These Are The Last Days
Tom Shrader examines Paul's warning to Timothy about the difficult times of the last days, focusing on how people will be lovers of self and money rather than lovers of God. He emphasizes the importance of Christians understanding their culture while maintaining discernment, noting that many will hold to a form of godliness while denying its power found in the cross.
“The power is not to change behavior. The power is to change a heart.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: CBCC August 2008
Recorded: 2008 at Cannon Beach Conference Center
Duration: 47 min
Themes: discernment, culture, deception, selfishness, materialism, godliness, persecution, mentorship, living in secular culture, mentor, pastor, facing cultural pressure, new believer, struggling with materialism, church leader, young adult
Scripture: 2 Timothy 3:1-5, John 17, Acts 17, 1 Timothy 6, Philippians 4:11, 1 John 5:21, Isaiah
Theological Themes: eschatology, end times, biblical prophecy, last days, apostasy, falling away, spiritual warfare, pastoral epistles
Full Transcript
Which I don't. I wouldn't be here. That you're here is amazing to me. It's a great night for being out and walking the beach, so thanks for being here.
Mila talked about that he didn't look like anyone, or he looked like everyone. You'd say that either way. He didn't have a distinctive look. He looked like so many people. Two years ago we were here, and Mila was doing the music. Mila and Chris. First time we worked with Mila and Chris. We started the first night, and it was driving me nuts as I listened to him. I'm going, I know that. I know that voice. It's driving me crazy.
It took me about three or four sessions to put it together, and finally I did. I just want you to hear. Greg, have you got the appropriate instrument? Because I'm going nuts going, gosh, he doesn't look like anybody, but he sounds like somebody, and it's driving me crazy. So finally, after about the third night, I said, I've got it. I know what it is.
A Voice Like Burl Ives
Okay, ready? "Have a holly jolly Christmas. Say that's it! It's the best time of the year. I don't know if there'll be snow, but have a cup of cheer. Have a holly jolly Christmas, and if you didn't hear, oh by golly, have a holly jolly Christmas this year. Oh, hold the mistletoe hung where you can see. Somebody waits for you. Kiss them once for me. That's my favorite part. Have a holly jolly Christmas, and in case you didn't hear, oh by golly, have a holly jolly Christmas this year."
Say that's it! I knew I knew that song. No, no, no, stay right here. I know he wants to sit down. One of the things that is kind of a tradition here through the week is a concert. So tomorrow night, Mila does a concert for us, and I've worked twenty years with musicians, and they're the pickiest people, and they hate to be told what to do, but one of the songs that you'll sing tomorrow night is "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Just do just enough to whet our appetite, so we want to be here tomorrow night for that.
I love this song and the way he does it. "Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly. Birds fly over the rainbow. Why then, oh why can't I?" How great is that? I just, I so wish I could do that, but I can't do that. All I can do is this. That's all I can do, but that, wish I could do more for you.
Paul's Final Warning to Timothy
Open your Bibles, if you would, please, to Second Timothy, chapter 3. One of the things and the reasons that I selected this book is, though Paul's writing to Timothy and we understand the context of it, it so applies to us today. Let me remind you, Paul is the mentor, Timothy the protege. Paul is in prison. We are going to really look at that as we close tomorrow night. He talks about himself being poured out as a drink offering and the time for his departure has come. So that's the backdrop for this letter.
Nevertheless, that's the backdrop. He still does not focus on the past, like we might say, here it is and we're about to say goodbye. He really spends just verses 3, 4, and 5 of that first chapter on the past. He talks really about the present and about the future. And when we get to chapter 3, there is a warning that we sense in that.
Look with me, will you please, at verse 1. "Realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come." And then he describes, not the settings. We know oftentimes when we talk about the last days, we hear about earthquakes and wars and rumors of wars and all that kind of stuff. I heard the other day that Hal Lindsey's book, The Late Great Planet Earth, is in its 180th printing. So there's certainly an intrigue that people have with that.
Paul Describes People, Not Events
I think I mentioned to you the other night, that's never been something that's really fascinated me. As Paul writes to Timothy about the last days, he does not describe wars and rumors of war, he describes people. He says this is what people are going to be like.
