The latter times, Paul writing
to Timothy in verse 1 of chapter 4, 1 Timothy 4, he says, now
the Spirit speaketh expressly. Now that's a term, now we know
that the Bible The author of the Bible is God Himself through
the Spirit, Christ through the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit.
We believe the Bible is the verbally inspired, inerrant Word of God. So when Paul writes here, now
the Spirit speaketh expressly, he's not saying now this is the
part where the Spirit speaks, but before this the Spirit didn't
speak, it was Paul, no. What he's doing here is he's
putting an emphasis on what he's about to write. Paul was the
instrument of writing 1 Timothy, as he was all of his epistles.
God is the author. He is the author and giver of
the revelation. So when he says, now the Spirit
speaketh expressly, he's putting an emphasis on what's about to
come. And it emphasizes, too, what
he has said before. But he says in verse one that
in the latter times, some shall depart from the faith. The latter
times, you know that term is used loosely and often these
days. Talk about the last days, the
latter days, the latter times. I've often had people say, do
you believe we're living in the last days? Yes, I do believe
we're living in the last days. But we've been living in the
last days since Christ ascended unto glory. Now that's the context
of the New Testament. What most people think about
when they consider the latter days, the last days, or the second
coming of Christ, most of what is accepted today as biblical
truth didn't come out of the Bible. And didn't even begin
until the 1800s And that's this dispensational stuff and all
that. The Bible is very clear on this,
that when these latter days, that's the New Testament days,
this is the last dispensation of time. I mean, we can talk
about that as far as dispensation, the last segment of time. There's
nothing else to come. age of the fathers, Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, and you had the old covenant, the Mosaic
law, now we're in the new covenant, the New Testament church. And these are the last days.
John says that in his book. I'm going to preach from John
chapter 2 and I'll show you that. But he says, you know, he talked
about, John talked about Antichrist. People today, they look at Antichrist
as one individual who arises on the political scene. But John
said there are many Antichrists in his day. And he speaks of
a spirit of Antichrist. And what is Antichrist? It's
someone or some spirit or some group that comes in the name
of Christ, but denies the doctrine of Christ. And so what Paul says
here, in the latter times, some shall depart from the faith.
And if you look over at 2 Thessalonians, just back a page or so, If you
read chapter 2, Paul speaks of the second coming of Christ because
many of the Thessalonians, believers, were just convinced that the
Lord was going to return in their day. And Paul corrects them. And basically what he says, we
don't know when the Lord's going to return, only God knows that. But we know that we should prepare
for it as if it's coming any day. As believers, we should
expect it. And he says in verse one of 2
Thessalonians 2, now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto
him, that you be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled neither
by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the
day of Christ is at hand. When a preacher comes and says
he's coming back today, or tomorrow, or whenever, don't let that trouble
you. in mind or in spirit. I've told
you all the story about the man. He used to come down here and
visit. And he used to, when I was in
Ashland, he came up there too. I think he was from Maryland.
He was retired military. But he followed a man out in
California who thought he could mathematically determine the
exact day that Christ was gonna come back. And he picked two
dates. First date he picked, It didn't
happen, obviously. And he said, well, I forgot to
add some things here, and he come up with another date. And
this man who come around to visit us, and he visited other places,
too, he had a T-shirt with the date on it. He wanted me to get
one of those T-shirts. And I said, no. I said, I'm not
going to get one, you know. But I said, what are you going
to do if it doesn't happen, then? Those shirts would be worthless.
Well, it didn't happen. It was several years ago. And
the man whom he followed has died since. But Christ tells
us, we don't know the day and the time, the hour. Are we closer
than the Thessalonians? Yes, sure, because we're future. I don't know when he's coming.
