False Teachers

Father, it is in that frame of reference that we come now to open your Word. We pray that you will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves: enable us to speak and hear, to understand and have your Word applied by your Spirit to our lives in a way that will be life changing, because we know that you’ve given us your Word not simply to increase our knowledge but to change our lives. So we pray that you will bring about whatever change is necessary today, not as a result of human manipulation, as a result of speculation, but by divine transformation. So we’re helpless before you, and we know that’s where we ought to be. Speak in the stillness, we pray. For Christ’s sake. Amen.

Can I encourage you to take your Bible and turn to 1 Timothy and chapter 6? We resume our studies this morning at verse 3. Just let me read verses 3–5:

“If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ …, he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.”

At first sight, it may appear that Paul has made a sharp turn to the right or to the left following the second verse, because in the first and second verses he has been dealing with this matter of slavery, encouraging slaves to show respect for all masters, making sure that they show no less respect for Christian masters, and pointing out that believing slaves should be the best of all. Now, how come this sudden change to the matter of finance and to the particular concern with those who would use godliness or religion as a means to that end?

Well, if you note the end of verse 2, where he says, “These are the things you[’re] to teach and urge on [the people],” he has said this a number of times, and his concern is, as we’ve noted, that people would know how they ought to conduct themselves in the house of God.[1] And so his concern is for simply another area of the church’s teaching. It’s the same concern for God’s name and for his glory. And I think when we see it in that light, then we can see that there’s a fairly obvious progression of thought: from the poor behavior of the slaves to the proud bellowing of the false teachers, the message of the gospel was being brought into disrepute. And having dealt with the matter of the poor behavior of slaves, he now turns to the proud bellowings of these false teachers.

Now, he has addressed the matter of false teaching from the very beginning of his letter. Verses 3–11 of chapter 1 are all about false teaching. At the beginning of chapter 4, he has returned to the concern and, in the first five verses, dealt with it again. And now here he is in chapter 6, nearing the end of his letter, and in verses 3–5, he is dealing again with this matter of these false teachers.

Now, it would appear from the instruction of the book—indeed, from the instruction of the New Testament, it is clear, and from the surrounding historical information—that the church was full of wandering prophets. There were all kinds of individuals who were moving in and out of the church on its fringes, sometimes at its very core, and they were full of theories. They were full of talk, and they had all kinds of versions of the gospel. And they were, in many ways, the religious equivalent of the secular Sophists. And the Sophists, these “wise men”—from the Greek sophia, for “wise” or “wisdom”—these religious sophists were doing what the secular Sophists did: namely, plying their trade. The Sophists would give you a wee bit of philosophy for a fee, they would dazzle you with words for a price, and they would also gather around them groups of disciples whom they would teach to be able to dazzle others with their talk and philosophy for a small fee. The significant thing about these characters was that they could talk about just about anything. At the drop of a hat, they could give you a talk on all kinds of themes. Didn’t matter if they cared about it. In most cases they probably didn’t. But at any moment, they could simply give you a little burst of something.

It reminds me, at least, and some of you, too, of your sortie into the Shakespeare’s play Hamlet and the arrival of the players, as you will remember, at Elsinore and the introduction that Polonius gives to these players when he comes to Hamlet and he says to him, “Hey, the players are here.” And then he describes them as follows:

The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, [or] pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and … liberty, these are the only men.[2]

And of course, Shakespeare is poking fun at the whole sort of sophist-icated rhetorical notion by creating Polonius as the sort of bumbling galoot which he is. And he is a verbose character manufactured by Shakespeare to poke fun at that whole approach to things.

Now, that was present in the Greco-Roman world to which Paul is writing. And these individuals who were moving around the church would compete with each other for the applause of men and women. “Chrysostom paints a picture of a public place in Corinth with all the different kinds of competitors,” as he refers to them, “in full blast.”[3] Listen to this:

You might hear many poor wretches of sophists shouting and abusing each other, and their disciples, as they call them, squabbling, and many writers of books reading their stupid compositions, and many poets singing their poems, and many jugglers exhibiting their marvels, … and no small number of traders driving their … trades.[4]

“Like men walking in the dark they move always in the direction of the clapping and the shouting.”[5] What a dramatic phrase! “Like men walking in the dark they move always in the direction of the clapping and the shouting.”

