False Teachers

1:00 If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of corrupt mind who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain. Amen. Let us pray. O God, our Father, grant to us then the ears that can hear, the eyes that can see. so that in hearing and in seeing we might believe, and because we believe we might behave, and in behaving we might live to the praise of your glory. For Jesus' sake we ask it. Amen.

2:10 Those of you who are regularly with us know that we're resuming our studies from where we left off last time, and we had dealt with these opening two verses in this whole question of how important it was for slaves to show respect for all their masters, to show no less respect for Christian masters, and that believing slaves should prove at all times to be the best. Now, there may, on first reading, appear to be a dramatic shift between verse 2 and verse 3, a change of subject matter which seems to be quite striking, a changing of gears that would appear perhaps to be taking us off in a whole other direction. But in point of fact, if we see, and I think we should, what follows as simply a further area of concern regarding God's name and the church's teaching, then there is going to be, I think you will understand, a natural progression of thought. Incidentally, can I just say, and I'm sorry to intrude on myself, that I have a ringing in my ears that is either above me or from these speakers beside me that is—or else I've got a ringing in my ears, you know. But there is a foreign entity around me that was not here before, and I'd love for it to go away.

3:42 I'm assuming that these are not angels. Or if they are, they're fallen angels. Well, we'll proceed anyway. The gurus of the sound waves will take care of it, I know, but I just could find no other way to alert you. So here's the business. Both the poor behavior of slaves and the proud bellowings of false teachers bring the message of the gospel into disrepute. And it is to this problem of false teachers which Paul returns now for the third time. I say the third time because he actually began his letter with a fairly lengthy section between verses 3 and 11 of 1 Timothy, dealing with false teachers. In chapter 4 and in the first five verses, he is concerned once again with false teaching. And here in verses 3, 4, and 5 of chapter 6, he is at the matter all over again. Now, it would appear from what he is writing and from what we know around this time that the church was full of all kinds of wandering prophets.

4:55 And these individuals loved to seize the opportunity to propagate their theories. These individuals were the religious version of the secular sophists. And the sophists were, from Sophia in the Greek, wise, were the kind of wise men who were very prone and pleased to sell philosophy. And on any occasion when they could gather any kind of crowd at all and garner a fee for it, then they would be prepared to talk. And for a small or a large amount of money, they would seek to dazzle their listeners with words, and then they would also charge a fee to teach other young men how they might be able to cash in on what was a lucrative arena for business. Their speeches were often, in fact, usually quite unreal, in the sense that they meant virtually nothing to them at all. They were able to talk on just about any subject.

5:56 Someone could call out a subject, and they would be able, at the drop of a hat, to give you five or ten minutes' worth and impress the listeners with their tales. In fact, when I was reading and researching this, I returned again to Hamlet and to the arrival of the players at Elsinore, and especially to the introduction of them by Polonius, who, as he tells Hamlet that the players have come in his own verbose style, and in Shakespeare's great cynicism, he depicts the very thing in Polonius' words that Polonius himself is running down. And he says of the group that have arrived at the court, he says, The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral. Pastorical-comical, historical-pastoral. Tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene-individable, or poem-unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light, for the law of writ and liberty, these are the only men. And of course, Shakespeare is putting in Polonius's mouth all the same silly stuff that he is about to find comes from the lips of the players. Well, it was that kind of stuff which really impressed people. Why would we be surprised?

7:26 It's the same kind of stuff that really impresses people. And the danger in 1 Timothy Ephesus is the danger in twentieth-century Cleveland. And it is not as if somehow or another we are about to read of an historic context that is so far removed from us, both by time and by geography, that we simply sit and say, My, my, those must have been interesting days. Listen carefully, and you may see yourselves. Listen carefully, and I may see myself.

