About this sermon
False teachers suppose that godliness is a means of gain, but Paul teaches that godliness with contentment is great gain. We brought nothing into the world and can take nothing out; with food and clothing we will be content. Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and ruin, and the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, which has led some away from the faith. Prosperity preaching still repeats the error. The great mystery of godliness is Christ himself, and contentment is found in knowing him.
Sermon transcript
Now let us turn to 1 Timothy 3.16. By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. He who was revealed in the Spirit, Excuse me. He who was revealed in the flesh was vindicated in the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. Now, first, Timothy 6, 1 through 10. Pardon me, let’s start at three.
If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing, but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions. and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, which suppose that godliness is a means of gain. But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it. If you have food and covering, with these we shall be content.
But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil. And some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. That ends the reading of God’s holy inspired word.
May it be dear to us this day. Let us pray. Our heavenly father, we thank you that you promise to bless the reading of your word in the public worship service. We also thank you that you promise to bless the preaching of your word. We ask, oh Father, that it might be faithful to your word. We also ask that we might have hearts to hear and minds to understand. May your word sink deeply into us this day and may it be lodged in us. May it be even in our bones and in our marrow. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen. I’m going to talk about a thing, at least in this introduction, that I would not normally talk about.
How many planets are there? It seems that this is something that is up for debate. When I was young, we were told that there were nine planets. I think a lot of you were told that there were nine planets as well. Maybe some of you are a bit younger and you’re being told some rumor that there are eight planets. It seems that someone or something has received a demotion. Pluto has received a demotion. Well, how is that? It was in 2005 that a man found another planet.
And that other planet happens to be bigger than Pluto, and it’s in our solar system. And so the news hit, and everywhere we saw, there are 10 planets. And now we have eight. It seems that this one, which is called Eris, is bigger than Pluto. And as a result of that, they said, well, maybe we should make this a planet. And then they said, well, No, we can’t have that because of the definition of what a planet is. So scientists argued, a planet is such and such, and it must be this big. And anyways, we have eight planets now by one definition. Or do we have 10 by another definition? Or do we have nine? I have to wonder, why am I talking about this?
Well, because the Greeks understood the planets. I know that there is an idea that all of ancient people until Copernicus and Galileo believed that the world was flat and there were arguments about whether the sun goes around the earth or the earth around the sun.
The reason I’m bringing this to you is that you might understand the concept of wandering. Paul talks about those who wander from the faith. That is the word that he uses in our target passage. People are wandering from the faith. And would you know, the word he uses is to planet. They have planeted away from the faith.
Understand that I don’t think the ancient Greeks, if they were in our time, would listen to arguments about eight, nine, ten planets, or are there eight planets and then there are dwarf planets. Sorry, Pluto, you’re now a dwarf planet. It would not have anything to do with that.
Those that wander, Those celestial spheres that wander are those that are planets in the Greek mind. That’s why Paul says they have wandered, they have planeted away. Now, it certainly is the case that a planet goes in a specific orbit and it maintains that, and that’s an ordered thing. So they don’t wander from their specific orbit, but They do wander when you compare them to the stars. The stars are fixed and they don’t move.
And so we see Paul warning us. What does he say? Be content with what you have. Be content with heaven. and be content with godliness. And this will keep people from wandering from the faith. God’s will is that you would be content with the salvation that you have. Those who have not been content, he says, they pierce themselves. They end in ruin. What I want you to see is our passage is very, very simple.
God is calling especially preachers. That’s very much the context here. And it’s especially warning against false teachers here. But that which is said is true of all of us. God desires that we be content in Him, that we would resolve our restlessness, that we would find our rest in Him and Him alone. That is our desire and that is His desire. We see the way that there are those who are preaching other doctrines.
Paul is warning against false teachers. I had a discussion with someone recently, well, why do you bring up what false ideas that people have about biblical characters and things like that? Well, I think that we ought to warn against those things so that we might understand the truth. And Paul, I think he agrees with me, or I agree with Paul, that we ought to warn against those who are teaching false things, that there are teachers who love money, and they are not content with what they have because they don’t have the gospel.
