Take your Bibles and turn to 1 Timothy 6. 1 Timothy 6. And we're going to pick up at the end of verse 2 and read through verse 10. So again, 1 Timothy 6, end of verse 2, through verse 10. Paul writes this, that, Timothy, teach and urge these things. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. Now, there is great gain in godliness with contentment. For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs." God, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for instruction and warning. And God, I pray this morning as we think about these words written to Timothy, God, that we would see how they fit We would see how they come to bear on our lives here today as we sit at Forest Hills. God, we desire that Your Spirit speak through what You have said. I have no words to offer, but we pray that Your Spirit would speak through Your words, through Your holy scriptures, God, and change us, and challenge us, and accomplish Your purposes. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. A few years back, conducted an experiment in the basement of my house. I'd gone to Moody Pastor's Conference and sat in this really cool session where they were teaching us some things how to illustrate and how to use things for family devotions and to illustrate biblical truths and things like that. So really cool, a lot of practical stuff. But there's one in particular that I really thought was cool. So I thought we'd try it. So one night when Kathy was gone, And that right there should clue us in that I felt more comfortable trying this with Kathy not at home. When Kathy was gone, I grabbed Carissa. I said, Carissa was, she was probably five or six at the time. And I said, hey, Riss, I said, you want to see something really cool? She's like, yeah. I'm like, all right, come on. Come with Daddy. We're going downstairs in the basement. So we went downstairs in the basement. And this illustration had to do with, and I won't give all the details. So this is one of those, don't try this at home, OK? It involved a microwave, and an egg, and some other things. And so I'd seen this done at Moody, and the guy demonstrated it in the class, and again, it was really cool. So I set the whole thing up with Carissa, and we're sitting here. Now, the way the illustration worked, it was supposed to work, you set the thing up, and you put the microwave on, and you have the egg in there. About every 10 seconds, you're supposed to look at it and observe what you see. So I told Chris, I said, okay, look through the window there. What do you see? About 10 seconds in, he goes, nothing, looks the same. All right, 10 seconds later, look again. Chris, what do you see? Nothing, looks the same. This goes on for about a minute, minute and a half. And eventually what happens is that the egg inside, it pops. And the illustration is, great, it looks fine on the outside. But all this time, something was cooking on the inside. Something was going on inside that wasn't apparent on the outside, and eventually, when that continued to go on inside, there came a point where it popped, and it became evident on the outside. Now, for some reason, In the book, Ed bought this book with how to do it, so it was a little bit different in the book than how the guy had done it in person, so I kind of thought, okay, this is probably the good medium ground in how to do this, and apparently it wasn't. Because our egg didn't pop. We had a small nuclear explosion in the basement of my house. The door of the microwave blew off the microwave. I'm not kidding. The bottom hinge popped, the locking mechanism, there was one hinge kind of still holding it on, but it blew open. The glass plate, the little spinny, the glass plate, I don't know where it was. It was gone. And there was egg everywhere. I mean, me, Carissa, the wall, I mean, all our stuff, and it reeked. And we're sitting there, and we're both like, And Carissa, in all of her wisdom, looks at me and goes, ooh, I don't think we should tell mommy about this. And I said, you're so wise, my young child. And I said, okay, don't say anything to mommy, I'll handle this. So we put the microwave back on the shelf and put Chris to the bed. Now, the microwave, my wife, and she reminded me as I told her the story, her grandma had given her this microwave right before she went to college, and her grandma had just died like two months before. So then I fell back because it was a sentimental microwave. And I got the look from my wife, and you know, Chris, I could have been killed, and I know, I'm sorry. I was just trying to teach her theology, you know. It happens. I think false teaching is a lot like that egg. You look at it on the outside and it looks okay. It's fine. Nothing going on. There's nothing wrong here. But at its heart, inside, there's something cooking. There's something wrong. And as that false teaching is allowed to continue, and as it is listened to, and as we pay attention to it, eventually at some point, it's going to blow. Eventually, at some point, it is going to bring about the natural fruit that it is designed to bring about by the enemy. This is a huge theme in 1 Timothy. You think about the size of 1 Timothy. Six chapters, a relatively small book in the Bible. And yet, The warnings about false teaching are laced throughout 1 Timothy. Right away, right from the get-go, in chapter 1, the introduction, boom, warning about false teaching. You go on at the end of chapter 1, Paul warns Timothy. They talk about Alexander