The Difficult Danger of Disregard

Second Timothy chapter 3 is where we will be this morning. We're going to look at verses 1-9 this morning. So let's just begin by reading it. Second Timothy chapter 3 begins this way: "But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty." Now, I want to stop right there. What would you guess he's going to say next? Times of difficulty — what do you think? You think maybe some extreme disaster, natural disaster, maybe economic collapse, wars, famine, religious persecution, something like that, right? I mean, that's what I would tend to think of, setting us up for this big idea of difficult times. It's not that at all. Let's keep reading.

"For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power. Avoid such people, for among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the truth — men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith — but they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men."

When I first think of a warning like, "Hey, there are coming times of great difficulty," I kind of think of Chicken Little, right? The sky is falling, the sky is falling, a piece of it hit me on the head. Paul wasn't Chicken Little, though. He is warning of difficulties. In fact, it is a certainty — when he says "understand this," that is actually an imperative. It's like, you need to count on this. You should realize this is a reality that is approaching. It is an inevitability, and yet it's not the kind of difficulty we often categorize as difficulty.

So in this passage, I think at the very beginning of all of it, we have to begin by understanding what the problem even is — what is the situation that we are looking at. We need to first unpack this two-word expression: "last days." He says, "Understand that in the last days..." What are these last days? When can we expect these last days? Well, broadly speaking, these last days is the time that we have been living in ever since the coming of the church age. Ever since Christ arrived here on earth, ever since Peter preached at Pentecost — and we sort of look at that as the beginning of the church age — we have been in the last days. We have been slowly and steadily, not spinning in a circle, but progressing toward the end of things as they are here on earth. They extend all the way until Christ's second coming. And what Paul is saying is that during these last days — during the time from Christ's ascension into heaven and the beginning of the church age all the way until he returns — what we should expect, and what Scripture is pretty consistent about, is that things are going to get worse and worse and worse. They are not going to get better. We try so hard to make them better, don't we? We are convinced that the next big thing is going to finally bring peace on earth, finally make life what we want it to be. But Scripture is pretty clear that's not going to happen until Christ returns.

In fact, while Christ was on earth, he was very clear to his disciples that what you should expect is opposition. What you should expect is persecution. What you should expect, if you live with me as your example, if you live your life for the glory of God the Father, if you live in obedience to Scripture, is that people are going to have a problem with that. His case in point is that if they opposed him — and they did, to the point that they killed him — then you should expect that if you follow him, they are going to oppose you as well. We should expect the same treatment he received. And Scripture is very clear that it is not going to get better; it is going to get worse until it comes to an end. But there is a time when this is going to come to an end. God isn't just sitting in heaven saying, "Boy, I wonder when I should sort of shift gears here and bring this to an end." No, he has a time — a time that has been planned since before the world was created. In fact, in Acts 17:30-31 we read this: "The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent." And then listen to this: "Because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead." That lets us know who this man is. But there is a day that is fixed. It is settled. God knows when that time is going to come. He knows when Christ is going to be sent back to earth to establish his kingdom. But until then, these last days that we are in right now are going to progress toward that end, getting worse and worse and worse.

And what Paul is saying is that grounding all of that distress, grounding all of that difficulty, is not just the circumstances of life under the curse. It's not just the bad things that we all endure in life. It's people. People are going to be the biggest problem the church is going to face. And if you look at the list that Paul paints here, it's rather a grotesque picture — it's almost so over the top that you think, "Well, I mean, who could possibly be like this? Surely no one is all these things." Lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power. That's a lot. I don't know that Paul is necessarily saying any one person is going to be all of these things, but these are going to be the representation of the kinds of people that will pervade society, will pervade and dominate culture, and even infiltrate the church, seeking to weave their way in and disrupt and disfigure it.

