Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – 1 Timothy 6:3-11

Those who do not pant after the Lord instead are driven, motivated by a love for money. So turn with you with me if you will to 1 Timothy chapter 6, begin reading at verse 3. Please stand for the reading of God’s command word to us.

Now I’m going to read all the way to the end of the chapter. The actual text I’ll be speaking on is from verses basically contained in verses 3 through 11, but really it does sort of form a unit. So I want to read the whole thing. 1 Timothy chapter 6 beginning at verse three, and actually I’ll start with the last phrase of verse two.

These things teach and exhort. If any man teach otherwise and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness.

From such withdraw thyself, but godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain that we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment, let us therewith be content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

But thou, oh man of God, flee these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of faith. Lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called in called and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. I give thee charge in the sight of God who quickeneth all things and before Christ Jesus who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession that thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebuked, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ which in his times he shall show who is the blessed and only potentate, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who only hath immortality dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen, nor can see.

To whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen. Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy, that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate, laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come that they may lay hold on eternal life.

Oh Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust. Avoid profane and vain babblings and opposition of science falsely so-called which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee. Amen.

Let us pray. Father, we pray that your grace would be with us and we would understand these words and we form our lives on the basis of them and praise you Lord God for all these things. We ask this in the name of Jesus our savior. Amen.

Please be seated.

—

How do we know if we’re on the right track? How do we know if our lives are really involved in doing what’s right relative to the scriptures? How do we evaluate what we do? Well, the text before us, the concluding text—really the beginning of this section, the concluding text of First Timothy—raises the question again of the heretics, the false teachers that he addressed in the very beginning of this epistle.

Remember way back in chapter 1 when Timothy was told the purpose of Paul’s leading them was to shut down these false teachers? He addresses these men again here, and I won’t take the time, but there are definite literary correlations. The obvious correlation is there, but there are structural, structurally manifested correlations between the group in chapter 1 and the group here in chapter 6.

Well, this group of men is so important in terms of this epistle and in terms of Timothy’s work. These false teachers are here said to be wrapped up in this whole question of what you might call material pragmatism. These are men who are pragmatic. What works? How do I know? What’s my evaluatory standard in reference to material things? They suppose that gain is godliness. The bottom line is everything to these men.

And we all have evaluators. One of the tough things is to keep in mind God’s system of evaluation as opposed to our system. We are prone to judge by sight, to evaluate by external appearance. And that’s what these men are prone to. This text is very important because it tells us how deadly and devastating such a perspective is.

Now, commentators look at this section and they say, “Well, you got two things going on. You got the heretics and then you’ve got greed addressed in this section of scripture,” but really they’re tied together. Because at the middle of all this, it says that these false teachers, these heretics, are those who suppose that gain is godliness. And then Paul discusses and throws in more discussion as the chapter continues about monetary gain. So these things are really wrapped up together.

Now, we could also say that because of this connection of money, this section is also wrapped up with the chapter that preceded it. Because remember, we’ve been talking about from chapter 5 verse one on about different ways of honoring different sorts of people—to honor widows with money and to honor elders with money, and then slaves to honor their master with hard work, and masters to honor their slaves if they’re Christian masters by reciprocating, by treating them differently because of the gospel. And so these things are all wrapped together, and they’re all wrapped together with a proper or an improper way of looking at how the kingdom progresses and what is the evaluation as to whether we’re on the right track or not—which we all want to know.

We all want to know that about our lives. How are we doing? And so that’s what this text is concerned with.

This text tells us that there is to be antithesis in the context of the visible church. We always think, “Oh, there’s something wrong. The churches are fighting amongst themselves, or people are fighting in the middle of the church or whatnot.” Well, hey, that’s what was going on in Timothy’s day. If you want to look at this as the golden age of the church—which I don’t think the scriptures would necessarily have us look at it that way—but certainly this is an age of obvious revelation from God relative to these matters. And yet still here, Paul has to defend himself all the time. We’ve got false teachers in these churches that Timothy is dealing with, and the manifestation of the warfare that God has placed into the world is between the two seeds.

