(S)

3 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. ² People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³ without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, ⁴ treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— ⁵ having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

⁶ They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, ⁷ always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. ⁸ Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. ⁹ But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.

A Final Charge to Timothy

¹⁰ You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, ¹¹ 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. ¹² In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, ¹³ while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. ¹⁴ But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, ¹⁵ and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the servant of God^[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

(O)

If you read the first few verses, it’s easy to see how society today could fit right into that description. Looking around the world, watching the news, and even in our own towns, we can see every one of those things playing out. There are many who have turned away from God and it’s all about “me”. Paul writes these things will happen in the last days. Are we in the last days? I’m not sure, we might be, but I suspect that every generation since Jesus probably could compare what was going on around them to those verses and think that this must be the end.

What I think is much more important in this chapter, and one of my favorite verses, is vs 16. I believe this is one of those critical verses that we must understand and believe, especially the first few words. “all scripture is God-breathed” or some versions say “God-inspired”. The whole bible hinges on these words. What I mean be this is if we don’t fully believe that the words in the bible are straight from God (written by human authors) through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the bible becomes a very useless book. Essentially, it would be a book of human opinion or interpretation. And we know that we are all flawed and have all made mistakes. It is critical we understand that when we say “God’s Word”, it is actually meant quite literally.

(A)

Meditate on that thought today. Study and memorize vs. 16. And this goes hand in hand with what we talked about yesterday as vs 17 tells us why the Word of God is so important to know. “so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but we need to know the Word. Read it, study it.

(P)

Father I thank you for your Word that came from your own mouth. Thank you for the people you chose to write down those words so we could so easily access them today. God help us all to understand it, and give us a sense of urgency to read it and know it. God bless each one reading this today. amen.