Dave Hentschel: All right, well, good morning, church.
Dave Hentschel: Please turn with me in your Bibles to the book of 2 Timothy, and I will meet you there in a second after I talk to you about an amazing thing that happened this week.
Dave Hentschel: Did anybody see the Artemis II mission and what was happening there up in the skies?
Dave Hentschel: For the first time in decades, astronauts have traveled back towards the moon.
Dave Hentschel: You may have also noticed astronaut Victor Glover had some spiritual things to say up there.
Dave Hentschel: He's also a Christian, and he shared a reflection as he was up there looking backward toward the earth from space.
Dave Hentschel: And as he was speaking, something he said to me was quite striking.
Dave Hentschel: He said that from where he was, as he looked back at the earth, he saw the earth as one thing, one place, one home, one shared existence.
Dave Hentschel: And though we have so many things down here that divide us, from that distance, many of those differences that seem so big to us all the time just didn't quite look the same.
Dave Hentschel: If that's true of humanity as a whole, how much more true should that be of the Church of Jesus Christ?
Dave Hentschel: And yet, oftentimes it feels untrue.
Dave Hentschel: And why is that?
Dave Hentschel: Why does the Church of Jesus Christ seem so divided?
Dave Hentschel: Why is it that people who share the same Savior, who share the same scriptures, who believe the same gospel, can become so divided.
Dave Hentschel: Now, to be clear, not all division is wrong.
Dave Hentschel: There are some truths in Scripture that are so central, so foundational, that we have to stand firm on them and contend for that kind of truth.
Dave Hentschel: But there are also so many other things that are not so much worth dividing over.
Dave Hentschel: And one of the greatest challenges in the Christian life, and one of the greatest challenges of Christian leadership, one of the greatest challenges I have found as a pastor is learning to discern the difference between those two things.
Dave Hentschel: That's exactly what the Paul is, the Apostle Paul is helping Timothy understand in this section.
Dave Hentschel: 2 Timothy 2 will be in verses 14 to 19.
Dave Hentschel: The theme of this passage really has to do with conflict.
Dave Hentschel: Conflict, specifically in the church, but I think you can apply it more broadly.
Dave Hentschel: And we learn here that conflict in the church can go wrong in a few different ways.
Dave Hentschel: We see sometimes it goes wrong through arguments about trivial things.
Dave Hentschel: We see sometimes it goes wrong through careless teaching, and then we see sometimes it goes wrong through actually heresy and false teaching.
Dave Hentschel: And so the title of my message today is it's all about passing on the faith to the next generation, but how do we pass on a healthy and unified church to the next generation?
Dave Hentschel: Because that's what we really want to do.
Dave Hentschel: And in this passage, we're gonna learn three things, three very practical, very relevant things.
Dave Hentschel: First, we're gonna learn what not to fight about.
Dave Hentschel: Then we're gonna learn what we must fight about, and then the million-dollar question, we're gonna learn about how to tell the difference between those two things.
Dave Hentschel: That's really what we're talking about here today.
Dave Hentschel: Um, what hills to die on, what hills not to die on, and how do you tell the difference between those two?
Dave Hentschel: Uh, before we dive in, let's let's ask for the Lord's help.
Dave Hentschel: Would you would you pray with me one more time?
Dave Hentschel: Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning with a grateful heart.
Dave Hentschel: What a beautiful day you've given us, what a beautiful church you've given us, what a beautiful body we have here.
Dave Hentschel: Thank you for the privilege of serving you.
Dave Hentschel: Thank you for the privilege of gathering with your people.
Dave Hentschel: Thank you for your the Lord's day.
Dave Hentschel: Thank you for the gift of your word, which is living and active and able to guide us in all truth.
Dave Hentschel: So as we open up this ancient letter as a part of the scriptures, we would ask that you'd quiet our hearts now and focus our minds and guard us from quarrels in our lives that don't honor you and from anything that would distract us from your calling and the truth of the gospel.
Dave Hentschel: And I just want to ask that your Holy Spirit would help us to rightly understand your word, give us wisdom to know the difference between what truly matters and what really doesn't matter.
Dave Hentschel: And would you shape us into a church and into people who love truth but also pursue unity and live in a way that honors you.
Dave Hentschel: And so may your word really take root in our hearts, in our church, and bear fruit in our lives.
Dave Hentschel: For we pray it all for Jesus' sake and his reputation.
Dave Hentschel: And everyone said, Amen, amen.
Dave Hentschel: If you're ready for God's word, let's look at verse 14.
Dave Hentschel: Together, Paul starts like this He says, Timothy, remind them of these things and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers.
Dave Hentschel: Pause here for a second.
Dave Hentschel: What we have here in this first verse is a solemn charge, a serious oath.
Dave Hentschel: Paul is invoking the very presence of God that Timothy is to give.
Dave Hentschel: And the first thing that Paul says here to Timothy is that he wants Timothy to remind them of some things.
Dave Hentschel: The term remind them is found in the present continuous tense, which means he needs to keep on reminding them of these things because sometimes we forget, especially in the midst of suffering, which this letter is talking about, a context of suffering, we tend to forget some things.
Dave Hentschel: So Paul says, I want you to remind them of these things.
Dave Hentschel: Now, what things?
Dave Hentschel: Well, the these things that he's talking about is the creed that we just read last week from the few verses earlier in this letter.
Dave Hentschel: The creed that was a poem that the early church would recite.
Dave Hentschel: You remember that poem that we read last week.
Dave Hentschel: You can see it there in your Bibles.
Dave Hentschel: These things are the essential truths of our faith.
Dave Hentschel: The gospel that's been outlined in this letter so far.
Dave Hentschel: Remind them of these things, Timothy.
Dave Hentschel: Now, who's them?
Dave Hentschel: Well, them is most likely the teachers that were referred to back in chapter 2, verses 1 and 2.
Dave Hentschel: You remember Paul said, Timothy, take these things you've heard from me and entrust them to faithful men who will be able to teach others.
Dave Hentschel: That's who Timothy is supposed to remind.
Dave Hentschel: Remind them of these things, and I want you to solemnly charge them to not quarrel about words.
Dave Hentschel: Literally, in the original, what that term says is word wars.
Dave Hentschel: Don't get engaged in word wars.
Dave Hentschel: And so what we have here in our text is actually a contrast between word quarrelers and true teachers or literally truth teachers in our text.
Dave Hentschel: But this is a problem that occurs.
Dave Hentschel: And it's not a problem that occurs outside the church, like the persecution Paul is experiencing.
Dave Hentschel: This is a problem that occurs inside the church that he needs to address.
Dave Hentschel: Because churches are rarely destroyed because of persecution on the outside.
Dave Hentschel: Actually, Tertullian famously said the blood of the martyrs is like seed.
Dave Hentschel: It's like the seed of the church.
Dave Hentschel: Actually, most churches struggle with problems that come from confusion on the inside of the church.
