Same Old Problems

Do I have any tick fans out there? You guys love ticks? No.

I'm shocked. Most people I meet like them. A couple of years ago I learned about the Lone Star tick. You guys heard about that one? That one doesn't give you Lyme disease. That one gives you something called Alpha-gal syndrome, which makes you allergic to red meat. It can even become toxic to you. So, yeah, pretty bad — pretty bad if you're a barbecue lover, or pretty much any American, you know.

It's weird to think about something like that — that a little tiny bug gives you a bite and that happens to you, right? Something that you once loved actually becomes toxic to you, and in some cases it can even be fatal.

The sermon that I'm going to be preaching this morning from Second Timothy chapter 4 is a warning about a spiritual condition that can work in the same way. People can develop an allergy, if you will, to something that is supposed to sustain them. What's really scary about it is that, in the same way a tick bite can affect you without you even realizing it — oftentimes the tick has gotten on you and burrowed in and you have no idea — this same allergy that Paul addresses in Second Timothy can also affect you without you even realizing it. The damage can be severe, and you've been unaware that anything was even happening.

Second Timothy chapter 4. Last week we looked at verses 1 and 2. I'm going to read the first four verses again, and this week we're going to look at verses 3 and 4. Paul says this: "I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths."

This is a warning. It's a warning against being spiritually relaxed. It's a warning for people like Timothy against relaxing their responsibility to be preachers of the word. And it's a warning against us becoming so relaxed in our present spiritual condition that we begin to reject and be repelled by something that is supposed to be valuable and even life-sustaining to us.

The warning begins with Paul assuring Timothy that the window of opportunity is closing — not closed, or closing altogether, but closing. He says in verse 3, "The time is coming." Truthfully, it was already there. Truthfully, it's been there ever since Adam and Eve. The reality that this time is coming — that this will happen — has always been present, because this is a universal reality that has existed since the fall, and the curse of sin has covered all of creation. A willingness to listen to and submit to the sound teaching of God is always under threat, and it is always something that sinful people are going to be disinclined toward.

The tragedy that Paul is warning Timothy about is that when people or groups of people who were previously willing to listen to the gospel and to sound teaching now find themselves — just like people bitten by the Lone Star tick — repelled by it, repulsed by it, even finding it toxic to them. They are opposed to it.

Let's go back and think about Adam and Eve. The first two people, right? They're living in the Garden of Eden — perfect paradise, perfect peace, perfect harmony. They had literally everything they could possibly want or need in that environment. We see paintings about it. People have been painting the Garden of Eden for a long time, and it all seems a little bit comical, right? I've seen paintings where there are waterfalls and giant gemstones at the bottom of those waterfalls and things like that. Who knows — however the painters imagine it to be, it's not better than what it actually was. What it actually was is better than we could possibly imagine. They were willing to listen to God, even desiring it — wanting God's presence, wanting him to come and walk with Adam in the cool of the evening in that garden.

And then, all of a sudden, there's a moment in time where the serpent convinces Eve that this isn't good anymore. "You shouldn't want this. There's something better out there. There's something that's going to meet needs you didn't even realize you had. And in fact, this God who gave you this environment, who put you here in the midst of all of these beautiful realities — well, he doesn't actually love you. He's depriving you of things. You don't realize it, but he's holding you back. He's keeping things from you that you actually want, even though you don't know it, Eve. And he's actually lied to you. He's not telling you the truth. He's deceiving you so he can keep this stuff for himself." And somehow the serpent is able to convince Eve that paradise is actually a prison — that she's being enslaved by God, and that the only way she can liberate herself is to eat this fruit and do the one thing that God told her and Adam not to do. And so Eve does. And Adam just goes right along with it, too — just goes right along with the scheme.

If you look at 2 Timothy 4:3–4, it is almost a perfect description of what happened in the Garden of Eden. "The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths." That's exactly what happened. It's a tragedy to think about. And as we look through the pages of Scripture and wind our way through the annals of human history, we can see that same story play out again and again and again — where people take what God has given them, his good word and instructions, reject it, and instead pile up people who say what they want to hear and convince them to leave behind the truth and follow after myths.

