churches and stir up trouble. Verse four, we can have this. I was at a conference back in 2012. I wasn't even in seminary but this guy next to me, he said, what's your view of the end times? I didn't know much about eschatology. That's the doctrine of the end times.

What's the future hold? I don't want to dismiss that. We should study this. Most of our faith is a historic faith. It's handled in the past and of course in 1 Timothy here we have a lot of application for the present Christian living, how we are to conduct ourselves in the household of faith.

But the future of the churches in eschatology. So I admittedly just didn't know much about it but he dug in further. I think this and this and I'm kind of giving him a nod. Okay, okay. That wasn't enough. He had to keep pushing and pressing his argument. I finally had to say, man, I don't know enough about this topic to even give you a decent opposition.

I don't know what the opposing viewpoint would even say to you. And so thankfully I just sort of deflated the whole thing and I wasn't able to give him what he wanted which was this craving of a debate, a controversy with me. I didn't know what else to do but tell him, you know, I'm a pan millennialist. It'll pan out eventually, you know. The Lord will see his will done.

I don't know what else to tell you. And we can do this as Christians. We can have these sort of cravings to debate, to discuss and we have to check it but as a distinctive mark of a false teacher there is a desire to controversy, to have a quarreling about words. An elder is called to not be quarrelsome.

A false teacher is distinctly marked by their quarrelsome. There's a group that insists on Jesus being called Yeshua. That would be the Hebrew way of saying the name Jesus. If you're in Mexico you might say Jesus Christo. If you're in America you say Jesus.

If you're in Burmese you say Yeshu. But I'm telling you ultimately it does not matter what we name Jesus but that we know Jesus, that we know the biblical Jesus. But this has been so pervasive and you pair this concept with Matthew 7 where Jesus says, you know, yes you cast out demons in your name.

I cast out demons. They insist on the name being stated as though Jesus cannot hear us if we don't say Yeshua. But there is a movement again in Charlotte, the Hebrew roots movement where they are essentially the repackaging of the Galatian heresy. They bring in faith in Christ and trusting in Him. They blend that in with the 614 laws of the Mosaic covenant and they add whatever they want to and they merge the old Mosaic covenant with the new covenant. And Paul again in Galatians 1, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

That's these men blending justification by faith in the finished work of Christ with the keeping of the law. Paul continues in verse 8, Galatians 1, but even if we are an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, I will now say it again, if anyone preaches to you a gospel contrary to the one you have received, let him be accursed. If we want others to come to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we need to give them the Jesus Christ that saves, that fully saves, that His finished work is fully sufficient.

These new ideas that are creeping in, these innovative theologies, I say it all the time, if it's true it's not new and if it's new it's not true. A false gospel gives these followers of these false religions a false assurance of salvation. They sadly feel confident in the cult that they exist in and snares them. My hope is that, as Jesus says, the gospel will set you free. I hope that the freeing gospel of grace will be sent out to them.

Continuing on, the marks of these men. They're puffed up with conceit, understanding nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy, for quarrels about words, which produce the evidence of this false teaching, envy and dissension, slander and evil suspicions. False teachers are coveting the existing church. They see the success of Paul in Ephesus. They covet his success. They want this following. They have this inordinate desire that they too would have a following like Paul, really for themselves though, not for the honor of Christ, not for the propagation of the gospel.

They really just want it for themselves. They go into the local church and they start to spread dissension. They start spreading slander, that is, lying and unsubstantiated claims about others that are negative, evil suspicions.

You want to know the quickest way you can cause division in the church? It's to spread suspicion about someone without actually confirming it. To speak on others in a way that is not true and confirmed. To not speak on what you know but what you speculate on in a negative way.

Operating on a hunch rather than operating on the truth. This is causing friction among people who are deprived of mind, deprived of truth. Imagine the godliness as a means of gain. This is a false teacher that is depraved in his mind. He is not saved by grace. As Paul tells us in Ephesians 2, he is dead in his trespasses and sins. He is depraved. Back to our Reformed doctrine of total depravity, he is dead in his trespasses and sins.

He is not spiritually sick, but dead. He has been deprived of the truth. There is no biblical truth in his ministry. He is blind to the truth. There is no illumination of the Spirit of God bringing understanding through the Gospel.

They are lost. To a false prophet, holiness is just a way to garner respect and gain reverence from followers. Back to the Galatian heresy. Look at how I keep the law. You Christians don't. Look at how I keep the festivals. Christ fulfilled those festivals.

You shouldn't be keeping them. Know your Bible. Know the law. See what Christ has done in the book of Hebrews. See how Christ has fulfilled these things. To go on practicing these things is to deny Christ. To say that his work was not sufficient.

We need to be clear. We need to go back to God's Word and use this as a warning that we have in verse 5, this gain that is being referenced here. This is a financial gain.

This is a selfish gain for money. Even going back to the Pharisees, the faith for them was not a way to actually access God, but for them to gain respect. The way for the faith for them was really to get respect and honor within the society. As they had honor in the church, they had power.

And with that, devouring widows' houses, they would accrue much wealth and they were attached to the powerful elite in society. Going back to Numbers 22, Balaam, he was the first freelancing false prophet. He literally was a known false prophet that used religion for his personal gain. He was a famous sorcerer. He would pretend to be pious in order to deceive others and pay them for his teaching. He would pretend to be reverent. Back in the book of Acts, Paul is operating in Ephesus around the temple of Diana.