and Hymenaeus who have shipwrecked in their faith. You go on in chapter 4, verses 1-5, and Paul talks about the deceitful spirits and people who are putting forth the teaching of demons. And Paul alludes to asceticism there. People adding to the faith and adding to the Gospel in order to look holy and to add to salvation. And then you come on here in chapter 6 into our passage today in another warning. So you see, in a small book, the warning about false teaching is laced throughout it. As we begin today, this is what we need to understand. That the threat of false teaching is very real to the church of Jesus Christ. It is a very real threat to the church of Jesus Christ, to the people of God. We need to acknowledge that. We need to be aware of that. It's interesting to me, As you trace through the books of 1 and 2 Timothy, one of the things I love about it is that Paul is exhorting Timothy. And there's these charges to preach the Word and there's a reminder to him of his ministry and to teach and instruct and to fight. And what is interwoven throughout those reminders to Timothy and follows it on several occasions is a warning about false teaching. So you have Timothy teach, instruct, fight, be a good soldier, because there's false teachers. And it's a reminder. It's a reminder that when we sign on to follow Christ, we don't sign on to live neutrally our entire lives. When we sign on to follow Christ, we have placed ourselves in a battle. Now that I am on this side, on the gospel side, on God's truth side, there is an enemy who is opposing. There is a false doctrine that is gonna be put forth as we put forth the truth. That's gonna happen. That's the nature of the battle. That is the nature of what is going on. And I think so often we can get lulled to sleep and comfortable, especially in Western Christianity. In places even like Forest Hills, we think, we're strong in our orthodoxy. We're not gonna compromise on the virgin birth. We're not gonna compromise on the atonement. We're not gonna compromise on the fundamentals of the faith. And probably not, hopefully not. But you know what, it's a lot more subtle than that. Satan knows that too. Those aren't the angles he's gonna attack from, at least at first. And I think as we read through here, we'll see some of the angles he takes. But what we have to start to do is remind ourselves, I cannot be neutral. For those of us in vocational ministry or in official ministry roles, sometimes it's easy to think, wow, I got the position. I got the job of being a pastor. I got the role of teaching Sunday school. Man, now I can kick back and relax. I got the job. I'm here. No, it's just starting. You have an enemy who's trying to undermine God's truth. I'm a Boston Red Sox fan. I know you guys know that. Most of you. Someone boo? I heard that. 2003, the Red Sox failed once again to advance past the league championship, once again at the hands of the Yankees. And so the general manager at the time, Theo Epstein, we're going to deal with this. And they went out and they signed Curt Schilling. Free agent Curt Schilling, a highly successful pitcher. And one of the big reasons why they got him was not only that, but because of his success in the postseason and specifically success in the postseason against the Yankees. Curt Schilling endeared himself to Red Sox fans everywhere. When in his introductory press conference, he sits down, he picks up a Boston Red Sox hat, puts it on, looks at the camera and says, well, I guess I hate the Yankees now. Right? Why did that endear him to people? He sat down, he understood. I've been brought here for a reason. And it is to beat that team. And I don't like them. And I'm gonna fight to bring a World Series to this town and beat that team. That's the mentality we need to take. I hate Satan now. I have a purpose. I'm engaged in a battle. Neutral Christians will succumb to false teaching. That cannot be us. We don't have the time to unpack it, but the reality, the threat of false teaching is laced throughout the New Testament. You look at in Matthew, Jesus says, beware of false prophets, ravenous wolves, he calls them, which by the way, ravenous wolves are dangerous. Ravenous wolves. In 2 Peter, Peter writes, false teachers secretly bring destructive heresies. They will exploit you. You get that? Secretly. Secretly bring. Jude 3-4 writes, Contend for the faith, for certain people have crept in unnoticed. It's not the big doctrinal things that Satan attacks first. It's the little things. False teaching erodes the little things first. We can get lulled to sleep. We have to be alert and awake. So Paul unpacks some things here to help us do that. First of all, the message of the false teachers decentralizes Christ and does not produce the fruit of righteous living. The message of the false teachers decentralizes Christ and does not produce the fruit of righteous living. Verse 3, if anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness. It is wrong doctrine because it simply does not agree with what Jesus has said. If it doesn't agree with what Jesus has said through His Word, it is false teaching. It's wrong doctrine because it doesn't produce good fruits. And we'll unpack this a little bit more in a minute because Paul does, but that's another telltale sign. False teaching ultimately will reveal itself for what it is. Good teaching, sound teaching, produces good fruit. It'll leave a positive legacy. Again, we'll unpack that more in a minute, but