Hear now God's holy word from 1 Timothy chapter 6 beginning in verse 2 reading through verse 10. 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. But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we had 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. 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 pains. This concludes our reading in God's Word. Let's ask His blessing upon that Word now and another brief word of prayer. Lord, we do come today and we ask that You would make Your Word, Your living Word, active in us. that you would use it to inform our minds, that you would use it to change our hearts, and that you would use it to make us more holy and more faithful to you. We ask, Lord, that your spirit would illuminate our hearts and minds, that our natural dullness might be overcome, and that we might behold the truth, and nothing but the truth, from these pages of Scripture. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Money is a powerful thing. It can change our life for the better, it can change our life for the worse. It affects where we live, it affects who we associate with, and it affects what we do with our time. And most will, I think, admit all that. Fewer, though, recognize readily the way in which money affects us spiritually. Whether we recognize and admit it or not, it's true. The Bible teaches us over and over again that our relationship with money has a profound relationship, excuse me, a profound influence on our relationship with God and on the state of our immortal soul. And this section of 1 Timothy chapter 6 provides a pointed example of money's ability to leave a mark on our soul. As Paul here, in these lines, exposes the way in which a desire for money had fundamentally fueled the spread of false teaching in Ephesus. Behind it all, that was really the driving, the motivating factor, that those who were spreading that teacher had their hearts and their minds set on gain. And ultimately what this passage teaches us is that there is a fork in the road which we must face in our spiritual life as we are forced to choose between a life set on greedy gain and a life set on godly contentment. Those are your options. These two things can't coexist. One of them, as we're going to see, produces rotten fruit, while the other produces a blessing for those who are in Christ. We must choose. And so with that in mind, this morning we want to consider our text in three parts. First of all, we're going to take a look at the rotten fruit of greed among the false teachers, verses 2-5. Second, we will consider the blessed contentment which accompanies godliness in verses 6-8. And then we will see in verses 9-10 a final warning against choosing greed over godliness. So we begin this morning by taking a gander at the rotten fruit of greed among the false teachers in verses 2-5. Now since the beginning of chapter 5, Paul has been laying down teaching on various relationships within the church. He has shown Timothy and his flock how to navigate life with one another. This included not just the broad life of the body, but also teaching on how to relate to those special groups which we've considered over the last few weeks. Widows, and elders, and slaves, and masters. Now, at the very end of verse 2, Paul concludes his thoughts on those subjects by exhorting Timothy to teach and urge these things. I think very clearly he wants Timothy to teach and urge those instructions which he has laid out in the last chapter or so. That's, I think, beyond debate. But to some degree, really, I think this command applies more broadly to the contents of the entire letter. Paul is reminding Timothy, once again, that he is not writing without purpose. He's writing to help Timothy. He's writing to teach Timothy. He's teaching Timothy how to teach others. And so he reminds him, the things I'm saying to you, you are to teach and to urge to others. And having issued that sort of summary command, Paul begins now in the end of verse 2 and the beginning of verse 3 to land the plane that is 1 Timothy. We're coming to a close. And so beginning in verse three, he circles back to his driving motivation for writing the letter one more time. He spent a lot of time in chapter one talking about the presence of false teachers in Timothy's churches. And now he's going to come back to that subject again as verses three through five feature Paul's final rebuke of such men. as he exposes here the rotten fruit growing from their wicked works. In verses 3 and 4 he writes this, 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. Now this statement sounds a little bit hypothetical. Paul does say, if anyone teaches. But the grammatical constructions employed here in the Greek text actually show that the statement should be presumed true. The people that Paul has in mind, they do exist. And they are marked, as we see here in the text, by a couple of things. First of all, their willingness to teach doctrine different from that taught by Paul. That's what is intended here when he says, if anyone teaches a different doctrine, meaning a doctrine other than the ones that I delivered when I first came and preached in the churches of Ephesus. They teach a different doctrine. And they teach a doctrine which clashes with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ. And they teach a different doctrine that does not accord with godliness. It is not consistent with the demands of godliness. And so the rebuke contained in verses 3 and 4 applies to those who have rejected the teaching of the apostles and the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, which