This morning we will be spending our time
in Second Timothy chapter three verse one through five
as well as a few cross references that we'll hop over to.
So if you do want to turn there in your Bibles,
feel free at this time.
Second Timothy chapter three verse one through five.
We're jumping in today to our week number three
in our series, wisdom of a grateful heart.
And just for a quick review,
week one we looked at Psalm 136
and it said, give thanks to the Lord for he is good.
His faithful love endures forever.
And we considered the story that creation tells.
One of our points was here, creation story
and how it all points us to the ultimate creator.
We asked the question, what have we
that we did not first receive?
What have we that we did not first receive?
And in that first week we considered the has said love,
I don't know if you remember the has said love,
the enduring faithful covenantal love of Yahweh God.
And that is who God is, not just what he does
or how he shows, it's who he is.
Last week, Pastor Mike shared with us
from Philippians chapter four
and we looked at the wisdom of contentment
and how we can thrive with nothing
and be content in everything.
And be content in everything.
We looked at how the embodiment of contentment
is Christ alone and we learned how we can grow
in contentment as we get into the word of God,
as we ask daily for his strength and power
and as we faithfully obey his commands.
Today, we'll be looking at this text
in 2 Timothy chapter three.
So let's dive in, verse one,
but know this, hard times, hard times
will come in the last days.
This letter is written by the apostle Paul
and he's writing to Timothy, his son in the faith,
who he has sent off to Ephesus to lead the church there
and lots of strife and lots of turmoil
throughout the Christian world at this time
as this small tiny seed, muster seed of faith
is beginning to spread and grow in the Roman Empire
and he sends this letter, the second of his letters
to his son in the faith, Timothy,
and he begins chapter three with these words,
hard times will come in the last times.
And he's already spent some time instructing his son, Timothy,
on what kind of servant leader he ought to be in Ephesus,
how he ought to conduct himself
and the way that he should live.
And he says things like flee from youthful passions, Timothy,
flee from them and pursue righteousness and faith
and love and peace along with those who call on the Lord
from a pure heart.
He said reject foolish and ignorant disputes
because you know they only breed quarrels in the body.
He said that you, Timothy, as the Lord's servant,
you must not be quarrelsome,
but you must be gentle to everyone,
able to teach, patient,
and instructing your opponents with all gentleness.
And he goes on to say that maybe God
would grant his opponents repentance
that they might escape the trap of the devil
and come to their senses.
And right after he says that, then chapter three begins
and he says, but know this.
Even as you live the way that you're supposed to,
even as you teach the way that you're supposed to,
even as you instruct your opponents with gentleness,
know this, hard times will come in the last days.
So what are these last days?
The last days were a way of saying,
talking about the time that comes
right before the end of the age.
Whatever time comes right before the end,
the consummation of history, the end of time,
whatever comes before that is the last days.
And on the day of Pentecost,
while praying in that upper room,
a powerful experience of the Holy Spirit
broke out among the disciples
and it resulted in them declaring the glory of God
in various tongues and languages.
And Peter quoting from the prophet Joel, what did he say?
He says, this, this marks the beginning of the last days.
This right here enters us into the final era.
The end of the age, the consummation of history
is before us.
The last days began then and continue to today.
We are in the last days.
Paul says that this age will be marked by hard times
and will be marked by moral decadence.
And what is the example that Paul uses
to help Timothy understand the difficulties
of the last days?
How and in what way will they be difficult?
How will they be hard times?
What will be the cause of this
or what will be the evidence of this?
Well, he says, well, people will be lovers of self
and lovers of money.
And then he lists off a whole bunch of other things,
boastful, proud, demeaning, disobedient to their parents.
Right, Elijah?
Was that hard to read?
Disobedient to their parents.
And then what's next?
Ungrateful, ungrateful, unholy, unloving.
And he goes on.
Irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control,
brutal, without love for what is good,
traitors, reckless, conceited lovers of pleasure.
Rather than lovers of God.
Holding to the form of godliness but denying its power.
Man, what a list.
I don't know if you've taken a look around much.
Hard times in the last days.
Hard times.
And for the purpose of our study today,
what is listed right there?
Ingratitude.
Ingratitude is a characteristic
of the apostasy of the last days.
Ungratefulness is a characteristic
of the apostasy of the last days.
