The first section of Chapter 4 consists of five
verses:
2 Timothy 4:1-5
1 I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord
Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead
at his appearing and his kingdom;
2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of
season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all
longsuffering and doctrine.
3 For the time will come when they will not endure
sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they
heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
4 And they shall turn away their ears from the
truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
5 But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions,
do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy
ministry.
Let us begin with the Barclay:
FOOLISH LISTENERS
|
2 Timothy 4:1–5
…paraphrased
I charge you before God and Christ Jesus,
who is going to judge the living and the
dead – I charge you by his appearing and by
his kingdom – herald forth the word; be
urgent in season and out of season; convict,
rebuke, exhort, and do it all with a
patience and a teaching which never fail.
For there will come a time when men will
refuse to listen to sound teaching, but,
because they have ears which have to be
continually titillated with novelties, they
will bury themselves under a mound of
teachers, whose teaching suits their own
lusts after forbidden things. They will
avert their ears from the truth, and they
will turn to extravagant tales. As for you,
be steady in all things; accept the
suffering which will come upon you; do the
work of an evangelist; leave no act of your
service unfulfilled. |
Paul goes on to describe the foolish listeners.
He warns Timothy that the day is coming when people
will refuse to listen to sound teaching and will
surround themselves with teachers who will satisfy
their desire with precisely the easygoing,
comfortable things they want to hear.
In Timothy’s day, it was tragically easy to
find such teachers. They were called sophists and
wandered from city to city, offering to teach
anything in return for money. Isocrates, the
Athenian orator, said of them: ‘They try to attract
pupils by low fees and big promises.’ They were
prepared to teach the whole of virtue for a modest
fee. They would teach people to argue subtly and to
use words cleverly until they could make ‘the worse
appear the better reason’. Plato described them
savagely: ‘Hunters after young men of wealth and
position, with sham education as their bait, and a
fee for their object, making money by a scientific
use of quibbles in private conversation, while quite
aware that what they are teaching is wrong.’
They competed for customers. Dio Chrysostom
wrote of them: ‘You might hear many poor wretches of
sophists shouting and abusing each other, and their
disciples, as they call them, squabbling, and many
writers of books reading their stupid compositions,
and many poets singing their poems, and many
jugglers exhibiting their marvels, and many
soothsayers giving the meaning of prodigies, and
10,000 rhetoricians twisting lawsuits, and no small
number of traders driving their several trades.’
In the days of Timothy, people were
surrounded by false teachers offering their sham
knowledge. Their deliberate policy was to find
arguments whereby people could justify anything they
wanted to. Any teacher, even today, whose teaching
tends to make people think less of sin is a menace
to Christianity and to society as a whole. In
complete contrast to that, certain duties are to be
laid on Timothy.
He is to be steady in all things. The word (ne¯phein)
means that he is to be sober and self-disciplined,
like an athlete who has all passions, appetites and
nerves well under control. The biblical scholar F.
J. A. Hort says that the word describes ‘a mental
state free from all perturbations or stupefactions .
. . every faculty at full command, to look all facts
and all considerations deliberately in the face’.
Christians are not to be the victims of crazes; in
an unbalanced and often insane world, they are to
stand out for their stability.
~Barclay Commentary
We will begin with the general commentaries and
proceed to the specific. First the Matthew Henry
Main.
Just as verses 1 and 2 make up one sentence, so do
verses 3 and 4. Before we read the Matthew Henry,
let us hear these two verses:
2 Timothy 4:3-4
3 For the time will come when they will not endure
sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they
heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
4 And they shall turn away their ears from the
truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
Because errors and heresies were likely to creep
into the church, by which the minds of many
professing Christians would be corrupted (2 Timothy
4:3-4): “For the time will come when they will not
endure sound doctrine. Therefore improve the present
time, when they will endure it. Be busy now, for it
is seedtime; when the fields are white unto the
harvest, put in the sickle, for the present gale of
opportunity will be soon over. They will not endure
sound doctrine. There will be those who will heap to
themselves corrupt teachers, and will turn away
their ears from the truth; and therefore [you
firstfruits] secure as many [true teachers] as thou
canst, that, when these storms and tempests do
arise, they may be well fixed, and their apostasy
may be prevented.” People must hear, and ministers
must preach, for the time to come, and guard against
the mischiefs that are likely to arise hereafter,
though they do not yet arise. They will turn away
their ears from the truth; they will grow weary of
the old plain gospel of Christ, and then they will
be greedy of fables, and take pleasure in them, and
God will give them up to those strong delusions,
because they received not the truth in the love of
it, 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12.
