Paul's Charge Against False Teachers

I invite you to turn your Bibles to 1 Timothy 1.

Thank you. We know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and the disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

Let's pray. Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power, and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and the earth is Yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and You are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from You, and You rule over all. In Your hand are power and might, and in Your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. And now we thank You, our God, and we praise Your glorious name.

Amen. Please be seated. Continuing on in our series in 1 Timothy, we are now going into the local church and addressing false teachers within the church of Ephesus. Paul is writing back to his son in the faith, Timothy, and he wants him to address the issues within the church. He writes this letter on his fourth missionary journey.

He is committed to missions. Paul's entire life is to expand the tent and to send the gospel out into all the nations, but at the same time he is still concerned about the local body of believers led by his son, Timothy. And so his hope here is that the church would be marked not only by faithfulness to God in its doctrine, but also to its faithfulness in its conduct. And so the word here that has been used so many times is in the Greek, dadaskalia. Dadaskalia is the true doctrine. It is actually used 21 times in the New Testament. Fifteen of their uses are in these three pastoral epistles, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus. And also along with it is Eusebia, which is godliness.

So we have this balance of orthodoxy, that is right doctrine, along with orthopraxy, which is its corresponding practice within the church. And so God's word is telling us not only should we know these things to be true, not only should we commit to the true gospel, but the conduct of our lives should reflect the truth in which we affirm. Back in his first missionary journey he wrote back to the church in Galatia and he said, I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you. It is grace of Christ and we are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there is another one, he says. So they are creating this gospel message that is not the gospel that Paul taught. There is a compromise within the message and he is fighting for a purity within the message. Because as he continues in verse 8, even if we are an angel from heaven, we are to preach to you a gospel.

Contrary to the one that we preach to you, let him be accursed. There is a fearful judgment for this compromising of the message that we must keep central to the gospel ministry. Back in Paul's day, and it is like it is today, there were sheep, there were wolves in sheep's clothing.

They seemed to be nice, they seemed to have nice fur. You approach them, but they are wolves. They are here to devour and spiritually kill those that follow them in their message. And so we see that Paul is warning them not to fall victim of these false teachers. In verse 3 he says, Timothy, I must charge you, this is a military term, and is to give an order. This is a mandate, this is a requirement that the gospel message must be faithful. Heresy is in a sense a cancer that can spread, it can metastasize and spread throughout the body of the congregation. And Paul is saying there is no tolerance for false doctrine.

We must find the source of this cancer and eradicate it. We must eliminate what is slowly killing the congregation and ultimately will lead them to straying away, swerving from the faith, and going to hell. And so the main point here that Paul is teaching is that we must address and remove false teachers within the church and hold fast to the one true gospel of saving grace that is found in Christ. So as we go into the church here we see in verse 3 that there are certain individuals. He doesn't name them specifically, which is interesting. So if they were to nail it down he might name certain people and maybe they're bad but I'm good. And he goes, no, certain people you know who you are, you are preaching a message that is different from the message that Paul has given us to preach.

We see that he is going in and keeping it generic. There were two men, in verse 20 you'll see that Hymenaeus and Alexander, these are particular false teachers that Paul has already dealt with. He's already excommunicated them and cast them out of the church. But now he is going in and saying, these are men among you that are preaching a message that is not faithful to God's word.

And we don't know why they're not taken out already. They might be men of status, they might have respect and it's hard to get men that are kind of in a higher ranking position in the church. It might be reluctance to confront them over their false teaching but either way Paul is encouraging Timothy to go in and face them and confront them.

And what does their message look like? Well, verse 4 tells us that they start to bring in myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than a stewardship that is from God. Back in Acts chapter 17 the Athenians they just liked new stories, anything that was new. They were strangers visiting there, used to spend their time in nothing other than hearing something new.

Just a new idea, just a new campfire story. Paul compares these stories to old wives tales, just ancient stories within Jewish tradition. And then certain men and certain tribes could cite their own genealogy and say this is a story from the tribe of Benjamin, this is a story from the tribe of Reuben. They would go back in their own church history and cite it as though it's authoritative. But again we have to go into this and see the error that is there in the church. These men already had this obsession with blending the gospel with Judaism, bringing in the pure gospel of saving grace and they would start to merge it together with these other beliefs. Galatians 2, remember Paul confronted Peter about this. Peter saw that the James gang were coming in, he saw the Jewish men, saw him with the Gentiles and he started to scoot away from them. He didn't want to be associated with the Gentiles. Though he had been saved from the yoke of slavery, that is he had been saved out from under the law.

