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.
1. Eschatology: The doctrine of end times. This word comes from the Greek word eschaton and refers to the study of “last things” or the “end times.” In verse 1, Paul wants Timothy to have an understanding that while times are tough, they’re about to get terrible: “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.” I’m reminded of the guy who was told, “Cheer up. Things could be worse.” He responded, “I did as I was told. I cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse.”
The phrase “understand this” is emphatic and means, “know and understand this, mark this, and pay attention to it.” One paraphrase says, “Don’t be naïve.” The idea is not to be surprised by how horrible things are going to get. If we expect an increase in evil, we’ll better be able to deal with it.
Technically, “the last days” began on Pentecost with the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church. We see this when Peter preached his sermon referencing the Book of Joel in Acts 2:17: “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh…” In that sense, we’re living in the last days right now.
At the same time, the phrase “last days” refers to the time immediately preceding the return of Christ. We read something similar in 1 Timothy 4:1: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.” This time is also called the “last hour” in 1 John 2:18: “Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.”
Things have been bad for a long time, but it will intensify as we near the imminent return of Christ. When Jason Crosby, our deacon chairman, preached on this passage at another church recently, he made this point, “These seasons will become more frequent and more intense with varying degrees of danger and difficulty for Christ-followers, the closer we get to Christ’s return.” Or to say it another way, there were difficult times in the first century, there are still terrible times today, and the outpouring of evil is about to increase exponentially. The cycles of unbridled sin will increase in intensity, and each cycle will be more severe than the one before it.
The phrase “times of difficulty” refers to a season of sin or an era of outright evil. The word “difficulty” is used in only one other place to describe two demon possessed men coming out of the tombs in Matthew 8:28: “…so fierce that no one could pass that way.” Another translation says, “exceedingly fierce.” The word was also used in classical Greek of raging storms and untamed savage animals. The last days will be filled with the dangerous and the demonic as people cast off restraint while society unravels. One commentator writes this about the last days: “They will be both painful and perilous, hard to endure and hard to cope with.”
Consider what preacher J. Vernon McGee wrote over 60 years ago: “You can find evidence in history of some of these things, but I don’t think you’ll ever find a period in which all of them are so manifested as they are today.” If that was true six decades ago, the acceleration of evil is on warp speed today.
While some Christians hold to an end-times view called “post-millennialism,” a belief which teaches things are getting better, the Bible is clear that things will get worse before Jesus returns.
Mark this: No matter how bad things become, our great God is in control.
2. Hamartiology: The doctrine of sin. Hamartiology is the theological study of sin, and comes from the Greek word “hamartia,” which means to “miss the mark.” We all miss God’s mark of righteousness according to Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Sin stands in opposition to the holiness of God and condemns us. We won’t be able to spend a lot of time on each sin listed in verses 2-7 but the accumulated evidence should convince all of us of human depravity.
Before jumping in, notice how verse 2 begins: “For people will be…” These signs that the end is near are not focused on wars, famines, and earthquakes like we find in Mark 13:7-8, but on the attitudes and actions of evil people, in particular the false teachers.
One pastor has some good insight:
“In 1988, evangelical philosopher and theologian Carl Henry made a stunning prediction in his book, “Twilight of a Great Civilization.” He said that as America progressively loses its Judeo-Christian heritage, paganism would grow bolder. What we saw in the last half of the 20th Century was a kind of benign humanism, but he predicted that by the start of the 21st Century, we would face a situation not unlike the first-century when the Christian faith confronted raw paganism—humanism with the pretty face ripped off, revealing the angry monster underneath. His words have come true and are coming truer with every passing day.”
This catalogue of 21 corrupt attitudes and actions could be taken from our newsfeeds and headlines today. We’ll go through verses 2-5 phrase-by-phrase. You might want to brace yourself and buckle up because it will be rough ride.
