Reasons to Avoid False Teaching (2 Timothy 2:14-19)

Well, it's so good to be with you. So glad

that you're here worshiping with us today at Christian School Sunday.

And to our church family, thank you for being here.

Thank you for your support of our academy, to our

academy families, and to our staff that is here. Thank

you for your partnership in the lives of students and children,

young men and women who, as Dr. Gray mentioned, who

are going to be our future. So thank you for

your partnership. We believe as a church that God's given

us many different gifts to reach our community, to minister

to our community. And God gave us Academy and that's

to come alongside and to minister to you and your

family and help you as a family grow into, um,

to be that family that God's called you to be.

So thank you for that partnership. And we're just delighted

you're here today. As we come to this passage scripture,

the title of my sermon is reasons to avoid false teaching.

Reasons to avoid false teaching. You know, throughout our life,

we kind of learn, like, there are just instinctively things

that we avoid. Sometimes we avoid things because we just

don't like them, like food. You know, certain foods you

may not like, you know. Like, for me, I'm a foodie.

I like all kinds of different foods, but I do

not like celery. Like, it's just disgusting to me. I

know some of you like it. God bless you. But

I don't. And I mean, I can't. You can't put

on peanut butter for me. You can't put it on anything.

If it's in chicken salad and I could taste a

little sliver of it, it's gone. It's out. So I

avoid that because I just don't like it. There's things

that we also avoid because they're not good for us.

Just over the last few months, I realized that my

body does not like coffee. I love it. I love

the way it tastes, but my body does not like it.

So I've had to cut out coffee. And so now

I have to avoid coffee because it's, it's just not

good for me. Right. And so there's things that you,

you avoid because you don't like them. And there's some

things you avoid because you, they're not good for you.

There's things that you avoid because they're deadly. You know,

you don't have a, um, you know, you're, you don't

have a pet copperhead at home. Right. Um, You don't

go swimming and say, hey, let's go hang out with

the sharks, you know. You avoid those things because those

things are deadly, right? And so as we come to that,

you know, we have this natural instinct to say there's

things that I'm going to avoid, things I don't like,

things that are not good for me, things that are deadly.

But have you ever thought about how that relates to

you spiritually? There are things spiritually that you are to avoid.

And as we come to this passage of Scripture, Paul

has given Timothy reasons why he and the church must

avoid false teaching. Over the past few months, we've been

in the study of 1 Timothy and now in 2 Timothy.

And as Paul is writing this letter, he's actually writing

it to his protege, Timothy. Paul is, of course, the apostle.

He played in many churches. He's in prison, actually. He's

in his second imprisonment in Romans. Rome, he is about

to die. It's probably when he writes this letter, we

know within a year he dies. And so he's kind

of writing his last will and testament to his protege

for the purpose of he wants Paul to continue on

the ministry that he has started. He is expecting, you're

my protege, and I want you to carry on what

I've done. And I want you to carry on the ministry.

And I want you to carry on God's work. And

so chapters one and two, he's really been focusing on that.

And in particular, last chapter two, as we've been talking

through the last few weeks, he's been talking about how

Timothy should continue God's work of ministry. He's to do

that in several ways. One, he's to do that by

finding God's strength. He's to do that by training others

or discipling others. He's to do that by enduring suffering.

He's to do that by reflecting on God's word. So

he says, Timothy, as he's in prison, I'm about to die. Timothy,

I want you to carry on my ministry. Carry on

my ministry. And I want you to do that through

God's strength. I want you to do that by discipling

others to do this as well. I want you to

do this by, and that means enduring suffering. And I

want you to continue in the work of the Lord.

I want you to continue in ministry by reflecting on

God's word. And then with this like, this plea or

this appeal to Timothy, he not only tells him what

he's to do, he gives him reasons why he's to

do it. Why is he to do it? For Paul,

he tells Timothy, do it because, Timothy, there's a reward

for you. There's a reward for you. What is the reward? Salvation.

God's prepared for you salvation in heaven. And because of

what Christ has done for you, because Christ has saved you,

and because he's prepared heaven for you, continue the work.