should probably be understood to mean the sound words concerning or about our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, they reject the gospel, and because they reject teaching which accords with the godliness, they reject the fruit and the implications of the gospel. They reject soundness altogether. And that word sound, used here in verses 3 and 4, is especially interesting because it's a word used frequently in the ancient world in the medical sphere. This was a word which could be used to describe someone as sound or healthy. And so what the false teachers have done is they have rejected Paul and they have rejected his Christ and as such they have not the spiritual health that accompanies true faith. They are deeply sick. They don't believe the truth. And they don't live in a manner which reflects the truth. They have not the gospel or godliness. And the spiritual disease festering within them could be seen in the way in which they were puffed up with conceit and understanding nothing. These men were filled with a tremendous amount of pride. They were haughty. They were puffed up. They looked down their nose at others because all they thought they knew. But Paul denounces their pride as folly because in promoting a teaching that contradicts the apostolic message of the gospel, they showed that they knew nothing of real spiritual importance. They understood nothing. prideful, arrogant, puffed up, conceited, and fools. So if these men were spiritually sick, if they were marked by conceit and ignorance, what did all their teaching amount to? The Apostle declares that such a person has an unhealthy craving for controversy and quarrels about words. Among the false teachers, soundness or spiritual health had been replaced with an unhealthy craving. These men were not moved in their ministry by a healthy love for the truth. They were chasing after the excitement of controversy and debate. and quarrels over matters of minor importance, fighting about words and terms. In a sense, it was all a game to these men. What was the result? They bore fruit that was rotten to the core. Their unhealthy cravings and their pursuit of those things which they craved produced envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth. That's quite the list. The commentator William Mounce notes, though, the organic connection and the natural progression of the various entries in this list of rotten fruits. He says this, where there are speculations and word battles, one naturally finds envy and strife. Envy and strife naturally develop into slander and evil suspicions. And where these are present, there is constant irritation. So while there may have been a multitude of false teachers in and around the Ephesian church, their heretical blabbering, by its very nature, is so discord among them. In all their bickering and in all of their attempts to undermine the true gospel, they fell into a trap of their own making. Envying one another and engaging in infighting. speaking evil and thinking evil of each other and producing those sparks of friction that could be expected from those depraved in their mind and deprived of the true truth as it had been taught by the Apostle Paul. Their fruit, you see, was rotten to the core. It stunk. But if all of that's true then, that raises the question, why did they press on? If they couldn't even agree with one another, if they were constantly fighting even with one another, why did they continue to pursue their unhealthy cravings? If it caused them so many problems. And in answer to that question, Paul puts his finger on the central issue at the end of verse 5. They do all that evil and bear up under all that trouble, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. There's the problem. These false teachers played the role of theologian and spiritual guru so that they could make a buck. At the bottom of all their work was that shaky, shifting foundation of greed. Now Paul, we've seen this just in the last month or so, Paul has already instructed Timothy to have faithful preachers paid for their labor. So how is this different from that? Well, these false teachers, though they perhaps and probably had been in the church to some degree at some point or another, they were at this point in their teaching, they were operating outside the bounds of the institutional church, and they were probably charging their hearers directly for the chance to listen to their teaching. If you want to know what we know, you're going to have to pay. Maybe think of it like this. It would be a little bit like if every Sunday morning I stood at the door with hat in hand and charged you a fee to come in. And if you didn't have the money, if you couldn't cough it up, well, sorry, go back to your car. It's kind of what's happening here in Ephesus with these false teachers. These men were pursuing godliness in order to fill their wallets, so to speak. But the problem with all that was that their strategy was inherently contradictory. It was nonsensical. It was self-defeating. It was bound to fail. Why? Well, what is godliness, according to Paul? I mean, these men, they imagine that godliness is a means of gain. That's contradictory, though, because what is godliness? Andreas Kostenberger, who is a commentator, he puts together all that Paul has to say about Godliness, and he comes up with this definition, I think it's very helpful. He writes that for Paul, godliness is a disposition of reverence for God that is grounded theologically and expressed ethically. I'll say that one more time. Godliness