Sermon Tone Analysis

*2 Timothy 3:1-9*

When I was in the Navy I spent my last couple of years training sailors in various areas like maintenance, alcohol awareness, and integrity.

One of the questions I used to ask the men and women in uniform was, “What do we do?”  I’d get lots of answers depending upon who I was training, like “We maintain ships,” “We support the fleet” or “We make steam to propel the boat.”

“Simpler than that,” I’d say.

“What is it that we do at our very core?”

After letting them think about it for a minute, I’d let them off the hook and say, “Guys, in the military our job is very simple: we kill the bad guys and blow up their stuff.

And when we’re not killing the bad guys and blowing up their stuff, we’re training to kill bad guys and blow up their stuff and threatening to kill bad guys and blow up their stuff.”

Before we could fulfill our mission, though, we needed to know who the bad guys were!  Picking out the bad guys is one of the biggest challenges anyone in the military faces.

To be able to do our jobs as soldiers in Christ’s army we need to know who our enemy is as well.

We have spent the last several weeks looking at our commission as soldiers in Christ’s army, and now Paul turns his attention to the challenges we face as we serve Jesus.

Granted, we may not kill bad guys and blow stuff up, but we oppose Satan’s schemes and try to foil his plans.

If we are going to do our job we need to know who the bad guys are, because the enemy is crafty and experienced!

In our passage today we will learn about the device Satan uses, the disguise he employs, and his sure downfall as our enemy.

1.                  *Satan’s Device: A Cascade of Bad Decisions.

(3:1-4)* As chapter 3 begins, Paul doesn’t want Timothy to look at life through “rose colored glasses.”

Paul is a realist, and he was in the world and in the church enough to know that things don’t always go as planned!

Even after encouraging Timothy to “cleanse himself” (2:21) and pursue Christ with others of like mind (2:22), Paul knew that there wouldn’t be only sunshine and rainbows ahead.

Every soldier needs to know that they are employed to defend against an enemy, and Paul now turns his attention to showing us who our enemy is.

\\ \\ /But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come./

(2 Timothy 3:1) \\ \\

Paul isn’t under the illusion that Timothy will have smooth sailing if he commits to living out his commission as a soldier in Christ’s army.

He instead prepares Timothy for the reality that despite his best efforts there would be difficulty in the days to come.

Just because a soldier is well-prepared and well-equipped it does not guarantee that he will never have to face opposition.

As we continue to look at our passage we will see that Paul is describing the events happening at the church in Ephesus in Timothy’s day[1], which leads me to the conclusion that the “last days” Paul is discussing here speak of the time between Jesus’ first coming and His Second Coming.

The New Testament speaks of “the last days” in some instances of the time of Jesus’ second coming, and others, as this one, of the relatively short interval between His first and second coming[2].

Paul is pretty clear that we shouldn’t be surprised at difficulty that arises despite our best efforts.

We may think that as a church we can avoid problems and conflict if we try really hard to be devoted and diligent servants of Jesus, but things will not always go according to plan.

We can only control ourselves, not the opposition.

Because there will be plenty of people who would like to stand in our way the path will not be an easy one.

The “last days,” the time between Jesus’ first and second coming, will be a time of opposition.

There will be trouble and turmoil in life, but as the adage goes we’ve been promised a safe landing, not a smooth flight.

Verses two through four give us a clear and sad picture of what our opposition looks like.

We will find as we look at these verses that we face a crafty enemy in Satan.

When I think of Satan’s activity on earth I tend to be focused on the world outside of the church, and blatant opposition to a biblical view of our world and our condition as people.

Paul makes us take a view here that looks inside the church as well as outside.

\\ \\ /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,/ (2 Timothy 3:2-4) \\ \\ What a horrible list of vices!

I look at the opposition that Timothy had to overcome and I get a little weary.

This doesn’t look like the church I want to be a part of!

It’s just a guess, but I don’t think Timothy wanted his church to look like this, either.