Look at it. Verse 2, "Men will be lovers of self and lovers of money," and then it's like dominoes. The rest of these just kind of fall after that. "They will be 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."
So we've got some key points in here. Verse 4 is one of them, and he said, "They hold to a form of godliness, although they deny its power. Avoid such men as these." Those are the five verses that we're going to look at tonight.
We Live in the Last Days
And the reason that this is so important, I think significant to us, is as he makes this general observation about the last days, that difficult times will come, the reason it's significant to us is we live in the last days. It is fair to say that you and I live in the last days as we define them biblically. The last days are the time from when Christ ascends into heaven until He returns again. So we've been in these last days now for about 2,000 years. There does seem to be a ratcheting up of it, perhaps. There does perhaps seem to be an intensity to it beyond what maybe we saw years ago.
But look at the world in which you live. I think it's so important for us to understand our culture. If I have a complaint about really great Christians, Orthodox Christians, is that they withdraw from the world. I don't think God ever intended for us to pull out of the world. In fact, Jesus says, just as you sent me into the world, John 17, I'm sending them into the world.
Called Into the World, Not Out of It
It is not a call for us to try to get together and just hang out with a bunch of Christians. That's good. There's a place for that. Church is important. Fellowship's important. Hanging out with the Christians is okay. But we've turned this into a whole subculture. We have to be very, very careful. A place like this, I think, has its place and its purpose and it's okay. It's fine to come here. I love
These Are The Last Days
Part 2 of 7
Coming here. It's fine to go to Christian events. But we need to understand that Christian, the word is a noun and we've turned it into an adjective. Christian is a noun, it's a person. We've turned it into an adjective. So we have Christian bookstores, Christian music, Christian comics, Christian schools, Christian, Christian, Christian.
Again, I'm all for those things. Those things are fine. But sometimes we send that message that we need to just hang around with Christians and out there are those awful people out there and we want to get together so we don't get any of them on us. Here's the problem. We're supposed to be getting us on them. And the only way to do it is to have contact.
I cannot fulfill the Great Commandment, love God with all my heart, love my neighbor as myself, or the Great Commission to go and make disciples unless I have contact with that world out there. Again, Jesus in John 17. Father, just as you sent me into the world, I'm sending them into the world. You and me and us into the world. That was incarnational living.
Understanding the Culture We're Called to Reach
If we were to take you all and say you're going on this mission trip, you're going to go to Morocco, we would spend all this time teaching you about the culture, what to say, what not to say, how they talk, what they thought, the prevailing cultural mores of the day, the language, the habits, the poets. You have to understand the culture. So you go to Morocco and so you could communicate there.
The same thing is true here. You need to understand the world you live in. You need to understand the people around you. You need to be able to relate to them. You go on their level. Not them coming up to yours, but you on their level.
It's exactly what Paul does in Acts chapter 17. It's a beautiful picture of it. Paul comes blowing into Athens and he's killing a little time. He's waiting for the boys to show up and he's walking around Athens. Then he gets an opportunity to come in to speak to the intelligentsia of the day and what does he do?
He says, you know what I observed? When I was walking around, here's what I observed. You're a very religious people. In fact, I even saw a statue to an unknown God. And what does he do? He connects their culture with his message. He said, I want to talk to you about that unknown God, because that that you've worshipped in ignorance is what I want to talk to you about. Let me tell you about Jesus. And he tells them about Jesus and he quotes the poets of the day.
You need to understand the world you live in, man. You need to understand how they think. You need to understand that just like you, they are intrigued by a story, by a message. You live in a world where people who are not Christians act that way and then we somehow get mad at them for behaving that way. They don't know Christ. Do you remember when you didn't and how you acted? Same thing.
The Challenging Nature of These Last Days
Paul makes a general observation that these last days will be difficult times, perilous times. Again, you get a sense of foreboding there. You get a sense of warning. And there will be a couple of specific things that we can look at. Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, and then it will manifest itself in all of these.
There will be times when we as Christians are on a collision course with the world around us. We can periodically peacefully coexist. But the bottom line is this, that you and I as followers of Christ have a different bottom line than the world has. If you are in business, the bottom line is the bottom line. For all of us who are followers of Christ, profit is not necessarily the singular motive, though it's not a bad thing.
