Okay, I'd like you to take your Bibles, open them to 2 Timothy 2, and in doing so, we are looking at seven critical imperatives you can't afford to disregard. Now, we've already looked at seven important truths you can't afford to forget in the first half of this chapter, and now, in the latter half, we're highlighting seven imperatives. And 2 Timothy is filled with imperatives. Because Paul knows Timothy well, he's not laying all this doctrine. He knows the doctrine, now he's exhorting him in light of the doctrine. and in light of the fact that he knows he's going to die soon, and he wants Timothy to be faithful in passing the baton of truth to faithful men and women who will be able to teach others also. For our purposes, we begin in verse 14. Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord not to strive about words, to no profit, to the ruin of the hearers. Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness, and their message will spread like cancer. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort, who have strayed concerning the truth, saying the resurrection is already past, and they overthrow the faith of some. Now, we've already emphasized two imperatives we have found in the passage. The first was found in verse 14, in which God wants you to remind your hearers of these important truths and warn them before the Lord not to engage in public debates with false teachers. And again, as we think of the important truths, we saw the seven Ms earlier in the passage. You need to remember your mission, means, message, mindset, mental focus, method, and motives. That's if you want to be faithful, and I trust that you do. I mean, why go through all this and not be faithful? Or why go through all this and grind it out in the flesh, and then at the end, not even get a reward out of the deal? You need to do what you do is unto the Lord, wanting to be faithful to Him, realizing faithfulness involves being first and then doing as an overflow. Secondly, God wants you to diligently study the Word of God, verse 15, so that you are approved to Him and are not ashamed when you give an account to Jesus Christ, having rightly divided the word of truth. And keep in mind, the Lord will not shame you. He won't shame you, but you can be ashamed. And you're ashamed because, like in 1 John 2.28, abide in Him, that when He appears, you may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. But there will be a sense of shame when the Lord has entrusted to us the responsibility to study and teach His Word, and we have failed to do that. or we have failed to do it in a way that honors Him, or failed to do that in which, a failure to do that in which we have failed to rightly divide the word of truth. The third principle we see, and we camp on this morning, is God wants you to shun false teachers and teaching, as they will have numerous negative consequences toward you and others. God wants you to shun false teachers and teaching, as they will have numerous negative consequences toward you and others. Now we see this beginning in verse 16. Verse 16. But you understood as the subject shun profane and idle babblings. Now, as you look at your Greek text, if you have it in front of you there. In verse 16. We have a definite article in the plural modifying the profane and idle babblings. And then we have the word day, which is a contrasting conjunction. So right here we have day, a contrasting conjunction. In contrast, as we're contrasting false teachers to the approved workmen who rightly divides the word of truth. But you shun. Let's camp on that important verb here at the moment. As you can see it there, it's peristosao. And as we look at this word, its meaning literally means to shun, avoid, circumvent, stay away from. Stay away from. Now, it is a present, middle imperative. Keep on staying away from, and that is a necessity. If you're going to be an approved workman, if you're going to rightly divide the Word of Truth, then you can't be constantly dabbling with false teaching. It's going to affect you. You know, you play with fire and you get burned, is the old saying. Now notice what the false teaching is called. The false teaching is called what in this passage? Profane and idle babblings. Now isn't it funny, in our day of political correctness, in which we want to take the edge off of words and not call a spade a spade, this is called profane and idle babblings. You know, babble, babble, babble, babble. I mean, God, this is God's view of false teaching. It's profane, and the word there means profane. It means worldly. It means godless. It's used as an adjective as it modifies what? The babblings there. The babblings. Secondly, the word idle. is the word that literally means empty of valid content, noises or sounds. Yep, they're a cuckoo, all right. That's okay, Angela, you can do it. Now, this is one of Paul's terms for false teaching. He uses it also in 1 Timothy 6 and verse 20. Let's just go there for a moment. 