Sermon Transcript
In general, we understand that if we want to add something to our lives, like being able to be in a performance like this, we need to say no to some other things. We may need to avoid certain things in order to embrace some other things, right? Like, if you’re like me and you want to get your cholesterol numbers down without the use of meds, we’ll need to say goodbye to some of our best, most wonderful friends. Like butter and sour cream and fatty proteins, you just have to say goodbye to that, right? If we continue to embrace or consume those foods, it will just be detrimental to our progress of lowering our cholesterol without meds.
If we want to save money to get out of debt or to buy a house, we’ll need to avoid frivolous spending, right? If we buy everything that we see that we want all the time, it’ll be detrimental to our progress of saving. That all makes sense to us. We kind of get that. That’s a fairly normal pattern in the world.
So, here’s the question for us this morning. Does that pattern still apply if we want to learn about God? If we want to grow in our understanding of Him? If we want to become more spiritual? If we want to connect with God?
Are there things that would be detrimental to our progress if we consume them, if we embrace them, or if we learn them? Would they be detrimental? The text that we are looking at today, 1 Timothy 4:1-8, says that yes, there are certain things we need to avoid if we want to progress in our relationship with God. So while you’re turning there, it’ll be up on the screen in a second, or it’s in your bulletin notes that you picked up on the way in, or you can actually open a Bible and look at 1 Timothy chapter 4. While you’re turning there, I just want you to think in your mind for a second, what do you think he’s going to say?
What do you think he’s going to say we need to avoid? What do you think he’s going to say will be detrimental to our progress in understanding God? And I’ll tell you before we read it, the answer might be a little bit different than you would expect. So, 1 Timothy chapter 4, verses 1 through 8 is our text this morning. Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and the teaching of demons.
Through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from certain foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed. Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather, train yourself for godliness.
While bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way and holds promise for the present life and also the life to come. So, if you were paying attention there, and if you were going to say that we were going to read that you needed to avoid sin in order to grow spiritually or to connect with God, this text might have been a little surprising because he doesn’t mention sin here. That’s not what he’s talking about. Of course, we would say sin clouds your enjoyment of God, but he actually warns of something different here. He says false teaching is what will hinder our spirituality or our understanding or our enjoyment of God.
So today, as we dig into this warning against false teaching, we’ll look at what the false message of God is, where it comes from, and how to stay true. So, what the false message is, where it comes from, and how to stay true. So, point 1, false messages about God. Have you considered that not everything everyone says about God is true? Have you considered that what some people say about God might be flat-out false?
Have you considered that? Another way to say that is by saying there is a right way to think about God, and there are wrong ways to think about God, which I know is rather countercultural for us in our current climate because we want to, this is all of us, we so want to be open and inclusive and say things like, you know, you believe your way and I’ll believe mine, right? To each his own. You do you. As long as you believe in something, that’s what counts.
We want to be able to say those things because we want to be friendly and open and inclusive. We don’t want to appear narrow, right? None of us do. But let’s just think this morning, is that the way that it works? What you believe about something in your mind creates what it is in reality for you?
And what someone else believes in their mind creates what it is in reality for them? Does that ever work? Like, if I say my wife Beth is about 5’5 with light brown hair and a mother of 2 boys, and you say, well, that’s great for you to believe, Dan, but I believe your wife’s name is Lucy and she’s 7 feet tall and she speaks fluent French. But you do you. You do you.
And I’ll believe what I want to believe. I’ll believe what works for me, and you believe what works for you. Does that actually work? Do your thoughts about my wife create who she is in reality for you? And my thoughts about my wife create who she is in reality for me?
Is that how it works? Of course not, right? Of course that’s not how reality works. As many engineers as there are in this area, I would think that we could easily accept there are true ways to think about something and there are false ways to think about something. As scientific as we are around here, I don’t really understand how we have ended up believing anything close to something like, whatever you want to believe about God is true for you.
Because that’s not the way it works, right? Reality exists irrespective of how we think about it. If someone believes different than what objective reality is, then those thoughts are wrong. If you think my wife is 7 feet tall and speaks French, you are wrong. It doesn’t matter how deeply you believe it.
