Understanding The Times

Good morning. It's good to see you guys here today. What a delightful place. We, you know, eastern Oregon is the dry side of the state, you know, and when we go back, we have family back in the Midwest and we'll we'll go back and we'll talk to them and they'll say, oh you guys live in Oregon. That's beautiful. We say, you haven't been to our side. There is a beautiful side, but it's not our side. We have, we're considered high desert and so get about nine inches of rain every year, every year, and yeah, you guys, I think you guys got that last night. I was listening. We, I was listening and we're staying in our RV up in the kind of, I don't know what you guys call that area up there, the upper lot, and we could hear it coming down. So we, as Brett said, we've known them for a long time since. I think we met them in the 80s. You guys remember the 80s? Big hair, weird clothes, and we were living up in the Pacific Northwest here. In fact, we lived up in Mountlake Terrace and Edmonds and for a few years while we were hanging out, trying to do the Lord's will, and then the Lord called us down to Ontario, Oregon. Anyway, we just, we love Brett and Kathleen and we're really happy to be here. I want you to start off by joining me, if you would, in 2nd Timothy chapter 3. We're gonna start there. So open your Bible, please, there. 2nd Timothy chapter 3. You know, the Apostle Paul never seemed to speak of himself as being gifted in the prophetic, and yet, you know, in some of Paul's letters, particularly here in 2nd Timothy and also in Thessalonians, we have some of the most amazing prophetic insights, particularly as it relates to the last days. The first five verses of this chapter are among them, and I'm gonna read those here with you just to let you know. I'm reading out of the ESV, okay? So it's probably not gonna be perfect with maybe what you're looking at, but it's gonna be pretty close. The first five verses of 2nd Timothy 3 go like this,

Let's start with prayer, can we? Father God, we just open our hearts to you this morning, and we pray that you would fill us with insight and understanding, because Lord, as we approach the Word, we recognize that apart from you, we, these are just words on a page, and we need, Lord, the illuminating work of your Holy Spirit to bring to life the message that is here, and we believe, Lord, that that's a desire of yours to fill us with insight and understanding, and so we're looking to you this morning to do that, and we look to no other. You are the teacher, Lord, here today. We are the receivers, so we open our hearts to receive from you, in the name of Jesus, our Savior. Amen. Amen. You know, reading through these first five verses of chapter 3 and 2 Timothy is almost like the Lord allowed Paul to tune in on the nightly news from what's going on today, you know, and then just write about it, because it's absolutely eerie how spot-on these descriptions of evil are, and we recognize that this is the world that, you know, we're living in today, and, you know, I'm old enough to remember when things were different, you know. I remember when Mayberry wasn't that far off. I mean, it was always a little idealized, granted, but, you know, it wasn't that far off, and Leave it to Beaver, you know, that was kind of like, gee, Wally, you know, it was kind of like the way life was. Well, it's not that way anymore. The days of Mayberry and Leave it to Beaver are gone, and although we've seen this coming, you know, for a long time, I don't know if you've noticed this. I was mentioning this last night over dinner with Brett and Kathleen that I think that the pandemic has somehow escalated the attitudes, you know, that we have seen in the world that have been on a slow boil for some time, but there's just been this movement, this fast, rapid movement or escalation of the attitude of the world, which, interestingly enough, I have both experienced this myself, and I've seen it in others. It has caused a grieving in people. I see this in believers. I see that they're grieved, and you know, whenever you look at the world, you're going to be grieved somewhat, but there's this heightened sort of escalated grieving that's going on, particularly pronounced here in the United States of America, related to the many freedoms that we have seen just vanishing from our country one by one, and the result of all of that, I find that people are either becoming discouraged to the point of depression, or they're getting angry, and those who are discouraged, it just, it