Lesson 06 “Godliness
vs. Apostasy” 1
Timothy 3:14-4:5
ID:
Inductive Questions (Asking the text questions like who, what, where, when,
why, & how?”)
CR: Cross
References (Comparing Scripture to Scripture, understanding the vague by the
clear.)
WS: Word
Study (Understanding definition, theological meaning, and usages in other
passages.)
The WORD: What does the Bible say?
Context: Read 1 Timothy
3:8-4:11 to understand the context of this passage. Then read 1 Timothy 3:14-4:5 in a more literal
or more dynamic
translation than you usually use.
1. ID: (3:14-15) What insights do verses 14-15 give about why
Paul wrote 1 Timothy?
2. ID: (3:15) What do these verses teach us about the nature
and purpose of the church?
3. CR: (3:16) Find where these events are recorded
in the Gospels.
4. ID: (4:1-2) How are these false teachers described?
5. ID: (4: 3) What false teachings did these false teachers
promote? How serious are these false
teachings? What religious groups
practice these “doctrines of demons” today?
6.
ID: (4:4-5) What
reasoning does Paul provide to contradict this specific false teaching about
abstaining from certain foods? (Genesis
1:29-31; Acts 10:10-15)
The WALK:
What should I do?
1. How do the items in this ancient confession or hymn
compare with the content of current doctrinal statements and hymns? (See the TBC Articles of Faith below)
2. Is there a difference between not eating certain foods
to be more healthy and not partaking for “spiritual” reasons? How does this false teaching relate to
fasting?
3. How do we keep a vigilant eye out for false teachers
without pouncing on everybody for honest differences and secondary errors?
4. What causes our conscience (syneidēsis) to become
seared (kaustēriazō)? (Rom.
1:28; Eph. 4:19)
5. Would common sayings like “let your conscience be your
guide” or “to your own heart be true” have helped these false teachers? What lessons are for us?
Going Beyond: 1 Timothy 3:16 was probably an ancient chorus
or creed and is a great verse to memorize and meditate on. If you like to use music in Scripture memory,
this chorus might be useful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NFw5iumK-8
q
The Bible (Bibliology) q God (Theology Proper) q
The Father (Paterology) q The
Son (Christology) q The Holy Spirit (Pneumatology) q
Man (Anthropology) q Salvation (Soteriology) q
The Church (Ecclesiology) q Angels & Satan (Angelology) q
Future Things (eschatology)
THE
WORD OF GOD
The next three articles
deal with revelation. Article III defines what we mean when we say that the
Bible is revelation and not merely a witness to revelation, as is affirmed by
the neo-orthodox theologians. Article IV considers the use of human language as
a vehicle for divine revelation. Article
V notes the way in which the revelation of God unfolds progressively throughout
Scripture so that later texts more fully expound the earlier ones. In these
articles the framers of the Statement guard against any view which would lessen
the unique nature of the Bible as God’s written revelation or negate the
teaching of some parts of it by appeal to other parts
ARTICLE
IV: HUMAN LANGUAGE
We affirm that
God who made mankind in his image has used language as a means of revelation.
We deny that
human language is so limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered
inadequate as a vehicle for divine revelation.
We further deny that
the corruption of human culture and language through sin has thwarted God’s
work of inspiration.
One of the
most significant attacks on biblical inerrancy that has come to light in the
twentieth century is that based on the limitations of human language. Since the Bible was not written by God
himself, but by human writers, the question has emerged again and again whether
such human involvement by virtue of the limitations built in human
creatureliness would, of necessity, render the Bible less than infallible. Since
men are not infallible in and of themselves, and are prone to error in all that
they do, would it not follow logically that anything coming from the pen of man
must be errant? To this we reply,
erroneousness is not an inevitable concomitant of human nature. Adam, before the fall, may well have been free
from proneness to error, and Christ, though fully human, never erred. Since the fall it is a common tendency of men
to err. We deny, however, that it is
necessary for men to err always and everywhere in what they say or write, even
apart from inspiration.
However, with
the aid of divine inspiration and the superintendence of the Holy Spirit in the
giving of sacred Scripture, the writings of the Bible are free from the normal
tendencies and propensities of fallen men to distort the truth. Though our language, and especially our
language about God, is never comprehensive and exhaustive in its ability to
capture eternal truths, nevertheless it is adequate to give us truth without
falsehood. For example, if we made a
statement that Chicago is a city in the state of
Illinois, the
truth communicated by that statement would in no way be exhaustive. That is, all that could possibly be understood
of the nature and scope of the city of Chicago
would not be known by any human being who made such a statement, nor would all
the complexities that go into and comprise the state of Illinois be understood totally by the
speaker. Certainly if God made the
statement, “Chicago is a city in the state of Illinois,” within his mind there would be total
comprehension of all that is involved in Chicago
and Illinois.
Nevertheless, the fact that God makes
the statement “Chicago is a city in the state of
Illinois” would
not in itself make the statement more or less true than if a human being made
the statement. Though we recognize that
human language is limited by creatureliness, we do not allow the inference that
therefore human language must necessarily be distortive of truth.
If human language were to
be judged intrinsically inadequate to convey revelation, there would be no
possible means by which God could reveal anything about himself to us in verbal
form. Since, however, the Bible teaches
that man is created in the image of God and that there is some point of
likeness between man and God, communication between God and man is possible. Such possibility of communication is built
into creation by God himself. With
respect to the denial that human language is so limited that it is rendered
inadequate, particularly in view of the effects of sin on our human culture and
language, we must say that though man’s fall renders us guilty before the
divine judgment and, though “all men are liars,” it does not follow necessarily
that therefore “all men lie all the time.”
