Hello, this is Pastor Mark Brashear with Cornerstone Baptist Church, and thank you for listening. We're grateful to God for the opportunity to provide you with this resource, and pray that this has been a blessing to you. Our desire is to faithfully preach through God's Word, verse by verse, and to see God use the preaching of His Word to transform lives for His glory. If you'd like additional information about the preaching and teaching ministry of Cornerstone Baptist Church, I invite you to visit our website at www.cornerstoneorlando.org. Until next time, this is Pastor Mark Preshear. God bless you and may God bless your time in His Word. Our scripture this morning is 1 Timothy chapter 6, verses 3 through 5, and the title of our sermon, discern and depart. And we are again, we're walking through 1 Timothy, Paul's letter to Timothy. verse by verse, sometimes word by word, clause by clause. We've been in this letter for just the better part of over a year now. And so Paul in this letter, now in chapter six, is beginning to wrap up this letter to Timothy and he changes focus. He went from how we interrelate with people in the church, now specifically addressing false teachers and false teaching. This is something that is incredibly important for us to understand. False teaching, false teachers, are addressed repeatedly in scripture. So repeatedly, in fact, that it's something that we need to take very special heed to. Again, here, Paul begins his letter in 1 Timothy addressing the issue of false teachers and false teaching. Now we come to chapter six, and he begins to address this issue again. It is, if you will, bookends on this letter to Timothy. He addresses false teaching throughout, specifically again here in chapter six. False teaching corrupts the gospel. False teaching corrupts holy living. It leads to sin, leads to disobedience. It directly impacts whether someone is saved or not. For that reason, it is so important that we remind ourselves, teach ourselves from the word of God how to identify it and how to protect ourselves against it. It is a critical issue. It's a critical issue because souls are at stake. Paul. When he was in Ephesus, he said he cried day and night for three years with tears, warning those in Ephesus that savage wolves will come in, not sparing the flock, leading away disciples after themselves. It is a serious issue. At the same time in Scripture that you have Paul addressing false teaching, throughout Scripture you also have this other reality. There is the other reality that there is a type of faith which does not save. That there is the reality of deception. That regardless of what someone professes to be, if they profess to be a Christian, there is the very real possibility that they are not a Christian. And so scripture repeatedly warns us of false conversion. false teaching, false doctrine, that doctrine which does not accord with wholesome words, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fact that someone in their own heart, in their own flesh, can be deceived by false teaching, deceived by error, and much, many times, error that arises out of our own minds, out of our own deceitful hearts. We are so prone to wander and so prone to being deceived. And so scripture is replete with that warning, replete with that exhortation. Identify false teaching, understand error, understand the truth, protect yourself against false conversion. Listen, this is what the Christian life looks like and align yourself with that. Don't be deceived. So it's so important that we cover this and Paul again comes to it in chapter 6. He begins in verse 3 by saying this, He knows nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, come strife, come reviling, evil suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain, from such withdraw yourself." We began last week looking at false teachers and the content of their message. And as we go through these simple verses here, these very profound verses, we're gonna look at several things. One is discerning the content of what they're teaching, all right? Next is gonna be looking at the character of those false teachers who teach error. There is a character there behind their teaching. We'll look at that. Thirdly, we'll discern the consequences of that in life. consequences of that false teaching in the church. We'll see that as we get into verses four and five. And then lastly, we're gonna look at the exhortation that Paul gives here to depart, to withdraw from those that teach. So last week we began with step one. Step one here from verse three is discerning the content of what is being taught, the content of false teaching. Is it truth from the Bible, Or is it error? Is it biblical? Or is it unbiblical? Verse three said, if anyone teaches otherwise, does not consent to wholesome words, does not consent to even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and not to the doctrine which accords with godliness, then he is proud knowing nothing. We made the point last week, you must submerse yourself. You have to be submerged in scripture to be able to discern that which is otherwise. We have the biblical truth, we have truth from God's word, and then we have that which is taught that is otherwise. They teach otherwise. That marks the false teacher's doctrine. It is that which is otherwise that doesn't consent with wholesome words, doesn't consent with the words of Jesus Christ, and doesn't consent with the doctrine that accords with godliness. We've got to be able to discern that. If you have enough Bible, now think about it for a moment, if you have enough Bible running through your veins, then when false teaching comes along, it gets filtered through all of that Bible such that you're able to discern truth from error. If you don't have enough Bible running through your veins, then garbage is going to get in. You have an untrustworthy filter and you'll fall for anything. You're not able, not as able to discern truth from error. Think about it this way. I'm going to give you a very simplistic example, right? Very simplistic example. Someone comes along to you and says, maybe you're listening to a sermon and you hear, If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ and believe in your heart that God has raised them from the dead, you shall be saved. Now is that Bible? Yes, you better believe it is. That's Bible, all right? But now, here's how they're going to present that in a lot of cases. The way that they understand it is simply, if you make a profession of faith, you confess the Lord Jesus. And you believe in your heart. I believe this fact that God raised him from the dead. The Bible says you can be saved. And here's how you do that. You believe that and you pray, Lord, I want you to be my personal Lord and savior. You pray to receive Christ as your personal Lord and savior. That's how they interpret that. But now if you know your Bible, if you know your Bible, then as that, Scripture is presented to you, then all of those texts begin to come to mind that add weight and import to what