BAD BEHAVIOR IN THE LAST DAYS (PART 1)

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times.

For people will love only themselves and their money.

They will be unloving and unforgiving.

They will...love pleasure rather than God.

Stay away from people like that!

2 Timothy 3:1, 2a, 3a, 4d, 5b NLT

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Here’s a news flash.

The world as we know it will cease to be.

It will be utterly destroyed and it won’t because of climate change or any other man-made construct. Rather, it will be annihilated because the God who made it has said so. He has already made it clear in His holy Word, a Word that more and more people are uneducated in and thus all the other ridiculous, false predictions about the fate of our planet and everything that lives upon it.

Indeed, the Bible makes it clear that the earth has an expiration date. It also explains to us what we can expect before that date comes, one example of which is found within the first nine verses of 2 Timothy, chapter 3. There we find Paul explicitly talking about human conduct in the world’s final days, bad behavior that we will look at in this series of messages. As we turn to the scriptures for today, we’ll begin with the matter of love.

You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times.

For people will love only themselves and their money.

They will be unloving and unforgiving.

They will...love pleasure rather than God.

Stay away from people like that!  2 Timothy 3:1, 2a, 3a, 4d, 5b NLT

Right out of the gate, Paul makes it clear that “the last days” will be “very difficult times” and will be marked by a misplacement of love which we know is central to the Bible overall and especially to the Gospel.

You may remember what Jesus said when challenged by an “expert of the law” who asked, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus quickly replied, drawing from the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ (Deut. 6:5). This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Lev. 19:18)^”  

Matthew 22:37-39

Then we have the actual verse that summarizes the salvation God offered through Jesus, His Son, a salvation grounded in love.

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

God showed us the great love He had by sending Christ to die for us despite the fact that we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). Jesus showed us first-hand how there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for their friends and then defined His friends as anyone who would do what He commanded (John 15:13-14).

In other words, God, the Father, and Jesus, His Son, through whom we become children of God, have deeply lavished their love upon sinners like us, far more than any of us deserve (1 John 3:1).

In turn, Christian believers are to love God with every part of their being, so much so that His love becomes our own. We are then to share that love, the love of God who has filled every part of us, with all others. It’s the only proper love in the world today and unfortunately, it’s a love that will be absent in the last days. No wonder the times will be difficult.

Going back to our scriptures for today, we learn that people will place their love in all the wrong things and places. They will be self centered, loving only themselves and the pleasures and lusts of the world which can include sex and money. You may remember that Jesus told us we couldn’t serve two masters and in the end days, people will be choosing to love the treasures of earth at the expense of storing up treasures for Heaven (Matthew 6:19-21, 24). They will chase after everything that will fade away once death comes.

And then there will be some people who will harden their hearts so much that they will refuse to love at all and that lack of love will lead to an unwillingness to forgive others.  How sad that will be when we find a large segment of the world’s population unwilling to love God or anyone else, refusing to pardon another after being wronged in some way!

It’s little wonder why Paul exhorts Timothy and those of us reading his words today to distance ourselves from those who exhibit these unloving behaviors, those who will be among the goats when Jesus returns to bring final judgment on the earth (Matthew 25:31-46).

In today’s message, we learn that there will be bad behavior in the last days which will lead to difficult times as people turn their love away from God and toward themselves and the world but there will be other indicators found in the attitudes of the people and we’ll look at those in the next messages of this series.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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