Dave Hentschel: Now, what are these quarrels about words?
Dave Hentschel: What are these word wars that's being discussed here?
Dave Hentschel: What is that?
Dave Hentschel: Well, what at what that is, is focusing on things in the church that are more peripheral, things in the church that are not essential.
Dave Hentschel: Paul says, do not do that, do not focus there.
Dave Hentschel: Why?
Dave Hentschel: Because it's no good.
Dave Hentschel: Literally, the term there is useless.
Dave Hentschel: It is useless.
Dave Hentschel: Timothy, it's a complete waste of your time, it's a waste of your breath, it's a waste of your energy.
Dave Hentschel: It is no good.
Dave Hentschel: And more importantly, he says it ruins your hearers.
Dave Hentschel: Literally, the term for ruins here is the Greek term for catastrophe.
Dave Hentschel: It will create a catastrophe.
Dave Hentschel: The catastrophe word is a compound word made up of two words, troph, which means to turn, and then kata means upside down.
Dave Hentschel: So to turn upside down, that's what a catastrophe is.
Dave Hentschel: When it gets turned upside down.
Dave Hentschel: Timothy, if you do this, if you focus on word quarreling, that will lead to catastrophe.
Dave Hentschel: You will turn this church upside down.
Dave Hentschel: Now let me introduce you to a concept perhaps you're not familiar with called gray areas.
Dave Hentschel: A gray area is a spiritual issue that leaves room for legitimate differences of opinion based on sound biblical interpretation.
Dave Hentschel: Gray areas are also known as secondary issues or areas of liberty, lesser things, non-essentials, tertiary items, disputable matters, lower tier, tier three, peripheral issues.
Dave Hentschel: I'll give you some examples of gray issues that can come up in the context of a local church.
Dave Hentschel: And you need to buckle your seatbelts for this one.
Dave Hentschel: Back in the early church, would you believe there was great debate about eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols?
Dave Hentschel: There was also great debate about holidays.
Dave Hentschel: They had a big disagreement about the date of Easter.
Dave Hentschel: In the first few hundred years, one of the major conflicts that arose in the church was a conflict about predestination and free will.
Dave Hentschel: And Augustine had it out with Pelagius.
Dave Hentschel: The great schism of the church between the East and West of 1054 was about the procession of the Holy Spirit.
Dave Hentschel: Did the Spirit come from the Father or from the Father and the Son?
Dave Hentschel: The church split in half over that issue.
Dave Hentschel: Then came the Reformation.
Dave Hentschel: The church split again.
Dave Hentschel: Now, some issues in the Reformation were definitely worth contending for.
Dave Hentschel: And other disagreements that came up in the Reformation, well, they seem a little bit more trivial looking back on them from our perspective.
Dave Hentschel: If you study Calvin and the city that he founded in Geneva, Calvin's Geneva had a lot of laws.
Dave Hentschel: Calvin's Geneva had standards, and he took stands against many things.
Dave Hentschel: He took a stand against all dancing.
Dave Hentschel: He took a stand against all religious pictures and relics.
Dave Hentschel: He took a stand against church bells.
Dave Hentschel: He took a stand against any altar candles.
Dave Hentschel: He even took a stand against naming your child a name that's not a biblical name.
Dave Hentschel: That was against the law.
Dave Hentschel: So Calvin's Geneva had a lot of gray areas that they were taking stands on.
Dave Hentschel: Fast forward to the 1700s, there was great debate about the use of instruments in the church.
Dave Hentschel: The organ was a scandal when that was introduced.
Dave Hentschel: Isaac Watts, many of whose hymns we love and enjoy today, someone we would never think of as progressive, was cutting edge.
Dave Hentschel: Many people thought you should only sing the psalms in church.
Dave Hentschel: You fast forward to our modern era.
Dave Hentschel: In the 1960s, there was great debate about whether Christians could listen to rock and roll music on the radio.
Dave Hentschel: In the 1980s, there was debate about Christian heavy metal and whether that was appropriate.
Dave Hentschel: In the 1990s, there was debate about Christians and reading fantasy series like Harry Potter.
Dave Hentschel: Today there are disagreements about parenting philosophies, which schools to choose for your children, public, private, homeschool.
Dave Hentschel: There are disagreements about the Christian and our relationship with alcohol, total abstinence or moderation.
Dave Hentschel: There are tons of disagreements about end times.
Dave Hentschel: Are you premillennial, amillennial, postmillennial, panmillennial?
Dave Hentschel: Will it all pan out in the end?
Dave Hentschel: Do you believe in a rapture?
Dave Hentschel: When will the rapture take place?
Dave Hentschel: Covenant theology, dispensationalism?
Dave Hentschel: What's your position on Israel?
Dave Hentschel: Should we unconditionally support the state of Israel as God's chosen people?
Dave Hentschel: Or is there room for legitimate critique there?
Dave Hentschel: Lots of disagreements about end times.
Dave Hentschel: People disagree about counseling.
Dave Hentschel: Should we exclusively use biblical counseling, or is it okay to have an integrative model of counseling?
Dave Hentschel: Is it okay for a Christian to take psychiatric medicine, or does that violate the principle of the sufficiency of Scripture?
Dave Hentschel: And what about holidays?
Dave Hentschel: Are we allowed to celebrate things like Halloween?
Dave Hentschel: Can we send our kids trick-or-treening?
Dave Hentschel: What about things like Christmas trees and Santa?
Dave Hentschel: Are we allowed to participate in those things?
Dave Hentschel: What about the Easter bunny?
Dave Hentschel: Does that violate someone's strong conviction there?
Dave Hentschel: Then we like to discuss charismatic gifts with great fervency.
Dave Hentschel: There are different views on tongues for today or healing or the gift of prophecy.
Dave Hentschel: Are they for today in a continual sense or have they ceased?
Dave Hentschel: There's different disagreements about church governance models.
Dave Hentschel: Should we have elders?
Dave Hentschel: Should we be a congregational government?
Dave Hentschel: Should we have a bishop?
Dave Hentschel: Is that a biblical role?
Dave Hentschel: And then there's disagreements about creation.
Dave Hentschel: How did creation occur?
Dave Hentschel: Are you a young earth person?
Dave Hentschel: Are you an old earth person?
Dave Hentschel: Are you a theistic evolution person?
Dave Hentschel: There's disagreements about the Sabbath.
Dave Hentschel: Are we allowed to work on the Sabbath?
Dave Hentschel: Are we allowed to recreate on the Sabbath?
Dave Hentschel: Are we allowed to, let's say, for example, have our kids participate in sports on Sundays?
Dave Hentschel: Are we allowed to watch an NFL game on Sundays?
Dave Hentschel: Where do we draw the line there?
Dave Hentschel: There are disagreements and get your hard hats on this one about music and worship.
Dave Hentschel: I know you could have never guessed that.
Dave Hentschel: We have the hand raisers and the non-handraisers.
