Latest / Reformed Thinking / Perilous Times and Counterfeit Godliness: Paul’s Warning for the Last Days (2 Timothy 3:1–5)

Transcript

Perilous Times and Counterfeit Godliness: Paul’s Warning for the Last Days (2 Timothy 3:1–5) · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Welcome to reformed thinking. It's good to be here.
• 0:02
  I have to say I was sitting in my study this week going over
• 0:05
  the notes for this, and I found myself getting genuinely
• 0:08
  anxious, which is unusual. Usually when we talk about the
• 0:13
  threats the church is facing, you know, our minds immediately
• 0:16
  go outward. We think about governments
• 0:18
  passing hostile laws or secular culture mocking faith.
• 0:22
  Right, the external enemies. Exactly.
• 0:24
  The danger is out there. We build up the walls, we get
• 0:27
  this fortress mentality and we're always scanning the
• 0:30
  horizon for the enemy trying to batter down the gates.
• 0:33
  That's the natural way to think. It's much easier to unify a
• 0:36
  group when you have a clear external enemy you can point to.
• 0:40
  You circle the wagons. But the text we're looking at
• 0:42
  today, it just flips that whole narrative on its said.
• 0:45
  We're opening up to Timothy and before we even touched the
• 0:48
  theology, we have to set the scene.
• 0:49
  The context here is just it's heavy.
• 0:52
  Paul is in the Mamertine dungeon in Rome.
• 0:54
  Which is basically a hole in the ground.
• 0:56
  This isn't the house arrest from the end of acts where he had
• 0:58
  visitors. No, not at all.
• 1:00
  It's a cistern. It's cold, wet.
• 1:03
  It would smell awful. He's completely cut off.
• 1:05
  And he knows he's about to die. This is it for.
• 1:08
  Him, it's the end of the line. So he's writing this final
• 1:11
  letter to his protege Timothy. And in chapter 3, verses one
• 1:14
  through 5, he points to where the real danger is coming from.
• 1:17
  And it's not Emperor Nero, it's not the Roman legions, It's a
• 1:20
  Trojan horse. The dangers inside the walls.
• 1:24
  That's what's so chilling. It is.
• 1:26
  And if you look at Second Timothy as Paul's last will and
• 1:29
  testament, which it really is, you realize he isn't wasting
• 1:32
  words. He's not just offering casual
• 1:34
  suggestions. This is a strategic briefing for
• 1:37
  the survival of the Church. He's telling Timothy don't be
• 1:39
  shocked when the biggest threat you face comes from inside the
• 1:42
  pews. Exactly.
• 1:43
  He's diagnosing a condition that, frankly, we see all around
• 1:46
  us today, but he uses language that is so much more intense, so
• 1:50
  much more visceral than we usually use.
• 1:53
  I was reading through the Greek analysis in our source material
• 1:56
  and I was genuinely shocked by the intensity.
• 1:59
  You can skim these verses in Sunday school.
• 2:01
  People will be selfish, greedy, proud and you think OK a list of
• 2:05
  bad behaviors. Note to self, be nicer.
• 2:09
  Right, a moral To Do List. But Paul isn't just listing bad
• 2:12
  manners here. He's laying out this terrifying
• 2:15
  pathology of the human heart, and he's aiming it squarely at
• 2:20
  religious people. He is, and that's why we need to
• 2:22
  unpack this carefully. Our whole mission in this deep
• 2:25
  dive is to get a handle on what Paul really means by the last
• 2:28
  days, to diagnose the root 'cause he identifies this
• 2:32
  idolatry of the self, and then to understand this really
• 2:35
  dangerous category of religion without power.
• 2:39
  And then there's that command at the end that we have to wrestle
• 2:41
  with, avoid such people. The very hard command.
• 2:44
  So let's start with the timeline.
• 2:46
  Paul opens verse one saying, but understand this, that in the
• 2:49
  last days there will come times of difficulty.
