Living without Hypocrisy
2 Timothy 3:1-9
Turn to 2 Timothy 3. We have said before that one of the advantages in preaching through a book as opposed to preaching a stand-alone sermon is that it forces you to preach such a passage that we have before us this morning.
“But know this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, without gentleness, without love for good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, but having denied its power. Keep away from such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and take captive weak women weighed down with sins, being led on by various desires, always learning and never able to come to the full knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, disqualified in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, just as theirs was also.”
2 Tim 3:1-9 (LSB)
See, if I was invited to speak once at a church, I would likely not choose this passage. There are two problems with this passage that I wish to discuss, but before we begin, let’s pray. Father, would You give us an understanding of this passage this morning? We understand that Your Word is without error and that all of Scripture is of vital importance. So, may we discover this morning why this section is included, that we would learn more about us. But even more importantly, we might learn more about You. And we ask this in Your great name, amen.
1st Problem … Who is this written about?
Growing up I just assumed that it was written about those outside of Christ in the world. There was a cantata written in the 70’s with biblical excerpts of music from the Bible all regarding the last days. And I remember the words being taken from the old King James, “In the last days perilous times shall come, for men shall be lovers of themselves. Covetous, boasters, proud blasphemers, disobedient to parents, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those which are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, and on and on.” And the gist of the song would lead you to believe that this is a description of those who would be living in the last days, certainly, those far outside of the church, and were living in a way which is in complete contrast to God and His Word. But I am not sure that is what Paul is addressing here with Timothy.
Already in 2 Timothy 1 and 2, Paul has challenged Timothy’s fear, teaching him that within the difficulties that he was facing, God had every intention and purpose for him. Secondly, Paul encouraged Timothy to live with endurance. Therefore, to work hard, and to persevere, because this purposeful life is so glorious, as our salvation leads us to eternal glory with Christ. And then later in chapter 2, Paul tells Timothy to live without shame, for the Christian is called to an honourable life. The joy of being used by God, and being a vessel fit for the Master’s service. But here in chapter 3, the book sort of shifts, as this is no longer about Paul challenging Timothy and pushing him towards sanctification, but it now is a description of a group of people.
Now what gives us a clue of who these people are specifically is this reference to Jannes and Jambres, men who apparently opposed Moses. In the book of Exodus, during the time of the plagues, there were men who tried to duplicate the acts of Moses, and who are referred to in the Bible as sorcerers. And through Satanic influence, they were able to do many of the same signs that Moses did. Now these names, Jannes and Jambres, became known in extra-biblical writings. Some believe that they were the exact names of these men, while others believe that these names only represented them. As Jannes means, “he who seduces;” and Jambres means, “he who makes rebellion.” The point is this, that these were men who were trying to deceive, which is exactly what is happening here in the Ephesian church where Timothy was pastor, having those among the church, who were not true believers, but were those who Paul describes here. Now we could understand that this list of sins could be a description of those outside the church, as we see in other passages. Paul speaks about this in Romans:
“Having been filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice: they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, violent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful.”
Rom 1:29-31 (LSB)
And earlier in 1 Timothy, Paul said this:
“Knowing this, that law is not made for a righteous person but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and godless, for those who kill their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for sexually immoral persons, for homosexuals, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching.”
1 Tim 1:9-10 (LSB)
However, these lists describe the those outside of Christ, in the world. Yet this list here in 2 Timothy is a description of some within the church. Now we first notice that it says here that “in the last days.” Now this does not mean something yet to come, but it is a reference throughout Scripture of the time of Christ’s first coming, until the time of His second coming. So, that the description was fully apparent in Timothy’s day is true, yet at the same time, the description is fully apparent in our day, as we, since the ascension of Christ are living in the last days. And what we want to be careful of is deceiving ourselves into thinking that times in the past were better, the good old days! The reality is that what we see in our society today, is only an outward portrayal of man’s sinfulness. Sin that was already there, but now with more boldness to be exposed. For we need to understand that this list of sins could be categorized generally as “man without Christ,” though with some people, and in some cultures, it is far more exposed and acted upon. And with this list before us this morning, I wish to break it down to help us see the main focus of these accusations, by making three negative statements.
- The direction of their love revealed their sinfulness (vs 1-4).
