Christ Jesus by command of God
our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope. To Timothy, my true
child in the faith. Grace, mercy, and peace from
God the Father in Christ Jesus our Lord. As I urged you when
I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge
certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to
devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote
speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is
by faith. The aim of our charge is love
that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere
faith. Certain persons, by swerving
from these things I've mentioned, have wandered away into vain
discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding
either what they are saying or the things about which they make
confident assertions. Let's pray. Father, we know that Christ is
our Savior. We confidently understand and
apprehend and comprehend with all the saints your love for
us, its depth, its width, its breadth, the vastness of it,
the riches of your glory given to us through Christ Jesus, Father.
The fullness of all that you have revealed in Him, Lord, standing
before us through the pages of your scripture. as we are guided
as Your people by Your Spirit to understand and to rest and
rest and rejoice and repeat in the sufficiency of Your promises
for us, Your people, in Christ Jesus, Your Son, whom You have
sent to destroy death. And so, Lord, we are Your people.
We display Your name. We are a light shining in darkness. And we are so by Your power. By your love, by your mercy,
by your everlasting and eternal grace. To whom you have given
us to Jesus Christ. Your son, Father, we now are
your children. Because you have said it so.
You have made it so. You have declared it so. And
in your power, you have proven it. And you have made provision
for righteousness in Jesus Christ, in his death that we no longer
stand guilty before you, and in his life that we shall be
like him forevermore. In his name we pray. Guide us
to all truth. Teach us these things in his
name. Amen. Well, we've spent some time dealing
with peace. We've spent some time dealing with what the gospel
is and what grace is. And beloved, if we were to again,
take a poll and say, is there any of us here today that has
a reason not to be at peace? We would all have a reason. Some
of us would have to, some of us would have a thousand. Some
of us could not find a reason for us not to have peace. Some
of us would have no way of finding peace if we were to truly evaluate
how we feel and think and perceive the world around us. But where
our peace rests is in the sufficiency and the power and the essence
and the person of God. The Father, God, the Son, God,
the Spirit, the three persons who are one, who are one being,
who are one God, who are one essence. who are revealed in
the glory, the perfection of who He is in the Son, Jesus Christ,
who became human and dwelt among us. We've not come here this
morning for parlatories and niceties and to feel like we've done our
Christian duty, though it is. We've not come here this morning
to appease the wrath of God, for it has already been appeased
to the death of Christ. We've not come here this morning
to gain jewels and crowns, thinking that if we are doing certain
things, then we will be greater in the kingdom, for Jesus is
clear in His teaching to the sons of thunder, right? To their
mothers. For he who is going to be great
must be nothing. That is the mind of Christ. Brother Queller
prayed for us to have and be taught the mind of Christ this
morning. We've sung about the mind of Christ. We've heard the
scripture from the mouth of Christ. And today we're going to continue
to learn that our peace is rested in the sufficiency of God's promises
because of Christ. And beloved, that's why we're
here. to be taught and reminded of these things so that the application
of this deep theology will bring us to a place of joy and satisfaction. And most importantly, that our
unity will be in Him and nothing else. That our joy will be found
in Him and nothing else. If there's anything else we need
in the context of our Christian life than Christ, we are missing
the point of it. See, those statements like that
beg the thinker to go, well, what about? And that's OK. There
are a lot of whatabouts. We have been given all things
in Christ. We've been given the assembly.
We've been given the apostles. We've been given the prophets.
We've been given the elders. We've been given the church.
We've been given the word of God. We've been given the spirit. We've been given the spirit through
which we cry, Papa. Because we've been adopted by
him. prepared, as Paul would teach the church of Colossae,
prepared to receive the inheritance of light. We've been qualified
with all the saints. How? Because of what we are and
what we know and how well we do? No, because of who Christ
is and what He has finished. And Paul has very simply established in verse
two here. That Timothy is his true child,
that possessive, my child, true child in the faith. And then
this expression of mercy in the midst of grace and peace so that
we would see that the tone of Paul's writing is not a tone
of chastisement. It's not upset with Timothy because
of what's going on in Ephesus. He's not angry with the elders
because there are things happening that aren't handled. He's not
frustrated that false teaching is absolutely taking place in
Ephesus. Beloved, if there are people,
and there is more than one of them, and their brain is working,
there is a false opinion among them. Some of you go, no there's not.
See, you're false. There are always going to be
false opinions. But the apostles demand by the
authority of Christ, He is the Apostle of Christ, the Holy One
that God has sent. Not of man, not of the church,
not of any other person, not of His own free will, not of
anything but the command of Christ, He is Christ's messenger, so
that when Paul writes to the church, we heed the words. You know my old funnies is that
I say, if a cat stands before you and meows out the scripture,
we are bound to hear it. And as those who are indwelt
by the Spirit, we are bound to heed it. I thought of another one this
week. If you're driving through the city and a bunch of pigeons
drop a plop on your windshield and that plop through your windshield
wipers produces a portion of scripture printed on your windshield.
The plop drop Bible has authority over you. You must hear it. That's absurd, isn't it? But
I want to show you it doesn't matter if the devil himself speaks
the truth of Christ. It is the truth of Christ. But that's not the devil's business
to make much of truth, is it? The devil's business is to take
truth, change it. How much? Just a little bit. Just a little bit. All it takes
is a little bit. For those of you who like to shoot long range
or short range, you shoot handguns, that four-inch barrel, without
even being able to see it with the naked eye, just a little
bit of change can be 30 feet at 100 yards. Just a little bit
of change here in the truth could be completely false. Paul, in
his writing to the churches of Galatia, he was angry. Was he
angry at the church? No. Was he angry at the elders? Absolutely not. Who was he angry
with? Those who insisted on others
hearing their point of view concerning a doctrinal position that the
Bible did not teach. What was he angry over? That
they had error? No, their insistence. It caused fear amongst the body
of Christ, who of all people ought to have peace, that surpasses all understanding.