8:08 The people to whom Paul is referring would compete with each other for the applause of men and women. Chrysostom paints a picture of a public place in Corinth with all the different kinds of competitors in full blast. And this is what he says. You might hear many poor wretches of sophists shouting and abusing each other, and their disciples, as they call them, squabbling, and many writers of books reading their stupid compositions, and many poets singing their poems, and many jugglers exhibiting their marvels, and no small number of traders driving their trades. Now listen to this. Like men walking in the dark, they move always in the direction of the clapping and the shouting. Like men walking in the dark, they move always in the direction of the applause of the people. They are not men of conviction. They are driven always by the market. They want to know what the market likes, and then they will provide for the market. They're always concerned that their constituency will be ready to receive them, and so whatever their constituency likes, that's what their constituency will receive.

9:32 And as we noted before in verse 3 of the first chapter, as I urge you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer, Paul is back on the same issue. He says, Listen, if these people are proclaiming stuff as they are, that does not tie in—verse 3 of 1 Timothy 6—with the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and with godly teaching, then these individuals are to be avoided at all costs. I want you to notice always that the Bible, the apostles, are very concerned for the issue of the purity of Christian teaching, in direct contrast to the indifference which has marked the church at various periods in its life, and a danger which I believe to be currently before us in the realm of contemporary evangelicalism. If anyone teaches false doctrine and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching.

10:51 That phrase meant something for Paul. That phrase means something. The sound instruction of the Lord Jesus is basic Christian doctrine. And the people of God are to be instructed in that doctrine so that when a word of warning like this comes, they will be able to determine true from false. Now, in order to help, Paul sets out for his readers the characteristics of the false teacher. The characteristics of the false teacher. And the first of these is that false teachers are conceited. They are conceited, verse 4. He is conceited. In other words, this individual, as he teaches, is inflated with a kind of pride that blinds him to the truth. This teacher regards himself as being in the know. But at best he is confused, and at worst he's actually corrupt. Now, again, Paul is simply reiterating here what has become a familiar emphasis for him in all of his writings. And I want to drive this home by giving you three cross-references. Romans chapter 1 and verse 22, he says, although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. 1 Corinthians chapter 8 and verse 1.

12:17 Now, about food sacrificed to idols, we know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know, but the man who loves God is known by God. Now, what he's referring to there is the person who is talking a lot about what they know. But as you listen to them tell you what they know, you're not sure that what they know has actually gripped and changed their own life. Titus chapter 1, verses 15 and 16, the same concern, To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and their consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit. for doing anything good. And at the very heart of it all, says Paul, is an inflated ego, is a dreadful conceit. Phillips paraphrases it with striking clarity when he says, If anyone tries to teach some doctrinal novelty which is not compatible with sound teaching, then he is a conceited idiot.

13:43 If anyone tries to teach—now notice this—some doctrinal novelty. This is the era of doctrinal novelty. All kinds of novel angles, all kinds of novel approaches, all kinds of ways of entering into the thoughts of Christianity, and books abound here, there, and everywhere, and tapes, and conferences, and all manner of issues. Well, says Paul, be careful. The New English Bible says, Such a man is a pompous ignoramus. That kind of drives it home. A pompous ignoramus. Have you ever met a pompous ignoramus? You say, Well, he couldn't possibly be a pompous ignoramus. He's behind a pulpit. Listen, there's plenty of room behind pulpits for pompous ignoramuses.

14:47 This kind of individual seems to be more interested in attaching people to himself than in attaching people to Christ. If we might put it in contemporary terms, it would appear that he's more interested in beefing up his mailing list than he is in seeing unbelieving people become committed followers of Jesus Christ. He has a following. He has an 800 number. He has a radio program. He has stuff. And his whole bent becomes a concern to attach people to himself. You see how you can't preach a sermon to anyone unless you preach it first to your own heart? We have a 1-800 number. We have a radio program. We have a mailing list with thousands and thousands of people on it that I have never met. Beware. more concerned to press his own views than to understand and convey the Word of God.

