Please would you take your copies of God’s Word in your hands and turn in them with me to 1 Timothy chapter 6. We are working our way through 1 Timothy here on Sunday mornings. Today we come to chapter 6, verses 3 through 10, which if you are using one of our church Bibles you will find on page 993. You may remember that Paul is writing to Timothy, a young pastor, who has been sent to the city of Ephesus to help bring reformation and renewal to the church. And Paul is giving Timothy a playbook on how he should serve as a pastor and how we all should live in the household of God, the church of Jesus Christ.
In the previous section of the letter that we considered a couple of weeks ago, Paul offered counsel on how the church should honor various groups within the fellowship. And he concluded his instructions at the end of chapter 6 verse 2 by saying, “Teach and urge these things. So these are to be your pastoral and teaching priorities for the Ephesian church, Timothy.” But what about those who refuse to teach these things? Paul introduces the issue of false teachers back in chapter 1, you may recall. He touched on it again in the first five verses of chapter 4. But he comes back to it now here to give more sustained attention to the problem. Those who refuse to teach ‘these things” but rather teach false doctrine.
Back in Acts chapter 20, not long after the church in Ephesus had been planted, Paul told the elders of Ephesus that “after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them; therefore, be alert. Fierce wolves will come into the church from outside and much more so bring,” he said, “from among the members of the presbytery at Ephesus itself, from among the body of the elders serving the churches, some will arise who will wander from the truth and begin to teach twisted things.” That was Paul’s warning, and now, years later, Paul writes to his successor as the leading pastor at Ephesus, young Timothy, and his predictions have come to pass. There are indeed false teachers, and now Timothy has to deal with them.
The story of the church at Ephesus ought to serve as a solemn warning to all of us here that even faithful churches, with a long history of the very best Bible teaching, are not invulnerable to deception. And our text today aims to equip us to identify and repudiate false teaching wherever and whenever we find it. We’re going to look at these verses under four headings. First, before we think about Paul’s expose of false teaching, I want you to notice there is an underlying assumption in verse 3 about the practicality of the truth. The practicality of the truth. That’s the first thing. Then, in verses 3 through 5, there’s what we might call the pathology of error. Paul shows us how it advances and spreads and what it looks like and how we can identify it. So the practicality of the truth. The pathology of error. Then thirdly, verses 6 through 8, in contrast to the destructive lies of false teaching, Paul reminds us of the profitability of contentment. Godliness with contentment is great gain. So the practicality of the truth. The pathology of error. The profitability of contentment. And then finally, verses 9 and 10, there’s a concluding warning about the peril of greed. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.
The practicality of the truth, the pathology of error, the profitability of contentment, and the peril of greed. That’s where we’re going. Before we look at each of those things, let’s bow our heads and pray and ask for the Lord’s help. Let us all pray.
Lord our God, as we bow now before You with Your Word spread open in our hands, our hearts laid bare before Your gaze, we ask that You would take the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, and bring it to bear upon our hearts and consciences and lives, to wound and to heal, for Your honor and glory. In Jesus’ name, amen.
First Timothy chapter 6 at the third verse. This is the Word of God:
“If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”
Amen.
The New York Times has a story explaining why Amtrak’s system serving the northeast keeps breaking down. “Long stretches of that system are unchanged from when the defunct Pennsylvania Railroad first electrified it a century ago. The antiquated system has forced Amtrak to cannibalize old substations for parts and or have them custom made, slowing down repairs.” One authority compares the New York to Washington line to a model T-Ford; the whole thing is barely fit for purpose. Sometimes we can think of Christian doctrine like the New York to Washington line with an infrastructure from the 1930s – out of date; no longer fit for purpose; unable to meet the demands of life in the modern world. Of course if we think like that, then the shiny innovations of what Paul will show us is really false teaching, well they will become very difficult indeed to resist.
And so before we get into the pathology of false teaching itself, I want you to notice that Paul assumes the practicality of Biblical truth first of all. Look with me please at verses 2 and 3 of chapter 6. “Teach and urge these things. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up,” and so on. Paul warns Timothy against anyone who teaches a different doctrine, and the true doctrine from which we are not to depart, he describes, you’ll notice, as “the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Do you see that phrase in verse 3? The expression “sound words” uses a Greek term from which we get our English word, “hygiene.” These are healthy words, words of wellness; wholesome words, health imparting words. True Christian doctrine imparts spiritual wellbeing to those who embrace it from the heart.
