One of my favorite books growing up was The Phantom Tollbooth. In it a boy named Milo along with some companions he meets along the way are on a journey to rescue two princesses named Rhyme and Reason and bring them to the troubled kingdom of Wisdom. There’s a lot of word play and and puns. It’s a great book.

On the way to rescue the princesses, Milo and his friends meet a faceless, well-dressed man who asks them to help him with chores. He asks Milo to move an enormous pile of sand using Tweezers, and he asks his other companions to empty a well using a little dropper and to bore through a mountainside with a needle. And they set about doing these chores until they realize that they’d spend over 800 years doing these tasks, and they’d never get to save the princess.

And then the man introduces himself to them “the Terrible Trivium, demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit.” They ask why he’s making them do these tasks. He says “Think of all the trouble it saves… If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you’ll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won’t have the time. For there’s always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing.”

As we think about the false teachers that Paul is telling Timothy about, I think that more than creating really malicious false doctrine (though there was some of that) the issue they pose is that of presenting you with lesser things, that might seem harmless in themselves, but will, like the Terrible Trivium, keep you from focusing on the really important things.

As Paul writes this passage, he’s mostly concerned with charging Timothy to discourage people from following these false teachings. But what I want to do as we go through this passage is keep comparing the false gospel with the true gospel.

And in this passage Paul says three things about the true gospel: you see it if you look at the end of our passage in verse 11.

He’s contrasting the sins he mentions in verse 9-10, which he’s implying characterize the false teachers. He says that this way of living is contrary to sound teaching, to the teaching Paul has handed down to Timothy. This teaching accords – agrees with (here’s the key words: “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.” 

Three things about the gospel

• Shows forth the glory of God
• The God the gospel reveals is a blessed God
• This gospel was entrusted to Paul

We’re going to structure this sermon around those three points. Take them in reverse order. We see three things about the true gospel when you contrast it with the false teachings.

The gospel is 

1. Settled in its content 3-4, 11c (entrusted to Paul)
2. Satisfying in every way 4-7, 11b (blessed God)
3. Soli deo gloria 7-10, 11a

1. Settled in content

After the opening greeting, Paul begins this passage saying, “As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine.” Paul doesn’t jump in with a Thanksgiving section in this letter. Not normal for Paul. It’s not that he’s not thankful for Timothy. He definitely is. But in this letter it appears that he has something pretty urgent to discuss with Timothy.

Paul says while he was on his way to Macedonia (think Northern Greece), he urged Timothy to remain at Ephesus. Whether Paul and Timothy were in Ephesus and Paul urged Timothy to stay behind while he was on his way there, or Paul found out news about Ephesus while he was on his way to Macedonia from somewhere else, and immediately told Timothy in person or by letter to go to/stay in Ephesus.

Whatever the case, Paul reminds Timothy of his urgent command to him to stay in Ephesus. Ephesus required some significant attention. What attention did it require? It required Timothy to charge certain people not to teach any different doctrine. 

Different doctrine from what? Well Paul doesn’t say. Because Timothy and Paul are both pastors, so there’s a lot of what we might call “Pastor shop talk” – you ever listen to people talk shop? Two people in the same line of work meet and they start throwing around acronyms that you don’t know and talk about common problems, or competitors in their market that both people dislike. And it can sound kind of like you’re listening to one side of a phone call, because there’s a whole world of insider knowledge that you’re not privy to because you’re not in that world.

Well Paul just says “remind them not to teach different doctrine” and Timothy knows what Paul’s talking about. Paul doesn’t elaborate on it. Because already when Paul is writing to Timothy in probably the early 60s AD, there is a specific, settled body of Christian doctrine, such that Paul can talk shop with Timothy.

You can see from the rest of the New Testament what that settled doctrine would be. Romans shows us Paul’s most comprehensive outline of the Gospel. You see compact forms of the central teaching in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul says the things of first importance are “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared” to many.

And there’s an ethical core to the gospel as well, that finds its roots in the 10 commandments of the Old Testament, as we’ll see in verses 8-10 where Paul talks about different sins the law forbids, and there he goes through the 10 commandments. That’s why Paul’s letters always mix together doctrine and right living. The truths about who Jesus is and what he came to do ought to lead to the right way of life.

And that’s exactly what Paul is pointing out about the false teachers in this section. They don’t have the right focus in their teaching, and it leads to the wrong focus in their living. They “devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies – Jewish legendary stories. These teachings promote speculation (v4) instead of stewardship from God. This word “stewardship” (word we get “economy” from in Gk) refers to God’s plan of salvation as it is worked out in people’s lives. So he’s saying, “These teachers don’t further the plan of God for the salvation of men and women through faith in Christ.” They just promote speculation – unsettled positions and flights of fancy.

