Equipped to Serve: Part 4

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of serving and pastoral ministry from 2 Timothy 3.

In this last session I want to talk about Christian leaders in the last days. That’s how the passage begins, “Mark this, there will be terrible times in the last days.” Not least when times are insecure, segments of the church have often indulged in a feeding frenzy of speculation over the last days, the final times, the end.

Advertise on TGC

Wanting to cash in on this current wave, a colleague of mine at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, with an irrepressible sense of humor, said in the faculty lounge the other day that he was contemplating writing a series of books under the title Right Behind. However, even if we don’t go down exactly that route … for those of you who are not afflicted with serious reading, there is already a series called Left Behind, and this was his response to it, you see. What can I say?

But whatever we say about such imaginative endeavors, the Bible does say some important things about the end, and it does no service to the church if preachers ignore those things in a vain effort to tame the feeding frenzy. We have to get things right rather than merely ignore them.

But what is perhaps the most striking thing about the Bible’s treatments of last things is although it does say some things about the very, very end, about what happens when Christ does return, there is far more emphasis on the fact that all the way from Christ’s first coming to his second coming, we are already in the last days.

People have called this by a variety of terms one of them being inaugurated eschatology. (The more syllables you can put in, the more learned you are. You know that, don’t you?) So if eschatology has to do with the eschaton, with the last things, the –logy bit is the word. So psychology is the word about the psuche, about the soul, and geology is the word about the ge-, about the land. So eschatology is the –logy, the word, the science of, the eschaton, the last things, and inaugurated eschatology is really an expression that talks about how the last days have already dawned, are already here.

There are lots of passages that make that very clear. Thus, for example, John writes in his first epistle, “My dear children, it is the last days, and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so also there are many antichrists, whereby we know it is the last days.” Now, notice what the author does not say.

He doesn’t say, “You may have heard that there’s an Antichrist at the end, but I’m not saying that. There’s nothing like that. There are just lots of antichrists already.” He doesn’t say that. What he says is, “You have heard that Antichrist is coming, and just as there’s one at the end, so already there are lots of antichrists already here.”

That is typical of the New Testament perspective that sees that from the beginning of the coming of Christ to his return there is this overlap of the ages. The old age is dying; the new age has already dawned in some powerful way. The kingdom has come, even if it’s not yet consummated.

We live, in other words, between the already and the not yet. Christ has already come, he has not yet come, and there are quite a few markers in the Pastoral Epistles here that tell us how to live in these last days. For example, in 1 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 1, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.”

In the context he’s talking about the things that are going on in Paul’s day. He’s not predicting what will take place only 2,000 plus years later, and so also here, “Mark this, there will be terrible times in the last days …” But it is very evident as you read on in the chapter that the apostle Paul understands himself and Timothy to be in the last days and, therefore, he is telling them how to respond to the things that take place in the last days.

Now this presupposes, of course, massive conflict. Are you familiar with the example of this that has often been given by Oscar Kuhlman? It’s an expression that was coined after World War II. If you read theology, you’ve stumbled across it. If you haven’t read too much of it, you might not have, so let me tell you, and if you already know about it, then forgive the vain repetition, but it is a very clever illustration.

He distinguishes between D-Day and V-E Day. Now you can understand why that would be so important after World War II. What happened on D-Day? Well, already in the East the Russians were pressing in, and then in North Africa the Western allies had triumphed and now were pressing up the boot of Italy, and on D-Day about 1.3 million troops were dumped in in three days, with all the tons and tons and tons of war material, and anybody with half a brain in his head could see that the war was over.

In terms of the numbers, in terms of the logistics, in terms of the sources of energy, in terms of the availability of steel, in terms of attrition, in terms of initiative, the war was over. So what did Hitler do? Say, “Oops, I goofed,” and sue for peace? No, some of the worst fighting of the war then followed. In the Battle of the Bulge it was only a shortage of gasoline that stopped them from getting all the way to the coast again, and in the East, well, the troops pressed in and some of the bloodiest fighting in the entire war was the rape of Berlin.

That was D-Day, but eventually V-E Day came, and then, in Europe, the conflict was over. What Kuhlman suggests is that there is a sense in which Christ’s first coming, including his incarnation and his death on our behalf and his resurrection, that is, for Christians, our D-Day, and spiritually speaking, anybody with half a brain in his head can see that the war is over.

