SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/14/2025 7:46 AM
My Worship Time
Focus: “False
Teaching Ruins the Hearers”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: “2
Timothy 2:14b”
Message of the verse: “and leads to the ruin of the hearers.”
MacArthur points out that the first and the most
obvious harm of false teaching is the damage it does to those who hear it. “It puts an obstacle in the way of
unbelievers, who may be turned away from the true way of salvation. It also does harm to believers, by causing
confusion, doubt, and discouragement, and disobedience.
“As one might guess, katastrophe
(ruin) is the word from which we get catastrophe. False teaching has a catastrophic
effect. The Greek word has the basic
idea of being overturned or overthrown, and in this context it carries the more
explicit connotation of being spiritually ruined. Paul is talking about teaching that
intentionally subverts the truth by replacing it with falsehood. Consequently, instead of building up the
hearers, it tears them down instead of bringing enrichment, it brings disaster.
“The only other use of that Greek word in the New Testament is found in Peter’s second epistle, where it s extremem seriousness is even clearer ‘[God] condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction [catastrophe] by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly thereafter’ (2 Peter 2:6). In that epistle Peter confronts false teaching which, by that time, was perverting God’s truth and ruining its hearers throughout the world. Those ‘untaught and unstable’ men distorted Paul’s teaching, just as they did ‘the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction’ (2 Peter 3:15-16). Even more dangerous, however, were the ‘false teachers among [them in the church], who [would] secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them’ (2 Peter 2:1).
2/14/2025 8:04 AM
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