2 Timothy lesson 9 cont.

Okay, so quick review. Turn your Bibles to 2 Timothy if you've got that. We're in chapter two. Last week we looked at verse 16, so I'll do a quick rundown. This class is like four times bigger than it was last week. So, take a review might be in order. So, last week, We looked at questions one through four.

So if any of you don't have questions, those are printed out in the back and we may need more. I don't I'm not sure there. So question one of last week, we looked at the word but. It starts with but, and anytime you see the word but in the Bible, you're thinking about what was prior to that.

But it reaches back twice, and it reaches back to, we talked about cut it straight and to be diligent. Those were the words that we really got down to. Cut the word of God straight, Timothy, and be diligent. And the diligence and the avoiding are the same instruction facing two different directions, right? That's what we looked at. And Wayne caught in the King James, the rightly dividing. And we talked a little bit about that last week as well. Handle it this way, Timothy, don't handle it that way. And that was kind of what we looked at.

And then question two, we looked at the word avoid, which is paristemi, turn around and walk. When the words are not accurate to the word of God, and you get caught up in worldly chatter, it leads to ungodliness. And Paul says, Timothy, your responsibility is to turn around and walk.

You don't engage. And some of the expositors that we read, we reached for the sea illustration, right? So keep your distance from the rocks. And Wayne brought up the icebergs and the Titanic. It's like steer clear of godless chatter, worldly chatter. And then we also looked at that word worldly, bebalos, outside the temple door. We said it doesn't mean filthy, because in some translations it could be thought of as worldly or filthy. It's not filthy in the sense that you might think. It means it belongs out in the street. It doesn't belong in the sanctuary, so to speak.

And the politics came up, and how politics sometimes get in the picture of God's Word and the conversations of God's Word. If I were to get up here and integrate my political views with the teaching of Second Timothy, I would be speaking worldly terms and mixing them with the Word of God. And so Timothy is warned against that. Carry it into the handling of God's Word and you've brought the street inside. So if you bring worldly chatter in, you're bringing the street talk inside. And a teacher's job is to know which side of the door he's standing on when he's talking about God's Word. We also talked about, in question three, empty chatter. We said that word is kinophonia. It's an empty sound. It's where we get phonia, the word, sound. So, kino being empty, so it's literally empty sound.

We talked about a word salad, you know, when the word of God just gets tossed around and about. We talked about static on the TV when words start to just be noise as opposed to actually founded in the word of God. And Trent said the line, Trent being one of the expositors, one of the commentators that we have for the notes here, Trent said the line we kept coming back to, the moral nature of man endures no vacuum, meaning empty words don't stay empty. You can't just unhear things. So Romans 1 came up, even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God. That's where that empty talk in the room comes in.

And then question four on godliness, it's not an attitude towards the rules, it's an attitude towards God. And a man's reverence can drain out while his behavior still looks fine. So treat holy things as common ground, and before long, you hold the holy one as common too. So you take God's word really loosely and you therefore end up taking God loosely himself.

So verse 16 told us what this talk does to the man who carries it. Verse 17 tells us what it does to everybody around the man who does these things, who engages in this type of talk. So, verse 17, someone read, let's go ahead and someone read 16 through 18. That's 2 Timothy chapter 2, 16 through 18. We'll get started.

But avoid worldly and empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, men who have gone astray from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and they upset the faith of some. They upset the faith of some. So question five, how do vain babblings or empty chatter spread? Like gangrene. Like gangrene, OK.

Well, that's a safe answer. Let's look at the word will spread. That's the word nome. In the King James Version, it will eat. will spread, will eat. So, and their talk will spread like gangrene. So, will spread, it carries the idea of pasturage, fodder, food. So, Paul pairs it with the word to have. So literally, the word will have pasturage. and so grow. So Thayer, again a commentator, gives it as growth, increase, will spread, growth, increase, will have pasturage.