Continue to find strength. Continue to train others. Continue to

endure suffering. Continue to reflect on God's word because God's

provided you salvation. And also because God wants to provide

salvation to others. So in this kind of leading up

to where we are this morning, there is this idea.

He's telling us it's like a positive and negative. There's things, Timothy,

as a worker, as a child of God, as a believer,

there's some things that you are to seek. You are

to seek salvation. God's strength. You're to seek to teach

others and disciple others. You're to seek God's word. You're

to seek to endure through suffering. And why? Because God's

provided you salvation. That's the positive. Today, as we come

to the next part of the, it's really the negative.

It's really, okay, this is what you're to seek. This

is what you're to avoid. And in this, he tells

them not only what he is to avoid, but the

reasons why he is to avoid it. So let's look

at this together and let's look at the reasons why

we must avoid false teaching. Look at where the passage

says in verse 14. He says, remind them of these things.

What are these things? It's the things I just reminded you.

What I just said to you is, Timothy, I've instructed

you to carry on my ministry and you to do

that through my strength, through God's strength. You're to do

that by discipling others. You're to do that by enduring suffering.

You're to do that by also reflecting on God's word.

So remind, I've taught, instructed you to do this. Now, Timothy,

I want you to instruct the church to do these things.

You know, sometimes we come in as a church and

we come in as people gather together and you think, oh,

this is going to be a great Sunday. We'll be

together as BCA and Bethesda and this will be great

for my children or this will be great for someone

else that I'm coming to church with. But have you

ever thought of as you come here today that God's

word is not just for those who are with you,

God's word's for you. It's not just for the pastor.

It's not just for the teachers that are here. It's

for you. And we are to be reminded that God's

instructed Timothy on things, but God's instructing you on some things.

And he calls Timothy, remind him of these things. They

are to do these things. They are to endure suffering.

They are to reflect on God's word. They are to

find God's strength. They are to teach others. So remind

them of those things. Those are the things that they

should do. And why should they do it? Because God

provided you salvation. But then notice the next thing. He

goes to the negative. Remind them of these things and

charge them before God. And this is what not to

do or what they should seek. Those things are the

things that they are to avoid. Listen to this. Charge

them before God not to quarrel about words. Not to

quarrel about words. What are they not to do? They

are not to quarrel. What is that? Quarrel means to

dispute about words. It means to argue about words. You

kind of think about this. It's not that Paul is

talking about debating on useless matters. He's not telling them, okay,

or tell the church not to debate about which is better,

UNC or Duke. We know the answer to that one, right?

I can help you with that later at UNC. But

we're not to debate about We're not to debate. He's

not saying you're not to debate about Jordan LeBron or

Pepsi or Coke or Stanley or Wallet. He's not saying

you get in these useless debates. Avoid those type of

useless debates. He's talking about here, Quarrel, about false teaching.

And how we know that is because of what he

said in the rest of the letters. If you look

at just 2 Timothy 3, verse 7, he talks about

2 Timothy 3:7

these false teachers. And listen to how he describes them.

Always learning and never able to arrive. at a knowledge

of truth. Here's these false teachers are always seeking some truth,

but they're never learning anything. They're never arriving at anything.

Paul actually refers to some of these false teachers in

the passage we're reading today. Look at just verse 17

and 18. Listen to what he says here. He says,

among their talk were spread like gangrene. Among them are

Hymenaeus and Philetus. Listen to this. Who have swerved from

the truth. saying that the resurrection has already happened, and

they're upsetting the faith to some. So who is he

talking about here, and what is the debate? The debates

are among believers or church members with these false teachers.

And he's saying, don't debate with them. Don't dispute with them.

It's worthless. D.A. Carson is a New Testament scholar. He's brilliant,

probably one of the best minds of the Bible. in

my time frame and he talks about just many years

as a New Testament scholar people will write him letters

from different places and he says that one time he

got a letter from a group and they had all

kinds of material and all kinds of literature they wanted

him to read and knew it was his Heaven Gate.

