Now if you would please take a copy of God’s Word in your hands and turn with me to 2 Timothy. We continue our studies in the book of 2 Timothy. We’re looking today at the first nine verses of 2 Timothy chapter 3. At the end of the previous chapter that we considered last Lord’s Day, Paul instructed Timothy on the kind of minister he ought to be and the kind of ministry in which he ought to engage. And now he wants to put that ministry into context. He describes the real world into which Timothy, into which all those who serve the Lord Jesus have been sent. He describes the people among whom he and we must do ministry with a very sobering string of adjectives that ought to land like hammer blows on the consciences of all those who refuse and who resist the invitations of the Gospel.
We’re going to examine the teaching here under four headings. First, in verse 1, there is a difficulty to understand. A difficulty to understand. Then in verses 2 through 5, a diagnosis to face. A difficulty to understand. A diagnosis to face. Then 5 through 7, a danger to avoid. A difficulty to avoid. A diagnosis to face. A danger to avoid. And finally, verses 8 and 9, a destiny to escape. A difficulty to undersatnd. A diagnosis to face. A danger to avoid. And a destiny to escape. Before we get to all of that, let’s bow our heads and ask for the Lord to help us as we hear His holy Word. Let us pray.
O Lord, today as we hear Your voice, we would not harden our hearts. Grant to us grace, then, Your Spirit helping us, to hear and receive the pure spiritual milk of Your Word for the honor and glory of the name of Christ. Amen.
Second Timothy, chapter 3 at verse 1. This is the Word of God:
“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 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.”
Amen.
Several years back, my family and I went on vacation to Belize and we snorkeled on the reef just maybe 100 yards or so from our vacation rental. We ate tamales sold by vendors who patrolled the beach every morning. We trolled for barracuda in shallow waters inside the reef, and we caught nothing! It was a great trip. One of those rare family trips that stay in your mind. One thing we did that did seem like a great idea when we booked it but made me nervous when the day came was to take a trip to Shark Ray Alley. You get on a boat that takes you out to a spot on the reef where there’s a sandbar, and everyone jumps in. You are a long way from the shore, but out on the sandbar, the warm, tropical waters only come up to about waist height, and then they chum the water and suddenly there are stingrays and sharks everywhere! And at this point I was thinking, “I may have made a terrible mistake! What have I gotten myself into?” In the end, it was a magical part of the trip – hand feeding stingrays in the Caribbean sun. But for a while there, I was not at all sure this was such a good idea.
Paul doesn’t want Timothy to be naive about the challenges that will face him in ministry. He ended chapter 2, do you remember last week, with the happy prospect that God might well use Timothy as the instrument by which to bring some of those who have been led astray by false teaching, to use Timothy to bring some of them to repentance and to a knowledge of the truth. “Your ministry might yet be a wonderful instrument in the hand of God, bearing great fruit, but don’t let the warm, Caribbean sunshine of that glorious possibility deceive you. There are sharks and stingrays in these waters.”
Look at verse 1 of chapter 3. Here in the first place is the difficulty we must understand. “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.” The phrase, “But understand,” clearly links verse 1 of chapter 3 to what has just been said at the end of chapter 2. Do you see that? “Yes, God might save some through your work and witness, Timothy, but understand this…” What is he to understand? What are we to understand about the context for our Christian lives, our Christian service? Look at the text. It is that “the last days will be marked by times of difficulty.” Now by the phrase, “the last days,” Paul does not have in mind the closing few years at the terminus of human history. The expression, “the last days,” in the New Testament actually refers to the whole period between the resurrection of Jesus Christ and His return at the end of the age. Paul is not warning Timothy about some long, distant, future scenario about which he really has no need to concern himself. He’d be long dead before it ever gets here. No, Paul is talking about the world that Timothy already inhabits and ministers within.
That’s actually very clear if you keep reading, because Paul explains the nature of the difficulty of the last days by describing the characteristics of unconverted people who live in those days. And then he tells Timothy – do you notice this in verse 5 – to “avoid such people.” Now if these are the marks of people living way off in the future, in the closing years of human history, millennia after Timothy’s day, why does Paul warn Timothy to avoid them in his own immediate ministry context in Ephesus? No, the last days are all the days between the comings of Christ, and Paul says they are days of difficulty in which Timothy already lives. And what makes them days of difficulty? Well, that is what we are about to see, but Paul wants Timothy and he wants us to understand and to face and to be sobered by and unsurprised by and ready for those difficulties.