Right back in Genesis, everything I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten. Everything we need to know, we can learn in the book of Genesis. Everything else comes out of it, unpacked from that archive file, so to speak. Genesis tells us that God has judicially placed enmity between two seeds: the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. It’s not there pragmatically. It’s not there because that’s the way things worked out. It’s not there because, well, it just sort of happens. It’s not there because either seed wants that to happen. It’s there because God has judicially placed it there. And it will ever be such that these two seeds will war.

And this text tells us that this warfare goes on even in the context of the institutional church. The church has never been united in the fullest sense. The church has never been pure, having no divisions or problems. That doesn’t mean all divisions and problems are a manifestation of this antithesis. Some divisions and problems come because we’re just ordinary folks, you know? We’ve got a lot of sin in us and we’re being sanctified and we fight with each other. You and your wife, or your wife, you and your husband—you have arguments. That doesn’t mean that one of you is the good seed and one is the bad seed.

But this text tells us that there are teachers in the context of the visible church who err from the faith so badly their end result is perdition. Perdition is how they end up. We’ll look at that in a moment. So this is talking about antithesis in the context of the visible church.

Look at verse 5. Verse 5 is, I think, at least—I don’t know if this is something we want to go into state for, but verse 5 is kind of a good synopsis of these first verses 3-11: “Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness.”

This tells us who these false teachers are. They’re the men who suppose that gain is godliness. They’re prideful. They have corrupted minds. They’re destitute of the truth. And they end up with a lot of perverse disputings. Perverse disputings here means a lot of friction, a lot of rubbing against each other in an improper kind of way—a lot of irritations going on with these kind of guys.

Now, as I said earlier, this can be traced back to the slave-master relationship in the first two verses of this chapter. Why don’t they agree? Remember, these are those guys who don’t agree. If they teach contrary to these first two verses about the slave-master relationship, that’s the context of what we’re reading here. That’s why I read the last half of verse two there at the beginning of the text.

How does it relate? Well, the lovers of money are not lovers of God and man. We have a unit here, and we can very profitably build in, as I said, the preceding chapter with its stress on honoring, paying certain groups—widows, elders, etc.

What drives men to split away, to reject, to devise different doctrines or theories different from those that are so clearly and plainly key to the rest of scripture? Remember we talked about how the honoring of widows is key to all the widows in the scriptures, and how the honoring of elders ties back to the case laws that go from the beginning of the Bible to the end. We have these concepts taught—the slave-master relationship, the way the world changes. It’s never to be by the arm of man’s strength or power. It’s to be by submission to the will of God. And these men reject all these things.

Why? Well, these scriptures tell us that they have a false estimation of the value of worldly treasures. A false estimation of the value of worldly treasures.

Worldly treasures are not bad. It doesn’t say that money is the root of all evil. It says the love of money is the root of all evil. Leviticus, the closing chapters, talk about the blessing of God upon a regenerate group of people—those who are submissive to Yahweh and to the Lord Jesus Christ. The scriptures, as R.J. Rushdoony points out, are a land-based faith. And we’re not talking here about Manichaeanism. Many suppose that there was a God of the spirit who was good and a god of the flesh who was bad. And so, you know, the flesh and riches and all this stuff is bad. We just want to escape from this physical material world. We want to get away from this. And that’s not what we’re talking about here.

That’s not what Paul is saying because the scriptures from beginning to end are a land-based faith. As Rushdoony points out, Leviticus points out, the blessings of God are temporal as well as eternal. We’re not talking about that. But we are talking about men who get all mixed up with all these representations of the glory and value of God. This fleshy stuff, this material stuff, tends to suck us into temptations. Our minds do. Instead of going to the God who we can’t see, we go to the things we can see and worship them.

