1Timothy 6:5 - Termites in the brain and gold on pigs

”...constant arguings of men being depraved [of] the mind and having been defrauded of the truth, supposing to being profit good-worship.”

-Constant arguing.  Bickering.  Our heart-sickness stemming from spiritual malnourishment has us constantly at each other’s throats.  Constant friction.  At least for those who have lifted up their hearts in pride and have walked out from under a humble submission to the authority of God and His Word.  They are in fact depraved.  Depraved of mind, and defrauded of truth - and in truth, they are depraved of mind BECAUSE they are defrauded of the truth.  Once you start down that path, once you begin to question, did God really say that?, then all bets are off.  You have laid the groundwork for depravity, a fertile seedbed for interpersonal friction.

-Depraved.  It refers to something which is spoiled, corrupted.  A decided change for the worse.  It is the endgame of moths and worms and termites. Termites in the brain - that’s what’s happening.  And yes, it is terminal.  There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is death.  Men (and women) of a depraved mind.  It is completely tied to being defrauded of the truth, deprived of the truth.  And it is largely self-inflicted.  They cast God out of mind, and He gives them an outcast mind (Romans 1.28).  Literally, they test (and fail) God and His truth in their mind, and they receive back a mind which fails the test.  A mind and a life which necessarily results in doing things which are improper.  Unable to not sin.  God gave them over.  When we kick God out, He gives us exactly what we (think we) want.  When we change Him out for something-other-than, when we exchange Him and His truth for that which is not, He totally gives us over.  And there is no coming back, my friend.  There is no coming back from total depravity - apart from the grace of God.  There is no hope of rescue apart from His divine intervention in Christ His Son.

-So we see people who can’t get along.  Constant friction.  Easily offended.  Rage monsters.  Intolerant and impatient.  Straining out gnats and dividing at the drop of a hat.  Or less than that even - the drop of a visor, or a beanie.  And we see something else.  Sadly, another symptom of this depravity is greed.  The ol’ profit motive.  Paul is about to tell us that the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil (1Timothy 6.10).  Well, Paul here mentions that some of these depraveds are actually expressing an interest in religion.  They are going thru the motions of devotion.  But they’re in it for the money.  They love money.  They’re in it for what they can get out of it.  What does it profit me?  Their heart isn’t right towards God, it’s not at all surrendered to Him, but hey, if there’s money to be made, then count me in.  This affects even those in the pulpit.  Decades of greedy preachers and televangelists who are getting rich off the backs of the faithful have created an entire generation of skeptics, disenchanted with the charlatans and shenanigans they have seen or heard about on tv and in the news, guys (mostly all guys) who pad their wallets and bank accounts and uglify our fair religion and Founder like gold on pigs.  It might be interesting to see how many preachers would still do it as a lifestyle if they couldn’t do it for a living.  I.e. if they weren’t getting paid.  Or if their income was something less than six figures.

-Paul shows us in these verses what the unsurrendered life looks like.  The essence of depravity is me-first.  Conceit.  Spiritual arrogance and pride.  Whereas the humble heart, the surrendered heart, puts me in my proper place.  It is the proper perspective on Who God is, and who I am in relation to Him.  Ranking Him first, above me-and-mine, and above all else.  It all begins here.  This is the jumping-off point - get this right, and everything else falls into place.  Good worship.  Godly God-like-ness.  Well-oiled relationships.  Contentment.  And what we see next, is that there is actually great profit to be found in losing it all...

1Timothy 6:4 - Sick people

”...[anyone different teaching and not agreeing to healthy words] he is proud, understanding nothing, but rather being sick about debates and disputes, out of which are coming to be envy, strife, blasphemies, suspicions, evils...”

-Sick.  Sick people.  They didn’t take their medicine today.  They are off their meds, in fact - not getting their recommended daily allowance of the healthy healing Words of Scripture - and that can’t be good.  Nope - vital signs are down, things are actually trending down, trending away from godliness.  Pride.  Lack of understanding.  And then we have all forms of interpersonal conflict.  This is where it all begins.  The fountainhead of man’s inhumanity to man, of our pervasive inability to simply get along.  To be a good neighbor.  It’s not about State Farm not being there - it is God’s Word not being there and being embraced in a humble teachable heart.  Pride.  Me-first, me-better.  Uh-gly.  As ugly as it gets, way more than skin deep, ugliness towards my neighbor flowing out of my nasty ugly heart.