the Bible says there in Romans chapter 10. You remember what the Bible says about repentance, and what repentance is, and how repentance is biblically defined. The Bible defines repentance. You remember what true, genuine, saving faith is. You remember how scripture defines genuine, saving faith. And you're not going to be duped into the fact that you can live however you want to live because you've made a sincere profession. You're automatically a Christian. You're not going to be deceived by that misinterpretation. You remember all those texts that discuss the high cost of discipleship. and how it will cost you everything, even your own life, to follow Christ. And if you're not willing to give up all that you have, he says, you cannot be my disciple. You're gonna remember those texts. You're gonna remember all those texts that say that you cannot continue to live in an unbroken pattern of sin and call yourself a Christian. And when that is presented to you because of your biblical intake and because of the biblical filter that you've cultivated, you're not gonna be duped by a misinterpretation of Romans chapter 10. Many verses in scripture say, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And so one might think to themselves, all you have to do is repent, change your mind, they think, about sin. That's all you gotta do to be saved. What about all those passages that say believe? Are you going to discount all of those? For all those that believe they will have eternal life and you forsake all those passages that speak of repentance, you have to have a cultivated biblical filter. You have to be submersing yourself in all of the Word of God so that you understand the whole counsel of God so that you don't get duped, fooled, deceived by false doctrine, by error. is much often in false teaching what is not said that is drastically important to your spiritual health and well-being, where you go when you die. If you are fooled by that misinterpretation, who's responsible for that? You are. You're responsible for it because you don't have that healthy biblical intake. You're responsible for your own deception. Who else is responsible for it? That guy that sold you the bill of goods. Now scripture teaches both. Scripture teaches that it is you who is responsible. Don't be deceived. John, little children, do not be deceived. He who practices righteousness is righteous. He who sins, makes a practice of sin, is of the devil. Don't be deceived. How much clearer can John be, right? Don't be deceived. But Peter also says it is by those who speak great swelling words of emptiness that people are overcome. that people are led away in deception. It's both, it's that false teacher and it's you. We must submerse ourselves in the word of God, learn the word of God so that we can discern truth from error. And these false teachers become those in 1 Timothy 1, verse 7, they desire to be teachers of the law, but they don't understand what they say, they don't know what they affirm. And many that I've witnessed to, witnessed to many false teachers, many people who teach that very plan of salvation, if you will, that simply disregards much of scripture, And they don't understand. They don't understand what they're saying. They don't understand what they're doing. They don't understand what they're affirming. They simply don't get it. Now think about the motivation for a moment of that false teacher. What's his motivation? Wow, look at how many people I've gotten saved. You go to a revival or a rally with a false teacher and they give some empty, superficial, wrong presentation of the gospel and a wrong response to the gospel, you get 300 people that come forward. Nevermind, you can't find one of them in a church a year later, but 300 people come forward. Wow, look at all the people that I've gotten to say. I remember witnessing before I found a good biblical church, I was in a not so It was in a false church, in a bad church. I remember going out witnessing and there was a guy that would come in every night after going out witnessing. I got three people saved tonight. I got four people saved tonight. He's boasting in his results. It's nothing more than covetousness. Doesn't Jeremiah say that from the least of them to the greatest of them, they are all given to what? Covetousness. Covetousness. Boasting in their results. Entire denominations boasting. I remember a while back a denominational slogan, a million or more in 2004. God is in charge of results. And the glory of God isn't their aim. It's in the collection of denominational statistics and numbers that lends itself to pride. We have to be like the Bereans in Acts 17. The Bereans heard what was being preached by Paul. That would have been new revelation to them at the time, and yet they went back and searched the scriptures daily to see if that which Paul said was true. They searched the scriptures daily. These false teachers think that they have a zeal for God, but it's a zeal for their own pride, a zeal for their own wallet, a zeal for their own, it's nothing more than prideful covetousness, okay? The same principle now holds true with anything that you intake. Think about it for a moment. It's true of Scripture. If you have a good, healthy biblical intake of Scripture, then when error comes along, it gets run through that filter of Bible, it rattles around there with all that other truth that you've got in your head and your heart, and you discern truth from error, and in that you protect yourself and you follow the Lord, right? Same goes true with anything else that you read. If you have, let's say you've got no books in your brain. That was me through most of my high school years in college. No books in my brain. I don't know anything, right? Okay. So I pick up a first, the first book that I'm going to read as I pick up that first book that I'm going to read, I have nothing with which to interact with what's being taught to me. The first one that comes along and pleases case sounds right. It's what Proverbs says, right? So that book comes along, I hear that argument. Wow, that sounds very compelling to me. That sounds right. You know what? I'm going to believe that I'm just spoon fed theology. Got no Bible in my head, nothing to protect me, I just take whatever I'm fed. It's like a baby that puts anything in his mouth, right? But now, if you've got Bible in your head, and then maybe you've read 14, 15, 18, 30, 80 other books that draw you into scripture, that are teaching you scripture, you've heard these biblical arguments, you're studied, and you're learning, and you're studying, and you're learning, then when you pick up that book, when you pick up that book, All that is being taught to you out of that book, all that's being presented, those arguments that are laid out for you there, are now being engaged with all the other arguments and all the other truth and all of that Bible, all of that thought, all of that meditation, all of that work, all rattling around together. such that it engages with the text. You have the ability then