Responsibilities and Reasons to respond to False Teaching in the Church Part 2 of 2

We gotta be discerning and not just follow preachers who are hip and cool.

For church leaders we have an obligation to protect the church from heresies.

Responsibilities and Reasons to respond to False Teaching in the Church

1 Timothy 1:3-7

Establish the need: It will happen; what will do you when there’s false teachings spreading in your own church?

Purpose: When there are false teachings in the church there are two Rs important for church leaders in the church to know.

1. Leaders have responsibilities to respond to false teaching in the church (v.3-4a)
2. Leaders need to know the reasons to oppose false teachings in the church (v.4b-7)

3 Just as I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, to remain on at Ephesus so that you would instruct certain people not to teach strange doctrines, 4 nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to useless speculation rather than advance the plan of God, which is by faith, so I urge you now. 5 But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from a sincere faith. 6 Some people have strayed from these things and have turned aside to fruitless discussion, 7 wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.

 

Setting the context:

• 1 Timothy 1:3-20 addresses the error in Ephesus (Mounce,14).
• Paul laid out Timothy’s first task is to deal with false teachers (Hiebert, 27).
• Verse 3 sets the tone for the entire chapter of 1 Timothy 1 (Mounce,14).
  1. Paul suddenly giving a specific exhortation without thanksgiving is a departure from how he normally writes but that shows how serious the problem is confronting Timothy and the church in Ephesus (Kitchen, 42).
  2. This lack of thanksgiving in an epistle when the issue is very serious can be seen in Galatians, 2 Corinthians and Titus (Mounce,15).
  3. Thus this shows how serious false teaching is!
• Many commentaries divide 1 Timothy 1:3-20 into four units, 3-7 followed by a digression in v.8-11, and another digression in v.12-17 and v.18-20 following up again with the topic left off in verse 7 (Mounce,13-14).
• We will look in this lesson at 1 Timothy 1:3-7.

In this post we will look at the second point and the second point in a later post.

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