And what’s more, he says they are, the sound words, the health giving words “of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He doesn’t mean only those words quoted directly from the lips of Jesus. Paul himself has quoted the words of Jesus back in chapter 5 verse 18. No, Paul means that all the words of the Bible, properly understood, are actually the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, the living, risen Christ, who continues by His Word and Spirit to speak to His Church. Every part of this book speaks with the voice of Jesus Christ. Whenever it is read and faithfully expounded, King Jesus is speaking to His Church, speaking to you. That’s why Christian doctrine is sound, wholesome, health imparting. That’s why it gives spiritual wellbeing. The risen Christ speaks it to our hearts in the power and blessing of His Spirit. How could it ever be outdated like an old train track, no longer fit for purpose? “When He speaks and listening to His voice, new life the dead receive. The mournful, broken hearts rejoice; the humble poor believe.”
And what’s more, Christian doctrine, notice again in verse 3, is also “the teaching that accords with godliness.” There is a direct, causal connection between how you live and what you believe. Truth and error have consequences. True doctrine accords with godliness. Indifference to knowing and loving all the doctrine of the Bible is causally related to our comparative inability to put our sin away and live cheerfully for Jesus Christ in the daily details of our lives. Sound doctrine is not abstract and philosophical and heady and abstruse. It accords with godliness. All theology is practical theology. The minute we doubt that, we become ripe for the deceptions of error and we undermine the foundation of practical, Christian holiness. The practicality of the truth. You ought to love doctrine if you want to be like Jesus. The practicality of the truth.
Now look again at verses 3 through 5 and notice Paul is outlining for Timothy the pathology of error. During the COVID pandemic, especially during those early days when nobody really knew much about the virus, we all became avid students of the symptoms and the mutations and the pathology of the disease, didn’t we? We all wanted to be careful. We didn’t want to put ourselves or our loved ones at any risk, and so we all became amateur pathologists. Paul is saying to Timothy he needs to be a spiritual pathologist and understand well the symptoms and the spread of the disease of false teaching if he himself is to be safe and he is to keep his people safe from its dangers.
Now we’ve just seen in verse 3 the most basic fact about false teaching is that it affirms what is wrong and denies what is true. They teach a different doctrine. They do not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now just to be clear, Paul isn’t here going after honest mistakes made by earnest Christians with teachable hearts. They’re not his target. Those are mistakes usually, easily corrected. Paul is going after people who dogmatically assert lies and adamantly deny truth. Such people, he says in verse 4, are “puffed up with conceit.” The word he uses for “conceit” there originally carried the idea of rising smoke. It’s a lovely word picture. Today we might talk about someone “blowing smoke” or “being full of hot air.” That’s close to the idea here. It is the epitome of conceit and pride, arrogance, to think that you know better than the Word of God. It may not look like it, but it is a species of arrogance whenever we find ourselves saying, “Yes, I know what the Bible says, but…” You do not know better than God. Puffed up.
But look again at verse 4. Not only are these false teachers conceited, you have to be arrogant to say, “Yes, the Bible says, but I know better.” Not only are they conceited, Paul says they “understand nothing.” In other words, the simplest, unlettered believer who meekly submits to the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, understands more about the world as it really is than the most sophisticated PhD scholar who is so smart, at least in his own eyes, that he can no longer take the Scriptures at face value. Arrogance. Ignorance.
There’s a third marker that we need to be on the lookout for. Look again at verse 4. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and quarrels about words. So one marker of a false teacher is a pathological attraction to drama, to controversy. They’re not contending, understand, they’re not contending reluctantly, driving by necessity for the great cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith. No, these people are contending about words. It’s sophistry, you understand. It’s all talk. It’s not substance. They go to war in defense of their own homespun theories, but they’re bored by the old paths of fundamental Christian truth. They’re always looking for a wedge issue, a newfangled idea, a hottake. And they love nothing more than having a good argument about it. Watch out for quarrelsome, warrior theologians who just can’t resist provoking an internet fight. It’s just not godly.
