All right, our sermon title today is You Will Know Them by Their Fruits. You Will Know Them by Their Fruits. And we are in 1 Timothy, and we are today going to look in Chapter 1 at verses 3 through 7. So we began this letter last couple of weeks, and we were looking primarily at the greeting, sort of getting in now to the body of the letter in Chapter 1. And after this greeting from the Apostle Paul to Timothy, where Paul, in the power of the Holy Spirit with apostolic authority now establishes and roots Timothy authoritatively in the church at Ephesus. Now he did this with a purpose of bolstering Timothy's position in the church, establishing Timothy's authority. And now in establishing Timothy's authority, it's time to get to work. So he's going to turn to the work at hand here in chapter one. Paul has written in chapter three that his letter from himself to Timothy is for the purpose that we might know how we are to conduct ourselves in the house of God. And now in the body of this letter, Paul will begin here in chapter one to set the stage for how we're going to begin to do that. And job number one, the first step that he's got to take here is going to be having to deal with error. with false teachers that have crept in seemingly unnoticed into the church at Ephesus and Timothy with the authority that he has from the Word of God, with the authority that he has from God himself through the Apostle Paul, now has to take hold of this problem in Ephesus. There is in Ephesus a full-scale assault going on on the Word of God. Everything authoritative in the church is being undermined. The word of God is authoritative. The apostle Paul is there with authority derived from Christ, our hope, and now Timothy established in authority in the church. And all this is being undermined. All this has been subverted. There's an assault going on. There's a spiritual war that is being waged and reminded, looking at these verses three through seven of what Paul wrote to the elders at Ephesus in Acts 20 and verses 25 through 31. This is what Paul said. Indeed, now I know that you all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, will see my face no more. Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men, for I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Therefore, take heed to yourselves and to 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. They have to take heed to themselves. They have to take heed to their doctrine. They have to take heed to the flock. They have to take heed to what Paul has painstakingly taught them during his tenure there, because this is the church of God, the church of the living God that Christ purchased with his own blood. And in verse 29, it gives sobering words for what is happening even now. In verse 29, for I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Those savage wolves are now here. Verse 30, also from among yourselves, men will rise up speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore, watch and remember that for three years, I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears. Paul poured his life into establishing and rooting and grounding this church in Ephesus, poured his life into ministering to the people there, and now he leaves Timothy in Ephesus to do the very same thing. He cares about these people. He loves these people, loves this church, and he knows what Satan is gonna do. From day one, from the time that this church has been established, Satan has sought to infiltrate the church. And Satan is at work against Ephesus. And this statement here of Paul in Acts 20 has been proven true. And we can see that these wolves have crept in and they have risen up among them and they're seeking to draw away disciples after themselves. This is not merely a question of facts. or merely a question of semantics, or merely a question of things over which we can agree to disagree. This is the doctrine and the life of the people in Ephesus and their souls are at stake. And this is the church that Christ purchased with his blood. This is important stuff. And this is a serious role here that Timothy has. In John 8, 44, the Bible tells us that Satan not only is a murderer, but the Satan is also a liar. And here he is infiltrating the church at Ephesus with his lies. And these are subtle lies. They're lies that undermine the authority of God's word. They're undermining what God would have his people know and live by. They're undermining the gospel by which people are saved. and there is great danger in this infiltration. These lies are often subtle. It's not overt lying that poses a great threat to the church today. You're not going to have someone walk into the church professing to be a Satanist and draw away disciples after themselves. You're not going to have a Muslim walk through the doors of the church and lead people professing Christians away to Islam or to Hinduism. It's not the overt lie that is the problem. It's the subtle lie. It's the half-truth that is shrouded in error. It's the half-truth that is deceptive. It's the half-truth because the half-truth takes the Word of God and misrepresents it. It misrepresents the teaching. It twists it. It twists it into something that is different. We're going to look at that. This is compromise. And in the church today, we see great compromise with the Word of God. I'm amazed at how quickly people are willing to compromise the very words of God. You have the words of Almighty God in your hands right now, the Bible. You've got the very words of the Holy Spirit that you can read and learn from. You can learn from God himself through his words. And how quickly today people in the church are willing to compromise with that. And they'll say, well, we just use different words. No, you use God's words. You're using different words. You're no longer using God's words. And we compromise with the gospel and we compromise with doctrine. We compromise with how we're to conduct ourselves in the church of God and compromise and compromise and compromise. There's so many examples of this, aren't there? You got witnessing. You talk to people all the time. Tell me how you got saved. Well, I got saved this way. I asked Jesus into my heart or I prayed to receive Christ. Or maybe you got saved because you were baptized at a certain age, or because you took the sacraments of the church. Maybe you grew up in church and that's how you believe that you got saved. Nevermind that none of that is the way that the Bible describes how someone is saved. But then when you talk to them, well, that's the way I got saved. Aren't we just talking about different things? You say repent, I say repent. They use God's words and the devil's dictionary to