Preparing for Difficult Times

Second Timothy chapter 3 verse 1.

2 Timothy 3:1

We're almost through with Second Timothy.

We've been going through First and Second Timothy for the last couple of months.

And we've seen some good instruction in here for Timothy in particular, but really for

all of us, even if we're not all going into a ministry type position as Timothy was, there's

still good instruction for us in here.

And that's true of the passage we're looking at tonight too.

In the context, it appears to be speaking of some specific people in a specific situation

that was going on there.

But as Ecclesiastes says, there's nothing new under the sun.

And so the things that we see in these few verses tonight still happen today.

So we'll look at this passage and kind of talk about what it means and then maybe talk

about some ways that we can apply it to ourselves.

So let's pray and we'll get started.

Father God, we come to you.

We thank you for a good night.

I thank you for the freedom and the privilege to come here tonight and to be able to look

at your word.

I pray that your Holy Spirit would be with us, that you would lead me, dear Lord, that

I'd be able to present your word in a way that helps us to grow and understand it better.

Dear Lord, we want to understand your word better and what's going on when it was written

and how we can apply it to us.

So I pray that your Spirit would move in that way and just hide me behind the cross that

I'd be able to preach and teach in a way that brings glory to you.

In Jesus' name I pray it.

Amen.

All right.

First, excuse me, second Timothy chapter three, verse one.

But know this, difficult times will come in the last days.

Now let's pause there for a second because it's not exactly clear when we see in the

Old Testament the phrase last days.

We may have an idea of what we think it means and it may be the right idea, but it may not

be.

Now typically when we hear the phrase the last days, we almost always tend to think

the end of time, the time before Jesus is going to return.

And it's possible that that's what last days means here and in other instances too.

However, when we look at that phrase, the few times it's used in the New Testament,

what we see clearly in Acts chapter two, verse 17 is that at the day of Pentecost that it's

said there that these are the last days that Joel talked about.

That is the days that Jesus brought about.

That is Jesus brought about these things that were going to occur.

We see that in the book of Hebrews.

You may remember way back in Hebrews chapter one at the very beginning, I think verse two,

that it says in these last days, Jesus has spoken to us.

And so there's a couple of ways, really three main ways that we can look at this phrase

last days.

One is the one that might come to our mind first, that this is talking about something

that's going to happen in the future at a time before Jesus returns, that this may be

some kind of sign.

And it's possible that that's what that means.

It's also possible that the term last days is talking about the whole period from Jesus

onward, from Jesus until, until Jesus returns from that whole period.

We see it applied in that way, it appears in the New Testament.

So it could be talking about that.

Sometimes when we see this phrase last days, it could be speaking of the last days of the

old system.

Now when this book was written and all the New Testament books were written, the old

Jewish system that Jesus had said was going to pass away was about to pass away in 70

AD is when the temple was destroyed and the old system was going to pass away.

And so some believe that when we say that phrase last days, that it's applying to the

audience in scripture.

And it was the last days of the old system, but a new system, a new covenant had been

established through Jesus.

So don't want to take too much time on that.

But when we say that phrase, we need to realize that it's, it's not necessarily used as speaking

of something that will occur at the end time.

It may be, but there are other applications when we compare it to other occasions where

it's used, where it's pretty clear that in those instances, it's not talking about an

end times thing.

It's talking about another time.

And so maybe this whole period from Jesus onward is the last days.

Nonetheless, it doesn't matter which interpretation we hold to there.

What we need to pay attention to is what's going on.

And the things that are going on have been going on in this world forever.

They've been going on as long as people have been here.

They've been doing these things and they will continue to do these things until this world

is no more.

Verse two, for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers,

disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without

control, self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited,

lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

So we have a long list of things here that is not good.

People are lovers of self, lovers of money, lovers of pleasure.

One Bible teacher I heard said, these are very loving people, but they love the wrong

thing.

And so Paul says here to Timothy, look, you're going to be exposed to these type of people

who are not good people, who are evil people.

And this is a pretty exhaustive list of sinful things.

