WWUTT 708 Preach the Word? (Part 3)

The Bible says that a time is coming when people will turn from listening to the truth and wander off into the midst.

But when that happens, we must remain sober minded, enduring suffering, doing the work of an evangelist when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt

.com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. We continue with our study of 2

Timothy chapter 4 verses 1 through 8 this week. The Apostle Paul writes to Timothy, 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 they will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

As for you, always be sober minded. Endure suffering. Do the work of an evangelist.

Fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.

I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.

Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the

Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing.

This week we've been listening to a sermon from Dr. Votibacham preaching on 2 Timothy chapter 4 verses 1 through 8, and we will conclude that sermon today.

He's already gone through the context of the passage, historical application, and right now he's in the midst of giving us a current day application, understanding how this applies to the day and age in which we live.

And so that's where we're going to pick up the sermon today. A little bit of yesterday's sermon here at the very beginning, but then

Dr. Votibacham is going to give some anecdotal evidences or examples of people wandering from the truth into myths, and then pastorally charging us as to how we should respond to those situations and those circumstances when even they happen in our own churches.

Here is Dr. Votibacham. Within a half a decade to a decade, a church that's holding firmly to the biblical understanding of marriage and a biblical understanding of homosexuality is hard to find and is considered narrow -minded, bigoted, and outside the mainstream because of it.

We were eating at the Narabread just a few days ago, and I'm listening to a conversation between three women.

We found a little place to sit. They were sitting over here near us, and we're getting everything situated.

I heard their conversation. I had to go and get something. I came back and heard more of their conversation, and it was one of those moments where I'm sort of warring within myself between, do

I engage this conversation and maybe try to correct some thinking, or do

I just continue to gather intel? And so I need to continue to gather intel.

And I'm sitting there, and I have a book that's coming out in October, Expository Apologetics, doing apologetics using the word of God, and I deal with this particular issue in there, and I deal with certain objections.

Almost every one of the objections that I dealt with in my book came up with these three women sitting there having that conversation.

One of them sits there and says, you know, here's the context. One of their friends, a young man that they all know, had put something on his

Facebook page decrying the same -sex marriage decision, and they're sitting there talking about this guy and how unreasonable he is, and the older woman, there's one older woman and two young women who are maybe college age, and the older woman says, you know, the problem with this is the same -sex marriage issue is not even about religion.

It has nothing to do with religion. It's about these people wanting these civil liberties, and it's, you know, okay, all right, fine, nothing to do with religion.

Heard that one before. Another young lady over here says, you know, my brother is a religion major, and his classes, you know, they've talked about the fact that there are only six verses that mention homosexuality, and those verses that are mentioning homosexuality are not talking about homosexuality as we understand it, because the

Bible doesn't deal with the issue of sexual orientation. It's dealing with something else.

Well, that's the Matthew Vines argumentation, God and the gay Christian, okay? That's the latest range for people who want to believe the

Bible and at the same time embrace homosexuality. Then, another one goes, I'm like, okay, where's the shellfish?

Where's the shellfish? And the other one goes, yeah, and people are saying, he says here, it's an abomination, you know, well, you know, so is eating pork, and so, ding, ding, ding, there's that one, and they just went down the list, and I was so glad that I did not engage when

I wanted to engage, because a few minutes later in the conversation, the conversation turned, and each of them began to talk about their church.

These weren't secular women. These were all church -going women. They're talking about their pastor, and they're talking about what this pastor's doing, and this youth minister, and this college minister, and they're all committed to the church, and every last one of them is making, parroting the arguments of the

God -haters who have pushed and promoted this issue, and you better believe that they have accumulated for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires.

They all go to churches that embrace homosexuality and same -sex marriage.

One after one after one, you know, big -name preachers and speakers, and, you know, are coming out in favor of same -sex marriage.

Tony Campolo, I think, was the most recent one who came out, and it's going to continue to happen.

It's going to continue to happen. This is an example where we are going to have to endure suffering, but more importantly than that, this is an example.

Remember I said those things that we see, right, and then there's parts of this text that we don't see? Here's the other problem.

This happens because we don't know what we believe and why we believe it. This happens because we become consumers of religion instead of practicers of Christianity.

You see, these women were consumers of religion. We live in the culture, we believe like the culture, but culturally we believe church is important.

So we want to find a church that is going to give us enough religion, but not so much that we're out of step with the culture.