Dave Hentschel: I think we should have different sections for the hand raisers and the non-handraisers.
Dave Hentschel: We have disagreements about volume.
Dave Hentschel: Is the volume too high?
Dave Hentschel: Is the volume too low?
Dave Hentschel: Believe it or not, I've received anonymous scathing criticisms just about this one particular issue.
Dave Hentschel: I mean, the way people write about these things to me is like with the tone of an apocalyptic uh end times catastrophe.
Dave Hentschel: People are passionate about volume, and they are equally passionate about the style of music.
Dave Hentschel: Should we use traditional hymns?
Dave Hentschel: Should we have contemporary music?
Dave Hentschel: Should we try to blend the style and make everyone unhappy every single week, like the grumbling Israelites?
Dave Hentschel: You should read the emails we get about this one.
Dave Hentschel: I mean, not just opinions, moral, right and wrong.
Dave Hentschel: And then there's the lyrics of the worship music.
Dave Hentschel: There have been scathing articles about lyrics like David Crowder's sloppy wet kiss lyric, or the lyrics to reckless love.
Dave Hentschel: These phrases generated much angst in the church today.
Dave Hentschel: And how about clapping during music?
Dave Hentschel: Does that steal away God's glory, or is it appropriate and even biblical to clap your hands from time to time as a posture of worship?
Dave Hentschel: And what about the worship team?
Dave Hentschel: What are they allowed to do?
Dave Hentschel: Are they allowed to transition off the stage during the pastoral prayer, or is that some kind of unholy type of gesture?
Dave Hentschel: Can there be music played softly underneath of the pastor when he prays?
Dave Hentschel: And how about the lighting?
Dave Hentschel: Should it be joyful and bright or should it be dark and contemplative?
Dave Hentschel: How about the meet and greet time?
Dave Hentschel: Does that have to be every single Sunday?
Dave Hentschel: Is that an essential part of each service?
Dave Hentschel: And how about the regulative principle?
Dave Hentschel: The principle of the regulative principle principle says Christians should only follow worship practices explicitly prescribed in the New Testament, as opposed to others who say there's freedom to practice anything that's not prohibited in the New Testament.
Dave Hentschel: There's different opinions about that.
Dave Hentschel: There's different opinions about prayers.
Dave Hentschel: Are we allowed to use a prescripted, written-out prayer in advance?
Dave Hentschel: Or does it have to always be extemporaneous prayers?
Dave Hentschel: And what about Bible versions?
Dave Hentschel: You should see the passion people talk about Bible versions.
Dave Hentschel: There's ESV, there's NIV, there's the King James only person.
Dave Hentschel: You have to use word-for-word translations.
Dave Hentschel: No, it's okay to use a paraphrase sometimes, like the message.
Dave Hentschel: There's a lot of passion about this.
Dave Hentschel: And then how about the sermon?
Dave Hentschel: Man, you might not like this sermon very much, but how long should the sermon be?
Dave Hentschel: Should it be 15 minutes?
Dave Hentschel: Should it be 45 minutes?
Dave Hentschel: Is this an area of freedom that there's a right length here?
Dave Hentschel: Or are we quenching the Holy Spirit by watching the clock instead of listening to the sermon?
Dave Hentschel: And what about Christocentric preaching?
Dave Hentschel: Does the gospel have to be touched into every single sermon, or is there freedom there?
Dave Hentschel: How about the Lord's table?
Dave Hentschel: Should we celebrate the Lord's table every single Sunday as often as you gather?
Dave Hentschel: Or is once a month sufficient, like we practice here?
Dave Hentschel: Or should we do it less frequently, like every quarter?
Dave Hentschel: Or is that not frequent enough?
Dave Hentschel: Now let's get really serious.
Dave Hentschel: How about the dress code, particularly of the pastor?
Dave Hentschel: What should the pastor wear?
Dave Hentschel: What is the appropriate attire?
Dave Hentschel: And how about the other people on the stage, like the musicians?
Dave Hentschel: What should they wear?
Dave Hentschel: My position when it comes to clothes may differ from yours, or you may feel great freedom in this area.
Dave Hentschel: One person said to me one time, my position on the pastor and his clothing is yes, absolutely.
Dave Hentschel: I think the pastor should definitely wear clothing, and I will not budge on that.
Dave Hentschel: That's a good idea.
Dave Hentschel: I could keep going on and on and on, but let me just ask you a true or false question.
Dave Hentschel: Christians like to fight.
Dave Hentschel: True or false?
Dave Hentschel: That's true.
Dave Hentschel: Everybody likes to fight.
Dave Hentschel: Christians are no exception.
Dave Hentschel: I hate to admit it, I like to fight.
Dave Hentschel: This is mostly true.
Dave Hentschel: And my experience as a pastor over a couple decades is that gray areas are the most flammable fuel for the fire in these fights.
Dave Hentschel: Differences in gray areas are the leading cause of church conflict.
Dave Hentschel: And the second is like not even close, not even off the on the charts.
Dave Hentschel: It is the leading cause of church conflicts.
Dave Hentschel: Gray areas.
Dave Hentschel: And it never ceases to amaze me how worked up people get over these gray areas that are areas of disagreement.
Dave Hentschel: And what's kind of disturbing is the energy people have around their opinions about these things.
Dave Hentschel: Their energy just seems so disproportional to the importance of what they're talking about.
Dave Hentschel: Now, don't get me wrong, gray areas are not unimportant issues.
Dave Hentschel: You may have an opinion on a gray area, that's fine.
Dave Hentschel: You might even have a strong opinion about a gray area, that's okay.
Dave Hentschel: But the encouragement, I think, from God's word today, from chapter 2, verse 14, is that we shouldn't quarrel about these things.
Dave Hentschel: Meaning we shouldn't elevate our opinion about these things to the moral level of right or wrong.
Dave Hentschel: I have it this way, I know it the right way, everybody else is doing it the wrong way.
Dave Hentschel: When we elevate a gray area and our opinion about that to the level of right and wrong, we're now being divisive in the body of Christ, and that's a problem.
Dave Hentschel: You need to be more flexible.
Dave Hentschel: In fact, you need to leave room for maximum flexibility about your convictions regarding these things so that you don't lead to disunity in the church with those who may disagree with you in a legitimate sense.
Dave Hentschel: Now, what when we do that, sometimes it feels so right.
Dave Hentschel: When we fight about these things, it feels so right.
Dave Hentschel: And we think we're fighting the good fight, but we're actually doing the devil's bidding, and it's discouraging.
Dave Hentschel: Just to give you exhibit A, let me remind you of how divided we got six years ago in the church at large over COVID and the pandemic.
Dave Hentschel: So many gray areas came to the surface here.
Dave Hentschel: Like, should we wear masks or no masks?
Dave Hentschel: Is the six-foot rule a legitimate scientific principle?
Dave Hentschel: Should we get the vaccine or is there vaccine hesitancy?