You know who’s going to win. The crucial conflict has been fought. The Devil is already a principally defeated foe. There is no doubt whose side is going to win, but does that mean that the Devil rolls over and says, “Oops, sorry.”? Oh no, the Apocalypse portrays this very powerfully, doesn’t it, in Revelation 12? “He is filled with fury because he knows his time is short.”

So we have repeated Battles of the Bulge as the Devil himself tries to break out again. Knowing full well, with all the rage of knowing his final assignation, he breaks out again and again and again, in some of the bloodiest fighting until, finally, we have our V-E Day and Christ himself returns.

So we live, you see, in the last days, the last days of this holy war between the already and the not yet, and that is how we are to think of these things. That means we should expect certain conflict. We should expect certain kinds of difficulty. We should expect certain kinds of challenge. If you don’t expect those kinds of things, stay out of the ministry. We are involved in a massive spiritual warfare, and that sort of imagery returns again and again and again in Scripture, doesn’t it?

While we talk fluently about the abundant life, you have to remember that expression, the abundant life, shows up precisely once in all of Holy Scripture, namely in John 10, where it’s talking about sheep eating a lot of grass. Of course, you can’t talk about having a lot of grass on a university campus today, but nevertheless, the abundant life is one of our favorite expressions, isn’t it? Everybody wants to talk about the abundant life.

In fact, the Bible says much more about conflict and spiritual warfare. Think, for example, of the picture in Ephesians, chapter 6. “We put on the whole armor of God, that we may fight and struggle against the archenemy of our souls.” Our conflict is not with human beings, we’re told, but with the Devil himself and all the dark hosts of deception and ferocious opposition.

If you don’t think in those terms, you should stay out of the ministry. Do you see? We have become so weakened by our exhaustion from physical war that we are embarrassed by songs like “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Yeah, I understand that, and yet there’s a sense in which, although you don’t want a militaristic jingoism bound up with the church, unless you see that you’re in conflict then you let down the side.

You just think that if you’re sort of nice, have tea parties, give out a tract or two, and so on, that everything will be all right. As long as you don’t cheat on your spouse, are reasonably courteous, and say your prayers, everything’s going to be all right. That doesn’t describe what happens in the last days. What does this text say? “There will be terrible times in the last days.”

Then the author fills out what he means by this. You can go through verses 2–5 very quickly; there are 18 or 19 items. The first four depict selfishness. This is not a militaristic, jingoistic conflict; it really is a conflict against the Devil, against sin, against condemnation, against judgment.

Look at these first four. They depict selfishness, “Lovers of themselves, lovers of money.” We’ve already seen that in 1 Timothy, haven’t we? “Boastful.” Isn’t that what 1 John 2 says? “The fallen world is made up of the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life …” That is, the boastfulness in all that we have and posses and are. “Proud. Lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud.”

The next two terms suggest socially destructive behavior. “Abusive,” we’re told. That is, in both word and in deed. How many of our homes tear themselves apart while, in word and in deed, our conduct, our speech, our talk to one another is destructive? It’s not encouraging. It’s not up-building. It’s not loving.

It furthers games of one-upmanship, and in the worst cases, it descends to physical abuse. I’m sure that in most of our churches there are women, especially, and perhaps sometimes men too, who have been abused, seriously abused by the homes from which they come. Then, “Disobedient to their parents,” which is meant to be taken as a kind of horrible mark of a disobedience of heart, a rebellion of heart. If you’re even rebellious to your parents, you’re just rebellious at heart. That’s the idea.

Then there are four –un words: “Ungrateful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving.” As if part of what is so destructive is the absence of virtue. Instead of being loving, we’re unloving. Instead of being grateful, we’re ungrateful, and so on. Do you see? Then two more that reflect speech and behavior. “Slanderous,” we’re told, “and without self-control.”

Then two more –un terms. At least, they’re –un terms in the original. They’re not quite so clearly such in English translations. “Brutal,” we have in most translations. It’s literally untamed, savage in that sense, conduct that is indifferentiable from that of a fierce lion. Untamed, and then literally, “Unloving of the good.” That is, not lovers of the good. Again, this absence of real love and affection for what is true and honorable and good and sweet and precious. No, no, no. Instead we are so sophisticated that we are unloving of the good.

Then there are four items which might show how Paul is moving from characteristics of the age to the false teachers themselves. “Treacherous,” he says. “Traitors, rash.” Little thought of long-term consequences. You jump on a bandwagon. You beat the drum. You get on whatever fad is coming along, but no real understanding of consequences for your actions and your speech and your fads and your preferences. Just quick, but not wise, too clever by half all the time, even in theology.

