Pitfalls and Parodies of Gospel-Centered Ministry (2 Tim. 2:14–3:9)

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K. Edward Copeland:

Shall we pray merciful God our Father? How grateful we are to be called partners with you in ministry, as we’ve turned aside this morning to listen to what you have to say and pray that first of all, you’d search us, O God, know our hearts, try us, know our thoughts, see if there be any wicked way in us, lead us in the way everlasting. But open our ears, open our eyes, open our hearts. Help us to hear very clearly what you expect from us in these last and evil days. Now, Master, I’ve arranged the wood, but only you can send the fire down. So I pray, send your fire. Jesus’ name. Amen. You my friend is in his last days. Just talked to his daughter before I came into this room, about 90 miles away from here in Kankakee, Illinois, where I grew up, godly man is in intensive. Care at Riverside Hospital. They’re waiting for me to finish my work here so I can go there. When I last visited him last week, he said that he wanted me to do his last will and testament, and so we got everybody else out of the room. He told me who he wanted his extensive theological library to go to and some other miscellaneous things. But that’s not really what he wanted to talk about. It was a guise to get everyone else out the room so he and I can talk face to face, not really face to face. He had a they call it a BiPAP machine. It’s a breathing machine. He had the oxygen mask on his face, and as he was struggling for each breath, he sort of scooted toward the edge of the bed and beckoned me to lean over closely. And I was thinking that he wanted to let me in on some family secret. Perhaps there was some insurance policy he didn’t want the children to know about, but the truth of the matter is that he’s been pastoring for over 50 years, and His concern was what was going to happen to his flock after he left, who would come behind him, and would that person hold the line of truth? And so you’ll excuse me if the text that I’m about to read to you is very palpable and personal to me today, because although Timothy was not at Paul’s deathbed, and Paul was not whispering, he was writing, there was a sense of urgency that characterizes somebody who knows They only have a few days left, that comes shining through this text, and it really resonates with Me. Second, Timothy chapter three, verses, one through nine. You. And if you don’t mind, I’m going to be reading from the New American Standard Bible. Those of you who think that I’m a heretic for not reading ESV, get Mark driscolls sermon from last night, and keep positively quiet. Second Timothy chapter three, verses one through nine, but the real. This that in the last days, difficult times will come 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, 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. Just as Yannis and yombrez opposed Moses, so these men also opposed 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 Yanis and yombres Folly was also grass withers, the flower fade. But the word of our God will stand forever. Paul here, as he’s writing to his diffident protege. Has been talking to him about how he is to conduct this ministry of the gospel faithfully, how he has to avoid certain things and how he has to find a way to be positive even in negative situations. But then, here in chapter three, he sort of makes a thematic funnel. He starts out with a general statement of the onerous nation nature of the last days, and then sort of describes the people that make those last days so difficult. And then goes further to pinpoint a subset of the majority group that is especially pernicious, and then ends with a pointed statement that gives us hope and opens up a main artery of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So he starts out talking about another way to look at it. He gives a couple of imperatives, a couple of commands. In verse one, he says, You need to know something. And then before he turns a corner there, in verse five, he talks about you need to avoid certain people. So this first imperative, you need to realize it’s a present imperative. You need to be intimately and progressively aware of the fact that in the last days, in that word last is the word we get eschatology from in the days that constitute the final sequence of the countdown. In the last days, they’re going to be difficult, fierce, troublesome times. First of all, let’s talk about these last days. We don’t have time to argue. I think you’ll agree with me that when Paul uses this terminology, he’s referring to those days that started at the Advent of Christ. He’s talking about God’s time clock, and according to God’s time clock, once Jesus invaded this planet, the fourth quarter started. We’re in the last lap. We’re in the last leg of the relay. We’re at the coda in music. The coda is that last section of the music where typically there’s more rhythm and there’s more intensity. We’re moving toward the climax. We’re in the last days. Now. I bring it up for the same reason that Paul brought it up when in by the very nature of this text, he knew that he was in his last days. It informed his conversation. See, when you when you know you don’t have much time left, you don’t talk about who’s going to make it on American Idol you know who’s really going to come out of the east in the NBA Playoffs. When you know you don’t have much time left, you tend to zero in on. On and focus on the things that are most important. And that’s exactly what Paul did here in this letter. And he is letting Timothy know that son, we’re in