This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “II Timothy” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, June 26, 1988.
About this sermon
The church’s war, Christ against Satan, is already won in Christ, and its outcome is not in doubt. The catalogue of sins in 3:2-7 describes present conditions. Believers share in Christ’s victory now, in the last days, before its final unveiling.
Sermon transcript
We are in 2 Timothy, the third chapter, this morning, and we are reading the first nine verses. Hear the word of God. This know also. In the last days, perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own self. Covetous. Boasters. Proud. Blasphemers. Disobedient to parents. Unthankful. Unholy. Without natural affection. Truce breakers. False accusers. Fierce. Despisers of those that are good. Traitors. Petty. High-minded. Lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.
From such, turn away. For of this sort are they that creep into houses and lead captive, silly women laden with sins, led away with divers’ lusts, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth, men of corrupt minds. reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further. For their following shall be manifest unto all men. As they that his Jan Janice and Jambres also was.
Did you know it? You are living in the last days. Now, the last day has not yet arrived. But these are the last days. And they have been since the time of Paul, the apostle. They have been since the time when God gave his spirit out of heaven to his church. They have been since Christ came died and raised again. These are the days between Christ’s first coming.
And his second come. And these days in the Bible are called. The last day. It doesn’t make any difference how far in time you are removed from the events of the first century. from the events of Christ’s death and resurrection and the giving of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, it doesn’t matter how far removed in time you are, whether it’s the year A.D. 50 or it’s the year A.D. 1988, these are the last days.
And because that is true, it’s important for you To understand. That there is a battle. Going on. There is a war. Raging. And this war is more significant than any of the wars which the world has had. For the state. In this war are eternal. It isn’t for a better share of the market. It isn’t for economical reasons. It isn’t for the purpose of wrapping up more real estate or asserting your will over others. It isn’t like the wars between nations. In the balance in this war is eternity. life and death. Eternal life and death. So there is a war on. There is a battle that is raging.
But I don’t want you to look at this battle as if you didn’t know the outcome of it. You are the people of God. And God in the last day. Has been pleased to make known to you. In fact, he has been pleased to build your lives upon the certainty of the battle. And it’s outcome. The certainty that in fact victory. Is given. Already. The outcome of this war has been determined.
Will evil prevail ultimately. Will the kingdom of Satan. Will it have the final word. As the last days of themselves have come so also has come that certainty with regard What do you imagine Christ was doing on the cross? Can you look to the cross and the outcome of that cross and their surmise, the outcome of the war? Can you see the war already resolved?
Jesus Christ In dying, inviting again. Has told us that the outcome of the battle is certain. God will try. He shall surely win. During his ministry. Jesus spoke to his disciples. He said that the significance of his ministry, and certainly as that ministry came to focus upon his death and resurrection, he was at work binding the strongman so that the strongman’s house might be spoiled. That strongman is Satan.
And Jesus has already entered into the strongman’s house. He has bound him, and now he is taking from Satan that which Satan thought was his. The outcome is already determined. And the power of the victory of the sun is already exerting itself in the world when a sinner comes to repentance when a sinner embraces Jesus Christ.
Satan’s house. Has been ransacked. And Satan himself has been robbed of a treasure. When the seventy come back from spreading the word at Jesus command. Jesus says to them, I saw Satan falling from heaven like lightning. The outcome, as it were, already determined. Satan, a beaten throat. Yet still raging. Still waging war.
Now, I know that there are many arguments about Revelation chapter twenty. And the mention of the thousand years of the millennium there and what it says there in those verses about Satan being bound. There are those who believe, yes, that even already the work of Jesus Christ has meant a binding of Satan, so that the nation may be wrong. For Christ’s sake. The nations that were deceived. Under the power and the dominion of the evil. Those nations now being robbed. So that out of them out of every tribe nation and there comes a new fellowship.
Of those who belong to God. These are the last days There is a battle. There is a war. But the outcome of that war is already known to us. Christ is the victim. The kingdom of God. Second Timothy three. Is about the war. Now There’s something here that you should realize. As Paul writes. You may well think that his concern is for the world out there. Over against the church in here. As if it was always us against them. But that’s not how all right. Yet honestly. If not. Brutally. Frank.
Paul makes it abundantly clear to this pastor Timothy. That the war is not between us and them only. It’s between us and us. Those he describes here are not pagan reprobates. They’re not crude barbarians who have no knowledge. They’re not those who haven’t been introduced into the matters of faith, who don’t know who Jesus Christ was. In fact, they do. Those that he describes here are in the church. You’ve heard the favorite excuse. I don’t go to church because it’s full of hypocrites. Paul agrees with you. Just read 2 Timothy 3. There is a war between us and us.
Yes, there are those who, though professing the name, don’t understand, who claim to have the faith and don’t know what they’re talking about, who boast of their position and really, before God, have no position whatsoever. So here’s the catalog. In the last days, there are men who are lovers of self. Where is God? Always behind that one most important. Lovers of I’m reading from the New American Standard now, not the King James. And if you have the NIV, you may have a bit of a different rendering as well. Lovers of self. Me first. Lovers of money. Why not? Money is merely the expression of my glory, isn’t it? My importance. It’s merely an extension of my. It tells everybody else just how important I am.
Money in the church. Even among those who would presume to teach. Creatures who love money. Oh no. Preachers who love themselves? Well, I know that that is a battle that I have to fight personally. Boastful. Not willing to wait for the acclaim of others. Always advertising themselves. Arrogant.
