Please turn in your Bibles to 1 Timothy 6. If I have my numbers right, this is the 17th sermon in a series on the book of 1 Timothy. I hope it's been a blessing to you. It's been a blessing to me. I grow spiritually by studying and preparing. I hope you're enjoying the delivery of the message. I hope it's a help to you. I hope it's effective. We covered the end of last time we met on this in chapter five with what we entitled the conduct of a pastor. And we get to chapter six and look what we have in the first two verses. Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and His doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but rather do them service because they are faithful and beloved partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort. And so if you were here Sunday night, I think most all of you were here Sunday night, you know that I preached a whole message on the Christian and his work dealing with employment. And so I've skipped this, at least for now, because of the redundancy. Didn't feel led to preach two messages in a row Sunday night and then tonight on this subject. But we will go to verses 3, 4, 5. 3 through 5 and deal with something very, very important to the Christian faith. If any man teach otherwise, so in verse 2 it said, these things teach and exhort. If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing but doting about questions and stripes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railing, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness, Okay, so now what are we supposed to do about this? From such, withdraw thyself. And so this will be our content for tonight as we look into this 17th message on the book of 1 Timothy. And the topic is false teachers, false teachers. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, please guide in this message to use it according to your will. And I pray that I would say the right things and use this to direct our thoughts, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen. Now, In this passage before us, the Bible is treating those that are called false teachers. He's talking about and defining these people by what their reaction is to the Word of God and to the doctrines of the Word of God. Doctrine means teaching. You're going to find that it is almighty important in the book of 1 and 2 Timothy, this idea of doctrine. Doctrine is the foundation I like to preach a lot about practice. So we have doctrine as the truth, and then our lives applying the truth, I would call that practice. I think that preaching on practice oftentimes yields more permanent results in terms of, or rather immediate results. In other words, it fills the altar, okay? But I want to explain that doctrine is the foundation. Without a proper doctrinal basis, there's no real reason to practice. And if you don't really, if you're not grounded in the truth of God's word and the doctrines according to godliness, what it says here, you won't long continue to practice whatever your decision has been to practice. So the foundation has to be laid through the doctrines of the Bible. But yet the devil, knowing that, has sent a barrage of false teachers throughout history, and it wasn't anything new. From the very Garden of Eden, he was causing them to doubt God's word, where the serpent said, yea, hath God said. Getting them to doubt what the Bible says, what God himself has said, and the devil's been at the same program ever since. And so warning about false teachers is something that in our culture is becoming unpopular. In other words, naming people who are apostate. And it doesn't do us any good to preach messages on how bad the world is. I mean, it does, don't get me wrong, there's a place for you to be preached about what is ungodliness and godliness, but what I'm talking about is it doesn't do us any good to say, hey, did you know that such and such a church, which, you know, there's one in particular that surrounds us, you know, that preaches apostate doctrine, and we'd say, well, pastor, we already knew that. What becomes sensitive is when your favorite author or your favorite publisher or your favorite teacher gets mentioned from the pulpit and the pastor has to defend it. And man, I'll have people call me during the week. Well, brother, I have been blessed by, I don't know, Paul Chappell's writings. He's a heretic. He doesn't believe in separation. He's got some doctrinal truth, yes. But if I preach about that one that you follow, then you're going to say, Pastor, you're being too pointed. You're being too harsh. I've been accused of being harsh. And I'm going to repeat something that I believe as a truth about the ministry that you need to understand. People come to this church not because they want what is the same everywhere else. They come to this church because of truth, because of separation, because they learn to obey the Lord and it's serious business. So why bend the truth of God to be flexible to the culture of man? That's just against God. And if you preach soft messages that don't point out sin, and sometimes don't point out the people that are false teachers promoting this kind of apostasy, then you're gonna end up with soft people in the pews. They will have no backbone. They will have no application of God's doctrines to the things that are very important. Without it, you have nothing. With the Bible doctrine, you can stand and all the world against you and