Paul is saying do not resubmit yourself to this yoke of slavery. But again, there is this sense of the Jews are citing their history, they are citing their lineage going back to Abraham. They are part of the original covenant people as it was an ethno-nation of Jewish people. You can imagine the church, there was sort of a respect for the Jewish Christians as they have been in this for many thousands of years.

There could be sort of territorial rights. There could be a respect that goes with knowing a lot of the Old Testament law. So what can happen is there is a natural division between Jew and Gentile within the church. I can imagine an older Jewish believer saying, you don't understand young man, talking to a young Gentile believer. Back in my day, we really knew Moses personally, we have that lineage and that can create this sort of division as though there is this steps between believers. But we are neither Jew nor Greek, that is the ethno-nationalistic distinction there. We are neither slave nor free, that is a status in society.

But male or female, the gender division. But we are all one in Christ. We have equal footing at the foot of the cross. We are all equal as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul clarifies and says, we are now Abraham's offspring heirs to the promise. Just as God promised that his descendants would be more numerous than the stars, we are among those stars. We are among those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so now we are Israelites in a spiritual sense. We are those that believe in the Messiah that was promised to the people of God back in Moses' day, going back to the garden.

We believe that there was one that would crush the head of the serpent and that is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But again, they are constructing these genealogies, they are building up and Paul tells us this is worthless, vain division within the church. And so we are to point these things out. And the aim of our charge, what is the point of aiming it out? Is it that we might boast?

No. We see that the charge of this is to love, to love the false teacher by confronting them with their error. And so the aim of our charge issues from a heart of a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. Love from a pure heart.

Paul tells us that love never ends. Prophecy will pass away, tongues will cease, knowledge will even pass away, but love is what will sustain. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. It is a pure heart that has been purified and washed and cleansed. It is cleansed of other idols, cleansed of other loves or other affections. And God's grace is the truth that shines in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Craig Troxell wrote this, a professor at Westminster, California. He said, the light does not bypass the mind, it opens the mind. Faith and knowledge are not arch enemies, they are blood brothers and share a home together in the heart. If knowledge fills the human heart, then saving knowledge fills the new heart. It is there in your heart holding hands with belief, trust, love, confession, salvation, and the other family members within the heart.

We trust in Christ with our mind assured of what we know to be true. This is the nature of a pure heart. Think back to David who cried out, God give me a pure heart. 1 Samuel 16, a man looks at the outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart. Even David who is known for his immorality, known for Bathsheba and all these horrible things, what does he do? He cries out to the Lord, repents of his sin and God purges a heart and gives him a new heart.

God takes out this heart of stone and gives him a heart of flesh. And in doing so he has been forgiven, he has been washed, he has been regenerated, and it leads him into this good conscience. John MacArthur wrote, the conscience is a self-judging faculty.

God does not mean clear but responsive, or good does not mean clear but it means responsive. A conscience is one that responds to the quickening and the convicting of the Holy Spirit. The conscience is what accuses us of sin. It is good and right that our conscience convict us if we are in sin, but all the while if our conscience is bad when it is not quickened when it ought to be.

Paul describes those that have a heart that has been seared. A heart that does not feel the quickening of God, does not feel that conviction over our sin. Some might have a sensitive conscience. I think a lot of us might be raised in more of a legalistic background where only finally at a certain age do you realize you can exercise liberty in Christ.

There might be some limitation if you are in a very tightly wound church. Finally you are opening up to having a freedom in Christ. The conscience might be limiting for a time, but what we see is that a good conscience or a clear conscience is one that is walking in faithfulness to God. But the seared conscience is one that is marked by evidence of someone not being responsive to the conviction over sin, the evidence of one being stiff necked, hard hearted, resistant to the conviction and the correction of God.

And so a good conscience is not only responsive to wrong conduct, but it also must be responsive to this wrong doctrine. We are convicted over our wrong teaching that we might hear, and as we hear bad teaching we go in, look at God's word, study as good Bereans, and know where the error is found, studying it, knowing it, and growing in grace through our understanding of God's word. So that is exactly how Christ taught his disciples to go into the word, to know him, to know God the Father, to pray by the power of the Holy Spirit, to go in and understand these teachings.

And finally we see we have a sincere faith. The confrontation that Paul is correcting false doctrine is not out of pride, but out of sincerity. If we go in and tell everybody how wrong they are, you're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong, that can sound and can appear to be self-righteous.

It is how we communicate, not only what we say, but how we say. We have to go in with clarity and with honesty and with a love for true faith in a clear gospel message. Explain where false teaching is. What we do not do is, out of the sense of charity and good will, simply allow false teaching to occur. Timothy, with all the love in his heart, must confront these false teachers.