Let’s take a close look at this vice list, though, because if we slow down a little and “unpack” it, we will see that what Paul has in mind is more than wagging his finger at some degenerates in Ephesus.

These verses, like 2 Timothy 2:11-13, are arranged in a chiasm[3].

Arranging them in their structure really helps us see Paul’s emphasis in this list:

 

* 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/        /

 

The sin I want us to notice first and foremost is the one that is arranged farthest to the right (and just about in the middle), which is translated in the NASB as “malicious gossips.”

The Greek word that lies under that translation is the word διάβολοι (/diaboloi/), from which we get the English word “devil.”

If we look up a few lines in our text to 2 Timothy 2:26, we will see that Paul wants Timothy’s opponents to escape the snare of the devil.

He uses the exact same word[4] there as we see here!

When we look at how Paul arranges this list, the random assault on immorality that we might at first see becomes a well-organized list.

This list shows us the device that Satan uses to gain a foothold in our church.

He uses a cascade of bad decisions (maybe even made by people with good intentions) to bend the church to his way of operating.

We might wonder how Timothy’s opponents got trapped by Satan in the first place; Paul shows us the downward spiral of bad decisions in these verses:

 

* *The first step-A Misdirection of Love*: The first two and last two items on the list all deal with love: “…lovers of self, lovers of money… lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…”  American society and pop-psychology tell us that having a good self-image is the most important thing in life.

If we think we’re okay, that’s all that counts!

We’ve become a nation of people that resemble a Saturday Night Live skit, when the character Stuart Smalley would look at himself in the mirror and say, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”[5]

If we look at this list from last to first we see that when we stop putting God in first place in our lives we /will/ replace Him with something.

First we replace Him with pleasure (maybe as simple as TV or as destructive as alcoholism), then with money and all the security that it brings, and finally we place ourselves on the throne that is reserved for God alone.

The first step in Satan taking over a church is a misdirection of love.

Jesus told us that the Great Commandment is to love God with everything we have and our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:30-31).

When we fail to obey, eventually it leads to the next level in Paul’s list.

* *The second step-Pride and Hostility toward Others*: The second tier in our list gets a little more intense than the first.

We become “boastful, arrogant, revilers… treacherous, reckless, conceited…”  Several of these terms are pretty straightforward (like boastful, arrogant, reckless, conceited), but a couple of them need to be unpacked a little.

A “treacherous” person is one who doesn’t keep their word, a person who can’t be trusted to be honest and committed.

If I occupy first place in my life, then even if I give my word to you about something the minute it becomes inconvenient I will ignore my commitment to you to focus on me.

A “reviler” is someone who is demeaning toward others with their speech; they patronize or talk down to people, belittling or making fun of them.

This person gets so caught up in themselves in their misdirected love that they become conceited.

In other words, they are full of themselves and can’t see anyone else’s needs around them.

That causes them to become boastful of their own abilities, arrogant about their worth, reckless in their promises and hurtful in their speech toward others.

Once God is removed from His position other people become pawns to help them achieve their ends.

When God is number one in our lives we see other people as bearers of His image, but when we put ourselves in His position other people’s lives and feelings go out the window.

If we leave ourselves unchecked, we will find ourselves even further into Satan’s plans.

* *The third step- Lack of Basic Civility*: The next tier on our list gets even worse.

The opponents are described as “disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable…without self-control, brutal, haters of good.”

At this point a person has allowed all pretense of civility drop.

They are unloving, brutal, and have no self control.

They can’t see a fault in themselves (because their self-esteem is too high!), so they won’t seek reconciliation with people.

They hold their parents in contempt, and God as well.

We can lament this state if we want, but it exists in our society and in our church.

How many teens do we have who have never been taught how to control themselves and choose well?

How many of us in our twenties and thirties have never learned how to curb our spending?

We don’t thank the people who help us.

When is the last time that we thanked the police who keep us from harm, or the veterans who fought for our freedom?

We roll our eyes when our parents give us direction.