2nd Timothy 3:1-9

Alright, we're in the middle of 2 Timothy. We're starting chapter 3, and there's only another chapter ahead of us here. So chapter 3, beginning part of chapter 3, verses 1-9. This particular passage happens to be full of warnings. Matter of fact, it's all warnings, you know, if you want to look at it that way. So I have a question for you before we even get started. Are warnings a good thing? And if so, why are they a good thing? Or is Paul getting too uptight and over-concerned and encouraging Timothy to do the same? So what do you think? Yes, Dan.

Warnings are a good thing if the source is good and if you listen. Why are you particular about the source? Well, it's kind of like reading the prophets. You know that's a good source, and there was false prophets in there. Ah. In other words, you could have a false warning. You've got to sign it. Bridge out. And there isn't any bridge out. Matter of fact, there never was a bridge. False warning. So a false warning could give you a bad direction.

What if it's like people who are always crying wolf or whatever after a while you just don't believe them? Yeah, it's, you know, the sky is falling and, you know, yeah, the crying wolf warning where it's like, there's warnings, yeah, he's warning all the time and that's all he does, right? He's all about the warnings. Oh, I've had enough of that, right? But that's not the case here. So good source, and it's just a constant flow of warnings. This is a specific warning on particular topics, and we'll take a look at that.

So here's 2 Timothy 3.1, but realize this, that in the last days, difficult times will come. In the New Testament era, the time of the New Testament, the Jewish expression had this idea, and you'll recall it from both Jesus and the Apostle Paul. The concept was there is the present evil age, sometimes this age is all you hear, but the assumption is it's evil, and the next.

And what's the next? The next is the age of the Messiah. Which until Revelation 20, the Jewish understanding, and you could well see why they would think this, the Jewish understanding was that the Messiah is going to rule for a long, long time. How long? Well, nobody knows. Until Revelation chapter 20 where it says six times a thousand years. Before that, nobody had any idea, it was just a long, long time. So you've got this age, the present evil age, and the age to come.

Holly? I'm sorry to take you off track so fast, and I don't mean to, but if you have... But you like it? Here's a short answer for my question. That would be good. If there's not, then I'm fine. But I've just been thinking lately about, is there a difference between evil and sin? Are they kind of the same thing? Now, so your question is the difference between evil and sin. There is a difference, but the difference is what? Sin, when you think of the word sin, what does that convey to you? An action. An action. Okay, good. Yeah, Stan? A response to evil. A response to evil. Okay.

What is sin with respect to, in terms of God? Yeah, it's a disobedience, and that's one thing. What else is it with respect to God? Yeah, it's a loss of fellowship. It's a divider between ourselves and God, right? So sin is that. When we say something is evil, it is something of a character that is the opposite of God's character, right? So sin deals with and addresses our relationship with the Lord and puts us at odds with the Lord in terms of relationship and fellowship. Evil is a character contrary to God. So they're related. One refers to the relationship and the fellowship being broken and the other, evil, particularly focuses on the idea of character. being opposite to God. Are they both sin? They're both sin, yes. It's just simply a different emphasis, but they're looking at the same thing.

We would be inclined because of the character emphasis for evil. We might look at something that goes on in society and say that's evil. Well, I mean, we might look at it and say, okay, here's this child that's been beaten, terribly neglected, and we'd say that's evil. And even an unbeliever might look at that and say, is that evil?

And they'd say, yep. The sin emphasis particularly focuses on relationship and fellowship with God, and they may not recognize that as well. So a lot of times an unbeliever will recognize that something is evil, though they don't acknowledge sin, because it has to do with my relationship with God. Yes?

So, if you look at evil, correct me if I'm wrong, but you would have to say that's spiritual, so it's a different spiritual direction, wouldn't it be? I mean, is evil a spiritual source? Well, if you look at Sin and evil, they're close terms. What I'm saying is that the evil is more of a character distinction, whereas sin is particularly a relationship and fellowship distinction. So if it was the present evil age, you can assume there's a lot of sin going on. Yes, and why is it evil in character, right? It is characterized by evil. His sin is prevalent, sin which breaks relationship and fellowship with God.

So they are closely related words, there's a slightly different emphasis, but closely related. Okay, so, realize this, in the last days difficult times will come. When did the last days begin? Essentially, there is the present evil age, and whenever this is said, and this is said several times in the New Testament, whenever this is said, it's focusing on the rest of this present evil age is the last days. Or latter times, that would be another term that you might hear. So it basically means as the centuries roll on, those are the last days. And when will the last days end?

