As a surfer, I look forward to hurricane season with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety. Hurricane season can bring epic waves to the East Coast, which are for the most part much better than the normal summer fare. But at the same time, those hurricanes are best enjoyed when they are hundreds of miles offshore. When they get close to land, or make landfall, they can be extremely dangerous. We are now in hurricane season, and the waves we have this morning are the result of Hurricane Earl which is churning away somewhere off the coast of Greenland this morning, after having moved up the US east coast over the last few days.
From a boating perspective, hurricane season is a perilous season. These powerful storms pose a serious threat to shipping and fishing vessels at sea. The apostle Paul was no stranger to severe storms while at sea. He said in 2 Cor. 11:25 that he was shipwrecked three times. One of those events we read about in Acts 27, where he and his shipmates were in the midst of a severe storm for 14 days and eventually had to abandon ship and swim ashore on an island. So Paul was very familiar with the season in which the storms were known to be severe on the sea. So here in 2 Timothy 3, it’s very interesting to note that Paul uses this expression of a perilous season in his letter to Timothy to describe what he calls the last days.
Notice vs 1, “But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.” That reads in the NASB a little more tame than how it was originally written. More literally, he means “perilous seasons.” It’s not the word “chronos” which indicates time, but “kairos” which indicates a season, a period of time. So during the last days, there will be periods or seasons which are particularly perilous, or even extremely perilous.
But the real difficulty in this verse is the phrase “in the last days.” Many people suppose that is a reference to the time directly before the second coming of Christ. But if you study the scriptures to see how this phrase is used in other places, it becomes clear that it cannot mean that. If that were so, it would be pointless for Paul to tell Timothy to avoid these people who characterized the perilous season of the last days, when the second coming has not yet come some 2000 years later.
There are many other references in scripture where this phrase is used, but the most significant one might be found in Acts 2:17, when Peter quotes from Joel 2:28, where God says, “‘AND IT SHALL BE IN THE LAST DAYS, THAT I WILL POUR FORTH OF MY SPIRIT ON ALL MANKIND.” Peter goes on to say that this prophecy was being fulfilled in that day, on the day of Pentecost. The best understanding then of the phrase the last days is to say that it is a time period that began at Christ’s first coming, and continues until His second coming. It is called by some the church age. And so as you consider the persecutions and afflictions of the church throughout the last 2000 years, it is evident that there have been perilous seasons which have come and gone. But these perilous seasons will become worse and worse as time goes on, culminating in a severe climax of wickedness in the last hours before Christ’s return.
Certainly, Paul and Timothy were living in a perilous season. They were experiencing persecutions and even executions for their faith. Paul would soon be martyred after writing this letter. In another couple of dozen years, Timothy would be stoned to death for his faith. I would suggest that we that are in the church are entering into a perilous season as well in our lifetimes, and possibly becoming even worse in our children’s lifetimes. When you look at the state of the world, t’s hard not to imagine that we are in the last hours of the last days, but it’s possible that our season will come and go and there may still be some time before Christ’s appearing. We do not know the day or the hour. But we know that perilous seasons will come as a result of ever increasing wickedness, until one day, God will say “Enough! It is time!” And Christ will come in the clouds with millions of His angels in power and in glory to execute God’s wrath and judgment upon the world.
It is the people of the earth who are living during these grievous seasons who are the cause of all the grief. Paul gives a long list of the characteristics of these sinful people. I’m reminded in Psalm 5:5 which we studied last Wednesday evening, that the Psalmist David said, “God hates those who do iniquity.” And he gives a description of boastful, proud, lying, deceiving people as examples of those that God hates. In Romans 1:28-31 there is another list which is very similar to the one here in 2 Timothy. It says in Rom 1:28-32 “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; [they are] gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.”
Now let’s read Paul’s list he gives here to Timothy and notice the similarities. Vs 2, “For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.”
Now I don’t want to get bogged down in defining all of those types of sinful behaviors. I think that this list can be summarized as “lovers of self,” “lovers of money,” and “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” They have no spiritual quotient at all in their lives. They don’t love God, nor love his people. Though they may profess to do both, their actions betray them. And about these sort of people, Paul says “avoid such men as these.” It’s not just males, but females, all people who embody such characteristics, we are told to avoid. To turn away from. The point is, don’t fellowship with such people. Don’t hang out with such people. Don’t try to be friends with such people. Because their actions will rub off on you. They will influence you to follow them into wickedness, just as Eve influenced Adam to follow her into sin.