all, you know, that disappointment and depression, it just becomes overwhelming. It becomes paralyzing, and for those who get angry, it often kind of eventuates into a militant attitude where everything they seem to say or post online becomes just full of criticism and very toxic, you know, and it seems like that's like the two responses that we've kind of seen people have related to this escalation of the attitude of worldliness and evil, that is darkness, that is just really taking hold of the world, and both of those attitudes, whether it's depression or whether it's this toxic, militant, angry, critical attitude, both of them render those individuals unable to share the hope and love of Jesus to a lost and dying world that desperately is seeking answers, and that desperately needs the message of the cross of Jesus Christ, and yet we find that many people are unable to share it because they've been overcome, just overcome with either a paralyzing depression or a militant kind of toxicity of their hearts. So I kind of want to talk to you a little bit about what's happening in the world, and at the same time pass along what I hope is a biblical worldview, because I think understanding this thing from a biblical standpoint is critical. Otherwise, you know, we're just gonna get, we're gonna fall into one of those categories that I mentioned, and I'm not suggesting, you know, that the evil that we're experiencing here today is so much different from the evil that has always existed. I mean, you know, we, the ancient Romans were known for their immorality. We know biblically that the city of Corinth was a hot bed of sexual perversion to the point where if you wanted to call somebody a mean name, you'd call them a Corinthian. Whether they'd ever set foot there or not didn't matter. That was literally a way of calling somebody a sexual deviant, you know. So, you know, these things are not new. I'm just saying that there's an escalation. But there, you know, when you think even about what was going on in those cultures back then, there's something that we have today that they didn't have, and that is a pervasive mechanism for immorality and deception to spread. We can spread it much faster than they could, you know. They were limited by their day and by the movement of populations by boat or camel or something like that. Today, it's instant. We have this, being that we're in the Information Age, we have this instantaneous ability to allow the ideologies and opinions of the world to spread like gangrene. Just like a, like a wildfire. Just whoosh! It's everywhere, and that's something that hasn't existed before. Movies, you know, I, when I was a kid, there were religious people that wouldn't let their kids go to movies. movies, you know, and we always kind of thought that was pretty weird. And now I look at movies, and I think, good, that's gracious. They're not just entertainment anymore. I mean, they are preaching to this generation that is being systematically indoctrinated, you know, with the worldly messages that movies are passing along. I mean, movies were never all that great, you know. You had to pick and choose. You had to be careful. But, oh, today, I mean, just the message, the woke message is just everywhere. It has permeated all of these things to the point where even just watching a movie these days is just, you feel like you need a shower after you're done, you know, it's just terrible. You know, in the passage that we opened up with here from 2 Timothy chapter 3, you know, Paul, the Apostle Paul did a pretty good job of describing the evil that would be part of the last days which we are today living in. But, you know, you'll notice that Paul really didn't describe the root of the problem. He just simply described the problem. He said, this is the way it's going to be. But in order to understand better the root of all these things that are blossoming today, and I don't say blossoming in a good way, we have to go elsewhere in Scripture. And, of course, one of the best ways to do that is to study the book of origins. I love teaching through the book of Genesis because we see there not only the beginning of how sin entered the human equation, but we see also how it progressed into the full posture of defiance, you know, against the word and the will of God that we are now experiencing in our world. So now that we've read Paul's description in 2 Timothy, we're going to go over to Genesis. So would you follow me there? And just as we were in 2 Timothy 3, we're going to be in Genesis 3.

