Difficult Times Will Come #4

So this morning is going to be our last sermon in the passage that we've been studying these past couple of weeks in 2 Timothy 3. So far in this section, we've been warned of the conflict that resides in churches. I pointed out that we expect there to be conflict between Christians and the world, but we're often unprepared to find conflict amongst Christians or within the church. And so Paul cautions Timothy and us. He says, hey, be on the watch out. Be on the lookout for this. This exists. This is real. and it's intense. And so this week we're going to be studying the last couple of verses, verses 8 and 9 of 2 Timothy chapter 3. And in these closing verses, Paul gives us hope that the men who are lying, the deceivers that reside within the church, will be exposed, that their lies will be exposed, and that we will be able to see them for what they are. The difficulty, as we will see in this passage, is that pointing out error and lies in the church

today, is not seen as a Christian thing to do. To say no to someone or to say you're wrong or to say that's not what the Bible says is not a popular thing to say today. And many of us, if we're honest, would say we prefer to stay away from those sorts of conflicts and we prefer to hold our faith in the things that we believe in private. But to what good end, I ask? None. Our faith is a public faith. The Bible is a public book. And so the things we believe, we ought not to be ashamed of believing. We ought to be committed to the Word of God in such a way that if it causes us relational difficulty or harm, if it causes tension, if it causes persecution even, we ought to hope and pray that God would give us strength to withstand those difficulties as they come to us, not give us clever reasons why we don't have to suffer, which is what our flesh would prefer.

And so this is the difficulty we're dealing with this morning. And if we're fair, pointing out error or a lie is actually very hard to do well. It's not enough to say, you're wrong, liar, heretic. To do it well is very difficult. It's very easy for us to tear one another down, to point our finger and to say, you're not a Christian. And in the process, to build ourselves up, as though we're the only ones who have it right. And there's a ditch on the other side. It's also easy to follow along with the crowd. Just go along to get along, keep our mouths shut, keep to ourselves, all in the hope that whatever difficulties arise will dissipate on their own and that we'll be left with the benefit of the peace without having the toil of the conflict. And so this morning, my hope is that we'll be able to see what to look for regarding conflict in the church. And more importantly, we'll be able to identify it

error, falsehood, lies, or as our passage describes it, folly. Our text this morning is 2 Timothy 3, verses 1-9. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? 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 Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose 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. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. So as I said, we're going to be focusing on verses 8 and 9. And I want to start with the phrase, these men also oppose the truth. This assumes something that ought to be true of the church and is worth noting for us today. And it's that the truth is to be taught and proclaimed.

Now, that may seem like, well, duh. But I would tell you, in my conversations as a pastor over the years, and people that have visited our church or you have told me where you've come from in other churches, they say, they didn't say anything about the Bible. We went and we sang and there was this, you know. these lights and this show and this other thing. There was this performance. But in terms of teaching the Bible, like what it actually says and explaining it to us, they didn't do that or they didn't do much of it. And when they did do it, they qualified away all of the tension. And you were left saying, what food have I been given from the word of God this morning? And so the truth must be proclaimed and taught in the church.

A church that doesn't teach the truth, the whole counsel of God, the things that are popular as well as the things that are controversial, will face less opposition in this world than the one that does proclaim the truth. Like us, you remember I said earlier, our faith is a public faith, but we would prefer to keep it quiet and to take that attack as a way to minimize the tension. Churches do the same thing. Not just individuals, but churches. Churches that agree with or at least keep quiet about their disagreements with the world will generally have an easier time growing and gathering people than a church that stands for the truth. It's very popular today. And I said at the beginning, pointing out errors and saying that's not true is not a popular thing today. And it's the most difficult to do with other Christians. If we could bring ourselves to tell an unbeliever, well, that's not what the Bible says.

we might have the benefit of them saying, well, I don't believe in the Bible. But what about when you talk to a Christian and you say, we both believe the Bible, but believe it teaches very different things. I said to a man recently, we were talking around this sort of topic, and I said, you know, what everyone likes to talk about, what Christians like to talk about these days and have for a while now is the inerrancy of Scripture. And I told him, that's a worthless conversation. It's not worth talking about the inerrancy of Scripture. What you should talk about is the authority of Scripture. What's it mean to believe in the inerrancy of Scripture? It means that you believe that the Bible is true, and that it is without error because it came to you from God's mouth. Men wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, is what the Bible says about itself. It is without error. And when people speak of the inerrancy of Scripture,

to support their position, what they're saying is, my position is right because the Bible is never wrong. But oftentimes, they're unwilling to be shown where their understanding or their practice is unbiblical. It's as if they hide behind the inerrancy of Scripture. And I say we should talk about the authority of Scripture because the authority of Scripture assumes the inerrancy of Scripture and then says, Not only is it true, but it has the ability to command things in your life, whether you agree with them or like them. It is the authority, the supreme authority. Your feelings or your relationships or your sufferings don't remove or change what God has said. Now that is not a happy thing or a popular thing nowadays.

