Now let's open the Word of God together to 1 Timothy chapter 4 in our study of this brief epistle from Paul to the pastor of the church at Ephesus. I'm going to begin reading in verse 1, but the Spirit explicitly says that in later times, one will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron.
Men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude, for it is sanctified by means of the Word of God and prayer. Christians are Christians because we believe something. We've committed our lives to a set of beliefs that we might call the faith.
We trust those tenets to be true and powerful and to bring us into a living relationship with the eternal God. These truths are able to give us significance in this life and beyond that to provide an assurance of eternal life. We are Christians because we believe something. As a matter of fact, everybody believes something, some idea, some notion. That idea, that notion becomes the foundation for life. That's even true of an atheist.
What we have come to believe by the grace of God is called in Timothy a sublime mystery. Verse 16, by common confession, great is the mystery that those who are godly embrace. It is a mystery in the sense that what we believe has been disclosed to us by God. It is not something that we have concocted. What we have come to believe has not been handed down by human derivation. What we believe has been revealed to us by God himself. It is the mystery. It is the faith in Jesus Christ.
The same spirit who led us to understand and embrace the faith of Christ, now in the text that we read warns us that some will abandon this faith. In later times, says the Spirit, an apostasy will occur. It's foreshadowing reached all the way back to the day of Paul. I believe that we are living in those times that was predicted by the Spirit here, the later times of this age, or as Paul calls it in 2 Timothy 3, 1, the last days.
By the way, I heard recently that 80% of Americans believe that the world will end by the year 2000, and 90% of Democrats think it's already ended. We can bask in the warmth and light of our faith, but we had better be serious about what the Spirit of God has predicted. This is a solemn realization that we are in a hostile environment in this world and faced with danger. There's an old Malaysian proverb that says, just because the river is quiet, don't think the crocodiles have left.
When we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we know that it's true, but let us not think that the war is over at that point. In certain respects, it's only begun. The danger we face in the world, as explained to Timothy in our text, is the danger of the influence of false ideas, false teaching. Paul makes it clear that the source of false ideas is spiritual. False thinking, mistaken worldviews, fraudulent religious and philosophical movements are not merely the result of innocent mistakes.
Seldom do these originate with human error. Rather, they come from a spiritual source. Paul says that false ideas are generated by satanic agents. He calls them here spirits and demons. These are real creatures. They are not mythological. Spirits or demons are supernatural beings who are in service of the devil. They are fallen angels.
And in his service, their aim is to dishonor God by destroying humanity made in the image of God, and in doing so to thwart God's plan as if it were possible to do so. In fact, they are deceived, thinking they will succeed. False ideas are a part of a conscious strategy on the part of God's spiritual enemies. And these false ideas generated by demons are intended to deceive. He speaks here of deceitful spirits and the doctrines that come from demons. They are intended to deceive mankind.
Demons specialize in deception, for they are like their father, the devil, who is the father of liars. William Shakespeare said the devil can quote scripture for his purpose, and indeed he can quote scripture and mix with it his lies in order to deceive those who are innocent. Eve would be an example of this, of course. Satan pretended to offer Eve the opportunity to have her consciousness raised to a higher level, to use the New Age kind of terminology.
He said, you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Eve, your consciousness can be raised. But he was lying. He was deceiving her, and she bought it. And we are all part of the result of that. We are sinners. Demons produce false ideas that seduce the thoughts and the thinking of people, turning them away from the truth and from God. Now the means of false ideas is sinister.
After all, if a demon were to appear in a physical form and try to deceive someone, it would be a frightening experience. No, no. There are much more clever and evil than that. Their means is sinister because what they do is to use human beings. Their false ideas are promulgated by humans.
Spirits rarely work openly, as in the occult, but much more commonly orchestrate behind the scenes an example of how a human can be used in such a means was given to us last week by the elder candidate who told about his college professor, a man who had at one time been in the ministry, the Christian ministry, but who renounced his faith and who made it his quiet goal to undermine the faith of every freshman that came into his university class.
