Paul's Warning Against False Teachers (1 Tim 1:1-11)
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Welcome and Announcements
Welcome and Announcements
Pre-Thanksgiving Love Feast on Wednesday, November 23rd in lieu of Bible Study & Prayer. Dinner starts at 7pm and will include the Lord’s Supper.
Pastor Daniel and Natalie will be away December 8th-10th. They will still be reachable via cell or email. In case of emergency, please contact Deane Herbst.
Let me remind you to continue worshiping the Lord through your giving. To help you give, we have three ways to do so, (1) cash and checks can be given at the offering box. Checks should be written to Grace & Peace; debit, credit, and ACH transfers can be done either by (2) texting 84321 with your $[amount] and following the text prompts or (3) by visiting us online at www.giving.gapb.church. Of course, everything you give goes to the building up of our local church and the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Prayer of Repentance and Adoration
Preaching of God’s Word (1 Tim 1:1-11)
Preaching of God’s Word (1 Tim 1:1-11)
Introduction
Introduction
If you have your Bible, please turn it to 1 Timothy 1:1-11.
As you know, we’re starting a new series this week for our Wednesday evening Bible Study & Prayer in which we’re working expositionally and exegetically through what we know as the pastoral epistles—1 Timothy, Titus, and 2 Timothy. All three letters are shorter letters written to young pastors—Timothy and Titus by the apostle Paul. Timothy was pastoring the church in the city of Ephesus and Titus was pastoring the church on Crete.
As I’ve said the handful of times that I’ve mentioned this new series, you may have this idea that because these letters were written to pastors, you might think that they aren’t necessarily for you—after all, you might not be a pastor and you might never be a pastor, but let me encourage you to notice that everything that Paul tells Timothy and Titus has significant application for us even to this day—even for those of you that may never pastor a church. In fact, I would argue that what we’ll learn through the pastoral epistles teaches a lot about who ought to be leading the local church, who should be serving the local church, and what the primary focuses of the local church ought to be—some of which, you may never have heard someone explain or teach before.
Just so you have a little bit of background information, Timothy is the pastor of the church in Ephesus—Ephesus was a port-city in what’s called Asia-minor. From the port in Ephesus, there were roads to every corner of the Asia-minor province and because the city was a port-city, you could just imagine that there was a significant of wealth brought into the city due to its ability to be a shipping hub. At the time of the writing of Ephesians, it’s estimated that the city had a population of about 250,000 people of mixed ethnicities, which was common for large port cities throughout the Roman Empire.
Concerning religion, Ephesus was known to be home to many different false religious beliefs—including worship of the goddess Artemis, who had a rather large temple; some practiced imperial cult worship—otherwise known as worship of the emperor; gnosticism, which is similar in concept to Scientology today; and even the practice of magic was popular amongst the pagan people. You can see how the various religious beliefs might cause some issue for the church in Ephesus.
My hope is that over the next few months as we work through the text, you’ll learn more about the local church, more about the qualifications for those who lead the church—the elders; and the qualifications for those who serve the church officially—they deacons, and that you’ll learn more about your role within the local church as well.
Before we go any further, let’s read 1 Timothy 1:1-11 together.
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope,
2 To Timothy, my true child in the faith:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
3 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, 4 nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. 5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
8 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, 9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, 10 the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.
As we study 1 Timothy 1:1-11 together, we’re going to break it into three parts: (1) Paul’s Greeting to Timothy (1-2), (2) Paul’s Warning (3-7), and (3) The Reason for Paul’s Warning (8-11). In this text, we see Paul open his letter to Timothy by reminding Timothy to be sure that what was being taught in the church accorded with sound doctrine. In this case, Paul gives us an idea of what the false teaching being taught was and it will help us see the importance of true doctrine being taught faithfully within the local church. Our message for this evening will focus on the need for true, genuine doctrine being taught in the local church today; and it will be a reminder that we must take the warning against false teachers seriously even to this day.
Prayer for Illumination
Paul’s Greeting to Timothy (1-2)
Paul’s Greeting to Timothy (1-2)
Our text starts with a greeting from the apostles Paul to Timothy. And while most people have a tendency to skip over these sorts of introductions in the epistles, I do want us to look at some of the details concerning what we read in the first two verses.
In v. 1, we see the author of the text, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope.” There are a few details that we should note:
First, it’s clear that it was written by Paul—and you might hear that and think, well of course, that’s precisely what the text says, but it is important for us to note because it helps us understand the relationship between Paul and Timothy, but I’ll get back to that later.