let's focus on this first part for a minute here. As you look through the theme of the false teaching as Paul addresses it throughout 1 Timothy, it decentralizes Christ. One of the things that, especially in chapter 1, a lot of commentators say Paul is probably dealing with here is this false teaching, this heresy of Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a teaching that, the short of it is that you sought to attain this higher secret knowledge. Here's the teaching of the apostles and the teachings of Christ, but those aren't enough. See, so Christ is decentralized, Christ is marginalized because the teachings of Christ aren't enough. You go on in chapter 4 and there's this asceticism. You add things to the faith. You add things to the Gospel so that you can earn favor with God or so that you can prove how holy you are. Again, in that, the cross is decentralized. The sacrifice that Christ made on the cross isn't enough. Again, Christ is marginalized. You go on, greed, gain, lack of contentment. What is that? Christ isn't enough. Right? Perhaps this is a lack of distrust. I'm not content. I need more because I can't trust my shepherd. I can't trust God. Jesus, again, is marginalized. And again, you think about greed and love of money and desire for personal gain. He's marginalized there because life is no longer about me, or no longer about Him and His kingdom and His glory. Life's about me and what I can get. And in Christianity, the faith becomes about me. So Christ at every level is marginalized. Anything that you come across that decentralizes and deemphasizes Jesus Christ, run away from it. It is dangerous. But these are the subtle messages that I believe that hammer at the church today. Lack of contentment, greed, preoccupation with things that don't matter. Not the big doctrinal errors. At least it doesn't start there. R. Kent Hughes, preacher, commentator, he writes this, we cannot entertain anything that takes away from the person and work of Jesus. Healthy Christianity focuses on Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of God's promises through His atoning death, resurrection, and ascension. It lifts up Jesus as the perfect second Adam. It lifts Him up as the ultimate Son of David. It lifts Him up as the Lamb of God. It lifts Him up as Redeemer and Savior. It lifts Him up as the true temple. It lifts Him up as the Alpha and Omega. It glorifies Him as our only hope. in life and death. Anything that competes with Christ needs to be avoided. Paul helps us out here some more by exposing the heart of the false teacher. The heart of the false teacher is evil and self-serving. The self-serving false teacher does not have your best interest in mind. Paul says, what does that look like? He helps us understand. First of all, the false teacher is conceited. He is conceited. The false teacher won't be willing to engage in thoughtful conversation, self-evaluation, or any type of biblical critique of his position. Arrogant. Contrast this, by the way, with Paul. Even here in 1 Timothy, Paul, I'm the worst person I know. Paul, I'm the chief of sinners. I'm the least of the apostles. Right? There's your humility. That's what you look for in a true teacher. One of my favorite teachers in my seminary years, he's gone home to be with the Lord now, but Dr. Joe Crawford, over at the seminary. Dr. Crawford forgot more in a week about theology than I'll know in my life. I mean, he was a brilliant man. And what I loved about Dr. Crawford was his humility. And I remember he'd often say something along these lines. He'd say, there are definitely things that we know, that we can know about God. 100% know because he's revealed them to us. But he said, this is bigger than me. And there are aspects of God I can't explain. So we're gonna give it our best at our theology classes. And I remember he'd say something along the lines of, you know, so here's my best shot at this, and he would teach us. And he'd say, no, I'm sure right now the angels who are supposed to be watching over us are buzzing around this room just cracking up at this old fool up here trying to explain the things of God. But I love that, that humility. It's the mark of a true teacher. The next thing Paul says about them is that they understand nothing. They understand nothing. He's already alluded to this in chapter 1 where he says that they desire to be teachers, but they're without understanding. They desire to be teachers. They'll stand up and they'll give you a bunch of facts, but they don't ultimately have understanding. And then we can usually tell, right? When there's someone who's like talking and they're giving some of the, you know, like they really don't know what they're talking about. Hopefully not what you're sitting there thinking right now. I bought it, here's what this looks like. I bought a camera for my wife, just for our family, and I think sports and stuff are getting involved. It was time to get a nice camera. So I've done some research. You could go down to one of the big box stores and say, hey, can you tell me about this camera? It drives me nuts is when you ask a couple of questions about the camera, and they're kind of like, oh, it's, you know, well. And they pick up the box, and they read the box to me. Right? You know what I'm saying? Like, they're like, well, this is, I'm like, do you work here? Because I can read the box. Don't read the box. I know what the box says. I want understanding. So like, okay. They