The Bottomless Pit and our Glorious God
Notes
Transcript
Many of our teenagers are down at Panama City Beach this weekend for the Back to School Retreat. I’m at the age as a dad where my oldest son is about to get his driver’s license. That’s a scary time for mom and dad. One of the things that I has really captured my attention is how much teenage boys eat! When we by pizza, we get one pizza for Noah and another pizza for the rest of us. He’ll eat that whole pizza and then be back in the pantry getting a bowl of Frosted Flakes at 10:00pm at night. Lord help us when all his teenage buddies come over to spend the night. It’s good for me. I lose weight because their is nothing in the house left to eat.
I like space stuff. I was watching this show the other night about black holes. They say black holes are so powerful that nothing escapes their gravity, not even light. They suck everything around. Planets, starts, comets, astroids, even light can’t escape that ravenous vacuum- but they are messey eaters and burb out light. I’ve concluded that black holes are the teenage boys of the universe. Their hunger is never satisfied.
You don’t have to look at a black hole to see a void that is never filled no matter how much it consumes. You don’t even have to go find a teenage boy to see that bottom pit that is never satisfied. For most people all they have to do is to look inward at their own heart.
20 Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man.
Sheol and Abaddon in the OT is referring to where the dead go. People keep dying. One scholar said, “The world of the dead never ceases to swallow up its victims...” (USB Proverbs).
That’s the way our desires tend to be. They never are completely fulfilled. The heart just keeps consuming more and more and more. No matter how much we have, it’s never enough. Contentment is rare commodity in our day.
*Blaze Pascal was a French mathematician and theologian in the 1600’s. Has been quoted many times saying something like this, “There is a God-shaped hole (or vacuum) in the heart of every man that only God can fill.”
In our text that we will look at this morning and next week, we are presented with two types of lives a person can live, I)The Diseased Life, or 2)The Delighted Life. It teaches us that the life that you live will be direct result of what you choose to fill that hole or vacuum in your heart with.
I. The Diseased Life (vv.3-5)
I. The Diseased Life (vv.3-5)
Paul is writing to Timothy who is in Ephesus trying to help a struggling church. In this church there are a lot of people who are living a diseased life. Diseased because of what they are choosing to fill their heart with.
Paul reference the teachers that are promoting a Diseased life who are living this diseased life. And, there are people eager to follow this teaching. A teaching that is leading them to ruin.
Paul tells us what they are filling their hearts with.
A. False Doctrine (v.3)
A. False Doctrine (v.3)
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,
Doctrine is simply what a person believes about God.
A.W. Tozer wrote these words in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy,
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.”-A.W. Tozer
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.”-A.W. Tozer
Your view of God impacts your view of everything else. It directly impacts what academians call your worldview.
*These glasses that I own were created for golf. They cast a slight shade of red on everything so that I can make distinctions in shades of green and a white ball in a blue and white sky. If I put them on I see everything slightly different than it really is. These are helpful. But, if I put on someone else’s eye glasses. I’m not even going o be able to walk a strait line, much less play golf.
You will naturally look at everything else through your view of God. If you get your view of God wrong, you’ll get your view of everything else wrong. Because wrong doctrine leads to a believing lies about life.
That brings up the second thing that people living a Diseased Life fill that lives with:
B. Septic Teaching (v.3)
B. Septic Teaching (v.3)
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,
“and does not agree with sound words of Jesus Christ.” (v.3b)
Here is where I’m getting the idea of a diseased life. Do you see the word translated “sound” here? (hugiaino). It’s a idiom that means “to be well or healthy.”
Jesus came to save us, but he also came to teach us how to live. He shows us how to live a healthy life (spiritually, emotionally, and physically healthy). In other words, how God created us to really live as we live in relationship with God. That what eternal life really is.
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
Listen to they way our hearts are described in Jeremiah.
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?
You can not trust your heart, your natural heart. It is depraved, sick, and wicked. It will lead you to places that you don’t want to go. Someone said, “Don’t follow your heart. Lead your heart.” We must lead it with the “sound” “healthy” words of Christ.
But the opposite of living a life of health is living a life of sickness and disease. If you live according to principles that misunderstand who God is. Then you misunderstand who you are. You’ll get the meaning of life wrong. You’ll get your relationships with others wrong. You’ll begin to love things that aren’t really lovely because your perspective of what is truly lovely and valuable will be wrong.