1st Timothy 6 and verse 20. Oh Timothy, guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings. And contradiction is what is falsely called knowledge. By professing it, some have strayed concerning the faith. And so we see here The use again of profane and idle babblings. This speaks of false teachings of any kind. In the accusative, it also indicates the object which needs to be repeatedly shunned. And so you need to shun, and that's to your benefit to do this, profane, worldly, godless, and idle, empty babblings. And isn't that so true about false teaching? They're empty. Empty of substance. Empty of truth. I don't care how well it sounds, it's empty. Empty. And so, God here is saying you need to repeatedly avoid as needed. And it's to your advantage to do this, that you repeatedly avoid false, godly, ungodly, empty of content or truth babbling. And, you know, we do well to hear and heed this in a day in which biblical separation from false teaching is rarely taught. You hardly ever hear any messages on separation anymore. You see, those in the, quote, grace camp think that separation is legalism in many cases. It's not gracious. Well, is Paul being ungracious here? It's the Spirit of God who directed Paul being ungracious here. In fact, I am absolutely convinced, and that's why we guard this pulpit. We guard this pulpit because we don't want that happening. We don't want people exposed to false teaching here and confused by it. And you know, even as much doctrine as some people have heard here, sometimes they hear just one thing and it kind of throws them right away. Instead, they go back to what you know to be true. In fact, exercise discernment in light of the truth. Now, we've seen what does shun mean. We've seen what is false teaching called in this passage. We've seen why is this necessary to shun. What is it spread like in two? Well, I should say, well, why is it necessary? Here we go. Four gives us the reason, doesn't it? 4. Provides the reason why he must repeatedly avoid false teachings as they will affect him. For they will increase to more ungodliness. To more ungodliness. The word increase, will increase, prokopo, means to advance, progress, grow, increase. You know, it's kind of interesting because that's the very word used in 1 Timothy 4.15. Meditate on these things, give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all. So instead of spiritual progress occurring in Timothy's life, we see in 2 Timothy, he says, if you don't avoid false teaching, you're going to make progress to more ungodliness. You're going to go in the wrong direction. You're going to advance in the wrong way. You see, false teaching is not sterile or stagnant. And here, this word increase will increase. What tense is it in? Can you see it? Future tense. It's in the future tense. Philip? I think the teaching myself. But let me just say this. The question was, what is the they? How do you distinguish the teaching from the teachers? You don't. And so I think they're combined. They, the teachers, because, you know, by the way, he hasn't mentioned the teachers yet. He's mentioned the babblings, right? So that's got to be the teaching. But he's going to mention the teachers right here, isn't he? at least two of them. So I think they are one in the same. I don't know if you can really separate. And so they will increase. Future tense indicates the result if false teaching is not avoided. Active voice means that false teaching has in itself what is needed for it to progress. And notice it'll increase to more Ungodliness. Ungodliness. Godlessness. This indicates false teaching does affect its recipients in a practical but negative fashion. When people say, oh, you know, I'm embracing this doctrine, but I don't think it really affects me, you think again. False teaching does affect you, just like true teaching should affect you. It affects you in many ways. In fact, you just think about it for a minute. Let's go back to this outer darkness teaching for a minute. Do you think churches that teach that unfaithful Christians get cast into outer darkness and you should therefore fear the Bema seed, do you think that has any effect on the hearers? Does that encourage your heart? Do you think that's a thriving, growing church that's going to have that? No way. It's going to be filled with legalism, and fear, and self-focused, and it goes contrary to understanding positional truth, and learning to focus on the Lord, and walking by faith, and so forth and so forth. And in many cases, it's going to be, well, I can't cut it anyhow, just let it rip. It's going to lead to license, which is ironic. You say, well, why? Because remember, the strength of sin is the law. The law. You want a church that really is involved in sin? Preach the law. Now that sounds funny, because people actually think the law is going to produce holiness, not the strength of the sin. By the way, definite article in the Greek. Strength