the last days. And since we’re in the last days, since we’re in that final sequence where, where this masterpiece of God called time is in its final chapter. Since we’re in those last days, that ought to inform how you do the ministry of the Word. Let me just hit some application, because I feel the fire already. What this means, my brothers and sisters, is simply this, since we’re in the last days, we have no time for recreational preaching. We have no time to be fiddling about we we have no time listen, if you were an attorney and you had a client on death row, and that client was about to be executed at 12 midnight. If it was 1150 and you only had one more opportunity to appeal to the governor for a pardon, you wouldn’t mince words, my brothers and sisters, he’s due back momentarily. It’s 1150 and the pardon has been granted, but the inmate hasn’t heard, these are the last days, Paul said, and in these last days, there will be difficult seasons, there would be troublesome times. The word difficult there. The only other places used in the New Testament is Matthew, chapter 828, where Jesus encounters those two demon possessed men in the gadarenes. And though most translations render that word in this context difficult or troublesome. I think that the real connotation has as its underpinning. It will be violent times, fierce times. Those are the times that we live in today, violent times, difficult times. They’re violent, they’re difficult, they’re burdensome, not because of famine, not because of natural disasters, earthquakes and tornadoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, but what makes the times so difficult are the people that populate the times. And so Paul points out that in these last and difficult days, there are going to be a certain type of people. And he lists here some various characteristics, 18 or 19, depending upon how you look at the last one. He talks about how people will be lovers of self and so on and so forth. But the list is not exhaustive. It’s just indicative of the types of people who will populate the last times, and will make those times so difficult to minister in as a faithful Proclaimer of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So instead of going through a exhaustive description of each one of these characteristics, because you have Bible software, you have commentaries, you can look it up. I want you to focus on really, what is the real problem? And I believe that the essence of this list is Copernican in nature. That is to say, before the Polish strong astronomer Nicholas Copernicus, before he came about, science, had a geocentric concept of the solar system. That is to say, we believe that everything revolved around the Earth. But when Copernicus, Copernicus came along, he posited this theory that is reality, and that is that no everything doesn’t orbit around the earth. The earth and the rest of the planets orbit around the sun. And what Paul is pointing out here in this list, as you look all the way from lovers of self all the way to the last phrase about lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God, I think the essence of the list is that there’s going to be a. Wholesale fundamental shift, where the center of all existence will be self and in that black hole of self centeredness, all kinds of degradation, all types of sin, all types of violence, because the son is no longer the center. When self becomes the center, there’s no telling what will happen. People will be lovers of self, lovers of money, disobedient to parents, all those types of things, and you can add on to the list. The root of it, however, is this incipient tendency in humanity to try to recreate reality so that we are the center. And the Lord said there was light, so that we are the center, as opposed to God being the center and the essence of reality. And so these characteristics sort of boil down to a point where the real root issue is misdirected love. Instead of people loving God, they’ll love self, and because they love self, they’ll do everything to gratify self. And so this misdirected love expresses itself in misdirected energies, pursuing things that are good, as if they’re ultimate, making and remaking idols in our own image, the real, authentic, only true and living. God says, You shall be holy, for I am holy. But when self becomes the center, we try to remake God and say, You shall be blank, because I am blank, you shall be greedy, because I am greedy, you shall be self centered, because I am self centered. Paul goes on here, if you look at verse five, he says, The tragedy of this vortex, the tragedy of this wholesale self centeredness is that It will not be mainly contained in the secular world. He says, The real problem with it is somehow another, the people of God, or those who profess to be the people of God, will be the ones who have these very characteristics, and the reason being because they have chosen form over power. Let me say it to you a different way. If the difficult nations, nature of the last days was just relegated to the fact that people who are atheist acted a certain way. That would be one thing. But the problem is, there are going to be some professing Christians who are practical atheists. They’re giving lip service, but not life service. They’re saying that they are one thing, but they’re giving evidence and giving fruit. That indicates that there’s something else. They’ll have a form, but they’ll deny the power that that form would indicate that they have. In other words, they’re barren fig trees. They’re paintings of bread that have no capability of satisfying hunger, their wells