When Gain Becomes God
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Enduring in Ministry • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Introduction and Context
Introduction and Context
Closing of 1 Timothy forms a giant inclusio.
Mirrors the opening statement in 1 Timothy 1:3-20
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.
In this passage, Paul will address the false teachers and their plight in an attempt to warn them off the path they are traveling.
This is Pastoral Paul interceding for the lost.
The Spiritual Sickness that Threatens the Health of the Church: Greed
The Spiritual Sickness that Threatens the Health of the Church: Greed
The false teachers at Ephesus were in mortal danger because of their greed.
3 If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness,
4 he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions,
5 and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.
““If anyone teaches a different doctrine”: a conditional statement; a warning to Timothy and all future church leaders about what could happen in the church and what to do about it.
This isn’t some apocalyptic warning, for false teachers are already present in the church.
Remember Paul’s warning to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:29-30
29 I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;
30 and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.
Now this has become a reality; certain men from within the church have begun to teach “different doctrine.”
Paul will give us a helpful guide for identifying what different doctrine is.
“Does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ”
It abandons the source of truth: the Lord Jesus Christ, the living Word of God.
“and the teaching that accords with godliness”
It departs from the standard of truth: the gospel of Jesus Christ.
All false doctrine fails for the same reason, regardless of its particular form.
It does not teach what accords with the person, work, and teaching of Jesus Christ as presented in the Scripture.
“sound” is a word that has to do with wholesomeness/healthiness.
Sound words bring health to the person.
The healthy Christian has a right understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ on a foundational level.
What He taught and practiced in His life.
What He revealed to the apostles through the Holy Spirit.
All our hope is bound up in Him.
The product of healthy teaching is godliness; conformity to Christ’s image (character), as Paul has repeatedly taught
49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,
Conversely, false teaching does not produce spiritual health; it does not produce godliness; it produces only worldliness, which leads to death.
The definitive separation between Christianity and heretical cults may always be found in the question, What do you teach about Jesus Christ?
What a faithful minister teaches and applies is merely Jesus Christ.
2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
What motivates these false teachers?
It’s not just someone who is merely in error (ignorance) but is active in deceiving others; but why does he do it?
It is a deficiency of character and not of information: Puffed up with conceit.
Being conceited means to be under a false illusion.
He is deceived in his views because he is deceived about himself.
He regards himself and his opinions more highly than he ought.
Every deficiency that follows flows forth from his own false image of himself.
The first result of his conceit is that he understands nothing.
always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: the trouble with our heretical friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.
His conceited ignorance shows forth in a second result: “He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words”
The faithful, orthodox Christian is never to blame for controversy.
It is rather the unsound theologian who inevitably brings it.
His false image of himself comes with an infection of the mind that drives him headlong into every debate, whether it is worthy or not. (A morbid compulsion)
He moves away from that which would bring life & health towards what bring sickness & death.
He majors in the minors.
Every speculative doctrine becomes a hill to die on.
When he splits hairs, he uses a chainsaw.
To my mind, this is the case in almost every corner of “Christian” social media. Endless fights and separations without any commensurate edification.
While this can sound like a person who loves to quibble over semantics, what is underpinning that is actually a war against the Word of truth; the revealed Word of God.
So conceit > craving > controversy > conflict.
Produces envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction.
The false teacher is full of envy: Unhappy when others succeed and joyful when they fail.
The false teacher is foments dissension: He undermines others at every opportunity.
The false teacher spreads slander: malicious lies aimed at destroying other’s reputation.
The false teacher shares evil suspicions: always looking for the worst in everyone.
The false teacher creates constant friction: the accumulation of the above controversies threatens and assaults the joyful fellowship of the church.
But standing for the truth of God never means picking fights. We should never be ones to relish a war of words in the church.
Theologian Alexander Whyte exhorts us:
Eschew controversy, my brethren, as you would eschew the entrance to hell itself! Let them have it their own way. Let them talk, let them write, let them traduce you. Let them judge and condemn you, let them slay you. Rather let thee truth of God itself suffer than that love suffer. You have not enough of the Divine nature in you to be a controversialist.
