A ‘LATTER TIMES’ WARNING

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on March 2, 2025 under 2024 |

Bethany Bible Church Sermon Message, preached March 2, 2025 from 1 Timothy 4:1-5

Theme: We must be diligent to cling to the truth of God’s word daily, because some will turn away in times to come.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

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As we have seen in our study of the letter of 1 Timothy, the great concern of the apostle Paul was that the Ephesian church—which Pastor Timothy served—stay completely true and faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ as it’s presented in the word of Scripture.

This was something that was stressed to Pastor Timothy at the very beginning of the letter. The very first thing he told Timothy was to command that some in the church to teach no other doctrine than that gospel. When something other than the truth of the gospel is taught, it causes people to be led astray from the simplicity and purity of faith in Jesus. As Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 1:3-7;

As I urged you when I went into Macedonia—remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith. Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith, from which some, having strayed, have turned aside to idle talk, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor the things which they affirm (1 Timothy 1:3-7).

In fact, at the time that Paul wrote, it had already become too late for some. Certain folks had already departed from the truth of God’s word, and had already made wreckage of their spiritual life. In verses 18-20, he told Timothy;

This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, having faith and a good conscience, which some having rejected, concerning the faith have suffered shipwreck, of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I delivered to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme (vv. 18-20).

And so, throughout this letter, we see Timothy’s spiritual duty emphasized again and again. He was to protect the church family that was under his care, and to diligently ensure that God’s people were being taught well from the Scriptures, were being instructed to live a life that conformed to the gospel, and were being urged to stand strong and faithful as a church family in the midst of an unbelieving world.

And now, as we come to the beginning of Chapter 4 of this letter, we find this important emphasis being set forth to Timothy in the form of a stern and sober warning:

Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer (4:1-5).

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Now; the importance of this was brought home to me in a very personal way recently. As many of you know, I have had a medical condition that required that I lay low for a few weeks. A lot of my regular routines in life had to be set aside. But by God’s grace, one thing that wasn’t set aside was a daily time of reading God’s word.

I want to share with you how important that daily time was to me. It often took a bit of work. Many times, I just didn’t feel up to it. But when I did my best to open my Bible anyway, and to pray for wisdom and just start reading, I always found that the Holy Spirit blessed me from the word and encouraged my heart in just the way that I needed. I grew closer and more in love with the Lord Jesus during those times. And it ended up confirming to me that a daily time spent reading God’s word—and praying to Him about the things I read—is the greatest habit of my life. I became more convinced than ever that, when I reach the end of my days on this earth, there won’t be anything more important to me than that I kept in fellowship with God my Father through faith in His Son and that I stayed faithful to the message of the gospel of Jesus as it’s proclaimed to us in the Bible. A lot of other things will certainly matter to me at that time, but I’m sure that having stayed faithful to the good news of God’s word will prove to be the thing that will matter to me the most!

This was brought home to me in another way during my time of laying low. I happened to read a book—written about fifty years ago—that told the stories of evangelical churches, and church denominations, and Christian colleges and universities and seminaries that had at some point begun to compromise on their belief in the authority of God’s word. It didn’t take very long after they did so before those churches and institutions began to deny other fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith. In some cases, they ceased to be evangelical altogether. It was a very sad and disturbing book to read.

And this has truly emphasized to me the importance of the warning we find in our passage this morning. The apostle Paul told Timothy that the Holy Spirit ‘expressly says’ that many would ‘depart from the faith’ in times to come. The word that Paul used to describe that departure is the Greek word from which we get the English word ‘apostasy’. It’s a word that means to ‘fall from a place’ or to ‘step from off a path’. It’s not a word that would describe someone who had never been on the path in the first place, but rather someone who had definitely been on the path and had later chosen to step off of it and wander from it.

Dear brothers and sisters; I am betting you know personally some folks who at one time professed a faith in Jesus—some folks who had been devoted members of a church, and who had been in the habit of reading the Bible, and who had been committed to the message of the gospel—but who are no longer so now. They had wandered off the path and departed from it, and are now no longer actively following the Lord Jesus that they once professed to love. In some cases, they’re even now living a life of open sin that is in complete opposition to the faith they once professed. I know of such people too. I don’t want to become one of them. And I don’t want any of us in this church family to become one of them. I want for all of us who believe in Jesus to do as the apostle John said in 2 John 8; that is, to ‘look to ourselves, “that we do not lose those things we worked for, but that we may receive a full reward”.

But this passage warns us that some will turn away and depart from the faith! And that’s why we must pay careful attention to what it tells us. It warns us that we must be diligent to cling to the truth of God’s word daily, because some will turn away in times to come.

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So then; let’s look first at verse 1 and at what it tells us about …

1. THE DANGER OF TURNING AWAY.

Paul told Timothy, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith …” And ‘the faith’ that they would depart from would be the very faith that Paul had just mentioned in the previous verse—which he called ‘the mystery of godliness’:

God was manifested in the flesh,
Justified in the Spirit,
Seen by angels,
Preached among the Gentiles,
Believed on in the world,
Received up in glory (3:16).

