Well, this morning as we are looking in 1 Timothy, we're going to be looking at chapter 4. And I've labored over this passage for the past 24 hours or so, trying to think how exactly does this fit with current circumstances in our church, because it's a pretty confrontational passage against false teachers and false teaching. That would be the negative aspect of this passage. But the positive aspect that I also want us to see this morning is that in 1 Timothy 4, the Apostle Paul is laying out a value that encourages Christians to cling to hope, and they cling to hope through the Bible. And we've heard that this morning, whether it was through the reading of Psalm 119, or the Scripture readings from Peter, that we have seen very clearly that our hope, in fact, depends on the Scriptures that God has given to us. And I thought, how appropriate that Laurie asked us to sing How Firm a Foundation this morning. Because there in the first verse of the song, it reminds us that the very foundation of our hope, the basis of our Christian life, is none other than the unchanging Word of God. It's not in our variable circumstances. It's not in the culture that seems to be constantly shifting around us. But our unflagging hope is in Jesus as He's revealed Himself to us in the Bible. So this morning as we look at 1 Timothy 4, I want us to see that Christians desperately cling to biblical truth. for their hope. Christians desperately cling to biblical truth for their hope. And that should encourage us this morning as we reflect on the situations facing the Wilsons, the situation facing the Lackeys, the things that the Berg's have recently been dealing with, as well as the LeBlanc's and others in our church. All to bring us face-to-face with our never-ending need to turn to Jesus over and over again. So this morning before I preach from this passage, let me pray again, asking God to direct our hearts and minds in His Word. God, I come to You this morning asking for Your help as I preach. I always depend on Your help for preaching, but I want to publicly acknowledge that this is Your Word. And it's Your power. And it's Your message that I'm trying to communicate. This is not up to me. It's not up to my clever ability to handle the passage. It's not up to me to illustrate it in a way that grabs people's attention or holds their emotions. But God, all of this is about You and Your authority. So God, as we look this morning to the Word, I pray that You would help us to be challenged and encouraged. Help us to be challenged because false teaching is everywhere. And we are immersed in it in our internet age. Because false teaching is only a click away. And God, we also pray because we also have incredible access to Your Word. That the Scriptures have been translated into our language in a version that we can understand, and that we can read, and we can cherish, and apply to our lives. So God, I ask that this morning we would do that in only increasing measure as we have the opportunity to follow You. Thank you for the centrality of the gospel that assures us of the forgiveness of our sins. And thank you for Jesus, who is our Lord and Savior, directing our lives and granting us eternal life. So God, we pray this morning that this biblical truth would become even more powerful and persuasive in our hearts and minds. And we pray that it would be the basis of all our hope. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. As we turn to 1 Timothy 4, we're in the middle of an epistle where Paul is writing to Timothy, his young protege, and he's giving him pastoral instructions. And among those instructions, he's reminding Timothy and the believers at Ephesus, as well as all who would read this epistle after them, of the values that God has prioritized for the local church. And in my last sermon a couple weeks ago, I mentioned that the central argument of 1 Timothy is at the end of 1 Timothy 3, where Paul says that the church is the pillar and ground of the truth. That this is a letter giving instructions for how we ought to conduct ourselves in the context of this church. I said that there were three God-given institutions in our world. The first being marriage, the second being government, and the third being the church. And we looked at how the church changes who we are because it redirects our values. And it redirects our values through the power of the Gospel, not merely the power of tradition, or forms or patterns of religion, but it redirects us because the Holy Spirit is transforming us from the inside out, and He's doing that in the context of the community. Well, last week, I was encouraged that Tom picked up on the second of those three institutions, the institution of government, and reminded us that our hope must be firmly on the sovereignty of God. That it's not merely on who will be elected in November, but that our confidence comes in God who is unwavering, no matter who the administration is. Perhaps now we need to do a message on family as well, and to talk about the vital importance of marriage. Well, it actually does come up in this week's passage. Because there were false teachers in Ephesus who were trying to undermine the gospel, and one of the ways that they were doing that is through an attack on marriage. In fact, in this context, they were actually saying that Christians should be so otherworldly focused that they shouldn't even