you know you have the Bible behind you. Then let all of heaven and hell and heaven will be on your side, but let all of the people of the earth be against me. I am standing with God. But if you don't have that foundation, that's why I tell you that ABC is a Christian growth. It's meant for the entire church. If you have not the foundation laid of your Bible truth, the Bible speaks about that in Ephesians chapter number four. It says you'll be blown about with every wind of doctrine. Somebody comes up with some silly notion over here like they did with the Thessalonian Christians saying that the coming of Christ has already happened. They're saying that again all over. That's what the basis of Protestant amillennialism is, this preterist view of the coming of Christ that 80s, 70s fulfilled what Jesus was talking about, and a lot of it's already passed, and then they allegorize the rest of it. What is it? It's apostate. And people don't like it, it's uncomfortable when you call out people that are wrong. But listen to the scripture, Matthew chapter five, verse number 17 or 19. Whosoever therefore shall teach, therefore shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, he shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. It gets worse. Matthew 18, verse number six, but whosoever shall offend one of the least little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were tied about his neck, and he were cast, drowned in the depth of the sea. Acts chapter 20 tells us in verse 28 through 31, take heed unto yourselves, talking to the pastors, and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers. to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock, and also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them. Therefore, watch and remember that by the space of three years I cease not to warn every one night and day with tears." I mean, this is some warning. Wolves, he calls them. Wolves, some from the outside and some that will be on the inside, that will lift themselves up in pride. Well, it's no fun naming names. But if you go back to the first chapter of this book, you see in verse number 20 at the end of chapter one, Now we're talking about Bible doctrine, so get your Bibles, get them open. Of whom it is Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme. Now to us, we don't know Hymenaeus and Alexander, but to the people of this time, it would have been somebody they knew very well. Hymenaeus and Alexander, whoa, what did you do? They might even be visiting the church that day. They're people that they knew that were named by the Apostle Paul and recorded eternally in the Word of God, the inspired book. Look over, if you will, all the way to the end of the Bible to the book of 2 John, that small little book. Sometimes John is called the Apostle of Love. And he does deal with love a lot. He is the author of John 14, I'm sorry, 15. He talks about it in 1 John chapter 4. But look at how he names the trouble. In 3 John, he says in verse number 8, Wherefore we ought to remember such, that we might be fellow helpers to the truth. I wrote unto the church, but deatrophies. Not somebody unknown, somebody from within the congregation. And here's the Apostle John, Mr. Softcoat, as some people try to use his name, and instead of being soft, he knows that needs to be called out. It needs to be talked about when people are teaching the wrong things and doing the wrong things. So read what he does. Theotrophies, who loveth to have the preeminence among them. Remember that as we get into the notes tonight. He says, receiveth us not. Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words, and not content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the brethren, and forbid it them that would, and casteth them out of the church. I'll go back to our text in 1 Timothy. I'm trying to illustrate that this is, among other passages, like 2 Timothy 3, verse 12, yea, and all that believe godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. Verse 13, and deceivers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and, excuse me, being deceived. So what does the Lord predict? It's gonna get worse, not better. The land is gonna be filled with those that cannot endure the sound doctrine in 2 Timothy chapter four. They want teachers that sound good, that have itching ears that'll tell me how good everything is in my life without pointing out sin, without being instructive about the dogmatic words of the Lord Jesus Christ. They wanna put their arms around every group of people and say, hey, yeah, you that are Calvinist and you that are Catholic, let's all get together and squeeze each other for Jesus. This is the day you're living in. It is all in preparation for a one world religious system. It is all leading, don't be blind to what's happening right in front of your eyes. It's predicted in the Bible, it's predicted that this would happen, and it's happening. People talk about the end times, you're living in it. You're watching it happen if you open your eyes and pay attention. Deceivers are waxing worse and worse. So that much of the work then of a New Testament church preacher becomes warning the flock. And when they will not warn the flock, they're apostate. So I'm talking about maybe we should be softer, Mike, and call them pre-apostate. Because they haven't moved their doctrine People talk like this, well I believe the same things I