And it won’t surprise anyone to discover that these guys who stir up controversy in order to make a name for themselves tend to attract other people just like themselves. The result of all this controversy, verse 5, is envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction – notice – “among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.” The squabbling theobros attract people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth. And they all get together and have a big, ugly fight. It’s toxic, divisive, and it produces only evil. Don’t get sucked into it. Don’t get sucked into it.
And back of all that, driving this quest to be someone and make a name and build a platform with some newfangled idea, back of all of that, Paul says, lies the sin of greed. Look at the end of verse 5. They do all this imagining that godliness is a means of gain. They think Jesus is their ticket to the big time. They think the church is their platform for personal promotion. They think the Gospel is a mechanism for material gain. You see that very easily, don’t you, in the prosperity gospel preachers on television who prey on the generosity of the poor and the desperate in order to line their own pockets. But you can see it too in otherwise orthodox pastors who are always trying to climb the ecclesiastical ladder, never able to settle down anywhere for more than a year or two, constantly looking for the next bigger pulpit where they can have more notoriety, greater and greater influence. They want to be rockstars, not shepherds. Godliness is not a means of material gain. The ministry is not a path to prosperity for people with no other marketable skills. The practicality of the truth. The pathology of error.
Then thirdly, notice the profitability of contentment. The profitability of contentment. Paul has just warned us against those who think that godliness is a means of gain. But now look at verse 6. “Godliness with contentment” – excuse me – “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” Godliness isn’t a show that we put on in an effort to impress others, build our brand, make a quick buck. Godliness is not a means to worldly profit, but godliness itself, when it is wedded to contentment, is great gain. Paul wants Timothy to see, he wants us to see the fundamental difference in mindset here and its radically different outcomes in our lives. One mindset is the result of false teaching; the other is the fruit of sound doctrine. The first thinks godliness, living like a Christian, is ultimately for our own benefit in this life. It’s about getting your best life now. It thinks godliness is a means of gain. But the other mindset thinks godliness is all the gain we need. It finds satisfaction in pleasing God, orienting life toward God, resting in the provision of God, adoring and delighting in God.
Are you a Christian because you think it eases your passage through a bumpy world? Is Christianity a crutch or even a scam to you, a game that you are playing to get something else, something more basic that you really want? Or is godliness itself the prize, a life that honors God? The first mindset can never be satisfied. It’s always looking for more, isn’t it, and it never has enough. Ecclesiastes 5:10, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money; nor he who loves wealth with his income. This also is vanity. When goods increase, they increase who eat them.” John D. Rockefeller once said, “I have made many millions, but they have brought me no happiness.” He added, “The poorest man I know is the man who has nothing but money.” Despite his wealth, Henry Ford once confessed, “I was happier doing mechanics work.” What a hollow life these men with money lived. Are you living a hollow life, spinning your wheels in the pursuit of material gain, never satisfied?
There is a better way, you know. The other mindset that Paul describes has discovered what the great Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs famously called “the rare jewel of Christian contentment.” Burroughs defined contentment as, “that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.” That’s a lovely definition of contentment, isn’t it? Let me read it again. “A sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.” What a blessing such a life would be. Don’t you want it? Don’t you want it? Happy under the hand of God, content to let Him order your days, trusting Him with tomorrow, at peace with today? And you get it, Paul says, from the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and from the teaching that accords with godliness.
How are you doing? How are you doing finding godliness with contentment? If you struggle with a discontented heart, can I suggest the prayer of Agur in Proverbs 30, verses 7 through 9. Maybe take that and make it your own. Proverbs 30, 7 through 9. “Two things I ask of you, deny them not to me before I die. Remove far from me falsehood and lying” – false teaching – “give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny You and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.” “Give me just enough that I might be content and rest in Your kind provision, neither grumbling against You nor pretending that I don’t need You. Give me what I need and no more.” That’s what Paul is calling us to here, isn’t it? After all, he says in verse 7, we brought nothing into the world and we can’t take anything out of the world. What is it they say? There’s a reason you never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul. Your stuff isn’t coming with you, and it’s certainly not worth living for. It won’t last. It won’t last. But godliness is the kind of gain that lasts forever. And so verse 8, “If we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.”
