Let’s take our Bibles together and turn to 2 Timothy. We are studying verse-by-verse through this book of the Bible, and today our passage is 2 Timothy 2:14–19. And the title of today’s message is “Stop the Gangrene.” 

There are two kinds of teaching that Paul references in this book. Two kinds of teaching, and two kinds of teachers! There is good, solid, rich, Bible teaching that supplies health to the church. And there is teaching that is like cancer. There is a kind of teaching that is health-giving and life-giving and wholesome to the church. And there is a kind of teaching that is gangrenous. And there’s no debate about the kind of teaching that Paul wants Timothy to provide. Paul wants Timothy to nourish the church in Ephesus with sound, Biblical, gospel-centered teaching.  

In fact, let me just tease out this healthy/unhealthy analogy a little further. This is a huge theme in what are called the Pastoral Letters of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus. Look with me at 2 Timothy 1:13. Paul writes “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me.” That Greek word for “sound” could also be translated “healthy.” It’s the Greek word ὑγιαίνω (hygiainō) which we get our English word “hygienic” from. Paul tells Timothy to “follow the pattern of [ὑγιαίνω/healthy] words that you have heard from me.” 

Similarly Paul tells Titus in the book of Titus, “But as for you, teach what accords with sound [ὑγιαίνω/healthy] doctrine” (Titus 2:1). Paul tells Titus as well that an elder, “must be able to give instruction in [ὑγιαίνω/healthy] doctrine” (Titus 1:9).

Paul says later in this book, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions” (2 Tim 4:3–4). 

Paul told Timothy in his first letter to him, “If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound [ὑγιαίνω/healthy] words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions…” (1 Tim 6:3–4).

So there’s healthy teaching, and there’s unhealthy teaching. And Paul gives an example of unhealthy teaching in our passage today. And he even names names among the false teachers. And he doesn’t just call this false teaching unhealthy, he calls it “gangrene.” Does everyone know what gangrene is? Well, we’ll get there. But first let’s start here. 

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Church, today I want to give you,

Five Identifying Markers for Healthy Teaching:

Write this down as #1. Healthy Teaching… is gospel-centered.   

1) It keeps reminding the church about the gospel (2:14a)

Paul says in verse 14.

14 Remind them of these things, 

What things? What things, Paul? The answer is – the gospel truths that he just relayed in 2:11–13.

11b If we have died with him, we will also live with him; 

12 if we endure, we will also reign with him; 

if we deny him, he also will deny us; 

13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.

 There are three encouragements in that passage and one warning. And this little hymn, this little poem encapsulates the essence of the gospel. And those things never get old. No Christian should ever say, “Not the gospel again… that’s so boring! Yeah, Blah blah blah… Pastor Tony, I’ve heard this all before.”

 We should never act that way. Pastors should never get tired of preaching the gospel. And parishioners should never get tired of hearing it. And pastors need to be careful to not be boring themselves in the way they communicate the gospel. Because what Paul summarizes in verses 11–13, is the greatest news that the world has ever known. And Paul tells Timothy, “Remind them of these things.” The Greek for “remind” here is a present active imperative verb meaning, “Keep reminding them of these things.” “Keep reminding the church about the gospel.” “Don’t ever stop reminding them of these things.”

 And one of my jobs as the teaching elder here at VBVF is to keep reminding folks about the gospel. One of the things that I obsess about every Sunday, as your Timothy, when I prepare a sermon to preach to this congregation is this—“Where is the gospel?” “Where is the gospel?” “If someone walked into our congregation unsaved, could they walk out saved after hearing the gospel?” I obsess over that. 

 And for you as parishioners, even if you’ve already heard the gospel and believed, you should celebrate being reminded of it every week. We need those reminders. And you should celebrate the fact that it is being heralded before a congregation that may have someone who needs to hear it, just like you needed to hear it when you got saved.

