The Book of Nehemiah Part 3

All right, we are going to pray and we're going to get started and continue our walk through the book of Nehemiah, otherwise known as Nehemiah.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, again, as we open your word, we ask you, Holy Spirit, to help us to rightly understand what you have revealed there.

Apart from your word, we are lost and in darkness and we are not capable of finding you, nor are we able to, on our own, rightly believe regarding you and truly love you with our whole hearts.

So we ask then through your word that you would guide us, help us to rightly believe what you have revealed and to walk according to your holy commandments, through the power of the

Holy Spirit, whom you have given to us, because you have not left us as orphans. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, let's see here. I'm going to try to organize just a few things on my screen here.

And there we go. Okay, we are going to continue our walk through the book of Nehemiah and things are going to heat up here.

And we're going to see what's going to happen. How did I say it? No good deed goes unpunished. And so as Nehemiah is rebuilding the wall, things are going slowly but still kind of fast.

It's kind of a fascinating thing. Half their workforce has to keep guard because there's threat of actual violence, of men coming and killing those who are working on the wall.

So one guy is working in brick and mortar, the other guy is carrying a sword and standing guard all the while while they're rebuilding.

Well, you'll note that oftentimes the easiest way to bring something to a halt is rather than go after the people who are doing the work, go after the guy who planned all of this.

And so Nehemiah, his head is going to be on the chopping block a little bit here.

So we read now, When Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies heard that I had built the wall and that there was no breach left in it, although up to that time

I had not set up the doors and the gates, Sanballat and Geshem sent to me saying, come and let us meet together at Haqqa Pralim in the plain of Ono.

But they intended to do me harm. And I sent messengers saying to them, I am doing a great work,

I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave and come down to you?

And they sent to me four times in this way, and I answered them in the same manner.

I like his response, by the way, it's like, no, I'm sorry, I've got paperwork to do and stuff. So I just don't have it in my schedule today for you to kill me.

So, you know, such is bureaucracy, c 'est la vie, right? It's a great diplomatic answer.

So they sent to me four times in this manner, I answered them in the same manner, and in the same way Sanballat for the fifth time sent his servant to me with an open letter in his hand.

In it was written, it is reported among the nations, and Geshem also says it, that you and the

Jews intend to rebel, that is why you are building the wall. Really?

Really? Really? We're now going to resort to just rank making up stuff, right?

Slander, malice. And you'll note that when you read the New Testament, how many times does the word slander come up?

In fact, rather than just speculate, why don't we just do a quick word search. We're going to look for slander, and what we're going to do is we're going to limit our search to the

New Testament, and we'll just do a little flex search, okay? That's an option, by the way.

It says flex right there. That's what I like to do with people. I like to flex on them. So none of you, yeah, really, yeah, okay.

Oh yeah, sorry, sorry. It's Mother's Day, yeah. So I should let everybody know here that I really enjoyed the cupcakes that we were able to enjoy thanks to Sarah's graduation, and you'll note that they were flying the

UND colors, those wonderful cupcakes. By the way, if you're feeling ill afterwards, remember that you can always sue.

Even Don Gross. I've never heard Don groan in pain like that. And his blood is green.

Okay, got it. So you'll note that the word slander appears quite a few times in the

New Testament. The Apostle Paul, like, for instance, in 2 Corinthians, talking about kind of the difficulties that he goes through.

In fact, let me add a little bit more context to it, because it's a great passage. We put no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry.

But as servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way. By great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger, by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the

Holy Spirit, genuine love, by truthful speech, and the power of God, with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left.

That almost sounds like something straight out of Nehemiah, right? Through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise, we are treated as imposters, yet we're true.

As unknown and yet well -known, as dying, and behold, we live.

As punished yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing everything.

You'll note that when we read, and we're reading here of the straight -out slander of Zanballot and Geshem and Tobiah against Nehemiah, this is standard fare.

Because here's the thing, the devil does not operate in truth. The devil is the father of lies.

And I can tell you that as Christians, we need to hear these words and take heed of the examples given to us in Scripture, because we are not immune from these types of attacks.

I may mention the fact that if you're following me on Twitter, then you'll know for the past month

I have been legitimately debating for real Nazis. And I never in my life would have thought that that would have been something that I would end up having to use apologetic skill or biblical skill to go against straight -out people who legitimately identify as National Socialists.

