An Expositional Sermon
1 Timothy 4:1-5
“Disordered Devotion”
Theme/Big Idea: The reason that we let the God’s Word shape the church is because the church belongs to God and is a visible display of the gospel.
Aim/Appropriation/Application: Pray that God would bear the fruit of unity from His Word that can only come from the hope of the glory of Christ in us as a local church.
Outline:
(1) Be On Guard (1 Timothy 4:1)
(2) The Allure of Demonic Doctrine (1 Timothy 4:1-3)
Step 3: Devoting oneself to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.
Step 2: Insincerity and lying.
Step 1: Living with a seared conscience dead to the Word of God.
(3) How Can We Enjoy Anything in this World? (1 Timothy 4:4-5)
Step 1: don’t call things bad that God has created good.
Step 2: receive what God gives with prayer and with what God’s Word says about it.
Questions for Further Reflection
(1) How do teachers fall from faithfulness into a full embrace of error?
(2) What kind of things would a pastor who doesn’t believe in the power of the gospel, and that Christ alone is the mystery of godliness teach and preach?
(3) What is a “good conscience”? How can we get it? And, how can we keep it?
(4) How can we have a clean conscience before God in the face of the condemnation that we rightly feel for our sin? Can we get a clean conscience through creating rules that we think will aid our justification by faith alone in Christ alone? (Hint: No!) Why?
(5) What are some ways that you can be honest about who you are, and doubts that you might struggle with? Are there any ways that you have been living and thinking that have encouraged self-deception? Do you claim to be a Christian, but you don’t really know what it means to be one? (If your answer here is “yes” please call us or email us on our contact page to talk and pray through this)
(6) Why can’t our ascetic works help us keep a clean conscience? What is the only way that we can keep a clean conscience before God? (Hint: continued repentance and faith alone in Christ alone) Why and how?
(7) What are at least two ways that we can pursue to enjoy things in this world? (Hint, the sub-points in point 3 of the outline above)
(8) How can you leave off the hope in the deception of false liberty that would leave us in sin and facing God’s wrath without hope? Pray that God would grow your affections for Christ and break the power by which we are so often tempted by empty promises of this world.
(9) How do you struggle with disordered devotion? What are the ways your heart is tempted to wrongly think about how you worship Christ?