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[0:00] Amen. Tonight we're going to start the last chapter of 1st Timothy.

[0:19] ! All who are under the yoke as slaves are to regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of our God and our doctrine will not be spoken against.

[0:42] Those who have believers as their masters must not be disrespectful to them because they are brethren, but must serve them all the more because those who partake of the benefit are believers and beloved.

[0:58] Teach and preach these principles. Again, this letter was written by the Apostle Paul as an advisory to his young protege Timothy.

[1:10] Timothy was guarding the church at Ephesus against false teachers and the spreading of false doctrine through them. We've been talking a lot about false teachers.

[1:21] We're going to talk about it again tonight. He was also being instructed to raise up elders among them, men qualified to carry on the ministry of the word.

[1:35] And Paul's going to be leaving and actually on Sunday morning in here has already left, gone to Jerusalem and been arrested. So that's where we're at on the timeline in our Sunday morning class in here.

[1:45] In our opening passage, Paul is addressing the world of slavery, which was very prevalent in the Roman Empire when he wrote his epistles.

[1:59] We, of course, do not experience slavery in the United States today, but we do have the employer-employee relationship that is appropriately addressed in these inspired writings under God's economy.

[2:15] Both groups, whether employer or employee, have certain responsibilities. The Christian, and if you get a copy of this list tonight, ignore Christina. There's no Christina.

[2:27] The Christian, regardless of the work chosen, is commanded through that work to advance the kingdom of God.

[2:41] If you're in a dead-end job and say, I wish I wasn't here and I'd like to be doing something else, just remember you're representing the king and you're to advance the kingdom of God.

[2:55] That makes no sense whatsoever. Wow. I started in mid-paragraph. Christian slaves were able to glorify God by faithfully fulfilling their duties.

[3:17] It would appear that many in Paul's day were questioning just how they were to perform work in a master-slave relationship. Which is what they had in the Roman world.

[3:31] Paul starts by telling them that Christians were to honor their masters. Speaking of believing slaves. Honor their masters. And some people argue against the inspiration of Scripture.

[3:46] I mean, they go so far as to say, you know, if there really was a God, he would have forbade slavery. We would not have had slavery even existing. But if we closely examine the Old Testament, we discover that God places significant protection on those serving as slaves.

[4:08] When we get to the book of Philemon, we see the seeds of the destruction of slavery. In that short but very significant book, which we studied here last year, we discover that a Christian man cannot own another Christian man.

[4:29] I mean, that's the bottom line in Philemon. And Paul said, you know, except on Isimus back no longer as a slave but as a brother. And you can't be a Christian owning another Christian.

[4:42] And so we have that great book of Philemon that teaches that because one can't own the other.

[4:52] Why? Because they are now brothers in Christ. You don't own your brother. You serve alongside a brother. And that's the new relationship. So here we read that the Christian slave was to honor his master.

[5:07] It would take a long time for slavery to disappear in the Christian world, I should add. We have our own experience here in America with slavery. There were very important reasons that the slave was to honor his master.

[5:23] First, so that the name of God would not be spoken against. Second, so that Christian doctored would not be spoken against and ridiculed. History noted that apostate Israel brought reproach on the name of God.

[5:40] We don't have time to detail where Israel went wrong, but they did. Paul wants to make sure that the church does not do the same thing.

[5:52] And I would probably have to say a lot of churches have, but not the body of God. All Christians in every age have a divine command to live lives by faith.

[6:05] Without faith, it is impossible to please God. Such faith does not end at the doorway of our employers. We don't exercise faith on Wednesday morning and some of us Wednesday evening and some more of us on, fewer of us on Wednesday night.

[6:23] We live by faith. And faith doesn't stop at the door of your employer. By exercising a spirit of respect for those over us, including unbelievers over us, we are proclaiming the truthfulness of the gospel.

[6:45] Now, Paul makes special mention of those employees who work for fellow Christians. We are to serve them all the more.