And they're here in the United States, they're here within Confessional Lutheranism. And so for a month,

I have been taking these yahoos on and taking their arguments, their

Bible -twisting, and taking it to task. And you know what the only thing they are capable of doing at this point?

Is just flat -out lying against me. But here's the thing, I've been lied about by so many people in so many different ways, nobody can get their story straight.

And as a result of it, I've just kind of gotten used to it. In fact, there was a few pastor friends of mine, we were all having a group chat together, kind of in the middle of the highest -pitched portion of this battle.

And some of these names you would actually know. But one of the fellows said, you know, how long are you going to keep at this?

Because man, I don't know how you're doing this, you must have a cast -iron stomach. And I said, I'm used to this.

This is like par for my course. So I explained to him that I'm just going to keep this up and wear them out.

But those guys still haven't figured out what I'm up to, which is hilarious, because they should have figured it out by now, but nope, they haven't.

And they continue to play by my rules rather than theirs, it's kind of funny. But the idea then is, slander is part of the program.

And I don't think I have ever heard Joel Osteen preach on such text, talking about how we are called to suffer in these ways.

And then you'll know as Christians, we are not permitted to engage in slander.

If you find yourself on the losing end of an argument, and you don't realize that what is called for at that moment is for you to repent, and you decide that what you're going to do is you're going to get that person.

I'm going to get them, and I know how I'm going to do it. I'm going to tell everybody in the neighborhood that this person eats

Meow Mix. You know, they're into cat food. Okay, that's a terrible slander, by the way.

Meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow. Alright, no, it's a silly example.

But the thing is, if you have to resort to slander, you've already lost the argument. You have already lost.

And so scripture tells us, so Colossians chapter 3, in fact, let me grab a little bit more context here, okay.

Therefore, having put away falsehood, remember the native language of the devil is what?

Lies. If the native language of the devil is lies, we can't engage in it. It is not something that we can do.

We need to then therefore put to death what is earthly inside of us. Everybody gets this part.

Although the world we live in now, holy smokes, what has happened to the Christian church? I mean, seriously.

Alright, where you have pastors and pastrixes flying the rainbow flag in the month of June and doing it year -round, blessing same -sex marriage, having re -baptisms for people who want to change their sex, right.

Andy Stanley, his church, North Point, they just baptized a woman who was pretending to be a man.

And part of the understanding of her, no his, his baptism, no, it's her baptism, because she's pretending to be a man.

She'll never be a man, right. Is that this was a way of kind of embracing that God is working in this person's life and stuff like this.

So, and then, by the way, we don't get to sit here and go, well, you know, praise

God that we're against homosexuality, but when in reality, let me ask you this, when it comes to sexual immorality, have you ever stopped to think that y 'all don't get to shack up with your boyfriends and your girlfriends and stuff like this.

And as I was working through one of my catechism classes with the youth, it was just a few weeks ago, you know, this topic came up.

And I told the group, I said, I don't want to hear in the future that my child who you confirmed is now living with their boyfriend or their girlfriend.

And one of the students looked at me like, really, you can't do that? It's like, yeah, you can't do that.

Okay, that's considered part of sexual immorality. Sexual immorality is a big umbrella, right.

So, we got to put it to death. Purity, passion, evil desires, covetousness, isn't our entire economy here in America based on this?

You know, it's gotten to the point where it's like, I can't watch certain events when they're releasing new products because it'll make me dissatisfied in something that I have that works perfectly fine.

Why do I need a brand new $1000 iPhone every single year?

Design obsolescence. Yeah, right. Designed obsolescence. Yeah, well, thankfully, the current one didn't make my current iPhone obsolete enough.

And it's doing just a fine job. I can still make phone calls with it. Can you believe that? Yeah, and I can still check

Instagram and other things with it. It's fascinating, but, okay. Covetousness is idolatry.

It's flat -out idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming.

So, you're going to note here, Christ eventually comes off the throne, comes to earth in judgment, and the reasons for it are listed is because of all of this yuck of the world.

I think it's time that we put it to death, as Christ has called us to do. And then Paul says, in these two you once walked.

Walked, peripateo. This is how you conduct your life. When you were living in them, but now you must put them all away.

Anger, wrath, malice, slander. Obscene talk from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices.

Yeah, you kind of get the idea. So, you have somebody that you don't particularly care for, and your solution is,

I'm going to let everybody in the neighborhood know what a horrible, terrible, no -good, rotten person that is.

This is not any way for a Christian to behave. So, yeah, slander comes up a lot, in the context of we need to not engage in it, but also that we are to endure it when it comes up.

