Now if you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to 2 Timothy, chapter 2. We're in the midst of a study in this letter of Paul to Timothy, a young pastor and missionary, elder, 2 Timothy, chapter 2 beginning verses studying today, 16 through 19. Paul here continues the instruction that he has been giving, and even last week we saw, about Christian teachers and Christian teaching. So that if we're teachers or preachers or missionaries or elders or study school teachers or Bible study leaders or parents who will be obliged under God to pass on the faith to their children or whatever we might be as friend to friend, sharing the truth of the gospel, or if we're aspiring to any of those things, then we need to be shaped by what Paul will say here.
And if it's the case that we're not those things, we're not yet anyway. If we're listeners and we're learning and not speaking up, perhaps do timid, not have to teach, we need to take this to heart too, so that we know what Christian teaching and Christian teachers to be listening to. You should be asking the question, should I be listening to him? And so let's pick up the reading at 2 Timothy chapter 2 beginning at verse 14, and then we'll study from 16 on.
Remind them of these things, charge them before God, not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth, but avoid irreverent Babel for it will lead people into more and more on godliness. And their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Jimenez and Philethis, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened.
They are upsetting the faith of some. But God's firm foundation stands bearing this seal, the Lord knows those who are his. And let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. Amen.
This is God's word, making right it on our hearts. Let's look to him in prayer. Father, speak to us, bless us. We ask, O Lord, what we know not, teach us, what we have not give to us, and what we are not, make us in Jesus' name.
Amen. Amen. Well, last week in verses 14 to 15, we said that Christian teachers need to be reminded to keep the main thing the main thing, to lead with the gospel, preach the gospel, things of that nature, and that Christian teachers also need to not quarrel about words, not be quarrel some people, and Christian teachers need to work hard in order to accurately or rightly handle God's word. Now, here Paul continues some of these ideas.
And here what he does is he builds on it with a warning to avoid irreverent Babel, verse 16, along with giving some more dangers of such a thing through verse 17. And then at the last half of verse 17 through 18, he gives some examples, very particular personal examples and doctrinal examples. And then in verse 19, he doesn't want to leave us discouraged. He doesn't want Timothy to be down.
Now he encourages him with an assurance from God. And so let me invite you to consider the warning and the dangers and the example and then this encouragement. In the first place, notice at the beginning of verse 16 this admonition, this warning, but avoid irreverent Babel. There's something for Timothy to steer clear of.
He's not to be like some people are teaching, right? Some people are speaking about God or about Jesus or about Christianity, but they're not speaking for God or for Jesus or for Christianity. Their words are a bunch of Babel. Their words are a bunch of gobbledygook.
And it doesn't make sense. It isn't faithful to the word of truth. And in fact, he says it's worse than that. It's irreverent.
It's disrespectful to God and it dishonors him. This is not the first encounter we had with this notion. In fact, if you look at the first letter of Timothy, 1 Timothy chapter 1 begins this way in chapter 1 verse 3, just listen, as I urge you Paul says to Timothy, when I was going to Macedonia, remain an emphasis so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and ennestenologies, which promote speculation rather than stewardship from God that is by faith. That's how he begins his first letter.
That's actually how he ends his first letter in chapter 6, verse 20, O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you, avoid the irreverent Babel and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge for by it, for professing it some of swerved from the faith. So you see, this is not a once and done thing. We need to be constantly vigilant, don't we? There's such a thing as theological virus that can creep into a congregation and it's got to be dealt with.
These people had swerved from the truth, he says. Well, they've done all the things you can do when you are shooting at a target and missing the bull's eye. They have shot short, they have shot to the right or to the left or above, but anything, but hitting the target. And so this is a reminder to us that those who speak about God and for God must aim to accurately handle the Word of God.
And that takes work and prayer and faith and study. And then in the language of Hebrews chapter 12, we might add this admonition, let us be grateful, he says, for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. And thus let us offer to God acceptable worship. And that of course would include acceptable teaching and do so he says with reverence and awe for our God as a consuming fire.
