Perilous Times

Our scripture text for our sermon today is 2 Timothy 3. We'll be reading verses 1-9. As I mentioned before, hopefully I'll have a chance to finish this series back here sometime. But we will be looking at chapter 3, verses 1-9. This is the Word of God. Let's hear what the Lord has to say to us today. 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 Janice and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the truth. men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith, they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as that was of those two men.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray. Lord, this is your word, and it endures forever. It's the very word of God. The grass withers, the flower fades, you tell us, but your word endures forever. We are so grateful. that you give us your word. We ask and pray now that we would hear it, that we would be both challenged and encouraged by it, that I would proclaim it faithfully and carefully, that it would be your word that we hear and not me, and that above all, all of us would be under your word today, for it is indeed your gracious word that you've given to us. For in Christ's name we pray, amen.

Sermon

Remember last week when we looked at the passage just before this that the end of 2 Timothy chapter 2 had ended on a rather positive note with the real hope of conversion of these false teachers. We had talked about the fact that Paul had said perhaps they may come to their senses and God will grant them the repentance leading unto life.

That's a positive note. Yet, when we are thrust back into this next section, this chapter, it seems to be a more negative note. It's a note that is pessimistic. It begins with a strong warning. Understand this, Paul says, or mark this or realize this various translations use that form to say hey pay attention there's trouble that you need to be aware of and he's back talking about false teachers again this is by the way the last time that he will talk about false teachers in this book but it's obviously something that's very crucial and very important and that strong warning says that in these last days perilous times will come, or difficult times will come. Scripture, of course, is very realistic. Yet, as we're going to see, it's hopeful even in the midst of that rather pessimistic sounding phrase. Perilous times, difficult times, false teachers. Yet in the middle of that, there will be hope.

Timothy has already been warned about the danger of false teaching and Paul says though we have one more last thing before we leave that topic of false teaching and false teachers that we need to make you aware of. The warning is serious that he gives to Timothy and yields some very vivid kind of teaching about living in these perilous times. The word that's translated difficult or perilous actually has the idea of threatening or ugly times.

That's what the root meaning of this word is. And it was used to describe the two demoniacs in Matthew chapter 18. They were dangerous. Remember those are the guys who were cutting themselves and everybody stayed away from them and they're out in the tombs and nobody wanted to be around with them? Yeah, perilous. Go in there at your own risk. That's what Paul is saying. The times we're going to see are times that are difficult.

It was used in Greek of wild animals and the raging sea. Do you ever notice that the book of Revelation, when it describes the second coming and describes what happens when things are all made new, just before that he says, and there was no more sea. Jews didn't like the sea. They were not sailors by nature. And they looked out there and saw the crashing sea.

Sometimes we'll watch certain TV shows that are set. For example, we like to watch a show that's set on the Shetland Isles, north of Scotland. And man, they have crashing seas. And we can't always understand their accent. So we put the closed captioning on so we can get their accent. And the little thing will say, Crashing noise when you see the sea. Crashing noise. You know, those seas are nasty sometimes.

That's what Paul is saying here. These times are nasty that you're going to have to face. So, thinking of that, what do we see here? Five realities. about living in perilous times that Paul wants us to see, that he gives to Timothy here. The first reality is this covers the whole inter-advental era, from the first coming of Christ to the second coming of Christ.

This is absolutely crucial for us to understand what Paul is saying here, because as soon as we hear the word, last times, Immediately, some of us think, OK, time to get out the charts. You know, those charts about the end times, you know, those TV preachers that got all those charts. As soon as you hear that, isn't that true? When you hear the word last days or last times, isn't that where our minds immediately go to get out the charts?

He's talking about what's going to happen just before Christ returns. And then we're surprised to discover that the New Testament actually speaks about the last days of the last times in a very different way. Because in the New Testament it's regularly used to refer to the whole period between the first coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ.

You might say, well, why is that? Why would this? After all, that's a couple thousand years ago. How in the world somebody living in the year 35 AD be living in the last times? To understand this, you have to understand that's in relationship to the Old Testament. The Old Testament are the previous prior times, once Christ has entered into the world, that the last days of human history have begun. That's the way scripture uses that term.

Why? Because Christ has come and provided the decisive blow. He's defeated sin and death. He rose again and is the down payment of our resurrection. The whole New Testament is based on the idea that the Kingdom of God has invaded our existence. So when you see the term last times, you gotta lock it out of your mind, the idea he's talking about the time when the charts need to come out. If you think that, you're totally misreading scripture and are not understanding what is happening. We have been living in the last days ever since Christ appeared on this earth.

