How Should the Church React?, Part 1

There's a growing trend in churches today where leaders have exchanged the truth of the Bible for another message other than the pure gospel.

And as followers of Jesus Christ, we're to be on our guard. In his paraphrase called The Message, Eugene Peterson rendered Paul's warning to Timothy in this way. Unscrupulous con men will continue to exploit the faith.

They're as deceived as the people they lead astray. Today on Insight for Living, we'll be looking at this alarming passage in 2 Timothy as Chuck Swindoll continues the important series called The Church Awakening. Turn please to the second letter Paul wrote to Timothy. And I would like to read for you the last five verses. That would be verse 13 down to the end of the chapter, verse 17. Second Timothy 3 beginning at verse 13. But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings, which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. You're listening to Insight for Living.

To search the scriptures with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message from Chuck called How Should the Church React? For the next few moments, I invite you to step into an imaginary time tunnel. Let's go back to another era, some 70 years ago, in another place across the Atlantic to Great Britain. Talk of peace is in the air, certainly we've deserved it. After all, we've finished what was known as the War of All Wars, and we have won the war and now we enjoy the fruits of that. Our own prime minister has made a trip and the treaty has been signed with that strange fellow that stomps around Germany with that funny mustache and that silly swastik on his arm.

I mean, what can become of that? Neville Chamberlain has told us, I have the document. This won't last another three months.

It's all over. We believe him. Except there's one among us who doesn't. And like a prophet from the Old Testament, he keeps saying, you cannot trust that dictator. He is an anti-Semitic murderer. He is a brutal man. He will invade our shores and take our land. There is no peace.

We must stand against him. Looking back over the years, we realize Winston Churchill spoke truth, though many of us at the time were not ready to hear it. Three years after the great Second World War, he sat down with pen in hand and wrote his magnum opus, a six-volume work on the Second World War, his reflections, the things that made sense, so much better sense, looking back. Interestingly, when I pull that first volume off my shelf, the one titled The Gathering Storm, where he covers the events related to that which led up to that great Second World War, I notice that he has a theme for the book at the very beginning.

In fact, I checked, each of the volumes has its own theme. How telling is the theme of the gathering storm. How the English-speaking peoples through their unwisdom, carelessness, and good nature allowed the wicked to rearm. It's been said for years that hindsight has 20-20 vision. Fast forward to 2001, early September.

Who could care less about Osama bin Laden, whoever he is? A handful of peoples is worth watching, but we knew better. We're secure and safe until the towers fell. Until the Pentagon, a whole wing almost destroyed.

The plane crashes in the meadowlands of Pennsylvania. And we realize how foolish we were. How unwise, how careless, how good-natured we had been. We are living in treacherous times.

When I say that, I'm not referring to the price of gasoline. When I refer to treacherous times, I'm not talking about the political polls as important as they may be, not just that. And it's certainly not a sign of my age. You look at a guy my age, you think, here we go again, same old prophet of doom, exaggerating beyond, he's over the top again. Pause and think. Think back. And look at where we are. And gather up in your mind the last 10, 12, 15, 18 years, we better or worse, church stronger or healthier? People being fed more by faithful expositors or is it now entertainment 101?

Some of you have come out of that background and it's just about broken your heart to look back and remember what once was and what now is. And the difficulty to convince people is that the enemy is invisible. If we could just see him.

If you could just know the forces of evil visibly, you would have a whole other perspective. And that is why I keep in my library this little guy. Now as soon as I put him on the pulpit, you notice he is bright red, has a bad nose, has sinister eyes, a horn, has horns, oops, over the years his horns have gotten loose on me. He has lost his arm, which used to hold a pitchfork. His tail is no longer there, but he's there nevertheless. In fact, when my sister gave this little creature to me, used to say, go to hell.

When you push this little thing down, that's what read across the front here. But he is now pious. He is now more pious.

It says welcome. That is the only thing true about this little caricature. Everything else is nonsense, stupid, silly, ridiculous. Satan is not ugly and horned and carrying a pitchfork and sitting on his shoulder whispering ugly little things in your ear. He is the most beautiful creature God ever created.

And so winsome, he took a third of the heavens with him when he fell. And they have become his demons, supernatural creatures that carry out their insidious sinister plans. And their strategy is right on target. Everybody thinking it seems, oh, we're doing so great.

Get back in the bag where you belong. We're not doing great. We need warnings regularly, men and women. We need warnings about our culture and about our times and about the church in general. We need warnings. We need to be aware. And so I have warnings that have been flowing out of me in this series rather regularly. But I need to say a couple of things to begin with here. First of all, hearing of danger is important, but it's incomplete. I can stand here and warn all through the time we're together. And they may be accurate warnings and they may be passionately said and I may believe them with my whole heart, but it's incomplete.

What's missing? What's missing is the right response. And that's the other statement I want to give you.

Responding to warnings is each person's responsibility. If I see a fire flashing in that room out behind you, you can't see it from the direction you're facing. But if I see that fire and it's raging and the smoke is beginning to come through the doors, I shout, fire, fire, get out.