And he points these things out to Timothy.

And then he goes on to say in verse three, he says, holding to the form of godliness,

but denying its power, avoid these people.

And so even this group of people that are pretty rough based on the list of things that

they're involved in here, even so, Paul acknowledges that there is some godliness in their life.

That is they know God to some extent, and even though they've been exposed to God and

the word of God, they are denying the power of God.

Now do we ever fall into that trap?

Maybe we're guilty of the same thing.

Maybe we know about God, but we don't really experience the power of God because we're

too busy living in sin.

We're not really trusting in God and growing in our faith.

We're not letting God work in our life.

We're not experiencing joy that comes from God because we're not content with God.

We are discontent with the world, and that begins to kind of take over in our life.

And when we're not focused on God, those who are God's people, then we do miss the power

of God.

We miss the strength of God.

And so he says of these people, well, they have some form of godliness.

They know a little bit about God, but they're not experiencing the full power of God.

Why is that?

Because they're evil people.

They're not living for God.

And that's a trap we have to make sure that we don't fall into because we may be guilty

of the same thing.

It's possible for us to fall into that same trap, to go through the motions and to know

about God and to be kind of godly people, at least in some way, but not really experiencing

the freedom and the joy and the peace that comes from a relationship with God.

And so he tells him, avoid these people.

So you're going to encounter these people who are going to be evil and they're going

to have some appearance of godliness, but they're not good people.

And so he says, avoid these people.

Now, this is important for us to pay attention to the people that we hang out with.

Who do we hang out with?

Are they pretty good people?

Are they pretty rough people?

Now, we may say, well, I'll hang out with rough people and I'm going to help them to

help to make them better.

Well, maybe you are, but then again, maybe they're going to help to make you worse.

So we have to pay attention to the people that we surround ourselves with.

That's very important.

Now, we want to be a positive influence to people who aren't living right.

And we want people to be positive influences on us when we're not living right.

So it's very important that we surround ourselves with good people and we avoid people who are

living in a way that's not good.

And that's what we see in this list here that Paul says, look, stay away from the people

who are practicing these things.

These are not good people to hang around with.

Verse four, six, for among them are those who worm their way into household and capture

idle women burdened with sins, let alone by a variety of passions.

Okay.

So now we see a little bit more about what this group of people are doing.

Now it appears to be that these are people who are there during Timothy's time that Paul

is describing something that, that maybe is already going on.

And cause he calls out something specific that they're doing.

They're finding women that are easy targets for whatever reason.

They're women who are idle, it says, they're burdened down with sin.

So the women that they're targeting are women who are easy targets to accomplish whatever

it is that they want to accomplish.

So these people that Paul is telling Timothy to avoid are not good people.

They're not good people at all.

And instead of taking care of the women and treating the women with respect as, as we've

already seen Paul right, they're doing just the opposite.

They're finding some opportunity to take advantage of people.

And you still see that in our world today.

You see many people today who were looking for somebody that to take advantage of.

Sometimes you even see that in the ministry, you see preachers or you see people in ministry

positions who are looking for easy targets because they're greedy and they try to find

people that are easy to get money from or easy to get other things that they may want

from them.

And so these people that, that Paul is talking about, these are, are pretty, pretty rotten

people.

They're not, they're not good people at all.

And it says in verse seven, always learning and never able come to come to a knowledge

of the truth.

Now, I'm not sure if he's talking about the women here in this passage or if he's applying

this back to the ones who are taking advantage to these women.

Either way, the point is the same.

And that is that they are learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

We want to be those who are able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

We don't want to just be spinning our wheels when we try to read God's word and seek God's

word and grow in God's word.

We want to be those who are really coming and grasping the knowledge of the truth.

Of course, they're not able to grasp knowledge of the truth, obviously, because their lives

are sinful.

They're described as sinful women here are these people, whoever they may be, these men,

it appears, are sinful men living in these sinful ways.

And so even though they are ever learning and they're exposed to the teachings of the

truth and knowledge, they don't ever grasp it.