[6:56] I'm blessed at having a boss who is a staunch, unashamed follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and Ed Gordon, city manager, and also pastor of Trinity Baptist Church on the west side.

[7:11] He is my boss. He is a pastor. He is a great man of God, loves the Lord, and he is unashamed of his relationship with Jesus.

[7:23] We will talk about it publicly. We will talk about it at city council meetings. But because Ed is a believer, that in no way gives me any special privilege to be disrespectful to him.

[7:39] I mean, if I was going to, I would have done it today. He hammered my budget. But I was not disrespectful to him. I'm respectful all the more because he is a brother in Christ.

[7:53] Neither can I be insubordinate, give less than a full day's work, which for a police chief is about an hour and a half, but still. It's more than the hour some of you guys put in.

[8:04] So, you know, I saw that in a Dilbert cartoon one time. They were going to work from home and said, do we have to do two hours a day or do we do the typical one hour we do at work, you know?

[8:14] We are to serve Christian employers all the more. As believers, we are to serve our employers obediently, completely, respectfully, eagerly, excellently, diligently, humbly, spiritually, and eschatologically as we look for the return of Christ.

[8:38] And John MacArthur amazingly stole every one of these from me in this list. But as he has been doing throughout this book, Paul is once again, though, now that he's established this employer, employee, or master slave, now he's going to go back, he's saying, Timothy, we're going to cover some ground one more time in this letter.

[9:08] And he says, we're going to talk about false teachers. You know, how many times in here has the subject matter been on false teachers?

[9:18] Same in the book of Acts in here on Sunday morning. Verse 3, if anyone, and who's he talking about?

[9:29] Everyone. Everyone. Everyone. Anyone. If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ and with the doctrine conforming to godliness.

[9:48] If anyone, similar to the first chapter of Galatians, if anyone preaches to you a different gospel, another gospel than the one I've been preaching, if an angel from heaven comes down, or an angel from hell, we call them demons down, and preaches any other gospel, let them be the anathema of God, the eternally condemned of God.

[10:11] And Paul, in that opening chapter in the book of Galatians, repeats that twice in two or three verses. Very, very important. Well, this verse of scripture embraces every false teacher that would ever live and seek to pollute the church.

[10:33] And let me tell you, false teaching is nothing more literally than a cesspool. It is a cesspool. And the men and women that are false teachers in our day are seeking to pollute the church.

[10:54] And Paul uses this word, anyone. It is all-encompassing. He is neither limiting this to specific time or to a specific teaching.

[11:05] He said, well, you can tell false teachers because they always teach this way. Well, no, not necessarily. They are all over the board. The first mark, though, of a false teacher can be found in what they teach.

[11:20] And I have to tell you guys, I have been on YouTube. I typed in false teacher. I typed in false preacher. And there is a, well, I'm going to use this word.

[11:34] Mike taught me this. A plethora. That's a gaggle. That's a whole bunch. Plethora. Plethora of websites devoted to false teachers.

[11:49] And I saw three or four that I was going to copy and show you tonight. And then I got to thinking, you know, I need to go to a smarter brother, more mature brother.

[12:01] And I called Jonathan. And I said, I want you to get on YouTube and look at these. And about five minutes later, and he didn't have time to go through them all, Jonathan called and says, these are, I want to throw up.

[12:13] You know? He said, we're not going to show these. We're not showing them. But, I mean, they are, they're just amazing. The pollution.

[12:25] I mean, Kenneth Copeland, you know, Jesus said, I am. And I say, so what? I am too. Who's the biggest failure in the Bible? It's not Judas.

[12:37] It's not Satan. It's God. God is the biggest failure in the Bible. And Kenneth Copeland preached on that for 30 minutes. Blasphemy. And you can see all that on YouTube. I'm not making this stuff up.

[12:48] They got mad at MacArthur, and both Benny Hinn and Paul Crouch, who's now gone to his reward, said, you know, if I had a machine gun, a Holy Spirit machine gun, I would kill him.

[13:01] Of course, he was hammering them on their theology and their pollution. If any man teaches anything that is contrary to the Word of God, mark it down, that person is false.