Yeah, when Christ returns, this present evil age will be over, and it will be the age of the Messiah, and no longer be the present evil age, and while there will be people who are unbelievers, sin will not pay off very well. Imagine being in a world where You know, it isn't a matter of, you know, you go and testify before the judge and something like that and see what you can get off on on a technicality. What do you do when the judge of the entire earth knows everything, including what you're thinking, when there are no technicalities to get off on? You can hire yourself a good lawyer and it's not going to do any good.

Evil will have its price absolutely. Yes? Would you say that the evil age started with the fall of man? Yeah, ultimately that's it. In other words, we have the fall, we have the present evil age, and the only time when that will be reversed in any way will be the time when the Messiah comes. The age to come. Now think of this.

If, Ephesians 2.7, the grace of God will be shown to us in the ages to come, what does that say about the next age? That's just the beginning of the times when grace will be shown, right? Because there are ages to follow. So with that as a perspective here, why does Paul tell Timothy to first realize this? That's an imperative. Timothy, you've got to realize this. Why does he need to tell him that?

It's another way to say, listen to me. Okay. It's another way to say, listen to me. Is it possible for somebody to tell you something and it just gets blown off? You said something? I think he's saying, consider. Consider. Get your attention. Yeah, let your mind ponder this. You know, realize it. Don't just let it run in and run out.

Do you remember everything anybody's ever said to you? Probably not. Do you remember some things? Yeah. It's interesting how there are events and things that are said that stand in our mind like it's recorded and other things not. What Paul wants Timothy to do, we would put it in modern vernacular, record this. Record this. Let it be something that sticks in your mind.

So what good does it do to tell Timothy that over a broad period of time from his writing onward for some time to come, difficult times will come? Timothy, about 1500 years from now, difficult times will come. Timothy, difficult times will come however long these last days last. What good does it do to give him that kind of a broad general warning?

Is it maybe because, you know, some people think that if we just try and do good and be better people that, you know, the world will become like a good place? Yeah, are we going to make the world just all better? And we're going to wake up tomorrow morning and everything is just really cool? The police don't have anything to do? You know, the crime lab has just got cobwebs and dust? Because nobody's doing anything bad.

Are we going to make it like that? Probably not, right? We're going to make it so that, you know, you don't have any soup lines or food kitchens or anything like that because everybody's doing just hunky-dory. It's not going to happen, is it? Yes. Nancy was talking to a lady some years ago who said, you know, how are we ever going to make things good so that Jesus will come back? Wow. Okay. There's a lot of talking to do. Yeah, it's important to realize that, hey, you're not going to go and tweak things and do this and that and make everybody hunky-dory. The fall happened. And we're not going to fix it. Difficult times will come. So did Paul have in mind some specific difficulties, or was he being intentionally very general? Did he have in mind specific kinds of difficulties?

I mean, is it the car won't start? The chariot wheels fell off? What is he talking about? The list. In other words, he's about to explain what kind of difficulties, right, in the rest of the passage we're looking at today. He's about to say, you know, difficult times will come, and we're not talking about, you know, my coupon expired. He's got some particular kinds of things that are happening. Doesn't he?

Okay, so let's look at 2 Timothy 3, 2-5, for men will be, and he goes on quite a list, yes, be lovers of self, lovers of money, and by the way, those words for lovers means to have an affectionate attachment to. Oh, I love myself. That sounds like the self-esteem movement. Lovers of money. Just can't get enough of it.

I don't know what I'm going to do. My bed just can't hold anymore gold and silver bars. Boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power, avoid such men as these." So what's this list about, or rather who is the list talking about? What is this?

Yeah. It's been happening a while, hasn't it? Yeah. It's got a long-standing tradition in history. Yeah. It's been happening a while. And let's ask this. Does someone have to have all the things in this list be their personal problem before they've got a problem? Yeah.

This is a bit of a theological rabbit trail that's related, but one of the things I think is interesting is you talk about the fall. The fall happened. The curse that came with the fall was in part I think that's an interesting quality is that as technology developed and grew, and particularly about the time that Paul came, technology was ramping up in ways that created a lot more liberty every time for a lot more people. That would make a lot of these activities much more accessible to many more people. as this movement is concerned, these are people who are complaining that they live in wealth that is like in the top 2% of all the world.