And so these men have a false estimation of value. And so it screws up their idea of the relationship between slave and master, between people and priests, between the young and the old as spoken about in 1 Timothy 5. They get all mixed up about these things because their motivation is improper.

God is affecting a radical change in the context of the young and the old and valuing them properly. He is affecting a radical change in terms of the world’s goods and services. The Magnificat talks about how those that are rich are going to go away empty-handed and the poor are going to be fed with riches. There are implications for the faith in these things. But this is not a result of the strength of man’s arm, nor the bottom-line estimations of the green-shades-and-calculator crowd.

Now, I don’t mean to cast any aspersions on Brad or Hank or Gartner or other accountants. Accounting is a good thing in scripture, you know. I mean, God’s an accountant. He keeps very careful measures. He has those long lists of people. You’ve got long lists of different offerings and different representations of tribes and such. God is detailed in his word. God is a god of accounting. And so there’s a proper use of green shades and calculators.

But I’m talking about people that think the bottom line is that material balance sheet. That’s what these guys are. This is the wrong way of estimation. The bottom line is supposed to be a calculation, an estimation based upon truth, orthodoxy, Christ’s words—specifically. This text tells us the doctrines that are in accordance with godliness are always accompanied by and lead to godliness—true biblical piety, good deeds, love toward God and toward his creation, his creatures, and particularly his image bearers in the context of redeemed men.

This is the bottom line evaluation or estimation. This is the way the reversal occurs—is through having our estimation being transformed away from material economic balance sheets to the balance sheets of truth, orthodoxy, and right practice and the right doctrines that go along with godliness. The rich are sent empty away. The poor are enriched. The prophet, priest, and king are changed on the basis of these things.

The priest, after all, is the one who consecrates everything to the service of the king. The balance sheet is not dependent upon money, but rather the balance sheet is to be the evidence of the fruit of the spirit in people’s lives. Money, important as it is, is a trailing indicator—to use, you know, a Wall Street term. You’ve got leading indicators and trailing indicators. Well, if you’re trying to put money as your leading indicator of how well you’re doing and where you should go, this text gives you tremendous warnings about the dangers of doing that.

Money follows obedience. Now, that isn’t true of everybody individually. The blessings in Deuteronomy 28 and the closing chapters of Leviticus are national blessings. They’re corporate blessings. Generally speaking, God’s people are going to end up as the head and not the tail. You’re going to end up loaning to people and not borrowing from people. But it isn’t always true of individuals. God may not give you a lot of wealth personally. He tells us here to be content with food and raiment.

Now, God does provide food and raiment. Now, that’s nurturing and guarding. You should be real familiar if you’ve been in this church for very long. Those are the big themes here of what God does for his people—to nurture us, nourish us along, and to guard us. He gives us, he feeds us, and then he protects us. Okay? And that is certainly true of all Christians.

But beyond that, the scriptures say you may or may not individually have much wealth. I think this is extremely important because this text tells us of a horrific downward spiral. In Van Til’s words, a disintegration, an integration into the void, a cycling down in two different ways in the text. We’ll get to it in just a moment—both in a community sense, where the community that cycles down with these kind of guys in the presence of it, and also in an individual sense.

So this is bad stuff. This is poison for you personally. This is poison for the church of Jesus Christ when the sound words of Christ are not heeded and rather when men assume that gain is the estimation or the valuation system—that gain is godliness. These are bad things. This terrible downward disintegration is what accompanies people with these false systems of value. They deny the truth. The scriptures tell us they do not promote godliness.

There’s a correlation here between health and sickness. The words of Jesus Christ are healthy, wholesome words, life-giving words. Men who reject them are proud, knowing nothing, doting about controversies and word wars, as the text tells us. “Doting” in its original application means sick—a sick attention to something. You become, in a perverse sense, focused on something. You become kind of sickly because all you ever want to do is eat carrots—nothing else ever. You become, you know, fixated on that particular kind of food item.