Sometimes we look at the world and it gets so bad and we say,
well, he's got to come back. Well, he said it would be as
in the days of Noah. How bad was it back then? I think
we all have the tendency to think that those days were better than
ours. And they weren't. I used to know a preacher who
said that the United States would be better off if we went back
to the kind of government that they had under the judges. And
I thought, son, have you read the book of Judges? Good night. It says, every man did that which
is right in his own eyes, in the book of Judges. So what are
they doing today? Everybody's doing what's right
in their own eyes. They don't wanna follow the word of God. There's not gonna be a paradise
here on earth. There's not gonna be a perfect
world. This world's gonna be destroyed and made new, and then
that'll be the paradise. That's the new earth, new heavens
and the new earth. So anyway, Paul says here in
2 Thessalonians 2, he says in verse 3, he says, let no man
deceive you by any means for that day shall not come except
there come a falling away first and that man of sin be revealed
the son of perdition That's the Antichrist, and I believe it's
the spirit of Antichrist. But anyway, he says a falling
away. Now the word falling away means an apostasy. And what that's
talking about, and this is what Paul is warning Timothy about,
that in the latter times, and that's in your time, Timothy,
and in our time, people who at one time claimed to be true Christians,
And listen to me now, they claim to believe the true doctrine,
but they'd fall away. And John speaks of that. I'll
deal with that in the next message. John says, they went out from
us. They were not of us, but they went out from us. So one
of the things we note here is that he's not talking to people
about people here who were saved and then became lost. They lost
their salvation, no. That's heresy. Salvation from
beginning to culmination to glory is all of grace. And you say,
well, you're a Baptist. You believe once saved always.
If God saved you, once you're saved, you're always gonna be
saved. But it's the security of the believer, the security
of the saved, grace. There's no such thing as being
saved one day and lost the next. I asked a person who was of the,
you've heard of the Nazarene faith? They believe you can,
my brother-in-law was in that for a while, and he said you
could be saved and you could be lost. And I said, well, what
could you do to lose it? And he told me, he said, I don't
know, but it has to be something pretty bad. Well, I guess so. You know, I've seen some of the
saints of God in the Bible do stuff that's pretty bad. All
right? And of course, I tell y'all,
we pick on King David a lot, you know, because of his glaring
fall into immorality, which he did. But I always think of the
prophet Nathan. He didn't come to David, and
you can read this in, what is it, 2 Samuel 12, I think? He
didn't come to David, and he said, now, David, if you don't
straighten up, you're going straight to hell. That's not what he said. He said, thou art the man, but
the Lord has forgiven your sin. Now there's going to be consequences,
he told him. He said, you're not going to
get off scot-free as far as suffering the consequences of your action.
If you run the stop sign and the cop catches you, you're going
to pay the fine, all right? But that's not going to send
you to hell. Christ is your hope. And so when
he says that back in 1 Timothy 4 now, The Spirit expressly says
this, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith.
The faith there is the body of the gospel, the doctrine, the
truth, all right, that they claim to believe. In other words, these
aren't people who've always believed a lie, and I'll put it to you
this way. These aren't people who called
themselves Christians but always believed a lie. These are people
who call themselves Christians but believed what true Christians
believe, claim to believe it, all right? But they fell away. Now, go over to 1 John 2. What
happened to them? Did they lose their salvation?
No. And look at verse 18. I'm gonna refer to this in the
next message too. He says, little children, this
is 1 John 2, 18. Little children, it is the last
time, and you've heard that Antichrist shall come. Even now are there
many Antichrists coming in the name of Christ now, but denying
the truth, denying the faith, whereby we know that it is the
last time. They went out from us. They left,
they apostatized, that's what it means. Now this doesn't refer
to a believer who gets messed up, or gets angry at another
believer and stops coming to church for a while, all right?
That happens, sadly. Shouldn't, but it does, all right? Aren't y'all glad that I don't
stop coming to church for a while? Be like the guy who, he's like
50 years old, he's still living with his mother, and she was
a churchgoer. And she tried to get him up on
Sunday, said, son, you gotta get up, we gotta go to church.
And he said, mom, I don't want to go to that church. She said,
why not? He said, they don't like me and
I don't like them. And she said, but son, you're the pastor. Anyway, this is not talking about,
this is talking about a person who claimed to believe the truth,
the gospel of God's free and sovereign grace in Christ based
upon his blood, his righteousness imputed, but then totally turns
against it and denies it. And I gotta tell you, I've known
one man in my life who's done that. He used to go to Scott
Price's church up in Ohio. He used to preach for Scott.
