Holding Fast to Truth in the Face of Deception

we go ahead and open this up in prayer and then we're going to turn to uh 1 Timothy uh chapter 4 we're going to look at verses 1-5 but let's open in prayer first father Lord we thank you for your goodness Lord we thank you for your word uh Lord we thank you uh that uh your word has this corrective power where it will warn us correct us and then point us in the right direction that we need to go that we may worship you rightly as we look at this passage tonight Lord May May we be warned and then may we be directed into right paths that we may praise you uh with Thanksgiving in your heavenly name amen so 1 Timothy Chapter 4 verses 1-5 and I'll I'll read that it says now the spirit speaketh

expressly that in the later times some will depart from the faith giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils speaking lies and heresy having their conscience seared with a hot iron forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from Meats which God hath created to be received with Thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth for every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused if it be received with Thanksgiving for it is Sanctified by the word of God and prayer you know as we've been going through our study of Timothy I find it's good to sometimes stop and remind ourselves of who this book is written to it's written to Timothy obviously but but who he is as a man

and Timothy we know from our earlier studies is a is a faithful brother he's a knowledgeable brother he's a man of character uh but he's also young I read this I also or think about this I often think of Pastor enner because he's probably in that range maybe a little bit younger than pastor enner and you know there's nothing wrong with being being uh young in leadership but the reality is is that when you are young and in leadership um you just lack life experience and because you lack life experience uh there are some things you might question as to why they are this way why certain things work a certain way and and and you just lack experience to understand why and I think Paul knowing

Timothy's Youth and understanding what he's been presenting to Timothy he anticipates a question from Timothy that would have come up about the workings of the church in the passage that Pastor way will cover next week that comes right before this one Paul tells Timothy that the church is the pillar and ground of the truth one of the main purposes of the church is to uphold Godly truth which is why the requirement of leadership of the church is based upon a Godly character not any kind of special TR special skills or special training uh because it's Godly character of the leaders that is necessary to help lead a Ministry that is to ground in truth and so the church is the institution that

God has set up to protect the truth of the gospel and all other truths that come from it but Timothy Timothy is not in a church that is protecting the truth when Paul first starts writing to Timothy if you remember back in chapter one one of the first things he tells Timothy is is to is to tell the preachers that are there to stop preaching their preaching had been so bad and had moved away from the truth that that Paul tells Timothy to go the young man and go and command the other teachers to stop and so what Timothy is experiencing within his church is not something that's a pillar holding up truth and so we could see that that Timothy might be questioning Paul you say we we the church is

to uphold the truth and yet I'm in this CH I'm in this church that has been teaching nontruth it's not looking right Paul and so Paul as he's Guided by the Holy Spirit then pens this passage to let Timothy know that the reality of Christian Life the reality of life in the church is that people will fall away from the purity of the faith and go back to dead religion and that's kind of a bummer but but at the same time Paul also lets him know that but for True Believers that pursue Purity what comes with a proper understanding of God's word then is the fact that we can recognize His blessings and that those blessings should lead to a heart of thankfulness thankfulness which is a fitting

worship for God and so our passage tonight is going to have two points one is to prepare us for the reality of people falling away from the faith and to understand why they do that so we can be warned and then the other so that we have a right understanding of the things that we have received from God so that we can Praise Him in thankfulness so let's look at that first point and pick it up in verse one it says now the spirit speaketh expressly that in later times some shall depart from the faith later times here means the current time as well as the time when Christ returns and Paul says that the Holy Spirit has made it expressly clear that in these times that you and me live in as well as

the time that Timothy lived in that people will depart from the faith now he's not speaking about people losing their salvation Salvation is secure for those that believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord that he is their Master their salvation is secure but this passage speaks to a manner of Falling Away of people that I think falls into two categories and the first being of people who are in the church who have a outward of appearance of being Believers but in reality are not saved Jesus spoke about this several times we get it in the gospels in Matthew Chapter 13 he gives the parable that you're so you're familiar with the parable of the sewer and that sewer goes out and he sews into