And yet, some people are, I guess I'm going to have bananas today for breakfast. Like I did yesterday. Like I did yesterday and the day before that. The sense of entitlement, and it is lovers of selves, it's lovers of pleasure. The funny thing is I read this and I look at my own life, and there's things I enjoy doing, and it's like, okay Lord, we submit these things to you. Am I having an attitude that even matches even some of this, even though I am a believer? much more accessible to many more people. Last summer we brought, summer last year, we brought Hassan over during a time that we would define as an economic recession. So Hassan comes over, do you think he realizes that we're going through an economic recession?

No. Not even close. We come up, first of all, we pick him up at the airport. He'd never been in an airplane or in an airport in his life. And he went from Uganda to Rome to Washington, D.C. to Denver. And then we take him on this freeway, and then he got flyovers. What's a flyover, you know? So he's got the flyover, and we take him on the on-ramp, and there's all these traffic lights, and we get off the freeway, and we pull up in front of the house, and I click the button to open the garage door. And yet, you know, he studied that garage door for days. He'd press the button and watch it go up and down, you know. And that was before we explained that in order to wash the clothes, all you got to do is drop them in the machine. Before that, he refused to have Nancy wash the clothes because he didn't want her to go through that much work.

So yeah, our technology oftentimes puts us in a place where it kind of masks how things stand, that we sometimes fail to perceive the character and spiritual issues because of our technology. Yes, Dan? And I was going to add that, a scriptural reference to that, what Randy was talking about is probably the Tower of Babel when God said that now that man is gathered together in one place, basically they can do anything they want.

So he then separates them by giving them all different languages. as they gather in one place, then you accomplish these technologies. Technology gallops too quickly. Right, exactly. Even stuff like the malicious gossip, so you can get on the internet and all those, you know, they start trashing people and bullying. Technologically accelerated malicious gossip, right? Yeah. And boy, it goes places you'd never dream that it would go. Okay, let's take a look about the third bullet down there.

Why would such people even bother to hold to a form of godliness? And what is a form of godliness versus godliness? Yeah? Legalism without faith. Okay. Why is legalism a form of godliness? Why isn't it godliness? Because God is the center of their attention.

Alright, what is? Yeah, in other words, legalism looks at, look at what I'm doing, look at what I'm not doing. That's going to be a topic right in our main service here. Here's the Pharisees, here's the scribes, here's the disciples even of John the Baptist. And why aren't your disciples holding to a form of godliness? Like we are.

Right? Even on the polar opposite of legalism where it's the gratuitous I hate to use the word liberty, but it's excess and claiming health and wealth type messages. Even Joel Osteen where you just need to be a better person. God really, his goal for you is to be a better person. Whatever that is. But that's the same problem. It's a form of godliness. What's God's vision for you? And it's not a biblical vision. It's a war mechanism.

Whether it's legalism or Why does legalism have an appeal? Why does legalism have an appeal? Because you've got a list. You've got a list? Okay, good. It makes it easy. You don't have to spend time. You can memorize it, you can write it down. Put it on the refrigerator. What's that? You put it on the refrigerator, right? It's you doing it. Yeah, you can do it. You know, you can do it. Yeah. You can do this, you know. And you can even have motivational speakers to tell you you can do it. Yeah. It's a measuring stick. It's a measuring stick. How am I measuring up? How am I doing? How am I doing? Yeah. Pat? And if you don't, those who know the list. Oh, man. Oh. Yes, that's right. You fell off the list. Right? Yeah.

Now, let's set legalism aside. Can I have a form of godliness without the legalism? How else can I have a form of godliness without the legalism? Is that possible? But I still am spiritual. Yeah. I'm still spiritual. I am loving all three of my partners, whatever gender, I'm loving to them all, right? Yeah. It's too much of I. Yeah, I, I, I, yeah. Probably all the isms. Yeah, all the isms, right? Yeah. Yeah, Buddhism and New Ageism and Botulism. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We can, in other words, there can be all sorts of forms and it can even be divorced from any strict morality.

There was a fellow, he's dead now, he was an American Buddhist author, Alan Watts, used to live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I never crossed paths with him, although He and I kind of went into some similar kind of places. Yeah, he wrote about Buddhism and things of that sort, but his personal morality was horrific. He went from one marriage to the next, and one bottle to the next. But he could still be a Buddhist, and write about it, and everybody, ooh, ah, you know, listen to this wise man, you know, between, you know, drunk times.