That's the first thing, there's a warning. And then he tells you what the dangers are of this kind of thing. Notice the dangers here of this irreverent Bible. It's bad in two ways, it's godless, he says, and it's gangrenous.
Verse 16 and following, but a void irreverent Bible for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness and their talk will spread like gangrene. So it's bad in a vertical direction, it's bad in a Godward direction. And it's bad in a horizontal direction towards others. It's bad in that it leads people away from God and a life of godliness here, a life of godwardness, a life of living before the face of God in a way where you desire to walk in his ways, it leads people away from that.
And it's worse than that, it doesn't much more and more. These people think they're going forward but they're actually going forward in the wrong direction. Their progress is regressed and they go from bad to worse, he says. If you give yourself even permission to go a little astray, then be careful.
You may keep going further and further astray. You might start with doubting the love of god or not embracing what Jesus said about himself as the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. But you do come to the Father, through him.
He'll begin to back away from that and that road leads to a wholesale abandonment of everything of the Bible. And he's cautioning against that. Well that's a vertical dimension, there's a horizontal dimension, their talk will spread like gangrene, it will spread or more literally the Greek he says it will find pasture. And so that's the picture of sheep being led to a flat plane of lush grass where they can feed and that picture was picked up in the medical terminology of that day as the commentators will tell you.
And it was used for describing things like ulcers that expand, they find pasture to grow. This kind of talk he says, when it takes root it spreads like Bermuda grass. I mean it spreads over the top of the grass and shoots out runners, it shoots out runners under the grass risins. You can even plant even though the stuff will just kill the good grass that you want, the green stuff.
Anyway, I went to visit Malena in Oklahoma City from Ohio where the grasses are green year around. When I first visited her I flew in, we drove to her house and everywhere I looked the grass was brown. And I just, I was flabbergasted, I went and killed all the grass and you're like, well no it's just hibernation, right? It just goes dormant or whatever.
Sorry, that was an off topic there. But Bermuda grass is the bane of a gardener's existence. It will just keep spreading. How do you want to play?
You can cut it and your mower will throw it in the garden and it will plant from there. It's coming up on spring, I got to plant my garden, but it's worse than that, right? He says it's like gangrene, which is an infectious decay that eats away the healthy parts of the body destroying blood vessels and killing tissue and it multiplies. It's so relentless that often from what little medical knowledge I have, if antibiotics can't kill it back if it's bacteria, then it will just keep spreading and causing more and more infection and they often have to amputate above it in the hopes of stopping its progress.
And why would Paul bring such a terrible, horrible medical analogy into our minds? Well, it's to startle us into revulsion at the thought of falling into this sort of infectious, contagious, poisonous, putrid error. So we should ask, are we listening, whether it's here, classrooms, podcasts, other places, are we listening to teaching in the name of Christ that honors God and does edify the hearers or does it lead you away from God, lead people away from Jesus, away from the good news that brings righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit? We need to ask that question.
We need to be aware of those dangers. And then he gives very pointed examples. Notice this. And in verse 17, he provides the names of the offenders, some of them, and the nature of their teaching.
Among them he says are Hymenaeus and Phileadus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some. Now, Phileadus is a person we know nothing about except what said right here. Hymenaeus, we encounter back in the first letter of Timothy, chapter 1 verses 19 and 20 where Paul warns that some have made shipwreck of their faith among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander.
And so Paul mentions that Hymenaeus by name and Phileadus so that, well, not only can he be on the lookout for bad teaching, but be on the lookout for men who are teaching bad things. And when you think of it, this is a dreadful way to end up with your name in the Bible. This is a horrible thing. To have your name in the Bible for eternity, for this sort of ungodliness, irreverent, babbling, and the trouble it causes the church and others.
There are others, it's not just them. Among them he says are Hymenaeus and Phileadus. So there are more people doing this. And just reflecting them that these people's names appear here should unsettle us.