Amongst themselves they ought not to be in discord. But self-appointed divine men,
went into Galatia as God Himself and has orchestrated a coup to
upset the apple cart, if you will, and cause so much fear
that grown men would be willing to circumcise themselves. That's
some scary stuff. Mutilating the flesh because
you fear the wrath of God. when the gospel, the good report
is that God has mutilated the flesh of His Son instead. Beloved, we are here this morning
to be corrected. We are here this morning to learn what elders
must be doing. We are here this morning to read
these personal, mercy-filled, peace-empowered letters that
Paul wrote to his spiritual son. His spiritual son. So that you the body may know
what I and the other elder brothers of this church are bound to.
Not just what, but how. And in what manner and with what
attitude. Beloved, Then when we learn these things,
we are literally learning Christ. Because only Christ is the true
shepherd. Only Christ is the perfect lover. Only Christ is
the greater husband. Only Christ is the true teacher. And because God has, in His sovereign
grace, His loving kindness, eternally to His people, reached out to
His elect ones, and shown them the truth because he has shown
such compassion and mercy, then the elders of the church must
overly compensate in that same direction. That's why, as we'll
see throughout these letters, we'll see where an elder must
not be given into fits of rage. But yet the culture says a man
gets it done. slings a fit, screams in people's
faces, makes a mockery of it. Do you know when we jest about
sin, it's wicked? When we laugh about those who
sin, it's a sin in itself. When we have memes that make
us chuckle, and we chuckle. We live in a world where my great
grandparents, my great aunts and uncles that I grew up knowing,
Some of them who lived over a century would have died if they had seen
some of what we call humorous today. They would have died. And the young people, oh, they're
just boomers. They were beyond, they were before boomers. They
were seedlings, you know. They birthed the ones who birthed
the boomers, you know. The point I'm making is that
we have come to the point where it is endearing to be a rear
end. To be bold means to be crass. To tell the truth means to hurt
anything along the way as long as truth is at the bottom of
it. And beloved, that is the work of Satan. It's the work
of Satan because the Bible teaches us that it is. And don't take
my word for it, hear the word of the Lord. And Paul is writing
this letter with mercy as the meat. Why? Because he's not upset with Timothy.
He's not upset with the church of Ephesus. He's not even upset
with Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom he calls out of that group
of certain individuals, you see. There's a lot of people at work
here. Two men upset the apple cart
of Ephesus and started suggesting false things, and many people
took root either to say, I think it makes some sense, or I'm not
having it, so everybody starts dividing. And Paul said, when
you divide, it's of the flesh. But the Puritan self-righteous
mongrels, well, I shall not participate with such wickedness. I depart
from thee, come out from thee. You see how silly that sounds?
I do it in that old style because it is a mocking of that. And
yet we laugh at that. I think it's humorous. Let's
mock, let's mock their evil. You see what I mean? It's just
natural. What did Paul teach us to do? Mock it? No, Paul teaches
us not to mock it. So as you are guilty, I am guilty.
I mean, how many little tiny Slurs have I thrown from the
pulpit about certain things in a way that makes us sort of laugh. But yet, if it were not for God's
everlasting love for us, we would not know the truth. It's not
funny when people stand in condemnation. And it's not merciful to be even
angry and bold about it. Paul is writing this letter and
he's reminding Timothy of the mercy of the Father, the true
Father. See, God is our true Father.
But we have fatherly and motherly relationships in this world through
DNA, through birth, through relationships, and through spiritual things. And so mercy, by definition,
as we've learned, is to be warm, is to be compassionate. is to
be empathetic, is to sympathize, is to have affection, is to understand
tenderness, is to help in times of need or comfort in times of
misery. I mean, what does comfort look
like in your misery? What does the mercy of the Lord look like?
We sung it today that he's just there. Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes it's not about orchestrating
all the answers. Sometimes it's not about getting
the whiteboard out and all the brethren and pounding through
the ends of it all. Sometimes it's just showing up
and saying, I love you in the Lord. And y'all know as well as I do,
we have experienced a lot of legalistic unbelief in our midst
over the last 10 years, where people who walk with us in the
doctrines of truth walk away from us in the applications of
truth. Some of them, yes, into gross sin and neglect and others
into self-righteousness. They know better. They're beyond
correction. And beloved, this letter is written
to the elders, to the elder, now to the elders of all the
churches that we may learn how to handle these things. That's
what this letter is all about. And there are some who would
say that we aren't to deal with these little things about how
to handle false teachers or how to handle disagreements, that
we are to just move right on over those things and just keep
on talking about Christ. But beloved, to omit those things
and to preach only Christ is to omit Christ. Because in the therefores. They
are hinged on the this is who he is. Now this is who you are
in him. Therefore, this is what I want
you to do. And we like to hear the word antinomian and we like
to hear the word legalist and all this kind of stuff. Antinomianism
is just another legalism. It's just another law by which
someone lives. It's another regulation or exterior
condition that is binding the church. Nobody can ever get it
right. You ever known those people?
That no matter what you say, it's never right. Even when you
mimic their very words, it's not enough because they don't
believe you. Because they have been given the mind of Christ
and the divine essence of Christ to become God to know you. I just described every marriage
in history, didn't I? I know what you're saying, but
I know what you really mean. I mean, you know, we might not say it, but
we think it. I am so sorry. No, you're not.
That's what we say in our minds. If you were sorry, you wouldn't
have done it. You're sorry, you wouldn't have said it. You'd have picked
your socks up yesterday. I mean, you know, it's simple. See the
stupid stuff we fight over. And I'm not going to equate who
Christ is in doctrinal error with not picking up your socks.
My beloved, in all manners, in all things, the manner is mercy.