So they are not content with the riches that they have. A very wealthy man was asked, how much money is enough? And he said, A little bit more. They said, how much do you need? Just a little bit more to be happy. I just need a little bit more. Isn’t that the deceitfulness of riches that you just need a little bit more and then you can be happy. These preachers, these who are opposing Paul and opposing Timothy, these are us men who love money and they want just a little bit more. And so they are seeking it.
God calls preachers to godliness. He calls all his people to godliness with contentment. And if you’ve been here in weeks past or in months past, we understand that godliness is not a list of things that you must do. Godliness is not, if you want to be godly, then you must wake up earlier and pray longer. and read your Bible more and be more holy. That’s not what godliness is. Godliness, I think, according to this epistle, but I think according to all of the gospels and to the epistles, is knowing Christ. That’s why we have this wonderful passage, and we keep coming back to it, because it is our confession.
1 Timothy 3.16, it is a common confession. When he says it’s common, that does not mean that it’s boring. That means that we all confess this.
That we confess that Jesus was revealed in the flesh. By understanding this, God makes me godly. He makes me more like Him. By understanding that Christ was raised from the dead, God makes me and you godly. And we must be content in that. The angels saw Him. Jesus Christ is proclaimed to all the nations, even in the apostolic age, in a sense. He was believed on, and He was raised up. He ascended into glory.
You notice that this mystery of godliness is something that does not include us. It is something that includes Christ and his redemptive historical works. And only after that do we confess him and believe in him. And we are found to be those who are godly. And this is not a mystery.
Paul says it is a mystery, and I’m not disagreeing with Paul. He says it is a mystery, but when Paul says mystery, he means revelation. We must understand this. There are those who would think that when Paul talks about mystery, he’s talking about secret religions, mystery religions that were present in the first century. And they had secret societies of a sort. We know just a little bit about them because we have portions of their writing.
That’s not the mystery that Paul’s talking about. The mystery that Paul’s talking about is what was mysterious in ages past. The previous ages did not know Christ and Him crucified. He was only known to the Hebrew people. And even that, in bits and pieces, they didn’t fully understand Him.
When Paul says mystery, he means the revelation of that which once was mysterious and now is a grand and glorious revelation of God’s light and of his power and of his fatherhood and of his sonship and of the Holy Spirit that opens our eyes that we might see God’s great acts.
We have seen the revelation of the mystery, Romans 16, 25. Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel, Paul’s gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for ages past. He, but has now been disclosed through the prophetic writings, has been made to all nations.
Belief in God’s great redemptive acts causes us to be found in Him, and we are found to be godly, and that begins the process of our sanctification, in a sense. We begin to be made conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we are called to contentment in this. called to understand, to be mindful of the inexhaustible riches of the Lord Jesus Christ that you are partakers of. What Paul would have the people to understand, what I want you to understand is that if you are believing in Christ, then the difficulties or the poverty of the hardship of this life will all be a distant memory when we are with God in heaven and we enter into a new age, which will be an eternal age. When we are resurrected and we are with Christ, We will look back on those days, on these days really, and we will exalt and praise God for the joy He brought to us, and we will praise Him for the distant memory of the crosses we bore and the hardship of this time.
Do you understand that you are the recipient of heavenly wealth that does not compare to this time and this age? You are right now recipients of that, and you will be recipients of that. With that in mind, Paul says, Be content with food and with clothing. That’s all we need. We will find our sufficiency in that because we have Christ who loved our soul and died for us and bled for us.
Now this is not to say that a Christian should not work harder. This is not to say that if a promotion or a raise comes to us, or an opportunity to leave a job and go to another, or for more education if it might advance us, we’re not saying that we ought not to seek after those things.
Surely, it is right to continue in those things. Those are good and those are right. It is right for us to be able to save up money for a difficult day or for a time when we are unable to work. All of these things are good. It is good to seek to make more. that we might give more, that we might provide our children with more, or whatever the case may be. There are so many reasons why it is good to have more.
