Thursday, July 10, 2025

PT-3 “The Urgency of His Commission” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/10/2025 9:01 AM

 

My Worship Time                                               Focus:  PT-3 “The Urgency of His Commission”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  2 Timothy 4:3-4

 

            Message of the verses:  3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

 

            Yesterday I ended by writing something that Jesus said in Matthew 10:16-18, 21-23, and so today I want to continue writing some other things that Jesus stated, this time in what is called “The Last Supper” from John 15:18-21.  18 "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. 19 "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you. 20 “Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also. 21 “But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me.”

 

            In the first SD on this subject I mentioned that I believe that the churches that are seen in Revelation 2-3 are in chronological order and also that we are in the era of the last church. Laodicean church age, the church that is seen in a painting of Jesus standing at the door and knocking, but there is no door handle on His side so that means that the door would have to be opened from the inside.  There is not one good thing said about this church, as there were in previous churches found in Rev. 2-3.  Jesus also spoke of this time period in the 24th and 25th chapters of Matthew, which also goes along with what John wrote in chapters 6-19 of Revelation, and it is my belief that we certainly are in this era at this time, and what Paul is writing about to Timothy certainly goes along with what is found written about the Laodicean church.  I am not saying that this is the only hard time that the church has gone through, as there were some very hard times in the early part of the church age, and then in other times of the church age too, but I believe that this could be the worse time that the church will go through.  I remember looking at what “Voice of the Martyrs” said a few years back as it spoke of many, many people in our age dying for the cause of Christ, I believe the number was 1000 per day, but we here in the United States do not hear too much about it.  I will now move on by quoting what John MacArthur writes.

 

            “Because of what lay ahead for Timothy, the need for his fearless, uncompromising preaching of the Word became all the more compelling.  The time would come, perhaps not long off, when he would have less opportunity to preach and less and less response to the truth he proclaimed.

 

            Anecho (endure) has the basis idea of holding up or holding onto, especially in face of difficulty, and also can be rendered ‘tolerate.’  Many people in the church at Ephesus would become intolerant of the unadulterated word, of sound doctrine, and of Timothy’s preaching of it.  Sound translates a form of the verb hugiaino, which means to be healthy, and is the term for which we derive ‘hygiene.’  It is rendered ‘safe and sound’ in the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:27). Timothy would face increasing resistance to doctrine that was spiritually healthy and nourishing, that was true of God’s Word—to ‘the sacred writings’ (3:15), to God-breathed ‘Scripture’ (v. 16).

 

            “In his first letter, Paul reminded Timothy that men and women who are ‘lawless and rebellious,… ungodly and sinners,…unholy and profane,…murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjures’ live lives that are ‘contrary to sound teaching’ (1 Tim. 1:9-10).  It is because sound teaching is a stinging rebuke to ungodly living that it is unacceptable and intolerable to those who persist in sin.  Those who live contrary to sound doctrine resent and resist the teaching of sound doctrine.”

 

            I realize that in MacArthur’s comments on these verses that he does not bring up things that will happen in the end times, but to me it is important to mention them especially as I look at how things are going on in the Middle East, and even in our own country as there is now as always been a division between good and evil, and as Paul tells Timothy it is going to get worse, and it surely has gotten worse from the time that Paul wrote this letter to Timothy, and one of the ways it has gotten worse is through technology, technology is advancing at a rate that is unseen in our world, and as it continues to grow in many cases it is used for harm and not for good.

 

Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I know and since I became a believer that God is in complete control and always will be, and once His patience runs out over a matter He will act, doing what is completely in His will.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  It is my hope and desire that the doctor that my wife will see today is the one that the Lord desires her to see in order to help her defeat any more cancer that may be in her body.

 

7/10/2025 9:40 AM

 

             

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