We can see in this passage much about love (vs 2) where is the direction of love? Lovers of self, towards self, and then it says towards money or materialism. Therefore, Paul then describes the effect of this on these individuals: they were proud or boastful; they were arrogant; they were abusive, opposite of kindness; they were disobedient to parents; they were ungrateful, opposite of Paul’s admonition to be thankful for all things in Ephesians and Colossians; they become unholy, as their heart was not set upon things above; and they were heartless or as the Legacy Standard Bible says, unloving. Another term the Scripture uses for this is a “hard heart.”
Rick Reed of Heritage Bible College said that when he does marriage counseling, many of the issues that we might discuss as the problems, began many years prior as both husband and wife began to slowly distance themselves from each other, as two hearts began to grow cold and become hard. Heartlessness, or a “hard heart” are family killers, as often it can be the softness of two hearts that can restore a relationship, but we often want the other person to make the first move. Parents, don’t let your heart become hard towards your children. Teens, do not let your heart become hard towards your Mom and Dad. And we certainly do not want to do this as couples. to grow hard toward each other.
He then says that they were unappeasable, the Legacy Standard Bible and the New American Standard Bible uses the term “irreconcilable.” The unwillingness to reconcile with someone. See again the connection with a hard heart, causing an unwillingness to join together and reconcile. There will be definitely those in our lives which will not allow us the ability to reconcile with them, but oh to have a spirit of reconciliation is the understanding here, as these are those who have completely eliminated that hope. Next, their unloving character has made them slander one another. Slander or maliciously gossip against someone: a conscious, deliberate realigning of half-truths to both make the other party wrong, and you right. And this loveless character brings a complete lack of “self-control,” in other words, it gets to the point where tearing someone down becomes normal, and always with the intent of the building up of self, self-love.
The next word “brutal” or “without gentleness” means a further “out-of-control,” in other words, nothing held them back. There is no restraint to what they said, content to be irreconcilable, no restraint to your disrespect for your Mom and Dad, no restraint to your heart growing colder, no restrain to your unthankfulness, no restraint to the love of money, things, and self. And then he goes on to say that they do not love that which is good, but are treacherous, reckless, and conceited. I like the King James, heavy headed, where we get the term that he has a big head. And then he concludes by saying that they are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. And that is the crux of the argument, as this misdirected love towards all these things, and not to God. For this is the demise of all mankind, the fullest form of idolatry is to love things, money, buildings, sex, success, significance, everything, before God! For if the world truly loved God, they would truly repent and be led to the knowledge of the truth, and come to their senses (2 Tim 2:252-26). That the prayer for the lost, that they would understand that running from God, means running to eternal damnation in hell. And it all begins with our natural love of self, because the direction of our love, determines our sinfulness, and some of these folks were in the church in Ephesus. Next, Paul turns specifically to these church deceivers.
- The direction of their praise revealed their godlessness (vs 5).
“[H]olding to a form of godliness, but having denied its power.”
2 Tim 3:5a (LSB)
These church-goers had an appearance or form of godliness. In other words, their religion was external. It was something that changed some of their outward behaviours, but had no impact on their internal condition. In other words, it was purely a means of grabbing attention to themselves and completely void of the power of God, therefore it was man or self-motivated. And I guess the question is: Can a person even deceive themselves to believing that this is okay? The answer is, absolutely they can!
“But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”
2 Tim 3:13 (LSB)
There can certainly be those within the church who can believe themselves to be perfectly fine with God by their own human effort and spiritual façade, that they deceive themselves into believing that they are okay with the eternal God. 2 Corinthians 13:5 is one of the most sobering verses in all of Scripture. It says this:
“Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not realize about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?”
2 Cor 13:5 (LSB)
Certainly, every true believer is willing to examine himself, and this is not a verse to “scare” the true believer, but is a verse to “scare” the unbeliever, that he might come to repentance. But these ones which Paul is speaking about do not have that same heart, for they deny the power of God, and through human strength depend upon self. And we learn here in this passage that many women in this Ephesian church had been led astray by these false teachers, just as many today can be led astray be those who would come with another gospel. Interesting that two thousand years later, we can turn on our TV’s, and watch people listen to, follow, support financially those who are clearly teaching a message far outside of the Bible, it’s amazing! Or that give their time to someone who has some fantastic discovery, some kind of mystical find in the Scriptures.
And their attraction to teach such falsehood is because of their love of self, love of money, their arrogance, their pride, and in their fallenness, they take down with them, many who will follow them. And a warning here to all of us as the modern-day church, and that is in our desire to grow big, we have left growing in Christ. As we do live in a day and age when churches desperately try to attract and entertain. And I trust you see here that we try to keep church simple. And much of the church movements such as contemplative church, crazy church, contemporary church, traditional church, are all results of a church culture that can be addicted to itself, after all, church must be the way we want it. Yet selfishness cannot produce community. And it you keep telling a generation that they are special, they will believe it. The direction of their praise revealed their fallenness.