The manner is kindness. The manner is comfort. Comfort. An injured animal will attack
you if you slap it. A broken arm, you don't pull
it off and throw it into a fire. You wrap it up and hold it tight
to the body. But why is it so natural for
broken arms and wounded animals to just flee? Because that's
what we do. And then God's word comes in
for those who have ears to hear. And teaches us differently. So
we come and we learn what mercy is all about. Paul is writing
this letter with a heart of mercy to his true child in the faith.
to his true childhood faith. This is intimate, supernatural
affection, birthed from the intimate, true affection of God toward
Paul, and the intimate, true affection of God toward Timothy,
in Christ Jesus, and in all these things, the spirit of peace through
Jesus Christ from God the Father, all these first two verses, this
is the glue that holds everything we're going to learn over these
next months together. And it is all of grace. The idea
of mercy as he's writing this, I urge you as I was going to
Macedonia to remain in Ephesus because you know Timothy traveled
with Paul. Timothy was sent to go get John Mark and to bring
back books when Paul was, you'll see it in the second letter,
when Paul was dying in prison. And Dr. Luke, the physician,
was with him, tending to him. And they wrote some letters and
they did some things and they got some instruction to the churches.
So Timothy was not just the elder of the churches in Ephesus, he
also was Paul's companion for a long, long time. And, you know,
people who we're close to and we love, we like to travel with
and be with, but the time for Timothy was to stay. This is
what I trained you for, Timothy. I need you to stay. I need you
to stay. I need you to do what you've
been called to do as an elder, which is to put in order that
which remains, just like we see in Titus. tiny Titus. And so Paul is writing
in the nature of God the Father's merciful love toward his people
in the revelation of Christ and his merciful love to his people
in the teaching of the apostles. Paul now is in his merciful love
also now encouraging his young son who is the elder of Ephesus to have peace. and to be at peace
in all these troubled times. So Paul commands Timothy to stay.
As an elder, Timothy's role is to put in order the things that
are out of place, and specifically, these false teachers. Now keep
in mind that Paul could have written some letters, like he
did to Corinth, and Paul could have written some letters but
this internal circumstances now, by this time, where established
elders are present. What is Paul saying? Paul tells
the elders that are local to deal with the circumstances locally. Because that's God's instruction.
We don't call the Atlanta office of a missionary entity and get
some expert to come down here who doesn't even know my middle
name to pop in and make assessment. There's a lot of professional
assessments in the Christian church. And most all of them
are not biblical. I'm not saying they're not good
advice. But as we've always learned,
if we're going to see God's promises fulfilled, we need to prescribe
to God's promises. And how are they found in the
scripture? So Paul says, I urged you when I was in Macedonia,
remain at Ephesus. Remain there. Why? So that you
may charge. See, we like that word, don't
we? Especially the men in the room. I charge you! Heretic! I mean, you know. You've seen the old British films.
Church history. You've seen John Wycliffe's film,
right? You've seen Luther. You've seen his little speech
in a German-English accent. You've seen these movies and
we want to be like that. We want to be the cardinal standing
there. Heretic! But God has not told any church
member or any elder to hold that role. Elders. He said, charge these
certain persons, plural, not to teach. other teachings, different
teachings. The word doctrine is the word
teaching. So not to teach different teachings.
See elders as recipients of mercy, Timothy as a recipient of mercy
from Christ was also now a recipient of mercy from an apostle. And
elders then must be merciful in all ways and in all circumstances. It is the essence of pastoral
leadership. True pastoral leadership, true pastoral headship emulates
the pastoral headship, the shepherding headship of Christ. Though he
was God, he did not take equality with God, something to be grasped
and made himself nothing, obedient unto death on a cross as a slave. Now, we don't impart this idea
that elders are like Christ because they are equal with God. No,
but the essence of his heart and his mind must be shared amongst
his people. And it's not just elders, it's
the church as well. The pastors may be in charge
of certain things and in charge of oversight and in charge of
correction, but they're not the boss men of the church. They're the first leaders. They're
the first to be held responsible. They're the first to repent.
They're the first to forgive. They're the first to forbear.
They're the first, and what do I mean by that? The leader shows
everybody else what to do and where to do it. Follow the leader. Remember we were doing that since
preschool. That's what leaders do. Leaders
aren't in charge standing around pointing fingers. Leaders are
walking and everybody else is following. Beloved, follow me
as I follow the example of Paul who followed the example of Christ.
And when I detract from that, when the other elder brothers
of any church detract from that, when we start getting worldly,
then just don't go there. Don't follow that. And maybe
there's a relationships enough in the body of Christ of intimacy,
not things that are contrived, not programs, not opportunities,
not projects that we put together. That's not what the Bible tells
us to do. We don't come as a body and make people love each other.
But as we're able, as we're gifted, we love in those ways and we
do so with mercy. Elders must be merciful. And
this local elders, elders who oversee and teach the body are
equipped by the Word of God and by the Spirit of God to inquire
and correct with love and more importantly, or as important,
with self-interest. Now what does that mean? That
sounds bad. Timothy had an interest in these people because he loved
them. He didn't love them in a sense of like, you know, I
love all peoples of the world. I love all Christians of the
world. I love this man that I've never met because he is my brother
in Christ. That's great. People who we've walked through
fire with. People who we've sat around on the couch and sat outside
in the car and wept with and prayed with and prayed for and
labored and stayed up all night worrying about, there's an interest
there. That's called an investment.
The elders of the local church are better suited to deal with
patiently and calmly and mercifully the issues that arise in the
local assembly. Outsiders are not welcome ever in the midst
of those issues, ever. Let me say that again, ever.
And when they come in, Paul has something to say about that,
doesn't he? Because what do they do? They capture people. They
capture their attention. They capture their heart. And
what does that do? It creates fear. Anytime we are operating
out of fear, frustration, anger, selfishness, it is not of the
spirit. It is always of the flesh. And we should not be making decisions
in those areas of emotions. We make decisions based on what
the scripture tells us boldly. in black and white in its context,
not in its theoretical argumentation. There's a place for inference.
