1 Timothy 1:3-7, 18-20 | Bringing Truth to False Teachers

TENSION NEEDING REDEMPTION:

We are tempted to add or subtract from the Gospel of Jesus, but that transforms it into a gospel of self-wisdom

CENTRAL TRUTH EXPRESSED (MAIN POINT):

We need to continually remind ourselves and one another of the beauty and purity of the Gospel and God’s commands

GOD'S HEART REVEALED:

He desires for His kids to listen and obey His voice

OUR RIGHT RESPONSE:

Meditate on God’s Word

1 | How have I experienced the tension?

I was thinking this morning about the Disney Classic Peter Pan and the scene in the film where Tiger Lily is being help captive in Skull Rock By Captain Hook and Mr. Smee. Captain Hook goes away from Smee, and then Peter Pan does an impersonation of Hook to convince Smee to let Tiger Lily go free.

Hook begins to shout counter orders from the distance. And Smee’s head is spinning because he is getting contradictory orders from who he believes is the same person.

Who should he listen to?

You have the voice of the hero Peter who is deceiving and manipulating him, and you have the voice of the villIan Hook who is bossing him around with continual abuse.

If you are Smee, do you think you might just have some trust issues? How do you know who’s telling you the truth?

I recently came across this quote from a research magazine on discourse and truth, “Truth is a function of trust and pertains to the authority of the source.”

I think that is super helpful and enlightening. In our American context, since the Vietnam war we have seen the continual erosion of trust in the political systems and institutions in our country which has only furthered in recent years.

During the pandemic we saw trust erode in just about every direction… From all directions experts and politicians become suspect. It got so bad that their authority makes them less trustworthy not more.

Failing in all the other systems and institutions, including the church, social media, and more made every other space of potential authority more and more suspect and unworthy of trust. So then where do we place our trust?

2 | How have you experienced this tension?

I would imagine most of you find yourself to be fairly trustworthy. I would imagine you typically agree with yourself on a number of issues. You feel justified by your thinking, your worldview, your emotions.

So it kind of makes sense how we as a culture can get to where we have gotten in what has been labeled by experts as a post truth culture (I know can we trust those experts either?).

As if we were Smee finally throwing off the shackles of the corrupt authority of Hook, I become my own authority, I get to decide who I am, what my destiny holds, and how I view the world around me. My truth becomes the most important truth. When everyone and everything else has failed, I can count on myself. We each become a silo of our own truths and identities.

What if we weren’t created for this kind of independence? What if we were created for interdependent existence?

What I am also not nearly as trustworthy as I think? What if I am just another poor version of authority? What if the problem isn’t just someone else but the human condition to try to define good and bad on our own terms?

What if there is actual authority? One who is truly worthy to rule and reign, to define good and evil on his terms, and is by definition is THE TRUTH?

How should that recalibrate our hearts and minds?

3 | What do the Scriptures say about this tension?

Go ahead and over your Bibles up to 1 Timothy 1 where we will continue tonight in verse 3.

Read 1 Timothy 1:3-4

1 Timothy 1:3–4 ESV

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, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.

We have covered over the last few weeks some foundational details to be aware of… that this is a highly relational letter from Paul the Apostle to his beloved disciple Timothy.

Last week, Brady brought clarity based on verse 5 of the concept that this entire letter is meant to be seen as grounded in love.

But here we discover a bit more of the context and details that have led to this letter…

When Paul was on his way to Macedonia he leaves Timothy to Ephesus to shepherd this church in the midst of difficult situations.

One of those difficult situations is that there have been false teachers who have been spouting all sorts of different truths and adding it to what God has already revealed. They have been adding to the law and by extension the Gospel.

The Law is simply God's wisdom, God’s teachings, and specifically God’s commands. It is in the law that we discover what God defines as good and evil. What he articulates as the way humans were created to flourish.

You can question whether or not he has the authority to do that if you want, but that is the focus and scope of the law. The law is comprised of God’s commands in the Old Testament, some were ceremonial, all were contextually relevant, and all of them were meant to draw those who followed God’s law to a greater understanding of God’s character. We find the fullness of God’s law in Jesus where he continually raises the bar on each law to the level of not just surface level obedience but obedience to the law out of a submitted and surrendered heart.