Other New Testament texts talk about that. Hebrews 1 verse 2, In previous times, God spoke through all kinds. He gives a whole list of ways God spoke. He missed one, the talking donkey. God spoke through a talking donkey one time. You know, God spoke in a lot of different ways. But in these, what, last days, He has spoken in His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus is God's last word to us in a very real sense. Acts chapter 2, verse 17 is another passage. The whole New Testament era is the last days.

That's why Paul can say here in verse 5, avoid these people. Because if Paul was talking about something that was going to happen way in the future, how in the world could these readers that he writes this to avoid them? If I were to tell you, like in the Star Wars, in a galaxy far, far away, avoid those people. What would your response be? You've got to be kidding. How do I avoid people living thousands of years from now in a galaxy far, far away? You can't. You couldn't avoid them other than saying, it doesn't affect me. It's way far away. Paul says avoid those people, the people he's going to talk about here. Why?

Because those people are people that Christians have faced from the beginning of the Christian era all the way to whenever it ends. We don't know when the Christian era will end. Some people are sure it's going to end tomorrow. Other people think it might end 3,000 years from now or 10,000 years from now. The point is, we don't know. It's been going for 2,000 years now. God may tarry. The Lord may tarry, and it may go on thousands of years more. We don't know.

But however long that period goes on, what Paul is saying here has direct application for us. We live in perilous times. This is crucial for us. Why? Because it means we always have to be on guard for the teaching that Paul is giving here. Perilous times are not just going to be found in the future. They were not just found in the time of the early church. Perilous times have been found all through Christian history. Now, this is crucial for us because There's a natural human tendency to do a couple of things.

That is, to always romanticize the past. How many times haven't you heard of people talking about, well, in the good old days, we did that. I can guarantee you, I'm getting in that age when it's far easier to talk about in the good old days, you know? We romanticize those times. Things were always good back then.

Not so. Or, the only time we talk about something bad is when, when you're my age and you want to tell your grandchildren that we, you show them those memes on Facebook, you know, where the kids walk trudging through three feet of snow and say, well, we never got snow days off. We trudged through three, three feet of snow. We went uphill both ways. You know, people my age have a tendency.

That's the only time we tend to look at the past and see it as bad. Peter, Paul here, rather, is being realistic. Perilous times are something you have to watch for throughout your life because they are always there. This is what we call biblical realism. The Bible is very realistic. The world is not always getting better and better and better. Yes, some things are better. We can look at certain kinds of technology, diseases that are gone. But you know what? The human heart has not changed.

Human beings are still as sinful and as prone to every one of the things, and we're going to talk about some of these things in just a minute, every one of the things Paul talks about here. Perilous times are here for us just as they were for them, just as they will be if the Lord tarries for our great great great great great great grandchildren. They will be living in perilous times as well. The second reality that we want to see about living in perilous times is these perilous times give a vivid demonstration of perverted self-love.

Now, did you notice there was this long list? And I counted them up and there are 19 of these bad things that are in this list. That's one of the longest lists of bad things you can find in scripture. Now, what's interesting about these in the Greek language is all of them are what we call in grammar the alpha privative. You might say, okay, you're talking fancy stuff. What does that mean? Well, we have that in our English language.

What is an agnostic? He's somebody who does not know. What is an atheist? Someone who does not believe in God. You put the little A in front of it. What is someone who is amoral? That means he has no morals. Virtually every one of these words, Paul has taken a positive word and said, these guys don't have it. The positive trait that they're supposed to have, they don't have.

Interestingly enough, a list like this is not unique to Christian writing. Some of the Jewish apocalyptic thinkers had similar kind of lists. But it's the opening and closing phrase, I think, that helps us to put this long list together. And there are slight variations in the translations of this.

The New King James has a blasphemer in here. And instead of someone who is unappeasable, like the ESV says, it has it unforgiving. But you can read the list, and you can get a pretty good idea. Some pretty nasty traits, 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, Read that list through and think about it. And the one thing you can say is, I don't think I would like to spend a lot of time with people who are described like that. It's not a pleasant list. But I think that this list is sandwiched between two terms that help us understand it.

