We have been slowly making our way through 1 Timothy on Sunday mornings here at First Presbyterian Church. If you’ve been with us, you may recall that at the end of 1 Timothy chapter 3, Paul has grounded his instructions for life in the church, the church he calls “the household of God,” he’s grounded those instructions on what he’s called “the mystery of godliness,” which he summarizes by use of what appears to be a quotation drawn from a credal text, likely in use in the church at Ephesus that celebrates the life, death and resurrection and the implications of the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the mystery of godliness. Godliness flows from Him – His person and His work. But at the beginning of chapter 4, which is our focus this morning, the apostle Paul reminds Timothy that he is to preach Christ, “the mystery of godliness,” in a context in which it is being directly challenged and undermined and opposed.
And like Timothy long ago, we need to understand the nature of that challenge and that opposition if we are to navigate it safely for ourselves as well. We live at a time and in a context where, at least in some circles, negative critique is frowned upon. Don’t we? We must always, “stay positive,” we are told. But Paul does not agree. If we are to avoid error, we need to know what it is. If we are to love the truth, then we need to see how destructive the lie can be. If we are going to love living in the light, we need help seeing how deadly a life lived in the dark really is. And so that’s the purpose of our passage this morning – 1 Timothy chapter 4, verses 1 through 5.
If you would look at it with me for a moment, let me quickly highlight five things that I want us to consider together. First of all, Paul highlights the danger we must heed in the first part of verse 1. Then secondly, in the second half of verse 1, the departure we must avoid. Thirdly, verse 2, the deceivers we must note. Fourthly, the doctrines we must reject, in the first part of verse 3. And then finally and more positively in verses 3 through 5, the duty we must perform. So those are our five headings – the danger we must heed, the departure we must avoid, the deceivers we must note, the doctrines we must reject, and the duty we must perform. Before we read the Scriptures together and consider each of those, let’s bow our heads and ask for the Lord to help us. Let us all pray.
Lord our God, Your Word is open in our hands now. We know that our hearts, our lives, are equally laid bare before Your gaze. We ask that by the power and mercy and grace of the Holy Spirit, You would give us light and understanding and grace to receive and rest on Christ and to believe all that Your Word would say. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.
First Timothy chapter 4 at the first verse. This is the Word of God:
“Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”
Amen.
Let’s think first of all about the danger we must heed. The danger we must heed. Paul has a warning for the Ephesian Christians about the terrible possibility of apostasy. Verse 1, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in the later times some will depart from the truth.” The danger of apostasy is a very solemn warning, isn’t it? “Some will depart from the faith.” There are two things here that make Paul’s warning particularly urgent. The first has to do with timing. Paul says this will take place, notice, “in the later times.” “In later times some will depart from the faith.” Now he doesn’t, he’s not referring to some distant point away on the horizon when this will happen, way off in the future in the closing, final years of human history. That would actually strip his warning of all its urgency, wouldn’t it? Two thousand years separate us from the Ephesians, and still none of us can know if we are living in the very last days of planet Earth, but I don’t think I’m risking much to say that if this warning was only talking about that time, the very last days of planet Earth, at the very close of history, then almost certainly it is not talking about our time.
But that reading of the text that sees the later times as referring to the close of history only, that reading almost completely misconstrues the teaching of the New Testament about the later times. For example, 1 John 2 verse 8, “Children, it is the last hour.” Already, at the time John wrote, it is “the last hour.” Likewise, 1 Peter 1:20, “Christ has appeared in these last times for the sake of you.” “In these last times; right now, in the days in which we are living, Jesus has come,” Peter says. Or Hebrews 1 verse 2, “In the past, at different times and in different ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, God has spoken to us by His Son.” So when is the last hour? When did the latter times, the later time, begin? When did the last days commence? They began when God sent His Son into the world to obey and bleed and die and rise and ascend to reign at the Father’s right hand. The Ephesians were already living in the later times, and so are we. These are the later times. This warning is not then for some future generation, do you see. It’s a warning for right now, today, which means that apostasy isn’t someone else’s problem. It is a danger that Paul wants for us to watch against in the days in which we are currently living.
The second note of urgency that sounds in this opening verse comes from the source of the warning. So the timing, now also the source. Look at verse 1 again. “The Spirit expressly says that in the later times some will depart from the faith.” This is not Paul’s forecast. He’s not saying to the Ephesians, “You know, on balance, better to be safe than sorry, in my judgment, I think you should probably be especially careful about this whole apostasy business.” No, Paul says to them the Spirit expressly says that this is not prudential advice, planning for the worst, hoping for the best. This is the revelation of God by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Some wonder if perhaps the words of Jesus in Matthew 24 are in Paul’s mind. Or maybe he is thinking about some of the many warnings against departing from the faith that you find littering the words of the Old Testament prophets. But whether Paul is talking about previous revelation now preserved in holy Scripture, or he has a new, direct word from the Lord on the subject at hand, it really doesn’t matter. The vital point is that the Spirit Himself says that apostasy is a present and abiding danger in the church of Jesus Christ.
