Difficult Times Will Come #2

Our gracious God and Heavenly Father, we do thank you for this season of Advent, this season of remembering that your Son, your dear Son, your only Son, your perfect Son, came into this world to save sinners, to redeem those who had, through their own actions and the actions of their fathers before them, died spiritually, had been cut off from your presence. and deserved only to await your judgment for their sins. Father, we thank you that you, even from the very beginning, from the beginning of Genesis, you promised to send us a Redeemer, a Savior, one that would crush the head of the serpent and who would be bruised on his head in our place. Father, this is great kindness and often not the sort of thing we find in ourselves.

We thank you for loving us, for bearing with us, for sending us your son and for giving us all that we need for life and godliness. We pray that you would help us each to love you more and to serve you better. There are many here this morning, Father, who are sick, who are in pain, who are suffering, who are struggling, who are discouraged and even depressed in the face of the sorrows that this life is full of. We pray, Father, that you would have mercy on each one of us, that you would meet with us where we're at, and that you would equip us to live lives of faith and walk in a manner worthy of our calling. When we sin, Father, please forgive us and help us to return to your sheepfold. We pray that you would give us soft and tender hearts, and that during this Advent season, you would help us to remember and to revel and to rejoice in your kindness to us, sending us your Son.

We pray for those who are expecting little ones. We thank you for the gift of children, not just the ones that are waiting to be born, but those who have been born, those who are growing and learning. We pray, Father, for all of our children, young and old, that you would have mercy on them and that you would help them to come to faith in your Son, that they would have a living and active faith, that they would have humble, teachable spirits, and that they would delight. and your kindness to sinners, your love for them. And I pray that they would be along with us as salt and light in the world, bearing your good news, the good news of the gospel to the nations. We pray that you would use us to build up your church, to bring peace and unity, to speak words of life to those who are perishing. Make us fruitful in your kingdom, Father. Bless us, we pray. Provide for our needs.

and glorify yourself in us and through the things that we say in the lives that we live. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So, each year when we have an Advent season coming up, I'm always wondering what I'm going to preach on, which might be a strange thing to you, but it often happens to me. I wonder, okay, am I going to preach on Advent, or am I going to continue through the book we're reading, or am I going to do some other thing? And for some pastors, I think it's probably easier for them to decide what they're going to preach on in Advent, but there are a few times of the year, Advent being right at the top of the list, that are very difficult for me to figure out what to preach on. And so, after mulling it over for weeks, and finally making a decision this past week, I decided that I'm going to continue to preach through 2 Timothy chapter 3, where we've been.

bearing in mind that we are in a season of remembering and anticipating our Lord's coming, thanking God for his first coming and anticipating his second coming. And so we're going to be continuing in our study of, as I said, 2 Timothy chapter 3. We focused the last time we were in this text on verse 1 of chapter 3. We read verses 1 through 9. Two weeks ago or three weeks, we focused on just the first verse where Paul warns Timothy that harder times were coming for the church. I mentioned in that sermon that we often think of the trouble that Christians face as coming from the world, but that actually this isn't the case. The greatest troubles that Christians face, that the church faces, arise from within her own walls, from within those who name the name of Christ. And this warning that Paul gives to Timothy was not unique to Timothy's time, but was always relevant.

So long as the church exists, Satan will be working to tear it down, even as God works to build it up. And so to be a part of a church is, in essence, to live in a war zone. We shouldn't be surprised when we see conflict in the church, but we also shouldn't revel in it. And so this morning we're going to be focusing on verses 2 through 5, and my hope is that as we study this passage, we will be able to examine our own hearts in light of this passage and see the ways in which we're tempted to be the sort of people Paul warns against, but not just that we'll examine our own temptations and end up saying, yes, yes, I'm a sinner just like that, but that God will be gracious to us in giving us strength to restrain ourselves and to serve him even in the midst of the war zone, to be faithful soldiers, good soldiers of Jesus Christ. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord from 2 Timothy chapter 3?