didn't pay me. This isn't a commercial for Norman Camera. I went down the road, Norman Camera. Oh, my. It was like awesome. He was telling me about the camera. He was like, yeah, there's the Nikon. Here's the Canon. Here's the difference. Here's this. I'm like, whoa, wait, what does that mean? Oh, OK, this means this. And as Conrad, this one has this. And so this is how this is different. This is this. You know, what do you want to use it for? This. And I'm like, you're awesome. Give me two. You know, it was like so refreshing. That's understanding. There's a difference. The person there really knew what they were talking about. They weren't just desiring to be a camera salesman. They were a true camera salesman. And the next thing Paul says here is that the false teacher has an unhealthy interest in controversies, in quarrels about words. They like to fight. They like to stir up grief, controversy. Again, I cite R. Kent Hughes. He writes this, These people, these false teachers, cannot or will not grasp the plain meaning of a sentence or a paragraph in its context, but rather fix on a word or soundbite and give it a definition that defies lexicons, history, and logic. Nothing dissuades them, nothing informs them, they understand nothing, and they enjoy it." Here's one of the ways you see this. Be wary of this. Anytime somebody says something like this, I have a brand new way of reading the book of Revelation. For 2,000 years, the church has been characterized by ignorant idiots who haven't been able to get it right. But I have this right! And we're like, oh, he's got a brand new way of Revelation. Right? Now, yeah, we're always learning that the Scriptures are inexhaustible, so there's always going to be like, wow, we didn't see this before. But, right, even that statement, that's stirring up controversy. Here's a new way to understand the atonement. Eh, yeah, I'll stick with the old way, thank you. It's better. But that's the kind of thing that the false teacher does. They argue, they like to stir up strife. The next thing. Paul warns us about the legacy of the false teachers. The legacy of the false teacher is bad fruit. Jesus had mentioned this back in Matthew 7. Paul has already alluded to it back at the beginning of the passage here. But now he unpacks what that bad fruit is a little bit. He says, the false teacher's fruit leads to envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions, and constant friction. These tensions are all interpersonal in nature, which makes sense, right? Because the false teacher is about himself. So if you're about yourself, you are going to be more argumentative. There is going to be strife. Bad fruit, if we patiently watch and patiently discern, again, false teaching will always reveal itself for what it truly is. Good teaching will bring good fruit. Good teaching will not leave this in its wake. Again, I can look back to Dr. Crawford. and the impact He made on people's lives. He was faithful to the Gospel and He was faithful to Christ to the day that He died. And you see His fruit. You see people who train under Him faithfully proclaiming the Word of God. That's the type of thing that you look for. That's the type of thing that reveals whether or not someone is a good and faithful teacher or is a bad teacher. The blindness of the false teacher leads to a completely wrong perspective of true gain. The blindness of the false teacher leads to a completely wrong perspective of true gain. Paul sums up and summarizes what the false teacher is all about by saying this, they view godliness as a means to gain. And by gain, he means financial gain. They use the Christian faith pragmatically. Now, before we sit there and say, yeah, that's what the TV preachers do, and Osteen, and all these guys, yes. But subtly, sometimes I think maybe we, if we're honest, it's the same thing. Right? If I'm honest, sometimes, you know, the weeks before I preach on a Sunday morning, sometimes I try to be a little extra good. If I act a little bit better this week, God will bless me. I have this job promotion coming up at work. I'll be an extra good husband. I'll make sure we do family devotions this week. I'll make sure I go to prayer meeting this week. God will bless me. I think it was Tozer who said, in some way, shape, or form, all of us embrace the prosperity gospel. We all sometimes make Christianity about me. That's false teaching. It's a false perspective on the Gospel. Paul understands that. So Paul turns a little bit of a corner here. Okay, we're talking about gain. Let's flesh out gain. And the issue is a warning here. Let's talk about gain. This is how the false teachers view gain. Paul goes on to say, in a way, the false teacher is right. Godliness is linked to gain, but there's two things that they miss. One, they don't understand what true gain is. That word does not mean what they think it means. And two, he says they're missing something because it's godliness with contentment. Without a preoccupation of things of this world, that, you couple godliness with that, Then it brings about gain, but again, it's not financial gain, it's true gain, spiritual gain. See, Paul turns their definition of gain on its head and takes it from, it's not a material, financial reality, it's a spiritual reality. This becomes very clear as he goes on throughout the rest of the text. He wants us to understand what true gain looks like. The false preacher, his gain is the bank account. His gain is the big