When you look at the list, the very first characteristic is really the summation of all the others. "Lovers of self" — that is going to be the capstone of what characterizes the type of people who are going to bring difficulty to Timothy, to the church in Ephesus, and even to the church in its form today: people who love themselves. And if that isn't the dominant theme in our world today, I don't know if you're paying attention. It is a self-obsession, a self-love, that pervades everything. All manner of behaviors are excused under that umbrella of loving oneself. It is a kind of worship. People are being shaped to live in a world populated by one person — me. Everyone else, as the kids would say, is a bot or an NPC, a disposable entity that just serves to advance my agenda in my life. The world revolves around me. Think of what you hear called a Napoleon complex, or think of Lyndon B. Johnson or Kanye West — these types of people. We sort of look at them and think, "Boy, they had a problem." But there are so many people who live exactly the same way. The theme of the list is a general disregard for standards, a general disregard for conventions, a general disregard for anything outside one's personal interests and agenda. Everything else is looked at with disgust. It's a pride, a narcissism, that dictates everything else. So sacred authority — parents, friends, law and order — all of it is cast aside. All of it is suspect. All of it is easily disposed of. That's what this list is portraying: a person in love with themselves, and everything else is on the chopping block.

And so we see this list tells us how they see themselves. They love themselves. They are proud. They are arrogant. They are boastful. Everything they do, they relish in. It is a badge they wear. There is no shame. They're not afraid. They do it with joy. They do it with pride. This list tells us how they treat other people. They are brutal. They are treacherous. They are abusive. They are unappeasable. You can't even work with these people. You can't negotiate with them. There's no attempting to reach a happy compromise or find a middle ground — it doesn't happen. The list tells us how they relate to God. They are ungrateful. They are unholy. They love pleasure rather than God. And interestingly enough, that word "abusive" — I placed it under the second category of how they treat others — but it really is about how they treat God, because that word "abusive" is actually the word "blasphemers." They blaspheme. They mock the sacred. They mock the holy. They mock God.

There is a particular problem in all of this, though, as you look at this list — this sort of over-the-top, perhaps somewhat satirical depiction of someone. If you look at verse five, there's a problem: they have an appearance of godliness. They don't look this way. You wouldn't just pick them out of a crowd and say, "Man, that person is grotesque. The way they act, the way they treat others, the way they treat God — I can't even stomach the idea of being around them." They're not necessarily that obvious. They have this outward veneer, this appearance of godliness, but they deny the power of it.

Have you ever heard of a Potemkin village? Our resident European historians may know the story — it was supposedly a fake portable village meant to impress Catherine the Great. The legend has it that Gregory Potemkin had people construct a façade of a village and place it along a river he was traveling with Catherine, and then every night when they went to bed, he would have his servants move the village farther down the river so that as they traversed it, she would continue to be impressed. It was totally fake. It looked great, but it was a façade, like those old Wild West towns you visit where it's just the fronts of buildings — just props. There's nothing there. That's the problem here. It's a façade. It's completely fake. What's behind it is disgusting. These people don't understand what real godliness is like. They don't understand what it really means to be surrendered to God, to be controlled by the power of his Spirit, living in submission to his Word. They don't understand any of this. They just try to look the part.

Paul is not the only person to warn the church about these kinds of people. In fact, in Second Peter, Peter writes this, beginning in chapter 2, verse 1: "But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies." It's not going to be overt. They're not going to blow any trumpets. There is going to be this veneer of truth, but they are secretly going to introduce destruction, falsehood, and heresy. He says, "Even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction." And then listen to this: "Many will follow their sensuality" — very similar to what we see in this list — "and because of them, the way of truth will be blasphemed, and in their greed they will exploit you with false words." It's a very similar situation. Their sin, their self-love, their pride, their arrogance, their hatred of God, their hatred of other people, their disregard for anyone and everything, is draped in robes of godliness. They can talk the talk and may even, at times, look like they are walking the walk. But this is a dangerous combination. It ruins the church internally. It destroys Christ's reputation outside the church. And it is especially damning and damaging when these individuals are church leaders.

Here is a situation addressed by John in Third John. He says: "I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. So if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us, and not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church." So there was this man in the church who had somehow managed some level of authority, and he was opposing anyone and anything that he didn't like — anything not in line with his agenda — including John himself. John was trying to get a letter to this church, and this man was cutting it off.

