Transcript

Grab your Bibles and let’s go to 1 Timothy 6 and as far as a direct sense, this is the last thing that, um, Paul says to Timothy about false teachers and false doctrine, and how it is his commission, his responsibility to protect the church from this, though it does splash over into the rest of the chapter some, mainly the rest of chapter 6 he’s addressing Timothy, the pastor, more directly about his own walk and his own faithfulness. We called this series of preaching through the book of 1 Timothy “Beautifying the Bride,” as Paul is telling Timothy how to fashion the church and how to function in the church, and I’ll be quite honest, I have been surprised at the amount of weight the Apostle Paul puts on guarding true doctrine, rebuking false doctrine, correcting error in teaching in the church. I’m gonna go ahead and say this upfront: as a church becomes biblically and spiritual healthy, that becomes a rather easy job. I’m not saying it ever stops but it comes a lot easier.

I just thought about Grace Life Church and I thought maybe my, about my first 20 or 25 years here, then the last 15 or 20 years here, and how different it is as far as, ah, things that are unsound, let’s say, creeping up and being embraced or a group in the church chasing off this thing or after this thing or that thing. As a church matures, it just doesn’t seem to be a factor much anymore and so those of you who are pastors out there maybe listening to my sermon on the internet or whatever, or going to be pastors, hold onto that truth because, you understand, Timothy is just on the initial first few years of this church plant in Ephesus and so there’s a lot to clean up. Matter of fact, you guys who might be a part of planting new churches like we’re about and like we’ve been a part of for so long, if you’re directly involved in leading a church plant, you can count on the first 5 to 15 years having a lot of fighting against false teaching. It’s, I mean, as Jude said, they crept in unaware and so Satan will do that. Um, I’m so fortunate here that if anything here at Grace Life Church begins to get out of line, it’s fixed before I can get to it. You, you’re just, you’re just sound, you’re loving, you’re compassionate but you do not allow errant doctrine and practices to take any root in the church and I praise the Lord for you for that. Now that doesn’t mean we’re through, Grace Life Church, it doesn’t mean we’ve arrived. We still have to be vigilant and careful and here’s one thing I wanna tell you: it has been the course through the ages of church history when there’s been a church movement arise and they’re very solid, in the second or third generation after the first generation, you begin to see a lot of compromise and a lot of error. You know why? Because the second and third generation of leadership didn’t have to suffer for the truth. The first generation did that for them, and they weren’t vigilant and they weren’t intentional, and they didn’t, they didn’t man the post like they needed to. And that’s why I’ve prayed many times if Anchored in Truth Missions and Ministries or Grace Life Church goes off-track, I’m asking God to bring it down. I, I, I don’t have any care whatsoever about us being big or strong or wealthy or whatever. God takes care of that. I want us to be true to him.

And, um, so anyway, Paul’s writing to Timothy. They’re in their early years of getting this church going. There was a lot to get established and structured, but over and over Paul keeps warning Timothy, commanding Timothy to guard the doctrines, that means teachings of the church. Let’s look at it together. 1 Timothy 6:3.

3 If anyone advocates 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 morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, 5 and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.

So the first thing we pointed out last time, I., under sound doctrine, it’s ground and source divinely inspired Scripture. Now that’s not the major teaching here but it is a major teaching in a sense. He’s talking about false teachers and how they veer from the true doctrines given through Christ and given through Christ’s early apostles like the Apostle Paul. But I did want to take the time and I did take the time to point out that our, the source rather of sound doctrine is always the divinely inspired 66 books of the Bible, the Old and New Testament.

When he uses the phrase in verse 3, “sound words,” he means wholesome words. His point is there are some who are indeed coming into the church, there are some who are indeed getting the ear of church members who are not teaching sound words. Now they sound impressive, they may be intellectuals, they may have a dynamic personality and great charisma, but the point is they’re not teaching you the truth. They’re not teaching you what’s according, if I might elaborate it, amplify what Paul is saying here, Paul is saying, “They’re not teaching you the doctrines I’ve given you which came from Jesus Christ.” That’s why he uses those phrases, verse 3, he says, “those of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

And so I, I spent some time establishing how we hold to the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture, that means the very words of Scripture are inspired and all the words are inspired. We have the truth from Ephesians 2 that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. What does that mean? It means those men were inspired by God through the Holy Spirit superintending through them to write God’s perfect word to us, those early prophets and apostles.