Well, here these guys are doting upon controversies and wars of words. They always want to mix it up. They always want to be buzzing, you know, with each other and getting into big word controversies. And there’s a sickness to that. The text tells us explicitly in the Greek. And there’s a healthiness to the sound words of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We don’t want to be sick. We don’t want to die. We don’t want to be cast into perdition. We don’t want to end up with wars of words in the context of the community. And so we want to avoid the source of all of this, which is an improper estimation of value—supposing that gain is godliness.

Now, it isn’t the only improper valuation. You know, you can get addicted, so to speak. You can become fixated on a lot of different things, not just money. The text understands that, but money is a big one. Money is one that all of us struggle with. All of us struggle with that temptation to see things in terms of monetary value.

The Holy Spirit creates a worship environment here at church. He brings us together. I’ve talked about this in the last few weeks. The Holy Spirit creates an environment of peace and tranquility, unity in the context of the church. That’s what he is about doing. These men, not only do they have a wrong system of evaluation, not only do they engage in wrong actions, they then produce an environment of chaos and not unity. We don’t want our character, our lives, to be characterized by disunity, perdition, and these bad things.

And how do we avoid them? Well, this text says that we are to avoid the money trap. We are to avoid the money trap.

Now, I want to address these particular texts in a way that relates this to the doctrine of the Trinity, and specifically to what we’ve talked about several times in the last few months. Remember we’ve talked about Romans chapter 7:14 and following, and I’m having my children read that on a regular basis to understand what those things are all about.

And so really, I guess the title for my talk is “False Teachers, Money, and the Trinity”—and the Trinity by way of standard, motivation, and environment. That’s the frame. John Frame came up with these designations, but they’re clearly what the scriptures tell about.

If you want an outline for today, here’s your outline—points one, two, and three. Point one: these false teachers have a wrong standard. Point two: these false teachers have a wrong motivation. And point three: these false teachers create a cursed environment both for themselves personally and also for the church of Jesus Christ.

So: wrong standard, wrong motivation, wrong environment.

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## Wrong Standard

First of all, these men have a wrong standard. The scriptures contrast these men to the words of Christ. We read in verse three: “If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness.”

These guys’ standard is not Christ’s words. It’s not correct doctrine. It’s not the law of God. Christ’s words are his law. Okay? The law is what Christ says in the scriptures. That’s his law to us—all 66 books of the Bible. And that’s the standard.

Remember in Romans chapter 7:14 and following, you want to do the law. You want to obey the law. If you find yourself falling short, there’s comfort in that because it means that you actually do want to obey the law, and that’s what God wants you to do. He’s given you a desire to conform to a particular standard. That standard is the standard of his word.

Well, these men don’t want to conform to that standard. These men instead conform to the standard of gain. They suppose that gain is godliness. I’ve talked about that several times now, but you see the idea. The standard by which they decide whether they’re on the right track or not is not the pure words of Jesus Christ. It’s not doctrine. It’s not God’s law. The standard of gain is godliness. Okay.

Now, the scriptures tell us that it is the words of Christ in this particular text that we’re to attend to. And that is, as I said, correlary to the law of God, which is Christ is the law. Christ is the word, and that law is found in his inscripturated word.

Matthew Henry says this about these words of Christ: “He said that the words of our Lord Jesus Christ are wholesome words. They are the fittest to prevent or heal the church’s wounds as well as to heal a wounded conscience. For Christ has the tongue of the learned to speak a word in season to him that is weary. The words of Christ are the best to prevent ruptures in the church. For none who profess faith in him would dispute the aptness or authority of his words, who is their Lord and teacher. And it has never gone well with the church since the words of men have claimed a regard equal to his words and in some cases a much greater.”