Ungratefulness is a poison in the human heart.
And Paul warns that people will be self-lovers
and stuff-lovers.
They're gonna love self and they're gonna love money
in this last day.
They love money.
They love that which is created over a creator
and they have disordered loves for it.
And verse four says that they are lovers of pleasure
as well, rather than what?
Lovers of God.
And therein wraps it up.
He begins the whole thing with lovers of self,
lovers of money, and he ends it with lovers of pleasure
rather than what we are to be
or how we were designed to be or created to be,
which is lovers of God.
But it begins there with lovers of self.
And at the heart of self-lovers is a heart of pride.
A heart that exists as the end of all things.
The buck stops with me.
The thankless, prideful person believes
they are the center of the world.
The thankless, prideful person believes
they have earned everything they have.
The thankless, prideful person,
for them, nothing is a gift.
But even in having all that they have,
it's still not enough.
It's still not enough.
The C.S. Lewis talking about the sin of pride
as the sin that is behind every other sin
and the sin that is original to the garden,
he said this, pride,
pride gets no pleasure out of having something.
Pride gets no pleasure out of having something
only out of having more of it than the next man.
We say that people are proud of being rich
or clever or good-looking, but they are not.
They are proud of being richer, clever,
better-looking than others.
If someone else became equally rich or clever
or good-looking, there would be nothing
to be proud of.
It is the comparison that makes you proud,
the pleasure of being above the rest.
The prideful heart knows no peace.
Lewis also says that what pride really enjoys,
more than getting the stuff,
what pride really, really enjoys
is the ultimate pursuit of power.
Pride is after power.
If I am a proud man, then as long as there is one man
in the whole world more powerful, more richer,
more clever than I, he is my rival and he is my enemy.
I must best him.
I must top him.
Thus, pride is the main cause of every misery and root,
the root of every strife in every nation,
every city, every neighborhood, and every single home.
Pride.
Where does boasting come from?
That's listed there.
How about ingratitude or slander?
Pride is at the roots.
Just a bunch of self-lovers.
Hard times will come.
But if it's true that pride truly only delights in power,
then how can a prideful heart relate at all or know God?
Well, to that Lewis says,
in God, you come up against something
which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself.
Unless you know God as that,
and therefore know yourself as nothing in comparison,
you do not know God at all.
As long as you are proud, you cannot know God.
A proud man is always looking down on things and people,
and of course, as long as you are looking down,
you cannot see something that is above you.
And that raises a terrible question.
How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up
with pride can say they believe in God
and appear to themselves very rarely?
They appear to themselves very religious.
I'm afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God.
They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing
in the presence of this phantom God,
but they are really all the time imagining
how he approves of them and thinks them
far better than ordinary people.
That is, they pay a penny's worth of imaginary humility
to him, and they get a pound's worth of pride
toward their fellow man.
I suppose it was one of those people Christ was thinking of
when he said that some would preach about him
and cast out demons in his name,
only to be told at the end of the world
that Jesus never knew them.
And any of us may at any moment be in
this death trap of pride.
What does it mean?
It means that a prideful heart will either be
blatantly opposed to the knowledge of God,
blatantly opposed to it, or it will feign religiosity,
but only as a power play,
so that that prideful heart can experience
a sort of superiority over its fellow man
or bind God in indebtedness to them
for their righteous life, for their righteous living.
Listen to this description that comes out of
the first chapter of Romans.
Romans 1, 18, for God's wrath is revealed
from heaven against all godlessness
and unrighteousness of people,
who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
Since what can be known about God is evident among them,
because God has shown it to them.
For his invisible attributes, that is,
his eternal power and divine nature,
have been clearly seen since the creation of the world,
being understood through what he has made,
and as a result, people are without excuse.
For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God
or show gratitude.
Instead, their thinking became worthless
and their senseless hearts were darkened.
Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged
the glory of the immortal God for images
resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals,
and reptiles.
Verse 24, therefore, God delivered them over in the desire
of their hearts to sexual impurity,
so that their bodies were degraded among themselves.
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie,
and worshiped and served what had been created
instead of the creator, who is praised forever.
Amen.
We see that the ultimate sin, that original sin of pride,
rearing its ugly head, and ungratefulness and pride,
they go hand in hand.
They go out for walks in the middle of the day.