of the sin nature is the law. Is the law. So Paul here is exhorting, he is commanding Timothy to choose to repeatedly avoid and separate from false teaching, which is viewed by God as profane and empty noise or chatter. The reason for that is that a failure to separate will result in it progressing and negatively affecting a believer's practical godliness. Now what was it spread like into? Their message. And notice, their teacher's message. Remember I told you these two go together? How do you separate the two? Their message. Now notice, this isn't a personal attack upon their person or character. but upon their message. And that is the issue. And you know, it's ironic in our day, we can't seem to differentiate between the two, that when you say anything negative, everyone feels personally attacked. How do you even interact in the arena of ideas any longer? I thought everyone is personally hurt, you know? Their message, their message. And the word message is what in the Greek? You see it in your text? What is it? Lagas. Their Lagas. Their message, their word, their teaching. It's used in verse 15 of the Word of Truth. Being in the nominative case here, it indicates it's the main subject of the sentence. Their message will spread. It will spread. Wow. And it's interesting, the Greek word for spread there speaks of a spreading or eating away, like gangrene eats away the flesh of someone. And the word cancer here, can you see what it is in the Greek? Yeah. Gangrenia. Yeah, which is the word for? Gangrene. Why they don't translate a gangrene in the new King James Version? I don't know. They did in the old. And there's literally a transliteration of it, basically. It'll eat like gangrene, slowly, surely, confidently. And again, how do you deal with gangrene in the first century? You cut it off. If you don't cut it off, it's going to spread. You don't shun false teaching, it's going to affect you. It's going to impact you. And that's why it's interesting sometimes, you know, I think everyone needs to be Berean-like. But I'll tell you, you know, sometimes this whole term, well, I'm just being a Berean. I tell you, it's just an excuse for independency a lot of times. On the other hand, it's true, we should be a Berean, we should gladly hear what's said, and we should search it out to make sure that it lines up. But you know, one of the things I like telling Bereans, people who claim to be Bereans, I said, you know, the result of that is they believed in and they formed a local church. Yeah, well, they don't like that part of it a lot of times, because they're really bucking authority a lot of times. But it spreads like gangrene, which eats away the flesh of someone. And false teaching will keep eating away at you. It will spread like gangrene. Now, next question, was Paul afraid to name the false teachers? Answer, no. There they are, Hymenaeus and Philetus. Now, let me make a couple comments about naming names. You know, it's interesting in Galatians, was there a problem, false teaching? Did he ever name the teachers? He didn't. He does mention in chapter five, you were running well. Who did hinder you? Now he said that not because he didn't know, but for them to identify him. So there are times when you just say broad brush things more. You say things that, you know what, your audience in fact, most of the time when you're speaking about that kind of stuff, most people know who you're talking about. Right? You don't always have to name the name. On other occasions, you do need to name the name to identify exactly who the false teacher is. And the Lord will have to give you wisdom to know the rule of thumb when that's needed enough. You know, over the years, you know, well, this past year, I had to name someone's name right over the pulpit who had been part of our church, who had now embraced false teaching and was sending out booklets to people in our church. You know, I've never hardly had to do that ever locally. I mean, I name John MacArthur and John Piper and those quite often, you know, but not somebody locally. You know, I don't even name any of the churches locally, if you notice. I hardly ever mention anybody's name locally. Because I'm after the principle more than the person. But there comes times when you do have to, just like you do as a parent. Don't you give general warnings? Don't. If someone tells you to come to their car, don't you go. Right? But if you had somebody problematic on the block, wouldn't you be very specific and say, now you stay away from so-and-so's house? And you know what? You would be viewed as an act of love in doing that and an act of carelessness if you did it. And yet, if you do that spiritually, God forbid, how unloving could you be? Well, Paul did it right here. He mentions, by name, two people. Now, they're not alone, because if you notice closely, who are of this sort. In other words, there's more, but I'll give you two examples. Now interesting, the first one is