There may have been other letters from Paul to Timothy, and more than likely, some going the other way. It becomes very obvious in the reading of these two that we have, that Paul loved Timothy very dearly. Even calls him ‘son’. He mentions Timothy in Romans, in First and Second Corinthians, in Philippians, Colossians, in both letters to the Thessalonians, and in Philemon.
It seems like Paul was always looking forward to the arrival of Timothy, or sending Timothy somewhere to someone. The very apparent thing demonstrated to us in Paul’s epistles is that he depended very much on the assistance of Timothy in ministry, and the comfort of having him nearby, and Timothy did not disappoint him.
Now, as pastor of the church at Ephesus, a very difficult place to minister because of its pagan culture and widespread practice of heathen ritual, Timothy receives from Paul instruction and encouragement in the form of these two letters, preserved for us in the scriptures, and therefore, although directed to Timothy by Paul, directed to us by the Holy Spirit.
We find several references in them to the spiritual gifts that were bestowed to Timothy at the laying on of hands, probably by Paul and others with him when they ordained Timothy to this ministry. Paul reminds Timothy of that by way of encouragement, and charges him to remind himself often of his own heritage in the faith and his upbringing in the Scriptures.
He also gives this young pastor some practical counsel concerning how he should direct and guide the behavior of those in the church.
As I was reading through these two letters however, I was struck by something that stood out to me from chapter three, and as I meditated on it I realized that some very pertinent things could be said to our time and particular situation and culture from this chapter. So I wanted us to spend some time here today, and ponder some of these things together.
DIFFICULT TIMES
Now as we approach the text, glance back for just a moment to the final verses of chapter 2. Paul has been warning Timothy against some who are spreading heresy, and then turns once more to Timothy and exhorts him to a life and lifestyle that sharply removes him from those others, and identifies him with the truth of the gospel he preaches.
So as you just quickly scan verses 24 through 26 of chapter 2 you can see that Paul is telling Timothy that the Lord’s man must be able to teach, patient, gentle, but bold enough to confront and correct error; that he must be a leader into truth, and then finally, in verse 26, Paul says that some who hear Timothy’s sound teaching and see his humble and patient manner may come to their senses, and thus escape the snare of the devil.
I don’t know if this sort of thing will ever be in my future… it’s not that I’m having delusions of grandeur, please believe that. But I have occasionally thought that it would be a great honor and for me, just plain fun, to someday speak to a graduating class at a seminary.
It would just be a great privilege, I think, to have that opportunity to come before a large group of men about to embark upon the ministry of their calling, and give them words of encouragement and exhortation from the scriptures.
Now if that time ever comes, I would probably then be scrambling, not trying to think about what I should preach on, but trying to narrow it down to one or two choices. Of course I’d have to pray about it, and I’m sure the Lord would give me clear leading.
But I said all that just to say that this portion of Paul’s second letter to Timothy is one passage that would be near the top of my list.
I would like to give them some direction for prayer in their own lives, that God would develop in them the kind of minister that Paul has described to Timothy in verses 24 and 25 of chapter 2, and then leave them with a reminder and a challenge to hold fast to the purity of the message of Christ and His death and His resurrection, and not grow tired or weary in it.
Because some who have gone astray from the truth, as discussed earlier in that chapter, being exposed to the faithful exercise of patience and gentleness and corrective doctrine, may finally come to their senses and come back to the true belief and teaching of the gospel.
This is the direction that Paul has given Timothy here, and I can’t help feeling that Paul might have experienced some sense of urgency as he wrote, that I think I would experience in being able to bring that kind of a message to young men about to set out in ministry.
He wasn’t speaking from any lack of experience either. Paul, throughout his entire ministry, had been fighting this very battle. Holding fast to sound doctrine, while others who followed him and sometimes went before him, denied in their own preaching the very truths he was spending his life for.
So Paul knew whereof he spoke, when he warned Timothy of those who had gone astray from the truth, and I think he had plenty of very vivid memories of his own travels and travails, when he declared them to be in the snare of the devil.
