“SOME SHALL DEPART FROM THE FAITH” – 1 Timothy 4:1
Departing from the faith is nothing new. It happens today. It happened in the church at Ephesus where Timothy was when Paul wrote. It happened in the history of Israel with everyone from kings down to peasants. There are always people who will understand intellectually, who will behave externally according to the revelation of God but who have no heart for that. In Hebrews 3:12 it says, “Those who depart from God demonstrate an unbelieving heart.” And the heart is the issue.
All of this discussion really refers to a single word and that is the word apostate.
An apostate is someone who departs from the faith they know, the faith they understand and the faith which they previously affirmed. An apostate is not someone who never knew but someone who knew, not someone who never believed but someone who even on the outside believed. But because the heart was never in it, because they never really knew God, they were lured away by the siren voices of the demons behind idols and false religious systems. They were led, it says in verse 1, by seducing spirits and the doctrines of demons to depart from the faith.
Scripture tells us, whether you’re looking at the history of Israel, or whether you’re dealing with the church, there has always been a battleground between God and His truth, and the devil and his lies. And that battleground is clearly drawn in Scripture and the fight goes on constantly.
Now such activities as that were going on in Ephesus when Timothy was there. The presence of false teachers has already been indicated. Back in chapter 1, verses 3 to 7 where Paul discusses the fact that there were some teaching other doctrines, fables, endless genealogies, they were dealing with questions that did not edify?
They thought they were teachers and desired to be teachers of the law but didn’t understand anything that they were saying. Verses 18 to 20 tells us they were apostate, they had made shipwreck of the faith. They had departed from the truth and they should be delivered to Satan to learn not to blaspheme in such a way.
False teachers are described in Scripture and there is ever and always a call for the church to deal with it. This is not a popular thing today.
In the name of love, everybody wants to forget disagreements. And when you come out strongly and confrontively against false teaching, you are very often criticized and labeled.
I know that happens to me quite frequently. But nonetheless, there is a biblical mandate and there is eternal cause for the souls of men to deal with false teaching as such.
The battle lines were drawn in Israel, they were drawn in the early church, they must be drawn today. And we like Timothy must be warned and instructed as to how to understand what is behind false teaching, the need to expose it, and how to deal with it.
There was an old church in England. It had a motto across the front, as old churches do over there. “We preach Christ crucified.” And also as often happens in England, ivy grows. And the ivy grew and after a while it said, “We preach Christ.” And the ivy grew. And after a while it said, “We preach.” And the ivy grew and after a while it said “We”. And the ivy grew and the church died and well it should if Christ is not preached.
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