TRANSCRIPTION | Sunday, May 9, 2021 | Two Things Are Going To Happen

 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

2 Timothy chapter three, verse 14, “But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them. And that from childhood, you have known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and it is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,” verse 17, this will be our anchor text today, “that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly furnished, for every good work.” Thoroughly furnished for every good work. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

Father, I ask you today to help me to preach, help me to teach, use this moment, bind spirits of hindrance, bind spirits of distraction, and let your will be done in Jesus’ name, and this church said, amen. If you've ever been in a home that is not furnished, it obviously feels lacking. And I'm sure that all of us have that experience to some degree. A few years ago, my wife and I, we were in the process of relocating. And we actually sold our house, furnished. And I don't know that we really thought that through, because it sounded like a good idea at the moment. But then when we went to purchase the new property, and we began to try to move into the home, like we realize we don't have anything. And walking in that home and even trying to figure out like what is it that we're going to furnish this home with, even while we were working through that process, it just didn't feel like home. It didn't feel comfortable, and it seemed like it took so long to get it just right to where it was fully furnished. You know, as I think about this text that we're going to take as an anchor text this morning, 2 Timothy chapter three, verse 17, it talks about that God desires for the man of God, I think you would also apply the woman of God, to be made perfect. That they would go through a process of becoming who it is that God really wants them to be. Look at it again, 2 Timothy 317, so that they can be thoroughly furnished unto all good works. God has a good work that he wants you to do. He has a plan for you. He has a hope for you. There's a way that God wants to use you that's going to impact other people, and bless other people. And what God wants you to experience is a furnishing for those works. That he begins to do something in you that then when you attempt to complete or facilitate the good work, the thing you're going to need to get that good work done, you look within yourself, and you find it. There's things already in the house of your life. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

When you think about this concept that Paul is writing to Timothy, this is his second letter to Timothy. Timothy is a pastor. Timothy is leading a church. And Paul speaks to him, often as a spiritual son. In fact, Paul repetitively refers to him as someone that would be like a son to him in the spirit. They have this spiritual parental child relationship going on. And so Paul talks to Timothy in a tone where he doesn't really hold anything back. And he talks to Timothy like you might talk to your child. He wants him to know there's some things that Timothy cannot overlook and that Timothy has absolutely got to have if he's going to be successful in his life. And he's telling him that he needs to be thoroughly furnished for good works. When we think about Timothy being furnished for good works, understand that this scripture applies to you and me as well, that God wants us to be thoroughly furnished for good works. Why? Like, why is it so important that you have to be furnished in order to do the good works, that you have to be equipped to do the good works? Well, one of the things that Paul points out to Timothy in this letter is there are going to be two things that are going to happen, absolutely two things that are going to happen. There's nothing anybody can do to stop it. They're going to happen one way or the other. It shows up in 2 Timothy chapter three, verse 12. This is what he says. He says, “If you live godly, in Christ, Jesus, you will suffer persecution.” The next verse says, “But evil men and seducers will wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