6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
The false teacher, in his conceit and controversies becomes depraved in mind and deprived of truth.
Starved of the truth, he becomes a deranged and desolate person (the absence of spiritual life and all the blessings that it brings.
The form of his desolation Imaging that godliness is a means of gain.
The sad irony is that while the false teacher may have the appearance of godliness, internally they lack the a godly heart.
For them, obeying Christ is a means to an end—worldly success for them.
Religion was big business in Ephesus (Temple of Artemis).
This pattern of thinking attempting to infiltrate the church too.
Christianity present & pursued as a way to achieve and accumulate material benefit.
The health and wealth gospel is not unique to the televangelists.
The danger of greed has been an ever-present danger to the church throughout her history.
The indulgences of the Catholic church.
The ever-expanding warehouses of Christian merchandise for sale.
Christian book publishers that produce endless new translations and versions of the Bible in various editions.
Study Bibles, Journaling Bibles, Men’s Bibles, Women’s Bibles, Children’s Bibles, Firefighter Bibles, Veteran’s Bibles, Donald Trump God Bless the USA Bibles!
All aimed at one thing, making money off of people’s religious practice.
So many church scandals involve money to some degree.
Pastors guilty of egregious crimes will still take their former churches to court in order to extract their retirement packages.
One commentator (Denny Burk) summed it up this way:
Ephesians–Philemon Comment
The false teachers peddle error not because they lack information but because they lack heart. They do not want what God wants, and their teaching reflects that sad reality.
Tertullian (Church Father) said aptly, “Nothing that is God’s is obtainable by money.”
The Antidote to Spiritual Sickness: Contentment
The Antidote to Spiritual Sickness: Contentment
Paul’s counter to this error is not to dismiss gain, but to show both what true gain is and how one comes to possess it.
6 But godliness with contentment is great gain,
7 for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.
8 But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.
Godliness is not means to a goal (gain); it is the goal itself.
Godliness is the knowledge of Jesus Christ in the mind and the heart worked out in the life of the Christian.
This isn’t the means to something more value.
It is supremely valuable all by itself.
Paul calls godliness great gain.
John Calvin said of godliness “[It] is sufficiently great gain to us, because through it we become not only heirs of the world but are enabled to enjoy Christ and all his riches.”
Godliness is gain both in this life and in the life to come for it leads us to eternal life.
Contentment is the way that we attain to this great gain.
Godliness is spiritually produced and contentment is our response.
Contentment has at the core of its meaning the idea of a man who possesses all that he needs in himself.
He is self-sufficient; not dependent on anyone or anything else.
But Paul is speaking of contentment in a different way.
Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs wrote about it in his seminal work, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment:
“Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.”
Rather than being self-sufficient, the Christian is Christ-sufficient, and that is much better.
For anyone who is in Christ has everything he needs.
3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,
4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
We have need for contentment in this world because the fallen world has a way of making us feel discontented.
The more pressing danger those is possibility that what we are truly unsatisfied with is Jesus Christ himself.
Jesus is great…but I want more.
This is the sad disposition of many in the extreme fringe of the Charismatic movement.
Always longing for greater signs and wonders.
38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”
39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
40 For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
41 The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.
26 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.
22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,
23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,
Chuck Swindoll poetically described our natural bent toward discontentment:
It was spring, but it was Summer I wanted; the warm days and the great outdoors.
It was Summer, but it was Fall I wanted; the colorful leaves and the cool, dry air.
It was Fall, but it was Winter I wanted; the beautiful show and the joy of the holiday season.
It was Winter, but it was Spring I wanted; the warmth and blossoming of nature.
I was a child, and it was adulthood I wanted; the freedom and the respect.
I was 20, but it was 30 I wanted; to be mature and sophisticated.
I was middle-aged, but it was 20 I wanted; the youth and the free spirit.