C. Immoral Character and Activities (v.3)
C. Immoral Character and Activities (v.3)
Now this isn’t exactly what we put into a diseased life. Remember I told you that black hole suck in everything around them. Even black hole burp out light. Immoral Character and Activities is what comes out of a diseased heart.
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,
“and teaching that accords with godliness,” (v.3) These teachers taught a teaching that that did not accord or lead to godliness. The thing about doctrine and teaching is that it reveals itself in everyday living. I can tell something about what you believe about God on the golf course. By how you talk, whether you throw clubs, whether you right down real scores. That’s true in every area of life. At your work, you can tell a lot about what a person believes about God just through how they deal with people, how honest they are, how they react in difficult situations, etc.
Notice in v.4 how he describes these people in the church and how their view of God and teaching showing up in their lives.
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.
All this was why? They were “depraved in mind” and “deprived of the truth.” What you put in your mind and heart comes out your life.
Now I want to spend a little time focusing on the last phrase. “imagining that godliness is a means of gain.”(v.5)
That brings up the question, “What is truly gain?” By gain we mean, “What is truly beneficial to a person.”
The tragic error being made here is seen in the word “means.” They believed “Godliness is a means of gain.” Notice the contrast with v.6. Paul said something different. He didn’t say that godliness is a means of gain. He said,
6 But godliness with contentment is great gain,
Godliness is not means to gain. But, godliness with contentment IS gain. I plan to take next week to talk about that. But, for the rest of our time this week let’s talk about the problem of living as if godliness is a means to gain.
The kind of gain that they are talking about is material gain. We know that because spends the rest of this text talking about the mistake of living your life solely for material gain and expecting it to bring contentment to your life.
But that is the worldview that most people live with. It’s about treasuring and spending your whole life on what really has no lasting benefit to you.
Malcomb Forbes was an American entrepreneur. You might know him by the fact that he was the publisher of Forbes magazine. Wikipedia notes that he was known for his “extravagant lifestyle spending on lavish parties, travel, and his collection of homes, yachts, aircraft, art, motorcycles, and Faberge eggs.”
Malcomb Forbes was once quoted as saying, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” The problem is that Malcomb Forbes died in February 24, 1990. The truth is “he who dies with the most toys, still dies.”
At the time of his death, Malcomb Forbes was estimated to be worth between $400 million and $1.25 Billion. I would question whether he ever really lived. What a sad story spending your whole life amassing material gain hoping that it will give meaning to life. Hoping that it will give contentment. But, it never does.
We don’t have a lot of people pulling in that kind of cash here at Mt. Gilead. So, why bring that up.
We’ll we make a similar, but slightly different mistake. We think that we are better because we add religion.
Many people “trust Jesus” and “follow the Lord.” Because they think that trusting Jesus will be the “means” to wealth. Then the wealth will bring them contentment. This kind of “doctrine” is rampant in the health and wealth gospel of the day.
That was the problem with teachers that Paul is referring to here. They were preachers who would gain a following teaching them that God would bring them all the wealth they desired if they would follow their teachings. Of course, their real goal was just to use religion in order to get rich.
Here’s the problem. If you are using God as your hope for gaining riches, then riches are still your God. But for those who know the true God, God is not a means of treasure. God is our treasure. God is our gain. In God along we find contentment.
Then we can earn money with the goal of using it to glorify God and bless others.
But that is a part of the Delightful life that we will talk a lot more about next week. So come back for the good stuff.
The problem that Paul is addressing to Timothy is a problem that the world has always faced to some extent. People pursuing wealth and material gain for the purpose of using it to fill that hole and give them a fulfilled life. A life of satisfaction and joy. A life that leaves you satisfied and content.
That’s the message that has always been prevalent in our world. The more money you have, the more fulfilled you will be. As Paul gets to later in this text, that is not a path that leads to fulfillment. It ‘s a path that leads to despair.
And this is not about how much money you have. By the world’s standards, everyone in America is rich. When we go to Honduras, we come back and tell you how many teeth our dentists pulled because the people can’t afford tooth brushes or access to health care.
A person can be poor and live life like money is the key to contentment.
II. The Delighted Life (vv.6-10)
II. The Delighted Life (vv.6-10)