So what Paul is saying is there are two things that are going to happen. Number one, those who live godly will suffer persecution. That's not something that any of us want to hear. It's not something that we can really get excited about, but it's going to happen. Persecution has happened in the past, towards followers of Jesus. Persecution will happen in the future, towards followers of Jesus. And whether you realize it or not, persecution is happening right now to followers of Jesus, even if you are not experiencing it personally. One of the things that happens to us in America is sometimes we take for granted the liberties and the freedoms that we have. And we don't understand that there are people all over the world, even the 26 churches that you guys have helped to plant in China, we don't even get to share digitally the names of those pastors, or pictures of those congregations, because they are under such levels of persecution, that if it were to be somehow infiltrated, it could cost them their entire lives. They would cease to exist as humans, they are under such persecution. All who live godly, will suffer persecution. It might be extreme persecution, it might not be as extreme. But if you keep putting God first in your life, at some point, the enemy is going to show up and he's going to use some kind of a personality to try and persecute you and push you away from doing the good works that God has called you to do. This word, live godly. I told you earlier that Paul looked at Timothy as a spiritual son. And some would say that the Greek words that make up that term, live godly, have a parental tongue to them. In fact, that terminology is only used in the Greek one other time in all of the New Testament, and it shows up in the book of Titus. And Titus was also a spiritual son to Timothy. So, Paul uses this word in a parental tone that you need to live godly, you need to live godly. And the thing that that “live godly” means is that you're going to be inwardly devout. That God's gonna make you devout from the inside out. You might say it to your kid like this, straighten up. That's what Paul's telling Timothy, is, I want you to have something from the inside out. I don't want you to just be all show. I don't want you to just go through the motions of religious formality. Like Timothy, I want you to be the real deal from the inside out. That you are as devout on the inside as you appear to be on the outside. And Timothy, I want you to realize when you do that, that's an awesome thing, but the devil is gonna hate you for it. And so the enemy is going to try to persecute you, and he's going to try to press down from the outside what's happening on the inside. So he's saying, I want you to have something on the inside that when the attack comes on the outside, you're gonna be able to stand. You're going to be able to take it. You're going to be able to resist it. You're going to be able to keep doing the good works that God has called you to do. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

You know when you think about that word persecuted, it actually shows up in the New Testament over and over again. In fact, Jesus Himself used that same Greek word somewhere between 10 and 15 times just in the book of Matthew alone. Jesus, Paul, multiple writers of the New Testament, they try to tell us that there's going to be some form of persecution. Why? Why is that going to happen? Well, number one, the enemy is always going to try to steal, kill and to destroy. But the thing you need to also know is the second part that's sure to happen. You do remember right? 2 Timothy three, verse 12, through 13. Two things are guaranteed to happen, all who live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. But what's the next verse, “But evil men and seducers will wax worse and worse.” It's guaranteed. Evil people are going to get worse. I didn't expect a celebration there, nor should there be one. But it's a reality. Evil people are going to get worse. That word wax worse, it seems to imply that it would happen in a gradual way. But even as you look deeper into the text, one of the things that that text is implying is that people will literally pioneer evil. One of the imageries that is associated with the terminology within this text is that, think about a pioneer who is trying to work his way through a thicket, or through this area that's grown up, and no one has ever been this far west before. But he's exploring, and so he's making his way through the thicket and through the danger, and he's fighting the all the mess that comes with that. And he doesn't know where the next attack’s coming from. And he doesn't know where the next battle is coming from, but he just keeps going forward. Well, it'd be one thing if you were doing that with something positive in mind, but what this scripture implies is that evil people do that with something negative in mind. That they literally begin to pioneer. What's the next wicked thing we can come up with? What's the next evil thing we can come up with? How much further can we take this thing into darkness. That's what this text is saying is that evil people are going to get worse and worse. And that's why godly people will ultimately experience persecution. But it says that as they're getting more and more evil, it's happening because they are deceiving, and being deceived.

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

Romans chapter one, verse 30, Paul talked about to the Roman Church. He said that people ultimately are going to pull away from God until they literally become inventors of evil, because they'll no longer have a God consciousness. That's Romans, chapter one, verse 30. But Revelation, chapter 12, verse 12, says this, that when time begins to reach its end, and time begins to become short on Earth, the enemy is going to sense that, and what he will do, he will increase his anger, he will increase his ammunition, and he will increase his assault, and he will increase all the stuff that he begins to release into the earth, and people are going to start to become increasingly wicked. In other words, it implies that the people who live in the end of time will see elements of evil that may be no one has ever lived up to that point will experience or see. Why? Because the enemy, he knows this time is short. And so him being the father of lies, he starts trying to deceive, and deceive, and to deceive, and get people who have explored evil up to this point to take their evil a little bit further, and a little bit further, and a little bit further, and he keeps drawing them away of their own lust. And evil people become worse and worse to the point that they will begin to embrace sin, and they won't even blush. The things that once would have at least made someone in sin have felt a little bit uncomfortable, they will begin to embrace openly. They will celebrate it openly. And it will be done in a way to where that men become more and more evil. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