- The direction of their teaching revealed their foolishness (vs 7-9).
“[A]lways learning and never able to come to the full knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, disqualified in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, just as theirs was also.”
2 Tim 3:7-9 (LSB)
We are a culture that is so addicted to learning, that we will not settle of something being true. At least in New Testament times truth was debated over, but we today often do not value truth. Yet the importance of knowing clear truth, for when we know the truth of God’s Word, false teaching quickly becomes evident to those who know clear orthodoxy. Yet those who place little value on doctrine and teaching, often will fall victim to a different gospel. Now looking at this list, and considering similar lists which we saw in Romans and 1 Timothy, we understand that though they are all describing different groups of people, they do describe people of one common denominator. And it is this, those outside of Christ. This has sorted out the question of who this is being written about in this passage, unbelievers. The difference is that some will live like this, with little influence; some will live like this, and will lead many with them; and some will be positioned within the church and deceive. Another difference is that some will openly acknowledge their sin, and yet continue sinning. Others will try to rationalize their sin within the world, as some of you may be sitting here this morning living in sin and yet you feel you are okay for you compare yourself with others who are worse than you. And still others within the church, who will try to appear godly, yet with an unrepentant heart, continuing in secret sins. So, if this list is describing the unbeliever, there becomes a second problem to sort out, and it is this:
2nd Problem … Does the description seem exaggerated?
In other words, do you see the problem? That if an unbeliever includes the nice old grandmother, might we think that Paul is a little overstated or extreme here. You see, we might describe a neighbour as someone who does not attend church, or someone that might not be truthful all the time, or may have some impure thoughts, or may not be as loving as they could be towards some. But to say they are arrogant, abusive, ungrateful, brutal, or treacherous, that seems like a bit of a stretch. So, what do we do with this? John Piper said this at the T4G conference that it is important that our theology match our practical, everyday thinking and belief. Therefore, to just teach something without believing it to be true in reality is senseless. Piper’s example was what about the sweetest unbeliever? Does he or she really look like this? Listen to Paul’s words to the Roman church:
“For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not submit itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh are not able to please God.”
Rom 8:6-8 (LSB)
I want to give you some things this morning so that we are able to better understand this, as I believe this passage can be very confusing if we do not understand it correctly. And I would also propose that this list is not exaggerated. Therefore:
- Sin started at the fall.
When God created Adam and Eve in the Garden, Satan placed within them the desire to rebel against God, and therefore, as the passage we just read in Romans, man has been “hostile to God” ever since. We must get out of our minds, especially those who may be from my generation or a little older, that sin really started in the 50’s or 60’s. No, what happened during that time and onward has been an exposure to sin in our culture. But the reality is that sin began in the Garden, it did not begin in 60’s sexual revolution. But sin is given to every generation and therefore follows to every generation. This is where we get the term, born in sin. And just as one generation might expose sinfulness outwardly to a greater extent, it is not less a problem in any generation. So, the sin that was part of peoples’ lives was often concealed. Why? Because the culture would have frowned upon it, yet it was not like it was any less present. Just as a small child may not reveal his or her sinfulness to a great extent, as one gets older, the difficulty comes in that exposing of what is truly already inside of each of us. In other words, we all have the same problem, as there is not one of us who is exempt from this. I guess that we could say that as we grow older, sin rears its ugly head. So, sin started at the fall.
- Sin begins in the heart.
We have the tendency to try to protect our children from our society and there is great wisdom in that, as exposure to sin, will cause most of us to be attracted to it and enticed by it. Nobody commits the worst of sins at the beginning, no, it starts with small sins which lead to bigger ones. The first time someone steals is not from a bank. The first time someone watches pornography is not the worst pornography. But there is a truth that plunges us into sin, even if we were able to shelter our children from every sinful thing out in the world, and that is that sin begins in each individual heart. Tim Keller speaks about the stain of sin, he said, “We need to understand the direction of the stain.”
I do not know if you have ever tried to paint wood, especially something like pine. But you can paint the wood and it looks beautiful. But what can happen after a while? A water stain, mildew stain, or knot stain can come through. And you can repaint it and it may look good for a while, but that stain reappears because the stain is coming from where? the inside. And that is the same as with sin. For as the stain is not coming from the outside, sin begins from and comes from inside, the heart. Remember when Jesus was preaching, he explained that it was not what was put into a man that defiled him, and He said this:
“But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, sexual immoralities, thefts, false witness, slanders.”