It says that they are lovers of self and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. You know, there have been a number of really fine theologians Think of Augustine in the early church or Jonathan Edwards in the 18th century, the great American reformed theologian, who emphasized that sin is at its heart a distorted self-love. A distorted self-love. Augustine even developed his whole theology around this idea. Rather than loving God and our neighbor, the two commandments, we love ourselves. And he says redemption is ultimately turning around that perverted self-love to love God and to love our neighbor. Jonathan Edwards, who was kind of a follower of Augustine in this way, said virtually the same thing.

There are a lot of parallels, by the way, in Romans chapter 1. Next week I go back to the Washington Church. They'll allow the time, I'm not quite sure how long, until their new pastor, Keith Dewell, arrives on the scene. And I've been preaching through the Book of Romans. I'm in chapter 7 now, in the afternoon service.

But Romans 1 begins with that great list, great in the sense of shocking list, of what people do when they worship and serve the created thing rather than the creator. Paul, in a sense, is saying that here. When we serve the creature rather than the creator, disaster is inevitable. Distorted self-love is the most exaggerated form of the love of the creature rather than the love of God. Just this past week, I was working on that really tough passage, Romans 7, which is one of the most difficult passages in the New Testament. And one writer, I didn't totally agree with him, but he made a good point.

He said, you know, Paul talks about coveting. in there. And he says it was when Paul thought everything was going fine, until he just ran smack dab into the coveting command. And he discovered he was a coveter, the last of the commandments. And this particular author says coveting is kind of a rephrasing of perverted self love.

I'm not quite convinced, but I think it has a relationship. Because coveting is something that means I deserve to have what you have. The best example you've ever seen, you can ever see of coveting is go to a nursery where you put a bunch of two and three-year-olds in there and you say to them, no, boys and girls, share. And what do two and three-year-olds hear when they hear the word share? I get everything that's yours.

Because I need to have that. Isn't that true? What do two and three-year-olds say? That toy? I want that toy. I don't care if you don't get that toy. I want that. There are ten cookies on there and there are ten little children in there. I get three of them, four of them, five of them, how many as I want. I don't care if you don't get any cookies. Isn't that true? Isn't that what little two and three-year-olds?

The natural human fallen state is to look out for number one. And the rest of this ugly list that you see in here are just outworkings of this looking out for number one. Now, we're reaping a culture that has emphasized this and let it go out of whack. Pop psychology has gone so far overboard on the self-esteem issue that it has unfortunately even been picked up by the church.

I was a young pastor, about a year out of seminary. I and every other pastor, I guarantee you, your pastor here, I can't remember who it would have been at that time, but would have gotten the same book as every pastor who had an address that they could find, got a book in the mail, and was called the New Reformation. And I can name names here because he's gone and his church is gone too, but it was written by a man named Robert Schuller. out in Garden Grove, California, and he argued this, if you preach to people sin, they'll empty your churches, but if you preach to them, feel good about yourself, I'm going to pep you up, I'm going to give you a good self-esteem, man will your churches grow. And his church for many years did. By the way, after he died, his siblings got squabbling over it and now the church folded and they sold it to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Los Angeles. That's the truth. You can check it out.

But I remember even Garrison Keillor, humorist, made a very funny you know, a little spoof on this. Remember he used to have the Prairie Home Companion Show and he had his fictitious pastor, the Reverend Inquist, and he said the deacons of that church called Reverend Inquist aside and they said to him, you know, you need to literally call them the Reverend Robert Super of the Turquoise Tabernacle. And he said, you need to listen to the Reverend Robert Super and learn how to preach. And he said, you need to learn to do the long pause, you know, so people would just be on bated breath to hear what you had to say and then pump them up with all kinds of good stuff.

Well, the Reverend Inquis tried it, practiced in the mirror, and it didn't fly at all. Wouldn't work. He couldn't pull off what the Reverend Robert Super of the Turquoise Tabernacle. But the point is, is that pastors, every pastor in America was told this.

Yeah, what does the Apostle Paul say? not only here, but in Ephesians 5.29, this excessive focus on self-esteem and self-love is far more serious.

Serious psychology was actually challenging that, even as Robert Shuler was sending out his books. There's a book, I checked it, it was written in 1980, two years into my first pastorate, by a Reformed man. He's a psychology professor, his name is David Meyer. And his books were actually, his social psychology book was actually used at the University of Iowa. But he challenged this. And he said, let's look at this. He was a Christian, reformed Christian at that. And he said, you know, when you study the data, And he had data after data after data in that book.