What we see in this text, is that author is Paul and that he is the apostle Paul who is an apostle because God and Jesus commanded for him to be an apostle.
He points out that concept, that he was commanded to be an apostle probably because he wasn’t one of the original apostles. Remember, in the history of the New Testament, Paul comes a little later than everyone else—in fact, if you’re thinking of where we are in the book of Acts on Sunday—in Acts 5, Paul is still known as Saul and he is a Pharisee who is about to start murdering Christians.
And yet, after Paul’s conversion, Jesus makes him an apostle—it was God’s choice for Paul to serve Him in the manner that Paul did—as an apostle to the Gentile people.
It’s interesting to see how Paul describes Jesus as “Christ Jesus our hope.” — Christ meaning the anointed one or Messiah and hope coming from the Greek ελπις, which speaks of an expectation or confident expectation. The idea being that Jesus is Messiah who we trust or who our expectations are in.
We then see in v. 2 the statement, “To Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.”
So, the apostle Paul is writing this letter to a man named Timothy, who Paul considers his true child in the faith.
This gives us a great understanding of the relationship that Paul had with Timothy. Paul considered Timothy to be like his spiritual son;
And I think that we can all get an impression of what this was like simply by considering how a father considers his own son.
An oversimplification of the father and son relationship is this—fathers care for their sons, teach their sons, trains their sons, and then sends their sons off into the world.
That’s how Paul viewed his relationship with Timothy—he cared for Timothy, he taught Timothy, he trained Timothy, and now he’s sent Timothy off into the world.
It also gives us an idea of what Timothy’s own thinking towards Paul would be like—Timothy would consider Paul a sort of spiritual mentor. One worthy of honor and respect simply due to who he was and what he had done.
This also gives us an idea of how Timothy would view the words given to him by Paul in this letter.
Paul is like his spiritual father and clearly, Paul is an apostle—thus, the words written have authority and the words written would be taken seriously and of utmost importance by Timothy.
He would’ve taken Paul’s words seriously because Paul was like a father to him and because Paul was an apostle chosen by the very command of God.
Concerning the “grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord” section of the sentence—I think sometimes people put a little too much emphasis into the meaning of these words.
Up to this point in the greeting given by Paul, he had stayed fairly true to what is typically considered normal Greek letter-writing.
It was common for someone to say “from so-and-so,” give his credentials, and then write “to so-and-so.”
This statement concerning grace, mercy, and peace was unique to Paul to some extent in that it was an addition to the usual Greek form—however, it does share a lot with what’s considered a typical Jewish greeting—shalom. Shalom is the very concept that you hope that whoever you’re speaking to experiences not just peace, but the very peace that only God supplies.
Paul’s essentially making the same statement, that he hopes that Timothy experiences the grace, mercy, and peace that only God supplies.
After greeting Timothy, Paul jumps straight into his letter. He doesn’t beat around the bush, he jumps straight into his letter and in this case, he starts with a warning concerning false teaching and in particular, concerning false teachers. Let’s look at vv. 3-7 again.
Paul’s Warning (3-7)
Paul’s Warning (3-7)
3 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, 4 nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. 5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
So, Paul makes a statement that when he left Timothy in Ephesus that he pointed out a certain concern to Timothy and that concern had to do with certain persons teaching different doctrines.
The idea being that there were certain people within the church of Ephesus that was preaching and teaching things that didn’t accord with what the apostles had taught.
This was actually a fairly common admonition from Paul to different pastors and churches throughout the world—a significant amount of his teaching is focused on rejecting things that weren’t originally taught by the apostles and being sure that only the Gospel is taught within the church.
In fact, the concept of being aware of false teaching and stopping false teachers is all over the New Testament—Jesus, Himself says in Matthew 7:15 “15 “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
Paul says in Acts 20:28-29 “28 Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. 29 I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;”
The Apostle John makes it a point that anyone who doesn’t teach the teachings of Christ isn’t of God and that you shouldn’t even receive a false teacher into your house because if you greet him, you’ll be guilty of his false teaching too. 2 John 9-11 “9 Anyone who goes too far and does not remain in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who remains in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. 10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; 11 for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.”
It makes sense that Paul would bring this point up again, especially when you consider that Timothy was considered a younger pastor.
Why is his age a point to be made here? Because younger pastors tends to have to deal with people within the congregation who won’t take them seriously because of their youth.