So when Paul says "the time is coming," he is not saying this is something new or something that has never happened before. But it is something that will happen to people who haven't felt this way about God's word before — that's the warning he's giving to Timothy. And it is something that will grow in its scope and intensity. As time goes on, this is going to get worse and worse; it's going to be more characteristic of a wider and wider group of people. Paul is also assuring Timothy that this is not just theoretical. This isn't just a textbook scenario — a matter of running through a hypothetical and imagining what it would be like if this were to happen. No, he says this is something that Timothy and every other true church is going to have to contend with. This is a reality.

Let me read you a couple of other passages of Scripture that deal with this same reality. In the Old Testament, Isaiah 30:9–11: "For they are a rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord; who say to the seers, 'Do not see,' and to the prophets, 'Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.'" Don't tell us about God. Don't tell us what he wants us to know. Don't tell us what he wants us to do. Just tell us what we want to hear. Tell us what makes us feel good.

Jude, verses 17 and 18: "But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, 'In the last times there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.' It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit." Jude uses that same word, "passions," that Paul uses in 2 Timothy 4 — that these people will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. Peter addresses it in 2 Peter 3:3: "Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires."

So if you look at these Old Testament and New Testament passages, there are two common traits that run through these warnings found throughout Scripture about this reality — this turning away from God's truth, this window that is always closing, always narrowing.

Number one is that people grow unwilling to be challenged by God's word. "I'm not willing to listen to this. It's too hard. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't like it. I don't feel good about myself when I hear this." The NIV says they won't put up with it. People are going to grow more and more unwilling to be spiritually challenged by the teaching of Scripture. Remember, Paul says in the verses preceding this passage — the whole description of what we're supposed to do with Scripture — that we are to reprove, rebuke, and exhort with it. Last week we said that basically means we're supposed to take Scripture and use it to direct and shape people's lives. And by implication, that means there are going to be things that need to change. Scripture isn't just there to say, "Hey, everybody, you're really great, you're really wonderful — just keep up whatever it is you're doing." If that were the case, we wouldn't need it, right? But sometimes it challenges us. Sometimes it tells us to stop doing what we're doing, or that we need to start doing something else, or that what we're doing we're doing out of selfishness, feeding our pride, serving ourselves rather than serving the Lord. There are all manner of reasons why Scripture would correct and direct us. So people are going to grow unwilling to be challenged by God's word. They won't put up with it.

And second, Paul is warning Timothy that — flowing throughout all of these scriptural warnings about this reality — people are going to prefer the things that make them comfortable rather than the challenges of Scripture. That's the whole idea of the itching ears. When you have an itch, you scratch it, right? Because that scratch feels so good. "Oh, I just want to scratch that mosquito bite. I'm sure that this time when I scratch it, it's going to make it feel great." And in the moment when you're digging in, it does feel pretty good. But as soon as you're done scratching it, you're like, "Oh, I've got to scratch some more." Before long you're just miserable. You're looking for relief. You're uncomfortable, and you're convinced that what's going to give you that temporary relief is really the thing you need. What can I do to feel good in the moment?

Itching ears are not craving truth. Itching ears are not looking to be challenged. Itching ears are hoping for something that will make them feel good. Temporary feelings are the driving force. "I don't care what's going to happen five minutes from now. I don't care what's going to happen tomorrow. I don't care about a week from now. I don't care about a million years in the future. All I want is to feel good about my situation right now. I want to believe in this moment that Sheryl Crow was right when she said, 'If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad.' I want to believe that." It's the mindset of a drug addict, right? Drug addiction doesn't want to get well — it wants the feeling. It wants to feel good. People will go to great lengths and destroy their lives to get the feeling. And they will avoid, reject, and rebuff anyone who tells them that it's the feeling that's killing them.

I've never really been drawn toward drugs, but I've shared this before: when I was in the emergency room with a kidney stone and they gave me morphine, that felt so good. The instant relief that just washed over you was just — this is pretty great. Well, that didn't make my kidney stone go away. Eventually the morphine wears off and you're back in pain. And that's just talking about something fairly superficial. If you just keep pumping the morphine, eventually you die. Itching ears want what will make them feel good immediately — right now, this moment. They're going to avoid discomfort. They're going to avoid challenge. They're going to avoid correction. And what Paul says is there is a closing window — a time coming when the ability to challenge people with the word of God is going to be ever diminishing. It's going to be harder and harder to do, because people are going to want it less and less, and instead they're going to want the thing that's actually killing them. They're going to want the thing that is actually poison. They're going to want the thing that's toxic — like someone bitten by the Lone Star tick who is now allergic to red meat but loves it so much they don't care what people say. Even if it makes them feel awful and they know it's going to kill them because their body is going to start fighting itself, they don't care. They're going to keep eating it. And that's what Paul says, on a spiritual level, is what Timothy and the church were going to face.