I'm going to have you stop there because we note in this section of Genesis 3 that there are two specific questions at the end of these verses and we have to remember something about questions. When it comes to God who's the one posing the question God never poses a question for which he needs an answer. All right. So if God is asking a question he's doing it for our benefit not his. And so there's some particularly important questions that he asks here and the first one he asks of Adam is I believe one of the most unrecognized statements in the whole of the Bible and it's the simple question, Who told you you were naked? Who told you that? And you'll also notice that Adam gave no reply. He didn't answer the question and the reason is because no one told him he was naked. Nobody had to because he figured it out for himself. And what we see here is that one of the effects of sin upon mankind is that it has caused us to be self-aware. And you know we consider self-awareness frankly today usually a good thing you know. He's very self-aware we'll say and we often say it in a very positive sort of a light but God created us to be God aware you know to have our sensibilities and our focus on him. But sin turned all that inward it all became focused and fixated on us and this inward turning to self has made us the center of our own universe and it literally has become the reason for our living. Whereas we were created to live for God as the reason to be we now have been turned inward and this self-awareness this self-focus has now just completely just enveloped our lives and all of this self-directed attention you know that we are that we're born with is the root of everything that Paul talks about in 2nd Timothy chapter 3. It is the root it is it is the foundation of all of the evil that all of the worldliness that we experience in our culture today and you can imagine with self when self became the man's highest objective you know pleasing me I was created to please God but now it's all turned inward and so now it's me that I am seeking and striving to please at all costs and with that as the focal point of my life the idea of bowing to the will of God has become offensive to us, it has become odious to the extreme and so therefore the unregenerate man responds to God with a very natural expression of defiance, that's where defiance comes from. I am my own God and I don't need you telling me what to do and I defy you, we say to God this is this is this is pre-Christ all right I defy you and this is this is the attitude of worldly man the the natural man the man as the NIV says without the spirit there is an attitude of defiance that has just taken over you know and we we I've always felt like teaching the third chapter of Genesis is one of the most depressing things I've ever had to do you know I hate it everything's great up until that point you know but you know you keep you keep going on in Genesis and it just unravels you know this this self-directed self-centered emphasis of life just causes life just to unravel and we don't need to you know we're not going to get into all the details of that unraveling here in this but frankly it is this attitude is clearly defined for us in one of the most incredible Psalms and for this one I'm going to put it up on the screen for you it's from Psalm chapter 2 check out this this is amazing why do the nations rage the psalmist asks and the people's plot in vain the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us fascinating passage is it not very interesting you know aspects to this passage not the least of which is that before the New Testament revelation of the Trinitarian idea of the the nature of God we see here in this Psalm that the vitriol and the hatred for submission is aimed at the Lord and against his anointed in that interesting you know in the Greek version of the Old Testament of course you know the Old Testament was written originally in Hebrew but in the it was translated into Greek about four centuries before the time of Christ and and in that particular translation it would literally say against the Lord and against his Christ so we can see that you know this is this is the focal point of man's defiance against the Lord and against his anointed but the two points I want to bring out about this this passage on the screen are these number one the focus of man's defiance is against what he perceives to be his own liberation from the constraints of God's law that is that is the essence of it right there the world sees God's law as bonds at least as it's given in there in in Psalm to, or cords, those words describe something that restrains, or constrains, right? In fact, the Hebrew could be translated chains, or fetters, right, shackles. That's what man is wanting to throw off, the shackles that he perceives that God has put on him through his law. The second point that's interesting that I want to bring out from that passage is that the rebellion comes down from the top. Can we put the passage back on there again? In fact, I'm just going to have you go ahead and just leave those up until we get to the next one so that people can keep looking at them. But you'll notice here something interesting about this is that it is the kings of the earth and the rulers, did you catch that? Who take counsel and have set themselves up against the Lord and are doing all this. Notice it's the kings and the rulers. Now that may or may not have political overtones because in our culture, you know, kings and rulers aren't necessarily those who are taking up a position of elected office, they're simply the ones with the loudest voice. And we know all