Which means that those within the church who want to teach false things will claim that there’s nothing wrong with their false teaching—the pastor only has a problem with it because he’s young and he doesn’t understand life yet.
Now Paul doesn’t spell out what exactly the false teaching is in this verse and the reason for that is simple—Paul trained Timothy and Paul taught Timothy.
Timothy already knows that anything that doesn’t line up with the Gospel—what Jesus taught and what the apostles taught is false teaching. There really isn’t much a reason to reiterate that here because Paul is writing to someone who would know what the Gospel is.
Instead, Paul reminds Timothy not to let someone who teaches false doctrines to teach and then in v. 4, he tells Timothy not to let people “devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.”
Now, you might hear that and you might have some questions as to what exactly Paul is writing against—what does he mean by myths and endless genealogies?
In 1 Timothy 4:3 Paul points out some issue concerning some Jewish false ideology, which has led many scholars to assume that the myths being spoken of in 1 Timothy 1 concerns Jewish false ideas that were sort of passed down person-to-person.
Because Ephesus was a multi-ethnic city with a pluralistic attitude towards various religions, it could also be that Paul’s referring to the ideology from false religions—whether that’s from the worshipers of Artemis or the emperor worship occuring throughout the city.
When speaking of endless genealogies, Paul is referring to the Jewish custom of spending significant amounts of time trying to iron out your own Jewish ancestry to determine exactly which tribe you were from and who your ancestors were.
It was common in Jewish thinking to want to know precisely what tribe you were from and who you were related to—and I think you can tell why. If you’re Jewish wouldn’t you want to be a descendent of David or someone related to one of the great men or women of faith throughout Old Testament history?
The Jewish people thought it would be great to trace their lineage back to some of these great men and women of the faith—so much so that they would waste inordinate amounts of time trying to trace their lineages.
Paul’s encouragement to Timothy is to not let people get caught up in false teaching, endless genealogies, and and myths and you might think — “wow, thank goodness that we don’t have to deal with all that today!”
But the American church has a significant issue with false teaching—just look at the prosperity gospel and word of faith movement rampant on television or even locally, look at the local churches that we know are teaching false doctrines.
And you might hear me say that and think, “you’re right, those are issues, but at least we’re not dealing with people caught up in endless genealogies and myths.” Really?
What about those who get so caught up in the study of the eschaton or the end times? They get so caught up in it that they develop theories of how all this works and they try to prove that certain current events line up with what was written in the book of Revelation—while completely ignoring the fact that the Bible tells us that Jesus doesn’t know the hour when He’ll return, only the Father does—so what makes a human being think that he can figure it all out?
Or what about those who get so caught up in the fact that their parents or their grandparents went to a certain church as if that makes it alright for them to live in sin—just because their parents or grandparents were faithful? Ignoring the fact that their salvation doesn’t rely on whether their parents or grandparents believed, but rather whether they, themselves believe.
Paul says that those who devote themselves to these sorts of things, “promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.”
And then he reminds us of what the point is in v. 5, “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”
Paul is telling Timothy that rather than allowing these people to continue seeking endless genealogies and myths that lead to speculation, he needs to charge them or command them or issue them a different goal.
The goal for every Christian is for the Christian to develop genuine love for God and for one another; and this love is to spring forth from a pure heart, a good conscience, and genuine or sincere faith.
Of course, we know that the biblical concept of heart refers to the seat of the mind, the emotions, and the will; conscience refers to an individual’s inner awareness of morality and personal actions; and sincere faith refers to a genuine trust in the Lord.
The whole point being that whereas these false teachers are caught up in issues that only cause further divisions, they really need to be focused on loving God, loving others; living righteously so their consciences are clean; and having genuine faith and trust in the Lord.
I think you can tell how being caught up with all the endless genealogies and myths can cause them not to be focused on loving God, loving others; living righteously; and having genuine faith and trust in the Lord.
For instance, if they’re caught up in endless genealogies and myths—and really, they’re caught up in speculation concerning issues that have no answer—so of course, they aren’t focused on loving God and loving others. They’re too busy loving their speculation—and that ties in with those today who are too focused on inconsequential issues like the exact details of the eschaton.
If they’re caught up in endless genealogies and myths—rather than preaching and teaching the truth concerning moral and righteous living they’re too busy speculating and postulating false ideas—so they don’t live righteously.
When they’re caught up in endless genealogies and myths—rather than simply trusting in God, they try to work out every detail so that they don’t feel uncertain about anything. They trust in their own knowledge than they do in God.
