2 Timothy 3:1-17 - Focus

Here we're in 2 Timothy chapter 3 tonight.

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

And so yeah, let's read, guys.

Says, but mark this there will be terrible times in the last days.

People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying its power, have nothing to do with such people.

They are kind who worm their way into homes and they gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to keep a knowledge of the truth.

Just as James, error Janice and Jombraus oppose Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth.

They are men that are paved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected.

But they will not get very far, as in the case of those men, for their folly will be clear to everyone.

You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecution, suffering.

What kind of things happened to me at Antioch, Econium, Lystra?

The persecutions I endured, yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.

In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

While evil do evildoers, imposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through Christ Jesus.

All scriptures God breathes, and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, training in righteousness, so the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Alright, so Paul starts off and he gives us this list.

He starts talking and he lists out nineteen things.

He says, But mark this, there will be terrible times in the last day.

And then he gives you this list, and I don't know what it is about this list, but it makes me want to chin like channel my inner southern black grandma, you know, and just like my ma.

I don't and I don't talk like that.

Like, but where does this come from?

But it's the instance, every time I read that list, lovers themselves, lovers of money, all these things, I'm like, mm, mm-hmm, yeah.

And I don't like having a glass of sweet tea or something with me.

Like, I don't know what's going on.

But I think it's just so, such an intense list, and it's so, if you knew a person who was checked off these lists, you would avoid them at all cost, right?

This is just a list of this thing that is so intense and almost disgusting in such a way.

Now, the first thing he lists, he lists 19 different things, and the first one that he lists is, but in the last days, there will be terrible times in the last days.

People will be lovers of themselves.

See, their focus will be on yourself.

When our focus is on ourself, the result is living garbage.

Now, I don't mean that a person is garbage, you know, but the way that they are living, and I don't even like that word.

I've spent a long time trying to think of a different word that wasn't so off-putting.

But then I realized that's kind of the point, isn't it?

I mean, this should be, this list should make us go, ugh, gross.

Oh, man, that get that out of here, you know, and put it in the bin, get it out of side.

I don't want it around me.

And it's a harsh word, but that's exactly what we need.

Now, the the sin, the first thing he says, lovers of themselves.

And everything after that is kind of a reiteration or a different facet of the war of the sin, lovers of themselves.

Um, somebody actually once said that the the the lovers of yourself or selfishness, self-focused, is the sewer pipe from which the rest of this garbage flows.

Right?

And so it's the focus on yourself results in the rest of these disgusting.

And we're just gonna go through, we could spend all night just talking about this, but I don't really want to do that.

But the first few, it says, you know, the lovers of themselves, people be lovers of themselves, lovers of money.

Now, just to kind of point out what I'm talking about, when you love yourself, your focus, of course, is where?

It's gonna be on yourself, right?

And so here, everything that leads into that.

So if you're a lover of yourself and you love money, it's not just that you like, oh man, I just like the way that paper feels in my hand.

You know, it's how, what it does for you.

There's actually, Jesus tells this parable in Luke, right, chapter 12, about this guy.

It's called the parable of the rich fool.

And basically, this guy is given, and Jesus is teaching to this crowd, and he teaches this parable, and he says that this man, um well, just read it in verse chapter 12, verse 15, it says, Then he said to them, Watch out, be on your guard against all kinds of greed.

Life does not consist of abundance of possessions.

And he told them this parable.

The ground of a certain rich man yielded abundant harvests.

He thought to himself, now this is where it goes, and this is what I'm drawing.

Look at what this parable does, what he's his line of thought.

And this is the thought of the man.

He says, What shall I do?

I have no place to store my crops.

Then he said, This is what I'll do.

I will tear down my barns, and I'll build bigger ones.

Then I will store up my surplus grain, and I'll say to myself, Self, you have plenty of grain laid up for many years.

Take life easy, eat, drink, and be merry.

See, his entire focus, his entire plan was for himself.