It was the ordinary word for spreading a fire or a sword that spreads. So when you read in verse 16, will spread, picture an animal grazing a field bear. the animals have completely eaten across the entire pasture and it's bare. I think gangrene, we're gonna look at that word, but I also really like the fire spreading because we all have that picture in our mind. So Paul's telling Timothy that their words will spread like fire, like gangrene, like animals just mowing down pasturage in a field. So the answer to how it's really in the picture, it spreads the way an animal grazes across a field.

It's not a leap. It's not an explosion. Head down, mouthful by mouthful, and the pasture is gone. That's the picture of will spread. And like we said, the literal word is we'll have pastrage. That's the literal way of saying it. And it's a horror, really, because the talk isn't just spreading, it's being fed by something. Somebody is supplying the field. Somebody is supplying the fire, so to speak.

You know, J.D., just reminded in James, he talks about that in James 3, 5, so also the tongue is a small part of the body and it boasts great things. See how great a force is set aflame by such a small fire. And the tongue is fire, the very world of iniquity. So, again, the spreading of fire, empty chatter, empty things is like a fire.

Yeah, James saw that too. So we already know that the field is open in this scenario, and last week Trench told us that the moral nature of man endures no vacuum. So you can't just unhear what the fire is spreading. So the question is, or the thought is, is that an empty mind is an empty ground, it's open range. And that's the audience of the person that's engaging in these conversations. Mike.

I was just thinking about, I think Donna and I have become experts in arthritis. since she's got two brand new shoulders. But what happens is arthritis is a virus, and the virus eats away at the marrow or the joint between the bones. And with two shoulders now, one was different than the other. The one she just had done was much more severe, which means there was much less bone to work with. and it just insidiously is eating away. Yes. And it's painful. It is painful. We're going to look at something from the gangrene perspective here in a minute with question six, so I'm going to hold on to that one. Arthritis is in a very similar fashion there.

When we're thinking about this pasturage in the open field and that man is not an empty vacuum, you can't just unhear the godless chatter and the words being brought into the, you know, worldly terms being, worldly thoughts being brought into scriptural or godly terminology, it puts a question in front of, I think, each of us. When this kind of talk shows up in church or in a small group or maybe in a family text thread, who is providing the pasture? The pasture. Who's providing that?

You see, there's both sides of that. There's the godless chatter, and then who continues to provide and feed more and more of it. The Bible Knowledge Commentary says, participating with those who engage in such profane speculations will only literally give their words a feeding place like gangrene. They must be amputated instead. So here's the answer to the pasture question. Participating in the conversation is what supplies the field.

Every time we sit in it and add to it, we're handing it another mouthful, so to speak. And notice that the remedy is a surgeon's word, amputate. And do not negotiate with gangrene, as we'll see. So that's verse 16 all over again. Turn around and walk from that. Don't feed it. Don't provide pasturage for it. Don't spread it. And Macaulay says, the words empty chatter translate a single word, Kinophonies, which is a compound of empty and sound.

We talked about that. This chatter will be shown to be the teaching of erroneous doctrine concerning the resurrection. That's the context of 2 Timothy here. So there was erroneous doctrine concerning the resurrection that was spreading like gangrene, and two dudes were a part of it. We're going to talk about those guys.

So as Macaulay says, as is true of all error, it has the tendency to spread and thus the forceful metaphor of gangrene. So look at what Macaulay did there with that. that statement. He connected verse 16 to verse 18. The empty chatter is not vague. Paul is going to name it in two verses. It had a doctrine and it had an address. We're going to see it really quick here.

So question six. This is where we get to the arthritis and in this case the question is spiritual cancer deadly? Yeah. I find it interesting the contrast he puts here that in the previous verses he gives the instructions on what the believer is supposed to do regarding the word of God. You're supposed to study, learn what it is, get familiar, so that when the vein, when this babbling shows up, you can discern the difference. Right.