It doesn’t matter how much you want it to be true. It’s false. Your thoughts about her do not change who she is. So, yes, there is a right way to think about God and there are many wrong ways, just like there’s a right way to think about my wife and there are many wrong ones. The question then becomes, how do we know what is right?
So, there are countless books that could show you why biblical texts are reliable. All these reasons have to do with things like the number of sources, meaning the number of people who reported the same event that is reported in the Bible, or the small amount of time that passed between when the event occurred and when it was recorded, or the detail that is given in the reporting makes it clear that this was not written as a work of fiction because fiction writing of the time didn’t have that level of detail. An Oxford professor of literature has said, either the biblical writers invented the genre of modern realistic fiction that had not been seen before and would not be seen until long afterwards, or what they wrote down is what it actually looks like, which is reportage of actual events. So, you look into all of that if you think it would be helpful for you. And, of course, there are just as many books that would be saying biblical texts are unreliable.
I personally don’t find those arguments as convincing, but you check them out for yourself. Here’s the catch though, you can know all of those facts intellectually, you can agree that biblical events are just as provable or more provable than every other event in ancient history, and yet you can still miss what is most important Which is an undeniable, unshakable, complete acceptance of who Jesus is, what He has done for you, and why you need Him. So here’s my advice, if you are really searching for what is true about God, look into all the history stuff if it’s helpful for you, go for it. But more than that, way more than that, listen to people talk about Jesus. Listen to sermons about Jesus.
If you’ve never heard a sermon that’s interesting for you, I can recommend some people who you might find more interesting. Just consume as much of that as you possibly can. Listen to people sing about Jesus. Sing a little yourself, maybe when nobody’s looking, but sing a little yourself. Read the Bible.
Read as much in the Bible as you possibly can. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you, James 4:8. Tells us. Do you know this is exactly how the people who first followed Jesus came to believe in him? Like the people who physically walked around with the physical Jesus, this is how they came to believe in him.
They followed a little, but they were unsure, and they followed a little more, they thought about leaving, but they kept checking him out. Then he rose from the dead and appeared to them in a way that they could not deny who he was. Peter tells us, 2 Peter 1:16, we did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses to His majesty. Peter says his beliefs aren’t some legend that was passed down for ages and ages. He says he believed because he saw Jesus.
He experienced Jesus. He didn’t listen to someone else’s ideas about God. Peter encountered a living, breathing, tangible reality that he could reach out and touch. Now, we will push back on that and say, well, hey, that’s great for Peter, right, who actually saw and experienced Jesus firsthand, but we don’t have that luxury. And sure, Peter didn’t follow a story, he followed a tangible person, but it certainly seems like we are following a story, right?
Like, we are following Peter’s story, as a matter of fact. So, how does that help us?
This is what happens. It’s how people come to faith. And I’ve prayed for you that by us talking about it this morning that it may happen for you today. There is a miracle that God performs in our hearts that is just as real and just as undeniable as seeing Jesus face to face. 2 Corinthians 4:6 describes it as God shining the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus into our hearts.
There is a light of knowledge, an undeniable experience of reality of who God is and who Jesus is and why we need Him to die for our sins that God reveals to us in our hearts. This is not some simple intellectual assent agreement to, oh, the internal consistency of Christianity is more likely true than other religions, or, yeah, I believe, I kind of believe there’s a God, so I’ll just kind of pick a religion and hope it’s right, or, my parents were Christians and they were right about a lot of things, so they’re probably right about this too. It’s none of that. None of that is the light of the knowledge of the reality of God that is revealed in our heart in an undeniable way. There is a revelation that happens inside of us that is true in a way that might only be able to be described as Jesus appeared to us.
He appeared to us in a way that we cannot shake. It’s like transcendent reality smacked us in the nose, and we are sure that we tangled with something real, even if we can’t quite explain how we know it’s real, it’s more real than what we reach out and touch every day. If you have not encountered Jesus in that kind of way, then pray this morning that God would shine in your heart the knowledge of the glory of God. In fact, don’t stop praying that until it happens.