Hymenaeus, the name of one of the false teachers, Paul had in mind. Probably the same man is mentioned in 1 Timothy 1.20, who was church-disciplined, in order to learn not to blaspheme." Now notice, he was treated as a believer. In fact, in 1 Timothy 1.20, it says that you may learn not to blaspheme. You know what the word for learn is? It's the word pedeo. It speaks of child training. It speaks of what God does to a believer. He disciplines them. He was viewed as a believer. Can a believer be a false teacher? Absolutely. Absolutely. Can a believer stray from teaching the truth and be viewed as a false teacher needing to be avoided? This passage indicates yes. And by the way, if this is the same man, and I'm prone to think it is, and most Bible teachers do, this indicates that the church discipline does not always produce its repentant and restorative effects. So you think church discipline will accomplish its goal? It didn't there with Hymenaeus. But you still have to do it on occasions because you have to protect the flock. Because remember, the purpose of church discipline isn't merely to restore the offender, but it's to protect the flock. And a little leaven leavens the whole lump. So that is needed at times. And yet, you know, if you ever church discipline, it's like, oh, how ungracious could you be? Well, it is in the Bible. It's in the epistles. And it's the very apostle of grace that tells you to do it, under the direction of the Holy Spirit. So we've got two guys mentioned here, Hymenaeus and Philetus. In 1 Timothy, it was Hymenaeus and Alexander. And Philetus is the name of the second false teacher that Paul knew, and perhaps Timothy knew as well. Notice again, Paul was willing to name the names of two false teachers that Timothy needed to avoid or separate from, lest their false teachings adversely affect them. And you know, sometimes people just don't always know who's teaching what, or what's the scoop. I'll give you just one practical example. The year was 1985. We were supposed to, Nancy and I had just moved down to Duluth, and they were having a Welcome to Duluth surprise party at Kenwood Bible Chapel. And it really was a surprise. There are very few times in my life I've ever been in a situation in which I walked in and had no clue what was going on for five minutes. And that's what happened. I walked in, I saw all these people, what is all this about? And finally I saw the banner up there, welcome to Duluth. And I finally started to, my parents were there. I mean, this is crazy. Pat and Charlie Mathis were supposed to be at that, but they had moved away. And so the believers there actually pulled some money together so they could have flown out to it, but they couldn't. So instead they gave the money to Nancy and I and flew us out to see the Mathises, who were now attending North Stonington Bible Church. And that is how I met Jay Chappell. And so we flew out there to LaGuardia. We stayed on Governor's Island, because Charlie was in the Coast Guard. And then we made our way up to North Stonington. And I sat in on a Saturday night Bible class with Jay Chappell. I can tell you what he's teaching. He's teaching Psalm 37, because I remember he's going word for word right through the passage. And after that, they had a time of fellowship at their house, because the chapel's big farmhouse is right next door to the church. And so I met Jay, we started visiting, we probably visited for maybe half an hour in the hallway, and finally turns to me and says, how would you like to preach tomorrow? No, I'll tell you this, whatever you go, you're a teacher, bring a message with you. I'll tell you, bring a message. And I did. I had one just in case. And so he says, how would you like to preach tomorrow? And so I preached the next day at North Stoning Town on what the gospel is and what it's not. I mean, if you're going to preach on something, Well, in giving that message, I rapped MacArthur. And I mentioned Lordship Salvation. I even made a little hit on Swindoll and some other things. I was pretty brazen back then. I don't even know if I'd name those names today. When you're a guest speaker, you just don't want to blow your audience out of the water right off the bat. But nevertheless, and partly it's because I had seen some MacArthur books in the back there, and I had seen a Swindoll thing over here and such and so forth. So I was kind of emboldened. So I think it was after that message, Jay says to me, he says, how would you like to go out to lunch, just you and me? And I said, sure. So we sat down. And remember, Jay was 20. almost 20 years my elder you know and yet you know gracious man love the Lord love his word we sat down and we talked we just talked on the word of God we talked as one pastor to another and number I'm 30 at this time he's 50 probably close and I came back on Wednesday night I think it was and I noticed all the MacArthur books are removed the spindle Book jackets and it's not