And I said to you that God has said all he’s going to say. I know there’s been somebody that became huge on the, on the internet recently, a pastor somewhere who’s seeing some dreams and it appears that those dreams might be happening. You say, “Pastor, should I pay any attention to that?” No. No. The old song, the old hymn is true and it’s be the conviction of our forefathers forever, what more can he say than to you he has said. God said the last thing he’s going to say through his Son Jesus Christ and those prophets and apostles he used to give us the New Testament text. The next direct revelation from God will be Jesus appearing and returning to the earth. So we have the perfect word of God to guide us. We don’t need any special revelations from anyone else.

So saying all that to say, my first point was that sound doctrine, its ground and its source is divinely inspired Scripture. That’s what we stand on. We bring everything back to that. II. My second point and last point has many sub points: sound doctrine, it must be defended, false teachers exposed and opposed. Now again you may say, “Pastor, you’ve said a lot about this.” That’s because Paul said a lot about it and, uh, that’s why the Apostle Paul when he was nearing the end of his ministry said, “I have fought the good fight.” Paul did not say, “I finished the fight for you.” He said, “No, I fought it until God got through with me.” He said, “I finished my course in the fight,” but hasn’t finished the fight. Matter of fact, every faithful pastor is still fighting today for the truth of the Gospel and to defend the church from false teaching.

Can I be honest with you? I, I’m soon to celebrate 40 years with you buys here and how humbled I am and blessed to, to even say that I, I did that and not that I did it but the grace of God did it through me, and I, I’ll be honest, you get tired of fighting because while you are not so prone to chasing error, we work with and we have association with and we have a mentoring and oversight relationship with many pastors who are in many churches and they’re fighting it all the time. And so I have some care for them too and sometimes you wish it just would, would stop for a little while but Satan never stops and that’s why Paul tells Timothy to keep on keeping on and here he begins to expose and oppose the false teachers and the false doctrine they’re bringing in and you talk about not pulling any punches. Look at what Paul says to Timothy about these Christ-less, God-less teachings that come into the church.

Again he says in verse 3, ” If anyone advocates a different doctrine.” He means, what he means by that: many are, alright? Then he gives that phrase and I, I’ll call this sub point A, that is, impure doctrine that produces impure living. And by the way, that’s one of the things that give it some time seems to always come out among false teachers and that is the embracing of immoral living. The embracing of sin in their lives, and often their doctrines even taught such things were acceptable to God. They, they turn the grace of God into lasciviousness. They turn the grace of God into a license or permission to sin. Now Paul doesn’t say that here to Timothy but that’s what’s implied, um, when he talks about if anyone’s teaching a different doctrine.

Let’s remind ourselves that a man’s morality tends to dictate his philosophy and his theology. When we’re hearing all these teachings today and, and we’re seeing many in the professing church beginning to cuddle up to and accommodate some of this wicked teaching about sexuality and all of this stuff that you can’t even keep up with it, it’s so perverse, and keeps devolving into various forms and fashions. And then a lot of them will claim to be Christians. I, I’m hearing that over and over, “I’m a Christian gay this, or I’m a Christian that.” And you have the same thing Paul was dealing with in this day and that is their lives are immoral so their theology is immoral. It’s unsound. The word “sound” there has the idea of purity. He says, they, you’ll notice that not only is their theology impure but their morality is impure.

Paul says it this way, “They have a doctrine, they do not rather have the doctrine according to godliness. It doesn’t seem to produce piety or godly living.” Sound words, that does produce piety or godly living. Matter of fact, that word for “sound words” is the word for “wholesome” and it’s the word we get our English word “hygiene” from, “cleanness, purity, goodness in their lives.” Paul again talked about this over in the first chapter, 1 Timothy 1:10, “and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound,” same word there, “sound teaching.” Ungodly teaching. Brothers and sisters, those who would tell us that any of these sins, and by the way, including homosexuality, is somehow becoming acceptable to God are not teaching you sound words, they’re teaching you unholy, unwholesome doctrine which leads to unholy and un, un, unsound or unclean living.

True doctrine produces sound spiritual health and true doctrine produces sound moral health in the lives of those under it. I’ll never forget being converted at age 19 and attending my first Baptist church and, um, knowing a lot of the people there because I’d grown up in the community, and I remember a particular man there that was well-known to have had several wives and I thought, “If he’s living that kind of lifestyle, how is he just sitting in this church? Why is immorality and sinfulness that’s not repented of just accommodated in the church?” It troubled me as a young man.