So, yes, there is a true message, and yes, you can know it in a very similar way to the way Peter knew it. And therefore, that means there are also false messages that we can know and identify. In our text this morning, we see a warning against certain false teachers who are saying, in order for God to forgive you, for God to accept you, for God to bless you, You needed to— this is what false teachers were saying— you needed to avoid certain foods and remain single. Don’t get married. That was verse 3.
And while we— you’re like, who would say that? We do not have widespread belief today that our dinner choices or our marital status have much to do with whether God accepts us or not. That’s kind of faded away. But there is a common thread between those beliefs and nearly every other false message about God. It’s a commonality that actually runs through every religion that isn’t Christianity.
So, what is that? What is that commonality of this false teaching? What is the false teaching? It’s this. It’s work, put in effort to earn your status of beauty, value, purpose, meaning, or worth.
It’s that we are forgiven, we are accepted, we are blessed, we are favored, we are counted worthy as a result of our work and effort. Did you catch that in the false teaching mentioned here? Avoid these foods, avoid marriage to be a real Christian, work in order to become. Those messages are 180 degrees off from the teaching of Christianity, but they are actually a common thread. The overall principle is the exact belief of every other religion in the world.
If you’ve been around a while, you’ve heard me say this many times before, you’ll hear me say it many times again. Other religions can all be boiled down to be good enough, right enough, long enough, and you will get your treat. Other religions differ on what you need to do to be good enough, right enough, long enough, and they have different ideas about what the treat is, but they all fit that general pattern. And even if you do not claim to believe in any religion, so none of this matters to you, Like if you say, hey, that’s why I don’t believe in religion, because there’s this constant judging on me and there’s this constant pressure to measure up on these arbitrary rules that don’t make any sense. I’d say, not so fast.
I’d say you can’t excuse yourself that easily, because you could still believe the same general principle false teaching that runs through every religion. Because our modern cultural narratives all fit the same pattern. Even if they are not explicitly religion. So, let me ask you, and if you’re only going to pay attention to one thing this morning, this is it, okay? Then you go back to sleep if you need to.
When do you feel, when do you really feel, when does it set in for you that your life has meaning? When does that happen? Is it when you have achieved something? Is that when you feel you have meaning? Is it when somebody loves you?
Is that when you feel you have meaning? Is it when you are praised? When somebody notices what you’ve done and says, hey, good job. Is that when you feel you have meaning? When do you feel that you have self-worth?
Is it when you’ve done a good job? Is that when you feel that way? What if you didn’t perform to the standard that you wanted to perform. Do you still feel worthy then? See, all of that— do you see this?
All of that is work to earn your treat. In this case, the treat is self-purpose and value. And even though it’s not explicitly religion, even though you aren’t religious, you’re still doing it. You’re still working to earn your treat. In Christianity, on the other hand, the treat is given to you as an act of sheer grace.
We have done things to diminish our work and value, but Jesus gives us His worth and value. We have done ugly, unspeakable deeds, and Jesus says, have My beauty. We’ve squandered the abilities that He has given us in selfish ways, and He gives us the credit that He earned for living a perfect sacrificial life. See, so in Christianity, we are saved, accepted, forgiven, blessed, beautiful, worthy, valuable, treasured, not because of anything that we’ve done, but because what Christ has done. That’s the good doctrine he’s talking about in verse 6.
And again, that is 180 degrees off, completely different from almost every other teaching in our world. As C.S. Lewis said, all other religion is basically ethics. Be good, be better. But Christianity is basically news.
This is what Christ has accomplished. Or as Rick Warren says, every other religion is do, Christianity is done. So, that’s the false message. Do. That’s always the false message.
Work to earn your status of beauty, value, purpose, meaning, worth. One way or another, false teachings almost always fit that pattern. So, if that’s the false message, where does it come from? I’ll warn you before we put it up on the screen that this answer will be even more countercultural than our first point.