Heaven Gate's cult. If you remember, it's a cult that

they all committed mass suicide. And he got that just

a month before he, he never entertained it. And you

would say, well, that's terrible. He didn't entertain it. But

the reason why he didn't entertain it is he, he

realized it's passive. It's, it's worthless. There's no value. He

says that in this passage. It's useless. I can tell

you how many times in my time, just a few

years ago, I had a guy knock on the door

at the office, and I came to the office, and

he told me that God had showed him through math

and astrology how you can find salvation in math and astrology.

And he just wanted to do a Bible study with me.

You know what? I turned it down. I'm not going

to do it. Why? Because it's not profitable. It's useless.

And he explains that here. And listen to why he

says this. I think it's very important. You say, Pastor,

that sounds very terrible. Why is he saying that? Well,

listen to what he says in this passage. Why? What's

the reason? He tells us not to do this. But why?

Charge them before God. Before God. The image of this

is like, imagine God's with you. You know, if God

was with you and you felt like Jesus was with

you all the time, there's things that you would avoid, right?

I know you would. You know why I know that?

Because I'm a pastor. And you know what? There are

some times I can walk in a room and suddenly

people's behavior will change. I remember one time we were visiting,

I was a few years ago here and we were

making a house visit. There was a crisis in the

family and we were going to them. They were not

in our church. We were just trying to minister to them.

And we walked up to the family and And they

didn't know we were coming. We didn't tell them we

were coming. And we walked up. One lady was smoking.

And I came up. And I introduced myself. And she

realized I was a preacher. And she went whoosh. And

she hid that thing. I was surprised she didn't catch

herself on fire. And she said. And then she realized

there was a whole other group. And they were having

a little party on the side. And she went over

to them. And she said, the preacher's here. The preacher's here.

I mean, I'm telling you, they were shoveling stuff all

kinds of ways. And I tell you that because they

thought because I was here, there was things and behaviors

they should not do. And in this passage, he's saying,

charge them in the presence of God to avoid that.

In the imagery there, it's just like if God's presence

was with you, you wouldn't look at certain things, you

wouldn't say certain things, you wouldn't do certain things because

God's presence was with you. Paul is saying, in the

same way, if God's presence was with you, you would

not listen to false teaching. You wouldn't consume it. You

wouldn't entertain it. You wouldn't have anything to do with

it because God's with you and he is what? Truth.

And you would want nothing that would be contrary to

who he is before your eyes or on your lips.

And so therefore, avoid it because it puts us before

the Lord. I wonder today, as you think about what

you are to avoid. How are you avoiding false teacher?

I think as we think about false teaching, I just

want to say, I think it's interesting as we come

to this passage of scripture, and I thought a lot

about this over the last week or so as I

was preparing for this, is I really struggled with in preparing,

do I give you examples of false teaching? And honestly,

I was thinking about doing that, and I may mention

a few today, But Paul doesn't do that here. You really,

as you look at the passage, he mentions Philetus and

Hymenaeus and that they have swore from the truth and

that they say the resurrection. But he doesn't list a

bunch of other false teachings there. It's kind of obscure

really what the teaching is. And I really believe that

Paul does that because it's hard to even go to

naming them all. There's really too many. But I do

think it's important for me to come to you today

and recognize how do you identify what is false teaching?

What is some examples of false teaching? I said this

a few, probably maybe a year ago or so as

we've gone through false teaching. Because false teaching is such

a major theme in Timothy and 2 Timothy and Titus

and most of, a lot of the New Testament letters

that Paul wrote and Peter wrote. There's two forms of

false teaching I think you see throughout our world. There's

false teachers who add to Scripture, okay? So just think,

if you want to think about false teaching, think about

it in two forms, right? There's false teachers who add

to Scripture. So these say the Bible is not enough, right?

There must be more Scripture available. or a new revelation

and we therefore need to add to scripture. There's those

false teachers and you can put all kinds of different

groups in that group, okay? Then there's false teachers who

subtract from scripture. These who subtract we call liberal theology.