He must do it carefully, he must not be harsh, but at the same time he must go in and explain to these men. 2 Corinthians chapter 2, Paul says that we are not like so many peddlers of the word of God, but men of sincerity as commissioned by God in the sight of God we speak. We do not flatter with our tongues. We do not affirm false doctrine.

There is a growing progressive Christianity that is very alive and well, where God is just minimized down into God as love and that's it. Love God, love people, and they just think as long as we are affirming what seems to be good and right, we have to go into God's Word to understand as He has described what is good and what is right. We have to compare what this teaching is to God's law and find the error and then point them to the grace and mercy in Christ. But what we do not do is affirm false teaching, lest they swerve. We see in verse 6, certain persons by swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things in which they make confident assertions. Not only are these people wrong, but they also are confident about their assertions as they are so wrong. And they are wandering away and they are committed to a wrong teaching and they are carving into this position.

They are committed. They are digging their feet in to false doctrine. But one of the marks of this, and Paul points this out, is that people are in vain discussion. They are not drawn away by long-standing arguments within the church.

They are drawn in by worthless debate, almost like argument for argument's sake. We have many differences with our Anglican brothers, our Baptist brothers, with our Episcopalian brothers, on church government, baptism, how much water to use and when to apply it has been debated for thousands of years. But we still have the centrality of the gospel, that is we are justified by grace through faith in Christ. That is central to the message. And while we have intramural debates with brothers and sisters who do not come to our Presbyterian denomination, we still have the centrality of the message. But Paul is calling out these men who come in with vain talk that are of no profit to the local church. I was told early on that if it is true, it is not new and if it is new, it is not true. If something comes up recently, it is definitely a compromise on this gospel message.

It is a quick, fast rule and it works. Typically when you hear these false teachings, they either are going to compromise on the doctrine of God, who God is, who the person of Christ is, who the Holy Spirit is, or they compromise on the work of Jesus Christ. I was in the freezer section at Wal-Mart and I saw this guy in a suit kind of off to the side looking at me and I thought, this might be something. By the time I got up to the produce, he was coming at me and I thought, I have been approached a couple of times in Wal-Mart for evangelism actually. He comes right up to me and he says, can I tell you about the mother of God? I would love to hear about the mother of God, please. He says, if you go to Genesis chapter 1, verse 26, God let us make man in our image. God the father and God the mother came together and they made man.

Isn't that amazing? And I thought, okay. I looked this up later. They told me they were part of the World Mission Society Church of God. All good words, all words that we affirm. The World Mission Society Church of God.

But at the same time, at the very center of it is a compromise on the nature of God. This is heresy. I couldn't do anything but just say, man, that is not rooted anywhere in church history. That is a heresy. Don't teach this. That's all you can really do is just point out the silliness of this. A few years ago, my friend's mother thought there was kind of a lack of emphasis on holiness in the church.

I think that's fair. We could emphasize now that we're saved by grace, let us grow in grace. Let's be holy as we're called to be.

She emphasized this so much that she joined the Hebrew Roots Movement, another denomination that is marked by faith in the atonement along with works of the law, including dietary laws, including festivals that Christ is the fulfillment. Again, they are getting away from the Gospel message. It is just a repackaging of the Galatian heresy.

These men that come in, they want to see what you really need to understand about the law. They desire to be teachers of the law, but they do not understand the bigger picture of the Bible that we are saved by grace. They want to merge in these works, merge in the law, and in doing so they contaminate the Gospel message.

This is my favorite example of this because still it is with this Galatian heresy. In Charlotte, if you go downtown on a Saturday, typically not during a pandemic, on any Saturday afternoon you will run into, and this is how advanced this is now, three different denominations of a group called the Hebrew Israelites. They take the verse, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated, and they believe, of course Jacob is the father of the twelve tribes, his sons are the heads of the twelve tribes, and they use this verse for a race-based ethno-nationalistic eternal election doctrine.

In other words, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are all black men, and as you continue in the genealogies, as you lead all the way up, black, Hispanic, and Native American people are the true people of God, and then Esau, as he is described in Genesis 25 verse 25, he has red hair. We think of people with red hair, Irish people, they tend to be white, so Jacob I loved, Esau I hated, black people are loved, white people are hated, and so what we've done is we've taken membership in a tribe, faith in the gospel, with keeping the law, it is Galatian heresy with black liberation theology on top of it, adding Hispanic and Native Americans. That is three different denominations are right here in Charlotte. You might not hear of it because you're in Harrisburg or you're in Concord, but they are in downtown every week praying on the urban community there. Everyone near the bus stop is hearing this message and they are being drawn in, and this is blasphemy, it's laughable, but it also is persuading. Tens of thousands of people in America are being led into this horrible Galatian heresy.

