1 Timothy 4:1-15 "False Professors, The Enemy’s Tactics, and God’s Good Creation"

Deception, whether you realize it or not, deception is everywhere.

Everywhere you look, someone is being deceived.

In fact, you have been deceived.

Just want to let you know if you have fallen, you have fallen for deception as well at different points in your life.

And just a kind of a quick test for that is have you ever overeaten in your life?

Have you ever continued to watch something on TV or on the computer that you know is inappropriate, but you keep watching it anyway?

Have you ever bought something, spent money on something because the way that you hoped it would make you feel?

Now these might seem silly examples, but this is what deception is.

It's looking at something and saying, that's gonna give me something that I want.

But if you're really honest and you use God's word to examine those things, you know those things cannot deliver.

They cannot give you what you're hoping for.

It's deception.

It's all around us.

Now it's interesting when you begin to kind of step back.

If you're a student or you just examine, you watch people, and you think, and I'm sure you've done this too, where you just watch people and you think, how is it that they're so easily deceived?

How can they be taken in like that?

Like, where's their brain?

Like, how is it that people are falling for this kind of deception?

Well, Paul, the Apostle Paul, in this letter to 1 Timothy, Timothy is pastoring the church in Ephesus, and he's instructing him on how to lead the church.

And he deals with false teachers.

He deals with deception.

And he tells Timothy, Paul does that people are deceived, this is in chapter 1, when they look to anything other than Christ for salvation.

And then here in chapter 4, he's telling him that people are deceived when they follow their desires and listen to deceitful spirits.

And then in chapter 6, which Lord really will get to, he tells him again that people are deceived when they are more, they care more about power than they do about righteousness.

See, there's all kinds of roads to deception, to being deceived, but they all kind of lead to one thing, and that is pride.

We all want to be king, and we all want to rule our lives.

We want the kingdom of Christ, and we want to be the king.

We don't want him to be the king, but we want his kingdom.

The goodness, the blessings, the prosperity, the peace that comes with the kingdom of Christ, but we do not want the king.

It doesn't take a philosopher or a scientist to tell us that the world is not the way it should be.

I think each one of us intrinsically knows there's something broken about the world, and if we're honest, there's something broken about ourselves.

We're born into brokenness.

We inherit brokenness.

In this condition as humans, it's what enables us to be so easily deceived.

Because we put ourselves in the center of the universe.

In our brokenness, we're seeking to be made whole, we're seeking something to satisfy, and something to give us meaning and security and purpose.

And false teachers come in and they play on that brokenness.

This is the same thing that happened in the Garden of Eden with Eve and the serpent with Satan.

When he said to her, Well, did God really say that?

He was playing on this desire, this desire that we all have to rule, to be satisfied apart from God.

Our own flesh, our own sinful nature loves to distort the truth, claiming ourselves to be king rather than Christ.

Again, this is because we have this broken nature, but it's also just a human nature.

This is our condition, if you will.

So in the first five verses here, Paul is warning Timothy not to be surprised when it's revealed that some people are false professors.

They made a profession of faith to be a Christian, and then the enemy is working to discredit God's good creation.

So he's saying, listen, don't be surprised when there's false professors, because the enemy is seeking to discredit God's good creation.

And this is the main idea in the text this morning: that the enemy is seeking to deceive people by promoting man-centered thinking and diminishing God's creation.

The enemy is seeking to deceive people by promoting man-centered thinking and diminishing God's creation.

And we see that the first part of the text, we see that false professors become apparent.

Then we see how the enemy's tactics become clear, and then we see that God's good creation is attacked.

So these false professors.

We're going to read through this passage beginning in verse 1.

We'll read through verse 5.

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits in teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be good or to be received with thanksgiving 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 thanksgiving.

For it is made holy by the word of God in prayer.

So these first two verses, false professors, become apparent.

Now the Spirit expressly says in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.

Paul is speaking of the Holy Spirit here.

Some commentators point to Acts 20, verse 29, where Paul warns that the church, that when the church will suffer greatly, wolves will come in and seek to destroy the church.

Acts 20:29

Others believe Paul received this revelation from the Holy Spirit that some would fall away in later times.

Now it's also apparent that the later times have come.