So, he says, stay pure yourself, and keep your message pure, and by your Godly efforts you may snatch some from the clutches of the evil one. He wasn’t talking about the unsaved; he was referring to error in the church.
So now we come to chapter 3 and we see the word ‘But’. “But realize this”
This is important! Can you now hear the urgency? “But realize this, Timothy!”
Sit up and take notice now. I’ve been talking about difficulties and difficult people, but what I’m going to say now is something you should never forget as you go about your work of ministry.
“…in the last days difficult times will come.”
Paul wrote this second letter to Timothy from imprisonment in Rome, probably in A.D.64; his final imprisonment. Difficult days will come?
This is Paul we’re talking about here, who has suffered much for many years for the sake of the gospel. I won’t go again today into the details that he himself has laid out for us in II Corinthians 4 and again in chapter 11 concerning the trials he endured in his ministry. His was a difficult life, and he was told it would be, very early after his conversion. The Lord told Ananias to go to Paul as he sat blind in Damascus, saying “…I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake” (Acts 9:16)
But here he says, “…difficult times will come”
Now should we conclude from this that Paul does not see his past as being at all difficult in comparison to what will come? Or does he mean to say to Timothy, “Tim, you may think you’ve had a hard time with some of those knuckleheads in Ephesus, but you just wait!”
I think neither. I think Paul is saying the word ‘difficult’, in relation to the endless struggle of proclaiming a pure, unadulterated gospel message, and having anyone pay any positive attention to it.
Hold out, Timothy, and continue to lead others to the truth and away from error, and you will rescue some. But you should realize that we’re in the last days, Timothy, and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. And you should realize that as time goes by, your job isn’t going to get any easier. You should realize that your opposition is going to come from directions that will continue to astound you, Timothy; you and every straightforward preacher and defender of truth.
A FORM OF GODLINESS
I’m sure Paul knew that he was writing during what could be called the ‘last times’. I don’t think Paul was projecting far into the future when he used that term.
With the teaching and the movies and books that have been dumped into our heads over the past 25 years or so, I think to a large degree many church-goers tend to think, when they hear the term ‘last days’, of something that will begin with either the rapture of the church, or the beginning of the Tribulation period.
At best, what might come to mind in some is just a general sense of how things are going in modern times, and that these must be the ‘last days’.
But the emphasis of Paul seems to be that he considered the final age of this earth to be bracketed by the ascension of Christ, and His return in judgment. I think Paul believed he was writing in the last days, and when he said, “…in the last days difficult times will come”, he was referring to a digression that would continue to worsen, and saying that the sensible man of God should not be deceived into thinking that it was going to get better.
If you skip the page over to chapter 4 for a moment, you’ll see in verse 3 that he says “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine;…” “For the time will come...”
So apparently, Paul is telling Timothy what he is telling him, because although he foresees the time when men will cease to listen, he has faith in a pure gospel message to keep the church on track as long as it is preached.
The next thing to look at here, is this long list of all sorts of evil that Paul is predicting will characterize worldly men in the last days. And since he is using the words, we must assume that these men existed in his time, or he wouldn’t have known the words to use them. So if he is saying that in the last days they will be like this, then he must mean that they will be progressively (or digressively) like this.
We’re not going to do a word study and find out what each Greek word is that he has used here; it’s impressive enough just to go down the list and really read each one, not just skim over.
Lovers of self. Lovers of money. Boastful. Arrogant. Revilers. Disobedient to parents. Ungrateful. Unholy. Unloving. Irreconcilable. Malicious gossips. Without self-control. Brutal. Haters of good. Treacherous. Reckless. Conceited. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.
Ok, run back over it and really let it sink in. He used the term ‘lovers’ four times. Put them together. Lovers of self, money and pleasure; and the fourth use, ‘rather than lovers of God’.
Now if Paul was talking about unsaved people of the world, outside of the church and going their own way, he would be wasting his time. Why announce the obvious?
Of course men have been this way since the Fall; sin makes them that way!
But look at verse 5!
“…holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power…”
These are men of the church! Ungrateful, unholy, unloving? Boastful, arrogant, revilers? Brutal? Treacherous? Yes!