And because they’re swerved from these, vv. 6-7 say, “Certain persons, by swerving from [loving God, loving others; living righteously; and having sincere faith], 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.”
Or in other words, they have the appearance of having great knowledge because they’ve spent so much time vainly discussing false ideas, but the reality is that they have no idea what they’re talking about.
While people around them might think that they have significant knowledge because they can talk about these myths, these genealogies, and speculations, the reality is that they don’t actually understand the Word of God let alone what they claim to be knowledgable about.
We all know people like this—they’re the type of person who never admits when they’re wrong. And when they’re confronted with the idea that they might be wrong, they just dig their heels in.
Romans 1 speaks about the same issue, “claiming to be wise, they revealed themselves to be fools.” — Romans 1 is specifically referring to unbelievers who claim to be wise, but aren’t; but the same principle applies to Christians who get caught up in endless genealogies, myths, and speculation. They claim to be wise, but they’re really foolish.
We all know people like this—that think they’re absolutely right and when confronted with ideas that prove they’re wrong, refuse to change their mind—and yet, they still think that they ought to be teachers teaching others about God.
Of course, those that fit this description, when the elders of the local church refuse to allow them to teach and preach within the church, they throw a fit—they get upset, they talk trash, and eventually they just end up leaving; but here’s the issue, what are the elders supposed to do while these sorts of people are still within the local church? Paul explains it in vv. 1-7, confront them, charge them to not focus on the myths, the speculations, and endless genealogies, but rather charge them to love God and others with a pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith.
Now, you might hear all that and you might wonder, “what exactly were these people teaching?” I mean endless genealogies, myths, and speculations really is a little vague, it might be helpful to see what sorts of things they were teaching wrongly. And Paul gives us a pretty good idea in the remaining four verses. Look at vv. 8-11 again.
The Reason for Paul’s Warning (8-11)
The Reason for Paul’s Warning (8-11)
8 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, 9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, 10 the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.
We see immediately, that the issue with the false teaching had something to do with the law—and it’s clear in v. 8 that these false teachers had taken the law and wasn’t utilizing the law in the way that it was intended.
But before he talks about what they were doing, he makes it clear that despite their misuse of the law, the law is still good, if it’s used properly.
We can actually make the same assertion today—there are plenty of supposed preachers and teachers who utilize the Bible in a way that it’s not meant to be used.
Just because they’re misusing it doesn’t mean that we get rid of the whole Bible, does it? — I think the colloquialism is, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
No, it means that when we face a false teacher or preacher, we confront if possible, and if the confrontation doesn’t lead to repentance, we do exactly what Jesus tells us to do in Matthew 18 concerning church discipline.
Someone misusing the Bible doesn’t make the Bible illegitimate—the Bible is still good, if one uses it correctly.
In the case of the Old Testament Law, Paul writes some details concerning the law’s purpose in vv. 9-11, “the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and 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 sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.”
What is Paul saying here?
First, he says that the primary purpose of the law is for unbelievers to see that they’re sinners—he confronts multiple sins just right in a row, lawless and disobedient, unholy and profane, men who strike their parents, murders, and so forth. Without the law, they wouldn’t recognize their sin as sin.
Second, he says that another purpose of the law is to show us what sound doctrine is. We see this in v. 10. Or in other words, if we want to know what is right belief, what’s right teaching, and what proper behavior is as a result of right belief, look at the law.
And as he continues in v. 11, he makes it clear that the law when rightly utilized is in complete accordance with the Gospel of God, with which he’s been entrusted.
Or in other words, when you rightly use the Old Testament law, you rightly understand how it connects with the New Testament Gospel.
Never think of the Old Testament as something that is no longer worthwhile or needed; always think of the New Testament as fulfilling the Old Testament.
So, what are we to use the Old Testament law for?
We use it, we read it, we study it because it teaches us what sin is, it reveals God to us, and it shows us how we ought to respond to God and His law.
Now, taken in conjunction with all that Paul has said so far about those who teaching false things, I think we can get a good idea of what the false teaching was and why it was so detrimental:
Of course, we know from vv. 4-5, that the false teachers were devoting themselves to myths and endless genealogies.
Because of this, they fell into speculation rather than stewardship of what God had given them.
We know that Paul is telling Timothy to command or charge them to love from a pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith.
They are to do this rather than staying in vain discussions, trying to be teachers of the law, but not really having understanding of what the law says or what their assertions mean.
