All right, friends, welcome back as we finish up a week in 2 Timothy.
Probably not.
Well, we won’t get to the end of the second chapter,
but we continue our way through the
second chapter.
We’re in verse 14.
I think some interesting stuff today.
I hope you will feel that as well as Paul continues to write to Timothy.
In some ways,
our context today is broad and a little bit all over the place,
but some really – I think some really good handholds,
some good jumping off points.
So let me read a few verses,
and then we’ll circle back and talk about them.
“Remind them of this and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over
words which does no good,
but only ruins those who are listening.
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by Him,
a worker who has no need to be ashamed,
rightly explaining the word of truth.
Avoid profane chatter, for it will lead people into more and more impiety,
and their talk will spread like gangrene.”
Let’s stop there, Michael, and then we’ll jump into the other stuff here in a minute.
So a good encouragement,
remind people of this.
We saw that yesterday,
this bit, “If we endure, if we deny, if we are faithless, He’s faithful.”
Remind them of this and warn them.
And here we get a little bit of an echo.
If you were with us in 1 Timothy,
we get an echo here.
Remind them not to wrangle over words,
not to be involved in these
fruitless arguments
over words, over terms.
And I love what Paul says here,
“It does no good,
but only ruins those who are listening.”
In other words, as new believers come to that,
as people who are still learning the gospel
come and hear these
inane arguments over this versus that.
The closest I can come to this, Michael,
is when we went to seminary,
when I went to seminary, Jane and I,
we would gather with other students,
many of whom were also married.
And I always felt terrible for the spouses,
because the students would naturally talk
about these things we were learning in class and these ridiculous,
very specific,
very esoteric theological arguments.
And my wife’s eyes would just glass over,
and she always thought,
“How can you make the faith
sound so boring and ridiculous,
and who cares about any of this?
None of this has to do with Jesus.”
Which isn’t exactly true,
but as an outsider,
you can see the point.
And there is a danger in that as these new believers come into an
environment where there’s contention, where there’s conflict, and where they don’t understand why you’d even be doing that.
It’s an interesting phrase.
It ruins those who are listening. So that’s an apt example,
I would only add.
There is a kind of fighting that is all about the words themselves and not the kind of substance behind the words.
That is in every family,
and it’s certainly in every church family.
The word here, Clint,
that is translated that way on that wrangling is logomacheos.
So this is why I love this gloss of it,
which by the way,
logos is the Greek word for word.
So it’s a compound word here with word combined with this thing that gives us the sense of
wrangling.
But this is what I love about this.
Here, I’m going to just pop this up so that you can see this.
Well, you’re going to have to have really good eyes.
Sorry,
this glosses it.
This is the gloss of that word, to be disputatious,
which is ironic given the subject matter.
But maybe fitting in the sense that
if you’ve ever been around someone who is,
let me use the word,
disputatious, it really doesn’t matter what you say,
you will be disputed.
Right?
It doesn’t matter what the content of the words are.
It’s actually an arguing about words.
That’s certainly true of seminary.
I would actually argue it’s also true of first and second graders,
that you say a thing and they just want to argue with the thing that you said,
even though what you said is perfectly fine.
They want to argue with every particular sort of word that they have,
that they have a better word for.
Whatever.
The serious version of this is,
in the church, we claim to be people who stand under the word.
And when I say that,
I mean with a capital W,
I mean the Johannine sense of,
we stand under Jesus Christ.
He’s our teacher.
In fact,
who he is,
is always the one in whom we’re called to learn and to model in our own lives.
When we become so obsessed with little words,
lowercase W, when we become obsessed with the fruit of what we say and know,
the containing of information,
the lording that over other people.
When it becomes a fight over that kind of term,
then we fail to stand under the power of the risen one.
And that is maybe one of Paul’s greatest spiritual gifts,
Clint, is his ability to turn the church away from its temptations to self,
its sort of inner
selfishness, and to turn it back to Christ.