Our feelings and our own view of things has become supreme. And so churches, like men and women of our day, have turned down the volume on the truth and refused to proclaim it as they should. And as a shepherd, it frustrates me. And the reason it frustrates me is the same reason it should frustrate you. When I look out, I, in some measure, look out and see what Jesus saw, which is sheep without a shepherd. People being devoured, being harmed, being lied to, being led to hell, to suffer eternally because no one will tell them the truth. And it makes me angry. And what I've found in my own life, and I hope you find in your life, is that you would rather have someone tell you the truth, even if it's a painful truth, than to lie to you and to comfort you in your error. When I came to faith, There was a time when I went to the pastor, one of the pastors of the church I was attending, and I asked him a question. And it was the sort of question that I already knew the answer to. Sometimes you have those questions, and you're not asking the question because you don't know the answer. You're asking the question because you need someone to give you strength to do what you know you should do, because you know it's going to be hard, and you might not get what you want as a result of it. And so I knew what needed to be done, and what needed to be done was confession of sin.

That's what I was asking him. Do I have to confess this sin? I've learned from it. I've repented of it. Do I have to confess it to the people that I've sinned against? Or is it enough for me to repent of it with the Lord alone? And he hemmed and he hawed and he went back and he went forth. And in the end, he said, well, if you really have learned the lesson and you really aren't going to do it again, I don't think you have to tell the people that you sinned against that you did this thing. And the reason he gave was because it might destroy the trust in your relationship. And it infuriated me because he was telling me that lying, leading my sins unconfessed to the people who had to suffer under the consequences of them was better than telling them the truth. This is what I did. He was no shepherd. And it made me angry.

that he cared more about my opinion of him or my relationships at the time than he did about the truth. And his counsel was in line with doing what's simplest and most comfortable and seems to cause the least amount of conflict. And it made me angry because he was not caring for my soul. I had sins I had to confess. Or every bit of the relationships that went on beyond that was going to be built on a lie that I was going to have to spend my life hiding and covering. Because why didn't you tell me sooner? So churches are to speak the truth and to recognize that as they do it, it will bring about opposition. Have you ever been in conversation with somebody and you go, well, if I say that, the conversation's kind of moseying along, and if I say that, it's just going to hit a brick wall and we're going to have a problem.

What Paul is saying is, in the church, as you proclaim the truth, you should expect those sorts of things to happen. And he gives Janus and Jambres as an example, which we'll come to in a minute. Before we get to them, I want to tell you that no church, not this church and not any other church, proclaims the truth perfectly. Me saying all of this about standing on the truth and proclaiming it is not some implicit plug for our great... strides toward perfection in this area. We're not perfect. But we do try to do this as a church, even as we fail in many ways. You ought to take note when you're considering churches and pastors and elders and those sorts of things. You ought to say, do they try to get at the truth? And are they willing to pay the costs associated with it and to face the difficulties?

of telling you the truth. And if they are, then they're good men. And if they're not, then they're bad men. If I stop telling you the truth or the elders of this church stop standing on the truth, even in our imperfect ways, if we start saying, no, no, no, we found a new way, you should leave this church. One of the elders just said, right. And I'm looking at the other two and they're going, yeah. We want your commitment to be to the truth. of the Word of God, even above your commitment to us. Or maybe another way to say it is, we want your commitment to us to be level with our commitment to the Word of God. And if you see us falling off, you ought to say something to us about it or ask us and say, hey, what's going on? Last week's sermon, Daniel came to me. I'm going to tell my response to his. He complimented me last week. He said, that was a difficult sermon and you did a good job. And thank you for saying hard things.

