- Hey Rockpoint family, Ryan here it's so good to see you, Thanks for hanging out with us. We are in the book of 1st Timothy, we're talking about a healthy church, What does a healthy church look like? So go ahead and grab a Bible, make sure you have one with you this whole time, so you can follow along with me. You're always gonna get the most out of our time together when anybody's teaching if you have a Bible in front of you. So go to 1st Timothy chapter four, we're gonna be in 1st Timothy chapter four and we're gonna look at verses one through six, okay? Let me read these six verses, and then we'll jump into them. Verse one, 'Now the Spirit expressly says, that in a later time, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insecurity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created, to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. Everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving. For this made holy by the word of God and prayer. If you put these things before the brothers, you'll be a good servant of Christ Jesus being trained in the words of the faith and the good doctrine that you have followed." Now, this is my coffee filter. I know you notice this, I know what you're thinking that's not a very big coffee pot Ryan. Well it's okay, we use it a couple times a day but we always start the day in my house with at least one cup of coffee, so I make some for me and my wife. And the other day, I made some coffee and I'm sorry I didn't clean it, my bad. I made some coffee and sorry sweetie, if you're wondering where this is today, but I made some coffee, and I noticed there were some little black things floating around in my coffee, and I thought this is strange. And I realized, oh, there's something wrong with the filter. This is the filter that all the coffee goes through. See before you drink, when you make coffee before you drink it, the filter filters out all the seeds and the bad stuff, so you can just get the good stuff and you can drink it and enjoy it and relax, and be awake and alert. And spiritually speaking, I wanna ask you, what is your spiritual coffee filter? When you hear people saying things to you, when you watch things on the news, when you see what's happening in the world, and when you learn about anything, how do you filter what you hear? What is the filter that you put everything through to conclude the good stuff? What's good and what's true and what's false. In 1st Timothy, chapter four, Paul is telling his younger mentee, Timothy, how to look for false teaching. He's telling him how to filter out the bad stuff and figure out what is the good stuff. So let's start with these verses in chapter three, which is the purpose of the book of 1st Timothy. The purpose of the book of 1st Timothy, like it says right there in verse 14, "That you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God." 1st Timothy is written as a blueprint for us to know how the church should govern itself and should operate and should look like. So how do we discern false teaching in the church as believers? Let's look at this together, verse one. "Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times, some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to the deceitful spirits and teachings of demons." Now, when it says Spirit expressly, that is referring to Acts chapter 20, and verses 27 through 29, when Paul is talking to the leaders and the elders of the church, and he says this, "I did not shrink," in Acts chapter 20:27, Paul says, "I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God," that means Old Testament, New Testament, the whole thing. "Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the Church of God which he obtained with his own blood." Verse 29, "I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after themselves." And then he says in verse 31, "Be alert, be alert." You and I as followers of Jesus, we need to be alert, we need to be on guard, and always looking out for false teaching when it comes to biblical teaching, 'cause there's a lot of false teaching out there and a lot of false teachers and we need to be on guard. So the Spirit expressly says to Paul right there in Acts 20, that some in later times will depart from the faith. Later times mean anytime after the Holy Spirit came in Acts chapter two, at Pentecost, after Jesus died and was resurrected from the grave, the Holy Spirit came and indwells his people, when we accept Jesus as our Savior. And from that moment on, which means a lot of history up until this point and in the future and today, there will be false teaching, "And some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons." Now, some depart meaning this is more than a stylistic issue, this is false teaching that will actually cause people to stop following Jesus eventually. Now we should not let false teaching, make us panic but we should be on guard against it. In 2nd Timothy chapter two, it says in verse 17, "Their talk, their teaching will spread like gangrene," verse 19, "But God's firm foundation stands, the Lord knows those who are His, and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from sin." Now, what were some of the false teachings at this time? So at this time, when Paul wrote this to Timothy, what were some of the false teachings that were circulating and going around in that area? I'll give you two examples real fast of some of the false teachers at the time. Example number one is called Arianism. Arius was a bishop in the church, and he taught that there was a time when Jesus was not, meaning he taught that Jesus was not eternal. He taught that Jesus was created and he also taught that Jesus, so we believe in the Trinity, that God who is Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three persons, one essence, three distinct persons, but one God. Arius taught that Jesus was not the same substance as God the Father, He was similar but a different substance. But of course, the Bible teaches that Jesus is the same substance as the Father and that's explained expressly in the book of Colossians. And at the Council of Nicaea around the year 300, they established that this was false teaching, and that this was not biblical, and orthodox and true to what the Bible teaches, or to what Jesus actually said and taught and did in history and who He was. So Arianism was an example of false teaching of the day. Another example of false teaching at this time was Gnosticism, and Gnosticism taught, well actually, the false teachers that plagued the church in the Ephesian church were the forerunners of the Gnostics of the second century. Gnosticism got really big in the second century but this false teaching that Paul's referring to here in these verses we're looking at, was a forerunner of Gnosticism. And Gnostics taught that spirit is good and matter is evil. So anything physical in the world is evil, but only spiritual stuff is good. They believe that all physical desire relating to the body are evil and should be refused, including normal desires for sex, and normal desires for food. "So the false teachers forbid people to marry and order them to a stain from certain foods," as we see in verse three, but Paul went to the heart of the error and Paul stated that matter was part of what God created, and that those who believe and know the truth can gratefully receive those things that God created which were designed to be received with joy. One of the things I really like about Rockpoint Church is that when you hear our senior teacher and leader Roy Fruits, speak often he will talk about grace. I love that grace because grace is good for those who have not yet received Jesus yet as their Savior and accepted Jesus as their Savior. You're saved by grace, God has a free gift for you and it's all by grace. You didn't earn it, you can't lose it, it's grace. And God invites you into a relationship with him, through His grace through what Jesus did. It's all grace, it's fantastic. Grace is also great for us who are believers, because you and I are saved by grace and in the book of Ephesians it says, "Not of yourself, that it is a gift of God. Not by works that no one can boast," in Ephesians chapter two. We are saved by God's grace, we didn't earn it, we didn't add to it, it wasn't because we're so great, it's because God was so great, and He was so generous and we follow Jesus by grace, we meet Jesus by grace and I love that. What are some false teachings today? When you look around our world today, and you look at false Bible teaching today, what's some false teaching today? Let me give you two examples number one, what's called prosperity theology, or the prosperity gospel, or sometimes it's called health and wealth teaching or health and wealth preaching. Basically it says that God's primary goal for you is that you would be perfectly healthy and rich. And if you're not healthy and rich, God's mad at you, and you have a sin problem in your life and your faith is not strong enough. And that is false teaching, you do not find that in scripture. You see in scripture, like in Matthew chapter six, it says God wants good things for His kids, and you and I are His kids, He wants good things for us, but our idea of what's good and His idea of what's good can be different sometimes. And God's desire and purpose for us is not primarily that we're healthy and rich. In Psalms it says, "God is near to the brokenhearted." In the book of James it says, "God chose the poor of this world to be rich in faith." And Jesus Himself was homeless, His friends abandoned Him, He spent time in prison, and He was murdered. Jesus was approved of and loved by his heavenly Father, but He had a hard life and it's not because He had a sin problem, it's not because He had a weak faith. It's just because God's plan was that He would suffer and struggle and all of us as followers of Jesus, we're gonna suffer, we're gonna struggle. And I have some close friends in this church actually, in our church locally, and they have some lifelong degenerative physical problems that they're having to deal with and you know what, they have a strong faith, and they don't have a bunch of sin in their life and God just hasn't chosen to heal them at this time, but God is still good, they have a strong faith, they're trusting God and just because they're not rich and healthy, they don't think God's mad at them. That's an example of false teaching today and we need to be on guard for that. Because that's not just false teaching in one particular denomination, the prosperity gospel is taught all over the place constantly. So we need to be on guard for that, we need to watch out for that. Another example of false teaching today, would be the false teaching that all religions are the same, that all religions lead to heaven and they're all basically the same thing, about the same God. Well, you know what? First of all, all religions do not teach that all religions are the same, okay? Second of all, a lot of aspects of the major world religions are exclusive. They cannot all the true and so that teaching is false teaching. The Book of Acts says, "There is one name under heaven by which we must be saved," that is the name of Jesus, not any religion or every religion, just Jesus. Second of all, Jesus Himself said, "No one comes to the Father except through me." Jesus did not see multiple ways to His heavenly Father, He saw one way and that was through Himself and he taught that over and over in the New Testament. These