Now he says he's an atheist. So what does the Bible say? Verse
19, they went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, truly
of the family of God, they would no doubt have continued with
us. But they went out that they might be made manifest that they
were not all of us. You see that? Now there's other
scriptures we could go to. You know, Paul said that about
those who turned away in the book of Hebrews. He said they
turned back unto perdition. But he said, but we are not of
those. We who believe, we who have been
saved by grace, are not of those who turn back. Apostatized. So understand that. An apostate
is a person who claimed to believe what we believe here, but who
then totally denies it, turns against it, calls Christ accursed,
denies the word of God. You see that? Not somebody, not
a believer who gets into trouble, which we can all do, and do many
times, all right? And can be called back to repentance.
Godly sorrow over sin. So go back to verse four, or
chapter four. Now what he says they'll do,
now these are particular things that you can generalize them,
but there must have been some of these things going on in the
church of Ephesus. And this is what he says, he
says, some shall depart from the faith, that's the doctrine
of Christ, the doctrine of his person, who he is, the doctrine
of his work and the accomplishment of it. You know, I've often said,
and I'm gonna mention this again, I'm not gonna preach the same
message, but I'm gonna go back to this again, because what I'm
talking about in the next message is how do we know that we're
in Christ? And one of the things, you know,
you think about 2 Corinthians 13, where it says examine yourselves,
whether you be in the faith. In other words, is the faith
that I'm listening to, the doctrine that I'm listening to, And the
doctrine that I claim to believe, is it the faith? Is it the truth? That's what he's asking there.
He's not saying examine yourselves to see whether or not you believe
enough. Sometimes our faith is, our believing, in the way of
faith, our believing is strong. Sometimes it's weak, isn't it?
You ever been through that? Can you identify with that? Sometimes
it's so strong. Sometimes it's so weak. Sometimes
we're like the disciples. Read about it in Matthew, Mark,
and Luke. You know, people actually, and I've been through this, and
I had a guy ask me this a couple weeks ago. He said, when were
the disciples converted? You know what I told him? I said,
I don't really know. Sometimes they'd say things that
you would think that only an unbeliever could say. And other
times they'd say things that only a believer would say. But
I'm not gonna get into that right now. But anyway, I know that
this, that Christ called them and kept them until he gave them
life and eyes to see and ears to hear. So let's not argue about
that. But the faith is the gospel. And two things that I wanna know
if I'm gonna have assurance of salvation, and this does pour
over into the next message. I want to know if I profess that
Jesus Christ is my hope, knowing that there are counterfeits out
there, I want to know that the Christ that I believe is the
true Christ of this book and not a counterfeit. Does that
make sense? And so, what does the Bible say? And then I want to know about
his work. What did he accomplish on the cross? Did he just die
to make me savable? Well, that's not the true Christ.
He shall save his people from their sins. And then secondly,
I want to know, do I really believe in him? Am I really trusting
in him? And we can go into different
things on that in the message, the next message. but some shall
depart from the faith. Now here's what was happening.
Number one, they were giving heed to seducing spirits and
doctrines of devils. You hear that? Seducing spirits. What are they trying to seduce
you? They're trying to draw you away from the truth. And normally, You know, it's
not preaching immorality that draws people away from the truth.
I mean, if you had a preacher come in here and stand up and
said, now we're all going to back, we're going to have a big beer party.