Not too many years ago, a couple came to Grace Life Church, a sweet couple and a faithful couple, and in our interview of them for membership, they said, “Pastor, we want to tell you one of the reasons why we came over here.” And I said, “Well, okay.” And they said, “Well, a deacon in our church, a leader in our church abandoned his wife and his marriage for this other woman and it wasn’t but a few weeks later he had the other woman toward the front pew of the church attending the services, and no one in the church said anything, no one in the church was willing to do anything, and we just don’t think that’s right.” Well, brothers and sisters, that’s quite commonplace. Paul says when there’s an unwholesome and impureness of the doctrine, there tends to be an unwholesomeness and an impureness in the lifestyle. It all comes from false teaching.

I got a call from a couple not long ago from another town and they thought they might be moving to this area, and part of the reason they might be moving to this area was they liked Grace Life Church, and they were asking me about the church and I was asking them about them and, uh, they said, “Can we ask you a question?” Said, “We finally found a church that we think is teaching sound doctrine, but literally every fellowship outside of the Sunday meetings of the church, every fellowship we go to in the church is centered around alcoholic beverages. Every time there’s a meeting, a fellowship, a small group, they, it’s all about bring your bottles and bring your alcohol.” And they were very gracious in spirit and said, “You know, we’re not jumping up and down and beating everybody up about drinking in moderation or whatever, but that, that troubles us.” And then she said, “Pastor, well, they’ll, do you have some meetings at your church where alcohol’s not involved?” I said, “Ma’am, for 40+ years there’s never been a meeting of our church that involved the drinking of alcoholic beverages, and there will never be a meeting of our church that will involve alcoholic beverages.” And really, to them, that had become something they had just seen all the time and it troubled them, they didn’t think it was right.

What am I saying? Paul says to Timothy, “Timothy, you’ll notice that unwholesomeness, fleshly indulgences, worldliness begins to creep into the church and it has two sides to it, not only is their lifestyles impure and unwholesome, their doctrine begins to be impure and unwholesome.” You see, you have to come up with the, theology to hold up your immoralities and that’s what happens, happened, then happens today, it continues to happen. But he says their doctrine is not the doctrine, verse 3 again, the doctrine according to godliness, and of course, Paul had to deal with all kinds of sexual immoralities, uh, Ephesus, Corinth, name the city of this day and they were plagued with the wanton embracing and rejoicing in sexual immoralities and sexual perversions, and those would kinda creep into the church and he’d have to fight, fight, fight, fight to say, “That’s not acceptable in Christian living.”

Titus 1:1, “Paul, a bond-servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of those chosen of God and the knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness.”

Matthew 7:15-20, Jesus said, “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing,” outwardly they claim to be righteous and have piety, “but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.” And that takes some time to see fruit sometimes. “Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?” Verse 17, “So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit.” So when we see these people begin to accommodate, celebrate and promote things that are impure and unclean according to the word of God, that’s not coming from a good root, that’s coming from an unsound heart and unsound teaching.

Jude 1:4, “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation,” now that’s powerful, isn’t it? In the sovereignty of God, those who are false teachers, who have false doctrine and false practices in their life, Jude says God marked them out long beforehand to condemn them. “Ungodly persons,” Jude continues, “who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness,” or a license to sin, “and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

2 Timothy 3:5, these are those who “hold to a form of godliness,” they put on the outward appearance of, “I’m a man of God. I’m a holy teacher. I’m anointed of God. I have the, the power of God.” They have the outward form, “although they have denied its power,” that is, their lifestyles have not been changed by the power of God, neither, of course, has their hearts.

Holiness, godliness, purity still matters. It still matters. It matters greatly. It is essential. These things are essential. Christians do fall and Christians do fail but they do not embrace impurities. They do not embrace unwholesomeness, unsound teaching and living, to use Paul’s phraseology here. Overall a Christians life has a different trajectory. It’s going in a different direction. There may be some, some pauses, some dips but it’s going in a different direction from the world. And Paul said, “One of the things you’ll notice about these false teachers and false teaching, not only is their doctrine unsound, their living is impure and unsound, and they tend to promote that kind of stuff.” Some of our largest denominations, we have leaders right now who are beginning to stick their fingers in the air and feel the current of the, the culture and decide that some of these things the church has said are sins, maybe aren’t really that serious of sins anymore. What I’d like to say to that gentleman is, “Sir, you sound just like what the Apostle Paul calls a false teacher. Those are unsound words and unwholesome, impure and unsound living you’re promoting.”