• 2:50
  Now I have to stop you right there.
• 2:52
  When most of us here last days, our brains immediately jumped
• 2:56
  to, you know, the left behind series.
• 2:58
  We think of end Times Charge, the Antichrist, the Great
• 3:01
  Tribulation, the absolute final week of history.
• 3:05
  Is that what Paul is talking about here?
• 3:06
  That is a super common misconception, but it it it
• 3:10
  really misses the broader biblical definition.
• 3:12
  In biblical theology, the phrase last days is it's a technical
• 3:16
  term. It refers to the entire inter
• 3:18
  advent period. So that's the whole span of time
• 3:21
  between Christ's first coming, specifically his ascension, and
• 3:24
  Pentecost and his second coming. So you're saying we've been in
• 3:27
  the last days for 2000 years? Exactly.
• 3:30
  Timothy was in the last days. The Reformers were in the last
• 3:32
  days days and we are in the last days.
• 3:35
  Wow. So it's not some future crisis
• 3:37
  we're waiting for, it's the spiritual reality of the age
• 3:40
  we're living in right now. Precisely.
• 3:42
  And that completely changes how you view history.
• 3:44
  You know, you have some theological camps like post
• 3:46
  millennial optimism or even just secular progressive liberalism
• 3:50
  that believe the world is on this upward ascent.
• 3:53
  Things are always getting better.
• 3:55
  Right, with enough education, enough technology, we're
• 3:57
  building a utopia. And one day we'll just hand a
• 4:00
  perfected world over to Jesus. Paul just shatters that entire
• 4:04
  idea. He really does.
• 4:05
  He doesn't say in the last days things will get progressively
• 4:08
  easier. He predicts trajectory of
• 4:12
  struggle. It's not an ascent to
• 4:14
  perfection, it's a polarization. The light gets brighter, yes,
• 4:19
  but the darkness gets much, much darker.
• 4:21
  It's the wheat and the tares growing together until the
• 4:24
  harvest. OK, let's talk about that
• 4:26
  darkness. The English translation says
• 4:28
  times of difficulty, but the Greek word chalapoy, that that
• 4:32
  word packs a much bigger punch, doesn't.
• 4:34
  It It really does. Difficulty is a bit of an
• 4:36
  understatement. Calipoy implies something
• 4:38
  fierce, something savage. Savage.
• 4:40
  Yeah. In extra biblical Greek from
• 4:42
  that time, this word was used to describe things like wild beasts
• 4:45
  or a jagged, dangerous coastline that would RIP a ship to shreds.
• 4:49
  It means hard to bear, menacing. Wow.
• 4:52
  But the most fascinating connection, and this is what
• 4:54
  really gives you the texture of what Paul is saying, is that
• 4:56
  this word only appears one other time in the entire New
• 5:00
  Testament. And this is the part in the
• 5:01
  notes that really grab me. It's in the Gospel of Matthew.
• 5:04
  Matthew 8.28 It's used to describe the Gadarene demoniacs.
• 5:09
  Remember that story? The two men possessed by demons
• 5:12
  living in the tombs, totally out of control, Matchy says.
• 5:15
  They were so fierce, Shalapoy, that no one could even pass by
• 5:19
  that way. They were untamable.
• 5:21
  That is a terrifying image to connect to this.
• 5:23
  So when Paul tells Timothy that Chalapoy times are coming, he's
• 5:27
  using a word that explicitly links the cultural climate to
• 5:30
  demon possessed men who cannot be reasoned with or controlled.
• 5:34
  That is the clear implication, He's saying the culture isn't
• 5:37
  just going to be inconvenient for Christians.
• 5:40
  It's going to be spiritually predatory.