Gangrene. Their word will spread like gangrene. King James Version has it as canker. Some of you know what canker sores are like. Cancer. Our word gangrenate straight across from a verb meaning to gnaw, to eat. Thayer says, a disease in which an inflamed part becomes so corrupted that unless a remedy is applied in time, The evil continually spreads, attacks other parts, and at last eats away the bones. Nothing in lost is, in translation here, gangrene is literally the Greek word. So before we answer, is spiritual cancer deadly, why do you think the spirit chose this illness? What does gangrene do that other sicknesses don't?

I actually had to go research this, and it wasn't pretty. I mean, I knew it in general, but I studied it a little bit. And Google had to ask me if I wanted to turn safe images off. It's pretty gnarly. So is it deadly? Is gangrene deadly? Absolutely it is. It spreads, it attacks other parts, and it ends at the bone. So yes, it is very deadly.

But notice the clause sitting in the middle of that definition because it's kind of the pastoral one that Paul has to Timothy. Unless a remedy be seasonably applied, So in, I'm sorry, that's Thayer, but that's his pastoral thought towards this. Unless a remedy be seasonably applied, in season, applied in time.

So gangrene is deadly and it's also treatable. And the whole question is whether anybody moves towards a remedy soon enough, right? So this is why Paul is writing, this is not a man describing a disease, this is a physician telling a younger man what to do before it reaches bone. So how does a person get gangrene?

Most often, a part of the body gets cut off from its blood supply. No blood, no oxygen to a portion. Usually in the feet, the hands. Happens when you're in extreme cold. You guys know about that? It's a danger. So no oxygen, no blood, and the tissue starts to die. It turns green and then it turns black. And it starts where something has been cut off from its life source. And that's interesting, right? So think about how this metaphor is working for Paul and how gangrene actually works.

It does not hurt where it is killing you. You know why? Because the tissue is dead. The nerve endings are dead there. So you could hit it with a hammer and you're not necessarily going to feel that. You might feel the pressure. and the rest of your body, but that toe or that foot is not going to feel a knife cutting across it. Because the tissue is already dead. There's no pain to warn you.

Catch this. Bad doctrine feels fine to the person carrying it. It's just fine. The resurrection has already happened. Guys, what are you thinking? So, it also doesn't stay local to one area. And that's the difference between like, he could have used a bruise, but he didn't say bruise, he said gangrene, because it moves. Bruise is in place, it heals in place. This is a disease that travels throughout the body. It continues to kill flesh. Which is exactly what Paul said in verse 16, it advances. Towards what? Ungodliness. So before we start thinking about who's doing this today, in today's world, time, let's sit with the disease itself. We'll get to the names in this next question. For now, just feel how serious this is for Timothy to have heard this from Paul.

2 Timothy 2.18, men who have gone astray from the truth saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and they upset the faith of some. I've got you an expanded translation of 16 through 18, because I want you to hear this entire metaphor and also the direction that Paul was guiding Timothy towards in its whole. So kind of going back to verse 16 through 18, to roll into verse 18 here in an expanded translation. So, but, but with reference to unhallowed and empty discussions, give them a wide berth, wide opening, stay clear of the rocks, for they will progress to more impiety towards God, and their word will spread as does a gangrene, of whom are Hymenaeus and Philetus, the very ones who are of such a character as to have deviated from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place and are overthrowing the faith of certain ones. So we have in this verse 18, men who have gone astray. King James has it, have erred. Gone astray, have erred. So this word, astikeo, to deviate from, to miss the mark.

It's an archery word. So these guys, Hymenaeus and Philetus, they were aiming. They had their bow and arrow and they were aiming. They simply did not hit what they aimed at. That's what they say, they've gone astray. They've missed the mark. So when you read gone astray, read missed the target. They missed the target. Paul doesn't, doesn't say these men were not aiming at the truth, he says they missed it.

They took the shot. They weren't just sitting there believing in the resurrection as a future thing. They were believing in the resurrection, they just missed the truth of when it happens. We're going to talk a little bit about the background of the resurrection and the philosophy of the time. What did they miss it by? They didn't deny the resurrection.