That's why I say that the means of false ideas is sinister. For it is humans that are used by the spirits to deceive other humans. And these humans are described here by Paul with some pretty strong language. He says they appear to be genuine, but they're wearing a mask. They appear to be open-minded, broad-minded, but they have a predetermined agenda, he says. He uses the word hypocrisy to describe them. He says by means of the hypocrisy of liars.
The word hypocrisy means to pretend, to play a part, to play act. In other words, he says that these false teachers are not really sincere, and the hypocrisy of their lives leaves them open to even further demonic manipulation and influence. He calls them outright liars. People who speak what they know is not the truth, even though they may be learned and pious, yet they cover up their ignorance by their words.
Their spiritual end is kept hidden, their immoral activities in the background while they portray something else and they're lying. Paul has said sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all. And then the apostle describes these hypocritical liars as those who are seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron. In that day, sometimes criminals were branded.
A hot iron was applied to the forehead, searing a mark there so that all would know that that person was a criminal. Sometimes I think it wasn't a bad idea. And he says that regarding these false teachers that their conscience has been branded. That is, their conscience has been cauterized. They no longer even feel guilty for the hypocrisy of their lying.
William Hendrickson says, by constantly arguing with conscience, stifling its warnings and muffling its bell, they at last have reached the point where conscience no longer bothers them. So false teaching is sinister because it comes very often in attractive wrappings, often delivered by very nice, articulate, intelligent people used of the devil. The example that he gives us of false ideas here is suggestive. Paul doesn't explain what all false thinking is.
The whole epistle couldn't contain that kind of information, but he writes in a representative way here about false ideas put forth by demonic deception. Basically we can summarize what he says in verse 3 by saying that false teaching is the idea that human works can curry the favor of God. The practice that he censures here is false asceticism. The idea that one can deny himself and in doing so have a spiritual gain.
That you deny the flesh and by denying the flesh you somehow improve your spirit or your standing with God. He says these people, at least that he has in mind right here, forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from certain foods. D. Edmund Hebert elaborates, Abstinence from marriage is regarded by them as a means to higher sanctity, thus placing the celibate life on a higher spiritual level than the married life.
The practice of abstaining from certain foods, and perhaps all foods at certain seasons, is esteemed meritorious and a special virtue. You don't have to think too long to understand what's being said here about holding up the celibate life as being a special spiritual experience, or advocating the abstaining from foods in certain seasons like Lent, and thinking that in doing so one somehow gains merit with God, that that incurs or curries his favor.
Actually what Paul is attacking here is the seed of what later became known as Gnosticism. It was a dualistic teaching that said that whatever is spiritual is good and anything material is evil. It blossomed to full life in the second century and was a great heresy that invaded the church. John also saw this coming and in 1 John sends out strong warning signals about it. But there's a principle behind what Paul is saying here.
The principle that he is assuming is this, anything that promotes the works of the flesh as a means of gaining spiritual virtue is false, it's false. William Hendrickson writes, whenever human reason is exalted above Christian faith, whenever this thesis that sin is real and is in its essence rebellion against God is rejected, for whenever man's ability to save himself is proclaimed, the ghost of Gnosticism stalks again.
The example of false teaching that Paul pulls out for us to look at from his day is the idea that there is some addition to the salvation that is by grace through faith. But that's not enough, that you need something more than that, be it abstaining from marriage or from eating certain foods. That the relationship that we have with God is grace plus works of some sort. And Paul says that is to be rejected. What is the answer to this sort of false teaching?
Well Paul is very specific about it, verses 3 to 5. False ideas come in many packages, not just the one that I've described to you. I see one in the Twin Cities today, I saw the church page yesterday in the St. Paul paper and there is a church in our area that is talking about a new phenomenon known in some charismatic circles as holy laughter. Maybe you've heard of it, maybe you haven't, if you haven't, no need to investigate.