different kinds of oils they produce different results but there's only one that that produces fruit the evidence of Salvation there's only one but yet there's two that that do start to show growth there's the there's the rocky soil and the thorny soil and both of those the the seed starts to sprout and it starts to look like it's going to come up and bear fruit and would give every evidence that it's going to but yet in the parable it dies away and there's only one seed that actually goes and produces fruit in a similar way in Matthew 13 Jesus speaks about a field that's been planted with wheat and then an enemy comes and and puts tears or weeds in in it and it gets mixed up with the with

the wheat and as Jesus goes to define the parable later on he notes that even angels couldn't tell the difference between the the wheat and the tears and what he's noticing or what he's noting is that within among the Believers will be unbelievers mixed and you won't be able to tell them time will eventually expose that because as the wheat grew it it had its fruit and at that period of time then the then the field could be Harvest and you could separate the wheat from the tears and and burn off the tears but it took some time for that to come about and and and to see the fruit of the real ones and so our lord Jesus made it clear that within the church we're going to have these unbelievers

and and to be honest sometimes they're going to look like Believers but after a while they're going to depart and they're always going to lack the fruits of righteousness John the Apostle John spoke about this in 1 John in 1 John uh chapter 2 vers 19 he writes they went out from us but they were not of us for if they had been of us they would no doubt have continued with us but they went out that they might be manifest that they were not of us and so John notes that that their the leaving was the evidence that they weren't truly saved and so what we have then is through God's word the spirit has clearly testified that that within the church some won't leave the faith now there's another

group that I believe this passage points to as well and this is of Believers themselves who temporarily fall away and they temporarily fall away because of undal or with sin that's undal with you see believers who repent or refuse to repent and keep in mind what repentance true repentance is true repentance is is is noting that we're wrong and openly confessing that wrong and then turning away from that wrong to live in obedience those who refuse to do that and do not address their sin Hebrews 3 talks about the fact that they can be deceived in their sin and so Believers May temporarily fall away but what but what must be made clear though is that there's no way to distinguish the difference

between a Believer who has temporarily Fallen away and an unbeliever so when they get to that point where they actually do step away from the church it's a little scary because you don't know if this is a Believer who has temporarily Fallen away because of their unrepentant sin and God's eventually going to correct that and bring that back in bring them to repentance or is this a person who is just completely they apostate and they completely walk away they have nothing they they're not saved and they don't want to be saved and you know sometimes as we live our Christian lives we run into situations and we struggle with our own failures and our own sins and we do get into points sometimes I

believe where where we start to think you know what am I doing I claim to know Christ but yet I got this sin I have troubles I'm struggling I just give it up I just walk away and realize if you run into that situations or if you struggle with those kind of thoughts realize that the consequence of walking away is is is serious it has Eternal consequences if you walk away or could have eternal could have eternal consequences if you walk away depending on what category you're in and you can't tell the difference and so I wanted to as I just was thinking about this to be honest I just wanted to note that if you are in that position right if you're struggling in a manner I don't know I don't know

where everybody's at but but if you're struggling in that position reach out to one of the pastors and let one of the pastors know and the reality is all of us would like to see everybody grow in their faith and if you're struggling and getting to this point of of breaking come to see one of the pastors and let us talk to you about it let us encourage you with the truth let us maybe help point out areas that you haven't seen before that you're that that you need to address and don't walk away because because there is that Eternal consequence from walking away but back to our passage Paul wants us to know just the reality of that is going to happen and so we should not be surprised when

people fall away from the faith the Holy Spirit knew that would be a reality and he made sure that the church would know that and then in vers second half of verse one and into verse two Paul now gives us the reason why people fall away it says there in the second half of verse one they give heed to seduce ucing spirits and doctrines of devils speaking lies and hypocrisy having their conscience seared with a hot iron two issues here one they pay attention to demonic doctrines and the other is that their conscience is seared now when you hear that term doctrines of devils where does your mind go you know a couple houses up from where I live in in uh kahalu uh uh a pastor moved in there a

