Okay we are live and welcome back to the program. Sorry I've been gone for a little bit but it's nice to be back and I had to run off to Cincinnati and then there was Thanksgiving last week and I was on vacation and so thank you all for being here all four of you whoever you are and today There's some emails and things I need to get to eventually here, which I really will try eventually, but things have been terribly busy lately here at church and with life in general, so I haven't had a chance to really get caught up on some of that email. There's always other stuff going on that I've got to get to. So, okay, yes, the world has gone mad indeed. Paul says Paul Garvey, not Harvey, not Paul Harvey from the rest of the story, but Paul Garvey from Across the Pond over there. But today I wanted to, hey, there's Brian Thomas. Good to see you on the little chat room over there. Today I wanted to take a look at a passage of scripture that I actually read last night to my family. I've been reading a book that was recently published by Answers in Genesis called The Ten Minute Bible or something like that. Really good, really well made book. It's an excellent overview of biblical history and just kind of helping people get a feel for the Bible and just try to go through things like that, especially with the kids so they'll have a good understanding of scripture and things like that. So I've been reading that, but last night, as the family was coming into the living room, I was sitting on the floor. We have a big L-shaped wraparound couch. It's a giant couch. Everything we buy has to be the biggest thing. It's like we go to the store, what's the biggest refrigerator you have? What is the biggest thing we can buy? Because I have a lot of kids. So anyway, I was sitting there on the floor, and the kids are kind of behind me. I'm going to put my arms up on the couch. And I thought this chapter, you know, 2 Timothy chapter 3, I think would be a good chapter. I had read it in my devotions that day, and I thought, let's just walk through this passage together. And as I walked through it with them, was asking them some questions, it hit me, this is a really important, very timely passage of God's word. So I wanted to walk through it here. So if you have a Bible and you're not driving or something like that You might want to open your Bible to 2nd Timothy chapter 3 and we'll begin at verse 1 I just wanted to walk for a few verses and get through you know as many of these as I can and I'm gonna pull up the Greek here on my screen. I still haven't figured out how to live stream the Bible works I don't understand why my camera cannot pull up That when it's in this live setting but it can't but I've got the New American Standard here in front of me my Bible and one of my Bibles that I read from. This is actually a really cool Bible. I got this from evangelicalbible.com. It's one of the Schuyler Bibles, and it's got the Reformed Confessions in the back. They don't have scripture proofs or footnotes or anything, but it's nice to have all those confessions and the Canons of Dort and the Heidelberg Catechism, the larger catechism, Westminster Standards are back there, so it's a really nice Bible, and it's a New American Standard. I'm a Bible, I love the Bible, I love Bibles, I just love having lots of Bibles, and I have Bibles everywhere in my house. So, anyway, 2 Timothy 3, verse 1, and let's walk through the word of God here together, and think about the fact that Christians in every century from the time Paul wrote this have looked at this, and there's a sense in which, really, this applies to every generation. That's will ever live until the Lord comes back Paul says but realize this that in the last days Difficult times will come and the New King James says perilous perilous times will come and That's an important thing to know In the last days, perilous times will come. Some might argue, depending on your eschatology, that he's talking about the last days of the Old Covenant before we get past the destruction of Jerusalem. That might be the case. I wouldn't bet my bottom dollar on it, but that might be what he's talking about. But I think in general, there's application here to no matter where you live in church history. And here's why difficult times are gonna come. Here's why perilous times, the New King James translates that term, what's that verb, the term there? Yeah, kailapas, kailapas is a term that only occurs in one other place. Wow, violent. Talking about the Gadarene demoniacs in Matthew 8, 28. They were so extremely violent. That term violent is kalapos and the other usages in 2 Timothy 3, 1. So violent times will come. Difficult times. Perilous times. In fact, I'm gonna look that up in a BDAG here real quick. Kallipos means pertaining to being troublesome, hard, difficult. And that's 2 Timothy 3.1, and then it also describes the term kallipos means hard to deal with, violent, or dangerous. In Matthew 8.28, talking about the Gadarene demoniac. Wow, so violent times, difficult days will come, and here's why. For men will be lovers of self. What a terrible description. Men will be lovers of themselves. And you know, in Romans 1 or another place, where is that in scripture where it says lovers of self rather than lovers of God? Let me see. Let me make sure I find that here. Lovers of God. Lovers of God. It's in this very passage, verse 4, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, right? So men will love themselves. What does that mean? We're supposed to have a love for ourselves in the sense that we preserve, you know, our own life and we try to take care of ourselves and we're not supposed to hate ourselves. We hate our sin and we hate the things we do, but we're not supposed to hate ourselves and, you know, in a malicious sense. But what's being talked about here in 2 