Itching Ears

The kind of teaching we look for from a local church pastor actually says a lot about us. Are we people who only want to hear what we want to hear, or are we longing to know what God's Word says? Today on Truth for Life Weekend, Alistair Begg examines why it's crucial for believers to submit to sound biblical teaching. 2 Timothy 4, and verse 3 and 4 read, For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. Father, we pray that as we turn to the Bible that you will open our eyes and grant to us understanding in our minds and faith and trust. Accomplish your purposes, we pray. For Jesus' sake.

Amen. A couple of months ago now, I received a call from my doctor's office informing me in a kindly manner that my doctor would no longer prescribe for me what I use as a daily medication if I failed for the third year in a row to show up for my annual physical. So I decided, I'll get a different doctor.

One who will let me come when I want and enjoy any kind of diet I choose and pretty well just please myself. Well, of course, I didn't do that. I very quickly made an appointment, and my physical will come up towards the end of February. I realized that he had my best interest in heart. It would be absolute foolishness on my part, perhaps even life-threatening on my part, to take the sound advice that was represented in that call, in that word, and set it aside.

I think all of us would concur with that. And to the extent that we understand that on a physical level, then it ought not to be difficult for us to realize just how far more significant that reality is when it comes to the spiritual realm. When Paul writes to Timothy in his first letter, he encourages him in relationship not only to his own physical well-being but also to his spiritual health.

And in the seventh verse of chapter 4, paraphrased by J. B. Phillips, he says to Timothy, Physical fitness has a certain value, but spiritual fitness is essential both for this life and for the life to come. And therefore, if one were to be prepared to play fast and loose with our own physical frames, surely we would recognize the solemnity that is involved in thinking about the fact that we have a soul that is eternal. In fact, the only part of our existence that will pass into eternity is the very essence of who we are, our souls. And that's why the charge that Paul gave to Timothy, which we noted last time, came across with such solemnity. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, the one who's going to judge the living and the dead, in relationship to the fact that he's going to appear, and he's going to consummate his kingdom.

It's all of that that is wrapped up. Because as we saw, the minister of God looks over the lives entrusted to his care as caring for their souls as someone who must give an account. I don't think we really give very much thought to our souls, do we? I think we tend to think of it the wrong way around, don't we? Believing somehow or another that the things that are seen are real and the things that are unseen are somehow unreal. When in point of fact the Bible reverses it and says the things that we can see are transient, they're ephemeral, and the things that we can't see are the things that are eternal.

Now, it was in light of those verities that he had given him this charge, the solemn charge and a simple charge. Just a phrase, preach the Word. Preach the Word. Regular expository preaching of the Bible is the staple diet of a healthy church.

It's the staple diet of a healthy church. I guarantee you I can take you anywhere in the world, and if we find health in the church, whatever nation, whatever city in the world, I guarantee you you will find the faithful teaching of the Bible. Now, why is this charge, then, so important? Well, he tells us in verses 3 and 4.

I've given you a charge that you need to heed, and now let me tell you, he says, of a challenge that you're going to face. This is not some remote future for Timothy. This is something that he has already identified in his first letter and now in his second.

And he's making Timothy aware of what he has previously taught him. There have been those, he says, in chapter 2 whose influence in the church was absolutely useless. They were involved in irreverent babble. Their babble led people into ungodliness. Their teaching spread like sepsis from a wound. It was like gangrene going through a body.

Absolutely dreadful. And at its very basis was the fact that these individuals had swerved from the truth. They'd swerved from the truth.

They're no longer holding the line in relationship to orthodoxy. And now he's warning Timothy and preparing Timothy for the fact that when he preaches, as he's going to do now because Paul is going to leave him, he reads to realize that he's not simply going to be faced with those whose minds may wander while he's teaching, but they will actually physically depart from him. He should anticipate that they will give up his theology in search of mythology. You have the text in front of you. You can look at it and see whether that's an apt summary of what he's saying. They will depart from the truth, and they will embrace error. Now, here's the thing to notice. This is not a diatribe about the surrounding culture. He's talking about the church. He's talking about the people in the church, the people who are sitting in a congregation such as this this morning, who may find within themselves the seeds of declension and of departure, who find themselves so pressed upon by the thought forms and worldviews that are essentially secular that if one is not careful, one may find oneself completely undermined as a result of that unless holding firmly to the truth we've been taught. Now, it's straightforward.

It hardly needs any kind of outline, does it? The time will come when people will not endure sound teaching. There's nothing hard to understand about that, is there?

They just won't put up with it. Now, we've noticed this word sound in the past. If you turn back just one page, you'll see that in verse 13 of chapter 1, he had urged Timothy to follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me. It simply means healthy, as opposed to unhealthy.

Now, these are the words that will find the body growing in its health and in its usefulness. He had mentioned that if you turn back one other page to chapter 6 of 1 Timothy 1, he had said to him there, Teach and urge these things, 1 Timothy 6.3. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the—here's the adjective again—with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he's puffed up with conceit, he understands nothing, he has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, constant friction among people who are depraved in their minds, deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.