“Conceited.” Far too impressed with their own opinions, far too lacking in humility to learn humbly of the positions the church has taken for years and years and years. “All these stuffy churches doing the.… We want churches.… Every time you have a prayer you have to light a candle first. It’s so symbolic, you know.”

You want to say, “Hasn’t anybody learned anything from church history?” Is there not some danger here somewhere. “Oh, no. In our generation it’s deeply mystical. It expresses a whole symbol-laden structure of something or other.” So impressed with their own opinions and yet unwilling to learn from the lessons of Christians across centuries and centuries of the Christian church.

“Lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” And finally, the most damning indictment of all, “Having a form of godliness, but denying its power.” The idea is the religion itself becomes a show. Sometimes the show is a certain kind of asceticism. Sometimes it’s show-off-ness, with a certain kind of knowledge. Sometimes it’s a show of power. Sometimes it’s a show of liturgical display, but it’s essentially show.

But the power that actually transforms lives, the power that takes people out of the ghetto and makes them sons and daughters of the living God, the power that reconciles men and women to God and to each other, it’s just absent. It’s just not there. It’s not even that people are all that interested in it. They’re just interested in the show.

The church itself becomes a kind of Vanity Fair. It’s a bit like what we read in Titus, chapter 1, verse 16, “They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for doing anything good.” That’s powerful language. In effect, the opponents were saying that true godliness is attested by their knowledge, by their practice, but they do not have the transformed behavior that justifies their claim.

Of course, in the ancient world, a lot of pagan religion was like that, because spirituality was divorced from ethics. In the pagan religions you could be ever so spiritual, and it didn’t effect how you lived. It was the Bible that insisted that those things must be tied together. If you’re really spiritual it will transform how you behave. You must hold them together.

If, instead, religion becomes something that you display with a lot of flourish, but at the same time it doesn’t effect with whom you’re sleeping, and it doesn’t effect whether or not you tell the truth, and it doesn’t effect whether you love people self-sacrificially or not, then from a biblical perspective it’s worthless.

It’s worthless. It’s worthless. So what does Paul say in verse 5? “Have nothing to do with them.” Now this is an important principle, but we nevertheless need to be careful. It’s not the only principle, for it is sadly true that one or more of these traits may be found from time to time in each of our own lives.

If we have nothing to do with anyone who ever trips over any one of these 19 categories, we’re not going to have anything to do with ourselves. We are going to excommunicate the whole lot. We might as well leave right now. In other words, if we cite, “Have nothing to do with them,” and apply it to anyone who is ever guilty of any of these, realistically we have a church that is an empty set.

Yet the point is important. Where there is a pattern of these things, there you spot the evil of the last days, a pretended religion, a kind of lust for self in all of its pomp, a kind of idolatry that de-Gods God, that makes me at the center of the universe, and my choices and my practices and my forms of worship even, but at the end of the day is not deeply hungry to bow to all that God has disclosed of himself and of this world and of our place in it.

Do you know what the very first responsibility of human beings is? It’s to recognize our creatureliness. That’s the first thing. The first responsibility of the creature is to recognize that he’s not the Creator. Anything else is the de-Godding of God. It’s the beginnings of idolatry. It’s the sin of the garden, but if we recognize our creatureliness, then we have to begin with God and his Word, his Godness, his glory. He’s at the center of everything. We exist for him. He does not exist for us.

To start thinking of God as sort of living out there somehow to serve us, and “I will define the sort of god who blesses me,” the whole notion is so bizarre for any person who really begins with his own creatureliness, that it is nothing other than idolatry. Do you remember how 1 John ends?

He talks quite a lot about the dangers of what later came to be called proto-Gnosticism, the importance of truth, the centrality of the cross, and so forth; and then at the very end, after he’s gone through it all with some practical advice on how to love one another and how to pray for one another, when not to pray for one another even, he comes to the very end and he has one line. He says, “My dear children, keep yourself from idols.”

On first reading you’re taken aback, and you say, “Where does that come from? I mean, this really hasn’t been talking about idolatry, has it?” And then you stop to reflect on it, and you realize that what he’s saying is that anything that does not buy in to the power of the gospel to transform, the confessions of truth about who Christ is, the love for the brothers and sisters, this deeply committed obedience, and then returns to the cross again and again, the burden of the whole Book, anything less than that is idolatry, because it’s got a different sort of god.

