- Well good morning. As Pastor Roy said, I'm Seth Fagerland. I'm one of the pastors here at Rockpoint, just grateful to be with you. Thank you for joining us today. Whether you are here in person, in the warehouse, whether you are online, welcome. We got a good time together. We're gonna things a little bit differently this morning. If you notice just even the timing of some things, the worship team will have some more worship time later. Then we also have something very exciting we want to share with you towards the end. So we have a nice, full time with you together. But if you are new, welcome. I know sometimes going somewhere where you don't know people, or just, you're trying to figure things out or getting to know a church, it takes some time and it takes getting to know people. So if you are online, please chat with somebody right there who wants to connect with you. Or if you are here in between the services, stop by the Next Moves in the gathering area. There's someone there that wants to meet you as we seek to multiply disciples in a healthy church. Well, we will be in II Timothy chapter three this morning, and so if you have a Bible, you can start turning there. We'll get there shortly. But I also want to just say a quick prayer as we jump into God's Word together. Father, I know in the busy-ness and the movement of even getting here, whether it was getting ready this morning, the drive, getting in, the conversations, everything, Lord, there's so many things that are always on our hearts and our minds, and I just pray with your help, that we're able to release things that need to be released, that we're able to quiet our hearts enough to listen to you. But ultimately, Jesus, we want to know you more. So now may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, our Lord, our rock, and our Redeemer. In your name, amen. Amen. Well, if you have been with us for a while, you know what we seek to do here at Rockpoint, or if you're new with us, you're getting to know it. We walk through the Bible. We do. We pick up a book, oftentimes a passage, but we walk through a passage of Scripture, and where we don't want the Bible to say what we want it to say, we want to discover who God says he is and who God says we are. But sometimes in the process of that, you come to a passage where like, ah, that's kinda hard. Can we skip this part? Can we move on? Let's go to a better passage. And I'm with ya. There's time came in my preparing when I found out what passage I get to preach on and I'm like, "That one's kind of a hard one." Right? But it's good because next week you'll see the well-known verses in II Timothy three that says for all Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training, so it goes on, right? So this is God-breathed. This is God-spirited, meaning God led them to what he wanted them to say. And it is useful. So as we read these verses in II Timothy three, I want us to have that in our minds and hearts as we dive into this. So II Timothy chapter three verses one through nine: But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins, led astray by various passions, always learning, never able to arrive at the knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all as it was with those two men. See, aren't you glad you came to church this morning, right? Anytime that there's a public reading of Scripture, there could be the spectrum of the responses, obviously, based upon where you are at, your season of life, where you're at in your journey with Jesus. So yes, reading this and hearing this, some of you feel like you're on the inside looking out and you can say, "Yes, that's right, amen. "The world is messed up." You might've already wrote some names in your Bible around each one of those descriptions as this person, and that person, and this thing going on. And that can be happening, right? But on the other end of the emotional spectrum are those sometimes feel like they're on the outside looking in. And they can hear this and say, "That describes me." And it could feel condemning. Guys, always God's Word speaks to all of us. So let me use an illustration as we enter these verses. And illustrations are great. They help us understand sometimes deeper things. But as always, every illustration breaks down, so take this as far as you want. Well, you've heard me say before that I went to school down in Chicago land. I say Chicago land because when you say Chicago, obviously, this is what people think. But Chicago land, literally, once you cross Wisconsin border, South of Milwaukee, it goes all along Lake Michigan, all the way to the Indiana border. So you say Chicago land, but I wasn't in downtown. I was closer to Wisconsin. But people, yeah, you have to, you give reference points, right? So all that being said, when I've told people that, "Oh I got a job as a window washer," they thought I was doing this. They thought I was hanging off of skyscrapers. Like, my poor grandma was worried about me for years because she's like, "Oh, are you being safe?" And