Verses 1 through 9. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. But realize this, that in the last days, difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal. haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power. Avoid such men as these, for among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women, weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Just as Janice and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Janice's and Jambres' folly was also. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. When thinking about this passage, I was talking with Timothy Deaton. And I jokingly said to him, I'm going to preach a sermon on each one of the sins that Paul mentions here. And we would be in this passage for months and months. And I was joking with him because it wasn't my intention to do that. And this morning, it's not my intention to go through each one of these sins.

explain to us how we fall into these sins. I think that as we read this list, if we can step over some of the language that may be a little archaic or passive voice or kind of not just plain as day to us, I think each one of us, down to the young children, could define for us and explain to us what those sins look like. I don't think that they're hard to understand. I don't think that we're wondering. I wonder what it means to be arrogant. I think each one of us knows well what it means to be arrogant or to be a malicious gossip or to be reckless or conceited on down through the list. And so what I want to do first is talk about this long list because the broader context of this passage is that Paul's warning against men in the church that are going to arise and who are going to cause trouble, who are going to try to lead astray the people of God.

They're going to try to steal the sheep and devour them. And so this is the broader context in which Paul speaks. And he's saying there's going to be difficult times that are going to come. There's going to be men whose lives are characterized by these sins. And there's this long list of them. There's not just two or three you need to look out for. It's as if all of our sins are listed here. Almost anything we could be tempted by could fall under one of these headings. And at the end of... Of verse 5, he says to avoid such men as these. And it can be a difficult passage. It's as if to avoid these men would mean to avoid everyone. You're treacherous and you're malicious gossip and you're selfish and you lack self-control. But in passing these sorts of judgments, which we do have to pass and I hope to explain as we go on, Paul's instruction here is not for us to withdraw from every kind of sinner that exists.

There actually are different types of sinners. Men view their sins in different ways. I said in our first sermon, I said that the difference between the sinners and the church, that the church is comprised of sinners. Some of them are redeemed. Some of them could be called by other names. The redeemed of the Lord, saints, and those sorts of things. And those would be true titles for them. But the difference between them and the men that Paul's warning against here is their repentance. or their lack thereof. And so when Paul goes through this list, I don't want you to read it and to just sort of have it wash over you like waves if you're standing on the seashore. If you've ever stood on the seashore, it's quite exhausting if there are waves, just to stand there. Because you constantly have these pressures on you, pulling you this way and pushing you that way, and pulling you again and pushing you again, and it's relentless. And it's exhausting. It wears you out to the point where just that simple push

pressure is enough to cause you to give up. And I think many times when Christians look at lists like this, our eyes sort of glaze over in a sense, because we look at them and we go, if we have some knowledge of ourselves, we go, that's me. There I am. Time after time after time, I've committed these sins. And to the tender conscience, they say, am I the sort of person that Paul's warning against here? Am I the one that should be avoided? But Paul's not speaking to those who have on occasion or at times committed these sins. When you become a Christian, you don't cease from your temptations or from your sins. There's not some category of temptation or sin that's removed from you. Oh, if I become a Christian, I won't struggle with that anymore. I said a few weeks ago.

That's a lie that many people believe. They think, if I become a Christian, I won't have these pangs of conscience and these difficulties and these bad consequences in my life because of my actions. To become a Christian is not to enter into a safe zone where there's no longer sinners or difficulty or hardship or consequences. The sins that Paul lists here are the ones that you and I all struggle with. And so Paul's intention isn't to say that if anyone finds these sin in themselves or in someone else, they should immediately avoid them. To do that, you'd have to go out of the world, Paul says in another place. And so what is Paul pointing at here? He's pointing to men whose lives are marked by these sins. When you look at them or when you think of them, you think, that man is arrogant. Have you ever met someone?

and thought, that is the most arrogant person I've ever met. Every word that came out of his mouth dripped with adoration of himself and condescension to everyone else. No matter what he was talking about, it was the defining feature of him. And so the question isn't whether you sin in these ways. The question is whether you're known by these sins. When people think of you, and they think of your reputation, And they think of, oh, I know what he's like. Are these the things they think of? That's the question. Do these things identify you? So let's take the first one as a case study. Do you love yourself? Anyone want to raise their hand and say, I don't love myself? Maybe our kids, who are very young and are entirely unaware of themselves. Maybe they would say, I don't love myself.