Dave Hentschel: Is that okay?
Dave Hentschel: Can we pass offering plates?
Dave Hentschel: Is it okay to pass the communion kit?
Dave Hentschel: Can we move church online?
Dave Hentschel: There were disagreements about so many things: plexiglass, pew spacing, kids going back to school.
Dave Hentschel: We debated, we argued, we grumbled.
Dave Hentschel: Some people divided everybody into two categories.
Dave Hentschel: Suddenly wearing a mask became a test of Christian faithfulness.
Dave Hentschel: Some Christians saw compliance with the CDC rules as a demonstration of loving your neighbor, whereas other Christians saw those ever-changing CDC rules for churches as an example of government overreach, which should be questioned.
Dave Hentschel: I could go on and on and on here, but you remember the kind of gray areas that were coming to the surface a few years ago.
Dave Hentschel: It really was almost endless.
Dave Hentschel: The answers to those questions are not as clear as you might think.
Dave Hentschel: There are legitimate opinions on all sides.
Dave Hentschel: It's very difficult for a church who faces something like that to maintain unity.
Dave Hentschel: And the question is, how?
Dave Hentschel: How does a church maintain unity in the midst of those kinds of circumstances?
Dave Hentschel: How do we fight for unity?
Dave Hentschel: Well, Paul would say something very simple.
Dave Hentschel: Here's the deal.
Dave Hentschel: Don't turn gray areas into gospel issues.
Dave Hentschel: Don't do that.
Dave Hentschel: Accept those who may disagree with you and have a different opinion than you do on those things.
Dave Hentschel: See, the temptation for the person who has a very strict conscience and a strict opinion about a gray area is to judge someone who doesn't agree with them and to look down on them, in a sense, to condemn them.
Dave Hentschel: And then the temptation for the other person who feels a little bit more of a liberty in their conscience on that issue is to ridicule the person who feels a little bit more strict.
Dave Hentschel: Say, what are you so uptight about?
Dave Hentschel: Paul looks at both of those people and says, You're both equally wrong.
Dave Hentschel: You need to accept one another just as God in Christ has accepted you.
Dave Hentschel: There are legitimate differences of opinion.
Dave Hentschel: You need to find a way to maintain unity even though you disagree about that, because your unity is in Christ.
Dave Hentschel: This is exactly what Jesus is calling us to do.
Dave Hentschel: Jesus says to love one another.
Dave Hentschel: The Bible does not say be of one mind except in the area of worship music, except in the area of politics, except when there's a pandemic.
Dave Hentschel: If that happens, you don't need to be of one mind.
Dave Hentschel: You can resist your neighbor and ridicule them and rebuke your friends until they see the light like you do.
Dave Hentschel: No.
Dave Hentschel: We are to choose to love, even though we disagree or have a difference of opinion.
Dave Hentschel: There are no exceptions to that.
Dave Hentschel: When we divide over gray areas, areas of a legitimate difference of opinion.
Dave Hentschel: Peter Pendell used to say, the world laughs, the enemy rejoices, we hurt, and God weeps.
Dave Hentschel: This is not good.
Dave Hentschel: And I imagine Jesus himself saying, Do not split my church, do not destroy my bride whom I love.
Dave Hentschel: Why?
Dave Hentschel: Because our unity proves that the gospel actually works.
Dave Hentschel: Friends, the stakes are really high on this.
Dave Hentschel: If we can't find unity inside the church, we're not going to have credibility outside the church.
Dave Hentschel: So we have to take this topic really seriously.
Dave Hentschel: To help us here, let Call my chancellor up to the witness stand, Chuck Swindah.
Dave Hentschel: This Swindall quote is long, but it's worth paying close attention to.
Dave Hentschel: He writes this in his book, Grace Awakening.
Dave Hentschel: He says, quote, one of the marks of maturity is the ability to disagree without becoming disagreeable.
Dave Hentschel: That takes grace.
Dave Hentschel: In fact, handling disagreements, he goes on to say, with tact, is one of the crowning achievements of grace.
Dave Hentschel: Unfortunately, the older we get, the more brittle we become in our reactions, the more tedious and stubborn and fragile.
Dave Hentschel: For some strange reason, Swindah says this is especially true among evangelical Christians.
Dave Hentschel: He goes on to say, you would think that the church would be the one place where we could find tolerance, tact, plenty of room for disagreement and open discussion.
Dave Hentschel: Not so.
Dave Hentschel: It is a rare delight, Swindah says, to come across those in the family of God who have grown old in grace as well as in knowledge.
Dave Hentschel: Many a ministry lives on the edge of upheaval, he says, of borderline controversy, simply because there's no room for disagreement, no freedom to negotiate, no open ear to those who hold a different opinion.
Dave Hentschel: That is sad.
Dave Hentschel: But biblical unity is not the same as uniformity.
Dave Hentschel: We're not one because we're the same.
Dave Hentschel: Biblical unity is born from different opinions of diverse people about disparate issues because we are one in the gospel and one in Christ and one in the Spirit.
Dave Hentschel: Biblical unity is a much deeper unity than us agreeing on every single gray issue.
Dave Hentschel: Now, if we don't get this right, Paul says, you're headed for catastrophe.
Dave Hentschel: I don't want to understate what he's saying here because he is speaking in very strong language.
Dave Hentschel: Gray issues are important.
Dave Hentschel: They're not unimportant, they're just not that important.
Dave Hentschel: They should never cause us to break fellowship with another brother or sister in Christ.
Dave Hentschel: As an example.
Dave Hentschel: Let me share about two great evangelists of the 1700s.
Dave Hentschel: John Wesley and George Whitfield were part of the first Great Awakening in America.
Dave Hentschel: They both preached to thousands and saw so many people converted under their ministries.
Dave Hentschel: These two men of God disagreed about predestination.
Dave Hentschel: Whitfield was very Calvinistic.
Dave Hentschel: Wesley rejected that doctrine.
Dave Hentschel: And their followers knew that, and their followers argued fiercely about that.
Dave Hentschel: At one point, someone actually approached John Wesley and said, Mr.
Dave Hentschel: Wesley, you and George Whitfield disagree on the topic of predestination.
Dave Hentschel: Do you think you're going to see George Whitfield in heaven?
Dave Hentschel: And Wesley replied, no.
Dave Hentschel: And then he paused for five seconds.
Dave Hentschel: And he said, Because I think he's going to be so close to the throne of God, and I will be so far that I'll hardly catch a glimpse of him.
Dave Hentschel: That's the spirit of brothers in Christ who don't agree about a gray area.
Dave Hentschel: Don't divide the body of Christ over non-essentials.
Dave Hentschel: That's the body that Christ died to unite.
Dave Hentschel: If you'd like to learn more about the topic of handling gray areas in the church, my friend Craig wrote a book called Gray Church.
Dave Hentschel: It's full of wisdom and practical examples of how to deal with this topic, and I found it greatly helpful in preparing this message for today.