It ought to be a warning that if you go astray and teach heresy and abandon the truth as it is in Jesus, then, well, the Bible is done being written. Your name won't go in this book, but there is a book where your name will be written. One day what little will be remembered of you is how you swerve from the truth and brought ruin to others. None of us should want that legacy.
Rather, we should want, like it's true of the saints, some of whom, well, all saints having walked with Jesus, some of them having remained faithful to his truth in their own generation, are rejoiced over by believers years, decades, centuries, even millennium later. And one day we can look forward to being with them and talking with them in heaven. There is a better future for those who walk with Jesus than the future for Hymenaeus and Phileadus. They deviated from the truth.
What is it they're teaching? Here he says, they say the resurrection has already happened. Now don't misunderstand. Paul doesn't mean they say that Jesus is raised from the dead because of course he is and that was a good thing that he himself propagated.
That's a foundational principle of the gospel. It's a first importance, he'll say. That Christ rose from the dead in accordance with the Scriptures. So that's not what they're teaching when they say the resurrection has already happened.
Here it seems they're saying something about believers and something untrue about believers in Jesus. They're saying that believers have already been raised from the dead, which is not true, not regarding the body. Our bodies as just time will demonstrate if you don't know this already. Our bodies will fall apart.
Should the Lord tear you? They will decay and to dust they shall return. And we wait in hope of the general resurrection from the dead where we will have our body reconstituted in power by the spirit, incorruptible, immortal and reunited to a soul made perfect forever and walk upon the new heavens and the new earth. There's a resurrection coming.
That one has not yet happened. They may have been confusing the resurrection of the soul in the newness of life with the further promise of the bodily resurrection, in which case they were saying that spiritual resurrection has come and that's true, but then they were saying that's all there is. They're upsetting the faith of the Son of Son because they're not leaving them hope of anything more glorious to come in the future in the bodily resurrection. They may have held that view as we know the later Gnostics did.
They may have held that view like the Gnostics who basically believed that things which are spiritual are good and things which are physical are bad or evil. And so you're glad to know the soul is raised from the dead with Christ in the newness of life, but what you want to do is escape the body because the body's evil in a Gnostic view of things and they may have been teaching something like that. We don't know that the Christian position of course is that the body isn't evil and final salvation looks forward to the raising of a more glorious body or they might have been saying the physical resurrection has already happened to believers, which is an odd thing to say, but there are people in church history who've said it. Somehow we are to believe that not only have we as Christians been raised with Christ in the newness of life, but our body is the resurrected body, all evidence to the contrary, knowing it'll decay and that of course would upset the faith of some by making them think that God's promises are not nearly as good as they sound.
As my old pastor put it, if the resurrection has already happened, for those of you who like End Time lingo, if full prederism is true, then put a hole in the head because if this is all there is, this is not all there is, there is much better yet to come. That's his point. Paul elsewhere encounters this kind of argument about the resurrection. You remember in 1 Corinthians 15 very famously has to deal with the truth that no resurrection is a real thing.
Of course the argument is a little bit different there, but the implications are the same. If we say there is no resurrection of the body into an immortal incorruptible spiritual honorable condition, if this is something that will not happen because it cannot happen because God isn't going to do it, then what are the implications? God even Christ has been raised from the dead in a body and if Christ hasn't been raised then we are full still believing him because he would still be dead which would mean the wages of sin was victorious over him and he was not victorious over the grave which would mean we don't have a Savior who can rescue us. But we do have a resurrected Savior.
He is alive. His body is glorious. His resurrection is the promise of our resurrection and we wait in faith, in hope for it as Philippians 3 says, our citizenship is in heaven and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. So Paul gives a warning and he tells you the dangers and he calls out some very specific people and their teaching and then notice as we conclude the last thing that Paul doesn't want to leave Timothy with the depressing thought that these troublemakers who have abandoned the truth about Jesus will ultimately destroy the church of Jesus.
They won't. They can't. Jesus will build his church in the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And so he ends up with verse 19, a word of assurance, but God's firm foundation stands he says bearing this seal.