But any of us who have any ability to look in the mirror and see something of what's there, would we say, I don't love myself. That's not what I struggle with. Of course we love ourselves. Of course we face these temptations. But as I said, that's not the main point. I remember reading years ago an article that dealt with what the author called nuisance lust. It's a very helpful article. And he was talking about how men and married couples and how you ought to teach your children to deal with nuisance lust. And what he was talking about was the fact that we are surrounded every day, almost every minute of the day, with things to lust after. Whether that's strange flesh or whether that's our neighbor's belongings or whether that's money or whatever it is that makes your clock tick.

We are surrounded by things to lust after, to want, to say, I want, give me some. And the author's intention was not to say, oh, that doesn't matter. But it was his intention to say, this is the world we live in. Each one of us, every day, has to deal with our own temptations and our own weaknesses. And there's a difference between having to deal with a passing temptation And the sort of thing that Paul's talking about here, which is men who have, instead of fighting against those temptations, have instead cultivated them. And so many of the sins that we struggle with on a day-to-day basis, and I don't mean to discount your sins, and I don't mean to say that you shouldn't have a tender conscience when you sin, but I do mean to say that you are going to face these temptations every day of your life.

to sin in all kinds of ways as they're outlined in this list. And that's not meant to depress you and to turn you away from Jesus Christ. It's meant simply to be a statement of fact. We all struggle in these ways. We all tend to love ourselves. How will this affect me? Not all of that is bad, right? The Bible uses this idea of loving ourselves in two different ways. In fact, when Paul talks to husbands about loving their wives and how to do it, he says no man ever hated his own flesh, but loves and nourishes and cares for it. Take care of your wife in the same way. Now, is Paul talking about a sinful sort of love and accommodation for your own sin, accommodate your wife's sin in that same way? No. There's different Greek words here, you know.

He's not talking about our sinful desires. You know, you love to satisfy your own flesh and your own sinful desires. Make sure you do that for your wife, too, because that's the definition of being a good husband. That's not what Paul's arguing for in Ephesians, but he takes for granted in there. He takes something that's familiar to all of us, which is that we are aware of ourselves. We do want to see ourselves taken care of, and that reality is ever-present. That reality gets off the course and ends up in a sinful sort of loving of ourselves, a sinful sort of taking care of ourselves, where we say, no, I won't sacrifice what I want for the sake of someone else. No, I won't go without my desires being met because they're sinful. There's a way to love ourselves that Paul says, husbands, make sure you take care of your wives that same way. And there's a way of doing it that is sinful, that is wrong. And every one of us faces that temptation.

And yet there's a way of cultivating that sin to where it becomes the defining feature of our lives. Where whenever we see trouble on the horizon at home or at work or in the family, our first and only thought is, what does that mean for me? How will that affect me? And if it's going to affect me poorly, I will not do it. That's the sort of loving of yourself that we're tempted by. But Paul warns us here against men who don't fight that temptation. Haven't we all at some point or another been faced with a situation with our wives or with our children or with our coworkers or wherever we're at, our classmates, and we go, if I do that, I'm not going to get what I want. And then you wrestle back and forth and you say, well, here I am, wanting one thing, but believing I should do something else.

And I'm trying to justify and I'm trying to rationalize and work out and feel my way through this situation. Is there a way we can both have what we want? But when it becomes clear to us that no, either I'm going to get what I want or my wife's going to get what she wants or needs, that at that point we say, then my desire has to go unmet and I'm going to love my wife. I could multiply examples for you in my own life where I love myself, where I think of myself, where I'm not aware of the people around me. Or I'm aware of them, but I'm like, well, they'll understand. Or they can take care of it for themselves. Or it's not as important to me as what I want. And I think you can too. If we're honest, if you have children, aren't you always teaching them this?

Philippians 2 is always in my mind when I'm talking to my kids. Have this attitude in yourselves that was also in Christ Jesus, though he existed in the form of God, didn't regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a bond. You go on and on, and you get on to the end of the passage. And for this reason, God highly exalted him. And you're saying, but at the very beginning, did you catch what Paul said? He gives us this big, long example of how Jesus did this very thing. But at the very beginning, he says, have this attitude in yourselves that was also in Christ Jesus. Which was what?