• 5:42
  It will be irrational, at times violent, and the grammar he uses
• 5:46
  implies it establishes itself as a settled reality, a savage
• 5:50
  season. You know, that helps explain why
• 5:52
  things feel so irrational. Sometimes we try to use logic or
• 5:55
  biology or basic reason with the culture and we just get screamed
• 5:59
  at. But if the season is truly
• 6:01
  shallow, boy, then it's like trying to have a polite debate
• 6:03
  with a wild animal. It's not a discussion, it's an
• 6:05
  assault. And that's why Paul is warning
• 6:08
  Timothy not to be naive. If you expect the world to play
• 6:11
  by the old rules of civility, you're going to be crushed, he's
• 6:15
  saying. Expect savagery.
• 6:17
  OK, so if that's the context of the Savage Fear season, what's
• 6:21
  the engine driving it? What's the root cause?
• 6:23
  Paul gives this long list 18 different vices.
• 6:26
  It's a whole laundry list of human depravity, but he starts
• 6:29
  with one. He does and the order is
• 6:31
  absolutely critical. The first one is the found head
• 6:33
  that unlocks all the others, he says.
• 6:35
  For people will be lovers of self.
• 6:37
  The Greek is Phylla toy. Lovers of self.
• 6:41
  Now I have to play devil's advocate for a second here.
• 6:43
  Go for it. If you walk into any bookstore
• 6:45
  today, or you just scroll through Instagram for 5 minutes,
• 6:48
  you will be bombarded with messages telling you that you
• 6:50
  need to love yourself more. Self love is pitched as the
• 6:53
  highest possible virtue. It's the cure for anxiety, the
• 6:56
  secret to success. But Paul puts it right at the
• 6:59
  top of this horrifying list of sins.
• 7:02
  He identifies it as the toxic root and this goes straight back
• 7:05
  to a core reformed doctrine of the fall.
• 7:07
  Augustine had that famous definition of sin in curvatus
• 7:10
  and say. Humanity curved inward on
• 7:13
  itself. Exactly.
• 7:14
  The problem isn't that we hate ourselves, Paul says in
• 7:17
  Ephesians. No one ever hated his own flesh.
• 7:20
  We naturally feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, look out for
• 7:23
  our own interests. The problem is idolatry.
• 7:26
  It's what our source material called autotheism.
• 7:29
  Autotheism, the worship of the self.
• 7:31
  That's a strong way to put it, but it fits.
• 7:34
  When I become the center of my own universe, when my personal
• 7:37
  desires define what is true, when my feelings dictate
• 7:41
  morality, I have effectively made myself God.
• 7:44
  I am sitting on the throne of my own life.
• 7:46
  So it's not about having a healthy sense of self worth as a
• 7:49
  creature made in God's image. It's about enthroning the ego.
• 7:53
  Correct, it's a displacement. We were designed to be lovers of
• 7:56
  God. When we displace God from the
• 7:57
  throne, we don't just stop loving.
• 7:59
  Our love just curves inward. And notice what he lists
• 8:02
  immediately after Lovers of Self.
• 8:04
  Lovers of money and then later lovers of pleasure.
• 8:07
  And one of our sources called this the liturgy of self
• 8:10
  worship. I thought that was a brilliant
• 8:11
  way to frame it. If you are a God, you need a
• 8:13
  religion. You need rituals.
• 8:15
  The liturgy, right? That makes perfect sense.
• 8:18
  So if self is your God, that God needs sacrifices, it needs
• 8:21
  hymns. How do you serve and satisfy the
• 8:24
  self? Well, first you need Reese
• 8:26
  versus. That's the love of money.
• 8:27
  For Larguroy, money is the tool to feed the idol.
• 8:30
  It buys the comfort, the status, the security that the self
• 8:34
  demands. In the ultimate goal of this
• 8:36
  religion, the chief end of man in the church, the self.
• 8:39
  Is pleasure Philo donoi? The text says lovers of pleasure
• 8:43
  rather than lovers of God. Pleasure is the experience that
• 8:46
  gratifies the self. So you get this unholy Trinity,
• 8:49
  self, money and pleasure. The self is the deity, money is
• 8:53
  the means of grace, and pleasure is the chief end.