used to believe. Yeah, but you're not warning people about the apostasy that's coming very much at the church. You're not being honest with people about the directions of people out there in the world that are preaching false things and are deceiving God's people. So maybe we could call them pre-apostate. Pre-apostate. So I've watched this and there's just nothing new. I've watched this in history. I remember when I was a kid, everybody went to church in the independent Baptist church movement, and everybody had a little plastic large envelope, plastic, not every person, but every Sunday school teacher. And it was a good Sunday school program from the regular Baptist press. How many remember those things? Yeah, yeah. And when you looked at it, man, it was laid out there just right. I mean, everybody had their little workbook and they had their little thing, everything prepared. Man, you could almost take anybody who didn't know anything about the Bible and make him an instant teacher. That was the program. That was the plan. Well, pastor, I can get this regular Baptist press in my church because it's well printed, it's well organized, it's well fashioned. But what happened? I saw it happen. and churches started giving up on the separation. Why? Because before doctrine goes, your separation goes. They started being infiltrated by these kind of movements. The Regular Baptist Press is a ministry of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, what we call the Garb Churches, who have apostatized. If you include in the apostasy any step of separation, these churches are on the forefront. It was started in the 1920s by Bob Ketchum there in the city of Gary, Indiana. It was the center focus of a lot of churches that gathered together and stood against the onrush of this liberalism and the modernist controversy, but they did not stay straight. and we collaborate with them, and we borrow their stuff, and we look good for a while, but until we start to compromise, as they suddenly bring in their other Bible versions, and that's what happened. And then the teachers are saying, well, I'll use their material, but I'll just skip over the Bible version and the little note cards that had the verses for the kids that were included. So now you're compromising, you're sort of warming up to those, and those churches then took on the other kind of step. They stopped the separation, they stopped preaching strong, and then they started accepting the Bible versions that were printed in the regular Baptist press. Pretty soon, the church is not any different. It's no different than every church out there in the park. Every kind of sly thing that the devil wants to maneuver comes through because we start these little subtle compromises with pre-apostate churches. And then preachers like me get labeled, you're harsh, you're unloving. If somebody were gonna hurt your children, get this, would you just let them go play with them? And if you did, if you knew there was harm intended in the heart of somebody and you let them play with your children, aren't you part of the problem? Say, pastor, who in the world would do that? Everybody, every family. Well, I know it's not good to do that for our lives, but you know, that's the uncle. That's the cousin. That's the, because you're related to it. And then you end up leaving your kids with them and babysitting them. in such circumstances that you don't know the depth of sin that will happen as a result, aren't you then complicit? And let me ask you again, if you let your kids go with a drunkard just because he was related to you and something happened to your children, isn't that a testimony of your love for that child? Rather, your lack of love for that child. Well, then really, when people are pointing at the preacher about how harsh he is, aren't they acting like little kids in the seat, in the living room, when they pout, I want to go to Aunt Susan's house, and Mommy won't let me. Mommy's harsh. Daddy's harsh. Now, I'm not your daddy. I'm not your daddy. I don't have that kind of authority. But I'll tell you, I love you. And I don't want you to get into any kind of sliding into compromise. Not through anything. You open that door, you can't shut that door. You open that door, you can't shut that door. I'll say it five times if you need to hear it. And the apostle made the doctrines and the teachings of God not a bottom shelf, but a very prominent part of his epistle. Mentioning the word doctrine in just six chapters, if I remember correctly, over 12 times. Bringing it to the forefront that what we're teaching and what we're allowing to influence this pulpit and in every part of our ministries is very, very foundational to everything we do. I said, boy, that pastor's excited today. Maybe I am, maybe I'm trying to preach like the Bible's preaching. Sometimes I have a tendency to look at messages about Bible doctrine and I sort of think, oh, this is gonna put everybody to sleep. When it ought to wake you up, scare you a little bit, That deceiver who deceived Adam and Eve, who's been after every Christian ever since, who even in his pride thought he could tempt the Lord and did, he's bigger than you and I and he's more dangerous than we can comprehend. If we really believed how bad the devil was and the things that he has for you and for your children, you wanna know something? You'd stop watching the YouTube. Say amen. Say pastor, now