I'm like, "Grandma, I'm good. I enjoy this." But this wasn't what I was doing. I was actually more of a small, commercial, you know, doing retail shops and restaurants, and carrying a bucket and a pole, at most. That's what I did. So when I, when whatever you do, whenever you do something enough, or you get trained enough, your eyes start to notice things, right? When say, there's some of you here that can open up a budget report, look at an Excel spreadsheet and know exactly what it's saying. Other of you see, like, "What is this thing?" Some of you can look at blueprints. Some of you can look at music notes on a page. Whatever your trained thing is, whatever the thing is that you have done again, and again, and again, your eyes have been trained to see things, right? So when I was a window washer, yes, initially I had no clue what I was doing, right? But over time, my eyes got focused in. And in fact, I'm ruined to this day. I can't walk into a room without looking at the windows. And it's just my, it's part of the suffering I have to do, I guess. But initially when I'd walk up to a glass, yes, it would be very easy from a distance to see, "Oh, it's messed up there. It's messed up there." It was very easy from a distance to make judgments about what was clean and what was dirty. But when you got up right up to the glass and your eyes were trained to look for the things that you were trained to look for, you could see all the things that needed to be clean. And where am I going with this illustration this morning, is when you get that close to the glass and you're looking for those things and you allow your eyes to be looking for them, you see the areas that need to be clean. And when you're that close to glass, you see your own reflection. So I believe with that in mind, I think as we go into this passage, I think there's some things that God wants us to help see. So I believe that there's kind of five anchor points that just kind of stood out to me as I was preparing for our time. I gave you plenty of white space in your sermon notes. Write down whatever you want to write down, and we'll also walk through some application. But first thing is this. He says, verse one, "But understand this, "that in the last days there will come times "of great difficulty." In the last days, there'll be times of great difficulty. My friends, since the Holy Spirit came, after Jesus' death on the cross, his resurrection from the grave, at Pentecost when God promised the Holy Spirit and came, the church was born, and we've been in the last days ever since. We've been in the last days. From that moment where Jesus said the last thing before he ascended, he says, "I'm coming back." I mean, so basically that timeframe, that process, that timing has been Jesus waiting to fulfill that promise. Now some of you may be like, Seth, come on now. That was 2,000 years ago. Was Paul wrong? 'Cause it obviously didn't happen when Paul was alive. And here we are in 2021. 'Cause you hear people say like, "Oh, well that already happened," and all this kind of stuff. And even they were dealing with this in I Timothy, where they said that, oh, those guys, they claimed that the resurrection already happened. Right? But when we talk about this, whose concept of time are we using? Whose concept of time are we referring to? Is it ours? Or is it God's? Because the Bible says a day with the Lord is like 1,000 years. So in 2021, we're only in day two in God's timing, really. I mean, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not making any predictions, all right? That's not my role here this morning at all. But I believe that God is doing something bigger. He's telling a bigger story. It's his story. And did God care about those 3,000 people who said yes to him at Pentecost? Absolutely. Does God care about the seven billion people alive today? Absolutely. We are in those last days. But then he goes on to say in those last days, there'll be times of great difficulty, and then he lists, oh man, 23 different descriptions of just blah, right? It was hard to read, isn't it? This is hard things. And there's no easy way to summarize it, but I'm gonna try. But did you notice the bookends in verses two and verses four? He says they'll either be lovers of self or lovers of God. I think that's what Paul was actually getting at. I don't think he actually wanted to walk through point by point every description. I think he was helping unpack you'll either be a lover of self or you'll be a lover of God. There's no way. You will love something. It's actually a matter of misplaced love. Misplaced. You will love something. It's not a matter, it's not a question of if you will love something, but what you will love. You see, we are greatly helped when we actually talk about sin to not just refer to it as breaking the rules. I know all of our different backgrounds and we were all young at one point, right, where it's like, "Okay don't do this, do this," and so we get this category of sin of don't break the rules. That's all that