And by the way, anybody who wants to read this, it's not out of print, but you can get it available online. And I'll be glad to send you the link if you want to know about it. Because this stuff is 40 years old, but it's still potent today. That when you look at what When they actually studied this, people didn't struggle with low self-esteem and you need to pump them up and make them think that they feel great. People struggled with inflated egos. That's why he called it the inflated self.

My favorite one were these teenagers who were taking the college board exams and they had a little quiz they had to take at the end to rate themselves compared to other students. Did you know And on several of them, 90% of the kids rated themselves in the top 10 percentile in everything they could rate themselves. Did you get that? 90% rated themselves in the top 10%! You know, high school kids.

Already back in 1980. And Dr. Meyer's final conclusion is, where is the vaunted problem of self-esteem that America is supposed to have? But you know what? Those kids are now grandparents. Those kids have been drinking at the wells of this for three generations. Some of you are school teachers. You've probably gone to workshops, right? Where they told you, pump up the kids. Tell them how great they are. Tell them that the secret to their success is that they just believe in themselves. You know? Sports teams. How many times when you ask the team that wins the World Series, why did you win? Well, we just believed in themselves. And I hear that and I want to think, you think the other team believed in itself as well?

Our society has been rampant with this, pumping up this whole question of self-love. We face a rash of the very thing that Paul is talking about here. And perverted self-love is going to have a consequence. Paul says avoid such people. That's tricky. Our society is full of people who think that they're the best. Every kid has gotten a participation trophy for every sport he's ever been in. In other words, you're all great. You've all done the best thing.

What Paul is saying here is we need to be realists about human nature. about the fact that people have a perverted turning in to themselves. When we raise kids, when we think of our grandkids, those of us who are now at the grandparent stage, yes, we want to encourage our kids, grandkids, but we need to realize that there is such thing as a perverted self-love.

That's no excuse, of course, for harsh childbearing methods. but it should lead us to this Biblical realism. Our children, our grandchildren, how are they born? Sinners. They're born sinners. God may very well regenerate them at a very early age, but they are not to be treated as little innocents, let alone as little princes and princesses. When Paul speaks of perilous times so tightly linked with this perverted self-love, it means that the Church needs to be very careful about imbibing this pop psychology which is all around us. There was a famous theologian who lived in the 1930s. His name was Reinhold Niebuhr. He was not an Orthodox Reformed theologian, but he wrote a book on the destiny and nature of man. One of his points, I'll never forget reading this, was this.

Now, we would have to phrase it a little different, but he said, All you have to do is open the morning newspaper for another reminder of the biblical doctrine of Original Sin. Now, we would say, turn on your computer, look at your newsfeed, what do you see? Another reminder of the doctrine of Original Sin. The Gospel, of course, saves us from that. The Gospel is many things. Our forgiveness, our redemption, but one of the things that Augustine was right, is it redeems us from this perverted self-love.

This focus on number one, where I am the only thing that matters. Paul says perilous times will come. People will have that. We need to understand and not fall prey to that. But another reality that he talks about is that this will show up in religious circles as well. Did you notice what he says here? After saying, avoid such people because among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women burdened with sins and led astray by various passions. Now this is perhaps the most astounding statement of this passage of scripture.

Because we might say, oh yeah, okay, I got it. Avoid those people. I understand that I may go to a seminar. Businesses are full of this too. young pastor, I joined the Toastmasters Club where you make speeches and just to meet some community people and I just read Myers' book and I shared a little bit of it in his speech and I had a bank vice president who just went ballistic afterwards. He said, my whole job is to pump people up. You can't tell me I can't pump people up. So it's in business as well as a bank vice president is telling me that's what his whole method in running his bank was all about.

So it's there. But you might say, I can avoid these people. What Paul is saying is, they worm their way into the Church. That's the term. It says they creep in, most of our translations, but some translations say they worm their way in. In other words, this is an astounding statement he makes. The Church is not going to be immune from this.

They are going to worm their way in. They are going to sneak in. They may appear to be devout. They have the appearance or form of godliness. They look like they are with you, but they are going to lead people astray. He says they have a form of godliness, but what does he say? They deny its very power. This fits with the whole biblical emphasis that knowing God, knowing the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, knowing that Christ forgives us and remakes us, is designed to change us. It has a power to produce godliness.

What does Paul say in Titus 2.12? Training us to renounce godliness.