to discern what you are hearing, discern what you're being taught, and you can discern between truth and error. You've gotta have Bible. You've gotta be taught the Bible. That's why it's so important to get yourself, especially new Christians, to get yourself in a good, solid, biblical church that's just gonna go verse by verse by verse through the word of God, such that you can for yourself, not that you're gonna just and be spoon-fed by us, so that you can see for yourself, like a Berean, I can look at the text, he's going verse by verse through that thing, I can see those clauses, so I can make a decision for myself, what is truth, what is error, here's what the Bible teaches. So that you begin to cultivate and build that good, healthy, biblical filter. Gotta have it. The moral of that story is, now the lesson we need to take from that is, you must be committed to the word of God. I can't tell you how many times I just, you know, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian, you're talking to people, I'm a Christian, I'm a Christian, and yet when you talk to them, what are you doing with your Bible study? What are you doing with your Bible reading? I just, you know, I have a job, and I got other stuff going on, and I just haven't gotten that sort of set. Listen, this is life or death. This is life or death, apart from the word of God. Listen, the Christian life is a slippery slope that you're climbing up. Right? And you're climbing up this slippery slope. It's not perfection, but it's the direction of your life. You're making this climb up the Christian life, so to speak. The world, the flesh, and the devil are so against you that if you stop climbing, you are already slipping backwards. Understand? You're already slipping down the slope. You've gotta continually climb, continually study, continually work. We talked about it this morning, that you've got to exercise yourself toward godliness, labor, strive, toil. That means gymnasticize yourself. Work, labor, agonize. Work yourself in the Christian life such that You can cultivate that godly, healthy intake of God's word. You can cultivate that filter. You can rely on Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit in you to help you. It's just building disciplines in your Christian life. The word of God is critical for this. If you don't have much Bible, and you're not engaging enough with those errors that come along, and just like a baby, you'll be tempted to put that thing in your mouth, and it's not good for you. Got to have Bible in our lives. You've got to put that discipline in place. You should be able to say, what are you doing for daily devotions? I'm doing this at this time, and here's how I'm doing it, and here's what is, right? That's in your life. It's just one of those things that's in your life. Christians have to have that. You have to have it. I can't exhort you enough on that point. Get you a time. Get you a plan. Get you a place. Study your word. Study the Bible. God works through the word to sanctify you. I don't know about you. It's happened in my own life. I'm sure it's happened in yours too. You're in the Christian life. You're trying to live for the Lord. You sit and think for a moment. You think, wow, I'm really struggling. having a hard time, maybe you're not having as much victory over that sin as you want, or you're really struggling in a couple of your relationships, maybe you're discouraged at work, or things just aren't going the way you think they should, and just problem after problem after problem, and you think to yourself, when's the last time I read my Bible? Really, really simple, really, really clear. You, in the power of the Spirit, with faith in Christ, just put the discipline of daily Bible reading and study into your life, and God will bless you through it. God will bless your Christian life, give you, you will grow. If you're not growing, you need to look to that potential cause. You don't have it in your life like you should. He's going to mature you. The Bible says, God, it's the cry of the Christian, sanctify me, Lord. Sanctify me by your truth. What does he say? Your word is truth. We're sanctified by the spirit of God through the word of God. It's so simple, so simple. And Christians, professing Christians, don't do it. Get a time, get a plan, put it in place and don't compromise. Get a steady intake of God's word. You must, you must. Your spiritual health, your spiritual vitality depends upon it. It may be that your soul depends upon it because there are many who profess to be Christians who are not. And by Slipping into sin, that person apostatizes from the faith, proving they were never Christian to begin with, and ends up getting to the point where you pass a point of no return. You must have a steady intake of the word of God. Now, in verse three, we're in step one here, discerning the content. In verse three, we are discerning false teaching as being a different doctrine. It says there in verse three, teaching otherwise, they teach otherwise, all right? So it's different from the Bible. Any teaching different from the Bible is a false teaching. It's a divergent doctrine. It's another doctrine. And because of that conditional statement there, we know that this is to be expected among us. The church should not be surprised when false teachers rise up teaching false doctrine. This is going to happen. The enemy doesn't slumber. He's always plotting, always attacking. But those who know the Word of God will be able to easily spot error and contradiction. We must have the Word of God. Now, next here, in discerning the content of the false teacher's message, We find in verse three that false teachers do not consent to wholesome words. They do not consent to wholesome words, nor to the words of Jesus Christ, nor to the doctrine which accords with godliness. Verse three, if anyone teaches otherwise, does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, And you see the results there. In verse three, they teach otherwise. That is a rejection of biblical authority. To not consent with wholesome words, or the words of Jesus Christ, is to reject biblical authority. That word there, does not consent, literally means they don't occupy themselves with it. It's a word that means they don't turn to it. Compound word in the Greek means one is toward, the other one is to go to, or to go, to come. They don't go to it. They don't occupy themselves with it. They don't give themselves to it. So it's, listen, it's one thing, right? To just reject it. You say, no, I don't believe that. But it's another thing altogether with the Bible to not consulted at all, to not occupy yourself with it, to not spend time engaging with it. That's what they're doing here. They're not consenting, but they're not occupying themselves with it. They reject it. Now you can reject things in a couple of different ways. One, you can just reject it with your words. I don't believe that. In another way, you can say with your words, I believe it, but you reject it with your life. Right? Both ways