It wouldn't surprise me to find that most of us read these first five verses as if we are Timothy, and that Paul is talking to us and saying, "Hey, you better be on the lookout for these kinds of people. Bring your little notebook, take notes on people, see if they line up with this list, and if they do, go get them." It wouldn't surprise me, because that's how I initially read it. I read it and I think, "Boy, any of you people — let's see here — who's loving pleasure more than they love God?" That's my instinct. And I probably should start with myself, right? Get the log out of my own eye first. Do I see myself in any of this? Do you see yourself in any of this? This could be a warning to you that maybe your life is not where it needs to be. Some of these characteristics are not things to be trifled with. Nothing on this list is something where you can say, "Well, it's no big deal — I've only got one of them. Well, maybe two, now that I think about it. But that's not the whole list." These aren't things to treat that way. If you see yourself anywhere in this list, if you see a characteristic or a tendency in your life, that should be a huge red flag. That should cause you great concern. That should give you reason to be running to Christ, running to his Scriptures, wanting support and help to grow in that area.

Where do you see yourself in this list? In what ways does self-love manifest itself in your life? Where are you tempted to put on the veneer of godliness instead of actually having true godliness in your heart? How might your wicked heart lead to times of difficulty for godly people? We shouldn't just ask this of ourselves, either. You should be willing to seek input from other people, because so often these are blind spots. So often we may have drifted — not jumping right into the deep end, but slowly over time drifting toward one or more of these characteristics without even realizing it. You may be blind to these things, and so you may need the help of others pointing them out in your life. That's why it's always good to have godly counsel in your life — people you trust, godly people from whom you can receive correction, instruction, and input, trusting that they have your best interests and God's best interests at heart.

So difficult times loom for the church, and the chief players are not the circumstances of life — it's people. People are going to be the biggest difficulty. But what are we supposed to do? Well, Paul is very clear. He tells Timothy to avoid the problem. Right there in verse five: "Avoid such people." Difficulty is certain, the difficulty is people, and what we can do is put space between them and us. Get these people away from the church. Get these people outside of your circle of associations. In other words, don't be so naive as to think that these kinds of people can play intricate parts in your lives and not have a negative effect on you. Isn't that why we love quoting 1 Corinthians 15? "Bad company corrupts good morals." Parents tell their kids that all the time, right? Who your friends are is so important. Who the influences in your life are is so important. And Paul is essentially saying we cannot afford, as individuals or as a church, to downplay the potential havoc that these people can wreak on a congregation or on an individual member.

He also tells us why, giving us two real-life examples of why these individuals are so dangerous. The first example he points out is that they are predators. There is no one who is off limits to them. They have no shame. They are not above going after the soft targets — the weak, the vulnerable. He gives us an example: "Among them," in verse six, "are those who creep into households and capture weak women burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth." Paul isn't suggesting that women as a category are weak or simple-minded, but rather he's giving us another caricature to illustrate the kind of people these individuals would gladly prey upon — people the church should be protecting, supporting, and helping. And yet Paul says there are individuals who see such people and view them as fresh meat. They are going to creep in. They're not going to be overt. They're going to play their games, but their games are being played to the damage and detriment of others. They go after the weak, the burdened, those who are led astray, those who are always learning but never arriving at a knowledge of the truth. This is one part gullible, one part impulsive, one part tormented — people who are struggling, people who need help, people who need godly individuals to come alongside them in support, to lift them up in prayer, and to help them work through their struggles. And yet Paul says these individuals are not doing that. This is purely exploitative. They want to destroy these individuals, and they are not too proud to stoop to this level of shameless conduct. They view defenseless people as easy targets. This is just sport to them. You cannot simply accept people who conduct themselves in such predatory ways toward the vulnerable and weak as something to be tolerated. They are dangerous.