To not regard your interests as more important than your neighbors. That's what it means to love yourself, is to say, I'm more important than you. And so Paul here warns us at the beginning of this list, in the last days difficult times will come and the first sin he gets, and I would say this is the foundational sin that all the other ones flow out of, men will be lovers of self. They will think of themselves, they will have given themselves over to believing that taking care of themselves and satisfying their own desires is what they should do. They lack self-critical capacity. They don't think they ever have sinful desires. Have you ever argued with someone, or maybe you've been the person guilty of it, that is never wrong? You're quick-witted? You're sharp?

You know just how to pivot and move in the situation to keep the other person you're arguing with off balance. You're smarter than them. You're quicker than them. You're louder than them. You're more intense than them. What's behind all that? What's behind all your arrogance and your pride and your lack of self-control? It's that you love yourself. Now we could go through each one of these sins and we could tease them out. But I think the point is made sufficiently. We all struggle with these sins. We struggle with loving ourselves. What is the primary way that people's love of themselves will be demonstrated? What do you think? I think it's the second sin, that they'll love money. Because money is how we get the things we want. And the men who love themselves will say, I need money to be able to get the pleasures and the comforts and the desires that I have met. Now, I'm not saying this whole list is sequential and that they build off of each other.

But when you see a man or a woman who loves money, you ought to think, I think they love themselves. And you wonder in the back of your head, you're like, am I allowed to say that? Can I think that about somebody? Can I really think that they're selfish and that they love themselves more than me? Well, would you think it of yourself? If you struggle with it, why would you presume that no one else does? And so the question here is not, do you struggle with loving yourself? Do you at times love money? Have you ever been boastful? or spoken and making an arrogant comment? Have you ever spoken ill of someone in authority? Have you ever disobeyed your parents? These are not the ultimatums. This is not the way Paul's arguing here. The question here is, do you cultivate these sorts of sins? And you say, far be it from me. I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do that. I'm a Christian. I wouldn't do that. And I'd say, well, Paul warns us that men who do cultivate these sorts of sins

will be in the church. So how do you know then if you're dealing with a normal sin or if you're cultivating a sin? It's a good question, isn't it? Well, clearly you do this and that and the other, and this is how you make sure. This is a heart question. What does your heart want? A few weeks ago, I talked about this. And when I was saying, what kind of man will you be? What kind of woman will you be? And I pointed to your heart and I said, the question is, Or this was last week when I was preaching in Romans where Paul says, wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death? The question is, what is your heart's desire? Even as you sin, do you hate it? Are you growing in your hatred of it? Are you growing in your love of God? What is the trajectory of your life? What are the inclinations of your heart? Which way are they running? And so that is where you start.

Trying to determine whether it's the normal sin that you're going to deal with each day or whether you're cultivating sins is you start with your heart's inclination toward it. But even with that, you can mislead yourself. This is really a gnarly mess if you think about it. It's really quite difficult. Because I'm not saying, follow your heart. It will never mislead you. If I was, I'd be lying to you because the Bible has something very different to say about your heart. Jeremiah says to us, the heart is more deceitful than all else and desperately sick. Who can understand it? It's as if he's asking, can we know ourselves? And the answer is no. Because the verse after that says, God weighs the heart. God searches us out. But that doesn't absolve our responsibility. We still have a responsibility to examine our own hearts and to see, is this really what I want? Is this really what I'm doing? Am I setting aside my wife and my children or my husband or my work responsibilities or whatever else is on my plate? Am I setting those things aside?

So that I can satisfy my own desires. That's the question. And what you'll find is it's never simply, yes, I am, all the time, or no, I'm not, never. We can't live our lives that way. I think so often when we ask questions, we want the question answered forever right now. I'll give you an example. Contraception. Young people, when they first get married, if you think kids are great, they have these really strong, bold, very defined edges about their views on contraception. And then they find out that some older couple, for reasons unknown to them, decided to use contraception, and they look down on them. And they think, we have a commitment. And it's an ironclad commitment that will never be affected by anything that happens. And they're fools. They're fools. And if God's merciful to them, as they go on, they realize that actually the answers to the difficult questions that we all have to answer in life are affected by the circumstances in which they're asked. I remember saying to a man one time about having children. He said, well, it's easy for you. And I laughed in his face. He's like, oh, yeah, it's easy for me to have a bunch of kids. It's just easy, I mean. Don't you wish you had it easy like me? No troubles, no difficulties, no hardships. The ease of Dave and Vanessa's life with 10 kids. It's just smooth water.

all simple and easy, never difficulties or hardships, never any cost. And I looked at him and I laughed at him and I said, do you think that we don't have to live by faith? Do you think it's any easier for us to live by faith than for you to live by faith? Well, of course, what he wanted was an answer that just, that spanned the course of time and never had to be asked again, never questioned, that never had to be asked again. And so this, like that, is a question that gets asked in a particular context. And so I'm not asking you, do you ever love yourself?

