From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling. 1 Timothy 1:6
Nowhere else in the Bible do we find the word ‘jangling’. This word means ‘babbling’ or ’empty words’ and it comes from the same root as Babel, where God confounded the languages of the people who tried to build a tower to Heaven. Those people in Babel had a lot in common with those referred to in our text. God had told those post-flood people to go forth and repopulate the earth. But instead, they came up with their own foolish ideas and dismissed God’s directions. Even with their lack of scientific knowledge, they should have known better. They were talking nonsense even before God confounded their language. They would have fit in well with people in our day; we can certainly hear plenty of vain jangling going on around us today. And it is all because they have turned aside from the Word of God.
We wonder how so many people can be deluded into following the teachings of such a false prophet as Mohammed, especially when we consider the hatred, the brutality, and repression that those teachings uphold. We are also amazed at the deception caused by Joseph Smith and his fairy tale religion of Mormonism, where his followers reject common sense and scientific proofs that soundly refute Smith’s nonsense. Similarly, we wonder how so many swallow the lies of a cult that wrote its own ‘translation’ of the Bible to match its teachings. It is all vain jangling. But so is the doctrine of such so-called ‘Christian’ churches as the Roman Catholics. Even the mainline Protestant churches have swerved aside from what measure of truth they once held to embrace the lies of modernism, compromise, and popularity. Very few of the denominations have anything that even resembles the plain teaching of the Gospel anymore, and those few that do are swerving aside into the paths of easy believism and a form that fails to address the need for repentance from sin and faith in Christ alone. It is all vain jangling. And it serves as a warning to us to cleave close to the Word of God and its principles that will preserve the truth.
The vain janglers like to have their ears tickled, so they give the teaching of their congregations into the hands of professional preachers. We know that even among our Assemblies, even the best of men are men at best, and they can be wrong in their doctrine. That is why God has given to us Assembly oversight in the plural, that the ideas of one man might not prevail above the Word of God. This helps preserves us from vain jangling. The vain janglers also like compromise with other so-called believers, mixing and mingling despite doctrinal differences. That is why the vain janglers like the modern-language versions of the Bible, those versions that are based on the corrupted texts embraced by the Westcott and Hort conspiracy. Those texts, apart from watering down the Bible’s emphasis on the lordship of Jesus Christ, dilute many of the basic doctrines of the Word of God. By using Bibles that are based on the preserved Textus Receptus, we can help to ensure that we do not succumb to vain jangling.
Our text speaks of those who swerve aside from what God commands. May that never be true of us. – Jim MacIntosh