you're preaching again. I'm preaching about watching your entertainment. Do something productive. Guard what your children have. Oh, is everything wrong with you too, Pastor? I don't look at bad things. Well, I'm just gonna, I'm no expert. I'm not there with your family, but I'll bet things pop up afterwards that ought not to be seen. And your kids are getting an education on how to spend family time. Number one point is the doctrine of false teachers. If any teach otherwise and consent not to wholesome words. Look at the words in chapter number six. Verse number five, three. If any man teach otherwise and consent not to wholesome words, even the words. Do you notice the repetition of one word? The word words is used twice. Why, because the bottom line is God's word. Bottom line, but that means that it is the most important thing you could know. Now I understand this, you could know all about the Bible and your heart could not be right with God, that's true. But you will not, even if you're on the right path, you look like a Christian, you're talking like a Christian, you're trying to be obedient, you will, unless there's a basis of Bible truth that underlies it all, you will not long do that. You've got to know what you believe and why you believe it. Every Christian should study the word of God to be approved of God. And if you do that, he says, you're a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Now these teachers come up and they say, They don't come and teach really something that looks directly opposite of the truth. Are we warming it up in here? Maybe it's just me. I'm going to ditch my jacket. I'm pretty hot. If everybody else is cold, it could just be me for once. Just get comfortable. I'm in no mood to quit preaching tonight. You don't have to freeze everybody out there, Zach. OK. People are not going to come and deceive you by teaching the opposite of what you have believed. They don't come in and teach opposite. They teach otherwise. What does that mean? Well, you can disguise the truth with a little bit of error and you've just destroyed the faith of some people. So man, it looks like truth. Man, it looks like they got a few things right. And then they slip this stuff in here about compromise. They talk about not just the Bible issue, but about living the right kind of life. They gossip about the pastor. They defang the preacher. I was reading one book that defangs the preacher. A preacher shouldn't name names from a podium. He should go and see that person directly. You know what makes the difference between seeing somebody, the requirement to see them personally, is when they are publishing information and disseminating it, they are trying to influence people, and pastors have to say, this is enough, we have to stop the danger of apostasy. And so do I have to go and talk to guys that publish garbage and say, hey, you that are compromisers out there, I need to have a conference with you because this book that you publish defangs a preacher. No, all it is is a step towards softness and compromise. No wonder the author that I'm talking about has a son that has a rock and roll church. whose name I've already named in the beginning of my sermon. Consent not to, they come with an otherwise, not an opposite, an otherwise. Don't you know there's another way? Don't you know you don't have to be as harsh as that Pastor Whitaker? Man, you can be the loving kind of smooth person. You're not gonna do that in the battle. You're not gonna go up to the enemy and say, hey, pal, I'm really your pal. No, you're gonna go up and say, pal, Because if you don't, he's going to kill you. And we're in a battle against the devil. They mask it. They'll say otherwise. But pastor, we're the only movement that shoots our own. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Just because somebody is a pastor out there doesn't give them the right to teach false things. and then they go out there and practice false things, it doesn't give them the right. And because they're a pastor and they're teaching falsehood, and I as a pastor, who have a responsibility of the flock, say, hey, watch, as the Bible says in space. He said, for three years I ceased not to warn you, night and day with tears. And you say, pastor, that is, you're shooting your own. He's not my own. If he's not consenting to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he comes in with an otherwise teaching, he thinks he's wise. It's not God's wisdom, it's another wisdom. I know that's not what otherwise meant, but that's a good explanation of it. And he comes in and he wants to subvert the truths of God. He is not one of us. And he needs to be called out. And in our day, we need to grow some guts, have a backbone. That's what needs to happen. It needs to toughen up from within that says, I have a desire toward the word of God more than I do toward my own desires. I have a desire to be obedient to these wholesome words, more than I do my own understanding. It says, lean not on thine own understanding, in all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. Not acknowledging me, or my emotions, or my desires. I'm gonna look at myself and say, my life is bound in the words of God Himself. They consent not to wholesome words. Wholesome means sound or sensible. These are people who do not consent to it, so they have another way to do it. We found a nicer way. We want Christianity wrapped