You can turn to 2 Timothy 3, and we'll pick that up in just a minute. Before we do, I want you to look around and find the baby or youngest person who might be around you. I have some biases, so I have some babies in my shepherding group. I didn't see Claire, but I saw Una. Una came in this evening, still working that updo she does. And I want you to think about maybe the last baptism we had. I don't know, there were so many baptisms in the last year that I'm not sure when the last one was, and I understand there are more on the way. But I want you to remember that there's a baptismal vow that we hear repeated that parents respond to. And so I'm gonna have Una in mind because I just wanna, I wanna use one pronoun. But here's the vow, so here's the vow. Do you promise, this is the second vow, do you promise to provide for her temporal well-being, to teach her to love God and his word, the Bible, and to provide her with a God-centered education? Now, I've been involved in seeing baptisms in reformed and Presbyterian churches like ours, my whole life, I've never ever heard a parent say no to that question. They always say yes. And then there's a question to the congregation, because all the rest of the congregation knows what a burden this is, these little people. Will you help? Will you help these parents of this new child? There's Claire. and we say yes. Tonight we're gonna think a little bit about why we have that vow, what that vow means, and why we say yes. Because all of these vows are grounded at different places in the scriptures. The vows weren't just kinda made up, well that would be a good idea, but they come directly from the scriptures and the scriptures call and claims on our life. So I am working on a series of sermons on education. And so this is really one of them. And it's based on 2 Timothy chapter three. If you've been here in the evenings all year, Pastor Jeff took four weeks to go through the amount of text we're covering tonight. Started January 8th and finished February 12th with that intern sermon in the middle mixed in there somewhere, I think. And so we're gonna be adding to that. This is additive work. All of that was sound. If you have your notes and wanna look at your notes while we're speaking tonight to make sure we're in line with that, that would be really good. But let's read together from God's word, 2 Timothy chapter three, remembering that this is God's living and active word in our lives. But understand this. that in the last days there will come times of difficulty, for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men. You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra. which persecutions I endured, yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. Now I want to mention a couple things as we start to consider this passage together. And as you might imagine, we're going to move through some real basics relatively quickly this evening. But I want you to remember that the passage that we're talking about is about all learning. It's about all learning. If you look at the end, every good work. It's not just about religious studies. Right? We live in a world of disciplines. You can't put this passage into a little box. It's, of course, biblical and theological. It just can't be limited to that. It's expansive. So everything that we're thinking about has to do with all of what we think about in Christ. And so, The way the passage moves is that we're going to look at the two sections of the passage and two parts of each. So the two major sections are divided at verse 10, where the apostle says, you, however. So we're going to look at those two sections. But what we need to remember as we get into it is this. This talks about the last days. It talks about the last days, and of course, it's talking about the last days, and the apostle assumes we're in them, as they're being written. We certainly think we're in them. And also notice that there's an Old Testament reference. Thank you, Elder Philly, for the setup this morning, talking about Moses. It's a wonderful thing what the Holy Spirit does, and it's a time of difficulty and trouble. And so we live in times of difficulty and trouble, and our difficulties and trouble are real, they're just not special. People have been living in times of difficulty and trouble throughout. And in our days, we want to remember that they correspond with the days of the judges, where everyone did what was right in their own eyes. So when you think about, at the beginning of the chapter, that list of what people are like, that list is an old list, not a new list. It's a list of what happens when people are not in step with God. But I want you also to remember that what we're reading about in the scripture explains the conditions that are driving the world's education agenda today. Because the world system does not dramatically change. And so what we see in the first half of this chapter really describes in interesting ways the conditions that we work on. When I was a new, brand new professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, When I was a brand new professor, I had read articles, I was made to read articles in my doctoral programs about how people, for instance, radical feminists working in literary theory, where I was studying, actually wrote articles about how they used their classes, their introductory composition classes, to try to evangelize young women to become radical feminists. And they had plans, and they stated those in these journal articles. But I had never experienced that directly, and then I went to IU, and I was sitting in a faculty lounge, and people were talking. It was about this time of year, the first week of school. And the professors, my older colleagues, were saying, they were complaining about the students at IU. And they were saying, our students are way too conservative and way too Christian. And then they talked about what they were going to do in their classes and what texts they were going to use and what things they were going to be teaching to try to