without water, clouds without rain. He says that what makes these times so difficult, young Timothy, and what you have to guard against is making sure that you don’t over. Emphasize the external to the point that you missed that it’s really about the internal. He says that these people will hold to a form of godliness. That is to say, religion will prosper, but at the same time, so will wickedness, because what is passing as religion doesn’t have any dynamite in it. That’s the word power holding to a Morphosis of godliness, although they have denied its dynamite. Let me go ahead and hit another liquid application I usually wait to the end. But I feel some fire burning. Listen, you can arrange the wood, but only God can send the fire. And so you need to recognize, my brothers and sisters, that the power is not in your external practices. The power is not in your performance. Sometimes we think that somehow or another, like that neurotic rooster, that the sun is coming up because we’re crowing. Somehow or another, we think that the ministry is being effective because of what we’re doing. Have you ever been riding in a driving a car and your passenger? Let me just go on and say it. Sometimes I’m driving, and my wife gets on my nerves. I’m sitting here driving, and if she thinks I’m going too fast, then even though she’s sitting on the passenger side, she’ll press her foot down. Or if I’m turning the corner too tight, then she’ll act like she has. Listen, there’s only one driver, and I have the wheel, I have the gas, I have the brakes. But sometimes we think that what we’re doing as passengers is really affecting how this thing is moving. Listen, if you’re sitting on a plane and you feel that the plane is not going fast enough, you flapping your arms is not going to make it go faster. The reason I point that out is some of us are in ministry, and we think our little flailing about is going to make it be more effective? No, no, there’s only one pilot. He has the wheel and he has the map as well as the throttle, so he determines where you’re going and how fast you’re going to get there. So stop flapping, just sit back, put your seat belt on and enjoy the ride. Power is not in performance. Power is not in your passion. If I come here today and I raise my voice, and if I go through the pyrotechnics that we see very often portrayed by some of our brothers and others. Just because it’s emotive does not mean it has dynamite in it, because power is not in passion, per se, well, where is the power preacher? The Bible says this, Paul wrote it in another letter. Romans, chapter one, verse 16, I’m not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the it’s the gospel. The dynamite is inherent in the message. First, Corinthians, 118 for the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those of us who are being saved. It is the power. It’s the message of the cross that has the dynamite. But don’t forget this acts one eight after the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you shall receive power. It’s the word of God, energized by the Holy Spirit of God, that actually brings about transformation. It’s not your performance, it’s not your passion, it’s not your proficiency, it’s all about God. But the problem is, in these last days, some of us have mistakenly thought that it’s really about the form as opposed to the power. That’s what Paul is warning against, that in these last days, they’re going to be a subset of these self centered people who will focus in. In on religiosity instead of relationship, who will focus in on the external instead of the internal? They’ll hold to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power, and Paul says, avoid turn away from purposely have nothing to do with such men. That means, personally, virtually, electronically, absolutely, because you can’t afford to start picking up the habits of someone who’s mimicking true gospel ministry. You can’t afford to start impersonating an impersonator, so stay away. Avoid turn it off. He goes on to talk about a specific subgroup of even that set. Are you looking at your Bible verse six says, For among them. Now, let me point something out as we sort of make that corner as we look at this second half, he’s given the first imperative that you need to know something last days are going to be difficult, perilous because of certain type of people. It gives the other imperative that you need to avoid them. And then he’s going to explain why, because there’s a certain subset that is particularly insidious. But it reminds me of something that if the power is in the message of the cross, if the power is in the Gospel as it’s energized by the Holy Spirit, it strikes me as Very interesting that proclaimers of the gospel, we are heralds. And in one sense, we’re simply reporters, because when we talk about this issue of being a herald, a proclaimer, initially, that’s what a herald was, someone who proclaimed or who spread some very important news. And the best heralds, of course, were those who were eyewitnesses, because sometimes, if you’re not an eyewitness, you might get the message wrong. You saw that in Second Kings chapter 18. You remember when Absalom had started that coup against David and Joab and the fellows had crushed the coup, and he sent a messenger to send word about the death of the king’s son. But one guy named ahimeiaz, he decided that he wanted to run and take the message, but he didn’t have the full story. And so when he got to where he was supposed to proclaim the message, someone asked, Well, what happened? What happened to the king’s son? He said, I don’t really know. I just