[13:16] And don't buy into these guys. And I actually heard this in my own ears years ago where the guy said, if I bring you anything that is in disagreement with the Bible, remember, I have the latest information from God.

[13:30] God's talking to me, and I have the latest information. Because that's the evidence of a cult. I mean, you know, that they have the exclusive knowledge here.

[13:43] False teaching can take many forms. It may be an outright denial of the existence of God. It may be a denial of the Trinity or of the person and work of Christ.

[13:55] There are many false teachers that deny the virgin birth or the necessity of the virgin birth. The sinlessness of Christ, the atoning sacrifice, his resurrection, ascension, and intercession for his people.

[14:12] Men also deny him through rejecting any thought that one day he will return for his church as he promised. And I probably hear that more than anything. And it's sort of like, you know, Peter said, these guys come in the last day saying, well, where's the appearance?

[14:26] You know, everything's going on like it always has. Where's the thing? Just last week in talking to Ed Gordon, he was talking about a church in this very town, and it was not a Baptist, Southern Baptist, thank goodness.

[14:40] But they were trying to hire a friend of his, I think like the business manager or something. So he met with the committee and the pastor, and he said, well, I just need to explore some things with you like, you know, where do you all stand on the atonement?

[14:54] And they said, the what? And he said, the atonement, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. He shed his blood for the remission of our sins and all who trust in him.

[15:06] Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Now, we think you get to heaven by being good, you know, be more good than bad, you know, we don't teach a bloody religion here. And they went on from there.

[15:17] And this would be considered a mainstream denominational church in our town, really, really mainstream. And they went on from there, just amazing rejections of truth.

[15:34] So how do you spot a false teacher within the ranks of the church? Well, let me tell you how we do it. By we, I mean us in here. We can spot a false teacher by being well grounded in the truth of Scripture.

[15:53] That is the best method. Know what the Word of God says. And that's the best way to spot a counterfeit.

[16:06] When you know what truth is, it's a whole lot easier to spot what false is. And so, you know, you've got to be students of the Word.

[16:17] I was telling John for one day, you know, I read, I don't know how many books a year. About the Lord, about the Bible, about the great doctrine Bible. I've got to spend more time in the Bible.

[16:29] My reading is interfering with my Bible study. And I just need to do more where I'm just, you know, in the Word of God. I read good guys, you know, Spurgeon and Coleman.

[16:43] But still, I'll read your sermons. False teachers are famous for rejecting the doctrine of godliness.

[16:59] Early in my Christian walk, I sat under men that denied that we should seek holiness of living. I was brand new.

[17:11] I didn't know. And they taught that godliness in this life was impossible. Couldn't be attained. Abandoned the effort. But the Bible's clear.

[17:23] We are to strive for godliness. By the way, you can put that word in there, reverence. Reverence for God. We are to strive. In Christ, we have his imputed righteousness, but we are also to daily mortify the flesh, mortify sin, and seek to live holy lives ourselves in the strength of the Lord.

[17:48] Without holiness, no one will see God. Now, holy living will not be to perfection in this lifetime, but it should be our direction in this lifetime.

[18:03] What happens if we fail? Well, not if. What happens when we fail? We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. Spurgeon really nailed this.

[18:16] I really and truly believe that. And actually, I'm reading a book right now with Jerry Bridges. He discusses this on holy living. But Spurgeon said, you know, he would discover an area of his life which he was struggling with and was sinful.

[18:34] And he would go to the Lord. And he just said, I had to just get on my knees and repent with tears. And he said, and the Lord was gracious and he cleansed me of that sin.

[18:50] And more light just flooded in in that cleansing process which exposed more cracks and crevices in my Christian personality.

[19:01] And I had to deal with those and God was gracious and more light came in and more.

[19:11] And he said, it's a continual process. And, you know, it is a continual process until we see Jesus as he is and are like him. But that is the direction that we should be traveling.

