Sermon Tone Analysis

If you have your Bible (and I hope you do) please turn to Paul’s first letter to Timothy.

If you are able and willing, please stand for the reading of God’s Holy Word. 1 Timothy 6 beginning with the last sentence of verse 2.

This is God’s Word:

May the Lord add His blessing to the reading of His Holy Word!

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“'Cause we are living in a material world

And I am a material girl

You know that we are living in a material world

And I am a material girl”

That’s not me; that was Madonna who sang that for the first time 35 years ago.

Regardless of what the song actually means or what Madonna meant it to mean, the chorus rings true, at least in part (grammar aside).

We are living in a materialistic world, aren’t we?

We are about the acquisition of stuff.

More stuff, all the stuff, better stuff, more expensive stuff, name-brand stuff, nicer stuff, new stuff.

“We are living in a material world...”

It starts young.

Pages-long Christmas lists.

“I want this!

I want that!

I want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!”

You know that we are living in a material world...

Madonna was a bit prophetic: we are living in a material world, or at least a materialistic world.

We are living in a materialistic world and we are, most of us, ourselves materialistic.

Our materialism—our tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values—our materialism is blinding us to the needs of the world around us.

Our materialism is killing us.

Of the 7 Billion people in the world, only one-third claim to be Christian (and a good number of those have a mistaken understanding of what it is to be a follower of Christ).

Subtract the professing Christian population, and we’re left with 4.7 Billion who are on the road to an eternal hell.

2 Billion of those 4.7 Billion have absolutely no access to the gospel.

There is an urgent spiritual need.

There is, also, an urgent physical need.

Several thousand people each and every day die due to lack basic needs and medical supplies.

Food, shelter, medicine are not readily available in most places.

Some 20,000 children will die TODAY due to starvation and preventable disease.

14 children die every minute while we eat popcorn and stream Netflix and Disney+.

If you own a car, if you have (at this point or any point) more than a few dollars in your pocket, if you work even a minimum wage job—if any of those are true, you are among the wealthiest people in the world.

We often compare ourselves to the 1% and think, “Well, I’m not rich.

Jeff Bezos is rich.

Warren Buffet is rich.

All those professional athletes are rich.

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Oprah, Ellen—they are rich!

Not me.”

But if we compare ourselves to the majority of people in the world, we’d realize that most of the world would look at us and see, in bright, flashing, neon letters: RICH!

“Look at them! They’ve got multiple cars, expendable income, a roof over their heads, more than one bathroom (and their bathrooms are inside with running water and everything!).

They have food filling their refrigerators and their cupboards; they have so much food they throw it away.

Look how rich they are!”

Comparatively, we are wealthy, wealthy people.

And we give very little of it away.

Did you know that on average, Christians give about 2.5% of their income back to the Lord?

And then, on average, only 2% of that 2.5% is given by the church to international missions?

To put it into a dollar figure: for every $100 a Christian gives, 5 cents of it goes to foreign mission work.

I don’t know what you give personally, percentage wise (and I don’t need to or want to know; and I won’t know unless you tell me).

I don’t know what you give, but it’s good, from time to time, to consider how much you actually give.

There’s no set percentage you must give, by the way.

But there are principles in place.

Our church is a bit out of the ordinary in the amount that we give.

I’ve mentioned this before: one of the first things that drew me to RHCC was the note in the bulletin stating 10% of everything given to RHCC was given to mission work.

Now, all told, we give close to 25% of everything the Lord has blessed us with; we give it back to the Lord, helping local people here and we send it to help support like-minded ministries and missionaries, both domestic and international.

That’s not to say that we couldn’t do more.

As long as the Lord gives me breath and the privilege of pastoring here, I’m going to work to increase what we give away.

“The Lord has dealt bountifully with” us.

He has blessed us so that we can be a blessing.

Unfortunately, not all people feel the same way toward their material possessions.

>As we know from our study in 1 Timothy, there are false teachers in Ephesus (the city where Timothy is pastor).

These false teachers are causing all kinds of problems.

They are experts in missing the point.

They are leading people astray.

So Paul, writing to young Timothy is exposing these false teachers, their false teaching, and the false teachers’ character.

What they are teaching, how they are living, what they are selling is leading the people astray.

Their teaching is anti-gospel and gospel+.

They are denying the truth of Jesus’ death and burial or they are adding to it: “Jesus died for your sins, which is great, but you also must do this and this and that in order to be saved.”

False teachers teaching a false gospel.

In our text for today, Paul identifies two destructive cravings of false teachers and those who follow them.

They crave controversy and quarrels.

And hey crave money.

These teachers were teaching another gospel, other doctrine, false teaching, teaching that is contrary to the truth.

This kind of false teaching will always, always lead to division in the church.

Being ignorant and arrogant is a bad combination.

A man who knows nothing about cars but arrogantly believes he can fix anything is probably going to hurt himself or someone else and will likely ruin the car in the process.

People who know nothing of the things of the Lord and yet have the arrogance to presume that they can teach or lead are going to hurt a lot of people.

What’s more, false teachers are going to stir up a lot of controversy and strife.

Unbiblical doctrine taught inevitably leads to controversy and strife.

Envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions, constant friction—all of these result from false teaching.

These flourish among those who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.

Paul points out the cause and effect of false teaching, the damage false teaching does to the church and to individual Christians.

He encourages us, urges us, pleads with us to:

Be Content in the Gospel

This is essentially what Paul is getting at in verse 3.

He implies that there will be people who teach otherwise—people who teach something contrary to the truth about Jesus.

There is much teaching that does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching.

Many, many people throughout the years have become either bored with or hostile to the gospel.

They become discontent with the glorious truths about Jesus.

When people become discontent with the gospel, they go shopping around.

They’ll turn on the TV or dial the radio or stream online something different, something that is, in their mind, better than the gospel.

They’ll find a gathering of people who call themselves a “church” but who have no interest in the gospel and have, instead, traded it in for life tips and marriage advice.

All it is is something contrary to the truth of the gospel.

People tire of the old, old story of Jesus and His love and, like a gift with the tag still on, they’ll exchange it for what’s new, for something bright and fancy, something that makes them feel better about themselves, something that tells them they’re able to make themselves right with God.

They look at the gospel and say, “Eh.

I don’t like this gospel so much right now; let’s try this.”

Discontentedness with the gospel is a very real condition.

There are countless people even right here in our small community who have become discontent with the truths about Jesus.

It bores them.