But what Paul is saying is being content with what we have so that we do not make money our God. See, that is the issue with these false teachers. If you would look at them, they would be teaching from the scriptures. But deep down inside, they do not know God, and they are not content with the God who wrote the scriptures. And so, they live as they do. They are not content with food and with clothing.
These false teachers. love money so much that it ends in their destruction. Sometimes it ends in the destruction of their ministries. And sometimes it ends, tragically, in eternal destruction, which is something that we must be mindful of. Money, mammon, must not be an idol. It must not be the thing that we worship.
It is a tool that we use, a tool that we have. Jesus Christ paid his taxes with real money. There was no need to counterfeit or anything like that. It was a tool for him. He did not make it his God. Christ is our God. The Father is our God. The Holy Spirit is our God. And Paul says this warning that Money or the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. The love of money is a root of all sorts of evil.
That is what he says. And do you not know this to be true in your own life? And also in what you know about the world. You look at the world and you see that nation rises up and goes against nation, oftentimes for money, sometimes for other reasons. But oftentimes, there is a monetary basis for doing so. Kings are assassinated by those who are their loyal subjects, or so they thought. And that is for money. And they fall into these trappings, these temptations, these passions, and destruction is their end.
That is the ministry of these people that Paul’s talking about. Paul sets up in 1 Timothy the ministry of those false teachers and the true ministry. And we must be mindful of those. The distinctions, the differences, And we hear Paul talking about his own ministry. I don’t think that he was one who was prone to begging to to bragging. But he is honest with his people. And look what he says.
In Acts chapter 20, 33, we read, I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. That is to say, the other preachers certainly were desiring after those things, if we understand it in a First Timothy context. But all he desires is that these people might know Christ, that they might have the comfort and joy of Christ and him alone and might be content in that. For not having Christ is destruction and it is difficulty. Paul’s concern was not for their wealth.
He didn’t care about that, how much more that they might know him. Acts chapter 20, 18, you yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews, how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you in public and from house to house testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s so much more important that he proclaim the gospel to everyone, to Jew and to Gentile.
That covers all the bases. They must hear it. If they reject it, that’s on them. But that is the focus of the ministry. I did not shrink back. I preached, and I preached that you might know Christ. That’s what I desire as well. That is surely what Pastor Knox requires. That is also what your elders require, that you might partake of the preached word and love Christ and know him. But our times have seen those who did not have Paul’s understanding of ministry. There’s a preacher who is on TV, and his name is Benny Hinn.
You know, I have a quotation from him. I’ve heard it many times. I’ve played it. You know what he says? This is a preacher of the gospel, and he says, I am sick and tired of hearing about gold in heaven. I’ve got to have it now, he says. This is tragic. I am glad for you to laugh at that, but I would like more so that your hearts would be gripped by how horrible that is. He’s gotta have it now.
Not too long ago, there were major controversies. and major media hyped issues about preachers who had multi-million dollar ministries. And they were, it all came to a halt because of scandal, of prostitutes, and of lavish lifestyles. There’s a man who was caught in a number of things in the 1980s. Young people, you may not know this name, But surely those who remember the 80s do remember the name of Jim Baker, a man who was very well known at the time, had a TV show along with his wife. And when scandal broke, all kinds of rumors came out and the media jumped upon these things.
Now, surely he was wrong in a number of ways, but the rumor was that in his house there were gold faucets and air-conditioned dog houses to be spoiled. Well, we have opportunity to know that that was somewhat media hype. You know, once things hit the media, it’s like rumors times three or times ten, but Though they did not have gold faucets, they did not. And though they did not have air-conditioned houses, they had chrome faucets, but the rumor began.
And though they did not have air-conditioned dog houses, they had heated dog houses, and that was just because they kept the dogs in the garage in the wintertime to keep them warm. That is a recipe for disaster, so they put heaters in their dog houses.
You understand the way that the public views a minister who destroys his ministry in these kinds of ways? It is tragic, because the name of that preacher will be dragged through the mud But people do not discern between the message and the messenger, and it is the name of the Lord Jesus Christ whose name is dragged through the mud as well. And this is a great tragedy.