And you sit there and say, I believe you, Chuck. I'm with you. Preach it, man.

Let's do it. And you don't run. You don't believe me. What's missing? A response that's responsible.

A reaction that makes sense. And what is that? Well, it certainly isn't marching on all churches that have left the faith. It isn't taking out a full page ad. USA Today signing our names, we're the last ones standing in the gap because we're not the last ones, though we are in the minority. But full page ads don't do any good.

Not in the long run. What we need is direction for our individual personal life so that we know how to respond when no one else is around. You see, being entertained will never prepare you for the doctor's report that it's cancer. And he fears it may not be treatable.

Or when the policeman calls and the other end of the line tells you it was your son who overdosed. Suddenly the entertainment stuff falls flat. And the little sermonettes and the ditties that were thrown out called preaching really don't help. You need truth to live by.

You need depth to fall back on. You need spiritual scriptural muscle to keep exercising. You need quietness and solitude and time alone with God and a development of your walk so that whatever happens, the next 9-11, whatever happens you won't be thrown aside.

You can stand on your own. And so for this reason I've asked the question, what must the church realize? Last time we were together, I want to go to the other side and answer how should the church react? And remember, difficult times have come. Remember the word difficult? Verse 1, chapter 3. Harsh, hard to deal with, exceedingly violent. Some would even render it savage times. Savage times. If you believe that you'll really double up on your teaching of your children. You really believe that you'll read the news a different way.

You'll see through a lot of the stuff that appears on the screen. You'll understand what the enemy's trying to do to you because savage times have come. And that brings us to our first of four guidelines.

Verse 13, evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. First guideline, stay realistic in the appraisal of your world. One of the greatest things you can do is just remain realistic. Don't drift.

Don't move into fantasy land. Don't pull the covers up over your head thinking by tomorrow morning things will be better. Don't listen to the nonsense that says peace is everywhere when you know in your heart it isn't. And the church as a whole is doing great when you know it isn't because expositors are less in number than they have ever been.

And God's people are not being taught for the most part. Stay realistic in your appraisal of the world around you. Look at the word evil. Let's let it say what it says. Let's don't hedge.

Let's don't soften it. It means evil. Walter Bower in his Greek English lexicon, very reliable source, offers these synonyms morally or socially worthless, wicked, bad, base, vicious, degenerate, evil intentioned.

All those words fit this term evil. Stay realistic about your times. Not everyone who wears a collar and uses a Bible is to be trusted. Not every church that has a vast following is to be attended.

Glitzy does not mean there's gold. Charisma does not mean it's worth believing. Everything must be determined by where you stand regarding the word of God. And we'll come after that in just a moment and develop that thought.

Stay realistic in the appraisal of your world. Evil men and the next word is imposters. The original term has to do with sorcerer, conjurer, a cheat, a swindler.

Careful how you pronounce that. Bower suggests this is a person who veers from correct instruction to lead others into error. That's pretty clear, isn't it?

An imposter is one who veers from correct instruction in order to lead others into error. So God gives us his own appraisal and says, now form that appraisal. Form that as the basis of your appraisal. Stay realistic.

In fact, look at what he adds. They will proceed from bad to worse. The Greek says they will advance to the worse.

Isn't that interesting? They will advance to the worse. Times won't improve. So don't be surprised if things are worse ten years later than now and if things are worse now than they were ten, twenty years ago. It's exactly as God said. They will proceed from bad to worse.

I read a great line this past week I'm wanting to memorize. Expect a gradual worsening of heretical distortions. Expect a gradual worsening of heretical distortions.

That's some realistic appraisal of our world. Eugene Peterson in The Message renders verse 13 as follows. Unscrupulous con men will continue to exploit the faith. They're as deceived as the people they lead astray.

As long as they are out there, things can only get worse. Pretty clear, isn't it? Don't be fooled by any of the externals, men and women. Don't be fooled. Any more than you're fooled by a little red creature everybody would call the devil that has nothing to do with the devil. Second, verses 14 and 15. You, however, I love this contrast.

It's a very strong contrast. But you, but you, Timothy, if it's true of evil and the imposters, but you, Timothy, you're different. You, however, you continue in the things you've learned and become convinced of. May I use one of the words that's not appreciated today? There's tradition in those words. There's the orthodox faith in those words. Revealed and continue in the things you have learned, knowing from whom you have learned them. In other words, there's no reason to abandon reliable information just because it's been around for centuries. And there's no reason to reject what is new and fresh if it is in keeping with the long-standing truth that has been set forth in the scriptures.

Nothing is necessarily wrong with innovation unless it's drifting from trustworthy truth. My job every time I speak is to make sure that my words are relevant with our times. I'm to connect with my world around me so that you and I are on the same page, we say. Nothing wrong with that. Everything right about it. That holds everyone's interest and it helps you see that this is for our times.