But what I think was that you thought I qualified what I said too much. And you were trying to talk yourself into how it must have been necessary for me to qualify the way I did. It was more than Daniel appreciated. I think if we were honest, Daniel would have said, I wish you wouldn't have qualified what you said so much. But I'm thankful. So he said to me, I'm thankful for what you said. It was hard, and I trust that you said what you needed to say. And what I heard was what I just told you. Now, I didn't tell Daniel that. I just said thank you for the compliment because I know Daniel well enough to know he didn't want to come and say, Dave, you pulled your punch. There have been times Daniel's come to me and said, Dave, you pulled your punch. And it's the sweetest thing. It's not comfortable. And at the time, I don't always enjoy it. But we're going to be people of the book and committed to the truth, recognizing that it's going to bring opposition. I could tell you stories of when Abram said that, when Dan said that, when other men have come and said, I think that you,

didn't say what you should have said. And I don't think it was because you were unaware of it, but I think you decided not to say something that you thought would be too costly. And so churches that proclaim the truth, even though they don't do it perfectly, are churches that you ought to be committed to. And you ought to encourage, as you talk to your friends and your family and your neighbors about churches, you ought to be encouraging them the same way. We need to be committed to the truth as it's expressed in the pages of Scripture. And where it creates conflict or tension, we don't run away from it. Even though we're scared and don't know what to do with it, we don't run away from it. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, you're the salt of the earth. And he goes on and talks about their responsibility, but at the end he asks a question. What good is salt that's lost its saltiness? And the same question is posed to us today with regard to our commitment to the truth. What good are we if we're not committed to the truth? What good is a church? How much will they help your soul if they're not committed to the truth?

if they won't face opposition for the sake of the truth and for your sakes. Jesus said of salt that's lost its saltiness, it's become worthless and is to be tossed out in the street to be trampled under the feet of men. It is of no benefit anymore to you. And so men, like Janice and Jambres, opposed the truth, the truth that Moses proclaimed. Now what truth did Moses proclaim? What was it that they were opposing? Some of you, most of you, if you're like me, you read Janice and Jambres and you go, who in the world are they? And maybe you have a Bible app and you search for Janice and Jambres and you think, well, let's go see where they're talked about in the Old Testament. And if you did that search, you know what you'd find? Nothing. Janice and Jambres are never mentioned anywhere else in Scripture except here. So who were they? I'll tell you who they were.

They were the magicians that Pharaoh put forward against Moses and Aaron as Moses came under the inspiration of God to say, let my people go out into the wilderness so that they can worship me. You remember, and they said, if you don't let us go, then what's going to happen? There'll be plagues, right? And what were those plagues supposed to communicate to Pharaoh and to all of the people, the Egyptians as well as the Israelites? It was meant to communicate the power of God, that their God was the true God. And so Pharaoh, in his hardness of heart and in his opposition to the people of Israel, in his fear, you remember Pharaoh was scared of the Israelites because they had had basically a peaceful slavery for most of their time in Egypt. But then they multiplied exceedingly. And Pharaoh said, this people, there's enough of them now that if they got of a mind to cause us trouble, there's enough of them that they probably could do it.

And so he put them into hard-forced labor and multiplied their work and made things difficult for them. And it's at that point that Moses is told by God, you guys need to get out of here. Well, Pharaoh's not willing for them to get out of there because all of his wealth and much of his kingdom is built on their backs. And so Moses comes and says, let my people go. And Pharaoh says, no. He says, well, if you don't do that, God's going to send a plague on you. And Pharaoh's answer initially was to gather together his sorcerers and his magicians, Janus and Jambres, together to demonstrate that they were able to do the same things that Moses and Aaron were able to do. The first instance of that was when Moses and Aaron came in and they said, the Lord God says you need to let us go out into the wilderness so that we can worship. And he says, no. And they take their staff, like as God told them, they throw their staff down on the ground and it turns into a snake.

What would you do if that happened? Oh, power, something's going on. What did his magicians do? The same thing. They threw their staffs down, and their staffs turned into snakes. And you know what happened to all these snakes? Moses' snake ate their snakes. But Pharaoh's left going, what power of God? My men can do the same thing that your men can do. So then they come back, and they say, if you don't let us go, we're going to turn this Nile River, into blood and all of the fish and all of the water and everywhere is going to turn into blood and everything's going to die and it's going to stink and it's going to be terrible. And Pharaoh said, nope. And his magicians were able to turn water into blood. So he didn't believe. And again, the same thing happened with frogs. These are the first three signs. They said, if you don't let us go, frogs are going to come up out of the water and they're going to