Paul Tripp has a helpful little book on marriage called, What Did You Expect? He’s challenging couples to get their expectations right as they enter into the realities of married life with all its many challenges. We might as easily have entitled this portion of 2 Timothy, “What did you expect, Timothy, as you go into ministry? This is the real world. This is life in these last days, so get ready. Buckle up. There are sharks in these waters.” You know one reason why many people burn out in Christian service – whether that’s in ordained ministry or in other forms of service – one reason people burn out has to do with unrealistic expectations about the difficulties involved. When people tell me, as they sometimes do, “Oh pastor, you’re awfully busy,” sometimes I’ll joke in reply, “Well you know, if people would just stop sinning and dying then I’d be able to get something done!” If it wasn’t for people, you know, ministry would be easy!
But that’s the whole point here, isn’t it? If you’re going to serve the Lord Jesus in any capacity, you are in the people business, and people are difficult. They make ministry in these last days difficult, Paul is saying. “So Timothy, brothers and sisters in Christ at First Presbyterian Church, adjust your expectations accordingly. In these last days, times will be difficult. That’s life following the Lord Jesus Christ.” There is a difficulty to understand.
Secondly, there is a diagnosis to face. In verses 2 through 5, Paul explains why ministry in these last days is so very hard, and he gives us a long list of the characteristics, the marks of non-Christian people. He’s diagnosing for us the dreadful condition of those who do not know Jesus Christ. Now it might not seem like it at first glance, but if you look at the passage, there is actually a structure to Paul’s list. It’s not at all obvious in our English translation, but it’s arranged in what Bible scholars call a chiasm. A chiasm means that Paul has arranged these various characteristics in a series of parallels. Imagine them like concentric circles, like ripples in a pond.
Let me try and show you that in the text if you’ll follow along with me. Look at the passage, verses 2 through 5. Verse 2 starts with two markers of disordered, debased love. Do you see that? Verse 2 – “People will be lovers of self, lovers of money.” And then at the other end of the section, we have the parallel in verse 4. The same people, Paul says, are “lovers of pleasure not lovers of God.” So that’s the widest circle and it surrounds everything else, framing, bracketing this whole list. And I think that’s meant to tell us that this is the fundamental problem with the unconverted human heart. It is the issue of misplaced, disordered love. The heart loves self. It loves money. It loves pleasure. It was made to love God, but other loves have excluded the love of God entirely. This is the root of the human problem. We love the wrong things. We are inveterate, hopeless idolaters. We love self and money and pleasure and not God, Paul says. And everything else in Paul’s list here really flows from this fundamental problem – the problem of a disordered love.
Then, notice the next concentric circle moving inward. Paul lists a series of characteristics that have to do with personal pride and its negative impact on our relationships with other people. So verse 2, people will be “proud, arrogant, abusive.” And then the other side of the parallel in verse 4, they will be “treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit.” When we misplace and disorder our loves in order to make idols of what is not God, it shows up in pride and arrogance and it wounds and abuses neighbor. Now think about those two pieces here – our ultimate love that we owe to God and the love we should show to neighbor. That is how the Scriptures characterize and summarize all that God requires of us in His holy Law. The Lord Jesus said, “The law is summarized in this, that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself.” When we turn from our love for God to love for self and money and pleasure, we start to use other people rather than loving them as we ought. Love to God and love to neighbor, they go together. To fail in one leads us to the failure of the other.
Then the next concentric circle, in toward the center, comes in a string of Greek words that all begin with a negative prefix, like our English “un” prefix. There’s actually a few of those “un” words even in our English translation. Isn’t there? Can you see them? They are, verse 2, “ungrateful, unholy people.” But let me try a clumsy translation using that “un,” English “un” negative prefix just to try and bring out the force of what Paul is saying so that you can see it in the text a little more clearly. If you would, follow along with me. Verse 2, people will be “unobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,” literally, “unhearted, unappeaseable.” Then skip forward in verse 3 to where it says, “without self control.” That’s really just one word in Greek with the same negative prefix. Paul says they will be “unselfcontrolled.” The next word translated as “brutal” in our version is literally “untamed” like a wild beast. And then the phrase, “not loving good,” is another single word with that same prefix, literally, “unloving of the good.”