But in no way is my relevance to take away from the impact of the truth. Now, Paul exhorts Timothy to fall back on their own long-standing bond together. The two of them had been through a lot. The virtues that Timothy learned from Paul, he says, continue in them and be convinced of them. The things they went through together, Paul is appealing to the bonding between himself and Timothy. He says, remember your roots as well. See the next verse? And that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which were able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

This is a great time to pause and apply this. Were you reared by parents who love the Lord? I didn't ask were you reared by perfect parents. We'd all answer the same answer. Flawed?

Areas of failure? Yes, true of all of us. But did they love the Lord? Were they faithful to instill within you an appetite for spiritual things?

I'll give you a little glimpse into my background. The most important adult in my life as I was growing up was my maternal grandfather. I was closer to him than I was to my own father which says a lot for grandfathers, by the way.

You can have an impact on the lives of your grandchildren and grandmothers as well, of course. I can't remember a time my mother wasn't memorizing scripture. It used to drive me up a wall at the time. I didn't value it.

I confess. I was a kid growing up. I wanted to play ball. I wanted to be with my buddies and my mother wanted to share with me her thoughts from Ezekiel or wherever she happened to have been at the time.

I didn't see much value in it. But as I look back, I remember how deeply entrenched my mother was in the scriptures and how she prayed for me and saw through my childhood, childish and teenage stuff. She kept an eye on the things of God on my behalf. She would claim verses for me. I didn't know what that meant.

I now know what it means. That from childhood, I've known a mother who loved the sacred scriptures which were able to give wisdom. I'm saved because of my mother. She shared with me the good news of Jesus.

She was there when I was born again. I have mentors that I can recall in my teenage years, Sunday school teachers who looked past a lot of the nonsense in my life, who saw a few pieces of jewelry in the midst of the garbage and the stuff. I had mentors in high school. I had a man in my days in the Marine Corps who saved my life spiritually as he took me under his wing and for 16 months we learned the scriptures together and I did street witnessing and we did evangelism and we did Bible studies together and all the time the same bunch of guys I was with were going down a tube morally. I was going up spiritually, not because of me, but because of a mentor. How grateful I am for that so that I look back on the 16 months not with shame, but with gratitude.

Turn my whole life around. I got to Dallas Seminary and I met men who knew Jesus and had walked with him it seemed like forever. I'd never been around men so godly and good.

They weren't perfect, but they were good men and they built into my life and Paul says to Timothy, continue in the things you learned and became convinced of. Be convinced of the long-standing truths that you've been taught. It'll help you when all hell breaks loose in your life. It'll help you when the next 9-11 hits closer to home. It'll help you when the flood takes your place. It'll help you when you get the report from the doctor and your eyes fill with tears.

This will help you. This will hold you close to him. This will deepen you. Faith becomes refracted through the personal experience you've had with those people in your life. It meant something to you. Can I ask you on occasion to just write him a letter of thanks? Just every once in a while if you can locate them, pick up a phone and say I want to tell you how much you meant to me back and name the things that they taught you. I still say to my mentors from Dallas Seminary, you'll never know what you meant to me and you'll never know what you still mean to me. Every once in a while I get stumped in the scriptures and I want to pick up the phone and call Ray Stedman, a man I did an internship with and he's dead now. I miss Ray. But because of that relationship with Ray, I'm more discriminate. My discernment is caner.

As Calvin who wrote, nothing is more inconsistent with the nature of faith than light, uncertain evidence which allows us to embrace everything indiscriminately. It's a great statement. Don't question it because it's long standing. Don't see it as out of date because it goes back to your childhood. Truth then is truth now.

Reliable information is reliable information that's timeless. Many of us can identify a person or two that came alongside us in the early days. These men and women modeled the Christian faith for us.

Knowingly or unknowingly, they were our mentors. You're listening to Insight for Living and this is message number seven in Chuck's nine part series called The Church Awakening. There's much more teaching ahead. And to learn more about Chuck Swindoll and this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org. If you're inspired to dig deeper or perhaps you're motivated to ignite the conversation with your friends at church, I'd recommend you request the book that complements this series. It's called The Church Awakening. Whether you're a pastor or layperson, Chuck's assessment of the state of our churches today will resonate with your personal experience. But more importantly, it'll inspire you to embrace the true church of Jesus Christ as defined in the Bible. To purchase a copy of Chuck's book, The Church Awakening, give us a call.

If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888 or it may be quicker to place your order online at insight.org slash offer. We're grateful to those of you who give above and beyond the price of resources because it's your partnership that allows us to inspire healthy churches beyond our own borders. For example, even during immense persecution, Christians in Eastern Europe are pulling together and drawing strength from one another. We know that's true because the Bible teaching you enjoy on Insight for Living is translated into numerous languages, including Polish and Romanian. And these ministries are made possible in part when you give.

It's all under the umbrella of Vision 195, our mission to make disciples in all 195 countries of the world. To give a gift today, call us. If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888. You can also give today by going online to insight.org slash donate. I'm Bill Meyer inviting you to join us again tomorrow when Chuck Swindoll continues his series called The Church Awakening on Insight for Living. The preceding message, How Should the Church React? was copyrighted in 2008 and 2010, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2010 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.