It was even possible to divorce what I am doing and what's happening to me and what I'm carrying out, to divorce that from spiritual standing. Spiritual is spiritual and what I'm doing physically is just whatever I'm doing. But they don't necessarily relate. They don't connect. And the Greeks kind of perfected the art. As a matter of fact, as time went on, they got even better at it. Divorcing, what am I doing? How am I living? And what's my spiritual standing? In the Greek and Roman world, spirituality had nothing to do with morality.

Okay, so what does denying the power mean? And what's the consequence of denying the power? Does that mean in order to fix that problem that I really ought to pursue power? What does he mean by denying the power? In other words, you've got one problem here is holding to a form of godliness. The next problem is denying the power. What does that mean? Hmm. Is that the power of God to give us eternal life? I think that's part one. That is an essential aspect of what he's talking about. Yes. Okay. Tell me about that.

Well, Paul says to be led by the Spirit and to, you know, well, to be led by the Spirit. That's basically a summation in Romans 8. And the Bible says that the power of God is that's Holy Spirit. I mean, so if you're, if you're a Christian anyway, or you assume to be a Christian, then Yes. And are they really being led by the Holy Spirit, or are they being led by their selfish nature, like in this paragraph?

Yeah, they'll say, I'm a Christian, but you'll see all these other things from the earlier list that characterize them. What's the problem in that case? Some say, I'm a Christian, but you see all these other things. What does he mean when they say Christian? Yes. In other words, they say, well, I'm Christian. They have a form of Christianity.

They've embraced this group. They're doing what this church says to do. And they don't necessarily have the Holy Spirit indwelt. And they're not saved to the uttermost because they didn't put their trust in God. They put their trust in this set of things.

I'm a Christian. I went to church this morning. I didn't start getting drunk until this afternoon. And I won't have a hangover until I have to go to work tomorrow morning. I'm a Christian because I like the things that Jesus said, the ones I listen to. I'm a Christian because we're all Christians here in this culture, aren't we? I'm a Christian because my parents were and that was what we were brought up to pray before we ate and sometimes afterwards.

Yeah. I saw a statistic that 85% of the people in the United States consider themselves evangelical Christians or Catholics. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. A very large percentage. Pardon? I wonder why we have 15% causing all this problem. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah.

The power is not talking about, you know, I can do crazy miraculous things, you know, I'll turn the lights off from up front, you know. It's not somebody who does these things that dazzle. It's power for life, and as Holly pointed out, for eternal life. It's spiritual reality that's missing.

We can concoct things easily that seem spiritual. You know that atheists can be taught to speak in tongues. As a matter of fact, speaking in tongues is a phenomenon that exists in every major world religion and most of the minor ones. Is that spiritual?

Maybe not. Going back to what Holly said earlier, the difference between sin and evil, so if you want to look at denying its power, so there's God's power and then there's Satan's power as well. I mean you have the evil spiritual reality that exists in the world as well, so could this possibly relate to the fact that you're being led by other than God's spiritual power.

So we wouldn't go back to evil again. We have the last few words there. It's only a few words, but they really open up a big set of questions. Avoid such men as these. Now what does that mean? Avoid such men as these. Maybe being influenced by them? OK. All right. Now, how about, what if I said, well, you know, about 300 foot distance is pretty good. So I'll just make sure I'm 300 foot distance from anybody that I look at that falls into this category. Is that the way it works? Yeah. Sir, John had said, don't even invite him in your house. OK. All right. So you got that. I know, I know.

There's a little community just as you turn off Turkey Creek Road and we'll all just move up there and just block anybody else from coming in and then we'll avoid these kind of people, right? But we'll get behind, we'll get behind a nice stone wall with concertina wire on the top and we'll avoid all these kind of people.

Is that what he has in mind? Pardon? You have to live in the world. Okay, so avoid him just a few feet is good enough. But what's he talking about here? What's this avoid? And why is he telling Timothy this? Where did he send him? First Timothy, he sent him to where? Ephesus. How are you going to avoid people like that in Ephesus? boundaries of supercritical source, and then long-term involvement and association with those kinds of people.

Because the thing is that evangelism is going, as it's moving around the world, we're going to come in contact. If I get assigned seat, row 19, seat A, I can't control who's in seat B. So I may be forced next to the religious nut, that I'm of a wrong sort. Or it may be something that I'm supposed to be preaching the gospel to, or it may be just that I can't not associate with them for the time of my flight. What does he mean by a void, and why is he telling this to Timothy? Because it's real easy to come to the place where, yeah, well, you know, what I'm going to do is I'm going to buy, you know, seat A and B and make sure I don't sit next to, you know, yeah.