define them. And they twist the word of God, and as Peter says, they twist it to their own destruction. This is not simply a matter of semantics. We have the word of the living God, and it's life and death. It is heaven or hell. It is eternity. And we've got to be faithful to it. We've got to hold fast to it. Our lives are at stake. Our eternities are at stake. And Paul has said that there will be those who will come in and they will twist this word. They will undermine this word. They'll undermine the gospel and they are seeking to destroy. and you're at stake. Peter said this in 2 Peter 2 verses 1 through 3, but there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you. And listen to what he says, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many, Peter says, will follow their destructive ways because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covetousness, they will exploit you with deceptive words. For a long time, their judgment has not been idle and their destruction does not slumber. It's through deceptive words that we are deceived, that people are deceived. Through deceptive, subtle deceptions with the gospel. Subtle deceptions with God's doctrine. And it's through that subtle deception that people are led down the broad road to hell. We've got a charge here from Paul, a charge from Timothy to protect that which has been entrusted to us. The doctrine, the faith, the content of the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. We've got to fight for it. And here, Paul is charging Timothy to fight for it. Fight for it because he knows what's at stake. We need men of God making an urgent call to the professing church today to stop what they're doing. Here, Paul is calling Timothy to charge those false teachers to stop what they're doing. Stop the false teaching. And we have the promise of scripture that it's simply not going to get better, it's going to get worse. Timothy says, or Paul says to Timothy later, that evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse. But it doesn't negate our responsibility to stand uncompromisingly against the infiltrations of this godless world, against the infiltrations of Satan himself into the church, and to take a stand for true doctrine. He finishes in 2 Timothy 3 with this statement, evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, but you must continue in the things that you have learned and have been assured of. We have to continue. We've got to hold fast to the word of God. Here in Ephesus, savage wolves are already in the camp. They are through the door and they're wreaking havoc in the church. They're through the door and they're spreading their heresy. It's spreading like a cancer. It is like gangrene, and Timothy's got to come in now and cut some of that out and cut it off. There's an urgency here. Look at verse 3. As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, remain in Ephesus that you may teach or charge some that they teach no other doctrine. Here there's an urgency on the part of Paul. Ordinarily, Paul, when he writes a letter, has a thanksgiving that he'll give. You know, we're bound to give thanks. for you, brethren, because you've been chosen by the Lord for salvation, or we thank the Lord upon every remembrance of you. There's a thanksgiving that's given. Here, Paul is straight to the business. There's an urgency here. It's similar to his letter to the Galatian churches in the sense that there was a serious problem in those churches that Paul wanted to address, and he immediately dispenses with the thanksgiving and simply levels a rebuke. Here, there's such urgency in Ephesus, Paul dispenses with the thanksgiving and just gets right to the point. He launches right into the problem. Now that begs the comment that we are in a spiritual war. Here in Ephesus, there is a spiritual war raging. Sometimes it's really easy to come to church and forget that fact, to be a part of the church and forget that fact. But listen, in Ephesus, in Cornerstone, in the church today, there is a war raging. It's been raging since... creation account, and it will rage until the Lord comes back and rules with a rod of iron. But that war is raging, and we have to stand with Christ, with Paul, with Timothy, with good biblical doctrine against that. What has been entrusted to us by those that have gone before us must be protected, must be guarded, must be held dear, cherished, and it must be contended for. We have to fight. With this, with this exhortation now to Timothy, beginning in verse three, there is exhortation to us. There is warning to us. There is valuable information here for how we're to conduct ourselves, and we're to stand against false teachers. We're going to look at verses three and four here first. And in verses three and four, point one on your notes, beware of foul fruit. Beware of foul fruit. In verses three and four, we're going to see four warnings for the church. There are four warnings laid out in verses three and four for the church at Ephesus. And by default for us today, there are four warnings that are laid out to the church at our time. Have things gotten better? No, things have continued to grow worse. Evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse. This error that we see in Ephesus, the same error going on today. There's nothing new under the sun. It gets repackaged, but there's still this spiritual war that's raging on. Beware of foul fruit. In verse three, I want you to see the first of these warnings, and that is beware of divergent doctrines. Look at verse three. As I urged you, Paul says, when I went into Macedonia, remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine. And here, this verse sets the tone for the whole chapter. Paul's going to spend all of chapter one dealing with false teaching, dealing with error, dealing with senseless babblers, as they're called. And these false teachers, these senseless babblers, as the King James says, these vain janglers need to be stopped. And this is similar, if you remember from Titus 1, very similar to what Paul said to Titus there. These folks have to be stopped because they subvert whole households, teaching things which they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain. In other words, It's not simply a matter of right or wrong or winning an argument. These people are overturning the faith of some. They're making shipwreck of people's faith. They're leading them down the broad road to hell. And here, Paul says to Timothy, as I urged you, that brings up the point that they'd had a prior conversation. Paul and Timothy had talked about this before, and in that conversation, Paul urged Timothy to stay in Ephesus and take care of this business