are a couple examples of false teaching. So how can you detect false teaching? How can you detect that what someone is teaching you from a pulpit, from a platform, from up front, even somebody in a personal conversation or maybe something your parents have told you, how can you detect false teaching? Maybe you grew up in a church and as you got older and you read the Bible more for yourself, you realized that teaching was a little off. How can you detect false teaching? Paul's gonna tell us that in the next couple verses. Look at these, verse two, so the false teaching, teachings of demons and deceitful spirits, verse two he says, "Through the insincerity of liars, whose consciences are seared." So first of all, false teachers and false teaching, they will be insincere. Second of all, they will be dishonest, you can tell they are not telling the truth. Third of all, they don't have a conscience, their conscience has been seared, they have a mortality problem. They treat people and in immoral way. 1st Timothy chapter one and verse five, it says, "Our aim is faith from a good conscience." And in verse three, you can see right there in verse three, these false teachings result in what's called legalism or holiness based on what you don't do. It's rules-based faith, instead of a grace-based faith. Verse three, it says, "Those who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving, by those who believe and know the truth." If you think about being in the grace of God or on the grace of God, picture yourself on like a horse, like a majestic horse, like a Bronco, like that new Bronco that just came out, that thing looks sweet, anyways, picture yourself on the horse of grace. Every believer is tempted to fall off one side of the other from grace, off one side of the horse or the other. One side is license, meaning you can do whatever you want, the other side is legalism, meaning it's all about rules, and your holiness is based on what you do or don't do. Those are opposite sides of grace that we're all tempted to fall in at some point. The side of license would be what Paul talks about as antinomianism in the book of Romans, you can go look that up, where he says antinomianism, anti-law, no laws, you can do whatever you want, you have like a license, like a driver's license to do whatever you want, 'cause you're saved, God saved you so now go do whatever you want. No, no, there are still boundaries and guidelines and commandments that God has for us, for how we treat each other and how we treat ourselves and how we obey Him. So license is not an option, we gotta stay on grace. Also legalism, that's the false teaching that results in this that Paul's talking about, legalism. These particular legalistic teachings were forbidding marriage and requiring abstinence from certain foods. Now, in Revelation chapter 22, and verse 18, when it comes to license, it says, "I want everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of this book of prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life." Scary stuff in the book of Revelation, He's saying, don't take away from the Bible, don't fall into a license, where you think you can do whatever you want, you're taking away all these commandments and everything the Bible says about right living, don't do that. And then in 1st Corinthians chapter four, verse six, Paul says, "I have applied all these things to myself and Apollo's for your benefit brothers, that you may learn not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one another against another." Paul says do not exceed what is written, meaning don't be a legalist, meaning don't add a bunch of rules, meaning to don't go beyond what the Bible says. Just an example in the book of Ephesians it says, "Do not get drunk with wine," clear commandment, "Don't get drunk with wine." If you were to conclude, I'm not gonna get drunk with wine, and I'm not even gonna drink, I'm not gonna touch it at all, and I'm gonna judge everybody else and make sure nobody else ever drinks anything, no matter what, that's exceeding what is written. The Bible drew a line right here, and you went past it, you exceeded what the Bible said, that makes you a legalistic Christian and that's a problem and we need to be aware of that and on guard for that and watch out for that. And the problem with being legalistic and being a rules-based, rule following you define your holiness by what you do or don't do. The problem is not that it's impossible, the problem is that it's actually possible. You can actually get to the point when you think about a checklist, where you can get to the point as a believer who tends to think a little bit legalistically or buy into that type of teaching, you can think check, check, check, check, I did it, I did all these things and I now I'm perfect, now I'm better than everybody else and I am perfectly holy and I have arrived spiritually, and nobody's as good as me. That's the problem with legalistic teaching and legalistic thinking is pride, you think you're better than everybody else, that's the problem. One of the things I love about the EFCA, the Evangelical Free Church of America is there's this old phrase, old saying in our history that says, "Where stands it written". It's an old school way of saying, show me a verse. Where does the Bible say that, see we believe you can believe anything you want about God and about heaven and hell and life and eternity and you can believe whatever you want, as long as it's biblical, as long as the Bible teaches it, and the Bible affirms it, you can believe it. So if you wanna believe something, okay fine, show me in the Bible where you believe that, that is kind of the attitude of the EFCA, which I'm so thankful for, that we highly