And this staccato series of adjectives that take positive virtues and then negates them – unobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unappealing, unselfcontrolled, untamed, unloving of the good – it’s all meant to tell us something important about sin. Do you see what it does, the force of this? It tells us that sin twists and undoes and undermines the good. Sin negates virtue. It takes the human heart and makes it opposite to the good. It makes us wholly averse to godliness. Sin has a warping, twisting, debasing power. This is where our love of self and love of money and love of pleasure will lead us. When we love our idols and not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we use and abuse other people and we become monstrous perversions of the self that God originally created us to be, bearing His beautiful image.
And right at the heart of each of these concentric circles is the word we skipped over at the very beginning of verse 3, translated in our version as “slanderous.” Do you see that word in verse 3? The word in Greek is actually “diaboloi.” It’s the same word Paul used in chapter 2:26 for the devil. He is the “diabolos,” the slanderer, and he captures people in his snare, Paul said. Well here is the outcome now of his ensnaring word. What happens to us? We become little “diaboloi,” little mimics of the great “diabolos” himself. Instead of the image of God shining more and more from us in all its intended beauty and glory, our sin debases and distorts and dehumanizes and makes us come to resemble the evil one in all his perversity and wickedness.
And then Paul adds one last, very searching, macro characteristic of the unconverted human heart in verse 5, covering this whole list. People, he says, can be just like all of this and even so, still have “the appearance of godliness but deny its power.” Here are little “diaboloi,” little devils, who go to church. Isn’t that scary? Paul says we can be just like the folks he’s been describing and still have the appearance of godliness, literally a form of godliness. We can look the part on Sunday, know all the words to say. We can be regular church members, never miss a service, and still have only the form, only the appearance, only the surface, and deny the power.
Paul has already referred to power a couple of times in this letter. Back in chapter 1 verse 7, “God has given us a Spirit,” the Holy Spirit, “not of fear but of power and love and self control.” And in chapter 1 verse 8, he told Timothy, “If you follow the Lord Jesus, you may well have to suffer as I am suffering for the Gospel, and you will be able to join me in such trials by the power of God.” So “power” here refers to the inner, supernatural dynamic that animates the Christian life. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of power and love and self control. The power of God enables the people of God to stand firm and persevere, even when suffering comes. It is the power of new life given by the Holy Spirit, uniting us to Jesus Christ, who comes to rule our hearts and begins to change us till we reflect His own moral likeness. It is authentic Christianity – not just a show, not just a routine, not just words.
Notice the language that Paul uses carefully about these people. He doesn’t say that they miss the power of God, that they overlooked it, that they misconstrued it. No, he says “they deny it.” They reject it. They prefer to use Christianity as a cloak for their self righteousness and their self indulgence. They prefer to use Christianity that way rather than accept the soul renovating, heart transforming, sin destroying power of Jesus Christ when it’s offered to them in the Gospel. And that, friends, is a tragedy, a tragedy of the first order. And I can hardly bear to think that it might be true of some of you sitting in these pews this morning. To be exposed to the power of godliness, the reality of heaven, the grace of the Holy Spirit, the offer of new life in Christ – week in, week out – and prefer the cheap, plastic counterfeit to the real thing. You want a form of godliness, like a mask to wear on a Sunday, but you deny the power of it when it’s offered to you. Jesus Christ died to give new life to sinners. God promises pardon and new birth to all who will come to Him. He gives the Holy Spirit to everyone who asks Him. The power of heaven in the heart of man. And you don’t want it. You have a form of godliness, but you deny its power.