Now don't forget, if you build barns, how big are you gonna build your barns?

Big enough to store your crops for a year, right?

Because if you build more than that, in this day and age, as an agrarian farmer, right, that you're just as can uh persistent, I'm sorry, somebody who lives off what they farm, um, they are living just year to year.

You're gonna build it off.

You don't need to build it gigantic to hold years of worth of harvest, because you're gonna survive on that over the winter.

So if you survive, your barns are already big enough to hold what you need for a year.

So there was no reason, practically, except for very selfish motives.

He didn't even want to sell it.

He wanted to do what?

Take next summer off.

Take the year off, take whatever, not even share it.

But instead, it was just about seeking his own pleasure.

See, his love of money really was a love of self, because he could take the time off and focus on who?

Himself.

Eat, drink, marry, get drunk, don't have to work, because it's great.

And what does Jesus say?

His response is it says, but God said to him, You fool.

Now, anytime somebody's called a fool in Scripture, ho, oh, that's a oh my, my, my, right?

That's you gotta watch out.

But he says, You fool, this very night your life will be demanded from you.

Then who will get what have you prepared for yourself?

This is how it will be when for whoever stores up things for themselves, but is not rich towards God.

And so Timothy is warned about these guys that are so focused on what?

On themselves.

Now he continues to go on.

He has this list.

He also says, kind of, he lists after that these three together, proud, um, boastful, ungrateful, conceited, I'm sorry, four.

So these are just kind of lumped, almost very similar.

These people who, what's their focus?

Self.

Look how great I am, right?

How proud they are.

They're conceited.

Well, I'm really, really good.

You're okay, but I'm very great.

You know, and ungrateful.

Why would somebody be grateful for something if they think they're deserving of everything?

And so they're ungrateful for those people around them.

And so again, it's this focus on that.

Now, it goes on, and one that's really interesting that kind of stands out, it's in the middle, it's disobedient to their parents.

Now, Jesus wasn't like, or I'm sorry, Paul wasn't like, oh, let's make this a happy meal and throw a little something in for the kids, right?

This is not just written to that.

To children, this is written to all of us.

And I know a bunch of us are at that stage in our life where we're having to take care of our kids and our parents.

And still we're called to obey them and to find that balance.

How do we care for them and still obey them?

And so it's this balance that we have to do, and so it can be a very difficult thing that we're called to do, and yet we're still called to do it.

So now what's cool too is if you read through there, it's not cool, I guess.

If it's something that's amazing, is he's not just talking about people outside of the church.

He's talking about people inside of the church who most likely already existed in the church in Ephesus.

And he says to him, Look, these are what's going to happen.

In the last days, there are going to be people all about these kinds of things.

Now, if we look back through Scripture, we can see that this has been going on since the Old Testament.

Isaiah, when he begins his book, Isaiah starts off and he starts calling people out, right?

Actually, Isaiah says it in the first thing, uh, Isaiah chapter 1.

Isaiah 1 · chapter mention

He actually, it's God talking to the people.

In verse 14 of chapter 1, he says, Your new moon feasts, this is a commandment of God, what they're supposed to do, your new moon feast and your appointed festivals, I hate with all my being.

Again, that's almost as bad as calling him a fool, right?

If God's saying he hates these as much.

Now, these have been commanded by God, right?

These are part of the Deuteronomy and Exodus, the law that was given in Leviticus.

Celebrate these things, the new moon feast, all these things.

What does God say?

I hate them.

They have become a burden to me.

I have wary of bearing them.

When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you.

Even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening.

And here's why: your hands are full of blood.

So you say that you worship me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me.

It's that inauthentic worship.

Saying one thing and then living a complete life, saying, Yeah, Lord, we donate everything to you, we give to you, and yet they're putting other people in slavery and doing these terrible things.

And it keeps going on, and it goes on and on.

It's amazing.

Check out Isaiah 1 and read it.