bother marrying. That instead, they should devote themselves to a more strict life of being single and not being distracted or entangled in a marriage relationship. And Paul comes at this and says, no, God gave the institution of marriage, and this is something that we should receive with thanksgiving, because it is rooted and grounded in His Word. And all of that is gathered from the first five verses of chapter 4. So let me read for us this morning, 1 Timothy 4, beginning in verse 1, and I'm going to read through verse 10. The Spirit clearly says that in latter times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things that are taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry, and they order them to abstain from certain foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer. If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, nourished on the truths of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed. have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives' tales. Rather, train yourself to be godly, for physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come." This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe. As you have heard in that passage this morning, the Apostle Paul is both confronting false teachers and their influence, and he's comforting believers as they would cling to the hope that they have in the Bible. Though this was written in the first century to a different group of people living in a different cultural time and context than our own, the message that was given to Paul under the inspiration of God is just as timely and relevant for us today. In recent years, I would say in researching a little bit, it's really been since 2018 that there's a hashtag that's become very popular called Xvangelical. And if you want to go into a wormhole of the internet, you can delve into it. But ex-vangelical is a hashtag that some have been using to pronounce their departure from Christianity. To say that they were raised in a Christian home, they were raised in the context of the church, and now rather than being evangelical, they're ex-vangelical because they are setting it all aside. They're leaving it behind. That hashtag began in 2018 and has only gained steam. It's now turned into not just a hashtag, it's a podcast, a website, and really a community of people that have had different experiences in the church, but now have a common experience of leaving the church. And if you are to listen to the news media, and sort of dive into some of the news reports that have been put in mainstream places, such as the New York Times, or the Guardian in the UK, or the Daily Mail in the UK, you would tend to believe that evangelicalism is on fire. That it is somehow a house burning down, and that everyone is abandoning the fire. And more and more people are becoming ex-evangelical. And yet, I think we see very clearly in Timothy that this is a phenomenon that's been going on in every generation for as long as the gospel has been preached. That it's not somehow picking up momentum and speed, though it's certainly amplified through social media, and it certainly seems to be screamed louder and more publicly and prominently, The Apostle Paul says in verse 1, the Spirit clearly says that in latter times, some will abandon the faith. So this is not new, and it is not going to go away. It should not cause us alarm in the sense that somehow the church is crumbling and the gospel no longer has power, but instead, it should strangely comfort us to know that God foretold this would happen. Now, when I say strangely comfort, I don't mean that we should take joy, delight, or satisfaction in anyone departing from the faith. Not at all. But instead, we can see this as something that God foretold us. That this should not be unsettling, but it should prompt us again to pray. And it should bring us to our knees and say, God, help our loved ones, help our children or our grandchildren, help our friends that would claim who have once claimed to follow Jesus that have now abandoned Jesus. And we pray that for several reasons, and we want to see those in this passage this morning. But a question we might ask is why do some people who once professed Jesus turn away from biblical truth? Why do some people who once professed Jesus turn away from biblical truth? And for our PowerPoint, this will prompt our first point this morning. that unbelievers abandon biblical truth. The reasons are as varied as they are individual. In other words, every person has their own story or their own reason for following are falling away from the faith, but there are some similar traits that seem to recur among groups of people. In fact, I want to just highlight a few of them this morning because they're so prevalent in our culture. Some would abandon Christianity because when they went to college, they had an experience, and they say they now want to live their own truth. And we hear that in terms of what's now being described as woke culture. That, man, I'm just going to live my own truth. And in doing so, they define truth according to their experience rather than something objective. And they ultimately reject God's truth. And God's Word is truth. Paul says to Timothy in his second epistle that God's Word is inspired. That it is breathed out by God. And that it is profitable for doctrine, for instruction in righteousness, and for