Tough times and troubled hearts

I love the candor of 2 Timothy 3. Paul, this seasoned, grizzled old saint gives a dark but realistic appraisal of life. 3:1* But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. Last days, time between the resurrection of Jesus and the 2nd coming. Difficult is perilous. Perilous is used to describe the savage nature of two demon-possessed men (Matt. 8:28). The word for times had to do with epochs, rather than clock or calendar time.1 So the times will be marked as perilous. Dangerous. This is so relevant for where we are. We live in uncertain times. Geopolitically, and economically. I came across this political cartoon in this weeks News Star These are tough times. No question about it. And people are frustrated and angry. Many wonder if we arent seeing the beginning of the decline of American supremacy in this world. Perhaps what we are seeing is the decent of man. Paul had a realistic impression of the non-believer Men will NOT grow increasingly good. Yes, there is an ebb and flow. Teachers see it from one year to the next. Some classes are good, some are well not so good. But without the natural progression is always ultimately away from civility toward greater barbarism. In the last days difficult times will come.

MacArthur, John (2005-05-09). The MacArthur Bible Commentary (Kindle Locations 60743-60745). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

They are here. Then he specifies what it will look like. I love the beautiful candor and brutal honesty in this accurate appraisal of life without Jesus. 2* For men will be lovers of self Lovers of self. Sound familiar. Its natural to love yourself. I was headed home from Chruch Sunday night a couple of weeks ago listening to this black preacher. He was on pride. Man he was good. The word I is in the center of the word sin. Its in the center of the word Pride. He said, What you got to be proud about. Go out strutting your stuff. You aint nothing but dirt. Gawwwd made you from dirt and you still dirt. Dress yoself up in the nicest clothes and you dressing up dirt. Walking dirt. Thats the biblical idea of man. Our calling is away form the love of self. lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, Word means slanderer. And this goes for both ends of a political perspescite. Create dishonest assessment like a straw man and then attack the straw man. disobedient to parents, Children are fearless. ungrateful, unholy, 3* unloving, irreconcilable, Bitterness and stern resentment is in place of the purer higher virtues of forgiveness and grace. Nothing you can do to pull people back together. malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,

4* treacherous, reckless, conceited, Conceit. I read recently that no major celebrity will allow his or her image without Photoshop effects. They are so vain that even the most skilled professional photogs arent good enough to present the image. They have to use computers to wipe away every flaw. lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, Not a pretty picture but it is fairly accurate for this day. Sure, there are exceptions. But the culture as a whole is fairly well defined. Self is loved. Money is loved. Boasting is acceptable. If you cant do it well enough hire a publicist. Arrogant. 5* holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. Its not that these people recklessly disregard the Lord. They pay lipservice to him, but they deny the power of transformation. They want three dollors of deity in a paper bag. Just enough to feel warm inside, but not enough to confront them. 6* For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, Some are even teachers. They play to the frivolous desire of the weak minded. 7* always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. They read and study and fill their heads with knowledge, but they never attain wisdom. 8* Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith.

Jannes and Jambres are not mentioned specifically in the OT but according to Jewish tradition these were the Egyptian magicians that attempted to counterfeit the miracles of Moses. They later disguised themselves as prosylites and left Egypt with the Jews. They were the ones that instigated the worship of the golden calf in Exodus and were killed with the idolators. The point is, that there will be fakes who pretend to love Jesus but actually pull people away from the true faith. 9* But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Janness and Jambress folly was also. The foolishness of the false teachers will eventually become evident. Now, with all this in mind. What do we do? What can we take from the list?

Rome was civilized but their understanding of civility is so foreign to ours that we would barely recognize it as such. If a baby was unwanted they threw it into the streets. For entertainment, they would go to the Circus or Coliseum and watch Christians or other dissidents torn to bits by hungry lions. They didnt bat an eye at cruelty in every form. And the loving practices of the church puzzled them. Aristides describing Christians to Emperor Hadrian, They love one another. They never fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who would hurt them. I they have something they give freely to the man who has nothing; if they see a stranger, they take him home, and are happy, ashtough he were a real brother. They dont consider themselves brothers in the usual sense, but brothers instead through the Spirit, in God. Our culture would say, These are the responsible things we should do. The Roman would scratch his head and be puzzled. Why do you do that? We take our Christian ethic for granted because it is ingrained in our culture. The foundation of our civility. As the church loses traction, the culture decomposes into barbarianism. Years ago I read a book by Charles Colson entitled, The New Dark Ages. He made a compelling point that the post Christian world is well stocked with barbarians. I believe that today in the West, and particularly in America, the new barbarians are all around us. They are not hairy Goths and Vandals, swilling fermented brew and ravishing maidens; they are not Huns and Visigoths storming our borders or scaling