There’s a book that has come out in America. You haven’t been afflicted with it on this side of the Atlantic yet, and I don’t know if you will be. It’s written by a pair of sociologists, Christian Smith and Melina Denton. The book is called Soul-Searching. It’s worth reading, even though it’s a sociological study on the other side of the Atlantic. I don’t imagine the facts are vastly different. I suspect here they may be a little worse.

What these sociologists do is probe very deeply. It’s a very competent study. It’s not a Christian book. It’s a competent sociological study, but they probe very deeply into what American teenagers believe. What is the religious life of American teenagers? What do they think? Because after all, many of them today are claiming to be spiritual in some sense. What do they actually believe? They finally sum it up under the letters MTD, by which they mean moralistic therapeutic deism.

Their god is roughly deistic. They do think that there’s a god out there who sort of made everything, but he’s not really concerned for the day-to-day operations, as it were. You know, you have to get on with that yourself. That’s the deism bit. On the other hand, he’s a god who’s interested in right and wrong, that’s the moralistic part.

You should be nice to one another, you know, and you should be pretty good, and there is a heaven and there is a hell, but, on the other hand, most people are going to heaven, partly because we are pretty good and partly because, at the end of the day, he’s a pretty nice god, too. He wants us to be good, and we should try to be good, and we should try to be nice.

But above all, he wants us to be happy, and since he wants us to be happy, he’s concerned to give us the sorts of things we need for our happiness. That’s the therapeutic part. And sometimes if you go to him in prayer in a real crisis, you know, then he does actually intervene and sort of help you out. That’s moralistic therapeutic deism.

One group in their study was made up of 267 statistically chosen teenagers from across the nation whom they interviewed at much, much, much greater length. In other words, instead of just filling out forms there were long, complicated interviews undertaken, and one question that they asked all 267 of them was, “What is required, in your understanding, to know God? Name anything you like, as many or as few things as you like. What is required to know God?”

Of 267, only 12 mentioned repentance. Only 12. Because at the end of the day, you see, they haven’t come to grips with the nature of sin. They haven’t come to grips with their role as creatures, as rebels. They haven’t come anywhere near understanding what the Bible says about the wrath of God, but if you can’t get agreement on what the problem is, how on earth are you ever going to get agreement on what the solution is?

How are you going to do it? You end up with MTD, moralistic therapeutic deism. Oh, and I’m sure that there’s an awful lot of MTD around in the adults. You don’t have to go all the way down to the teenagers to find it, and in one sense, the church must distance itself from such nonsense. It has to. “Have nothing to do with them.” Otherwise, at the end of the day, you have a form of religion that is utterly devoid of power and ends up denying Christ himself.

Then in the final paragraph before Paul makes his primary points (we are going to get to the primary points yet), Paul then establishes three further characteristics of these last days and the false teachers. First, they prey on the vulnerable, not least with overtones of sexual connections. Verses 6 and 7. “They are the kind to worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth.”

There’s a kind of sneaky infiltration, even into Christian homes here. They gain control over weak-willed women. Now, it’s then really important to understand what this text is saying. It is not saying that all women are weak-willed, any more than it’s saying that all men are these sneaky infiltrators, but you do need to understand that very often, when there is sexual malfeasance in the church, it’s almost always more than just sex.

Where there is malfeasance between a leader (a pastor, elder, bishop), and a woman in the church, almost always there are overtones of power. There’s a control element. It’s very rare that it’s merely sex. So if you have the desire to dominate and to control on the one hand (fed by sexual drives), and the kind of neurosis and uncertainty and desire to be controlled and captured on the other hand (fed by sexual desire), you have a lethal combination.

In other words, your belief structures effect your ethics, and this worldview effects how you view men and women, and that can play into the weaknesses and inconsistencies and neuroses and sins and guilts of both parties, until you have homes destroyed. Doctrine matters for a lot of reasons, including the sexual integrity of the home. Don’t kid yourself.

Then they have depraved minds, we’re told, and are careless about the truth. “Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth. Men of depraved minds.” They can talk endlessly about various social phenomena, but at the end of the day, they are unwilling to make exclusive claims for Christ. They walk away from the heart of the gospel, which is bound up with his death and resurrection, and sooner or later, we’re told in verse 9, their folly becomes evident to everyone.

“They will not get very far, because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.” Yet you need to understand “they will not get very far” does not necessarily mean they’re going to be exposed next week. A new movement comes along, and it sometimes takes a year, two years, five years, even a half-generation before you really see what it’s all about.