And what a shame it is that we can sit and hear God's word and listen to God's word and

read God's word and never really grasp what it says.

And we have to be on guard because maybe there's been seasons in our life that we've done that.

Maybe there's seasons in our life that we went to church a lot, but we didn't get anything

out of it, or we read the Bible a lot, but we didn't get anything out of it because there

was sin in our life or there were other things on our mind.

And so we were continually learning, but we weren't really learning.

We weren't getting any knowledge from it.

And so that's a bad place to be in.

And that's where this group he's talking about.

This is where they were.

Verse eight, just as Janus and Jambres resisted Moses, so these also resisted the truth.

Men who are corrupt in mind, worthless in regard to the faith.

Now this name's Janus and Jambres here.

This is the only place that these names occur in the scripture.

And so it's not perfectly clear exactly who these two are.

However, it appears as though these would be the magicians who performed some of these

miracles that Moses performed.

If you remember, when Moses went to Pharaoh, there were some miraculous things that God

told Moses he was going to be able to do.

And Pharaoh's magicians were able to copy some of those miracles and say, oh, well,

what he's doing, his God's not that spectacular.

Look, we can do these things too.

But ultimately they ran out of magic or whatever they were doing, whatever sleight of hand

they were doing to perform those things that Moses was doing.

Eventually their abilities, whether they were manmade or demonic, whatever they were, eventually

their abilities ran out.

And so he says, look, there's some evil people here that are among you, but have no fear

because they are just like those who came against Moses.

And even though it looks as though they have some power, even though it looks as though

maybe they're on the same level and are going to be trouble for you, remember the story

of Janus and Jambres who came against Moses.

And it says, so these, excuse me, they resisted Moses.

So these also resist the truth.

Okay.

So the ones that Moses went to, to Pharaoh and to the magicians there, they resisted

the truth that Moses said, hey, God is going to deliver these people.

And they resisted the truth that Moses tried to tell them.

Ultimately as Moses continued to do the miracles and the plagues were poured out on the people

and the magicians were not able to, eventually they could no longer resist the truth.

They had to give in and say, let the people get out of here.

He says that these men are corrupt in mind, worthless in regard to the faith, but they

will not make further progress.

For their lack of understanding will be clear to all as theirs, that is Janus and Jambres

was also.

So obviously Timothy is facing some opposition and going to be facing some opposition in

the future possibly.

And Paul is saying, look, don't get frustrated, don't get discouraged because even though

these people are coming at you, these evil people, they will not be able to stand up

as time goes on, eventually they will fail.

Eventually they'll crumble, but those who trust in God will remain steadfast and remain

firm.

And so he's giving him some good instruction here and just a word of warning, hey, pay

attention to these that you may encounter.

And so that's kind of the context of what he was writing, but I think it's important

maybe for us to look back at verse two and to look at this list of these things.

This is a good opportunity for us to take a test.

Now it's easy for us to look and think about these people that are being talked about and

say, oh yeah, these are pretty evil people.

They did some pretty evil things and indeed they were doing some evil things.

But we need to look at this list and see how we're doing in these areas.

Maybe some of these areas we're not doing too good either.

What are some of the things he says?

For people will be lovers of self.

Okay, well, we need to test ourself here.

Are we lovers of self?

Do we think too much of ourself?

Are we pretty proud?

Do we think we're the best looking, the smartest and all these things?

Sometimes we have a real high value of ourself, especially in this culture.

It's even encouraged, it seems like in this culture to really have a high value of yourself

and put yourself first.

But the scripture says just the opposite, that those who are first shall be last and

last should be first.

And so we want to make sure that we don't fall into that trap, that we don't become

lovers of ourself.

What else does it say?

Lovers of money.

Are we greedy?

Are we those who are seeking money and love money and want more of it?

Well, there's a difference between working to earn money and to have things and to be

able to do things and make a living and save a little back for rainy days.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But somewhere along the line, we can kind of cross that line and we can really begin

to love money too much and begin to seek money and do anything we want to get money.