godly living. That in all these ways, God's truth is changeless. Yet some in the 21st century, in their desire to live truth, are rejecting God's truth. Others would say that they just want to accept and affirm all people. They just want to accept and affirm all people. Their acceptance largely comes because they've now experienced someone who is unlike their background or their upbringing, and that that person is actually kind and friendly, and doesn't fit into the categories that they had created. I remember years ago talking to someone who'd been raised in a Christian school, went to a Christian college, and then went to a seminary, and had lived in a Christian bubble his whole life. And he said to me, as a 25-year-old young adult, he said, for the first time, I had a conversation with a non-believer. And I was shocked. They were actually nice. And they were friendly, and compassionate, and caring, and easy to talk to. And I said to that person, I said, what did you expect? He said, well, from sermons that I had heard my whole life, I expected them to be unkind, to be rude, and to be ruthless, and to be in direct opposition to my faith. And it was kind of sad that that person realized that at 25 years old, that that was not indeed how non-believers are. The point is, in experiencing people unlike ourselves, that doesn't necessarily undermine our faith. We don't have to reject God to accept people, but we do have to follow God's standards for how we should live. The irony for people that reject Christianity because they say they want to accept and affirm all people is that they judge God and accuse others of judging them. Well, others still will say maybe it's not living their truth or that they want to affirm and accept people. They will say, well, we live in a complicated pluralistic world with so many religions, it's impossible to figure it out. And who am I to say that Christianity is right when someone else may be raised Hindu or Muslim or Baha or whatever religion or non-religion you want to fill in the blank. These individuals are simply reflecting a pluralism that mirrors their cultural experience more than a pluralism that undermines God. And they ignore God's holy and righteous character and the exclusive nature of God that he has laid out for himself. Well, others may reject God and turn from Christianity because they say, well, I've just started asking questions. And as I delved into those questions, I just wasn't finding answers. And their questions all reveal intellectual and emotional assumptions that need to be addressed and need to be answered. But I find it interesting that oftentimes they dismiss God's answers, or they assume they know God's answers. The last one that I would highlight this morning is that all of them, no matter what the particular reason given for departing from the faith, all of them say they can no longer accept the Bible as God's Word. At the end of the day, if we press them down to brass tacks, the bottom line is the Bible may be interesting, some may even grant that it's historical, but they will no longer accept it as the standard of faith, or the standard of doctrine, and the standard of life. They reject the Bible for another set of beliefs, and in doing so, they abandon God. And this is heartbreaking. Sadly, many former professing Christians are the most strident and passionate opponents of the gospel. And throughout every period of church history, the church can expect defection and opposition by some who once professed to be Christians. That's exactly what Paul is saying here. That when the Spirit clearly says, in other words, it's unmistakable that this is a given fact of the Gospel. That where the Gospel is preached, some will respond, but then they will turn away. And it's no different than Jesus in the parable of the sower, where He talked about the seed of the Word being sowed. That some was sowed on rocky ground, some on shallow ground, and some on fertile ground. The point was that the Word of God goes out. but the response to the Word of God is varied. And it depends on the spirit at work in people. So whether the hashtag exvangelical, whether it was the prominent deconversion of people on television when that was the most prominent form of media, whether it was books that had been written, or pamphlets long before that, this phenomenon has happened and will continue to happen. And why is this? Well, the Apostle Paul gives us a few reasons why, and I just want to highlight them quickly. The first is that demons deceive them. Demons deceive them. It says they abandon the faith and they follow deceiving spirits and things that are taught by demons. Remember back in the Garden of Eden when God had created Adam and Eve in sinless perfection. He only gave them one rule. He said, do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And Satan, who is a liar and a deceiver, came to Eve, and what did he do to her? He asked her a question. He said, did God really say? And he undermined Eve's confidence in God's Word. And he raised questions in Eve's heart and mind, and stoked them to the point that Eve and Adam disobeyed God's one command. The demons of Satan continue to deceive people, even in our own generation. People who abandon the faith are deceived by demons. And I'm not saying that as some sort of Pentecostal statement or some mystical thing, but it is a reality that Satan