There's a place for organized, systematized use of understanding
the whole of Scripture, but that whole is easily manipulated. Elders, the local elders, God
has ordained this and He does not welcome intrusion from other
congregations or other presbyteries or other associations. This ideology is unbiblical and
it produces suspicion and I believe it produces a sterility of intimacy. It sterilizes us. It makes us
cold and clinical. So what does he charge Timothy
with? He charges him to charge others. Now I use the word charge.
He charges Timothy. What is a charge? A charge is
a quest. A charge is a comment. A charge
is an accusation sometimes. But He didn't say destroy. He didn't say ruin. He said certain
individuals, I want you to charge them to stop teaching different
teaching. I want you to tell them to stop. So what does the
elder do? Hey, let's talk about what you
just said. Let's talk about what you're
thinking. Let's talk about what you're saying and why you're saying
it. Let's talk about this thing. Let's get to the bottom of where the
error is. And all we need is the Bible. We don't need anything
else but the word of God to establish what is error or truth. And I
promise you there's a New Testament letter that will establish or
deny any doctrinal position that exists in the world. There's
a New Testament letter in and of itself that can fix it all.
We don't have to, we do not have to establish any other source. Now, in the context of hobbyists,
in the context of, you know, expressing and expanding our
ideas of history and where we've come to get, this is called anthropology,
We can come together and start to learn and grow and think about
other things, but when we're correcting the church, we correct
the church according to the scripture. So Paul says, Timothy, charge
these people not to teach different doctrine. See how sterile this
sounds already? But I want to hear about Christ.
I want to hear about the gospel. We know the gospel and we'll
get to the gospel. The gospel is the root of all
this. Why do we ignore this teaching? And the reason that so many Christians
are in such turmoil today is because they ignore the scripture. Everybody who is born of God
ought to be able to give a basic gospel in their own language.
Everybody who is in the faith ought to be able to have, without
any definitions or a thesaurus or dictionary whatsoever, ought
to be able to articulate what they've read in the Gospel of
John Or in Paul's teaching to the church of Ephesus, just to
name just simple places, one gospel, one letter, and ought
to be able to express some sense of the gospel in their own words.
But I think most Christians are copy-pastes. They have this mindset
that they don't know what the gospel is, but they've heard
something that they agree with, and so they hold on to it. They
memorize it. And they walk around in circles who have a specific
identity and then they memorize that ideology or that theological
position of these people. And they all seem to be in the
same camp, but yet when it comes to the Bible and what it teaches
to know and then do, there's a problem. You see, it starts
to rub. And beloved, the Bible is going
to rub our flesh. It's going to rub it in the wrong
way. It's going to rub against the
grain. It's going to burn. It's going to do things that
our flesh doesn't like, but at the same time it is going to
be a salve for our row. It's going to be medicine for
our illness. It's going to be refreshment
to our thirst. So don't teach any different
doctrine. I'll get into that in the weeks to come because
Paul starts to explain it. We can speculate or we can just
take it for face value. We don't need to dig too much
into what the English ideology or the 2022 understanding of
philosophy and myths and the use of the law is. Let's just
understand what was going on that day. How do we know what's
going on that day? We've got the book of Hebrews.
We've got the book of Romans. We've got Dr. Luke's exposition of
the Acts of the Apostles. So we know what was going on.
We know what the Jews were up to. We know what the Judaizers
were up to. We don't have to know history to understand scripture.
Scripture teaches us just enough history to help us understand
what's being taught. So don't teach any other type
of teaching. This role is part of the manifold, listen to me,
the manifold responsibility of the elder in the scope of keeping
order and overseeing the unity of the body in doctrine, in practice,
in attitude, in love, etc. And it's all or none. Beloved,
you can't be the elder of a church and be all about eschatology.
You can't be the elder of the church and be all about Bible
study. You can't be the elder of a church and only want to
preach out of John's writings. You gotta preach other stuff.
You gotta teach what's called the full counsel of the scripture.
I can't just go to Romans 9 and preach it every week. Because
Romans 9 makes zero sense. without the first eight chapters. That's what we do, isn't it?
I've never gone to a movie, bought a ticket, however many hundreds
of dollars those cost now. No, that's the popcorn. I've
never gone to a movie and waited an hour and a half to go in.
I don't really want to see anything for the last five minutes. Why
do we read the Bible that way? Because it's been parsed out
in history with some chapters and verses, so it makes it easier.
This. So we read it like a fortune cookie. We read it like I came
to the conclusion many, many years ago, like a vitamin box. We've segmented the Bible in
a way that this is for this and this is for this, and we love
the, you know, we love the Thompson chain reference Bibles, right?
I mean, you got this much Bible text and this many references.
We love to study Bibles, but we don't like to study our Bible.
We don't like to reference Paul's writing to Timothy to Paul's
writing to the Church of Galatia. We don't know what Paul taught
the Romans because we haven't read it, but we know Romans 1.
We know Romans 3. Some of us who are really in
the Old Testament know Romans 4 and 5. And if we're Calvinistic or
whatever or Reformed or whatever your historical moniker might
be, which I think is unnecessary, we love Romans 9. If we're Baptist, you know, we
love it all. We love all the things of God. But even then, we're not reading
it. I mean, let's ask our question. How many of us read the letter
of 1 Timothy every week? We're learning this letter, and
beloved, you're not gonna really grasp it if you're not reading
it. I read it every day. Why? Because I have to, because
I forget what I did this morning when I got here. I was looking
for my coffee. I left it in the truck. I mean,
what kind of a, that's brain damage. You don't leave coffee.