They say the Bible's full of errors, the Bible cannot

be trusted, so therefore we're gonna remove from scripture. I

think as you come to this passage of Scripture and

Paul is saying, listen, you and I must avoid irrelevant babble.

We've got to avoid irrelevant babble with false teachers who

want to add to Scripture and false teachers who want

to distract from Scripture. And so we must be prepared

to do this. We're commanded by God. So I wonder today,

How do you recognize what is false teaching around you?

How are you avoiding those things? And how does God's

presence change how you avoid false teaching in your life,

in the life of your family? Father's here today. You're

a spiritual leader of your home. How do you know

the false teaching that's coming in your home? You say

it's not coming in my home. Yes, it is. You're

watching TV. If you've got a smartphone... It's coming. How

do you avoid it? How do you have nothing to

do with it because of the presence of God? I

want you to see secondly, reasons to avoid false teaching

because it puts us before the Lord. But secondly, because

it produces no spiritual profit. Look at verse 14, remind

them of these things and charge them before God not

to quarrel about words. Here's the reason, which does no good.

I think it's so interesting the way Paul writes this

and the way his writing style here is he's, again,

he's really going this positive negative. Things that you should seek,

things that you should not, things that you should avoid.

The things you should seek, right? You should seek what?

Finding God's strength. You should seek enduring suffering. You should

seek to disciple others. You should seek to, those are

the three I can remember right now. You should seek

these things, right? Why? Why? The reasons why is because

there's a reward. And what is the reward? The salvation

that Christ has given you. And so the idea is

you seek these things and listen, there is a spiritual

profit to it. There's a spiritual edification to it, to

your personal life today, but also eternal value in heaven.

So there is a profit. And then in the contrast,

he says, but you are to avoid and have nothing

to do with false teaching. You should avoid it because

of the presence of God in your life. But number two,

you should avoid it because there's no profit in it.

There's no spiritual benefit. I can think of in my life,

one thing about me, as you may not know, I

know I'm getting to be an older man, just had

a birthday the other day, but I am truly still

a kid at heart. So one thing you may not

know about me is I am a gamer. So I'm

a gamer as old as the Atari. I mean, I

had the OG, the original Atari. Some of y'all know

what they're talking about. Kids, I'll explain later. Then there

was Nintendo, right? So I had Nintendo, and then eventually

I got the original Xbox, right? And so now I

have a PS4. So I've had it all, or PS5.

I don't even know what it is, but I have one,

the newest one, right? I like Fortnite. I play Fortnite.

So again, I'm a kid at heart, right? And have

you ever, like, the kids will know this. Some of

you may not in this. Like, it'll keep track of

how much you play. Oh, my Lord. And there's times

where I've looked at how much I've played and I thought, oh,

the Lord's not, I'm not going to get to heaven

one day and the Lord says, you know, you really

did good on season eight of Fortnite. You know, your

level got really high. Great job. I'm really proud of you.

And you kind of get to a place where you

feel like, Is there any spiritual, like, is this really

helping me spiritually at all? It's really useless. And Paul

is saying that here about false teaching. Like, you can imagine,

just put your head into what we just talked about.

Imagine these cults, right? I like to go to Sam's,

and the Mormons like to go there too. And there's

a lot of them there, and you think that they're,

They're surrendering two years of their life to go on

mission and to do all this evangelism. Think about all

the things that they've done throughout their whole lives, and

at the end, there's nothing to it. There's no salvation,

and there's no heaven. You could think about cult after

cult after cult who's done the same thing, thinking that

they're doing all these things for an eternal reward and

to the end to find hell. You think about the

liberal theologians who say, I am so smart, I have

all these degrees and I have all these academics and

I'm so wise and I'm so wise that I know

more than God does and God's word has to submit

to how smart I am. And in the end, they

may be wise in their own eyes, but they are,

what the scripture says, they're They're nothing, right? And Romans

says that, right? Claiming to be wise, they become fools,

Romans 1.22 says. I warn you parents today, as you

love your children and you think about, you're here because

you love your children. You want to provide what's best

for them. You provide food. Food that you think is

good for them, you take them places you think that

are good for them. You avoid taking them places that

you don't think that are good for them. How do you,

as parents, avoid false teaching and cults and theology that

spiritually is no profit to them? I just encourage you.

