In House Teaching

Introduction & Review

So last week we began our summer series on 1 Timothy that focuses on Behavior in the Household of God. The title is based on Paul’s stated purpose in writing this letter to Timothy that is found in...

1 Timothy 3:14–15 ESV

14 I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, 15 if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.

So to the degree that we would consider ourselves “the church of the living God” we are responsible to the behaviors described here in 1 Timothy. If we are honest, we don’t really like the idea of having expectations for our behavior. It feels confining and restrictive to say that we need to behave is a certain way. But this behavior requirement is not a meaningless jumping through hoops, it is because we have been given a responsibility. The last line of this verse alludes to this when it says that we are a “pillar and buttress of the truth.”

One of the particulars we mentioned last week was that the Apostle Paul wrote this letter to Timothy who was serving as a pastor in the city of Ephesus. Now to an Ephesian, any mention of the word pillar would bring their minds to one place. Slide

Along with being one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire and a major trade route by both land and sea, the pride of the Ephesian people was their Temple to the false goddess Artemis…which was held up with an elaborate system of 100 Pillars and Buttresses. This temple was so magnificent that is known as one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, and pilgrims flocked there every year to pay homage to the pagan goddess. So the Apostle uses these terms very intentionally.

In contrast to pillars and buttresses that held up the lies about Artemis, the Church is to be the pillar and buttress that holds up the truth about Jesus Christ.

Outside of some ornate cathedrals, we typically only see or use pillars for decorative purposes, but in these ancient times they were structural. The Pillar was designed to hold the entire structure up and the buttress was put in the place to hold up the Pillars…that held the entire structure up. Every part of the building was dependent on the structural integrity of the Pillars and Buttress’, just as every part of our Church is dependent on the strength of the truth.

With their Greek philosophical roots, seeking the truth was a part of the culture of the Ephesians, but this letter wasn’t written to the city itself, it was written to Timothy and the Church that Paul had planted there many years before.

And this church really exploded onto the scene in the ancient world. Acts 19 tells us the story of how Paul spent three months in the synagogue trying to convince the Jews there that Jesus was their long awaited Messiah, but when it became clear that their hearts had hardened against it, he led the followers of Jesus down the street to “the lecture hall of Tyrannus” where he began teaching about “The Way” of Jesus, which is what Christianity was first called...and that is when things just exploded.

God began doing some extraordinary and miraculous things through Paul, as sick people were healed, evil spirits were cast out and the Gospel was going forth so boldly that the text says that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord. Talk about a successful church launch!

But with every story of success there comes stories of opposition. It all started with that crazy story of the “Sons of Sceva” who tried to do exorcisms “by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” They didn’t know Jesus, but they wanted to use his power. And the evil spirits said to them “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” I picture the color just leaving the face of these imposters because then the man with the evil spirit jumped on all seven of them and just wooped them good so that the text says “they fled out of that house naked and wounded”

But here is the thing, these men were not a part of the Church. They just saw the powerful things happening there and they wanted a piece of it. They tried to use the name of Jesus for their own agenda, instead of submitting to Him as LORD, they tried to make Jesus their errand boy. Jesus is nobodies puppet. He doesn’t come out and grant you a wish because you said the magic words. “ …by the blood of Jesus, Amen! Did it happen?

We need to be cautious of this Church. As children of the King we have been given the privilege to ask God for good gifts and God will always give us what is truly good- according to His definition of good. Remember that along with giving us our daily bread, Jesus taught us to pray “Thy will be done”. Jesus didn’t come to be our errand boy - He came to restore to us the joy, honor and privilege of being His.

There is a big difference between these two attitudes, and the Sons of Sceva did not understand this going in, but after they got wooped many other Ephesians did. So much so that many of them ran home and gathering together all their pagan worship stuff (old pillar and buttress) and threw them in a huge fire in the middle of town. And the church celebrated together over this “no turning back” attitude of these new believers. The book of Acts tells us that the value of the books burned was more than 2 million dollars. That was quite a fire that was ignited, literally and figuratively.

And it might seem strange to have dollar amount recorded here, except that it introduces the next part of the story very well. Someone sold them all those books...and while the people inside the Church were celebrating their new found freedom in Christ, there were others outside the Church who saw how this was going to be bad for business. The culture, religion and politics of Ephesus was all mixed together into one entity that was centered on the Ephesian Temple to Artemis… and this new Church in town was teaching that there was nothing there but a whole lot of pointless pillars. So the men who made and sold books, idols and trinkets of the goddess Artemis started to see their livelihood going down the drain. So they gathered together...and fueled by their own self interests... they started a riot.

I am not making this up or stretching this out to fit modern times, it is right here in the text. Most of our Bibles even have a title heading reading “A Riot at Ephesus”. As this is not our primary text for today, I don’t want to get too far down this rabbit hole, but I gotta say that... in light of all that we are facing right now in our country, it is worth reading this week. I can tell you that it has brought me hope to see how similar the behavior of self serving individuals can be even when separated by a couple thousand years. It just affirms once again the wisdom of Solomon who said, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

So the early chapters of this new Christian Church in Ephesus was marked with great excitement and growth as so many people came to know the truth, just as it was met with great opposition from those who profited from the selling of a lie.