You know it's at the end when you're leaving your coffee. See? All jokes aside, Beloved, we
have to hold fast to the Scripture. And in doing so, what I'm about
to teach you out of this is the easy, surface-level understanding
of what Paul is simply saying. Let's listen to it. As I urged
you when I was in Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you
may charge, and listen carefully, certain individuals not to teach
any different teaching, nor to devote themselves to myths and
endless genealogies, which promote speculation. rather than the
stewardship of God that is by faith. What is he saying there? It's
real simple. Paul is tactfully teaching to
tell the elders or to tell those people in the congregation who
are so enjoying all these diverse teachings and attitudes and distinctions
and all these things to stop. And he's also not just saying
stop teaching this, which is step one, that we may inquire
and understand what's truly taking place because we're merciful,
patient, loving, kind, gentle, self-controlled, not fearful,
not anxious, not upset, not even a little bit disturbed. Because
being a little bit disturbed is not a fruit of the Spirit
of God. I don't see that over there. For the fruit of the Spirit
is kindness, being disturbed, a little frustrated, a little
cranky, and absolutely. And don't stab people, but show
them the knife. I mean, that's not the fruit
of the Spirit. Where did that even come from?
I'm telling you folks, it's a lot exposed up here. I'm sorry. I'm simply saying,
Paul is saying, certain individuals. Who are these individuals? I'm
willing to bet there were probably 40 people, maybe 50, in a city
the size of Ephesus with two firecrackers like Hermie and
Alex. They made a mess of things. And
it was running rampant. And people were going crazy.
And people were dividing. And people were upset that they
were even around. And Paul doesn't name anybody
until he gets to them. Because Paul says certain individuals.
Why didn't he just name the whole list? Because the point is not
to destroy them. The point is to reconcile. That's
mercy. They were in a time of need,
they were in a time of error, they were in a time of sin. You have mercy
in your time of need. You have grace in your time of
temptation. Oh no, but those who have the seed of the essence
of the divine mind know not to care about it, but to
be careful. For years, everywhere I am, There's
always someone who knows the heart of a man. And they know
that they know it. To me, that is person is claiming
to be God. You know the heart by what they
say. Oh, really? You know their affections, you'll
know their temperament, you know their attitude, you won't know
if they're born again. They confess to be a brother
in Christ. Paul takes that absolutely to the bank. And church discipline
mercifully and patiently corrects it. Flesh is out. And even when
they are removed from the fellowship, we pray for our brother and sister
who has been removed to be reconciled unto God by being reconciled
unto the relationships of the body of Christ. That's why Paul tells Timothy,
put away childish things. Because the whole world is like
a preschool playground. And when the kid doesn't get
its way, doesn't get its next turn, you know back in the slides
when I was a kid, the slides were like 70 feet tall, made
out of stainless steel. They waxed them every morning,
you know, buffed them down. And just a ladder. No railings,
no tether, no nothing. And all the kids in the playground
lined up, and he had this one guy, let's call him Bob, and
he was always ready to get to the top. And when he had his
slide, it was his turn to slide, and there were 16, 17 more kids
now to go. He shoves his way back up to
the front. And then what the teacher does when he starts to
go down is just sort of pull his foot. That's what the world's
like. We don't get our way, we don't
get our turn, we don't get our voice, we throw a tantrum. We
shove people, we shove ourselves in front of the responsible way
of doing things. We do that in our flesh, and
when we do it, we're not shoving others around the playground,
we're actually shoving Christ out of the way when we're pushing
the Word of God and its authority and its sufficiency to the yeah,
but column. So certain individuals, Paul
is exhorting mercifully He's exhorting here by not naming
them. He's showing mercy by not naming
them. Because there is a grave evil
when error in the church is made into a spectacle. There's a grave evil when people
make a lifestyle of showing all the false teachings. Because
you know what they're doing? They are sharing what they love
most. Out of the abundance of the heart,
the mouth speaks. Beloved, you will share what you love most.
Sharing the antithesis of Christ is not Christ. Philosophically,
we can argue for the place of it according to the measure of
which the apostles would express it, according to the need of
the local assembly. I have five children and a grandchild,
see. And when they turned three, I
didn't line them all up and say, I'm going to tell you about all
the bad things that have ever happened in the world. Let me tell you
about bad people with white vans and candies and puppies. Let
me tell you what happened to the kid across the street. Let me tell you. No, don't. I
mean, we don't do that. We don't give a list of errors
that are found in the world and tell our children. When we're
teaching them how to drive, we don't show them all 29 of the
wrong ways to make a left turn. We show them how to make a left
turn. And we show them how to make a left turn. And we show
them how to make a left turn. And when they don't do it the way
we show them, they know they're wrong. Because they've learned
the truth. So Paul is not emphasizing the
error or the people who are causing the error. He's emphasizing the
truth. And he's doing so because that is what God commands the
elders of the church to do. And he commands the people of
the church to be busy with working with their hands and serving
each other and being quiet. Certain individuals, it is sinful
to make a spectacle of error because it puts it before Christ. And it blasphemes the gracious,
merciful fatherhood of God in Jesus. But what is he telling
them to stop? He said stop teaching different
doctrines. Stop teaching different teachings. These guys are teaching a different
teaching. They're exposing the church to external ideologies
and philosophies that disrupt the unity of the body. That's
what was happening. Paul was mad in Galatia because
they were disrupting the joy and the unity of the gospel.
Not because these knuckleheads were teaching circumcision, because
they were convincing others to do it. Because here's the one thing,
if somebody comes along selling garbage out of the back of a
truck and you're not interested in garbage, just let him go on. We've learned what to do in those
circumstances with First John. Just quit giving them a platform.
But see, the problem now is that everybody is a platform. You're
a platform. We're all influencers. We influence
everything around us. With a snap, I mean, you changed
your picture this week on a social media thing. You don't even remember
that you did it. And 600 people go, oh, I love
that dress you're wearing. I love that cat you got. What
cat? I forgot I had that picture. I mean, isn't that how we relate
to one another now? We don't say, have you talked to John
and heard what's going on in his life? We say, did you see
what John put on Facebook? We don't care about John. We don't
talk to John. We're just nosy. That's a busybody.