Now, lest we’re tempted to think for even a microsecond that somehow or another we are removed from this both by the passing of time and the geographical separation, we need only to think for a moment or two and to recognize that Chrysostom, describing a first-century scene, has described many a sorry scene in contemporary evangelicalism. He has described, sadly, a number of conferences. He has described a number of conventions which take place regularly across the country, where you can see the jugglers and hear the clowns and listen to the talks and be marveled and dazzled by all the passing superstars. “Beware!” says Paul. “Beware!”

You see, Paul is gravely concerned that the people that are under his care would be instructed in the gospel. He’s said this from the very beginning. In 1:3, he says, “I went to Macedonia; I urged you to stay there in Ephesus.”[6] Why? “So that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer.”[7] And it’s no surprise that as he begins the end of his instruction, he is back pointing out that “if any[body] teaches”—6:3—“false [doctrine],” and it “does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus … and to godly teaching,” then you need to be very, very careful in dealing with them.

Paul is concerned that the main things and the plain things of the gospel would be grasped by successive generations so that the gospel would be maintained in its purity down through the corridors of time.

Now, his concern for Christian doctrine is in direct contrast to periods of the church’s life where we have shown a kind of indifference to the matters of doctrine, which is sadly apparent in far too many quarters, and it is very, very scary. Very, very scary. We understand that God is sovereign, and we know that the gates of hell will not prevail against the advance of the church which Jesus is building.[8] Therefore, we are not despondent, but neither are we unduly optimistic. We want to be realistic. And here it is, loved ones: unless there is the transition about which Paul is so concerned… And he comes to it in his second letter, and he says, “The things that you have heard from me, the same entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”[9] Paul is so concerned that the main things and the plain things of the gospel would be grasped by successive generations so that the gospel would be maintained in its purity down through the corridors of time. And it is in an understanding of what is true that people then will be able to detect what is false.

And so Paul sets out for his readers two things: number one, he gives the characteristics of these false teachers; and then, number two, he gives the consequences of their false teaching. Now let me just go through it with you, each in turn.

The Characteristics of False Teachers

First of all, what are the characteristics of these false teachers?

Number one: according to verse 4, they are conceited. They have fat heads. They are so inflated with pride that they are blind to the truth. They regard themselves as being “in the know.” If you meet them, they are “in the know.” They know this; they know that; they know it all. You have the impression that they are simply know-it-alls. But, says Paul, these individuals are at best confused, and at worst they are corrupt.

Now, this is no new theme for Paul. It runs through all of his letters. You can find it in Romans 1:22; 1 Corinthians 8, in the opening verses; and in Titus. And we will turn to the Titus reference since it’s so close. In Titus, his concern is the same. Titus 1:15: “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and their consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.” Now, these are the individuals he’s referring to in 1 Timothy 6.

Listen to how Phillips puts this notion of empty-minded conceit. He’s paraphrasing the verse, 4: “If anyone tries to teach some doctrinal novelty which is not compatible with sound teaching …, then he is a conceited idiot!”[10] Has a sort of politically correct ring to it, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it make you wince a little bit in your chair? Because the postmodern context in which we live has no place for any absolute, has no place for any touchstone, has no standard by which anything can be judged. Therefore, everybody is judged on their own merits and demerits. And if he’s a nice man and has an idea, then he has gained a listening, and we couldn’t say anything about him. Not so, says Paul. The fact is that if he has a fat head and a big mouth and he is teaching that which is not in accord with the sound instruction of the Lord Jesus Christ, then he is, to quote the New English Bible, “a pompous ignoramus.” “A pompous ignoramus.” Has a ring to it. I like it.

Such an individual is more interested in attaching people to himself than he is in attaching people to Jesus Christ. You bring this right down to the grass roots, this is how it goes: he is more concerned to add people’s names to his mailing list than he is concerned to see people grow in their knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is more concerned to get letters from individuals that have money in them to support the radio program than he is to see people’s lives touched and transformed by the power of the gospel. He is more concerned to hear his own name spoken about and bandied around and become notorious than he is concerned to hear the name of Christ praised and honored amongst a growing number of people.