Now here Timothy is ministering in later times to the people.

And here we see this departing of the faith.

They're being deceived as they're devoting themselves to deceitful spirits in the teachings of demons.

And the warning is helpful because as Christians, it reminds us what's going to happen.

This has been happening in the church ever since then.

There will be people who make a good profession.

They say the right things, they have the theology worked out.

And they might even be behaving in a certain way that appears to be righteous, that appears to be a Christian, a follower of Christ.

But then as life goes on, the lies begin to come.

And the deceit is sown.

And they follow the ways of the enemy.

Turn with me in your Bible to Matthew, back to the Gospels to Matthew 13.

In Matthew 13, Jesus is giving a parable.

I'll give you a moment to turn there.

This is a very familiar parable of the sower.

Matthew chapter 13, we will read verses 1 through 9.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

And then we'll skip to and do verses 18 through 23.

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea, and great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down.

And the whole crowd stood on the beach, and he told them many things and parables, saying, A sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them.

Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil.

But when the sun rose they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away.

Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them.

Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

He who has ears, let him hear.

And then Jesus explains this parable beginning in verse 18 of chapter 13.

Hear then the parable of the sower.

When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.

This is what was sown along the path.

As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately immediately receives it with joy.

Yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a little while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.

As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfaithful.

As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it.

He indeed bears fruit and yields.

In one case a hundredfold, in another thirty, and in one another sixty, and in another thirty.

This parable is often used in lessons with evangelism and how we're to evangelize, and there's different responses to our evangelism.

But I think it's a good picture of the reality of the of the people around us.

There are people who make professions, who seem to receive the word, and then life or deceit or other things come in and destroy what was there, revealing no true, genuine faith.

See, the reality of false teachers is that they're working with half-truths.

Truth is spiritual by nature.

Real, genuine truth is not subjective, it's settled.

Francis Schaefer in his one of his books talks about, he calls it true truth.

This is truth that does not change, it does not shift.

It's true, no matter what.

And truth is the work of God.

And lies are the work of Satan.

The Holy Spirit reveals truth.

If there is a battle over truth, in lies, it's a battle over good and evil.

And Satan isn't taking any days off in his effort to sow lies.

He's seeking to lead people away with his tactics to distract them, to cause other things, to work into people's hearts, to distract them from their love of God.

Look at me in verses two and three.

Through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be revealed, received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.

See, the devil is crafty.

He's not creative, right?

He's very crafty, but he's not creative.

He deceives by telling people the same lie over and over again.

And those who buy into that lie, buy into it again, their hearts are hardened.

Their consciences are seared.

They no longer have the ability to see clearly, to understand truth.

It's not as if you're holding two people with 20-20 vision and you're saying, now what is this thing I'm holding?

One has sight, one does not.

And that lie that the devil always uses, it's the same one he used in the garden.

Did God really say?

Did God really say those things?

And it's this understanding, this forbidding, these false teachers that Timothy is dealing with, they're forbidding kind of crazy things.

Marriage and food.

And it's it's wild because from our perspective, you you read this, you think, they've got to know, right?

False teachers who are who are teaching that marriage is forbidden, they've got to know that if no one gets married, then they're just having children out of wedlock, which is clearly not God's plan in the New Testament.

And if no one's getting married, then no one's having kids, like that's the end of the human race.

Right?

It just takes like two extra thoughts to realize how crazy this is.

To forbid marriage.

They twist and they distort.

It's interesting.

One commentator said, a reasonable summary of the entire Bible's view of marriage is found in Hebrews 13.

That marriage should be honored by all.

It's presented as God's means for human fulfillment in the creation mandate found in Genesis 1.28.

God blessed them and said, Be to them be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.

Christ endorsed marriage, not only indirectly in Cana in John 2, but explicitly in his teaching in Matthew 19.

But yet the false teachers, here they're trying to deny God's good blessing by twisting Scripture.

By telling people, well, if this is what God said, that's a good try.

But what you really need to do is you need to do this.

Yeah, God said you can be saved by putting your faith in Christ, and you should do that.

That's a good thing to do.

But what you should also do is you should be circumcised.

You should follow these diets.

You should not get married.