separate these conservative Christian students at IU from their family backgrounds and from their deep religious commitments and those kinds of things. It's worse today. We know that. It's not better, that was 1995, okay? Seems ancient to some people here. Now, what I want us to start out by thinking, if you look at the text, is there's this description, there's this long description, there's a long list, it corresponds with a number of other lists, you can find almost the same list in Romans, in Romans chapter one. And it says, avoid such people, A very short imperative statement, avoid such people. There's a long run-on sentence and then there's this very short statement. And the reason given for avoiding these people is very important. So the first thing I want us to concentrate on is they have the appearance of godliness, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. The function of the people in the first half of 2 Timothy 3, they are not atheistic, agnostic people on the face of things. They come with religious fervor and often with false religious teachings. They're false teachings. And they're enthusiastic. And so there are many things about what they're doing that have the forms of godliness, but deny its power. And they are working on a plan. Notice that what they're doing is attacking households. If you remember what I said about the conversations at Indiana University, knowingly trying to separate people from their families, from what they had been taught, from their churches, and they do that with a powerful falsehood. If you remember when Pastor Jeff preached through this, we talked about counterfeits and false teachings. And so they present sin and passion and following your heart and pursuing your own way and exalting self over God. They call that good. This is the good way. So they're calling evil good. It's the nature of falsehood. Now we can look in different time periods, in different eras. This doesn't always show up in exactly the same way, but it always shows up. It always shows up. And then the second thing that we wanna see is, and this is where Elder Villey's message comes in, we're going to Egypt, because Janus and Jambres get involved in this activity. And this is where we get their names. Janus and Jambres, the names, they don't show up in Exodus. Right? We don't know their names. They're just the magicians. But here we get their names. And one of the things we learn about them is consistent with calling evil good, they are always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. Always learning. but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. And I can tell you that when I was being taught educational things at the Pennsylvania State University, the dominant theme was, it's all about the journey. We're not concerned about what we learn and what the end product, but the process of learning is deeply important. Always learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. Now let's just think a little bit about Janice and Jambres for a minute. First of all, I think it's better for us to reflect on them as magi. Because when we think of magicians, we tend to think of people who are illusionists, right? People who aren't really doing anything, they just trick our senses and make it seem like they're doing something. But we have a higher esteem for the magi because of Christmas. Right? We have the Magi who come from the East. Right? Well, these magicians are that kind of person. They are Magi. They are highly educated. They are highly trained. They are scholars and scientists. They are among the very few people in Egypt who can read and write. They are the counselors to the king like Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They've been trained in all the literature of the Egyptians. And when the king needs help, he calls on them, and they can come and help. So they would be highly esteemed educators in the Egyptian system. And you'll remember from this morning that We hear from Stephen in his final speech that Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. So Janice and Jambres come on the scene in Exodus, and they're contemporaries of Moses. Now, some of you have seen the old Cecil B. DeMille film, Ten Commandments, and you see that film and you start to understand that there were relationships, that Moses was part of the royal family, and that Moses has relationships in the court, and more recently, not real recently, but more recently, if you've seen Prince of Egypt. You know, you get that sense that Moses is really Egyptian in so many ways, right, in culture and education and that. And so I don't know and we don't know if these magicians were known extensively and personally to Moses. He had been away for a while. But they're certainly contemporary and they certainly understand the same literature and the same science and the same things. And so I want to remind you of these magi, Janus and Jambres, because as we talk about them as counterfeits and later in the passage as impostors, it doesn't start out that way. And see, worldly education, worldly wisdom at the beginning is hard to discern in many cases. It's hard for people who find it attractive to distinguish between the counterfeit. It's a pretty realistic counterfeit. So you'll remember at the first scene in Exodus where Moses and Aaron go before Pharaoh, the Magi are there and Aaron's rod turns into a snake. And the Magi can duplicate that. They throw down rods and they turn into snakes. Now we like this scenario because Aaron's snake eats up the other snakes, which is a very good scene. But nevertheless, they can mimic the miracle. And then Moses and Aaron are called to bring the first plague and water is turned into blood. And the Magi can mimic that. And they turn water into blood too. And then the frogs come. I always think this is, I don't know whether this is part of God's sense of humor, that the magi actually contribute to the plague in the first two rounds. We want more water turned into blood, we want more frogs, right? But they do, and