• 8:55
  And listening to that, you can't help but see how it critiques so
• 8:58
  many modern church movements. I mean, if a church's main
• 9:01
  promise is your best life now, or financial blessing, or just a
• 9:04
  constant emotional high. Then it's essentially A
• 9:07
  theological accommodation to self worship.
• 9:10
  It's telling people come to Jesus not because he is worthy
• 9:13
  in himself, but because he's the best tool to serve you.
• 9:17
  And that exposes the prosperity gospel and a lot of the seeker
• 9:20
  sensitive pragmatism as being fundamentally aligned with this
• 9:23
  root pathology of the last days. It just turns God into a cosmic
• 9:28
  bellhop for the idol of self. That is, that's a very heavy
• 9:32
  critique, but it seems unavoidable.
• 9:35
  If you take Paul's warning seriously, it is.
• 9:37
  But he doesn't just stop with the internal attitude.
• 9:40
  He shows how this idolatry explodes outward.
• 9:42
  I mean, if you have a world full of people walking around
• 9:45
  thinking they're little gods, that's going to absolutely wreck
• 9:48
  relationships. It leads to total social
• 9:50
  fracture. Verse 2 continues proud,
• 9:52
  arrogant, abusive, disobedient to parents and I want to pause
• 9:56
  on that last one. Yeah, that one always feels like
• 9:57
  it jumps out of nowhere. You have these massive cosmic
• 10:00
  sins, bride arrogance, and then suddenly disobedient to parents.
• 10:04
  Almost sounds like he's just complaining about rebellious
• 10:06
  teenagers. Why is that on this list?
• 10:08
  Because it's so much deeper than just teenage angst.
• 10:11
  In a Reformed worldview, we understand that God has ordained
• 10:14
  certain spheres of authority. The family is the 1st and most
• 10:18
  basic one. It's the training ground for
• 10:20
  submitting to any other authority.
• 10:22
  So when a culture is marked by being disobedient to parents,
• 10:26
  it's not just a social problem. It's a theological rebellion
• 10:29
  against the very idea of God ordained authority.
• 10:32
  It's the practical outworking of I am my own God.
• 10:35
  If I am God, then nobody tells me what to do.
• 10:37
  Not my parents, not the state, and certainly not the church.
• 10:40
  That makes a lot of sense, and that leads right into the next
• 10:42
  two descriptors. Ungrateful.
• 10:44
  Unholy. They flow directly from it.
• 10:46
  It creates an entitlement culture.
• 10:48
  If I am the center of the universe, then I deserve
• 10:51
  everything. I am owed everything.
• 10:53
  I owe no one anything. Gratitude is the joy, fearful
• 10:56
  recognition that I have received, a gift I didn't earn.
• 10:59
  The self worshipper cannot be grateful because they believe
• 11:02
  they earned it all. Unholy.
• 11:04
  Nothing is sacred, Everything is common.
• 11:06
  Everything exists to be consumed by me for my own pleasure.
• 11:09
  Nothing is set apart for God. And then we get to a word that I
• 11:13
  have to admit I found particularly disturbing in the
• 11:15
  study notes. Heartless.
• 11:18
  The Greek is astrogoy. Yes, this is a very specific and
• 11:22
  very tragic term. The Greek word storgo refers to
• 11:26
  natural family affection like the.
• 11:28
  Bond between a mother and her child.
• 11:30
  Exactly. It's that instinctual biological
• 11:33
  bond that holds families together.
• 11:35
  It's the glue. Paul puts the alpha primitive,
• 11:38
  the letter A in front of it, which negates the word.
• 11:41
  So it literally means without natural affection.
• 11:43
  So he's saying society will become so warped by self love
• 11:46
  that it actually overrides our most basic biological instincts.