What becomes more apparent though as Paul continues in this letter, is that these people he is describing are not necessarily pagans, but people in the church. Particularly church leaders seem to be indicated here as a part of this group. The list we read in Romans was describing people who had rejected God wholeheartedly, they didn’t even try to pretend to be Christians. But these people Paul describes, though they have many of the same characteristics of the pagans, are actually according to vs 5, claiming a form of godliness, or you might say, claiming a form of religion. They claim to be godly, to be Christian, to be a part of the church.
Now when we understand that he is talking about so called Christians in the church, and we are to avoid such men as these, then that is a very shocking statement. Of course, we know that we are warned in scripture by the apostles and by Christ, that false teachers will come in to the church who are actually wolves in sheep’s clothing. We are warned that the false doctrines that they teach are actually the doctrines of demons. We are warned that they will lead many people astray, and destroy the faith of many. But it’s still shocking to realize that they are in the church, masquerading as Christians, and we are told to avoid fellowship with such people.
Jesus gave a parable about the wheat and the tares, which I’m sure you are all familiar with. There is a long time in the process of the planting and sowing and maturing of the wheat, when the tares look like the wheat. Jesus said the devil comes in the darkness and sows tares amongst the wheat. The only way to be sure which is which is to wait for the harvest, when the fruit will make it known which are tares and which are wheat. That’s a picture of the church, tares are sown amongst the wheat. And the fruit which shows the difference is either their righteous behavior or their wicked behavior. That’s why Paul gives us this list of the behavior of these people. Their actions show that they are not converted. They may hold to a form of religion but their actions show that they are unregenerate.
Now those false teachers, Paul says, in particular take advantage of those in the church who are weak. Vs6 “For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
A lot of people see some sort of male chauvinistic bent that they think Paul has against women in this statement. So it’s tempting to try to mitigate the effect of Paul’s words here which on the surface seem to be an indictment against women. But actually, I don’t think that Paul was a male chauvinist at all. I think he writes by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So either you are going to believe that the Holy Spirit is a male chauvinist, or you don’t believe that the scriptures are inspired.
The best way to understand it, is to realize that in the church in Paul’s day, and in the church in our day, there were some women who are gullible, who were vulnerable to deceiving spirits, who are weighed down by sins that they have not repented of, nor have they been delivered from. And these false prophets, these wolves in sheep’s clothing have targeted these women. It’s like the way a wolf works in the wild. They go after the weaker sheep, the straying sheep, the ones that have wandered from the herd. Those are the targets of the wolves in sheep’s clothing.
And I would suggest that Paul’s indictment is not so much against the women, even though they are burdened with sins. His indictment is directed towards the false prophets who prey on these gullible women. These women who are looking for spiritual validation without repentance are easy prey for these false prophets. These women are not led by the Spirit, they are led by their impulses and they are taken captive by these false doctrines that promise spiritual validation, but actually produce more ungodliness and are held captive by the false doctrines. As a result, Paul says these women are always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Now that is not an indictment against all women. There are women who are strong in the faith, who are knowledgeable of the scriptures. In a previous passage, Paul praises Timothy’s mother and grandmother who raised Timothy in the scriptures and imparted to him the knowledge which leads to salvation. So in the church are many women who live chaste and holy lives. Women that are examples to the younger women. But there are some weak women who are especially vulnerable to the false teachers. These women were home when their husbands were working, and the false teachers knowing they were vulnerable, preyed upon them and targeted them.
I think we see that happen today a lot of times by the use of television. There are some people who mean well, who have good intentions perhaps, who go to some of these so called Christian television broadcasting stations, and they listen to false prophets who tell them what they want to hear. They tell them that they don’t need to repent of sin. I could name names this morning, but I don’t want to give these false prophets any more notoriety than they already have. But I warn you that a lot of the characters who are televised on these Christian TV stations are wolves in sheep’s clothing, that come right into the homes of the unsuspecting and take them captive by deceit. And of course, they try to take their money as well, to fund their lavish lifestyles and private planes and luxury homes. A more primitive version of that was happening in Paul’s day. But it’s still happening in our day and it’s perhaps more prevalent than we realize.
