I Need a Doctor

Good morning! My name is Matt Martinez and I am the pastor here at Renovation Church Shoreview.

About once a year, I go to the doctor for a checkup. Nothing major — but something has shifted in those visits recently. Before, my doctor would almost question why I was there. The appointments felt like a formality, and I was in and out. But lately, my doctor uses words like "age" to explain the soreness I'm feeling. And as I'm heading out the door: "Hey Matt, I know you like candy. You should start laying off the sweets."

I don't care for any of that — but I keep going back, because my doctor is trying to help me live a healthy life and prevent serious illness.

In our passage today, Paul takes on the role of our spiritual doctor, he diagnoses what is going on in the world and in our lives — naming what is unhealthy, and pointing us toward healing. Let's read it together.

Please grab your Bible, or find the one under your chair, and turn to 2 Timothy 3:1-9. In the Renovation Church Bibles, you'll find it on page 814.

Paul is the writer of 2 Timothy, and he is in prison and waiting to be killed for his faith in Jesus. He doesn't have much time left, but he wants to make the most of it, and so he is passing on as much wisdom, encouragement, and warning as he can to Timothy in this letter. And so this is why the writing can feel urgent and direct.

Paul wants to help Timothy lead a spiritually healthy life, and give him the tools to help others do the same in a world that constantly undermines it.

We also, live in a world and culture that undermines the Christian faith blatantly or subtly, we can learn from Paul’s wisdom and practices in this letter as well.

Let's read 2 Timothy 3:1-9 together, we will start reading where you see the large number 3 on page 814.

1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

6 They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, 7 always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. 9 But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.

Just some light reading we have for the Sunday morning service.

For those wondering what is going on in the world today? Paul, our doctor, gives us a diagnosis of the days we live in:

The Diagnosis: There Will Be Terrible Times in the Last Days

Paul's description of the first century feels unfortunately familiar. We could write our own version for today: soaring gas prices, gridlocked politics, the war in Iran, declining student performance, public violence, stagnation, and inflation — and those are just today's top headlines. What a time it is to be a Christian.

When we hear "the last days," our minds tend to jump to post-apocalyptic imagery and end-times predictions that we may see in movies or shows. But the Bible has a larger, longer view of the end times.

According to the Bible, the "last days" actually began with the birth of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2. That means Paul and Timothy were already living in the last days, and evil has been accelerating ever since. When Paul calls these "terrible times," he means furious, dangerous, and difficult — and that certainly feels familiar right now.

It's right to believe we are in the last days before Jesus returns. But we miss Paul's point if we get lost trying to figure out dates or decode every detail he describes.

Paul isn't writing this to satisfy our curiosity — he's writing it as a wake-up call. Evil is like a sickness. Sin is contagious, and if we're not paying attention, the unhealthiness of the world quietly infects us and pulls us away from God.

So the real question Paul is pushing us toward is this: Have you been infected — and how do we build the spiritually healthy habits needed to faithfully endure?

My daughter plays on a soccer team — a bunch of eight-year-olds still learning the game. But I've really enjoyed watching one of her coaches work with the girls. At halftime, the coach gets them together and has them talk through what they did well and what they need to work on. Some of the girls don't love talking about the struggles, but this coach gets them to name it — and then, come up with a plan to improve.

My daughter’s soccer team can't grow without knowing what's working and what isn't.

It's not enough to know that the times we live in are difficult. We have to hear what is causing the problems. We have to hear that some of our habits might be causing the problem.

The Diagnosis: There Will Be Terrible Times in the Last Days

• Humility is required for healing.

The first step is to go to the doctor- we (first) go to the Great Physician Jesus- not ourselves or others to- find healing.

Next, we really listen to what the doctor has to say. You cannot get upset when the doctor says you can’t have as many Reeses Peanut Butter Cups as you used to. (That’s just a random example).

A really practical way followers of Jesus can begin these steps is a simple prayer we say using the verses we find in Psalm 139:23-24

“Search me, God , and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

The healing process begins when we humbly ask the doctor to name the places in our lives that are unhealthy.