Would that seduce you? No. See, what they're talking
about, and I'll show you this, look over at 2 Corinthians chapter
11. So he's not talking about a physical
seduction here, it's a spiritual one that would draw you away
from the truth. In 2 Corinthians 11 verse two,
Paul writes, for I am jealous over you with godly jealousy,
for I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you
as a chaste virgin to Christ. Christ is your husband. And he
says, but I fear less by any means as the serpent beguiled
Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted
from the simplicity that is in Christ. Now that's exactly what's
going on over here, these seducing spirits and the doctrines of
devil. It's Satan trying to draw them away from the simplicity
that is in Christ. And that word simplicity, as
most of you know, means singularity. And what is that singularity
that's in Christ? It's this, it's all my salvation,
all the blessedness of it, all the benefit of it, all the preservation
of it, all the righteousness of it is in one single person
based upon his one single work, and that's Christ crucified and
risen from the dead. It's not conditioned on me. Now
that's what happens. This is how the devil seduces
people away. He gets you to looking to yourself. Take an inventory. So as to draw
you away from the assurance and the glory that's in the person
and work of Christ. And he'll either do it one of
two ways. And it's always the same. He'll either do it through
self-righteousness Which means this, I look at myself and say,
hey, I'm better than I used to be. I thank God I'm not like
other men. I pray every day. Somebody asked
me yesterday, he said, do you have a certain hour of the day
that you pray? I said, not always, but I try
to, you know, but that's not gonna save me. I fast twice a
week, I give tithes of all this, you know. And he does it under
the guise of grace. I think, you know, the first
three words out of the Pharisee's mouth was, I thank God. He thought
he was giving God the credit. The first thing out of the mouths
of those false prophets in Matthew 7 were, haven't we preached in
your name? But they were preaching heresy.
They were preaching salvation and righteousness based upon
what they thought God enabled them to do. And that's a subtle
heresy. Oh, it's not me. It's God in
me. You've heard of the terms imputed
righteousness and imparted righteousness? Usually imparted righteousness.
Now, not always, but usually. It's a bad term either way, okay? Righteousness. which is the legal
declaration of God that justifies his people, the imputed righteousness. The merits of Christ's work,
of his obedience unto death, is charged legally to my account. I didn't have anything to do
with producing it. It's all Christ. Now, imparted
righteousness, a lot of times, means that I'm righteous based
upon what God inwardly enables me to do. That's heresy. But you know, it makes people
feel good. That's the seduction. And that's the work of the devil.
And that's what he's saying here. They give heed to seducing spirits. Things that would seduce or draw
people away from that gaze, that fix. You know, the psalmist said,
my heart is fixed. Fixed where? On Christ. His glory,
his person, his work. And that's my hope. Well, don't
you have to do anything? Yes, but not to rival or take
the place of or add to what Christ is and what he's done. You see
the difference? And it's a subtle heresy. The
subtlety of Satan. And that's what Paul said, I
fear. And over there, if you read the whole chapter of 2 Corinthians
11, over on there he says, don't be amazed that Satan disguises
himself as an angel of light. That's scary, isn't it? He doesn't appear to you with
horns and a tail and a pitchfork. He's like those preachers who
stand behind pulpits and preach a perverted form of grace. Legalism, self-righteousness,
and I'll even say freewillism is the same way, because it makes
salvation conditioned on sinners. So he says, some shall depart
from the faith, giving heed to these seducing spirits and doctrines
of devils. Look at verse two, speaking lies
in hypocrisy. Now, you know what hypocrisy
is, that's like an actor acting out a part. And they speak lies
because they believe a lie. These ideas of progressive sanctification
in the sense that I'm just getting better and better and better
and less sinful and less sinful. Now think about that, you know. And I'll say this, you know,
I've often told you, I wrote an article about this years ago,
but are we getting better? And I'll say this, I hope we
are. I hope I'm a better person today than I was 20, 30, 40 years
ago. I hope I am. But if I am better,
that still cannot save me or make me righteous and holy in
God's sight. Do you see that? Why should I
strive to get better if that doesn't save me or make me right? Well, my friend, God has saved
us by grace. He's given us everything that
we have spiritually and eternally. When we don't deserve it and
don't earn it, shouldn't we thank him? Shouldn't we be his servants? You see what I'm saying? What if you, you know, I'll have
people come up in the parking lot or different places saying,
can you give me some money to eat? And if I have the cash,
sometimes I'll give it, sometimes I won't. But what if I gave them
the cash and then they turn around and spit in my face? You think
I'm gonna try to get that money back? I don't know, I might let
them go, but I don't know. But I know that says more about
them than it does me. Yes, believers should strive
to, we all ought to strive to be better in every facet of life
that God has put us in as good stewards of His grace, but not
to be saved, not to be righteous. Christ is our righteousness.