And I think one can make the case that’s what he’s doing here.
I think Paul is clearly aware that when we have those moments of conflict,
and particularly when they’re not profitable conflicts,
we do exactly that.
We take the focus off of Jesus and we put it on these other things.
Often we put it on self and our own pride in initiating those kinds of arguments.
And so in contrast, Paul encourages Timothy,
do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him,
a worker with no need to be ashamed,
rightly explaining the word of truth.
In other words,
don’t get involved in these profitless arguments,
this wrangling over words,
rightly explain the word of truth.
And then there’s a wonderful,
I think a very open-ended phrase here, Michael,
avoid profane chatter.
And people have sought to define that,
I suppose, and we could add a great number of words to that.
That could be gossip,
that could be meaningless talk,
the word profane, it could mean things that are inappropriate as well.
But it is this large category of speech,
which Paul says is best avoided for the Christian,
because it leads people into more and more impiety.
It leads them away from Jesus,
profane chatter.
And I think the combination of those two words is really interesting.
On one hand,
it is ungodly,
profanity, that’s the root, it is ungodly.
And secondly,
it’s chatter, it’s noise, it has no benefit,
it has no meaning,
there’s no depth or substance to it.
It is simply fingernails on a chalkboard that leads people not to Christ,
but away from Him.
That’s a wonderful phrase,
avoid profane chatter.
We could all strive to do that to some level more than we do, I’m sure.
Yeah,
the profanity here is not what we think of when we think of profanity,
the swearing or the cussing.
I mean, certainly,
that’s probably in the field.
But what is in mind here is the thing that lives in somebody else’s camp.
I just learned this here today,
Clint.
But it’s interesting, this word itself,
if you were going to be literal about it,
means across the doorway.
Sort of that thing that lives out there that you don’t need to bring into your house.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had a kid bring a song home that you would prefer not to have
played in your home,
and you need to process that with them.
There’s a kind of,
there’s the world doing the world.
This is one thing I really appreciate about Paul.
Paul never seems to get fussed when the world does worldly things.
Paul never seems particularly–
Expects it.
Yeah, he’s not out to go rant and rave about the stuff that those people are doing.
What he’s very intentional about saying is that stuff doesn’t come home.
You don’t need to bring that into the family circle.
That doesn’t need to be in the church.
Don’t replace the sacred words that stand under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Do not replace those with the trivial,
with the meaningless.
You know,
I think in some ways,
Clint, we have trivialized the idea of what is being spoken
here.
When we make it all about whether or not you swear or whether or not you say something
that is culturally inappropriate,
that is the smallest sense of,
I think, what Paul means here.
When we as Christians are tempted to speak about things that have no material value
while we claim to be the people who hold the most beautiful treasure that exists.
That is the good news of Jesus Christ.
When we replace that depth of treasure with sheer ramblings and just words that have no
constructive value to the community,
that is in itself a kind of loss.
I hear a note of that here, what Paul’s saying.
Yeah, so my Bible has an interesting footnote.
The verse above, the words rightly explaining can be translated “cutting straight.”
In other words, a straight line.
And if you imagine profane chatter,
it’s just the opposite of that.
It is crooked.
It is multifaceted.
It is not one line that is true.
It is this sort of spiderweb of falseness and falsehood.
And then verse 17,
I don’t know if you could call this poetic,
but there are certainly times where Paul is descriptive in a wonderful way.
Because that talk, their talk, now accusing the false leaders of doing this wrangling and this profane chattering,
their talk will spread like gangrene, like an infection,
like bacteria.
It is poisonous not only in those who do it,
but it is poisonous as it spreads to others.
And in Paul’s estimation,
at least potentially, spreads very quickly.
Clint,
that is fascinating because we often…
We sometimes make the mistake of thinking that Paul is all about grace and faith,
and that someone like James is all about works.
May I remind you,
James says essentially this very same thing,
that the tongue can light a fire and fires can start entire forests ablaze.