God cares about, the whole 10 Commandments thing. All right, we're good. But you can't break any rule without first and foremost the motivation of your heart saying I want something else. It's not about breaking the rules. So it helps us to understand sin not as breaking the rules, but as idolatry. Turning something else, other than God, into an ultimate thing in our lives. So yeah, we can look at the outside world and say, "Yeah, the world is messed up." You can see the news. I bet you your Facebook feed has been less than encouraging recently. You could look at the big changes and the shifts going on in the culture and the world around us. You could see the movies that come out and the stuff that shows up on your Netflix. You're like, "Are you kidding me? "How is this on Netflix? And my kid is here." So yeah, the world is messed up. Or we can get close enough to the reflection, our own reflection in the glass, and we can see these things in our own lives. And I'm not gonna speak for you. I'll speak for myself. 'Cause when I was preparing for this and I was walking through those things, I could write my name beside each and every one of them in big ways or small ways, and the reality Of the times in my own heart and life that I have misplaced love. Because no matter how good I can make things look on the outside, on the inside, on the inside, I still have a broken natural disposition to worship me, to worship Seth, that life should revolve around Seth. What Seth wants, what Seth desires, what Seth thinks is his best life, that is still, can be going on inside of me. And it's evidence of the fall, where the very first humans, Adam and Eve, tried to live independently of God. You see, sin is rejecting God as God in our lives and trying to insert ourselves in his place, loving myself instead of loving God. Which brings us to kind of a third, our third anchor point, and it's this. At the beginning of five, Paul goes on to describe these people saying they have the appearance of godliness, but they deny its power. The appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Well, what power is he referring to? It's the power of the Holy Spirit. It's the power of Holy Spirit that God promised would come into those who trusted Jesus as Lord and Savior of their lives. And so when the Holy Spirit comes, what the Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit does different things inside of us. And there's so many things as you study the Scripture to see that, but let me give you just kind of a three summary things. One is holiness. One is holiness because God says that before he sends you the Holy Spirit, he describes our hearts as if they were like stone, dead, no life in them. And he says but I'm gonna give you a life, a heart of flesh. I'm gonna breathe my spirit into you. I'm gonna move you to live the life I created you to live. So yes, when you receive the Holy Spirit as a believer in Jesus, you start to experience a transformation in you where it wasn't there before. You actually experience the Fruit of the Spirit. You would see things where evidence of love, and joy, and peace, and patience, none of those things can you make happen in your life. Have you ever tried to make yourself a more loving person? Good luck with that. Or you say like, "I'm not gonna pray for patience "'cause I know what God's gonna do in my life. "He's gonna bring messed up people into my life." Well, maybe you are the messed up person, right? But all this kind of stuff going on where you can't make the Fruit of the Spirit happen. It's something that the Holy Spirit can only do in you. So holiness. What else does the Holy Spirit do? He helps you with perseverance. And not for a physical competition or a sport. I know we tend to like to use those verses in those contexts. I'm talking about the things in life where it's hard, and you got to endure difficult circumstances. Read your Bibles. How often did God's people have to go through difficult times? A lot. Now pause on that note. I am not promoting a negative will of God theory. Meaning, that if it's hard, if it hurts, if it's bad, it must be God's will. No. But how often does God do a purifying work inside of us that he has to take us through something where it helps remove those things in our life where we are so latched onto the misplaced loves in our heart and God needs to take us through something. 