in pink lace. Right, you mean you want put people to sleep and off guard when the devil comes with his attacks. It's a Christianity that's not working. It isn't working out there. You say, but pastor, their auditoriums are full. Why, because they rock and roll? Go to the homes and see if there's any difference between their home and the home of the world. And you'll find that there's no more victory here than in the world. If you want victory, you're gonna stick to those wholesome words. There is victory in this book. There is not victory in compromise. There's victory here. And I can't overstate it, the response of people. Well, that pastor, he's just harsh. No, maybe he's right. If I'm right with the Bible, then I am right. And it doesn't matter how big a name or how many doctorate degrees somebody has, when they contradict the Bible, they're wrong. And to be 90% accurate with God's word is not good. That's a deceiver. Second thing is the demeanor of the false teachers. There were some other things I had there. Let me back up and say this about the doctrine that is according to godliness. You see, doctrine truth always produces godliness. In other words, truth is no good that's not practiced. But God's truth, His way, His doctrine will always change our lives to be closer to Him. It isn't permissive. Like today's churches where, hey, you can do anything you want. I looked up on a website and one of my roommates that I had in Bible college, he went to Fundamental Bible College. and he's got a church down somewhere in the Carolinas, and his song leader's got really long hair. I mean, he looks like the devil, looks like the world. You say, what's wrong with that? Did you read 1 Corinthians? It is a shame for a man to have long hair. That's the Bible. If you don't like that, take it up with God. He wrote it, I didn't. And my point is that people are not consenting to wholesome words, but if they did, it would produce godliness and separation in your life. It always does. So good doctrine produces a different walk, a cleanness, a holiness. False teaching promotes a pleasure-seeking so that the emphasis often changes in a church to how you can feel good about yourself rather than about how you can be convicted for your sins. I know this is not popular. but it needs to be preached. Your conviction about what God has in his word produces holiness. What's happening in compromising churches is that anything goes. You can have sin in the church and still be okay. Like pastors who, even though we went over this, that the Bible says if you don't have your family in order, how can you run the church of God? And people are saying, but oh, Chuck Colson, we know his son went into wicked sin, but that's all right, his books are good. And so he goes out and compromises with his son in order to reach his son. Pastor, you're stepping on my toes now. No, you need to get your ideas off of the names of men and into the words of God. And if you didn't have any loyalties to these individuals who have a lot of notoriety, and by the way, that comes with a lot of money, And if you didn't know those personalities, and you just read the Bible, and you had a relationship with Jesus, your loyalties would drag you far away from those kinds. And I'm begging you, become loyal to the Bible. Loyal to Christ. What is the demeanor, number two, the demeanor? Well, it says he's proud. Number two, it says he knows nothing. Number three, he's doting about questions of strife of words, and that produces some terrible effects. So what we have here is pride. This is fundamental to all false teaching is a pride. And I've seen it all my life. Because I've been, my dad was saved by the time I came around. And so I grew up in a Christian home going to church. I'm gonna tell you what I've noticed, okay? And I want you to think about this and how it applies to your life, okay? There are a lot of people who covet the ability to teach and to preach. Well, I really want a chance to preach, pastor. No, I'm glad that you want to preach, to share God's word, okay? Chase, I'm not talking about the work that we're doing. Have you noticed in the same chapter, right? He's getting ready to preach his first sermon. But they come up to the pastor and they say, pastor, that was a great message. You're an awesome preacher. As if the whole motivation for it is full of pride. I've seen it all my life. And they actually, like they come to each other and they say, hey, did you hear my sermon today? Wasn't it good? I had a good point. They talk like this. I've heard it all my life. Because my dad was a preacher, I would be around the preachers when the preachers were done preaching. Pride. You know what's true about every false teacher? Every false teacher. Pride. Full of himself. I know something you've never heard before. Especially when somebody says that, you know, run the other way. There isn't anything new under the sun. The Bible is The old-fashioned way. And the old-fashioned way is already done and laid out, and it's already put together. And somebody says, well, I know something that nobody else knows. I just have knowledge that somebody else never found out. I'm smarter than the preacher. Yes, people have said that. People, more than one, have said that to me since I pastored this church. Not in here. They're not in here. I'm not going to quit looking around. I thought I saw Terry look at Elijah like, Elijah, why did