From that point, he jumps straight into this idea that just because these false teachers are misusing the law, doesn’t mean that the law itself is wrong
In fact, the law is still good when its utilized the way that God intended for the law to be used.
So, what were these false teachers doing? While getting tripped up with endless genealogies and myths, they were utilizing the Old Testament law and they were manipulating it to make demands that the Old Testament didn’t make.
Thomas D. Lea and Hayne Griffin, “[The false teachers] used the law as a launchpad to turn out spellbinding tales about ancestors and thereby robbed the law of its convicting power. If these teachers had used the law as a means of leading their hearers to Jesus, that would have been fine with Paul . . . The false teachers in Ephesus had given their energies to many enticing replacements for the gospel. That trend had to stop! No program, aim, or emphasis in our lives can be allowed to hinder our full involvement in sharing the gospel of Jesus’ saving power.” (Thomas D. Lea and Hayne P. Griffin, 1, 2 Timothy, Titus, Vol. 34, The New American Commentary, Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992, 70-72)
And Paul’s opening statement to Timothy is clear, concise, and important—you have false teachers in your church, confront them, stop them, and encourage them to return to what they ought to be doing. Remind them that the “aim . . . is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”
The position of this confrontation in the letter tells us just how serious false teaching is—it’s of utmost importance to confront, which is why its the first thing that Paul says. It requires quick and concise action that calls the false teachers to repentance and it necessitates a return to sound doctrine that lines up with the Gospel.
Now, in the remaining few minutes, I want us to look at some specific application for this.
Application
Application
You might have been listening this evening while thinking, “yes, I agree with all this, but what do I have to do with this? This is written by an apostle to a pastor/elder in Ephesus. I’m neither an apostle or elder, what does this have to do with me?” So, let’s talk about that.
Paul’s warning against false teaching aren’t found just in 1 Timothy. Paul warns against false teaching throughout his letters—just like Jesus warned against false teaching while he was still alive.
I’m not going to give you a comprehensive list, but let me just give you some of these statements:
Jesus says in Matthew 7:15 “15 “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
Paul will later write to Timothy again in 2 Timothy 4:3-4 “3 For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths.”
Paul tells the Colossian church this, Col 2:8 “8 See to it that there is no one who takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception in accordance with human tradition, in accordance with the elementary principles of the world, rather than in accordance with Christ.”
Later in this very letter, Paul says that 1 Timothy 6:3-5 “3 If anyone [teaches] a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, 4 he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a sick craving for controversial questions and disputes about words, from which come envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, 5 and constant friction between people of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.”
And this is just a fraction of the verses that call out false teaching and tells us to confront false teachers—in fact, some have estimated that there are more commands to deal with false teaching in the New Testament than commands to love one another (though don’t misunderstand that—we are still to love one another).
What we’re taught throughout the New Testament is that every believer ought to be able to tell when someone is teaching false doctrine.
Matt 7:15-20 “15 “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they? 17 So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 So then, you will know them by their fruits.”
And really, the only way that you’re going to know whether someone is preaching and teaching false teaching is by knowing what true doctrine is. Or in other words, if you don’t know what Christians believe according to Scripture, then you won’t know when someone comes and teaches something contrary to Scripture.
So, you’re not an elder nor are you an apostle—what is your responsibility when it comes to false teaching within the church? This is it, you need to know Christian doctrine and biblical truth well enough that when you hear false teaching, you know it’s false teaching.
You do this in two ways: (1) by reading and re-reading and re-reading Scripture over and over again and (2) by taking a look at doctrinal statements.
The first way is more important—because Scripture is God’s Word. If you’re a Christian, you ought to delight in God’s Word. So, reading it over and over again, though it can be a little hard some times, is something that I think any Christian would admit, needs to be done.
In fact, I would make the argument that you’ll never understand Christian doctrine if you don’t consistently read God’s Word.
There are all sorts of different methods in doing this—you can read the Bible chronologically on canonically. You can follow a reading plan like M’Cheyne’s or a plan that gives you a little bit of reading from every part of the Bible.
You can do this on your own, with your spouse, or with friends—the only thing is that you ought to be reading Scripture.
Now, of course, I know that there are parts of Scripture that are hard or difficult to understand and you may be tempted to just skip those passages, but let me encourage you not to.
When you find yourself in passages that are hard or difficult, what ought you to do? There’s two answers to this:
First, pray and then read it again—Ask God to give you wisdom as you seek His truth and then read the passage again.