'Cause it's when you have to go through, when you have to endure a difficult season, circumstances, when you have to lean into God and say, "God, I can't go through this without you," you discover that you don't follow Jesus because you have to. That you don't follow Jesus because you're supposed to. That you follow Jesus because it's better. It's the life you were made for. And you taste it when you have to go through that perseverance. And the Holy Spirit helps with that. And the third part of the Holy Spirit's power in your life is you actually get to see the advancement of God's kingdom. The advancement of God's kingdom. We've been talking about this for weeks now, the ministry of reconciliation, that God has reconciled himself to us through the work of Jesus, and he has given us the ministry of reconciliation, meaning He is drawing other people to himself through you. That was what was so radical to the disciples. I don't know if you remember during Easter weekend if you read John 13 through 17 during that week that I encourage you to do that week, John chapter 14, that moment when the disciples are saying Jesus when are you gonna show yourself to the whole world? Why are you only showing yourself to us? And Jesus says whoever follows me and obeys me, my father and I will come and live in him. Jesus says I'm gonna show myself to this world through you. That's my plan. That's my plan. And we get to see other people come to a saving relationship with Jesus as Lord of their lives. So Colossians 1:13 says this: He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and he has transferred us in the kingdom of his beloved son. Amen. All those things are great evidences of the power of the Holy Spirit. That is the exact contrast that Paul is drawing. He's saying that these people have the appearance of godliness, but they are denying its power. They are denying the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. So remember the context of II Timothy. This list that Paul describes, it was happening inside the church. I know you and I want to look at the news and point outside the world say, "You see? "You see what's going on?" And Paul is saying hey, Timothy, I know what's happening back at that church. I know what's happening. There were these false leaders that were twisting the gospel, making it say what they wanted it to say, using it for their own advantage, and they were leading people astray against the lives of the kingdom of Jesus. And Paul says that these individuals make everything look right on the outside, but there is no evidence in their hearts of loving the things that God loves, of calling sin, sin, of when things get hard, obviously their value system emerges and they have an alternative, and even a competing agenda to the agenda of the kingdom of Jesus, the rule and reign of Jesus inside individuals' hearts and the hearts of a whole community. And Paul points to that. He says they have the appearance of godliness but they deny its power. Which brings us to a very hard but a very clear fourth anchor point, and Paul says "Avoid such people." Avoid such people. This is the only command in these nine verses. So this is not a suggestion. It is a clear command there where Paul says when you identify these types of individuals who are operating this way, it's time to set up some boundaries. Now, as we need to, as always, we need to interpret Scripture with Scripture. So what we saw at the end of II Timothy two last week, what Pastor Roy walked us through last week, we saw Paul's encouragement to Timothy when he was dealing with these difficult people. He said things like hey, you know, don't quarrel with them, but be kind and he says teach them, which I don't think it meant lecture them. I think was meant, hey, come alongside them, open up God's word together, remember who God is and who you are. Remember the gospel together. I believe that's what he means when he says to teach them or to teach with them in that. But he says patiently endure evil, that's what Paul was telling Timothy, and correct each other with gentleness. That's step one. Step one is seek repentance. And that's hard. Especially when you deal with it inside. Seek repentance first. That is the ultimate goal. That is number one. That should be clearly the step one. But step two in this process, as Paul continues his line of thought into II Timothy three, he says it's time to set up a boundary. He says if they persist, if they continue, if they do not respond to your gentleness, your kindness, your remembering the gospel together, and all of those things, then put up a boundary. He says, "Avoid such people." Comes a point where you say it is enough. Which brings us to our fifth and final anchor point in this passage where Paul says avoid such people because eventually their folly will be plain to everybody. Eventually their folly will be made known. What's Paul saying? He's saying eventually sin will be found out. A verse I memorized a long time ago, I don't know why it was easy to remember, but it was Numbers 32:23. I remembered Numbers three, two, two, three. But it says this, it says, "Your sin will find you out." Your sin will find you out. Eventually, your sin will be made known. Everything will be revealed in the light. And so of course, when we feel like we're the ones who are being wronged in the equation, we want that to happen right now, right? When we feel like, man, that's not okay. It is not okay for that person to act that way. It's not okay for that person to say those things about me. And we want it to be dealt with right now. Paul and Timothy felt the same way. There is a good chance Paul was on trial because of the