You should do X, Y, and Z.

You should be a part of this lineage or study these Hebrew languages.

Follow these myths and these genealogies.

And it becomes just untenable.

It's all over the place.

How are we to know how to follow God?

If in one season it's do this, and now we can't eat these foods, and then we have to be circumcised, and then we can't marry.

The enemy's tactic, again, it's not creative, it's crafty, though.

It's just to sow doubt.

Is God's means for happiness and fulfillment in your life, is it really getting married?

Is that getting married and working hard and, if the Lord allows, having children and seeking to do good?

Is that it?

I mean, surely you want some more pleasure in your life than just those things.

So, yeah, I'm sure it's a blessing.

Those things can be good.

But God also does want you to be happy, doesn't he?

He wants you to be satisfied, he wants you to be comfortable.

So you can see how the enemy begins to sow lies of deceit.

And one that we find very common in the church is self-righteousness.

And I think that's primarily the false teaching that Timothy has to deal with in his own context is people who are seeking to make much of themselves by their own self-righteousness.

One theologian points out that self-denial is often used as a way to become self-righteous.

Look at me.

I go to church every Sunday.

First one in, last one out.

Look at me.

I read through the Bible every year.

Look at me.

I study these things, and I've been to this school.

I wear some kind of WWJD J D bracelet.

I actually don't know if those are still around, but some of you guys know what I'm talking about.

This idea that we're doing something that somehow makes us just a little bit better.

It somehow elevates us.

I go to a church that preaches the word.

We sing good songs.

I go to a church that knows how to do evangelism.

I do this, I do that.

This idea of promoting ourselves.

And all of a sudden, that pride comes back in.

That pride, the thing that all false teaching kind of hones in after, goes after our own pride.

It's right there.

And I get it, it's frustrating.

But this the enemy knows this, he comes after this.

Maybe you can relate where you feel like there's something that has gone well.

You you've had a wonderful time in the word and in prayer.

Or you're being really consistent in your spiritual disciplines, following Christ in those ways.

Or you share your faith with someone.

Good things, things that honor God, that glorify him, that bring a blessing to you.

And you do that, and then in that, there's a moment where you just feel like, you just kind of like, you know, alright.

You know, you don't want to like text everyone, hey, look what I just did.

But there's a sense in you feel kind of good about yourself.

You're like, hey, I I'm doing pretty well.

And even that, the Lord is so kind to reveal pride.

Even when things are going well and you're following faithfully, you must guard against pride.

Because the enemy is always going after that.

He's always telling you that you can be more, that God somehow holding you back, withholding something from you, keeping something, keeping you down, that you should be more of the center of your own world.

The enemy's tactics are clear.

He's always going after pride.

And that when people buy into those lies, their consciences are seared, and then they become liars, false teachers, discrediting God's good creation.

Look with me at verses four and five.

For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.

For it is made holy by the word of God in prayer.

This God's good creation comes under attack.

Again, what do we see this clearly in the Bible?

Genesis, right?

Genesis 3.

In the garden, full of God's good creation, God puts a limit on Adam and Eve and says, Do not partake of this fruit.

And what's the enemy do?

He brings doubt.

He's criticizing and he's lying to them about God's good creation.

God says, eat the fruit and you will surely die.

And the enemy says, Satan says, eat the fruit and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil.

Well, what's the tricky thing about that?

Was Satan wrong?

Kind of, but kind of not.

Right?

There's a half-truth in there.

And false teachers are always peddling half-truths that seek to destroy God's good creation and God's good created order.

You know, all of chapter 3 in 1 Timothy, Paul's making this argument about how the church is to function and how we're to be praying and how we're to behave ourselves and how men and women are to act and to lead and to serve.

It's God's good design.

Here the enemy is always seeking to discredit and to destroy that.

But the Lord has created things good.

We also see that in Genesis, don't we?

God made all things and they were good.

And even though sin has entered the world and has brought death and destruction, God's creation is still good.

And as we receive what He's given to us with thanksgiving, and we acknowledge that God made it good because His Word tells us that.

We're offering a prayer of thanksgiving, the Lord blesses that.

The theologian Robert Yarbur points out this in Christ, in Christ, everyday activities can bring glory to God through his sanctifying and consecrating presence by faith.