They are also fearless — Paul doesn't say that explicitly, but that is the point he is making. They don't just go after the soft targets. They will contest, disrupt, and seek to discredit even the truth and the spiritual leaders of the church. The illustration he uses is Jannes and Jambres. Who are these men? These are the traditional names of Pharaoh's magicians who opposed Moses when he came before Pharaoh to demand that he release the Israelites. You remember the story. Moses comes to Pharaoh, and there's a back-and-forth between Aaron, Moses, and these magicians in Pharaoh's court. They're trying to match what Moses is doing, though everything Moses does is superior to what they do. They even try to duplicate some of the plagues, which doesn't make any sense — but the point is that these are individuals who had no problem opposing the leaders God sent as his representatives. They had no shame in going after them and opposing them directly, all for the sake of keeping the people of Israel in captivity and in slavery. Moses and Aaron were trying to liberate them, bring them out of Egypt, and lead them to the promised land that God had promised Abraham. And these individuals' main concern was that Pharaoh maintain control and keep his dominion over them.

And so what we see in these illustrations Paul gives Timothy is that it doesn't matter whether you're weak and need help or whether you're strong in the faith and strong in the truth — individuals like this are going to oppose you. And what that means is that everyone in between isn't going to be spared either. Everyone is a target.

Well, this brings us to a very real dilemma. Look back at Second Timothy chapter 2, just before Paul lays this out. Let's look at verse 22: "Flee youthful passions, pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies — you know that they breed quarrels. The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will."

There is a dilemma here. Paul has just finished talking about the reality that people can corrupt others, but he has also said they can change. And so it's important that the leaders of the church — Timothy being one of them — must take great care to correct with gentleness, praying that God grants people repentance. We say things like, "The church isn't a resort for the healthy — it's a hospital for the sick." Have you ever heard that? Or, "God loves perfectly imperfect people." We love that. We embroider it on pillows, make little memes about it, tweet about it. It makes us feel so warm inside to think about things like that. We want people who need Jesus to be in the church so they can learn about him, learn from him, and see what it looks like to be a faithful — if broken — follower of Jesus. So we don't check anyone's credentials at the door. We don't make them fill out a survey to make sure they qualify to come in.

So what are we to make of Paul's command to avoid these people — to not be around them, not let them around you? What is going on, Paul? On the one hand you're saying, "Don't be quarrelsome, don't get drawn into these things, but correct them with gentleness." And now you're saying, "Don't have anything to do with these people." Why would Paul make such a strong command to mark these people and avoid them?

Well, number one, as you look at this list, it should be clear that these are not people who are simply wrestling with their own sins, their own struggles, their own brokenness. They are actively menacing the church and people within it, and in many instances they are doing so disguised as godly spiritual leaders. Basically, what Paul is saying — to use a medical analogy — is that yes, a surgeon doesn't refuse to operate on the sick, but that doesn't mean we allow infected doctors into the operating room. Yes, the church welcomes the spiritually sick for healing. But someone actively spreading infection doesn't get to be on the surgical team, and frankly, we'd prefer if they weren't even in the hospital. The issue isn't their sinfulness. The issue is their active conduct within the body. Paul isn't saying, "Let's keep the healthy and kick out the sick." He's saying, "Don't let the predators into the safe house. Don't let people who are doing spiritual violence to those who have come for spiritual nourishment, who have come to worship God, who have come to grow and be fed — don't let those people use them as fodder. There needs to be a separation."

I think there is also precedent throughout Scripture where we are regularly encouraged to separate from or remove dangerous and destructive people for the sake of the body of Christ. Let me give you an example the Apostle Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 5. He says, "I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people." But then he gives this qualifier: "Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world." If you couldn't ever associate with anyone involved in any illicit sin, well, you'd just have to live in a bubble. You couldn't even go home — wherever you are, you'd be surrounded by sinners, yourself included. But he says this: "But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler — not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you."

So what Paul is saying is that people out in the world — unbelievers — we have no reason to expect that they are going to conform their lives to the moral standard of Scripture. That's not our expectation. But for believers, and those professing to be believers, we absolutely do expect them — not perfectly, otherwise we wouldn't need the New Testament — but we expect them to live according to God's standards, for the sake of the testimony of the church, for the sake of the health of the church, and for the sake of the effectiveness of the gospel. And so when people come in wearing the veneer of godliness while their actions, their hearts, and their lives are completely contrary to it, the church does not simply twiddle its thumbs and say, "Oh well." There is a call to remove those people.