That’s constantly what we have to be on guard against in our own life. Teachings that are themselves outright false; or, and this is more subtle, teachings that seem harmless but lead to fruitless speculation and wasted living. True gospel ministry and gospel teaching sticks to the main diet of Christian teaching, a settled gospel. THe gospel handed down to Paul. And true gospel teaching conveys this gospel in a way that points you to the way to live that accords with the gospel.

This is a reminder to Pastor Devon and I, to always keep the main thing the main thing in our preaching. But it’s also something we all need to keep in front of us. Because we’re all constantly tempted to focus on other things that take our attention away from the gospel. But that’s what we’re here for. We’re hear to proclaim the same settled gospel that was entrusted to Paul, and even now, 2000 years later has been entrusted to us.

The gospel has a specific, settled content that we proclaim.

2. The gospel is satisfying in every way.

Paul describes the gospel as the gospel of the blessed God. If you’re a Christian that word “blessed” might almost sound like a non-word, b/c you’re so familiar with it. We’re blessed by God, we bless the Lord, God is blessed. Blessed are the poor in spirit, etc. What does it mean to be blessed?

For us to be blessed means to enjoy good things from another. We are blessed when we enjoy blessings. Blessedness is closer to the word for “happiness” – not necessarily superficial happiness, but in the sense of deep satisfaction. And for us, the concept of blessedness highlights our inherent neediness. We find these things – blessing, blessedness, not in ourselves but when we receive from another – ultimately God.

But blessedness for God is entirely a different thing. God has all goodness and happiness in himself. He’s not like you or me. He doesn’t need. To paraphrase a theologian named Fred Sanders, For God to be blessed is for God to enjoy his own God-ness.

Now, this book, 1 Timothy has two of the four verses in the New Testament that refers to God as a Blessed God, in so many words. Why is that? I don’t know for certain, but I suspect it is because the false teaching that was prevalent in Ephesus had the tendency to draw people away from finding full satisfaction in an endlessly full God who from his fullness reaches out to draw sinners into his own eternal blessedness through union with Jesus Christ.

Instead, these false teachers provided lesser pleasures. They offered things like fascinating speculation with genealogies and myths as we saw in verse 4. There’s something really enticing about thinking about what stories could have been true about these great figures in the faith.

Maybe that doesn’t sound like something interesting to you, but think of how people write fan fiction today. Fan fiction is this whole literary sub-genre, literary community, of people who create fictional stories in a pre-existing fictional universe. Pretty much any popular media franchise has people writing fan-fiction, or making fan fiction films. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter.

Now the thing about fan fiction is that some of it is good, and some of it is bad. It’s fun to create more story webs in a previously existing world, and to feel like you could fill out for yourself something. But it’s never as good as the real thing. It’s always less good, less interesting, less original. Less satisfying.

And that’s likely something like what these people were doing. Coming up with stories about Old Testament figures and imbuing them with some sense of spiritual meaning, or perhaps finding other stories that people wrote down and obsessing over them.

It lead to vain discussions (v6). It lead to people thinking they had a grasp of the Old Testament and thinking they could be teachers of the law – Mosaic law, but possibly even broader teaching the Old Testament. And we’ll see in chapter 4, it lead to them restricting things like marriage and food – blessings from our blessed God. Almost like a fan fiction author who writes fan fiction using AI saying they know the work of the author better than the author themselves, or even better than a serious scholar of that author’s work.

Now, at some level, you might not think that problem sounds super dangerous. That might reflect how imbalanced we are as a culture with so much of our attention focused on entertainment. But I think its the innocent, harmless appearance of this issue that makes it so dangerous. What’s wrong with people having some vain discussions about harmless topics? So what if some members go from those discussions and start developing really strong opinions about some tertiary, unimportant matters like what you should eat or not. That’s not the gospel.

Yes… but imagine a church taken over by that spirit. Have you ever heard of a church being split by really small matters? I’ve heard of a pastor who became so obsessed over the topic of only singing psalms in church that he ended up splitting the church. That’s not even an example of a bad thing in itself. Singing Psalms in church? Great! Letting that come before the gospel in its importance? Bad.

And these teachers were coming up with things that were denying the goodness of God’s creation – again, marriage, foods. And you can derive a sort of pleasure from following dictates, or from endlessly discussing fascinating things. People love to talk about interesting things. You love stimulating conversation, so do I.

