2 Timothy 3:1–13,

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.

They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these men oppose the truth—men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.

You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

A great blessings of being a Bible focused church and its leadership, that the strange situations in the Bible of seemingly contrary emotions and emphases and truths prevent us from becoming a superficial, simplistic, lopsided people.

Here the focus is on the lifestyle and the personal characteristics of all of this unbelief and all of this false belief. This presupposes, you see, massive conflict.

In John’s terms, between Christ and antichrists, between Satan and God and his people. This is exactly the same sort of conflict we saw when we studied together last year Revelation 12, 13, and 14. The same kind of conflict that you get in Matthew 24–25, Mark 13, and Luke 21. It’s part of the whole Bible storyline this side of the fall, but everything has been made acute. Jesus has come. The decisive battle has been fought. We are in the last days as history winds down, and we’re heading for the consummation.

How are we to understand our times?

There will be terrible times in the last days, we’re told. The word terrible is sometimes rendered in the New Testament English versions by violent; for example, the Gadarene demoniac in Matthew 8:28. He was so violent that people couldn’t control him. He was so out of control. He was so wild. You might almost render this: in the last days there will be wild times. Things get out of control.

2 Timothy 3:1–13. is predominantly bleak and ugly. In verses 1–5 there’s a list of nineteen ugly characteristics of evil people. Then in verses 6–9 there’s a description of how they sneak into houses and take women captive; and a glimpse into history and how this has been going on for centuries. And then in verses 10–13 there’s a description of what it costs those who try to live a godly life in such a culture.

Nineteen specific descriptions of moral ugliness! And there’s an even longer list in Romans 1:29–31.
The Bible-saturated mind loves to linger long and mainly on the beauties of holiness, but knows that the ugliness of evil is real (in us and in the world) and we dare not be ignorant of it.

We Need to Know About Evil

Between the beginning and the end of the Bible, there is evil and there is suffering. But the point to be observed is that from the perspective of the Bible’s large-scale story line, the two are profoundly related: evil is the primal cause of suffering, rebellion is the root of pain, sin is the source of death.

It is important to grasp just how vile all evil really is.

Even parts of secular society are beginning to appreciate this point. In the Western world, the twentieth century began with utopian optimism and great self-confidence. We ended it much more soberly: our resources are running out, our weapons of war are monstrous, the dictatorships of right and left have murdered tens of millions. The past century was host to two world wars and a lengthy cold one. Massive famine on a scale unimagined threatens to handle the population explosion by the most elemental and draconian of means. And some, at least, have recognized that the root of the evil lies in us.

“We have met the enemy, and he is us”: this famous line from the Pogo cartoon strip is rather tellingly reinforced by an immensely revealing book of essays, Facing Evil.

The authors are by no means of one mind; none displays a distinctly biblical framework for understanding evil. Nevertheless, many of the essayists make the point that the violence, the greed, the lust, the malice that operate on the institutional scale find their primal springs in the human heart.

But it is the Bible itself that most vehemently insists on the evil of evil. No biblical writer sanctions the pagan doublethink by which opposites somehow circle around each other and eventually coincide: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isa. 5:20).

At the most basic level, moral evil is to suffering what cause is to effect; yet suffering itself is so tied to the fallen order that it too is rightly thought of as evil, and experienced as such. How God exercises his sovereignty over such diverse evils is still to be explored.

Paul begins the chapter, “Understand this , Know this, Here is something beauty-loving people need to know. We need to know about evil. And I see at least six things about evil that we need to know in verses 1–13.

• The times we live in are evil.
• Evil is very severe.
• We need to know the specifics of evil.
• Evil is very sneaky.
• We limit evil by know the true of God’s Word.
• Evil takes actions toward the Godly.

The time of evil in our life

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self …. etc.”
In the mind of Paul the last days bring an intensification of evil. In 1 Timothy he says, “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.” (1 Timothy 4:1). The apostle Peter says, “Scoffers will come in the last days” (2 Peter 3:3). Jude says, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions” (Jude 1:18).

All the writers of the New Testament would agree that the “last days,” the “later times,” the “last time,” began with the coming of the Messiah, Jesus into the world. That was the arrival of the end, the beginning of the end, the last chapter of world history before the consummation of Christ’s kingdom. 1 John 2:18: “Children, it is the last hour.” Hebrews 1:2, “In these last days God has spoken to us by his Son.” 1 Peter 1:20: “Christ was made manifest in the last times for your sake” (1 Peter 1:20).

So we are living in the last days, we have been since Christ came. The evils that characterize the last days show up again and again in history. And as we come to the end of the end, the return of Christ, we should expect that there will be the greatest intensification of all.

This will happen while the faithful remnant of God’s people experience great devotion to Jesus Christ and a willingness for martyrdom (Matthew 24:12–14). Therefore, we must be very careful not to assume that the degeneration of culture at the end of the age is owing to the failure of the church to be holy. There is no promise in the Bible that the holiness of the church will guarantee the transformation of culture.

And we must also be careful not to assume that our day is the last of the last days. It may be that between now and the end of the end God plans for another great revival in the church and another great awakening in the world.

The severity of evil

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.”

“Difficulty” is a mild translation. Fierce, is the word used in 2 Timothy 3:1, “But understand this, that in the last days there will come fierce seasons.”