Jesus Christ himself, speaking to his disciples in Matthew 18:15-17 — a passage we often call church discipline or church restoration — gives us a process for confronting sin within the church, how to do it graciously and with the intent of seeing repentance and restoration. But in that process, if an individual, after being confronted and the issue addressed multiple times at different levels of severity, still insists on persisting in their sin, there comes a point where the relationship changes and you no longer treat them as a believer. In Matthew 18 it says you treat them like a Gentile and a tax collector — someone who is different, who is an unbeliever. They might claim to be a Christian, they might claim to be a follower of Christ, but there is an unrepentant sinfulness in their lives that is indicative of someone who is not a true believer. And so they have to be regarded and treated differently.

This is not always clear-cut, of course, because you and I don't have the benefit of God's omniscience. We can't always see what's going on in someone's heart. The Bible even says that man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. Knowing exactly what's going on is often very tricky and challenging. But Paul is telling Timothy that as a leader of the church — one who is trying to bring stability to this congregation — he has to be aware of the destructive nature of these kinds of individuals. And when it does become evident who Timothy is dealing with, they have to be separated from the church for the sake of its health.

So the key for us — whether leaders of the church or individual members — both as we seek to examine our own hearts and as we become aware of things going on in the lives of others in the congregation, is first of all to know what the Bible teaches so that we can cultivate biblical discernment and understand what's going on. It's also key because it helps us grow in our faith so that we aren't so easily taken in by false teaching when it's dressed in charisma. Don't be afraid to ask questions when you hear something that doesn't seem right — something someone is doing, saying, or advocating for that doesn't seem to be in line with the teaching of Scripture. Don't be afraid to seek more information.

I think there are a couple of things we can take with us as we come to a passage like this. Number one, first and foremost, don't be this kind of person. This list is meant to be repulsive. When you see these things in your life, take that very seriously. Address it. Seek to root it out. But similarly, don't tolerate this kind of activity in the church either. Don't cover up for these kinds of people. Help protect the church by, as Paul says here, letting their works expose them for who they are. That's ultimately where he ends — these people's works are going to be their own exposure eventually. You can't hide it.

And then I think something else, not quite explicit here but definitely implicit: thank God that his grace is great enough to save sinners, even like these people. These individuals are not beyond the reach of the grace of God. Sometimes we tend to think, "My sins are too big," or "That's too big a sin for God's grace to cover." Never write these people off as unsavable. Even if you have to distance yourself from them, we avoid these people not because they can't be redeemed, but because access without accountability creates a danger to the vulnerable in the church — and that isn't loving either.

So when you come to a passage like this, it should be sobering. There should be a sense of seriousness — sobering because God cares so deeply for his church and wants it to be a place of care and protection, but also sobering to realize that there are people like this in the world, maybe even within this congregation, and they can wreak all sorts of disastrous havoc if they are allowed to act unrestrained as they see fit. We have to take great care to guard the church from people like this.

Let's pray. Dear Lord, I thank you for Paul's faithful warning to Timothy as he tries to help him be a good shepherd to this congregation and to bring some stability and restore them to the kind of church that is a safe place for those seeking to learn from Jesus and to be shepherded by God's people. But also for this painful warning about the reality that when we live in a world under the curse of sin, there are going to be people so given over to their sinfulness that they want nothing but destruction and devastation upon the church. They want to destroy. They want to disrupt. They want to break it apart. And that cannot be tolerated. If we love you, if we love your people, if we love your Word, when individuals like this are revealed, we must take great measures to care for and protect the flock. Help us to do that. May you also help us to be diligent in searching our own hearts and our own lives to see if there are even small roots of these kinds of sins dwelling in us, and help us to dig deep and cut them out. Help us to surrender every aspect of our lives to you so that we might live for you and for your glory. We ask this in your name. Amen.