That's quite a sentence, isn't it? And where does it all stem from? It stems from the fact that they do not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, they have deviated. You see, the people to whom Timothy is ministering were confused at least on two fronts. They were morally confused, and they were doctrinally confused. They were confused about what they really ought to believe, and therefore they were confused about how they really ought to behave.

Because our belief and our behavior are interwoven. Paul makes that point for Timothy, doesn't he? First Timothy again, 4, says, Watch your life and your doctrine closely. In this, his final letter, he's able to say to Timothy, And you know about my life.

You know not only what I said, but you also know my life. There is a direct relationship between a deviation from the truth, and that's impact, then, in the moral consensus of a church or of individual lives. People are not going to be tuning in, says Paul to Timothy, to the kind of teaching which makes them healthy and useful. Instead, you will discover that they have itchy ears, and their ears are tuned, not to Sirius, but to Curious. Some of you have the Sirius on your car as well. Well, they wouldn't be tuned into Sirius Radio, they'd be tuned into Curious Radio. Because these are the kind of people who are always looking for something that's fascinating, intriguing, speculative, spicy—you know, all these kind of things. There's some spicy theological insights. They're just a rich aroma coming out from wherever it is.

And what do they do? Well, they just try and find as many of these people to teach them as much of this as they possibly can. That's the significance of this picture. They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. And the Greek is actually, they will heap up for themselves teachers. They'll just get more and more and more of them. It's not that they just go for one new teacher. They say, No, no, this one's good, and that one's good, and so on.

And these people just heap this stuff up. It fits with the notion that we saw earlier of weak-willed women who are burdened down by all kinds of sins and led astray by various passions. That's in chapter 3. Actually, the verbal root is the same between the two sections in the Greek New Testament. So you see what the picture is?

See, when people stop believing in the truth of God's Word, they usually don't believe nothing, they just start to believe everything. So they start to accommodate all kinds of notions. And you notice the correlation here. They will accumulate for themselves teachers who will accommodate their passions.

This is what I want to be. Oh, well, we can help you with that. As opposed to, well, actually, this is what the Bible says. Now Paul says to Timothy, Here's your problem. These people that you're going to be preaching to, they're not going to hold the line.

They're going to accumulate for themselves teachers who will consider it a privilege to let them have whatever it is they want. Now, Timothy was in the first century. We're in the twenty-first century. Isaiah was, what, six or seven centuries B.C. And what do you discover when you read the Bible, when you read church history?

That this is not a peculiar phenomenon, at least not peculiar to first-century Ephesus. Let me give you an illustration from the Old Testament, from the prophecy of Isaiah. If you'd like to turn to it, it's Isaiah chapter 30. And the context is that the people of God have rejected the instruction of the prophet of God, namely Isaiah. And the reason that they have rejected his word is not because of any lack of clarity on his part, but actually he's just been a little bit too clear.

It's too easy to understand what he has to say and too difficult to accept what he has to say. They didn't actually want him to stop preaching. They just wanted him to preach according to their passions. They just wanted him to preach in a manner that they would be able to live with.

Wouldn't alter anything at all. So look at it as it's recorded for us, verse 9, Isaiah 30. They are a rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord. There's nothing they can't understand.

It's that they don't want to hear. They say to the seers, Do not see, and to the prophets, Do not prophesy to us what is right. Speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path. Let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.

Well, that's pretty straightforward, isn't it? Tell us smooth things. I would not like that as an adjective to describe myself or any one of my pastoral team.

We may be smooth in terms of the absence of facial hair, but that's as smooth as I think we would like to be. But now, the terminology between the centuries before Jesus and now here in the first century is the same, isn't it? In Isaiah they turn aside from the path, and in Timothy they turn away from listening to the truth. So, in other words, he's describing a certain kind of group of people that he's going to encounter as he operates. Now, remember, when he took his leave from the Ephesian elders, Acts chapter 20, he said to them, From among your own group will come people who draw away people after them.

They'll teach all kinds of things. They'll be like wolves emerging in the middle of sheep. And now here's Timothy, and he's confronted by this very thing.

The congregation's then selecting their pastors, provided their pastors will accommodate their passions, tell them what they want to hear. They're far more interested in novelty than they're interested in orthodoxy. You say, Well, this all seems so very far away. Really? I don't think so.

I think it seems very, very close. Now, I don't know where you are this morning in your thinking, but I'm standing with Martin Luther. What more can he say than to you he has said, to you unto Jesus, for refuge have fled?

In other words, he has given to us his final statement in the Word. We don't worship the Word, we don't worship the Bible, but every deviation from his book is either one that takes us above the line or below the line. Turning people away from biblical revelation and turning them in to speculation. See, these people are in search of a spirituality that is disconnected from biblical truth. That's really the issue of it.

Every time—there's hardly a week passes, if you move in the community at all, if you let it be known that you have any interest in spiritual or religious things, you will find somebody who will say to you, Well, I'm a very spiritual person, but of course I have no time for the Bible at all. And then we have to talk with that. We've got to unpack that.

Why is that? What does that mean? And so on. So here comes the prophet. He speaks the Word of God. So we don't want to have the Word of God.