Where one goes, the other one is right by its side.
The prideful heart is the thankless heart,
and it is at enmity with God.
It is an enemy.
Self-lovers are lovers of created things,
lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God.
What does it mean, though, to be a lover of God?
In Luke chapter 17, we are told of a time
when Jesus is engaged in his kind of itinerant ministry.
He's moving from place to place.
And while he's traveling between Samaria and Galilee,
he encounters 10 men, 10 men he comes upon,
and they all have leprosy, which was this terrible,
terrible chronic infectious disease.
And they shout out to him, Jesus, master,
have mercy on us.
And when Jesus sees him, what does he say?
He says, go, show yourself to the priest.
Go, show yourself to the priest.
And while they're on their way,
going to the priest, what happens to them?
They're all healed.
All 10 of them are healed before they get to the priest,
before the priest does any sort of whatever.
You're healed.
They're healed on the way.
It's extraordinary.
It's a miracle.
Their life is restored, this chronic disease done, gone.
But one of them, it says, there were 10, but one of them,
seeing that he was healed, returns.
And with a loud voice, I love that that's in there,
with a loud voice, gave glory to God.
With a loud voice, gave glory to God.
He fell face down at Jesus' feet.
Thanking him.
And, little side note, the narrator puts in there,
and he was a Samaritan.
He was a foreigner.
That's what Jesus says.
Then Jesus said, we're not 10 cleansed.
Where are the nine?
Didn't they, didn't any return to give glory to God
except as foreigner?
And he told the one, get up and go on your way,
for your faith has saved you.
What a powerful picture.
10 were healed of their disease
as they were traveling to the priest,
but only one returned, and he returned in worship
and gratitude with a loud voice.
For nine of those men, Jesus was a means to an end.
And for one, he reaped the glory of God.
One, he recognized that Jesus was the end.
He was it.
Yes, I got healed.
Yes, my life is restored.
I don't even care.
I'm not gonna go on living my life.
I'm gonna come and bow down and worship in a loud voice,
give glory to God for what he did to me,
in me, and for who he is.
All of them called him master.
Only one acted like he was, who they said he was.
Jeremiah Burroughs, a Puritan preacher and writer
from the 1600s, he wrote a publication
that was titled The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.
The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.
And in that book, he said this.
He said, worship is not only doing what pleases God.
Worship is not only doing what pleases God,
but also being pleased with what God does.
Worship is not only doing what pleases God,
but also being pleased with what God does.
Worship includes taking delight in and giving thanks
for all that God brings into our lives in all circumstances.
When the saints perform actions to God,
then the soul says, oh, that I could do what pleases God.
And when they come to suffer any kind of cross in their life,
oh, that what God does to me might please me.
I labor to do what pleases God,
and I labor that what God does shall please me.
Here is a Christian indeed.
Here is a Christian indeed who shall endeavor both of these.
It is but one side of a Christian to endeavor
to only do what pleases God.
You must as well endeavor to be pleased with what God does.
And so you will come to be a complete Christian
when you can do both.
And that is the first thing in the excellence of His grace,
of contentment.
Last week, Pastor Mike talked about how true contentment
is found in obedience to God.
There is no peace in disobedience.
Jeremiah Burroughs expounds on that by saying,
active obedience is doing what pleases God.
Active obedience is doing what pleases God.
Passive obedience is being pleased with whatever God does.
Being pleased with whatever God does.
I think we are very familiar with the first one.
But how acquainted are we with the latter?
How acquainted are we?
Both have to do with what pleases God,
and both have to do with what we ought to be pleased with.
It pleases God that He would design a world
according to the power of His word
and in accordance with His will,
governed by His law and wisdom.
That pleases God.
It ought to please us.
It is worship for us whenever we obey according to His design.
According to His will.
According to His wisdom.
It is also worship when we recognize that whatever God does,
we are to give worshipful thanksgiving for it.
Whether what it is in our life is poverty or prosperity,
or sickness or health, good times or hard times,
worshipful thanksgiving to God.
We show our faithful trust of God
when we are pleased with whatever God does.
A lover of God is one who loves all that God is,
all that God commands, and all that God does.
A lover of God is a person who has centered God
in their reality and has dethroned themselves
in delights in all that God is and does.
Ungratefulness is a mark of an apostate,
one who has rejected God.