croak and rib it and eat everything, and it's going to be awful. Janice and Jambres were able to bring forth frogs. And so you realize the tension and the problem, the conflict. This is Janice and Jambres' opposition to the truth. God has said, let my people go, and Pharaoh has placed Janice and Jambres in place to say, no, we will not. And they, by their special arts, their magic, opposed Moses. So then it carries on to the next. plague, which was a plague of gnats. And in Exodus 8, 18 and 19, it says the magicians, which we presume from Jewish historical records that Paul and Timothy would have known who Janus and Jambres were. We don't have record of it these days, but we trust that when he said that, everybody knew who they were talking about. So there was an oral tradition of who, or a written tradition in Jewish history, of who these men were. That they were men of note, that they had a reputation, and their reputation was that of opposing

Moses, as the Exodus began. And so Moses and Aaron come and they say, let us go or there's going to be a plague of gnats. And it says here in verses 18 and 19, the magicians tried with their secret arts to bring forth gnats, but they could not. So there were gnats on man and beast and the magicians said to Pharaoh, this is the finger of God. But Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he did not listen to them as the Lord had said. And so there came a point where these men's opposition to Moses failed. They succumbed to the power of God, and they acknowledged it. They went to Pharaoh and they said, this is the finger of God. Now, have you ever wondered how they turned their staff into a snake, or water into blood, or how they made frogs appear? I wonder. And I think there's probably two explanations.

Two possible explanations. One is that there was some sort of demonic power in them, some sort of dark power. We know that demons do have power and are able to do things, accomplish things that are contrary to nature in opposition to God and rebellion against him. But I think more commonly, and probably what's going on here, is just that they were magicians. Is magic real? What is magic? It's just a sleight of hand. It's the art of deception. It's not real. If you were to go and watch a magic show or see someone do a card trick, and they say, here, pick out one of the cards, and you pick the card out, and they show you your card, and as they're talking to you, they say, put it back in here wherever you want, and they do their thing, and then they go, is this your card? And you go, that's my card. Is that magic? No, it's a trick. It's a trick.

The reason it seems magical to you is because you don't know the trick. Now I want to ask you, do you like tricks? I think we all like tricks. We all like to be amused in this way and say, how do you do that? How do you do that? And you start studying about it and say, do it again, do it again. And they do it again. And we're just amazed. And you say, tell me how you did it and what's the magician always say? They say no. Why do they say no? Because they're proprietary. Because if they show you their trick, then their value, their power, their power diminishes. Because they've shown you they don't really have any magic. They just have good tricks. The Bible doesn't record for us how these men made their staffs appear to be snakes. We trust that all of the things that Moses and Aaron did, they did by the power of God. That miraculously, their staff, turned into a living snake such that it could eat the other snakes. And we say, that's contrary to the laws of nature. That's not possible. And I say, that's right. That's why we call it a miracle. That's why it's a demonstration of the power of God. And these magicians, Janice and Jambres, were able to replicate the appearance, but without the power. And we know that because there came a point where their trickery ran out.

they couldn't make gnats appear. I don't know. Maybe they were able to make things this big appear because they had a way to make frogs come out of somewhere, but gnats were too small, or maybe it's because they fly, or I don't know, but they couldn't produce gnats. They didn't have a trick to produce gnats. And so their deception ran out. Their lying, their folly was exposed. I read this verse last week from Ephesians, and I'll read it again. Ephesians 4.14 says, As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.

by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. Now, how many of you have ever had someone explain to you how to do a card trick or a coin trick or something? Is it nearly as impressive to you once you know how they did it? Are you ever able to watch the trick and be fooled again? No. It's lost all of its interest. It's lost all of its appeal. Now you just are like, it's just a deception. And maybe it's an entertaining one, but it's just a deception. It's lost all its power over you. Because you've seen it for what it is. That's what happened to Janice and Jambres. And that's why they said, this is the finger of God. But they opposed Moses. They opposed the truth with lies and with deception. Their goal was to disprove Moses by showing that his power wasn't from God. And as I said, that's why they said, when they couldn't replicate the gnat, this is the finger of God. They were able to recognize, there's no trick here.

They did something that's not possible, and that's because deceivers know that their tricks aren't real. Somewhere in their heads, they know that their tricks aren't real. Their job is to fool you into thinking that they are. But once we know the trick, once we see the sleight of hand, we go, ah, it's no longer interesting, it's no longer cruel, it's no longer powerful. And so God uses Janus and Jambres and says that just like their... their wickedness, their deception would be exposed. He says, in the church, Timothy, when there are men who rise up and men who oppose the truth and men who seem to have the anointing of God and the power of God, in time, their folly and their deception will be exposed just like Janice and Jambres. Now that's meant to be a comfort. Could you imagine being Moses and Aaron?