Timothy 3, 2, men will be lovers of self. Lovers of money, it says. Lovers of money. Boastful. Okay? Boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving. Man. So let's think about each one of these. Lovers of self. Man was created to love God and love neighbor, okay? And obviously we're to take care of ourselves. There's a love that we're supposed to have for ourselves. But agape, when scripture speaks of the agape love, or the, it's also the term phileo is used as well. It's talking about a self-giving love that puts something else before you. It's a self-giving, self-sacrificial love. When men are lovers of themselves, they're going to be more and more and more self-destructive because they don't care about anyone else. If our first love is ourselves, then all these other sins are going to follow. Lovers of money. Lovers of money. Why do people love money? Well, they can spend it on their pleasures and do whatever they want, buy things that can feed their sinful lusts and desires. Boastful. There's the term boastful, arrogant, haughty. Hupereithanas. Boastful, arrogant. Blasphemous. Revilers. People who speak evil of divine things. People who say things that are flagrantly wrong in the eyes of God, and praise what is evil rather than praising what is good, and that sort of thing. Blasphemers. Okay? Disobedience to parents. Boy, that's going to be one of the marks of the last days, and it's going to mark the age in which we have to fulfill the Great Commission, and that's going to be something we face. Yeah, disobedience to parents is a very serious sin. Children are told to obey their parents in the Lord. Obey your parents. Now, in general, we're supposed to obey our parents, even if we don't like what they say. Now, obviously, if they command you to sin, you're not supposed to obey them. But disobedience to parents will characterize the latter days. unthankful, unthankful. Actually, I'm preaching on that this coming Sunday, preaching on the 10 lepers that Jesus healed and only one of them returns to give thanks in gratitude, being ungrateful, being unthankful to God for the fact that He created us and that we don't have any rights, especially as sinners, and that we are obligated to love and obey Him always. The rebellion of man is an illustration of being unthankful. Because what could be more irrational and crazy than someone who has no independent existence whatsoever rebelling against the being that created them and designed them to find their joy and happiness in communion with them? What could be more crazy than that? Ungrateful. People will be unthankful. And, as a general term, unholy. Unholy. Unloving. Irreconcilable. Irreconcilable. You won't be able to get people to admit they've done anything wrong to be reconciled to one another. Malicious, the term diabolos, okay? Malicious, gossips, they'll be gossips. They'll be without self-control, okay? Slanderers is another word for malicious, slanderers, diabolos there. And then without self-control, of course, what is one of the fruits of the spirit? The last one listed in Galatians 5, 22 and 23. The last term listed there is self-control. Okay, it says Brian Thomas here. Only let my readers observe that Phil- Philoutia, self-love, which is put first, may be regarded as the source from which flow all the vices that follow afterwards. Yeah, yeah. Self-love rather than God-love. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. In fact, in Romans 1, one of the sins that's listed there is God-haters. It's kind of a catch-all phrase. If someone is a God-hater, they're going to love self. They'll love sin. Alright, without self-control, because that's one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, brutal. They will be brutal. That term, anemeros, savage. or brutal, and then despisers of good, haters of good. There are so many people out there who have unbelievers, that there's a Christian in their life, there's a Christian that they know, and they just hate them. If you're a believer in Christ, and you are a person of integrity, and you work hard at your job, you will have people that will just hate your guts for no good reason, for no reason other than that you do what is right, you do what is good. Despisers of good. Afelagathoi. Afelagathoi. Despisers of good. Haters of what is good. Some people just hate, hate because something's good. They'll see a family, that family is godly, and they'll just hate them. Just because they're godly. Not because they offended them in some way, they're just, they hate them because they're godly. Think of Cain. Why did Cain kill Abel? Because Abel's works were righteous? And his weren't, and Cain's weren't. That's what it says in 1 John 3, 10 and following. Why did he kill his brother? Because his works were righteous. What a strange reason. Someone did good. I hate them for that. You're gonna see that. You'll have people that despise you just because you're a Christian. And while you're trying to do good, they will despise you. If you try to lead them to Christ, they'll despise you for that. They are haters of good. And so if a Christian is trying to preach the gospel and trying to share the good news with people, which is good, there'll be people who despise good, hate good, and do everything they can to shut good down. They won't be successful, thankfully, but we have to watch out. It's one of the things that makes the times we live in dangerous and perilous at times. Okay, next one, treacherous. Treacherous, that term pradates. Let's see if that's used somewhere else here. That's unusual. It's only used three times. Yeah, Judas, who became a traitor, pradates. Yeah, in Stephen's sermon in Acts chapter 7, it's used there. They became the betrayers and murderers of the righteous one, of Christ, the betrayers, the pradates. So here, people will be treacherous, says