So everything we're seeking to do, including marriage, including eating food, including kind of raising children and just going about our life and doing work and cutting the grass and washing clothes and having conversations with our neighbors, all those activities can bring glory to God.

Can be used as a tool to a means to glorify God.

And so why wouldn't the enemy seek to destroy those things?

To discredit.

Those things are petty.

That's the lie of the enemy.

Trying to diminish God's creation and how we're to steward what God has given us for his glory.

See, God's word reveals God's intended purpose.

It reveals what he has for us.

Food, marriage, just being two examples.

There's so many examples that people take and they want to distort.

But using the example of marriage and food, God's word reveals its intended purpose for us, which is for our good and for his glory.

I say this many times, but think about food for a moment.

It does not have to be good.

God did not have to create food to be delicious and wonderful.

He could have made it very bland and simple.

But he in his creativeness has made it the way it is, that we would partake of it and give him glory for that.

And yet the enemy seeks to sow deceit and to bring on these rules, forbidding things that God has given that are good.

God's creation is always under attack by false teachers.

We are reminded from God's word what is good, why he's given us what he's given us, and then we pray, thanking God for what he's done, asking him to bless the things that he's given us for our good and for his glory.

That we would take the things he's given us, that we would use them for our good, not for our demise, not to manipulate others, not to harm ourselves or other people, but for our own good and for God's glory.

That's why he's given us these good things.

We pray, asking him to give us a heart to do those things.

So just a question.

How often do you give thanks to God for the physical, tangible things he's given you?

I mean, how often are you thanking God for your, whether it's your home or a meal or your vehicle, clothes?

There's so many things.

And if we're if we're Christians and we're following God's word, we believe these are blessings that He's given to us.

Undeserved.

Sure, you work really hard.

How in the world did you work hard?

God gave you the ability.

Scripture says if there's breath in your lungs, it's God's gift to you.

Right?

So even the ability to work hard and to pay for those things is God's blessing.

And how often do we thank God for those things?

God created everything good.

So let's enjoy his creation by understanding his design for it and having a heart that is thankful.

Now, as I mentioned, the devil is he's crafty but not creative.

And he's using the same tactics again.

That question, did God really say?

Did he really say that?

Which is another way of saying, can he be trusted?

That's the question.

Can you really trust God?

The enemy's always sowing half-truths.

We see that again in Genesis 3 in the garden.

This idea that you, this half-truth is that you can have the kingdom, and you can kind of be your own king.

It goes back to that pride.

That you will have security and pleasure and satisfaction.

It's interesting as we examine our own hearts, and I just encourage you to think about this how half-truths flourish when people are fearful of loss.

When people are fearful of missing out, and when people are fearful of not being significant.

Okay?

So you think about the fear of loss in your life, losing someone you love, losing something you've achieved, something significant.

There's a fear of loss there.

A fear of missing out.

What if I never get to that place in life?

What if I never marry the person I want to marry or have the dream that I have?

What if I'm missing out on something?

Or that fear of not being significant?

What if I don't do with my life the things I want to do, my dreams?

Or what if I'm not doing something that matters?

So you have these fears.

Well, we all have these fears.

And then the enemy comes in with half-truths, telling you, telling you.

If you follow my way, you will have that.

You can have pleasure, you can have meaning, you can have fulfillment, you can have all the things you want.

And you know what?

You don't have to wait on God's timing and his plan and his design for that.

You can have it now.

Just go and take it.

So the enemy is sowing this deceit.

And it plays on this feeling in us that God is withholding something.

That God is doing something that he shouldn't be doing, or he's not doing something that he should be doing.

He didn't show up when I needed him to.

Where was he when this was going on?

And we have this difficulty of trusting him.

I often, as a parent, disappoint my children, giving them what they do not want.

Or oftentimes, most of the time, not giving them what they do want.

But they don't know what I know.

They don't have the perspective that I have on life.

And to them, the world is so small and singular.

Similarly, as Christians, as we mature in our faith, we realize that we must trust God's goodness and his design, not allowing ourselves to be carried away by our own desires or by false teachers who say, listen, this is your desire, and you don't have to follow God's design for it.