I happened to run into it last fall when I was in Lakeland, Florida visiting my nephew and niece and saw it on television in the church where it started in that part of the whole country. It originated in Australia, then went to Toronto and now is starting to branch out in all parts of the North American continent. The idea is that if you are filled with the Holy Spirit you will laugh with hysterical, uncontrollable laughter.
I watched this on television as the pastor of this church was preaching to his congregation that was supposedly filled with the Holy Spirit and all of them were laughing and mocking, excuse me laughing at him, which came across as mocking. I was quite curious that he wasn't laughing. He was being filled with the Holy Spirit as signified by laughing. Why wasn't he hysterical with laughter? He wasn't.
He was trying to preach something, but as he was preaching and talking about Jesus Christ the whole congregation was laughing at him. And I'll tell you there was no witness in my spirit that that was of the Spirit of God. Indeed it seemed very demonic to me. False teaching comes in many different kinds of packages, but there is one scalpel that opens them all and exposes their fallacies. And that scalpel, that knife is the Word of God, the truth of God.
Now packages of false teaching come with many wrappings. They can be religious movements like I've just described to you. They can be philosophical ideas that buzz around the university campuses for example. False teaching can come in the package of music. And by the way, not just rock music. You listen to some of the country western stuff that's out there and it's just false ideas, false ideas penetrating people's thinking through the medium of music.
Talk shows on television where every unclean and dirty thing eventually appears. The false ideas that are portrayed in audiences clap as these people spout false thinking. The entertainment media, fictional books that are written, intellectual and politically correct materials, the teaching in some school classrooms. I mean false ideas come in many packages. There are many vehicles that deliver false teaching. So let's not just think that it's got to be in a church.
It's pervasive in our culture. Now the best protection against the threat that all of us face of false teaching is what he describes here as to believe and know the truth. You see the facts of God will always divulge the fantasies of the devil. He can concoct his lies and package them any way he wants to, but the truth of God which we believe and know will always expose the lies of the devil. Now Paul brings forth some truth to expose the lie that he's dealing with.
Begins in the middle of verse 3 where he says regarding these foods and marriage I think, he's saying which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. Everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude for it is sanctified by the means of the word of God and prayer. We can reduce what Paul is saying here to a very simple syllogism. God is the creator of food and marriage. God is good.
Therefore, food and marriage are good and to be enjoyed with a right attitude. And that attitude is gratitude. Not asceticism, not overindulgence, but self-control and gratitude. He says that these gifts of God are sanctified by the word of God. That is God has spoken, he has said regarding marriage this is his plan. He says it is good. It's not good the man be alone, it's good they be married, husband and wife. He created the earth with this bounty, he said it is good.
That's God's declaration, that's God's truth and yet these false teachers are saying whatever's material is bad. So you see how the word of God just lacerates that false teaching? What these people were teaching is a patent lie. Certainly the threat of false ideas is sobering to me. There's a very serious warning in this text.
A prediction that is clearly revealed to us by the Holy Spirit when and how we're not told, but the Holy Spirit explicitly, clearly states that in the later times there would be an apostasy. He says some will identify with the faith and then will pay attention, that is they will give assent to false ideas. They will devote themselves to those ideas and he says they will fall away. In other words they will withdraw from the faith, they will go away from the faith, they will apostatize.
Now who is he writing to? Timothy. Timothy is the pastor of what church? Ephesus. Go back with me to the book of Acts for a moment to the twentieth chapter and notice what Paul had said years before to the leaders at the church at Ephesus. He calls for the elders of that church to come to meet him at a certain place. They were going to have a retreat together.
He wanted to speak to them privately and he lays out his heart to them and for them and then he says in verse 28 as he begins to bring his retreat message to a close, be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood. Notice what he says, I know that after my departure, when this retreat is over and I'm gone, savage wolves will come in among you.