So, just in case you’re tempted to think we’re talking about anybody, you can’t preach the sermon to others until first you preach it to yourself. So, we have a 1-800 number. We have thousands and thousands of people I have never met on our mailing list. We have growing notoriety across the country, from coast to coast and in all kinds of cities. And it is possible for us to become pompous ignoramuses, more concerned to press our own views than to convey the good news of the Bible.

Such individuals are an antithesis to Michelangelo. Did Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel? How do you know? You weren’t there. (Ha ha.) That’s good, ’cause I wrote that down, but I wasn’t sure. It’s just my broad background of knowledge, you know? (He said humbly.) But it’s reported that when he painted the Sistine Chapel and the ceiling, that he taped a candle to his forehead to prevent his own shadow intruding on the work. And Paul says, “The trouble with these characters, first of all, is they need a whole ring of candles wrapped around their forehead, because they love it when their shadow intrudes upon the work.” Characteristic number one: conceited.

Characteristic number two: controversial. Now, notice the phrase; it’s very important: “He has an unhealthy interest in controversies.” Now, that’s different from being a controversial character. Right? Because you can be controversial for all kinds of good reasons. If you believe in purity, you’ll be a controversial person in your high school. That’s good! If you believe in integrity, you will be a controversial person in the filling out of expense reports in your sales team area. That’s good! If you’re concerned to uphold the truth of the Bible in terms of the Trinity, in terms of the deity of Christ, in terms of the fact of the resurrection, then you will be a controversial person. But you may be a controversial person as a result of holding a controversial view, but it is not on account of the fact that you have an unhealthy interest in controversy. That’s what he’s referring to. These people get off on being controversial. This is what rings their bell, floats their boat. They love controversy. They have an unhealthy interest in it, and they love to quarrel about words.

Phillips paraphrases it, “His mind is a morbid jumble of disputation and argument.”[11] So whenever this chap speaks, whenever you move around him, he’s always got some deal going, you know. He’s always got some little twist to it, some way of looking at it. There’s always a little unique specter to it all. You never feel like he is upholding the sound instruction of the Lord Jesus. There’s always this twist. This, he says, is the kind of person who, in an unhealthy manner, is stimulated by word battles. And these word battles prove to be nothing more than verbal quibbles.

Such an individual, instead of putting off his shoes from his feet because the ground is holy before the burning bush, wants to take photographs of the burning bush and send it out to all the people on his mailing list: “You won’t want to miss the striking picture of the burning bush that I have for you this month—for an offer of no less than…” You know how it goes. This kind of individual loves to debate theories about the return of Jesus Christ but doesn’t live in purity, doesn’t live in holiness, doesn’t live with a zealous concern for evangelism. This kind of individual loves to debate which English translation of the Bible is the absolute right translation while not reading his Bible or obeying his Bible or sharing his Bible with anybody else.

You know the kind of person I mean, don’t you? They come up to you, and out of the blue, it’s their first question: “Did you read the book by Mr. So-and-So on the versions of the Bible?” “Yes, I did. Somebody sent it to me.” In fact, three people sent it to me. They wanted me to understand that the NIV is a heretical translation of the Bible and that I should stop using it. Now, two of them I put in the round file, and one I kept for history’s sake. It’s on my shelf. But it is a battle about words. It is spurious, it is an unhealthy interest in controversy, and it’s not the issue.

But certain individuals are never happy unless they’re stirring up controversy. Says Trapp in an earlier day, “The wit” (i.e., the skill and ability, ’cause wit has a different connotation now, doesn’t it?)—but let’s say the skill and ability “of heretics and schismatics will better serve them to devise a thousand shifts to elude the truth than their pride will suffer them once to yield and acknowledge it.”[12] So in other words, their ability allows them always to be doing the soft-shoe shuffle around the Bible—they’ve always got a little angle on it; you never can get them to stand still for a moment—instead of their ability bringing them down underneath the instruction of God’s Word.