This text says that false teaching comes from demonic influence. 1 Corinthians 10:20 says something similar, demonic influence. Now, of course, I believe it is possible for people to come up with false ideas about God entirely on their own without the intervention of any type of demonic spirit, but that is not what is talked about here. Which I know— hello, I’m here too— for our Western minds and our Western bias of the world, talk of demons sounds pretty primitive and unscientific, right? So, if you just gave a giant, like, eye roll at the mention of spirits, I’ll just give you one thing to consider.
Sometime around the beginning of the 19th century, one vein of Christianity started minimizing the supernatural events that occurred in Scripture, because they believed those accounts were simply the way early unenlightened people understood their world. But now, meaning the 1800s then, they understood there were no such things as demons and spirits because those things could be explained by science, which is pretty much what many of us believe today, right? Well, when this vein of Christianity, this anti-supernatural vein of Christianity, sent missionaries to Africa and tried to explain to the native peoples there how there were no such things as demons and spirits, spirits, they didn’t get very far. On the other hand, the Christianity that has exploded in growth throughout Africa, and by the way, also Asia and Latin America, is the brand of Christianity that affirms the existence of the supernatural. Because Africa and Asia and Latin America, they see it all the time.
They have witch doctors. They have demonic ceremonies where people intentionally become possessed and then seem impervious to pain or become super strong. They live with these things. So, when someone shows up and says, there, there, simple tribesman. Don’t you know that white Western people have determined that none of this exists?
It is all superstition and unenlightened ignorance. The tribesman didn’t buy it. He says, you are invalidating my experience. But when Christians showed up and taught, yes, Yes, there is a spiritual world. Yes, there is a good spiritual world.
Yes, there is an evil spiritual world. And as powerful as you have experienced the evil spiritual world as being, Jesus is even more powerful than any evil spirit. That teaching affirmed the Africans. It lined up with what they already knew about the world. And especially when they began to see that people who became Christians were no longer really affected by the demonic practices, like when this Jesus spirit came into a person, that the witch doctor didn’t really have power over that person anymore.
When they saw that, they were like, wow, this is for real, and they got on board. So if you want to do an eye roll when we talk about demons, I get it. I know it’s hard to pull ourselves out of our Western biased cultural perspective, but realize if we don’t, We are just dismissing what entire continents of people still live with today. Is it perhaps possible that they have something to teach us instead of we have something to teach them? Is it possible that we have missed something that they see?
Would you give that any odds at all?
Just something for you to consider. So, for this morning, let’s just imagine, pretend that we accept that there are such things as demons. I know that’s a big leap for some of us, but let’s just imagine it anyway. And let’s assume false teachings really do come from demons. If all of that is true, it means following those beliefs aren’t exactly benign.
It’s not as innocent as, you believe what you want to believe, I’ll believe what I want to believe. It’s not as innocent as that. Some beliefs are true and good and helpful, and then there are other beliefs that come from powerful evil forces that desire our complete destruction, which might be why verse 7 says, have nothing to do with these false teachings. Get away from them. Don’t entertain them for even a second.
Now, we might, like, naturally get the creeps if we see someone, like, chanting some type of incantation in a séance, or if someone’s head is spinning around like in The Exorcist, someone calls on the spirit of Satan or something. If something like that happened, we might say, all right, I still don’t believe in demons, but it’s probably best for me to just stay away from this. We might understand the danger if it looked like that, but remember what Paul is saying is demonic here. Works-based religion, do instead of done, effort instead of grace, which doesn’t seem so creepy to us, but that’s exactly why he warns us. Stay away, he says.
Those are some serious wicked forces you are tangling with. Leave it alone. So, that leads to our final point, how to stay true. And let’s just be honest, this is not easy because we are completely immersed in the message of do instead of done, of work in order to become worthy. In fact, we might be more immersed here in Silicon Valley than anywhere else in the world.
I am repeatedly amazed by the stranglehold this seems to have here, the shame people feel if they don’t measure up to whatever standard they are holding in their minds. Students or their parents, maybe more so their parents, who want to hide the fact their student didn’t get into a top school, or the I’m better than you pride if they express, if they do get into that school. Or the justifications that start flying if you aren’t as far in your career as someone else? How defensive people get if they are exposed of being wrong about something? People seem like they will do anything to avoid saying, yeah, I was wrong about that, when clearly they were.