And it's not a matter of if it will come up, it's just a matter of when. And that's kind of the problem.

So, here we have Geshem and Sanbalat saying, the reports have come to us that you are building these things because you

Jews intend to rebel. You know, I'm sure that Nehemia here would have been tempted to look at these fellows and go, your mom dropped you on your head when you were born, right?

Is that the problem here? I would have loved to see if he did, because then

I would feel a little more justified in my snarkiness. That's one of the things about being a

Gen Xer. So, from time to time people accuse me of being a boomer, you don't even know what you're talking about.

I am a Gen Xer, and a snark is my spirit animal. This is what it means to be a

Gen Xer, man. It's like, you just don't get it. So, you intend to rebel, that's why you're building the wall.

According to these reports, you wish to become their king. Really? Really?

And you have set up prophets to proclaim concerning you in Jerusalem.

There's a king in Judah, and now the king will hear of these reports. We're tattling on you with these false reports.

So now come, let us take counsel together. Then I said to him, saying, No such things as you say have been done, for you are inventing them out of your own mind.

For they all wanted to frighten us, thinking their hands will drop from the work, and it will not be done.

But now, O God, strengthen my hands. Now when

I went into the house of Shemaiah, the son of Delahiah, the son of Mehatabel, who was confined to his home, he said,

Let us meet together in the house of God, within the temple. Let us close the doors of the temple, for they are coming to kill you.

They are coming to kill you by night. These guys just don't end. Man, seriously.

No good deed goes unpunished, especially when you're doing something God has called you to do. But I said,

Should such a man as I run away? And what man such as I could go into the temple and live?

I will not go in. And I understood and saw that God had not sent him, but he had pronounced the prophecy against me, because Tobiah and Sambalat had hired him.

Oh, look at that. A false prophet for profit. Come into the temple of God. Let's go to the temple of God.

And when he shows up, kill him! Kill him! Right? But he figured it out. For this purpose he was hired, that I should be afraid and act in this way and then sin.

And so they could give me a bad name in order to taunt me. Remember Tobiah and Sambalat.

Oh, my God, according to these things that they did. And also the prophetess, Noadiah, and the rest of the prophets who wanted to make me afraid.

Wow! Does any of this make a lick of sense to you guys? Have you noticed how absolutely insane and irrational sin makes us?

So the wall was finished on the 25th day of the month of Elul. In 52 days.

That's pretty fast. I mean, wow. I mean, not quite two months they finished the whole work.

And when all of our enemies heard of it, and this is the days before they had skip loaders and things like that. That's impressive.

And when all of our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us, they were afraid. And they fell greatly in their own esteem.

For they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God. Right on.

Because you'll note, 52 days. A little less than two months in finishing the wall, when half of your workforce is having to carry a sword.

They probably could have got it done in a month if they didn't have that problem. Clearly God was with them. Moreover, in those days, the nobles of Judah sent many letters to Tobiah.

And Tobiah's letters came to them. For many in Judah were bound by oath to him because he was the son -in -law of Shekaniah, the son of Ara, and his son

Jehoananan, and had taken the daughter of Meshulam, the son of Barakaya, as his wife.

Alright, sounds like you've got a bunch of intermarrying going on between people of important statuses.

They also spoke of his good deeds in my presence and reported my words to him. And Tobiah sent letters to make me afraid.

So you've got people who are working closely with Nehemiah, who are reporting to Tobiah, letting him know everything that goes on, everything that Nehemiah says, and I'm sure none of that got twisted at all.

I've seen stuff like this happening in Oslo, but that's a different story altogether. And so they literally sent letters to make

Nehemiah afraid. Now, when the wall had been built,

I had set up the doors and the gatekeepers. The singers and the Levites had been appointed.

I gave my brother Hanani and Hananiah the governor of the castle charge over Jerusalem, for he was more faithful and God -fearing man than many.

So note, the person who's now the governor, he was set up to be so because why?

He feared God. Well, you know that's not going to be good for business for the corrupt politicians, right?

You'll note that men who legitimately fear God and they are in politics, they are in positions of authority, holy smokes, those people are despised by those who are corrupt.

And over and over and over again, they are slandered and maligned. But this man, he was put in charge specifically because he was a

God -fearing man. May God give us such people. So I said to them, let not the gates of Jerusalem be opened until the sun is hot.

And while they are still standing guard, let them shut and bar the doors. Appoint guards from among the inhabitants of Jerusalem, some at their guard posts, some in front of their own homes.