• 11:50
  That is the claim and the source material pointed to some very
• 11:53
  difficult but necessary examples here.
• 11:56
  When the love of the self is the supreme value, even the life of
• 11:59
  1's own child can become an intolerable inconvenience if it
• 12:03
  interferes with the autonomy of the self.
• 12:05
  You're talking about the culture of abortion.
• 12:06
  Yes, where parental convenience or personal autonomy can triumph
• 12:10
  over the life of a child, it is the chilling suppression of
• 12:14
  store go. Or even on the other end of the
• 12:15
  spectrum, how we sometimes treat the elderly.
• 12:17
  Precisely when an aging parent becomes a burden, when they
• 12:21
  require time and money and sacrifice, a culture of self
• 12:25
  lovers finds it easier to just push them aside, warehouse them,
• 12:29
  because they no longer serve the idol of the self.
• 12:32
  It is astrogoy. It is the freezing over of
• 12:35
  natural human warmth. What a stark picture.
• 12:38
  It's a culture that just can't sustain community because
• 12:41
  everyone is jealously guarding their own little throne.
• 12:43
  He also mentioned slanderers and brutal.
• 12:46
  Slanderers is the Greek word diaboloi.
• 12:49
  It's the plural form of the word for devil.
• 12:51
  So people are behaving like little devils.
• 12:53
  Yes, when people gossip, when they tear down reputations on
• 12:56
  social media for sport, they are doing the work of the accuser.
• 12:59
  And brutal. The Greek is anomeroy.
• 13:01
  It means untamed wild, which circles us all the way back to
• 13:04
  the beginning. Du Chalapoy, the savage season.
• 13:07
  It's a perfect. Bookend It's a culture losing
• 13:09
  its ability to be civil, to trust, to even have a
• 13:12
  conversation because the self is so fragile and yet so
• 13:16
  aggressive. It's a jungle.
• 13:17
  A jungle of little gods. That is a very good way to put
• 13:20
  it. OK, so if I'm reading this list
• 13:22
  up to this point, selfish, greedy, arrogant, brutal,
• 13:25
  heartless, my mind is going to the Pagan world.
• 13:28
  I'm thinking he's describing the Roman arena or, you know, the
• 13:32
  worst parts of our secular culture today.
• 13:34
  But then we hit verse 5 and there is a twist that changes
• 13:38
  absolutely everything. This is the shock.
• 13:41
  This is the dagger in the heart of this passage for the church.
• 13:44
  Verse 5 says having the appearance of godliness, but
• 13:47
  denying its power. So.
• 13:50
  So these people, they aren't atheists, they aren't secular
• 13:54
  humanists fighting the church from the outside.
• 13:56
  They're. Churchgoers, they are religious.
• 13:58
  That's what makes this a Trojan horse.
• 14:00
  Paul is warning Timothy that these savage, self loving,
• 14:03
  brutal, ungrateful people are going to be standing right there
• 14:06
  inside the visible church. They'll be reciting the Apostles
• 14:09
  Creed. They might be serving on
• 14:10
  committees. They might even be standing in
• 14:12
  the puppet. We have to break down that
• 14:13
  phrase. It feels like the key to
• 14:16
  spotting the danger appearance of godliness.
• 14:19
  The word is morphosis. Right.
• 14:21
  Morphosis refers to the form, the the silhouette, the outer
• 14:25
  structure of a thing. The image that comes to mind is
• 14:28
  a Potemkin village. It has the facade of a building.
• 14:32
  From the street, it looks like a real house, but if you walk up
• 14:34
  and push on the door, you find there's nothing behind it.
• 14:37
  It's just a hollow shell. So these people have the
• 14:41
  structure of Christianity down. They know the language, the
• 14:44
  Christianese, they sing the hymns.
• 14:46
  They look like sheep. They have the form.
• 14:48
  The form is perfect. But they deny the power.
• 14:51
  Now, this is a word we have to be really careful with.