We must avoid false teaching because it puts us before

the Lord, but secondly, because it produces no spiritual profit. Third,

because it can destroy. It can destroy faith. Look at

this passage quickly as we wrap up this morning. Listen

to what he says. Remind them of these things and

charge them before the Lord not to quarrel about words

which does no good but only ruins the hearers. Listen

to that. But only what? Ruins the hearers. The word

ruin there is catastrophe. It's destruction. This word is only

used twice in the New Testament. The only other time

it's used is actually used by Peter, the apostle. It's

in 2 Peter 2, 6, and this is what it says.

And if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah

to ashes, he condemned them to extension, making them example

of what's going to happen to the ungodly. The word

extension there to To devastate them to ruins is the

same word that Paul uses here. Destruction. I think it's

important for you to understand that Satan desires... Listen, I

love the song we sang just a little bit ago,

the kids sang, right? Jesus is the answer. Satan desires... Listen,

that although our children and our students know that Jesus

is the answer, Satan desires to fill them so full

of lies and deception and false teaching that at the end,

they'll doubt whether Jesus is really the answer. There's a

book that actually our seniors read. It's by C.S. Lewis,

and C.S. Lewis is a believer, by the way, and

he writes a fictional story about And it's about different things.

It's called Screwtape Letters. And in that, he has an

older demon giving advice to a younger demon named Wormwood.

And he's trying to tell Wormwood how he should deceive

his human that he's been assigned to. And this is

what it says. Your man has been accustomed ever since

he was a boy to have dozens of incompatible philosophies

dancing about inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines

as primary or true or false, but academic or practical

as jargon, not argument. And this is your best ally

to keep him from the church. You see, the demons

believe the best way to destroy the life of a child,

to destroy the life of a boy, a young man,

a young girl, It's just give them a bunch of

jargon in their mind, confuse them with false teaching, either

from cults or liberal theology, and get them so confused

that they don't know whether the Bible or the church

is truth. And they'll turn away from saying that Jesus

is the answer. And it'll lead to their what? Destruction.

Listen today, we must avoid false teaching because it puts

us before the Lord, because it produces no spiritual fruit,

Because it can destroy faith. Fourth, because it's ungodly. Listen

to what he says in this passage, verse 16. He says,

but avoid revel at Babel for it will lead people

to more and more ungodliness. Because it's ungodly. I think

the idea is this fallacy that they think they're becoming godly.

But in the end, it's never leading to spiritual godliness.

It's just leading to ungodliness. I'm going to move quickly. Fifth,

because it spreads like a disease. You know, I was

thinking about this today, and this week I actually got sick.

I got a little cold, and I actually got it

from Chloe. Thank you. Daughters give you a lot of gifts.

This was a gift she could have not given. I

would have been okay. But that's the way, like, cold's right, happens, right?

Somebody gets it, and then you give it to another

family member, and then the whole family gets it, right,

and it just spreads like a wildfire. We see it.

A lot here at school. I actually called. I was

talking to a friend who works at a car dealership

in White Forest. And I was calling him. He was like,

you sound awful. You sound like you're sick. And I said, yeah,

I got a cold. I think I got it from

my daughter. He said, half of the workers at the

dealership are out with the same thing. It spreads. And

I tell you that because what happened here, right here

in Durham, I got it and Chloe has it, has

already spread to White Forest, right? It's the idea that

sickness can spread easily and quickly, right? And the imagery

that Paul says in this passage of Scripture, false teaching,

look at verse 17, and their talk will spread like gangrene.

He uses the imagery of a sickness in a body

that starts at one place in the body, and within

24 hours or 48 hours, it's spread and taken over

the whole body. It spreads. It's like a disease. It's deadly,

not only for your child, but how it might spread

to others. and destroy the lives of others around you.