A new movement comes along and you sometimes are asked for an instant answer, and sometimes it’s better just to be a little cautious and say, “I’m not sure. I can’t see where this is going very clearly yet.” But on the long haul, the truth comes out. Not only does it come out in the extent to which it does or does not align with Scripture, it also comes out in the distorted behavior that it brings about.

I can remember, a bare 15 years ago, The 9:00 Service in Sheffield. You can see a certain kind of behavior that finally comes out. Although it had been going on for a long, long, long time, who knew all this was going on? But eventually the truth comes out, things explode, and credibility dies, and those with a little more foresight have foreseen some of these things, but eventually it’s apparent to all of us. Don’t be too quick to condemn, but don’t be too quick to bless every fad, either. Understand that, in God’s providence, the truth will out.

Now this is really cheerful on the last day of a conference, isn’t it? Yet this is the picture that Paul paints, and now he gives some counsel to Timothy about how to live in the light of these characteristics of the last days. What are they? What are the things that we need to hold front and center as we live and serve in the last days?

1. Hold the right mentors in high regard.

Hold the right mentors in high regard. Verses 10 and 11. “You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings, what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, the persecutions I endured, yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.”

Now in the NIV, there is a conveniently inserted title, “Paul’s Charge to Timothy.” In other words, we’re finished with the stuff in the previous verses, now we come to the charge. There’s a sense in which that’s correct, but of course that insertion of a title was not there in the original. You are supposed to read Paul’s remarks here in the light of the remarks in the previous verses.

Paul is going so far as to say, “Now you’ve seen these false teachers and what they do. Let me tell you, I’m going to provide you with another model. Look at me.” That’s what he says. Now I want to ask you, have you, at any time in the last, oh, let’s say two years, said to young Christians, “I want you to live the way I do. I want you to follow me. I want you to imitate me. That’s what I want you to do. Then you’ll learn to be Christian.”? Have you? Why not?

You’re supposed to. Isn’t that what Paul says elsewhere? “Be imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ.” Isn’t that what he says? Isn’t he saying the same thing here? “There are lots of false models out there. Don’t imitate them. What I want you to do is imitate me. I’ll tell you what you should see in me.” He mentions faith, he mentions persecution, he mentions perseverance, and he mentions righteousness, and he says, “Now do what I do in this regard.” Shouldn’t we be saying that?

Because the truth of the matter is, we all follow people, don’t we? We all follow people. Our little children, they have few models, but they follow them pretty closely. Their accents are our accents, and so forth. We used to live in Britain one year in three, and every third year then we’d come across, and our kids would just listen to the accents on the street for two or three days, and they all sounded like little Cambridgeshire people. You know? That’s the way they sounded.

Then they got back and it took them about four more days to all sound like Midwestern Americans, because they didn’t want to be different, so they just sounded just like everybody else. You see? They chose their models. They weren’t going to sound like Mommy and Daddy anymore. Nope, they were going to sound like the kids on the street.

Then, of course, as our kids become teenagers, they expand their field of variety. They’re going to become like rock stars or movie stars, or like Elle, or whatever. There’s another whole set of models, it sort of ups the ante a wee bit, but no matter who we are, in our imaginations, in our flights of fancy, what we wake up and think about in the middle of the night, we think of ourselves in terms of other people. You wouldn’t mind being like that.

If you have lots of testosterone, you think of yourself in some crucial situation where you manage to overcome the nasties by your magnificent display of tae kwon do or whatever it is. Or if you think of yourself in a beauty pageant and all the world admiring you, then you think of people along those lines, or you might think of yourself in some very religious categories, and now you’re going to be preaching at … like Spurgeon at the Crystal Palace, and eventually, you see, all of these models run through our heads, and we think in different ways, don’t we?

You might think as your spouse has cancer, what it would be like to live alone, and the tears and the grief, but how you will be stalwart. Imagination, don’t we do that all the time? You can’t avoid it. So choose your mentors. You’re a Christian. Whom do you really want to be like? And as soon as you ask the question, you also ask, “How shall I help others follow Christ by providing a model to them?” Because an awful lot of Christian discipleship is merely the passing on of the model. That’s all it is.

I’ve used this illustration before. If you’ve heard it before, forgive me, but it was so powerful when I was a young Christian myself that I dare to mention it again. When I was an undergraduate studying chemistry and mathematics, another chap and I decided we’d start a Bible study, an evangelistic Bible study in the dorm where we lived.