There are men that are selling religious goods, trinkets and little statues of Diana. He went in and preached the Gospel so powerfully. God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, worked so strongly in Ephesus that it shut down businesses. Paul pointed out their idolatry with sound teaching from the Lord Jesus Christ. He proclaimed to forsake these things. Come back to a faithful, triune God that offers salvation in Christ. It literally put people out of business and caused a riot.

They were so upset. There is the power of the Gospel illustrated in Ephesus. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church. Many schemes to buy indulgences. Indulgence would be used. You'd buy an indulgence to lessen the punishment of your loved one as they're in purgatory. Martin Luther confirmed the only thing indulgences guaranteed was an increase in profit and greed because the pardon of the Church was in God's power alone. He knew that God alone saves. God alone can do these things. Despite the corruption of the Catholic Church, the doctrine of truth continues on here at Grace Church.

Despite Joel Osteen and Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar who was 30 minutes north of my parents' house back in Atlanta, it is ongoing and it will always be. So you and I must be prepared to identify these things. I would say take Paul's command to heart. If you have the King James, the new King James, the majority text has one little phrase that the ESV doesn't have. That's okay.

We have majority text and eclectic text. We have the full Word of God, but the King James expounds a little bit further in this verse. It says, From such, withdraw yourself. Avoid these false teachers. You might think, oh, the Jehovah's Witnesses are coming. The Mormons are coming by. Let me bring them in. Let me serve them a meal. Let me show them the love of Christ. I understand and I appreciate the heart of the Church to do such a thing.

I really do. Paul is clear. And he doesn't just say it here.

He says it in Romans chapter 16 verse 17. I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught. Avoid them. Do not welcome them in. Do not let the false teaching spread.

This is a cancer that is infiltrating the body of Christ. Do not let them in. If you know someone who is a false teacher, I think about how I interact. I have friends who are Muslims and friends that are Mormons. I talk with them. I interact with them.

I have a social life that I can be friends with them. But the moment that we get a doctrine, I'm not going to entertain this false teaching. There is a zero tolerance policy for false teaching. And he says it to Timothy here. He says it to the church of Galatia.

And he says it to Titus at the church in Crete. Avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law. That's the same Judaizers that are coming into the church.

They are unprofitable and worthless. As for a person who stirs up division after warning them once, then twice, have nothing more to do with him. Knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self-condemned. What would that look like for us? What would that look like for us here at Grace Church in modern times? I think of someone coming into Grace Church. They're a visitor. We want to welcome them in. We want to bring them into Sunday School and to corporate worship. And they're friendly as most false teachers and false cult members are. And then the questions start arising in Sunday School, which again, I want to encourage good questions.

I want to encourage discussion. But as the doctrine starts coming out and as we get to Genesis 1, they mention maybe the mother of God. Or perhaps they go to Isaiah and challenge the idea that God is and always has been and He is the one true God. Perhaps they challenge that with a background in Mormonism. Perhaps they want to make Jesus of like substance with the Father.

Perhaps they want to creep in this false teaching. We must address it immediately. I as a minister of the Gospel have to address it. The elders here at the church must do this. We took a vow coming from our brook of church order. One of the vows that I took, do you promise to be zealous and faithful in maintaining the truths of the Gospel and the purity and peace and unity of the church, whatever persecution or opposition may arise unto you on that account. If there is false teaching in the church, there is a zero tolerance policy.

They must be removed. They are misrepresenting Christ. They are misrepresenting and misguiding the gospel of God. This can influence our younger and more impressionable Christians but it is of no profit.

If you reason with them and witness to them and ultimately they will not repent, Titus says, do not have anything more to do with them as they will only spread lies and spread slander and spread dissension and further division within the church. Grace, I want us to remember one thing. We are the people of God. We are God's people.

We are a holy nation, a royal priesthood. We represent Christ as ambassadors to Christ. We go out and proclaim a Gospel message that all those that look upon Christ by faith will be saved. We look to the atonement of Christ and see that Christ bore our sin and that he gives us a washing and regeneration and a cleansing from our sin. And he gives us his perfect righteousness by faith. We go up to heaven as those with nothing in our hands but simply trusting and clinging to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We are going into heaven saying it is all of Christ. So please, with me, sharpen your spiritual discernment. Read the Word of God. Study these things. Know these things. You never know when you will be in a Walmart parking lot and you run into someone that claims that God is ice, water and steam, which is just a repackaging of a fourth century heresy called modalism.

You never know when it will happen, but it happens. Be prepared. Peter tells us to give a defense of the faith, give a defense of the hope that is within us. Finally, Paul tells us here to guard the deposit that has been entrusted to you.

To me as a minister, yes, but to you as a Christian, guard that deposit. Protect the truth of God's Word. Protect faithful doctrine and delight in the truth of God's Word.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you in the Lord. We come to you in the finished work of Christ. It is Christ that is full of grace and full of truth.

We think over these things this evening. Oh, that we would know Christ all the more, that we would conform ourselves to the faithful teaching of Christ. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would work within our hearts, regenerate us, and calibrate us, strengthen our love that we have for Christ. We pray that you would give us assurance of what Christ is and what He accomplished on our behalf. Let us go to your Word and see these truths and base our lives on these things. Let it be a foundation of the path in which we walk in the name of Christ. In your sins let me pray. Amen.