See? And that's not the way intimacy
works. God has not ordained gospel ministry
on social media. It's not the church. And we may
have people that we dearly love, that we have real life intimacy
with, who are submissive to the Word of God, who watch our teaching
and listen to our teaching, but they know the difference and
the effectiveness of life together. Beloved, this is where the rubber
hits the road when we're together and when the microphone is over
and the praying and the praise is over, we actually are able
to make application in real life. Because if it didn't matter,
then we could all stay home. Certain individuals are teaching
something different than what you're supposed to be teaching.
They're teaching the church and they're disrupting the unity
of the body. They're offering opinions and interpretations
and they're imposing their ideology or their theology or their doctrine
on the life of others in the church. Have you ever had that
experience? We're talking about the gospel
and everything is focused on the gospel and everybody's together
with the right truth of Christ and all the stuff. I almost said
together with the gospel, that would have got me hanged. You
know, and all sorts of things. But, and all of a sudden, out
of nowhere, someone comes up with an ulterior ideology and
wants to express, wants you to express your opinion on something
you've never thought about. And then they charge you demonic
because you answer wrongly. Oh my goodness! Beloved, that's
not of God. And elders patiently correct
that. What happens when people like the preaching but don't
want to be shepherded? They leave. 100% of the time. That's the reason every person,
other than those who are looking for a youth ministry, every person
has left our church. Here are youth ministries that
are youth. right here. They can do what they want to
do. They can go play games, do Kung Fu, go to the firing range.
It doesn't matter. We don't have to entice them,
you see. But people leave because they
don't want to be shepherded. They don't want the doctrine
of Christ to be applied to their lives. You're not telling me what to
do. And some of them are so wise
with that divine eye that they actually know sometimes that
the elders of certain churches are reprobates so that they don't
have to listen to them. But the Bible doesn't even say
that you don't have to listen to the reprobates. Jesus says,
listen to the Pharisees and obey what they teach you, boy. Just because they're gone. Paul
said to the church of Philippi, these people who are charlatans
who are preaching my gospel, they've mimicked my, they don't
know it, they're just mimicking it. but they're mimicking it
perfectly, let them keep preaching. We know they're making bank on
it, who cares? The gospel they preach is right,
let them preach. That's crazy, isn't it? Would
that fly today? No, you put a J in front of Jesus, with some people
they'll crucify you on Twitter. There was no J in the original
text. Okay, ease us then. See that silliness? And we don't
want to make fun of people's disturbances. I don't want to
call them convictions. Those are disturbances. But we
don't cater to them. We have to be tactful. We don't allow other people to
impose their interpretation or their doctrinal distinctions
upon the church. Paul is tactful. Paul is patient.
Out of these people, certain individuals, there are two that
I believe were the ringleaders, and that is Hymenaeus and Alexander. And they had refused all manner
of patient mercy. They had refused all manner of
biblical correction, and they were wrecking the church. How
were they doing it? They wouldn't stop. See, the
ones who won't stop are the divisive ones. The ones who won't follow
the order of Scripture are the ones who are dividing the body.
not always the ones who bring the error in. So we don't know if they were
the ones who started it, but we know they were the ones who
were stirring it. And it is always gossip to speak
ill of someone in any way, and they're not in the earshot of
it. And that, by definition, according to Peter, the apostle
of Christ, is murder. God doesn't need the details
in order for us to pray. We don't have to inform His heart
and His ears of what's truly going on in the lives of His
people by telling Him all the details so that the people in
the prayer meeting can hear us. I've seen a lot of damage done
in that. Paul is tactful and patient.
These men had refused all manner of mercy and they wrecked the
church. They destroyed their faith, he says. They've abandoned
the assembly, refused the teaching of Christ, ignored the advice
of the elders, rebuked the authority of the apostles, but yet even
so, Paul treated them as brothers. In 2 Thessalonians, when Paul's
talking about the busybodies and what they're doing and always
in everybody's stuff and what they should be doing, he says
what? He says, warn them as a brother.
Do not regard them as an enemy. So Paul's desire is for giving
acceptance of these two men included in the group of certain individuals.
After all, these men had already been excluded from the lives
of the believers, and until they come back with the heart of learning
and correction, evidenced by them not teaching against the
apostles' teaching, they were not to be embraced. Many were
led astray. to disunity and divorce, yet
these two men were the leaders, in my mind, attempting to stir
it all up. They went after these things and contacted and connected
others on behalf of their ideas and teachings. They stirred fear
in the hearts of the church. But they were not able to rotly
divide the simple truth of what Paul was telling them to do,
much less the weightier issues of the law. These wannabe teachers
were unskilled in the scripture, ignorant of what was required
concerning instructing others in the faith, unqualified to
do so, uncalled to do so. They knew things, but they were
unwilling to be taught how to teach them, how to be tactful,
how to be godly, how to give oversight and care and mercy
and tenderness to the church. Yet they would not heed the warnings
of these leaders, of Paul and the other apostles and the elders
of Ephesus. They wouldn't heed the warnings Because in their
quote, humble arrogance, they wanted to teach others what they
knew. Yet Paul says they knew nothing. And what they had was
a myopic nonsense that is a different doctrine. Paul's desire here is to put
it all back together in order. So that the body would walk in
unity. He makes no judgment of these men except that what they're
doing is sinful. He doesn't say they're lost,
but rather they're disobedient children acting stupid. Pitching
a fit on the playground because they want a quicker turn on the
slide. They want to be heard. And they do it in the name of,
this is the truth of Christ. Like Paul in Galatia. He says
to them, what has changed? Why have you changed what you
have learned by the grace of Jesus Christ to another gospel
which is no gospel? Why? He was merciful to them.
He was concerned for them. So Paul says to the elder Timothy,
charge them to stop teaching this stuff, to stop talking.
And secondly, verse 4, he says what? I lost verse 4. Nor to devote
themselves to myths and English genealogies. Now we're not going
to parse out the difference between myths and English genealogies.
