239 – DANGER IN THE CHURCHJanuary 21, 1962
Pastor Henry F. Kulp
I Timothy 1: 1 - 11 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope; Unto Timothy, my own son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus, when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine, Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do. Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned: From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling; Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm. But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;
Paul commissioned Timothy to go to Ephesus and charge some that were there that they teach no other doctrine, neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies.
1/ Then when we go to Revelations, we find in Revelations 2: 1 - 7 Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, which I also hate. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
Timothy was successful in guiding this church. These seven churches are churches which did exist in the past. This is not the primary interpretation, but it does give us some facts about the church there. These facts will be in existence in the future as well. But, verse 4 tells us, God says, nevertheless, I have somewhat against thee, because thou hath left thy first love. Notice, this is less than a century later. Even though He said, verse 2 that thou has tried them which say that they are apostles and are not and found them liars, found them to be false.Yet in spite of all this there was something lacking. The church had left its first love. We should be careful not to mistake this for brotherly love—it refers to love for Jesus Christ. Now their works were wonderful, but God is a jealous God, and Jesus Christ is a jealous God. He wants to have our love first and foremost—He wants to be first in our hearts. And you know what finally happened in this church at Ephesus—they were suffering from heart-departure from Christ.Things that had come to occupy first place in their hearts that Christ alone should occupy.
2/ Now the word Ephesus, means desirable. It is the term that a Greek applied to the maiden of choice. But this desirable one had lost its first-love. It is true they were still saved—not lost, still had a message, still worked for God, but they didn’t have the joy in working for the Lord that they once did. Their work was a burden. Now they did these things, but they were things that they found hard to do, where before they did them with great ease, they had lost their first love for Jesus Christ.
3/ Whenever I think of this, about Ephesus losing its first love I always think of Jacob. Remember he could work for seven years for the hand of Rachel because he loved her, and remember
Genesis 29: 20 And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.
The seven years seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had foe her. We can work real hard, but that work can be bitter unless it is soften and sweetened with love. We can work for God with clinched fists, and the gritting teeth, saying it’s got to be done, so we do it. But that is not the way God wants us to work for Him. He wants this work to be easy because of the love we have for Him. But God expects us to do hard things, and love enables us to work hard for Him. You can picture Timothy in the midst of that snarling pack of wolves, and you might say here at Ephesus, here there was disputing about this doctrine, or that doctrine, but he could trust Timothy. He could leave Timothy there and Timothy was used of God in that church, or in those assemblies.
4/ Now notice what Timothy was to do there in this area. He was to charge some, there wasn’t too many here, but there were some, they weren’t to teach any other doctrine, they weren’t to give heed to fables or endless genealogies.There is one we must keep in mind here. This was easy to happen, because there was no Bible as we know it today. There was not written scriptures as we know them today, that is on the New Testament. It was easy for the heretics to gain credence with their doctrine by creating fables about the Lord Jesus Christ. Some Fantastic stories of His childhood, for instance some of them are still in existence. The word genealogies, quite often was translated with mystical history. The word, fables, could be myths, so all this was the result of imagination. Somebody came inn and he wanted to gain a hearing and so he invented things about the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice what Paul calls these things.
I Timothy 4: 7 But refuse profane and old wives' fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness.
They are called profane, and old wives myths, or fables. So these teachers from without, and the teachers from within, they used to make up things and to push these off on the folks. So what did it do? It brought up questions—questions that couldn’t be answered. Questions out of the word of God are fine because we can dig into the word of God and find the answer, but when we go outside the word of God we do not have the answer to our questions. Whenever we have a question about something, we should keep digging into the word of God until we get the answer. But naturally, with these myths, these things these men made up, you cannot find the answer in the word of God, because it is not in the word of God.
5/ Titus evidently had the same trouble, for in Titus 1: 10, 11 For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.
where it says there are many unruly and vain talkers especially they of the circumcision—those who came in with empty things—things other than what the Word of God actually taught as Paul taught it.
6/ Then Paul tells Timothy in verse 5 that the end, or the goal of the charge is charity or love, the charge should produce love, and I am sure this meant among the brethren. But the endless genealogies and the fables, they produced as vs. 6 tells us, vain jangling? Why it is arguing isn’t it? Of course it is. Here is a principle that everyone should recognize. Teaching should not produce arguing, but should produce love. You will find as we go back to the law-keeper, that we talked about when we were studying Galatians, these folks who are always judging other people. They never really have love in what they teach—it does not produce love for one another, but rather vain jangling—the looking down the nose at other folks.
7/ Right doctrine, and right teaching should produce love, not enmity, not hatred. If what I teach is true, it should not cause me to despise those who do not agree with me, but it should cause me to love them anyway and try to help and to be kind to them—not to be finding fault with them constantly.
8/ I Timothy 1: 7 Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm.
Now he says, they desire to be teachers of the law. I do not think there are any good teachers of the law, I never knew anybody who tried to teach the law who did not get into trouble. And did not get folks who followed them in trouble. God has not raised up teachers of the law. I don’t see why folks don’t get through with the law, when God says get through with it. There may be many of you listening to my voice this morning who say, we need the law, we have to have it—we know that grace saves, we still have to have it.