Though all of us lie at one time or another, this does not mean that we
lie every time we speak. Again, that
tendency toward corruption, distortion and falsehood is precisely that which we
believe to be overcome by the divine inspiration and involvement in the
preparation of Holy Scripture. Thus, we
think that skepticism about biblical integrity based on inferences drawn from
the adequacy or inadequacy of human speech is unwarranted.
TULSA BIBLE CHURCH ARTICLES OF FAITH
The doctrine to which the Church
requires the assent of all applicants for Membership is contained in the
following Articles of Faith:
1.
The Bible,
consisting of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, is the Word of God,
a supernaturally given revelation from God Himself, concerning Himself, His being,
nature, character, will, and purposes; and concerning man, his nature, need,
duty, and destiny. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are without
error or misstatement in their moral and spiritual teachings and record of
historical facts. They are without error or defect of any kind.
2.
There is one God, eternally existing and manifesting
Himself to us in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
3.
Our
Lord Jesus was supernaturally
conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, a lineal
descendant of David. He lived and taught and wrought mighty works and wonders
and signs exactly as is recorded in the four Gospels. He was put to death by
crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. God raised from the dead the body that had
been nailed to the cross. The Lord Jesus after His crucifixion shows Himself
alive to His disciples, appearing unto them by the space of forty days. After
this, the Lord Jesus ascended into heaven and the Father caused Him to sit at
His right hand in heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power
and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in
that which is to come, and put all things in subjection under His feet and gave
Him to be Head over all things to the Church.
4.
The Lord Jesus
before His incarnation existed in the form of God and of His own choice laid
aside His divine glory and took upon Himself the form of a servant and was made
in the likeness of men. In His preexistent state, He was with God and was God.
He is a divine person possessed of all of the attributes of Deity and should be
worshipped as God by angels and men." In Him dwelleth all the fullness of
the Godhead bodily." All the words that He spoke during His earthly life
are the words of God. There is absolutely no error of any kind in them and by
the words of Jesus Christ; the words of all other teachers must be tested.
5.
The
Lord Jesus became in every respect a real man, possessed of all the essential
characteristics of human nature.
6.
By
His death upon the cross, the Lord Jesus made a perfect atonement for sin, by
which the wrath of God against sinners is appeased and a ground furnished upon
which God can deal in mercy with sinners. He redeemed us from the curse of the
law by becoming a curse in our place. He who Himself was absolutely without sin
was made to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God
in Him. The Lord Jesus is coming again to this earth, personally, bodily, and
visibly. The return of our Lord is the blessed hope of the believer and in it
God's purpose of grace toward mankind will find its consummation.
7.
The
Holy Spirit is a person and is
possessed of all the distinctively divine attributes. He is God.
8.
Man was created in the
image of God, after His likeness, but the whole human race fell in the fall of
the first Adam. All men, until they accept the Lord Jesus as their personal
Savior, are lost, darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of
God through the ignorance that is in them, hardened in heart, morally and spiritually
dead through their trespasses and sins. They cannot see nor enter the kingdom
of God until they are born again of the Holy Spirit.
9.
Men are justified on the simple and
single ground of the shed blood of Christ and upon the simple and single
condition of faith in Him who shed the blood, and are born again by the
quickening, renewing, cleansing work of the Holy Spirit through the
instrumentality of the Word of God.
10. All those who
receive Jesus Christ as their Savior and their Lord and who confess Him as
such before their fellow men become heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus
Christ. At death, their spirits depart to be with Christ in conscious
blessedness, and at the second coming of Christ, their bodies shall be raised
and transformed into the likeness of the body of His glory.
11.
All
those who persistently reject Jesus
Christ in the present life shall be raised from the dead and throughout
eternity exist in a state of conscious, unutterable, endless torment and
anguish. (continued)
12. The Church consists of all those who, in this present
dispensation, truly believe on Jesus Christ. It is the body and bride of
Christ, which Christ loves and for which Christ has given Himself up.
13.
There
is a personal devil, a being of
great cunning and power. "The prince of the power of the air."
"The prince of this world." "The god of this age." He can
exert vast power only so far as God suffers him to do so. He shall ultimately
be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone and shall be tormented day and
night forever.
Leader Notes:
WORD:
1-3. Don’t be
in such a hurry to get to those juicy false teachers and what they teach that
you short change these glorious truths about the church and the mystery of
godliness.
“It is now generally recognized that this
paragraph is the heart of the Pastoral corpus . . ., which puts the
instructions of the corpus into proper perspective.” –Thomas Constable
3. Dr.
Utley’s Free
Bible Commentary will be helpful on this question.
4. This question is pretty broad, so dive in. Included is the issue of what it means that
they “fell away.” Avoid the bias of
common theological usage and use a good word study and context to identify the
meaning here.
5. I think
that taking a little time to track through Paul’s argument would be helpful for
1) understanding these specific errors and 2) learning how to reason with
Scripture. There are also Scriptures
that talk about when we should and shouldn’t marry, but I don’t think we will
have time to open that “can of worms.”
WALK:
3. This is huge!
We need to talk about the importance of not allowing serious error to
creep into the church while still being kind, patient, and charitable to
believers who have honest disagreements and non-critical errors. We also need to think about and discern what
“hills are and aren’t worth dying on.”
While we don’t kill people for differences over things like mode and
time of baptism like they did in the 1600’s, we might make them wish they were
dead by the way we treat them.
4-5. What I
am driving at with these questions is that while a tender conscience is
desirable and a seared conscience should be avoided, we cannot completely trust
our conscience.
→ I don’t have a question
about the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, but you might take a minute
to point it out.
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