that swindle is free grace. It's just that he's he's cloudy a lot of times You know and there was all these adjustments me And I know why Jay just didn't realize when MacArthur was coming from He had picked up some things and MacArthur. It was fairly early. Remember this is 1985 and there were some things MacArthur is saying that was good, but people weren't really catching on in Some ways to the whole lordship issue yet at that point real well And this is a good example where sometimes people don't realize where someone's coming from right away. And sometimes naming the name and explaining the problem is very helpful and that's what he's doing here. And notice Hymenaeus and Philetus of this sort who have strayed. They have strayed. Now, to have strayed means, how do you stray from something in which you didn't know? To stray means you had to have been close by and moved away from it. Who has strayed? And by the way, this is a heiress active indicative here, in which they strayed by choice, And in doing so, they now miss the mark. The word strain means to miss the mark. It means to deviate. It means to depart from. It's used in 1 Timothy 1, verse 6, and chapter 6, verse 21, of straying from the truth. And in the indicative mood, or the aorist tense, it's just stating the reality of the fact. They have strayed. Now, I want you to notice, what were these teachers measured by or measured against? They've strayed concerning the truth. The truth. That's what they've strayed from. Definite article modifying truth. It indicates there is such a thing as absolute truth. By the way, have you seen the phrase, the truth, earlier in the passage? What verse? Verse 15, rightly dividing the word of truth, right? The truth. Aletheia, again. In the accusatives, it acts as the object of the verb having strayed. Having strayed concerning the truth. Now that is a general statement. They've strayed concerning the truth. What's the next question that immediately you ask? Well, what truth? What truth did they stray from? Well, Paul says, saying, here's what they're saying, that the resurrection is already past. The resurrection is already past. The participle saying explains the means of how they affected others via false teaching and what they strayed from. Concerning the resurrection is already past. The word already, past, is in the perfect tense. It's already happened in the past. It's completed. It's completed. Now, we don't know exactly what they meant by this. I'll give you a couple ideas. Remember, Greek philosophy tended to be dualistic, in which they would say that spirit is good, body is bad, flesh is bad, right? So they might have been just teaching a spiritual resurrection. And that has passed already because you were resurrected with Jesus Christ. So therefore, there's no future bodily resurrection. They might have been teaching that or something else. But I know this, when you say the resurrection is already passed, you have just undermined significant eschatological future truth. Is there ever a place to take a stand on eschatology? Now, if you go in some circles, they'll say, oh, we don't argue about eschatology. That's just an area of difference and liberty. Wait a second. These men were named by name and told to be avoided because of their eschatological position. Saying the resurrection has already passed. And what was the result of that? They overthrow the what? The faith of some. Can you overthrow a faith that doesn't exist? Is it possible to be saved an apostate? and have your faith overthrown? This passage absolutely says yes. In fact, it's interesting for the word overthrow is a present active indicative of anatrepho. And it means to overturn upside down. And the present tense indicates their current state so that they presently have their faith overturned. Overturned. Yes. Yeah. The question is, is this similar doctrine to second Thessalonians in which they thought they were going through the day of the Lord? Is that what you're saying? No. Well, they're both eschatological. Yeah, no, I think it's a case where I don't know that they're apples to apples, but they're both dealing with eschatological truth. But I don't know it's the exact same problem of 2 Thessalonians 2. But notice, they overthrow the faith of some. So their false teaching was not satirological in nature, the gospel and salvation, but eschatological, future things, yet nevertheless needing specific separation from, lest it adversely spread like gangrene and would result in increased ungodliness, even overthrowing the faith of some believers, And this is interesting to observe, as there are those in our day that think that the gospel alone is the basis of separation. There are people in our day who would say what, students? They would say, well, you know, these outer darkness people, well, they got the gospel right. So therefore, you don't have to take a stand and separate from that. Not true. Not true. And if you are going to be