So there's this firm foundation and that either refers to the church built on a solid foundation of the apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone and God is building his church like a building, right? And it's on a solid foundation and it stands or he means something like God's firm foundation, his truth given through the apostles and prophets with Jesus being the apex of the revelation of God. And this truth is a firm foundation and it stands or he may mean both for the church is built on the truth and the church is itself the pillar and butchers of the truth. But in any case, it will not be toppled.
It will not be flipped upside down. It cannot be destroyed is his point. Yes, the faith of some will be troubled, but the church will survive. The people of God will go on and there is a seal.
He says that says so. There's an inscription with a double assertion of assurance. It's a seal or inscription like even today many great buildings will have carved in the granite on the outside. The name of the building or the purpose of the building, the New York City Post office famously has engraved in granite, neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
It's the unofficial motto of the U.S. Postal Service. Or the inscription on the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.
It's seal says equal justice under law. It's at least an aspiration in the hands of sinful people. We have to acknowledge it's not always done, but it is what ought to be. Well here this firm foundation that stands has an inscription or a seal and it's twofold.
It's in two phrases. One from God's perspective, so to speak, and one from a believer. Both of which appear in Numbers chapter 16. If you want to do some homework later today, read Numbers 16.
And if you can read it in the Septuagint version, which is in the Greek from the Hebrew translation, then you'll see it even more clearly than it is in your English. But it's there. Number 16, there was a rebellion against God in the days of Moses. And Aaron, in fact it was a rebellion against Moses and Aaron as God's appointed leaders.
And Cora and 250 well-known leaders rebelled. And Moses did what? He put his confidence in God to deal with it. He was to demonstrate those who were serving God and those who were rebelling against God.
And God in the story does separate those who were his or those who were not. And then he judged those who did not repent, who did not turn from iniquity. But Israel as a whole was not told. Israel as a whole was not thrown down.
God took care of his people then, like Paul is saying, God takes care of his church, though some within it may go astray, even teachers. So he invites Timothy to share the confidence that Paul himself has and that Moses had, that God can take care of his church, from God's side that seal says, the Lord knows those who are his. I thought of that expression in Galatians chapter four, a different context where Paul is telling them, now that you have come to know God, or rather that you are known by God, there's two sides to that relationship. And it's one thing to say, I know God is another to know that God knows you.
And the Lord knows his own. He is sovereign. He's the only one who can see each one. He knows our hearts.
He knows those who are his. He knows them and he holds them and they will never ultimately, totally, finally fall. Or else this assurance makes no sense that his building, his church, his people will say him. God knows who are his when people are going astray.
But the other inscription is from the believer's perspective, which is what we're called to in verse 19. This is part of the inscription, part of the seal, let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. That is calling upon Jesus to save you from your sins, certainly involves saying, Lord forgive me, pardon me, don't hold it against me. But salvation includes the Lord not only pardoning you from sin, but freeing you from the dominion of sin.
One day from the very presence of sin, so that those who come to Jesus need to turn from sin and turn to Jesus, looking to him for pardon and power to die to sin, to kill sin, to bring to life by the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit. Those who have begun to call upon the name of the Lord Jesus for salvation are people who repent of sin. They have begun to hunger and thirst for righteousness, and Jesus promises those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. He says they are blessed, for they shall be satisfied.
Is that what's going on with you? And while we can't see or know infallibly those who the Lord knows are his, we can see some of that fruit. We can't ask if it appears to be genuine. We can hear people if they actually confess the faith, and we can see people as they either aim or don't to live out the truth.
But we can certainly have this assurance, says Paul, that God's true, genuine, sincere people won't fully and finally be overcome by this spreading gangrene of irreverent, babble and false teaching that leads to ungodliness. But by both of these seals, we may be encouraged to know that the heretics don't win. God's church will not fall. And so in that confidence, heed the warning, avoid the dangers, reject the heretics, teach the truth, receive the truth, put your hope in Jesus, for he is faithful and true.
And his name is the word of God, and he is King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and Savior of sinners like us. Let's pray.