August 31 and September 1, 2002
2 Timothy 3:1-9
A Case For Seatbelts and Air Bags
How many public warnings do you think you have either seen or heard since you were a little child? I am not talking about the warnings you got from parents, grand-parents, pastors or Sunday School teachers that were aimed at one person or a small group of persons. I am talking about general warnings that are published for the masses. There have always been warnings. If you are from the World War II generation there were lots of warnings like, “Loose Lips Sink Ships.” If you were young in the early fifties you heard, “Beware the Red menace.” But it seems that I grew up in the age of warnings and they have gotten progressively pervasive as I have gotten older. When I was little I remember feeling strangely comforted by the picture of a friendly brown bear named Smokey. Remember his warning? “Only You can prevent forest fires.” Even one of my favorite songs that I always ran to the upstairs bedroom at my grandma Stratton’s house to play every time we visited was essentially a warning. (SINGIN) “If you go out to the woods today, you better not go alone, If you go into the woods today be ready for a surprise. For every bear that ever there was is gathering today in the woods, today’s the day when Teddy Bears have their picnic.”
Those warnings are intended to be rather innocuous. They are meant to inform as well as protect. Remember, I said I have been raised in an era of warnings? In my teenage years it seemed like there was a new warning published in the paper almost daily about another commonly used substance or additive that caused cancer. It was almost comical to me at that time that everything seemed to cause cancer in white mice. I even tried to convince a high school teacher that I had done my own study and had concluded that cancer was actually caused by white mice. All we had to do was get rid of white mice and we could cure cancer. I got the same response from Bernie Whitehead, he thought it was a joke. But here we are thirty years later, we still have cancer and we still have white mice. If I could just get someone to give this one a shot… well I’m ready to book a trip to Stockholm and collect my Nobel Prize in medicine. We try apricot pits, tree bark, crystals and chanting, why not try getting rid of white mice?
Then warnings seemed to pick up after high school. Today you can’t seem to purchase any product that does not contain a warning label on it or is covered with warning labels. Have you bought as ladder lately? One I got recently has twelve separate warning stickers. I decided after I got it that it was far too dangerous for me to attempt to clean out my gutters all by myself so I’m having them taken down. They seem to always be clogged and running over anyway. I just bought a blow dryer a few weeks ago for those who had gotten baptized to use to dry their hair before they came back into the worship service. There were four warning labels affixed to the cord. The warning labels were longer than the cord. There was a warning booklet and the idiot warning on the side of the blow dryer(that’s right, today there is always an idiot warning on every item as well.) The idiot warning on the blow dryer said, go ahead and say it… “Do not use this appliance in the shower.”
I agree with a comedian I heard several years ago, “If you are stupid enough to use a blow dryer in the shower, well you deserve to die and besides it would improve the gene pool immensely, what do we need to be warning these idiot people for?
In 1965, the federal government passed legislation requiring that all vehicles in the United States sold after July 1st of 1967 were required to come equipped with front seat driver and passenger seat belts. There has been a steady progression of laws passed to protect occupants of motor vehicles. Rear belts in 1970. 3 point shoulder and hip restraints in 1973 for front seats and lap belts for rear seats. First passive restraint rules were written in 1980. Three point restraints for all seats in 1982. Then we got car seats for infants, booster seats for toddlers, driver side air bags, passenger side air bags. We got the warning about child car seats and passenger side air bags. Warnings and more warnings and we seem to be less and less safe. I wish there were some way we could get back to the three warnings my mom gave me standing on the curb on 8th avenue as I got ready to cross the street and walk the twelve blocks to Collett elementary school in 1961.
1. Look both ways before you cross the street
2. Don’t talk to strangers
3. make sure to raise your hand and ask Mrs. Keene (1st grade teacher) several minutes before you have to go to the bathroom if you can go.
Warnings, warnings and more warnings…”Danger Will Robinson.” That is where the apostle Paul starts chapter 3 of 2nd Timothy. However the warning doesn’t spill out as you open the package, remember, these are Paul’s last words to a beloved son in Christ. They are not warnings addressed to the masses and they are not idiot warnings. These are the words of a man whom God had already elevated to the third heaven to see how things really were and how things would become. These are the words of a man whom had been granted the privilege and the responsibility to see many things in the future as a way to prepare the church for what was ahead.
In an age of passive warnings, active warnings, surgeon general’s warnings, product safety warnings, research warnings, weather, earthquake, volcano and tsunami warnings and lest we forget the newest category, terrorist attack warnings we have the tendency to dismiss them all. Especially when we read these warnings, given more than two thousand years ago, we are tempted to get that glazed over look we all get when we hear that a new item has been added to the list that causes cancer in white mice. But, dear friends don’t do it on this one. Because this list is about eternity and this list reaches across some twenty centuries and speaks with authority because when we read it we know and sense that this list of warnings is more true today than when it was when it was written in that little circular cell across the street from the Roman Senate building by the stooped, nearly blind, cold, lonely, bored and sorrowed old man named Paul. Paul tells us that there will be three characteristics of the last days, lets read 2 Timothy again.
“But mark this, there will be terrible times in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love (inhuman, RSV), unforgiving, slanderous, without self control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”
The first characteristic of the last days is that, Peoples primary motive will be to please themselves. When you look at the list is there anything that seems out of order when one speaks about what humanity is or works toward today? Is there, in you frame of reference when these attitudes, behaviors and desires were ever more prevalent. Just to look at a couple.