the New American Standard, translates it as treacherous, traitor. I mean, isn't that terrible? You think of people who are known historically for being traitors. You know, Judas Iscariot, who was a traitor. He betrayed a trust. Benedict Arnold is the guy, you know, in American history is seen as a traitor, a guy that was treacherous against America. People that give away secrets and, you know, treason is a very serious sentence, you know, usually punishable by death. If you do something to expose our country to danger, you know, you can be put to death for that. But that's going to characterize the age. A lack of integrity. People will be treacherous. They will be traitors. They will break promises. They won't be trustworthy. And that's one of the things we got to watch out for. You want to be a trusting person. You want to think well of people. But if people give you good reasons not to trust them, then don't trust them because the age we live in is going to be marked by treachery, traitors, liars. Okay. The next term, um, reckless, reckless, um, propitates, propitates, rash, reckless, or thoughtless. Okay. That's another term. It's only used, um, Two times, Acts chapter 19, since these are undeniable facts, you ought to keep calm and to do nothing rashly. That's right, that's the response of the, who was the magistrate there? Excuse me. Yeah, when they, when they, the people, Alexander, Alexander. concluded it was Alexander, since the Jews had put him forward and having motioned his hand, Alexander was intending to make a defense to the assembly. That's when everybody's rioting and they're upset and they cry out, Great is Artemis of the Ephesians, or Great is Diana of the Ephesians is another way to translate the term Artemis. That actually was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Was the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. It was a humongous temple. It's also one of the only wonders that there's actually there's one column of it left standing there, but it was a Massive temple and they made a lot of money Selling little trinkets and junk and idols and things like that. So they were all upset Because they were saying that there are not gods that are made of stone and everything else so the magistrate comes out and says, um, don't do anything rashly. So people are going to be rash. They're going to be rash, meaning reckless. Don't do anything reckless. Have you ever noticed? I mean, sin causes people to do, to act like that, to be reckless, reckless with their souls, reckless with their life and be, to be too daring and stupid and things like that. You know, um, I can think of a lot of reckless things I did that I could have lost my life on before I was a believer. And people do reckless things and dangerous things unnecessarily. So we don't want to be like that. We don't want to be propitace, propitace, rash, reckless. But the latter days, the times we live in, Timothy, there's going to be a lot of reckless people. There's going to be traitors that will lie and betray you inside the church. There's going to be reckless people. And then the next term, conceited, puffed up. People will be conceited, they will be full of themselves. People will be arrogant and full of themselves. Next term, phileidonos, phileidonos, loving pleasure. Loving pleasure. okay, rather than loving God, rather, that term, malon, rather than loving God, philotheos, philotheos. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. In fact, I think Adonis, isn't there a Greek god named Adonis that's like the god of pleasure or something like that? Loving pleasure, philodonus, malon he philotheos. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Okay. Yeah, Julia Following points out, Diabolos is used three times in the New Testament in all three occurrences. It is translated malicious gossips in the New American Standard. Yeah, slanderer or devil. You know, Satan's called that, I believe. And the other, one of the other occurrences I think is in Titus 2, and it's talking about the conduct of women. Women should not be diabolos. They should not be slanderers, liars, that sort of thing. Okay. So, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. So, Timothy, watch out, man. There's going to be hard times, violent times, difficult days ahead because people are going to love themselves. It's always a dangerous thing. People are lovers of themselves. Watch out. There's going to be danger coming. There's gonna be lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, slanderers, 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. And here, this is one of the reasons that Paul is saying this, these are gonna be people in the church. Holding to a form of godliness. Having a form of godliness, but denying its power. Having a form of godliness, but denying its power. That reminds me of, like, Arminianism. And all forms of semi-Pelagianism. Having a form of godliness, looking like it, looking like you're godly, but denying its power. denying the power of God in salvation, denying that He's the one who saves and sanctifies and all that. And we're told from such people turn away, avoid such men as these. So when you see individuals that are conceited, when you see people who have a form of godliness but deny its power, when you see all this stuff, people are lovers of themselves, everything's about them, everything's about them gaining attention, or them and their gifts. And you see people disobedient to parents, scoffers, people that are revilers, liars, they're unholy, unloving, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, and you avoid that. You turn away. Timothy, don't fall into such company. Okay? Verse 6, For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women, weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, or led away by various