in Ephesus. So this was, in Paul here, an official reminder to Timothy, if you will, in front of the church as a whole, so that the church as a whole could see the job description now of what Timothy has to do. This is an official reminder to Timothy of a prior conversation for the benefit of the church. Now, Timothy may have wanted to go with Paul. At this point, it had been five years since Paul made that warning about Ephesus, that savage wolves would come in. And Paul was still very involved in ministry. And Timothy may have likely wanted to stay with Paul. They loved each other. They're brothers. They're ministering together. They're out sharing the gospel. So he may have wanted to go with Paul. But the dire circumstances in Ephesus were such that Timothy had to go back. He had to stay. He had to deal with this problem. We have to take care of this church. In other words, that church, under the weight of this error that was being spread, was in serious jeopardy. And so Timothy needed to have stayed. But now Paul gives Timothy the command. He urges Timothy to charge some, that some there is undefined, but you can rest assured that the people in Ephesus knew exactly who they were. Charge some, they didn't have names, but here in receiving this letter, they would have said, oh yeah, I know exactly who he's talking about. Is this guy teaching this, and this guy teaching this, this guy over here teaching this false teaching. They knew who these people were, and in verse 20, Paul gets pretty specific when he starts mentioning names, Hymenaeus and Alexander. We'll get there as we go through Timothy. But this sum here, undefined for now, he'll get more specific later, and he is to charge sum. That word charge in the Greek is parangelis, and it is a word for command. It's a word with authority. And now you can see, if Timothy is going to stand there in Ephesus and charge these false teachers to stop teaching these destructive heresies, then Timothy's authority in the church has to be established. That's why, in verse 1 and 2, Paul took such painstaking methods, even in his greeting, to establish Timothy's authority. So now Timothy, his authority grounded, his authority in the Word of God rooted, now can stand in the church at Ephesus and charge these false teachers to stop preaching this nonsense. This word charge has a military strength to the word. It means strictly, officially, authoritatively tell them, stop what you are doing. And that's coming with authority from God. through the apostle Paul, and now to Timothy, his delegate. It's similar to the word that Jesus used in Luke 8, when he was charging or commanding the unclean spirits to come out of the Gadarene demoniac. It's that same word, charge, command. Here, they're going to be commanded to stop their senseless babbling. Now, people sometimes today don't like command language, right? They bristle against it. Why is that? Because they're flesh. Because we're naturally rebellious in our flesh and we bristle against commands. But now this is the Word of God. And throughout the Word of God there are commands. Now if you're a genuine disciple, his commands aren't burdensome. You love serving the Lord. Lord, command what you will. and then grant what you command. I will follow you to my dying day." Right? We have those commands, but some people bristle against the commands. But now sometimes it's necessary to use that kind of language. It's interesting here in verse 3 that Paul urges Timothy, notice the difference, and Timothy is to command some. They teach no other doctrine. That word urge, parakaleo, means to call to one side. With a true son in the faith, Timothy, often all there is to do is simply to encourage, simply to exhort. Say, come along and do this, right? And Timothy, a true son in the faith, a humble brother, a wanting to serve the Lord, simply falls in line. Yes, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna remain in Ephesus. I'll take care of this, Paul. Just all you have to do is just encourage him, just exhort him. But there are times when stronger words are necessary. There's a necessity to hear from the Lord commands because we in our flesh often will bristle against them. Look, just for an example, we're in first Timothy here. Just look one page back at second Thessalonians three. Probably don't even have to turn second Thessalonians three. I want you to give you give you an example of this. Timothy's command here to these false apostles, these false teachers, doesn't come in and of himself, out of his own authority. Timothy has no authority in and of himself. He has a derived authority from God Almighty through the apostle Paul. And it's out of that authority and under the authority of God's word that now Timothy is charging or commanding some that they stop teaching what they're teaching. Here in 2 Thessalonians 3, just look at how this is worded in verse 6. Let's start there. 2 Thessalonians 3, verse 6. Here it is from Paul. But we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you. Nor did we eat anyone's bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you. Not because we do not have authority. I don't know, Paul had authority, right? So they've got authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us, verse 10. For even when we were with you, we commanded you. Now that's the same root word that we see here in 1 Timothy verse 3, right? We commanded you this, if anyone will not work, neither shall he eat. For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies. Is he calling them lost? No, he's merely calling them busybodies. They're not working. He is going to command these disorderly folks to become orderly, and he's using command language because often commands are a necessity. They come from the word of, we need it sometimes, a thus saith the Lord, amen? And here he's giving a thus saith the Lord. Look at verse 12. Now those who are such we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread. But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary in doing good. And if anyone does not obey our command, our word in this epistle, note that person. Do not keep company with them. They may be ashamed. We sometimes bristle against the idea of commands, but the Lord's Word, God's Word is chock full of commands for the Christian. It all depends in how you respond to that command. A genuine believer, a genuine disciple of Christ responds with humility. Lord, command what you will. You are my Lord, my King. You've saved me and I want to follow you and please you. I want to obey you. But to that person who is self-righteous, self-willed, rebellious, they hear a command from the Word of God, and they bristle against