The city was wide and large, but the people within it were few and no houses had been rebuilt.

Then my God put it in my heart to assemble the nobles and the officials and the people to be enrolled by genealogy.

And I found the book of the genealogy of those who came up at the first and I found written in it, these were the people of the province who came up out of the captivity of those exiles whom

Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, had carried into exile. They returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his town, and they came with Zerubbabel, Joshua, Nehemiah, Azariah, Ramaiah, Nahamani, Mordecai, Mordecai, hmm, that's a notable name.

You ever read the book of Esther, right? Bilshan, Mishpareth, Bigvai, Nechum, Baana.

The number of the men of the people of Israel, the sons of Parush. Now I'm not going to read this list. Okay, number one, it contains numbers.

This is going to be dangerously close to me doing math, and we all know that math is evil. But when you read this, you're going to note something here.

One of the things that I will always point to in the scriptures, this is a feature like this that disproves this concept that in the

Bible we have a bunch of myths and legends and things that really didn't take place in human history.

Always and again I ask the question, then what's with these genealogies, these kinds of lists?

What's with all of these historical names and the minutia of detail that is given?

All right, again I point then to the Star Wars trilogy, the original one.

How does Star Wars begin? A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Is this kind of detail something that really matters when you're telling a story like that that really isn't anchored in anything historical but just in the imagination of humanity?

Not at all. And that's the thing. I remember years ago I interviewed a lady who had come out of a liberal church, and it was these kinds of lists that really conflicted her because her liberal pastor who didn't believe the

Bible just kept referring to the Bible as a bunch of tales and stories that had been changed over and over and over.

How many times have you heard somebody say, we can't really trust the Bible because it's been translated and retranslated and changed and modified and edited.

Balogna, okay? The people who say that do not know what they're talking about.

Over and again one of the major analogies that they give to try to make the claim that the Bible has been changed is they'll say, don't you remember when you were a kid and you played the game of telephone, right?

Now funny enough in the United Kingdom that same game, that same game is called

Chinese whispers. I don't think you'd call it that in the United States, not without being crucified.

But we all know how the game goes. You get a line of kids. You got 10 kids at a party and you begin by telling the first kid the first paragraph of the

Gettysburg Address, right? Four score and seven years ago, our fathers, and you just whisper it in their ears.

And then without the ability to even see the words that they've been told, they then are to whisper that word for word in the ears of the next kid.

And by the time it gets down to the last kid, the last kid says, so what is it that was being said?

Well, what was told to me was Barney saying, I love you and you love me. Okay, it just gets really twisted up and everybody has a good laugh and there are people who legitimately think that is how

Christianity is passed down. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, when you consider how the Mazarites would handle the scriptures, you know, so the

Mazarites were the ones really who, they're the ones who gave us a lot of the Old Testament manuscripts that we have.

These people were so precise in how they would take a copy of the

Old Testament and then make a new one. They had ways of fact checking to check to make sure they hadn't made an error.

And if they had made an error, guess what? The whole scroll got destroyed. That's how precise they were.

Instead of thinking that Christianity and the scriptures or how we communicate it is like a game of telephone, which is a horrible example.

Instead, the better way to think about Christianity is it's like karate or taekwondo, right?

When I was, I have a bum knee because of this. So when we were raising our kids, we were raising, my children wanted to do taekwondo, right?

And of course, you know, when you have three kids and you're trying to figure out how you burn as many calories as possible so they go to sleep at bedtime, taekwondo sounds like a reasonable bargain.

It's a small amount of money to pay for a large amount of calorie burn, right? So, but after watching them do it,

I decided, you know, I think I wanna do this for a while. And I came this close to getting a black belt in taekwondo, but I blew my knee out.

But I can tell you something about how taekwondo worked. As I was working my way through the ranks of taekwondo and learning this martial art, my martial arts instructor, my sensei, man, he was a stickler for details.

And so you had to learn the forms. You had to learn everything.

And so, like, if you're working on a forward punch, you know, you get into a particular stance and you make a forward punch, he would come along and he would correct your posture.

He would say, no, your hand needs to be out to here, and I need your knees down lower. And he would physically, like, kick you in the back of the leg to get your knees down lower, you know, and make sure that that...

And he would sit there, and from time to time when we were working on forms, in his taekwondo studio, he had a big wall mirror, and he would stand next to me, and he would say, now, mirror what

I'm doing, and we would look at each other through the mirror, and we would go through the different moves, right?