15:52 Such an individual is the antithesis of Michelangelo, in the sense that Michelangelo, in many of his paintings, is reputed to have pasted, to have taken a piece of cardboard, put it around his head, and attached a candle to the cardboard so as to prevent his own shadow intruding upon his work as he painted. Some of us could do with a whole crown of candles around our heads to prevent that kind of intrusion.

16:26 Alas, it would seem that with the opportunity can so readily go the conceit which sees an individual more keen to display himself than to make much of Christ. And you cannot make much of yourself and much of the Lord Jesus at one and the same time. Characteristic number one, then, of the false teacher is that he is conceited. Number two, he is controversial. Controversial. Now, where do you get that from? Well, right there in the text. It says he has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words. Now, notice every word is very important. Paul was prepared to stand for the truth of the gospel, wasn't he? Somebody would have said, Paul is a controversialist. After all, he writes to the Galatians and he says, I am very concerned about you that you are so quickly diverting from the only true gospel to something that isn't even a gospel at all. And there are people today who would say, oh, if you hold that line, then you are controversial. You're fulfilling this.

17:26 That's not what Paul is referring to. Paul is talking about an unhealthy interest in controversy. These individuals thrive on controversy. They're warped. The more controversial they can be, the more esoteric their angle is, the more bizarre their novelty, the happier they are. And they send people scurrying out to discover whether these things are really so. Now, if it was true then, it's certainly true today. This individual, says Phillips, has a mind that is a morbid jungle of disputation and argument. A morbid jumble, actually. I can't read my writing. A morbid jumble of disputation and argument. You ever meet this guy? You're only with the person a couple of minutes, and they've got you off on goodness knows what the subject is. way out on the far end of the computer screen. Well, I was reading such and such the other day.

18:28 It was called The Jewish Code, or whatever it was, or the Jimble Jumble book, and I saw it the other day. Or Mrs. Brendikus, and she wrote a book on why every version of the Bible is demonic, you know, and I would like you to spend an hour and a half of your life unscrambling her nonsense for me. No, I'm sorry, I won't. Do yourself a favor. Stay away from people whose minds are a morbid jumble of disputation and argument. This is the kind of person who is unhealthy. They are stimulated by battles about words. The battles that they engage in are nothing more than verbal quibbles. And instead, then, of taking their shoes off before the burning bush, they're taking photographs of the burning bush. Instead of living in purity and radical evangelism in light of the definite, visible return of Jesus Christ, they are arguing to the death on the mat for a view of the return of Jesus Christ. Instead of reading their Bibles and submitting to it with childlike trust, they want always to engage in arguments about which version of the Bible is the true version of the Bible. These people, many of them, can hardly read English, let alone Hebrew or Greek. But that's what drives them.

19:50 Some people are never happy unless they're stirring up controversy. He says, You better watch out for anyone who teaches false doctrine, doesn't agree with the sound instruction of the Lord Jesus. I'll tell you what they're like. He says, they're conceited. And their interest in controversy is wrong. Trapp, the old commentator, said, The wit of heretics and schismatics will better serve them to devise a thousand shifts to elude the truth than their pride will suffer them once to yield and acknowledge it. In other words, all of their abilities allows them to live their life doing the soft shoe shuffle around the plain truths of Scripture, rather than allowing their wit to bring them underneath the instruction of God's Word and to bow to it. Thirdly, such individuals are not only conceited and controversial, but they are corrupted. Verse 5,

20:48 they are men of corrupt mind who have been robbed of the truth. I will come to the little section in the middle in just a moment, but he is referring to the same individuals, I believe, here in verse 5. Their unhealthy interest has not only, as we will see in a moment, infected others, but it has led to their own personal corruption and decay. Now, once again, this is a familiar theme for Paul. Turn over two pages into 2 Timothy chapter 3 and notice what he says. Describing individuals, he says in verse 6, These are the kind who worm their way into homes, gain control over weak-willed women who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. Just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth, men of depraved minds who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected.