In verses 2-4, Paul gives us a list of symptoms that point to the places that have grown unhealthy in our lives and in the world. Let’s read them.

2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God

A summary of the symptoms Paul lists can be described in this way:

The Diagnosis: There Will Be Terrible Times in the Last Days

• Humility is required for healing.

The Symptoms: Disordered Loves and Disordered Allegiances

In verses 2–4, we take the lesser loves and the lesser allegiances and make them ultimate- we put them before God.

I read this great analogy to describe this:

Our heart is like a love pump. It was always intended to pour out love, and the object of that love was to be on God first. But our sin causes that pump to stay on and get knocked off kilter. Now the love pump pours out love on ourselves instead of God.

This list in verses 2-4 are examples of that.

I want to read through this list again slowly, with some explanation of each symptom along the way. I want to do this because I hope to use this as an opportunity for honest self-examination. Have the courage to name the spiritually unhealthy places in your own life.

And before we begin, let’s pray the verse we walked through earlier:

Psalm 139:23-24

“Search me, God , and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

So now, I am going to read through this list of things Paul says people will be. Where do you see yourself?

• Lovers of themselves — that means your own feelings and desires become the supreme authority
• Lovers of money — you say "If I could just get that, then I'd be happy"
• Boastful — you love to draw attention to your accomplishments
• Proud — an inflated view of yourself
• Abusive — weaponizing words to destroy someone's reputation or emotional health
• Disobedient to parents — a rebellious spirit toward authority
• Ungrateful — assuming you have a right to what you receive
• Unholy — participating in what you know to be wrong
• Without love — you are unable to have compassion
• Unforgiving- you hold everyone accountable, but not yourself
• Slanderous — distorting what others say and do
• Without self-control — a slave to your appetites
• Brutal — refusing to give compassion
• Not lovers of the good — unable to appreciate the goodness and beauty God gives, but drawn instead to what is demeaning, vulgar, or crude
• Treacherous — breaking promises for personal advantage
• Rash — ignoring wisdom and accountability
• Conceited — making everything about yourself and how you feel
• Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God — believing life exists to satisfy your desires, and refusing any sacrifice God calls you to

When we see ourselves in this list, we're tempted to do one of two things — deny it or spiral into discouragement. But God isn't trying to shame us. He's trying to help us get better.

Denial doesn't make sin disappear. Discouragement keeps us stuck. What actually leads to healing is humility — coming to God honestly and surrendering what we find. When we refuse to do that, we start reaching for counterfeit cures instead of the real one.

Let’s come back to our passage and read verses 5-7.

5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.

6 They are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over gullible women, who are loaded down with sins and are swayed by all kinds of evil desires, 7 always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.

The Diagnosis: There Will Be Terrible Times in the Last Days

• Humility is required for healing.

The Symptoms: Disordered Loves and Disordered Allegiances

The Counterfeit Cure: Settles for appearances instead of true transformation.

I love running, and one year I signed up for a race. I needed to do some training for this race, and the program I downloaded to help me, opened with a surprising observation: most people buy the shoes, get the gear, and sign up for the race — but never actually start the training. They look like a runner. They just never hit the trails.

Paul warns about the same trap in verse 5. It's possible to look godly on the outside while never letting God actually change you on the inside.

John Ortberg captures this honestly in his book The Life You've Always Wanted. He writes about how quickly his heart chases the approval of others — and then admits that even while confessing that struggle, he catches himself hoping people will think he's humble for saying it. The desire to appear good can run so deep that we don't even notice it.

That's exactly what makes this counterfeit cure so dangerous — it doesn't feel like a counterfeit. It creeps in, worming its way quietly into our lives, which is why Paul uses the image of false teaching sneaking into a home.

A note on verse 6: Paul mentions gullible women here. In the Ephesian church, most women had never received any religious education. Their eagerness to learn was actually a gift — a new freedom Jesus had opened to them countering the culture — but it also made these women easy targets for false teachers. Paul isn't criticizing them. He's exposing the tactic. Evil targets the vulnerable, which is exactly why the church must make every person — men, women, and children — deeply rooted in the truth of God's Word.