Paul begins to describe the world that we live in and he says this, these will be difficult, challenging times. First and foremost, people will be lovers of self. They will be self-absorbed. Does that sound like the world that you find yourself living in? They will even have something like self-magazine. They will talk about self continually. They will talk about self-image and self-esteem and self, self, self, endlessly.
The Crisis of Self-Absorption
I hang with guys who are bemoaning the fact that we don't have any great leaders anymore. And they'll say, you know, where are the Washingtons and the Jeffersons and the Madisons and the Lincolns and the Churchills? I think we have a deeper problem. It's not that we don't have any leaders anymore. We don't have any followers left. Nobody will follow anymore. We're self-absorbed.
Even the United States Army has capitalized on this. In the old days, when they recruited, they would say this. Here was the motto, Uncle Sam wants, what? You. Now they don't say that anymore, do they? They appealed in that day to a sense of honor and duty. What do they say now? Be all you can be. Isn't it amazing?
It's a subtle shift. One says, come to us for duty and obligation. Now it says, be all you can be. You be everything you can. You come to us and we'll help you accomplish your goals. It's understanding the culture.
The Counter-Cultural Nature of Christ's Message
People will be obsessed with self. That's the battle, isn't it? Christ's message is so contrary to the world we live in. The world that says, look out for number one, watch out for yourself. Jesus says, deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me. See how they're counter opposed?
Jesus says, I'm more than welcome to be the model here, for He says, the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. There's the characteristic that's at the heart of the Christian life. The word literally means, to minister to. You and I are called to be servants, even as we lead servant leaders.
But in the last days, people will be lovers of self, and they will be lovers of money. They will love stuff. They will be obsessed with stuff. Again, we're right there. Can you just turn to the left? We were there this morning in 1st Timothy, 1st Timothy chapter 6. Paul tells us, here's something that is so powerful, a concept for us to begin to get our arms around.
The Call to Contentment in a Consumer Culture
Paul reminds us that godliness plus contentment is a means of great gain, and if we simply have food and covering with those, we should be content. Paul picks up the same idea in Philippians chapter 4, verse 11, where he says, "I speak not from want, I have learned to be content in whatever circumstance I have been. I've learned to live with a lot. I've learned to live with a little. I've learned the secret of being filled. I've learned the secret of going hungry. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me."
Paul says that in this life we need to understand that the call to contentment is counter to the culture. Radio Shack had an advertising campaign a couple of years ago, and here was the catchphrase: "We have thousands of things you never knew you needed." We have thousands of things, not a thing or two or three or a dozen or a baker's dozen. We have thousands of things that you never knew you needed, and God says, "Listen, here's what you need are the very basics of life: food, clothing, housing," and even then He doesn't give it any definition, does He?
He simply says, "I'll meet those needs." It may be food, it may be a bologna sandwich, it may be a filet. Clothing, it may be something magnificent like these shorts, or it may be something like many of you wear. It may be housing, it may be five or six bedrooms, hundreds of thousands of square feet, or it may be a studio. And therein lies the battle, doesn't it? In these last days men will be lovers of self and lovers of money.
The Treacherous Pursuit of Wealth
Can I remind you again how treacherous that is? It's verse 9: "Those who want to get rich." He doesn't say those who are rich. Some of the greediest people I know don't make a whole lot of money. "Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin. For a love of money is the root of all sorts of evil, and some have longing for it, have wandered away from the faith."
Now, I do want to talk about those of you who have stuff, because he does talk about rich people. Here's the problem with rich—it's a relative term, and here's how I've watched people define it. People tend to define rich this way: anyone who has more than me.
I was with a guy who had sold a business, and I think he netted out something like 10 or 12 million dollars. So we're having breakfast one day, and I'm talking about stuff. I said, "You're rich." You know what he said? "I'm not rich." I said, "Really? What's rich?" He said, "I would say 25 million is rich." Have you talked to the guy with 25 million? He says 30. And everybody just goes like this, and I don't know what they do when it gets to Gates.