And he would correct me as I was going, so that when it came time for testing, when it came time for testing, what

I was able to demonstrate is that I had mastery of that particular level of taekwondo.

Christianity is a lot like that, okay? You'll note that when you look at the pastoral epistles, in the pastoral epistles, we are instructed that the one who wants to be a pastor, that this is a noble office, but this is somebody who must study and show himself as approved, as a workman who does not need to blush with embarrassment, who can rightly divide the word of truth.

Well, somebody has to study and show themselves approved and demonstrate that they have competency in rightly dividing the word of truth, that means they're going to have to prove their competency to somebody who's farther down the line than them, right?

Christianity is not about changing the story or anything like that. It's about preserving the scriptures.

In our day and age, we have technology where constantly our technology is getting updates.

We're on iOS 16 or something like that now, and of course they're going to reveal what's coming out in iOS 17 in just a few months or a few weeks, and we all know that our technology has constant incremental improvement, which is a great way to run a business, by the way.

If you want to say competitive, constant incremental improvement is a great thing, but we have a faith that Scripture describes as the faith once delivered to the saints.

There are no update packets coming from heaven to give us

Christianity 2 .4. It doesn't work that way. It has arrived perfect.

No downloads. I like what you said there, sir. Yes, that's right. No downloads, and I'm sorry for those of you who are expecting angels over Alaska.

That's just not a thing. Well, that was the weirdest. That was one of the...

I don't know what religion that was. It's just not Christianity. All right, so the point is here, when you see this type of minutia, this is 100 % proof.

We're not dealing with myths. We're dealing with legitimate history.

These are real numbers of different, of the amount of survivors from each of these different family and clan names.

So I'm going to skip all of that, though. All right, let's see here.

All right, so then we've got the list of all of the temple servants, the sons of Solomon's servants, the Sotai, the temple servants.

All right, we're still... This one goes on for a while. The total, let's get to the bottom line. I like that.

Bottom line's a good thing, okay? The whole assembly together, now listen to this. There were just a little less than 5 ,000 who went into exile after the three different campaigns of Nebuchadnezzar that God sent to judge

Judah. And they did as God commanded. They hunkered down. They had sons and daughters, and they gave their sons and daughters in marriage to each other, and they had children.

So the whole assembly together was 42 ,360. That's less than the population of Grand Forks.

That is not a lot. And they were all hanging out in one town together.

Each of these people were returning to their different villages and towns and things like that. Besides their male and their female servants, of whom there were 7 ,337.

And they had 245 singers, male and female. Their horses were 736.

Their mules, 245. Their camels, 435. And their donkeys, 6 ,720.

You'll note that that kind of tells you something here, that donkeys were the primary beast of burden of that age.

And that actually jives with what we know historically from archaeology. Now, some of the heads of the fathers' houses gave to the work.

The governor gave to the treasury 1 ,000 derricks of gold, 50 basins, 30 priests' garments, 500 minas of silver.

Some of the heads of the fathers' houses gave into the treasury of the work 20 ,000 derricks of gold, 2 ,200 minas of silver, and what the rest of the people gave was 20 ,000 derricks of gold.

2 ,000 minas of silver, 67 priests' garments. So the priests and Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, some of the people, the temple servants, and all of Israel lived in their own towns.

And when the seventh month had come, the people of Israel were in their towns. Chapter 8.

This is the most important bit of this book. Pay attention to what happens.

So they've accomplished what they needed to accomplish. They're still under big threat.

Nehemia is being lied about and slandered all over the place. And all of these people that are lying and slandering are doing so to the purpose of basically provoking these people to fear them because they're basically up to no good.

So all the people then gathered as one man into the square before the water gate. They're in Jerusalem.

And they told Ezra, the scribe, to bring the book of the law of Moses that Yahweh had commanded

Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women, and all who could understand what they heard on the first day of the seventh month.

And he read from it, facing the square before the water gate from early morning until midday.

You think my sermons are long? Wow. Okay. From early morning to midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand, and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law.

And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose.

Does that sound like a pulpit to you? Right? That's really the point.

Beside him stood Matathia, Shema, Ananiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, on his right hand, on his left hand.

And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people. And as he opened it, all the people stood.

Huh. Huh. They stood. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. Lord, to whom shall we go? Right? And Ezra blessed Yahweh, the great

God, and all the people answered, Amen. Amen. Lifting up their hands, they bowed their heads, and they worshiped

Yahweh with their faces to the ground. Hmm. Bow your head, face to the ground.