house. And trust me, I was researching this this week and looking at some of the houses some of these guys have. It's amazing to me. That's not it. It's spiritual in nature. And so Paul says, just so we're clear on that, Material gain is fleeting. You brought nothing into this world. You're not leaving with anything. Why? Because the gain that they're after, it's not lasting. I was in the birthing room, all of my kids, all four of them, all four that we had, the adoption, so I wasn't there for that one, obviously, but the four that we had, I was in there for all of them, and guess what? It wasn't a duffel bag that popped out of mommy behind the kid, right? Krista's iPod, and we were joking about this this morning, Krista loves her iPod, it wasn't Krista, oh, cool, it was the iPod. It wasn't Maggie and My Little Pony, it came right out after her. Legos, that would have been awesome, it would have saved me a lot of money, but it didn't work that way, right? Nothing comes in with us. Because it's fleeting, it doesn't leave with us. This is not the kind of gain that you pursue as people of God. He goes on and he paints this progression for us. The reason why... The reason why true gain cannot come to the person who's not content is because if you're not content, it means you're preoccupied with the things of the world. It means that Christ is decentralized. And that person cannot truly gain in areas of spirituality. In fact, not only do they not gain, but they go the opposite direction. And Paul paints the picture here for us because it progresses. It progresses. At first, it's a desire, and then it becomes a love. These are heart words, by the way. The desire's there in your heart, then the love, and it becomes this preoccupation that ultimately, the word that Paul uses is like drowning. It plunges you under. It consumes you. Tolkien illustrated this really well in The Hobbit. Chris and I, we just watched this together recently. She fulfilled my requirement of reading the book before she could see the movie, and so she did. So then we decided to watch the movie together. And you have Thorin Oakenshield, the Dwarf King, and they talk about this treasure under the Lonely Mountain and how it kind of has a sickness to it. And Thorin is the one who demonstrates the effects that he gets there. And throughout the 18 hours of the movie, He, at first, he's got some noble qualities and characteristics. But once they get there, and he gets around the money, he starts to change. He starts to become a little bit more inward-focused. He starts to turn on his friends, and ultimately he becomes completely irrational. to the point where his friends are coming to him and there's a battle going on. He says, Thorn, our kin are dying out there. And he says, I don't care. Close the gates. This is their problem. This is ours. They're like, well, yeah, that's a story. No. That's it. That's how it works. Paul goes on to say that, right? The love of money, it changes you. It becomes a root of all kinds of evil. It changes who you are. It changes who you are as a person. It changes your focus. And you can't gain spiritually when you're in that position. So I ask you this morning, are you content? Or have you bought into the subtle false teachings of the world so you need more? Are you content? Are you content with where God has you? Are you content with your home? Are you content with your car? Are you content with your job? Or is it about more? I need the newest piece of technology. I need the new iPhone. I need this. That preoccupation will kill you. Contentment. Godliness. It brings gain. You might not have anything in this life, but you'll have everything. You may look poor to the people of Forest Hills, but to the only person who matters, you'll look rich. Where's your focus? It's a very graphic end that Paul puts out there for this way of thinking. He says, many have gone this direction, and they've been impaled. They've been pierced through. Pierce through is a graphic term. It's sadness. It's brokenness. You've been ground and pierced through. There's a heaviness that comes to those desires. There's a weight. There's a sickness. And ultimately, I think what's at play there is that piercing and that submerging. It's regret. It's regret that I sold my life out for these things. And I wasted it. Are you content? Or are you selling your life out? That's the message of the false teaching, teachers. Pursue that stuff, that that's what spirituality and life's all about, but you ought to know better. And protect yourself from anything that says otherwise. The person who came to mind is reflecting on that was Judas. I think he illustrates that piercing through better than maybe anyone else in scripture. He goes and he sells out his king 30 pieces of silver. And in the hours that followed, Judas was plunged under and pierced through because of what he had given his life. to what he had sold out to, and he goes back to the religious leaders too late. He casts 30 pieces of silver back at their feet, and he goes out, and he hangs himself. That level of despair is what awaits the one, I believe, who doesn't heed the warnings. Are you content? Are you pursuing true gain? Church, guard yourself. Guard yourself from the messages of those who would tell you otherwise. Walk the shelves of good Christian bookstores, and there's plenty there. Plenty of pragmatism. Plenty of things there that paint Christianity about us, decentralize our Savior. Don't. Don't heed.