Dave Hentschel: So Paul says, Timothy, don't do the word quarreling thing.
Dave Hentschel: Don't let unnecessary divisions creep in.
Dave Hentschel: As a leader, quarantine those types of debates.
Dave Hentschel: But focus on something else instead, because avoiding foolish debates is only half the job.
Dave Hentschel: It's not enough to just say what a church must not do.
Dave Hentschel: We also have to talk about what a church must do, right?
Dave Hentschel: So that's point two.
Dave Hentschel: We've talked about what we should not fight about, but now let's talk about what we should fight about.
Dave Hentschel: And for this, drop down with me to verse 16.
Dave Hentschel: I'll come back to 15 in just a second.
Dave Hentschel: Paul goes on to say this but avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene.
Dave Hentschel: Among them are Himenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened.
Dave Hentschel: They are upsetting the faith of some.
Dave Hentschel: Strong language here.
Dave Hentschel: This false teaching Paul is talking about, he likens to a virus.
Dave Hentschel: A theological virus has crept in.
Dave Hentschel: It's like an infectious, spreading, dangerous disease.
Dave Hentschel: Let me show you a picture, and as a warning, the picture's a little disturbing.
Dave Hentschel: But Paul likens this false teaching to gangrene.
Dave Hentschel: Those of you in the medical profession, you know how serious this is and how it needs to be dealt with severely.
Dave Hentschel: It's a kind of a blood poisoning.
Dave Hentschel: Now that's a terrifying image.
Dave Hentschel: In the ancient world, in fact, if gangrene were to set in, it would spread throughout your whole body and eventually kill you.
Dave Hentschel: And the only way to stop it was radical action.
Dave Hentschel: You had to remove the infected tissue before it spread.
Dave Hentschel: Let me get that nasty picture off there and go back to the verse.
Dave Hentschel: Paul is saying false teaching is that serious.
Dave Hentschel: It is infecting the body of Christ.
Dave Hentschel: It needs to be severed out.
Dave Hentschel: It is not healthy.
Dave Hentschel: It's dangerous.
Dave Hentschel: In fact, it's deadly.
Dave Hentschel: But this kind of false teaching rarely ever announces itself.
Dave Hentschel: You know, wolves don't come to the front and say, hey, I'm a wolf.
Dave Hentschel: Heresy never comes into a church that way.
Dave Hentschel: Rather, it usually comes in quietly, it usually comes in nuanced and sophisticated.
Dave Hentschel: It sounds thoughtful, but you recognize it departs from the truth in some very important way.
Dave Hentschel: And when it does that, it starts to spread slowly like a spiritual disease.
Dave Hentschel: And then it brings havoc.
Dave Hentschel: So this is why Paul actually names these false teachers.
Dave Hentschel: Who's spreading this theological error?
Dave Hentschel: He says, well, it's Hemenaeus and Philetus.
Dave Hentschel: Paul names them.
Dave Hentschel: No, this isn't personal hostility, this is spiritual triage.
Dave Hentschel: There were teachers in this church who were denying the future bodily resurrection for the saints.
Dave Hentschel: They said, Oh, that's already happened.
Dave Hentschel: It's all spiritual.
Dave Hentschel: It's already all taken place.
Dave Hentschel: You've been resurrected.
Dave Hentschel: Now, why did they teach this?
Dave Hentschel: It may be that the teachers were making Christianity more palatable to those who maybe struggled with the doctrine of the resurrection, which were many in the first century.
Dave Hentschel: And to accommodate them, they left off a foundational belief of Christianity.
Dave Hentschel: And Paul says, when they did that, they swerved.
Dave Hentschel: They got off the road.
Dave Hentschel: They literally missed the mark.
Dave Hentschel: And when they did that, this is dishonoring to God.
Dave Hentschel: It is irreverent, and it is harmful to the body of Christ.
Dave Hentschel: Because why?
Dave Hentschel: These are matters of great significance.
Dave Hentschel: The resurrection, that's unsettling.
Dave Hentschel: And what Paul actually says, yes, they are upsetting some people's faith.
Dave Hentschel: Why?
Dave Hentschel: Because the Bible clearly teaches this.
Dave Hentschel: It doesn't just teach about the immortality of the soul, it also promises the resurrection of the body.
Dave Hentschel: This is our great hope, and this doctrine is not third tier, it's essential.
Dave Hentschel: So Paul says, do not let that disease spread any further.
Dave Hentschel: Timothy, when you practice theological medicine, make sure you're all scrubbed up and kept pure.
Dave Hentschel: We don't want any infections coming into the body of Christ like that.
Dave Hentschel: And so the second principle here in our text is kind of the opposite.
Dave Hentschel: We just learned we should not fight over things that aren't worth fighting for.
Dave Hentschel: But Paul also says we should fight over things that are worth fighting for.
Dave Hentschel: Now, this could be kind of confusing.
Dave Hentschel: At this point, let me introduce you to a framework that will give us some categories to work with.
Dave Hentschel: And some of you have seen this before, but it's worth repeating.
Dave Hentschel: I call it the three buckets.
Dave Hentschel: The three buckets.
Dave Hentschel: There are three buckets, and the first bucket we're going to call cardinal doctrines.
Dave Hentschel: Can you say that with me?
Dave Hentschel: Cardinal doctrines.
Dave Hentschel: In terms of a definition, a cardinal doctrine is a doctrine that is essential to the Christian faith.
Dave Hentschel: Theologians Grenz and Olsen write, quote, a belief is considered cardinal if it seems essential to the gospel.
Dave Hentschel: In other words, if its denial would entail apostasy, rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Dave Hentschel: In other words, if you don't hold to the resurrection, if you don't hold to a cardinal doctrine, you're probably not a Christian and you're teaching heresy.
Dave Hentschel: That's how central these doctrines are to our faith.
Dave Hentschel: If someone knowingly rejects a cardinal doctrine, they're moving outside historic Christian belief.
Dave Hentschel: These are high-stakes beliefs.
Dave Hentschel: The resurrection is in this category.
Dave Hentschel: Now, there are not very many issues that are cardinal in nature.
Dave Hentschel: Most theologians have maybe a dozen of them or so.
Dave Hentschel: A few examples of cardinal doctrines would be like the Trinity, the deity of Jesus Christ, the authority of Scripture, justification by faith, the bodily resurrection, the return of Jesus.
Dave Hentschel: Those would all be examples of cardinal doctrines.
Dave Hentschel: If you want to know what cardinal doctrines we hold to here, the membership class will tell you all about that.
Dave Hentschel: We'll cover it later this month.
Dave Hentschel: Now, for cardinal doctrines, I want to give you a key word.
Dave Hentschel: The key word I want you to remember when it comes to this bucket is fight.
Dave Hentschel: When it comes to cardinal doctrines, they are worth you fighting for them.
Dave Hentschel: They are worth preserving.