They’re conceited. They’re controversial. Thirdly, they’re corrupted. He comes back to these individuals in verse 5. We’ll deal with the interim verses in a moment, but in verse 5 he comes back to them. That’s what he says: this “constant friction” takes place “between men of corrupt mind.” Not only has their unhealthy interest infected others, as we’re about to see, but it has led to their own personal corruption and decay. These false teachers somehow or another, in the past, were acquainted with the truth, but it is clear that they were never arrested by the truth. They pander to it, but they were not possessed by it. Acquainted but not arrested.

See, there’s all the difference in the world, is there not, between being simply acquainted with a matter and that matter having somehow or another burned itself into the core of our beings. So we can deal with things at arm’s length. We can talk, for example, about whatever it is that we may have a modicum of knowledge on: the double circulatory system of the heart, the only thing I ever understood in biology. So I can give you fifty cents’ worth on that. But if you press me with one good question, I’ll collapse. But I can talk about it. I have some acquaintance with it. But when I talk to my dad on the phone and he tells me how his legs are all swollen up, and his knees are fat, and his legs seem to weigh eighty-five pounds each, and he can’t walk around, then suddenly, the news of the double circulatory system arrests me. It impacts me. It’s not a biology textbook; it’s a life. It’s a relationship.

Now, for men and women who wander around the fringes of religion, it is increasingly possible to be acquainted with all kinds of things, both as listeners as well as as teachers. So we’re acquainted with it all. We’re inoculated against it, because we have a modicum of knowledge. And as a result of that, we’re able to deflect different approaches that come our way. And we can answer in this way and answer in that, because we have a sufficient knowledge of the truth. But it has not arrested us!

And that’s the factor in relationship to these teachers. They can talk at the drop of a hat, but there is no passion in their souls. There is no change in their lives. There is no conviction that drives them. You think you’re at a performance. You have the feeling that they might just as well be reading the yellow pages. They may just as well be reading a storybook. They do whatever they like! They can cry at the drop of a hat. They can make you laugh. They can move you, stir you. And if you’re stupid enough, you’ll buy their stuff and their tapes and their books, and attend their conferences, and go down the Cuyahoga River on a banana skin. These individuals have lost their hold on the truth because the truth clearly never had a hold on them. Their inner orientation, their mental attitude, has been diverted and corrupted. They’re so full of themselves that there’s actually no place for any truth inside of them. There’s no place left.

They are conceited, they are controversial, they are corrupted, and the whole gospel has become commercialized. Isn’t that what he’s saying? They’ve “been robbed of the truth,” and they “think that godliness is a means to financial gain.” Turn to Titus 1; you’ll see the exact same thing, and in the eleventh verse. These individuals, he says, “must be silenced, because they[’re] ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach.” So their content is off, and they’re doing that “for the sake of dishonest gain.” So there’s two strikes against them: number one, the content is bogus; and number two, the motivation is wrong. So they’re selling you the wrong stuff, and they’re driven by the desire to make a buck on the back of what they’re selling you.

Now, so far, you have got to be impressed by my restraint in not applying this to contemporary situations, are you not? Good, because I’m very proud of it myself. I really am. But I don’t want to do that. It’s too easy. It’s sadly too easy. Where did we get this gospel that didn’t have dying in it? How can you have as your master a dying Christ, and you don’t die? A suffering Christ, and you don’t suffer? A selfless Christ, and you’re full of yourself? A Christ with no home, and you building retirement homes? They see religion as a way of getting rich, and so they make a show of their godliness. And the better the show, the larger the fee. They’ve donned the mask of religion in order to enrich themselves. Such individuals view their task not as a vocation nor as a calling but as a career, and so they will seek to chase down all the best options in pursuit of financial gain: “Is there a place that I can go where there is a bigger fee and a bigger crowd? I’ll go there. I have an open diary? Then I try and find the best shot where I can make the biggest amount of money and impress the largest number of people and broaden the scope of my influence in the greatest way.”

How can you have as your master a dying Christ, and you don’t die? A suffering Christ, and you don’t suffer?

“The Greeks were intoxicated,” says one commentator,

with the spoken word. Among [them], if a man could speak, his fortune was made. [And] it was against a background like that that the Church was growing up; and it is little wonder that this type of teacher invaded [it]. The Church gave him a new area in which to [display] his [talents,] gain a tinsel prestige, and a [profitable] following.[13]

That is the truth. The church provided, in the first century, this context. They could never have imagined the size of the market that would be present two thousand years later—the ability for an individual to display his talents to gain a tinsel prestige and a profitable following. Now, it’s real easy to point the finger. But the fact of the matter is, the danger sits on your shoulder every day.