shady stuff that was going on at this church, that these leaders were saying some things that weren't true about him. They were reporting things to authorities. They were, some people have speculated that Paul got turned in in many, many ways by these people who were manipulating, and posturing, and all this kind of stuff was going on. And you can imagine Timothy, a young leader, saying that's not okay. They can't do that. They can't get away with that. And Paul is saying, Timothy, eventually they won't get away with this. This will be made known. Paul had to remind them 'cause it looked like the bad guys were getting away with it. It looked like someone had made a lie, spread a lie, and people were embracing it as truth. And you've been there, haven't you? That's a hard place to be where you want to make it right. You want to make it known. And Paul was saying Timothy, hey, hang in there. Eventually the folly of these people will be known. They won't get away with it. Eventually it will be plain to all. So how do we, what does this mean for us this morning? And I want us to just walk through these anchor points with some application thoughts for us. And the first is this, is we are in the last days. Okay, I'm not here predicting when Jesus comes back. That's not our role. But we can agree of saying, hey, man. We read this description and we're like, yeah, in the last days, man, this stuff is happening. But my friends, there are more believers in Jesus alive today who live outside of America than who live here. So we should not be surprised as post Christianity starts to emerge in America where we are here, right? 'Cause people will naturally look at this passage and say see, this describes the end times. This describes the last days, the days before Jesus Christ comes back again. And yes, we are living in a world where these things are showing up more than ever, and things are only gonna get worse. But guess what? Paul was not being prophetic in this moment. This stuff was happening 2,000 years ago, too. This is what they were dealing with, as well. So Paul wasn't just saying, well, Paul wasn't wrong. Paul was dealing with this in his context as well, telling Timothy. So this stuff has been going on for 2,000 years, so we cannot be shocked that it's happening, that it's showing up in our back door now. But, my friends, to remember that Jesus' kingdom is coming, which means more than ever that we need to trust and follow Jesus. We, by the power of the Holy Spirit, need to become more like Jesus, because he says, he promised that's how this world will know Who he is. So secondly, I think we need to see the deeper, real needs of other people. See the deeper, real needs of others and for yourself. What do I mean by that? I mean this doesn't, this doesn't excuse people from their behaviors. This does not remove them from having to deal with the consequences of their actions or their decisions. But I want you to recognize the brokenness of other people at its core is misplaced love. It's misplaced love. And if you can remember that, if you can see that, it actually gives you, God gives you compassion for people who don't deserve it. Right? Hurt people hurt people. We've heard that, right? When people are mean, when people are, when you read that description, and I know each and every one of you at one of those points, there's just too many, you can not ignore that whole list, at one of those points, a name came to your mind. A person came to your mind. A experience came to your mind. And it hurt. Where somebody did something in that light, in that vein. But you need to recognize in that, again, it doesn't excuse them from being held accountable or, again, the consequences of their decisions, but at its core, our brokenness is misplaced love, which then applies to us. If you allow that filter to look at other people and look at yourself in that same, get close enough to the glass to see your own reflection and say where in my own brokenness do I have misplaced love? Because I promise you, every single area in your life where you are dealing with emotions of anger, or sadness, or fear, you peel back the layers, you'll get to the core of misplaced love in your heart where you've turned other things into ultimate things, and you're just reacting. Your spirit is reacting to what you think is real. And this allows you, if you allow this to look at the deeper real needs of yourself, it allows you, my friend, to actually get healing. Yes, let's call sin, sin. But we don't, we don't live in sin. God shines his light on and says, hey, let's work on this. 