[19:26] What about the attitude? I love the conciseness of Paul. What is the attitude of false teachers? Paul says, conceited. Pretty much of an economy of words here.

[19:39] He is conceited. Tell you what, you ever look at those videos? That comes out. One of them today I was looking at, he says, I'm a billionaire. What are you people? I'm a multi-billionaire.

[19:51] Well, yeah, he's at the top of the Ponzi scheme. Of course he's a billionaire. Paul gets right to the point here. The attitude of the false teacher is one of conceit born of pride.

[20:06] Very prideful. False teachers are puffed up about their knowledge and the fact that they are judges of what the Bible says.

[20:16] They really kind of harken us back to that period of time in history when the Bible was chained to the altar. They didn't want the people, they didn't want people in the common language.

[20:28] You guys realize that men were executed for translating the Bible into English? I think of, and from Latin into their language, John Huss, John Wycliffe, they're great men that paid with their lives over there.

[20:42] But they want to be the judges of the Bible. They'll tell you what it means. And, you know, I don't make a habit of listening to these prosperity guys, but they always have a verse on prosperity.

[20:56] Totally out of context, you know, and try to justify that God wants you all to be a millionaire and the way you can attain that is by giving you your money. I've never quite figured that out.

[21:07] Show me a false teacher and I will show you an arrogant person, an arrogant man. They set their teaching above even what the Bible has to say.

[21:22] Peter said in 2 Peter 2.18 they would speak arrogant words of vanity. Arrogant words of vanity. I was determined not to name names when I started preparing this lesson, but one of the most arrogant of that is Kenneth Copeland.

[21:39] I've already mentioned him. He fits that definition. He was a frequent, made frequent appearances on Trinity Broadcasting, Paul Crouch.

[21:52] I remember when he said, you know, God is the biggest failure in the Bible, and Paul Crouch said something like, oh, thank God you see it that way. I thought I was the only one that understood that, you know, and just blasphemous stuff.

[22:06] False teacher is conceited, prideful, arrogant, blasphemous. They have a much overinflated sense of their own importance, and they are here to infect other people with their disease, and they do it quite well.

[22:29] What about the mentality of false teachers? In chapter 6, verse 4, he understands nothing, but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words.

[22:47] False teachers are men and women filled with pride, but devoid of understanding. Devoid of understanding.

[22:59] I heard Benny Hinn when I was researching on a tape, and he said, you can know you're a Christian if you're a good person and you live a pretty decent life and you try to do white things, and that makes you a Christian.

[23:17] He didn't have an understanding, one of being born from above. That concept is gone.

[23:27] Never had it. They are fools living, they are fools before the living God.

[23:39] They have no spiritual insight, so what do they do? They make it up. They make up spiritual insight. They are fruitless and teach the doctrines of devils.

[23:55] Flee from them. Protect your children from them. Protect your wife from them. Protect your church from them and protect yourself from them.

[24:07] We had a former member here that got really caught up in one of the big charismatic churches in Carlson. and he came and bragged, prideful, that he got to take a free trip to the Soviet, to Russia, on a crusade, and he said, blind eyes were made whole, deaf people could hear, we raised people from the dead.

[24:33] Dr. McBride said, did anybody get saved? He was incensed. To this day, he's never spoken to Michael. He never spoke to him again.

[24:44] Local car dealer. Never spoke to him again. Mike, give me a smile of recognition. Protect yourself, your family, from them. What about fruit?

[24:55] The fruit of false teachers. Out of verse 4c, the first part of 5. Out of which, here's their fruit, arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction.

[25:17] We can know that false teachers fail the test of truth because they fail the test of godliness, godly living.

[25:28] I mean, Copeland lives on a lake in Fort Worth and the house is 12 million dollars, which is about 6 million less than his airplane.

[25:40] It is Cessna jet. They are disharmonizing within the church. What does that mean? They have an inability to bring unity to the body of Christ through their teaching.

[25:54] Why? Because their teaching is false. It's false. Only truth unifies. Lies never unify.