number of years ago Pastor Kana he's the pastor of the Winward Baptist Church and there used to be kind of an odd couple that lived in that house before he was there and I remember when he moved in and and he moved in and uh and the carpet was kind of messed up and and him and his wife were thinking you know if we uh if we pull up this carpet we might have some nice wood floors underneath let's see if we got some nice wood floors we can sand them and make them nice and we'll do wood floors instead of carpet so so they pull up the carpet and when they pull up the carpet they find the satantic satanic pentagram painted on the floor there in their house and he's telling me this and I'm like I'm

so glad you moved in you know I'm really really glad but that kind of issue we're like no we're not going to go anywhere near that we're not going to get tripped up on that but you realize the doctrine of devils that Paul is noting here is that slight Twist of the truth that takes truth and turns it to air this is what the serpent did to Eve so serpent slightly Twisted the information to trick up Eve and she turned and turned what was good into what was evil the devil as he gets Jesus out into the Wilderness and tempts Christ he slightly twists the truth to try to trick up Christ and the reality is is a doctrine that we really need to be careful of is not that that blatant stuff we're not

going to fall for that it's that slight Twist of the truth but also note let me back up a little bit and this falsehood of demon demonic forces the church is actually supposed to fight against in Ephesians 6:12 it says for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities against Powers against the rulers of the darkness of this world against spiritual wickedness in high places these false ideas they come into the world and and the world often considers them wise and the internet is full of this but it's these false ideas that really are of the devil we need to seek to tear those down uh By God's word in Ephesians chapter 6 it calls God's word The Sword and that's the

offensive weapon of the believer to be able to tear things the tear these things down in 2 Corinthians verse 10: 4-5 says for the weapons of our Warfare are not carnal But Mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds casting down imaginations in every High thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God and the bringing in captivity of every thought to The Obedience of Christ and so it is through the word word of God then then what we we we fight off or we seek to correct these little erors that come sneaking into the church and into the doctrines and they come from all over I was just studying this and it reminded me of a TED Talk I listened to a while ago I don't think TED

Talks are quite as popular nowadays as they used to be but but I was listening to this Ted Talk and it was this scientist he was a young man he was a scientist um and he was talking about religion and he said you know I've studied all the major religions and I have this way to test everything and I figured you know if there is truth in one of these religions what will happen over time is it'll gain in popularity and since it'll gain in popularity we should be able to identify that that is a religion of Truth and then it goes on to State he goes but I haven't really observed that in my studies and so what I must conclude is that every religion has a little bit of Truth and so every religion

we need to give some respect to and to this the crowd starts clapping and they're all happy and you know what comes to my mind it's Matthew 7 Matthew 7: 13-4 it says enter ye in at the Straight Gate for wide is the gate and Broad is the way that leadth to destruction and many there be which go in there at because straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadth unto life and few there be that find it I can correct that false teaching by the word of God because it clearly states that the word is going to be rejected by the majority and accepted by the minority which is exactly what we see what was happening and and and as I'm as I've being an engineer myself and listening to a

scientist make these kind of statements I think your research was horrible because here it is right in God's word you said you studied Christianity and here right as in is it right in God's word clear as day it states that it's not the majority it's the minority and so we correct those false ideas through God's word but notice this and this is important to catch too notice that from our passage it's people like that guy from the Ted Talk and others and others within the church that demons actually need to propagate the false teachings people have to give heed or devote themselves to them or to false teachings for false teachings to have any effect you realize false Doctrine only has strength

once it's accepted and propagated by men and women and we wonder sometimes why would a person do this if it takes somebody believing in the the the doctrine of the Devils or demons to be able to propagate it and to have its effect in the church why in the world would somebody actually get on board with that well the passage the second Point tells us the reason why and that's because men and women can fall away from the truth and accept false doctrines because they have allowed their conscience to be seared this is important to catch right A lot of times we think you know I just got to study more to know more and then I'll be better off but the reality is I keep looking at scripture again and

