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We left off with Paul mentioning two men by name, Hymanaeus and Philetus, and saying that they were teaching false things, namely the lie that the resurrection had already come and gone. He continues then at verse 19 and says:
2nd Timothy 2.19-26 3.1
November 29th 2020
Meat
19 Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.
20 But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honor, and some to dishonor.
21 If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.
22 Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
23 But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.
24 And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient,
25 In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;
26 And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
Alright, let’s go back to verse 19. After naming the enemies around Timothy, Paul adds
19 Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.
In spite of the enemies that have taught false doctrine about the resurrection having already come, Paul says that “the foundation of God is sure or is steady and even though some had been turned away by the arts of these false teachers the foundation of the church which God had laid remained firm.”
We know of this foundation because Paul describes it well in Ephesians 2:20, calling it the household of God, and says that it is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone.”
With that foundation in place, the church, (meaning the bride and meaning the body of true believers spanning across the centuries), would never fail.
I want to point something important out here about what Paul bases the foundation of the true church upon – Inspired Words.
Note that he says that it is build upon the foundation of Apostles and Prophets with Jesus Christ being the Chief cornerstone.
How do we know the contributions of the prophets of old? By and through the Words they uttered by the Holy Spirit which were recorded in the Old Testament. He mentions Apostles. How do we know the apostles? Again, by the words they utters and were recorded in the New Testament. And he adds that Jesus Christ is the Chief Cornerstone. And who is Jesus Christ? The very Word of God made flesh, and who we also know by and through the words written about him again by the Spirit.
These Words – in all their forms – spoken, written, read are all understood by the Spirit. In fact, that is the only way that they can truly be understood.
Those who seek God honestly, in Spirit and Truth, will discern truth by and through these words, and they will continue forward in the faith unobstructed by the lies and false traditions of Men.
But the words cannot be intellectualized, that will lead to trouble. They have to be received by the Spirit whose fruit is love.
Understand them through any other means and a believer runs the risk of going sideways.
The failsafe then in the process is seekers of truth from the heart diving in and allowing the Spirit of truth to help them comprehend the totality of the words of the Apostles, the Prophets and of Christ Himself.
Interestingly, it was the words of two men that had lead others away from the truth. And here we understand the power of words on others in the human condition – they can lead to truth and life or they can lead to lies and death.
Test them all by the Prophets, the Apostles and the Christ by the Spirit – hold fast to what is good.
Paul is telling Timothy that an apostacy here and there will not unmoor the faith from its foundation. And he adds that the foundation has this seal, which means that it has the following inscription:
“The Lord knoweth them that are his. And
Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”
It’s pretty cool imagery – perhaps we can see it like a giant slab of marble representing the apostles and the prophets of old with Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone, and beneath it is a band of solid brass attached with sold brass bolts and inscribed on that brass plate are two statements:
“The Lord knoweth them that are his.”
“Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”
The foundation is unshakeable and secure and no matter who apostatizes or what occurs, it is unmovable.
Anyone who embarks to stand upon that foundation is reminded before stepping up that, “the Lord knows who are his.”
This is probably borrowed from Numbers 16:5, which says, “The Lord will show who are his,” but is translated in the Septuagint as, “God knoweth who are his.”
There is no fooling him. No deceiving God as His knowledge of all is sure and right. He reads the heart, mind and intention of all.
But Paul does not leave it at that. He adds another inscription to the first – and it is a reminder to all, almost as a “therefore statement,” and it reads:
“Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”
He knows who are his, and if you are His, by and through naming (by faith) the name of Christ, depart from iniquity (from adeekia, from unjust or unrighteous living.)
From these two passages Paul is going to now describe the body of believers as a house with different types or qualities of vessels in it – or vases or cooking pots.
After this he will move on to tell us what kind of vessels those who are His ought to strive to be, and then after describing this ideal, will explain that by and through adopting these listed traits such a believer or leader may assist in freeing others from the snare of the devil.
So, the first principle is the Lord knows who are his so don’t go trying to fake it. And the second is if you are His, if you truly lay claim to Him and His name as Lord and Savior of your life, then it is incumbent on you to walk away from the unrighteous traits we all encounter in life as human beings.
In this second subscription we have a phrase that leads to the notion that it is up to each individual to choose to abandon evil deeds and iniquitous behaviors and while there is some truth to this the reality is we can only success in this through his direct assistance.
At least if we are wrapped up in sin from our core – which I was.
I would therefore explain what it means to depart from iniquity as a follower of Christ in the following way.
Suppose you have been tied up, wrapped up, by some unseen force head to toe in ropes. Your eyes are covered and your mouth is gagged, your hands tied together, arms, legs wrapped, feet – and all the knots are the type that get stronger the more you resist against them with your muscles. And then you are then commanded to walk across a desert.
That’s a pretty impossible task, right? To try and execute it on your own will in all likelihood lead to failure.
But suppose you have someone show up who is an expert at getting out of such a predicament – his name is Harry Houdini.