This is how we wander off in the midst. This is how we wander off in the midst. I'll give you a second example, and then bring this home.

A second example is, and this is a much more sensitive issue, but it's very closely related.

For a while now, young people, young Christians in America, have been lured into the social justice movement.

Now if the social justice movement went by its actual name, young Christians would not have been lured into it, because the social justice movement is actually cultural

Marxism under a new name. There's no such thing as social justice, people.

In fact, in the Bible, justice never has an adjective. There's justice and there's injustice, but there's not different kinds of justice.

Something is either just, or it's unjust, or it's unjust. So the social justice movement, which is about putting people into various constituencies, and then having people in these various constituencies, and identifying people only by their constituencies, and treating people according to their constituencies, and having as our highest goal, creating a certain level of equality between certain groups of people, it doesn't fit within the context of biblical

Christianity. Because within the context of biblical Christianity, we recognize that there are only two races of people.

There is the race of the first Adam, and the race of the last Adam. Amen? Those are the only two races of people.

And we understand that what we need is justice, period. And so let me give you an example of how this is playing out, in terms of people running along into myths, and us being in deep trouble.

There are people who were killed in South Carolina, and it was a tragedy. It was an absolute tragedy.

And all of a sudden, we have flags being taken down all over the place. And it's interesting for a number of reasons.

Number one, it's interesting because this is buying into a platonic idea of reality. The platonic idea that believes that things are evil.

Not people, but things. So let's go after things, and we're going after flags. Here's the other problem.

Major Nidal Hasan killed more people in Killeen, in the name of Islam, than were killed in that South Carolina church.

There was not the outcry that we saw because of the South Carolina church. Just the other day,

Marines and sailors killed by another man in the name of Islam.

How many people have been killed recently in the name of the Confederacy, and were running to take down flags?

But how many people have been killed recently in the name of Islam? And we don't say a mumbling word.

Why? Because our reaction has less to do with our genuine love for people than it does with our desire to advance a particular narrative.

Folks, that's beneath us as Christians. I'll say it again, that's beneath us as Christians.

It's another area where we're wandering off into myths. These are just two examples.

We could look at more, but these are just two examples where our thinking has been absolutely corrupted, where it's not being brought in line with what the

Word of God says, and where we're trying to co -opt the Word of God, and then bring along teachers in accordance with our own design, and listen to those teachers who make us feel good about these particular issues, as opposed to saying, wait a minute, before I run headlong after the crowd, allow me to measure this against God's Word.

Here's what you need to know. When you do that, there's a price to pay, and that price is going to increase as the days go by.

We're in the midst of a rapid and sustained decline in this culture.

Here's what I don't want you to do. I don't want you in the midst of this rapid and sustained decline to think like this.

These people brought their ideology, and they used these methods in order to get their ideology to the head of the line.

What we need to do is employ the same methods to get our ideology to the head of the line.

That's not the answer. Two things. What did Paul tell

Timothy to do? And secondly, what did Paul do? He said, you endure hardness, hardship.

You be sober -minded. You do the work of an evangelist.

What do people need? People need the gospel.

Here's the great irony. When people are drawn off into myths, what they're drawn away from is the gospel.

When people are drawn away from the gospel, they begin to co -opt Christianity in order to use it for things that have nothing to do with the gospel, with nothing to do with what we're really about.

And they're co -opted by the culture. And we become just like the culture, just on a different side of the issue or the argument.

This is what happens. And all of a sudden, our appetite is for social change.

Our appetite is for justice for the homosexual. Our appetite is for, you fill in the blank, instead of our appetite being for the gospel, and people understanding the gospel, and people's lives being transformed by the gospel.

Through the work of an evangelist. And then what does he say? He said, I'm already being poured out like a drink offering, and the hour of my departure has come.

And then what? I fought the good fight. I finished the course. I kept the faith.

In other words, Paul says, what I want you to do is not veer off into things that are not gospel things, and that don't advance gospel things.

Because that's what we have to be about. You have to preserve the gospel and proclaim the gospel, because that's where our hope is.

And you see, what's going to happen is, people will begin to believe that their hope is in things other than the gospel.

Your hope is in prosperity. Your hope is in political correctness. Your hope is in whatever group you belong to.

And as they believe these things, they'll accumulate teachers in accordance with these own faulty desires, and they'll have a version or a brand of Christianity that is all about these peripheral issues and loses the gospel.