They just moved it. Wrong place in the timeline. Is that bad doctrine? It is according to Paul. And this isn't the only time that this happened. You're welcome to get that sun out of your eye. So the resurrection he's talking about is not the resurrection of all saints, or just the Lord Jesus, or who's he talking about? He's talking about the resurrection of the saints.

So what do you think would be a little bit scary if you're a believer listening to Hymenaeus and Philetus? We missed it. So, wrong place on the timeline. This is not cutting it straight like we talked about in previous lessons, right? This is taking a crooked cut. Verse 15 talks about cut it straight, Timothy. And this word that we're talking about, hastakeo, Paul only uses it three times in the whole New Testament. and all three to Timothy.

In 1 Timothy 1.6, 6.21, and then here in this verse, he kept warning this young man about men who were aiming and missing, aiming and missing.

Macaulay says, we do not know exactly what error they taught concerning the resurrection, but apparently they spiritualized it rather than anticipating a literal bodily resurrection. That was Macaulay's perspective on this. When you talk about positional truth and identification truths, the word of God tells us that we were crucified with Christ, buried, and resurrected. And so, I didn't think about this before, but I look at myself as been resurrected and seated in Christ in the heavenlies, a positional truth that is true of me now. So they must, this man must have been saying that a general resurrection had already taken place, or was it individual?

Let me read the Bible Knowledge Commentary on it. Give us the Greek philosophers. So, Greek philosophers typically viewed the soul as immortal and the body as its temporal prison. The idea of the physical resurrection of the body, both Christ's and the Christians', was therefore foreign and difficult for them to grasp. The heresy of Philetus and Hymenaeus probably involved the idea that resurrection was a purely spiritual affair which occurred at conversion or baptism.

I've heard at that point. Baptism is a a demonstration of what's already happened to the believer. He's just making a public demonstration of it. When a believer is saved, he goes through the process of the cross with Christ. And from a positional standpoint, he's seated in the heavenlies. It's interesting that somehow Paul doesn't elaborate more about this.

Now, it could be the kind of doctrine like the Nazarenes think that now that you're a Christian you don't sin anymore. You know, that kind of thing. Because they switch their condition all the way over to the positional truth and try to make it a condition.

AJD, something that I'm just thinking about here is, I mean, if you think about the, talking about rightly dividing the scriptures, and most of the scriptures were the Old Testament scriptures they were studying in the New Testament was, you know, being written, not fully distributed yet at this point, but, I mean, if you take the, like the resurrection is a common theme in the Old Testament, they knew about that, they believed in it, and And if you understand it, it's the resurrection that ushers in the coming kingdom. If you take that idea and say, well, the resurrection's happened, what you have is kind of a kingdom now theology, right? Could be some element of that going on there that, well, we're in it. This is the kingdom of God right now on the earth. And it may be a distortion of the fact that we are spiritually, we're identified as Christ in his death and resurrection. But that's a judicial and spiritual reality. The resurrection of the dead is yet future.

And we'll participate in that. But anyway. No, that's very helpful because that would have been the scripture that they were working from, because what Paul was telling Timothy was brand new to Timothy. Yeah, like I'm just thinking of the last verse of Daniel, you know, God's talking to Daniel, but it says, as for you, go your way to the end, then you will enter into rest and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age.

So there's this idea, well, we die, we rise again and go into, you know, that future kingdom. I think that's really receptive. What would that mean to them if they thought it was a resurrection? Everybody being resurrected, wouldn't they be looking around for Uncle Frank and everybody else? Because he didn't make it. No, I mean, but it's the same thing as what goes on in vast swaths of Christendom today. This is the kingdom. We're in it. This is what was looked forward to, but it's all spiritualized kind of, right? It's not literal.

Paul dealt with this in 1 Corinthians 15 too. He said, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection, our faith is worthless. Christ is the firstfruits and after those who are Christ, it is coming. The body is sown perishable and raised imperishable. That's 1 Corinthians 15 dealing with false teaching with regards to the resurrection as well. And there's other things, in fact, 1 Thessalonians that talk about it. The dead in Christ will rise first.