21:48 it. What will they do? Chapter 4, verse 4. The people in hearing this will turn their ears away from the truth, and they will turn aside to myths. Now, what Paul is suggesting here is that these individuals, these teachers, were in the past acquainted with the truth. But it is clear that they were never arrested by the truth. You see, it's possible to be acquainted with it and not arrested by it. You can worship here every single Sunday and fill a fat notebook with information about the Bible, and you can be as acquainted as anyone without ever being arrested by it. You can describe how you know of this detail and that detail and the next detail, but in terms of it actually having invaded your life and transformed you by the power of God's Spirit, it's just not there. Indeed, that's why some of you are where you are, because you're very acquainted but unchanged. You must be the most miserable of all people.

22:46 external religion minus transformation equals yuck, equals whoo, equals I can't find an English word for it. I mean, it's the worst. And you're saying to yourself, Why is this? Acquainted but not arrested.

23:19 Knowledgeable but not changed. And teachers are like that as well. That's why you can go to churches all across the nation today and listen to people talk from behind a box. And as you listen to them talk, you may score them on humor, you may score them on length, you may score them on knowledge, erudition, language, whatever you like. But when it all is said and done, you say to yourself, I'm not sure that fellow has got a knowledge in his heart of anything that he's on about. I don't know if he even cares. I don't know if he even knows. That's what Paul is talking about. The truth that these people propounded had never possessed them. They had lost their hold on any awareness of truth that they had because the truth clearly had never laid a hold of them. Their inner orientation and their mental attitude had been diverted and finally corrupted. They were so full of themselves that there actually was no place for truth within their lives.

24:18 The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 2 Corinthians 4.4. Then Paul says, For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. That is going to be one of the tests, always, of what we're doing and why we're doing it. Are we preaching ourselves, or are we preaching Jesus Christ? Are we preaching the Bible, or are we propounding our own views? Are we bringing people under the sound of the Scriptures so that as sensible people they can understand what is being said, and they can go back always to the Scriptures to verify whether it is there or not? That's the test. It may not be brilliant. It probably won't be brilliant. But most of us haven't been brought up on gourmet food, whatever it really is.

25:18 We've been brought up on the basics. Our moms made us the basics. They fed us the good stuff, the solid stuff, and we blessed them for it. And it didn't have to be set on the plate in some magnificent way. Not if we were hungry. But if we had become sort of gastronomic gurus ourselves, then, of course, we might flip from restaurant to restaurant and table to table to find out whether it was being done just in the correct fashion. And Paul says there are all kinds of these teachers around, and you can run from table to table, and you can titillate your palate if you choose. Fourth characteristic is that these individuals are commercialized.

26:18 They are commercialized. These men of corrupt mind have been robbed of the truth, and they think that godliness is a means to financial gain. In other words, the thing that they've got going seems to be a way for them to line their own pockets. And he refers to these individuals again in Titus chapter 1 and verse 11, saying of them, They must be silenced, because they are ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach. So their content is wrong, and their motivation is equally wrong, and that for the sake of dishonest gain. Okay? So what they're saying they ought not to say, and why they're saying it is equally bad. They see religion as a way to get rich. So they make a show of their godliness, and the better the show, the larger the fee.

27:19 They have donned the mask of religion, they wear the clothes of religion in order to enrich themselves. They do not see their responsibility in ministry as a calling, as a vocation, but they see it as a career. And so they will seek to chase down the best options in pursuit of financial gain. It says one commentator, The Greeks were intoxicated with the spoken word. Among them, if a man could speak, his fortune was made. It was against a background like that that the church was growing up, and it is little wonder that this type of teacher invaded it. The church gave him a new area in which to display his talents, gain a tinsel prestige and a profitable following. A tinsel prestige. What a great title for a book. The kind of tinsel that blows in the breeze, gets trapped in the door, gets pulled off and trashed and sodden by the rain, and eventually drifts off down the street in pursuit of that tinsel prestige and the financial gain that comes from it, these conceited, controversial, corrupt individuals ply their trade. Now, if you think I'm doing a very noble job of not naming names or using contemporary illustrations, then I'm forced to agree with you. I really feel that I am. And I'm feeling very humble about that as well, I want you to know.