Friend, if that’s you, I pray that God is shining the spotlight of His truth on the reality of your heart as you hear His Word. I pray that today you would feel yourself to be at a crossroads as verses 2 through 5 have painted a portrait of your life and have exposed it in all its emptiness and ugliness. I pray that today, as the power of godliness is offered to you once again, you would do now what you have never yet done, what you’ve done over and over again till now. I pray that you would not deny, refuse, reject the power of God, but that you would embrace it as it is offered in Christ. What is it we sometimes sing? “Come, ye sinners poor and needy, weak and wounded, sick and sore. Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity joined with” – what? “Full of pity joined with power. He is able! Come and doubt no more!” That’s the situation with which you are confronted one more time here today. Jesus is here, ready to save you, full of pity joined with power. This time, this time, please don’t deny the power of God in the Gospel. You need to know that there is, that you cannot sink down into these descending circles that Paul has been describing so vividly in verses 2 through 5, you cannot sink so low down into that pit of sin and rebellion that the power of Jesus can’t pluck you ought and wash you clean and set you free in an instant today. He is ready to save, full of pity joined with power. He is able. You come to Him. Don’t let the power of God pass you by and be content with a show a minute longer. The difficulty to understand. The diagnosis to face. Is this you – having a form of godliness but denying its power?
Then, look at verses 6 and 7 and notice the danger to avoid. At the end of verse 5, Paul tells Timothy to “avoid such people. Be on the lookout for this sort of folks, Timothy, in your own immediate context, and be on your guard against them.” And in verses 6 and 7, he focuses on a particular subset of these people he’s been describing in 2 through 5 that specifically are troubling the church in Ephesus where Timothy served. Keep in mind the background throughout this whole letter is the issue of false teachers. The shade of the false teachers lurks constantly in the background of 2 Timothy. And Paul is going after them again here. Notice what he says. “Among them” – so among all of these people I have been describing – “among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women.” The false teachers in Ephesus have developed a particularly insidious and wicked tactic to gain a following for themselves. Do you see it? They target weak women, Paul says. The word Paul uses here is a diminutive. It has the sense of immaturity. These are immature, vulnerable women, and notice they are carefully selected. The women are targeted because, Paul says, they are “burdened with sins and led astray by various passions.” They are burdened with sin, loaded down with it, like a weight on their consciences. And yet they are still led about by various passions that have a hold upon their appetites. And that makes them easy marks for the predatory grooming behavior of these false teachers.
It all sounds so very contemporary when you think about it, doesn’t it, because it is. This is the playbook of cult leaders and false prophets in every age. They adopt abusive, manipulative behaviors that break people down, that brainwash them and deceive them and control them and dominate them. They look for the vulnerable, people loaded down with guilt and shame, immature in their faith, enslaved to their passions, and then they offer them a quick fix, an easy solution, a shortcut to liberation. “Just follow me, embrace my message. I have the inside track. I have the secret knowledge.” These are the people, Paul says, we need to avoid.
Notice, too, the outcome of these deadly, underhanded tactics for the poor women upon whom these women were preying – verse 7. These women who were sucked into the false teachers’ orbit were “always learning but never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” Paul had told Timothy back in 2:25 that the aim of his faithful ministry ought to be that God would grant repentance to some of his hearers so that they would come to a knowledge of the truth. But here’s the heartbreaking tragedy of those who believe the lies of the false teachers. They are desperately addicted to their heretical ideas, constantly learning from them, always going deeper and deeper and deeper into error, in the hopes of finally finding freedom and peace and rest from the sin that burdens them. They are hamsters on a wheel, running and running and running but they get nowhere. They can never find the knowledge of the truth here.
How do we avoid these false teachers now that we see how dangerous they can be? Well, Paul says, remember, that it was the immature who are particularly their targets. That’s why we can never afford to remain content with childish, simplistic, basic, rudimentary understanding of the Christian faith. We need to grow up into maturity and seek to know from the holy Scriptures what we believe and why we believe it lest we too become ready targets for the lies of those who would mislead us with all sorts of error and false teaching. A difficulty to understand. A diagnosis to face. A danger to avoid.
And finally, verses 8 and 9, a destiny to escape. All of this must have been awfully daunting to young Timothy, don’t you think, as he reads Paul’s very heavy description of the difficulties that ministry in these last days inevitably involves. It’s like chumming the waters at Shark Ray Alley. I’m sure reading it, Timothy’s thinking to himself, “What have I got myself into here?” And so the apostle offers him some closing encouragement. He points, notice, to the destiny waiting for all who embrace error and pedal lies, Timothy’s primary opponents in Ephesus. Notice in verse 8 that he likens the false teachers to Jannes and Jambres who opposed Moses. He’s talking about the court magicians in the palace of Pharaoh back in Exodus chapter 7 who served Pharaoh during Moses’ various confrontations with him. Moses, you remember, performs miraculous signs and then the Egyptian magicians perform counterfeit miracles keeping up with Moses. Until – so they can keep up with him only to a point. And then in Exodus 18 and Exodus 19, their magic tricks finally fail them and they are exposed as the counterfeit that they really are for everyone to see. Exodus doesn’t name these magicians. Jewish tradition called them Jannes and Jambres. And just like them, verse 9 says the false teachers will likewise not get very far, “for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of these two men.”