We understand that there's a historical narrative that goes all over
the place that the Jews were good at what? They were good
at creating stories. They were good at establishing
anecdotes and establishing new rules and regulations and things
and the history shows it from the Mishnah all the way even
to the consumption of Moses and all these other tight writings
that history has proven to us. There are a lot of things and
so we see it today in a lot of the cults and a lot of the Hebrew
cults and things. There's always some mystical excitement about
finding something from antiquity that's mysterious. Yet the scripture
says that the apostles have been stewards of the mysteries of
God. So teach them to stop what they're
saying and to stop thinking this way. So you have to stop the
behavior first so that you can keep unity. Then you take, as
an elder, patience to correct others to get to the bottom of
why people think that way. Yet sometimes the church can't
even manage its affairs because, you know, people take it upon
themselves to destroy the possibility of reconciliation. Let's go back to preschool. A
kid has an accident in his pants. He's pooped in his pants. And a good teacher will Hey Bobby,
you pitched a fit at the playground and you deserve to be pushed
off, but I'm going to treat you kindly. I know you've got a problem. Let's walk back here and get
your mom to come and help you. Versus, ooh, somebody pooed. I mean, and then the whole classroom
mocks Bobby until he graduates high school. It's wicked. nor devote themselves to myths
and English genealogies which promote speculation, not solidarity
in truth, rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith." And
I'm going to finish here. Well, I'm going to pause here
and finish up next week. But see here in verse 4 we have
this exhortation to the elder to charge certain individuals
to stop teaching and to stop thinking in a certain way. Myths
and genealogies, the phrase expressly references humanistic thinking,
historical thinking, philosophical thinking. And sometimes these
things walk with scripture, but they all are not insufficient
for the purpose of growing the believer. And as we see here
in Ephesus, what happens is someone comes with an idea, and then
that idea grows some thinking, and that thinking grows some
error, and that error grows like gangrene. And beloved, we are easy. to
bend toward the option of error, and we are easy to bend into
the space of division. Much can be said, as I've already
mentioned, about Jewish ideas and writings and stories and
legal positions and theological definitions, but Paul says these
things are not to be a part of the assembly. They're not to
be taught to the church. These outside things and secondary
sources and these heretical ideas and understandings, these are
not the bread and butter of the church. They don't build the church up
in stewardship. See, because God has called the
elders of the church to be stewards of the body. I may be your pastor, but I am
not your boss. I don't own you. I'm a steward of God's people.
to teach them the wonders of His mercy, the glory of His name. So I don't believe that the Scripture
would give any warrant whatsoever for anybody to debate and to
deliberate on defining terms and arguing against systematized
expressions of exposition, etc., etc., and so forth. I think we
can learn together through the teaching of Scripture and through
life interacting together around what we've learned. So when these
teachings are devoid of application, or worse, especially those who
refuse to enfold clear teaching of instruction and its handling,
they become, in my opinion, demonic springboards to division. Now
what do I mean by that? I mean that anybody who's teaching
theologically, who refuses to hear be taught pragmatically,
this is a springboard into the demonic. We learn the things of Christ,
and then the question is, now what? What difference does it
make to what end? But see, we've got individuals
who are individually inspired to be the body of Christ all
by themselves, only with others who share their specific distinctions
in the context of their ideologies, with no regard to God's promise
that He will grow His people. through his church, through his
word. And I don't, I have no sympathy
for even, no matter the nature of the origin of the condition
of the truth that may be argued from the construction of people
and their attitudes and their false teaching or their concerns,
I have no sympathy when they refuse the instruction of scripture. None. People come and they ask for
what? They ask you for help. They ask
you for counsel. I'm having a problem. Can you
help me? And their face is all bloody and one of their teeth
are missing. Their lips all swoll up. What
happened? I just keep falling, hitting
my face. Every seven or eight steps, I just fall, hit my face,
I just fall, hit my face. And you look them over and they've
got shoestrings this long and they're all untied. See, watch, and they fall, trip
over the shoestrings and bust their face. And you say, hey,
hey, hey, brother, just tie your shoe. Don't tell me what to do. You know? And then they keep
looking until they find somebody to say, you know why you're hitting
your face? Because the person telling you to tie your shoes
pushed you down. And so on and so forth. And the next thing
you know, what happens? Everybody's upset about something.
love it everybody was upset about something in Ephesus too and
Paul's response was clearly teach the truth teach them not to teach
anything but the truth and teach them to think differently about
the truth because elders Beloved pastors
cannot examine and respond to circumstances according to our
own wisdom and our own desires. We must follow as stewards the
instruction found in Scripture. Paul says that, that we are stewards.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians that if I do my own will, I have a
reward, but if not my will, I'm still entrusted with a stewardship.
For an overseer, as we find in Titus 1, as God's steward must
be above reproach. What's that reproach? Not following
scripture. Not submitting to the instruction
of the apostles. Must be above reproach. He must
not be arrogant, or quick-tempered, or drunk, or violent, or greedy
for gain. 1 Corinthians 4, the scriptures
teaches that elders are stewards of God's mysteries revealed.
inclusive of the life of the church and her corrective unity
and the reconciliation according to the promises of Christ, not
the proclivities and the prerogatives of man. We don't cower to what
human beings want and think they need. We serve only that which
the scripture teaches and first and last is Christ and Him crucified. According to the scriptures,
we teach the perfect work of Jesus Christ. because we're at
peace with God by grace. We've received mercy and now
we have the mind of Christ in our dealings with others. And
if you don't believe me, look at verse 5. The aim of our charge
is love. The aim of our charge is love
that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere
faith. There's a lot here. We'll unpack
it all in more depth next week, but so that we will have meat
to walk on and live on over the next few days. We need to understand that the
nature of false teachers and their errors and theological
division exists so that God will be seen
as faithful in unifying His people. Paul says that heresies must
be among you. So God ordained. We sang that
this morning too. The good stuff, the joy and the pain all come
from above. Well, that is a difficult lesson
that we know instinctively, we know, we know academically, we
know spiritually, but it is hard to rest in it. It is hard to
rest in knowing that all of our pain is a gift from our father.