saw a bunch of commotion. I don’t really know what happened. And so he became a useless Herald, a useless messenger, because even though he was running with a message, he didn’t have it accurate as it relates to the disposition of the king’s son. Now I point that out because as we start to look at what might be called a parody of true gospel ministry. I think there’s some interesting links, as we think about the fact that what used to be called heralds, now we would call them reporters. They’re reporting the facts of the news. That’s what a herald did. He didn’t add anything, didn’t take away from anything. He just reported the facts. And according to what I’ve shared with you before, the power is found in the truth of the verifiable facts of the gospel. Jesus died for our sins, was buried and was resurrected on the third day. Those are facts that formulate the basis of the gospel. But what has happened today in society? Paul was arguing, you got to make sure that you don’t follow this in the gospel ministry. And that is this, do you know that in today’s society, we no longer really have journalists. We have political and social and cultural commentators. We have people giving opinions about what they think the news is, and as. Tragic as that is, what’s more damnable is we have some pulpiteers who are not actually giving news concerning the king’s son, but they’re giving their opinion about the opinion about what somebody else said about the death of the king’s son. And Paul says, You got to watch out, because that’s what’s going to be happening in the last days. Within the subset of these people who are self centered and hand have denied the power of the gospel, there’s going to be a group Look at Verse six, for among them are those among them are those who creep into surreptitiously. They infiltrate households and captivate weak women. That is to say these particular creeps specialize in appealing to and approaching those who have in the context of this text, a lot of time on their hands. Now that’s not to say that Paul is arguing that women are somehow another inherently spiritually weaker than men. That’s not the issue. What he’s talking about here is particularly here in Ephesus, as he had already prophesied in Acts chapter 20, there were going to be people who came up out of the church to draw disciples away from them, and ravenous wolves who would come in but they would prey on the most vulnerable. And in that context, it happened to be the women who were trying to run their households. These women weighed down with sins led on by various impulses. And here’s the crux, verse seven, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. That is to say, ever enrolling in spiritual classes but never graduating to repentance, ever learning but never matriculating into application these women and in today’s society, let’s just say people, these people, somehow or another, have mistakenly thought that exposure is the same thing as experience that because they’ve heard it, or because they’ve been around it somehow or another, that they’ve got it. I need you to understand, my brothers and sisters, we live in a society in these last days where we’re oversaturated with information, information that we can make no application of on a daily basis. Most of us hear and see and are listening to reports and seeing images of the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and we’re listening to the talking heads on TV talking about the economy. But the truth of the matter is, most of us would be hard pressed to explain the difference between the Taliban and al Qaeda, to really understand or express what’s really going on with the Shiites and the Sunni to really, actually and accurately describe what is a derivative and what is a junk bond. We hear it every day, but we don’t know what it actually means. And the Bible lets us know that in the last days, we’re going to be inundated. We’re going to be overfed, but undernourished as it relates to spiritual matters, simply because we’ll have these spiritual color commentators preaching, recreationally, sharing all types of things, but just really appealing to those who are laid laden with sins led on by various impulses, but only have enough truth to be inoculated against the truth they’ve heard just Enough gospel to not receive the true gospel of Jesus. Christ Paul says, You got to watch out for these type of people, always learning, never able to come to the knowledge of truth. He goes on to point out that just as Yana. And yombrez opposed Moses. Now these names are not in the Old Testament, but they’ve come down through tradition. These are the supposed names of those magicians, those Egyptian conjurors, who stood up against Moses, who, as Moses, threw down his staff. They, with their trickery, made their staffs into snakes, just like Moses and opposed Moses, these men that I’ve just described, who creep into households and take captive people who are ever learning but never really able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Paul says they’re just like two examples in the Old Testament. Now, as Mark Driscoll pointed out, it’s very interesting that in every chapter of this book, Paul gives the names of two people that you need to watch out for in chapter one, in verse 15, it’s figelus and homogeneous. In chapter two, verse 17 is Hymenaeus and Philetus, and we see Giannis and Jambres. And then in chapter four, he talks about Demas as well as Alexander, the point is, very simply this, that in every age there are going to be those who oppose the truth, men who rejected the faith, but because they want To have a