-And pride would thus be not only the first symptom but also the first cause.  It is the consummate act of pride to question what God said - an illness as old as the Garden, yea older than that.  Did God really say ________?  The willingness, the brazen instinct to question what God has said, the readiness to take the wide and oft-traveled highway away from what God has said is the essence of pride, and we see it in the serpent in the earliest pages of Scripture.  The whole creation thing had barely gotten off the ground, and here he comes, all proud and haughty, the prince of the power of the air, cast down to earth on account of his pride, more than ready to ensnare and enslave the masses of would-be image-bearers into thumbing their collective noses at the loving God Who fashioned them to bear His glorious image forever.  Questioning God’s Word.  Did God really say that?  And pride now induces them to even question the truth of that creation account.  Did God really make all that?  Did God really make me?  No strings on me...!, we insist, as we stumble down the path of ignorance.  Understanding nothing, Paul says.  Professing to be wise, they became fools (Romans 1.22).  Sick, broken, hurting people.

-And it is in the garden where we see this heart-sickness begin to infect our relationships.  Not only are we hiding from God and His scrutinying gaze, the searing heat of His Truth, but we are hurling at one another.  Passing on our hurt.  Instead of peace and harmony and love, we have debates and disputes, envy and strife, blasphemies and abusive language in place of healthy life-giving words, suspicions (we find it oh-so-hard to trust one another).  And evils.  All kinds of nasty evils.  The exact opposite of godliness.  Sick people.  Friends, we were made for so much more.  We were never made for this.  But wait - (sadly) there’s more...  :(

1Timothy 6:3 - On Designer Wallpaper and Cure-what-ails-ya...

”These [things] be teaching and urging.  If any is different-teaching and not agreeing to words being healthy, to the [ones] of our Lord Jesus Christ and to the teaching according to good-worship...”

-Good worship.  Good worship.  This is the goal of all our instruction.  All our much ado about something, about Someone.  This is our thing.  AKA  godliness.  Being like God.  Holy conduct and godliness (2Peter 3.11).  Life and godliness - God’s divine power poured out towards that end. (2Peter 1.3).  This word appears more in this letter than anywhere else in all of Scripture.  We are to pursue it (1Timothy 6.11), practice it (1Timothy 5.4), train ourselves for it (1Timothy 4.7), embrace the great mystery of it (1Timothy 3.16) - it is to be the wall paper, the background color of our entire life (1Timothy 2.2).  The word is eusebia, or eu-sebo, meaning good worship.  We call these people pious.  Godly.  Devout.  They are devoted to God, obsessively so, and their devotion determines their demeanor.  It colors their conduct, like so much wallpaper.  It is the background of how they live and act.  But we’re not talking about some gaudy old paisley pattern you’re going to want to strip off at first chance.  Not gaudy - but godly.  No, this is heavenly designer wallpaper of the finest kind, designed and installed by the Master Designer Himself.  That’s right - this One towards Whom we direct our devotion is the One Whom then colors our life with the many shades of Himself.

-Now the key, however, is that this devotion must be in accordance with sound words, words which are healthy.  Now, what does that mean?  These are the Words of Jesus Christ, Paul says.  For starters, we certainly look at the words which Jesus spoke and which His apostles recorded under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  The RED ones.  And not just those, of course - all the God-breathed words which are contained in His Word.  But really all the words which are true as they relate to Jesus.  Not some different doctrine, some different teaching about God and Jesus, not some different teaching about what He is like.  Such words are not healthy - in fact, they are quite the opposite.  Quite unhealthy.  Sick.  Sick, sick sick.  Sick people.  Our deep abiding soul sickness is that we change the truth of God for a lie (Romans 1.25).  We desperately supress the truth (Romans 1.18), desperate to deny our guilt.  We readily jettison the truths about what God has said and what He is like for half-truths and lies and dismissals and denials.  So-called worldly wisdom, the platitudes of fools.  Worldy fables and old wives' tales (which we looked at in 1Timothy 4.7).  No, no - we are to be pursuing a life which is characterized by moral excellence which is grounded in true knowledge (2Peter 1.5), one which shows off what God is truly like because it is based on true understanding of Him and what He is like.  Which comes straight from what God has revealed about Himself - in His Word.  In the words of Jesus and in the words of Paul and the other apostles and prophets, as collected in the Bible.  These teachings we hold to be God’s authoritative revelation about Himself and how He wants us to live.  Sound, healthy words.  And they make for healthy living.  They are in fact God’s prescription for healthy living.  They are both the antidote and the immunity-booster.  The vaccine and the cure.  Timothy is to be taking great pains to be absorbed in teaching these words of health, in urging people to take this immune-boosting, cure-what-ails-ya soul medicine into their hearts and lives.  But there are those who are teaching something different...

1Timothy 6:2 - A Family Discount?

”But the [ones] having believers [as] masters, let them not be despising, because brothers they are, but rather more let them be serving, because they are believers and beloved, the [ones] partaking of the benefit...”