it. Their commands are burdensome, and they simply don't want to follow. Sometimes these commands are necessary. Here in the church at Ephesus, this command is necessary. These guys needed an authoritative command from the Word of God to stop teaching this nonsense, and that's what Timothy here has to do. So back in 1 Timothy now in verse 3, He needs to charge some, and the charge that he's going to give is that they teach no other doctrine. Here's where we get the issue of divergent doctrines. Literally, in the Greek language there, that's what this means. It's divergent doctrines. There's a word there that basically Paul has coined himself. He's taken a word for teaching and he's added to it other or divergent or something different. That's the Greek word heteron. So he takes the word for doctrine, for teaching, and he adds heteron to it, another doctrine, a different doctrine. In context, it's a corrupted or a perverted or distorted doctrine. These are corrupt, wrong, false doctrines. If you think about the word orthodoxy, where we get that word is that's truth. Orthodoxy is that which is true. Heterodoxy becomes that which is false. So this is taking orthodoxy, the true content of the Christian faith, the doctrines that we're to stand for, the hills that we're to die on, and they are taking that and making them hetero, heteron, something different. Heterodoxy, something false. They're different. They're sectarian. They divide a brother from a brother. They divide brother from church. They're divisive. They're opposing Paul and opposing God's word. They're simply the opinions or the fabrications of men's imaginations. They're just not lining up with the word of God. And here's how this happened. All right. We've got these folks in Ephesus. And in verse seven, if you look at verse seven, these false teachers desired to be teachers of the law. All right. So these folks in Ephesus, these false teachers have taken it upon themselves now to become teachers of the law. It's interesting. Paul and Timothy were appointed by God. These false teachers appointed by themselves, they appointed themselves, they've taken it upon themselves to be teachers. Here, Paul and Timothy are preaching in accord with God's call on their life. And these guys are preaching What? Out of their self-will, out of their self-righteousness. Here, Paul and Timothy are preaching the truth in obedience to God's word. These guys are preaching something different. They're preaching something divisive, something corrupt and perverted. And in accord with this presumption, in accord with them taking this upon themselves, preaching out of their own self-will, they taught doctrine different from Paul. and taught doctrine different from the Word of God. As such, that's in accord with their self-will and their rebellion. They preached their own crude imaginations, their own inventions, figments of their own imaginations. And we'll see in going through this that the end of Paul's teaching, the end of biblical teaching, is love from a pure heart with a good conscience and a sincere faith. The end of their teaching is mindless babble, endless genealogies, fables and myths, endless speculations, meaningless tripe is what they're peddling. And this is similar in construction to another passage that we see. Let's turn to Galatians 1 together, and this will help us understand how we're to view this kind of teaching, what's going on here. In Galatians 1, Mindless babble. I love the King James. Vain janglings. Nonsense is what they're teaching, what they're peddling. Look at Galatians 1 and look down beginning in verse 6. Now here, this'll give us help. This'll help us understand how we're to view what's going on here in 1 Timothy 1. In verse 6, Galatians 1 verse 6, here Paul says this, Gospel. Now the same construction in 1st Timothy 1. It's a heteron didaskalia, a different teacher. Here it's a heteron euangelion, a different gospel. And now Paul is coining these words. These are Paul's words that he's coming to this. This is something different. It's not the true gospel. It's not true doctrine. It's something perverted. It's something corrupt, something different. Look at verse 7. They've turned from the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. This other, this heteron, is a perversion. It's a distortion. Now, mind you, As Paul says here, there is no other gospel. There is no other doctrine. So when they use the word gospel, euangelion, or they're using the word doctrine, they're stealing that word from the truth. They're not entitled to that word. They can't use that word. There's one gospel and there's one teaching, and yet they come along and say, this is doctrine, this is the gospel, right? This is something corrupt, something perverted, and it's deceptive. It's going to draw people away. Look at verse eight. But even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. This fundamentally is where the problem lies. You preach any other gospel, any hetero, any just different, just distorted, perverted, corrupt. You preach that, you're eternally damned. You're to be cursed. Same thing in first Timothy one, you preach any other doctrine. What's happening in Ephesus? People are being led astray. They're turning their, they're shipwrecking their faith. They're overturning their faith. This different doctrine that they're teaching. And in this construction, you can see the same result. This hetero didaskalia is a different, corrupt, perverted doctrine. The end of that is curse is hell. False teachers don't go to heaven. and they're leading people to hell with them. These are divergent doctrines, and this here in Galatians 1 gives us an understanding of how we're to understand this construction in 1 Timothy. We have, go back to 1 Timothy, we have in the church today divergent doctrines, don't we? Can you name one? Can you name five? I would have to take my shoes off to start counting, and it wouldn't end there. We can name thousands of them, can't we? We have divergent doctrines ad nauseum in the church today. Everywhere you turn is someone who has taken it upon themselves to be a teacher of the law, teaching something different than the Apostle Paul, teaching something different than the word of God. They're teaching something corrupt, something perverted. And these perversions, these corruptions in the church today aren't overt. It's not the Satanist coming in, or the Muslim coming in, or the Hindu coming in. It's the guy coming in saying, I'm a Christian. and they're teaching something that doesn't line up with the word of God. They're teaching difference. Now, these in the beginning may seem to us seemingly harmless. This error in Ephesus started somewhere. It