What Henry’s saying there is that when we take the secondary standards of the church—for instance, the confessions, the catechisms—as good as they may be, and exalt them to the standard of God’s word, we have made a horrendous mistake. We’ve moved away from the wholesome words of Christ. We want to build on those words, we want to make application of them—that’s a good thing to do. But ultimately there is only one infallible fixed standard. There’s only one standard for faith and practice, and that is the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. These are the words that create unity. These are the words the Holy Spirit uses to create the environment of peace and blessing in the context of the church.

Henry went on to say that when men leave the wholesome words of our Lord Jesus Christ, they will never agree—in other words, in either words of their own or other men’s invention—but will perpetually wrangle and quarrel about them. And this will produce envy when they see the words of others preferred to those that they have adopted for their own. And this will be attended with jealousies and suspicions of one another, called here evil surmisings. They will proceed to perverse disputings.

You see, all this bad stuff begins when our conversations are filled not with the words of scripture, not with the law of God, but with different standards—our words instead of Christ’s words. Or in the case of these men, their words are motivated by this other standard, that they’re trying to speak forth words that produce gain, that produce monetary gain, in the context of their lives.

It doesn’t say they’re rich, by the way. It’s talking about those who want to be rich.

Let’s attend to the words of our savior relative to this particular topic—contentment and the goods that God has given to us. And I’ll read first in Matthew 6:25-33 if you’d like to read along with me. Matthew 6:25-33. These are the words of Christ. This is what we’re to attend to. The words of our savior.

Now, I’m going to read from actual quotations of our savior. The words of Christ are not simply found in those red letters of some red-letter Bibles. They’re found in the entire scriptures—they all speak of him. They’re all his word to us. But I’m going to read the very words of our savior here in Matthew 6. I’m actually going to read in verse 19 and following:

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rough rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moths nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break in or steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

These men’s treasure was gold, silver. They were lovers of silver. That’s where their heart was.

Our savior goes on to say: “The light of the body is the eye. If therefore thine eye be single, the whole body shall be full of light. But if thy eye be evil, the evil eye, the envious eye, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness?”

There’s really a transition, or actually not a transition. There’s a progression there—the same progression that our text lays out for us of men who have the wrong system of valuation, and then they end up with the eye being evil, the evil eye, the envious eye, and then they end up being plunged into darkness. The same progression our text tells us of. Really, you could say that Paul’s words are an exposition of these living texts.

It goes down in verse 24: “No man can serve two masters, for either he will make the one—or excuse me, he’ll either hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

That’s what they were trying to do. And they ended up serving mammon and cut off from God.

“Therefore, I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body, but what you shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

“Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, oh ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, ‘What shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or wherewith all shall we be clothed?’ For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the tomorrow, for the tomorrow shall take thought for the thing of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

You see, this is really helpful, isn’t it? Because when Paul says “with food and raiment be content,” food and raiment are covering it. It, you know, can mean not just clothes but a house or a shelter—guarding again. But he says “with these things be content.”

He doesn’t mean it’s okay to worry about these things, or it’s okay that the valuation standard is right. It’s just that it’s too much gain they want. The gain you really want is food and raiment. That’s not what he’s saying either. The flesh wants to go to that place. When we read the text in 1 Timothy 6, we want to say, “Yeah, yeah, okay. So we can’t have as our goal and motivation a lot of money, but we can have as our goal and motivation food and clothing. That’s our responsibility. God will take care of the rest.”

No. Go back to the words of the Savior. He says, “Even these things, don’t seek after these things. God will provide you with these things. These are trailing indicators again.” Well, they are indicators. If you’re hungry, they’re probably not working. And God wants you to be hungry to get you to work. Okay, they’re trailing indicators, but they’re not the things you seek after.

Hunger is a sign that you’re being slothful and you’re calling to God. It’s not a sign you need food. I mean, that’s secondary. Okay. So this text tells us very importantly—it builds on what Paul says. It corrects it rather for our flesh, which wants to go astray. These are the words of our savior about how we’re to perceive the physical aspect of our lives in terms of the striving for money that all of us are falling into so often.