I was retired, but it was middle-aged I wanted; the presence of mind without limitations.
My life was over, and I never got what I wanted.
Discontentment robs our life of joy.
Comparison is the thief of joy.
Why is godliness with contentment great gain? Because you can’t take it with you.
For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.
The Scripture teaches us of the reality of our lives.
19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
21 And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Solomon also taught that we ought to be content with our lives because of its finitude:
18 Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot.
19 Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God.
20 For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.
The reality is that what we have is enough (indeed, it is more than enough).
But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.
Paul recalls the words of Jesus in Matt 6:25:
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
Our culture teaches that we need to have more.
Discontentment always wants something more or something else.
It always thinks about what it thinks it still lacks (enough is never enough).
Discontentment is a condition of the heart.
It doesn’t come from what we don’t have, it comes from who we are.
But Christian contentment is knowing that if I am not satisfied with what I have, I will never be satisfied with what I think I want.
Contentment has nothing to do with our possessions.
It comes from possessing Jesus Christ by faith.
He is the true treasure of our soul, and the only thing which can truly satisfy us.
In him we find meaning, purpose, joy, and satisfaction enough for this life.
And anyone who is satisfied in Christ can endure all things in Him:
11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content.
12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.
13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
The Signs and Symptoms of Spiritual Sickness: Discontent
The Signs and Symptoms of Spiritual Sickness: Discontent
The danger signs that show we have a contentment problem are illustrated so that we may recognize and avoid a bad end.
9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.
10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
The desire for riches results in a temptation toward evil and evil ends.
When desire money, it becomes a trap that holds us.
14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
We need to see that our wrongly-sourced desires will only inevitably lead ruin and destruction.
The desire to get rich (or stay rich) is relatively harmless.
But that desire entices us to get rich (or stay rich) by immoral means (conceiving sin)
The cycle repeats as our temptation leads us to more and more evil desires (enough is never enough).
Ultimately, this desire leads us to ruin and destruction:
Ruin=moral failure in this life.
Destruction=spiritual death in the life to come.
The rich are not the only ones who struggle with an unhealthy devotion to money.
It is also those who want to become richer than they already are.
In both cases they have fixed their desires on material wealth rather than on our inheritance which is in heaven.
In both cases, the profit motive becomes the overriding motive of their lives.
But Jesus says in Mark 8:36:
36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?
Now, money itself is not evil; it is only a tool to accomplish our purposes.
It can be used for good and noble ends.
Illicit & idolatrous devotion to money is a source of all kinds of evils.
Greed is a sin that leads to many other sins.
It is ultimately lacking trust in God’s goodness.
Lacking trust in God’s goodness drives us to seek for ourselves what we think we need.
Conceited pursuit of money becomes a broken GPS that leads us into a lake.
It is a self-inflicted wound.
Following our desires for things other than Christ will aways bring personal miseries.
Ultimately, it may lead us to wander completely from the faith.
Conclusion
Conclusion
The real problem for us is that we lack the heart to do what we ought to do.
What we tend to want is more possessions, more independence from God, more power than God.
Jesus says in Matthew 6:19-21:
19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,
20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
So we must wage war at the level of our hearts.
Concern yourself with the truth, and receive the truth of Jesus Christ with gladness and thanksgiving at all times.
Let us hold fast with Christ at the center of our lives and our theology.
If we remove him from the center, we will inevitably become lost.
As we push him further and further out, our character will degrade.
We too will become conceited (self-deceived).
Corruption will follow our conceit into the church.
The deadly poison of envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions, and constant frictions will begin to ravage the church.
In the end, we could become just another group of hypocrites trying to work harder than others so that we can hold a self-justifying sense of superiority over others.
It will mean death for us and for everyone that we infect with that view.
But godliness with contentment is great gain.
We can instead trust in Christ’s all sufficiency in our lives.
He is all we need! And if we keep Him always at the center of our lives, we will have gained everything.
