DAILY DEVOTIONAL – February 25, 2021
“More Jesus, Less Jangle”
Prayer: Lord Jesus, it has always been, it always is now, and will forever be all about You. According to Your mercy, Lord, keep us from wandering off the narrow path that leads to life. Amen.
Scripture: 1 Timothy 1:3-7
3 As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, 4 nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. 5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, 7 desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
Devotional – “More Jesus, Less Janglin’”
Ephesus was a large seaport city on the western coast of modern day Turkey. The Apostle Paul had successfully proclaimed the Gospel there and the church that was born in Ephesus from Paul’s preaching proved to be of great significance in the early days of Christianity. Timothy was one of the Greek converts that Paul raised up and trained as a pastor and overseer of the church.
Paul’s first letter to the young pastor Timothy was written when it became evident to Paul that he would probably not be able to make it back to the city of Ephesus anytime soon. Paul himself says as much in the third chapter of 1 Timothy when he writes in verse 14, “I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God.”
As I said before, the Ephesians church played a vital role in the spread of Christianity. Ephesus was the first of the 7 churches that Jesus Himself wrote a letter to in the Book of Revelation (written by the hand of the Apostle John) after He had risen from the dead and ascended back to the Father. In that letter, Jesus praises the church in Ephesus for what they did well. Jesus tells them in Revelation 2, “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write, ‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary.’” In short, the Christians at the church in Ephesus were praised for guarding the Word of God and defending the Gospel of Jesus Christ against the many false doctrines and false teachers that strove to get rid of Christianity and that proved a constant threat to the hearts, minds, and faith of the believers in Ephesus. This is what Paul is talking about when he writes to Timothy in our text for today and charges him to rebuke and warn “certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.”
Today, 2,000 years later, I would say that Paul’s words of warning and exhortation are exponentially more important for the church in America. Never before has there been such a frenzy of information and such easy access to the countless lies of the devil and of the world that veil themselves behind the thin vail of religiosity and self-serving virtues of ‘spirituality’. Much of today’s secular spiritualism and our culture’s ‘religion of virtue’ has unfortunately crept into the church. This is exactly what Paul is referencing when he said to Timothy, “Certain persons…have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.”
Have you ever heard the term “vain janglin’”? It is an antiquated term that is used by the King James translation of this passage when Paul says that certain persons have wandered into “vain discussions”. The word jangling first appeared around the late 13th century, and it means to talk excessively about nothing, to make idle chatter, to gossip. Think about the sound loose change makes in your pocket. The near worthless value of a few lose coins in your pocket is communicated well by that thin, metallic sound they make as they clink together and jangle around in your pocket. That’s the essence of the vain and spiritually cheap talk that Paul is warning against and encouraging Timothy to resist and rebuke.
The vain janglin’ of today’s pop-Christianity and pseudo-spirituality has not gone without influence in the church. I personally hear this vain janglin’ in two significant ways. First, I am shocked by how many Christians today confuse what they think they know or what they want to know about Christianity with what the Bible actually teaches about our faith. Quite often I hear the Bible quoted like a Scriptural self-help vending machine that spits out pre-loaded verses of the Bible when they seem to fit a conclusion a person has already made about Christianity, even if what they have concluded has nothing to do with the Bible passage they reference, or worse yet, the Bible passage they quote actually teaches something quite different both in its immediate context and in light of the teaching of the Bible as a whole. Perhaps the two most common Bible verses people jangle in vain with are Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” and Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” If you are not aware of the true context in which those verses were written or to whom they were originally written, you should definitely learn that before you quote them again.
The second way I here many people today “vain janglin’” is when they prove to have just enough Biblical knowledge to be dangerous to themselves and others by making, as Paul says, “confident assertions” about theological topics that the Bible either does not clearly assert itself, or doesn’t speak to at all. I won’t get into specifics, but I hear a lot of this kind of “vain janglin’” surrounding COVID-19 and how people do or don’t think the church should respond. We need to be very careful as Christians not to confuse our opinion or what we want to be true about the Bible and about what Jesus said, with what is not only written throughout the Bible on a particular topic, but also what would have been intended and understood by the writers and recipients in the days the Bible was written.
The Bible itself makes clear in numerous places the Good News of what is written, and why what is written in the Bible has been written.
- Jesus says in John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.”
- After His resurrection, Jesus taught His disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:27, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”
- Romans 1:16-17 says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed.”
- John 20:30-31 says, “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
All of Scripture has been given to us by God with the primary purpose of revealing to us our need for salvation and revealing to us the Good News that salvation comes only through faith in Jesus Christ who died and rose again from the dead as the Son of God. When this world does come under the judgement of God on the last day, that is the only teaching that will determine whether we live or die, whether we spend eternity with God or separated from God in hell. That’s what matters most to God, our salvation, and that is why He has graciously given us His Word. That is the one message that will save, and that is the one message the Church must guard and boldly proclaim at all costs and above all other “vain janglin’.”
Thanks for joining me for another daily devotional, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today, and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