I think one thing that, as we think about this,

I think it's important to understand just how much false

teaching is spread across our world. You know, I read

a passage the other day in my Bible reading. It

was in Kings. It was Elijah. You remember Elijah against

the prophets of Baal? There's 450 prophets of Baal. You

know what struck me about that? I've read it many,

many times. How many false prophets were they? 450. How

many men of God were they? One. There were one

true believer, I mean, one true man speaking the word

of God, and there was 450 that was contrary, teaching

false teaching against him. And you can see that numerated

all throughout Scripture. I really believe today it's about the

same statistic. For every pastor, godly, preaching the word of God,

there's one, there's 450 more false teachers out there. who

are contrarian to what that one pastor is saying. It spreads.

It's spreading in our world. And just think about how

bad it was in the Old Testament, but think about

the advancements of social media today. You know what the

most popular video was this week on social media? It

was a lady dancing in Costco. And she danced in Costco,

and 1.7 million people watched her videos. 1.7 million people

watch this lady dance. And can you imagine how false

teachers can use the medium of social media to spread

like gangrene throughout our world? Listen to me today. False

teaching spreads. And it's happening through social media. It's happening

to AI. I encourage you to go look at Gospel Coalition.

It has an article about AI and how AI's different

chat boxes teach social different theologies and it's sad today

the future of your child of your student might gather

their their theology from a chat box that's not going

to teach them the bible but it's going to keep

teach them a skewed version of god it it spreads

it's because it spreads like a disease lastly you know

as you as you think through this as we finish

this morning You put all this together. It's kind of grim,

isn't it? You think about false teaching puts us before

the Lord. There's no spiritual profit for it. It's catastrophic.

It destroys. It's ungodly. And it's spreading. And you get

to a place and you might say today, Pastor, I

feel overwhelmed as a parent, as a grandparent, as a

church family. It does seem like there's 450 to 1.

Odds are stacked against us. What are we going to do?

And God's word says this to us. Listen to this.

But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal. The Lord

knows who are his, and let everyone who names the

name of the Lord depart from iniquity you know what

the hope that we have today is false teaching may

be on the rise but listen God's foundation today is

still sure God's word still stands and listen God still

today knows who are his. He knows who are false

and he knows who are believers. And today he calls

you and I who are true believers to depart from iniquity. Today,

what hope do we have? God's foundation is still true.

We are to depart from iniquity. And we are to

continue to live in truth. How do we do that?

We stop seeking what? We avoid false teaching and we

stand firm today, but God's foundation is sure. He knows

that we are his. And so therefore today, listen, church,

more than ever, we as a church must avoid false teaching,

but we must seek God. We must say, God, today,

you've called me to find strength in you. God, today

you've called me to seek you in strength. God, you

today have called me to disciple, teach others what is truth. God,

you've called me today to endure suffering. God, you called

me today to continue in faith by reflecting on the

word of God. God, today the answer to false teaching

is right in the pew and it starts with me.

It starts by me seeking your word, by me enduring

in faith, by me finding my strength in you, by

me teaching others, by me to growing in your word

because your foundation today is sure. So God, today I

want to seek you. I ask you today, church, what

are you seeking and what are you avoiding? I encourage

you today. Seek the Lord. Seek the Lord. Stand firm

on his foundation. Avoid false teaching. Will you pray with me? Lord,

I thank you, Lord, for your word today. I pray that, Lord,

you've spoken today. I believe that. Lord, this has not

been my words. It's been yours. Lord, I know this

is a somber message to think about the dangers that

are in our world. Lord, I pray today that we

would be believers today as we're reminded of what you

charged us today. that we'd be believers who would hear, Lord,

your word. God, we would seek, Lord, the things that

you call us to seek. We avoid the things that

you tell us to avoid. God, we thank you today

that there is a reward stored up for us in heaven.

And Lord, although things may crumble around us, Lord, your

foundation is firm today. You know who are yours. And today, Lord,

If we're not where we need to be today, I

pray as your word says, we'll depart from iniquity and

return to you, Lord. Lord, we love you. We thank you, Lord,

for this morning. In your name we pray. Amen.