Instructions for the Rich
But by the standards that I think Paul's writing about, many of us in this world are rich, in this room. Look at verse 17: "Instruct those who are rich in this present world two things. One, don't fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches. Two, not to be conceited."
See, once you have some level of success, there's a great temptation to be conceited. Once you are the one who is over in Beijing and you come back with the gold. I have a friend that in the '64 Olympics won three gold medals and a silver medal. And whenever we're out, and I'm introducing him to strangers, I will say, "This is Charlie. Charlie was a swimmer in the '64 Olympics and won a silver medal." And I'll never talk about the gold. It's perfect. You can see it killing him. "But I won three gold." But then that sounds too conceited, doesn't it?
I don't know how many world records Charlie had during his swimming career. But when you're like that and you've got the gold, there's a tendency to be conceited. When you've developed the program that the whole company's using, there's a tendency to be conceited.
The Attitude of Success
I've gone into business environments where I've been asked to speak to 50 or 60 business people, sales people. And you can tell the top ten from the bottom ten pretty easily. Because you'll walk in and you'll say, "Good morning." "Good morning. Morning." There's the bottom ten. They're the ones writing.
The top ten are going, "When do you think this will be over? Because I don't need this. I'm the salesperson of the year. Number one in the state, the region, the country, the planet, the universe. And I doubt there's anything you have to say that could contribute. In fact, you ought to be listening to me." Those who are rich have a tendency to be conceited. See that?
The Uncertainty of Riches
And the second thing is to fix their uncertainty and their hope on the uncertainty of riches. You know what I think that means? I think we have a tendency to say, "If I have that stuff, I'll be happy." That's why even when we look at somebody who's a movie star or an athlete who's famous, we're looking at it and say, "What do they want?"
Do you know the name Mutt Lange? Mutt Lange is a guy for me that I'm going, "What is it exactly in life you need?" You have hundreds of millions of dollars, all sorts of success, and beyond all of that, your wife is Shania Twain. It isn't going to get any better than this, boys and girls. And I read that Mutt walks away from that, and I'm saying, "What is it you need, Mutt?"
And you know what I'm doing? I'm buying right into the world system. The world system that would say, "If you have that, if you have that, if you have her, I'll bet you're going to be happy." That's what it means, the uncertainty of riches, I think. To begin to think that stuff will do for you what only a relationship with Christ can do.
You can never buy that happiness or that fulfillment. Success will never bring you those things you so desperately want. What are they? Well, it's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.
The fruit of the Spirit is the byproduct of a right relationship with God. I have peace with God, and now that I have peace with God, I can experience the peace of God. But you live in a world that doesn't buy into any of that.
The Character of the Last Days
They are lovers of self. Let's go back to 2nd Timothy 3. They are lovers of self and lovers of money. They are boastful, literally braggarts. They're loud, great claims of greatness. They're arrogant, self-exalting, determined to have it their own way. Literally, it means to place above, or the idea of superiority. They're arrogant and revilers. They're blasphemous. It carries the idea of being abusive or slanderous.
Disobedience to Parents
They're disobedient to parents. I don't know that I've ever seen a time when, at least around where I hung out, when we were kids and your dad said something or your mom said something, you just did it. And I watch it now, and I watch this parent, I don't get it. I don't get the parenting that goes this way.
I don't understand standing in a store and saying, "Timmy, Timmy, come here. Timmy, one, two, three." Okay, let me help you out here. Here's how this goes: "Timmy, come here. Bam!" That's how you deal with this. You train.
I'll give you the best show on television every week on parenting. It's the best show on parenting you're ever going to see, called Dog Whispers. Watch how he trains that dog. That's how you train a child. Now you have to add love and some other things to it.
Susan and I, I think, were pretty good parents, and we just used common sense. We were the mom and dad, and they were the kids. Delayed obedience was disobedience. James Dobson says it this way: the number one mistake parents make is thinking if they love their kids enough, they don't have to discipline them.
A Lesson in Consistent Parenting
I was teaching, Sarah had to be about four or five, so this would have been 25 years ago. So I had no business teaching a class, but I was teaching a class, and part of it was on parenting. We were out in church afterwards, and since I was teaching, we had brought two cars. We were right there in this church. It was like this major thoroughfare that everyone had to walk through. Sarah, Haley, Susan, and me were right there.
