Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Tidbits. Today, we are in 2 Timothy 1 and verse number 13.
This is the Apostle Paul's last letter that he writes.
He's writing it to his son in the faith, Timothy, and he's trying to encourage him as Timothy is there in the church at Ephesus as one of the elders, one of the pastors, and he encourages him in this way in verse number 13.
He says, hold on to the pattern of sound teaching that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
First, he says, to hold on to the pattern of sound teaching, that sound teaching would be the teaching that is in accordance with God's Word.
That is, it's not false teaching, it's not saying things that aren't true, it's saying things that are reasonable, that are held together, it's sound. You can put your weight on this teaching and it will hold up your life.
And so he says, I want you to hold on to that pattern of sound teaching that you've heard from me. He says, it can be easy to just fall into the same patterns that others are following.
There were many false teachers, even during this time, ones that would claim that Jesus was just a God, that He was not the God.
There were many people that would use Christianity, that would use this talk of the risen Savior Jesus in order to fleece other people's pockets, that they were just in it for the money.
There were other people that they were doing it in order to frankly just be immoral, in order to gain new sexual partners. And Paul says, I don't want you to be like these false teachers.
I want you to hold on to the pattern of sound teaching that you have heard from me. We ought to have a gratitude for those that have exemplified faithful, consistent Bible teaching in our lives.
And we ought to, if we are those that are teaching others, whether that's kids, teens, small groups, pastors, whatever, we ought to continue to teach that faithfully.
Maybe if you're one that you're not teaching, but you listen to other people, I would encourage you only listen to those teachers that faithfully teach the same word of God, the same truths that you find in the Bible.
Don't listen to those that, frankly, are in other outside religious groups. Don't listen to a Mormon priest for your teaching. Don't listen to, you know, just maybe a person that's with, you know, Christian science, so called.
Don't listen to the people that are new age or those that would buck against the Bible's teachings, but still claim to be Christians. There are many people out there today that would be looking to employ Christianity just to make a buck.
And you can find those guys normally, those will be your ones that they've got their own private jets. They're the ones that will boast about having the largest house in the state. Those kinds of people are not the people you want to learn from.
Instead, follow, listen to the people that have sound teaching in accordance with the Bible that exemplify godly character. It doesn't matter how much a person says that you might like.
If they do not follow the Lord with how they live their life, do not follow them. Don't listen to them. Don't make a regular habit of that.
And then I think even of the last portion here that he says, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus, how do you determine someone's sound teaching?
Well, does it go with the faith of the gospel, the word of God clearly expressed, the gospel that is received through what Jesus has done alone, by faith alone and Christ alone, by grace alone, for the glory of God alone, as shown to us in scripture
alone. And not only should we have this faith that determines what sound teaching is, but also love. And love is one of those deepest characteristics of Jesus.
If you constantly have to give explanations of why the cruel, sarcastic, hurtful, mean things that you're saying are really, actually loving, then that's not real.
If a person, if a teacher that you're listening to constantly has to be like, oh, well, listen, this is loving because it's loving to tell people the truth, but how I'm saying this and what I'm saying about other people and the tone that I'm using,
none of it seems loving, then you ought to take a step back and go, okay, is this really God? Is this the faith that was delivered? Is this the gospel way if this person is just so un-Christ-like in how they talk?
And let us be those that would hold fast to the sound teaching that Paul did that came from a walk with the Holy Spirit with the faith and love that Jesus has for us. Thanks for tuning in. See you next episode.