To further describe and warn against these false teachers in the church, Paul gives an historical illustration. He says in vs8 “Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these [men] also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Jannes's and Jambres's folly was also.”
The first question we must ask of course, is who is Jannes and Jambres? Well, this is the only place in scripture that they are mentioned by name. But whoever they were they opposed Moses. The answer is found in Jewish rabbinical tradition, which Paul and presumably Timothy were familiar with. That tradition states that Jannes and Jambres were the magicians of special arts who were called up by Pharaoh to counter the miracles that Moses did. When Moses turned the staff into a snake, Jannes and Jambres turned their staffs into snakes. Moses snake ate their snake, but still, they performed mighty miracles by some power other than the power of God. And they were able to duplicate to some degree most of the miracles that Moses did.
Now that is a significant characteristic that Paul is pointing out about these false prophets. Some of them may possess miraculous powers. I believe that a lot of the so called miracles that are being done today in the church at large are not true miracles at all. I know of one such false prophet in particular who admitted that he studied and practiced hypnosis before he supposedly became a Christian. I think a lot of these faith healers are practicing something like that. They seem to always heal a disease that can’t really be quantified by actually seeing the problem. Something a like a pain in someone’s back, or headaches or something that they are supposedly healed from, whereas the poor paralyzed guy in the wheelchair usually leaves the service still in the wheelchair. Those types of false prophets are just charlatans, snake handlers, what I call fake healers.
But what Paul indicates is that some false prophets do possess some spiritual powers. But the spirit that they are of is not of God. It’s demonic. I think there are some preachers or evangelists active today that may fit that category as well. But most of them I think are charlatans. It’s mostly smoke and mirrors, the power of suggestion, perhaps hypnosis. But there are deceiving spirits in the church, and we are told in John to test the spirits. 1John 4:1 “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” That’s why we need the gift of discernment. To distinguish between truth and error. The point that should be clear though, is just because there is some seeming miracle, some power demonstrated in the church, that is not a reason to believe that they are of God. Don’t be deceived by demonstrations of some spiritual power into believing or accepting false teachers who actually oppose the truth.
Paul says, just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regards to the faith. The bottom line, that means these men are not saved. They have a form of religion but they denied the power thereof. They have depraved minds, that means they are unconverted. Oh, they seem to have a power, they claim it’s power from God, but their power is not from God, its’ demonic. Listen, demonic power is real. Demons can make a man superhumanly powerful. Demons can cause physical things to do things that are unnatural. But greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world.
What is important to take away from this is that we are warned that these demonically powered false prophets are in the church, taking captive people who are easily duped, who are gullible, who are living in sin and looking for an answer that doesn’t require repentance from sin. And we are told to avoid such people. To recognize that they are not teachers of the truth of the gospel, but are actually opposed to the truth. And we must practice discernment to know the difference.
But though Jannes and Jambres at first were able to match Moses miracle for miracle, there came a point when their limit was reached and they were not able to duplicate Moses’ miracles. At that point they had to reluctantly concede that what Moses had done was the power of God. In the same way Paul says the false prophets of his day will fall short and be revealed for who they are. We can assume that the same will be true today about the false prophets that we see on television and so forth. One day their true nature will be revealed and they will be put to shame. That revelation may come in their lifetime, and from time to time we hear about some famous televangelist who comes to public shame because their depravity becomes known. But if not in their lifetime, it will certainly come on the last day, at the judgment seat of Christ, when Jesus said "Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’ (Matt. 7:22,23)
There is the message of great hope in the midst of this great deception that is perpetrated on the church — the spirit of the false prophet will not prevail against the truth of Jesus Christ. The spirit of the last days to deceive is not stronger than the power of Jesus to save. The tremendous truth is that we don’t have to be held captive by the spirit of the world; but by the truth of the gospel we can be set free from the captivity of sin and the condemnation of death and receive life from the Lord Jesus Christ.
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