Timothy needed to be reminded that eventually false teachers and false teaching, like all of the devil’s schemes, will prove self-defeating in the end and its folly will become plain to everyone whose mind has been renewed by the Gospel. The point is, you see, God fights for His people. The sovereign Lord exposes lies and He brings the tactics of the devil to nothing. This, He often does, in this life. He will certainly do it when these last days in which we are living and ministering come to their allotted conclusion and the Lord Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead. On that day at least, all lies will be exposed for the utter folly that they really are, and we will all see it. “Never forget, God fights for His people, Timothy. He will expose the lies that seem right now to prevail so strongly in so many quarters. He will expose the lies, the lies of the diabolos, the slanderer, the devil, and the lies of all his little diabolos that he has ensnared and captured to his service. They can’t win in the end! Get it clear in your mind that the truth of God in Jesus Christ triumphs! That’s how the story ends. It will help you press on in your service to the Master in these difficult days.”
But of course there’s also an urgent warning here, isn’t there? This all means that what you believe is not neutral. It is not indifferent. Paul is saying that one day, if you believe the lie, you will be exposed under the white hot, dazzling brilliance of the Light of the world Himself, the Lord Jesus, when He comes to judge. That’s a destiny, surely, that we ought all to seek to escape. These are the last days, remember. That expression signals both opportunity – there is time yet. These are the last days still – opportunity. And urgency – time is running out. These are the last days. Now we let ourselves off the hook all the time, don’t we? We find excuses to avoid responding to the invitation and summons of the Gospel. “If there’s time yet,” we tell ourselves, “it can’t be so urgent, surely. I’ll repent tomorrow. I’ll get serious tomorrow. And anyway, I’m in church, aren’t I? That’s got to count for something. My conscience has been pricked, my heart has been stirred under the preaching of the Word, so there’s some spiritual sensitivity left in the old dog yet. That’s a good sign, surely.”
But then while your conscience rebukes you and calls you to repentance, you remember your darling sin, your beloved pleasure, and you decide that today you’re not yet ready to do without it all, not yet. Jesus will just have to wait. And then there are all your so-called friends. You can see their faces and hear their voices in your mind right now, inciting you, joining you in wickedness. You could never abandon them, let alone withstand their disappointment and their disdain when they learn that you no longer wish to participate with them in their sin. And so you excuse yourself and you run away from God. You rest content with conviction instead of conversion, with empty religion instead of true repentance, with a mere form of godliness instead of the power of God. And so another Sunday passes and Jesus calls to you and you won’t come. “Tomorrow I’ll come. Next year I’ll come. When I’m old I’ll come. When I’ve worked out a few more things in my mind, then I’ll come. When I get through this difficult stretch in my life, then I’ll come.”
No, now is the appointed time. Today is the day of salvation. Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart. Time is short. These are the last days. And while you put off and delay and avoid dealing with Jesus Christ, your time may yet run out. He’s calling you now. You deal with Him now. Get serious about Him now. Remember, “Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity joined with power.” Enough with the devil’s lies. Away with your foolish contentment with a mere form of godliness. You have come to church, well that’s good. You need to come to Christ. Come and be forgiven. Come and be made new by the power of God at last. Come and get clean. If you will, when the last of the last days finally dawns and the skies split open and the Savior comes, you will have nothing to fear and an eternity in which to rejoice. May God make it so. Let’s pray together.
Our God and Father, we pray for those in our assembly who have only a form of godliness and who deny its power, who resist, who excuse, who justify unbelief, rebellion, disobedience, self indulgence. They know the truth, but they love their sin. O God, today, now, here, under the hammer blows of the Gospel, crack open their hard hearts. Pour in Your amazing redeeming grace and love and mercy in Jesus Christ and draw them to Yourself we pray. O God, save sinners, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.