lusts. Okay? These individuals captivate weak women. And they make them, they captivate them, and those women are already weighed down with sins, led on by various lusts, led away by various lusts, always learning, never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. And it's important that we recognize that that's right there in inspired scripture. People who are like this, who have a form of godliness, and yet they're governed by all this self-love and selfishness and everything else, They captivate weak women who are weighed down with sins, who are led away by various lusts, because they're easy to trick, they're easy to get to deceive. Always learning, never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. That's probably a reference to both the individuals that love themselves and those weak-willed women. Always learning, never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth. Okay, so really, you're gonna have opposition to the truth from inside the church? Yeah. Despite the best efforts of elders, people will slip through the cracks, people will be able to give the right answers, and they'll get in there and they'll start opposing the truth. Just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the truth. Men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith, meaning these are not believers. They're not true believers. And we know from the word of God, eventually people's sins will become evident. And look at what it says, verse nine, but they will not make further progress for their folly will be obvious to all. Their folly will be obvious to all. Just as Janice and Jambres folly was also. Now, what is that talking about? To the discerning, to the biblical Christians, to those that know and love the truth, they will eventually at times have to walk away from a church. Or walk away from their elders if their elders aren't discerning, if they allow false teaching to creep in, if they allow gross immorality to go unchecked and that sort of thing. because their folly will be obvious to all. You think of, okay, all the places where there's false teaching in what calls itself the Christian church, and you think about how obvious, to Christians, it's always obvious that it's false teaching. Okay, like Kenneth Copeland. and Benny Hinn and all the charismatic, the parade of charismatic charlatans that run around on TV throwing the Holy Spirit across stadiums to knock people down and all the healing crusades and all the other stuff and all the chicanery. You look at it, you know, with the poofy hairdos and eye makeup and all this crazy stuff and you think, That's so obviously wrong. It's so obviously loony. And yet they have these giant followings. They have these huge followings. And Paul brings that up in 2 Timothy 4. People who have itching ears, they will heap up, they will pile high teachers who will tell them what their itching ears want to hear. And you see, the thing is, the true Christian church, and true evangelists, and true ministers of Christ, you don't tell people what you think they want to hear, you tell them what they need to hear, and you tell them what God has put into your heart and in your mouth. I just started reading the prophet Jeremiah, and it's, I will put my words into your mouth. I will put my words into your mouth. I will teach you what you must say. And so the ambassadors for Christ, we have a message that belongs to someone else. The gospel is ours to preach, not to edit. It's ours to proclaim, not to soft-pedal or make a little less offensive in the law. The law of God is not ours to, well, we're not gonna address head-on the key cultural sins of our time, because that's just gonna tick everybody off, especially all the so-called conservatives that are compromising. We don't want to get them all upset at us, too. The Bible is ours to proclaim, not to edit. Okay. Um, okay, cool. Julia's got all the references to Diabolos right there. Okay. Yeah. Um, first Timothy, uh, three 11. Diabolos is not used of the devil and Matt and Matthew four. I thought it was, I thought, or what does four verse one, I wrote, I just want to see him to bother the devil. Oh, it is used there. Diabolo. Is it the same word? It is. So Diabolos is used, yeah, let's see. It's actually used quite a bit of the devil. Good grief, wow, there's a lot of them. Okay, anyway, the devil, the devil, the devil. Yeah, diabolos usually means devil. People will be devils, meaning slanderers. Oh, only a plural use. Okay, okay, yeah, devils. Okay, gotcha. All right, all right, just wanted to make sure. I was going to say, I thought that term was used in other places. Okay, so back to 2nd Timothy 3. Paul Garvey says, all 500 of our church walked out of the Church of England. We are now independent. Yeah. Yeah, so Paul, are you like, you're not one of these reformed Episcopal Church, you were actually in the mainline Church of England? I'm sure you'd have to walk out of that place, because it's a real liberal mess, isn't it? Anyway, all 500 walked out. So that's good. I mean, you have to do that. So when you see a form of godliness, so there's a good example, you know, all the vestments and the bells and smells and you've got the beautiful buildings and architecture and the pews and you can hear your footsteps echoing off the walls and the high ceilings and everything else. There's a form of godliness, but they deny its power. And Paul says, you got to turn away from that. You turn away from it. Okay. All right. And so people's folly will be evident to all. It's obvious. Kenneth Copeland, you know, for, For someone like Michael Brown to refer to that man as his brother, you think, what in the world? How could you possibly, how could you possibly call Kenneth Copeland your brother or Benny Hinn? These guys wouldn't know what the gospel was if it smacked him in