following, are putting on a tremendous impersonation of true gospel ministry. Paul points out that just like Yannis and yombrez opposed Moses, these men are going to oppose your message. Timothy, I’m pointing it out to you so you’ll not be caught off guard and think that everybody is supposed to like you because you’re a preacher. I pointed out because you need to be on guard so that you will be able to not only identify the idols in your culture and in your community, but identify those who are impersonating the gospel ministry. But here is the good news. The good news is in verse nine, it says very simply this, that they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Giannis and ngambres Folly was also now, Paul is saying here that Giannis and ngambres pose a very real threat, but they have a very real God ordained limit. The truth of the matter is, my brothers and sisters, that in the last days, things are going to get progressively worse. God promises that, and it’s going to get worse not because of natural disasters, even though those will intensify, it’s going to get worse because of the people who populate these last days. And out of those people, they’re going to be an even worse subset of people who proclaim or profess to be believers, but in actuality, are impersonators. They’re impostors. And even out of those imposters, there are going to be those who get behind the pulpit but have no power, he says, but young man and today, young woman, my brothers and sisters don’t get upset because he points out that ultimately their folly will be exposed. This word, Folly is translated, was only found another place in the New Testament, in Luke chapter six. Believe it’s verse 11, and it’s translated their rage. It has the idea of being so enraged that you’re senseless, so upset that you can’t think through what is going on. The Bible says that ultimately evil will be exposed. And I want to see if I can’t bring my exposition to a close and then point out some practical applications and we’ll be done. Point is this, that despite the grievous nature of the last days and the self centered people that will live therein and even imposters who might draw away disciples after them, the bottom line is. God is still in control. The bottom line is that if God is God, and he is and right is right and it is, then evil is incapable of a perfect plan. Evil can never anticipate God’s intervention. And so even though the Bible says in chapter three, a little bit later on, that these impostors are going to get worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived, the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is God ain’t worried about it, and neither should you be because even though it’s a real threat, it has a real limit. See, we don’t live in a dualistic universe. It’s not that good and evil are evenly matched, and we don’t know who’s going to win. This isn’t Batman against the Joker, and we don’t know who’s going to come out ahead. This isn’t the Celtics against the Lakers. We don’t know who’s going to win. This is not some type of contest where we have opponents who are on parity. We live in a universe that is controlled by God and in God’s own time according to God’s own timetable, all evil will be eradicated, and one day, even death will have a funeral. This text lets us know that even though evil men will wax worse and worse, they have a God given limit, because every lie has an expiration date, but truth will march on from everlasting to everlasting. What this text teaches us, if you really look at it and concentrate on it and allow your mind to not just look at this immediate context, but look at it in the context of a larger canon of Scripture. This lets us know that even though evil will be temporarily successful, ultimately, evil always has to be swallowed up in utter humiliation, because evil’s foolishness will be exposed for what it is. Luke, chapter six, verse 11, this word folly, again, was used of those opponents of Jesus, who, after he had healed a man, they were so enraged that they started plotting about how they could do away with the Savior, and that folly led them ultimately to bring trumped up charges, to run a kangaroo court and to convict Jesus the Christ. But in their folly, they didn’t realize something that I need you to hold on to, and that is that God is, can I say it this way? God is so bad that he can take the foolishness of evil man and let it redound to His glory. That’s what the cross is about. Because had they known what they were doing, they wouldn’t have lifted him up. But in their folly and in their foolishness, they took him out to that old rugged cross. They nailed Him in His hands. They pierced him in his feet. They lifted him high. He hung his head and died. And they fought in their foolishness and their folly that they had won, not realizing that through their folly, they were actually activating the very means by which he would be crowned victor, the universal unified title, heavyweight champion of the universe, because he conquered death, hell and the grave. So since this universe hinges on moral foundations, meaning that no eye can live forever. And since God, in His sovereign grace, even uses the folly and foolishness of evil men to redound to His glory, that means that you and I as gospel people, must always remember several things, and let me give you an application I’m done thank you for being so patient and thank you for listening. It means very simply it is, stop acting like what you do doesn’t matter if you’re a Proclaimer of the gospel, you’re on the winning side. Act like that. Why are you so distressed about