Or Titus 2.14, Christ redeemed us. Why?

To purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works. We are going to celebrate the Lord's Supper in just a few minutes. The Gospel is there, present in front of you in the Lord's Supper. But the gospel isn't just there for us to say, thank goodness and thank you, Lord, that my sins are forgiven and then walk away and say, well, it doesn't affect me in any way. That forgiveness, that reassurance that we're going to get from the Lord's Supper today is there to change us so that we will be more and more godly people. And Paul appeals to this interesting Janus and Jambres. And some of you might be simply saying, who in the world are Janus and Jambres?

Never heard of these two characters. Well, that's because they don't show up in the Old Testament. But there were Jewish legends about these people. Now, that doesn't mean Paul is saying he agrees that these people are history. It would be like somebody saying, talking about, well, let me give you an example. You remember old Paul Bunyan? And we all know Paul Bunyan is a mythical character. But we can use them as an example. Paul is saying here, you all know the legends about Janus and Jambres.

And you know that they were famous for their hypocrisy. One legend said they were the Egyptian magicians who faked a conversion to biblical faith and then later on got the Israelites to worship the golden calf. We don't know. There's no historical basis for that. But this was common Jewish legends. In other words, Paul is appealing here. He says, you know all those legends about Janus and Jambres.

Those were bad dudes. Those were guys that you didn't want to hang around with. They were false teachers. He says, just as we know about those legends, so watch out, he says, for false teachers. They too are to be avoided. This fits almost with what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5 verses 9-12, where he says ungodly hypocrites are almost worse for the church than outright pagans. We think from reading behind the scenes and what Paul is talking about here, that they were teaching some sort of radical antinomianism. In other words, the idea that they were teaching something that says how you live doesn't really matter. But what we do know is that the church here needs to be aware that false teachers can come.

And he is reminding us here that while churches can get obsession with numbers and can let discipline slide, and while we need to avoid excessive sectarianism, we can't overlook the fact that we need to take seriously the fact that the session of a church is given a responsibility for watchfulness over the church. That's, by the way, one of the reasons why I don't like big churches. I shouldn't say that again. Why I don't think big churches are the best. I happen to have a friend who was on the staff of one large church, and he told me this.

He said he went into session meeting 30 elders sitting around a table well-known nationally known pastor he was on the staff of that church there and he said somebody said I got the clerk of the session pulled out a paper and said I got a request from the Browns let's call them that the Browns have moved to Raleigh North Carolina and the Browns want to have their membership transferred and he says any of you remember the Browns Every one of the elders kind of looked at the other elder and said, Browns, Browns. Do you remember the Browns, Browns?

Final Point

Finally, one of them popped up and said, like five or 10 years ago, I remember sitting across from them at a fellowship meal once. That was the sole remembrance, he said, anybody had of the Browns.

Then one of the men finally said, anybody got a problem with sending the letter? No. He said, one of them said, I move we send the letter. The clerk sends the letter to First Presbyterian Church in Raleigh, North Carolina or whatever church he was sending it. Nobody had a clue. It was all about huge church, but there was no oversight. Paul is saying here, they might say, well, you know, our church is never going to have that problem. Our session knows all of us. Well, it's good that they know you. Because you and I need that oversight. Because Paul is saying here, these problems can come.

Now, of course we realize some churches will want their converts with, one of my favorite theologians, J.I. Packer, says some churches want their converts pre-sanctified. In other words, they want them to clean up their lives totally before they let them into membership. We let people into membership of Bible-believing churches that are not pre-sanctified.

Some of them are new converts. They've got a lot of warts. They've got a lot of things that need to be cleaned up. But you know what? The oversight of the church as they sit under the preaching of the Word and the power of the Gospel is that their lives will change. And that's what Paul is saying here. Now, even churches, though, will sometimes think, well, that's not a problem here. We run a tight ship here. We have strict lifestyle codes and make the assumption that having a strict lifestyle code will guarantee godliness. I can tell you that it didn't. I just read, finished the book about a week ago.

Some of you are familiar with the TV show that had the big family, 19 kids, the Duggars. And one of their daughters has married a young man who is a Calvinistic Baptist pastor. And she said it caused her to rethink a lot of what she was raised with. She had been heavily influenced by Bill Gothard's ministry. When you read her book, that was disastrous for her spiritual life.