And he instructs you on how to piece by piece, line by line, rope after rope escape from the ties that bind you. And most of his instructions are based in relaxing, not in resisting.
When I was a young man steeped in sin religion told me to resist the bands that held me bound. But the more I resisted the tighter my binds became.
When Jesus entered my life, he taught me to look to him and relax. To trust that he had taken care of the sin in the first place, and to then allow him to help me over time escape its clutches by His power, and not mine.
This is where we play a part in overcoming ourselves and overcoming our flesh. We first desire escape, and we allow him to then work in making the escape possible.
This requires patience, trust, longsuffering, and looking to him in consummate faith as the one with the skill set to make us free.
It is not resisting, it is releasing; it’s not turning to our strength, its truly turning to Him; it’s not law, its love for Him; and it is realizing that in our weakness He is make strong.
So, where Paul’s words seem to suggest that we are the ones, in our strength, to turn from iniquity, the rest of scripture makes it plain that He is the one, we are merely inviting him, desiring him and then allowing him to work.
Departing from evil is really an act of the mind surrendering our lives over to Him. The minds desire to make this turn comes when and after the Holy Spirit washes it enough to understand and see clearly enough to desire righteousness and light over unrighteousness and dark.
And in this we can all then see that we must first seek to have our minds renewed before we will ever arrive at the place where we desire and allow God to work in us.
Paul now enters into an analogy and says at verse 20:
20 But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honor, and some to dishonor.
It appears that Paul is continuing on with his analogy of the house of God having a foundation and includes the idea that the house is great or that the church is like a large edifice and that in such a building we would not expect to see articles or products that are all the same value and quality.
Using this analogy, he is saying that in such a house there will be items made of wood or clay (like broom handles, bowls or pots) and there will be vessels of gold and of silver, precious items like silver art frames, gold flatware, diamond light fixtures and solid gold tables. Whatever.
Paul describes them as having honor and some dishonor. His point is that some items are highly respected for their make-up and use, while others are much less respected for their properties and use.
We would value and “respect” a gold and diamond vase much more than a clay pot where we spit tobacco, right?
The same thing is to be expected in the church is Paul’s point.
And skipping all the exceptions to this analogy, what Paul is saying is we can presumed that there will be a great variety of gifts and attainments in the church and that we are no more to expect that all will be alike than we are that all the vessels in a large house will be made of gold.
And so, he adds at verse 21
21 If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work.
The word “these” here appears to refer to the characteristics represented by the vessels of wood and of clay which he calls in the previous verse “vessels made to dishonor.”
Of course, a literal interpretation of this would be useless and untrue to real life because we all know that everything has its place in a house and that broom made of solid gold and lacking straw would be pretty useless.
But when applying it to people being in the household of God the example holds water. So much so, in fact, that Paul even says that at the judgment everything will be tried by fire and that the wood hay and stubble (of our works) would be consumed leaving only the precious metals behind.
So, allow yourselves to be purified, he says to Timothy, and replace the beggarly weak elements of your nature with the valuable and eternal.
And this moves him to now say in connection with these insights:
22 Flee also youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
Remember, Timothy was a young man, and this advice is directed and addressed to him.
I appears that Paul knew that as a young man Timothy would possess what he calls, “youthful lusts,” and advises him to flee from them, advice we might all embrace no matter our age.
“Flee from the lusts that accompany your flesh, (but) follow righteousness.”
Great advice, both on what to flee and what to follow. And relative to the Latter he adds, “follow”
“righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”
The advice is self-explanatory, but the last line is important. Four times, including this one the importance of a pure heart is articulated in the New Testament.
We remember 1st Timothy 1:5 saying:
“Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:”
And then Peter also wrote:
1st Peter 1:22 Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently:
Such a heart is only made by Him through the Spirit and our willingness to let him work.
And then Paul returns AGAIN to the trouble of strife and foolish talking and says
23 But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes.
In his first epistle to Timothy Paul repeatedly warned against foolish talk and questions. The word “unlearned,” here means trifling or things that do not lend to edification of others but those that are just, “stupid.”
Like, Can God make a rock so big and heavy that he can’t pick it up?
The Greeks and the Hebrews – but especially the Greek – were super into such talk and controversies and would spend days, months, years debating them. Often these debates were unanswerable – and Paul is merely warning Timothy to avoid these things.
At this point he brings Timothy back into the ways he ought to be, and says at verses 24-25
24 And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, 25 In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;
Paul does not say “but the pastors of the Lord, or shepherds, or elders, but the dolous of the Lord – the servants.
Of course, the context seems to point directly to those who are in leadership in the church but the application could be to all who serve the King – and that would be all who receive Him by faith and follow His lead.
The servant of the Lord, Paul says,
“Must not strive.”
The word is mach-ah-mahee and it means go to war. And the meaning is very plain – those who are his operate by characteristics and ways that are not of this world but are of His Spirit – they are peaceable, meek, gentle, kind, loving.
This is a lesson I have had a long battle over in my life and it has taken numerous trials and fails to ultimately help me see the futility of such. As a servant of Christ.