I want to point this out and show you the foolishness of this. Please if you have your Bibles with you, go to Genesis 49. The twelve tribes are mentioned here and I can't think of any other reason as to why.

If you go on Google image you'll see twelve tribes, Hebrew Israelites, you'll see these tribes described here. If you go down to Issachar, verse 14, Issachar is a strong donkey, crouching between the sheepfolds. He saw that the resting place was good. The land was pleasant.

He bowed his shoulder to bear and became a servant at forced labor. The tribe of Issachar are the nation of Mexico. It would be Mexicans. They read this verse to say that the land that was pleasant was America.

The forced labor would be the idea that Mexican Americans as they come to America tend to do blue collar labor. If you go to Gad, verse 19, raiders shall raid Gad and he shall raid at their heels. They shall raid Gad, so the idea is that someone comes in and raids them and attacks them.

They regroup and they attack back. They believe Gad to be the Native Americans. And so again you're taking a 35 hundred year old text. Moses writing Genesis had 20-20 America in mind and so Mexicans are Issachar and Gad is Native Americans. And so as you find your membership in these tribes, it is persecution now and liberation in the future in heaven where this will all be flipped.

This is all part of it. Simeon and Levi are brothers. Weapons of violence are their swords. Simeon and Levi are Haitians and Dominicans. And they are brothers because they share the same chunk of land. They're on the same island. This is a laughable, horrible, misleading I laugh not to cry.

This is misleading tens of thousands of people in America. And so they take this doctrine of Jacob whom I loved in the proper genealogical light. It leads to David.

It leads to Christ and we want to be in that team so they put Jacob as a black man. He was ruddy and beautiful and had beautiful eyes and was handsome and the Lord said arise anoint him for this is he. Esau is described as having red hair. They're both described here red, ruddy, black man and white man. But then just one word study, one Hebrew word study shows us that they're actually being described by the same word Admonai which ultimately means sort of a red or brown. They're the same color.

One Hebrew word study tells us they have the same skin color. This entire system of this race based division where God hates these people and loves these people. This is all nonsense. This is moronic.

This is literally from the Greek word moranos. This is foolish. This is silly. It's where we get the word moron. This is dumb. This is completely unfounded and this is made up about 50 years ago.

But it is preying on the black community, the Hispanic community and the Native American community. It is the doctrine of demons. This is wicked. And they have outfits. They use military terms.

Their leader is a general. It's very enticing to the flesh to have kind of militaristic sort of they get in line and they chant and they yell and it seems very cool and authoritative but again it is wicked and evil. And Paul tells Timothy in chapter 2 of 2 Timothy, remind them of these things and charge them before God not to quarrel about words which does no good and only ruins the hearers. That's what this is. They have quarreled with these words and they have led themselves into a damnable heresy.

This is wickedness. And the Hebrew roots movement is not that much different. They believe that you can't say Jesus. You have to say Yeshua because that's the true name of Jesus as though Jesus is wrong and Jesus Christo is wrong in Spanish and any other transliteration of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is completely ridiculous. Because Jesus said in your name did we cast out demons and he said I never knew you. As though Jesus is limited to hearing his own name in the Hebrew that God would not hear our prayers. Paul warned Titus, avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, quarrels about the law for they are unprofitable and worthless. As for a person who stirs up division after warning him once, they come into the church, we hear it, we know what they're talking about, you've been warned.

That's it. And then twice have nothing more to do with them. Knowing that such a person is warped and sinful and he is self condemned. We do not entertain this false doctrine. We eradicate it.

And Titus would say their mouths must be stopped. So what we have to do is we have to see the right use of the law. We want to earn our way. We want to blend in gospel saving grace with the works of the law. We have to focus here and see where the law drives us to the grace and mercy in Christ.

Starting in verse eight, we see that we are to use this in the right way. We are to use proper usage of the law. Law is not bad, it's the wrong use of the law that is so incorrect and misleading to the church.

Now we know that the law is good and if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law was not laid down for the just but for the lawless and the disobedient. We go in to use the law that Christ has actually fulfilled part of the law. Back in Matthew 5 verse 17, do not think I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.

I have come to abolish them but to fulfill them. As we go back and look at the Old Testament laws, there are ceremonial laws of sin offerings and grain offerings. Christ comes in and ultimately is our final and absolute offering. Ceremonial law, to do that today is to deny the work of Christ. So that is complete in Christ. He is the sacrificial lamb. He is the fulfillment of the ceremonial law.