Oh, thanks, dad. You see? It'd be like our dad giving us
a box for Christmas and his fist was in it. We took the hand off
and it poof! Look at there, gotcha! What'd
you do that for? You didn't tie your shoes, son. I want to remind
you what it feels like. And that's not how our Father
works, is it? He works all things according to the counsel of His
will. All things work out for good. So even when the road is
paved with pain, the end result is glory. And our eyes are on
the one who is our life, Jesus the Christ. And the essence of that is love.
John would say in his first epistle, chapter 4 verse 8, that anyone
who is not loved does not know God because God is love. We're
not troubled, we're not fearful, we're not judgmental when we're
walking in the Spirit, we're not hateful. Christ is our everything. And we have a pure heart, and
a good conscience, and a sincere faith, and from those things,
our life together flows. From those things, our ministry
flows. From those things, when the bad
comes, we correct one another from those things. From Christ. The truth of Christ is given
to His people by faith. and we are resting and we are
at peace and have received mercy. This faith rests, beloved, with
assurance and with confidence in the conscience that God's
promises. What is that conscience? That
God's promises as reported in Christ, that's the gospel, are
firm and fast and have full effect. So elders then, our charge is
to teach the word from this love that comes from these conditions
that God has effectuated in His children. And the body listens
from this love because of whose we are. And it's because that's
how we have learned. We haven't learned Christ in
fear. We haven't learned Christ in opposition. We don't learn
Christ from the antithesis. We don't learn Christ through
the error. We learn Christ in love. And so we are at peace. And we're
striving to rest in that peace. We're striving for unity. Not
outside the scripture, but within the scripture. And the new birth
yields the heart and mind to the teaching of the instruction
of the apostles. Simply. And it's all of grace.
So the sheep of Christ who are walking in the Spirit are not
looking for other or further ways to divide and to be separate,
but rather they look to the only one who brings them together
in righteousness. Who is that? Jesus Christ. The
good news is God's love for His people and that He forgives them. in Christ Jesus who stood in
their place. God is in the business of salvation and He does with
His grace as He sees fit. And we live as beneficiaries
of mercy. And beloved, we must show it. Christ. Christ. John would write in 1 John chapter
2, my little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you
may not sin. I believe Paul could reiterate that here to Timothy
and to the people that he oversaw. But if anyone does sin, we have
an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He
is our propitiation for our sins and not ours only, but also for
the sins of those in the world. And by this we have come to know
him. We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments,
if we hold by faith to his promises. Because whoever says, I know
Him, but does not do this is a liar, and the truth is not
in him. But whoever does keep the word of Christ in him through
the love of God is perfected. And by this we know that we are
in him. Whoever says he abides in him
ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. So beloved,
I can say that I'm a Christian, and I can literally be born again,
but being a Christian is following Christ. A lot of unconverted
people walk as Christians. And a lot of converted people
walk as pagans. In what way? They don't love.
They don't love anybody. They say they love Christ, but
beloved, we can't show our love for Christ unless we love each
other. That's the only way to do it. If you want to know my
position on what John is teaching there, just go back. I preached
the whole letter. God is teaching us. God is teaching
us And He is showing us and He is
entrusting us with this gospel. And we are at peace. So beloved,
as we continue in this letter, I want you to know that there
is nothing that can change about that. And there's a lot that's
going to change for all of us in the months to come. Some of
us may not be here. We may be gone to glory. Some
of us may get sick. Some of our congregation may
decide they're not going to listen to the Word and they may leave. Some people may even say one
day that they never did believe. Beloved, we're still at peace.
Don't let it rock us. Christ died to make us His righteousness. justifying us before the Father. That means we are right. We're
in a right place and it can never be changed. Christ has finished
the work of redemption and beloved, that is our only anchor. But
together, we can help tether one another to the anchor of
this gospel truth as we walk through fire. As we walk through
fire. But separate, we're like a lamb
in the woods. in the midst of a pack of wolves.
So as we prepare our hearts for the Lord's table, let's remember
what our Savior has done. Let's pray. We thank you, Father,
for this truth. And Lord, I just pray that you
would give me focus as I continue to teach. I know it's very difficult
right now for us all to think and to focus, but Father, we
know that Your Word is true, so help us to read it every day
and to be intimate with the pages of Scripture, and that in doing
so, Lord, Your Spirit will teach us great things about who You
are and what Christ has done. And Father, remind us in every
practical sense about the incredible practical reality of the death
and the resurrection of Jesus. that we would never lose sight
of it, that we would never think that our transformed lives, our
hope, our Father, that the lack thereof is our demise, but Lord,
that we are righteous and sanctified forever in Christ Jesus and nothing
shall snatch us out of your hands. But Lord, the world that we live
in is absolutely horrendous and it hurts and it's one thing after
another and lordly season that we're in now is to teach us to
be dependent upon you so lord we bring with joy this gift or those who are just scared
of everything we pray for them brother I pray for the elder
brothers with me that we would be committed to doing that which
we are commanded to do that we would be patient with your people
Lord, that we would be patient with each other, that we would
endure to press into the cross and into the gospel and into
Christ and into the knowledge of the truth so that we would
be prepared to love one another effectively and to give wise
counsel according to you and your word, not according to tradition
or our own philosophies. And that we would be patient
with those who doubt and we would be patient with those who are
in error and that we would rejoice when we see reconciliation and
that we would weep, but also have joy when we see things go
bad. And so as we continue to worship
today, Father, we thank you for this comfort. We thank you, Lord,
that though our time is always set, Lord, there will be a day
when it will be timeless and we will sit before you. never
to move, always to learn and to see and to glory in your righteousness
in Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.