In 1 Timothy 1:3-7, Paul distinguishes between bad teaching and good teaching.  The former category is much larger than we might expect.  It includes false doctrine, but it also involves empty speculation, fruitless discussion, and opinionated ignorance.  As a rule, brethren are alive to the dangers of the first of these, but we often don’t pay as much attention as we should to the problems that come with the other three.

As Paul describes it, empty speculation arises from paying attention to myths and endless genealogies.  In essence, this is spiritual reasoning without a solid Scriptural foundation.  It is speculative because it relates tangentially at best to the word of God, and it is empty because it does not help the hearers inherit eternal life. 

Such speculation is rife across the religious spectrum.  It arises from progressives who want to overturn divine commandments based on what they think they know about life in the first century as well as from conservatives who want to speak clearly where the Bible does not.  We may find its conclusions congenial, but it represents a trap for those who wish to follow Christ.

Second, we come to fruitless discussion.  Such discussion is fruitless because it does not achieve the good goals Paul sets out in v. 5.  It does not produce love from a pure heart, a good conscience, or a sincere faith. 

To put things another way, it does not transform our hearts to be like God’s heart, it does not instruct us in God’s commandments and how to obey them, and it does not show us that God is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.  These discussions often arise from nonbiblical sources (beware of studies on marriage and the family that do not cite Scripture!) or take the Bible and turn it irrelevant.  A discussion of the minutiae of ancient life 2000 years ago without any connection to anything is not spiritually beneficial!

Finally, we come to opinionated ignorance.  In this case, the problem isn’t the topic.  It’s the teacher.  He’s talking about a worthwhile subject, but he’s not doing so in a worthwhile way.  He doesn’t understand the word properly, but that doesn’t keep him from insisting on his conclusions obstinately.

As teachers, we solve this problem not by avoiding the area of study entirely, but by making sure that our understanding of it is good.  We must know both what we believe and why we believe it.  For instance, it’s not enough to cite 1 Corinthians 16:1-3 as an explicit authorization of a weekly collection for the continuing needs of the church.  It isn’t.  Instead, we must know how to use 1 Corinthians 16:1-3, along with passages such as Acts 4:34-35, 1 Corinthians 9:14 and Hebrews 10:25, to reach the conclusion that a continuing collection is authorized.  If we can’t work through the reasoning necessary to arrive at a conclusion, we shouldn’t be teaching the conclusion.

All of this makes preaching and teaching sound like a challenging work, and it is.  If we want to be useful in the kingdom, there are many pitfalls we must avoid.  Nonetheless, sound preaching and teaching is vital to the spiritual health of the Lord’s people, and if we carry out this great work with care and diligence, we will gain an everlasting reward.

I originally wrote the following as a comment on a Facebook post by Tony Mauck.  Having written it, I decided to give it wider distribution.  I believe it correctly restates the Biblical principles that should govern our speech and behavior when it comes to masks, vaccines, and discussion of the same.

- In areas where we are given liberty by man and God, we must respect the liberty of others. We must not judge or show contempt toward those who use their liberty differently. (Romans 1:1-3)

- When we talk about these things, we must speak graciously and in a way that edifies everyone.  Speaking in a contentious, self-righteous, angry way is ungodly. (2 Timothy 2:23-25)

- Elders must not lord it over the flock but rather lead by force of example. (1 Peter 5:3)

- Christians under elders must obey, submit to, and follow them, so that their conduct gives the elders joy rather than grief. "Am I making the elders' work harder or more unpleasant?" is a very important question for all of us to ask. (Hebrews 13:17)

- Christians must obey the government, saving only the times when it commands us to do something that directly contradicts the law of God. (Romans 13:1-3)

- We must not confuse our personal convictions, whether based on conscience, our understanding of the Constitution, or anything else, with the divine commandment. If we do, we likely will fall into serious error. (Acts 26:9-10)

The other day, I was talking on the phone with a dear friend of mine who is writing a book about the fear of God.  She’s doing this in part because of her concern that the Lord’s people aren’t discussing the fear of God as much as they should be.  We like to hear about grace and mercy, but we’re not so fond of teaching about the fear due our Creator.

I found this particularly striking because like sin and grace go together, fear and mercy go together.  If it is not a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, then God’s mercy to us doesn’t matter much either.  None of us are deeply appreciative when the doctor fixes our hangnail!

It’s obviously true that God’s fear leads us to appreciate His mercy.  Though it’s less obvious, it’s also true that His mercy leads us to fear Him.  Indeed, if our appreciation of the forgiveness of God doesn’t produce the fear of God, we’ve missed something.  This morning, then, let’s see how this idea emerges, along with many others, when we cry to God out of the depths.

Naturally, we’re going to be studying Psalm 130, and the first portion of this psalm concerns A GOD WHO LISTENS.  Look at Psalm 130:1-2.  Even in this introductory section, there are two valuable lessons for us to consider, and the first is that even God’s people can find themselves in the depths.