for the apostle Paul is a disposition of reverence for God that is grounded theologically and expressed ethically. So these men were pursuing an outward form of godliness, which by its very definition must be theologically grounded and ethically expressed, and they were pursuing it in theologically ungrounded and unethical ways. Contradiction. Makes no sense. The whole scheme was bound to fail, but the allure of riches blinded them to that fact. Their depraved minds were clouded with thoughts of greedy gain. All they could see were dollar signs, or whatever the equivalent was 2,000 years ago. You see, brothers and sisters, we must not be naive. Not all who say, Lord, Lord, belong to the Lord And not all who would purport to be Christian teachers are in it for His glory. There are false teachers with us today who continue to believe that godliness is a means of grain. Many of them have large congregations and public profiles. You see them on TV. You see their clips circulating online. You see their books in stores. They're right out there and they're unashamed. But no doubt there are some who are driven by this desire for gain who operate more subtly. And so we have to be, knowing that this is a reality in this fallen world, we have to be wise and discerning. We've got to refuse to follow after flashy teachers who are continually compromising and contorting the truth in order to expand their donor bases. And we got to remember that when Paul described the profile of a faithful overseer back in chapter 3, it actually included the caveats that he must not be a lover of money who is puffed up with conceit. He used those very terms. And so may the Lord ever protect us from men who view godliness as a means of gain. And may he ever protect us from believing that lie ourselves. Because when money becomes the motive in ministry, it begins to bear rotten fruit as it did in the lives of the Ephesian false teachers. So that's what we see through verse 5 in our text. But Paul does not stay there. He provides a positive alternative in verses 6-8 where we see the blessed contentment which accompanies godliness. He's already introduced now the connection between godliness and gain. And so he takes this occasion to show Timothy a better way. The Ephesian false teachers viewed godliness as a means of gain, and Paul is here ready to concede that godliness does lead to gain. The problem is that the gain which comes with godliness looks very different from the material gain which was sought by the heretics according to verse 6, but godliness with contentment is great gain. You see, the godliness is the gain. Godliness is not the means to the gain. Godliness is the gain. Possessing a disposition of reverence for God that is grounded theologically and expressed ethically, which is the definition we mentioned just a moment ago, it does have its benefits. Godliness is not meant to produce misery, after all. But what the false teachers have missed is that the fruit of godliness is not material gain, but spiritual gain, which comes accompanied with contentment. The godly in Christ are already rich, and they can be content because they know that Christ is Himself all-sufficient. And that blessed combination of godliness and contentment becomes the thing to be pursued. Really understand what Paul is on about here. Think about another, perhaps better known passage where Paul also uses this language of contentment. In Philippians chapter 4, verses 10 through 13, Paul says this, I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty in hunger, abundance in need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me. When we come at this passage through the lens of Philippians chapter 4, what we see is that contentment is knowing that no matter what's going on in your life, you have all that you need if you have Christ. For He is the one who strengthens you to do and to face all things. And this contentment can be possessed by those who have attained a godly disposition in union with Christ, even if their worldly wealth is severely lacking. The false teachers believed that godliness was a means of material gain, but the church was to have a more realistic worldview, knowing that godliness did not always lead to material gain. And this more realistic worldview is expressed in verses 7 and 8. Godliness with contentment is great gain because we brought nothing into the world. We cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing with these, we will be content. See, Paul's point here is that godliness with contempt in Christ helps us face the world as it really is. Though the false teachers may, through their swindling, pile up a great big pile of money to feed their greed, but they have forgotten the fundamental reality of human existence, which is this. We came in with nothing, and we're going to go out with nothing. So when we go out, Our hope better be set on something other than that pile of money that we amassed between those two milestones. We must have our hope set on something more enduring than that. You see, for those who are not in Christ, the helplessness of the little baby and the helplessness of the dying elder, these are bleak pictures. They feel hopeless. And they would rather think of the pleasure that you experience between those two points. But these pictures of helplessness, they need not be any discouragement to us, because the saint has all they need in Christ, and the Christian's experience of Christ's riches only grows in death. It only grows in death. So in the present, we can content ourselves with having just food