That—as we saw in our last time in 1 Timothy—is nothing other than the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ itself. And it’s from that essential message—the message that defines the Christian faith—that the Holy Spirit says some will depart.

Now, Paul said that the Holy Spirit ‘expressly’ says this; or as it can be translated, He ‘explicitly’ or ‘clearly’ says this. There can be no mistake about it. Some who had been walking along the path of ‘the faith’ will definitely depart from it. But when would this happen? Paul said that they would do so ‘in latter times’. So, is this a prediction about an ‘end-times’ departure from the faith?

The Bible tells us that there will be such a departure in the end times. In 2 Thessalonians 2:3, Paul warned that the Day of the Lord would not come “unless the falling away” or ‘the apostasy’ comes first”. This speaks of a definite, singular ‘falling away’. And Paul even went on in 2 Timothy 3:1-5 to write to Timothy about this and tell him;

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power (1 Timothy 3:1-5).

But the kind of falling away that Paul is speaking of in our passage this morning seems to be something different from that. He doesn’t say it will happen in ‘the last days’, but rather ‘in latter times’—that is, ‘times’ or ‘seasons’ or ‘time periods’ in the plural. This seems to be speaking of a kind of ‘falling away’ that would happen following the times that Paul wrote—and that would, in fact, happen repeatedly throughout the history of the times that follow all the way up to the present. In other words, the fact that some in the church will apostatize from the faith will be a reality of the church all the way up to the time when our Lord returns.

And this is even made more plain by the fact that, in the original language, Paul says that the Spirit expressly says this in the present tense—that is, in an ongoing way. The Spirit was issuing this warning in the time of Paul, and He is issuing this warning even today through the testimony of the Scriptures. That’s why we must heed this warning and be continually on guard.

Think of the warning that the Lord Jesus once gave in the parable of the soils. He told of how the seed was cast on four kinds of soil—on the wayside where the birds came and ate it, on the rocky soil where it didn’t sink in very deeply, on the uncleared soil where the thorn bushes choked it out, and on the good soil where it took root and produced fruit. He told us in Luke 8:11-15;

“Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity. But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience” (Luke 8:11-15).

So; the Holy Spirit is warning us in this passage of a reality that we must constantly be on guard against; and that is, in latter times and all along the way, some who once walked in the path of the faith will depart from it and apostatize from it. As this passage makes clear to us, that’s something that will happen. Some will turn away. But we must determine to be ‘good soil’.

Now; this passage goes on to tell us something very surprising. We may think that when someone departs from the faith, they then end up departing unto nothing. They may say, “I used to believe the gospel; but now I no longer believe in anything spiritual. I’m a complete materialist in my thinking—strictly secular.” But that turns out to be untrue. Look at what this passage says about …

2. THE RESULTS OF TURNING AWAY.

The first result that Paul mentions of turning away is that they begin listening instead to diabolical teaching. They don’t become ‘neutral’. He said, “the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons …”

The Lord Jesus taught us something about this in Luke 11:24-26, where He said,

“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first” (Luke 11:24-26).

Every human being born into this world is a spiritual being—whether they think that’s true or not. No one—no matter what they may think of themselves—is able to be a non-spiritual being. When someone who once walked in the faith departs from it, they don’t depart into ‘nothing’. They depart instead into the lies and deceptions and deceits of the demonic forces of the devil—who even deceives that man or woman into thinking that they actually have departed into ‘nothing’. Or it can be that they depart from a faith in the solid truth of the gospel into false religions, or deceitful philosophies, or even—as is happening more and more—into open forms of the occult and satanism. But in the end, no one departs from the truth of the gospel into ‘nothing’. They depart instead into “giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons”.

Another result of turning away is that such a person begins uttering falsehoods in a hypocritical spirit. Paul wrote in verse 2 that some will depart from the faith, “… speaking lies in hypocrisy”. They start out by pretending to believe a gospel that they now no longer believe … all in order to keep up an image of faithfulness and spirituality; and then they begin to change the meaning of the words they use … all in order to sound like a believer in God’s word while actually speaking as an unbeliever of it; and soon they cast all pretense aside, and speak and teach things that are in diametric opposition to the truth of the faith they once professed.

I suspect that these are the kind of people that the apostle Peter wrote about in 2 Peter 2:1-3; where he said,

But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber (2 Peter 2:1-3).

Such false teachers are able to bring in such destructive heresies ‘secretly’ because they are able to ‘speak lies in hypocrisy’, and pretend to be something that they no longer are.

A third result of turning away from the faith is that such a person begins searing their own conscience into insensitivity. Paul wrote in verse 2 that some will depart from the faith, “… having their own conscience seared with a hot iron”. The conscience is that element of our being—placed in us by our Creator—that enables us to determine right from wrong. But after knowingly departing from the truth of the gospel, and after falling under the influences of the devil, and after believing and telling lies in hypocrisy, they end up burning and scorching their conscience to the point that they can’t tell the difference between right and wrong any longer.