Second, ask for help—this can be done by pulling up study Bible notes, utilizing a good commentary, calling or texting a pastor. Any good pastor would want to help you, you just need to ask for help.
This is the only way you’ll learn what those hard passages mean.
If you want to learn true doctrine, start at the source—God’s Word.
Now, occasionally, it helps to have these details more spelled out. So, let me give you a few resources that can help with this:
Read our church’s doctrinal statement—you’ll notice that in every statement that we make in it, there are multiple verse references for every point. Read the statement, then look up those verses.
You can also do this with the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, the 2000 Baptist Faith & Message, and really any doctrinal statement. All orthodox doctrinal statements are going to agree with the essentials—you might see disagreements concerning baptism, the Lord’s Supper, church membership, and the end times, but everything else will be almost identical.
If you really want to go in-depth, read a Systematic Theology like The Moody Handbook of Theology, Christian Theology by Millard Erickson, or if you really want to go in-depth, read Joel Beeke’s Reformed Systematic Theology or Calvin’s Institutes.
All of these resources help to summarize biblical truth, but never look at these as a replacement for the Bible—they are not God-breathed texts and are only true as much as they correlate with Scripture.
Learn true, biblical doctrine so that when you hear false teaching, you don’t automatically fall for it.
Once you know true, biblical doctrine—hold your pastors accountable to it. Hold me accountable to preach and teach true, biblical doctrine; and whenever we have guest preachers, hold me responsible for what they teach—if they don’t teach truth and I keep inviting them in, confront me about it.
I’m human, so I can make mistakes and I can do dumb things and say dumb things—hopefully, if I teach something incorrectly it’s a mistake and when you confront me about it, I repent and fix my error.
But make sure that you’re confronting me if it’s an error, not if it’s a matter of opinion—for instance, if I say that the Noah’s Ark was really a cruise ship—confront me about it because that’s clearly wrong; but if the problem is that you don’t like the way that I said something or maybe we have a difference of opinion that’s inconsequential—then we can certainly talk about it, but don’t think of it like an error that needs repented from.
Of course, this ought to all be done in love—so do this out of love from a pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith.
Hold our church accountable for teaching and preaching true, biblical doctrine—and if we don’t, confront us about it in love (calling us to repentance).
There’s one last thing that I want to say about this—if I ever preach and teach false doctrine intentionally and I refuse to repent when confronted and you’ve shown me that what I said was false:
Don’t bite your tongue and think — “well, he’s the pastor, there’s nothing else I can do.” You have my encouragement that if I teach false things—I want you to remove me from ministry.
And if you’re completely unable to remove me for whatever reason—then you have my exhortation to leave and find a better church, even if that means planting a new one.
Learn true, biblical doctrine—keep our church in accordance with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Confront me if I err, remove me if I refuse to repent, find a new church if you see false teaching and the church refuses to correct it.
You may not be an elder, but you have a responsibility to not tolerate false teaching and false doctrine in our church—take this responsibility seriously by learning the truth of the Gospel in the Bible and holding the church itself accountable.
Put simply, what we learn from 1 Timothy 1:1-11 is that false teaching is a significant issue that demands action: so, you need to (1) learn true biblical doctrine, (2) hold the local church accountable, and (3) refuse to tolerate false teaching—remove the teacher or if you can’t, find a new church.
The Gospel is this important.
Pastoral Prayer
Prayer Requests
Prayer Requests
This is this week’s prayer list:
Sean Herbst — Addiction
Pray for Alexus (Tom and Raenelle’s great niece) — pray for her as she struggles with seizures and pray for the family as they seek to find answers medically.
Caleb Miller - Medical Issues
Mike Parkes — was in a car accident with Scott Parkes on the way home from State College yesterday. Scott is home with home with some pain and soreness, but Mike is in Pittsburg with a broken neck, severe burns and he’s waiting for surgery. We want to give thanks that Scott’s alright; and we want to pray for Mike’s recovery.
Larry Spikes (Pastor Daniel’s step-father) — may be having open-heart surgery soon.
Georgia Tracy — Surgery went well, she is now in recovery. Please pray for continued healing.
Stacey Williams — Stacey had surgery yesterday. Please pray for a quick recovery.
Alan Wisor — Medical Issues
Pray for the church’s building fund
Pray for Bansuk Korean Baptist Church, their pastor Young Koo Lee, and his family. Despite continued growth in the church, there have been some issues with some of the church wanting to remove the pastor from ministry. Pray for wisdom and unity in this situation.