is in the world as an accuser. He's in the world as a liar and the father of all lies. And his stated mission is to draw people away from Jesus Christ and the gospel of forgiveness of our sins. As he does that, the Scriptures also say that Satan is a roaring lion looking for whom he may devour. He's not passive mealy-mouthed, but he is aggressive in his approach, trying to snatch people away from Christ and into unbelief. And as he does this, Satan works tirelessly. Well, the Apostle Paul had said earlier in chapter 3 that there is a mystery of godliness. He also says that they're here, that there is a mystery with what these deceiving spirits are teaching, that these things taught by demons, we're not sure what they all are. but they lead people away. And one of the ways that Satan works to lead people away is through their consciences. And that brings me to the second aspect of this is why are people led away? Why do people succumb to false teaching? First, it was because of demons. Second, it's because their conscience misleads them. It says in verse 2, such teachings come through hypocritical liars whose consciences have been seared with a hot iron. False teachers and everyone who follows them have seared consciences. What does this mean? Well, it's a metaphor to show that their conscience has been ruined. That their conscience no longer works the way God designed it to work. That in a sense, that part of their mind has been deadened and corrupted. And it's an awful thing. And Paul, remember, is writing to a group of Christians, and he's saying these are not people outside the church that are antagonistic, that are trying to stop it. These false teachers have come from within the church. And these individuals he calls hypocritical liars. They're saying one thing with their mouth, they're doing something else with their lives. And what ends up happening is God has created us all with our conscience to live lives of consistency. And eventually, the false teacher's inconsistency will be revealed. Because they must align the way they live with what they say they believe. And even though they had been in the church, perhaps some of these false teachers had been leaders in the church of Ephesus, they eventually walked away from the church and the faith and were trying to drag others with them because they could no longer register or distinguish right from wrong, because their consciences had been corrupted. According to Paul, elsewhere in the New Testament, a good conscience is guided by faith and enables a person to discern right and wrong. So hear what I'm saying. A good conscience is guided by faith. In this passage, he says, a seared conscience is guided by pride and reasons that right is wrong and wrong is right. It turns everything around. And in fact, if you leave any of us long enough on our own, we can rationalize anything. We can explain to ourselves and convince ourselves, even deceiving ourselves, that we are right. When in fact, we may be dead wrong. If you don't believe this, I was thinking this morning as I was driving to church, I don't know why this thought came into my head. It was not in my notes. But I thought, even look at the way people have responded to coronavirus this year in 2020. There's all kinds of information out there. Not all of it is helpful, and a lot of it is conflicting. And most of us have a strong opinion about what we think about that information, whether we're trained or not, to have an opinion about some of that information. We come to it with prejudice and understanding. And what do we do? We rationalize our pre-understanding. And we use that as the proof, as it were, to say, see, I told you. This is how it is, and we try to morph and define reality according to our own experience. Paul is saying that false teachers have done the same thing with the Scriptures. That they have turned away because they're living hypocritical lives. They're not living in a way that's consistent with the Scripture. Instead, they're living in a way that undermines the Scripture. And sooner or later, their lives, what's going on on the inside, their beliefs, must align with their lives. And that brings me to the last thing I want to highlight from this this morning, and that is demons deceive them, their consciences mislead them, and religion enslaves them. Religion enslaves them. It says here, they forbid people to marry, and they order them to abstain from certain foods. Now, what I find ironic is even in the false teachers, there is a religiosity to their false teaching. And the same is true in every cultural context, that people who don't believe the Bible, who don't accept God's authority, still believe something, and they're still quite religious about it. As I've thought about the hashtag exvangelical that I mentioned earlier in my sermon, One of the things that I find ironic about that movement is how evangelical they are about their non-belief. And what I mean is, they've exchanged the beliefs, but they've kept the religion. And I even read one article this week that said, Growing up in the church has made me fearless in talking to other people to try to convince them that God does not exist. And I thought, that's interesting, because you're doing exactly the same thing that perhaps you did as a teenager, whether it was going door-to-door or going on a mission trip to tell people about Jesus. Even in