got started somewhere, and it starts generally in small degrees, and it happens by degree over time. Used this analogy before. I think it's a good analogy. I'm not a rocket scientist. I'm not even close. But for you rocket scientists out there, you can attest to the truth of this, that if you send a rocket into space and you begin that rockets on the launch pad, all right, and you've done your calculations and your calculations are one degree off. By the time you get into space, you have missed the universe, right? You've missed the solar so you are off the reservation. With doctrine, it's the same thing. Listen, if you corrupt or pervert or change or distort, if you put in place a divergent doctrine that is not faithful to the word of God, listen, this is not merely a matter of semantics. This is not merely a matter of the words that we use or don't use, or we agree on this. Listen, this is the word of God, and we're dealing with people's souls. If you start off one degree off, By the time you get to the gospel and someone's soul, you have missed heaven. You missed heaven. So we have got to be faithful to the word of God. One degree in the beginning asked before, if you were to take a glass of water and you knew that that eight ounce glass of water had one drop of arsenic in it, would you drink it? Absolutely not. And yet we compromise with the word of God. When the word of God says repent and believe in the gospel, and you come along and say, merely say this prayer and ask Jesus into your heart. Listen, we're not talking about semantics. We're talking about heteron euangelion, another gospel. When the Bible says that all of those who are in Christ Jesus are no longer slaves to sin, they've become slaves to righteousness and they live heart holy lives, radically different lives than they lived before. They are a new creation. And then someone comes along and they introduce the idea that a genuine Christian can just live in their sin. We're not talking about semantics. We're not talking about mere things that we can agree to disagree on. We are talking about heteron, you on Galley on heteron to the Ascalia. We're talking about something different, something corrupt, something perverted, something that has changed from the word of God. We're to use God's words and we're to use God's dictionary in defining them. This is not a matter of speculation. It's not a matter of semantics. This is serious business. And it's serious business because people's souls are at stake. Your soul is at stake. We can't lose our salvation. But now he that endures to the end will be saved. If you are in Christ, then Christ will preserve you to the end. But if you fall away, it proves that you were never saved to begin with. And that falling away is happening here at Ephesus. We see in Ephesus the apostasy of those that claim the name of Christ. And it's happening because of this divergent teaching. That's the first warning. Beware of divergent doctrines. How do you protect yourself from this? How are we as a church to protect ourselves from this? First item, first way to protect yourself is you have to be true. We saw the description of Timothy in verse two, a true son in faith, a true son, genuinely converted. When you're genuinely converted, you may fall. You're going to stumble. You may find yourself in error. The Lord will preserve you. The Lord will protect you. You need to be in the faith. You need to be genuinely saved. But secondly, in order to be protected, you have to be in the Word of God. You have to be submersed in the Word of God. You need to understand the truth so that any assault of the wicked one, no matter how subtle, you're simply not going to fall for it. Like he can walk through the door and say what he wills, I am in the word of God and I'm going to hold fast to the word of God. How can you say that you'll do that if you don't know the word of God? We were witnessing to a guy the other night and having a conversation and couldn't point in scripture to how he was saved. Couldn't point in scripture to how someone should be saved from the Bible. How can you have any Assurance that you're saved to begin with. If you can't point to scripture and say how you got there, you can't point to the word of God to say how someone is. Listen, it's the word of God. You have to be submersed in the word of God. You have to know the word of God. Heard it said that counterfeiters, when someone wants to be an expert at identifying counterfeits, like a dollar bills, $20 bills, they study the original and they study the original so carefully that they know every detail about that original. They don't have to study the myriad ways that counterfeits are made. They just have to have a really clear idea of what that original looks like. Any counterfeit that comes along doesn't match up. Study the word of God and study the word of God so thoroughly, so completely, so fervently, so zealously that any counterfeit that comes along, you're simply not going to fall for it. Yeah, that's different. No, that's not according to the word of God. And I'm going to reject it out of hand. And with Timothy, I'm going to charge you to stop teaching that nonsense. We have to abide by the word of God. But thirdly, you have to be in a good church, in a Bible believing, Bible teaching, Bible preaching, faithfully obeying the Bible church, a holy living church. The church, as Paul has said to Timothy, is the church of the living God, which is the pillar and ground of the truth. It's the pillar and ground of the truth. The church is responsible to protect and to guard that which has been entrusted to it. And we must protect and guard against these foul fruits of divergent doctrines. At the heart of all this is the gospel. In the same sense, with that degree of separation there, in the same sense, if you're one degree off on the gospel, everything is corrupt. Everything is impacted. You can't count on anything. If you walk into a church and you hear some perversion, some distortion, some corruption of the true gospel, you need to run. Because that's going to, like 11, it's going to influence everything in that church. It's going to influence discipleship. It's going to influence evangelism, or in most cases we see a lack of it. It's going to influence every doctrine that's being taught. It's going to influence their view of conversion. It's going to influence everything. You simply have to be in a good, solid Bible believing church. Well, I think this church over here is, and they're compromising with the word of God. They're compromising with the word of God and living it out. They're compromising with the word of God and obeying it. I simply cannot compromise. Compromise is where