Luke 12:13 and following. I’ll read as well. Luke 12:13 and following:

“And one of the company said unto him, ‘Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me.’ Come and, you know, take care of my monetary problems with my brother.’ And he said unto him, ‘Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you?’ And he said unto them, ‘Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.’

“And he spake a parable unto them, saying, ‘The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, “What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?” He said, “This will I do. I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.”‘

“But God said unto him, ‘Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. Then who shall these things be which thou hast provided?’”

Paul, right? Naked we come into the world and naked we go out of the world. And actually the way that’s phrased, it’s really more like: naked we come into the world because naked we’re going out of the world. Beginning and end is assured. That’s the way it is. And as a result, it’s foolish to seek after those things which we neither have brought into the world nor can take out with us, as this man did.

“So is he that layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. You know, Paul says they think gain is godliness. Well, godliness with contentment is great gain. He plays it. He twists it around there. He does it again later in the chapter. We’ll see in the following weeks. But, you know, he does this word play on them just as our savior does here. He that lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. You want to be rich toward God, to his kingdom, not in physical possessions.

“And he said unto his disciples, ‘Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life which you shall eat, neither for the body which you shall put on. Life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which neither have storehouse nor a barn, and God feedeth them. How much more are ye better than the fowls? And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit? If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?’

“You can’t do the smallest of things. You can’t provide food to nourish yourself with. Only God can do that. Forget the big barns that you think you can do that. God may give you those things as stewardship, but you can’t even do the smallest of things. Why? You take thought for the rest?

“‘Consider the lilies, how they grow. They toil not, they spin not. Yet I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothe the grass which is today in the field, and tomorrow is cast in the oven, how much more would he clothe you, oh ye of little faith? And seek not what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind. For all these things do the nations of the world seek after, and your Father knoweth that you have need of these things. But rather seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.

“‘Fear not, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’ Remind you of your great shepherd in heaven. ‘Sell what you have and give alms. Provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

“‘Let your loins be girted about and your lights burning. And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for the Lord when he will return from the wedding, that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. Blessed are those servants of the Lord, when he cometh shall find watching. Verily, I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.

“‘And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are the servants. This know that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and he would have suffered not his house to be broken through. Be ye therefore ready also, for the son of man cometh in an hour when you think not.’”

These are the sure words of our savior. The sure words, the life-giving words—life in the sense of our personal salvation, life in the sense of the manifestation of life in the context of the community, the congregation of the Lord. May we treasure Christ’s words. May we teach our children catechisms? Yes. Confessions? Yes. But may we teach them most of all the words of Christ as found in the scriptures. That is the source of life and godliness, not the documents of men.

R.J. Rushdoony—I thought about this so often in the last four or five years. I didn’t understand at the time. In paper, men trust. Men think they can produce documents based upon the word of God. Surely that will take care of all problems. Men’s documents typically, I mean, they’re good. It’s important to do it. Important to say, “This is what we’re doing as a church.” But boy, if you put your reliance on those things, you have no way to resolve problems. Those things can be helpful, but they can also be used by men to produce more problems, to war over men’s words. That’s what Matthew Henry was saying.

So, let’s teach our children. Let’s teach ourselves the words of our savior. That’s the source of life-giving power and strength from God, not man.

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## Wrong Motivation

These guys have wrong standards. These men have wrong motivation. As Romans 7 goes on to say, “I wish the right thing, but I find myself falling short. But praise God that my motivation is to do the will of the father.” Our motivation is love for God and love for our neighbor. That’s motivation right there. Yeah, duty is important about the commands of God. Those are all important. But you know, he says, “If you love me, keep my commandments.”

If your motivation is correct, the way it’s demonstrated is in keeping the standard. If the motivation is doing the will of the father, love for the father—and of course love for the son and for the spirit as well—then our motivation drives us to that standard.