and clothing. Some have argued that the word Paul uses for clothing here could possibly be extended to shelter because it's really a word which communicates this idea of having a covering. We could dispute whether that's included in his list of essentials, but the point still stands that those who possess godliness with contentment can make do with the absolute bare necessities of the flesh because they already possess the world's greatest treasure in the soul. And since this is indisputably true, we know that the future of the godly gets brighter and brighter in eternity when our spiritual possession of Christ is purged from all remaining stain and presence of sin. Meanwhile, the life of the ungodly person who's set on greedy gain, that their life is more like the lifespan of a firework, flashes brightly for a short while, makes a big scene, But in the end, there's nothing left but fizzle and smoke. That's the life of the ungodly set on greedy gain in comparison with the Christian whose heart is set on Christ. See, congregation, this passage sets before you a fundamental dichotomy you must choose. There is the rotten fruit of the false teacher set on greedy gain, and there is the blessed contentment that can thrive on bare necessities, which accompanies the godly, because they have found Christ all-sufficient. I shouldn't have to say it, but I will. Given those two options, choose Christ. We are sinners. We deserve nothing. We don't even deserve the bare necessities I explained. But Christ was still willing to die on the cross for us, even while we were yet ungodly, and through faith in Him, now raised from the dead, we receive forgiveness, we inherit the eternal resurrected life made possible through His power, we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, and those things are the things that we need most. We don't deserve them, but we need them, and He gives them. 2 Corinthians 8 verse 9 puts it, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you, by his poverty, might become rich. He wants to make you rich, not with a material richness, but with a spiritual richness that enables your godly contentment with the bare necessities. Wherein we become willing to go out of this world with that which we brought in. Nothing. And so here, a somewhat comforting message from our text this morning, which is this, that we live in a worried and anxious age, deeply. Our society has centered itself around the accumulation of wealth and comfort and pleasure. All around us there is a race to the top, a fight to make a little more. There will be winners and there will be losers in this society, but all of that can be really just set aside. You can set all that aside when the Christ who makes us rich becomes all-sufficient for you. Is Jesus all-sufficient for you? Has He become for you the source of what the Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs referred to as that rare jewel of Christian contentment? Have you come to possess that rare jewel? If so, then know that you have come into possession of greater gain than all that is possessed by the wealthiest people in the world. And you can praise the Lord for that. If you've not, Then you need to understand what the text is saying, which is that contentment is the natural companion of true godliness. So you need to pursue it. You need to pray for and you need to learn to treasure Christ. I stand before you today as someone who himself needs to grow in this regard, learning to treasure Christ as all sufficient and through him learning to be content like the Apostle Paul in all things. Let us make that our goal. But as Paul comes to verses 9 and 10, he wants to hammer this home a little harder, not simply presenting the treasure which we have in Christ, who is all-sufficient, though he does that, but he wants to end here with a final warning against choosing greed over godliness, because we know how enticing riches can be. This passage began as a condemnation of false teachers in Ephesus but Paul has used his discussion of them as a springboard in which to discuss the clash between greed and godliness and so in these last two verses he supplies us with a warning for any who would follow those enemies of the church who left behind the teaching of Christ to go after something else altogether. Those possessing Christ and godliness can be content with food and clothing But for the greedy, the situation is very different. For them, even the life of luxury ends in disaster. Here's what verse 9 says. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. We live in the United States of America. which is one of, if not the richest nation to ever exist, walk the face of the earth. And as such, the desire for wealth accumulation is all around us. It's the air we breathe. We tend to think of it as a natural goal, that desire to be rich. And there is a sense in which it is good, to have enough to pass on to the next generation. Proverbs 13.22 says, A good man leaves inheritance to his children's children, but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous. And so there's some goodness to those things. But we've got to recognize that living in this environment, living in this nation, having been brought up in a land of prosperity, that the desire to be rich, it sneaks up on us. It comes cloaked in noble garments. Wouldn't it be good? Wouldn't it be nice if you had just a little more? And when it sneaks up on us like that, we don't see it for what it is. It becomes, that desire to be rich, an insidious and effective temptation to sin. It becomes a snare, to use the language