But this is progressive revelation for Timothy at this stage, right? He didn't have all the parts and pieces to it. But we do know, while Paul did not necessarily identify the exact nature of it, we knew that it was gangrene. And it was not accurate to what Christ had revealed to Paul, right?

So we think that the mechanism of these two men was spiritualizing, taking a promise God made about bodies and graves and rewriting it as a figure of speech. Not as something that positionally happened to you, but just as spiritualizing it. Something that already happened to you on the inside maybe. But they didn't understand the identification of resurrection as Paul would identify it outside of his letter to Timothy. I think resurrection has to do only with the body. And if they spiritualized it, then they're talking probably about It's like Courtney said, you know, where's Uncle Joe?

Yeah. I don't see him. Well, because that's what the Greek philosophers, the soul was immortal, but the body is a temple prison. Right. And so they had to do something with the body. Yeah. But the way that they were teaching it led many astray. Yeah. It was a difficult way. They upset the faith of some, is what the verse says.

If the resurrection already happened, then this is all there is. You take the future body away from a suffering saint and you've taken his hope and handed him basically a metaphor, not a life. Well, maybe that was what the gangrene was. If they're talking about resurrection and Uncle Frank isn't there, that was the gangrene that he was saying that it had happened and, you know, the physical resurrection or something.

Because, you know, when you say it, I think of Ephesians, you know, we've been placed into the heavenlies, you know, all the things. And kind of what you read from one of your commentaries, it sounded almost correct. It's just they misinterpreted. I'm trying to figure out what they got wrong, what they were doing. You know, is it the physical resurrection as in the Old Testament? Where's all my family? Where's all the generations that should be here? I'm trying to figure out what the game green was. Yeah, you and every commentator out there.

I mean, to be really specific, but we do know that it had an effect that Paul was very concerned about, and so it was not the resurrection positionally, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, seating. That was not what they were communicating. And so, it upset the faith of some. They don't mention at all the new creation. No. And so that's, without that, you're still hanging into Adam. Yeah. So do we have, question seven, do we have men like Hymenaeus and Philetus around the church today?

Yeah, and something you said earlier about that, you know, I've been thinking about lately because I'm in the Colossians context, is that these people don't, they're not intentionally, usually, not intentionally trying to harm the body. You know what I mean? You were talking about you can hit yourself with a hammer, you don't realize it because you're, they think they've got the truth. You know, usually those who are false teachers are just sincerely wrong people.

Sincerely? Yeah. Yeah. Right. They bought into something or invented something. They think they've got some scriptural basis, but they're not accurately dividing the word. Yeah. Where do you see a promise God made about real future being turned into a figure of speech about now? You see that in the church today? We're not looking for names. We're learning here to recognize a move. The way Philetus and Emineus, I cannot say his name. Yeah, that guy. Yeah, Emineus. We're not looking for names in modern day Christianity to study about that right now.

I'll mention a camp, but we're looking at how the pattern of how these guys move. and what Paul was warning Timothy to watch out for. So the move is really specific and it's not denying a doctrine outright, it's relocating one. That's the move, that's the pattern. When do you have someone spiritualizing or creating a metaphor of the scripture saying, this isn't like literal, this is, metaphorical for you. Learn from the metaphor. Now there's metaphors in scripture, but you have to be very careful to recognize what is literal versus what is metaphorical, and the Greek is great in identifying those things for us.

But this is a pattern or a move in relocating the doctrine. Taking what God said is coming and saying it's already come, taking what he said is bodily and saying it's only spiritual, So here's the test, and it's the one we spent this previous lesson on.

Does it cut straight with the word of God? Does the promise stay where God put it? For the people he gave it to at the time he said it would happen, or do we just apply it to other people, other time periods, move it? So the test is, does it cut straight?