[26:07] Lies never unify. Only truth. Well, Paul wants to mention the cause of false teachers. Again, in an economy of words, in verse 5, depraved minds.

[26:23] Depraved minds. It doesn't get any simpler than that. They have depraved minds. Men and women who are false teachers have a depraved mind.

[26:35] Why? It is an unregenerate mind. They've never been regenerated by the spirit of God. They are depraved. Paul said in Romans that the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God.

[26:52] Romans 8, 7. Mind set on the flesh is in hostility toward God. He's at war with God. We remember when the war broke out back in the garden.

[27:04] Still going on. False teachers are not normal. They're not normal folk. Their minds are not normal because they are under the influence of Satan and his demons.

[27:17] such a mind does not react normally to truth. They cannot understand the deep things of God.

[27:28] Why? They're not saved. What does that mean? They have not the spirit of God to illuminate their minds. They're unsaved.

[27:40] The spirit of God isn't at home. The truth of God is foolishness to those who are perishing. And that's why they can mock doctrines such as the atonement, such as the virgin birth, such as the resurrection, the intercession of Christ, his return.

[28:02] They can bring mockery to those things because it is foolishness to them. They can't understand them. not having the mind of Christ, false teachers produce error.

[28:16] And I'm not recommending those videos, but they're full of error. They're full of error. And what about the condition of false teachers?

[28:27] They are deprived of the truth. The condition of false teachers can be summed up with one word. They are apostate.

[28:38] apostate. They're apostate. Now, we've studied that. Apostates are those who have been exposed to truth, know some truth, yet they turn from the truth of Christ and seek righteousness apart from Him.

[28:59] To preach error, they preach error and they know that they're preaching error. you find the little guy in the middle of Africa who's never heard.

[29:12] He's on his way to hell absent a genuine encounter with the Lord. That's why we send missionaries, but he's not an apostate because he hasn't been exposed to the truth.

[29:26] I think apostates have reserved for them a deeper level of hell. and I've never really studied that, but I think apostates are in a bad way.

[29:40] In our verse, the Holy Spirit uses the word deprive, meaning to steal or to rob. Those are fitting descriptions. False teachers pull people away from the truth of Christ.

[29:56] They pull people away from the true Christ and encourage them to follow a false Christ. The Christ of the false teachers day is a monetary Christ.

[30:09] The Christ of riches, the Christ that you're going to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. He's going to make you a millionaire. If you're not well off, it's because you don't have enough faith.

[30:20] You're living in sin. He doesn't want anyone poor. He doesn't want anyone ill. I was with a five-year-old boy last night that's dying of cancer. I guess they would say their parents didn't have enough faith.

[30:34] I don't know. But false teachers pull people away from the true Christ. They themselves have gone astray from the truth. They were exposed to it to a certain level, but they were never saved, even though they did have contact with the truth at some point in their life.

[30:55] They walked away and became apostates. Well, their condition is terminal. They're on a fast track to judgment. They have rejected God's only provision for salvation.

[31:10] They're looking for a salvation within themselves. That places a man that's doing that or a woman beyond repentance, beyond salvation.

[31:21] They're looking for their own. Peter, of course, writing by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, understood this. Listen to this. And for those who want to follow along, I'm in 2 Peter 2, verses 1-9.

[31:34] But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.

[31:58] Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them, the way of the truth will be maligned, and in their greed, well, there's a good word, in their greed, it's written 2,000 years ago, in their greed, they will exploit you with false words.

[32:17] their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell, and committed them to pits of darkness reserved for judgment, and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, not Russell Crowe, but preserved Noah, a preacher of right, you don't understand that, he starred in Noah.

[32:47] a preacher of righteousness with seven others when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly, and if he condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter, and if he rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men, for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment.

[33:37] what a stinging indictment on the unsaved apostates of this day. Jude gives a warning about such preachers of Satan, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turned the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ, he will return to execute judgment upon all and to convict all the ungodly for all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

[34:25] Wow. And judgment's coming. Judgment delayed is never judgment denied. And, you know, just because God has long-suffering doesn't mean that judgment has been done away with.