Lovers of self: I grew up hearing and still hear so often, that it makes me sick, “You can’t love someone else until you love yourself.” I had no trouble loving my mother, father, sister, brother, friends, neighbors, church folks when I didn’t realize that I had to love self first. After I learned that little lesson in 1971, I had a lot of trouble loving anybody. That is of course until 1975 when I had a young woman I met at a High School football game started loving me or in 1979 when a little girl named April was born and she loved me, I got regular vaccinations of the same in 1982 with Jay and in 1986 with Katie. I don’t have much trouble loving today after I came to the knowledge in 1980 that God so loved the world and that he so loved me that he gave his Son to die for me. It is amazing that we really learn to love when we learn that we are loved. Three or Four generations of persons believe the opposite because of a lie that sounds a lot like reality and that is one of the primary tactics of Satan, but we’ll hear about that later. By the way, I started liking myself and loving myself a whole lot more when I experienced the love of God and the love of others. I hate to think of the consequences of the life I would have if I were still waiting to love myself before I could love others.
Lovers of Money: Let me put it this way, Enron, ImClone, WorldCom and not only all of those inside who would do whatever necessary to get more of it, but all of us on the outside who loved the rise in our portfolios or our mutual funds.
Ungrateful: Hence the rise of entitlement and victimization
Slanderous: We’re coming up on another season of politics. We are going to get real tired of this one, real soon, and “Christian candidates” are primary users of this tactic.
The second characteristic of the last days is: The word of God has no transforming power. Verse 5 reads “having a form of godliness but denying its power.”
Folks I do not believe I have ever seen a more powerless time in the lives of people. So many things seem to win so many victories over the people of God. I preached and taught a seven week series, seven years ago at Vincennes First Baptist that to me was as prophetic a group of lessons that I had ever prepared. The series was on the seven deadly sins. I stated then that it was my belief that we would soon see a spectacular rise in the evidence of these “deadly sins” in the life of the church (not Vincennes 1st specifically, but they are not left out) and in the life of God’s people. The seven deadly sins are: Sloth, Lust, Anger, Pride, Envy, Greed and Gluttony. To paraphrase the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” “These sins are marching on.” In the pulpit and in the pew. That is “having a form of Godliness but denying its power.”
The third characteristic Paul identified was that, in the last days people would reject the truth and expound new truth. The reason for this occurring is because our enemy is so good at two tactics. These are the same two tactics that he has used since the beginning of time. The first is outlined in verse 6, now remember folks and specifically you ladies, these are the words of Paul and while they talk about some women, they are just as true of some men as they are of some women. Read it with me, “They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by al kinds of evil desires.” This highlights the tactic of infiltration. Notice the word, “worm?” That is a great word here. How does a worm move? It twists and turns and slimes it’s way along, almost always under foot, hidden until a storm washes them out into the open That is a great picture to see how this tactic works in these warnings that Paul gives to us about the last days. The characteristics that I have outlined are just like that twisting, turning, just below the surface, hidden until the glorious cleansing of God occurs and washes them into the open and out of our lives.
The second tactic of our enemy is outlined in verse 8, “Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth.” How did Jannes and Jambres oppose Moses? They did it by counterfeit, they did this by trying to Imitate Moses. They were the two guys who opposed Moses in Pharoah’s Court. When Aaron threw the rod down and it turned into a snake, they threw theirs down and made snakes. The Bible says when God caused frogs to come upon the land of Egypt, they made more frogs. If I had been Pharoah I would have been a bit ticked. Get rid of the frogs, don’t bring more. Jannes and Jambres were the dumb and dumber of imitators but they were imitators none the less.
When you read the Great Awakening stories about the Whitefields and the Wesleys of the 18th century you see that these men, though they preached to huge crowds, did not gather them by sending out press agents and advertising in the newspapers. They merely went out on the street corners, even the fields, and began to talk to a few people about the gospel. But the whole English nation was so hungry, so empty, so lonely, miserable, and depressed that they began to flock to hear these men. The word so spread that whenever they started preaching people would come running to hear them. John Wesley and George Whitefield often found that, though they began by speaking to just a few people, before they were through they would be addressing a crowd of ten thousand or more. I think that is what we are headed for in the future. Times of stress are also times of great opportunity, when God uses the devil’s very deceitfulness to outwit him, and to prepare the hearts of people for a genuine pouring out of the blessings of God.
Remember, then, that hypocrisy and insincerity in the church is what was produced the times of crisis that are described here. We are living heirs today of the lukewarmness of the churches of the ’20s and ’30s of this century. God’s righteous judgments always are based upon reality. He knows what is in the heart. If we think we are fooling God by our coming to church, by singing hymns, by faithfully attending Bible studies, but not allowing the Word to get at our self-indulgent lives and change us, we will awake sooner or later only to find we are fooling ourselves. These are strong, searching words from the apostle’s pen. Paul will go on in chapter three to describe how to counteract these characteristics of the last days. We will look at “Reading the Owner’s Manual” next week, but until then wear the seat-belts that Paul has given you in these warnings. Seat-belts and air bags save us because they help us if we go too far too fast in a car that is involved in an accident. Neither go too far or too fast…You have been warned. Let us pray.
LL- Breathe
8:45- #543” When the roll is called up yonder”
11:00- Breathe