Have you ever loved money, remember? I'm saying, in the particular context, right here, right now, whenever you're confronted with it, do you love yourself then? What did you do? Did your actions at that point point in the direction of loving yourself, or did they point in the direction of loving God and your neighbor? At any given time, you may say, you know what, I was selfish. I did do what I wanted to do. And then I say, okay, take a step back. Is that normally how you respond? And if you answer at that point, You know what? Actually, it does appear that I do. Then what? Then what are we to do? Repent. We're to turn away from it. When we see that we're failing in some way like that, and it's abundantly clear to us, oh, you know what? I do have a habit of this sin. You can either cultivate it, which means you can either learn how to hide it, how to bury it, how to satisfy your desires in such a way that you convince yourself they don't affect other people.

or you can repent of it. But to hide your sin, to suppress it, to become more sophisticated in the way in which you satisfy your desires is not to repent of it. And it is to become the sort of man here that Paul warns against. Don't do that. It will not end well for you. Your sin will find you out. So you start with examination of your own heart, realizing that your heart is apt to mislead you. And so you examine it with caution and with suspicion. with as much suspicion as you have of other people and their motivations. If you can have that much suspicion of yourself as you do of other people and why they do the things they do, you'll have started in the right direction. But beyond that, we need some sort of check and balance to see if we're being misled, to see if we're seeing things clearly.

So what is that check and balance? Well, in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7, Jesus said, beware of the false prophets. Now you should hear the commonality between what Jesus says in Matthew and what Paul says here in 2 Timothy. Beware of the false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit but the bad tree bears bad fruit. And so you see that examining your heart to see if you struggle with these sins is somewhat subjective. But fruit? Fruit's not subjective. We can mislead for a time. We can fake it. But in time, our fruit will be evident. Whether you love your wife, whether you honor your husband, whether you train up your children and discipline them, whether you're a hard worker and do your job or not, it'll become evident in time. As much as you may have convinced yourself that that's not true. As an example, now there are exceptions to the rule, there always are, but go with me. If I meet a man and every two years he has a new job, that tells me an awful lot about what I want to know about that man and his work ethic. Unless he's just climbing the ladder like you wouldn't believe. I think this man, at the very least,

struggles with loving money, struggles with contentment, may be lazy, probably is not a very submissive man who doesn't like to be told what to do because he changes jobs every two years. What's the fruit of that? Well, compare it to a man who works and serves at the same place and through thick and thin for 20 or 30 years. What do you know about that man? Can we know anything about him? Sure you can. So if we can know good things, Can't we also know the bad things? A tree is known by its fruit. The things you do in your house will become evident. You know why? Because your kids will get older and they'll show us what you do at home. But they won't know that, they won't be as sophisticated as you are in the way that they hide it. And so here it is, your bad mouth for everyone to see. Your laziness, your selfishness, your pride, whatever it is, your youth group leaders are going to see it and they're going to go,

Well, his dad doesn't seem to be like that. And if he has any sense, he'll go, hey, dad, I noticed that little Billy has a sharp tongue. Any idea where he learned that? And a good parent will say, yep, I do. Thank you. Thank you for showing me my blind spot, my fruit. It's painful. I remember being a youth leader before we planted this church for four years. And having to go to officers and tell them that their kids shouldn't be dating the kids they were dating as 14- and 15-year-olds because they weren't Christians, that's hard. You go to an elder and say, you know, your child is dating a Catholic, like a devout, like their family's real Catholic. And that's not a good idea here. You don't think so? No, I don't. I really don't. Here I am, 23-whatever years old, talking to my elders.