Dave Hentschel: You dare not give up on a cardinal doctrine.
Dave Hentschel: You hold your ground on cardinal doctrines.
Dave Hentschel: Why?
Dave Hentschel: One theologian put it this way: quote, beliefs that are at odds with Orthodox Christian theology are a direct threat to the basic beliefs necessary for adequately understanding God's plan for personal salvation.
Dave Hentschel: If a church gives up its cardinal doctrines, that church is slowly in decline.
Dave Hentschel: There's not much faith to pass on to the next generation.
Dave Hentschel: And so this is why the Bible says you're to contend for the faith, Jude chapter 1.
Dave Hentschel: This is why we must pass the baton of the faith delivered to us by the apostles, and each generation must do this.
Dave Hentschel: The danger here, if you give up on a cardinal doctrine, is the danger of heresy.
Dave Hentschel: It's the danger of false teaching.
Dave Hentschel: You are now outside of Christianity.
Dave Hentschel: That's a huge problem.
Dave Hentschel: Bucket number two.
Dave Hentschel: The second bucket that you need to be aware of is the bucket that I'll just call clear Bible teaching.
Dave Hentschel: Now, this bucket is a little bigger than the cardinal doctrine bucket.
Dave Hentschel: There are many more issues that fall into the bucket of clear Bible teaching.
Dave Hentschel: For example, um, well, before I get to the example, you might you might not like what the scripture says about an issue, but it's clearly taught in the Bible and it's hard to get around.
Dave Hentschel: So the key word when it comes to clear Bible teaching is the word obey.
Dave Hentschel: Obey.
Dave Hentschel: For example, Paul says in Ephesians chapter 5, do not get drunk with wine.
Dave Hentschel: If you ask me what you should do regarding the issue of intoxication, I'm gonna say, you should obey the Bible.
Dave Hentschel: It's really clear in the Bible.
Dave Hentschel: You might not like it, but it is nevertheless clearly taught, and it's hard to deny the Bible's insistence that we should not be drunk with alcohol.
Dave Hentschel: Other examples would be like, do not lie, do not be unequally yoked with a non-Christian in marriage, do not divorce under certain, except for under certain specific biblical exceptions.
Dave Hentschel: Children, obey your parents.
Dave Hentschel: We could probably throw into the clear Bible teaching all ten of the Ten Commandments, as well as hundreds of other clear statements in the Bible that have prohibitions or commands for the believer.
Dave Hentschel: Clear Bible teaching.
Dave Hentschel: It's the danger of saying, hey, you say you're a Christian, but you clearly are not living your life as if you believe any of this stuff.
Dave Hentschel: You're not obedient to what God says you should be doing.
Dave Hentschel: You're saying one thing, you're doing another thing.
Dave Hentschel: It's like you're wearing a mask, it's like you're two different people, it's like you're a hypocrite.
Dave Hentschel: So that's the danger if we get this bucket wrong.
Dave Hentschel: The third bucket we've already covered, and it's that bucket of gray areas.
Dave Hentschel: This is what we've been talking about earlier.
Dave Hentschel: Areas that leave room for legitimate differences of opinion based on a sound biblical interpretation.
Dave Hentschel: Now, the key word that you need to remember for this bucket is the word accept.
Dave Hentschel: You need to learn to accept your brother or sister in Christ who disagrees with you, because your opinion is not necessarily the right way.
Dave Hentschel: You may think it is, but there are legitimate differences of opinion.
Dave Hentschel: So don't judge them, nor should you ridicule them.
Dave Hentschel: Rather, the Apostle Paul says in Romans 14 and 15, accept your brother in Christ who disagrees with you about this, just as God in Christ has accepted you.
Dave Hentschel: Now the danger here, if we get the gray area bucket wrong, is the danger of legalism.
Dave Hentschel: Legalism is when I add my rules to your life.
Dave Hentschel: Legalism is when I say, I think what I think about this matter should be imposed on you.
Dave Hentschel: Legalism is when we add to the word of God our own traditions or the opinions of human beings.
Dave Hentschel: And Jesus had a lot to say about legalism, and none of it was good.
Dave Hentschel: This is what Paul is talking about here.
Dave Hentschel: So a cardinal doctrine is a doctrine for which we need to contend and fight.
Dave Hentschel: And that is gonna take some backbone on your part, especially in a day like today.
Dave Hentschel: But it's what we're called to do.
Dave Hentschel: Al Moeller said it this way: when a leader walks into the room, a passion for truth better enter with him.
Dave Hentschel: It's gonna take some resolve to fight for the cardinal doctrines.
Dave Hentschel: We must fight for them.
Dave Hentschel: But, but, however, please hear this next part.
Dave Hentschel: You can fight in a spirit of love.
Dave Hentschel: You can fight in a spirit of gentleness.
Dave Hentschel: You can stand firm for things in such a way that still seeks to persuade others, not antagonize them.
Dave Hentschel: That probably means you need to stay away from debates on social media when you're talking about these topics.
Dave Hentschel: That probably means you're not getting in a text war about this.
Dave Hentschel: That probably means email's not the best venue to fight about cardinal doctrines.
Dave Hentschel: These are face-to-face, serious conversations.
Dave Hentschel: I'll give you an example of someone who really struggled with this.
Dave Hentschel: John Calvin.
Dave Hentschel: He was a reformer in Geneva over in Switzerland, and he had a comrade.
Dave Hentschel: His name was William Farrell.
Dave Hentschel: Yes, Will Farrell, not the same Will Farrell.
Dave Hentschel: William Farrell.
Dave Hentschel: William Farrell was an outspoken and hot-headed man.
Dave Hentschel: Because of his temperament, John Calvin wrote Farrell a letter in which he urged Farrell to please do more to accommodate people and seek to persuade them and win them over.
Dave Hentschel: But you see, the ferrils of this world believe any effort to be judicious and prudent is being a cowardly sellout.
Dave Hentschel: But Calvin wisely recognized that his friend's constant, intemperate denunciations often stemmed not from selfless courage, but rather from the opposite, ugly pride.
Dave Hentschel: Writing about Pharaoh, Calvin said this.
Dave Hentschel: Friends, it's possible to seek to be winsome and persuasive and still stand firm for your convictions in a way that does not unnecessarily harden or antagonize the person who's disagreeing with you.
Dave Hentschel: We're seeking to win them, right?
Dave Hentschel: Not get rid of them.
Dave Hentschel: For me, one way I try to make sure I do this is I pause to pray for the person that I disagree with.
Dave Hentschel: And that puts my heart in a better place to have a conversation.
Dave Hentschel: And it stirs up my own love for them.
Dave Hentschel: John Newton, the guy who was a slave trader and wrote Amazing Grace after he became a Christian, said this.
Dave Hentschel: Newton said, What will it profit a man if he gains his cause and silences his adversary?
Dave Hentschel: If at the same time he loses that humble, tender frame of spirit in which the Lord delights and to which the promise of his presence is made.