Even in English, the idea of crying out to God from the depths is powerful, but in Hebrew, it is even more so.  To the Israelites, the depths were a place of primordial chaos, and if you were in them, it was a sign that you had been cast out from the presence of God.  This is why Jonah is swallowed by a great fish that goes down into the depths.  We can end up there too, whether because of sin or tragedy.  Things can get so bad in our lives that we feel isolated from every source of goodness.

This certainly is where the psalmist believes himself to be, but even though he is there, even though we might be there, calling on God is always possible.  This one seems like a sin problem.  The psalmist has sinned so egregiously that he has ruined himself, but even there, he cries out to God in the hope that God will listen.

So too for us.  It’s possible for Christians to wreck their lives utterly, and some do.  Nonetheless, as long as we are alive, it’s never too late to seek the Lord.  Everything else may be gone, but if we humble ourselves and come to God, we are sure to find Him.

The second part of the psalm is about FORGIVENESS AND FEAR.  Let’s keep going in Psalm 130:3-4.  This is not the way that any of us would have written it.  We might have said, “If You marked iniquities, we would be afraid of You, but since You offer forgiveness, we rejoice in You.” 

That’s not where the psalmist goes, though.  Instead, he asks rhetorically who could stand before a God who remembered sin.  We know the answer to that one.  Not I.  Not any of us.  Imagine if that were what existence was like.  There is a God, He knows everything we do, and one day He will condemn us, fairly but unmercifully, according to His perfect standard.  I haven’t found many depictions of the afterlife that make nihilism look attractive, but that one does.  If all we had to look forward to were eternal torment, we would long not to exist, and there would be no point to anything.

However, that is not who God is!  He will execute justice if we force Him to it, but He longs to forgive, and His forgiveness makes fearing Him make sense.  Who would worship a God who is just going to squish them no matter what?  On the other hand, because mercy is on the table, we have a reason to honor Him, to revere Him, and to follow His commandments.  Mercy and fear aren’t opposites.  Instead, they work together.

In the third part of this psalm, we see a truly beautiful description of WAITING FOR THE LORD.  It appears in Psalm 130:5-6.  The first part of this section, though, explains why waiting for the Lord makes sense at all.  We wait because we hope in His word.  The better we know the Bible and its promises, the more motivation we have to trust God.  Conversely, if we don’t know the Scriptures, we will find waiting on the Lord to be very hard.

This tells us, then, that Bible study is one of the most important tools we have for preparing for disaster.  My crystal ball is broken these days, but this I know:  the day will come for every one of us when we have no other hope but God.  The time we spend with the word now will give us the assurance we need then to persevere through trial.

This is necessary because in the midst of disaster, waiting for the Lord isn’t easy.  In one of the loveliest figures of speech in the whole Bible, the psalmist says he waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for morning.  I’ve never been a night watchman, but I can imagine what it’s like, especially back in the day when every little village needed one.  It’s boring, it’s frightening, it’s miserable, and it’s dangerous.  How grateful the watchman would have been to see the sun rising and realize that he had made it through the night without being eaten by a lion or slaughtered by a Philistine!

Waiting for the Lord is like that, only more so.  There have been times in my life when the seconds dragged by, when the minutes felt like hours because of the depth of my despair.  And oh!  How eagerly I waited for deliverance from God.  In times like that we long for Him because nothing and no one else can help.

The final portion of the psalm explores further the value of HOPING IN THE LORD.  Let’s conclude our reading with Psalm 130:7-8.  Hoping in God isn’t only for the psalmist.  It’s for all of His people.

This is because of God’s faithful love.  As always, when we see “faithful love” or “steadfast love” or “lovingkindness” in our Old Testaments, we should think chesed, that untranslatable word that is probably the best single-word description of the whole Bible.  Chesed is the great covenant love of God, the love expressed in action that continues despite everything.

Right now, God regards every single one of His people with chesed.  He feels this faithful love for me and for every Christian in this room, right now.  Because it is faithful love, we can be sure that God will make His goodness known in our lives again.  However massive the mess, however deep our grief, sooner or later God will make it right.

His chesed for us also leads him to offer redemption that is not minimal or grudging but instead abundant.  Because of God’s faithful love for His people, He eagerly overflows with grace for all of our transgressions.  We don’t have to worry that the greatness of our sins has exhausted His mercy.  As long as we return, He always has more to give.

The apostle Paul was fond of sarcasm, not because he didn’t love people, but because he did.  When Christians he had converted turned aside from Christ, it drove him to distraction, and that distraction often found its expression in heartfelt exasperation. 

One such expression appears in 2 Corinthians 11:4.  In contrast to the stubborn resistance the Corinthians put up to Paul’s teaching, they listened eagerly to the false teachers who followed him.  Paul tells them that they bore a different gospel beautifully, implying that the attention they devoted to the workers of deceit was the attention they should have devoted to him.