These men, this text tells us, were lovers of silver. That’s what the word says in this text. It tells us specifically that these men were lovers of silver. Their motivation, in terms of their violation of standard, is that they are lovers of silver. They are men who, as a result of their loving silver instead of loving God, have become proud, knowing nothing. They lose the ability to intellectually process data. Even that’s the implication of the text.

It doesn’t just mean they’re empty of knowledge. What it means is that because of their proud being puffed up—it’s the picture of one being enveloped in smoke. That’s the picture in the Greek of pride. Because of that, they cannot continue to intellectually process data correctly. They will know nothing. It’s a continuing tense because they’ve left the source of all knowledge. They’ve left love for God.

In congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves: what is our motivation? If you know, we want to know if we’re on the right track. One way to look at the right track is: what is our standard of evaluation? Is it money or is it the law of God? Is it the words of Jesus? But beyond that, that either counting gain as godliness on the one hand, or the words of Christ stem from our motivation. The motivation is the key to producing the correct standard.

These men are described as lovers of silver, and that’s what leads them to an improper standard.

In congregation of the Lord, we must make sure that we understand that our motivation for all that we do is love for God and love for our neighbor who represents the image bearer of God to us—whom we haven’t seen—or neighbor whom we have seen. And if you don’t have love for God and love for your neighbor in your soul, pray to God that he give you that love in increasing measure.

And if you find yourself using a standard other than the words of Christ, then it’s because the love of God is absent. And Jesus says, “Return to that first love.” The first motivation for everything else you do and say—these men were men who love silver, improper motivation, improper standard. And as a result, they create a corrupted environment.

When we have the love of God given to us by the Spirit, the love for him and love for his image bearers, and we then take the standard of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit uses all that to create an environment of peace and blessing in the context of our lives and in the context of our church, in our community, in our country eventually.

And this text tells us that these men did anything but produce a context of peace and blessing. These men become sick. They become doting upon questions and controversies. They become doting upon word fights.

That word fight there in the text specifically refers to—it’s a combination of two words: the word “logos” and the word “macho.” We were saying “our word macho man, a fighting man.” In verse four, “those who are proud knowing nothing dote about questions, strifes, controversies, debates, and strifes of words—word fights, you know, like food fights in Animal House. These are word fights in the context of the church. And that’s what these men get into.

And then look at the progression. Whereof comes—because there are men with an improper motivation, an improper standard—then there comes out of these men an environment of what? Envy, strife, railings, and evil surmisings.

Envy is an emotional reaction to what somebody else has that you don’t have, and you want to destroy what they have. It’s not covetousness—wanting what they have. It’s knowing you can’t have what they have, and as a result you want to destroy them. And so in these word fights that they get involved with, they want to destroy the other person. They kill community in the context of the church by this progression of first envying, and then strife, contention, blowups, etc.

Railings that proceeds—they start with envy in the heart. They move out to strife with their fellow man in the context of the church. That blows up into railings against people. And the word actually is the word blasphemy here is what it is. And blasphemy is ultimately directed toward God, but it can be directed toward his image bearer.

And some commentators think what we see here is it’s called blasphemy instead of railing without being called blasphemy because it’s a railing in the context of the visible church. And it’s a railing that uses scriptural truth supposedly as justification for the railing against another person. And so it is blasphemous. It rails against a person. It’s blasphemous because it takes Christ’s words and tries to shoehorn them into arguments against Christ’s image bearers. Okay?

The envy, strife, railings, and then it gets to evil surmisings. And what that means is you start doubting everyone’s motivation. It’s the complete breakdown of the glue that holds us together as a church, as a family, as a community. And that’s trust for each other, of believing the best about one another.

This downward progression of these men ends up with actual evil surmisings. And at that point, communication is impossible. I’ve known people who so distrust one’s motives they will not enter into meaningful dialogue anymore about anything because they don’t trust you anymore. They’ve ended up with evil surmisings about what you have to say.

And to the person with a jaundiced eye, everything looks yellow. Presuppositions are a hard thing to shake.