The second layer of the warning is that not only is the window of accepting this kind of truth closing, but the wisdom of the world is shrinking. Notice that in Paul's warning, the struggle is not due to people rejecting instruction altogether — not due to them casting off all teaching. In fact, he says it's the opposite. They are going to pile up more and more teachers. They're going to accumulate instructors. But the problem is they've traded the good ones — the ones who would actually teach them wisdom, teach them truth, teach them things that will help them — and instead they're just piling up people who will tell them what they want to hear. It's going to be the classic case of the blind leading the blind. In Romans 1:22, Paul talks about people who, "professing themselves to be wise, became fools." They pin the ribbon on themselves. They give themselves the degree, the title: "I am the wise one." Or, as we've talked about from the book of Judges, there's that refrain — everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

"Don't tell me my business. I already know. And I'm going to get teachers. I'm going to get experts. I'm going to get leading authorities. I'm going to pile them up all around me. But I'm only going to pile up the ones who say what I want them to say. And then I'm going to say, 'See, I'm right,' because look at all these teachers who affirm what I'm doing, what I'm believing, how I'm living." I'm going to get teachers who only confirm my pre-existing biases. We call that confirmation bias, right? It's the tendency to search for information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs, and anything that contradicts that we discredit and cast away. We see that all the time.

This is the kind of thing we use to justify racial animosity, or the idea that "my God is too loving to send anyone to hell." That's the kind of thing we'll say: "I don't like that idea, so I'm going to get teachers around me who will only say, 'Yeah, you're right about that. Don't look at what the Bible says — just believe your truth.'" This is the kind of teaching we'll get: teachers we pile up around us who will justify or excuse our personal sin preferences and lifestyles. "The Bible says this is sin, but I really like it. So I'm going to get people who say, 'Well, the Bible isn't right about that. There were culturally conditioned circumstances back then that we don't really have to worry about now. It was uninformed; but now we are informed.'" All of that. Whatever the Bible says about the sanctity and dignity of life, or sex and marriage, or human sexuality, or lying, cheating, stealing, anger — any of those things — just find somebody who will teach that the Bible is wrong about that, or that what you think the Bible is saying, it isn't really saying, and that what it's really saying is what you already believe or want to be true. That's the kind of teachers we will get for ourselves.

We'll get teachers who will allow us to make Christianity more socially acceptable. We're not going to abandon the label "Christian" — we'll just find people who can manipulate and shape it to suit whatever the current tastes of society are. And so we will get teachers who reject the notion of the exclusivity of the gospel. When Jesus says, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" — we'll get teachers who say he didn't really mean that. We'll get teachers who say, "As long as you're sincere in your faith, as long as you have really strong convictions about what you believe, it doesn't matter what you believe — as long as you believe it, go for it." We'll get teachers who say, "Oh, you know what? Jesus made mistakes, too," or, "Jesus owes you an apology." This is the category of the prosperity gospel as well, right? The whole notion of it is that God's main concern is you living a comfortable life right now — "your best life now." All of that is to make Christianity more socially acceptable. Just be happy right now, ignore everything else the Bible says that makes you uncomfortable or unhappy, and make the rest up in order to justify this downward spiral of spiritual delusion.

These people have to multiply their teachers and accumulate them — heap one upon another until there's a great pile of them, all confirming one another. Here is what one lexicon said about this whole idea of accumulating teachers: "In the imminent time of apostasy, self-satisfied men will collect teachers in masses according to their own wishes. The element of heaping together ironically stresses the superficiality of their desire for knowledge." They pile them up. The accumulation becomes the justification — there are a lot of them, which makes it right, rather than what they are saying being true.

Think about social media algorithms. You get on whatever your social media app of choice is — and if you don't use social media, then whatever news channel you tend to watch — the more you engage with a certain kind of content, the more the platform feeds that to you. You don't go looking for an echo chamber. You don't go looking for a platform that's only going to tell you one perspective. But you keep clicking on the things you like, the things that make you feel good, and they tend to be the things you already believe to be true. Eventually, that's all you see. You've essentially accumulated for yourselves people who are telling you what you already believe to be true. You accumulate voices that scratch your itch, and that tends to be the only kind of voice you can tolerate. And you didn't even mean to do that — it just happened.