He was a lovely Christian, but rather bashful, so inevitably it was going to fall on me to lead the Bible study. I didn’t want to be outnumbered, so we asked only three and hoped that only two would show up. Unfortunately, all three came, and within about five weeks we had 16 people squashed into my little room, and I was rapidly outclassed.

I mean, I was studying chemistry and mathematics, for goodness sake, and I was trying to lead people through John’s gospel, and there were some very good minds in there, and still there were only two Christians, this other chap who wouldn’t say boo and me. So I was rapidly outclassed again and again and again, and not handling things very well, I’m quite sure, but mercifully on the campus of McGill University there was a chap called Dave Ward.

He was a graduate student. He was a rough jewel. Everybody knew that. Suave he was not. Posh he was not. He was a rough jewel. On the other hand, he had a great reputation for being straight with the gospel, giving good answers, being a bit in your face, but being a person of integrity. You could trust him, and he would spend time with students if you brought them to him.

So every once in a while I’d get stuck, really stuck, and I’d say, “I don’t know. I don’t have a clue, but I’ll take you down to see Dave Ward.” So this particular night I took two more of these guys down to see Dave Ward. Dave was one of these high-energy types, you know? You put 50 people in a room, Dave at one end, 49 at the other, and 90 percent of the energy was at Dave’s end.

He couldn’t be still for love nor money, and it definitely wasn’t a counseling atmosphere, but on the other hand we always put up with it because it was Dave Ward. He sat down and got our coffee sloshed down in front of us, and he turned to the first one and said, “All right, why did you come?”

The first chap said, “Well, you know, I think that at university we ought to be open-minded and ask a whole lot of questions, and while I’m here I think I ought to learn more about Buddhism and Hinduism and Islam and Christianity, so I joined this Bible study and I might just like to learn a little bit more about Christianity while I’m an undergraduate here.” Dave looked at him, “Sorry, I don’t have time.”

The student said, “I beg your pardon?” He said, “I don’t have time. I’m a graduate student myself. I’ve got endless deadlines. There are people who really do want to know more about the gospel. I don’t have time for dilettantes. If you want some books on basic Christianity and you’d like to know more, I’ll give them to you, but I don’t have time to waste sitting around chewing the fat. I don’t have time. Why did you come?” He turned to the second one. “Good grief, what have I done this time?” Tact was not his strongest suit.

The second fellow said, “You’ve got to understand that, you know, I come from what you people seem to call all the time a liberal home. I mean, we go to church sometimes, but it’s a great home. My parents love me. We’ve got a great family. We’re very close. We’re generous. We give away a lot of stuff. We do things in the community. We help people, you know? We believe that there’s a god, same as you folks believe that there’s a god. Yet you go on and on and on about all this Christian gospel stuff.” He said, “What have you got that we don’t have?”

Dave looked at him, looked at him, and then he said, “Watch me.” The student said, “I beg your pardon?” He said, “Watch me. Move in with me. I’ve got an extra bed. Be my guest. Three months, six months, whatever it takes. Eat my food. I’ll pay for it. Watch me. Just come live with me. You get up when I get up. You go to bed when I go to bed. Apart from courses where you can’t be with me, that’s fine, I understand that, you spend all the time you like with me, and then at the end of the six months you tell me that there’s no difference. Watch me.”

Now that student, whose name was also Dave, he didn’t take Dave Ward up on it literally, but he started spending a lot of time with Dave. He became a Christian, and today he’s a medical doctor on the mission field, and that’s part of our evangelism too, isn’t it? “Watch me.” So on the one hand, this text is saying to a young man like Timothy, “Choose your mentors.” You younger men here who are just starting out in the ministry or who are thinking about ministry, decide what you want to be like.

Do you want to be like the flashes in the pan? Do you want to be like the gurus? Do you want to be like those who are worshipped by people of the opposite sex? Or do you want to be stamped with suffering, fidelity, joy in the Lord, perseverance, wisdom, and faithfulness? What do you want to be like? Then imitate them.

You who are older, do you not see your responsibility to take some of these younger men under your wing? Tim Keller and I were on the phone the other day, because we work on a certain project together. He said he had been challenged recently by one of the investment bankers in his church. This banker said that in that particular banking institution, when you got to be a certain level of seniority, when you became a senior partner, the company mandated that you spend one-third of your time working with junior staffers.

Now he says, “Tim, I want to ask you how much of your time you spend with junior clergy coming up behind you.” Tim said to me, “I was so ashamed. I could only say about 2 percent.” There are huge things in your prayer life, in how you evangelize, how you organize your home, how you give priorities, what you read that are not taught in simply a sermon, are they? Not even taught in a course. They’re bound up with how you live.

