Strategy Of Temptation: Undermine God's Authority

- Their outward form of Christianity and virtue makes them all the more dangerous

3:6 - “For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions,”

- Weak in virtue and knowledge of the truth, and weighed down with emotional and spiritual guilt over their sins, these women were easy prey for the deceitful false teachers

3:7 - “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.”

- 1 Tim. 2:4 uses this same phrase, equating it with being saved; Paul is identifying these people who often jump from one false teacher or cult to another without ever coming to and understanding of God’s saving truth in Jesus

- The present age (since Jesus’ first coming) has been loaded with perilous false teaching that cannot save, but does condemn (vv. 14, 16-17; 1 Tim. 4:1)

3:8 - “Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith.”

- “Jannes and Jambres” - not named in the Bible, but likely two of the Egyptian magicians that opposed Moses (Ex. 7:11,22; 8:7,18-19; 9:11). According to Jewish tradition, they pretended to become Jewish proselytes, instigating the worship of the golden calf, and were killed with the rest of the idolaters (Ex. 32)

- “the truth” - same as above

- “opposed” - the same word is translated “debased” in Rom. 1:28 and comes from a Greek word meaning “useless” in the sense of being tested (like metal) and shown to be worthless

3:9 - “But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.”

- “folly…plain” - Sooner or later, it will be clear that these false teachers are lost fools, as it did with Jannes and Jambres

3:10,11 - “You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra—which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me.”

- “persecutions” - From a Gr. verb that lit. means “to put to flight.” Paul had been forced to flee Damascus (Acts 9:23-25), Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:50), Iconium (Acts 14:6), Thessalonica (Acts 17:10), and Berea (Acts 17:14)

- “Antioch…Iconium…Lystra” - As a native of Lystra (Acts 16:1), Timothy vividly recalled the persecution Paul faced in those three cities

- “the Lord rescued me” (Cf. 2 Tim. 4:17-18, Ps. 34:4,6,19; 37:40; 91:2-6,14; Isa. 41:10; 43:2; Dan. 3:17; Acts 26:16-17; 2 Cor.1:10) - The Lord’s repeated deliverance of Paul should have encouraged Timothy in the face of persecution by those at Ephesus who opposed the gospel

3:12 - “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,”

- Faithful believers must expect persecution and suffering at the hands of the Christ-rejecting world (cf. John 15:18-21, Acts 14:19-22)

- - “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.”