• 14:53
  In our theological circles. We're cautious about that word.
• 14:57
  When some people hear power, they immediately think of
• 15:00
  miracles. Healing Services Signs and
• 15:02
  wonders is Paul saying these people are false because they
• 15:05
  aren't performing miracles? No, and the expert commentary is
• 15:08
  very clear on this, coming from a Reformed and cessationist
• 15:11
  viewpoint. This power, the Greek is DN
• 15:13
  Amos, is not about charismatic gifts or spiritual showmanship.
• 15:18
  So what is it? It's the power of the gospel, as
• 15:20
  Paul describes it in Romans 1.16.
• 15:22
  It's the supernatural strength of the Holy Spirit to regenerate
• 15:25
  a dead heart and to sanctify a believer to actually make them
• 15:28
  holy. So the evidence of this
• 15:30
  dynamicist isn't that you can speak in tongues, it's that you
• 15:33
  can kill your sin. That is exactly right.
• 15:35
  True spiritual power kills self love.
• 15:38
  It produces humility. It produces self sacrifice.
• 15:41
  These people with the form. They claim Christ but they
• 15:44
  refuse to let him kill their sin.
• 15:46
  They want a Savior to forgive them, but not a Lord to rule
• 15:49
  them. They want the social benefits of
• 15:51
  the church, maybe the emotional high from the music or the moral
• 15:54
  reputation of being a Christian. But they deny the regenerating
• 15:57
  force that actually changes who they are at the core.
• 16:00
  The source material we looked at identified 3 modern enemies that
• 16:04
  really fit this description of form without power, liberalism,
• 16:08
  ritualism, and pragmatism. I think it'd be helpful to walk
• 16:10
  through those. Certainly.
• 16:12
  Let's start with theological liberalism.
• 16:14
  It keeps the form of Christian ethics.
• 16:16
  It uses words like justice, love, compassion.
• 16:20
  It might talk a lot about Jesus is a great moral teacher.
• 16:23
  But it denies the power. It denies the power of the
• 16:26
  substitutionary atonement. It denies the physical
• 16:29
  resurrection as a historical fact.
• 16:31
  It hollows out the entire supernatural core of the faith
• 16:34
  and leaves just a shell of social activism.
• 16:38
  It's a form of religion, but it has zero power to save a soul
• 16:41
  from sin. OK, then you have ritualism.
• 16:44
  This is more like dead orthodoxy.
• 16:46
  Yes, this is trusting in the outward acts themselves, taking
• 16:50
  communion, getting baptized, showing up on Christmas and
• 16:53
  Easter as if the ritual functions like magic.
• 16:57
  Ex operate operato. I did the thing, therefore I am
• 17:00
  safe. The condition of the heart is
• 17:02
  irrelevant. It's pure form over actual
• 17:05
  faith. And that's dangerous because you
• 17:07
  can feel so secure in your religion while being completely
• 17:09
  lost. You feel inoculated against the
• 17:11
  real thing. And then there's the third one,
• 17:13
  pragmatism. And this feels like the big one
• 17:15
  for the modern evangelical church in the West.
• 17:17
  It's the scourge of the modern church.
• 17:19
  Pragmatism adopts the form of success.
• 17:22
  Big crowds, slick production, professional lighting,
• 17:25
  data-driven marketing strategies.
• 17:27
  On the outside, it looks like a thriving movement.
• 17:30
  But it denies the power of what? It denies the sufficiency of the
• 17:33
  Word of God to do the work. It trusts in human technique
• 17:36
  rather than the Holy Spirit. It's the CEO pastor model.
• 17:38
  If you have the right strategy, you get the results.
• 17:41
  And you can build a massive organization on pragmatism,
• 17:43
  right? Without the Holy Spirit ever
• 17:45
  having to show up. A corporation can draw a crowd.