Dave Hentschel: The answer is you gain nothing.
Dave Hentschel: 1 Corinthians 13 says, If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but don't have love, I'm a resounding gong, I'm a clanging cymbal.
Dave Hentschel: Even when we stand firm on our convictions, and we should, we must remember the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, about whom it says in 1 Peter 2, when he was reviled, he reviled not again.
Dave Hentschel: And when he suffered, he threatened not.
Dave Hentschel: So we fight, yes, but we always fight with gentleness and respect.
Dave Hentschel: We speak the truth, but we do so in love.
Dave Hentschel: Amen.
Dave Hentschel: So we've seen what not to fight about, and we've seen what to fight about.
Dave Hentschel: And here's the$50 million question.
Dave Hentschel: How do you know the difference?
Dave Hentschel: How do you know the difference between those two categories?
Dave Hentschel: That's a trick, right?
Dave Hentschel: Well, sandwich right in the middle of this section, I think, is the answer.
Dave Hentschel: Look with me at verse 15.
Dave Hentschel: Paul's instructions are as follows do your best to present yourself to God as one approved.
Dave Hentschel: A worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
Dave Hentschel: That verse assumes there's a right way to interpret the Bible, and there's a wrong way to interpret the Bible.
Dave Hentschel: The Bible is a powerful book, and it can be misused, and it can be perverted, and it can be abused.
Dave Hentschel: Almost every major heresy throughout church history has not come from avoiding the scriptures, but misinterpreting the scriptures.
Dave Hentschel: So this question here is about biblical hermeneutics, a big word that just means the science of interpreting the Bible.
Dave Hentschel: And there's a right way to do it, and there's a wrong way to do it.
Dave Hentschel: And the stakes could not be higher because a wrong interpretation leads to a wrong application.
Dave Hentschel: This is why there's greater accountability for teachers of the Bible.
Dave Hentschel: So let's unpack this verse a little bit and apply it to all of us.
Dave Hentschel: First, Paul says this do your best.
Dave Hentschel: Some translations say be diligent, meaning this takes work to be approved, to present yourself to God.
Dave Hentschel: This is who you're serving, right?
Dave Hentschel: When you study the Bible, you're not serving other people.
Dave Hentschel: You account, you're accountable to God.
Dave Hentschel: You work for Him as one approved.
Dave Hentschel: That word approved there was used in the metal trade of proving silver or gold as a precious metal.
Dave Hentschel: One who receives approval.
Dave Hentschel: It was the great missionary Jim Elliott as he was studying to go to Ecuador for which he would lose his life, who said, I'm studying for the Aug degree, the approved unto God degree.
Dave Hentschel: This is how we must study the scriptures as a workman, meaning this is hard.
Dave Hentschel: Remember earlier in chapter two?
Dave Hentschel: It's like being a soldier, it's like being an athlete, it's like being a farmer.
Dave Hentschel: This is gonna be hard.
Dave Hentschel: Why?
Dave Hentschel: So that you don't need to be ashamed.
Dave Hentschel: There is a way to handle the Bible that is shameful.
Dave Hentschel: Paul says, I want you to rightly handle the word of truth.
Dave Hentschel: Literally, that term rightly handle means cut it straight.
Dave Hentschel: Cut it straight.
Dave Hentschel: It came from the blue-collar context.
Dave Hentschel: It literally means to cut a straight path.
Dave Hentschel: It was used of engineers building a road through difficult terrain.
Dave Hentschel: If you've ever watched highway construction through mountains, you'll see massive machines cutting through rock, clearing trees, leveling the ground, cutting it straight so that it'll go straight to the destination.
Dave Hentschel: That's exactly what faithful Bible exposition seeks to do.
Dave Hentschel: It clears away confusion, it clears away opinions, it clears away speculations so that people can travel directly from the text of Scripture to the truth that God intends them to apply in their own lives.
Dave Hentschel: The Bible teacher's job is not to invent messages, the pastor's job is to cut a clear path through the text so that people can arrive at the truth.
Dave Hentschel: Part of rightly handling or rightly dividing is rightly dividing what areas are cardinal doctrines, what areas are clear Bible teaching, and what areas are gray areas.
Dave Hentschel: And when you rightly handle the word of truth, you can discern between those three buckets and you can learn how to apply this text.
Dave Hentschel: So Paul says, Timothy, do this, you won't be ashamed, because you're rightly handling the word of truth.
Dave Hentschel: And that's what the Bible is.
Dave Hentschel: It is the word of truth, and that's how you need to treat it when you read it, Timothy.
Dave Hentschel: It's the inspired revelation of Almighty God.
Dave Hentschel: It's not a book of man, it is inerrant, it's infallible, and it is true.
Dave Hentschel: The grass withers, the flowers fade, the word of our God stands forever.
Dave Hentschel: Treat it as the word of truth, as one who's approved unto God, who doesn't need to be ashamed.
Dave Hentschel: We'll talk more about the scriptures in chapter three when we get to verse 16.
Dave Hentschel: But this is what Christian leaders wield, the truth.
Dave Hentschel: And that's what the church needs.
Dave Hentschel: To faithfully pass on a healthy, unified church to the next generation.
Dave Hentschel: It needs teachers who study the Bible with great diligence, which seems like a no-brainer.
Dave Hentschel: But there are many teachers and pastors today who maybe you'll have a hard time believing this, but actually deliver sermons in churches without much study of the Bible at all.
Dave Hentschel: Like they're just extemporaneous TED Talks.
Dave Hentschel: It's it's uh whatever they're thinking about that week or whatever's in the news or whatever their own.
Dave Hentschel: Hobby horse is like a stream of consciousness.
Dave Hentschel: Careful exposition of the word of God takes hard work.
Dave Hentschel: This is why every single week we say, please take out your Bible and turn to this page.
Dave Hentschel: We want you to see that the sermons are rooted right there in the text.
Dave Hentschel: It's not coming from us.
Dave Hentschel: This is coming from God.
Dave Hentschel: You don't need to hear from me.
Dave Hentschel: You need to hear from Him every week.
Dave Hentschel: We bring the Word of truth the best we possibly can.
Dave Hentschel: Not perfectly, but this is the goal.
Dave Hentschel: This is the aim.
Dave Hentschel: This is what moves people towards godliness, the word of truth.
Dave Hentschel: And how do we tell the difference about what to fight about and what not to fight about?
Dave Hentschel: By rightly handling the word of truth.
Dave Hentschel: As we read this passage, you begin to feel a weight, right?
Dave Hentschel: You feel the weight of this problem.
Dave Hentschel: You see the false teaching could be spreading, arguments could be dividing these churches.
Dave Hentschel: People sometimes drift from the truth.
Dave Hentschel: But I want you to see that Paul ends this section with a word of great confidence.
Dave Hentschel: So finish the passage with me by looking at verse 19.