you say that? But the key is that pride. I'm gonna tell you something, I don't covet to be in the pulpit. I never have. I argued with the Lord when he called me to preach that there's no way that I could, I could even, whew, I had the hardest time even praying. I was 14, and my dad would call on me to pray in church, and from my seat out there, and I sat in the back on that side over there most of the time, and I would be called on to pray, and I had a hard time even praying. And I argue with God, I can't do this. And I'm gonna tell you the reason that I'm here is not because I'm good at this, or not because I've done it a long time. Like one fella told me, I don't know if I'm called, but I've been doing this long enough, I should just keep on doing it. That's not a calling. I am here because of the calling of God on my life. And as the Bible says, what Paul said, woe is me if I preach not the gospel. I don't even know if I could be right with God if I stopped preaching. I guarantee I couldn't even pray. And if I'm going to be right with God, it's going to take proclaiming the truth, making people feel a little uncomfortable at times. Well, that pastor, he's naming people again. Well, is he right or is he wrong? See, we've been programmed so much to be so concerned about the issue of pointing out sin that we no longer look at what he's preaching, but about whom he's preaching. It becomes the issue of, well, he said he called out the Pope in that sermon. I just, I don't call out the Pope a lot of times, because I know you assume that he's a total, total heretic, right? I don't, I call out the people that might affect you. that are seeking to influence you, that are publishing books and podcasts and pushing on you. They're a false kind of Christianity. Their demeanor is full of pride. They forget Proverbs 27 where it says, let another man praise thee and not thine own mouth, a stranger and not thine own lips. There's something wrong. Beware when somebody covets the pulpit. Usually false teaching follows inflated egos. I'm going to say that again so you remember it. False teaching usually follows inflated egos. Be careful. Be careful. So I don't see myself as being seen in the pulpit. What I see is like a heart surgeon going into a very important surgery. trusting in God and in His Word to do surgery spiritually, which is more important than your physical heart. That's the way I see myself. And the responsibility laid upon me as if nothing else I could do in life without delivering God's plan of preaching. The demeanor, number three, the description, we get into this knowing nothing They are also destitute, in verse 5, of the truth. So in verse 4 it says they are proud and they know nothing. So what do we know about them? Well, if you just look at what they say, I don't care. You could find the errors in the holes of everything that they're putting out. Because they're ignorant. They're destitute of the truth. They're like those that are willingly ignorant of 2 Peter chapter 3. And it says those that are destitute of truth, it means literally from Strong's concordance, kept back by fraud. They make a decision to do this. They're out to hurt our people, to draw people away after their wrong ideas. Usually an idea that says you can live how you want and God will be happy with you. that's usually at the heart of it, why? Because they want their own sin to be excused. Their own greed and covetousness and lust and every kind of thing that's going on out in what's called evangelical Christianity, which is a very broad umbrella. We operate as just a tiny portion of what that umbrella would be and we are separate from almost everyone there. Say, but they're preaching the gospel. Yes, I know. Some, as Philippians 1 says, preach the gospel even of strife and of envy. And wherever the gospels preach, I therein rejoice, yea, and will rejoice, but I will not go with it. I will take a stand on God's word. You know what else is true about them? They're full of sickness. Look at that word doting. It's an unusual word. I had to look it up. It is the Greek word that if you transliterated it into English, it would be spelled N-O-S-E-O, pronounced nauseo. Yes, it's where we get the nauseated word. It means to be sick. That is, in a way of a diseased appetite, to hanker after. figuratively to harp on. They are doting about looking, searching, seeking, wanting somebody that'll listen to me, Pastor. Now, I mean, I want people to desire to serve the Lord. And you say, what are you looking for first? Faithfulness. Faithfulness. Say, Pastor, I want to serve the Lord. Be faithful. They say, but I'm as faithful as my job will allow me. But if you can't come, I'm not gonna put you in position if you're not gonna be in church. Why? Because that's the requirements required in a steward that a man be found faithful. But there are people that even if they wanted to teach really good things and they come and say, pastor, I just want, I think you're wrong for not letting me be in the teaching position. Why? No, I'm not saying you shouldn't teach. Watch what I'm trying to say. Why do you want to teach? Because I want to influence people. No, you had it right the first thing, because I, I, I, I. It's ministering with a heart to obey the Lord. So you say, Pastor, what are you listening for? If I said, why do you want to teach? because the Lord told me to. Isn't that a little different? Hmm. Then