At the end result of this disintegration of community painted out by these men with the wrong motivation and a wrong standard, the environment they produce—the breakdown of communication—is they’ve got those glasses that came about as a result of envy, and they wanting gain as godliness, and they’ve entered into strife, and they’ve entered into rage against other people. Now they’ve got these glasses on so tight that they cannot be pulled off anymore. They interpret everything now on the basis of those presuppositions of evil surmisings about everybody else’s motives.

That’s the breakdown that happens here in the context of these men’s lives.

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## Cursed Environment

Now, there’s also a breakdown in the environment of their own person because the text goes on to tell us that it isn’t just the community that breaks down for these men.

Look in verse 9: “But they that will be rich—that’s who these men are; gain is godliness. They want to be rich. They fall into temptation and a snare and into many foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.”

There’s a visual image being painted here. And by the way, in the Greek there’s a series of P’s. It’s an alliterated sermon as it were from the Apostle Paul.

But look at the progression. You’ve just heard me talk about you don’t want to be where I’ve just described, right? You want to—you don’t want to be in a position of alienation in terms of community, of the communion of the Lord, in the community of Christ. You don’t want that. Well, here’s how it happens.

You fall into a temptation. The desire for material gain is a temptation. And the temptation, once given into, becomes a snare. See, first it’s just a picture. “Hey, come over here.” You come over there. Boom. The snare is laid. And now you’re stuck. You see, it goes into a snare, and you fall into many foolish and hurtful lusts. You’re stuck now. And it’s foolish what you’ve ended up doing. You’ve ended up trying to seek after gold, which after all is just a corruptible thing. You can’t leave this world with it.

That guy with the full barns—he’s dying tonight, and nothing’s going with him. It’s foolish. But it’s more than foolish. It goes into a further description here of being hurtful. It’s not just foolish to you. You’ve been snared now by that temptation to something that’s foolish and hurtful to you. And you’ve actually drowned. It drowns men in destruction and perdition.

The idea of drown is to fall all deeply, be sucked into this thing, and to be struck into destruction—which is terrible, isn’t it? The temptation, the snare’s closed, it’s foolish of you, then you realize it’s more than foolish. My leg is killing me here, and now that poison in my leg is going into my whole body. I’m going to die. Destruction is now what I’ve been snared into.

But look at the last thing it says: perdition. The word perdition there is the word for the resting—not resting place—the final state of men without Christ. Hell is what’s talked about here. It isn’t just destruction of the body. It’s destruction of your soul eternally in hell.

You see the progression. And so congregation of the Lord, we don’t want to create that kind of wicked community in the context of the church. And more than that, we don’t want to see ourselves at the end result of a progression—of being starting with a simple temptation of the wrong standard, thinking that the way to evaluate if we’re on the right track is how much bucks we got in our pocket, or how good we look to other men, or any other standard other than the standard of the Lord Jesus Christ.

If that’s what we get sucked into, we get sucked into a temptation. The snare closes. We think it’s stupid. The poison starts to run up. We’re hurting. We’re dying. And when we die, we realize as we’re dying, we’re going to hell. Horrific picture of the great curse upon men—all because they fall into this temptation of material pragmatism.

And then we read: “The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. The love of money, not money, which some having coveted after, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”

I don’t know about you, but “pierced themselves through with many sorrows”—I immediately thought of Judas. I immediately thought of Judas when I read that text. And what was Judas’s sin? Why did the 30 pieces of silver—he kept the box, right? Kept the box originally for the apostles, and it became a temptation. The temptation became a snare for him. And then the 30 pieces of silver is what he wanted above all else. And he got his 30 pieces of silver, but he did so at great cost.

“What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” In Judas, all he got was 30 pieces of silver. But he knew the value at the end. He knew what he had done. That’s part of hell—a self-consciousness about your own sin. He got rid of the 30 pieces. Didn’t want those anymore. Pierced through to his soul’s destruction.

Esau knew: “I sold my birthright for this mess of pottage.”