I said, "Haley, you go with your mom. Sarah, you come with me." Sarah said, "No." I said, "All right, let's do this again. Haley, you go with your mom. Sarah, you come with me." "No." Well now there was a crowd gathering. "Let's see how he handles this one, the one that just did the lesson in there. Let's see how this works for him."
I moved her over to the side a little bit, and I said, "All right, Sarah, you come with me." "No." So I spanked her, stood her back up, and said, "Sarah, you come with me." "No." She's crying, this little snot's rolling. I'll tell you, she's a lot like her mother. I had to deal with this.
She decided that this was going to be her Pickett's Charge. This was going to be her Gettysburg, and it was a significant moment. We went through this several times. Finally, crying and still defiant, she gave me her little hand and walked to the car. I never had another public challenge with her again. That was the moment she decided.
The Epidemic of Poor Parenting
It is amazing to me, the awful parenting that I see. As I said before, primarily because I don't think parents love their kids. Because if they did, they would deal with this. Here's why parenting is so tough: it requires consistency and presence. You can't parent from afar. The other thing that parenting does is it shows you how selfish you are, because you have to live a selfless life to raise that kid.
You live at a time when kids are just blatantly disobedient to their parents. We've got an epidemic problem with junior high and high school students today. The reason is simple: not lousy kids, lousy parents. In these last days, they'll be disobedient to parents.
Ungrateful and Unholy
Ungrateful. This sense of entitlement. They can't say thank you. It drives me nuts to go to a restaurant and pay a bill. To pay the bill and have the person who gives me the change say, "Have a good one." Have a good what? No, you say thank you. Ungrateful.
Unholy. It's the idea of gross indecency. Unloving. Here's what it means: not to follow natural affections. I'll give you a great example of this. There's no more natural affection than a mother for her child. Yet you live at a time when plus or minus 1.5 million mothers will kill their babies this year.
Divisiveness and Gossip
Irreconcilable differences. We've got neighbors suing neighbors, arguing at homeowner association meetings, ready to come to blows over whether the tree's going to go here or here.
Malicious gossips. It comes from the Greek word, this word malicious, from which we get the English word diabolical. It's used in the New Testament 34 times to describe Satan, the great accuser.
I had a guy that came to me one time and said, "I need to ask your forgiveness." I said, "That's cool. What did you do?" He said, "Well, there's a guy in town that I thought was you, but it isn't you. Everywhere I saw him, I would comment to all the people around him about you. I'd use your name. So what I really did was slander you all over town, but it wasn't you, it was this other guy. So I ask for your forgiveness."
I said, "Well, that's not a problem, because I'm the world's greatest forgiver, so that's not a problem. But just one point of interest: How are we going to fix this?"
If I have a pet peeve, and Christians do it all the time, is that we talk way too much about each other. We periodically dress it up and say, "You know, you need to be praying for so-and-so. They've always struggled with," and then we gossip.
Without Self-Control and Brutal
They'll be without self-control. They will jettison all inhibitions. They will be brutal.
They'll be savage. They'll be like wild animals in these last days. You see it all the time now. They'll break into a house, and not steal anything, and just beat the snot out of people. You'll see kids gathered on a schoolyard, and you'll see the film of it now on YouTube, as they gather around, and 10 or 12 kids will beat the snot out of another kid. They'll be brutal.
They'll be haters of good. Isaiah writes this: "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil. Who substitute darkness for light, and light for darkness. Who substitute bitter for sweet." They're haters of good. It's not that they're neutral, but they will mock anything that has value to it. They'll be treacherous. They'll even turn against their own families. Reckless, negligent, rash, self-centered.
Lovers of Pleasure Rather Than Lovers of God
Now, I want you to look at verse 4. It's an amazing verse, when you stop and begin to pull it apart, and it almost just falls apart real easily, the last part of it. They are lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God.
It does not say they love pleasure more than God. It says they love pleasure instead of God. So, all of a sudden, their recreation, their pleasure, their hedonistic desires becomes their God.
At the end of his little letter, 1 John chapter 5, I believe it's verse 21, John closes the letter this way. Strange way to close. He's rocking along, making all these points, he gets to the end, and he says this: "Little children, guard yourselves against idols." And that's the end of the letter.