The leadership not sparing the flock. Now notice this, from among your own selves, he is suggesting that some of the people who went on the retreat, some of the elders of that very church, he says, from among your own selves men will arise speaking distorted twisted things to draw away disciples after them to drag them away after them. Doesn't that sobering to you? That's sobering to me. That there can be even among us people who will ultimately become apostate.
Now this brings a problem to mind. When Paul says that there would be people identifying with the faith who would fall away, is he saying that there were persons who were truly saved by the faith and who because they fell away have lost their salvation? Or is he saying that these were people who were superficially going along with the truth until they became apostate, revealing that they were never genuinely saved? Well to answer that we have to go to other teaching of the word of God.
First of all we know that the scripture clearly, and I mean without doubt, the scripture clearly attests to the security of the genuine believer. And that security also means that the one who believes will keep on believing. Now it may be that he will go through periods of question, even doubt. He may go through periods when his life is not faithful to God, but the genuine believer will persevere in his faith. He is secure.
The scripture also clearly asserts that among the true believers there are those that are not genuine. Jesus told about the parable of the tares and the wheat. They're planted together. The farmer came and plowed his, or planted his wheat. The devil came along and planted the tares. So they're together. And they look alike. They look the same outwardly. But ultimately the fruit is different and therefore they're revealed.
And thirdly the scripture clearly affirms that false ideas come against the church, but serve a positive outcome. So that those who are genuine in their faith may be tested and approved. For example, let's just take the time to look at 1 Corinthians chapter 11. I like what Paul says in verse 18 of this chapter. For in the first place he says, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you. That's why we know that this church was the first Baptist church of Corinth.
Now I say that because that's my background. And he says, in part I believe it. Smart man. Didn't believe everything. Then there was verse 19. For there must also be factions among you. There must be factions among you, he says. In order that those who are approved may have become evident among you. In other words, God allows false teaching to wash over the church every now and then. He allows that.
Because in so doing, the false believers, those who are superficial in their faith, are swept away so that those who are approved remain. So what we're saying is that no genuine believer can become an apostate. The grace of God keeps him. But within the church there are those who do not genuinely believe, who are just going along with it, and they are susceptible to become apostates. They can be taken in by false teaching, like we've described here, and be swept away.
And God allows that so that the true believers can remain and be approved. So even this sobering threat, the possibility of apostates from within the professing church, even this sobering threat has a positive outcome for the Church of Jesus Christ. I want to close quickly with four steps that I think are important in the light of the danger that we face in false teaching. The clock on the pulpit says ten minutes till nine, so I'm going to go by that one rather than the one on my wrist.
Step number one, be absolutely sure of the genuineness of your faith. Be absolutely sure of the genuineness of your faith. Examine yourself, whether you be in the faith. Look hard at what you truly believe and what difference, what difference it makes in the choices that you make, the friends that you cherish, the lifestyle that you follow. Don't ever settle for a false assurance that can't be backed up by the evidence of God in your life.
Jesus John 3.19 tells us that it is a changed life that loves with the love of God, that assures our hearts before God. I understand that we gain assurance of our salvation from what the Word of God says, but we also have to realize that our hearts are assured when there's a change that's evident to ourselves. The basis for our faith is the Word of God, but the proof of our faith is in the changed life. And my friend, if the changed life isn't there, you better do some deep searching.
That's true of all of us. I'm talking to me as well as to you. We need to be absolutely sure of the genuineness of our faith. Secondly, be extensively familiar with the truth of your Bible. Be committed to study it, to grasp its realities, to believe its revelation. And in doing so, be confident of its trustworthiness, its reliability. Settle in your mind once and for all that God has spoken and that what He has said in His Word is final, it is inerrant, and it is authoritative.
And whatever else you may hear or whatever evidence you may have out there that seems to contradict that, settle in your heart that the Bible is the final authority, not experience, not what other people say, but what God has said. Number three, be wholeheartedly willing to examine the content of your thinking. The psalmist said, search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts, and see if there be any wicked way in me. That is a way that leads to pain.