The Gospel is the good news of Jesus, it is the purity of truth that Jesus came into our world to reveal to us God’s heart that while we have consistently broken God’s law and lived outside of His desires for us, He sent Jesus to redeem and restore us back to life in His forever family so that we can rule with Him for eternity in His Kingdom, and He accomplished this through this sacrificial death on the Cross taking our sinfulness onto himself and dying in our place that we might live. We do not earn it. We receive it by faith and trust that our sinfulness has been buried with Jesus and what came out of the tomb with Jesus is a resurrected life, renewed, and meant to continually grow and discover what it means to become more like Jesus.

These false teachers were adding to the law and the Gospel. I don’t know how big of a deal that sounds like to you. Shouldn’t they be able to teach whatever they want? People are free to listen to them or not, why does it matter?

Is Paul making this a bigger deal then it needs to be by sending Timothy to correct them?

Have you ever read fan fiction or watched a fan production from your favorite series?

They can be pretty compelling.

I have been listening to a podcast called X-Men the Audio Drama, but they make it clear that it is not affiliated or licensed by Marvel or Disney to make it.

What makes it fanfiction is that they do not have the official authority to make it.

So when you read watch or listen to fanfiction you understand that it is not officially canon, and so you can enjoy it but you know that at the end of the day its not made with authority.

Fascinating right? It’s all fiction yet even with fiction authority matters.

Now let’s take it to these false teachers in Ephesus….

They are teaching myths.

In other words they are adding fanfiction to the Bible.

This was not new, there had been myths that had been added to the characters of the Bible for centuries… for example, in one myth the prophet Daniel kills a dinosaur who is worshipped as a god. Maybe that it is true, maybe it is not, but it was never included in the Scriptures for a reason, because that story does not carry authority.

Yet what these false teachers are doing is adding authority to words that did not come from God. Big deal.

They are leading to unhelpful speculations focusing on things like geneologies.

Ultimately what they are doing is teaching “a different doctrine”

We also find out in Chapter 4 these same false teachers are adding rules on top of the law. They are proclaiming with authority nonsense about to be saved you cannot get married and you cannot eat certain foods, even though God had already revealed to the church neither of these realties are required for following Jesus.

According to what Paul is saying and a consistent theme of the Scriptures… I do not have the authority to add commands with the authority of God. I do not have the authority to define good and evil based on my wisdom.

Now each of us needs to learn how to discern what God says about good and bad looks like in our daily contexts and realities. But this is the difference between following Jesus in our everyday life vs following my own wisdom with a side of Jesus in my everyday life.

I am not God. I am not the King.

When we come to follow after Jesus this is the profession we are making. That He is King over everything including us.

Which means we trust His ways over our own. His commands over our own desires, beliefs, and opinions.

Paul then directly contrasts that reality…

Read 1 Timothy 1:5

1 Timothy 1:5 ESV

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

As Brady taught last week, what is so sad about these false teachers is they set their sights on a different target. They lost aim on love from a pure heart, and ended up in a realm of a different doctrine, a different law, a different Gospel.

Crystal Light in a pitcher of water… At what point does it stop being water and becoming lemonade?

The moment its purity is affected.

What is so heartbreaking about these false teachers is this is what they are doing is having the opposite affect of what we can assume they started off trying to do, provide clarity on the Gospel and God’s Desire for humanity. They are adding to the Gospel because they are adding to the law, and by doing either they are crafting an entirely other gospel.

Read 1 Timothy 1:6-7

1 Timothy 1:6–7 ESV

Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.

They want to puff themselves up because they are a brutal combination of arrogant and ignorant.

They were making confident assertions. That is the definition of arrogance, right?

When you talk to someone with an authoritative confidence you are stepping into the territory of arrogance.

Arrogance is unfortunate but where this gets dangerous is that they are “lacking understanding.”

That is ignorance.

Have your ever spoken with arrogant ignorance?

Me… never.

I have recognized in me through the pandemic I have spoken to friends with an arrogant ignorance about much… I lack authority and expertise in a number of fields, so I desire to recognize that temptation in myself and the power of the Holy Spirit bury it dead.