We live at a time when we are idol worshipers. Do you see it? And at the core of that is our pleasure. It is our sports, or our food. We look at our lives, and what becomes our God in these last days is our own self-satisfaction. That's what He's saying.
He says, here's the general point, again, back to the text. He said, here's the general point. The general point is that in last days, difficult times will come. He begins to get a little more specific when he says this: men will be lovers of self and lovers of money. And then he describes what they're going to be like, and he kind of summarizes it and says this: they will be lovers of pleasure instead of lovers of God.
A Form of Godliness Without Power
And then verse 5, but they will be godless people. Do you see it in verse 5? They hold to a form of godliness, although they deny its power. They'll be spiritual. They'll love talking about spiritual things.
The section of the Borders bookstore that seems to be growing the fastest is spirituality. They will be deeply spiritual people. I think you need to understand the culture. One of the ways to understand the culture, a great way to understand the culture, is to go to Costco. Go to Costco and go to the section with movies and music and books.
Here's the key to understanding. Costco doesn't stock something unless it sells. That's all they're about. They are about one thing. They don't stock it if it doesn't sell. So if it sells, then you get a real great indication of the culture very quickly.
If you go to Costco and look at the books, the books they stock are the books that people are buying, and you will go there and you'll see a study Bible, and right next to it you will see all sorts of heresy by Deepak Chopra and all these other guys and "Conversations with God" and all this other junk. But it's the world you live in. It's the last days.
So people are lovers of self and lovers of money and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, but they hold to a form of godliness. It's their own godliness. It's the God that they created. One of the authors said this: "God made man in His own image and man has been returning the favor ever since." Meaning we create God as we want Him to be.
Creating Our Own God
Haven't you had that experience? You decide to have this conversation, you sit down with a friend, and you're at a Starbucks or Seattle Coffee or whatever it is you have up here, and you're having this discussion, and you start talking about the difficult things of life, and all of a sudden you talk about God. You talk about a God who gives and takes away. You talk about the God of the Bible, and all of a sudden your friend says something like this to you: "My God would never do that."
Right? Haven't you had that experience? What have they done at that moment? They've created their own God. "My God would never." My God would never allow or cause something in your life that inflicts pain and hardship. My God would never do that. Well, here's the problem you got. The God of the Bible does.
They will hold to a form of godliness, but they deny its power. Where's the power? Where's the power in our relationship? It's in the cross. Isn't that what we looked at last night? Paul said, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel." Why? "For it's the power of God for salvation."
The Power is in the Blood
Where's the power that we have? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. "What can wash away my sin?" Listen, I've got a fundamental problem in my life. You do too, and it's sin.
We see this all the time. You can take somebody who just drinks too much and get him sober, but they're just going to hell sober. You can get somebody who's promiscuous and you get him celibate, but now they're just going to hell celibate. They're going to hell miserable. They're celibate and sober and going to hell. They're losing on every level at this point.
That's not the power. The power is not to change behavior. The power is to change a heart. That's the hardest thing with kids, is we confuse a kid who's compliant with a kid who's converted. That's the hardest thing in raising kids, is to try to figure out, is that little kid a little Eddie Haskell? Who's saying, "Yes, Pastor Schrader. Yes, Pastor Schrader."
I hate that. Because I know when they get around the corner, they're going, "I can't stand that fat guy." Now they are. See, here's what Paul says to Timothy, to you, and to me. That in these last days, difficult times are going to come.
And what's going to make them difficult are the people. They're going to be lovers of self and lovers of money. Watch out for these people. You know what you and I need? Discernment.
There was a meeting that took place at Oregon State University in the year 2000. It was called God at 2000. One of the speakers said this: no religion can claim to have the whole truth about the mystery of faith. And I urge all Christians to embrace other faiths. Rabbi Kushner, who wrote the book filled with heresy called Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People, said that various religions offer a multitude of paths to God, and they all get us to the same place. Another author said this: the ancient Christian message of Jesus, saying "I am the way, the truth, the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me," is vanishing and is being replaced by a new Christian message of unity.