here are our requirements. All through the history of this church, and maybe I should be more blunt than I am, but I've had people come to me and demand of me. There have been people that have been nice, a little bit like, well, you know, back in my old church, the Sunday school super, and they're looking at me like, and? Right, I mean, that's happened. I love these people. They're not here in this room, but I've had other people demanding me, what are the requirements? Right now, you have to tell me what the requirements are to be a teacher. And I said, no, I'm not even gonna tell you. They say, why, Pastor? Why do they want to know? so that they can comply. No, that man wanted to change the church. He was demanding that I give up those requirements. For Pete's sake, God has requirements if you're gonna be a teacher. I don't know who Pete is, maybe St. Peter, I don't know. You know, not only are they sick, but they're seditious. And strife of words, whereof cometh envy? Where should the ministry be filled with envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings? Where should this be in the ministry? And so to keep it out, we have to stop listening to the teachers that cause to err from the words of truth. That's a verse from the book of Proverbs. Notice also, look at their deduction. They just say, hey, supposing gain is godliness. So, man, when a church has too much money, what should they do with the money? I think so. Whether it be home missions as far as like, hey, I'm all for getting better looking tracks to pass out. I'm all for having nicer brochures. Maybe you should buy Bibles for every person in the city and go door to door with cases and start passing them. If you have too much money, use it for God. And when a church just starts to fill the building with special optics and the pastor's got the most inflated salaries, a lot of the characteristics, you say, pastor, we've never had that problem. Why are you preaching? That's true, but I praise God for the way that this church is doing with their church budget, by the way. I sometimes don't tell you when it's good, but it's not that every week is above budget, but it's been averaging, and knowing the facts of who's here and who has had to leave the church, I know that a lot of the money left the church, and God is still meeting all the needs. Not to mention we're giving an extra $1,000 every month to Brother Zulu there to feed the churches there. That's amazing. Praise God for what you're doing. But I'll tell you a characteristic of those that have too much money. They become proud of the money as a sign that God is with us. After all, look, we have so much. Look at all of our beautiful grounds. You know, I mean, they got flower beds that exceed the entire budget of our entire church budget for a year. And they become fixated on the fact that God must be blessing them simply because they have money. Now, I believe in God's blessing sometimes as coming through money. I believe that, okay? Sometimes he does that just to give you a little extra to say, hey, I just want you to know I'm with you. But you're not spiritual because you have money. In fact, it is money has a tendency to corrupt. Next time we meet, we'll talk about real gain from this passage. We're gonna meet pretty soon, and I'm gonna pop in here on a Thursday night. I've got a couple of those where I'm gonna be zooming in and preaching a Thursday night. We'll talk about real gain from God's word. What does it mean, real gain? But supposing gain is godliness, he said, that's apostasy. But that is a byproduct, sort of a deduction of somebody who is just set and enamored about themselves. Watch out, the last thing today is the departure from false teachers. At the end of verse number five, from such, with, no. It says from such, have just a, a controlled relationship, a guarded relationship. That's not what it says either. He said, Pastor, can't I benefit from the good that they're doing and stay away from the evil? In some instances, and by the way, normally concerning an author that has already passed away. That's my philosophy. You wanna know my philosophy? I have authors like our library, whatever we have in there, a little over 2,000 volumes right now. It's not a huge library, but there are a lot of reference books in there. A lot of them I wouldn't agree with everything the author says. But sometimes you have to go through and eat the meat and spit out the bones a little bit. But I'm going to tell you something. As long as an organization is still putting out their material, as long as an author is still going to town writing, you don't know where he's leading. And the subtle changes and innuendos and the, as I call, defanging of the preacher's power and authority, going on in these writings, you don't know where he's going to go next. And because these men are good at words, they're good at writing, they're good at printing, they're good at really graphic designing, then they draw you in. And you're sort of looking for, well, what are they going to write next? But when there's an author whose complete works, because he's passed away, it's all done, you have a beginning and an end of his writings, and you can evaluate everything. I'll give you a quick example. I don't agree with everything from The Berean Call. Remember that little newsletter I used to give you, Brother Ricky? But Dave Hunt was the head of that thing. And he