Why? Because I really think he's a false teacher. Because he taught that if you followed all his rules, spiritual success was guaranteed. And he had rules for everything. If you followed his rules, spiritual success was guaranteed. And she said it led her to see her relationship with God as nothing but rule keeping. And if she violated one of those rules, which she later discovered were not Biblical rules at all, or simply Mr. Gothard's rules, that her spiritual life was going to go down the tubes.

It's interesting, the title of her book is Free Indeed. She didn't deny the faith. Matter of fact, her view of salvation and sanctification, I know it's a Calvinistic Baptist church that they're in now, they have a little different view of church and sacraments, but on doctrine of salvation and sanctification is absolutely identical with Reformed churches. And what does she say?

I was not taught that. This destroyed my Christian life. In other words, why? Because it never got to the hard issues. It was always on externals. Do the externals. If you do the externals, everything will be okay. Now, I'm not going to stand up here and make suggestions about what externals you should keep, how you should dress, certain activities you should do or avoid.

But just remember, doing those things will not guarantee you're a vibrant Christian if your heart is far from God. As a matter of fact, it can likely turn you, if you think doing these things ensures that I'm a godly person, will turn it into legalism.

Because the majority of these character traits that Paul is talking about are matters of the heart and not outward actions. Did you see what Paul said? He said, they had an outward form of godliness, but they denied the power. An outward form of godliness, but denied its power.

Critical spirits, wanting our own way, gossiping that often veers into slander, are signs of a heart problem that may demonstrate a religion that's only an outward form. What does that do? It should call us into self-examination. especially today as we approach the Lord's Supper. We need to ask ourselves, do I really understand and know the power of the Gospel? That the grace of God is designed to transform me inwardly, not just to some externals, but inwardly. Leads us to another reality, it's a call for watchfulness.

Timothy is warned that As I said that these false teachers will worm their way into the fellowship. He says that they will creep into households and capture the minds of what most translations say weak, or some translations say silly, or gullible, literally the word is little women. Capture them. This isn't trying to be a sexist statement that Paul is making here. Paul had earlier said some really wonderful things about Timothy's mom and his grandma. Rather, he is talking about a very specific situation in which these were most likely wealthy women with extra time on their hands who had been targeted by these false teachers.

They got into little small groups in those homes, taught them false things, and led them astray. It says that they were burdened with guilt. What likely happened here is that these false teachers, because we know this was rather common in the early church, had taught them a list of you.

If you avoid this, avoid this, avoid this, avoid this, avoid this. Remember Paul in Colossians has to talk about people who say, do not taste, do not touch, do not handle. It's likely that's what he's talking about here. And led these women to a perpetual state of guilt because they found it difficult to do this. If it was combined with a tendency to let other things slide, an antinomian tendency, this obviously would compound it.

Also we know, remember he had talked about Hermeneus and Philetus who had denied that the resurrection had occurred, maybe that was combined with that, we don't know. We don't know a lot about these false teachers other than they are very much warned about here.

This is not the first time the church has had that. The Church has had this combination of antinomianism, not following real Biblical guidelines, but picking up extra-Biblical and un-Biblical guidelines and making giant rules about them. This has been a plague on the Church in various forms. It shows up in different forms throughout the history of the Church. This call to watchfulness means that we need to be aware that false teaching that has destructive moral consequences can often enter in ways that we aren't aware of.

Now, this happened in small groups here, but this is one reason why the session of a church needs to have great care in understanding what various small groups are using. I would recommend that every book that a small group ever uses in a church, you present that book to the session. and say, what do you think about this? I had a good experience of that in my first church.

We had a women's Bible study. Interestingly enough, it was one of the elders' wives handed the book to her husband and said, we want to use this book. It was called, Here Am I, Send Moses, or Send Aaron. It was about the life of Moses. And it was written by the pastor of a well-known evangelical pastor.

And I said, OK, why don't we look at this? So I read the book. Apart from the fact that it had a wrong basic method, it mostly looked at Moses as an example, which is to pull Moses out of the context of he's a part of the history of redemption. First of all, that's an interpretive problem to start with. But second of all, I about did a triple take when I read one of the chapters.

And it was about the burning bush. And this was the application, this lady and our elders wife wanted to use it, had on the burning bush. The bush was on fire and was not consumed and you can be a burning bush like this for Jesus. I talked to the session and I said, you know what, this is one of the most horrible methods of Biblical interpretation I have ever seen. We are not burning bushes for Jesus. That is absolutely not what the passage is about. It's a revelation of the holiness of God. Not that we are going to be burning bushes like Jesus. It's a distortion of what the scripture.

