But anyway, 1 Timothy chapter 1 verse 3 says, "As I besought thee to abide still at Ephesus
when I went into Macedonia, that thou mightest charge some that they teach no other doctrine.
Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies which minister questions, rather than godly
edifying which is in faith so do."
Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience
and of faith unfeigned from which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling,
desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm.
Now you say, "Pastor Anderson, what does the word jangling mean?"
Okay, this is jangling, right?
If I shake my keys around, this is jangling.
So basically instead of these people using their mouths to talk about something that
matters, something that is godly edifying, something that builds up someone, something
that teaches someone, something that makes them a better person, something that makes
them a better servant of Christ, a better husband, a better father, a better human being.
You know, that's godly edifying, which is by faith in the word of God.
But then there's just jangling, which is just blathering.
It's just making noise with your... it's just a bunch of noise.
It's like the Bible says, where people become a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, but
they're not saying anything that matters.
It's just... you know, and they're not saying anything that matters.
And here's the thing.
Sometimes this kind of vain jangling can be confused for actual godly edifying.
Because a lot of times this vain jangling has to do with the Bible.
Now I'm not making this up because look down at your Bible in front of you.
It says they've turned aside into vain jangling.
What are the next words? Desiring to be teachers of the law.
So does this vain jangling have something to do with the Bible?
Yeah, but it's just asking stupid questions about the Bible and going on and on and on
about things that don't matter.
See there are things that the Bible makes real clear.
Things that the Bible emphasizes.
Things that the Bible tells us over and over again and very clearly and puts great importance
on.
That's what we ought to talk about over and over again.
That's what we ought to put emphasis on and put the importance on.
But then there are people who like to find the most obscure thing in the Bible that God
does not spend time on or that he does not give us any details about.
Something that he just barely touches on.
Just barely brushes on and then they just want to delve into that for hundreds of hours
that I'm going to get to the bottom of what it means.
When it says, you know, that the woman should have power on her head because of the angels.
You know, I'm just going to spend hundreds of hours just speculating about things that
-- look, the things that are revealed, you know, that's what we need to spend time on.
There's enough in the Bible that's crystal clear for you to worry about than to just
jangle on and on about angels and demons and Nephilim and all these spiritual things that
you don't even know anything about that the Bible gives very little detail about.
You just want to go on and on and on and on while the world goes to hell, while huge sections
of the word of God that are clear and easy to understand go completely ignored, we're
just going to find the most obscure passage and just delve into some strange new doctrine
or some little nuance of something and try to figure out what it means.
It's vain.
What does it profit?
Sometimes people call this majoring on the minors.
Now everything in the Bible is important, but here's the thing though.
Some things are more important than others, number one, and number two is things that
are clear and that are revealed, that's what God wants us to spend time on, not beating
our head against things that we don't understand.
It's like people who go to take a test and they just spend the whole hour on question
number two.
What do they tell you when you take a test?
If you don't understand question number two, keep going, move on, and then later it'll
come to you, maybe.
But if it doesn't, at least you can do the rest of the test, okay?