Well, I’ve told you Timothy didn’t pull any punches. He’s just starting, Paul rather, he’s just starting with Timothy on the seriousness of this, of this false teachers and false teaching creeping into the church. Notice in verse 4 there, he talks about, B., his proud heart. His proud heart. He said, “he is conceited,” arrogant, proud. You know, pride is the foundational sin. Pride is the sin that all other sins flow out of. Pride is what made the devil the devil. Pride, the first cousin to pride or, uh, uh, the other side of the coin of pride or an aspect that never leaves pride is the desire for power and control. Satan looked at God and said, “Why does God get all the glory? Why does God make all the decisions? God has all the power and control and I want it.” We all have that in us in this fallen flesh but the false teacher is given over to it. It, it’s his MO. It’s, it’s, it’s common in all that he’s about.

You see, all other sins are mere fleabites in comparison to pride. You know, other sins can bring people together. People go out drinking together. People go out being immoral together. People go out stealing together, or whatever it is. But your pride puts you against everybody else. Pride’s about me. Power and control is the driving goal of Satan and that’s basically what’s behind the false teacher. He’s proud. He wants the power in the church. He wants control in the church and he wants the praise and the profit that comes from that.

Well, not only does his immoral impure doctrine correspond with his impure and immoral life, and not only is he, does he have a proud heart, Paul goes on and says to Timothy, C., he has an empty head. He’s empty-headed. He says in verse 4 he “understands nothing.” This is a man who is certain that he knows everything yet God says he knows nothing. You ever known anybody like that? You know who comes to my mind? Donald Trump. I’ve never seen a man that’s so convinced he knows everything. And I’ve told you before, I’ll vote for him again because I don’t have any choice, and I’m thankful that he’s got bulldog tenacity and he’s tough. It’s a, look, brothers and sisters, we’re not in a day where our country needs sweetness all the time, we need somebody that’s tough. I’m thankful for, for those manly attributes, I just wish he didn’t have some of the others. This proud man has an empty head. He thinks he knows it all and God says, “You know nothing.” And by the way, all that matters is what God thinks.

Listen to Proverbs 18:2, ” A fool does not delight in understanding, But only in revealing his own mind.” Proverbs 1:7, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge.” You see, you don’t know anything until you first fear the Lord. That means a reverence and an awe. That means a self-humbling of yourself before him and his word, that he’s right, and in every way you’re thinking, your motivation or your conclusions disagree with him, you say, “He’s right. I’m wrong.” That’s the beginning of knowledge, the fear of the Lord. And to truly fear the Lord, you’re acknowledged that you know nothing, and when you acknowledge that you know nothing, that’s when you really start knowing something. You understand that? Now you say, “Wait a minute, pastor. I know people that don’t know God and they, they have wisdom about medicine or aeronautics or whatever it is, these technologies and they do a lot of good things.” Yes, but their motive behind it is not the glory of God, so yet they still know nothing. The motive is themselves.

Romans 7:18, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.” Paul says nothing good dwelt and that included his mind. He knew that apart from God’s changing of his heart and mind, ultimately there was no good thing that could come out of his life.

Proverbs 30:2-3 the writer of Proverbs says, “Surely I am more stupid than any man, And I do not have the understanding of a man. Neither have I learned wisdom, Nor do I have the knowledge of the Holy One.” What he’s saying is, “In my natural condition, if God didn’t help me in my natural condition, I’m more stupid than any man. I have nothing good in me.”

So we see his impure doctrine, at least impure living. We see he has a proud heart. We see his empty head, although he thinks he knows everything. Thirdly, notice his contentious mouth. His contentious mouth. Look at verse 4 again and we see there, it says, “he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise evil, rather envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction.” Well, let’s go back up to that first phrase, he has morbid interest. It just means an unhealthy interest. In other words, he’s interested not in what glorifies God or what’s good for the church, he’s just interested in having his way and actually causing trouble. When I see that in the world today, there’s a notion today if we can cause enough chaos in the culture, we can gain power and control. That’s basically the way the false teacher works in the church. He uses his words not to build up and to help but to be contentious.

Controversial questions, he says. He’s always about controversial questions. You know, it’s interesting to me if you open your Bibles, you’ll find that God makes so much exceedingly clear that the false teacher is not interested in what God has made exceedingly clear, he wants to cast doubt on the Scriptures by camping out on secondary things that are not real clear, and what it is, it’s a way to divert attention from his unholy living. Let’s don’t get to the stuff that’s clear about good and bad, right and wrong, law and truth, let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s have all of these questions about all these things and we don’t quite understand, and that way we won’t have time to really talk about the things that condemn me. That’s really where he’s going with this whole thing.