• Lovers of self. Instead of loving God, people will love themselves more than anything else, which is the definition of idolatry. This type of narcissistic behavior is the cause of all other wickedness because when sinful self-centeredness is unleashed, everything implodes. One of the reformers said this: “But readers should note that lovers of themselves, which comes first, can be regarded as the source from which all the others that follow spring from.” I saw a clip this week of country star Miranda Lambert stopping her concert mid-song to call out fans who were more interested in taking “selfies” than listening to her perform. Here’s what she said: “The girls are worried about the selfie and not listening to the song…sorry, I don’t like it…at all.”
• Lovers of money. Luke 16:14 tells us the Pharisees were “lovers of money.” Many Americans were excited this week when the Powerball jackpot soared to over $1 billion. One of the world’s lies is that money is the answer to life’s problems. People are lured into playing the lottery with promises that their lives will improve if they can only hit the jackpot. If they can just get lucky with the numbers, their problems will disappear. Ecclesiastes 5:10 says: “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.” 1Timothy 6:10 says the “love of money is a root of all sorts of evil.”
• Proud. This word refers to “self-assertive swaggerers and empty boasters” who traveled around as quacks filled with empty boasts about the products they were pushing. A proud person is described in Psalm 10:3: “For the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul.”
• Arrogant. Closely related to being proud, the arrogant are haughty, seeing themselves as over and above others.
• Abusive. This word refers to blaspheming God and reviling those made in God’s image. Any kind of abuse is evil and abhorrent.
• Disobedient to parents. The word for “disobedient” means, “not pliable.” We certainly see the rapid breakdown of the family today. This was predicted in Micah 7:6: “For the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother.” Check out this assessment from someone who observed what is happening in the younger generation: “Youth today love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, no respect for older people, and talk nonsense when they should work. Young people do not stand up any longer when adults enter the room. They contradict their parents, talk too much in company, guzzle their food, lay their legs on the table, and tyrannize their elders.” Do you know who said this and when he said it? It was Socrates, over 2,400 years ago! I guess not much has changed. Parents, make sure you are teaching first-time obedience to your children.
• Ungrateful. There will be an increasing attitude of entitlement and disregard for God’s kindness in the last days. We see this in Romans 1:21: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Jason said it like this: “They believe they deserve everything good they receive and therefore feel no need to be grateful.”
• Unholy. People will become more and more profane and impure, treating nothing as holy as they live out their passions with unbridled fervor. One commentator writes, “The world’s culture will be a reverse image of the things of God. It will honor things that are shameful and shame things that are honorable.”
• Heartless. This word means, “hostile and odious, without natural affection” and is described in Romans 1:31: “Foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” An example of this took place a week ago in Milwaukee when a mother and her boyfriend were arrested when her two young boys were found running outside with matted feces in their hair and welts all over their backs.
• Unappeasable. People will refuse to change and become more implacable as we near the end.
• Slanderous. This is the word “diabolos,” from which we get the word “diabolical.” This is also where the word “accuser” comes from, which is a description of what Satan does day and night according to Revelation 12:10: “…who accuses them day and night before our God.”
• Without self-control. This is the idea of living without limits. I’m reminded of a quote from Vance Havner: “People used to blush when they were ashamed. Now they are ashamed if they blush. Modesty has disappeared and a brazen generation with no fear of God before its eyes, mocks at sin. We are so fond of being called tolerant and broadminded that we wink at sin when we ought to weep.”
• Brutal. This means, “savage, wild, and untamed.” I observed this behavior at our bird feeder this week as “bully birds” were dive bombing other birds who tried to eat next to them. But birds are no match for the brash brutality we see in our world today.
• Not loving good. These haters of good are living out Isaiah 5:20: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”
• Treacherous. This word is the same as betrayal and describes what Judas did to Jesus.
• Reckless. A reckless person is rash, careless, and headstrong. This person is so focused on themselves that they don’t notice anyone else.
• Swollen with conceit. People like this are literally “puffed up” with conceit. The word has to do with being surrounded with smoke, meaning they can only see themselves and not others. Interestingly, Paul circles back around to pride as the source of sin.
• Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. The word “pleasure” in Greek is where we get the word hedonism. According to one historian, one of the downfalls of Rome was attributed to people saying, “Give us bread and the circus.” They wanted good food and lots of fun. This is an apt description of our world today. I think of Romans 16:18: “For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites.” I saw a post this week that epitomizes this philosophy: “If it doesn’t bring you energy, inspiration or [pleasure], it doesn’t belong in your life.”
• Having the appearance of godliness but denying its power. This is a good reminder that Paul is speaking of religious people here. The word “appearance” means they act like they believe but don’t behave according to what the Bible says. They were experts on the externals but had not internal power to combat sin. They had a religious appearance without Christlike character and religious words without Christian content. According to Matthew 23:25, the Jewish religious leaders were masters at faking their faith: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.”
• They creep into households and capture weak women. False teachers often slink in secretively. We see this in Jude 4: “they crept in unnoticed.” To “capture” means, “to gain control over, to take as a prisoner of war.” The word “weak” certainly does not describe all women but does show how false teachers prey on anyone who is vulnerable. We see this when TV preachers make their incessant pleas for money. One word of wisdom would be to support those ministries that are not always talking about money. We also see how sinful teachers sometimes take advantage of women through sensuality. Unfortunately, many of these stories have hit the news recently. Abuse is always wrong and should never happen.
• Always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. There are some people who are always learning, scrolling, and listening but nothing seems to stick with them. It’s important to learn and then internalize the truth so it turns into a conviction.
Settle this: No matter how bad things become, our great God is in control.
3. Sanctification: The doctrine of holy living. We come now to the second command in this section. Listen to the last part of verse 5: “Avoid such people.” To “avoid” means, “to shun and turn away.” The first command is found in verse 1: “But understand this.” We could summarize this entire section by these two commands: Know them and avoid them.
Remember, Paul is referring to religious people here. The idea behind this is found in 1 Corinthians 15:33: “Bad company ruins good morals.” We must stay away from these kinds of people in person and also be careful about watching them on TV, reading their books, or following them online. Don’t let their influence into your home or into your heart.
On Tuesday morning, Beth and I had the honor of serving breakfast at Camp Summit. Camp Summit is a ministry of Youth Hope, one of our Go Team partners. Their motto is, “Bringing youth hope.” For eight weeks each summer, the gospel is given to elementary, junior high, and senior high students. I was thrilled that the young guy I’ve been mentoring this past year was at camp this week.
I was reminded of some stats from a Youth Hope newsletter.
• The average screen time for kids is now 7 hours a day.
• Children play outside an average of just 4-7 minutes a day.
• 85% of Youth Hope kids do not have a biological father present.
As I looked around the breakfast tables, there was something missing. None of the 50 boys had an electronic device with them! In this unplugged environment, students were able to be outside in God’s creation, heard the gospel every day of camp, and learned how to have a relationship with their Heavenly Father. BTW, Edgewood member Bill Bealer serves in the Youth Hope Food Pantry. He told me they are looking for more servants to join this strategic ministry.
While it’s great to get away for a week and be separated from electronic devices, it’s even more important to learn how to live separated from sin when at home, school, work, and play.
1 Thessalonians 4:3 says, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality.” To be sanctified means, “to be made clean, to be separated and set apart for a purpose.” Sanctification has a negative and a positive aspect – we are to be separated from sin and separated unto the Savior.
“Sanctify” and “saint” come from the same root word in Greek. Saint is the noun form of sanctified. When you are saved, you are immediately set apart because now you belong to the Lord. And as part of our growth, we are called to be progressively sanctified as we surrender to Christ daily.
Incidentally, the study of eschatology should always have a purifying effect on how we live today. Here’s what I said when preaching at the prophecy conference last fall: The closeness of Christ’s coming should cause us to walk closely with Him today. This is spelled out in 1 John 2:28: “And now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears we may have confidence and not shrink from Him in shame at His coming.”
Pay attention to this: No matter how bad things become, our great God is in control.
4. Sovereignty: The doctrine of God’s authority. God is in charge and is always working His ways and His will to accomplish His purposes. We see this in verses 8-9: “Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.”