In other words, the evil will not simply be ugly to watch, and grievous to the godly mind, it will be at times violent, fierce. Verbally fierce and physically fierce. We will see this in the list that follows.

Which means that the invincible joy we know as believers because of the work of Christ and our new, secure relation to God our Father, does not depend on the absence of moral ugliness or the absence of physical danger. We need not and we must not let the immorality and horrors of the last days dampen our joy in Jesus.

We were never promised that earth would be our heaven before Christ returns. And you are preparing for yourself a great disappointment if you try to make it so.

“We rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). “In this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience”—joyful patience (Romans 8:24–25). “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8).

We need to know some specifics of evil.

In verses 2–5 Paul lists 19 examples of the kind of evil people who be in our lives in these last days. The aim of a list like this is not to grovel in evil or gloat over others or savor indictments. The aim is to understand the untrue and varieties of evil and to spot these things in ourselves and others with a view to overcoming them and avoiding them.

“For people will be lovers of self (narcissistic),

lovers of money (materialistic),

proud (loving to draw attention to their accomplishments),

arrogant (with an inflated view of self),

abusive (wanting to be verbally hurtful),

disobedient to their parents (having a rebellious spirit),

ungrateful (assuming that they have a right to the things they get),

unholy (indifferent to the attitudes and acts that reflect the value of Jesus),

heartless (unable to sympathize or empathize),

unappeasable (unwilling to forgive),

slanderous (devilishly distorting what other say and do),

without self-control (a slave to their appetites),

brutal (dead to all tenderness),

not loving good (unable to see and savor moral beauty),

treacherous (breaking promises for their own advantage),

reckless (craving admiration for taking risks),

swollen with conceit (blind to the ugliness of self-preoccupation and the beauty of admiring others),

lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God (finding more satisfaction in physical appearance than in the divine admiration),

having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power (using religion for personal gain without treasuring Christ above all).” (2 Timothy 3:2–5).

It seems that Paul knows he is in the last days because he begins in verse 1–2 by saying that these are the kinds of people that come in the last days, and he ends the list in verse 5 by saying to Timothy, “Avoid such people.” They are there. Not just coming, but present. It is the same for us today, they are here now and for the rest of our lives.

When he says “Avoid them,” he doesn’t mean never talk to them. In 2 Timothy 4:5 he tells Timothy “Do the work of an evangelist.” Talk to unbelievers. Instead he means: Don’t hang out with them month after month as though they’re not in trouble.

But the sheer fact that Paul gives such a long list of evils shows that he had seen a lot of evil in his day. And he had thought a lot about the way sin ravages human life.

Evil is very sneaky.

“Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.”

This vulnerability may have been the case in Timothy’s setting. But the point of this text is not to encourage it. The point is that evil is insidious. It creeps toward the weak: weak women, weak men, weak children. And the task of the church is to make women and men and children mighty in the word of God. Saturated with the word of God. So that women—and men—can stand against the wiles of the devil. So that women—and men—will not be dabblers who are always sampling new trends and never landing on anything firm.

Our study and understanding of God’s Word can limit the effect of this evil.

You must have the link between the gospel and ethics, between the gospel and relationships, or you’ve got nothing. Sooner or later, people have the right to ask the question, “Are you converted?”

“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 was that of those two men.”

I think what this means is that those who are true Christians will not be taken in by these creeping opponents of the truth for very long. Jannes and Jambres are the traditional names of the magicians who opposed Moses with their ability to do counter miracles (Exodus 7:11). But you recall that three miracles into the ten their power gave out (Exodus 8:18; 9:11). And they were exposed.

That is what Paul has in mind here. These creeping opponents of the truth may not get spotted for what they are right away. Remember they have “an appearance of godliness.” But they will be spotted.

As we face these evils, the Godly person will suffer from them.

You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11 my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra—which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. 12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, 13 while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

Sometimes there are a lot of people in the church that just don’t see how bad some stuff is until it’s gotten really bad.
It takes a little while before the thing really exposes itself for what it is, that evil men and seducers go from bad to worse. Hold few illusions about the world. There will be persecution; indeed, the sweeping statement of verse 12 is stunning, isn’t it? Everyone who lives a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Well, things are going to get worse before they get better in the Western world on this sort of front. For the truth of the matter is that where there is integrity and family values, let alone Christian confessionalism and truth and honesty and gratitude

The alternative to evil is godly suffering, and final deliverance. You have seen my persecutions and my sufferings, Timothy.

The power to do that will come from the confidence of your blood-bought deliverance from evil, especially your final deliverance. Verse 11 (at the end): “… which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me.” Paul didn’t mean that the Lord keeps us from persecution and suffering. He was stoned so severely in Lystra they thought he was dead (Acts 14:19). But does he mean: Ah yes, but I am still alive? He rescued my life.

It may cost you much to stand against the evil of the last days. But I promise you, by the authority of God’s word, if you stand by faith in your crucified and risen Savior you will be delivered and it will be infinitely worth it.

Hold few illusions about the world. Verses 12–13: “In fact, everyone who lives for Jesus will suffer.

Hold onto the Bible. Verses 14–16: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”

with respect to some of the current patterns bound up with some forms of the new perspective that they have a certain form of attractiveness to them. They are structurally very enticing because they seem to present a whole system that drags you in, and you can’t find certain texts that seem to support this.

Hold out the Bible to others. “Preach the Word …” Herald this truth.

God is still in control as the evil intensifies toward the last days.