they can. And the Bible doesn't say they were fake frogs. And I don't understand that science. I don't know how they did that. I don't know whether that was demonic power or whether it was demonic power manifested in high-tech science that the Egyptians had that we no longer have records of. I'm not sure, but they were able to do it. Then the gnats come, and you'll remember from this morning if you were listening, They can't mimic the gnats. And they say, this is the finger of God. The Magi miss the next two episodes. So when the flies come, the Magi are not involved. When the livestock come, the Magi are not involved. And then when the boils come, the Magi are afflicted by the boils. Then they're afflicted. I want you to remember, though, that at the beginning, they were able, for whatever God's ordained reason was, to harden Pharaoh's heart more deeply by mimicking what Moses and Aaron were doing according to God's power. What the Magi do, according to 2 Timothy 3, is they oppose Moses, who is the teacher. Moses is bringing the word of God to Pharaoh and to Egypt, and they oppose his teaching. You can get this sense that they're saying early, who are you? maybe with a sense of we know you. And they oppose the truth, 2 Timothy says, they oppose the truth. And I want you to remember that Moses is a type of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we see the same thing in people responding to the Lord Jesus. They reject his teaching. And in the ultimate conversation with Pilate, they reject his truth, not by saying, I reject your truth, but by saying, what is truth? It's a rejection of truth in its entirety. And so it's important for us to see how the scripture lays out these coordinates of the world system of education that are manifested in different ways from era to era, but are always manifested. And it's very important for us to remember that they have this deep self-orientation. They produce the same fruit all the time, even if they come about it in different ways. But then we have the pivot point. And the pivot point comes in Paul saying to Timothy in two different ways. The second way he says it in verse 14 is, but as for you, Right? There are lovely places throughout scripture where this happens. It happens in Hebrews twice, right? Where we hear about what's going wrong in the world and the temptation that we have to get sucked into it and the impact that that has on households and families and the church. And then there's this relief, okay? But as for you, remember what you have learned and from whom you have learned it. And this is the place at which the apostle then, first of all, says, you have been with me. You have been with me. And you have observed my teaching and my conduct and my aim in life. I'm not aimless. I'm not always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. I know what I've been called to do. I know where I'm going. You've learned from my faith and my patience and my love and my steadfastness. But you can hear that the Apostle Paul is so concerned about what we just set aside because he's experienced it in his body. He has suffered and been persecuted for listening and walking with the Lord Jesus Christ and teaching his word. And so he comes back and says, look, what I have just described to you, these imposters, these counterfeiters, they are not going away suddenly. They will remain. They're gonna go from bad to worse. And it's really clear And Pastor Jeff was really helpful with us on this. It's really clear that for people who are walking with the Lord, they'll be able to see through all this. For people who are attentive to God's word, we'll see, we'll be able to discern the counterfeit. We'll be able to tell the imposter. Because we'll be like Bereans, we're always comparing what's being taught with what the scripture says. And so he says, not only remember what you've learned, the sacred writings, remember the sacred writings, but remember the sacred writings that you have been taught from the time you were a pup. We're talking about people who were baptized. And there are a lot of older people in here who were baptized as babies and don't remember it. None of us do. But what you have to do is count on the fact that that baptism is something that represents God's commitment to you, children, as a child of the covenant. And it also represents our commitment to you as our children of the covenant. that we want you to always have been familiar with the sacred writings. We want you to never be able to remember a day when you didn't know the name of Jesus Christ, where you didn't know what He expects of all of us, that you didn't know His way in His word from the sacred writings. which are able to make us wise for salvation. And remember this, wise for salvation doesn't just mean the Bible makes us wise so we can get saved. It's not just about, it is about that. It is about that, but it's not only about that. It's about wise for salvation is about being able to live saved. What is it to live, not just to get saved, but to live as a person who has been saved from all of this through the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we're called to ask for wisdom and we're called to pursue it in James 1. in James 1. And if you think about the two forms of wisdom in James, you will see that we're working on the same set of coordinates. In James 3, it talks about earthly wisdom being unspiritual and demonic and producing bitter jealousy and selfish ambition. Those are summary statements for what we read at the beginning of 2 Timothy 3. If you look at 2 Timothy 3, look at the list, you'll see bitter jealousy and selfish ambition all over the place outlined. But then what I think, and this is not an interpretation of scripture, this is a little sidelight from me, I think we come up to the great unasked question of our day. And that is, remember what you have learned and from whom you have learned it. And from whom you have learned it. In Moses, we saw the magi critiquing both Moses and his teaching. And we see the same thing