 And to that, you might say, “What’s the gospel again, Pastor Tony?” Well, let me say it as clearly and joyfully as I can. The gospel is this. God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to die on a cross for your sins. And if you confess your sins before a righteous God, and believe in the finished work of Christ on that cross… his death on a cross but also his resurrection from the dead… you shall be saved. 

 You don’t get saved by going to church. You don’t get saved by reading your Bible. You don’t get saved by getting baptized. You don’t get saved by being a good person. You are saved by faith alone, grace alone, and Christ alone. 

 Paul paraphrases it this way in verse 11. 

11b If we have died with him, we will also live with him; 

 Those who repent and believe have died with Christ and have become new creations. And they will live with him forever in eternal glory. 

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One identifying marker for healthy teaching is that it keeps reminding the church about the gospel. Here’s a second marker for healthy teaching:  

2) It resists getting bogged down in meaningless quarrels (2:14b)

Paul says, “On the one hand…”

14 Remind them of these things,

“Remind them continually about the gospel …” 

 and [on the other hand] charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers.

Literally, “Charge them before God to not [word-fight]” or … “to not [war over words].” There were, very literally in Paul’s day, people who would bicker and squabble and wrangle over semantics. And Paul says, “You tell them, Timothy… you tell them to knock it off! Tell them to stop obsessing over meaningless things. Stay on task. Make disciples. Study the Bible. Worship God. Build up the church. You’ve got enough to do with just a little amount of time to do it… life is short … so don’t get bogged down in pointless, fruitless, meaningless quarrelling.”

That’s a good word from Paul. That’s good advice for a young pastor. And here’s what was probably taking place in the church. Craig Keener writes that, “Many professional speakers gave nitpicky attention to irrelevant twists and turns of phrase; some philosophers believed that one could do no better than examine the logic of words.” 

So in the Ephesian church, they would play these little word games that would essentially miss the forest for the trees. Let me give you some examples of what this might look like. It’d be like a man who argued pridefully about the exact nuance of the Greek word for “humility.” 

Or imagine a group of people who started to argue over the exact meaning of the word “fornication.” How far could you go without committing fornication? Does that include premarital sex? Does that include adultery? How far can you go in an adulterous relationship without really committing adultery? 

Some of you might say “People would never argue over stuff like that!” O yes they do! I’ve sat through silly quarrels about that kind of stuff. You might remember one of our former presidents actually said, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

And let me just clarify. It’s not that words aren’t important or that they don’t convey meaning. Words are incredibly important. They are used as the raw material to create ideas and facilitate communication. But when words are cleverly divorced from their context and used to support the ideas of the speaker more than the ideas of the writer, that’s when this error occurs. 

For instance I went to a church once that did this. The pastor cleverly dissected every word in a passage and completely ignored the context. He had charts and graphs and all kinds of explanations for words and parts of words. And exasperated I said to myself during that message, “What passage are we in again? I don’t even know where we are in the Bible. We’re just off in etymology-world!” 

This is a sensitive subject for me, because words are my life! I’m a professional talker. And words are the raw materials that I use for my livelihood. And sometimes I agonize over the exact way that something should be communicated. And I’ve asked the Lord before, “Am I missing the forest for the trees? I don’t want to be like these false teachers who were playing word-games and starting unprofitable word-wars. Help me, Lord!”

But let’s broaden our application here a bit. There are ways in which we, in an unhealthy way, haggle over words. And those of you, like me, need to be careful with that. But there are other meaningless, unprofitable debates that rage in the church. Here’s a few I thought of. 1) Who’s the anti-Christ? It’s him no it’s him no it’s him. No it’s her. It’s that politician! No, it’s the other team’s politician! 2) When’s the end of the world going to come? 3) Can God create a rock so big that he can’t move it? 4) Can God microwave a burrito so hot he can’t eat it?   