faithful in ministry, you are going to, at times, have to separate from false teachers and false teaching. In fact, you're going to have to be careful even what you read. Now, I'm not saying that you can't read things that take opposing views. That's why we're learning how to do interpretative resolution, right? So that you can interact with other views, but you're going to have to be careful in your exegesis. And when you do find things that are wrong, you have to just push them aside. Now, there are things that are possible interpretations and doctrinally allowable, but the ones that are outside the box, that's problematic. And you're going to have to be careful, careful in your study, and at times separate from false teaching. That's why we're not ecumenical at Duluth Bible Church, as you know. And there's a reason for that. And as I've said before, there's people who say, we love the clarity here, but we don't like the stand. Well, the clarity is because of the stand. Once we lower the stand, we're not going to want to cut it sharp, and therefore, you're not going to get the clarity. You say, well, how can you go and teach at Oak Hills Christian College when you know that doctrinally, they're fuzzy? Now, it's interesting, in talking to the president of the school when I first met him, I asked him if he believed in eternal security. He said, well, yes, of course. He said, are we to say that God can save us, but he's not able to keep us? I thought, yeah, amen, you know? And he made another statement, amen, amen. But I know there's not clarity at the school. But if you can go into a situation in which you can communicate the Word of God like Paul did in Acts 19 at the synagogue, without compromising biblical principles or being restricted in your message, is there a place to go in and do it? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Now, does that mean I want to have this close, intimate, working relationship? There's no way we can have that unless you have a doctrinal basis for it. But can you go in and preach a message that hopefully someone will respond to and give away literature and so forth and so forth? Yes, you just got to be very wise though. Very wise. In some situations you might say, no, I think it's going to hurt. I'm not going to do that. In other cases, you're going to say, you know, this is an open door. I have peace about it. I prayed about it. I'm not violating principle. I do have, I'm not restricted in my message. And you know, when I'm there, you know, my son said to one of the students, he goes, uh, you know, my dad's coming to preach at chapel. He said, uh, you know, it might shake up a few things. And the student says, Oh, that's okay. We need some rocks overturned from time to time around here. I'm hoping a lot more people think that way when we're done. So what's the principle, students? God wants you to shun false teachers and teaching as they will have numerous negative consequences toward you and others. And I just really want to encourage you to take this to heart. Take it to heart. It's imperative in our day of community hermeneutics. And in fact, I'll tell you, here's one of the differences between us and FGA and GES and others. You know, they will teach a view, or they will talk about a view here, and, well, there's this view, and there's this view, and there's this view. Now, what do we do? We then say, yeah, but those are bogus, and this is the view. We are dogmatic on the view. When you can be dogmatic doctrinally on the view, what do they do? They leave all the options still on the table. That's the difference. See, we might say, yes, there's this outer darkness view. But at the end of the day, we don't say, and all of these are viable. At the end of the day, we say, this is bogus as the day is long. So it's not that we won't explain another view. And if it's just an issue of interpretation, We might say, well, this is the view we take, though others, good Bible teachers take a different view on this, and it's not worthy of separation. This is just an interpretative issue. But when it's a doctrinal issue, and outer darkness is a doctrinal issue, this isn't just interpretative. You see the overflow of that? on your Christian life, your view of your position in Christ, your view of living by faith, your view of fear, your view of God's discipline, your view of the Bema Seat. I mean, this isn't just an exegetical issue. It's clearly a doctrinal difference. And as a result, it's imperative that you separate from that kind of teaching. Any questions? Okay, let's pray. Father, we ask that you would give us wisdom as we walk through these passages to embrace these principles and have wisdom to know how to apply them at the end of the day, that we might be faithful to you in what you've called us to do. We pray and ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, we're going to give you just a four-minute break, and then we're going to go on to exegesis here.