Two things that are guaranteed that if you live godly, at some point you will suffer persecution. In fact, it will be a validation of your godliness. Second thing, evil people are going to get worse and worse, because they're going to settle for deceiving and being deceived. Let that sink in for a moment. Two things guaranteed to happen. Two things guaranteed to happen. You want a full context of it? 2 Timothy chapter three, the same chapter that we've been evaluating. Paul draws a picture. Chapter three, verse one. He said, “I want you to understand this Timothy,

that as godly people suffer persecution and as evil people get worse and worse, know this, in the last days, perilous times will come, and men will be lovers of themselves. They'll love money. They'll boast. They'll be proud. They'll blaspheme. They'll be disobedient to their parents. There'll be unthankful. They’ll be unholy. They’ll be unloving. They’ll be unforgiving. Just in what we've read thus far, you see social media and canceled culture, slanders without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, they'll deny power of it. From such people you got to turn away Timothy, for of this sort are those who creep into households, and make captives of gullible women, loaded down with sin, led away by various lusts, always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

So when we're thinking about godly people are going to suffer persecution, and we think about the fact that evil people are going to get worse and worse. And then we begin to see Paul literally describe this for us of how it's going to unfold, how it's going to look, in the middle, you start to think, what are we supposed to do, man? Like, I don't want to suffer persecution. I pray that we never have to know persecution the way that much of the world has had to experience it. I don't want somebody who's a bad person to become a worse person. You don't either. You don't want an evil person to become more evil. So what are you supposed to do? Like how do you combat that? How do you overcome that? How do you keep living for God from the inside out if all that mess is coming at you from the outside in? How do you do it? And Paul helped Timothy, 2 Timothy, chapter three, verse 14, he told him “But Timothy, you must continue in the things which you have learned and you have been assured of knowing from whom you have learned them.” So what Paul tells Timothy is yes, Timothy, godly people are going to suffer persecution. And yes, Timothy, evil people are going to get worse and worse. And here's what some of that people getting more evil is going to look like. But Timothy in the middle of all that, I want you to just keep on keeping on. You continue doing what you have learned to do. Continue doing what you've learned. What did he learn to do? Like, so, okay, keep doing what you know, to do, keep doing what you've learned to do. But what did he learn to do? It's actually a very simple answer. So we just read verse 14, now I want you to see verse 15, “From your childhood, you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.” There is absolutely nothing that you can learn that will be greater than the scriptures of God's Word. There is nothing that you can put in your child that will do them more lasting good than the Bible itself. You can help them with their jump shot, and you can teach them how to run for a touchdown, and you can help your daughter expand her social media influence, and we can help our sons, and we can help our daughters, and we can help our children, and we can put all this incredible stuff in them, but at the end of the day, when godly people are suffering persecution, and when evil people are getting worse, there's going to be one thing that's going to be important above all else, and that is that they will have learned something that they can continue in, and that thing that they learn above all else has to be the Holy Scriptures. And the thing, the thing that Paul tells Timothy is he says, you learned this when you was a kid, man. Your mama had you in Sunday school, she had you in children's church, she was bringing you home, and she was taking you through the Word of God. And she was teaching you how to remember and how to memorize and how to get the sword of the Spirit in your life to where you could yield it skillfully. And hey, Timothy, that's why when godly people start suffering persecution, and when evil people start getting worse and worse, you're going to be able to make your back like a T-rail, and continue doing what you have learned to do, because this is not something you're just getting started with, this has been in use since a kid.