the face like a two by four. Okay, so reformed Anglican, good, that's good. Okay, yeah, the plural is translated differently. Yeah, if we're liars, if we slander, yeah, we're acting like the devil. Their folly will be evident to all. When someone is like this, when someone is what is described here in 2 Timothy 3, it's going to be plain and obvious to Christian people. It'll be plain and obvious to them that these are individuals who are clearly not lovers of God. that these people don't know Christ and they don't walk with God. And that's why you turn away from them. And that's why, again and again, the church typically is not able to be reformed. Typically, the believers have to leave, just like with Rome, just like believers had to leave Second Temple Judaism that existed at the time of Christ. I mean, they just had no choice but to leave. The reformers had to leave the Roman Catholic religion behind. They tried to reform it and they couldn't. Because once the rot gets in there really deep, you have to have a continuing church. That's why we love the PCA. The PCA is not going to deal with the problems that it has. It is not going to discipline Greg Johnson and his ilk. It's just not going to do it. And they've already, you know, they've exonerated him of all charges. You know, I got, I saw some emails go out and some stuff that was written after the last General Assembly. Hey, the conservatives are winning and oh, it was a great assembly. We got all the overtures through that we wanted and someone forwarded me one of those. And I said, that is so naive. The fact is you have guys telling the whole world and you have since 2015. Telling the whole world that they're homosexuals and the courts of the church have done nothing and they're not gonna do anything and arch Presbytery I was the I was on that committee that studied revoice and pointed out all the errors and all the denials of God's Word and all of the false teaching and It fell on deaf ears. Nobody cares. Nobody cares and So we had to leave, we got out, and I'm so thankful to be part of Vanguard Presbytery. And I'm sure we're gonna have our own battles, and we're gonna have our own issues that will come up eventually, and we'll have to deal with that. And we need to make sure that we do that faithfully. Okay, so verse nine again of 2 Timothy 3, they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Janus and Jamboree's folly was also. Okay, now he goes into more positive exhortation here. Hopefully you guys can hear me now online here. My phone always picks up everything, so it's good. That's always kind of my backup, and I post it on Sermon Audio. So if the YouTube recording's messed up, you can just get it on our Sermon Audio feed. Go to iTunes and look up Birtle Heights Presbyterian Church, and you can subscribe to it. Our Sermon Audio feed is all the stuff that we do on YouTube is also put out on Sermon Audio. That is like an RSS feed you can subscribe to it in the podcast app and it'll it'll keep downloading it in fact if you want if you can like write a review of our churches podcast on sermon audio that helps some in some way that helps Get it more exposure if you like put some stars on it and put a review out there a written review on iTunes or whatever podcast thing you you use. But I was able to get it set up so that our sermon audio feed also feeds the podcast app. So it's also out there on podcast. So if you want to leave a review and like it and subscribe or whatever you need to do to do that, that'd be cool. Okay, so after he says, okay, you'll be able to recognize these people that are lovers of self pretty easily. Okay, their folly will be evident to all. Okay, Kenneth Copeland, you know, with his fleet of multi-million dollar jets and everything else that he does and all the chicanery, all the stuff, Benny Hinn and all the Creflo Dollar and Rick Joyner and Mike Bickle and all the rest of them. do will be obvious to everybody. And now he turns to Timothy and says, now here's what you need to do. So for the Christian people, here's what we need to do. I cannot emphasize how important this is. I just can't. Verse 10, now you followed my teaching. Okay, you followed my teaching, that term didaskalia. Didaskalia, you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra, what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me. So we are to follow The teaching, the conduct, the purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, sufferings, everything that happened to Paul, and you can read about it in the book of Acts at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra. You know, he got stoned, I think it was at Iconium, and was drug out of the city. You know, he stands back up, dusts himself off, and gets right back to it, you know. Man, the guy was determined. You know, he saw in those men that stoned him and drug him out of the city and left him for dead. He saw himself, because what did he used to do? The very thing that they did. I think that's why he had such a drive and was not going to be deterred from his mission. He saw himself in a lot of these sinful people that he witnessed to. And then verse 12. Here's a verse for the ages. Here's a verse that our kids need to know, that all of God's people in America need to know. Verse 12, 2 Timothy 3, verse 12. Let me pull it, I wanna make sure I get it here in Greek too. Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Will be persecuted. Dioko. And there it's diokthesontai. It's a future passive. They will be persecuted. You wanna live a godly life? You are gonna have people that despise you just because you're godly. Young women, you will have women who hate you just because you're modest in the way you dress. Like, you won't do anything to offend them, you won't actually hurt them or say anything about them, never did anything, never even had a bad thought about them, but they'll hate you just because you're modest. Just because you don't run in the same flood of dissipation and immorality and godlessness. Just because you stand for what's true and right and you don't go along with our cultural sins. You have people that despise you just for that reason. Here it's all-inclusive. Everyone, pontes, all, who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus, all that want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus, will be persecuted. future passive, they will be persecuted. Okay? So if you follow the teachings, and you follow the conduct that we're supposed to live by, and the patience, love, and perseverance, you're going to be hated by unbelievers. You will be. And sometimes they'll even be in your own house. Jesus said, son-in-law against father-in-law, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law, Three against five, five against two, you'll have division in your family, and there'll be problems like that. Be ready for it. Jesus said, if you love father or mother, if you love wife or daughter more than me, you're not worthy of me. If you're not willing to lose your friends, maybe even lose your family, Out of your commitment to biblical truth and righteousness, Jesus said, you can't be my disciple then. And so there's going to be some tough decisions that might have to be made in the near future. I hope it doesn't come to actual making Christianity illegal or making God's law illegal, but we've got to count that cost now. We need to think about that now while there's still freedom and peace and things like that here in our country. There's that light again, hitting me right in the face. Look at that, it's like, I'm gonna go blind. Okay, verse 13, here's another warning. Let me hide behind my lamp right here. There, that better. Oh, now it's over the lens. Okay, I don't wanna do that too. Okay, that's better. I'm gonna hide behind this. I have a little lamp over here that helps me read. Okay, but evil men, verse 13, evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. What's an imposter? He's an imposter. An imposter is someone who pretends to be something that they are not. Evil men and imposters, so people that are just outright evil, And people that pretend to be godly or pretend to know Christ, they're going to get worse and worse. They're going to get worse and worse. It says, deceiving and being deceived. You know, one of the reasons that false teachers are so successful is that they believe their false teachings. I mean, false teachers don't come up to people. Yeah, I have figured out the best way to deny the Christian faith and perish eternally. And I want everyone else to deny the Christian faith and perish eternally, too. They don't do that. They themselves are deceived. They would look at you and say, I believe the Bible, I believe Scripture. They say they believe it, and they're imposters, evil men and imposters. They'll proceed from bad to worse. They'll grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. And then he says to Timothy, verse 14, here's one of the more familiar, getting into familiar territory, if you're wondering, we're about to come up to a verse I've probably memorized, that's true. You, however, listen please. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of. What are the things that you have learned and become convinced of? The truth of the doctrines of scripture. that justification is by faith apart from works. As Paul says four times in one Bible verse, Galatians 2-16, knowing that a man is not justified by works of law, but through faith in Christ. Not by works of law, but through faith in Christ. And we seek to be justified by faith in Christ and so on and so forth. And it's by faith in Christ and not by works. Faith in Christ and not by works. That's the gospel. Continue in the things you have learned. Keep a copy of the Westminster Shorter Catechism in your car, and make sure you remember all those clean, clear biblical definitions. Read the Heidelberg Catechism regularly. Read the Heidelberg Catechism regularly. In fact, I want to read a question and answer. I was reading the Heidelberg Catechism, because I do that for devotions a lot, and it's just wonderful, and look at the scripture proofs and everything else. And it was so wonderful, this question and answer. I think it was question 60, Heidelberg Catechism, question 60. Yeah, listen to this. I gave this to my son, one of my sons. I said, read this please. How are you right with God? Question 60. Only by true faith in Jesus Christ, even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously sinned against all of God's commandments, and of never having kept any of them, and even though I am still inclined toward all evil, nevertheless, without my deserving it, out of sheer grace, God grants and credits to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ as if I had never sinned, nor been a sinner, as if I had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for me. All I need to do is accept the gift of God with a believing heart. That's something you need to be convinced of and continue in. Know those great doctrines of the faith. Know the gospel and be immovable in the gospel. Man, I cannot get away from this thing. Know the gospel and be immovable in the gospel. You, however, continue in the things you have learned. What is that? The gospel, the doctrines of scripture, the doctrines of the word of God, the precious solas of the Reformation. Sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura, sola Christus, sola Deo gloria. Okay, I'm going to fix this real quick. I can't get away from the light, it's killing me. Okay, there we go. That should do it. Okay, don't like to do that, don't like to get up from the screen, but all