He really needs to break up with her. And he did. And they were thankful. And it was hard. Good trees bear good fruit. And it's obvious that it's good. Bad trees bear bad fruit. And it's obvious that it's bad. So what are you producing? You know, trees that produce good fruit, good apple trees, are some of the ugliest trees you'll ever see. You ever gone to an orchard and actually, I mean, we look at them and we're sort of just taken over by the, there's apples there, you know. But you ever looked at what the tree looks like? They're the most hideous things you can imagine. They're unhealthy. These are not healthy trees. That's why they're producing so much seed. If you ever look around and you say, why are there so many whirlybirds or helicopters or wherever you came from and whatever you call them on my maple tree? Why are there so many this year? I can tell you. It's because there was a drought the year before. And the tree is stressed out. And trees will produce more fruit when they're stressed out.

That's how it is. I'm sorry, you can have the most beautiful pear tree in your backyard, but you will get more fruit off of that pear tree if you trim it to produce fruit, which means to cut the live tips off and force the growth back down and pluck the pretty blossoms off, half of them in the summer, so it produces more fruit. Stress it out. And here's the trick. Don't kill it. That's the whole trick. Don't kill it. Don't stress it out so much that it produces fruit, but not so much that it becomes susceptible to to insects and funguses and that kind of stuff. And it really is an art. So when you go to Beasley's or Anderson's or wherever you go to get your apples, you should know there's artists that work. They have to work their art on that canvas. Don't kill it, but don't let it get too comfortable because it has to produce apples. And that's how God is with us. The ones that bear good fruit are often the ones that are under stress, the ones that are under load, that have a burden on them.

The ones who are faced with loving themselves and the consequences of it and don't have the option to fool around with debating whether they should do this or shouldn't do that. Of necessity, they're required to love other people because they've organized and ordered their life in such a way that they don't have another choice. Many people in our society realize this and understand it, and I wish we understood it as well as they do. It's why they don't have children. they understand that the ordering principle of their life will change when they have children. And so they say, I'm not getting on that train. But those of you who have gotten on that train have had your life changed. And not for a moment, not like, oh, well, the pregnancy was hard. Oh, well, the baby, you know, first six months was hard. Forever. Those of you who have grandchildren, your life's changed by kids, and all they're growing up, and they become adults, and you don't stop worrying, and then they have grandkids, and you do it all over again. It changes your life.

Forever. It demands that you love somebody else other than yourself. That's what being a parent is. It's saying you will get out of bed when you don't want to. You will clean up things that make you want to throw up. That's what you will do. And you'll do it without throwing up, hopefully. It's how God disciplines our love of ourselves. Fills our life with people that we have to love instead of ourselves. We don't have time to think about loving ourselves. That's his kindness to us. Now, does it stress you out to have all these little kids running around, little I-needs and snot machines and everything else that they're doing? Is it like, ah! We all joke on Facebook, I can't even go to the bathroom. Good! I mean, it's not always enjoyable, but isn't it good for you? How much time would you waste if you could? How less productive would you be? You men, you've got to...

A bunch of kids to take care of. A bunch of people to provide for. Doesn't it mean, like, you better get your rear end out of bed. You better get to work and produce value because you need a raise. Isn't that good? Isn't that stressful? And isn't it good for you? Good trees bear good fruit. They respond to the stress by bearing good fruit. You cannot do both. You cannot love God and love yourself. Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6, Jesus says no one can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God in wealth. You say, well, he says wealth. He didn't say loving ourselves. And I say, Paul said wealth. He says the first thing you'll do if you love yourself is love money. So there is a type of man or woman, but mostly men in this passage because we're focused on the leaders of the church that ought to be avoided. We ought to be seeing what they love, what they're about.

Now here's the crazy thing. As I've talked about all of this, you might think, how could a Christian ever have this be true about them on the inside? How could they be this treacherous and this wicked and this deceitful and this sinful? And still, how could anyone think they're a Christian? But Paul tells us they will. They will hold to a form of godliness. And this is the hardest part of this passage. Everything Paul's laid out, and I've only taken one of the sins. Loving yourself. We could do it with all of them. It is very possible because of how wicked and corrupt we are to do everything I've said already regarding love ourselves and more and still look like Christians to the people who pass by. Still get into leadership and still get into places of regard and honor. That's what the Pharisees were. When Jesus went after the Pharisees, this is what he condemned them for.