• 17:47
  A rock concert can draw a crowd. Pragmatism can create a church
• 17:51
  that looks wildly successful. It has the morphosis, but
• 17:54
  spiritually it is producing people who are still lovers of
• 17:59
  self. They're there for the show, not
• 18:01
  for the Cross. OK, so we have this very bleak
• 18:04
  diagnosis. We were in a savage season.
• 18:07
  The rude pathology is self worship.
• 18:09
  It's producing A fractured, heartless society.
• 18:12
  And the scariest part is that this rot is hiding behind a
• 18:15
  religious mask inside the church itself.
• 18:19
  So what do we do? Paul doesn't just leave us with
• 18:22
  a description, he gives a command at the end of verse 5.
• 18:24
  He does avoid such people. The Greek word is apotrapu.
• 18:28
  And it's a decisive term. It's an active command.
• 18:30
  It can be used in military or medical context.
• 18:33
  It means to turn away from, to shun.
• 18:35
  It implies you need to isolate a contagion.
• 18:37
  But wait a minute, avoid such people.
• 18:41
  I can just hear the immediate objection.
• 18:44
  Doesn't that sound incredibly unloving?
• 18:46
  Are we supposed to move to a compound in the mountains and
• 18:49
  never talk to anyone? Jesus ate with sinners and tax
• 18:52
  collectors. Right.
• 18:53
  And we have to be extremely clear about what this command is
• 18:56
  and what it is not. Context is everything here.
• 18:59
  Paul is not telling us to withdraw from the unbelieving
• 19:01
  world. He says elsewhere we'd have to
• 19:03
  leave the world entirely to do that.
• 19:06
  Exactly. And 1st Corinthians he makes
• 19:07
  that point. We are called to be witnesses.
• 19:10
  We are salt and light among the pagans.
• 19:13
  This command is specifically about those inside the visible
• 19:15
  church who claim to be brothers and sisters who have the form of
• 19:19
  godliness but are actually wolves in sheep's clothing.
• 19:22
  It is an ecclesiastical command about Church purity.
• 19:26
  So it's about who we partner with in ministry.
• 19:28
  It is the Reformed view would see this as an application of
• 19:31
  the third use of the law. It guides our obedience and
• 19:34
  protects the community of the faithful.
• 19:37
  Practically, it means we don't form ministry partnerships with
• 19:40
  those who deny the fundamentals. You don't yoke the church to
• 19:43
  liberalism or to cults that have a form but preach another
• 19:45
  gospel. You don't partner with the
• 19:47
  spiritual contagion. And this must be a direct order
• 19:50
  for church leadership, for elders.
• 19:52
  It's a primary duty. A shepherd who is nice to wolves
• 19:56
  is a traitor to the sheep. If an elder see someone in the
• 19:59
  congregation who fits this description, a slander, someone
• 20:03
  who is brutal, someone actively promoting self worship and
• 20:06
  causing division, They cannot just let it slide for the sake
• 20:10
  of a false peace. Avoiding them.
• 20:12
  That means you don't give them a platform.
• 20:14
  You don't let them teach you. Practice church discipline.
• 20:17
  It also strikes me that this has to have a personal application
• 20:19
  too. We said self love is the root.
• 20:22
  If we're being honest with ourselves, that root is in all
• 20:24
  of our hearts to some degree. That is the most uncomfortable
• 20:27
  part of this whole deep dive, isn't it?
• 20:30
  The line between form and power doesn't just run between
• 20:33
  denominations or between other people.
• 20:35
  It runs right down the middle of my own heart.
• 20:38
  We have to avoid the self lover within us.
• 20:41
  We have to be ruthless with our own hypocrisy.
• 20:43
  We have to constantly ask ourselves the hard questions.
• 20:45
  Am I just going through the motions?
• 20:46
  Is there real spiritual vitality in me?
• 20:49
  Am I actually filling my sin or do I just love the way my
• 20:54
  religion makes me feel about myself?