And notice the language carefully. “The Spirit expressly says.” The word translated “expressly” means “explicitly” or “emphatically.” This is not a deduction that Paul has drawn from other truths found scattered here and there in the Word of God. This is an express, specific and emphatic revelation of God that none may safely ignore. “The Spirit expressly says that in the later times some will depart from the faith.”
And that ought to have an immediate and sobering effect upon us all. We do not believe that a true Christian can lose their salvation, but neither do we believe that our eternal security allows those who profess the truth faith to presume upon God’s grace and believe whatever they like and live however they please. A mere profession of faith alone is no guarantee of eternal security. Presumption is a soul-destroying error that we must be vigilant to avoid. Make every effort to make your calling and election sure. Apostasy is a very real and present danger. Be warned. There are hidden reefs all around, and you can make shipwreck of your faith if you run aground. Jesus is the only safe harbor. Never take Him for granted. Never presume upon His mercy. Turn to Him. Rest upon Him. Seek Him until you find Him. Study to become like Him. The danger we must heed.
Secondly, second half of verse 1, notice the departure we must avoid. “The Spirit expressly says that in the later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.” From what were the Ephesians being tempted to depart? Paul says, “some will depart from the faith.” “The faith” there refers to the system of doctrine taught in holy Scripture. It is the faith that is summarized for us at the end of chapter 3 by that great credal statement about Jesus’ life and ministry that Paul calls “the mystery of godliness.” “The faith” is the Gospel. It is the truth of God. And it has definite content. Paul is not concerned here that the subjective quality of faith in the hearts of the Ephesians might grow cold. That’s a legitimate concern, but it’s not his focus in this text. No, Paul is concerned that the object of faith, that in which we place our faith, the truth of God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, might be undermined or eclipsed or even replaced by a false gospel and a counterfeit message.
Brothers and sisters, Christianity does not consist merely in a subjective feeling of dependence or trust. It requires the embrace of a definite body of truth. To be a Christian one must do more than merely identify as one. We believe and we must believe in the virginal conception and birth, the perfect, sinless, obedient life, the atoning, substitutionary death, the victorious resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ as the only ground of our hope and confidence for acceptance before a holy God. That is the faith. But some, Paul warns, will depart from the faith. How many there are in our own day who claim the name “Christian,” who attend services in what calls itself a Christian church where there is no Gospel, where the light of faith, “the faith once for all delivered to the saints,” has been extinguished; it no longer shines. It’s even possible – this should be chilling to us – it’s possible to say all the right words and mean none of them. I trust that none of you are in that position where you are saying the right words but you mean none of them.
Kent Hughes and Bryan Chapell, in their commentary on this passage, retell the story of Benjamin Jowett, the Oxford classist and theologian – quote – “who abandoned orthodoxy while still a churchman. Jowett would recite The Apostles’ Creed in chapel by saying, ‘I,’ in a loud voice, and then he’s whisper, ‘used to,’ to himself, followed by, ‘believe,’ in a loud voice. ‘I – used to – believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord,” and so on. It’s the height of hypocrisy, isn’t it? Don’t play games. Please don’t play games with God. He sees your heart. And you might fool everyone else, but you can’t fool him.
And notice too the mechanism of this departure. Look at verse 1 again. “Some will depart from the faith” – how? What does it say? “By devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.” Now I don’t think Paul means that these people were involving themselves in the open practice of occult religion. That certainly is demonic, to be sure, but Paul here means something far more subtle and far more pernicious. He means that those who depart from the truth by embracing false teaching, they think they are embracing the deeper truths, the new insight, the higher life, and all the while they’ve been deceived. What they’ve really been doing is devoting themselves to demonic error and the deceptions of spiritual evil. If the mystery of godliness is the Lord Jesus Christ, if He is the source of godliness, faith in Him is the ground of all that pleases God in our lives, well then the mystery of ungodliness is the scheming imaginations of demonic power who seek to sow the seeds of error everywhere that they can gain a hearing. Doctrinal error isn’t harmless. False teaching is not a benign difference of opinion. It is a satanic strategy designed to turn people from the only way of salvation – by faith alone in the obedience and blood of Christ alone – to turn them away from Him. The danger we must heed. The departure we must avoid.