Never does Paul tell anyone, any of the recipients of his epistles, to avoid the unsaved. No, he says just the opposite and instructs them to deal with the unsaved by calling them to repentance and giving them the gospel so they might be saved.
But here he warns “…and avoid such men as these” These are men of the church! And they are dangerous.
This brings us to a place where we need to pause a moment and reflect on what concepts tend to guide our unconscious thinking, in relation to how we view both the church and the world around us.
How often do we as Christians gather, and at some point during the time of our fellowship, whether we’re there for Bible study, or eating together, or whatever, the conversation turns to whatever assault is lately being launched against God in our society? Oh, the ACLU is backing some atheist who doesn’t want his little girl to have to say “under God” when she pledges her allegiance to her country’s flag.
And over here, this judge has been removed from the bench because he refuses to obey a higher court order to remove the Ten Commandments from a public place.
And there are other stories, and they seem to be growing in frequency. Don’t let it surprise you; it was foretold by our Lord that these things would increase.
But Paul isn’t talking about those people who in their ignorance fear and attack what they don’t understand. And it would behoove us all, Christians, to stay mindful of the fact that in the history of the church, the greatest persecutions of true believers, and the most harm done to the true bride of Christ, have come from within the ranks of the established church.
And we shouldn’t be taken back when we see men who hold relatively prominent positions in the church acting in evil and ungodly ways. Satan had them entrenched in the infant church even in Paul’s day, and he has been careful to place them very strategically ever since.
H.G.C. Moule, among other things, was Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, England. He wrote many books on the New Testament, and some are reprinted by Kregel, a publishing company that primarily reprints books that have been out of print. In Moule’s commentary on II Timothy, he says this on verse 5.
“It is a remarkable phrase, and reminds us that the gloomy picture of verses 1-5 was not so much meant to present a world raging against the church, as the church awfully wounded by evil from within. ‘What are the great non-Christian religions?’ said a friend of mine in my hearing long ago. And he answered his own question; - ‘Judaism, Mohammedanism, Brahmanism, Buddhism and unspiritual Christianity’.”
The man made a strong point, in equating the church devoid of the Spirit to the other pagan religions of the world. I agree with him, although I’m sure that despite the choosing of his words, he would also agree with me, that unspiritual Christianity, is not really Christianity.
POWER DENIED
I think Paul is referring to this when he says that although they have a form of godliness they deny the power thereof.
What does he mean here? What power? Well, first let me point out that these are not men who are erring in ignorance. He makes that clear in verses 6 through 9, which we will discuss just briefly.
No, they are very deliberate in their efforts to undermine the work and furtherance of the Kingdom of God. Remember the descriptions we read of them in the previous verses.
So holding to a form of godliness, meaning pretending to be a part of the brotherhood of saints, and performing and engaging in the rituals of worship that are distinctive to Christianity, they shut out the very power of Christianity, which is the Holy Spirit in all His work and ministry to the body.
They themselves have not the Spirit of Christ, and in their teaching and the practice of their religion they shut Him out and deny His power.
Now there is a portion here that I have alluded to; verses 6-9 that make us slow down in our reading and wonder exactly what Paul is saying. I don’t think that Paul was trying to insult women in general, but it seems apparent that he was addressing a specific problem that existed in that culture at that time.
When I read verse 6 I thought of the horror stories we’ve heard of bored housewives and widowed and elderly women, who have been deceived by slick, handsome televangelists and as a result have sent them large amounts of money, to the detriment of their own financial well-being.
Those aren’t the only kinds of charlatans out there, and I don’t mean that as an attack against televangelists in general. But the important point for us to grasp in what is being said here, I believe, is that the men Paul is exposing for Timothy’s contemplation and avoidance are deliberate liars and crooks. And let me remind you; they are connected to the church!
Now I want to mention Jannes and Jambres just very briefly, since Paul did, and then move on to a close. It is supposed that they are the magicians of Pharaoh who opposed Moses before the Pharaoh, trying to mimic the miracles that Moses was doing, with his staff turning to a snake and back, and the blood in the Nile, and so forth.