It's a huge warning to all these people.

And yet we see this happening back in Isaiah.

This exact thing that Paul talks to Timothy about in the last days.

Now we see it accelerate.

This is going to be happening more and more.

And I think we can see this in our own society accelerating and becoming more in-depth.

You ever now, what do you do when you get on, you know, let's be honest, you get on our phone and we start scrolling, you know, through whatever it is, and you notice what happens?

Things that you like stop popping up more and more, right?

You're not introduced to new things.

I mean, things keep accelerating to where we're only like the things who's about.

It's about you, right?

The world, the apps that we have, everything that we interact accelerating and being more and more like us.

And so we can see that it accelerates, it's always been in existence, but it becomes more intense and more dense in the way that it happens in our lives.

Now, what Paul calls Timothy to do, he's gonna do this in a minute, because this is reality.

He says to him, actually, right here, he says, have nothing to do with such people.

Have nothing to do with these people.

These people that you meet that are all about themselves, that are completely self-focused, have nothing to do with these people because they do what?

They lead others astray.

See, if you're hanging out with these people and being around them, they're going to lead us astray.

And I think we have to examine our own relationships.

We have to look, and you should take a look at the people that you're around.

Are there people that after you spend time with them, you're around them for a few hours or whatever, you guys go to dinner or whatever, when you get done, is your language all of a sudden worse?

Are you catching yourself thinking thoughts that are just way outside the box and ungodly?

Are there people that you are around that are leading you astray to where you need to limit that your interaction with them?

I saw, you know, I've had to do this with people, I've seen my parents do it with other people, where they kind of have to say, I know, let's not hang out anymore.

You know, or we're gonna just put that limit because we need to make sure that we are limiting who we're being around, because we want to make sure the people we do spend time with are feeding us towards God, pushing us that way.

Now he tells us about this people and he tells them a little something else.

He says, Have nothing to do with these type of people.

They are the kind of people who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women.

They lead people astray, who are loaded down with sins and swayed with all kinds of desires, always learning, but never able to come to a knowledge of truth, just as Jonas and John Brace.

So he tells them, these people lead others astray, and then he lists these two guys, Janice and John Brace, who oppose Moses.

So they are teachers that oppose the truth.

They are men of depraved minds who, as far as faith is concerned, are rejected.

But they will not get very far, because in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.

Now, if you've got a Bible, it should have a footnote.

If it doesn't, you know, um, then I'll help you out.

It's referring these two guys, these two names, are unnamed characters in the Old Testament, way back in the book of Exodus.

And he says, These are the men that opposed Moses.

Now we learned here their names, but they were the sorcerers that came from Pharaoh's court.

Now, if you're unfamiliar with this story, what happens in Exodus, right?

Moses gets tasked with the job of going to Pharaoh and asking Pharaoh to set the people free, set the Israelite people free.

You know, lead them out into the desert.

And so Moses says, okay, I'll finally he, after arguing for a while, he says, Okay, I'll do this, but how am I going to prove that I'm from you?

And so God gives him these ways that he can prove.

And it's pretty amazing.

He actually says, throw your staff down, and when it hits the ground, it becomes a snake.

And now, if I was to do that, I'd be like, man, couldn't we do something cute like a chipmunk or something?

But okay.

And so he does this.

And then when he picks it back up, he has a staff again, right?

He says, Go do this, I'm going to go before you.

So he goes before Moses.

I mean, I'm sorry, Moses goes before Pharaoh and he starts to talk to him, and he says, Okay, you need to let my people go, and and they need to prove that they're from God.

And so he takes his staff, and and this is Exodus chapter 7, verse 10.

Exodus 7:10

So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh, and he did just what the Lord commanded.

Aaron threw his staff on the ground in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake.

Alright, so pretty cool, right?

Now, Pharaoh isn't instantly like, whoa, okay, this is crazy.

Okay, maybe I need to listen to you.