Paul elaborates further, verse 4, he “disputes about words,” strife it means with words. This will form parties and factions and groups in the church over things that don’t matter. In other words, they form divisions over secondary things that Christians can disagree on but ought to stay in fellowship over. Like they’ll say if you don’t join our group and interpret the way we interpret on this secondary point, then you’re not really spiritual, you’re not really godly. Um, I think we’ve got the, the will illustration that we can put on the screen that all illustrations have weaknesses in them but in the will illustration, we point out the main things that are very very clear in Scripture, and sometimes I’ll tell people as, as I’m teaching pastors or whatever, they’ll say, “Well, can you do this in a church and do that in the church?” I say, “Yes, after you get these main things performing well in the church.” Then I’ll say, “And you’re not gonna get through with that. You’re not gonna get through doing personalized strategic world missions as well as you ought to. You’re not gonna get through every member ministry in small groups as well as you ought to. You’re not gonna get through with preaching the word in the power of the Spirit as well as you ought to. You’re not gonna get through with being a, a model church, a Spirit-empowered church that God might use as a model for others as well as you ought to.” In other words, there’s things we know that are clear but the false teacher is not interested in those, he’s interested in secondary minor point, actually usually it’s a distortion and a misinterpretation about some vague thing in Scripture and forming a group around it so he can be head of that group. And again, it’s about power and control.

So what comes out of this kind of action and behavior in the church? Verse 4, “envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions.” “Aha, they don’t agree with our position. They don’t agree with our leader and the way he understands this text over here. They’re not spiritual. They might not even be saved.” Evil suspicions. Just stirring that kind of stuff up in the church.

Then, uh, in the next verse, verse 5, “and constant fiction.” We’ve had so many of those float through the evangelical church in years and, and, I, I, I mention this one because I probably have heard more pastors talk about this one in the last 20-30 years than any other and that’s homeschooling. Homeschooling is good and homeschooling can be blessed of God, and we have great homeschoolers at Grace Life Church, and we stand with them and we help them, but what we don’t have is homeschool Nazis. We don’t have that. We don’t have those that rise up and say, “If you don’t do it like we do it, all the rest of you are inferior and unspiritual.” We don’t have that. Well, that’s what the false teacher would do. He’d take an issue that Christians can have different approaches on and he’d say, “You gotta do it like this, the way I’ve told you to do it or it doesn’t matter.”

Paul elaborates further about them in verse 5 and says, these are “men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth.” Literally it means a corrupt mind. It means what’s in their head is corruption. No truth is there. They’re, they’re deprived of the truth. And again, the Apostle Paul had to deal with so much like this. He had the Gnostics on one end who claimed to be elitist and if you didn’t understand the Bible the way they required you to understand it and according to their “superior elite knowledge,” then you weren’t really spiritual. Then he had the Judaizers over here who thought that you ought to be bring the law into the Gospel and if you didn’t keep these certain laws of Moses, you couldn’t be a real Christian or really pleasing to God. And so he, he says, “Those men are corrupt in their minds and they’re deprived of the truth.” Paul brought up fighting against false doctrine and contentious false teachers in the church over and over and over again.

I found some interesting thoughts in Calvin’s commentary. Listen to this. Calvin holds that false teachers may hold to orthodox doctrine. He said they’ve probably got a sheet somewhere in a filing cabinet, they could pull it out and say, “Here’s the doctrines I believe,” and it’d be solid. He said yet they pollute the teachings of Christ with stupid chatter. Not my words, those are Calvin’s words. Stupid chatter. In other words, they get on stuff that doesn’t matter then when you call them out and say, “Look, you’re making an idol out of something the Bible’s not clear about you’re just causing dissensions and suspicion and strife in the church.” They’d say, “Oh, no, no, we hold to sound doctrine.” Then they’ll pull out the other piece of paper. So be careful when they just profess they believe the same things we believe. What are they making a big deal out of? What are they putting the attention on is what Calvin is saying. They go all out on stuff the Bible says little or nothing about.

You know, here in the South we don’t hear about it much anymore but years ago when I first was converted and saved, there were strong movements and there were some good and godly people in these movements, some of you have been in this movement, but it was a movement that had real strict rules about your dress and the way you appeared, and particularly for the women in the church. Y’all remember that? Couldn’t cut your hair. Couldn’t wear make-up and there are a few other essential things that the Bible talks about over and over again. No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t talk about that over and over again.