Now there are a few things that I believe are worthy of vigorous discussion. There are a few things that I think are worthy of even (and I say this cautiously) spirited debate. But if we’re not careful, I think that these discussions can degenerate into ungodly quarreling. For instance, 1) abstention from alcohol 2) pacifism vs. just war participation, 3) The timing of the rapture (pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib), 4) The intersection of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. 

Also there are a whole host of issues like that that I would put under the category “Meat sacrificed to idols!” 1) homeschool, public school, or private school? 2) Should Christians enjoy movies, video games, and other entertainment? 4) Should Christians get tattoos and body piercings? 3) What constitutes proper dress and modesty for a Christians? 5) Should Christians cheer for the Longhorns or should they cheer for the Aggies? 

These are the kinds of issues, theological and otherwise, that have the potential to create endless, meaningless quarrels in Christian circles. And not a little divisiveness. Can we discuss and debate some of these issues? Yes, absolutely we can. 

The word that Paul uses for “quarreling” is a very strong word. It has the idea of “verbal fisticuffs.” So discussion? Yes. Debate? Yes, please! I love a good debate! But be careful now. A nice civil debate can very easily degenerate into verbal fisticuffs if you’re not careful to check your flesh. I’ve been guilty of that. We’ve all been guilty of that.

The reason we avoid these meaningless quarrels is because Paul says they “do no good” and they “ruin the hearers.” These kinds of conflicts (especially public conflicts) are actually a stumbling block to others watching from the sidelines, possibly the weaker brothers out there who are distraught by Christian “word-wars.” So, Paul says here, “Be your brother’s keeper. Keep the main things the plain things and the plain things the main things. And don’t get bogged down in meaningless quarrels.”

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Write this down as the third point from our message. Healthy teaching reminds the church about the gospel. It resists getting bogged down in meaningless quarrels. Thirdly…

3) It handles God’s Word with care (2:15)

Paul writes in verse 15, 

15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

When I was a kid, I was part of what was called the AWANA program. AWANA is an acronym for “Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed.” And we used this verse, 2 Timothy 2:15 as a theme verse. And we used to sing a song that went like this: 

“Approved workmen are not ashamed,” 

Boys and girls for His service claimed!

And so this verse was extremely prominent in my childhood. And then I went to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for seminary. I felt this stirring in my soul to preach the gospel. I had the desire but I didn’t really have the training, so Sanja and I moved up to Chicago to begin our studies. And lo and behold, written on the outside wall of the main entrance to the Moody Campus there was this verse etched in stone—2 Timothy 2:15. This verse just follows me everywhere I go! Even now in San Antonio, this verse is etched on my heart. 

15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

Paul uses this word ὀρθοτομέω (orthotomeō) for “rightly handling,” which literally means “cut it straight.” The Greek ὀρθός (orthos) means “straight.” That’s why you go to an orthodontist to make your teeth straight. And τέμνω (temnō) means to “cut” or “hew.” So Timothy is being told to cut the word of truth straight! 

Now I’m the Timothy in this church. I get that. My role is the teaching elder at VBVF. So this especially applies to me to cut it straight. But in whatever way this is true for me, it should trickle down to every aspect of our church. All of our elders should feel the weight of this. All of our children’s ministry teachers and small group leaders should feel the weight of this. All parents should feel the weight of this. We are called to handle God’s Word rightly. We are called to handle it with care. We are called to cut it straight.

And “handling God’s Word with care” doesn’t mean you put it up on a pedestal and forbade people to touch it. “Don’t touch it! Don’t even look at it.” Is that what Paul means here? No, of course not. It’s not a porcelain vase or something like that. Handling it with care means don’t be sloppy in your study of this book. Don’t be careless in your use of this book.

What makes for a good carpenter? He builds with care. He or she measures twice and cuts once. Sanja and I could never do home repair projects together, because she would measure and cut with accountant-like exactitude. I thought that took too much time. I would always say, “good enough.” And that would drive her crazy.  

But in my teaching responsibilities here at VBVF, “good enough” doesn’t cut it. I need to measure twice and cut once. I need to cut it straight. 