Moses, we know, already wasn't the kind of guy that put himself forward as being out in the front of the pack. He wasn't like, yeah, I'll go do it. He made God angry at his opposition. He was like, no, no, no, don't send me. And now, Moses, go talk to Pharaoh. We'll give you Aaron. So Moses and Aaron go in there and they do this thing. And then God allows, for a time, these deceivers to do the same thing. And then Moses and Aaron have to go back. What's the difference? Go back again and tell him this other terrible thing. Same thing again, and a third time. It would have been very difficult to be Moses. Do you not think that Moses would have wondered, where is the power here, Lord? What exactly is going on? Because you're doing miracles through us, but these men are also doing what appear to be the same thing. It would have been very difficult for Moses. And it's difficult for us to sort out the truth from the falsehood, the deception from the reality.

Paul also describes these men, Janice and Jambres, men in the church who are deceivers, as men of depraved mind. I don't know if you've ever had experience in your life where you've worked to maintain a lie. You lied, and then you realized, I have to maintain this. I have to keep up the facade. I have to continue down this path. It wasn't just an inconsequential lie. It was the sort of lie that's going to resurface at times. I'm committed to perpetuating it. What ends up happening to the person who perpetuates lies? How do they regard their lie? Over time, they begin to believe their own lies. They begin to think it's true. And that's what it means to be men of depraved mind. Men who, in their opposition to God's truth, those who've persisted in it so long and so thoroughly that they've become to believe their lies.

And in Romans, God says, for this reason, God gives them over, because they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. He gives them over to this deception, this self-deception. And they move from deceiving others to deceiving themselves and believing lies themselves, where in the beginning they knew it was just a trick. They may have had a more tender conscience, but over time, they become hardened and brazen, men of depraved mind, taking pride in their ability to deceive. There's no such thing as a Christian deceiver or liar. All of us have sins that we struggle with, if we're honest. And you could probably name two or three of them that are particularly difficult for you. But you don't identify yourself by them. You don't say, I'm a liar. I'm an adulterer. I'm a proud Christian. You recognize that these things...

are not what you want to become, the markers of your character. You fight against them. But there are those in the church who cling to a form of godliness but deny its power in such a way that they call themselves Christians, but really they're deceivers. They're liars. They're enemies of God and his people. And these men exist in the church, and these are the ones Paul warns that we keep away from. Now there's a strange thing that goes on in this passage. It says that these men, will make progress, that they do gain an understanding, that they do gain traction for a time. They will gain a hearing. But then at some point, they will make no further progress. Now, there are lots of things that we could describe or say. Here's an example of it. I'll give you one in just a second. But I want you to know that these men are good salesmen. They have a good spiel. The things they have to say are attractive in some sense or even believable. The example I'll give you.

of one that I think has had its heyday, rose up in the church, had its heyday, and now is more clearly able to be seen for what it is. It's the seeker-sensitive movement, as an example. I came to faith 2006, 2005, no, 2004. Sorry, I'm working backwards. That was a real popular thing at the time. I was up in Chicagoland. It was where Bill Hybels was at, Willow Creek Church, and you had Rick Warren out in... at Saddleback out in California, and you have these, like, this is the rise of the seeker-sensitive movement. And what was underneath that whole movement was, how do we get unbelievers to come into church? They asked the question. It's a business question. How do we get new customers? So they asked the question, how do we get it? And so to get their answers, what they did is they went to unbelievers and they said, what will it take to get you to come to church? And the unbelievers, in a nutshell, the sum of what they said was, well, it needs to not be like church.