about public opinion today. We know that that's, you want to really change society, get their ear, right? Doesn't necessarily mean that somebody who has an elected office is going to have the capability of doing that. It could just be somebody else. It could be Joe, anybody who just happens to have a big microphone. And the internet's given many people a big microphone today to influence society. And so the kings and the rulers are now those who are dominating public opinion. And make no mistake about it, they are advocating defiance against the Lord and against His anointed one. And it's been going on for thousands of years, as I mentioned, but we've seen it. We see it in the early pages of the Bible, you know, the biblical account of the Tower of Babel, or Babel, however you decide to pronounce it. It's a fascinating story, but it's one that few Christians actually recognize in terms of its implications related to the defiance that mankind projects against the Lord. Because you'll remember that what God said to Noah was, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, right? Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. Now let me show you on the screen from Genesis chapter 11 what happens. The people said to one another, come on, let's make bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar, and they said, come let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top to the heavens, and check out this last area, and let us make a name for ourselves lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. You see, God said, fill the earth, and they said, no, we're going to stay right here. We defy that message of the Lord God. We will not, we are not going to bow to you, we are not going to honor you, we're going to in fact make a name for ourselves, right? And we're going to stay put right here. Why? Because we want to. That's it. That's it. Right there. And that passage right there, it's a declaration of man's heart toward God, let us make a name for ourselves. It's all about me, it's not about God anymore, it's all about me. The heart of man desires autonomy, independence. He wants to be his own master, and he wants to define right and wrong for himself as well, and he's done that through the years. Check this out. From judges, we see this same sort of an attitude. In those days, there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Isn't that a great description of today? Nothing's changed. Nothing's changed. The defiance of man, nothing has changed. We found some new ways to communicate it, but nothing ultimately has changed. In fact, I just read this past Friday, a news item that said that California, I don't know if you saw this, they ruled that bees are a type of fish. Did you guys check that out? Yeah, yeah. They ruled that bees are a type of fish in order to protect them under, you know, the Endangered Species Act. Okay. It's just, you know, we're going to make up our own rules. It's it. Don't worry about it, you know. I mean, today we even see this in areas involving gender. God said, I will make them male and female. There are two genders. There's male and female. But man says, no, I defy that. Not only do I say that there are multiple genders, but I have the freedom to decide my own gender, regardless of what biology might say. I am my own master. I say what goes. You don't tell me anything, right? It's like a child, you know. The Bible may say, you know, that you were made male or you were made female, but the defiance of man says that he will not be limited by God's rules. Our situation is very much like Isaiah described in ancient Judah. Let me put this also on the screen. From Isaiah chapter 59, it says, so justice is driven back and righteousness stands at a distance. And I'm quoting this out of the NIV because I like it. It says, and this is the incredible phrase, truth has stumbled in the streets, or I think as the ESV might say, in the public squares. Truth has stumbled. Truth has stumbled. Isn't that amazing? Honesty, he says, cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found. In fact, whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. They become hated because they don't want the same attitude of worldliness, you know, in their lives and so forth. And this was, you know, and frankly, this is one of the ways that we know that because truth is being so perverted and so twisted, this is one of the ways we know that we're in the end times. Let me show you also 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, it says, the coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, with all wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refused, past tense, before the lawless one even comes on the scene, they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore what happens? God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false. You see, the kings and the rulers have echoed their defiance, but the people underneath them are just being caught up and swept away in it, swept away in a wave of delusion. They're literally deluded, deluded into believing that you can be a different gender than what you were born with. That's a delusion, you guys, right? And it's sad, I mean, it grieves us. These are some of the things that grieve us about what's going on in the world today. And of course, the stage is being set for the coming of the lawless one. He's not here yet, by the way. Lawlessness is here, but the lawless one is not here yet. But the stage is being set, you know, for the mother of all deceptions. And we see that happening. All right. So if I haven't just totally depressed you up to this point, and I hope