I came across some notes today in my computer with the file name, “Sermon on Future.” I think this study from my pastor dates back at least five years ago.

In the notes, my pastor, Richard Jordan, says, “Everybody thinks everything happening today is brand-new, but it’s really just as old as the Garden and Adam and Eve. It’s just new to you, because that’s what happens when you’re younger. When you’re older, you begin to realize these things.”

The sermon was about how II Timothy 3 represents Paul’s look into the future.

“What should we expect the future to be like?” Jordan says. “Paul says perilous times are ahead. Verse 2 says people will be lovers of their own selves. The longer God’s grace is extended, the more hearts of men will produce perilous times. Self is going to be the measure of everything.”

Here’s just some of the rest of what he said, edited down by me:

“Verse 5 says they have a form of godliness, but deny the power therof. Now what’s that talking about? That isn’t talking about the world out there. He’s talking about the way it will be in the church as the world goes on. Self begins to take over. ‘Form of godliness’ is talking about the church—it’s that external religious performance—a form.

“It’s form, or external religious performance, denying the power of the internal reality. Where’s the power of God? It’s in the gospel; it’s in the Crosswork of Christ. It’s not out there in politics; it’s not in the pocketbook.

“It’s my faith resting in the reality of who God has made me through the Crosswork of Jesus Christ—when Jesus Christ died to put away all my sins; put away everything that’s wrong with me and has dealt with it, and there’s a finality to it. Then there’s the reality of His resurrection life.

“It’s what God’s already done for me. I don’t have to go try and find it. I don’t have to seek it. I don’t have to work up to it. I don’t have to pray it down. I don’t have to go rededicate my life 15 times a year. That’s who I am. I just need to relax and live in the reality of who God says I am wherever I find myself day in, day out.

“Paul says in that same verse, ‘from such turn away.’ That’s saying, ‘Don’t be a part of that kind of system; that kind of activity.’

“Verse 6 says, ‘For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts.’

“He’s not picking on silly women and he’s not saying all women are silly. What he’s talking about is, ‘You’re not using your mind, silly!’ You’re being captivated by the form, by the outward things; it’s the old wives tales kind of thing.

“ ‘Laden with sins, led away with divers lusts.’ There’s this whole system of guilt that drives and runs an uncertainty that’s pushing—ever learning , always looking for answers but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Why? Because they’re looking at the form and not the reality. They’re looking at the performance-based acceptance program—legalism , the law—as opposed to an acceptance God gives you in Christ.

“Not because of who you think you are and what you can do because you focus on yourself, but because of who Christ is and what God has done in Him, and who God has made you in Him.

“I Corinthians 1:30 is such a wonderful verse on redemption. I don’t know about you, but in my life on a regular basis, day in and day out, I have to look to the Lord and say, ‘I need wisdom. I need to know how to deal with this. I don’t know what to do.’ Something happened, somebody said something about somebody else. People say things about me all the time.

“I know what pressure is and I know what it is to sit with something and not know what to do. You know what I do? Time and time again, I go down into my study and sit in my chair and say, ‘Lord, I’m going to start with Romans chapter one and read all the way through to the end of Philemon, and I know the answer is in there somewhere.’

“I don’t have to go around saying, ‘Oh, Lord, I want wisdom.’ I already have the wisdom. It’s written on black and white pages in a book that I can carry around with me everywhere I go. All I need to do is access what’s already there for me.

Everything I’ll ever need to know to handle the details of my life in a wise a way is there.

“A lot of times when people criticize you, there’s something to the criticism. And even when they’re wrong, there’s something they could have gotten you on if they’d only known about it. That knowledge keeps you from wanting to have the bravado.

“I was watching a clip of Dr. Phil talking to a guy. Phil asks him, ‘What are you proud of?’ and the guy told him about the kids he teaches at school. And Phil said, ‘No, I mean what are you proud of about you?’ And the guy didn’t have an answer. Dr. Phil says, ‘Well, we’re going to give you some things to be proud of about you.’ I thought, ‘You know, the guy really had the right attitude to start with.’ What do you have to go strutting around being proud about yourself?

People say, ‘Shouldn’t I have a good self-image?’ You, REALLY?! Let’s put you on Jay Leno because you could be good on the comedy circuit. You don’t need a good self-image; you need a proper self-image. You need to understand who God’s made you in Christ. Outside of Jesus Christ, there isn’t anything good that’s going to come. That’s the problem. Men become lovers of themselves.

“You know, if you sit around thinking about yourself all day—you know what you’ll get within an hour and a half? Bored. That’s what happens to young people. A teenager will say, ‘I’m bored.’ ‘Well, what are you thinking about?’ If you quit thinking about yourself, and got out there thinking about someone else, you know what—you won’t be near as bored. To think about yourself for an hour and a half—‘People, you’re bored with YOURSELF!’ You have to see, ‘It’s outside of me.’ The closer you get to the light, the better you see the dirt.

“There’s a reason people are so plagued with guilt. It’s because we are. We do fail; we don’t keep the cheese on the cracker all the time. We’re not on the top of the list all the time.

“When you know the righteousness God has given you in His Son, you know what it does when you see your failures? You see things in your life, and instead of being condemned by them, and shocked by them, and overdrawn by them, you say, ‘That’s a waste of time in my life because that’s not who I am. Why am I wasting my life with that? That’s what Christ died to put away.’

“And you begin to deal with it; I begin to look at it. I begin to objectively evaluate it. I begin to say, ‘That doesn’t belong in my life and I need to put it off by putting on Christ—His attitudes, His actions.’

“I find I need to preach the gospel to me more than anyone I know: Sanctification—to have purpose and meaning in life. Redemption—to have liberty and freedom. That’s what God gives me in His Son and that’s a reality of who I am.

“These people (in II Timothy 3) are ever learning and never able to come to know that. Why? Because they’re focusing on what they’re doing and what others are doing, rather than who God’s made them in Christ. That’s the essence of grace—what God has accomplished for you through the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ at Calvary.

“That enters into every aspect of your life—where you lived this past day and where you’re going to live in the week ahead. It’s designed to live there in those details of your life. It’s designed to live in you, and out through you, for others to catch the aroma of.”