So here we’re seeing the power of the tongue being shared across some of these New Testament
writers, which I think is an interesting thing to note.
Another word that sticks out to me,
I want to point this out to you before we pass on it,
is verse 15, “A worker who has no need to be ashamed.”
And I don’t know about you.
If you remember, just a few days back, we had “ashamed”
come up in our text.
And interestingly,
Paul was making reference to this individual who was not ashamed.
So I want to pull this up for you.
This is chapter 1,
verse 16,
“May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Anish for us,
because he often refreshed me, and was what?
Not ashamed of my chain.”
I think there’s an interesting connection there.
What are we ashamed of?
It is an interesting question to ask the Christian.
Are we ashamed of the gospel that we’ve been given?
Are we ashamed of the suffering that sometimes comes along the way of faith?
Of course, remembering that Paul is experiencing a kind of suffering because of his faith,
but we believe he’s in captivity at this point.
So when he says that a worker has no need to be ashamed,
that clearly means that it has nothing to do with the outcome,
right?
It’s not that you shouldn’t be ashamed because all the time things are going to pan out for you,
or that you’re going to rise the ladder,
or that people are going to see and esteem you
as they should.
It’s rather that one shouldn’t be ashamed because of the substance of the message.
The fact that this is put inside this section,
which we’re talking about,
idle talk, chatter,
there’s no quicker way to find shame than to open our mouth and say that thing that we shouldn’t have said.
The truth is,
one of the quickest ways to stay true to the core of the gospel,
Clint, is to fundamentally be careful about what we’re willing to talk about,
to measure with some discernment our words.
And I think it all kind of fits together in a neat way here today.
Certainly true for all of us,
but especially true for those who serve at some level as leaders.
And so as Paul commends to Timothy a path of leadership that avoids those things,
he does a very interesting thing in naming,
sharing the names,
shaming literally those probably known to the community who have fallen into that trap.
So let me continue here.
“Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetas,
who have swerved from the truth by claiming that
the resurrection has already taken place.
They are upsetting the faith of some.
But God’s firm inscription, the Lord knows who are His,
and let everyone who calls on the name of the Lord
turn away from wickedness.” So very interesting.
Again,
remember that this is likely being read
in the church in public hearing,
and it is bold for Paul to name these men as false teachers,
to criticize them for leading people astray.
Some have swerved, some have gone off the path
of truth by listening to these men claiming that the resurrection has already taken place.
They are upsetting,
they are turning upside down,
knocking over the faith of some people.
So there was evidently this small group that believed that this,
what we would call something like the rapture,
and those are difficult words because they don’t really exist yet at this point
as a theological concept
in the scripture,
but the idea that people have already been
resurrected, that we may not be waiting for that,
it has already happened.
And in teaching that, they are
disregarding what Paul understands to be one of the core messages of the faith,
which is that we are waiting for Christ to come and receive us and renew us.
And so whatever exactly the
controversy is, Paul is concerned enough about it that he calls them out by name and certainly makes
it clear to that community that he is not in favor of people listening to them.
I think, you know,
these are one of the moments I think when we see Paul as a strong,
I don’t think I’d go so far,
Michael, is to say heavy-handed leader,
but certainly when he needs to be forceful,
when Paul
needs to get his back up and stand firm,
he is not afraid of conflict and he is not afraid
of stepping on toes.
Yeah, when he says, “Follow me as I follow Christ,” he means by that he has a
place in mind, he has a direction.
Paul’s not listless in his leadership.
I think that may make
us uncomfortable in some places.
If there is a Hall of Fame for biblical characters,
I guarantee you this is not the way that you wanted to get your name in the Bible.
I mean, there’s a sense, I guess, in which, “Hey, I’m in there.
We’re all sinners saved by grace.” But to have Paul name
you as one who is swerved,
particularly as it relates to the idea of resurrection,
which he’s just named as being central to the Gospel.
I mean, this is,
to your point,
this is a strong censure.
