Preparing For Difficult Days Series

Preparing for Difficult Days

2 Timothy 3:1-9

Rev. Brian Bill

July 22-23, 2023

This week, I did a Google search to see how the ever-knowing search engine would answer this question: “Is our world getting better or worse?” Of the top five responses, four of them said the world is getting better. Here’s an example of one which gushed how good things are: “Humanity is faring much better than ever before. Child mortality, famine and poverty are at all-time lows, and life expectancy is at an all-time high.”

Only one search result said things are getting worse. That surprised me because it seems obvious, we are in a moral free fall. I guess it all depends on what standards we use.

Instead of consulting Google, let’s go with what God says in 2 Timothy 3:1-9: “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. 9 But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.”

Last week, we learned how the main thing is to keep the gospel the main thing. Here’s a summary of the sermon today: No matter how bad things become, our great God is in control.

In the 2022 State of Theology study, which we’ve referenced several times, Lifeway Research and Ligonier Ministries surveyed American Christians on their understanding of basic Christian theology. The results of this survey are alarming. Here are three of the most concerning findings.

• 48% of evangelicals believe God learns and adapts to different circumstances.

• 65% of evangelicals believe everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God.

• 56% of evangelicals believe God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

When the pastoral team went over these national results, we were stunned but not surprised. One pastor remarked that these results are in no way reflective of those who call Edgewood home. We wondered if there was a way for us to distribute this same survey to our church family as a way to take our theological temperature. Several months later, we discovered this survey was available, so we made plans to release it to our congregation. It’s now ready for you to take.

There are several ways you can access the Edgewood State of Theology Survey.

• You can take your phone out right now and capture the QR code on the screen and then come back to it after the service (or if the sermon is boring you can do it during the message).

• We have hard copies available at the Welcome Center.

• You can take the survey by opening up the e-newsletter which was sent via email on Thursday (if you’re not on this list, please sign up on a connection card).

• The survey is also available on our mobile app and website.

I took the survey this week and found it very simple to navigate. Our Mainspring ministry has already completed it as well. This survey is anonymous and should take you only 10-15 minutes to complete. Since our focus this year is on EVERYONE, we’re hoping everyone at Edgewood participates. As of noon on Friday, over 170 have already taken the survey. Pastor Kyle and I will be sharing the results in a special livestream on Thursday, August 10.

As I studied our preaching passage this week, I struggled to find an outline of the text. Then, I realized Paul is giving Timothy a primer on a few basic tenets of Christian theology. Let’s look at this section of Scripture and draw some theological truth from it.

While many react negatively to the topic of theology, believing it’s a dry and fruitless endeavor, one writer suggests everyone is a theologian in the sense that any time we think about a teaching of the Bible and strive to understand it, we are engaging in theology. The task of theology has to do with knowing the true God and developing an integrated knowledge about Him in light of His self-disclosure in the Scriptures.

I see four areas of theology in our passage: Eschatology, Hamartiology, Sanctification, and the Sovereignty of God.