That's what it needs to be. And that was the rise of smoke machines, strobe lights, CCM sort of Christian music, very emotive sort of experiential church services. It was meant to come in. And instead of coming to worship God, you came to experience God. Instead of coming to faith, you came into a relationship. Those have very different connotations or expectations for what is expected of you. I come into a relationship as I am. If I'm coming to faith, it means I've got to change. And so these men, they went out and they said, we're going to get the unbelievers. We're going to run the Great Commission on Jet Fuel here, and we're going to get people in the church. And so they created a whole system that got unbelievers to come to church. All they had to do...

was make it not like church, make it more like a concert, and take away the truth. And so I came to faith in a church like that, attending a church like that up in Chicago. This is the place where I was told, no, you don't have to confess your sins. And so the seeker-sensitive movement grew and grew and grew by leaps and bounds. Mega churches abound. This becomes the new model for how churches are supposed to... be. This is how you grow. You build a church by building all of these experiences and all of this apparatus. And the people, the unbelievers, they'll come. Well, they will come to church, but they don't come to Jesus. Many of them don't. It's very much a revolving door. They come in, they go out. There's nothing that gets a hold of them. And so then the seeker-sensitive movement realized, well, we're not having trouble gathering people, we're having trouble retaining people.

and discipling them. And so then the marketing became, well, we bring people in, that's our job, that's our place, that's our role, but then they're going to go into smaller churches that have more of an emphasis on discipleship. So we're going to become the aggregator. We're going to grab all the people. And then they're going to go into smaller churches, which actually is what happens to me. And many people that I talk to say that they have trouble with being discipled, being known, having accountability, growing in godliness in really big churches. Because it's just hard to be known, and it's easy to just come and go as you please. And so then they said, well, you can go into little churches and they'll get discipled. But then they realized that the people weren't going into little churches. They were just going back to their former lives with some assurance that they and God were fine. And so what does the seeker-sensitive movement become today? Does it still have the vitality that it had 15 years ago? No.

Is it still around? Oh, yes. Are there still churches being planted under that sort of a model with that sort of philosophy of ministry? Oh, absolutely. But I think Christians now, for a time, were enamored with this. But I think many of them who had their feet somewhere in the Bible realized, this isn't right. Something's wrong. And they went, this isn't where we belong. And they went to churches, they went to their grandmother's church, or they went back to their grandmother's church. you know, a place where they taught the Bible. And that's what Paul's getting at. This is an example of Paul getting at the fact that these deceivers will make no further progress, that their folly will become evident to all in time. And when he says evident to all, he doesn't mean that every single person, like that the movement, that these deceivers will lose all of their influence and all of their sway, but that God's people, those who are students of the word, those who have been taught well and who submitted themselves to the scripture, will realize in time, even if

Even if they should realize it sooner, in time they will realize, this is not the truth. This is not right. And they'll remove themselves from it. So the seeker-sensitive movement is a movement of the past, largely. It's still around, and it's still trying to figure itself out, but it's having to pull in other things to try to make themselves relevant. What are they pulling in? When I was at that church 15 years ago, 20 years, whatever it was, There was a scandal in the church, and you know what the scandal was? They had their first woman preach. Up to that point, they'd never had a woman preach. They'd had them do other things in the worship service, but they didn't preach. But then, through a scheduling problem and sickness, one of the pastor's wives filled in and preached. And all of the older people in the church went, what? That's not what the Bible's supposed to do. And then the conflict was joined.

Because you had the young people who were like, women should be preaching. That's what feminism would teach us. This is not right that it should be just men. And so the church said, they tried it, not at the main campus, of course, at one of the smaller, but the news spread like wildfire. I wasn't there. But boy, I'll tell you, everybody was talking about it the next week. Such and such's wife preached. They were trying to be relevant, and they were still trying to pull in people, the world, with the world's bait. And church is still doing it today. What are they pulling in today? Critical race theory. Yes, thank you, Tim. Critical race theory. Churches are trying to be relevant by talking about systemic racism. And I'm here to tell you, it hasn't run its course yet, but it won't last. It won't last. There will be people who get sucked away into it, but God will preserve his church. And there will come a time where he says, no more of that.

There was a time when there was a real popular guy in evangelical circles called Rob Bell. Where's he now? On Oprah. He's outside the faith. Man of depraved mind rejected with regard to the faith. And nobody looks to him as a Christian leader anymore. Anyone who follows him has followed him out of the faith. And whatever they believe about what he says or has said in the past is not because they think the Bible teaches it. Now, are you content for God to work in that way? to preserve his church through conflict over a long period of time while some of the people that you know and love fall for the deception and as a result are swept away. That's hard. That's hard. So if things like the Seeker Sensitive Movement will be exposed for what they are, will become obvious to all, and will make no further progress, how should we respond?

to those things. How should the Church of Jesus Christ respond to the pressures of feminism? How should the Church of Jesus Christ respond to systemic racism or intersectionality or critical race theory? If she knows that the center won't hold, it's going to come apart at some point. It will only produce conflict and factions and division. It cannot stay together. It's like trying to put two positive magnets together. It cannot work. What should we do? Huh? Purge the leaven. Yes. That reality should give us strength to fight against those things. It should not cause us to withdraw and go, ah, we don't worry about that stuff. That's no big deal. Because you remember how I said earlier, my concern with men who won't proclaim the truth is that the sheep are the ones that suffer. The people are the ones who are harmed. And that's why you fight.