Striding through the earth like a king. even stepping on whomever in order to get where they are destined to get. Would you sell your mother? Would you sell your cherished belief? Here is an evangelist who believes firmly in the word of God, so he says. But for the sake of achieving an end which he has held to be his professional dream, he even sacrifices his commitment to the Word of God in order to get what he wants. Revile it.
Utterly oblivious to any kind of authority. And surely ministers are not the only ones guilty of this. It’s sort of a law unto themselves. What about Christian folk? Am I not a law unto myself? Can I not decide what I will do and when I will do it? It’s my business and no one else’s. Don’t you dare tell me what God wants me to do. Not only do you have no right, not even God has the right. So what do I do in order to keep myself in the good graces of God? I invent my own God, the kind of God who tolerates my vices. He still likes me, even though you say your God doesn’t. of all authority, extending it a bit disobedient to parents.
Children think that it’s part of growing up and parents, unfortunately, think that it’s part of growing up. Children have inalienable rights. They have the right to disobey their parents, not according to God’s law, according to God’s law, children who disobeyed their parents were executed. You’re talking about life and death issues here. This is serious business. Ungrateful interestingly coming after disobeying the parents.
Saying thank you. Maybe even screwing up a bit of that courage within you to go to your father or your mother and say, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being tough on me. Thank you for insisting that I show respect. Thank you for insisting that I go to church on Sunday and that I honor the Lord. Thank you for being who you are.
Unholy. Moving from ungrateful to unholy. Living without any respect to the authority of God in such a way that now there’s a moral collapse. and loving. Obviously, since I love myself best. Irreconcilable. Impervious to intriguing. Conflict between us. Ask if there can be reconciliation between us, not on your life. I will die first. probably. But then comes.
Malicious gossip. Spreading rumors securing your games. At the expense of others weaknesses. Making. A life. time profession out of the affairs and business of everyone else. For the purpose of making yourself look good. Without self-control. Out of control. Moving into those relationships with others in which violence is a possibility.
Verse three, towards the end, brutal. We’ve heard a great deal about love in our generation, haven’t we? But yet it’s still a society out of control. We hear a great deal about love in the church yet the church can find within it a within its membership. Those who lack self-control who are brutal. Who are cruel and vicious. Haters of good treacherous. Truth break. Reckless. Conceited.
And what is it that they serve? Ultimately, it seems, yes, themselves. Yes, their advancement. But most of all, they serve the world and the pleasures that the world offers. For that reason, they cannot see clearly. They can never penetrate the mystery of life. For everything is always on the surface. It’s always an issue of immediate gratification. I have to have it now. My drinking is very important to me. So is my gambling. So is my marijuana. So is my cocaine. So are my women.
I cannot see through. The externalities of life. I live perpetually at the level of the surface. I never see eternity. I can’t see things in terms. Of the internal significance of things. I’m a lover of pleasure, and because of that, I can’t even as much see God, let alone love Him. In fact, I must admit to you, He doesn’t even occur to me at all. may even hold to a form of godliness. Strange as it may seem.
Despite all we have read. A form of godliness that is sheer hypocrisy. Because their life is a continual contradiction of that godliness. They deny the power of that godliness a power in it that is at work in them to transform. For that is what godliness is all about. What does the word mean? It means god-likeness. Godliness is god-likeness. The power of godliness is denied because there’s no transformation.
Instead, in this war that is going on between us and us, it seems that these people are on the side of the enemy. They produce their teachers. They take advantage of the week. They enter into houses, they creep out the way and captivate weak women, so it says. Don’t think that. Paul here being particularly chauvinistic in his remark about women and weakness. This is a passage about men. and the reprobate character of men who in their teaching function. Set themselves to. Capture those who are weak. In the army. Making an army for themselves. But again. In this war. You are not to be discouraged.
If you are clinging to your Savior and holding fast to the word of life. If your heart is melted before him in order that you have received restoration through him. He being your life and your power now, you knowing whose side you’re on, you’re fighting with the Lord. And that not out of self-righteousness, because you’ve abandoned all hope of righteousness except to come through Christ and Christ alone.
And you holding on to those things now are given assurance even by this apostle as he concludes his remarks here towards the middle of this chapter. There were those in that former day When Moses came as something of an earlier Christ, if you will, through whom the people of that day would be redeemed.
There were those who stood up against him, Janet and Jamborance, two magician who sought to overthrow the fate of the House of Israel, and they were unsuccessful, and so shall all those who have placed themselves in the company of the of hell. The deceivers will not win. They cannot win. Why? Because Christ died and was raised again. That’s why. Because Christ is coming again. That’s why.
And victory belongs to him. And that victory is even serving itself now in the church it may not be apparent to you you might belong to a church that is gone clear off the face of the world clear off the map in terms of disobedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ keeps a witness to himself yet in the world. That witness. Is still. from the world. As a testimony to the victory that is Christ.
They will make no further progress. The last days as its terminus in the last day. Their following will be obvious to all. In the last days and. And when the last days end, you don’t want to be standing with them. You want to be standing with the Apostle, and with Christ, and with God. Father, we thank you. That our God is a warrior. Who has gone forth? To wage war on behalf. Of his beloved church. And we thank you that the victory that he has won is one. Because. Jesus Christ has appeared.
And even though there may be distractions and terrors and great ungodliness that arise within the church, we will not despair. For our God reigns and our Christ has triumphed. Lord, give us grace not to live self-righteously, but also to resist every form of evil.
And to practice the good. As it is found in Christ. In the gospel. And Lord build us up in the knowledge. That our hope is secure. For Jesus Christ. Is the testament of your grace whereby For your own name’s sake, you have procured for yourself a people that shall praise you forever and ever. Lord, we thank you for this.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.