Matt 15:18-19 (LSB)
This is exactly why we cannot blame others for our sinfulness, or that we can blame others for the sinfulness of our children because it comes from within us, not from without. Tim Schroeder at an AGC conference said this:
“The problem is that the stain is not around you, but that the stain is in you. Therefore, what is needed is not an outside-in cleansing, but an inside-out cleansing. The direction of the stain comes from the inside.”
Tim Schroeder, AGC Conference ‘16
Sin started at the fall, sin begins in the heart, and :
- Sin can only be referenced to God.
The reason that this list looks extreme to you and I is that we are comparing each other with each other. If you look to the East early in the morning right now, you will see the planet Jupiter, Jupiter compared to the earth is massive, as 1,300 earths would fit into Jupiter. But in comparison to the sun, if the sun were the size of a basketball, Jupiter would be about the size of a pea. See, to understand something properly, we must know what we are comparing it to. And when we compare our sinfulness to one another, we do not appear all that bad. And your neighbour, who may be described like this in 2 Timothy 3 does not appear to be this bad in reality because my reference point is my own goodness. And this is why law-keeping cannot save anyone or any kind of rule-keeping, because our hearts are desperately wicked in comparison to God. For my heart compared with the holiness and purity of God, what I may have thought to be only small stains, become resounding sins. So, when Paul describes these people in this 2 Timothy 3 passage, his reference is not them with some sort of man-made righteousness or man-made holiness, no, his reference is in contrast to the righteousness and holiness of God. Finally:
- Sin is forgiven only in Christ.
I guess we could say that there is both good news and bad news here. The bad news is that when referenced to God, this description fits you and I. There is no excuse, for this is something that is part of me, it is something that flows from within me, and there is no one I can blame. But here is the good news, which the Bible calls the gospel, this is the only kind of sin that God forgives through Jesus Christ. God does not forgive small sins because there are none. When I repent of my sin, and receive Christ into my life, I do not go from being a bit of a bad guy to someone sort of forgiven. No, the gospel is much, much greater than that. For I go from someone who is viewed by God as a lover of self, prideful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient, wanting to appear religious, and lover of pleasure, to being completely forgiven in Christ. “My sin oh the bliss of this glorious thought, My sin not in part but the whole, Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, Praise the, praise the Lord, oh my soul!” Part of my salvation is understanding exactly where I came from. If you do not understand your condition, you will not come to the Forgiver to be forgiven. Therefore, you must understand your condition to be healed. One of our early church fathers, Augustine, has taught us much about the biblical view of our complete depravity outside of Christ. And after pouring out his heart in confession to Christ for his sin, Augustine said this:
“Cast thyself upon Him, fear not that He will not withdraw Himself that thou shouldest fall; cast thyself fearlessly upon Him, He will receive you, and will heal thee.”
Augustine, Confessions of St. Augustine 189
If you are here this morning maybe pretending to be something you are not, or believing that your sin is unforgivable because it is so great, or that you want to go back to trying to observe the law. Then cast yourself upon Christ, and trust Him to forgive you. See, what we want to understand here is that we do not go from sinfulness to perfection in this life. For the description of what Paul gives here is what we were, and perfection in Christ is what we are becoming, and will attain in eternity, this is our sanctification. And the righteousness that you and I need to enter heaven is not our own. The righteousness that we need to stand before God is the righteousness given to us by Christ, for it is His righteousness that gains us our standing before the Father. But by the grace of God, we are being sanctified even here in this life. And our movement from this list, as we learn to love deeper, and show greater thankfulness, joyfulness, and gentleness, is our maturing in Christ.
Mom and Dad, you will never be perfect parents. However, the goal is that you are striving through the work of the Spirit to become more and more like Christ. This is your sanctification, your maturing in Christ. Teens, if you know Jesus Christ, becoming more mature in Christ means a movement to become more like Him. So, do not be a hypocrite and hide yourself. Do not believe that you are too big a sinner, because we all are. And do not try to please God though law-keeping, when Christ has done this for you. But serve Him will all your heart. Let’s pray. Father, forgive us for our love and focus on self, to a people who are better learning to love Your Word; to a people who are better learning to love Your people; to a people who are better learning to love You above all else. Lord, it is our desire to become like You. And all God’s people said, amen.