And you know what? He finally got it, but he looked at me and he said, well, my wife says it teaches good application and it's a lively book. You know what? We should care less whether it teaches a lively book and teaches, quote, some application. It taught bad application. It did not teach what the scriptures intend for us to learn.

So, whether it's a men's Bible study or a women's Bible study, don't get upset if you hand a book to the session and they look at you, look at the book and say, I don't think so. Even if it's someone who's a quote, well-known Bible teacher and your friends over at church A, B, C, D were using it and they handed it to you and they say, oh, this is a great book. Our men's Bible study used this. You'll love this book. But if the session comes back and says, nope, this book teaches horrible methods of Bible interpretation, the false teachers wormed their way into this church.

Sessions need to be aware. But the last reality, and this is the optimist, you may say, oh man, you've been pessimistic. You've been giving me a big downer all morning. The last one is that they don't get the last word. Did you see what the last phrase They will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men."

Referring back to Janus and Jambres. Just at the time we're ready to throw up our hands in discouragement and say, despair! The church is always going to have these people. What in the world are we supposed to do? Paul says, don't despair. They will be exposed. The gates of hell will not prevail against Christ's church. God will raise someone up to expose them. We can think of the great periods in church history. Just last week was Reformation Sunday. Martin Luther was raised to expose false teaching. When you read about what was going on at the time of the Reformation, it's incredible.

Pope Leo X, when he read Martin Luther's theses at first, his first response was, what drunken German wrote these? He'll retract them once he sobers up. That's what he said. What drunken German wrote these things? He'll retract them when he sobers up.

Johann Tetzel, who was going around saying, my indulgences are so good, you can violate the Virgin Mary and you can still get out of purgatory with my indulgences. Talk about false teaching. Along comes a humble monk, named Martin Luther, with a little bit of a fiery temper, and he says, something is rotten in Wittenberg. Not just rotten in Denmark, it's rotten in Wittenberg. And he was fired up, and these people got exposed. False teaching will get exposed. God's word stands true. Now, sometimes false teaching can take huge turns.

You know, Islam. It's in the news lately. You've got radical Muslims, Hamas terrorists, who are butchering people. You know that Islam is really a perversion of Biblical truth? They take elements of Biblical truth. Moses and Jesus and Abraham all show up in their teaching. But what do they do? Horribly distort it. But it gets exposed for what it is.

Truth will be plain to God's people. God will raise up those who will clarify His truth. So when we come to the Lord's table today, how do we come? With great confidence. Rather than being discouraged about living in these perilous times, we realize the Lord knows His own. God's truth will be guarded.

He will keep His church from falling into grievous error. He can come pretty close sometimes to toppling over, but his truth remains. It doesn't mean some churches won't wander around for a time, but it means that with confidence the serious kind of error that Paul is talking about here will be exposed. It won't destroy the church.

After all, Jesus said, the gates of hell will not prevail against his church. Do you believe that? The gates of hell will not prevail against His church. When you come to the Lord's table today, you're being reassured of many things, but one of the things you're being reassured of is that Jesus Christ said, I have instituted my kingdom and my church, the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

False teaching may worm its way into the church, but God will preserve it, His church, and expose the false teaching. To summarize what we have seen today, the Church has lived and will continue to live in perilous times until Christ returns. The answer is watchfulness, watchfulness within the Church, but above all hope. Hope that God will expose false teaching that seeks to destroy His Church and preserve His people. Perverted self-love may be taught by our society around us, but each of us, when we examine ourselves, will say, with Paul in Romans 7, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

And he will say, thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we're celebrating today. Yes, we know that we have a perverted self-love, apart from the redemption in Christ. But thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And he can transform us into those who love God, and love our neighbor as ourselves. When you come to the Lord's table today, you come to receive His promises of grace for forgiveness and promises of grace that He is going to redeem His people. And that means all of us who are genuine believers who approach His table today.

Closing Prayer

He's not going to leave us the way we were. He's here to change us. That perverted self-love which leads to all of these other nasty things in this passage God is going to change us and redeem us and remake us from the inside out. Well, let's pray. Father, this is your word. We're so grateful that you give us a hopeful word in the midst of what otherwise looks like a depressing passage. We're grateful for your truth. We're grateful for the power of the gospel. We're grateful for the hope that we have. From Christ's name we pray,