29:02 Let me illustrate it for myself. A few years ago, and if I told this story before, I apologize. I guess it comes with time, but I was invited to give the invocation at an awards banquet sponsored by a car company, one of the big three. And I went to this event, and the man turned and said, Now, Reverend Begg will give the invocation. And I stood up and invoked. I listened to a long event, and a man who was a go-for-the-gold speaker did his thing, and then he said, Now, Reverend Begg will say the benediction. And so I benedicted. And then I left. Well, the man who had been the master of ceremonies called me up some weeks later, and he said, we would like you to return to our event twelve months hence, because you did such a fine job invoking and benedicting. And I had had such a dreadful time that I said, oh no, I said, no, I think I'm busy that evening. I'll be bending down or something.

30:23 I—no, no, he said, you really must come. And then I made the mistake of saying, well, I'll tell you what, I'll come if you'll pay me what you paid that guy who shot the air full of nonsense for half an hour while I was sitting there. He said, oh, I haven't come to the best part. We were definitely going to pay you that. And then I realized that in a phrase, somewhat facetiously, I just put one foot on the sliding slope to oblivion. And I didn't know what the guy got paid. I said it as a joke, as a throwaway line, get him off my back. And it turned out they paid him one and a half thousand dollars, which was nice. Now, do you know that it is customary for people who gain notoriety in America as speakers to charge a fee?

31:26 to tell the people that they will come for a basic sum of X thousand dollars plus whatever else it is? That's okay, because we mustn't muzzle the ox that's treading out the grain. For some people, that is their source of income. They do not have the benefit of the support of a local church. But don't you see how it opens up the door to all kinds of dangers? So when we take the Bible and we say, Okay, here's a description of individuals who presumably started off really good and went south. It's really easy to go, and I'll tell you, another few people who apparently have gone south.

32:22 But where do the Scriptures start? Start with us. The Lord says, Hey, You better not be going south. How many men who shot out of the blocks in the first hundred yards of the five thousand meters of life went off with a sterling start, and somewhere around bend thirty-four fell on the tracks and were never heard from again. Two things have done that in ministry to men more than any other—sex and money. So, these are solemn words. Now, the characteristics are clear, and the consequences are equally clear. And I want to drive this to a close by showing you the consequences of these people being let loose amongst other people. Pseudo-intellectual theorizing doesn't come itself. What happens when you have this kind of nonsense? Number one, you have envy. These controversies and quarrels about words result in envy. When people engage in speculating about various theories, when people apply their intellectual curiosity to nothing more than trifles, they are susceptible to pride. And so instead of finding agreement in submission to the sound instruction of the Lord Jesus Christ, they become envious of the people whose puerile arguments seem to be attracting the largest following. And so they look over here, and they say, well, he's saying all of this, and there seems to be huge crowds go to that, and here I am, and I'm just doing the main things or the plain things, and there doesn't seem to be such a large interest in this? Envy. Strife. Envy and strife almost always appear

34:30 together in the New Testament. They go together like cheese and crackers, although they're not palatable as cheese and crackers are. In fact, they are unpalatable. Strife and envy is an unpalatable concoction. The one who has been bettered in the argument is unwilling to acknowledge defeat, and as a result, bitter discord ensues. And you'll find that these individuals are constantly contradicting the views of their rivals. You don't, in their company, find yourself drawn to Christ and drawn to the Scriptures and set forward. You find that when you're in their company, they are constantly explaining why this person's wrong and that person's wrong, and he didn't really do it right, and he didn't proclaim it right, and so on. envy, strife, malicious talk—why would we be surprised?—slander, scornful, insolent language that is heaped upon the opponents. Insults and malicious innuendos, is how Phillips paraphrases it. And evil suspicions. Evil suspicions. The man who is jaundiced sees everything yellow. The mind of the envious is haunted by mistrust.