Huh. I wonder where we got that idea from. You started to see some connections? Right. Right? Also, Joshua, Bani, Sherabiah, Jamin, Ahub, Shabbathai, Hodiah, Maasaiah, Kalithah, Azariah, Jehoshabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, and the

Levites helped the people to understand the law. So while he's out there reading this, and people who are not quite getting it, they can ask questions, and they had guys on hand.

We have operators standing by to answer your questions. And that's what they were doing. While the people remained in their places, they read from the book of the law of God clearly, and they gave the sense so that the people understood the reading.

Huh. What a revolutionary idea. That's just crazy talk.

Actually reading the Scriptures, being able to help people to understand the clear sense of what it is that they are hearing, isn't that the job of pastors, by the way, now in the

New Covenant? That's exactly the job. But you'll note then that there are many people today who are pastors.

This isn't what they're doing. This is not what they're doing at all. In fact,

I have noted for a long time now in places that call themselves churches, you are not meaningfully going to hear

God's Word. You're going to hear a few verses taken out of context right after they have the laser smoke and light show with the circus animals and stuff like that.

I wish I was joking about that, but I'm not. You'll have Spider -Man flying in and dropping down from the ceiling and kissing a woman in the front row.

Yes, that has happened. You'll have people on trampolines and ladies spinning from large pieces of cloth hanging from the ceiling and doing stuff like that.

And then you won't meaningfully hear God's Word at all. So many of the people that we serve here, having come to us, they're starving for God's Word.

Starving. But the job of every pastor is to do this exact thing that Ezra did that was done on that day.

And that is to read from God's Word and to do so clearly and give the proper sense so that the people can understand what they're reading.

That's the job. Preach the Word. In fact, think of it this way. I can just hear somebody going,

Well, that's Old Testament, Roseboro. That's Old Testament. We're in the New Testament. We don't need to do that.

How many times have I heard that argument? Paul prophesying about what's coming, which is already here.

Understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 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. We covered this in one of our studies this week.

I reminded the folks that this is not a description of people who are outside the church.

This is terrible times because this is what's going to happen to people who call themselves

Christians. Having a form of godliness but denying its power. This is describing people in the last days as we get closer to the return of Christ.

What kind of churches are there where people can thrive as lovers of money and proud and arrogant and abusive and disobedient?

I would say that's the majority of churches nowadays, right? The people who attend them, this describes them to a

T. Among them are those who creep into households and they capture weak women, burdened with sins, led astray by various passions, always learning, never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

That's kind of one of the most frustrating things I've seen regarding those who twist the scriptures in these churches that do not rightly handle

God's word. There are people sitting in these churches taking notes and I'm sitting there going, why are you taking notes?

The guy isn't teaching you anything. Always learning, never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

Just as Janice and John opposed Moses, these men also opposed the truth. These men are corrupted in mind.

They're disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get far for their folly will be plain to all as it was of those of those two men.

But you, however, Timothy, you have followed my teaching. You've followed my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra.

With persecutions I endured, yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Look at that. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

While evil people and impostors, they will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and affirmably believe, knowing from whom you have learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

All Scripture is breathed out, theanoustos, by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work.

Now let me roll back up and see if I missed some questions because we're getting close to the time

I've got to go. Okay.

God has preserved His own word in the Scriptures. That's right. The pastor sees it. One brother asks me, why does

Paul say follow me instead of follow Christ? Okay, so you'll note that Paul here, in pointing to himself, you followed my way of living.

Paul is following Christ. You want to know what the godly life of following Christ looks like.

You look, Paul says, look at what I've done. Timothy could have said that to the next generation of pastors that he would have been training.

Follow the example that I, follow me as I follow Christ. The point is that Paul is basically saying he's following Christ.

Deceiving and being deceived. Sounds like, yeah, yeah, that's right. Sounds like Romans. Deceiving and being deceived.

Over and again, I'm just stunned having done almost two decades of fighting for the faith.

A lot of the people I was critiquing a decade ago, they're gone. They didn't retire from the ministry.

They spectacularly fell. I think of Brian Houston, Carl Lentz, Mark Driscoll, who should not be doing any ministry at all.

Then Pete Wilson and others. The list just goes on and on and on and on. Every one of these people having big, spectacular falls.

Now, my apologies. I have to go. I'm up against a hard deadline. We'll have to end here.