of the text, which the devil uses to entrap the careless. To entrap the discontent. And it inspires all sorts of senseless and harmful desires in us that when we pursue them, plunge us into ruin and destruction like ships capsizing at sea. And so here in verse 9, Paul is warning you. Be wary of the desire to be rich. Examine yourself and determine whether that desire is lurking within you. If it is, Pay attention to the Bible's warning. Feeding that desire leads to shipwreck. It will drown you in the end. And ultimately, Paul actually shows us here that feeding that desire, pursuing that desire for riches, it can lead you all the way to apostasy. Closing out this section of verse 10, he writes, For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It's through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. These are very familiar words. Love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. Many know that the Bible teaches this. They can quote it to you. And actually, these words may have sounded familiar to one degree or another. to Paul's first readers. Because similar sentiments about the love of money are found in many of the ancient writers. This is not a uniquely Christian notion. That a love of money brings about much evil. But Paul here, he takes it and he puts the apostolic approval on what was in this day a common sentiment. But we can't allow the familiarity of these words to lessen their pointed power in convicting us of sin and warning us against ungodliness. Because Paul says here, and we must believe him, that loving money is the root which so much rotten fruit grows. As he showed in verses 3-5. It becomes to us, if we pursue it, if we seek to go after it, it becomes another master. which we serve in devilishly creative ways, as Jesus declared in Matthew 6.24, no one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. and lovingly bowing to the master that is money, like the Ephesian false teachers had done, it leads to all sorts of evils. Greed, stealing, lying, cheating, idolatry, we could add to the list. But ultimately, yes, it even leads, Paul says, to apostasy, as people began to prefer the thought of material riches to the thought of spiritual riches in Christ. Paul knew of some in the church so overtaken by this love that they had wandered away from the faith. They pierced themselves with many pangs." He doesn't divulge the nature of those pangs, what exactly they had experienced, he does not tell us. But we can, I think, guess that he's speaking of things like the pain, the guilt, the disappointment, the disillusionment, and similar evils which accompany a greedy heart that can never get enough. Have you ever noticed, I have, that you get your mindset on that one thing that you need. Oh, I sure would love to have that. That right there would make me happy. How often have you got that thing and thought, well, that wasn't the silver bullet. That one didn't do the trick. We become disillusioned. We become disappointed. And we will be destroyed if those things which have come to disappoint and disillusion us were the things that we set our heart on. So friends, beware of the love of money. Beware the desire to be rich. If those desires dwell in your heart, then you need to call upon the Holy Spirit of God to pluck them out. You're in danger. And maybe you're wondering, you're thinking about it, it may be that in God's providence you have wound up wealthy in this world. Maybe you've already got some measure of richness, at least compared to the poor in this world. And you're starting to wonder about yourself because you don't feel as if you have gained your riches in greedy or ungodly ways. And if that's you, Paul is going to circle back. He's going to come back around to that, and he's going to provide additional counsel to the godly, who are also wealthy, before the letter is over. We aren't there yet, though. So, let's keep our focus on the danger for now. We'll come back and console you in a couple weeks. For now, think about the danger. If the options on the table are greedy gain, or contented godliness in Christ, then we need to pursue contented godliness every single time. For the bare essentials plus Jesus counts for more than money can ever buy. The bare essentials plus Jesus counts for more than money can ever buy. Heed the warning. Trust Christ. Commit yourself to the apostolic teaching, to the sound words concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, which accord with godliness, and pursue Him. For in pursuing Him, you will find all that you really need. And so, congregation, having placed our faith in Christ, if indeed you are trusting Him, if you have that great spiritual treasure which is found in the Lord, then today, do not think on those things which you wish you had, but count your blessings. Let us commit ourselves to reading the Bible, hearing God's word, and taking stock of all that we've received in Jesus Christ, because we've got a lot. Let us meditate upon the riches which accompany godliness. And as we do so, let us obey and let us be content, setting aside the love of money and hearts set on greed and gain. For truly, the riches of the wicked will one day come to nothing. They may seem quite favored now. But one day their riches will come to nothing and they'll go out of this world just like they came in. Nothing carrying with them. But the good news is that for us, even if we have little in this life, even if we don't have a fraction of what the rich possess, little becomes much with the Lord. And with that, we must be contented. So let's pray.