[34:41] The very severest hell is reserved for those who have been exposed to the truth, walked away from it to preach doctrines of devils, and to lead millions of people astray.

[34:58] They're going to be led into hell in the next life and into bankruptcy in this life by giving them all their money. I had an FBI colleague that ended up divorcing his wife because she gave every penny to Oral Roberts Ministries.

[35:17] When his check hit the bank, she wrote a check, and he changed banks, he did everything good, and they finally divorced. She considered herself, she said, I'm more married to Oral than I am giving him all her money.

[35:32] The motive of false teachers, who suppose that ungodliness is a means of gain. Does that not sound like today? This is written, you know, 2,000 years ago.

[35:46] Who suppose that ungodliness is a means of gain, financial gain, status, false teachers are after money.

[36:04] Right across the board. It always comes back to money. We had a dear lady here, she finally passed away. She had, when I say rheumatoid arthritis, this poor little lady, she's about four foot nothing anyway.

[36:21] She was gnarled. Loved the Lord. She was all and in desperation, she finally told her husband she was going to a Benny Hinn crusade in Little Rock.

[36:32] And he said, you'll have to count me out of that. And a friend of hers took her and she was so hopeful that something would happen. And they come out beforehand, they're all lined up outside and they work the crowd.

[36:45] Not Benny, but his handlers. And they came, they're going down the line, what's your problem? I have stomach cancer. Okay. what's your problem? Well, I have a brain tumor.

[36:58] What's your problem? Well, my arm got cut off in a dust hole accident. They come to her, they look at her, they went around her, totally around her.

[37:10] They will heal the unseen. But I want to see them make eyeballs out of mud and spit, you know, or dirt and spit. I want to see that stump.

[37:22] That's how Jesus would do it. That's how Jesus would do it. They're after money. They believe that their false godliness will bring them much gain financially.

[37:37] Usually they are right. They're at the top of the Ponzi scheme. Of course they're getting rich. I heard one of them, actually Creflo Dollar, he said, I looked out in the parking lot, he said, you all showed up in jalapes.

[37:57] I drove a Mercedes and I got four more of them in my garage. Well, of course he does. Little ladies are sending him money on their social security checks.

[38:09] they mimic Simon the sorcerer, Simon the magician in the book of Acts. Now when Simon saw that the spirit was bestowed through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money saying, give this authority me as well so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.

[38:38] Well, he made a mistake. He was talking to Peter. Peter said to him, may your silver perish with you. That's pretty plain because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money.

[38:58] You have no part or portion in this matter for your heart is not right before God. Therefore, repent of this wickedness of yours and pray the Lord that if possible the intention of your heart may be forgiven you for I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.

[39:19] By the way, it goes on from there. Simon didn't pray for himself. He looked at Peter and said, you pray for me. You know, a charlatan, an absolute charlatan. this deal with Simon the magician, the sorcerer, is magnified in our day to epic proportions.

[39:41] Epic proportions. False teaching, false preaching, is a multi-billion dollar proposition. they're bringing in guys in the billions.

[39:56] In the billions. Can you imagine, I mean, just humanly speaking, God can do anything. God didn't need our money. But just think of that money in the hands of true ministry.

[40:08] You know, a VOM or you can name many, many, many godly ministries out there. And yet, a lot of that is siphoned off to false ministry.

[40:19] When Jimmy Swaggart was exposed, the year he was exposed, he took in $150 million. When that was real money. I take half that in cash now. But $150 million.

[40:33] It's a multi-billion dollar industry. Greed marks out the false teachers. Here's some of the other marks. They deny the truth.

[40:46] Their teaching does not produce godly living. They are arrogant. They are ignorant of spiritual truth.

[40:57] They divide and create chaos in the church. They serve and seek money. And they spread the deadly disease of apostasy.

[41:08]  They're going to go to hell and they're going to take unfortunately, regrettably, a lot of people with them.