who’s in office? God is on the throne. He’s not up for reelection. I. Amen. Why are you so distressed about the lies that are going about and the lies that are going forth from evil men preach the truth. The power is in the truth. If you blow it up with the truth, if you allow the Holy Spirit to empower your ministry of the word and your preaching, your teaching, but not just your preaching and teaching, and you’re living it in your loving then what difference does it make what evil men are doing? That does not mean that we don’t confront evil. That does not mean that we don’t stand against the things that are wrong. I’m talking more about our attitude. Stop acting like God isn’t in control. Stop acting like you don’t have a father who knows what’s going on. So be faithful in your proclamation, knowing that it’s not your performance, neither your passion that’s accomplishing it. It’s the power of the Holy Spirit and the truth of the facts that you’re accurately reporting. So get the facts straight and stop preaching for response, preach for results. Preach that men and women might come to know Him and to embody this gospel ministry. Let me see if I can finish up. They will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all. God is in control. No lie will live forever. God is going to make sure that it comes out just like He promised it would, because he does everything after the counsel of his own will. It doesn’t matter that those who are lying seem to be prospering temporarily, because I want to leave you with this simple illustration. They say that Johan Sebastian Bach died riding a fugue. It wasn’t complete. His son analyzed the fugue. And to make a long story short, what he did was Bach. That is, in his last fugue, he put his name in the very musical notation of the fugue in German musical notation, A, B, natural is notated as what they would call a h. So he put B, A, C, H, all throughout the fugue. And it wasn’t until after he died that people recognize that if you play his last fugue, and if you play it right, then his name rings through every measure. The most beautiful part of it is that his name is living on in his music because he wrote within the very fabric of the fugue his name my brothers and sisters, evil men are going to get worse and worse in these last and evil days. But the good news is that we have a composer who wrote his name in every line in every melody. But here’s the problem, we got to play it right. We got to get the notation correct. And if you play it right, they’ll hear his name even in the folly of evil men, because he wrote that into the very nature of this universe, and that is simply this that he ultimately wins, because he is the king, and he’s not ever going to abdicate his throne. Let me give you this other example, because I keep forgetting. This is a young crowd. My wife has fueled an addiction in me that I’m ashamed, actually, actually ashamed. And I’m not saying this facetiously, I’m trying to break it. She has fostered an addiction in me that I’m actually trying to break. I want you to pray my strength in the Lord that I’ll be able to break it. She started watching this TV show called 24 and so now every Monday, I got a fellow addict here. Confession is good for the soul. I. Every Monday, we sit down and watch the exploits of Jack Bauer as he tries to save the world. She got me hooked several Christmases ago by purchasing the DVD set of the first three or four seasons of 24 and so I was so addicted, I would because every episode is a cliffhanger. Have you seen this thing? I mean, every episode how Jack gonna get out of this one? I’m trying to figure out. And so I would be for one Christmas break. I was staying up to, you know, 12 and one at night, trying to see how is he gonna get out of this next episode. And finally, in one episode, I think it’s in season four, they actually killed Jack. I said, What? And I wanted to stay up and watch this. I said, Now, how are they going to work this out? But then I slipped up and actually watched the credits roll. I had never done that before, and when I looked at the credits at the end of the story come to find out that Kiefer Sutherland, the fellow who plays Jack Bauer, is the executive producer. So when I saw that, I went on to sleep, I said I you know why I went to sleep? Because I recognize, as long as Kiefer is the executive producer, he’s going to make sure that his character is all right, my brothers and sisters in this final chapter of God’s masterpiece called time, don’t ever get it twisted. Don’t stay up at night wondering how it’s going to come out. I got good news from the executive producer, we win. He’s written the script, and according to the script, every knee is going to bow. Every tongue is going to confess. So even in these last and evil days, do your work. Do it well. But don’t stay up at night wondering how it’s going to come out. The good news is we win every head bound merciful God, our Father. Thank you for meeting us here, and thank you for reminding us that even in difficult times when self centeredness will run rampant, and where gospel impersonators will seem to be making traction, that ultimately, no lie can live forever. You’re not worried, because you have a plan, and according to the plot, the sun still will be the center. So help us now to do what we do, to recognize the danger, because it’s real, to avoid those impersonators, lest we start mimicking an impersonator. But always help us to remember that even the folly of foolish men will redound to your glory. So now help us to live in the light of this truth for us in Jesus’ name, we pray, amen. Amen.