Beloved: grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. I am delighted to welcome you to another week of the month of August 2022. And I pray that God will continually humble your heart before Him, so that you will always embrace His word for your daily edification, exaltation and salvation. Amen.
Paul, writing to Timothy in a letter, says to him, “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” (2Tim 4:3-4NIV) Who are the people this apostle is referring to here? Is he referring to unbelievers? No! Rather, he is referring to so-called Christians, to people who claim to have been born again through faith in Christ Jesus.
And what does Paul say about these people? He says they have a wrong attitude towards the truth of the of the Lord Jesus. In what way is their attitude towards the truth of Jesus wrong? First, as he points out, it is by not putting up with it. In other words, they detest it and do not want to embrace it. In fact, Paul says they turn their ears away from it. Why? It offends and hurts them. Why does it offend and hurt them? It is because it is contrary to their way of life.
Perhaps you too hate to hear the truth about God or about yourself or about life in general. Perhaps you too are continually turning your ears away from the truth when you are confronted with it. It only means that your life is contrary to it and you don’t want to admit it. Therefore, you will never be free from whatever binds you and is destroying you, for it is only the truth that makes people free (John 8:32).
Another thing that Paul says about these so-called Christians is that they gather around themselves a great number of teachers that will tell them what their itching ears want to hear. That means these people know what they want to hear. But it is not the truth. And in order to satisfy themselves, they will do anything to look for those who will tell them what they want to hear. Even if they have to pay handsomely for this to happen, they will do so.
It is no wonder, then, that we have a lot of preachers today who have departed from the truth of Jesus in order to teach errors, myths and other related nonsense. And interestingly, they also have a great number of people that are willing to follow them anywhere.
Now perhaps you too have certain things you want to hear from God or your church leaders other than the truth. Maybe there are things about money, sex, Christian devotion and so forth that you want to hear from God but which are contrary to what He wants to tell you. I want you to know that you will never be free from the trap of sin and death until you humble yourself to hear and embrace the truth He is bringing to you. Yes, you may go from prayer mountains to prayer mountains or from prophets to prophets for deliverance or exaltation. But as long as what you want to hear is not what God wants to say but what your itching ears want to hear, you will never experience the salvation or exaltation you are seeking.
So, what do you want to hear? Is it God’s truth that will bring you perfect liberty in your life or men’s lies and stories that have no power to give you any serious help? As for me, it is the truth of God that I want to hear all the time. And that is why I join Habakuk to say, “I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint.” (Hab 2:1NIV)
Do have a week of delight.
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