I’ll never forget, I was just a young preacher and I, I was reading J. Vernon McGee. No, probably was listening to J. Vernon McGee on the radio. Y’all know who J. Vernon McGee is? And he came to that text about women and their appearance and J. Vernon McGee said, “I don’t think the Bible teaches that women can’t wear make-up.” And then he said, “A little paint will help any old barn.” Anyway, my point is rule after rule, emphasis after emphasis, trend after trend, the false teacher is prone to get on a bandwagon of some of these things and pull the church into divisions and strife over things that really don’t matter. Now no doubt some Christian ladies need to pay more attention to the way they dress or their lack of dress. Some of you mommas need to do a better job on the make-up front probably, but we ain’t starting a movement for or against it.

Now I’ve missed 100 others, okay? Those are just illustrations of the kind of stuff and, and balls get rolling and movements get started and you have whole giant movements of people following these things, and every few years there are things that come along like this. Calvin again said this: good sounding courses that are not the primary calling of the church. Did you hear that? The false teacher is prone to have a good sounding course, this the way we ought to go, sounds pretty good, but it’s not the primary mission of the church. They twist simple and genuine teachings and make it about their own subjective personal view of godliness. Now we’ve got in Baptist and evangelical life today the social justice movement and all this stuff and there’s some good in it and it sounds good, but the way they’re doing it, they’re, they’re actually making it a course of religion and they’ve gotten way way out of balance. It’s not the main mission of the church, going back to Calvin’s statement.

Well, E., in our outline: his base motive. His base motive. We talked about his pride and his conceit and arrogance, that’s certainly his base motive, but in verse 5 he brings this out again and he says, “who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.” He, he’s figured out, “If I can get in the church and I can give them a show of godliness, and all the ladies say, ‘Oh, I’m so impressed with his devotion to God.’ And the men say, ‘Boy, he’s committed,’ I can use that to bring the disciples astray from following Christ and the main truths of Scripture to following me.” And when I use the phrase “base motives,” I mean it both ways. Base means of the lower realm, motives that come not from the wisdom of heaven but from the lower motivations of earth, and base meaning the foundation from which all his other actions flow from. His base is he’s using godliness for selfish pride and gain. His motivation was to gain power over men, to get profit from men, and praise from men. Did you hear that? When you get down to his base motive, he wants power, he wants financial profit, and he wants praise. Why? Because he’s enslaved to the fear of man. To him it’s all about people and all about getting the following.

Calvin said again, their single objective is to parade themselves. Their single objective is to parade themselves. They’ve schemed to make use of the church and their own unbiblical, subjective, contrived “godliness” to gain carnal profit the same way men of the world, the unregenerate gains profit out in the world. He’s just bringing it into the church. That’s what Paul is saying to Timothy about sound doctrine.

Here’s one real powerful illustration from the New Testament in Acts 8. In Acts 8, beginning in verse 18, “Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was bestowed through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money.” Simon said, “Oh, now wait a minute. I see these apostles can do something I, I don’t know anything about so I’m gonna give them money and they can give me this spiritual power.”

Verse 19, “saying, ‘Give this authority to me as well, so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.'” But Peter seeing his motives were wrong, verse 20, “But Peter said to him, ‘May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have no part or portion in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray the Lord that, if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.’ But Simon,” again, this is Simon the magician, “answered and said, ‘Pray to the Lord for me yourselves, so that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.'” Here’s a guy, what he’s saying, what Simon the magician was saying was, “I’m gonna get in this movement. I see it, it has a lot of profitability to it, it has a lot of praise of men in it, and I’m gonna, I’ll even buy it if I have to.” And what does Peter say? “You’ve missed everything. You’re trying, you have base motives, misusing the things of God for selfish gain.”

So Paul tells to Timothy in a direct way for the last time in this letter, “Timothy, guard sound doctrine and guard against false teachers.” And for those of you in ministry or, and by the way, if I could say this, thank you for over these decades how you’ve stood with the elders as we have faced thing after thing, issue after issue, that would lead us away from the main thing the Bible says is our cause and is our mission. Now it may be more important today than ever because increasingly there are young pastors all over looking to us for guidance and if we compromise here, it’ll be hard for them to not compromise here. But let’s be a good example for the glory of God, and that we might be a part of spreading his truth and his Gospel and his glory to the very ends of the earth.