See if there be that in me. And lead me, he says, in the way everlasting. It's amazing, isn't it, how willing we seem to be to take the word of a college professor or a best-selling author or some religious guru without even asking where he's coming from, what his underlying biases are. Isn't amazing how much time we give to listening to things like music, the lyrics of which often pump false ideas into our brains and we never test that.
So be wholeheartedly willing to examine the content of your thinking. Dr. Evan O'Neill Kane was a pioneer in the medical profession. He was chief of surgery at New York City's Kane Summit Hospital. During his 37 years of experience, Dr. Kane had seen too many deaths and disabilities caused by general anesthesia. So it was his studied opinion that the most major operations could and should be done with a safer local anesthesia. His only problem was he couldn't find any volunteers.
Until one day someone finally stepped forward to put his theory to the test. In 37 years, Dr. Kane had conducted nearly 4,000 appendectomies, all fairly routine, but this one would be different. The patient would remain awake through the entire operation. Before surgery, the patient was prepped and wheeled into the operating room where local anesthesia was administered.
Dr. Kane began the operation and carefully cut through the surface tissues, clamping off blood vessels in route to the appendix. Using the organ, the 60-year-old surgeon adroitly pulled it up and performed the surgery. The operation concluded successfully with the patient experiencing only minor discomfort. In fact, the patient recovered with such remarkable speed that just two days after his surgery he was released from the hospital. Dr. Kane's test was a brilliant success.
The risks of general anesthesia could be avoided by using local anesthesia instead. This milestone surgery was performed on February 15, 1921. And you might want to note this final interesting fact. Dr. Evan O'Neill Kane and the patient who volunteered for the experimental procedure had a great deal in common. They were the same man. What I'm saying to you is that we need to do some surgery on our thinking.
As painful as we think it may be, we need to look into our minds and discover why we think what we do and do surgery where it is needed. And finally, in order to be prepared for the danger that's out there, we need to be completely devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ and His work in the world. We want to stay on course and not get sidetracked like those unfortunate people mentioned in chapter 1, Hymenaeus and Alexander.
They had made shipwreck concerning their faith because they were not completely devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ and His work. Let us be so. Let us look unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith. Someone has said, he who walks close to Christ leaves no room for anything else to come between. We live in a world that is dangerous. It is dangerous because of the false ideas that are epidemic. But let us show loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ in the face of them.
A few years ago there was what was called the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco. A large religious service was part of that exposition and many people were gathered to hear a minister who was delivering a main address. It soon became clear that although he was a gifted speaker, he began to direct his eloquence against the power of the blood of Jesus Christ to redeem sinners.
The story goes that when the influential minister had stopped speaking, a timid elderly lady stood up in the midst of the crowd and began to sing softly a hymn written by William Cooper. The words went like this, There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. On the second verse about a hundred people stood and joined her. And they sang together those words.
And by the time they reached the fourth verse, over a thousand people in that congregation stood to sing, Dear dying lamb, thy precious blood shall never lose its power till all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more. Let us show the same kind of devotion to Jesus Christ that that dear lady showed.
And when we hear that false teaching, let us not only reject it for ourselves, but let us confront it and be loyal to the Lord Jesus Christ in this world filled with false teaching that come from the devil. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the truth of your word. We thank you for its instruction, for its blessed truths, for its warnings as well. I want to pray this morning for every one of us gathered here.
And the first prayer I offer, Father, is that if there be one of us that has a false sense of assurance regarding our salvation. If somehow we have missed it. If there be some way we have believed in a false gospel that mixes works with the grace of God. We will see today the error and turn to the message of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ shed for our sins.
May your children here be filled with great assurance regarding the finished work of Christ and the security that belong to all who are yours. And we pray that you will make us faithful disciples in a world that is filled with false ideas and which will only get worse as time goes on. And may we stay on course in Jesus' name, amen.