They're hypocrisy. You love the greetings in the marketplace. You love the seats of honor at the table. You multiply your prayers. But inwardly, you're like whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones. You killed the prophets. And so what they appeared to be and what they were in reality were not the same thing. And this is still a temptation today. Now, I'm going to ask you a question. What's a bad guy look like? When you teach your kids, don't talk to strangers. Stay away from the bad guys. You're worried about predators and the like. What do you tell them they look like? Big, scary, stinky, mean. Is that what they look like? That's what your kids think they look like. Strangers are monsters. Is that really what they look like? No, they look like you and they look like me. Men are often not what they appear.

And this is especially true in our society that demands that we lie about ourselves. That each one of us lives under a constant pressure to lie about who we are. It's as if you tell the truth, you get run out of town on a rail. If you admit fault, you've committed the worst possible sin. You've shown your weakness and the wolves descend. And so of course we lie about our sins. Of course we cultivate them in the darkness. We have to keep up appearances. But this shouldn't be the case of Christians and especially not Christian leaders. Earlier I said that these sins have to be cultivated. Here's the thing about Christians and the way we think about sin. We think we can play with it and we can toy with it and we can set boundaries and say, I'm doing this and I know I probably shouldn't do this, but I won't go past here. You're wrong. You're wrong. And how many times will you have to

cross over that line and then the next one that you set and then the next one that you set before you realize you're lying to yourself and you want those lies to be true. You really do. As a Christian, you go, I want it to be true that I would really hate sin if it got to that point. But over time, we cultivate our sins if we're not careful to go far beyond what we could imagine. How many men sit in prison or live with consciences plagued who thought, I never thought I could do that? I never thought I would do that. But they did it. Why? Because they cultivated it. And they clung to a form of godliness all the while, and no one knew. I remember a story one time. I was not a part of this. Another pastor friend of mine was counseling with a couple. And there had been, previous to their marriage, the husband had been married and committed adultery, divorced, remarried, became a Christian. Beautiful family.

15 years married, teenage kids, 20 years married. Eventually, you find out that he had done it again to his new wife, and they ended up divorced because he wouldn't repent. And he comes to the pastor after it's all broken out, years after the fact. He's been committing adultery for years. Finally, it comes out, and he says, you should have known. When I was telling you that I was having, I was being tempted with thoughts of taking my own life and wanting to increase my life insurance and stuff, you should have known that I was in sin. And he laid this at the pastor's feet, like the pastor was supposed to have been able to understand that as I'm committing adultery. Pastors are not omniscient. They can only deal with what's said to them. And the pastor that was involved in this is no slouch.

He's not stupid. He has discernment. It's not like he was trying to not see what was there. But that man, on the inside, was full of dead men's bones. But to the appearance, anyone would have thought upright, upstanding Christian man for a time, until he was given over to it. So it is very possible to hold to a form of godliness, to give assent to what... to it by the things that we say, that holiness is good and believing Jesus is good and living lives of righteousness is what we should do. While at the very, right as those words come out of our mouth, by our actions, we deny its power and we say, yes, no, but not for me. Not for me. Because I can't have what I want and repent of it at the same time. And so since it takes time to cultivate sins, sometimes it also takes time to recognize them in other people as sins.

Now Paul's talking to Timothy and he doesn't tell us in this exact letter, these are the men I'm talking about. But if we were to go back to 1 Timothy and we were to go back to Acts, we would say, oh, we know who those guys are. Alexander and Hymenaeus. Those are the guys he's talking about. They would have known. They'd had years to work their wickedness until it was apparent to all. And sometimes it takes time to recognize what's really going on. After all, the people are trying to hide it from you. The Christian leaders, they're trying to keep it under wraps. They're trying to keep it below the radar. They're trying to make you believe a lie. It's kind of frustrating, isn't it? But as we watch and as we observe, we should be looking for good fruit and bad fruit. And one thing I'll tell you in this day is that gathering a following, that's not good fruit. That's the purpose of the wolf.