Some years ago, now (and it is years ago; it could be almost ten years ago), I spoke—I didn’t speak, I attended—an event organized by one of the big three car companies in America. And my brief was to give the invocation and the benediction. And so they had a meal, and there were two thousand people there, and I sat at a platform table with people that I didn’t know and who didn’t really care if I was there or not. And the man stood up and said, “And now the Reverend Begg will give the invocation.” And so I stood up and invoked and sat down for the next two hours. And then he said, “And now the Reverend Begg will give the benediction.” And so I stood up and benedicted and then sat down again.

In the middle of the event, in the main part of the event, was a pump-’em-up speaker—a very, very good communicator. And he told these young people that had come from high schools and from the top echelons of their high school how they could go for the gold and seize the crown and do everything and so on. And it was really a bunch of smoke and mirrors and had no substance to it at all. And I can remember being jealous for his opportunity. And I went away, came home, and I was some weeks later on the receiving end of a telephone call from the master of ceremonies.

And the master of ceremonies said, “Al, we would like you to come back again next year. We do this every twelve months. We’d like you to come back.”

“Oh no,” I said. “No,” I said, “you know, that’s okay. I think I’m busy. I’m bending down on that day next year, I think.”

And “No, no,” he said, “we would like you to come.”

And why I said it I do not know, but quick as a shot, I said, “Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll come if you pay me what you paid that character that spoke for half an hour.” Now, I don’t know what he paid the character.

He said, “Oh, I haven’t come to the good part yet. I was just about to tell you, we are going to pay you what we pay the character.”

Then I said, “Oh man, now I’m in it!” Because, you know, if I’d been on the receiving end, I could have said, “Well, I didn’t know.” But now it sounds like I tried to make it happen. So I said, “What did you pay him?”

He said, “Fifteen hundred bucks.”

I said, “Man, that sounds pretty good.” So I went, and I spoke, and I took the fifteen hundred bucks, and we went on spring break or something—I don’t know. And it was awesome.

But that day I made a note to myself. I said, “I’m never going to do this again, ever.” And every day, almost—three times a week—I get letters from people asking me to speak places. And almost inevitably, they say, “Will you please tell us what your fee is?” And what I discovered was—and people must “work out [their] own salvation with fear and trembling”[14]—what I’ve discovered is that it is customary for people in America, once you have any measure of notoriety at all, to be able to write your own ticket, within certain limits. And suddenly, on that day, how would you ever know whether you were peddling the Word of God to make a profit or whether you were preaching the Word of God because you’d been called to preach? For me, it’s impossible to do. So there’s no fee. There couldn’t be. There is no motivation here that is financial.

When you read the Bible, don’t start applying it for the guy three seats up from you. Apply it to yourself.

Now, am I saying this to boast of my own ego? No. I’m saying this to let you know that when you read the Bible, don’t start applying it for the guy three seats up from you. Apply it to yourself. Don’t start saying, “Oh, there must be a lot of bad people out there who are doing a lot of bad things.” Apply it to yourself! You realize, you… On that day, when I said, “Oh, I think I’ll do it if you just pay me the same amount of money as that guy,” I put one foot on a banana skin that day. And you don’t have to be a genius to work out the financial benefits that can accrue once you start that. Paul says, “These men are driven by the desire to make financial gain from the gospel.”

The Consequences of False Teaching

Now, are there consequences? Yes, there are. And I’m just going to read them to you, and we’re through. Pseudo intellectualizing, intellectual theorizing, doesn’t come by itself. What comes with it?

Number one: “envy.” “Envy.” When you are on the receiving end of this stuff, it generates envy. When people engage in speculating about various theories, when they apply their intellectual curiosity to nothing more than trifles, they are susceptible to pride. And instead of finding submission in an agreement to the sound instruction of the Lord Jesus Christ, they become envious of those whose puerile arguments are attracting the largest following. And since they are driven by the market, they say, “Well, what generates the biggest reaction? Well, it’s over here. Oh, well, I think I’ll go over here and do that. Because after all, I can do very well with that.”