to reject that. You can say, I believe it, and you can be a hypocrite and don't live in accord with what you say you believe. And you can reject the word of God with your life. And we see that exemplified throughout scripture. Just think about for a moment in scripture, the numerous times, if you've read your Bible at all, the numerous times in the Bible where someone failed to heed the word of God or seek the word of God or seek the counsel of God and the trouble that it got them into. Right? Many times. Think about Joshua. Joshua, man, running strong, doing well, they're going into the promised land, fails to seek God before going into Ai, and 36 men are killed. We later find out that we had some treasure hidden under a tent, and Achan gets in all kinds of trouble, right? But he didn't seek the Lord beforehand, and 36 men are killed. Think about Ahab. Ahab reluctantly seeks God's counsel through Micaiah, the prophet, and rejects it out of hand. It does not consent to it, and then they suffer defeat. God judges them, but just rejects God's word out of hand. We see that happen throughout scripture. Because the Bible is the doctrine which accords with godliness, to reject it out of hand or to disregard it or to neglect it or to avoid it results in sin. It is sin to reject it, and it results in sin as a consequence. Rejecting biblical authority obviously leads to sin. As we've seen in 1 Timothy so far, this sin can put you on a slicker slope leading toward apostasy. We see those there that suffer shipwreck of their faith, they become apostates and eventually become false teachers. It all begins, so that you understand, with not consenting. Now think about your own life for a minute. You may say with your mouth, I believe in the word of God. I trust in the word of God. I depend on the word. Whatever you say with your mouth is one thing. How are you living? How are you engaging with the word of God? How does the word of God impact your life? Because to not consent with wholesome words means not to occupy yourself with them. If you say the scripture or the literally that word wholesome there, the being healthy words of God, if that is scripture to you, if you value scripture and then yet you're not occupying yourself with scripture such that you are applying it to your life and living according to it, then you're not consenting. You're rejecting it, right? It's, you know, we can say with our lips, we can profess with our lips, but our hearts are far from him. It's the same kind of thing. You must occupy yourself with scripture, consent to wholesome words, which means to follow them, to apply them, to obey them, right? It's a very slippery slope when you don't do that. I want you to see this progression. You're in 1 Timothy chapter six, just flip back to 2 Thessalonians, one more letter back, 2 Thessalonians chapter three. And I want you to see this slippery slope that it places you on. This should be a very fearful thing. If you don't feel or you don't perceive in your own Christian life that you're zealous for the Lord, man, you're sliding down a very slippery slope. If you don't have a steady, healthy intake of God's Word, you're on a very slippery slope, and it's a dangerous position to be in, and it does have consequence in your life. I've talked to people, regularly, right? We've seen this in our church, people that slip away, slip away, slip away. And in part, they begin simply by not consenting with wholesome words. And that bears consequence. You face the consequences of that compromise. and it ends up in sin, and you become hardened, and you reject a good conscience, and before you know it, you're out the door. This is a very slippery slope. We need to take heed to this warning and what the instruction here is. Look at 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, and look at the beginning in verse 6, okay? It says here in verse 6, We command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us. What they're doing here in verse 6 is this brother who's in trouble here is rejecting biblical authority. He's not consenting with wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's rejecting those. Now drop down to verse 14. Here the Bible says, if anyone does not obey our word in this epistle, in other words, they reject it, they don't consent to it, they're not going to live by it, they don't obey it, right? You're not to keep fellowship with that person, but rather you are to note that person, verse 14 says, and do not keep company with him, in order that he may be ashamed." Now, rejecting the Word of God is sin. And here in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3, we see another example of church discipline. This is church discipline in the Bible. It gets to a point where we're not to associate with those who reject biblical authority. That's the instruction from the Word of God here. Now that's not to be cruel. But that's with the intent that, the purpose that here in 2 Thessalonians 3, that they may be ashamed. So they can come to their senses over their sin, turn back to the Lord, be restored to God's people. They're to be restored, okay? It's not to be cruel. They might come to their senses and repent. And the purpose that what we're to do to cause that to happen is to note them and to not fellowship with them, okay? This person here, 2 Thessalonians 3, is rejecting, not consenting with biblical authority. And that's demonstrated by their life of disobedience, demonstrated by their life here. That's very interesting, and I want you to see this. In verse 15, the Bible says in verse 15, don't count them as an enemy, but admonish them as a brother. So here in verse 15, you've got someone that we're, the posture we're to take toward them is that they're a brother. We're simply to admonish them as a brother in hopes of regaining our brother to us. Notice the slippery slope. Look at 1 Timothy chapter one now and go to the right. 1 Timothy chapter one, beginning in verse five. The posture that we're to take toward those in 2 Thessalonians three is that we're to admonish them as a brother. Don't count them as an enemy. But this person who rejects biblical authority is on a very slippery slope. Look at verse five, 1 Timothy chapter one. The purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from a sincere faith. Now, that's the purpose of wholesome words, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, the words, the doctrine that accords with godliness. The purpose of those words is, from our standpoint, love from a pure heart, okay? a good conscience that only comes from obeying the Lord. You have a bad conscience when you disobey, right? You disobey, disobey, disobey, eventually your conscience becomes seared, then it's an unworking, almost worthless conscience, right? You've got to have an informed conscience. And we're to have a sincere faith. We're to have integrity in our faith. We're not to be hypocrites. We're to have integrity. Look at what it says in verse 6. from which some, having strayed," now they're not just not consenting