Don't do that. Especially since one of the things these people are going to be able to do by doing that is avoid persecution.

Isn't it interesting? You go to the political correctness route and have a version of Christianity that's politically correct.

All of a sudden, the political persecution, that stops. You go the word of faith route.

Everybody's greedy anyway. Amen? You give them a gospel of greed, what happens?

They're happy with the gospel of greed, especially when you're leaving other things along. You're not talking about sin anymore, because everybody knows they're a sinner.

But when you hold firm to this word that says, Christ died for sin, once for all, the just for the unjust, in order that he might bring us back to God, and the reason that he had to do that is because you're a sinner who can't save yourself, and your greatest need is to be forgiven of your sin.

You see, when you do that, that's uncomfortable. People don't like that. All of a sudden, all of those things that Paul said would accompany are intensified.

It's really simple, folks. Our tendency and our temptation is to run to any and everything but the gospel, so that we don't have to pay the price that preaching and holding to the gospel requires, both personally in terms of my own fleshliness and my own self -righteousness and my own legalism, and then externally in terms of people liking me and not persecuting me, because I'm not giving them that one thing that says, you're not okay, and you need

God. Both of those things come together to say to me, I know a way you can make all of this stop, and I'm here to say to you this morning, it ain't worth it.

It's not worth it, because here's what you need to know. The moment you make all of this stop, what you're making stop is those things that conform us to the very image of Christ.

Can I ask you a question? When am I more like Christ? When people are celebrating me and they're not offended by me, or when they want to hang me on a cross because of what

I'm saying? So when that temptation comes and it says, you can make it all stop, you can make it all go away,

I want you to realize that the it is you being conformed to the image of Christ as you hold firmly to the gospel and as you proclaim the gospel in spite of what it costs you.

And when you do that, you recognize, I don't want it to stop, because if it stops, all

I got left is me, and I don't know about you, but I don't need to go through life with more of me.

Amen, somebody. I don't know what it is that you're dealing with and wrestling with in this area in particular.

And I know that right now, in the midst of this body, there are people who are reeling because of difficulties that have come, because of doctrinal issues that at this very moment are being worked through and worked out.

Let me just take a moment of pastoral privilege and give you a word of warning and encouragement.

When you have a chance to choose between people and truth, you choose truth, because telling a person that they are more important than the truth is not loving that person.

This is why Jesus said, I've not come to bring peace, but a sword, and in that text he's talking about dividing people, even in their own households, fathers and sons and mothers and daughters and brothers and sisters.

Because even when the relationships are that close, even when it's your mama and your daddy, if you are choosing between mama and daddy and truth, you choose truth.

You choose truth. If for no other reason, because if you truly love a person, what you desire is for them to walk in truth.

Isn't that what John says? He has no greater joy than to hear that his children are walking in truth.

That's his greatest joy. Amen? That's his greatest joy. And if I would more desire for you to walk with me than I would desire for you to walk with truth, number one,

I'm not loving you rightly, and number two, I am an idolater. It's idolatry, pure and simple.

Our greatest desire is truth. Even when those whom we love are wandering off into myths, why?

Because what do they need more than anything else? Me? No. What they need more than anything else is truth.

They need truth. Hold firmly to it and don't let go.

Don't let go. And also don't think that it's an either or thing, that we either have people or we have truth.

I want both. Amen? I want both. I want those whom

I love and I want them in the truth. If I run after those whom

I love and forsake the truth, those whom I love can't create truth. But if I run after the truth and keep loving those whom

I love, the truth can change the ones I love. My appreciation to Dr.

Vodibakam and his ministry. I'll pick up on this next week and offer my own commentary on 2

Timothy 4, verses 1 -8. Let's conclude with prayer. Our wonderful God and Savior, we thank you for salvation in Jesus Christ our

Lord. And I pray that that would be our greatest desire for Christ and his kingdom.

That we would know that laid up for us in heaven is the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to us on the day of Christ, to all who have loved his appearing.

So let us not lose heart when things go the way that they go in this world. We know that's going to happen because this world is fallen and it is sinful.

But Christ has promised that he will put an end to all of these things. He will conquer his enemies.

He will deliver us from this into his eternal, imperishable kingdom. So let us have a hope for that day and also love others in the truth as we hold out the gospel awaiting the day of Christ.

In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an

Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an