it begins. So beware of divergent doctrines. But I want you to see here in verse four, there's a second warning verse four. He charged them, they teach no other doctrine. Then he says, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification, which is in faith. So here is the second warning in verse four, not to give heed to these endless genealogies, these myths and fables. In other words, beware of profitless pursuits. Beware of profitless pursuits. Here, this is the second issue that Timothy is to put an end to. The next thing that he's going to forbid these false teachers from doing. And it begins in verse four, nor give heed. That word there, nor give heed, literally means don't devote yourself to this. Don't. For lack of a better word, it's don't addict yourself to it. Don't turn yourself over to it. Don't turn your mind to it. They have become devoted to these things, addicted to them, if you will. It's not in verse three that simply their teaching is wrong. Now, Timothy has got to charge them about their lifestyle, about their conduct, about their behavior. They have become, with their behavior, with their life, devoted to these fables, these endless genealogies. Here it's sinful behavior, sinful conduct. In chapter 4, Paul tells Timothy to be devoted by giving attention to reading, to exhortation, and to doctrine. That's what we're to be devoted to. In the Word of God, it says we're to be devoted to reading scripture, to exhorting one another, exhorting ourselves from the word of God, and to doctrine. And here, they're giving heed. They're being devoted to fables and genealogies. Now, what are these? What are fables and endless genealogies? To begin, fables are myths. They're legends. They're false stories that only gullible people would believe. And here we've got gullible people in Ephesus believing these fables because they're being pulled away by these false teachers. In the Greek, it's muthos. That word is offset often in Greek against the word logos for word, God's word. The two are at odds. They're in opposition to one another. In other words, a myth or a fable is the opposite of the truth of God's word. This myth, this fable on shifting sands of lies, set apart, set opposed to God's granite slab of his word that cannot be moved, cannot be changed, cannot be compromised with. Here, they're devoted to these fables. There's a place where this is illustrated good. We won't turn there for lack of time, but I'll read this to you. It's in 2 Peter 1, verse 16. Here's what Peter said. Peter said, we did not follow cunningly devised fables. when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. So first Peter says, listen, we're not following fables. We're not following myths. We're following Christ. And in verse 19, he says this. We have the prophetic word, Lagos there, confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place. Interesting there, that heed is devote yourself to. You're to become addicted. You're become devoted to, solely focused on God's word. as a light that shines in a dark place. Fables, myths offset and opposed to God's word. Here they are devoted to, turned over to fables. But now you've got endless genealogies. It's interesting here, the word endless tied to genealogies means that it It's going on ad nauseum in the church. There's so many, this is all they're talking about. It's like constant stories, constant things about genealogies, right? And that word, which that follows it is plural present tense. It means ongoing. This was an ongoing present tense reality at the church in Ephesus that they're all tied up and all devoted to endless genealogies, endless myths, endless divergent doctrines. Now the genealogies here, it was interesting. There was a practice at that time. that it was a rabbinic practice where priests would take the Old Testament genealogies and make up stories, allegorize stories about obscure names in those genealogies that made them appear to be more spiritual. I'm going to come over here to this genealogy and you got these names, like the names that you see in the Book of Chronicles, all these names listed. We don't know anything about that guy right there, and so I'm going to make something up. I'm going to tell a fable or a story about this guy and his genealogy, and people were following this stuff. It was called allegorizing the text. Now, that doesn't only exclude the genealogies. Throughout church history, there have been those that will allegorize texts for a spiritual meaning that is deeper, that are hidden from the true meaning of Scripture. We believe here, the Bible, For starters, we believe the Bible, amen. With the Bible, we take the literal, grammatical, historical interpretation of scripture. If scripture says it, well, it's pretty clear we can believe it and we can follow it. But there are those that want to search for hidden meanings behind the text or allegorize or spiritualize meanings behind names in these genealogies, behind what scripture clearly says. And that's what these guys were doing. They were endless about it. They were spouting off about Endless genealogies, endless stories, and made them look more spiritual. And what was their motivation for doing that? Why? Why? Why devote yourself to that kind of thing? It's just as Paul said in Acts 20, they were wanting to pull away, lead away disciples after themselves. Follow me. I have some hidden truth. Follow me. I'm the one that knows what's going on here. They desired to be teachers of the law. They desired to make a reputation for themselves. They desired to have followers. It's similar to Simon Magus in Acts 8. And it's interesting, the word devoted to, it's the same word there. People were devoted to Simon Magus, who did lying signs and wonders. Here, they're devoted to these false teachers who are teaching myths. and endless genealogies and feudal speculations. It's the same kind of thing. Here, they're devoted to profitless pursuits. This is even worse than profitless. It amounts to nothing. There's absolutely no value whatsoever in going through this nonsense, and they're completely devoted to it. But it's worse than profitless because it's sending people to hell, because it's destroying their faith, because it's taking people away from serving and learning from and being with the one true and living God. And it's pointing them over here to something empty and hollow and shallow and perverse and corrupt. It's worse than simply a profitless. And it has made them completely unfruit-bearing. and were to be fruit-bearing for Christ. I was witnessing to a guy one time, giving an example of this. This is going on today, right? Endless genealogies, one former fashion, myths and fables, one