Tension

After his three years in Ephesus, Paul set out to plant a church somewhere else. But before he did he gathered together the leaders of the Church and gave them a very direct warning. He says...

Acts 20:28 ESV

28 Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

These leaders, whose role we will talk about in a few weeks, were to first watch their own behavior but also keep watch on the behavior of the rest of the Church. Why is this so important? Because, Paul says...

Acts 20:29–30 ESV

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.

These wolves are not coming from the outside, in a place like Ephesus that would have been expected, but these false teachers will come from within the household of God. That is a sobering thought isn’t it. That God would instruct His church to “Pay careful attention to yourself and others” because someone from among you can “draw away the disciples after them.”

Can we just be honest with each other and say that this is an uncomfortable idea. It is one thing when the threat is coming from out there and then we find comfort in banding together in our shared faith - but this warning is about a threat that comes from inside the household of God. The idea that someone that we know, someone that we trust, someone that we love, someone who meets us with a smile and a handshake each week could leading some people away...I don’t even like to think about that possibility.

But Paul’s warning is well founded because we find here in 1 Timothy that this is exactly what has happened…and Paul gives Timothy instructions on how to deal with that Household behavior.

So turn with me, if you haven’t already to 1 Timothy chapter 1 p. 991 in the Bibles in the chairs, I’ll pray and we will look at this behavior of fighting for right doctrine in the household of God.

Truth

After the greeting that we looked at last week Paul starts right in with his instructions in verse 3 ...

1 Timothy 1:3–7 ESV

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.

Many things going on here, but one thing to certainly note is that Paul’s concern is not that the teaching of the Church as a whole is off track, but that there are “certain persons” in the Church who are leading people away from right teaching. This is exactly what Paul warned the Ephesian Elders would happen…and now it has…So Paul is instructing Timothy to “charge” or “command” them not to teach these wrong things.

This is a very serious confrontation that Paul is urging Timothy to step into, so as a members of the household of God, the question for us becomes how can we keep ourselves from becoming one of these “certain persons” in our Church so that someone in leadership has to confront us in such a manner?

Well a good first step is to ask, “What does Paul say is the wrong thing that these men are teaching.”

The wrong thing to teach (1 Tim 1:3-7)

Paul gives us three things that Timothy needs to command these “certain persons” to stop teaching

1. Different doctrine - (different than the Apostolic deposit)

When Paul talks about a “different doctrine” here is saying anything that is different from what God has provided to His people through the Apostles. Apostles like the Apostle Paul, Peter John and the others. Theologians call this bank of information “The Apostolic Deposit”. This is what Jesus taught his Apostles to teach His Church.

In Timothy’s day this deposit was found either from the very mouths of the Apostles themselves or from someone else whom that Apostle entrusted with their teaching. So you could go up to one of them and ask, “So and so said Jesus taught this…is that right?” “Um, no that is not what Jesus taught” or “Yes, and...”

But obviously those apostle are not around anymore so we can’t go check with them on these things. Our access to the “Apostolic Deposit” today is in the writings of the Apostles and those they entrusted with their message as found in the New Testament. So today, one of those “certain persons” would be anyone who teaches anything contrary to the New Testament. This means that any conversation or confrontation about a teaching being either right or wrong BEGINS with what does God’s Word have to say.

It would be nice if every conversation ENDED right there too, but that is not always the case. Because there are some things in Scripture that are clearer than others, so Jesus-loving, Bible-believing Christians sometimes disagree on how a particular verse or passage is best interpreted. This is not something to be afraid of, but simply the next step in growing together as the household of God.

So what do we do when this happens? Well in love and to the best our ability we lovingly approach our brother or sister in Christ with a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith and we work together to sharpen one another in Biblically based debate on what God would have us know through a particular Scripture. If we remain committed to this premise, then we can be confident that God will grow us in our understanding of the issues we discuss together. In this way, we will stay far away from the “certain persons” that Paul is warning about here.

The second category of wrong teaching is…

Distracting doctrine (devotion to myths)

While we don’t know specifically which “myths” Paul is talking about here we do know from Jewish history and even a similar charge found in the book of Titus that there were many “Jewish fables” that were passed on from person to person to try and explain certain aspects of Jewish life. It is not that anyone was necessarily trying to pass them off as the Word of God, but they were side projects that were getting too much attention. People began to put too much stock in the stories and instead of focusing on the teaching of the Apostles, they began to treat these myths as a source of truth worth debating over. That is why Paul says of these that they “promote speculation” instead of stewardship from God that is by faith.