Tell us smooth things. Here is the Word of God that has been left by the apostles in its doctrine that is now inscripturated in the New Testament. This is what it says about the nature of man. This is what it says about the doctrine of creation.

I mean, that's just where it is. You have to work it out somehow. Spiritual engagement disconnected from biblical truth. Jeremiah says the same thing. Listen to this. An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land.

Whoa, what's that? The prophets prophesy falsely, the priests rule at their discretion—listen—and my people love to have it so. That's the problem. That's the problem. You see, the problem ultimately is not the prophets or the priests.

It's the people. That's why I'm working so hard to teach you these things. So that after my departure, you will also be able to hold to these things.

So that the children that are in our nursery this morning will rise up and they will hold to these things. Because I always tell you, you're only a few years away from this place becoming a carpet sale room. And it would become that as a result of a declension from the truth, either going above it or going below it. You say, well, that's a little extreme, is it not?

I don't think it is. Because if you think about it, the biblical assessment of man, what the Bible says about us as men and women, is not naturally appealing. You know, if you want to appeal to people in the Shugrin Valley, you probably shouldn't tell them what the Bible says about them.

Because what the Bible says about us all is this. One, I'm sinful. Two, I'm guilty. Three, I'm responsible.

And four, I'm lost. Have a great day. See, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. You can't do that.

You can't do that. If you wanted to have a great day, you're going to have to say, well, you're not really sinful. You know, a few things happen to you, and after all, you're a combination of, you know, molecular structure and psychological imbalance. No, no, you're sinful. You're sinful. And you're guilty. And you can't fix it. And you're responsible for it.

You can't blame it on your grandmother. And you're lost. You want to make it really clear? Bring to mind now your favorite grandchild, your newest one, the tiny one, with the big eyes and the wriggling and everything that goes along with it. Think of all of their potential. Think of all of their capacity. Bring them before your mind's eye.

Sit them on a stool in front of you. And say to yourself, this little girl is sinful, guilty, responsible, and lost. And she needs a Savior. She needs a Savior more than she needs swimming lessons. She needs a Savior more than she's in trek. She needs a Savior more than she goes to the best university in America.

All those things may be coming and going, but the fact is, she needs a Savior. That's at the very heart of things. That's why I say to you that the biblical statement of the nature of man, the view of the world broken, that's why it's so crucially important to heed the charge and to take up the challenge. See, when we come back next time, we realize that what Paul's going to say to Timothy is not, so throw in the towel, Timothy. You know, try and accommodate yourself.

No. He's going to say, the harder it gets, the tougher it is, the harder you've got to go at it. That's why he told them earlier, when you feel like it, when you don't feel like it, when the response is strong, when the response is pure, you've got to keep going. Do you realize how important it is to pray for young seminarians, to pray for pastors, to pray for each other, to pray that in the teaching to our children, that there's a fastidious commitment to orthodoxy, that there's no fudging and blurring of the lines, so that these little ones may grow up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? General Booth of the Salvation Army, you remember they asked him at the end of the nineteenth century, your concerns for the church going into the twentieth century. What are the chief dangers confronting the church? And he said, the chief dangers which will confront the church in the coming twentieth century will be religion without the Holy Spirit, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.

How prescient was that? Dick Lucas, Dick was working there in London and living there in London, right in the very heart of London, in the shadow of Lloyd's of London, which the IRA tried to blow up on a number of occasions. And on one of the occasions, the bomb made a significant impact on St. Helens Bishop's Gate, and actually almost killed the Reverend himself. He was very pleased about it, he said, because he had wanted to do some changes in the church for a long time. And because it was a historically listed building, he wasn't allowed to, and the IRA did them a tremendous favor. And so he was able to tear all the pews out and make all these kinds of changes. But as he took me around, he said, and I want you to see this, and he showed me the entryway at one point into the building. And he said, this part of the building was left completely untouched and chiseled into the stone lintel above the doorway, it said, heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will never pass away.

And Dick said, so we continue, and so we continue too. You're listening to Truth for Life Weekend with Alistair Begg. We're in a series called Guard the Truth. Today's message is a powerful reminder of the importance of solid biblical teaching. And if you're a regular listener to this program, you know that the faithful teaching of God's word is our passion, a Truth for Life. We believe the Bible is the true word of God, and our goal is to teach it in a way that is clear and relevant so that listeners like you can be assured of its truth and can be changed by God's spirit. We also want to encourage you to make God's word a priority in your homes with your children and your grandchildren.

Today's book recommendation is designed to help you do just that. The book is called Bible Stories Every Child Should Know, and it's perfect for passing on God's truth to the next generation. This is a beautifully illustrated book that contains more than 120 stories from both the Old and New Testaments. The stories are told in simple language that young children, even preschoolers, can easily understand. And each story is two to four pages long, just the right length for those attention spans. There are even questions you can ask to help keep children engaged. Find out more about the book Bible Stories Every Child Should Know when you visit our website, truthforlife.org.

I'm Bob Lapine. Persevering is always a challenge, especially if we're experiencing headwinds, but the task of ministry has unique challenges associated with it. So what does it take for us to press on in ministry? Find out as you join us next weekend. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.