How does someone rightly divide the word of truth? How do you cut it straight? Well let me give you a few responses:

You study the context. You don’t proof text. You don’t rip a verse out of its immediate context to support your ideas instead of the Bible’s ideas. You don’t throw a bunch of random verses into your sermon stew and present it to the congregation. You work hard to make it simple and relatable and digestible for your congregation.    

You read what it says not what you want it to say. You respect the original authors (the human author and the Holy Spirit) and you don’t say, “Well here’s what this passage means to me!”  

You chew on it. You think about how it affects your life and the lives of others. You read it again and again. You take your time with it. For me that involves translation. I translate it from its original language. That’s one of the ways I chew on it. 

And listen, children’s ministry teachers and small group leaders, you don’t have to translate it from its original language to chew on it. You can do that in other ways. You can read it in multiple English versions. You can use sources. And you are doing a great disservice to your people if you just rush through your lesson a few minutes before you teach it. That is not handling God’s Word with care. If I did that on a Sunday morning, our elders would probably go into nuclear meltdown. And they should.

You use sources. I never ever preach a sermon without reading commentaries and other Bible study material. There is wisdom in a multitude of counselors. And it is foolish and it is prideful to say, “I don’t need any help; I got this!”

You pray! You ask God for help. You ask God for guidance. You ask God for unction and power as you teach.

Now for me on Sunday mornings, that’s like a twenty hour process, if it’s a passage I’ve never preached before. No children’s ministry teacher or small group leader needs to be held to that standard. This is my vocation. This is my life. This is my ministry—the teaching of God’s Word. And whatever else I do (hospital visits, counseling, leadership, staff meetings, board meetings, administration), I can’t compromise those hours of study. And I would never hold our other volunteers to that same standard.

But whatever standard is set at the very top needs to trickle down to every area of our church, and every area of our lives. So that even in our fifteen minutes of Bible reading and devotions every day, we need to be conscientious about handling God’s Word with care. We don’t just sloppily work through a text while checking our email. We handle this with care. We cut it straight. That’s what good teachers do; that’s what I’m trying to model from the pulpit. But that’s what good Christians do too. All of us should be doing this.

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Fourthly. Write this down. Here’s another thing good teaching does.

4) It avoids gangrenous false doctrines (2:16–18)

Paul tells Timothy to rightly handle the Word of Truth. And now he says, “While we’re on that topic… here’s another thing you need to do…”

16 But avoid irreverent babble, 

“Avoid ‘godless, trivial chatterings.’” Why Paul? Why?  

…for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, 

17 and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus,

“Stop the gangrene, Timothy! Put a stop to it! You need to avoid it in your own teaching, but also when you see it spreading in your church… you and the rest of the elders need to man-up and put a stop to it.”

Now let me just tell you a little bit about gangrene. I found some really cool pictures online this week that would greatly illustrate this passage, but I decided to not put them on the PowerPoint slide for you. You can thank me for that later. But if you’re not familiar with that term, gangrene is a type of infection that kills healthy tissue in a person’s body. It’s a type of “necrosis.” That’s the medical term for it today. The primary cause of gangrene is reduced blood supply to the affected tissues, which results in cell death. In our day, Diabetes increases the risk of gangrene and so does long-term smoking. 

Now in Paul’s day, keep in mind that there were no antibiotics back then. There was no such thing as sterilization. And so a diagnosis of gangrene was absolutely terrifying. If a body part was infected with this kind of dead tissue, it was often amputated to stop the spread of gangrene. In fact sometimes fly maggots were used to treat chronic wounds to stop the spread of gangrene, because some species of maggots consume only dead flesh. And that could prevent the need for amputation.

Paul uses just about the most disgusting and the most terrifying medical terminology in his day to describe how devastating false doctrines are in the church. We might use the term “cancer” because that’s so devastating in our day, but cancer is actually pretty sanitized compared to gangrene. You don’t always see the devastating effects of cancer until the very end. But when you see body parts that are essentially dead and black and infected by gangrene, then that’s the picture of false doctrine in the body of Christ.