with wholesome words, now they've strayed and they've turned aside to idle talk. One point on the slope, you simply reject wholesome words, I'm not going to obey it, you're in sin, we admonish you as a brother, hope to get you back. But then in rejecting that biblical authority, now they've strayed. Now they've turned themselves aside to idle talk. Listen, if there's a vacuum of truth, it's going to be filled by what? Error, lies, right? Demonic influence, all kinds of things. If you have an absence of the truth, you're gonna have worldly reasoning. If you have an absence of the truth, you're gonna get philosophy, psychology, a bunch of nonsense, right? A bunch of garbage. Here, they have rejected biblical authority. Now they have strayed from the truth, strayed from that biblical, those wholesome words, and now they have turned themselves aside to idle talk. Now listen, two in verse five and six here, in rejecting biblical authority, You reject what that biblical authority produces. It doesn't just stop there. You reject love from a pure heart. You reject a good conscience. And you reject integrity in the faith. You become a hypocrite. You reject all of that. And not consenting with wholesome words, you are rejecting all of that, right? A very serious thing. Now, let's go a little bit farther down the slippery slope, drop down in 1st Timothy 1 to verse 19. Having rejected a sincere faith, a good conscience, love from a pure heart, now in turning aside from the truth and turning aside to idle talk, you suffer shipwreck. Look at verse 19. Having faith in a good conscience, which some having rejected concerning the faith, now they've suffered shipwreck. They suffered shipwreck farther down the slippery slope. The next verse down, they become blasphemers. They're put out of the church so they may be taught not to blaspheme. So now, turning aside to idle talk, now you're a shipwreck of your faith and you become a blasphemer further down the slippery slope. Those that reject the faith become shipwreck apostates that now open themselves up to demonic influence, speaking lies in their hypocrisy. Their consciences are seared beyond recovery and they teach otherwise. Look at 1 Timothy chapter four. 1 Timothy chapter four. And look there at verse one. The Spirit expressly says that in latter times, some will depart from the faith, not consenting with wholesome words, giving heed now to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons. You have rejected biblical authority, not consenting with wholesome words. Now you've turned aside, rejecting love from a pure heart, rejecting a good conscience, rejecting sincere faith, just living in your sin. You have turned aside from truth, and now you're turned aside to idle talk, worthless talk. You suffer shipwreck of your faith, and now in 1 Timothy chapter 4, you're giving heed to deceiving spirits, doctrines of demons. He goes on to say, verse 2, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. Listen, you reject a good conscience, you will dull your conscience, render your conscience less and less effective, and eventually you will sear it. Oftentimes in the heart and mind of a false teacher or someone who's just delivered over to a debased mind, delivered over to their sin, they have no conscience left. They just sin with impunity, believe any filth, trash that comes along because their consciences have become seared. They have rejected a good conscience by obeying the Lord. Then what do they do? They forbid to marry and command abstinence from foods. They become the false teacher. This, it's amazing to me, right? At first, we are to admonish them as brothers, and it's here that they become hypocritical liars, enemies of the cross of Christ, whose God is their belly, whose end is their destruction, right? Overthrowing the faith of many. Go another page to the right, go to 2 Timothy chapter three. 2 Timothy chapter three. And look there, beginning in verse six. This describes them now. Think about this, the slippery slope. Verse six describes them, for of this sort, these false teachers, are those who creep into households, make captives of gullible women, loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts. You know, I was witnessing one time, speaking in the front yard with a lady, myself and two other folks with me, speaking to this young lady in her front yard, and she became very convicted over her sin. The law of God had its effect on her heart. She saw her sin. She started weeping, weeping over her sin in the front. I need to be saved. Lord, I want the Lord to save me. This conversation, okay, you need to cry out to the Lord to save you. You need to turn from your sin. We gave her the gospel and then said you need to be in church. Where are you gonna be in church on Sunday? You need to come to church. You need to be around God's people. You need to hear the word of God preached. You need to now turn from your sin and follow Christ. And so I'll be there, I'll be there, I'll be there. We left on the way out of the neighborhood. I remember, oh, I need to get the number from her house. I need to follow her up. So I turned around to go back to the house and get the number off the house. And as I get to her house, upper driveway to Jehovah's Witnesses. So what ensued after that was me getting out of the car and there was a war for her soul, basically, behind the scenes. I never saw her, never saw her again. Followed up, cold and indifferent, swayed, pulled away as a battle for her soul. Mind you, this is, right? Overthrowing the faith of many. This is not a light matter, it's a very serious matter. False teaching, false theology, false doctrine, false teachers, so serious because souls are at stake. And just to reject the truth, you'll be pulled astray to error, led away. There's much more on this that could be said. In 2 Timothy chapter three, verse seven, he goes on to say, always learning, never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. He says in verse eight, now as Janice and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth. They're men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith, but they will progress no further, for their following will be manifest to all. But listen to what he says in verse 10. Listen. Here is the exhortation. This is what you need. Verse 10, but you, but you have carefully followed my doctrine, my manner of life, purpose, faith, long suffering, love, perseverance, persecutions, afflictions, which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra, following the word of God, following his faith, following his example, right? Living for the Lord. That's the glorious but you. Out of them all, the Lord, Paul said, delivered me. Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. Evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14, but you, but you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of. Where does that come from? Knowing from whom you have learned them. Well, who is that? From childhood, how you have known the what? The holy scriptures got that from the Bible. You learn that from the word of God and those holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be complete. preserved, persevered, sanctified, protected, matured, grown, strengthened, hope-filled, right? Oh, the Word of God does that, so that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for producing fruit. for every good work, right? It's what the word of God does for us. We must, you and I, we must submerse ourselves in the word of God. There's great protection here. It's a progression, it's a progression, a slippery slope. That happens, so you understand, as we've talked about before, it happens by small degrees over time, right? Small degrees of compromise, small degrees of willful sin over time. and rejection of God's word in your life, in your obedience, followed by small degrees by which your conscience becomes dulled, and then senseless, and then seared. In mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis said this, if you examined 100 people who had lost their faith in Christianity, now you understand, it doesn't mean they lost their salvation. These are people who were never saved to begin with, never saved to begin with, okay? If you examined 100 people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument. Do not most people simply drift away? It's a rhetorical question. The answer to that question is yes, most people just simply drift away. In other words, what's being said there is that, okay, I profess to be a Christian, I'm studying the word of God, I'm following Christ, on my doorstep shows up a Jehovah's Witness, I listen to a 30-minute argument from a Jehovah's Witness, and now I'm an apostate. Jehovah's Witness. Generally, it doesn't happen that way. Generally, it happens by a subtle and slow drifting away. You profess one thing with your lips, profess one thing with your mouth, and in your life, you compromise and you compromise. and you allow for sin, and you allow that sin to linger a little longer, and a little longer, and then you're not availing yourself of the means of grace that God makes available for your perseverance, for your growth, for your maturity, for your sanctification, and you continue to sin, and you continue to sin by small degrees over time, by small compromises over time. Do not, most people, drift away. You can look at many who have drifted away, right? We've seen that happen. Many who have drifted away. There but by the grace of God go you and I. It is going to be the grace of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord, that preserves us in the faith. And if we're going to be preserved in the faith, we must avail ourselves of the means of grace that God gives us. It is simple, right? Why is it such a struggle sometimes in our Christian lives to instill those disciplines? They are life and death. We just don't value it the way we should. And we need to cultivate a healthy value of the word of God. Now, after digging to the bottom of that well, in discerning the content of a false teacher's message, we're gonna see three things here in verse three. 1 Timothy chapter six, verse three. Three issues here with discerning the content of their message. One is that false teachers and their message do not consent with wholesome words. They do not consent with wholesome words. Two, they don't consent with the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. Three, they forsake or do not consent with the doctrine that accords with godliness. All of those things wrapped up in describing the teaching otherwise, the false doctrine, okay? They don't consent, false doctrine doesn't consent with wholesome words, doesn't consent with the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and doesn't consent with the doctrine that accords itself with godliness. Think about it this way. In verse three, you see the substance or content of false teaching, unwholesome words. You see the source of false teaching, not the Lord Jesus Christ, and you see the standard of false teaching, it accords with ungodliness. You see the substance of godly biblical truth, wholesome, healthy words. You see the source of godly biblical truth, the Lord Jesus Christ. And you see the standard by which we judge the doctrine that comes to us, godly living, holy living, okay? So think of it, substance, source, and standards. Let's look at the substance. The truth is made up of wholesome words. That word wholesome is healthier sound, speaking of spiritual health. Literally, it's being healthy words. You're consenting with being healthy words, okay? These are healthy words which will result in a healthy life. Do you believe that, Christian? Do you believe it? If you give yourself to healthy words, if you've got the Spirit of God in you, you give yourself to healthy words, you will have a spiritually healthy life, which I know is what you want. If you're a Christian, you want that. So give yourself to healthy words. It's not rocket surgery. This is simple stuff, right? Give yourself over to the Word of God, you will have a spiritually healthy life. These are literally being healthy words. We must have a steady diet, a full diet of wholesome words that lead to spiritual vitality, right? Spiritual health, fervency, faith. These are the words that in a Christian will lead to inevitably, inexorably will lead to growth and maturity. Is that kind of sanctification something that you value? I heard one amen. Is this something you value? Amen. So don't let anything get in the way of that. That's what we desire as Christians. That gives us great joy. Lord, thank you. I mean, you see so many impacts that the word of God will have in your life. God, thank you. You see progress in your Christian life. God, thank you. It's one of the great grounds of our assurance is we see that work of grace in our hearts and we can say, God, thank you. It assures us of our salvation, assures us that we are in him. His spirit witnesses with our spirit. We're children of God and we're like, amen. So we desire that sanctification. It will happen if you have the Spirit of God in you and you give yourself to the Word of God. You devote yourself, occupy yourself with God's Word and allow the Spirit of God to be at work in you. The Lord says so. If you say that is something that you value, then where are you now when the Word of God is being taught? We have Sunday school classes being offered. Are you there? We have a small group where brothers and sisters, mature brothers and sisters in the faith are teaching. Are you there? The word of God is being taught, being preached, being talked about over fellowships. Where are you? If you say that you value it, then don't let anything get in the way. Don't let laziness or apathy or all that other garbage get in the way of your sanctification. The Lord holds that out to you as a great blessing. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to continue to reject those wholesome words? Is that what you want to do? No. That's why you've got to value the Word of God and get yourself under the Word of God. God works through means. Do not reject the means of God to have His way in you. You need to occupy yourself with them. If you get yourself in there, God's going to bless. As opposed to spiritual health that these wholesome words bring, False teaching will produce spiritual sickness and disease. False teaching will produce spiritual sickness and disease. The effect of false teaching is a spiritually unhealthy life. And they are described here in the negative of not consenting with wholesome words. So we have the substance. The substance of truth is made up of wholesome words. The source of these wholesome words is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. What we need for spiritual health are the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn't simply mean there that those are quotes about Him or things said about Him. These are the words of Jesus Christ. It's not simply limited to the red words you have in your Bible. All of this is the words of Jesus Christ. The Bible, Colossians 3, verse 16 says, This is the word of Christ. Chapter 2. 2 Peter 2. This is why it is so critical to be in a good church, be taking in wholesome words. There is a consequence for not doing that. Chapter 2, verse 12. Consider the slippery slope. We at once admonished them as brothers, and now look how we talk about them in verse 12. But these, like natural brute beasts, made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil. Boy, we were talking bad about those nice guys. You don't know how wonderful that Catholic priest was to me when he sat there in the hospital and consoled me while I was going through that. Or how nice that pastor was, he went over to his house for lunch and he told me all those good things. Does it matter how nice they are if they are luring you away by their deceptive words, dripping honey in your ear all the way to hell? No, as nice as you may think they are temporally, they are brute beasts because souls are at stake. They are made to be caught and destroyed because they're leading people to hell. They speak evil of the things they do not understand and will utterly perish in their own corruption and will receive the wages of unrighteousness as those who count it pleasure to carouse in the daytime. They are spots, blemishes, carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you, having eyes full of adultery." Now look how their doctrine leads to their life. Right? What ends up to be the truth in their life. They're full of adultery. They cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices and are accursed children. They have, and here it is, forsaken the right way. They've rejected wholesome words, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the doctrine that accords with godliness. They don't consent with it any longer. They followed in the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness. Balaam taught the people of Israel to sin. As Jesus Christ said, he led them in idolatry and fornication. He couldn't get God to curse them. through his prophecy. And so he went around side, take a flank, if you will, to Balak and showed Balak how to get them to sin. Introduce them to pagan wives that they will commit fornication with, that will lead them into idolatry, and then God will judge them, right? It's the lie of Balaam, the doctrine of Balaam, teaching them to be ungodly, leading them into sin. Here, he led them in the way of sin. He, Balaam, loved the wages of unrighteousness, but he was rebuked for his iniquity. A dumb donkey, speaking with a man's voice, restrained the madness of the prophet. Verse 17, these are wells without water, clouds carried by a tempest for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. Said the same way in Jude 13, right? Reserved for the blackness of darkness forever. Verse 18, for when, here's what they do, they speak great swelling words of emptiness. They allure through the lust of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption. Now let me remind you, false doctrine, unwholesome doctrine, does lead to ungodly living, unholy living. So no matter how Godly, that false teacher may sound in the pulpit, you don't know his life. How many, how many false teachers have we seen teaching their error in the pulpit every Sunday, on TBN, every hour of the day, just filling up the airwaves with garbage? that eventually fall. Fall and fall and fall. And there's that guy and that guy. You almost can't keep up, right? It's like one after the other, like dominoes, just because of their ungodly lives. Unwholesome words produce unwholesome living, ungodly living. Here they are slaves of their own corruption, by whom a person is overcome. By him also he is brought into bondage. For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, now here it is again, than having known it to turn from the holy commandment. Again, they reject wholesome words, they reject the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, they reject the doctrine which accords with godliness. And it happens to them, according to the proverb, dog returns to his vomit. This is why we're so adamant to speak against heresy, because false teaching spreads spiritual disease, spiritual sickness and death. We're not just out to pick a fight. This is a matter of life and death. They're spreading a sickness, and it's a sickness that kills. Bottom line, false teachers are not committed to God's word, they reject it. They may use it, and they may use it frequently, simply as a springboard to support their false theology, like the Romans 10 example that we used. It's nothing more than just a springboard. It's like a hen pecking. You can almost say anything from the scripture if you try hard enough. It must be the whole counsel of God, a faithful interpretation of it, a faithful use of it, rightly dividing it. They don't love it. They don't devote themselves to it. They, a false teacher, will add to it. They'll subtract from it. They'll change it. They'll delete certain things. They'll interpret it wrong. They won't stick to it. They'll deny it. In this, next, we have the standard. We saw the substance of those words as being wholesome, the source of those words being our Lord Jesus Christ. Lastly, the standard, this is the doctrine that accords with godliness. God, hear me now, never intends doctrine, scriptural truth, to be separated from how you live your life, never. All those two things always go together. Teaching should be tested by whether or not it produces holy living. Now think for a moment. You're in a church. Many of you come out of churches like this. I came out of a church like this, where you're hearing doctrine. Now, at the time, biblically literate, frankly unsaved, didn't know the word of God at all. I'm listening to the preaching that's coming out, and pretty much I'm taking that teaching. If I looked around me with any discernment whatsoever at the church that I was in at the time, you have adultery, fornication, divorce, divorce, divorce. This guy believes in evolution. This one over here believes there are many paths