That's his intention, is to gain a hearing and to gather a following. That's why he's there. So don't go, well, everyone thinks he's orthodox and good. Of course he is. That's what he has to sound like. And the fact that he's better at saying it and marketing it and producing it is not an indication of good fruit. When Paul warned the Ephesian elders, he said, savage wolves will arise from among your own selves. seeking to draw the people, the sheep, the disciples away. That's their goal. Their goal is to steal you away. And so when you see everyone going to somebody, you ought to go, I'm not one of the lemmings going off the cliff. I'm just going to stand back a minute and I'm going to watch and see what becomes of it. And so you have to be on your guard. You have to have your eyes open. You have to realize that in the church there's difficulty. There's men who are not what they appear to be.

And that in time, it will become obvious. That is at the end of our passage, which we'll come to next week, or maybe the week after, it's what it says. But they will make no further progress because their folly will be obvious to all. In time, it will be. Okay? And so you have to be vigilant to this end your whole life. I think, remember earlier I said we always want answers that are like, I want to put you in the good category, I want to put you in the bad category. And once you get in the good category, then you're just, you're over, you made it.

And it's like you have to do something really terrible and awful and you have to own it and say, I did do it and it is what I wanted. And for us to be like, wait, you're not a good guy anymore? We have to be vigilant in the church for the deceivers and for the wolves and for the people who are leading God's children away. And it takes time. Sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes it only takes a few weeks or a few months. And sometimes it takes 10 or 20 years. But as you watch, And as you keep tabs and as you build a profile in your head and with other believers, it will become obvious and apparent what's going on. Paul says these men should be avoided. What does it mean to avoid them? Well, I listen to them because they have some helpful things to say, but I don't listen to that part over there. Now, I'll tell you, there are old dead men that I'm more comfortable with you doing that than with men that are alive.

There are guys I'd recommend to you that are, you know, I'd say you should read Augustine. He's great. If you want to know about knowledge of your own sin or his political writings and the city of God and his confessions, those are excellent. Do not read Augustine for sacraments. He's awful. He's what we would consider to be a heretic because they didn't understand that stuff at that time the way that we do now. So, you know. Chew the meat, spit the bones with those guys. G.K. Chesterton. Hated Protestants. Hated them. Lots of good things to say about men and women. Lots of good. Now, he's a fixed end. He can't change anymore. There he is and there's his body of work. And so I'm more comfortable with these. I'm going to read him with knowing what's good and what's bad. I could go through and we could name. Richard Baxter. Great on pastoral theology. Not good on a lot of other stuff. But that's the way it is with people.

But with people who are done and their work is over, I'm more comfortable with you saying, they're a fixed target and you can sort through that. You have everything they've ever said and they aren't saying anything else. You can get the good out and you can get rid of the bad. Guys that are still alive, you should not do the same thing with them. You should be way more careful because they're still a moving target. And it doesn't yet... it isn't yet clear where they're going to end up and what their commitments are going to be and whether they will finish well. So you mean I should like not listen to people who sometimes have good things to say? You are very bright. That's what I mean. That is exactly what I mean. But what about when they have helpful things to say? Be honest with me and tell me, was the helpful thing they said news to you? If it was, then come tell me I'm not doing my job. But if you knew it and you're like, oh, look, they're saying it too.

There's no benefit in that. Turn aside from them. Don't let pragmatism justify keeping an eye on them. Even if, in the end, you're going to end up in the same foxhole. Instead, join yourself to men who are bearing good fruit. Perfect fruit? No. If you go to the orchard, you will find bad apples on good trees. But you'll also find bad trees that just don't have any good fruit on them. So when I say good fruit, I don't mean perfect fruit. But join yourself to men who are bearing good fruit. Submit to them. Trust them. When you don't understand, be quiet and learn. There's an idea. Don't go find your echo chamber somewhere where they stroke your ego and scratch your ears. Instead, join yourself to men who are bearing good fruit. Submit to them. Trust them. Learn from them over years and years. Be influenced by them. Here's a crazy idea. Become like them. We're so easy to look at whoever it is and we go, well, I like this about him, but I don't like that about him. It's not how it works.

Guess what? I've been the pastor of this church for 11 years and some of you have had 11 years of me shaping your theology in the way that you think. And I think that's good. I hope you do too. My family has also grown here and has been a part of life amongst you for over a decade. And it's changed and shaped the way that we live. And I think that's good. Now, have you always appreciated everything I've had to say? Surely not. Have I always appreciated your influence? No. But I do love you. And you ought to love me too. And here's to many more years of us loving and serving God together. Okay? Let's pray.