You can have that now.

You can enjoy that now.

And then you start to kind of follow that, and your heart begins to be hardened towards the Lord.

And then you start making these just weird rules to kind of make yourself even more self-righteous and feel better.

Then you try to impose those rules on other people.

A true truth grounds us in reality and it gives us clarity.

That's why Christians need other Christians in their lives to protect them from themselves, to protect them from the deception that they're prevalent to, that they could easily be carried off into.

Don't trust yourself on this.

Everyone who was deceived or has been deceived, they think they're right.

We talked about this before.

False teachers don't know they're false teachers.

When you're being deceived, you don't know you're being deceived.

And so you need godly men and women in your life who know you, who can speak the truth to you lovingly and directly and say, I think you're wrong.

This is what Scripture says, and it does not line up with what you're saying.

That's one of the reasons why we as a church practice meaningful membership.

Is we're just being really clear about this.

We want to be honest and clear.

We intend to walk through life together, encouraging one another and rebuking one another.

Now, hopefully, and it's been my experience, there's a whole lot more of encouraging one another than there is rebuking.

But there is a responsibility there that we see in the New Testament given to the church to encourage one another, to hold one another accountable.

So we seek to do that well.

So do not go it alone, brother or sister.

Seek to surround yourself with godly people.

To the non-Christians, I just ask the question: what is true and what is good?

And how do you know what is true and good?

How do you begin to order your life or understand the world without truth or goodness?

Now you might read this verse and think this is just another passage about false teachers, so be on the lookout on the lookout for false teachers.

But I want to argue, or I want to show you this passage is really about understanding the gospel.

The soul without Christ worships so it can get.

The soul without Christ worships for what it can get.

The soul with Christ worships for what it has already received.

Do you understand that?

Before Christ, you're worshiping so that you might receive something, so that you might receive some kind of salvation or security or meaning or purpose.

But with Christ, you worship because he has saved you, because he has already done the work.

That he has brought you from death to life.

Salvation makes humans, which we are worshipers as humans, it makes our response worshipful, not a request.

We're not seeking, we're not worshiping so we can seek to get something from him, but we are worshiping because what he has already done for us.

We don't worship to get approval or protection, salvation.

We worship because he has already given us these things.

And when you don't understand that, that's when false teaching and deception come in.

As a Christian, there's nothing you can do to make yourself more right with God.

There is nothing you can do to earn more of his favor.

So you worship because he's already come for you, that he loves you and shows you his mercy and kindness.

We worship because Jesus came for us and he saved us from our sin and from deception.

So we understand the need to follow Christ and to obey him.

And so when the lie comes in, you're not really content, are you?

You're not really satisfied, are you?

This whole Christianity thing isn't really working out for you, is it?

Yeah, you're right.

That that must mean there's something wrong with the Christianity thing, the Bible.

Because I know myself, and it can't be me.

It must be something else that's wrong.

Or the lie comes in and says, you know what, you're actually you're pretty good at what you do.

And you know, you could really be used, you could really, you really have a lot to give to the world.

You should deserve more respect.

And and you should really go out there and seek to kind of grab the world and harness the world and kind of just live out your dreams.

You could really do that.

You deserve more recognition.

It's that same lie that God can't satisfy.

That if you just kind of put yourself at the center, you make yourself the king.

Then, then you could be satisfied.

So, Paul dealing with these false teachers is uh Paul telling Timothy to deal with these false teachers is reminding them, and reminding the church, really, that there will be people who are deceived.

And they're deceived when they do not understand the gospel, when they do not understand the reality that Christ has come and paid the price for all of their sin.

They're not believing in that.

They're believing in something, and then they're walking out their life in a way that reveals they're still trying to earn something.

They're still trying to, they still want to be king.

The gospel puts you on your face before the Lord.

It's no longer about you.

It's no longer about kind of your dreams and what you want.

It's about Christ and what he has done for you.

We rest in that.

And so it's a call to come and die to all those desires, all those things.

And then in that, in Christ is life and life eternal.

And that is the encouragement and the message of the gospel.

And that is how we contend false doctrine and false teaching is keep reminding one another the good news of the gospel.

Church, let's pray.