started writing. He stayed in the Presbyterian Church. He died about, what, I think about 2008 or something. His last book was called An Urgent Call to Serious Faith in Christ. He would have preached at the end of his life a message like this. Get serious. Your life is about to end. But you could take all that he's written, and I haven't read everything, but almost everything he's written, he's probably written maybe, maybe he's written 50 volumes, and I've read almost all of it, I would guess, over the years. He wrote a lot about Colts, and I used to teach the Colts back at the Bible College, so I just, he and I corresponded, it's the only time I corresponded with him was over that issue. But you know the total of where he's gonna go, because he's passed away. I wouldn't agree with everything that he would teach. I don't think his ecclesiology was right. But what I noticed about the man is that the older he got and the more that he studied, the closer he got to what we believe. Even started picking up our old fashioned Bible. There's a couple of those guys that started that direction. And they started out maybe a little bit over here. Another one of those is passed away is Mr. Phillips that was in charge of the correspondence school and developed it for Moody Bible Institute. And John Phillips, he started out with his own, he had his own version of the Bible that he wrote. But as he got older, he became more concerned about the actual words of God, and he walked closer and closer and closer, and when he finally died, he died in an independent Baptist church in North Carolina, Bobby Robertson's church, and he died with all of his commentaries published again by another publishing company with the King James Bible. So you know the total. of what they're doing. Say, Pastor, that sounds like an awful lot of study to know what these guys are thinking. And that's my point. Because deceivers are going to wax worse and worse, multiplying. And they're going to deceive more and more as we draw closer to the time of Christ's coming. The time to be less careful isn't now. It is time to be more careful. it is time to be more serious about doctrine. And the command here, from such, withdraw yourself. That means cut the relationship. Ooh, that goes against our culture. Ooh, that's mean. And I'm saying I didn't write the Bible, and I'm not reinterpreting it wrong. That's what it says. And while we play with all these other kinds of compromising preachers on our bookshelves, and we listen to compromisers on the internet, and we think, well, I can handle it. Yeah, you're just falling for the same pride that really motivates them. They are proud, knowing nothing. What are you saying you're knowing nothing? Who's smarter, us or a lot of people that have been deceived in the past? In other words, a lot of smarter people than me have fallen away from the right paths. Do you understand that? And if you don't think so, you're proud. And you're in trouble. But a lot of people. Reminds me of what Proverbs chapter six says that many strong men have been taken in by her, talking about the adulterous woman. Many strong men. And you know, it comes to the point where I have to say, a lot stronger men, many of them, who are stronger than me, have been taken in by the sin of this adulterous type of woman. Who am I? I better strive to be close to Jesus at all times. No compromises. No compromises. And the church that preaches this isn't, this is not being preached, to my knowledge, anywhere else in this city. It is a rare thing across America. It is unpopular in our culture when you get up and you preach, thus saith the Lord, and this guy over here is doing wrong, and this guy's doing wrong. I mean, they get ice cold. And I'm saying it's because we live in the last days. The devil's trying to wrap every independent Baptist church right up in with the others into a one world church organization. And he'll succeed. He'll succeed after the rapture. What's left of the congregations, who are a lot of those filled with people who think they're saved and they never really were saved. They'll still be around and they'll still play church for a little bit of time. and they'll see nothing wrong with joining friendships with the people they're already friends with and reading. It'll mean nothing to them. But the doctrines that we're talking about were worth the blood of all the martyrs. Do you know how many of them died just for baptism? Oh, baptism's not an important issue. You know how many? Go read that book by Van Brought, Martyr's Mirror. and discuss and read the stories of men and women and children who were baptized publicly and were burnt at the stake or killed in other ways simply for one doctrine. Are you serious enough about your faith that you'll live for it or die for it? It's worth it. Let's stand and have a closing prayer. Heavenly Father, I pray that we'd honor you not. I don't want to have an ugly attitude about false teachers. I don't particularly like Lord to call them out. But Lord, I pray we wouldn't be afraid to do what your word says to do. I pray that you would please. Guide us into all truth. Help us to love truth more than we love ourselves. So that defending the truth at all cost is what we're here for. And Lord, I pray that you'd help us, Lord, to be willing to just be what you want us to be. Touch our hearts tonight, Lord, in your name I pray. Heads bowed and eyes closed.