'Cause this is hurting you and it's hurting other people. Can we deal with this? Not everything at once. But can we deal with this right here in your own heart? And then, my friends, this is where we do see confession, and repentance, and pursuing Jesus in these areas of our lives. Thirdly, as we do seek to multiply disciples, which means as we trust and follow Jesus and grow to become more like him, we will see evidence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. So, my friends, you should, as you lean in, you should be seeing, and or go after, look for it, it is happening, you might just need a friend, or a mentor or something to help you peel back those layers, but look for those areas of holiness in your lives, of saying what wasn't there before is there. Even if it's just, like, it's gardening, it's spring, even if it's a tiny little sprout right now, barely poking up, say, huh, I guess I didn't completely lose my stuff on that person, so I guess I'm a little more kind now. I'm a little more patient. And okay, Jesus helped me. Right? Look for areas of holiness. Look for areas of perseverance. Say God, help me. Help me to endure through this for your sake. What are you teaching me; but what are you doing to reach other people? But then also other areas of advancing the kingdom of God. Then fourthly, when we encounter these things as listed in the first part of chapter three, remember step one, seek repentance. Seek repentance. Seek gently, kindly, draw close to them. Look at God's Word together. Not in a condemning, you're right, you're wrong, I'm right way, but in a way of saying, hey, can we remember who God is and who we all are? And can we come together and look at this together? Seek repentance first. But then he says set up boundaries. At some point, if someone continues to persist and say, no, this is what I'm gonna do, put up a boundary. He says avoid such people. Which, I like sharing resources whenever I can, and so I like going and checking out the different Bible Project videos that are out there, kind of helps summarize different books of the Bible, sometimes themes throughout the Bible. Again, it's a tool, so use it as a tool, but as the video for II Timothy at the end, it says this, it says: Following Jesus involves risk and tension. Which most of the time happens in the context of relationships, right? Friendships, whatever "Following Jesus involved risk and tension, "which is which isn't a sign of Jesus' absence." Sometimes when we feel like, oh, this feels risky. Ah, this feels tense. I don't know what to do with this. You get kind of weird stomach feeling thing. What do I do with this? That's not a sign that Jesus is an absent. But in the dark and difficult moments, Jesus' love and his faithfulness becomes more tangible and real as you have to take a hold of that purely in those times. Right? And then the last point I feel needs to be said from this passage is this. Eventually, eventually, all sin will be found out. Yes, all sin will not only be found out, but it will also be made right. Every knee will bow before Jesus. And you may have even thought in the context of this morning already of a bad person who seems to get away with it. My friends, they will stand before Jesus someday. And either it'll be made right in judgment before a Holy God or it'll be made right having been forgiven and acquitted by the blood of Jesus, who lives to intercede for those who trust him. The Bible describes Jesus right now as interceding on the behalf of those who look to love and trust him. My friends, all sin will be found out. So often, it feels sometimes we become neutral parties when it comes to sin. We feel like it's, we create the, obviously the God category and then the, obviously the really, really bad category. And we feel like we're neutral, independent parties. My friend, this is stuff that we have to work on in our hearts as well as we get close enough to that reflection. But not only yours, but the sins of others. So again, remember, Paul was saying to Timothy, he's reminding him, hey Timothy, they're not gonna get away with it. This will be made known. The lie will be revealed. The truth will come out. Paul doesn't say when it's gonna happen, but he guarantees and encourages him. What's he saying? What's he saying? He's saying Timothy, hey, hey, God's got this. God is still God, even when things are bad. Paul, old man, just beaten and tired at the end of his life, literally, literally months away from his own execution, probably not justly, and he is penning this note to Timothy. Hey Timothy, eventually all folly will be made known. God is still God. God is still telling that story. It's his story. So whether it's the brokenness in our own lives or the brokenness we see clearly in the world around us, my friends, God is not done telling his story. Jesus is sovereign, which means he is the ultimate authority. He is in control. Even when it doesn't look like it in the world around us. Jesus, the King of all Kings, the Lord of all Lords, He is the Savior. So as we continue to worship Jesus more, and I told you that earlier that we still have a time of worship here, my friends, enter into this time. Step into God's light. Let us be willing to expose the darkness of our own hearts, but then allow the covering of Jesus to be the one who declares that he has made it right in our hearts. And then ultimately, light will overcome the darkness. God is still God. Let's continue to worship.