And envy generates “strife.” The two things go hand in hand, like cheese and crackers but not as palatable. Indeed, it is unpalatable. One of the individuals is bettered in an argument, he is unwilling to acknowledge defeat, and as a result, bitter discord is the result. And there is a constant contradicting of the view of their rivals. And there are people like this always in the Christian church. When you talk with them, there’s always criticism. It’s always argument, it’s always envy, and it’s always strife. Indeed, one of the reasons that evangelicalism is in the predicament that it’s in today is not as a result of the inroads of the world. Forget the world! The problem is in the church! It’s decay from within! Speculation and commercialization and corruption and deceit and generating envy and strife, which is pervasive. And with strife comes “malicious talk”: slander, scorn, insolence, insults, and malicious innuendoes, and evil suspicions. Look at the list!

The man who is jaundiced sees everything yellow. The mind of the envious is haunted by mistrust. This kind of individual begins to suspect every action, every word, every gesture of those to whom he is opposed. And as a result of it all, there is “constant friction”—a mutual irritant in the system, protracted quarreling, persistent wrangling. Says one of commentators, “When the ‘mad’ novelty dispenser meets his opponent again, to discuss other ‘religious’ matters, … he is vengefully nettled, convulsively agitated, thirsting for ‘blood.’ … Their ‘religious’ discussions” are actually “disputations … full of scurrilous abuse, stinging insult, and heated invective, or else … covert insinuation, malicious innuendo, and thinly veiled disdain.”[15] “Covert insinuation, malicious innuendo, and thinly veiled disdain.”

Now, I don’t want to alarm you, and I don’t want to play some kind of coward’s castle, but I’m going to tell you something: you just described many a pastors’ conference in the United States of America: “covert insinuation, malicious innuendo, and thinly veiled disdain.” “How many do you have? What’s the square footage of your building?” Since when were those New Testament questions? If that’s the kind of stuff that the shepherds talk about when they’re alone, it would be no surprise if the sheep decided that godliness actually is a means to financial gain.

Let me say two things, and I want to wrap it up.

Number one: this issue of strife and envy and everything—this’ll creep up and bite a church on its bottom when it isn’t looking. And it may happen to us on any day. It may have begun to happen. Whenever a local congregation begins to sound to itself and then to others as if somehow or another it understands the Bible, you know, in a way that nobody understands the Bible—it understands doctrine in the only right way to understand it; it is the compendium of all revealed truth, and every other pulpit and every other place and every other preacher and every other group is somehow or another suspect—then that congregation is in deep, deep difficulty.

And to the degree that you or I feel that spirit of pride rising within us, we go right out there to the front door and squat down in front of the verse that’s there in the marble—the only marble in the building, as far as I know; one piece put in there by the old polish man from 43: “You have exalted above all things your name and your word.”[16] We have only one string to our bow, one theme to our song. It’s not about Parkside. It’s not about us. It’s about him. And you see, when you move away from the sound instruction of the Lord Jesus Christ, then you inevitably start to talk about “us” rather than “him.” Said my old New Testament teacher—bless his memory—Donald Guthrie, “True godliness must never be commercialized [because] it is a matter of the heart and not the pocket.”[17]

The individuals Paul has described were—notice this—thirsty for applause, hungry for praise, and greedy for gain. Don’t you like it when people clap when you do something well? And you’re not going to just stand back from this and say, “Oh, I don’t like applause.” You play your violin, and they all go [applauds]. You go, “Hey, man. Violin, man. That’s me.” You make a sales presentation; they’re [applauds]. Wonderful! He said, “You know, if you’re not careful, the guys that rise to the fore in this are driven, like men walking in darkness, by the sound of clapping and the lure of applause.”

That’s how it is that a guy loses his edge, presumably—starts off, and he says, “I want to tell you what’s in this book.” Then suddenly, he stops telling people what’s in the book. It’s not that he does it one day and say, “I’m not going to tell you what’s in this book anymore.” He just starts to deviate ever so slightly—just goes off ever so… “I don’t want to say that. It’s a little hard. I don’t want to mention that. There’s a few people out there… I don’t want to… No.” Before the congregation knows where it is, a deviation of one degree over twenty-seven miles has taken them way off the track. And they woke up one morning and said, “You know what? We’re no longer on the freeway. We’re not even on a B road. We’re in By-Path Meadow here. How did that happen?” It happened not as a result of a major U-turn; it happened as a declension because an individual became enamored with applause, thirsty for praise, and greedy for gain.