We see that in the world today all the time.

As people become greedy, there's a show that we watch sometimes called American Greed.

And you see people on there and they do some of the worst stuff you could possibly imagine.

It starts out as some little something and then pretty soon they need more money and

for long they willing to kill or cheat or steal or whatever to anybody.

It don't matter if it's their own parents.

They'll do whatever they got to do.

So we don't want to get to that point.

That's why it's important for us to look at lists like this and remind ourselves that

greed is a bad thing.

We don't want to be those who are lovers of money.

Boastful, proud.

Well, those two things kind of go together.

Do we boast in ourselves?

Are we boasting?

Oh, look how good I am.

Look what I've got.

Look what I did.

Look at me.

We need to be careful that we don't become boastful, that we don't become proud.

Blasphemers, disobedient to parents.

Well, that's a good one to remember.

That's a command we see all the way back in the Old Testament to honor your father and

your mother.

These are pretty simple things for the most part to understand and maybe we're doing all

these things, but then again, maybe we're not doing these things.

And so if we're not, we need to pay attention to this because the things on this list are

bad things.

If we're doing these things, then we need to ask God to help us to overcome these things.

Ungrateful, that's a good one for us to think about.

Are we ungrateful?

Are we happy with what we have?

Are we content with what we have?

Are we grateful for what we have?

And sometimes we see in our world, and I've been guilty of this before, we have something

and it may be really nice, but it's not what we want.

We're not grateful for what we have.

We want more.

And the Bible says here that that's not a good thing to be ungrateful.

We should be grateful.

Unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control.

We won't go through all these for time's sake, but what about that one?

Without self-control.

To have self-control is a good thing, but to not have self-control is a bad thing.

So we need to work on that in our life maybe.

We need to work on being able to have more control, to say no when we need to say no,

or to hold out on something when we need to hold out on something.

We need to be able to have that control that we don't give in, but that we're the ones

who are in control of our life and the decisions we make and the situations that we are involved

in.

Brutal, without love for what is good.

Holy smokes, that's a bad one.

Without love for what is good.

Hopefully we don't fall into that trap.

Hopefully we love some good, but these that's being talked about here, they don't have any

love for any good, it doesn't appear.

So when you get to that place, you're in a bad place.

Traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

So this is a long list of some pretty bad things.

Maybe we need to look at this list, and others like it in scripture, and say, okay God, am

I falling into any of these categories?

Am I doing any of these things?

Because these are not the kind of things that God wants us to do.

And maybe we're doing pretty good in some of these areas, but maybe there are some that

we need to work on.

So we want to be those who live a godly life, who live a righteous life, who live more like

Timothy than these guys.

So that we will be able to grow in the Lord, to be able to grow in our knowledge and understanding.

That we are not those who continue to learn but don't have knowledge and truth, but we

are those who look at God's word, we learn from it, we see the areas where we fail, and

we grow in the truth of God's word so that it can transform our lives into the men and

women that God wants us to be.

Let's pray.

Father God, we come to you, we thank you for your good word, and I pray that you would

help us to examine our own lives, to see areas where maybe we are not where we need to be.

This is a pretty intense list of things that are just not good, dear Lord.

And I pray that you would help us to see if there are areas that we are guilty of these

things.

Areas like this, dear Lord, that maybe we're living in these sins.

Help us to see that.

Help us to repent of those things.

Help us to be able to overcome those things by your power, dear Lord.

I pray that you would help us to continue to come and read your word and hear your word,

both here and in our own time, dear Lord, that we would learn and come to knowledge.

That we wouldn't be those who are just spinning our wheels, dear Lord, but that we would be

those who are really seeking you and really growing in you in every way.

God, I pray that you would help us not to be discouraged, just as those who came against

Moses and were overcome, dear Lord, by your power.

So it will be for us, God.

Maybe there are times that there are some that come against us in situations that are

discouraging, in people that are discouraging, dear Lord.

But in the end, God, you always win out.

So let us never be discouraged by whatever we're up against.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.