again and again and what I find is the is is the is the calling to Purity the calling towards righteousness and in that action pursu ing righteousness pursuing Purity is the greatest way um to defend the faith and to promote it yes we need to study and yes we need to know God's word but but living it out in all Purity is is the effective aspect of it and so Paul notes here that their conscience are seared there's a couple ways to understand the idea of being seared hot iron actually isn't in the original Greek um there there's a reason why it's added there's a it's because that Greek term is a couple ways to be understood you could you can sear something by like how we sear meat right you

sear the meat Hole uh or you can sear it with a branding iron um the King James takes the uh takes the position of searing it like meat that's why they added that with an iron but either way you look at it the conscience is ruined it is from a ruined conscience that allows us to accept false Doctrine we need a good conscience the conscience is what guides our action in Romans uh 2 the 2 part of verse 15 it notes that a conscience uh Bears witness and that the that that with its thoughts it accuses or excuses a person you see our conscience guides US based on the truths that we have it affirms or condemns the actions that we take but we can sear that and by searing that we sear that through

unrighteousness in Romans 1:8 it notes that it's it's seared by holding down the truth with unrighteousness sin Sears the conscience un sorry ongoing unrepentant sin will sear a person's conscience and with a seared conscience a person is susceptible to these false doctrines and I don't know about you but when I was younger in my faith often when I thought of people that struggled with unrepentant sin I thought they were just like big sins right like like guys that were unfaithful to their wife and then didn't want to repent and I okay that's that's unrepentant sin but but no unrepentance is any sin that we don't want to give up any little pet thing that we want to hang on to and we don't

want to let go you know any wife that would refuse to submit to her husband because she just doesn't respect them that ongoing sin will make her susceptible to accepting false doctrines the man who doesn't lead his home and puts his career before his commitment to his wife is living in sin and is that way susceptible to accepting false false doctrines the person who does not address their pride the person who does not want to forgive the person who doesn't want to love anything that we hang on to as our pet sin and we don't want to seek to fight to put it off and we want to just hang on to it makes us the susceptible to accepting false Doctrine and once we accept it we will then try to

propagate it and once we start doing that not only will we drive ourselves out of the faith but we others out as well too and so the summary of this is don't be surprised that people fall away from the truth God has told us it will happen but when they do Fall Away realize the The Source realize that they're falling away because they've allowed their consciences to be seared by sin I was thinking about this a couple months ago because I had uh somebody that that I know know I don't really know him that well I've just met him a few times and um he's a pastor and you know he's cheating on his wife and because I had a connection with the guy it it affected me and and it was very very

disappointing but the reality is is I kind of thought it through and I recognized you know he compromised he compromised and he started getting close to somebody and he didn't address it and he just let it kept going on and on and on as he let kept going on with that sin his conscience got seared and he kept going worse and worse and worse and eventually got to the point that that you know it was beyond beyond repair I guess and his marriage is a mess and his got rotten relationships with his children and his grandchildren but that drives us away doesn't it when we hear that that wants to drive us back into pursuing Purity because we don't want to go that way we don't want the seared

conscience now let's go into that second point in the remaining verses we get the idea of what the false doctrines were that was happening here in the in the church and as we see Paul correct it we can be encouraged because it helps us to come to a proper understanding of the blessings that we received by the Lord so that we can give thanks in verse three he starts to describe what they were doing it says forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from Meats which God hath created to be received with Thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth the false teaching in this issue or this instance was based around U not marrying and abstaining from eating Meats now Paul doesn't

expand on the details of this and it's not tied to Paul's other teachings about restraining on what we eat so that we don't cause other people to stumble instead what is going on here is that the teachers are claiming that through celibacy or through refusing meat or refusing some kind of of food or certain kinds of food uh you can uh or have a result of a greater spirituality through denying themselves of certain things they can reach a higher level of spirituality and really this is the greatest form of false religion because what it does is it simply claims that there is something other than the work of Jesus Christ uh that is needed to bring us into a proper and full relationship with