Dave Hentschel: Paul ends by saying this: But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal.
Dave Hentschel: The Lord knows those who are his, and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.
Dave Hentschel: In other words, Paul says the church ultimately does not depend on human leaders, it rests actually on the sovereign knowledge of God.
Dave Hentschel: God has laid a firm foundation for his church of Christian doctrine that Christians can stand on.
Dave Hentschel: That quotation that he gives here, the Lord knows those who are his, comes from the book of Numbers.
Dave Hentschel: The context there was something called Korah's Rebellion, where the people of God rebelled against Moses and God's appointed leadership.
Dave Hentschel: And as a result, they were judged by God for that.
Dave Hentschel: The earth actually swallowed them up and fire came down from heaven.
Dave Hentschel: It was a wicked story.
Dave Hentschel: The point is, Paul's saying you shouldn't rebel against God's appointed leadership in any generation, like Hymeneus and like Philetus are doing.
Dave Hentschel: Paul is charging Timothy and the church to stay faithful to God's appointed apostolic leadership in the church who stand on this solid foundation of sound doctrine.
Dave Hentschel: That means the church is not fragile in the hands of God, but it also means something else.
Dave Hentschel: Those who belong to Christ must live like they belong to Christ.
Dave Hentschel: That leads to his second quotation.
Dave Hentschel: Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.
Dave Hentschel: That quotation comes from Isaiah chapter 26.
Dave Hentschel: In Isaiah's day, that was a call to righteous living as opposed to those who were idolatrous and wayward.
Dave Hentschel: This is what true believers are to do, those who are sealed.
Dave Hentschel: This refers to the marking out by God of his property, under his protection, under his provision.
Dave Hentschel: They should depart from iniquity, abstain from wickedness, abstain from evil, obey clear Bible teaching.
Dave Hentschel: This is the calling of the church.
Dave Hentschel: It's very clear.
Dave Hentschel: The world out there knows how to divide, don't they?
Dave Hentschel: We have a way to unite.
Dave Hentschel: We have an opportunity to show them something totally different.
Dave Hentschel: We here in the body of Christ know how to be unified because God is one.
Dave Hentschel: And we know how to be holy because God is holy, and we are to reflect our Creator.
Dave Hentschel: By doing this, the church will be strengthened and believers will grow in holiness and Christ will be honored.
Dave Hentschel: Friends, the heart of this passage is that the Apostle Paul is trying to protect two things.
Dave Hentschel: He's trying to protect the unity of the church, and he's trying to protect the truth.
Dave Hentschel: And they're both really important to pass on a church to the next generation.
Dave Hentschel: A church without truth is compromised.
Dave Hentschel: It's not worth passing down.
Dave Hentschel: And a church without unity, it's a catastrophe.
Dave Hentschel: The church needs both.
Dave Hentschel: And so Paul's heart to Timothy is saying, create a church like this.
Dave Hentschel: And my heart, as one of the pastors here, one of the shepherds here, is I would like to create a church like this too.
Dave Hentschel: A church that is both full of grace and truth, that's both unified and sound in its doctrine.
Dave Hentschel: The key is knowing what battles to fight and what battles not to fight.
Dave Hentschel: So if I could sum up the passage, what Paul is teaching here is pretty simple.
Dave Hentschel: It's this a healthy, unified church knows three things.
Dave Hentschel: What not to fight about, what we must fight for, and how to tell the difference.
Dave Hentschel: That's how you pass on.
Dave Hentschel: A healthy, unified church.
Dave Hentschel: So as we apply this passage to our own lives and our own hearts, I would ask you to allow the Spirit to search you and ask yourself some questions.
Dave Hentschel: Are there some things that maybe you've been quarreling about that aren't really worth quarreling about?
Dave Hentschel: Are there some gray areas that you've been fighting for that maybe you need to back up on and let other people disagree about?
Dave Hentschel: Maybe you need to hold those things more loosely and leave room for your brother or sister?
Dave Hentschel: Maybe God is inviting you to take a little bit more of a humble posture on those things.
Dave Hentschel: On the other hand, maybe you're here and there's some things that are clearly worth fighting for, and you haven't really been willing to fight for them.
Dave Hentschel: You've been compromising on them.
Dave Hentschel: Maybe there's some cardinal doctrines that you've really not been holding to, and it's time for you to take a firmer stand for the faith, lest that false teaching spread like gangrene.
Dave Hentschel: And maybe for you it just means I need to learn to stand firm on this issue because it's really clear.
Dave Hentschel: Whatever the Lord is speaking to you, I encourage you to obey how the Spirit might apply this in your own life.
Dave Hentschel: But this is what it means to pass on a church healthy and unified to the next generation.
Dave Hentschel: There's an old quote, some say it's Augustine, some say it's someone else, that kind of summarizes it really well.
Dave Hentschel: In essentials, unity, in non-essentials, liberty, and in all things, charity.
Dave Hentschel: As we close, think back again about what Victor Glover said as he looked from the perspective of the moon back to the earth.
Dave Hentschel: He said from that distance that it looked like one thing: one place, one home, one shared existence.
Dave Hentschel: In a much deeper way, we are to see the Church of Jesus Christ in that fashion.
Dave Hentschel: One body, one faith, one Lord.
Dave Hentschel: But that kind of unity never happens by accident.
Dave Hentschel: It is intentional.
Dave Hentschel: It doesn't happen by ignoring the truth.
Dave Hentschel: It doesn't happen by fighting over everything.
Dave Hentschel: It happens when we learn to do what Paul said to Timothy to do.
Dave Hentschel: Not to quarrel about what doesn't matter, learn to fight for what does matter, and learn the difference by rightly handling the word of truth.
Dave Hentschel: In that way, we don't just become one thing in the universe in a vague sense.
Dave Hentschel: We become one people built on God's one foundation.
Dave Hentschel: Amen.
Dave Hentschel: Let me invite the worship team to come as we pray together as I close.
Dave Hentschel: Would you pray with me?
Dave Hentschel: Heavenly Father, thank you for the truth of your word and for the reminder that your firm foundation stands.
Dave Hentschel: Thank you that your church is not built on human wisdom or human strength, but on the unchanging truths of the gospel.
Dave Hentschel: And Lord, help us now to take those truths with us as we leave today and guard our hearts from any unnecessary arguments and quarrels over things that, in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter.
Dave Hentschel: Give us a spirit of humility and grace toward one another, especially where sincere believers might disagree.
Dave Hentschel: At the same time, I pray that you'd give us courage and conviction to stand firm for the essential truths of the faith.
Dave Hentschel: Help us to contend for the gospel faithfully while we do so with gentleness and respect.
Dave Hentschel: And would you make us into a church that handles your word accurately, that loves one another deeply, and that passes on the faith faithfully to the next generation?
Dave Hentschel: For we ask it all in the strong name of Jesus, and we pray for his reputation.
Dave Hentschel: And everyone said,