Quoted verse:
2 Thessalonians 2:11-12
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong
delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not
the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
Observe,
(1.) These teachers were of their own heaping up,
and not of God's sending; but they chose them, to
gratify their lusts, and to please their itching
ears.
(2.) People do so when they will not endure sound
doctrine, that preaching which is searching, plain,
and to the purpose; then they will have teachers of
their own.
(3.) There is a wide difference between the word of
God and the word of such teachers; the one is sound
doctrine, the word of truth, the other is only
fables.
(4.) Those that are turned unto fables first turn
away their ears from the truth, for they cannot hear
and mind both, any more than they can serve two
masters. Nay, further, it is said, They shall be
turned unto fables. God justly suffers those to turn
to fables who grow weary of the truth, and gives
them up to be led aside from the truth by fables.
~Matthew Henry Main
Note: In the
commentary before I read 2 Thessalonians 2, it says,
"they [firstfruits]
will grow weary of the old plain gospel of Christ.
Part of me acknowledges this as true but I have also
witnessed a maturity in the Work and specifically in
the sermons and Bible studies that are being
produced. We are going deeper into the scriptures
than ever before. We are sure seeing it here in our
immersion into 1st and 2nd Timothy. I take no credit
for this at all. God is inspiring a depth of
learning and a strong dynamic in the presentation
that I could not call what we are getting as "the
old plain gospel."
Let us go to the Matthew Henry Concise.
People will turn away from the truth, they will grow
weary of the plain gospel of Christ, they will be
greedy of fables, and take pleasure in them. People
do so when they will not endure that preaching which
is searching, plain, and to the purpose. Those who
love souls must be ever watchful, must venture and
bear all the painful effects of their faithfulness,
and take all opportunities of making known the pure
gospel. ~Matthew Henry
Concise
Now this from the Alexander MacLaren
Verses 1-5 are a rousing appeal to Timothy to fulfil
his ministry. Embedded in it there is a sad prophecy
of coming dark days for the Church, which
constitutes, not a reason for despondency or for
abandoning the work, but for doing it with all one’s
might.
The prospect of dark days coming, which so often
saddens the close of a strenuous life for Christ and
the Church, shadowed Paul’s spirit, and added to
his burdens. At Ephesus he had spoken forebodings of
‘grievous wolves’ entering in after his death, and
now he feels that he will be powerless to check the
torrent of corruption, and is eager that, when he is
gone, Timothy and others may be wise and brave to
cope with the tendencies to turn from the simple
truth and to prefer ‘fables.’
The picture which he draws is true today. Healthful
teaching is distasteful. Men’s ears itch, and want
to be tickled. The desire of the multitude [generally
speaking] is to have teachers who will
reflect their own opinions and prejudices, who will
not go against the grain or rub them the wrong way,
who will flatter the mob, and will keep ‘conviction’
and ‘rebuke’ well in the background. That is no
reason for any Christian teacher being cast down,
but is a reason for his buckling [applying oneself]
to his work, and not shunning to declare the whole
counsel of God.
The true way to front and conquer these tendencies
is by the display of an unmistakable self-sacrifice
in the life, by sobriety in all things and willing
endurance of hardship where needful, and by
redoubled earnestness in proclaiming the gospel,
which men need whether they want it or not, and by
filling to the full the sphere of our work, and
discharging all its obligations.
~Alexander MacLaren
with edits by me.
Note: Again, all
these admonitions to the minister apply, in concept,
to every firstfruit [sobriety
in all things, willing endurance of hardship and
redoubled earnestness].
Let us go now to the specific commentaries.
The three main commentaries I use are in agreement
that this verse is in two parts:
1] And they shall turn away their ears from the
truth.
2] And shall be turned to fables.
1] And they shall turn away their
ears from the truth.
And they shall turn away their
ears from the truth - That is, the people
themselves will turn away from the truth. It does
not mean that the teachers would turn them away by
the influence of their instructions.
~Barnes Notes
Note:
Interesting commentary here. Teachers in apostasy or
knowingly preaching false doctrine is another issue
and there is much admonition on you to prove your
teachers and stay with truth.