I haven't, I want to turn a little bit now and share just a word of encouragement. What does God's word have to say for those, the saints living in the final days? Well, there's much encouragement. And the first is from Proverbs 23, which I'll put on the screen for you as well. I love this. Buy truth and do not sell it. Buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding. Now, thankfully, there's no purchase necessary for these things. But what this passage is saying to you and me, it's emphasizing that we need to have our focus and our aim on laying hold of the truth and not letting go. Because you have to understand, Christians, that that is the heart, that is the emphasis, that is the aim of the enemy in these last days, is to get believers who have up to this point known the truth and held to the truth to let go of it, and to say, well, see, then we waffle a little bit, you know, it's not that big of a deal. It's a big deal. Letting go of truth is a big deal. And that's one of the reasons the Bible tells us to hang on with all we're worth. And one of the things God's word helps us to understand is that the world being lost in darkness has no ability to lay hold of the light of God's truth apart from the Holy Spirit. Guys, do you realize that? You got unsaved people you work with, you got unsaved neighbors and friends, they can't know what you know apart from the Spirit. Paul tells us this, 1 Corinthians chapter 2, the man with, and I like to quote this out of the NIV again. The man with... the Spirit, and what it literally means in the Greek is the natural man, does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God because they are utter foolishness to him, and look it, look it, he cannot understand them. He cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The truths that we embrace, the things that we hang on to, were given to us as a gift through the Spirit. We lay hold of them through the Spirit. We hang on to them through the Spirit, right? We know them to be true through the Spirit, but listen, you can't expect your unsaved neighbors to do that. You can't expect your unsaved friends, relatives, or whatever, to embrace the wisdom and the order of God's Word apart from a genuine work of the Spirit. So you see, it doesn't do any good to rail against the sin of mankind. Getting angry isn't the answer. I can shake my fist all day long. That's not gonna help. They need the Spirit of God. It's not going to happen without the Spirit of God, so there's no use, you know what I mean? You can't just get all angry, you know, when your governor, just like our governor, you know, does, and I'm just not political. God told me years ago, don't, Paul, just stay out of politics, but you know, it doesn't do any good to get mad. What good is it gonna do? Oh, these idiots, you know. Let them call bees birds, you know, because people, our job is not to correct the thinking of the world, okay? Our job is not to correct their thinking. It is rather to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross of Jesus Christ, what He did there, what He accomplished there, so that they may be saved. Bottom line, that's our job. Don't get depressed, don't get angry, share the gospel.

Guys, do you understand you cannot instruct unsaved people on how to observe the Word of God? Because all you're gonna do is give them the law, and guess what the law does? It kills. Remember? The law puts to death. The law is like your bathroom scale. All it can tell you is how much work you have ahead of you. It can't change your weight. The law is like that. It can only tell you how far short you fall of God's standard of righteousness. It is only through the Spirit. So we can't instruct people in the righteousness of God. They must be born again in order for them to make that jump. And so the commission that Jesus gives us, that has to be our primary focus. And by the way, we're given an end date on this thing, and it's not yet. What's the end date? What's the expiration date on this commission? The end of the age. There it is right there. So it's still in force today, right? And we can't afford to let ourselves get distracted by all of the nonsense swirling around us. And as defiant as the world is, and as much as they say no to the Lord and to His Word and stuff, we must be equally steadfast. As defiant as they are, we must be equally steadfast. We must match their defiance, not with defiance, not with anger, not with depression, but with steadfastness. Related to the Word of God, related to our determination to preach the cross of Jesus Christ. Amen? Let's pray. Father, we love You. We don't say it nearly enough. And we know, Lord, that Your Word is true, and the truth sets people free. And we know, Lord, God, that we're living in a world of intense darkness, and the need today is for us to show the love of Jesus Christ and to share about the cross of Christ to a lost and dying world that's seeking answers. So, Father, God, forgive us for our discouragement, and forgive us, Lord, we pray for our anger, because as Your Word tells us, the anger of man does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. But we pray, Lord, that You would empower us to keep going with the commission, the greatest commission man has ever received. Go into all the world, every neighborhood, every workplace, every home, every school, and make disciples. And then, teach them to obey, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Father, we want to just renew our determination, our steadfastness, to carry out that commission today. We ask it in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and King. Amen.