As an example of bogus teachers, Paul mentions the names of two guys, Jannes and Jambres, who opposed Moses and mimicked some of the miracles. Interestingly, the names of these two magicians are not found in the Old Testament but come from the Jewish Targum, which functioned like a commentary.
I invite you to join me in Exodus 7 for the backstory. Moses and Aaron were charged with leading God’s people out of Egypt but were met with resistance by Pharoah. As a result, God sent 10 plagues on the Egyptians, but Pharoah kept hardening his heart.
For the first plague, Moses and Aaron were told to strike the Nile and it would turn to blood. Listen to what happened next in Exodus 7:22: “But the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts.” For the second plague, God sent frogs to cover the entire land of Egypt. Notice Exodus 8:7: “But the magicians did the same by their secret arts and made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.”
BTW, the powers of darkness will do miracles in the last days, and some will be swayed according to 2 Thessalonians 2:9: “The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders.” Jesus said it like this in Matthew 24:11-12: “And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.”
We see God’s sovereignty on display with the third plague of gnats. Let’s pick it up in Exodus 8:17-19: “All the dust of the earth became gnats in all the land of Egypt. The magicians tried by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not. So there were gnats on man and beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, ‘This is the finger of God.’”
The magicians could not match God miracle-for-miracle, because their occult powers were inferior to God’s power. Reluctantly, they ended up giving glory to God. In a similar way, Philippians 2:10-11 teaches that eventually everyone will bow before Christ: “So that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
The magicians are nowhere to be found during the fourth plague of flies and when the fifth plague of boils is unleashed, their folly becomes plain to all. God let them go only so far before unleashing His righteous judgment. Listen to Exodus 9:11: “And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils came upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians.” If we go back to Exodus 7:12, we see that when the magicians turned their staffs into snakes just like Moses had done, “Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs.”
Friends, listen. As bad as things are, God has set some limits. I’m reminded of what God said to the sea in Job 38:11: “Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed.” There will come a time when He puts an end to all the perversity and triumphs over all that is bad. The truth will win out because it is the truth! As Billy Graham often said, “I’ve read the end of the book and we win in the end!”
No matter how bad things become, our great God is in control.
Application
Let’s draw some application from this passage.
• Guard your first love. Four of the attitudes and actions in this catalogue of sins have to do with misplaced love. Revelation 2:4: “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.”
• Be doctrinally discerning and theologically astute. As error accelerates in the last days, we must continually examine the Scriptures to see what is true. 1 John 4:1: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”
• Don’t fret and become unfaithful. It’s time to trust that God is in control. Jesus asked an unsettling question in Luke 18:8: “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
• Prepare for battle by putting on the armor of God. You are in a war with your flesh, with the world, and with the devil and his demons. If you need help knowing how to fight this battle, ask the 200+ kids who learned how to stand for truth during Super Summer Slam this week. Ephesians 6:11: “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” Many of you know Frankie Stephens. What you might not know is he has been spraying weeds in our parking lot for years. When I called to thank him this week, he said, “I’m killing the devil’s weeds in God’s parking lot.” Brothers and sisters, let’s not let the devil’s weeds grow in God’s people!
• Go with the gospel because the time is short. Listen to what Jesus said in Mark 1:15: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
While not explicitly taught in this particular passage, I want to end with one more theological term.
5. Soteriology: The doctrine of salvation. It was G.K. Chesterton who said, “Original sin is the only doctrine that’s been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.” The Bible says because we are sinners, we fall short of God’s glory, and therefore deserve to spend eternity in Hell. In order to save us from our sins, Jesus came to earth and died on the cross as full and final payment, providing forgiveness for sin and eternal life. He was raised from the dead on the third day, demonstrating His power over death, the devil, and our own depravity. When we repent of our sins and receive Jesus as Savior and Lord, we are adopted into His forever family as His children.
To say it another way, the Scriptures alone teach we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for the glory of God alone!
God is delaying judgment because He is giving you time to decide to follow Jesus, but it is dangerous to presume upon His patience. 2 Peter 3:9 says, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
Invitation