And they shall turn away their
ears from the truth - The truth strips them
of their vices, sacrifices their idols, darts its
lightnings against their easily besetting sins, and
absolutely requires a conformity to a crucified
Christ; therefore they turn their ears away from it.
~Adam Clarke
Note: This does
not happen, by definition, to a forward-moving
firstfruit. We are talking about those in the
backsliding process, the falling away process or to
those in and around the Body of Christ who are not
converted, falsely converted and/or crept in
unawares.
And they shall turn away their
ears from the truth. - The solid truths of
the Gospel, not being able to bear the hearing of
them. ~John Gill
And they shall turn away their
ears from the truth. - It is a moral law,
continually illustrated, that those who do not seek
truth will receive untruth.
~People's New Testament
And they shall turn away their
ears from the truth. - he people stopped
their ears and rushed at Stephen in Acts 7:57.
~Robertson's Word Pictures
Note: In Acts 6
we read of Stephen, a man full of faith and power
and who did great wonders and miracles among the
people. In verse 9 we see a number of individuals
standing in the synagogue disputing with Stephen.
This is where Stephen gives a presentation that
basically covers the entire plan of and history of
the Work of God.
In Acts 7:51 we
hear Stephen say, "Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised
in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy
Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye."
Then in Acts 7:54
we read, "When they heard these things, they were
cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their
teeth."
Finally we read:
Acts 7:57-58
57 Then they cried out with a loud voice, and
stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one
accord,
58 And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and
the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young
man's feet, whose name was Saul.
Note:
...they stopped their ears.
What you read in the commentaries on the meaning
here is that they felt that what he said was
blasphemy.
And they shall turn away their
ears from the truth. - It is a righteous
retribution, that when men turn away from the truth,
they should be turned to fables (Jeremiah 2:19).
~Jamieson, Fausset, Brown
Quoted verse and this is very
interesting:
Jeremiah 2:19
Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy
backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and
see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou
hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is
not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
Note: This is
very instructive to how things work in the world and
how God works with mankind.
2] And shall be turned to fables.
And shall be turned unto
fables; - See the notes at 1Timothy 1:4.
~Barnes Notes
Quoted verse:
1 Timothy 1:4 [See
Lesson]
Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies,
which minister questions, rather than godly edifying
which is in faith: so do.
And shall be turned unto
fables - Believe any kind of stuff and
nonsense; for, as one has justly observed, “Those
who reject the truth are abandoned by the just
judgment of God to credit the most degrading
nonsense.” This is remarkably the case with most
deists; their creed often exhibits what is grossly
absurd. ~Adam Clarke
And shall be turned unto
fables - things idle, trifling, useless, and,
unprofitable; and which are no better than old
wives' fables; some respect may be had either to
Jewish fables, or to the miraculous mythologies of
the Gentiles, or of the Gnostics, and others: but in
general, it includes everything that is vain, empty,
and senseless; and this is to be considered as a
just judgment upon them; that since they like not to
retain the knowledge of the truth, but turn away
their ears from it, God gives them up to a reprobate
mind, a mind void of sense and judgment, to attend
to things idle and fabulous.
~John Gill
The word, "fabulous" means:
1] almost impossible to believe; incredible.
2] told about in fables; purely imaginary.
3] known about only through myths or legends.
Synonyms: fabled, fictitious, invented,
fictional.
Note: just so
there is no confusion regarding this word,
"fabulous" it can be used informally as "extremely
good." Example: "I had a fabulous time at the
party." Today and most interestingly, we might say,
"I had an unbelievable time at the party."
And shall be turned to fables.
- The Greek has the article, which, though it cannot
well be given in English, implies that the ‘fables’
will be such as have been named before.
~Popular commentary
Note: Most all
of the false doctrines we hear about today have been
around for hundreds of years.
And shall be turned to fables.
- More correctly, will turn aside.
~Vincent's Word Studies
And shall be turned to fables.
- To false and unprofitable doctrines which the
world is now so bewitched with, that it would rather
have the open light of the truth completely put out,
than it would come out of darkness.
~Geneva Bible Translation
Notes
Note: It is
fascinating to me how these individuals will be
turned to very old stuff and things that make no
sense to the forward-moving firstfruit.
In 2 Timothy 3:1 we read that perilous times shall
come. In 2 Timothy 4:3 we read, "for the time will
come" in God's church that individuals will not
endure sound doctrine but will turn them aside and
latch unto all manner of false doctrines and ideas.
This is a warning to all of us and this is the
lesson of verse 4. |