It’s not until Jim Baker went to jail that he gives testimony of the fact that there in my cell, began to read the Bible for the first time, not to just cherry pick verses here and there, but to read it in context and to understand what the writer intended when he wrote, not just my own reaction to it and taking it what I want from it and running with it. It is not until the end that he understood that he had proof texted, and he had preached about prosperity. That all you need to do is confess that you have money, and you will have it. You see, in this understanding, the modern TV preacher, faith is a force, and your words give power to that force. And if you speak into existence, money, it will speak, it will come into your life. That is what they believe.
Tragic. Jim Baker says, the more I studied the Bible, however, I had to admit that the prosperity message did not line up with the tenor of scripture. My heart was crushed to think I led so many people astray. I was appalled that I could have been so wrong. And I was deeply grateful that God had not struck me dead as a false prophet. This man wrote this in a biography entitled, I Was Wrong.
And even today, there are those who are preaching that what you need to do, this is on television all over, if you would give a sacrificial gift, and they’ll name a number, 100 or 500 or $1,000, a sacrificial gift, God will Multiply that. If you would just plant a seed of a thousand dollars, God will cause that to be blessed ten or a hundred or a thousand fold. And so many people unsuspectingly thinking that this is gospel truth. Fall for this.
You see, the problem with those who are focused on money, why do I read that quote about Jim Baker not knowing his Bible till he gets to jail? Because I think it’s the case in many false preachers, but also, staying in our text, I think that is the case with the false teachers of Paul and Timothy’s age. They do not read God’s word in context.
Another preacher says that he drives a Rolls Royce because Jesus would have done so. He says, to get you out of this malaise of thinking that Jesus and the disciples were poor, the Bible says that He has left us an example that we should follow His steps. That’s the reason I drive a Rolls Royce. I’m following Jesus’ steps.
Clearly, these people are not like Paul, with minds on things below and not things above. The true preacher, though, preaches good news, regardless of the audience, regardless of monetary issues at all. He desires to preach the gospel to those who will hear, and that is his focus. We read in Psalm 40, this passage, which I said is a passage about the Lord Jesus Christ, what preacher would not want to agree with what I’m about to read to you.
Psalm 40, verse 9, I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation. Behold, I have not restrained my lips as you know, O Lord. I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart. I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation. I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation. May every preacher desire that.
I want you to know that God is faithful to his promises because he is faithful to his people because he has bound himself in a covenant to you and those who would preach otherwise. Those who would hold back and restrain their lips from preaching that good news and would preach about prosperity or preach any other false gospel.
For those, they pierced themselves. Why did Paul use pierce themselves? Isn’t that strange? There’s not another place in the Bible that talks about piercing themselves, but it’s just simply a word for destruction. Because they’re not preaching the one who was pierced. They have wandered. They have planeted from the faith. God, His faithfulness is trustworthy. You know how trustworthy?
It is so trustworthy that He has ordered the heavens as they are. And if He were to break His promises, He would also destroy the heavens as He has given them. But as He has made a covenant with them, and He has made a covenant with you. Listen to Jeremiah 31. Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day, and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar. The Lord of hosts is his name. If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the Lord, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation forever before me.
God says he will not allow his covenant nation to pass away And it is as sure as the planets. It is as sure as the sun and the stars. He is faithful to his promises. And you must understand that by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you are that nation to whom he keeps those promises. And as we trust in Christ, he will cause us never to planet away. A cross does not drive as well as a Rolls Royce, but in the long term, it will get you much further.
Let us pray. Our God in heaven, help us to be a contented people We have such great riches because we have you, O Lord. We ask, O Father, that you would help us to understand that though it seems as if sometimes we would be as those wanderers, that you have given us promises, that if we trust in your Son, that you have fixed us and that you hold us even as you hold the stars. We ask, oh Father, that none here would wander from the faith, that we would all receive the warnings, and that we would call about Christ. For only in him do we have true contentment. In his name we pray, amen.
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