former fashion. I was witnessing to a guy one time, and he was in his house, didn't go to church, claimed to be a Christian, didn't go to church, didn't know the gospel, hadn't been around Christians ever, you know, and he's sitting in his home, blogging and writing and studying and researching about the time that Christ would come back. You're trying to pinpoint the time. And he's looking at the news, and he's got all these news reports. Here's what's going on in the news. Here's what's going on in Israel. Here's what's going on in the Middle East and how all this ties in. Here's the stellar maps of the stars, and the stars are all going to come into alignment. And here's the Mayan calendar and how that works with it, right? Endless fables, endless myths, endless genealogies. And he's going to spend his life on that track and go straight to hell. It's profitless. We've got to turn to Christ. We have to follow Christ. What, for you, is a profitless pursuit that stands between you and serving Christ? Right? Make the application to your life. Are you involved in some profitless pursuit that steers you away from ministering to the Lord? As some of you, before I was converted, before the Lord saved me, I was a workaholic. Work, work, work, work. Work was my idol. Is work your idol? Do you devote, devote, become addicted to, turn yourself completely to work? And is that keeping you from serving Christ? Now, a Christian will work heartily on the job with an excellent attitude as unto the Lord. That's a great testimony of God's grace to him. Great testimony of being a Christian. But when you turn that work into an idol and it winds up being a profitless pursuit that leads you away from Christ, then you've got to reject that thing. And you've got to repent and have a right attitude about that. What about family? The Lord commands you men to sacrificially love your wife, for you ladies to love your husband, to submit to him, to be good husbands and wives, mothers and dads to your kids. We're commanded from the Lord to do that. But if you've turned that into an idol such that it distracts you from serving the Lord, listen, those things are not to be pitted against each other. Those two things, it's not serving the Lord that causes neglect of your family. It's sin and neglect that causes neglect of your family. The Lord's not going to do that. You can serve the Lord. You need to do both. What things in your life are profitless pursuits that are keeping you from Christ? Here it's the same thing. What is your fable? What is your endless genealogy that is keeping you from following him? That's possibly idolatrous. You've got to repent of those things. So here now we've got divergent doctrines. We're looking at myths, endless genealogies. We're starting to form a picture now in Ephesus of what this heresy is, what this difficulty is that Timothy is going to stand against. But it's still a little vague, right? It just seems like a mixed bag of things. What exactly is this heresy? Now, I believe that in Scripture, if you look at this letter to Ephesus through Paul to Timothy in that day and age, in the first century, they knew exactly what these heresies were. They were in it. They were living it. So when he mentioned, they know exactly what that is. But now you pass forward to us today, there's application to us today. All scripture is given of God for our admonition, for our edification. And so we look at this passage of scripture and we make application for ourselves. There are some things in scripture which are, I think, purposefully or intentionally somewhat vague so that we make proper application for ourselves today. Here you can take. the total picture of what Paul is painting to Timothy here in this letter and get an idea of what the heresy was. We have our own heresy to contend with. Here, we know that the heresy involved a Jewish influence. Because these desired to be teachers of the law. They were anti-Gentile. We'll see that in Chapter 2. They began to become ascetics, hating the body, hating the flesh, those kinds of things. We'll talk about that more. They speculated over the law and they speculated over Old Testament genealogies. So we know that there was a Jewish influence here, but now it wasn't a mainstream Judaism because they weren't saying you got to do these works. You have to keep the dietary laws. You have to be circumcised. You have to obey the law in order to be saved. It wasn't like the heresy that was going on in the churches at Galatia. This is a little bit different. They based themselves or devoted themselves to these allegories, this special knowledge behind the clear teaching of Scripture that they thought they were adhering themselves to. Although they were called teachers of the law, Paul says that they were ignorant of the law. Now, that certainly wouldn't have been said of a mainstream Jew at the time. They would have been teachers of the law. They would have known the law. Here, these were ignorant of the law. Here, it's affecting the gospel. In verse 5, they were said to have been turned away from the faith. In 2 Timothy 3, they had people there that were denying the bodily resurrection. Now, what all this points to is obviously gross error, gross error. But it also points to a subtle or beginning stage of what would come to be known in the second century as Gnosticism, right? This hidden knowledge behind the truth of Scripture that you have to know in order to be saved. A part of Gnosticism was a hatred of all matter. Therefore, the flesh was bad, the body was bad, and so you need to abstain from foods. They forbid you to be married, and we see Paul addressing that here in 1 Timothy. So all of this is the first century. The reason that I bring that up is to help you with this, to avoid this error. Gnosticism was a heresy that didn't become fully formed until the second century. If we say here, if there are those that will say that Gnosticism was evident here in Ephesus, when Paul was writing this letter to Timothy, and that Gnosticism was a second century reality, what does that say about Paul's authorship of Timothy? Could he have written it? No, Paul's in the first century, Gnosticism in the second century. All right, but we don't have to view it as a full-blown Gnosticism. Listen, another endless speculation, another divergence from true doctrine, another myth, if you will, is that Paul didn't write 1 Timothy, is that this book doesn't have the authors that are ascribed to each of these letters. Listen, if you approach the Bible, and many do today, like a liberal postmodern German higher critic, then you come to scripture under the assumption that what it says is wrong. What it says is not