"Religion of Denial" 1 Timothy 4:1-5

Order of Service

• Call to Worship — Psalm 96:1-6
• Prayer of Invocation
• Confession of Faith — Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 8, Section 1
• Confession of Sin — adapted from Isaiah 53
• Assurance of Pardon — Psalm 130:3-4
• Scripture Reading — 1 Samuel 12
• Pastoral Prayer
• Offering
• Sermon
• Benediction — 2 Corinthians 13:14

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Sermon Title: Religion of Denial

Scripture: 1 Timothy 4:1-5

I. The Warning of Denial

A. The Holy Spirit expressly warns the church of false teachers in the last days

1. "The Spirit expressly says" refers either to the words of Jesus during his earthly ministry or to apostolic teaching inspired by the Spirit
2. "Later times" is equivalent to "last days" in 2 Timothy 3:1 — the age between Christ's first and second coming

B. The nature of this false teaching is not liberal but ascetic — a false conservatism, not an anything-goes permissiveness

1. Satan is dynamic: he attacks through false liberalism at the front door and false conservatism at the back
2. Church history shows a recurring pattern: orthodoxy corrects one heresy, but a faction swings the pendulum to a new extreme
3. The Reformers battled both Rome and the radical reformers (e.g., the Peasants' War, 1524–1525); the Reformed confessions, including the Westminster Confession, address both errors
4. North Point, as a conservative church, must guard against Satan entering from both directions

II. The Subtlety of Denial

A. These are described as deceitful spirits — Satan comes as an angel of light, not in a Halloween costume

B. Fallen human nature has an ingrained ascetic, Pharisaic tendency

1. Our knee-jerk reaction to self-denial is to call it pious and holy
2. Kent Hughes's illustration: moving through rooms that grow progressively bluer — each step is barely noticeable, but placed back in the original green room, the drift becomes obvious; this is how man-made denial moves us away from Christ

C. This passage follows 1 Timothy 3:16 deliberately — godliness rests in Christ and Christ alone, not in conformity to a man-made do-not list

1. False teachers locate godliness in self-denial rather than in Christ
2. Biblical commands to deny certain things are real, but conformity to God's will must flow from faith fixed on Christ
3. The church in Ephesus is called in Revelation 2 to return to its first love — Christ alone

D. Application: What man-made rules produce guilt and shame in you apart from Scripture? This is the ascetic spirit pulling you from Christ

III. The Ungratefulness of Denial

A. The specific ascetic practices in Ephesus: forbidding marriage and requiring abstinence from certain foods (1 Timothy 4:3)

1. This reflects syncretism — a blending of Greek dualism (material world is evil, spiritual world is good) and Jewish food laws from the Mosaic administration
2. Greek dualism led to denial of marriage and physical pleasure
3. Food restrictions were a carryover from the Mosaic law, but Acts 11 shows Christ declared all foods clean — "What God has made clean, do not call common"

B. God's good gifts are created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth (1 Timothy 4:3)

1. From the beginning, creation's good gifts were meant to be enjoyed by God's image bearers to his glory
2. These gifts are never to be severed from the Creator who gives them

C. These gifts are made holy "by the Word of God and prayer" (1 Timothy 4:5)

1. The Word declares them good (cf. Acts 11; Isaiah 5:20 — woe to those who call good evil)
2. Prayer is our grateful response to God's declaration — a conversation: God gives and declares it good; we respond with thanksgiving and praise

D. The religion of denial is not merely thanklessness — it is an accusation against God as a flawed creator and a bad gift giver

1. Illustration: giving a gift someone throws in the dumpster and then lectures you about — worse than ingratitude
2. God's good gifts are meant to draw our eyes upward to the gift-giver himself, not merely to the gifts — praising God to others: "Have you heard of this God? Let me tell you what a generous gift-giver he is"

E. Application for the present moment of hardship

1. God is removing many of our "toys" (American abundance) so we can be grateful for daily bread and refocus on him
2. Matthew 6:11 — "Give us this day our daily bread" — a fitting prayer for this season
3. Like children on vacation with only three or four toys, scarcity produces gratitude
4. This is a time not to bewail God's goodness but to laud it — "He has dealt bountifully with us" (cf. Psalm 13) in and through Jesus Christ