And then we see that we have Matthew 5 21 that Jesus begins to expound the Ten Commandments. You've heard it said, thou shalt not murder. But he says, whoever murders is liable to the judgment.

I say to you, everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to the judgment. Again, between murder and anger is every single application we can think of of violence, anger, malice, assault, any sort of application. And so we might go back to the civil law and see where is the civil law moral.

And in doing so we have multiple applications. Just the same way with the Seventh Commandment. It's not just thou shalt not commit adultery, but Jesus says it's lust in the heart. And everything in between those would be an application of the Seventh Commandment. Our larger catechism in the Westminster Confession of Faith gives multiple applications of these Ten Commandments. The seminary takeaway term here is the general equity. We can take application from the civil law in a good way that teaches us what is an application of the Ten Commandments.

And ultimately that is what is our center. God's Ten Commandments never change. Back to the progress of Christianity, they try to minimize the gospel and they'll say it's just love God and love people. Well, Commandments one to four is loving God and Commandments five to ten are loving people. That's where we draw this from is that we see that God's moral character is described by the Ten Commandments. So as we go through the verses here, understanding this that the law is not laid down for the unjust, but for the lawless and the disobedient, for the ungodly and the sinners, for the unholy and the profane. These are all applications of the first table of the law, Commandments one to four. The disobedience, the ungodliness is all breaking the first couple of commandments here. And then we get into striking their fathers and mothers, Commandment number five, for murderers, Commandment six, the sexually immoral, those who practice homosexuality, Seventh Commandment, enslavers, Eighth Commandment, liars, perjurers, Ninth Commandment, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. We have this summed up in the Ten Commandments as it just lists perfectly down the Ten Commandments. We use the Ten Commandments in a positive way to give us guidance on how to live. Jesus said, if you love me, you will keep my Commandments. And so the law must be put in its proper perspective. The ceremonial law is fulfilled in Christ, the civil code applied to Moses and the theocratic nation of Israel, we now today are past that time and we can use that to our benefit, but finally we use the law to give us guidance on how to live. Paul said it back in Romans 7, if I had not been for the law, I would have not known what was sin.

He was unaware. Professor Cornelius Van Til, he said the law gives us a sinful self-awareness. We are sinfully self-aware of our own shortcomings. We are made aware of our own law breaking before God.

What for though? It's to show us for who we are. In light of God and in light of his word, we see who we are, that we are law breakers, we are those disobedient, we are those lawless, ungodly, sinful, unholy and profane that Christ died for. That's the glory of the gospel. The depth of the law points us to the depth of God's riches and mercy and grace.

That's the point. Paul was a murderer, a Christian terrorist. If he was to ever be embarrassed about anything in front of the church, he used to be the enemy of the church, but God, because of his great rich mercy, shone to Paul.

He broke in. He repented of his sin. God cleaned his heart, gave him a new heart, took out a heart of stone, gave him a heart of flesh, brought him to saving faith. Then Paul said, I have been crucified in Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, because He loved me and He gave Himself for me. That is the beauty of the gospel. So now that we hear this, we see this law is what is driving us to faith in Christ.

We must look to it. 2 John chapter 1 says, And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, and so that you should walk in it.

For many deceivers are gone out into the world. Even there, as he is saying, walk in faith, he is still warning us about those who deceive us. We are surrounded by false teaching with one clear message that it is all of Christ. It is nothing that we bring to Christ. It is simply trusting in the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ. John MacArthur said, There are two religions in the world, just two.

Those that believe in faith and faith alone in Christ and those that believe in their works will save them. So how do we know where we detect false teaching? Studying the cults, it is like studying a bag full of counterfeits and there is one crisp actual twenty dollar bill.

We are surrounded by wrong teaching. What we have to do is keep central faith and faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ, believing in Him only, so that we do not contaminate this word and bring in any other false teaching. We believe in one who was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. We believe in one who became sin on our behalf, that in Him we might be the righteousness of God. We believe in one who was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace and by His wounds we are healed.

It is what He has done, not what we have done. So let us rejoice in Christ. He has healed us. Let us respond to Him in walking in obedience.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do come to You in the name of the Son. Through Him we have been justified through grace. We now have peace with You through our Lord Jesus Christ. Remind us every day that we are simply redeemed sinners looking to You by faith, trusting in You alone for salvation. Please write this truth on our hearts every morning. And in doing so, starting with our justification, and then only then do we seek to be faithful to You through our obedience. Please continue to bless our church. Your sons and me pray. Amen.