Do you know what a “steward” is? We don’t really use that word very much any more in our circles but it is someone who manages the affairs of a household. So instead of caring for the “household of God” by teaching what Jesus taught, they were distracting God’s people with questions about things that really didn’t matter nearly as much. Asking cynical instead of sincere questions and planting seeds of doubt in the household of God, instead of cultivating the faith that would bear more fruit. In other words, these teachers were majoring on the minors in such a way that they were distracting the household from what really mattered and swerving into wrong teaching.

Have you ever met someone like this? I don’t mean someone who is just naturally inquisitive and so they ask sincere questions, I mean someone who seem to just want to chip away at the faith by always introducing unanswerable questions from unsubstantiated sources. The seem to have to question every little thing, even when the answer is plainly before them. That is leading people astray into a distracting doctrine, and we should be one of those “certain persons”.

The third category that Paul offers is

Divisive doctrine (devotion to endless genealogies)

In the Church in Ephesus, these “certain persons” were causing divisions in the church based on who their grandpappies grandpappy was. And of course there are many lists of genealogies in the Bible so it is not that genealogies are in and of themselves wrong doctrine…it is how you are using that information.

The purpose of genealogies in Scripture was not to track who was more important than others - it was to track the fulfillment of the promises of God to particular family lines. And remember that God made these promises…to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David not just to be a blessing to their family line alone, but that through them... He would bring blessing to the entire world.

But it appears that some people in the Church at Ephesus had missed that use of the genealogies and were behaving divisively, claiming some sort of elevated status according to how closely they were related to a particular significant person in Jewish history.

This was a common issue in the early Christian Church as many Jews felt that the promises of Jesus as the long awaited Messiah belonged to them first and foremost and that everyone else gets in line behind them. It was against ideas like this that the Apostle Paul taught:

Galatians 3:28 ESV

28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

We might not have a Jewish genealogy to hold up, but certainly we could take on an attitude that said that there are some people in the Household of God that somehow have greater value than others. And certainly your involvement in the work of the Kingdom God could make you more or less useful - but that is not the same thing as being more valuable - and it is certainly not something that we should allow to cause divisions in the Church.

So to keep us from becoming these kind of “certain persons” we definitely need to avoid teaching

Different doctrine (different from Apostolic deposit or New Testament),

Distracting doctrine (devoting ourselves to things not ground in Scripture) or

Divisive doctrine (doctrine that elevates one group of people over another).

So if those are all things to avoid, what should we be looking to teach? What is...

What Is The Right thing to teach (1 Tim 1:5-10)

Well certainly we have uncovered some of this already. Whatever the “Apostolic Deposit” or New Testament teaches us would be right doctrine, but the Apostle Paul actually gives us the key to help us prioritize the value of all teaching. He even shows us this in the example of the Old Testament Law...

1 Timothy 1:8–10 ESV

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,

This is clearly not an exhaustive list, nor is it a pretty one, but do you recognize this list from anywhere? While it is no where near a word for word comparison, this list does seem to track pretty well with the 10 commandments. So there is sound doctrine to be found within the 10 commandments.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me > the lawless and disobedient

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image > the ungodly and sinners

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain > the profane

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy > the unholy

Honour thy father and thy mother > those who strike their fathers and mothers

Thou shalt not kill > murderers

Thou shalt not commit adultery > the sexually immoral, homosexuals

Thou shalt not steal > enslavers (stealing the very life of a person)

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor > liars, perjurers

Thou shalt not covet > this is the only one missing, but it could be caught in the “whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine”

If you ever thought you don’t have to obey the 10 Commandments because it is in the Old Testament…here you go.

But why is Paul laying this out here? After he just got finished condemning devotion to Jewish myths and genealogies as wrong teaching is he now preaching devotion to Jewish law as right teaching? Well, it depends on what you are looking for in the law.

You see the list in verses 9 and 10 is a parenthetical to the overall message that Paul is getting at here. So lets take verses 8 and 11 and read them back to back

1 Timothy 1:8 ESV

8 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully,

1 Timothy 1:11 ESV

11 in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

What is the RIGHT thing to teach? The Gospel.

Gospel Application

If you were wondering when we are going to finally be done with teaching on the Gospel, it is never going to happen. We finished the “Joyful Gospel Partnership” series last summer, We finished the Gospel Project series this past spring. But no matter what series we are in, we will always teach the Gospel at Friendship Church because it is the center of all right teaching.

The right use of the law, or any other “good thing” that we might teach, is only good when it is used in accordance with the gospel. The same Gospel that the Apostles like Paul were entrusted with.

You heard again this morning about how we are voting at the end of the month to update our mission statement, but the one thing that the Overseers agreed was not negotiable was the inclusion of a reference to the message of the Gospel. So among others things we kept the wording “The life giving message of Jesus Christ” as a center point to our mission.

A mission of “Partnering together to proclaim, grow, serve and rejoice in the life giving message of Jesus Christ.” or if we needed a more concise version..

“Partnering together... in the life giving message of Jesus Christ” The Gospel.

Landing

If we stick to this church we will never become the “certain persons” that Paul urged Timothy to keep from leading the household of God into wrong teaching.

Invite the Worship Team up while I pray for us.