true. Paul. Okay, well, it can't be Paul. An apostle. Well, how do we know he's an apostle? I got to figure it out. Of Jesus Christ. Well, Jesus Christ, I mean, really, is he just an example? Right? That's the way a liberal postmodern German higher critic would read scripture. This Bible, this word of God is penned by the Holy Spirit, written by the Holy Spirit through Paul. These are the words of Christ written here. So when you come to scripture, this is another endless fable or endless speculation. To come to scripture, scripture, you base on the assumption that it is true. And scripture proves itself to be true. So this is not a fully formed second century Gnosticism here. These are, if you will, free-floating. They haven't coalesced yet. It's just a mixed bag of heresy that Timothy is going to have to stand against. That's what we're facing. That's what he needs to deal with here. We can see that in several statements that are formed. In 1 Timothy 1.19, this is causing the faith of some to be shipwrecked, which means that this is against or in place of the gospel. In chapter 4, verse 1, their teaching is called the doctrine of demons. In chapter 5, verse 15, they turn aside. To turn aside to their teaching is to turn aside to Satan. Just something against biblical doctrine, against the gospel. In 2 Timothy 3, 7, they are always learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth. There's that hidden knowledge there. In 2 Timothy 3, 8, the next verse, this teaching that they're teaching is opposed to the truth. In Titus 1, verse 14, they are teaching the commandments of men. and all as a result of Satan's activity in the church. In chapter one, verse 18, we see the importance of Paul's charge here to Timothy, that he has to fight against it. That's what you need to know. That's what we need to know about this heresy here. It's simply against the gospel, against sound doctrine. Now it sounds out of control. When we start looking through this book and there's teaching on the roles of women, and there's teaching on leaders, and there's teaching on against asceticism, and there's teaching against these heresies, it looks a little chaotic. There's just a lot going on. Mind you, this is going on in the church, in the church at Ephesus. It's a lot going on. But listen, the point to take away from part of this is that it starts somewhere. It starts with a small compromise, a subtle departure. Listen, if we as a church think to ourselves, you know what? This church discipline thing is really difficult. It's hard to go through that, right? And we know it's a command of God, but we want to be more loving than God. And so we're just going to stop doing it. Easy to do that, right? Churches do it all over the place. How many churches do you know that faithfully practice church discipline? This one does. That happens almost nowhere. It's a compromise. It starts somewhere. Remember the ECT document, Evangelicals and Catholics together. With a stroke of the pen, they made 1.6 billion Catholics Christians. It's a compromise. 1.6 Catholics are not Christians. They don't believe the gospel and place their faith in Christ. It's compromise, these subtle compromises. It starts somewhere. And the result is here that it leads to sinful behavior, leads to a sinful lifestyle. That's why Paul says, take heed to yourself and to your doctrine. This produces worse than that which is simply profitless. This produces something that destroys, that seeks to destroy. It begins small, and so you have to squash it at the beginning. And we have to stand and contend earnestly for the faith. Next, in verse 4 here, there's the third warning. It says, "'Nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith.'" The third warning here is beware of chasing the wind. We'll look at this more next week. This word, which cause disputes, literally means it's fruitless, meaningless, purposeless speculation. It just causes a diligent, literally, a diligent seeking for that which is lost. It's a diligent, you're searching around. It's like it's the same word used in Hebrews 12 of Esau, who sought repentance diligently with tears and couldn't find it, found no place for it. Same word there just produces godlessness, produces an endless searching. They were always searching for knowledge and could never come to a knowledge of the truth. That's what he's talking about here. There's so many warnings here in this passage, and we'll dive in more and finish up this section from 3 to 7 next week. But this is a charge in the same way that Paul is charging Timothy, listen, beware of these things. And Paul is doing that for the purpose that we might know how we ought to conduct ourselves in the church of God. We need to understand as a family, beloved, that we are in a spiritual war. that we have to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Because in doing that, taking heed to ourselves and to our doctrine, you ensure that you, by your faithfulness to Christ and through his grace and mercy to you, can endure to the end and be saved. but also we protect that doctrine so that others can be saved, so they can come to faith in Christ and escape the wrath of God. It's so important. We have to guard ourselves against compromise. Let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord, thank you, God, for your word. Lord, thank you that Is this a loving, gracious, merciful, heavenly Father who, when we go for a piece of bread, doesn't turn and give us a stone, or that you provide warnings? Think of how, you know, a parent in a neighborhood would want to warn other parents about a pedophile who lived in the neighborhood, or a criminal who was lurking through the neighborhood, or you as a loving, gracious, heavenly father, through your word, by your spirit, warn us of these errors. God, I pray that we would have open ears to hear, open minds to understand, open hearts to accept, believe, and follow God. your instruction that we should charge some, they shouldn't teach these divergent doctrines, and that we wouldn't, Lord, that we be protected by you, Lord, protected from pursuing just fables and endless genealogies, endless vain wranglings, speculations. God, please protect us. Command what you will, Lord. We want to follow you. but Lord, enable what you command. And Lord, save souls for your glory. Lord, help this church, Lord, to be a church that holds steadfast to your doctrine, to your gospel. Lord, and then, Lord, bless this church and the teaching of this church with the fruit of salvations, Lord, souls being saved for your glory, for your namesake, Lord, for your everlasting worship. And we love you and praise you, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.