Cultures degenerate
In the scientific world there is a law of degeneration called, The Second Law of Thermodynamics. Simply put, things will naturally move from a more complex arrangement to a more simple arrangement. The law of entropy. Leave a buick in a field for two hundred years and when you get back it will not become a Ferrari. It will degenerate to a simpler state. Paint a post and leave it and it will eventually return to dirt. The law of entropy is also in play in civilization. Mankind will degenerate into his most base form if left unchecked. The difference maker is the Holy Spirit. Look where the church has been predominating in culture and you will see a culture marked by greater gentility and grace. Civility is directly proportionate to the degree of Jesus influence on it.

our city walls. No, this time the invaders have come from within. We have bred them in our families and trained them in our classrooms. They inhavit our legislatures, our courts, our film studios, and our churches. Most of them are attractive and pleasant; their ideas are persuasive and sublte. Yet thes men and women threaten our most cherished instututions and our very character as a people. The only difference between barbarism and civility is the Holy Spirit. Where the spirit is at work, then lives improve. Where the spirit is pushed aside or forgotten then lives tend to spiral. Without the influence of the Holy Spirit, the world tends toward barbarism. Every man does what is best for himself. Idiocracy is our future. Watched the Congress debating the merits of the potato. Here we are in the worst economic crisis since the great depression and they are debating whether to allow potatoes into schools. The health conscious want to get rid of them. But then the potato lobby says Not so fast. Much more nutritious than lettuce. But we have fat kids. Ive never been on a diet, and Im something of an expert, that says eat all the potatoes you want. I just thought it was absurd that we lack the common sense to deal with this on our own and the government has to make a decision for us. And here we are debating the merits of the potato while we fight in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. We have people in the streets of NY protesting the large banks and wall street. We have so many other issues.

But thats where the degeneration takes you. Fiddling with French fries. Idiocracy. I think of that famous line by Malcolm Muggeridge, "Thus did Western man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania; himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down. And having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer, until at last, having educated himself into imbecility and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over, a weary, battered old brontosaurus, and became extinct." Without Jesus culture declines. Know it. Accept it.

Quit trying to control the culture

Paul is making sociological observations without any prescriptive advice. He didnt say, And Timothy you need to put a stop to it. This is just to understand what you are up against. You cant control the world. You must influence it. Win it. Woo it. Love it, hateful and rebellious as it is. See it for what it is, lost and without hope. 10* Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, 11* persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium and at Lystra; what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me! 12* Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

13* But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. He doesnt take them on. I think this is the mistake. As the Baptist church saw the culture sliding from her grasp she went after it and tried to force it back into her place. Noble idea, but ill-advised. You cannot change what you cannot influence. The more we tried to control the lost they more they hated us for it! You say, But what about my children? They will have to grow up in this mess. More important than every for the Christian parents to do their job. Protect them from the smut and corruption, but prepare them for the journey. Intigrated sense of self. Help them to stand alone. Integrated sense of self. Thats not me. Thats not me. Thats me. Friend choices are the most important decisions he or she will make. Understand that they are doing this in the cauldron of peer influence and at the same time, at the height of their personal insecurity. We find confidence in repetition. Everything is new. Choices are emotional. But no frame of reference. Then do what they do. Must work ever harder to protect and prepare.

give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. That is them, this is us. You dont have to live that life. We dont take our cues from culture. We draw our direction and values from the teaching of the Word of God. 16* All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17* so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. What a contrast. And what an opportunity. Dont fret the downward spiral of this generation. Recognize it for what it is and use the opportunity to create such a stunning contrast that they will see your good works and glorify your father which is in heaven.

Win them through a distinct life

14* You, however, Do you feel the transition. That is them, lets talk about you! continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, 15* and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to