But you were made for greater pleasures. Pleasures the gospel alone provides. You were made to glorify God, to make much of him, and to enjoy him forever. You were made to find your greatest enjoyment in God, your deepest joys met by God.

You were made to rejoice, not in fascinating conversation, but in a God who out of his fullness of happiness and satisfaction, reached out to you, as a poor, helpless sinner, and raised you from a sea of wickedness and hopelessness and brought you into his family, changed your life. Out of his mere goodness and love.

These other endless distractions don’t satisfy. Don’t be drawn away by fads that might even seem like substantial or significant, if you find they are drawing you away from Christ. From the gospel that satisfies our deepest needs with a blessed God.

3. Lastly, third point. The True Gospel is soli deo gloria – to the glory of God alone.

Paul calls the gospel “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God” – the gospel reveals God’s glory, and calls people to glorify him. And you see again that the false teachers Paul describes didn’t have the goal of glorifying God clearly in view. They wanted to glorify self. Verse 7: “desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.”

These teachers desire to be teachers of the law. They really like telling people what the law really teaches. They liked being the expert in the room. It’s a very self-promoting endeavor of theirs, to confidently assert their own understanding of the law. But it was not fueled by right understanding. They don’t even understand what the law is useful for.

Now there’s three primary uses we as Christians should think about the law. Usually when people talk about these uses of the law they put them in this order.

1st use of the law – to restrain sin. That’s what laws do today in our own country. Keeps people from doing wrong. God’s law does the same. It is there to expose people’s sins and keep them from further sin.

2nd use of the law – to bring us to Christ. The law reveals to us the evil in our hearts and shows us that we cannot be good enough in God’s eyes. The law can’t save us – we need the gospel for that. We need God to save us by grace. We don’t get saved by living according to the law. The law shows us that we need grace, we need Christ.

3rd use of the law – to teach us how to live a life pleasing to God. As Christians, we are shown what it looks like to live a life pleasing to God. You don’t earn grace or salvation or blessings by keeping the law, but you enjoy God’s smile, enjoy his pleasure. The law reveals the likeness of Christ, and so to live according to the law is to conform yourself to the life of Christ.

Paul here is highlighting the first use, and maybe also the second. He says “the law isn’t laid down for the just but for” and then lists a bunch of different kinds of sinners. His point is that the law names sin. It restrains sin. It calls out to sinners that their deeds are in fact sin.

He’s not saying this is the only thing the law does. But it’s significant in this context. So he focuses on this use of the law.

And as we’ve seen, he lists all these sins. It’s not a random list either. These are all sins that have to do with the 10 commandments in order. First he has two summary terms: lawless and disobedient – using that to contrast with “just”

Then he walks through 10 commandments:

1st commandment – You shall have no other gods before me – ungodly

2nd commandment – You shall make no graven images – sinners – often used of gentile idol-worshippers.

3rd – You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain – unholy – people who don’t revere God as holy

4th – Remember the sabbath to keep it holy – profane – those who are generally profane

It becomes even more clear when we get to the 2nd table of law:

5th – Honor your father and mother – those who strike their fathers and mothers

6th – You shall not murder – murderers

7th – You shall not commit adultery – the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality (both hetero/homosexual sin)

8th – You shall not steal – enslavers – people who steal human beings

9th – You shall not bear false witness – liars, perjurers

And in place of the 10th commandment, You shall not covet, which catches all other sinful desires, Paul says, “whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine”!

Paul makes this list and then says, “everything else that goes against sound teaching” – that’s what the law exposes. It is meant to expose everyone, to make all sinners aware that they are not living in accordance with what? The gospel of the glory of the blessed God.

Paul is saying, “These people want to be teachers of the law? They first need to recognize that they’re sinners seeking their own glory instead of God’s. That they’re living contrary to sound doctrine, out of accord with the god-glorifying gospel.” The gospel reveals the glory of God through Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection for sinners. And the gospel rightly received creates men and women who then live their lives to bring God glory.

I invite you tonight to that gospel. If you haven’t been a Christian, I invite you to repent of your sins and trust Jesus Christ as your savior. Give your life to him and let him reorient your life away from shifting teachings of men, from trivial matters, from small pleasures, from putting yourself first. Rest on the solid ground of the gospel, that has been handed down over centuries, that will last. Be satisfied with a God who overflows with blessing and who alone can satisfy your deepest longings. Live your life humbly before him, for his glory in all things.

Let’s pray.