People just become viciously defensive if they get corrected or called out about the smallest things. All of that, all of that, do you see it? All of that is finding our value and worth in some type of our performance.
It’s works-based salvation. It’s, I only feel okay about me if I measure up to some standard. It’s works-based salvation. So, telling us who live in this time and in this place, to stay away from that kind of thinking, that’s like telling a fish not to get wet. This will be a challenge.
But if we can do it, the result will be confidence, self-confidence, peace, even when we aren’t measuring up. Okay, so how to get there? He says instead of following these myths, Train yourself in godliness, which has value for both now and later. That’s verses 7 and 8. Next week, Dave is going to cover more on what godliness is and what training steps in that direction might look like.
But in our text today, I only see one strategy for training in godliness, for pushing away false teaching. I only see one in our text, which is tell a friend and listen to a friend. Tell a friend good doctrine. Listen to a friend tell you good doctrine. Verse 6, if you point these things out to the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained— there is our trained word— being trained in the words of faith and the good doctrine that you have followed.
So, by telling good doctrine to others, you are being trained, and having them tell you the same, you are also being trained because they are also servants of Christ. So, if other people are going to follow this, then they will be telling you. It won’t just be you telling them all the time. So, super practical, how do we do this? Super practical.
When you see someone being excessively defensive, especially when they’re wrong about something, you say to them, it’s your friend, you’re going to tell a friend, you say, hey, there’s no need to prove yourself. You don’t need to defend yourself. There’s no need to prove yourself. As a Christian, your value doesn’t come from being right anyway. You can be wrong and still have value.
You remind them of that. When someone seems insecure because they lost a job, or they don’t have what somebody else has, or their kid doesn’t have what somebody else has, they didn’t get into the school, you say, hey, your worth doesn’t come from those things. You don’t have to feel unworthy if you don’t have them. Your worth doesn’t come from there. Your worth comes from the fact that Jesus, who is the author of the universe and holds time in His hand, He loves you.
He loves you specifically enough that He died for you to be in relationship with you. The author of all creation died to be in a relationship with you. That is why you have worth, and that can’t be taken away just because you don’t have what somebody else has. When someone’s sin has been exposed and they are feeling shame, you say, hey, Jesus paid for that sin. He carried that shame for you.
It has been lifted. We remind each other of these things over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Until it sinks in and this false works-based salvation is no longer in our minds.
There is this scene in one of the Narnia books, The Silver Chair, chapter 12, if you want to go read it later.
The prince has been held captive in an underground world for 10 years by the witch, but now 3 friends have come to rescue him. The problem is when these 3 friends show up, the witch throws some green powder in the fire and starts playing some music which puts all of them in a trance, and it begins to enable her to deceive them like she has deceived the prince for the past 10 years. She says there is no above-ground world. All of the above-ground world is a dream. And each of the 3 rescuers try to refute her by telling her all about the above-ground world, but they slowly become more and more entranced until even they start to believe there is no such place, even though they just came from there.
Finally, with a last burst of effort, one of them stomps on the fire where she’d thrown the green powder and and says basically, I am going to believe in the above-ground world no matter what. It’s a whole lot better than this place, even if it is only a dream, which kind of clears everybody’s head and they fight to defeat the witch.
We are so saturated in our underground works-based salvation earn your value, earn your self-image, earn your importance world that we can scarcely believe that there is an above-ground world where our performance does not equal our worth.
Our worth was bought for us and given to us by what Christ did for us on the cross. And we need a friend who can stomp out that enchantment for us, and we need to be that friend to somebody else.
Let’s pray this morning. Father, thank you that there is an above-ground world. Thank you that you made a way for us not to work for our purpose, value, worth, meaning, beauty, Thank you for Jesus, Lord, who died on the cross and takes all of the mess that we have created and gives us all of the beauty that he earned.
We ask that we could embrace those things today for the first time or in a deeper level than we ever have before. We ask those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
