Proper 24
2 Timothy 3:14—4:5

Buy this gadget and your life will be changed. You won’t have to worry about anything with this product. Buy this stuff. Use it and you will become a whole new person. Buy these clothes—you will be thinner and more attractive. Buy this food and live forever. Buy this. Buy that. You will be better than ever. Have you heard any of this before? Do you believe it?

Paul in a letter to Timothy recognizes that there will come a time when we believe what we know cannot be true. List to what Paul writes, “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.” (***ref)

I think it is safe to say that the time that Paul warns us of has indeed come. We are in a time when people are finding teachers to suit their own desires. People are not only turning away from truth they are completely ignoring it, even though they know it to be true. We all know people who make conscious choices to buy into things that make no sense, but Christian? Can you see how this could and is affecting the church?

The good news is that Paul didn’t leave us to figure out what to do on our own. He gave us the antidote for this buying frenzy. Paul shows us that we don’t have to buy everything that is being sold or buy into everything that is being claimed. He reminds us that if it seems too good to be true . . . then it probably is.

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