9/ Are you saved? Then you are righteous in Christ. Then the law is not for you. The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient. You see, if you cling to the law that is where you put yourself. You put yourself among the lawless and disobedient. The law is not made for the righteous man. God has made us righteous in Christ and the law is set aside, we have nothing to do with it.
10/ Now you will notice the things that are enumerated here—if you are in that class, then you better go to the law, for the law was written for you to show you the evil of your sin. But you show me a scripture that tells you that the law is teacher—it isn’t. The law is a schoolmaster, yes, to bring Israel to Christ, but it is the grace of God that teacheth.
Titus 2: 11, 12 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;
12/ The answer to this law-keeping is the Gospel, the glorious Gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust, Verse 11 Notice, it is a glorious Gospel, and it is of a happy God, for that word blessed should be translated, happy.
One day when I was reading G. Campbell Morgan, in his searchlights from the Word, I came across this and was thrilled by it—“A happy God has given us this glorious Gospel.”
13/ You may misunderstand this word, happy. We have folks who say—Happy New Year! Are you a happy person? Or so and so is a happy person. When the world says, happy, they have one thought in mind, for that word comes from the word, haphazard—it is something that depends upon happenings—in other words, you can be happy because certain things happen in your life—if you have happy things happen in your life, you have happiness, if you have bad thing in your life, you are unhappy. But this is not the word that Paul uses in writing to Timothy.
14/ The Bible many times uses the word, happy, and quite often it is translated, blessed, but in reality, its meaning is happy. Now the Greek language brings out the difference that I have been trying to talk to you about. First of all, there are two Greek words with distinct, different meaning, and they are both translated by either blessed or happy. The first one MUCK—KAR’—EE—OS. This was used by Greek writers when they were speaking of the happiness of deity, of the gods. Then the word was U—DIE—MON and the Greek writers used this of human happiness. Now you will notice in that word, U-die-mon—you have the word, DIE—MON—E—OWN and right away you get the word, demon. Did demon is what Udiemon means. In other words they thought there were demons that brought good luck and good fortune. When you hear someone say, my, he is lucky, or he has good luck, it is going back to the thought of the Greek days when the demons would bring good luck or good fortune. Now the Bible does not use this word. Because we do not have good luck or good fortune.
15/ True happiness comes only from God. I Timothy 6: 15 Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords;
Where we read, He is the blessed, the happy, and only Potentate. True happiness is an attribute of God, and God tries to put this attribute in those who believe in Him.
16/ God’s people should be happy people.
Deuteronomy 33: 29 Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is the sword of thy excellency! and thine enemies shall be found liars unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places.
And here we read, happy art thou, O Israel, these are the last words from the mouth of Moses before he ascended Mt. Nebo, that is where he died. God’s people are, and of course must be, a happy people, following Him. True happiness does not come from the world—the world knows nothing about it. But God’s people should be happy. Here Israel was God’s chosen people and they were meant to be a happy people.
17/ But how, what would cause the children of Israel to be a happy people? It is brought out to us in Romans 4: 6 Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works,
Here we have Paul quoted from a person living under the Old Testament, he lived under the law, and here he described the happiness of a man whom the Lord imputed righteousness without works. So you can see they were happy because they had this situation in God.
18/ Luke 11: 28 But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.
Here we have a principle that runs through the Bible. Blessed are they who hear the Word of God and keep it. And that word, blessed is the same word, it should be happy are they who hear the Word of God and keep it. This runs through the Word. Let’s just get another example of it very quickly.
Revelations 1: 3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.
We are happy when we heed the Word of God. I don’t have time to go into this more fully, but it is a truth, a man whose sins are forgiven, has been made righteous, is happy if he recognizes the situation—a man who heeds the Word of God is happy.
19/ Titus 2:13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;
Here we have the happy hope. The happy hope when Jesus Christ appears in the Heavens for us. This is the way God makes us happy today. He makes us happy through the Word. When you turn to the Word, and you find something that is wonderful there, it just thrills your heart and makes you happy, and then when you keep your eyes on the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ, it brings happiness to you. You can be going through some horrible situation, you can be going through some testing, but you think, Jesus Christ could appear in the Heavens and catch me out of the world today. It is happy thought isn’t it? This happy God wants us to be happy, and happiness of this nature can only come from God.
20/ Then Paul says something in verse 11, that no one else has been able to say—The Gospel was committed unto him. Undoubtedly this grace gospel, the mystery was given to Paul and not to others.
21/ I would like to clear up some things that people say. They hear us speak about Paul, and they hear us say his name quite often, and they are those who seem to think we are putting Paul in a positon above Christ but this is not, in fact, in the last while back, there has been a movement called, “Back to Christ,” and that movement was started partly by those who believe that in talking about Paul and Pauline truths, we are getting away from the Lord Jesus Christ. Now that is not true. We only speak about Paul because Paul was given the distinctive truth that is for us in this age in which we live.
22/ There is a lot of misunderstanding by people who go into the Bible promiscuously, going to the Bible as though the entire Bible was for the church. Now, I frankly admit that the whole Bible was written for the church, but the whole Bible is not about the church. Most of the Bible was written about the Jews, but there is a distinctive part of the Bible that was written to and for the church of Jesus Christ, and that is that which was given directly to Paul.
AMEN
Ref: 01/21/1962 / 239 - DANGER IN THE CHURCH / 05/18/2021
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