with Jesus, the attack on the teaching and on the teacher. And who we learn from is absolutely vital. Absolutely vital. At every level, who we learn from is absolutely vital. I will not go into the story today, but when I went to the Pennsylvania State University, I was among many brilliant God-forsaken people. And the Lord gave me a dissertation director. who I didn't even know, who had an international reputation as an Augustan scholar and was a committed, deeply biblical Baptist. And the Lord just delivered me to him and said, help this young man, help this young man learn. At the time when I needed it the most, the Lord provided the from whom will you learn it. to teach me how to think and to teach me how to study and to teach me how to teach at the most important level. God is very concerned, not only about what we learn, but from whom we learned it, because from whom we learn teaches us conduct. It teaches us how to have the right aims. It teaches us All the things that Paul says to Timothy, you saw me go through persecution and suffering, so you can go through persecution and suffering. And we need those kinds of teachers and God delivers them to us and delivers us to them, but we need to seek them out. I wanna remind you that if we take the whole of 2 Timothy into account, that Timothy's first teachers were Grandma Lois and Mom Eunice. And just as Elder Villey was talking this morning, it was their faith that Paul said that Timothy received. Timothy received the faith through their faith. It was really his, not theirs, and it was theirs together. So it wasn't just Paul. And that's why this kind of educational framework in 2 Timothy 3 is for the whole range of all education. It's not at just one level or one point. So we want to remember that godly wisdom, what we're pursuing, all in all of our faith in life depends on both the teacher and the teaching. Because what we're to learn needs to always show up, always needs to be manifested in word and deed. We need to learn it in word and deed with our teachers. We need to put it into practice in word and deed. That's the test of faithfulness. That's the test of faithfulness that Jesus taught. That's what Moses was, he was powerful in word and deed, Stephen said. And so we conclude with this last segment, the most memorized part of 2 Timothy 3, in which we are taught about the scripture and driven to the scripture. And so unsurprisingly, in all education, not just all Christian education, all good education, all well-grounded education, begins and ends with the Word of God. There are ceilings that human beings cannot get past in their learning if they're not trusting in God's Word, starting with God's Word, and ending with God's Word. And so we recognize at the end of 2 Timothy chapter 3 that scripture is both the teacher and the content. Scripture is both the teacher and the content. If you look at Hebrews where it says the word of God is living and active, there's a change in voice. And it changes from the scripture as a text, as an it, to he. The scripture works that way. God's word works that way because as we learn from this text, it is spoken by God. It is God-breathed. It is God-breathed. It is inspired. It is spoken. And it is good for teaching and reproof and correction and training in righteousness. Now, when you think about that list, teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness, there's a possibility that two of those could feel good. Two of them don't feel good. At least in my experience, I've never been reproved and then gone off and had a celebration. And I've been reproved a number of times. Never been corrected and said, wow, I'm glad for that. It takes me a day or two. I don't know how long it takes you guys. I get corrected. I'm like, I'm not proud of this, but sometimes I have to sulk for a day in silence. No, before I can get around to all the value that was in the correction or the reproof. Training and righteousness can go either way. Sometimes training is joyful and exciting. Sometimes training is heavy duty work. But the point is that all of this is driving us that we would be equipped for every good work. Not every good religious work. Not every good work associated with or seen by the church. Not every good work that we get props for. Every good work that God the Creator has made that human beings are called to do and can do well. So as we close, just take a moment to review the world system as we hear it in 2 Timothy 3. There are these three primary phrases. Form of godliness, but denying its power. Form of godliness, but denying its power. Always learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. Always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth. And both deceiving and being deceived. Make a mental note. Deception and self-deception always go together. If I am deceiving someone else, I'm always self-deceived as well. And then I lie to myself and I say, I've got it right. and the deceit is either worthwhile, it's going to work, I had to do it, however we get into that. By contrast, a godly life in Christ, education, as it has been ordained by God, comes to us in this way, through teaching and teachers both, always together, the teaching and the teacher, always coming to a knowledge of the truth. always coming to a knowledge of the truth, always learning, always coming to a knowledge of the truth. For the purpose of good works, for every good work, for every good work that the Lord has prepared in advance for us to do, that we might walk in them, so that we are come to walk on Christ's paths and to live a faithful life. so that we might be found faithful in both word and deed. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we are just grateful to you that you have given us the great teacher, the Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord Jesus, we pray that we would be taught by you and that you would always be placing us with people who can teach us because they have been taught by you as well. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.