Today, there are far too many Christians who bear a different gospel beautifully, and it is entirely understandable that they should do so.  In the sense of 1 Corinthians 2:14, the gospel is unnatural.  It does two things in particular that humans don’t like.  It demands that we do hard things ourselves, and it keeps us from adopting easy workarounds.  When a different gospel diminishes the former and permits the latter, we tend to bear it beautifully.

To see how this works, let’s pick a simple example:  hospitality.  The Bible commands us to be hospitable, a sacred tradition that stretches back to the days of Abraham if not earlier.  Hebrews 13:2 tells us that we should follow Abraham’s example because he entertained angels without knowing it.  This refers, I think, not only to the possibility of supernatural visitors but also to the impact that hospitality can have both on others and on us.

Hospitality reveals the generosity and kindness of Christ.  As we practice hospitality, we become more like Him.  It surely is a part of walking in a manner worthy of the gospel!

However, there’s a problem.  Hospitality is hard.  It goes against the grain of our culture.  Either we invest a lot of time in cleaning up and preparing a nice meal, or we expose our messy fast-food reality. We might even have to invite over a rampaging mob of church kids.  Not surprisingly, many modern-day Christians struggle to show hospitality.

There are two solutions to this problem.  Either we do better at hospitality ourselves (still hard), or we outsource hospitality to the church.  The latter is much more appealing.  Sustaining that fellowship hall at the church building will cost some money, but we have more money than time.  We drop a check in the plate, and we never have to open our home to anybody again.

As elegant as this solution seems, there are issues with it.  First, it’s different.  First-century Christians were in the hospitality business, but the first-century church wasn’t.  Second, the fellowship halls, gyms, and so forth might produce hospitality of a sort, but they don’t produce a congregation of hospitable Christians.  Anything that subverts the gospel goal of godliness is hostile to it.

Walking in the ancient paths is difficult and frustrating.  We are inclined to Americanize our faith by departing from it in ways that seem good to the wisdom of our time.  Consequently, the words of the agents of change often fall on receptive ears.

However, we do better to consider the wisdom of the One who laid out those ancient paths in the first place.  His ways are not our ways, and He always has reasons for His commandments and His silence, even if those reasons are not apparent to us.  Rather than bearing a different gospel, we should strive instead to bear our cross.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a friend’s funeral in an unfamiliar church building.  I took a seat by an aisle and shortly noticed a gouge in the back of the pew support in front of me.  The gouge was at knee height.  To the left/exterior, it was narrow and shallow; to the right/interior, it broadened and deepened to about a quarter inch.  Another, fainter horizontal scrape appeared two or three inches above it.  None of the other pews around me bore similar markings.

I will never know for sure, but I would guess that the scrapes came from a walker or similar piece of assistive equipment.  An older Christian once sat (has sat?) there for years because that was Their Pew.  They shuffled into the auditorium on their walker, gingerly lowered themselves to the seat where I sat, folded up their walker, and dragged it into the same row. 

As they were doing so, their lack of stability forced them to brace the walker against the pew in front of them.  Every time, something (a walker brace?  screw heads?) raked across the pew support.  Service by service, year by year, those feeble hands wore away the gouge that I saw.  That Christian may well be dead now, but the gouge still bears witness.  They assembled.

Sometimes, it is the faith we display in our weaknesses that makes the deepest mark.  Lots of strong, healthy Christians strode into that auditorium, worshiped, and departed without leaving a trace.  However, the pew support remembers the Christian who probably couldn’t drive to church anymore, who couldn’t walk unassisted, whose pace was slow and even doddering.  They certainly inspired pity, perhaps contempt, perhaps frustration from the custodial crew, but they came.  No one would have faulted them for not coming.  They came anyway, and the pew support testifies to their faithful obedience.

So too with the marks we make, and not only on pews.  Some of the Christians whose singing I remember most are those who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.  They knew it and sang anyway.  Loudly.  They were humbled, but God was exalted. 

How about the introvert who, with white knuckles and sweaty palms, welcomes a visitor to the assembly?  Or the octogenarian who shows up to help a relocated brother unload the moving truck?  Or the song leader who can’t read a note of music but listens to a new hymn over and over on YouTube until he feels comfortable introducing it to the congregation? 

How about the apostle Paul, who struggled with covetousness but learned from Christ the secret of remaining faithful through poverty and prosperity alike?

We often seek to glorify God through our strengths.  This is our wheelhouse.  This is the thing we are good at.  Look at this wonderful thing we are doing (for God)!

Perhaps, though, He is best glorified through our weaknesses.  This is not our wheelhouse.  We are terrified.  We are a hopeless disaster.  We would not be doing this for anybody but God, but He told us to do it, and we are. 

The ungodly might be laughing at us, but God isn’t laughing.  He is pleased.  He loves not only the sacrifices that arise from effortless self-confidence but also those offered in weakness, fear, and trembling.  Against all worldly wisdom, we surrender our two mites, knowing it can’t possibly matter but trusting that it will be enough.