The apostle Paul once wrote about unbelieving people “who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness” (Ephesians 4:19). But it’s different in the case of someone who once walked in the faith and then ends up turning from it. They had ‘feeling’ in their conscience, but ended up ‘cauterizing’ it—burning it and scorching it as if with a hot iron so that they no longer feel the impulse of conscience that they once felt. Sometimes you run into such people. They once walked devotedly with the Lord Jesus and were very sensitive about His commands. But now, you’re surprised to hear them using filthy language that they had never used before, or embracing practices that they never would have thought of embracing, or applauding and celebrating sinful lifestyles that they used to sincerely believe were an offense to a holy God. Sometimes their life after they denied the faith is more sinful than it had ever been before they embraced the faith. This is because they had seared their consciences into insensitivity.

And then, finally, a fourth result that Paul mentions of turning away from the faith is that they begin enforcing a system of ‘spirituality’ through legalistic rules. As Paul puts it in verse 3, some will depart from the faith “… forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.”

The truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ is a truth that gives us great liberty. It teaches us that all of our sin has been placed on Jesus as our sinless Substitute—who died on the cross to atone for all our guilt before God the Father; and that all of His righteousness has been placed upon us—so that God now sees us, by faith, as being as righteous in His sight as Jesus Himself. There’s nothing that we need to add to the cross of Jesus to make ourselves holy before God. All that we need to do is believe that we have been declared righteous through faith in Him, and rise up and live the righteous life that conforms to what we now are by faith. But once someone who embraced that has departed from it, they then begin to formulate rules and regulations on a purely human level in order to make themselves ‘righteous’ and ‘holy’ in their own sight. And look at what they end up doing. They even go so far as to forbid ‘marriage’—which God has created for the good of humanity—in order to declare ‘celibacy’ as the key to spirituality. They even go so far as to abstain from ‘foods’—which God created for the sustenance of life—in order to say that someone can become more ‘holy’ because of what they don’t eat. They, as it were, cancel out God’s good word and write commandments of their own creation.

The apostle Paul spoke of this as well. In Colossians 2:20-23, he wrote;

Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations—“Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh (Colossians 2:20-23).

It almost seems like a blasphemous thing to say; but when someone who once walked in the truth of the gospel then turns away from it, they descend so far into self-deception that they almost think of themselves as more wise and more holy than God their Creator!

So you can see, dear brothers and sisters, what a horrible thing it is to depart from the truth and apostatize from the faith of the gospel. Such a person doesn’t simply depart unto ‘nothing’. They depart unto a downward course of spiritual deception, hypocrisy, insensitivity, and captivity to legalism. The Holy Spirit says expressly that in later times some will depart from the faith. It will happen to some. And that’s why we must be diligent to cling to the truth of God’s word daily.

Now; it’s important to say that, if someone who once walked with the Lord has apostatized—if they have fallen away—they can still return. Think of the apostle Peter. He denied the Lord three times; but the Lord Jesus forgave him and restored him. If someone repents of their apostasy and turns again to the Lord for forgiveness, the Lord—who is rich in mercy—will forgive them and restore them to Himself. But it’s far better never to have wandered at all.

And that leads us to one more point that Paul makes. And that is …

3. THE PREVENTION OF TURNING AWAY.

Paul tells us about it in verses 3-5. In speaking of the things that become ‘forbidden’ by those who wander away, Paul affirms that they are free to be enjoyed by those who “believe and know the truth, For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.”

We know, for example, the truth from God’s word that marriage is a holy institution to be entered into joyfully, because God Himself made it and blessed it. And we know the truth from God’s word that all foods are free to enjoy, because God Himself declared all foods to be clean. After He made all things, He declared it to be “very good”. No one is made less holy in God’s sight by entering into the institution of marriage as He created it, and no one is defiled by eating whatever foods God made whenever they wish. The Bible tells us that, at the very beginning of creation, God declared it all ‘good’; and nothing is to be refused if we can use it with sincere thanks to God, because it is sanctified—that is, made holy—by two things: (1) by the clear declaration of the revealed and written word of God, and (2) by our humble submission to Him in gratitude through prayer.

If we keep true to God’s word in the daily practices of life, and if we turn to Him continually in dependency and thanksgiving, then we will have done much to keep ourselves from being among those who depart from the truth.

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Dear brothers and sisters, I have a duty with regard to this. As a pastor and a teacher of God’s word, I need to do what the apostle Paul told Timothy in verse 6;

If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed (1 Timothy 4:6).

By God’s grace, I am doing my duty now. But you, dear brothers and sisters, have a duty too. It’s told to us in Hebrews 2:1;

Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away (Hebrews 2:1).

Let’s, therefore, be diligent to cling to the truth of God’s word daily, because some will turn away in times to come. With God’s help, let’s make sure to not be among them.

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