up to the mountain. This one over here denies God's word altogether. I don't even know why he's there. This one over here, you know, and that's Deacon, you know, and this guy over here, you know, right? If you're honest with yourself and you look at this, I remember witnessing to a young man one time on the praise team playing guitar at a very large charismatic church not far from here, who was put in that position on the worship team while, they knew it, living in sin with his girlfriend. If that teaching is producing unholy living, ungodliness in the church, then that is a false church and they're preaching false doctrine. Wholesome words is going to produce obedience in God's people and it will produce godly living. It is the doctrine which accords with godliness. If there is doctrine being taught that is according itself with ungodliness, it's not God's doctrine. We have to, I have to often talk to people that just, they don't know enough to know what they need to know, right? And so you tell, listen, just look around your church. I remember witnessing to a guy, he asked me about church discipline. I explained it to him, and he said, if we practice that in our church, it would clear out our entire church. All right, that should tell you something. That should be enough that even though you don't understand everything right now, that should be enough that you would run from there and get yourself to a biblical church, right? This concept, godliness, draws a sharp contrast between the genuine Christian life and the empty profession of it. Godly doctrine in the life of a true Christian is going to produce holy living. Christian teaching is that which produces godly living. False teaching falls short because it doesn't result in godliness. False teaching will result in an unholy life. The Bible says of false teachers that you'll know them by their fruit, right? Matthew chapter 7, Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing. Inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You'll know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits, you will know them. There's simply no power in the false to change a life. There's no power there. The Holy Spirit's not at work in it, no power to make a change. What about you now this morning? Is your life getting increasingly holy? It's not perfection, you understand, it's direction. Are you making progress in this Christian life? There are many times in your Christian life where you won't always be able to sense that progress really clearly. Ask someone, ask a brother or sister, you know, do you see me making progress? Do you see more and more victory over sin? More and more consistency with those spiritual disciplines that are so necessary to live the Christian life? Do you see progress? If you don't, it may be that you have the right doctrine, you're a Christian and you have the Spirit of God within you, but you're not applying that doctrine the way that the Bible would have you apply it. You're not availing yourself of the means of grace that God gives you. You're not submitting yourself to God's word and faithfully obeying it, faithfully living it out. Or it could mean that you're not a Christian, that you don't have the spirit of God in you, that you don't have your strength and power in and of yourself to do anything, and so you fail and you fail and you fail. You need a new heart. You need Christ. You need the spirit of God in you. You can't do it on your own. If you're a Christian and the right doctrine is not having the right effect in you, why? Will you diagnose yourself? Think about it for a moment now. What is hindering you? What is getting in the way between you and that Christian life that I know you want? What stands in the way? Are you allowing work to interfere? Are you allowing hobbies to interfere? Are you allowing Downton Abbey to interfere? What is it? What is it? What is it? Discern that, whatever it is, and get that out of the way. Is your soul worth changing jobs over? Yeah. Is your soul worth, I've talked to many people out of state, many of you have moved here to go to church here. Is it worth moving to get in a good church? There's nothing worth clinging to and give up your soul over. So what is getting in the way of your sanctification? Diagnose that. And then the instruction we need to take here from 1 Timothy chapter 6 is avoid that slippery slope. Don't allow garbage and filth of false teachers to come in. Allow the Word of God to sanctify you. Protect yourself. Avail yourself of the means of grace. The Lord may preserve you in the faith and live the Christian life. Don't compromise. Don't stop striving and toiling. Don't stop exercising yourself toward godliness. And it is this Word that accords with godliness. Will you put the Word of God into your life? Will you discipline yourself in the word of God? This is a necessary discipline. Just can't be any more clear from scripture. You must have it. Devote yourself to the word of God. God, by the spirit of God in you, God will see to it that you're grown, see to it that you're matured, see to it that you're preserved. You're in his hand. Nothing, no one will snatch you out of it. But you've gotta be in his hand, amen? Amen, let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you, God, for your word. Lord, thank you that it is wholesome. Thank you, Lord, that it is from you, our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you that it accords with godliness when we see the effects of the spirit at work in us through the word of God to sanctify us, to grow us, to mature us. And God, what a glorious blessing that is. What a glorious joy that is for the Christian. Lord, forgive us for our flesh and our worldly reasoning sometimes, just our deceitful hearts and how we would take that for granted or neglect it. immeasurably foolish it is of us, Lord, to do that. Forgive us of that great sin. Convict us, God, of that great sin, and we might repent and turn to you, Christ, living by faith in you, studying your word, taking in those wholesome, being healthy words, taking in the words of our Lord Jesus Christ and seeing you work in us, Lord, to make us more and more godly. Thank you for this instruction. God, I pray for everyone here. that there would be nothing that would hinder, nothing that would stand in the way, we wouldn't be ensnared or entangled by sin or distractions or whatever it may be, whatever comes. We would be faithful to apply these truths and put this great means of grace, this great Christian discipline in place in our lives such that we protect ourselves from false teachers, false teaching, and that we can live this Christian life and one day, Lord, be taken home to glory and worshiping you in heaven for all eternity. We love you, Lord. Thank you for this time together. I love my brothers and sisters here, and God, please just continue to bless and protect our church. God, may we hold in very high regard, very high esteem these wholesome words, the words of our Lord. And thank you for this time in Jesus' name. Amen.