And Paul gives us a quick example of this in the following verses:

8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so also these teachers oppose the truth. They are men of depraved minds, who, as far as the faith is concerned, are rejected. 9 But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.

In the book of the Bible titled Exodus, there were some Egyptian magicians of pharaoh who opposed Moses- who was a servant of God. Moses was sent by God to free the slaves in Egypt, and he was given power by God to perform miracles to help convince the Egyptians that this is what God wanted them to do.

But when Moses started performing miracles, Jannes and Jambres were able to do some of the same miracles- not under the power of God, but under the power of evil. They had the appearance of godliness, even though they were not following God.

Yet eventually they could not match God miracle-for-miracle, and their counterfeit powers were shown to be inferior to God’s true power.

The Diagnosis: There Will Be Terrible Times in the Last Days

• Humility is required for healing.

The Symptoms: Disordered Loves and Disordered Allegiances

The Counterfeit Cure: Settles for appearances instead of true transformation

The True Cure: Acknowledging the Truth of Jesus

When Paul uses the word "truth" in verse 8, he means Jesus himself. And here's the hard reality — you can hear the Word of God over and over, love the idea of his grace and forgiveness, and still never fully hand your life over to him. That's not the true cure. That's just another counterfeit.

The true cure is to acknowledge and surrender to the real thing.

Think about a bank teller checking $100 bills. They don't learn to spot fakes by studying counterfeits — they study the real bill so closely that anything false stands out immediately. The more familiar you are with the real thing, the more obvious the fakes become.

It works the same way with Jesus. The more time you spend with him — reading his Word, praying, bringing every area of your life under his truth — the easier it becomes to recognize and resist what's false.

A simple way to check which direction you're heading is to ask: am I chasing pleasure, or am I growing in love for God?

• Pleasure comes easily; loving God takes effort and sometimes sacrifice.
• Pleasure feels good now; loving God pays off in ways that last.
• Pleasure lets us tune out responsibility; loving God calls us back to it.
• Pleasure is about pleasing others over God; loving God asks us to let go of our pride.

Coming back to verse 5, Paul writes —"Have Nothing to Do With Such People"

This can sound harsh at first. Paul actually tells Timothy one chapter later to share the gospel with everyone. And this distinction matters.

Paul is specifically addressing leaders in the church who wear the mask of godliness while holding onto sin — and even defending it as acceptable. With people like that, we draw a loving boundary. We don't let them lead or shape our community, but we always leave the door open if they genuinely want to change.

More broadly, Paul is warning us not to get too comfortable with the world's way of doing things. It sneaks up on us slowly — through the movies we watch, the music we listen to, the content we scroll through — until sin stops feeling like sin. The answer is to keep returning to God the Great Physician, and refuse to make a home in anything less.

When you stack all of this up — the terrible times, the deep-rooted self-centeredness, the hollow religious masks, the algorithms creeping into our homes — it can feel overwhelming. But Paul doesn't leave us there.

Take a look at verse 9:

But they will not get very far because, as in the case of those men, their folly will be clear to everyone.

Just as Jannes and Jambres — the Egyptian magicians who opposed Moses — were eventually put to shame and compelled to give reluctant glory to God, so will the evil of the last days. Their power had limits. And so does Satan's power, even now. God is still in control.

This is the message of great hope in the midst of great darkness: the challenge of the last days has an answer, and that answer is Jesus Christ. The spirit of our times is not stronger than the power of Jesus. We don't have to be bound by it. We don't have to be slaves to self. .

There is hope — and his name is Jesus.

I have shared this story, but I feel like it is important to say it again.

When my son was born, he was not ready to enter into the world. All it took was five seconds, and he knew he preferred to be back with mom. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for people to know this world is not what it should be. We live in a place desperate for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control… We have all of those things as Christians! It is the fruit of the Spirit of God in us!

I will then finish the service and then come back and give the gospel invitation at the very end of the service.