God at the heart of this this is works-based salvation and you know the idea of Works based salvation we're always quick to denounce but the reality is and we'll see here and we as we look at this is It's is it's is it sneaks into our thinking very easily let's follow the the discussion here Paul's argument and we'll see that in verse four four he notes that everything that God created was good in Genesis God had created the world and all that was in it was good notes that in first or Genesis 131 God then creates marriage in Genesis 2:24 and he and he gave all things including meat for food in Genesis 9:3 and so all these good things God gave to humanity and in verse 4 it notes that nothing

is to be refused if it's received with Thanksgiving God's good things are not to be refused when he has given them and because they are the good things that we have received then our response to that is one of Thanksgiving but the doctrines of demons that Paul's talking about here drive people to disagree with that and they say no it is not good to accept the good things of God instead it is good to reject them and by that I can be more spiritual and this has plagued the church throughout history we have a very long history in the Church of people coming in and saying hey we don't need to eat certain things or we need to be celebrate um to be more spiritual but in reality by doing this what

they're doing is they're rejecting the good things of God and limiting now uh their opportunity to praise God through thankfulness and this attitude slips into our thinking because anytime we start to take what is good and think I need to deny that to be right with God we've gone into the false Doctrine and this kind of thinking is actually all over it starts with even with unbelievers I was actually talking to a a guy this week trying to encourage him to turn to the turn to Christ and and he kept insisting that the only way that he could be right with go with God was if he made himself a little bit better and it's the same kind of thinking because of what he's doing is he's saying you know

what there's something good salvation in Christ but I'm not going to take what is good I'm going to push that off and deny that while I continue to pursue to be a better person I told him don't do that because you're not going to you're not going to be better and you're eventually going to frustrate yourself and get depressed and trying to do that but we do that in all manners of our thinking we we have something that is good and we think if I if I can attain this thing then I reach to a higher level in my relationship before God in some manner simple things easy things like like having having devotion time in the morning I mean that's fantastic uh that's a great Habit to develop spend time

in God's word spend uh you know pray uh before you start search your day and start your day off like that fantastic habit but but when it your thinking starts going to the place of you know I didn't have that quiet time this morning so I'm not quite as right with God as I should be now you're made right by Christ you're made right by the work of Christ all of us are but if we put something in between that we've basically added works and we're going into the same idea that Paul here is talking about you know our relationship with God is good the fact that we can pray before God is is good so we should Rejoice from the fact that we should pray if we if we M up and we and we we forget our time

of prayer that we me that we were planning to do okay it happened you know repent go back and pray and be thankful that you can pray because God has allowed you to come into the throne room and speak to him directly it's a good thing we cannot let our inability to do certain things or our pride in doing certain things cause us to start thinking that that affects our standing before God our position before our God is only by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and this is the anchor of our soul so instead of feeling like something that we do makes us greater or lesser in God's eyes really what we need to do is we need to think we need to focus on being thankful we should be thankful for God for

sending his son we should be thankful for Jesus for his work on the cross and we should be thankful to the holy spirit for the work that he's done in our heart and then we should be thankful for every other blessing we have even small things like food because even those are a blessing let me ask you this do you bless your food our food is actually the blessing I used to do this Lord you bless this food to my body doesn't make any sense because the food is the blessing what we need to be is we need to be thankful we need be thankful even over the food that we are given and so when we pray before we eat we pray with Thanksgiving because God has blessed us with that and so then may may we

receive all of God's blessings with Thanksgiving then may we never turn his blessings into requirements that we think make us right before God maybe stay far away from that false Doctrine let's not let our hearts get seared at all our lord Jesus did all that needs to be done and we can remain thankful to him