You know what Paul says that is? That's the last days. That's the last days when people are going to come and say, "I don't know why we have to argue about this. Can't we talk about the things upon which we agree?" And I'm okay with that. But the things upon which we agree are things like the infallibility of Scripture, the virgin birth, the incarnation of the living God, Christ dying a substitutionary atoning death for us, the resurrection of the dead.
Alarming Statistics
I'm going to give you a couple of alarming statistics. One is just out in the world: 50% of the kids who enter high school this year will not graduate. That is an alarming statistic. But when you look at the body of Christ, here's a more alarming statistic. Using George Barna's numbers—you know that name? Kind of the Christian polling guy—he says that somewhere around 50 to 60% of people say they are born-again Christians. But when he asks, "Do you believe in the very things we just mentioned?" I'm not talking about hard things now. I'm talking about the infallibility of Scripture, the virgin birth, the substitutionary atoning death of Jesus on the cross, the physical resurrection of Christ. When we look at those things, you know what the percentage is? 7% of the people in this country believe in those basic truths. 7%.
China is more Christian than the United States of America. I'm all for missionaries. But if you want a ripe mission field, let me tell you where you can find it: the local church, filled with men and women who want to sing songs, who even want to study Bible and read verses, but have hearts that have never been converted. That's the last days. And you live in them.
Paul's Call to Us
Here's Paul's call to Timothy and His call to you and to me. It's to understand and be able to read the culture in which you live. That in the last days, this is how people are going to be. And He says in verse 5, "avoid such people as these." Don't even hang around with people like this. Watch out.
Something's going to happen really interesting. Most of you are here all week. We are not. We are out of here tomorrow. But there'll be that moment at the end of the week when it's the equivalent of coming down from the mountain. It's when you have to go back to what we might call the real world. Well, here's where we find out if this stuff is really true. If you can't pull off the Christian faith sitting at Cannon Beach, in the conference center, you got real serious issues. The challenge is not here. The challenge is there. And to understand the world you live in.
Living in a Dark World
And in a world that's dark and difficult and loves self and loves money and loves pleasure rather than loves God, in the midst of that, He says, "I want you to go and not become cynical or harsh or angry or offensive, but I want you to go in love and share the gospel message." That's the challenge that He gives us, isn't it? And we can't go and begin to give this away if God hasn't done that work inside of us first. The basic step is understanding the gospel, the power. The world has spirituality, but they deny its power.
And the power is the resurrected Christ. It's not just that the tomb was empty. That's fine. It's not just that the tomb was empty. It's that there is a risen God. He appeared. They've seen Jesus. He's alive. And our fundamental problem, which was our sin, now has been reconciled. His blood has washed away our sin. And now He says, "You go into the world and you become My messenger."
Sharing the Message
You take this message in a world that doesn't want any part of it. It wants to talk about spirituality. And you, just as Paul said, "I want to talk to you about that unknown God," you can go and say, "You know what? We can talk about money and self because the reason you want that is what you really want is happiness. And that's not illegitimate. What you need is joy. And there's only one place to find it. And that's Jesus." And they see you live that way and they're drawn to that message.
Well, for us in this world, trying to sort things out, figure out how we want to live, we need that compass in these last days. In these last days, when people are like this, when they're acting like this, thinking like this, behaving like this, what do we do? Paul's going to give us the answer. We're going to look at it tomorrow morning. We'll start right there.
Father, thank You for this wonderful truth. Thank You for Your Son, Jesus Christ. Thank You for love that we find in Him and Him alone. God, in these last days, when people love themselves and they love money and they're self-absorbed, and yet they understand there's something bigger than them, so they create their own God, allow us to go and to share this wonderful truth with them. As You transform our lives and our life is changed, let us be instruments that You use to change lives around us. God, we do thank You for wonderful places.
that You provide us, like Cannon Beach. Wonderful instruments like Christian music and Christian books, for the Scripture itself. God, all of that, so that You can reshape our mind, our heart, our attitude. God, we pray that You don't just give us knowledge, You give us discernment. That in a world that can be confusing, we can sort out the truth. That we can find real power, and the power is in the cross. God, thank You for the blood. We pray to You in the Savior's name. Amen.