value and prioritize the role of Scripture in what we think and how we live. Look at verse four, it says, "Everything created by God is good, and nothing has to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving." Now, there were dietary restrictions, okay? In the Old Testament law, there were dietary restrictions of what you should eat and not eat but in Acts chapter 10, I'm not gonna read it, but you can look it up and Acts chapter 10, starting in verse nine, the Apostle Peter has a dream, and in that dream and in that vision, God brings down all these animals, some of them as a good Jew, you were not supposed to eat, but God said, go ahead and eat all these animals. And Peter said, no, no, God would never do that because some of those animals are unclean and then God said, all these animals are clean, from now on the Old Testament rules about dietary restrictions are over, you're saved by grace and you can eat whatever you want. And you can go look that up if you want, and so, "Everything created by God is good, nothing has to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving." Look at verse five, it says, for it is made holy by God, sorry, "It is made holy by the word of God and prayer." Some helpful categories I think, as you start to think through what do I believe personally, what is my personal theology, theo means God, ology means the study of it, it's of a study of God, theology is the study of God. What's your personal theology? What's your personal doctrine? Or what are your points of belief that you hold to as a Christian, as a follower of Jesus, or even just as a person? Maybe you're not a Christian yet, that's fine. What do you believe in? What do you hold to? In the EFCA, there's something that's really, really helpful I think, for some categories as you think through what you believe personally and how you filter the teaching that you hear? To watch out for false teaching and hold to true biblical orthodox, historic teaching. And these categories are majors, so theological majors, theological minors, and then also style issues, majors, minors and style, okay? So major issues, so the EFCA talks about major issues of, you know, God, the Bible, sin, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the return of Jesus eternity, and there's some more, but there's these 10, like essential major big things that we hold to as believers. That's historic Christianity for the last 2000 years, it's based on what Jesus taught, and what Jesus did, and the whole counsel of God, the Old Testament and the New Testament. And a major theological issue would be was Jesus fully God or not? Well, that's a major issue. So you need to know that Jesus was fully God and fully man also and if someone teaches that Jesus wasn't really God, He was just a good moral teacher, that's false teaching. And that's false teaching in a major category that can actually affect your eternal destiny. And so you need to have that category, also the category of minor. There are some theological issues and things in the Bible and things in Christianity that are minor issues, for example, baptism. Now baptism is important, if someone teaches that you don't need to get baptized, that baptism is not a big deal, that's false teaching, 'cause the Bible says baptism is important. But in the minor theological category, some Christians think you should get baptized as a child, they will hold the infant baptism and they have some scripture to support that, other Christians see that you need to be a believer and you need to make your own choice when you get baptized because this is an issue of obedience to Jesus, the way He modeled for us, and you shouldn't get baptized when you're child, you should choose to get baptized after you've become a Christian, as a believer, as an adult. Now, there's verses that support both these views and whatever your view on that, either way it's a secondary theological issue, your eternal salvation, your eternal destination is not based on your view of baptism, okay? Jesus talked to a guy named a thief on the cross, we don't know what his view on baptism was, we don't know what his view on a lot of minor theological issues were, but we knew that he understood the majors, he knew who Jesus was, he knew who he was and he knew that he needed to trust in Jesus as a savior and Jesus said, "Today, you're gonna be with me in paradise." There's major theological issues, and there can be some false teaching in those that you gotta watch out for. There's minor theological issues, and there can be some false teaching there that you gotta watch out for but there's also different views on minor issues and it's okay to have grace and charity and understanding and not break friendship or fellowship because of those minor issues. And then there's the issue of style, how do you dress when you go to church? What kind of songs, what kind of music style does your church have? That's just a stylistic issue, okay? There's not a lot of false teaching on that, it's just a style issue. It's good for you as a believer to know, what's a major theological issue, what's a minor theological issue and what's just a style issue, that will help you filter when you hear biblical teaching or spiritual teaching about the meaning of life and truth and these things, you can put it through that filter of what's a major issue, what's a minor issue, or what's just a style issue, and then you can look for the false teaching based on what the Bible teaches in any of those categories. I think those categories are really, really helpful. Verse six, says, "If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed." In chapter four and verse 16, it says, "Watch your life and your doctrine closely." Friends, you and