And when you figure that this is being said in the midst of a room of people who know these
individuals, it is possible, maybe unlikely, possible they’re in the room.
I mean,
that should settle on us a little bit,
Clint. I think that should strike us.
No, there is a moment in
which we’ve transgressed the boundary that Paul says that’s swerving,
that’s off.
You’re off the mark and you need name for it.
And it matters.
It matters a great deal at that point in time that
this is coming from Paul.
I mean, this is the guy.
I mean,
he’s probably founded this church.
They know him, they’ve looked to him,
they’ve heard the Gospel from him.
He’s responsible for planning these seeds.
And he’s now saying these men have left the path.
They’ve driven off the road in
regards to the truth.
They took the wrong ramp and they’re not on the right road.
I sort of smile
imagining Timothy having to read that on that given morning and say,
“Yeah.” Thanks, Paul.
Appreciate that.
A lot.
But again,
and we’ve said this before,
sometimes Paul gets a bad reputation.
Occasionally, maybe he earns a little of it.
I’m not sure.
But Paul is not just squabbling here because he
doesn’t like what…
Paul understands this to be a battle for the heart and soul of the church and
what the church believes and what the church teaches.
And he believes that these men are
dangerous because they are spreading like gangrene,
this false idea, this
profane chatter.
This is the profane chatter he’s talking about.
He’s not saying, “Oh yeah, they said some swear
words or told an off-color joke.” He’s saying they’re teaching something that isn’t in keeping
with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and they’re trying to spread it and they have to be stopped.
We have to call them to account because it threatens the
true teaching of the Gospel of
Jesus Christ.
And so when he says profane chatter,
yes, there’s a lesson in that for all of us,
but this is particularly what he has in mind in regard to the passage.
I don’t want to rush on without making the point that we do learn something from the places where
particularly the New Testament writers dig in,
where they draw crimson lines.
I think that does
matter as we seek to live out the faith today.
And here it is striking that resurrection is clearly
an issue that Paul is willing to name.
He’s willing to name these individuals.
He’s already said that the resurrection of Christ was central to his Gospel.
We live in a world…
the church in our own present day is beset by lots of controversies,
many conversations that are
hard and that need to be had.
That said,
you know, Clint, I think there are some times in which we
overemphasize the rigor of the conversation in the wrong places.
I mean,
we should be very clear
we’re the people of the resurrection and there are a lot of people who that makes uncomfortable.
There’s a lot of people say that’s not for me.
That’s okay.
In fact, we should be a welcoming
place to come in and let’s live into what we claim to be true.
Let’s ask difficult questions
about it.
Let’s seek faith in it.
But I guess the point I want to make is just don’t mistake the
idea that resurrection is somehow not an issue for the church anymore.
I mean, this remains, I think, an important
conversation that we should have.
And we are very quick,
I think, to jump into other conversations and miss some of these essential New Testament teachings.
And so I think it’s worth pointing out as we rest here.
Absolutely.
And just maybe almost along the
lines of biblical trivia,
if you’ve been with us in 1 Timothy and you thought,
“Heimanias,” that sounds vaguely familiar,
Paul also called him out in the first letter of Timothy in verse 20 of chapter 1,
“Shipwreck in their faith among them,
Heimanias and Alexander, who I turned over to Satan,
that they may learn not to blaspheme.” So Heimanias has, I think,
the distinction of maybe
being the only person that Paul’s not a fan of named in two different letters in the New Testament.
Shipwreck and gangrene.
Not good.
Yeah, neither of those terms we want to apply to.
Yeah,
Heimanias is not on Paul’s,
not on Paul’s, “You’re doing great” list.
For sure.
Wherever you are and whoever you are,
we’re glad that you would spend some time with us today.
We look forward to seeing you next week,
which is a wonderful Memorial Day weekend,
and we will see you soon.
Remember, we’ll be Wednesday next week.
That’s right.
Yeah, no Tuesday.
See you next week.
Thanks, everybody.