-The context here of course is Paul talking about slaves and masters, but in our modern world of freedom and independence the terms are modified (for most in the west at least).  Those words don't mean what we think they mean.  Not what they used to mean.  In fact they barely exist anymore.  But we could easily extend this principle of serving and not disrespecting to any believer who has [been placed in] some kind of authority over us.  Supervisor.  Boss.  Teacher.  Coach.  Parent.  Pastor.  Youth leader.  Even a substitute.  Substitute teacher.  Substitute parent [aka babysitter].  Obviously, Paul is thinking about non-blood-relatives, those who are related instead through the blood of Jesus Christ and through faith in His name.  Spiritual family.  But could not these principles also be extended to physical family?  I say yes...!

-Just because someone is family doesn’t give you the freedom or permission to be able to disrespect them.  It doesn’t give you the right to be able to take some moral shortcut, some spiritual offramp or detour off the highway of holiness.  Do not deviate from doing what is right just because your brother or sister is in charge.  In fact, you should respect them and serve and support and submit to them all the more BECAUSE they are family, Paul says.  Because they get the benefit, our brother or sister in Christ, this one who is family.

-It is hard to lead.  Leadership is a hard job.  Those who don’t lead often fail to realize this.  More is required of a leader - there is more responsibility, more pressure, more at stake - more accountability.  And the job is made more difficult when the sheep go astray.  When they get lost.  Or worse, when they get all uppity, when they resist going where you are trying to lead them.  When they are lazy.  When you get more bleating than following.  And isn’t this what we are tempted to do, when someone we know is in charge?  If we have a close relationship with them, the more familial our relationship is to them, the more we are prone to take exception.  We feel that we somehow get a pass, an exemption from whatever regulations and rules or decorum may be incumbent upon anyone else unfortunate enough to not have the same familial standing which we enjoy with the leader.  With the one in charge.  We get a pass, a family discount as it were.  We are exempt from normal expectations or respect, of compliance.  We have a backstage pass - we can take a shortcut.  All that other stuff doesn’t apply to us.  Plus - we know this person.  We hang out with this person.  We maybe even live with this person.  We know the ghosts in their closet - makes us more prone to disrespect.  Or we presume upon our relationship with them and expect that they will forbear with our disrespect.  We will get a longer leash.  Or so we think.

-Uh no, Paul says.  Uh uh.  Don't’ you go there, family.  If a family member is in charge and trying to lead, all the more reason we should do our level best to lighten their load, to listen to them and support them and do whatever it is they are asking us to do.  They are beloved, beloved by our Savior Himself - and should be so by us as well.  We are to demonstrate this love by NOT disrespecting them, and rather by serving them.  This is our good and beautiful worship which shows off the breathtaking goodness of God. 

1Timothy 6:1 - Don't be dissin' that...

”As many as are under a yoke as slaves, their own masters worthy of all honor let them be ruling, in order that NOT the name of God and the teaching may be being blasphemed.”

-Blasphemy.  Blasphemy.  It is speaking evily or even lightly about something sacred.  Disrespect.  It is a capital crime.  Or was.  In a theocracy, at least.  In those places where the regard and reverence for the sacred is held in the strictest and highest esteem, speaking against that object of reverence can get you killed.  Don't be dissin' that.  This happened to be the case in Israel, where the devoutest of Hebrews dared not even pronounce the sacred name of Jehovah - Yahweh - lest they somehow contaminate Him with their own residual spiritual filth.  Specifically, if you were one of His people, one of His chosen ones, you were charged with protecting His reputation.  Your words and your very conduct reflected back on Him.  Thus, speaking against Him, doing something contrary to His character or revealed will in some instances was even punishable by death (Leviticus 24.16).  That was - on the surface at least - the crime of which Jesus was accused (Matthew 26.65-66).  That’s how seriously the nation Israel regarded the importance of guarding the reputation of the one true God, the thrice-holy Lord of hosts, most high King of the Universe.  Not only did Israel consider this a sacred trust, but so does the God of Israel Himself, the One Who chose them, Who reveals Himself in His Word and in all He has made.  AND in the people He has chosen and  (re)made!   Always putting Himself out there, His reputation on the line and out there for all to see.  He takes His reputation with the utmost regard.  And the words and conduct of His people reflect back on Him.

