SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/13/2025 8:23 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-6 “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.”
I desire to conclude this section this
morning, and so I begin by quoting from John MacArthur’s commentary as he
begins “It was the self-will of Adam and Eve, their
own desires, that led to
the Fall, and it is that naturally transmitted self-will that has driven their
descendants ever since. It is to please
their own desires that so many people today flock to preachers who proffer God’s
blessings apart from His forgiveness, His salvation apart from their
repentance, His acceptance as their Savior but not as their Lord. Because they love the ‘ungodliness and
unrighteousness’ that manifest their own
desires, the unsaved ‘suppress the truth in unrighteousness’ (Rom. 1:18). In doing so, they turn their ears from the truth.
“The compound verb will turn away is from apostrepho, meaning ‘to
cause to turn away’ and is active. Will turn aside is from the closely related ektrepo,
meaning ‘to cause to turn aside’ but is passive.
“The
verse therefore can be laterally rendered, ‘And
cause themselves to turn away their
ears from the truth, and be caused to
turn aside to myths.’ Ektrepo
sometimes was used
medically to refer to a dislocated joint.
The minds and hearts of those who reject God’s truth become spiritually
dislocated, knocked out of joint, as it were.
Paul used the same verb in his first letter to Timothy of those who had ‘already turned aside
to follow Satan’ (1 Tim. 5:15, emphasis added).
‘If our
gospel is veiled,’ Paul
explained to the church at Corinth, ‘It
is veiled to those who are perishing, in
whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that
they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the
image of God’ (2 Cor. 4:3-4). When God’s truth is knowingly rejected, Satan’s
falsehood is inevitably, through often unknowingly, embraced. In other words, deliberate rejection of God’s
truth makes a person vulnerable to Satan’s myths.
“Many churches today are filled to
overflowing with those who want their ears tickled with the myths of
easy-believism and the many variations of selfism and so-called positive
thinking. They come to have their egos
fed and their sins approved, not to have their hearts cleansed and their souls
saved. They want only to feel good, not
to be made good. Tragically, such myths serve
to religiously insulate people from the true gospel and drive them still
further from the Lord.”
My
advice is if you are in a church like that, then get out as fast as you can.
7/13/2025 8:47 AM
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