Zondervan, Bible background's commentary says, they claim that the general resurrection of the dead has already occurred and thereby are destroying the faith of some. It is interesting to note that this particular heresy is making a comeback today by those who teach that the return of Christ and the general resurrection of the dead was fulfilled in AD 70.

So here's the same move that's happening today. You take the return of Christ and the resurrection, you say they already happened back in 80, 70. There's some people that believe that. And there's strong camps about it. Same relocation, just in modern day. So what God is saying is coming gets moved into the past. That's the move.

The name of that camp or that view is called full preterism. Not important, but there's preterists, full preterists, partial preterists, so forth. And some of that makes its way into certain reformed camps as well, covenant camps. So we have to be careful about moving the time periods of these things because there's plenty of great folks that believe that the prophecy was filled in 80-70.

They're believers, but they've taken a doctrine and moved it from its intention of what Paul was saying. And he's warning Timothy about that. Basically for us, it's keep the promise where God put it. For the people he gave it to, to the time that he said, at the time he says, that's cutting it straight. And the hope that it protects is real. The dead in Christ will rise first.

That's 1 Thessalonians 4.16.

So 1 Timothy 18 through 20, this command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, that by them you may fight the good fight. We're back in 1 Timothy. This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, that by them you may fight the good fight, keeping faith and good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith.

Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered over to Satan. so that they may be taught not to blaspheme. So hominins is not a new problem. Paul had already dealt with this man in the first letter of First Timothy. He already handed him over, already named him, and here he is in the second letter, still teaching now with another guy, Philetus.

That's worth thinking about. So discipline had already been applied, and the gangrene kept spreading. See that? He'd already disciplined and turned him over to Satan. And here he is in 2 Timothy, another letter, don't know the distance of time between the two, but now he's got Philetus on his side. And that's exactly Paul's instruction to Timothy in this verse 16 here, is not argue harder. What is our response to this? Argue harder or what? What's the word there? Turn around and walk away. Turn around and walk away. I don't think there's been a generation of Christianity that hasn't dealt with this same situation that Timothy was dealing with.

So, we know the pattern, we know what it looks like, we know the effects that it has, and we know our response to it from these verses so far. Question eight, no, that'll be next week. I'll read the question. By using the word who, does Paul refer to a group of men? Actually, I might be able to get this through.

So, in the verse it says men who, that's the word we're looking at, hoitenes, men who. And this word, it's a little bit more interesting than just the men who have gone astray. It's a pointing word that does double duty. It points someone out and it describes his character. Not just who, more like the very ones who are of such a character as to. So men who is more than a label. Read men of the kind who. carries a little bit more weight than just the men. Those are the people. Those are the types of people, the character of the type of people that have gone astray from the truth.

So we're not going to walk around today looking for Hymenaeus and Philetus teaching false doctrines, but certainly worldly chatter, avoid it. It spreads like gangrene, and especially when it gets into doctrinal error, and the pattern of moving when God said he did something, and when he intends to fulfill those things, in this case, but certainly it applies to every doctrine. You know? The word implies that Heminius and Philetus were only the more conspicuous members of a class of false teachers.

So again, we're describing the type. All right. I think Paul gave Timothy a recognizable face for a pattern he'll meet again and again. And I think that that's our response here is to recognize not the faces of these men, but the types of character that these men who lead astray.

So next week, we're gonna get into verse 19, and we'll start with nevertheless, and talk about the foundation that stands. All right, let's close in prayer. Father, how we thank you that we can trust your word, that we can trust in the foundation of your word to keep us straight. And Lord, by straight, we mean focused on the very person of the Lord Jesus. and the truths in which we have been given to from Paul. We just pray that we would hold them and cut them straight as you've asked Timothy to maintain. We'd recognize the pattern of how false doctrine and just feeding that spreads like wildfire, like gangrene. And so Lord, we just recognize the danger there and just pray that you would keep us illuminated by the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit to navigate these difficulties within different groups and conversations that we have. We're thankful that we have your word to stand on and that we can remain there and be very confident. And we thank you for your love and for your grace. In your name we pray. Amen.