Paul’s says, “You’ve got to deal with it, Timothy. You’ve got to amputate that limb. You’ve got to stem the tide of that death or else it’ll spread all over the church.”

“In fact, Timothy, let me be a little more specific about what I’m talking about. There are two men out there who are spreading irreverent babble, they are leading people into more and more ungodliness. And their names are Hymenaeus and Philetus.”

Now Paul’s already mentioned this guy Hymenaeus. In 1 Timothy, Paul told Timothy to excommunicate this guy because he was spreading all kinds of false doctrine in the church along with his partner Alexander. Now Hymenaeus is back. And he’s got a new partner named Philetus. And Paul says he’s still spreading false doctrine. Look at verse 18. 

18 who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some. 

Now this sounds absolutely ridiculous to us. Can you imagine someone coming into VBVF saying this? “Hey everybody, the resurrection has already happened!” We’d all say, “Really? Because it doesn’t feel like it already happened. I mean I’m still dealing with sin. I’m still dealing with the effects of the fall. I still have health problems. I’m still aging. What are you talking about?”  

So what were these guys teaching? What exactly were they blathering on about in Ephesus? Well we don’t know. We don’t know the extent of their teaching or how they explained that the resurrection has already happened, but we can make a decent educated guess. In Paul’s day there were a number of gnostic (or proto-gnostic) heresies that believed essentially that the material universe was evil and the immaterial universe was good. The body was evil. But the spirit was good. It was an expression of Greek dualism that had crept into the church. 

And many of the Greeks had concluded that since the body was inherently evil you could just indulge your flesh and engage in all kinds of moral filth and it didn’t matter because the soul was the only thing that lasted forever. Perhaps that’s what Hymenaeus and Philetus were teaching? And that’s why Paul says their 

“irreverent babble” will “lead people into more and more ungodliness.”

Or, and this is what Paul describes in 1 Timothy, they could have been teaching a form of asceticism that believed that everything material was evil. And so they constructed all these arbitrary rules about how to discipline the body. “Don’t eat this. Don’t eat that! Don’t even look at that! Don’t have any fun, etc.” Because according to them, anything having to do with the body is evil. Only the spirit is good. Paul pretty angrily denounces this kind of legalism in both 1 Timothy and also the book of Galatians. 

The problem with the church embracing these expressions of Greek dualism is that the Greeks were disgusted by the concept of a bodily resurrection. Why would we want to be trapped in a body again? It’s evil.

And so, here’s my conjecture, these false teachers were teaching that the resurrection had already taken place in our hearts. It was a metaphorical resurrection that didn’t involve a real, future, eternal, bodily resurrection. And that directly contradicts the Bible’s view of resurrection. That’s not what Paul taught. That’s not what Jesus taught. That’s not what the OT taught. That’s not what the early church taught and wrote down in the Apostles’ Creed.

Now let’s talk practically about false teaching in today’s world. There are probably some forms of resurrection-denial in our day, but that’s not the most prevalent heresy that the church needs to watch out for. The more prevalent heresies in our day are the following… and these are gangrenous: 1) The Jehovah’s Witnesses and others who deny the Deity of Christ, 2) The Unitarians and Oneness Pentecostals who deny the Trinity, 3) The anti-supernaturalists who deny the miracles of the Bible, 4) The liberal theologians who deny the authority of God’s Word, the atonement of Christ, and the existence of hell, 5) The social gospel advocates who try to moralize the gospel into a bunch of do-goodism for Jesus, 6) The “Jesus plus” advocates who say that good works are part of our salvation, and 7) probably the most prominent heresy in our day is “the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel,” which I have denounced on many occasions from this pulpit.     