I, we need to watch our life, we need to watch our doctor closely. What you believe and what you know is important. When it says in verse three, that you believe and know the truth, that's an experiential knowledge. You know that truth, you believe that truth, and you experience that truth and you live it, that's important. What you believe, your personal doctrine, the doctrine of your church is important. It's really important. In the book of Acts and chapter 17, one of the things I talk to students about all the time, is that there was a group of Jews and they were called Bereans, they were Berean Jews. And it says in Acts chapter 17, "The Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they receive the message of Jesus with great eagerness and they examined the scriptures every day to see if what Paul was saying was true." I love that, there was a group of Christians, there was a group of believers that were checking the Bible to see if what Paul was teaching was true? I love that, they're in fact checking Paul with the Bible, friends, you and I, we need to use as our filter scripture, to filter through everything we hear and we teach. We need to watch our life and our doctrine closely. And let me give you some application, let's talk about this. How do we apply this? How do we really, really live this out? Couple things first of all, if you wanna sharpen and refine, and grow and deepen your doctrine, what you believe and what you know, I wanna give you a couple resources, number one, go to "efca.org" and check out our doctrinal statement, so this is for a beginner. So if you're a beginner, if you've been a Christian less than two years, I want you or if you're not even a Christian at all, I want you to go to "efca.org" and check out our doctrinal statement on the 10 major things that we believe and ask yourself, do I believe these things? And if you don't, try to figure out why you don't, and if you do, be affirmed and encouraged. Now, if you've been a Christian for let me say more than two years, if you've been a Christian for at least a couple years, you've been following Jesus, this is a great resource right here. This is called "Evangelical Convictions", it's a thin book, it's short, it's right around 200 pages, okay? And this book is kind of explanation and an exposition of our doctrinal statement as a church and it's really, really good, isn't it? It's not a hard read, it's an easy read and it's really, really helpful, you could do a chapter a day, be done within two weeks, okay? It won't take you long at all. And if you've been a Christian for at least two years, and you're looking to really sharpen your own doctrine personally, check that out, that's a good resource. And then thirdly, I would say if you've been a Christian for a while now and you're ready to be challenged, go check out Wayne Grudem, "G-R-U-D-E-M", Wayne Grudem "Systematic Theology", that's really, really good. Also, you could check out the series we just did last year called "Unshakable Truth", that is also a great book by Josh McDowell, either of those would be good resources for the mature believer, for the advanced believer who's been a Christian for a while. There's also some good free stuff online. Dallas Theological Seminary has some free seminary courses online, I've done a couple of them the last few months, they're really good. You can check those out too. But watch your life and your doctrine closely and the second thing I wanna challenge you to do is this specifically if you're a parent, hi, parents, if you have kids, I specifically wanna show you something. There's a book I read, have been reading recently by Barna, it's called "Spiritual Conversations in the Digital Age" and there's a graph in here I wanna show you and this graph shows, people I prefer to have spiritual conversations with. So they interviewed a whole bunch of people, people that they prefer to talk with spiritual stuff about, look at that list. Number one, a friend, spouse, children, a religious, you know, pastor professional, and then mom, and then who's at the bottom of that list? Dad, is that interesting? A lot of people, whether they're practicing Christians, not a practicing Christian or not a Christian, they just don't wanna talk to their dad about faith, about life, about doctrine, why is that? I don't know exactly, I'm reading through this book, I've been praying about this and thinking about this but dads, just a word to dads, man, we gotta talk to our kids about Jesus. I mean, you don't have to be an expert, just have the conversations, talk with your kids as a dad, about what you believe, why you believe it, and how you view scripture and what is your filter? How do you decide through scripture, what's true and what's not? Parents, we need to be talking to our kids about Jesus and dads, we need to be doing it especially. Let me pray for you, Jesus, thank you for our time together. I pray for everybody who's with us today God that they would know you better than they did a few minutes ago, that they would think through what their filter is, of how they're avoiding false teaching, avoiding license, avoiding legalism and that they are following you closely Jesus because you love them. God, we need to watch our doctrine closely. Doctrine is not a popular word today, a lot of people are uncomfortable about talking about the nitty gritty things we believe, God let's be people who are not afraid to have spiritual conversations with anybody and everybody, let's figure out what we believe personally, let's be part of a good church that teaches the Bible well, and Lord, let's also have spiritual conversations with our friends, our neighbors, but especially our kids. And we ask these in Jesus name, Amen. Good to see you.