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

But here's the thing, here's the thing. I want you to see something that stuck out to me in this passage of text. I had a day to kind of take some time and pray this week, and I actually found myself led to 2 Timothy chapter three, wasn't exactly where I was expecting to wind up at. But I just kept reading that chapter over, and over, and over, and then I saw something. I saw something that I had never noticed about the text before. That in this passage, when Paul is talking about how evil people are going to get worse and worse, and then he tells you about what all that evil stuffs gonna look like. It sounded pretty bad, right? Did you notice that one of the reasons that he said that was gonna happen, 2 Timothy, chapter three, “For this sort, are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sin, that they may be led away by various lusts.? The first thing I would say to you is if you have a creep in your house, get him out. Sorry, is that what you….Well, I can't get no help on a Sunday morning. It says there's gonna be stuff that's literally going to try to creep into houses and try to take advantage of gullible women. And I thought about that, and I prayed through that some, and I believe this is one of the things that the Lord would say, that when the discernment of women is suppressed, it limits the ability of the next generation to be thoroughly furnished for the work of God. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

There's something about the discernment of a woman. There's something about a woman's willingness to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit of God. And to be able to get in tune with what God is not only saying, but wants to do in the earth. And that if women disconnect from that God connection in discernment, and allow themselves to become gullible and give place to the creeps of this world, then it seems to make a next generation more vulnerable, because you have to go back with me for a moment to what God said to Timothy through the pen of Paul. God told Timothy, he said, Timothy, godly people are gonna suffer persecution, evil people are gonna get worse. What do you do? You just continue doing what you know to do, because you learned it. And the thing that you learned was the Holy Scriptures. Y'all still with me? So you're going to keep doing what you learned to do, and the thing you learned was holy scriptures. And you learn those Holy Scriptures when you were a kid. Guess who he learned them from? 2 Timothy, chapter one, verse five, God lays the smackdown through the pen of Paul. Paul starts out this letter by saying, Timothy, when I think about you, I can't help but to think about your grandma and your mama, your granny Loyce and your mama Eunice, they had something special. And when I'm around you, Timothy, our sense that what was in them is in you too. That same gift that was in their life is in your life. Most people believe, scholars especially, that Timothy's dad was probably a pagan. He was probably a heathen. He was probably a creep. But granny and mama, granny and mama, drug that boy to church. Granny and mama made sure that boy knew how to pray. Granny and mama understood this boy's got to have the Word of God on the inside of him because he is not meant to be like everybody else. I don't care what kind of generational curse the enemy's trying to bring over his family tree, it's gonna stop right here, and granny and mama got involved, and they put a hedge of protection around that boy to where he learned something. That come hell or high water, if my God gets me in my God will get me out. That if I'm suffering persecution, or if evil people are getting worse, that's something worth standing for from the inside out. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

It's amazing that even this fatherly thing that Timothy was missing, God provided it in the spiritual realm through Paul. Granny, and mama. Granny and mama. Hey, granny, hey, mama, don't you ever settle for being gullible. You walk in the discernment of the Holy Spirit. If I could just testify about my mama for a minute. I feel like I grew up with granny Loyce and Mama Eunice, sister Betty May and sister Sharon. And I have an incredible father. And I'm grateful for that part of my story. But today's Mother's Day I need to talk about granny and mama. I need to talk about my granny teaching me how to pray when all she knew how to say was Lord bless Eric. And I stand before you at 40 years old today blessed coming and going, the head and not the tail, because somebody who couldn't even string three sentences together and had nothing more than a sixth grade education knew how to pray the blessings of God down on a family and believe. I can tell you about my mama. She ain't gullible. She got the devil at Hello. I’d come home, and I'd be like, hey, mama, I'm thinking about going out with this girl; she says you ain’t gonna be thinking long. It started to get late, and I’d start to kind of since it's time for a little bit of trouble, and it was back when cell phones were the size of suitcases. It would start ringing

Ring. Ring. I don't know who I'm trying to help this morning. This is a smartphone, we had dumb phones. It would start ringing. 

“Eric, where you at?”

“All nowhere mama, just you know.” 

“Eric, you need to get home and you get home now.” 

“Mom, I don't feel like coming home.” 

“I said you better get home, and you better get home now. Boy, I will beat the tail off you.”