Instead, Pharaoh then summons wise men and sorcerers.

Now, these are the guys that we learn later in their name are Janus and Jambraes, right?

The Egyptians and the Egyptian magicians also did the same thing by their secret arts.

So then they took a staff and they threw it on the ground and it became a snake.

Now, what's crazy is they were able to do that, right?

Which is which is nuts.

I had people tried to explain this to me, but it says that they did it by their secret arts.

We don't really know how they did it.

But they were able to do this.

But I love that God is like, oh, you think that's pretty cool?

Each one of them threw the staff on the became a snake, but Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs.

So they're like, oh, you think you got this?

Check it out.

Now my snake's gonna eat all of yours, right?

And then he picks it up.

It's just fantastic.

Yet Pharaoh's heart became hard and he would not listen.

And this happens several times, right?

Remember the first plague?

Moses puts his staff into the Nile, and the Nile and all the water in Egypt becomes blood, undrinkable.

Everything dies.

All the fish die, nobody can drink it.

What I love is Pharaoh then calls his magicians in, and they're like, oh, he turned the river into blood.

Now, if they were really awesome, what would they do?

Turn it back, right?

We've got all this blood.

Their answer, here's some more blood.

Right?

They make, but this is the dumbest answer ever.

They make more blood.

You've got a big problem there, Pharaoh.

Let me make it worse, right?

So, I mean, this is a terrible thing.

And then it goes on.

The next one, this plague of frogs.

What does God do?

God sends this land of frogs that just goes all over, covers the entire land.

So Pharaoh calls in Jonas and Jombrays, and what do they do?

Get rid of the frogs?

No! They make more frogs, right?

Dumbest answer ever.

Right?

But anyway, this is what they do.

Now here's the thing: they showed that they could duplicate or they could imitate what God had done, but they couldn't get rid of it.

And then what happens on the next one is the plague of gnats.

Right?

God sends this plague of gnats.

Tell Aaron, Stretch out your staff over and strike the dust of the ground, and throughout the land of Egypt, the dust will become gnats.

And they do this.

And so Pharaoh goes to his guys and he's like, Okay, show me again.

But the magicians tried to produce gnats by their secret arts, and they could not.

Since the gnats were on people and animals everywhere, the magicians said to Pharaoh, This is the finger of God.

See, up until that point, they said, We can do everything that God does.

They tried to imitate and tried to pretend that they had the power that God had.

It reminds me of this story, too.

There's this old joke, maybe you guys have heard it, where this group of like evolutionary scientists get together and they get technology, they raise it up, and they're like, you know what, we think we've got the science, the ability to make man.

We can create a man.

And so they challenge God.

Like, God, we want to show you we're just as strong, just as powerful as you.

And so God is like, okay, let's see what you got.

And like, we're gonna make a man just like you made a man.

And he's okay, let's see it.

And so they go over and they get their scientific equipment ready and they're ready to go, and then they go and get dirt and they bring it, and God's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you get your own dirt.

Right?

See, people can try and imitate, but they can't because God is God and we are not.

And yet, these men that he describes are ones that go in and that says they have godliness, they have a form of godliness, but denying its power.

See, if you were to see Janice and Jombrace with no context, and they threw their staff on the ground, you'd be like, Whoa, something's going on here.

If they were able to make blood, you're like, weird flex, but okay, right?

But then when you see it, when you know the truth, when you know God, then you can see this is just a pitiful imitation.

See, when these households that were very gullible didn't know the truth.

And so when people worm their way in, when these false teachers would worm their way in, they had an appearance of godliness.

But compared to what God actually is, you can see it's a pitiful imitation that lacks power.

Now, Paul continues to call them over, and he says, he does this thing over and over.

They try, oh, this is what they try to do.

Sorry, I missed my point.

They try and show that they are like God.

Then Paul, over and over throughout the book of 2 Timothy, has this phrase, but you, but as for you, not so with you.