That's why you proclaim the truth. That's why you have relationships that end up broken. Because you love the sheep. Have you not had someone in your life say something that was hard to you? Offensive even. But in time you realized the reason they said it was first because they loved God and second because they loved you. Even if what they said to you hurt. I have. And I thank God for the men and women who've loved him enough and me. enough to say those things. Tell me the truth. That's what we ought to want. Men who are willing to fight and endure our scorn, our disapproval, in time, the error in the church. Whatever it is, we'll be exposed. God, through all of the hardships that his people have endured for the last 2,000 years, he has preserved his truth and a remnant of people for himself.

Sometimes there was more, and sometimes there was less. But however much it seems that the foundations are being shaken, and it's all really going to fall apart this time, the folly will become obvious in time. And our part is to oppose it in the meantime, to help expose it. You remember in Ephesians, Paul says, do not participate in the evil deeds of darkness, but rather even expose them. This is our work. And why expose? Because it's loving, and it helps the trouble to come to light. And I've got to be finishing up. And so two quick applications. First, if you're a Christian, you trust God in the midst of conflict. You have to. You have to. You have to be willing to enter into the conflict and you say, well, where's no hope? If I say that, then the relationship's going to be broken and it's just going to be miserable forever. First, I hope that's not true. But the only reason I have hope that that will not always be true is because I trust that God can and is.

can be and is merciful to people. And the things do change in time and relationships, even if they go through rough patches. And so you have to think not what is the short-term most comfortable thing, but what is going to produce long-term the most godliness. And do that. Trust God in the midst of the difficulty. Just like he exposed Janice and Jambres in time and protected his people, he'll do the same now and today. The second thing is, when I think of Janice and Jambres, I think there is a danger to me, and you should think the same thing. Not that there's a danger to Pastor Dave, but that there's a danger to me, you should think. Could you think of something worse than fitting the description here that all of your sins and your opposition to the truth will be made obvious? That all of your wickedness and your corruptions, past and present, will have a bright light shone on them so that everybody can see?

That's the most terrifying thing. That's like the dream where you wake up and you're giving a speech in front of your high school class and you forgot to get dressed. It's the most mortifying thought in the world, but your sins, having them exposed, you can do a few things with that tension. You can redefine sin as though you don't actually commit that much sin, or you can realize that you do commit quite a bit of sin. And what you need is God to help you keep watch over your heart. very strong temptation to hide, to run around, and to live like a hypocrite, all in an effort to keep your sins hidden, keeping them from being exposed. But at what cost do we do that? Who among us wants at the end of our lives, or before, to fit the description of a man of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith? Having begun well, he didn't finish.

That's the end of those who hide their sins. That's the end of those who won't repent of their sins and confess them and go through the pain associated with it. I can tell you from my own life on more than one occasion, confessing sins is painful. And it's hard. Because to confess your sins is to relinquish control of the situation that you think you have. You think, as long as I keep doing this stuff, I've at least got control of it. And that is a lie. But you at least think it, that you have some control. When you say, here's what happened, you now place the control in God's hands ultimately, but in front of other people. And in my life, those have been the times when God has been most merciful to me, even though it's hard, even though there's pain. And so if you want to know how to not become like Janice and Jambres, confess your sins and look to Christ for forgiveness.

Confess your sins to your pastor and your elders. Confess your sins to your spouse or whoever you sinned against, or your kids or your parents or your co-workers or whoever it is. And don't sugarcoat it. Just tell them the truth. This is what I did, and this is why I did it. And from the beginning to the end, it was wicked. There's no redeeming silver lining to be found in there. That was sin. Will you please forgive me? That's the way to keep from becoming men like Janice and Chambers. Confess your sins. Keep short accounts. Trust God and join yourself to other believers, to a church that will help you in this work. Not one of us is strong enough to do this on our own, to bear our own sins and keep ourselves accountable to not commit them further again in the future. We just aren't that strong. I'm not that strong. And I don't think you are either. And so we need one another. Let's pray.