In this world, in war, in fleshly endeavors – have at the battlefields, but if we are serving the Lord in our lives, we must not strive.
Now, Jude says something that sounds like the opposite advice. He writes in Jude 1:3
“Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”
So, which is it? “Not strive or earnestly contend for the faith?” Our answer lies in the Greek.
Paul here clearly says that “servants of the Lord must not go to war – not strive.”
The Jude passage says that believers ought to “earnestly contend for the faith” which is based on the Greek word, Ep-ag-o- id-zom-ahee, which means to struggle, wrestle, labor diligently – but does not mean strive, as in warfare or contention.
The differences are subtle but they are there. We engage diligently, and with great struggle to comprehend and defend the faith but we do not go to war – and that is the difference between the two passages.
We know that the Jude passages cannot mean “contend” (in the sense of contention or warfare or bloodletting) through words, otherwise what Paul says here in 2nd Timothy, that
24 And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, 25 In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.
is a lie. So, no warfare, no contentious mean, abrupt, unkind attacks, but instead the servant of the Lord must be
but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, 25 In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.
As men and women of peace, being gentle to all men. This word translated gentle is only used here in all of the New Testment and it means not full of disputations or quarrelsome.
“Apt to teach,” being a teacher by nature, seeking to instruct others in the things of the Lord, “patient,” which here means, forbearing and it’s another Greek word that does not occur anywhere else in the New Testament. And instead of just meaning straight up patient, it means being patient in the face of evil or injuries bestowed. (Verse 25)
25 In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves;
With gentleness instructing those souls who embrace error and stand against the truth. As natural men and women we tend to think that anger in the face of those who resist God or embrace false doctrines is the best medicine.
Paul corrects this notion and reminds us all that servants of Christ are peaceable, gentle, and will not strive. Some maintain that there is purpose is calling people out, labeling them heretics, or holding them up to public scorn.
Not so. And Paul provides us the reason, saying: “if (or in the case that) God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.”
If God would give them new insight and help them admit the truth when it comes to them.
The message seems to be, do everything in your power to get out of God’s way in reaching them with the truth. And that includes insulting them, embarrassing them, or removing them from your company by word-violence.
Be a representative of Christ to them in peace, love and patience and in doing so God might have a hand in bringing thm around! And our last verse in chapter 2 Paul adds
26 And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
The word recover here means to be made awake or to wake up from the delusion or deception embraced.
It really means to become sober and to waken out of inebriation.
Because of this the representation in this part of the verse implies that while under the influence of error people can be like an intoxicated man in a state of deep slumber. And the hope is by God working and our not inhibiting his work to rouse them to sobriety, they may come out of the snare of the devil which has wrapped them up in rope to the point that they cannot freely think.
Paul will on occasion mix his metaphors and this is no exception as he has likened these souls to being drunk and asleep but also trapped in a snare, which was a trap commonly used to catch birds.
But the general idea is clear. What is not so clear is the line, referring to Satan that says, referring to deluded souls:
“Who are taken captive by him at his will.”
The Greek word here best means who are taken alive, who are won over, who are taken captive through snares or seduction.
The line added, “at his will,” sounds like Satan had the ability to take whomever he wanted, but the story of Job proves this idea false.
What the phraseology better means is that Satan, having taken them and that ensnared them, have gotten them to comply to his will.
So, we have a couple minutes remaining let’s embark on chapter 3 and set the stage for next week as Paul now says at verse one:
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
6 For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
So back to verse one where Paul says
1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
I have to point out (again) that this epistle was written to, addressed to Timothy. And that here Paul tells Timothy (again), “This also know.”
And the obvious follow-up question is why would Paul want Timothy to know that in the Last days perilous times would come, and thy spend the next nine or ten verses describing what people would be like in those days IF the last days were going to be some two thousand years later?
At the very least, Paul was certainly referring to the last days of something that pertained to Timothy and the time that he was living in.
That is a very plain fact stated plainly here.
Now some suggest that the last days that Paul is describing refer to the last days of the Hebrew Nation at that time. That it would be the last days before the destruction of Jerusalem and that the people in those last days would be as Paul describes them in verses 2-7.
That is the most basic understanding of what Paul says and why he says it and I would suggest that it is dead on true.
Others will go so far as to say that in these last days God destroyed the vestiges of all material religion at that time, including priesthoods, the temple, the Law written on stone, dietary and dress demands, and genealogies.
I would agree with that as well.
Some say that these last days evidence the incoming realities of the next age where the Good News is available to all people of every clime, nation and gender, and that it was fully placed in the hands of the Holy Spirit. And to this I would also agree.
But most say that the end of that former age, and everything I have just described, does NOT mean that the next Age was fully introduced. These reject the idea that Jesus returned to wrap that former age up and to institute the new one, and therefore they reject that we have ever since been in the new age with a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem and a new way of individuals relating with God directly by the Spirit.
And with them I would fully disagree – kindly, peaceably, gently.
Let’s wrap it up here and continue on with verse 2 next week.
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