You say, I'm just ungrateful
for the difficult times I've been in.
Just a little ungratefulness for the difficult times.
But the Bible says, count it pure joy,
my brothers and sisters,
when you encounter trials and testings of many kinds.
Yes, you say, but I'm suffering
physically, I'm suffering.
The word of God says, give thanks in everything.
For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
What's God's will for me today?
What's God's, there it is.
What's God's will?
I wanna know what God has to say.
I wanna know what his divine will is for me today.
Give thanks in every circumstance.
Count it pure joy.
Rejoice, always, again, I'll say it, rejoice.
The Bible invites us over and over again
to center our life in a reality around God,
who he is and what he is doing.
And to never take for granted the good,
the difficult, the blessings, or the trials.
But to again, rejoice in God's will.
But to again recognize what have we
that we have not received.
Good from his hand.
Difficulties to train and teach and discipline his children.
With everything we have, we've received.
It is said of the Roman general Pompey,
that was his name, his mom must not have liked him,
but Pompey, the Roman general Pompey,
that when he was carrying grain to Rome
in a time of, what's the word I'm looking for?
Drought or famine, yes, thank you.
In a time of famine, he was carrying grain to Rome.
He encountered this great, dangerous storm on the sea
as he has this ship full of grain
and their traversal ship is full of grain.
They're traversing.
And in the midst of that danger on the sea,
and the storm on the sea, it is said that general Pompey
turned to his sailors and said, we must go on.
It is necessary that Rome should be relieved,
but it is not necessary that we should live.
We must go on.
Rome must be relieved.
It is not necessary for us to live.
We ought not flee to save our lives.
We ought not turn back or abandon the cargo.
Rome must be relieved.
That is the mission, that is the goal,
that is the purpose we are on.
We are going to do it even if it costs our life.
We're going to do it.
Our life is second to dairy to that main purpose.
That's what he was saying.
And I would say, and I'll change it a little bit, right?
It is necessary that God should receive
joyful and grateful worship in all things
it is not necessary that we should live
or be well to do or that we should get to experience
all that we desire.
It is not necessary, but it is necessary
that God ought to receive all glory that he is due.
That is the mission.
That is the purpose.
We were made to glorify God and to enjoy him
who he is, what he commands, and what he does forever.
And each one of us are invited into that.
Paul began by saying, the apostates of the last times
are those who lose sight.
And you can see that in the reference in Romans, too.
He makes reference multiple times.
That ingratitude is at the heart of that prideful heart
that turns away from God and rejects God,
rejects the purpose for which they were created,
and instead turns to become worshipers of the things
that were created or given or the life that they want to live
and not the God who gave everything to them.
And the invitation that we have
is instead to recenter God in our lives,
to say that he is the main thing.
We are secondary to that.
And we were made to glorify God and enjoy him forever
as he is in all of his character, in all of his commands,
and in all that he does.
This is our invitation.
And the truth is, there is no contentment,
there is no gratitude or joy outside of that.
Everything else is fleeting, everything else is temporary,
everything else is fading.
Only in the everlasting eternal God
can we find the thing that is everlasting and eternal.
And that which all of our hearts are searching for
is found in him.
And when we give him glory and are satisfied in him,
we're satisfied in something that can never be taken away.
We find our joy and our life and our thankfulness
in the thing that never shifts or changes,
not like a shadow as the sun passes
from one side to the other.
God does not change, he is eternal,
from eternity to eternity.
And therefore we can put our trust and our hope in him,
and he will never fail.
It's worth spending it all.
It's worth giving it all.
It's worth centering your life around him.
Some of you may be in very difficult times right now,
you may be dealing with health issues,
you may be dealing with financial issues,
you may find yourself in relational issues
that you have no idea what to do,
and they're pressing down on you
and they feel like your world,
your world has become those issues
and they feel like your whole world is crashing around you.
And I just invite you that let the word of God
snap you out of that delusion.
Let the word of God snap you out of that delusion
and bring you to reality,
which is there is a great creator who loves you
and has given and given everything that you have
to show that great love and care and concern for you.
Turn to him, turn to that which lasts.
Your problems are here today in God's name.
Your problems are here today and gone tomorrow,
just like you, just like me,
but from eternity to eternity, God.
And we get to find our great joy in him.
And I implore that we do that this morning.