-Thus does Paul invoke the serious charge of blasphemy against those slaves who would disrespect their masters.  Not that they are blaspheming per se.  But their dishonorable conduct towards their masters dishonors God all the same.  And it incites their masters (some of whom are unbelievers) to speak against both them AND against their God.  Even unbelievers understand the way of the universe, the moral law which God has written on their hearts.  Though veiled and obscured from their understanding, and though their consciences are often seared and scarred and hardened, they nevertheless still instinctively know right from wrong.  God has put this knowledge in them (Romans 2.15).  All people understand that disrespecting a superior is wrong - whether by my actions or my attitude.  Failure to respect a superior calls into question both my heart and values, along with whatever religious standard or deity might inform them.  And so Paul says, masters are worthy of ALL honor.  He uses the word, despot.  Not kyrios, which means Lord.  No, this word can refer to both reasonable and unreasonable masters, and is used of Jesus (Luke 2.29, 2Timothy 2.21, Jude 4), but it certainly gave rise to that word which in English conjures up those who wield absolute power in abominable ways.  Despicable.  Peter goes so far as to insist that even unreasonable masters are to be afforded all respect.  Honor.  When those of us who follow Christ honor the ones whom God Himself has put in authority over us (cf John 19.11, Romans 13.1, 1Peter 2.13-14), we show off the beauty of the Name and the teaching of the Lord Jesus.  We make Him look good.  He IS good, of course - all the time.  But we can show this off by how we treat those in authority over us.  Or not.  We can detract from that, we can uglify the Name of God when we act or speak ugly towards our superiors (cf 2Peter 2.9-12).  When we be dissin' them.  We could very well be giving an unbelieving, unreasonable master another reason NOT to believe in Jesus.  But it can feel good to do that, can’t it?  To give air to our grievances and complaints against someone in authority over us?  It feels good, doesn’t it?  Cathartic, somehow.  They deserve it, don’t they?  They certainly don’t deserve my respect.  I suggest that this disrespect is a fleshy indulgence.  That’s what Peter is saying.  And we ought not do it.  We ought to be very careful before we go there.  Seriously careful.  How we relate to and regard our surperiors is serious business.  God takes it very seriously (cf Numbers 12.8-10).  So should we.

1Timothy 5:25 - The Mother of all Jumbotrons

”Likewise, also the beautiful works [are] very evident, and the [ones] having otherwise - they are not able to be hidden.”

-There is nothing hidden which will not come to light.  Sooner or later - and even now, the quality of our work and our works speaks for itself.  Our lives are the real big screen, on display for all to see, whether we see it or not.

-And that’s usually the case, isn’t it?  We don’t see it.  We miss it.  We either have blind spots, or we think we’re going unnoticed.  Maybe it’s our good deeds, those which are beautiful and exemplary, those which show off the beauty of the Lord and which bring Him great pleasure.  Truth is, He sees.  He sees.  He notices.  He will never forget a single act of kindness or of service or of anything done in His Name (Hebrews 6.10).  And people notice as well.  They notice.  It’s about the heart.  The heart which overflows in beautiful works is plain for all to see.  As plain as the nose on your face.  Any and all who cross your path will catch a glimpse of Christ in your countenance.  They get a whiff of His fragrance at every encounter.  A sweet aroma, a life-giving perfume, Paul calls it (2Corinthians 2.14-16).  Either that or a death-dealing drug.  Depends on where their heart is.  But there’s no mistaking it.  Even if they don’t say a word - it’s out there.  We’re out there.  Everything we do.  All our works - the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Yes, sometimes their appearance can be delayed, or disguised somehow.  We do try to hide our junk.  And some of us, we even manage to conceal it - for a season.  But it cannot be hidden forever.  Sooner or later, we get found out.  It’s who we are - who we are always shows itself (Proverbs 10.9).  And someday, one day - the truth will come out.  The books will be opened, and all God’s people (as well as those who are not) will see it.  We’ll have a front-row seat for the grand reveal.  On that jumbotron of heaven, the mother of all jumbotrons, don't you think (or however it plays out)?  But all we concealed will be revealed.  Every last bit of it.  Hopefully, that’s all been covered by the blood of Jesus - if not, there’s a lake of fire in somebody’s future (Revelation 20.12-15).  Even some of what’s covered will be burned up, tested for the quality of the work.  And what’s left will be all that which was done through Jesus and for Him (1Corinthians 3.12-15).  There’s no hiding it.  No hiding.

1Timothy 5:24 - More Brake-tapping!

”Of some men the sins very evident they are, going before unto judgment, but some also they are following.” 

-Prior to his detour in the previous verse to care for Timothy’s health, Paul had been coaching him on the challenges of leadership and of addressing the problem of sin in the body.  He was either cautioning Timothy about putting someone into leadership to hastily, someone who may possibly not quite be ready for that responsibility, or someone who could possibly be (still?) struggling with some kind of hidden sin; OR, Paul could have been concerned about receiving a potentially unjust accusation of sin against a current leader.

-His point here is that sometimes you can see quite clearly when someone is engaged in disobedience, and then other times you cannot see their sin.  Perhaps they are hiding it.  Perhaps their struggle will emerge if they are thrust into a position of leadership before they are ready.  But caution, patience, wise counsel, taking time to seek the Lord and His wisdom and what He wants in prayer - these are things which help to make sure that we make informed decisions with regards to leadership and discipline within the local church.  Again - a bit of brake-tapping is in order.  The well-being of the body and of the forward-progress of the mission are at stake!