their forsaking God, they are clinging to patterns that they learned in the house of God. And why is that? It's because of the religiosity of people. And that's what's happening here in this passage, that these religious false teachers are saying, look, we know what you've been taught by Paul, what Timothy's trying to teach you, but we have a better insight. We have some new rules and some new regulations that will really help you. But instead, all they were doing was enslaving themselves. And what's interesting is people in the name of freedom from religion and freedom from God and all the constraints that he places on them, willingly place themselves under the slavery of false religion. And they have different rules and regulations, different beliefs and different worldviews and assumptions, but all of them are just as enslaving. In fact, I would argue more enslaving. Yet Paul counters this by saying that Christians can see all things as good because they're given by God. Look again at verse number 3. He says, "...which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth." For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. Because it's consecrated by the Word of God and by prayer. Paul brings the Ephesian believers back to the centrality of the Word of God. And he says, you will know all things are good, you can even have gratitude for them, because they've been set apart by His Word. But that means we must know His Word. We must be nourished by His Word. And next week, I will conclude this sermon. I'm breaking it into two parts today, since we took some time to pray. But I want us to end this morning by saying that we must cling to our hope in God's Word. And when we depart from God's Word, it should be no surprise that people depart from the faith. There was an inscription that many people used to handwrite into their Bibles that I think is still helpful today. And that is this. It would say, sin will keep you from this book, or this book will keep you from sin. So think about that on the front of your Bible. Sin will keep you from this book, or this book will keep you from sin. The idea being it's a very simple, memorable reminder that as we put our attention and focus on God's Word, that He will bring the Word to life in our hearts and in our minds. He will encourage us and enrich us, and He will assure us of the hope that we have in the Bible. This week, as I've been praying for the Wilsons and the Lackeys and the Bergs and others in our church, I've been thinking about this principle. That their hope right now is not in the hands of doctors, but their hope is in the hands of the Savior. The healer God, who has told us that He is a healer God. That He is a provider and a protector who will work His grace in their lives and in all of our lives. If we remove ourselves from the Scriptures, we fail to nourish our hearts and our lives in them, then we can surely know that faith will go out in our hearts. The Apostle Paul here is pleading with Timothy and the believers to cling to the Scriptures for their hope. And as they would do that, they would recognize false teachers, and they would see the beauty of the Gospel, that Jesus saves sinners from their sin, and that it's because of their sin that they need a Savior. So this morning, as I conclude, I don't want to come with a sledgehammer to hit anyone who has doubts or struggles about their faith, because those are legitimate. Instead, I want to encourage you and invite you into a conversation, or a continued conversation about your doubts and anxieties about the faith. And as we encourage that conversation, we will constantly point each other back to the Word of God over and over again. Because it is the basis of our faith, it is the strength of our faith, and it is the hope of our faith. So let's pray this morning. God, as we come this morning to pray again, we're reminded of the importance of the Bible. God, we see in this passage where the false teachers have departed from that. They've added rules to the Bible saying that marriage was not good and that certain foods were not good. And God, many good people were believing the influence of the false teachers, and they were being led away. and they needed this corrective. God, I pray that in our own context, that if any of us are feeling the pressure of things like ex-evangelical, or we're feeling the pressure of family or friends that are opposed to what we believe, or even questioning what we believe, that God, I pray You would protect our hearts, our minds, and our consciences, I pray that You would help us to anchor our heart and soul in Your Word, and that just as these medical events that we've been praying for have brought us to our knees to pray and ask for Your mercy and Your help, God, I pray that difficult conversations with people who are questioning the faith, whether adding to it or subtracting from it, that that also would bring us to the point of desperation as we read Your Word. That we would read it with new eyes and new ears, with an intensity and passion that we have not had in a while. And that we would see in Your Word the very words of life. And God, I pray that You would strengthen and fortify our faith as You have promised to do, because Your Word is alive, it's sharper than any two-edged sword, and it pierces to the core of our being. So we pray that this morning, in Jesus' powerful name, Amen.