rejecting sound doctrine

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 2 Timothy 4:3-4

Paul describes the motivations people have in rejecting the preaching of the Word as he exhorts Timothy to faithfully continue to do so with patient teaching. There are five characteristics of those who reject the clear exposition of God’s Word when there is Christ-centered, gospel-saturated, doctrinally driven preaching.

1. They don’t endure. They want quick and easy answers, will not work at listening to the truth, and applaud platitudes and Reader’s Digest condensed talks.
2. They want something novel and exciting that is the opposite of sound doctrine. Itching ears are tired of hearing gospel truth. They trade the wonder in salvation with wandering to new and opposite message.
3. They collect teachers like Pokémon cards. It’s about the latest craze and the accumulation of novel messages and messengers. They focus on men, not the message.
4. They suit their own passions. False teaching de-emphasizes sin and exalts the flesh. It craves affirmation and not confession.
5. They turn away from truth. This implies that they hear it and reject it. The gospel is both replaced AND ignored by choice.

Lord,

help us stay true to the command to preach the Word, always ready with clear exposition of the text, gospel application of the text, and Christ-centered focus in the truth of the text!

Amen