So some commentators speculate that these men Paul is warning against were also practicing some magical arts, maybe of the occult. I’m not sure that is really implied at all, but since I don’t know everything, I’ll concede that there may have been that element. There are obviously those who know much more about this culture and these times than I.
But I think it is more important for us today, just to take note that within the boundaries of what the world would see as the modern day church, are men just like those Paul has described in verses 1 – 5, and it sometimes takes wisdom and spiritual discernment to pick them out.
This is why I focus so sharply and stress so strongly, the need for every born again believer in Christ to really know the fundamental doctrines of the faith, and to diligently pursue a vibrant and growing personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
The farther removed from them you are, the more readily you will recognize them and the fallacies of their message when you come upon them. They are writing books, they are on television and radio, and they are in the pulpits of many fundamental protestant churches across our land.
And they may not be openly practicing the occult, but let me tell you something, Christian. A man’s message does not have to stray far from the pure gospel before it becomes something demonic.
In fact, it becomes demonic, as soon as it strays at all!
STAY TRUE
So what am I saying in all this? Does this have some practical application to my life, you might ask?
Well, yes indeed, it does. Because Christian, you have to realize that if you are truly saved; if you know the gospel of Jesus Christ and the power of that gospel has been applied to your life and you have not only a form of Godliness but the power thereof in you, dwelling in you and empowering you for love and for service, then you are the true church.
And while you may not be a preacher, and perhaps will never be a pastor, (although I would encourage all young men to stay open to the prospect of God’s calling on your life for that) still, the charge Paul continues to give Timothy in the rest of this chapter and even through the first half of chapter four comes directly also to you.
Continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of. Think back on those in your life who have been your teachers in the faith; those who have had a great impact on your life and thinking, not only through their verbal teaching but the example of a Godly life.
Never let it slip from you, that the Bible you have believed is able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus, and by that same power you are able to lead others to that same wisdom that leads to salvation.
We live in difficult times, believers. And difficult times will come. They will increase in intensity. The world is not getting better. It is getting worse. It is getting ready to be destroyed with an intense heat, and despite the most frantic and sincere efforts of the ecologists, that’s where it is headed.
Those of the world will continue to stop their ears and scream for your silence. And the Jannes’ and Jambres’ who come along will continue to deceive and destroy, and take captive and lead astray.
But their folly will be made obvious to all. In the end they will not prevail.
And you have this heritage; this wonderful legacy left to you by this wonderful Apostle, and not only him but many who have come after, who stayed the course. Who fought the good fight. Who finished their course, keeping the faith, holding fast to their confession of an unchanging gospel.
An elderly preacher was rebuked by one of his deacons one Sunday morning before the service. "Pastor," said the man, "something must be wrong with your preaching and your work. There’s been only one person added to the church in a whole year, and he’s just a boy." The minister listened, his eyes moistening and his thin hand trembling. "I feel it all," he replied, "but God knows I’ve tried to do my duty." On that day the minister’s heart was heavy as he stood before his flock. As he finished the message, he felt a strong inclination to resign. After everyone else had left, that one boy came to him and asked, "Do you think if I worked hard for an education, I could become a preacher--perhaps a missionary?" Again tears welled up in the minister’s eyes. "Ah, this heals the ache I feel," he said. "Robert, I see the Divine hand now. May God bless you, my boy. Yes, I think you will become a preacher." Many years later an aged missionary returned to London from Africa. His name was spoken with reverence. Nobles invited him to their homes. He had added many souls to the church of Jesus Christ, reaching even some of Africa’s most savage chiefs. His name was Robert Moffat, the same Robert who had spoken to the pastor that long ago Sunday morning. (source unknown)
Difficult times, Christian.
There will only be an increase in numbers of those in the church who have a form of religion but, denying the power thereof, will be ’nay’ sayers, discouragers, destroyers.
But if you are one of His, and you know the gospel, then you carry with you the very power of God for salvation. And nothing is too difficult for Him. The spirit of Jannes and Jambres will continue to thrive and its audience will grow. But you have the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. What does that knowledge inspire you to?