35:49 The individual, strife-ridden, malicious talker begins to suspect every action, every word, every gesture of those to whom he is opposed. And as a result, you find that they become a catalyst for constant friction. Verse 5. Constant friction between men of corrupt mind. There is a mutual irritant about these individuals. Protracted quarreling, persistent wrangling. says one commentator, when the mad novelty dispenser meets his opponent again to discuss other religious matters, he is vengefully nettled, convulsively agitated, thirsty for blood. Their religious discussions are actually disputations full of scurrilous abuse, stinging insult, and heated invective, or else of covert insinuation, malicious innuendo, and thinly veiled disdain.

36:58 Now tell me this is long ago and far away, and then tell me the truth. Do you realize how quickly a church can be marked by these things? envy, strife, slander, malicious innuendo—the notion that somehow or another this is the only church that really understands the Bible, that we're the only church that really knows, you know what's going on? I tell you, any time you feel that rising in you, you go out there to buy that little stone there at Psalm 138 2b and just sit down there cross-legged in front of it for a while. And remind yourself, you have exalted above all things your name and your Word.

38:06 And any influence, any significance, any understanding, any usefulness is all of your amazing grace. And amazing grace does not make proud, arrogant, envious, striving, malicious, scutterless individuals. Such are the consequences of this kind of instruction, that those who engage in it think, as he says at the end of verse 5, that godliness is a means to financial gain, says my old teacher Donald Guthrie, bless his memory, true godliness must never be commercialized, because it is a matter of the heart and not the pocket. The individuals Paul has described were thirsty for applause, they were hungry for praise, they were greedy for gain. What a thing! Look at this. Thirsty for applause, hungry for praise, greedy for gain.

39:12 You tell me you don't like applause? You played your violin at the school? You love the applause! You tell me you don't like the accolades of a job well done? You love it! You can become a drug! You don't look at this and go, my, my, what a strange group of individuals. You look at this and you say, I see my face. thirsty for applause, hungry for praise, greedy for gain. using numbers as the means of judging effectiveness. Pastors telling one another how many they have here, and how many they have there, and how much was this, and how much was that, and how many square feet, and how big is the extension, and blah, blah, blah.

40:16 It's full of it, loved ones! It's a curse! It's a drug! I've tried it. Epikletus records a conversation between one of these characters and his disciple, and with this I finish. The man had given his speech, and he talks with his disciple, following his performance. And the conversation goes like this, Well, what did you think of me today? There's the first mistake. Never go home and ask your wife, What did you think of me today? Who the world cares? And after all, you probably have to go and pull the blankets over your head for the rest of the afternoon if she ever was good enough to tell you the truth. So learn to ask the right question. First, you ask the wrong question.

41:19 and the conversation is done from there. Well, what did you think of me today? Answer, upon my life, sir, I thought you were admirable. What did you think of my best passage? Which was that? Where I described Pan and the nymphs. Oh, it was excessively well done. A much larger audience today, I think. Yes, much larger. Five hundred, I should guess. Oh, nonsense! It could not have been less than a thousand. Why? That is more than Dio ever had. I wonder why it is.

42:13 They appreciated what I said. Beauty, sir, can move a stone. Such a dialogue is far too close for comfort. The main things are the plain things. And the plain things are the main things. And the day that you hear me off up some side street, trying to introduce you to the key to the whole business, run me out of town. And the day you find me up some side street… Seeking applause.

43:09 Hungry for praise. Greedy for gain. I hope you come and get me back. And I pledge myself to do the same for you. Let us pray. O God, help us, we pray, not only to be acquainted with your truth, but also, Lord, to be arrested by it. Save us from the false piety that parades itself in the eyes of men and isn't genuine in your sight. And so sanctify us by your Spirit that both in heart and life we may serve you acceptably to the honor of your holy name. Through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ we are.