Related to a previous example, we could say horizontal fellowship and relationship. Okay. So it's the depth of your fellowship and relationships that needs to be looked at. Okay. What if one of them lives next door to me? How am I supposed to avoid them? So I think a part of what we have to look at is to say, what does this avoid mean? And look at it real carefully.

And the simple thing to do, and Christians have gone here, is to end up making some kind of spatial rules. And pretty soon, now we're legalists. You can be this many feet from them, but not that many feet minus two. So we end up with definitions, you know, I'm going to move way out in the mountains, and then we won't have that. There was a Christian commune north of where we lived in Northern California, and we had a few guys come and visit us from that commune. And the head of the commune was like, his name was Leon or something.

Anyway, they had the idea, you know, where Paul warns against coarse jesting. They had the idea that Christians should never express humor. Well, guess what? You walk into a Peterman household and that's, you're in trouble, you know. So they just thought we were sinful as could be, you know. pouring out sin because we crackin' jokes and laughin' and, you know, expressing humor. And they just thought we were terribly sinful.

Yes? I can say, I think it depends on also who's going to be influenced. I mean, children are obviously influenced easily because they're going through that stage of life where they they listen here and they pick up all these things from other people. Well, if you have people who are relatively new Christians, they can be easily influenced by a church that's teaching false doctrine as well.

So, I think we have here, you have to look at, where are you? And I mean, when you look at Paul, he's being instructed by Christ. So, Timothy is being instructed by Paul. And he's a young convert, so this is a lesson he needs to hear from the standpoint of his maturation process.

Here is, I think, you're touching on an important question, and that is, why are we trying to avoid men like this? Because that, and rather than falling into it, you know, if I'm 20 feet away, that's okay, but 19 is a little too close. Instead of falling into legal definitions like that, we begin saying, well, why avoid people like this? And so let's think about it. What would be some of the reasons why you'd want to avoid people like this? Maybe there's even particular conditions.

You don't want your right doctrine to be altered. So you don't want an influence that is a bad influence, and let's ask this, upon whom? Upon yourself, maybe? Or what if, if you think about it, a lot of us have other responsibilities, and it may be as simple as, these are people I fellowship with, It may be, you know, I'm a husband or a wife and I don't want my spouse to, you know, get influenced by this. It may be I've got kids or grandkids that are somewhere in the circle and I don't want them being influenced by this, right? So we can step into different circumstances where our responsibility for looking at, you know, what's the influence here? is different, but we have to look at it and say, no, I don't want to do that. Here's another question.

How about time? How about protecting your time? Should I say, well, Nancy, I know we haven't spent any time together this week, but I got to go talk to this guy who's a lover of self and a lover of pleasure and a lover of money, and I know I've been doing that every day all week, but I'll kiss you goodnight before bedtime.

I'm giving an extreme example, but it's possible to waste a lot of time with somebody who really has no idea of what spirituality is and really is not interested. And maybe too, if you have a tendency toward some of these things, like maybe some people have more of a tendency toward being lovers of money or being gossipy or whatever, so to me it's like, you know, if that's something you're already struggling with, to put yourself in that situation... Yeah, this might be just, this is going to stumble me. I'm going to be drawn in by this and negatively influenced.

Good point. Good point. Stan? pastor that we respected, he was actually an assistant pastor, and his comment I thought was so cool. Because when I told him the story, and I was so upset by the situation I was in, he said, if there was a glass of poison over there on the counter and I told you to drink it, would you go drink it? Answered my question. That's all he needed to say.

Let's look at the flip side of this question, and that is, if we're to avoid people of this character quality, are there those that we ought to deliberately spend time with? Are there those that we ought to deliberately be exposed to and associate with and fellowship with? Yeah. Now, here's another complicating matter. Is it possible that you're to avoid someone who might be saved? Can someone be saved and perhaps live out some of these things? Could be. Could be. So it may be, even, that someone is saved, but no, no, no, you really shouldn't do that.

Even as a shepherd in the church, there are times we've had to approach people and say, you know, you shouldn't do that here. Years ago, I was an elder in a church in Carson City. There was a man who came into the fellowship and he was hunting down the women like a wolf. And so I approached him and I said, you're welcome to fellowship with us here and learn God's Word and all that, but you may not. go pursuing these women like a hunk of meat. And even though I told them, you're welcome to fellowship with us here, as long as you don't do that, never saw them again.