• 20:56
  That's the real test. And repentance is the only way
• 20:59
  to clear that contagion out of our own.
• 21:01
  Souls. So as we start to wrap this up,
• 21:02
  it's pretty dark picture. Paul paints savage seasons,
• 21:06
  counterfeit godliness, traitors brutal.
• 21:09
  It could feel really overwhelming.
• 21:11
  You can make you want to just hide, but that wasn't Paul's
• 21:14
  goal here, was it? He wasn't trying to depress
• 21:16
  Timothy. No, not at all.
• 21:18
  He wrote this to equip him. The purpose of the warning is to
• 21:21
  foster endurance. Paul is being a realist.
• 21:25
  He's telling Timothy, don't be shocked, don't be naive.
• 21:29
  When you know that the season is savage, you stop being
• 21:32
  surprised. When the culture hates goodness,
• 21:34
  you stop expecting the world to be polite and you buckle up and
• 21:37
  you stand firm. And what's the answer to this
• 21:39
  problem of form without power? Is it to just abandoned the form
• 21:44
  altogether? You become spiritual but not
• 21:46
  religious. No, that's the wrong reaction
• 21:48
  entirely. The answer?
• 21:50
  Dead formalism isn't formlessness.
• 21:52
  It's filled forms. It's real power.
• 21:55
  And in our theology, that power comes through what we call the
• 21:57
  ordinary means of grace. Which can sound so boring to the
• 22:00
  modern world ordinary. It does, but that is where the
• 22:03
  life is. The dynamis is found in the
• 22:05
  faithful preaching of Scripture, in prayer, and in the
• 22:07
  sacraments. That's where the Holy Spirit has
• 22:09
  promised to meet us and work on us.
• 22:11
  We don't need a new program or a better light show.
• 22:14
  We need to go deeper into the true gospel that actually
• 22:16
  transforms us. We need to sit under the Word
• 22:18
  and let it cut us. We need to come to the Lords
• 22:20
  Table and feed on Christ by faith.
• 22:23
  Godliness isn't a costume we put on, it's a new creation being
• 22:26
  worked out in us. And we have to remember the hope
• 22:29
  in all this. We do.
• 22:31
  This savage season is temporary. These last days have an
• 22:34
  expiration date. The Kingdom of God is eternal.
• 22:38
  And actually, the darkness of this age serves A profound
• 22:41
  purpose. It makes the diamond of the true
• 22:44
  gospel shine that much brighter when the world is heartless and
• 22:47
  brutal and fractured. A church that genuinely loves
• 22:51
  one another. A people who are truly holy and
• 22:53
  self sacrificial, that stands out like a city on a hill.
• 22:56
  The contrast becomes our greatest apologetic.
• 22:59
  That's a powerful perspective. It's not about retweeting from
• 23:02
  the darkness, but about shining more brightly by contrast.
• 23:04
  That is the calling. So here's a final provocative
• 23:07
  thought for you to Mull over as you go about your week.
• 23:10
  We've talked a lot about form versus power.
• 23:13
  Imagine for a moment that you were put on trial today for
• 23:16
  being a Christian. The prosecutor is trying to
• 23:19
  convict you. Would there be enough evidence
• 23:22
  to convict you of the power of godliness?
• 23:25
  Evidence of a changed life, of sin being killed, of radical
• 23:29
  love for God and neighbor? Or will they only find evidence
• 23:32
  of the form of Bible on your shelf, a church attendance
• 23:35
  record, and a Christian playlist on your phone?
• 23:38
  It's something we're thinking about.
• 23:39
  It certainly. Is I'd really encourage you to
• 23:41
  open up Second Timothy Chapter 3 this week and just read it
• 23:44
  slowly for yourself is a short chapter, but as we've seen it is
• 23:47
  packed with urgency for us today.
• 23:49
  Thanks for joining us for this deep dive.
• 23:51
  Thank you. This has been reformed thinking.