I don’t want to hear anybody saying it couldn’t happen here. I got an email the other Sunday night—came late Sunday night from one of my dear friends in Ireland. What a great guy, Noel Agnew! He said, “I just found your stuff on the internet, and I wanted to know if you were still walking on the tracks.” And then he went in and described a few things, and then he said, “I have just come home from our monthly Communion. We had forty people, but I am learning not to be concerned about the numbers.” And you know, it humbled me. It put me down, you know, in a good way. ’Cause I thought of him there faithfully, faithfully, week after week, laboring with no immediate evidence of apparent success or influence, but the joy of the Lord is his strength.[18]

These individuals that Paul is describing used numbers as their criteria for effectiveness. Epictetus records a conversation—and with this I close—between a Sophist and his disciple following the Sophist’s performance. It goes like this: “Well, what did you think of me to-day?” Incidentally, that’s the first mistake. Never ask that question. Don’t ask your wife to answer that question for you—not unless you’re prepared to be humbled. That’s not a New Testament question: “What did you think of me today?” And he says, “What did you think of me today?”

“Upon my life, sir, I thought you were admirable.”

“What did you think of my best passage?”

“Which one was that?”

“Where I described Pan and the nymphs.”

“Oh, it was excessively well done.”

“A much larger audience today.”

“Yes, much larger.”

“Five hundred, I should guess.”

“Oh, nonsense! It could not have been less than a thousand.”

“Why, that is more than Dio ever had. I wonder why it was? They appreciated what I said too.”

“Beauty, sir, can move a stone.”[19]

See, I can tell you tall tales. I can personally, with very little external help, see you laugh and see you cry. But I cannot teach the Bible and see you move one inch closer to conformity with Christ without the divine enabling of the Spirit of God reminding me to remind you that in an age of novelty, the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things.

Let us pray:

O God our Father, the Word of God gives us no place to jump and hide. We find ourselves pressed in by its truth and its challenge. We look a few verses ahead, and we realize it’s about to get worse, because now it moves beyond the person in the position of teaching influence to the group in the crowd and the temptation of being driven by the desire of financial gain. So we pray that you would make us students of your Word. Conform us, by your Spirit, to the image of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Save us from the hypocrisy that likes to make people think that we’re really quite diligent in relationship to these things—the kind of false piety that parades itself in the eyes of men and isn’t genuine in your sight. And so, then, sanctify us by your Spirit, that in both heart and in life we might serve you and that we might do so acceptably, to the honor of your great and holy name.

Through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ we pray. And may his grace and mercy and peace be our abiding portion, today and forevermore. Amen. Amen.

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[1] See 1 Timothy 3:15.

[2] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2.

[3] William Barclay, The Letters to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, The Daily Study Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 144.

[4] Dio Chrysostom, Discourse 8, quoted in Barclay, Letters, 144

[5] Dio Chrysostom, Discourse 34, quoted in Barclay, Letters, 145.

[6] 1 Timothy 1:3 (paraphrased).

[7] 1 Timothy 1:3 (NIV 1984).

[8] See Matthew 16:18.

[9] 2 Timothy 2:2 (paraphrased).

[10] 1 Timothy 6:3–4 (Phillips).

[11] 1 Timothy 6:4 (Phillips).

[12] John Trapp, A Commentary on the New Testament, ed. W. Webster, 2nd ed. (1865; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), 647.

[13] Barclay, Letters, 145–46.

[14] Philippians 2:12 (KJV).

[15] William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Pastoral Epistles, New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1957), 197.

[16] Psalm 138:2 (NIV 1984).

[17] Donald Guthrie, The Pastoral Epistles: An Introduction and Commentary, The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 124.

[18] See Nehemiah 8:10.

[19] Epictetus, Discourse 23, as paraphrased in Barclay, Letters, 145.