So he takes this comparison of these old things, these other things, what the world or what false teachers are going to do, and he says, but you are gonna do that.

And this is what he does here exactly.

You, however, in verse 10.

So he talks about these false teachers that have a form of godliness but deny its power.

And he says, You, however, know all about my teachings.

Teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings, what kind of things happen to me in Antioch, Aconium, Lystra, the persecutions I endured.

Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.

In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

So he lists this thing.

Now, if you can read about what happened to Antioch in Acts chapter 13, right, Paul goes to Antioch, and it says in the description, it says that the Jewish people there that opposed him heaped abuse on him, and they stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

And then he lifts the next one, he says, in Antioch, in the Iconium, and he says, there, if you read in Acts 13, he says, the people stirred up against Paul and Barnabas and plotted to mistreat them and plotted to stone them to death.

And so they heard about the plot and they left town.

And then he says, in Lystra, and this is in Acts 14.

And there it says, Paul and Barnabas, they go into town and they heal this man.

This man, Paul sees that he has faith to be healed, and so Paul stands up, your sins are forgiven, you're healed, and the man stands up, and the people lose their mind.

Right?

And they're like, oh my gosh, the gods have come down and visited us.

And finally it gets translated, and they figure out that they are calling them gods, that they're trying to say, oh, you're like Zeus, right?

And so Paul and Barnabas freak out, they're like, no, we're not, and they rip their clothes.

Now, if they were self-focused, what would they have done?

Been like, yeah, well, I'm not exactly God, but pretty close.

So give me some food, right?

Or whatever it may be.

But instead, they tear their clothes, and I love this.

They tried to make them gods, but Paul and Barnabas deny it.

They know we are not gods.

So then they stone them, right?

And so it's like the quickest 180, like, oh my gosh, the gods have come to visit us.

Let's throw rocks at them.

All right, and so they go on, and the Jews come in and stir up the crowds, and so they actually stone Paul and Barnabas to the point where they think they're dead, and then they drag them out and drop him and leave them outside the city.

And I just can't imagine how bad you have to be hurt to people think you're dead and drag you out and just leave you out there, and then you get up, and what's he do?

Gets up, goes to the next town.

Let's do it again.

Right?

If Paul was focused on himself, I don't think he would have got up.

I don't think, like, as soon as the rock started flying to be like, whoa, whoa, fine, fine.

I'm good.

I'm good.

I'm just gonna go back over here where my God stuff's at, right?

He could have left.

Instead, Paul's focus is not on himself.

What is Paul focused on?

His focus is on God.

When our focus is on God, the result is holiness.

See, when we focus on ourselves, the result is garbage.

It's living a life that just stinks, that's filthy.

And yet, when our focus is on God, then we start to become put apart or set apart.

We start to become holy.

Because we start to live in a way that is different than the world around us.

We start to look different.

And then Paul goes on, he adds this another thing, as but for you, but for you, you know, so you these are the way the things do it.

This is the way I'm living, as for you, continue in what you've learned and have been convinced of.

Because you know from whom you learned it.

And this goes back to what we talked about a couple weeks ago.

Keep on keeping on, right?

Continue in what you've been doing.

You've stayed strong, keep on doing that.

And then he drops, he goes on a little bit farther.

He says, But for you, continue in what you've learned and become convinced of because you know from who you learned it, and how from infancy you've known holy scriptures, which were able to make you wise for the salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

And then he drops this almost this fact bomb on him.

This thing that is so dense, right?

In these next two verses, he says, All scripture is God breathed, is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.

So that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

So he leads this and he says, Listen, this is what it's for, for rebuking and correcting.

Now, those are two very similar things.

It's more the intensity of with which it's done.

Right?

So we don't just go up and Jesus actually walks us and gives us this step-by-step on how to correct sin in the church.

In Matthew, he actually tells us this is what you need to do.

Right?