And Paul doesn’t say here, “Just be patient with them, Timothy!” He doesn’t say, “Just be tolerant of them, Timothy. To each his own in the church.” He says, “Their teaching is like gangrene, Timothy. Don’t let it spread in the church. Don’t let it infect the body of Christ. Cut it off. Cut them off. And protect the health of the church.”

A lot of Christians with tender consciences have trouble with this. “Why does God have to be so harsh?” “Why do church leaders have to be so vigilant about divisive people?” Because God doesn’t want his truth to be compromised. And he doesn’t want his church infected. Avoid it. “Avoid their irreverent babble for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness and their talk will spread like gangrene.”

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Finally, write this down #5. Good teaching also does this. 

5) It exhorts believers to forsake sin (2:19)

Paul writes in verse 19, 

19 But God’s firm foundation stands, 

So there are a bunch of crazies out there perverting the gospel and misleading people. But “God’s firm foundation stands.” They can’t move God’s firm foundation even one inch. And good teaching steers clear of error and keeps pointing people back to that foundation.

Some people think that the foundation here is a metaphor for the church. I actually think it refers to the gospel, or even more specifically to Christ himself.

And Paul says that foundation bears a seal.

19 But God’s firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” 

Paul actually quotes here from the OT and the story of Korah in the book of Numbers. If you remember that story, there were a group of usurpers in the Israelite camp that thought that Moses should split up his leadership role. And Moses said to the ringleader of that group, a man named Korah, “In the morning the Lord will show who is his” (Num 6:5). And the next day the earth split open and all of Korah and his rebellious party were swallowed up by the ground.  

So the implication here is that false teachers may have their day, but God is not mocked. And God is not fooled. He knows who belongs to him. He knows who is faithful to him. And he will prove to this world those who are his. 

In the meantime, here’s what we do. Here’s the other seal that is emblazoned on the people of God. 

and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.” 

A tell-tale sign of the true children of God is that they depart from iniquity. The proof is in the pudding. Those who belong to God are actually going to start hating sin and growing resistant to sin like the Lord is resistant to sin. And good teaching helps a person do that. Good teachers help lead their churches to a place of holiness and righteousness and Christlikeness. Not perfectly righteous—because none of us will be perfectly righteous on this side of eternity—but increasingly so. 

I heard a pastor say once that the best way to determine a Christian’s spiritual maturity is to assess how much that Christian hates sin. And I would just add to that another assessment. A Christian’s spiritual maturity is determined also by how much they love holiness. That is a true indicator of spiritual maturity. 

And holiness, despite what people may say, is not solemn, serious, joyless austerity. Holiness is the absence of sin. Holiness is a departure from iniquity. God is the most joyful person who ever existed, and God is perfectly holy. And our pursuit of holiness can for you (if it’s based on the right foundation) open up new avenues of joy and freedom and peace and rest and health. 

Let me say it this way: holiness is healthiness. Did you know that? Unholiness is gangrene. And so part of healthy teaching is helping the people of God who call on the name of the Lord to depart from iniquity.  

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So let’s stop the gangrene! Amen, church? Let’s pursue health together. Let’s embrace healthy teaching together. One pastor said it this way: “The best way to keep weeds out of the church is to fertilize the grass so that it grows healthy and strong.” 

And let me say this. I want to say one final thing to a person or two who maybe is here this morning and you don’t feel healthy. You don’t feel strong in God’s Word. You don’t know how to rightly divide God’s Word. Maybe you’ve spent an extended season of your life in a church that didn’t teach God’s Word or that relativized the authority right out of it? Or maybe you’ve experienced an extended season of churchlessness and that has left you starved and emaciated and unnourished?

If that’s you, then hear me on this. You just stick around. You just keep coming back here on Sunday morning and let the Word of God be like an IV in your arm. And get into a discipleship group or a small group where you can grow and be challenged and be encouraged and be built up in God’s Word. And just wait and see the healthiness come. It will. I’ve seen it. I’ve experienced it. God’s Word gives health to our souls.