We haven’t had time to do it, but have you noticed in the Pastoral Epistles how much of the instruction here is on how you live … how older women are to help younger women, how older men are to help younger men, how a slave is to live, how a master is to live, what integrity looks like, what business looks like?

All of these things in the Pastoral Epistles are not just making sure everybody knows how to spell propitiation and what it means. That’s important, don’t misunderstand me, but it jolly well had better work out in how we live, and there’s some instruction in there and there’s some modeling there. Hold the right mentors in high regard.

2. Hold few illusions about the world.

Hold few illusions about the world. Verses 12–13. “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and imposters will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” This does not mean that the world gets perpetually worse. It means, rather, that in every generation evil people go from bad to worse. In every generation they go from bad to worse again and again and again and again. Don’t be deceived.

You see, one of the things that goes wrong with the world so often is that we become ridiculously optimistic because we don’t really believe in sin. The greatest example of that really came at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, when everybody thought, “We’re through the bloody wars of the Wars of the Roses, and the religion wars of Europe, and we’re through with the building of empire wars, and now we’re at the twentieth century. Everything is going to get nicer and more peaceful and more gentle.”

Then World War I, then the Great Depression, then World War II, and then the Cold War. Now we’re at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and with the Cold War behind us, and Stalinism is gone and Hitlerism is gone, everything’s going to be wonderful now, isn’t it? And we’re surprised when it’s not.

The twentieth century was the bloodiest century in human history. Apart from war, there were 170 million people killed by their government apart from war. Apart from war. The bloodiest century ever. I can’t think of a single reason on God’s green earth why the twenty-first century won’t be just as bloody or even bloodier.

Give up your small illusions that we’re in a great place. This is a damned world. It may be that God, in his mercy, will forbear. It may be that things will not be too bad for a while. It may be that there will be some relative peace for some time, but if you think you’ve seen the last major war in Europe, you haven’t read your history books and you don’t believe your Bible.

Jesus himself says, “There will be wars and rumors of wars. Do not be dismayed, the end is not yet.” The heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked. One way or the other, we’ll find out how to start a war. It might take 50 years, but it will happen. It does happen, whether they’re regional skirmishes or major worldwide conflicts. We can do it. It’s only a matter of time until somebody drops another A-bomb. It’s only a matter of time.

That’s at the level of massive conflict. In the church itself there are wonderful things to observe in the church’s growth, but there are also new heresies rising all the time, new pressures coming upon us. One of the ugliest things going on at the moment is the transformed definition of tolerance. The older definition of tolerance was well put by Voltaire, of all people. He said, “I may detest what you are saying, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Which presupposes, you see, that you are disagreeing with someone, and then you nevertheless insist that they have the right to articulate their views, understanding that the same rights redound on you, so that you have the right to articulate your views, too. That’s called freedom. You disagree with somebody, but insist they have the right to speak.

In the new tolerance, you are intolerant if you say that anybody’s wrong. I don’t even know what that means anymore. I don’t have a clue, because you see, if I say, “You’re not wrong, you’re not wrong, you’re not wrong, and you’re not wrong. We’re all equally right, and I tolerate you …” I don’t know what toleration means until I disagree with you first. Don’t I have to disagree with you before I can tolerate you?

This whole new notion of tolerance is intellectually incoherent. Moreover, it’s morally corrupt, because the one people these people don’t tolerate are those who disagree with their view of tolerance, so in the one place where they do think that somebody’s wrong, there they don’t tolerate them!

This is becoming a major coup celebre in the Western world to warrant a certain kind of persecution all over again. Oh, we’ll face this. We’ll face this. Do you realize that there have been more Christian martyrs in the last 150 years than there were in the previous 1800 years of the history of the church? In the last 10 years there have been enough Christian martyrs that, if the same percentage of Christians were killed in the next few decades, it would mean that of all the Christians alive in the world today, every 200th of them would be killed.

Every 200th Christian in the world would be killed by martyrdom. Now, of course it’s not all evenly distributed. I know that, but you throw in a couple of million in the southern Sudan in the last 15 years, that sort of ups your averages a bit, and not fewer than 11,000 in Indonesia in the last three years, and on, and on, and on.