And at our best, we still fall short. So what do you do? Fix your gaze on Him. So they
speak lies in hypocrisy. Anybody who thinks that they
can have a right relationship with God based upon their performance. Okay, now I'm not gonna go into
all the, unpack all this today, but I mean, I know when we do
well, we can do well, you know, somebody says, well, I feel closer
to God. But here's what I'm saying, I'm talking about establishing
a right relationship with God who justifies the ungodly. Anybody
who thinks that they can have a right relationship with God
based upon their performance is a hypocrite. You've forgotten
what kind of sinner you are. And to turn around and say, well,
I'm not as bad as some people, or at least I'm better than that
one, that's hypocrisy. Here's the point, though. You
may be better than that one. But where does that get you as
far as establishing your salvation and your right relationship with
God? That's the work of God's grace in the blood and righteousness
of Christ. He goes on, he says in verse
two, having their conscience seared with a hot iron. Their
conscience, you know what the conscience is, that's your courtroom. In your mind, in your heart.
Because we always go through life judging ourselves and judging
others. And somebody says, well, I don't
judge anybody. You do, too. Don't lie to yourself. Don't
be a hypocrite. We judge everything. Now, in an unregenerate state,
we judge everything wrongly. I say everything. I'm talking
about spiritually, in salvation. For example, if you ever say
that anybody's going to hell because they're a sinner, you've
just condemned yourself, because you're a sinner too. Now, are
there sinners who are going to hell? Yes. But why is that? It's because they don't know
Christ. They deny Christ. There are sinners who do some
awful things, I mean terrible things, and there's some sinners
who are lost who are pillars of the community. But my friend,
if you don't know Christ, where does that put you? If you don't
believe in Christ, if you're not in the faith, where does
that put you? Puts you on the outs with God. So their conscience makes a judge. Now we judge according to the
gospel. See what I'm saying? But their
consciences are seared with a hot iron. That word sear is like
cauterize. You know when you bleed and they
wanna cauterize, stop the bleeding? Well, their conscience is seared
over with self-righteousness, and they can't get away from
it. Verse three says, forbidding to marry. You know about the
Catholic church, their priests take a vow of celibacy because
they think that's a holier state. Well, that started here. You
know, that kind of thought, you know, to remain single. I've
always said, well, you can remain single physically, but that doesn't
touch this up here. You know, because what Christ
say about adultery and fornication, it comes from the heart, comes
from the mind. To teach that you're holier if
you don't get married, women or men, that's hypocrisy. That's denying the faith. Marriage
is a beautiful union between a man and a woman that pictures
Christ and his church. And then he says, and commanding
to abstain from meat, taste not, touch not, handle not, you know
what Paul said in Colossians. He said, which God hath created
to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know
the truth. If you say I'm not gonna eat pork, not only is your
life gonna be miserable, but it doesn't make you holier. Somebody
said to me one time, said, It's never been proven that vegetarians
live longer, it just seems longer. And he says in verse four, for
every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if
it be received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified, set apart
by the word of God in prayer. When he says every creature,
he's not talking about everything without exception. He's talking
about everything that God created to be food. And reasonable people
can tell the difference. That doesn't mean if you go out
and eat a snail or what, well, I guess they do in France. But
you know what I'm saying. There's nothing that says you
have to abstain from this food or that food, but God has created
it for us. And we do it with Thanksgiving.
That doesn't mean that when we go to a restaurant, we have to
make a show of prayer. I mean, I tell people, I pray
silently to myself. I say, thank God for this food.
We don't have to make a show of it. But it's there, and it
says, sanctified by the word of God, set apart for our use.
That is in a godly way, not gluttony now, you see. But in a way, and
he says in verse six, he says, if thou put the brethren in remembrance
of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ,
nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, see,
the teachings of the Bible, the gospel and its particulars, whereunto
thou hast attained. And so he's simply encouraging
Timothy to stand firm in the doctrine of Christ. Okay.