Sorry. My mama. Not your mama. But she had this sense. I'd come in my room, she would have the bedspreads tore off, everything tore out of the closet, everything laid out. She was inspecting. I know it’s in here, and I know it's in here somewhere, I can sense it. I’d come in, my truck be disheveled, everything throwed out on the driveway. What is wrong with you, women?, it's in here, I know it's somewhere. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

Aren't you glad to know that God can use mamas. She got the revelation of prayer clothes, maybe that's new to some of you, maybe something you've never heard of or thought about. But the Bible talks about the Apostle Paul and how that it says it while he was praying he would have handkerchiefs on his body. And then he would send those handkerchiefs and miracles would happen. And my momma knew she wasn't Paul, but she thought if it could work for one, God is no respecter of persons, maybe it worked for Sharon. And so she'd get handkerchiefs and she would pray over them and, and she put them under my bed, because she knew I was running from God. And she knew I was wrestling with sin, and my bed got miserable. I didn't wanna sleep in my bed anymore. So I moved to the couch. And the couch got miserable. So I moved to the other couch, and then that couch, and so I went for a drive, and then the drive was miserable. Everywhere I went, she was chasing me with prayer calls. Years later, I opened up my billfold and found one on the inside of my billfold. She just wanted to believe that hell wasn't gonna win. And she was willing to stretch her faith and to believe God, and I think ultimately when I pulled over at mile marker 82 on the Cumberland Parkway in 1998 and finally surrendered to God, it was a direct result of a grandma and a mom who weren't gullible.  And I've humorously shared with you some of the stories because if I were to tell them seriously, it  would blow your mind the level they went to. Just believe in God that hell’s not going to win. The kingdom of heaven is going to be imposed. 

 

Pastor Eric Gilbert

And I just, I feel like that there's those of you that your grandma's and your mom's, and God's been speaking to you, and God's been sharing with you things about how to make sure your child learns something. I want to show you something, it’s the last thing I'm gonna give you today. They're going to begin to play the music softly. 2 Timothy 3:14, “Hey, Timothy, I want you to continue in the things that you have learned,” watch this, “and that you have been assured of.” They did not just teach Timothy. It reached a level of assurance. Hey, Timothy, if persecution comes, if evil people get worse, you can be assured that God will be the author and the finisher of your faith. And that you can never go wrong doing right. Hey, Timothy, you keep serving God with your whole heart. I thought about that old song, Blessed Assurance. “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. Air of salvation, purchase of God, born of his spirit, washed in his blood, watch this, “this is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long. This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior all the day.” Don't you want your kid to have that story? Don't you want your family to have that story? You may be sitting here today and you're like, well, preacher, this is great, but my kids have already left the house, and I feel like I've missed these moments. It is never too late to be who you might have been. We serve a God who possesses the ability to restore even the years that the cankerworm, the locusts have eaten according to Joel chapter two. Don't you limit God. And maybe you're hear, and you're saying, well, my kids, they don't have that kind of mom. Maybe you're a single dad and you feel like, well, what do I do? You begin to step up and do what you know to do, and watch God fill in the blanks for you just like he did for Timothy. Timothy didn't have the right dad, but he had the right grandma, and he had the right mom, and God took care of the dad situation. And maybe you're the dad, you're like, I don't have the mom, God has a way of filling all the blanks. But on this specific Mother's Day, I need to speak to some moms, but you're saying I want the discernment of God over my life. I want to make sure that the gift of discernment is in my life and that God can use me to be able to see the things that the enemy's trying to bring into my child's life and the things where the enemies trying to make evil stuff get worse and worse, and where that you'll be able to even discern when the enemies bring in the wrong relationship, and the enemies trying to pull them into the wrong digital vortex and suck their lives into some kind of mess. And you're just going to walk in discernement. Can we believe and pray that God's going to raise up some mothers and grandmothers in 3trees Church and beyond that are not gullible, but they walk according to the power and the unction of God.