No, in this context we need to realize we must hold few illusions about the world. Do not get into a dreamy land of endless optimism that refuses to see the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. So hold the right mentors in high regard, hold few illusions about the world, and …

3. Hold onto the Bible.

Verses 14–16. Now, we’re running out of time, but let me at least say this. Hold onto the Bible, because in this context, it’s not merely a question of holding onto the idea of inerrancy, as important as the truthfulness of Scripture is, but in these verses, holding onto the Bible is bound up with the Scriptures that attest to the salvation that is ours through faith in Christ Jesus (verse 15).

Holding onto the Bible means holding onto the gospel. It means holding onto all the truth of God. It means holding onto right and wrong. It means holding onto all the hope that is ours for eternity. It means holding onto the cross. It means holding onto the resurrection. It means living in the light of the end.

It means adoring God as our Creator and our Redeemer. It means loving Jesus with heart and soul and mind and strength. It means all that is most precious for all eternity. That’s what it means. Hold onto the Bible. Don’t give this one up. For the Bible, Scripture, is superbly useful for this vast range of things mentioned in verse 16, “… teaching, rebuking, correcting, training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” They make us wise, wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Finally …

4. Hold out the Bible to others.

Chapter 4, verses 1–8. Hold out the Bible to others. Hold the right mentors in high regard. Yes. Hold few illusions about the world. Hold onto the Bible, and hold out the Bible to others. There is a solemn reason for this charge given in verse 1. “In the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge.” Hold out the word of God.

In other words, in the view of the end, in the view of the consummation, in the view of the soon appearing of Christ, in the view of living with eternity’s values in view.… We’re back to eschatology again, aren’t we? In the view of all of these things, that we will give an account on the last day for all the things we’ve done in the flesh, in the view of all of this, “Preach the Word. Be prepared in season, out of season, correct, rebuke, encourage, with great patience, careful instruction.”

For what is described in verses 3 and 4 happens again and again and again and again. The time comes when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they’ll gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. That’s why, at the end of the day, you can never say, “Because Preacher X has got such a big crowd; therefore, this is the way to go.”

In times of revival and reformation, if Preacher X has a big crowd it may be the way to go. In times of declension and decay, if Preacher X has a big crowd that is explicitly the way not to go. Because our mandate is not to judge all ministries by the size of the crowd but by fidelity to the Word, and it also means, you see, that the way we proceed finally, the way we win, the way we bear witness, the way we conquer, is through the Word.

Do you remember that great scene in Revelation 12 where the Devil is unleashed in all of his fury against the sons and daughters of the woman, the church of Jesus Christ? He’s unleashed in all his fury. He knows his time is short, and then we’re told how the Christians overcame the Devil. How did they overcome the Devil? Well, they overcame him, we read, “By the blood of the Lamb.”

It’s literally, “On the ground of the blood of the Lamb.” No matter what charges he brings against them, no matter how he tries to defeat them, at the end of the day they are content that Christ has rescued them. They believe that they are reconciled to God because of what Christ has done. He shared his own blood. They overcome on the ground of the blood of the Lamb.

Then also, we’re told, “By the word of their testimony.” That does not mean they give their testimonies a lot. That might be a good thing to do, but it’s not what it means. “By the word of their testimony” means by the fact that they bear witness; they bear testimony to the gospel. That’s how you defeat the Devil.

And finally, “The do not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” I mean, what are you going to do with a Christian who really lives with eternity’s value in view to shut them up? Kill them? But that middle one is what gets me every time. These Christians overcome the Devil himself by the word of their testimony. That is, by bearing witness again and again, by bearing testimony again and again, to the gospel.

How does darkness roll back in Yorkshire? It’s on the ground of the blood of the Lamb, it’s by persevering even to death, and it’s by the word of your testimony. Hold out the Bible to others. Find every way you can, in noon-hour Bible clubs, in neighborhood Bible studies, one-on-one, in a pub.… I don’t care where you do it. Find every way you can to teach the Word of God, and the Word of God, empowered by the Spirit of God, does its own work.

That’s how Christians overcome the Devil. In these last days, yes, yes, yes, hold onto good mentors. Yes, yes, hold few illusions. Yes, yes, hold onto the Bible, but even that sounds a bit defensive, doesn’t it? Hold out the Bible to others. That’s how Christians advance in Yorkshire in dark hours. Let us pray.

Who is sufficient for these things? Surely not we, O God, but this is where you have placed us, so empower us by your Spirit that we may be found faithful, and, having done all, still to stand, and bear fruit, we pray, in Yorkshire and to the end of the world. For Jesus’ sake, amen.