Thirdly, notice what Paul says about the deceivers that we must note. Back of the false teaching that is leading some astray in Ephesus is the malice of supernatural evil. But demonic powers, Paul now makes clear, use human agents to get their work done. Look at verse 2. “In the later times, some will depart from the faith.” And they do this, Paul says, by devoting themselves to demonic deception and false teaching, but they access that false teaching, verse 2, “through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared.” There are those in the church who are misled and sincerely deceived. There’s no cynicism in their mistake. They’ve simply come to honest but faulty conclusions about the faith they once embraced. These are the people Paul is talking about in verse 1. But all too often, they’ve been led into their abandonment of the Gospel by other people who know better. Paul calls them “insincere liars,” lying liars, hypocritical liars. It’s a stunning indictment. Paul is not pulling his punches. Not only are they telling people lies, but they don’t even believe the lies they are peddling. They are religious, snake oil sales men, charlatans, offering not the Gospel of full, free forgiveness by the blood of Christ, but a spiritual Ponzi-scheme, a get-rich-quick false gospel that allows them to fleece the unwary and the desperate.
One of the most influential theologians of the 20th century was the liberal Lutheran Paul Tillich who taught at Union Theological Seminary. He taught at Harvard; he taught at Chicago University. Tillich rejected the authority of Scripture, the possibility of the supernatural, the exclusivity of the Gospel, almost every fundamental of orthodox, Christian belief. He was lauded in his day as a genius of liberal, Protestant, theological innovation, and he taught generations of mainline Protestant clergy in America. But since Tillich’s death, biographers have exposed for all to see his multiple, extramarital affairs, his unrepentant love of the most vile pornography. His personal moral bankruptcy unmasks the hypocrisy and impotence of his theological vision. Paul describes him perfectly in verse 2, doesn’t he? He was among those “insincere liars whose consciences were seared.”
It happens all the time. And so Paul wants us to be vigilant, not just against false teaching but to make sure we take note of, we can identify false teachers whose deception and insincerity makes no apparent difference to them. Their consciences are seared, cauterized, utterly desensitized by the horror of their sin. But the lies that they peddle so glibly to others destroy the people of God when they gain purchase. The danger we must heed. The departure we must avoid. The deceivers we must note.
Then fourthly, verse 3, the doctrine we must reject. So what did the Ephesian heretics actually teach? Paul doesn’t give us a comprehensive analysis of their teaching, but verse 3 does tell us about their practice. They forbad marriage and they required abstinence from foods. They were peddling a form of aestheticism. Aestheticism is the idea that the path to true spirituality, to deeper intimacy with God, to real holiness lies in external acts of severe physical self-denial. In this case, they appear to have embraced the common dualism of the ancient Greco-Roman world that viewed the material world as evil, and therefore the needs and functions of the human body as polluting. The path to true spiritual growth requires the forceful suppression of those physical appetites and those bodily needs, therefore. So they forbad marriage. They denied the blessing of sexual union within marriage. They embraced dietary austerity. They put the body down. That was their approach.
And sadly, the apostolic denunciation here in our text notwithstanding, this temptation to aestheticism has persisted in segments of the church really across the ages ever since. The aesthetic turn led many of the early church fathers, many of the medieval theologians to argue that celibacy was a higher form of spirituality than marriage. The Roman Catholic Council of Trent in the 16th century denounced those who denied that virginity was superior to the married state, and monastic vows of poverty and celibacy and severe fasting were all held up as the spiritual idea. And to be sure, Protestants have not been immune to that temptation either. It’s often alleged that the Puritans were particularly prone to the danger of aestheticism. A classic example you might know is H.L. Mencken’s famous definition of Puritanism. Puritanism is, he said, “the haunting fear that someone somewhere might be happy.”
But in this case actually, popular misconceptions aside, I don’t think we can make the charges against Puritanism actually stick. The truth is, the Puritans had a remarkably positive, celebratory vision of marriage and sex and food and the basic goodness of the material world. All are the gifts of God, richly to be enjoyed. Commenting on the symbolism built into the manner of Eve’s creation as a wife for Adam, Matthew Henry, the great Bible commentator in the Puritan tradition, Matthew Henry remarked – quote – “The woman was made of a rib, out of the side of Adam, not made out of his head to rule over him, not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side, to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected and near his heart to be beloved.” Isn’t that beautiful? “Not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, near his heart to be beloved.” Equality, complementarity, protection, love – that is the lofty vision of Biblical marriage that the Protestant Reformation recovered for the church.
But the apostle Paul, in our text, is warning us about the seeds of super-spirituality and legalism that were being sown already in the Ephesian church in the first century; seeds that history shows have grown like weeds in every generation ever since. You see, aestheticism becomes plausible to the serious-minded, religious person whenever the centrality of the Gospel of free grace is put at a discount. When Christ is no longer the absolute center of our lives, when He ceases to be the mystery of godliness, the fountain of all spiritual life, the engine of all spiritual progress, when that happens something must take its place, His place in our hearts. Instead of Jesus, some people turn to increasingly high liturgy and the rich aesthetics of manmade artistry. Other people replace the centrality of Christ with a turn toward the mystic and the search for ecstatic experiences. And still others – and these are the guys who are the problem in Ephesus – still others turn to aestheticism and severity and legalistic demands that add to the requirements of Scripture and define holiness by outward behavior alone.