right, there, finally. Okay, you continue in the things that you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them. So the doctrines of the Bible, you continue in them, hold on to them, don't move away from them. When you hear theologians and speakers who sound bored with the truth, discard them. Theological innovation is never a good thing. Coming up with innovative, fresh new insights, supposedly, probably not going to happen very often 20 centuries after the coming of Christ. But the gospel is immovable and it's always the same. So continue in it. Continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of. And that, from childhood, you have known the Holy Scriptures. There it is. The, um, the Holy Scriptures. From childhood, you have known the Holy Scriptures. The He'era, uh, He'eras, Holy, uh, Gramma. Gramata. You have known, you have known, the Holy Scriptures. From childhood. And you know what the term that's used there is? Brephos. Brephos is the term that, uh, Elizabeth, John the Baptist's mother, uses the term brephos to describe John the Baptist in the womb. From being a baby, from an infant, from infancy, you have known the Holy Scriptures. In other words, it was taught to him his entire life. And I love, I love Timothy's story because who taught him the Bible? His mom and his grandma, Lois and Eunice. taught Timothy when he was a little boy, the Holy Scriptures. And why are those so important? Why are the Scriptures so important? Because they're able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. And Brian Thomas says, Calvin says, the most bitter persecution will come from these imposters. Here's a quotation. That's right. I remember preaching on that when I preached through Genesis and commentators point out, commentators point out that that really there is an ominous kind of threatening there, like Ishmael wanted to kill or hurt Isaac. Calvin's commentary on this passage here, I've read it before, and one of the things he says is Paul warned Timothy about these imposters. because it was important for Timothy and for all ministers of the gospel to be prepared to spend the balance of their lives in uninterrupted warfare for the truth. There will never be a time that we're not supposed to be in polemical mode. I had a friend that went to a Westminster seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and he got all upset at me because I was saying NT writes a false teacher, which he is, who preaches a false gospel. This guy criticized me. He said to me, you know, Patrick, you're always in polemical mode. You're always in polemical mode, wanting to refute this and refute that. And I said to him, if you're not prepared to be in polemical mode for the rest of your life, please don't go into the ministry. Please don't go into the ministry. Why? Because as we just saw in 2 Timothy 3 verse 4, we already have enough traitors. We have enough treacherous people who will not defend the truth. We don't need any more. So if you want to criticize me for being in defensive mode for the truth, guilty. Guilty. Why? Because the passage is like this. Calvin was exactly right. The minister of Christ, if he understands the nature of the day that he lives in, he's got to be prepared to spend the rest of his life, the balance of his days in this world in uninterrupted warfare for the truth. And so we better know the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. And now we get to the text that most people have memorized. Pasa grafe theopneustos, all scripture, every scripture, is God-breathed. And profitable for doctrine, or teaching, didascleion, for reproof, pros elegmon, elegmon, there for reproof, rebuking people, for correction, correction. You know, at times we need a course correction in our practice, in our theology. We need to be reformed according to the Word of God when we're shown that we're wrong about something. For training in righteousness, that term paideion is the what the same term is used in Ephesians 6 about how we were to raise our children in the paideion of God, in the ways of God, in the training and discipline of the Lord. And here the scriptures are profitable for doctrine-approved correction and for training in righteousness. And here's the thing, In order that we're able to stand against the false teachers of our time and all the headstrong, haughty, boastful, proud, lovers of self, lovers of money, the traitors, the reckless, the conceited, the lovers of pleasure, these false teachers, these evil men and impostors, We are to know the scriptures, know the scriptures so that the man of God, the Tu Theou Anthropos, the man of God would be equipped, thoroughly equipped for every good work. In order that the man of God would be complete, adequate, that term artios, artios, complete, sufficient for the task. Equipped for every good work. So, the Scriptures. And for Timothy, it was really just at that time it would be the Old Testament. The Old Testament, whatever revelation God had given to his people, that was sufficient for them at the time. But now, obviously, 2 Timothy 3.16 is not addressing the issue of the extent of the canon. It's addressing the nature of scripture. Whatever scripture was available was sufficient to build up the elect in the gospel and to give them hope and eternal life and to teach them how to live in this world. Now, we're blessed because we have all of it. We have all 27 books that were added to the Old Testament and the New Testament. So we've got it all. But the scriptures are able to make us equipped for every good work. So think about what that means. Think about how far-reaching that is. Every good work, pon ergon agathon. Okay, exer tisminas. We are equipped for every good work. Loving your wife, being submissive to your husband, teaching the Christian faith, loving other people, church government, discipline, raising