But it is a matter of saying, look, don't be around these people, I can't have you doing that. Okay, flip side, and we're about to run out of time, I can see that, I can't wait to touch the button. look on Brian's face. So we're going to read the passages here and see what kind of questions we get to.

2 Timothy 3, 6, and 7 on page 2. For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. In the next verses, 2 Timothy 3, 8 and 9, just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the truth, men of depraved mind rejected in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Janus and Jambres' folly was also. Let's go back up to the questions on 2 Timothy 3, 6 and 7. Who would want to enter into households and captivate weak women? Does that appeal to anybody? Sure. Yeah, no hesitation there. Isn't it interesting? There are those who like to do that. Why?

Yeah, in other words, they like power, so those who are vulnerable to their press for power, yeah, are motivated to do that. They're not motivated by care for the women, they're motivated by having power over them. Do you want to take advantage of someone else's shortcomings? Yes, take advantage, and those that take advantage, word pair is a biggie. Because that's what they're doing, aren't they? They're not looking and saying, you know, I want to go out and just help people. No. They want to take advantage of the things that someone else is struggling with. So let's ask this question. Is Paul being chauvinistic in verses 6 and 7? Is he saying that women are weak? Is Paul being chauvinistic? Should we shake his finger at him and, ah, Paul, eh?

Or what should we say there? Why is he using this term? Well, doesn't it say weak women, so it's like, it would be women who are in a weakened condition, like not at all. Okay, yes, right, okay, good point. Pardon? They're vulnerable. And does he identify why they are weak or what characterizes their weakness? Does he say that? Yeah. Think about it. They're weighed down in sins. Why would that be a problem? Why are sins going to weigh a woman down? Why is that going to make her more vulnerable? No hope.

We're going to be so engulfed and enamored by the sins. Yeah. Engulfed and enamored. Yep. Distracted. I mean, basically the way that the human mind responds to sins is complex and robust. Yeah. Is this possible for younger women or is this exclusively for older women, that there's a potential weakness? Anybody. Yeah, it could be either one, right? Yeah.

Here's a mother of young children. She doesn't talk to anybody, you know, who speaks adult. Desperate for some kind of adult companionship and either the husband is just not there, just plain physically not there, or he's emotionally not there and not available. He's down at the bar, he's busy at work. He's traveling overseas.

I was amazed some years ago as I was going to engineering school at Santa Fe State, I took the bus most of the time. And at one point in time I noticed that there was a fellow who I saw on the bus frequently and I got to talking to him and he was an ambulance driver.

And I said, what are the main categories that you get ambulance calls for? And I was stunned to have him tell me that the third highest category of ambulance calls was women attempting suicide in the most economically elevated part of town. They didn't commit suicide, they attempted suicide. Yeah, a desperate cry for help. I can call my husband, I can't get his attention. Maybe they'll listen when the hospital calls. Maybe he'll finally listen when he finds out I've taken enough sleeping pills to do me in. Because what they'll do is they'll take all the sleeping pills and then dial 9-1-1. Right? Because they don't want to die, they want to get the husband's attention. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

They never get there. They never get there. It's the fact that we have failed so miserably at being able to communicate the gospel as the church. Right. Universal. Yeah. This is a pretty devastating problem. Yeah, it is. They don't even understand the relationship because believers cannot share the gospel. I couldn't until I was Probably about my late teens. Yeah. Which is a shame, yeah. What is the gospel? Just boil it right down. What is the gospel? So instead what you do is you get these people knocking on the door, you know, carrying around this cult literature. They're just as confused as can be. They end up invading their lives.

Or things come via the television. That's a real common thing here. Our technology allows people to What Paul warns of happens because now we've got this television that you can pipe in a hundred channels on. We got the wicker channel, you know, we got, you know, the puffy red chair channel. You got all sorts of different things. And, and so these, these guys come in via technology. and pipe it in.

And we're running out of time. I can see people ready to press their noses against the glass doors. So rather than make a cleaning problem, let's pray. Okay? Alright. Lord, we thank you for the spiritual food that you have given us here. We thank you for the insights, for not just hand-wringing, floor-pacing worry, but valuable cautions and warnings that are of substance. We thank you for that. We thank you for the insights from that. And pray that we might grow in the grace and knowledge of you as a result of it. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.