Famously, Michael Horton once asked, “What would things look like if Satan actually took over a city? The first frames in our imaginative slideshow probably depict mayhem on a massive level, widespread violence, defiant sexualities, pornography in every vending machine, churches closed down and worshipers dragged off to city hall.” Over half a century ago, Donald Grey Barnhouse, pastor of Philadelphia’s Tenth Presbyterian Church, gave his CBS radio audience a different picture of what it would look like if Satan took control of a town in America. He said that “all of the bars and pool halls would be closed, pornography banished, pristine streets and sidewalks would be occupied by tidy pedestrians who smiled at each other. There would be no swearing, the kids would answer “yes sir” and “no ma’am” and the churches would be full on Sunday where Christ is not preached.”
You see, Satan loves mere morality. He loves it. He loves excessive strictness and narrowness and severity. He delights in aesthetic extremes. He loves that stuff because he knows if he can only get us fixated on those things, Christ will cease to have first place in our hearts and we will be sitting ducks for his deceptions. The danger we must heed. The departure we must avoid. The deceivers we must note. The doctrine we must reject.
And finally, notice with me verses 3 through 5, the duty we must perform. The false teachers have substituted the Gospel of free grace in Christ with a prohibition of marriage and food and aestheticism. That’s their approach. But Paul says “God created these to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” Christians are not dualists. The material world is not evil. Creation is good. Marriage is a gift. Sex in marriage is holy and food is a thing to enjoy with thankful hearts. The world is beautiful and redolent of the glory of God. “This is my Father’s world. He shines in all that is fair. In the rustling grass I hear Him pass, He speaks to me everywhere.” That’s Paul’s theology here, isn’t it? “The world,” Calvin said, “is the theater of God’s glory.” Creation is good, and we are to receive it all, Paul says, with glad and thankful hearts.
The great English essayist, G.K. Chesterton, rejected all aestheticism and sums up the better way that Paul is describing for us here really beautifully. He once wrote, “You say grace before meals, alright, but I say grace before play and the opera, and grace before the concert and mantomime, and grace before I open a book and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.” There is a concrete, practical difference that knowing and embracing and resting on the mystery of godliness really makes in our daily lives. Do you see it? It puts Christ front and center, and He becomes the foundation of our spiritual confidence before God – His obedience and blood, not ours. His self-sacrifice, not ours. He saves us by His self-denying, self-giving love, and now we live in the wonder and gratitude of that gift. We have no need now for aestheticism and legalism and austere severity. We live now, the life we live now is all gift and we need fear none of God’s other gifts to us. Instead, we get to use them with gratitude and praise, for His glory and our deep joy. We consecrate everything to Him by prayer and the Word.
How do you fight off aestheticism and legalism and excessive severity and narrowness and any attempt to add to the Word of God something He has not prescribed? You fight it off by clinging tenaciously to Christ alone as the only Savior of sinners whose self-denying, self-giving love means we now live every day in a posture of deep gratitude rather than in austere suspicion of God’s good creation.
As we turn to the Lord’s Table, let me remind you that it is a Table that should be marked by gratitude. In other traditions more commonly than in our own, the Supper is often called the Eucharist. It’s a perfectly Biblical name drawn from the Greek verb the Gospel writers used to describe what Jesus did at the Last Supper. He took bread and He gave thanks. The word is “eucharisteo.” He gave thanks. To give thanks. The Table is a eucharist. It is a Table of gratitude, of thanksgiving. Jesus has died for sinners. His death gives us life. And if you see that, if you grasp that, if you know the life that He died to give you as God’s great gift, then every other good thing He gives you in this whole created universe begins to shine with new glory. Doesn’t it? Because it all reminds us of the generosity of our Father’s heart who gives us all things to enjoy and has given us His greatest gift, His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, that “whosoever should believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Fight off satanic temptation to aesthetic extremes and to dreary legalism with a strong dose of gratitude for all that God has done for you in Jesus Christ. And now then you are able to receive with thanksgiving every good gift from His hand. And so come, dear believer in Jesus, with joy in your heart to the banquet table, to the Eucharist, and give thanks. Let us pray.
Our Father, we praise You that You have spread a banquet table of good things for all of Your people in Jesus Christ. There is pardon for us in Him, and adoption as Your children in Him, and the gift of Your Spirit filling our hearts in Him, and joy and peace in believing the Gospel in Him, and grace to guide us every step of our pilgrimage in Him, and grace upon grace upon grace in Him. As we come to the Table, fill our hearts anew, we pray, with deep gratitude and thanksgiving, for we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.