In Matthew chapter 18, he gives us these steps.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

He says, dealing with sin in the church, if your brother or sister sins, go point out their fault just between the two of you.

If they listen to you, then you've won them over.

So go and correct them.

If you see somebody living in a wrong way, go to them and don't just say, I think you're doing it wrong.

Instead, take the word, as Paul says, the word of God is useful for teaching and correcting and rebuking.

So take this and say, listen, there's a better way that you can be living.

Because I see what you're doing.

And if you listen, if they listen, awesome.

You've won the brother and sister.

Right?

But if they do not listen, and this is where we go into the realm of rebuking, if they're not listening, but if they do not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.

If they still refuse to listen to you, tell it to the church.

And if they refuse to listen to you, even the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

And so start off in correction and then move up to rebuking, to correcting them harshly to where they hopefully will start to listen.

So he says, this is for teaching and rebuking and correcting.

And then he says, for training in righteousness.

Now the word that he used there is Padea.

Padea is one, how many of you guys, any Star Wars fans?

I love Star Wars fans, right?

And how do they refer to the little ones?

Padawan, right?

This is a play on that.

It's a Padawan, a young learner.

It's a student that's growing in life.

They would have known this word because they would see in the education system around them.

And they didn't have public schools like what we had.

If you wanted to educate your kid, you would hire a teacher that would follow, they would follow this teacher around.

And so you would see teachers and their students walking around, and the students walking right behind a teacher, and them training them up in the ways that you wanted to raise them.

And so they would see this, says, this is what you do.

Training, and I love this phrase that I came across, training in this way, training for righteousness, is cultivating the soul for right living.

Cultivating, bringing about this picture of making sure that everything is in balance, that things are put in the right way, cultivating the soul for right living.

So we're not just learning scripture for the sake of knowing scripture.

You know, we're not just learning it for solar drills, right?

Anybody grow up in the church?

Have to do those?

Right?

You had to hold your Bible above your head.

If you didn't grow up in the church, it was kind of a bizarre thing, right?

But you had to hold your Bible up here, and then they'd say a passage, and you pull it down, and you'd try and be the first one to find the passage.

I didn't think it made a lot of sense, but it's what we did, right?

But we don't do this.

We don't know the Bible just so we can win Bible trivia night, right?

But we do it, scriptures are for training, and scriptures is key to endurance and good works.

Our right understanding, our correct understanding must live, I'm sorry, lead to correct living.

And this is actually what the Psalms, the book of Psalms, opens up with.

The book of Psalms starts off, and he says that we need to be living correctly.

And it says, Blessed is the one who does not walk in the step of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners, or uh stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, who meditates it on it, his law day and night.

So the law, the scriptures, he meditates them on them day and night.

And what does that result in?

That person is like a plant, a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither.

Whatever they do prospers.

So it's not just about knowing Scripture, but when you know it and you put it into action, then it results in the right way of living.

And this is why Paul, over and over in this book, has been saying, Timothy, make sure you're in the word.

The word is useful, the word is great, the word is our cornerstone of our faith.

And actually in Psalms it contrasts it with this.

It says, Not so the wicked with the wicked.

They are like chaff that the wind blows away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.

See, if we want to succeed, if we want to finish the race in our faith, the best possible thing we can do is be full of his word.

We have to make sure that our focus is not on ourselves, but on God.

And the easiest, the best possible way to do that is making sure that we are in the word every day.

Would you guys pray with me?

God, we are living now in the difficult days that Paul was talking about.

We're in the midst of people being focused solely on themselves.

And the fact is that we were not immune to it, God.

We're not immune and it sneaks up on us.

Lord, where our footing has grown uncertain, please help us to put our feet on solid rock of your teaching and of your word.

Press your word that you breathed out into the empty, open spots in us, Lord, to where we can be full and know in our heart how good you are.

And not just know, but that that can lead to us succeeding in all that we put, that you put before us, Lord.

We pray this in your son's name.

Amen.