children. Every doctrine of the faith is taught in Scripture. We know we're equipped to do that by the Word of God. The Word of God equips every man that knows it. It can't equip you if you don't know it. The Scriptures equip us for every good work. Everything that we're called to do, God teaches us in His Word. And shame on us. Shame on us for not being Bible readers. Shame on us for not being Bible readers. Ooh, a lot of stuff being said over here. The Lutheran Church, 100 yards behind my house, has a 50-foot-long pride flag out front with, All are welcome here. My goodness. Imagine Luther seeing this wokeness in churches bearing his name. Yeah, that would be a volcanic response. Says Cafe Queen. I'm so thankful we have found a good reformed church. It's a long drive, but so worth it. Such good preaching, doctrine, and fellowship. Who's Cafe Queen? Have you been on here before? That's the ELCA. I actually went to an ELCA church before I understood that there were liberal versions of these Reformation churches. And it was like, what? It was bizarre. And then I went to a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, and I asked them there, I asked one of the officers there, what's wrong with the ELCA? He told me ELCA stands for Eternally Condemned and Lost Church in America, or Eternally Lost Condemned Church of America. And that's when I learned about That's what I learned about the liberal mainline versions of all these denominations, which is a sad, sad thing. Okay, so that's 2 Timothy 3. We can go into chapter 4. Maybe we can go into chapter 4 next time. But if nobody has any questions, first time for you in the chat. Okay, well, welcome, Cafe Queen, whoever you are, welcome. It's good to have you here with us. Um, so if anyone's got any, um, like your sermons on seminary you you were well good I appreciate that and your encouragement and um, you're welcome. That's my pleasure. Sincerely. I have the privilege I mean I get to preach to such a great congregation here the congregation that loves the word of God and doesn't want to You know, they don't want to burn crosses in my yard for the things I preach, which is encouraging. That's really good because there there are some um There are some reform ministers that have a real tough time trying to teach sound doctrine, and their churches don't like them. And there's ministers that are without calls right now, that they don't have a church to preach to, because there aren't enough discerning Christians who want them to preach. So I'm really blessed with this church here. I don't use Accordance, I use BibleWorks. I've gotten really good at using BibleWorks. It's actually BibleWorks 8.0. I know they came out with 9 and 10.0, but BibleWorks 8.0 has so much functionality in it, I mean, that I don't even use, and it's so easy. I have all the PF keys set up. It's so easy to use, and it's a great thing. So, okay. Enjoying the Romans series? Good, good. Yeah, that took a long time. That took 79 sermons. to get through Romans. I know other ministers have taken much longer, but I wanted to get through the book in a reasonable amount of time. So about a year, a little over a year and a half to get through Romans. And I, man, I got to read Doug Moo's commentary, read Calvin, always try to read Matthew Henry. And Leon Morris' commentary on Romans was good. I think there was another one. Oh yeah, and Charles Hodge. Charles Hodge's commentary on Romans is really, really good. Charles Hodge's systematic theology stuff is excellent, but he was also a really good commentator. He wrote a commentary on Ephesians that I've read before. The one on Romans I went I worked through when I was doing the sermons and Charles Hodge was it was a brilliant man So was his son Archibald Alexander Hodge and they were they were really good theologians and good real good clear Theological writers, which is one of the things I really really appreciate that's what I look for is clarity The best kind of theology is understandable theology, which is why I don't read Neo-Orthodox. I don't read Karl Barth and people like that. Anyway, well, I love you all. Thank you so much for your kindness. I got a really nice email this past week from a lady that has been a listener for a while. It was a cup of cold water. It's a weary soul really was and I appreciate everyone's kindness And just thank you all so much. Thanks for being here I'll try to put up some kind of a notice if I'm not gonna be able to make it on Thursdays But I apologize for the last couple weeks. I got that call from my mother it's like I needed to get to Cincinnati to see my father and I He's not doing great, so please pray for dad. Dad is a very godly Christian man. He told me when I saw him in the hospital, he says, son, I'm getting concerned. It's about time to check out. And so I'm asking God to have a group of angels ready to receive me. So he's ready to go on to glory, but I still think he could live a number of years longer. I'm praying that he will, because I would really love for him to live longer. So love you all, blessings to you too, Cafe Queen, Brian, Paul, Jesse, Julia, and Paul Garvey, and forgive me if I'm leaving anyone out, I don't think I am. All right, we'll see y'all next time. Thanks for watching or listening. This is Pastor Patrick Hines of Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church, and you've been listening to the Pulpit Supplemental Podcast. You can find us on the web at www.bridwellheightspca.org. Our sermons are streamed through sermon audio, and you can listen to that on the iTunes podcast version of Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church. Feel free to join us any Sunday morning for worship at 11 a.m. sharp at 108 Ridwell Heights Road in Kingsport, Tennessee. And may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.