Because arrogant ignorance is dangerous. And the trouble with ignorance is when we are ignorant we by definition don’t know it, and often when someone points it out to us we ignorantly ignore them anyways.

Hence why Timothy is in Ephesus in the first place.

We are going to finish up are time at the end of Chapter 1 because Paul is going to get pretty specific now about some of these individuals and where their arrogant ignorance has taken them…

Read 1 Timothy 1:18-20

1 Timothy 1:18–20 ESV

This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.

Paul wants Timothy to hold onto the Gospel so badly.

The only way that Timothy can have any affect on these individuals who are teaching nonsense is by the Spirit of God.

He reminds Timothy that this is indeed spiritual warfare. These false teachers are not ultimately the enemy, Satan and his minions are. They come to kill, steal, and destroy. They aren’t creative, they are manipulative.

They have been manipulating, playing on the insecurities and overconfidence of these false teachers to draw them to this arrogant ignorance.

These individuals were trying to play God and define good and bad on their own terms and they didn’t even have a clue of how damaging this was to themselves and their community. So it seems so drastic for Paul to remove them from biblical community, but nothing about this is to punish them… it’s to remove the safety net of community around them and allow them to see the brutality of what they have been engaging in.

If Paul refused to allow them the space to see just exactly where their dark path would lead them they would stay in arrogant ignorance filled with division and bitterness. But what Paul desires for them is to experience a life of flourishing.

Many scholars believe these two men listed here were actually former elders within the church of Ephesus.

These were likely pastors, individuals called to shepherd and serve the church… often times we can see when famous Christian’s and pastors have these epic falls, sinful failures, and begin to teach heresy like these guys and just look down at them for their nonsense… but do we take the time to humbly realize that they aren’t the enemy, but we have an enemy who wants to play on my and yours insecurities and overconfidence’s to draw us away from Jesus and His community.

So we need to continually draw near to Jesus and submit our thoughts, desires, and lives to Him realizing that He is the authority and I am not. He knows what is truly good when I think I know better.

Just like we talked about a few weeks ago, the one who has this authority is not just trustworthy, but filled with light and life.

He Is a really good God, who in the midst of a dark world in bringing redemption. His desire is that we would experience His divine biblical love and begin to radiate it in purity to the world around us.

None of us are better than the worst and most hypocritical person who calls themselves a Christian. But each of us can and will be deceived by the enemy who was to whisper the same lies that he has been after since the garden, promising that we can become our own authority and we can define good and evil on our own terms.

4 | How can the Gospel bring resolution to this tension in your life?

So we fight to keep the Gospel pure in both our individual journeys with Jesus and we fight to keep the Gospel pure in our biblical community as we journey in discipleship together.

This is not about correcting or proving we are right.

This is about each of our desperate need to be reminded that we are called to live as children of the light untainted by the false truths of our world and our sinful desires.

I need to be reminded, especially in light of our post-truth culture, that I do not have the authority to define good, evil, wisdom, foolish, or even who I am myself.

If you follow Jesus you are not your own, you belong to another. He has authority…

But here is the really good news.

He is a really good King. He in fact defines goodness as well. Kindness. Gentleness. Hope. Joy.

Ultimately our obedience and acknowledgment of him being King is not meant to produce misery but unending delight. Intimacy love and overwhelming joy.

What he desires is to draw us near as we listen to the purity and beauty of His Voice to experience life with Him individually and as a community.

5 | What would the world see if the church embraced this resolution?

None of this should take you or I to a place of simply fighting culture battles and proving the Bible to the world.

“The Word of God is like a lion. You don’t have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the lion loose, and the lion will defend itself.” - Spurg

But what each of us needs to ask first and foremost is where have I been adding or subtracting from God’s commands and desires in the Scriptures? Where am I refusing to submit to his thoughts and desires over my own? Where am I trusting myself over Him?

And to journey with one another to help one another within the family see those spaces that each of us may be ignorant about.

Jesus did not say the world will know that we are his followers by how right we are, but by how we love one another. So let’s love one another in grace and truth closer to our King Jesus.