Paul says that these people will be consumed with passions — inordinate, self-indulgent cravings, where the self is lord and master of their life. Our desires become our identity. Do we not see this all the time? "What I desire, what I believe will make me happy — you can't say that's bad, because that's who I am. If the Bible comes against that, if anyone comes against that for any reason, they're not attacking that thing — they're attacking me. They're erasing my identity. They're saying I don't exist because I like this thing, and they're saying it's wrong, therefore they're saying I am wrong." And we will pile up so-called experts who will offer validation for our own self-indulgence. So Paul says that the wisdom of the world is shrinking, even as people self-delude themselves into believing that the wisdom and the experts are in support of them.

I would beg you, friends — please do not choose your spiritual leaders based on their ability to make the Scriptures comfortable to you, to make the Scriptures non-confrontational. Because if sin is like a spiritual cancer, we need faithful pastors, teachers, and spiritual leaders who can use Scripture like a scalpel to cut that cancer out, to carve it out of our lives. We don't pick those people just because they make us feel good or because they're not going to do anything that will hurt us or make us uncomfortable. I like stand-up comedy, but I'm not going to choose my doctor just because he or she can tell jokes and make me laugh. I want them to be able to diagnose my problems and give me real solutions to those problems. That's what we need in our spiritual leaders as well — people who can take the truth of God, apply it to our lives, and use it to reprove, rebuke, and exhort us so that we might be more and more like Christ. Even if that is uncomfortable and painful and challenging and hard, I don't want just a pile of leading experts who say the things I want them to say.

And the last warning that is part of this whole passage — that Paul is laying at the feet of Timothy, and by virtue of Timothy the church of Ephesus, and by virtue of the church of Ephesus the church around the world — is this: what Paul wrote to Timothy in Ephesus was also meant for us here today. This is part of the reality of the word of God being living and active. And this last part of the warning is that not only will the wisdom these people are working with be shrinking, and the window of opportunity be closing, but the willingness of people is fleeting as well. There is going to be a diminishing willingness to hear — or even tolerate — the truths of God's word or its preaching. Paul says these people will turn away from listening to the truth. They're going to go from a point where they're at least willing to hear it, to now: "I'm turning my back on it. I'm rejecting it. I cannot even tolerate this anymore. I can't stomach it. I can't abide by it. I can't be in the presence of this." And instead they're just going to follow after myths — stuff that they don't really care about the source of, because they like what it says and it makes them feel good.

When faithful Christians attempt to use Scripture to reprove, rebuke, and exhort — to shape and direct people's lives — even when it's done, as Paul says, with complete patience and teaching, there's going to come a point when people aren't going to listen. They're not going to tolerate it. They're not going to put up with it. They're not even going to be willing to abide by it. They're going to turn away. "Just give me more of the myths so I can justify my passions."

In 2 Peter 1:16, Peter says, "We did not follow cleverly devised myths, but we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we were eyewitnesses of his majesty." Peter is basically telling his readers that what the godly prophets of old — and even the apostles of Peter's day — were telling the church is completely contrary to the myths that so many people were running after and embracing. In a previous letter that Paul wrote to Timothy — 1 Timothy 1:4 — he says to not devote themselves "to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculation rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith." He's telling Timothy to make sure the people in that church are running away from these things, not devoting themselves to them and turning toward myths. Similarly, in his letter to Titus, Paul wrote about the same thing — people who are going to devote themselves to myths, which is going to stand in opposition to the truth.

We know from Scripture that sin is enticing. I don't think any of us would believe — even if we went back to the circumstance with Eve in the garden — that what the serpent told her didn't seem like a good idea, didn't make sense, didn't seem like, "Boy, maybe this could really be a good idea to eat this fruit. Maybe it would be better. The fruit sure looks good." Sin is enticing. Sin, as Hebrews says, easily entangles. Fighting it, resisting it, conquering it can be difficult and hard. That's why we're told in Scripture that we're supposed to put it to death — even the desires have to be put to death. And this is a danger we're being told a lot today — that it isn't the desire so much as whether you act on it that you really have to worry about. It's so much easier to simply construe as evil those who preach against the sins you like. When sins entangle, when sins cling to you, when they do provide temporary happiness and relief, we kind of change things up. We don't have pedophiles anymore — we have "minor-attracted persons." We don't have rapists anymore — we have "culturally confused people." We don't have fornication anymore — we just have "Netflix and chill." Preaching against sins like these or any others eventually becomes intolerable, becomes backwards, becomes, you know, primitive and simple-minded, and those on the receiving end of correction are just done with it.