And remember, when Paul says that to us, it’s not just talk. He has walked the walk himself, hasn’t he? Listen to what he says to the Philippians in Philippians 4:11. “I have learned,” he says, “in whatever situation I am, to be content. I know how to be brought low and how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” “I live in the hand of my great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He’s got me. He’s got me. And so I’ve learned to leave it to Him, to be content in His care.” That’s what Paul is saying.
And just in case you think Paul was a special case, an unusual fellow, and this kind of contentment isn’t really possible or the likes of you or me, he goes on immediately in Philippians chapter 4 to say in verse 19, “My God will supply every need of yours, according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” If you trust in Jesus Christ today, He’s got you too. He’s got you too. Don’t let your head be turned by the deceptive promises of prosperity peddled by the false teachers. The sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness leads to the rare jewel of Christian contentment. Godliness with contentment is great gain. He’s got you, believer in Jesus. You can really rest in that.
The practicality of the truth. The pathology of error. The profitability of contentment. And finally, notice what Paul says about the peril of greed. The peril of greed. If we do turn from the path of contentment, Paul wants us to know what we’re letting ourselves in for. Look at verses 9 and 10. “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” The desire to be rich, he says, is like stepping on a bear trap in the woods that snaps shut on your shins. Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare. It slams shut upon you. He says it’s like falling off a cliff onto the jagged rocks below. Those who desire to be rich fall into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. Let me plead with you to listen to the warning of the Word of God. When the desire for riches rules your heart, your life is set on a collision course with ruin and destruction because, verse 10, “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
The love of money is the original, spiritual cancer site that metastasises throughout the soul in all sorts of destructive patterns and habits of mind and life and it will ruin you. And you can almost hear the sorrow in Paul’s voice, can’t you, when he concludes, tragically, “It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” The pursuit of money is a wrong turn off the safe path. The craving for riches is a self inflicted wound. What a tragedy! What needless sorrow and pain! You don’t need to take that road. You don’t. Listen to the sound words of the Lord Jesus Christ. Mark 8:36, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and to forfeit his soul?”
Maybe today you are standing at a crossroads. You’ve been heading down the path of the pursuit of this world’s prosperity, living for riches – either the riches you’ve had and you’re trying to hold onto and accumulate more of, or the riches you don’t have and long for and are obsessed by. Maybe you’ve been using religion as part of the package – Jesus has been an accessory to your nice life. Maybe you’ve actually been hoping if you pay your religious dues you can have the life you’ve always dreamed of. The warning of this passage today is clear, isn’t it? You might manage to get more money than you ever imagined, but if you set your heart on it, it will pierce you through with many pangs in the end. If you make money your god, it will deceive you with countless, unfulfilled promises and destroy your soul along the way.
You cannot be content with money, no matter how much of it you make, because you were made for something more. The Scriptures are calling us to the path of contentment which is the path of godliness. And let me be clear, that starts, it starts today. You can get back onto that path today with repentance. Repentance. You need to tear the idol of money and ease and luxury and earthly gain from the throne of your heart and set apart Christ as Lord there. You need to cry to Him for pardon. He is true treasure! He Himself. The reason that godliness with contentment is great gain is because it rests in the greatest of all treasure – you have Jesus, and He’s got you. Your heart was made to find contentment only in Him. That’s why nothing else can ever, will ever satisfy. Won’t you ask Him today for mercy? For forgiveness? Your greed is wicked, but your Savior is full of mercy and grace. He can give you the rare jewel of Christian contentment, but you have to go to the nail-pierced hands to get it. Would you go to Him? He is the treasure you need.
Let’s pray together.
Our God and Father, as we bow before You, we confess, we confess the idol of greed and money. We confess how easy it is in this world, in this particular cultural moment to live for the accumulation of stuff, for comfort and ease. O Lord, deliver us. Deliver us from the catastrophe of being ensnared by it, pierced through by it. Instead, have mercy. Show us again that Christ is the pearl of great price and the great treasure. And grant that as we take hold of Him now by faith, turning from our greed and our sinful selfishness, as we take hold of Him, may we find the rare jewel of Christian contentment at last. For Jesus’ sake, amen.