Some people may say, "Well, doesn't the Bible say, 'So far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all'? So wouldn't teaching the Bible, if it makes people upset, if it makes people feel bad about themselves — wouldn't that be not being at peace with them? Wouldn't that be stirring up animosity and hostility? And also, doesn't the Bible say — didn't Jesus say in Matthew chapter 7 — 'Judge not'? And wouldn't we be judging people if we were to preach against their sin? I know the Bible says certain things, but not everybody likes that. So if we did that, wouldn't we be judging them?"

Well, if you read Romans 12:18, where Paul talks about being at peace with all people so far as it depends on you, the peace he's talking about there — the peace we are to strive for — does not involve disobeying the commands of God. That's not what he's saying. He's not saying turn your back on the word of God or don't use the word of God. It involves not returning evil for evil. It doesn't involve silencing the truth for the sake of appeasing people. That's not what he's talking about at all. And "Judge not," as Jesus says in Matthew 7:1, doesn't mean you can't use the truth of God's word to reprove, rebuke, and exhort. What it means is we don't judge by standards we are unwilling to apply to ourselves. That's why he follows it up with the parable of the speck and the log. If your brother has a speck in his eye but you have a big log in your own eye, take the log out of your own eye first — apply the truth of God's word to yourself first — and then, Jesus says, you can use it to help your brother take the speck out of his eye. So if I were to preach the word of God to you but not to myself, that would be a problem.

The thing that is lost in all of this — and it is so tragic — is that when people decide they are done with the word of God, because it's hard, because living according to it sometimes can hurt, because it means they've done wrong and they have to confess certain things, repent of certain things, correct certain things in their life, leave behind things they do love because the Bible tells them those things are toxic and poisonous and bad for them — if we just go back to the message of the gospel, the gospel is our greatest reminder of just how much God loves us.

Because one of the lies people use to convince us to reject the truth and embrace the myths is that God wouldn't say that to you if he loved you. The gospel reminds us just how much God loves us. It reminds us that the way of salvation was his idea — that salvation is from the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. That even though we were in rebellion against God, even though it is us who are at enmity with him, it was God's idea that Jesus Christ should come to earth to suffer and die — even though he is sinless — to stand in our place, to take the punishment on himself, to be the atoning sacrifice, to have all the pain and all the shame and all the guilt poured out on him, to be buried, to die, to rise from the dead three days later victorious, so that our sins can be forgiven — so that everyone who entrusts themselves to that can be saved. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

All of that reminds us that God is fully invested in the redemption of sinners. "If he did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" And so those who would attempt to take the word of God and say, "See, God is depriving you — God's taking away your nice toys, taking away the things you like so much" — the gospel reminds us: no. It's like the parent who takes the piece of broken glass away from the toddler and says, "Don't put that in your mouth." You like that shiny piece of glass right now, but if you suck on it, you're going to be in pain. The gospel reminds us of that. And his word, and all that it contains, is one of those good gifts that he gave us. We would want to accumulate for ourselves teachers who would explain this to us clearly and truthfully — not teachers who would obscure it and twist it to suit our own needs. We should want teachers who will give us what we need, not just what makes us feel good in this moment.

So there are two things I think we take away from this. Because this time is coming — and it is already here — it reinforces the value of solid, biblical teaching and preaching. That has to be a bedrock of any true church that is going to last. And it also reinforces the need for us to be willing to receive that teaching, even if it hurts us, because it's there for our good.

Let's pray. Dear Lord, we thank you so much for the clarity with which Paul paints for Timothy the urgency he was facing — the urgency for the need of clear and consistent preaching of your word. We understand that that urgency has not diminished; if anything, it has ramped up, and it's more relevant today than it has ever been. We would ask two things as we have come to this passage. We would ask that you would continue to provide for your church faithful Christians who are willing to teach and preach your word with clarity and conviction. And we would ask that you would continue to soften our hearts and make us receptive to that truth — that we would be willing to subject ourselves to it in the same way that we want to see other people's lives come under its influence as well. We ask that you would continue to use this word in this church, use it in our own lives, and help us to be proclaimers of it out in the world, so that people can hear and know the truth of your Scriptures. Amen.