Don’t Let Your Ears Be Tickled

Bible teachers and theologians generally talk about the lack of Bible knowledge among Christians today. There is clear evidence that supports this, as many Bible colleges have stopped giving Bible knowledge tests to incoming students (who were grew up attending church), assuming they have very little to no knowledge after years of increasingly poorer results on these tests. Usually when I talk with folks about this or a related subject, one of the most frequent responses I hear back, “But my pastor is a godly man and he knows the Word!” This always causes me to stop and pause. The question I want to ask, but often hold my tongue because I know it won’t do any good, is, “How do you know?” See, we are warned that as the days grower closer to Christ’s return, more and more folks will begin to lean towards “preachers” who tell them what they want to hear, rather than sharing from God’s Word:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.  – 2 Timothy 4:3-4, NASB

I’m like anyone else and I like to hear when I’m doing things right, when things are going to be better, when the message is positive. We all like positive messages. However, the catch is our desire for a positive message should not outweigh our demand for the truth. The warning Paul was giving Timothy is there will be a time when within the Church folks will be more interested in hearing messages that make them feel good rather than listening to messages which clearly put forth God’s truth. The problem is made worse when folks inherently trust the person bringing the message but don’t have the knowledge to know that what the man or woman is saying does not match up with what the Bible teaches. Let me use an analogy to explain.

One time when I was schedule to go on a long flight, I happened to be sitting at a window where I could clearly see the mechanics working on or around one of the engines. I know a little more about aircraft engines now then when I took that flight, because I was a kid then. However, I still really don’t have much knowledge about aircraft engines. Sure, I’ve flown on quite a few planes, grew up as a Marine dependent with a dad who worked on military aircraft, spent four years in Air Force ROTC, graduated college with degrees in physics and mathematics, spent four more years in the US Air Force, and read some here and there, but I don’t know much about aircraft engines. That’s the truth. And if an aircraft mechanic said he fixed the issue and then went into detail about what he did, I wouldn’t have the slightest idea if he was telling the truth or not. I’ve been around aircraft all my life and I even have a close family member who has worked on aircraft. But that doesn’t make me knowledgeable about aircraft engines.

Similarly, without breaking out God’s Word and delving into it, we can’t know it, or at least we can’t know it well enough to tell when someone is “tickling our ears.” Case in point: I remember recently when someone asked, “Doesn’t the Bible say…?” and gave me a quote. It certainly sounded Biblical, but it wasn’t. It was a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. And while it was a fine quote and one we should try and honor, it wasn’t from the Bible. So just like I can’t be able to tell if an aircraft mechanic is fooling me and telling me what I want to hear unless I actively learn aircraft mechanics, we can’t tell if someone is fooling us with respect to anything related to the Bible or Bible teaching unless we take the time to know the Bible. Sound Bible knowledge is a must. A desire for sound Bible knowledge and teaching is a must. This is how seriously God takes it:

Now therefore hear the word of the LORD. “You say, ‘Do not prophesy against Israel,and do not preach against the house of Isaac.’ Therefore thus says the LORD: “‘Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided up with a measuring line; you yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.’”    - Amos 7:16-17, ESV

God isn’t playing games about the message He has delivered to us. He has taken it upon Himself to pour out to us His special revelation. If we don’t take it seriously, if we don’t clamor for sound Bible teaching (that we know is sound because we have studied the Scriptures), the consequences are dire. The people had reached a point where they didn’t want to hear any bad news. They didn’t want to hear God’s warnings against Israel. Because they choose to have their ears “tickled” by positive messages telling them everything was okay, they missed the warnings. They missed the opportunity to correct the course. And they suffered accordingly. I don’t want that consequence in my life, nor in the lives of my children. Therefore, it is important not to have my ears tickled, but to hear the truth, whether I like it or not.

The Safety of Scripture

Last night I watched a show that in the end I wished I hadn’t watched. It was detailing the stories of the children involved with the Branch Davidians and what went down at Waco, Texas years ago. The reason I wished I hadn’t watched it was because there were stories of things that ought not be done to children and ought not be taught to children. Yet those things happened. And that broke my heart. A couple of times I found myself asking, “Why did the parents let this go on?” and “Don’t they see that what this one man was preaching wasn’t in obedience with the rest of Scripture?” Of course not. They studied what he wanted them to study. They understood what they studied on the basis of his interpretation, not based on the broad spectrum of Scripture, with proper exegetical study and proper hermeneutics, which is a fancy way of saying proper interpretation (understand the historical context, understand the cultural context, understand the textual context, understand the context within all of Scripture, and look for the most straight-forward interpretation based on all of that). As a result, the Scriptures couldn’t protect them. It couldn’t provide them safety. For if they had been more familiar and more understanding of the Scriptures, they would have seen that Koresh’s interpretation of an apocalyptic end did not meet with the full body of Scripture, that his taking of child wives and his theology of polygamy did not hold up under proper scrutiny. They would have heeded warnings like the following:

You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. - 2 Peter 3:17-18, NASB

It is important to note that this warning comes after when Peter talks about Christ’s return. It warns us not to be carried away by the mistakes who don’t hold true to what is right. And based on what was going on in that compound, what that man was saying wasn’t right. For instance, how can you annul this, which Koresh was doing?

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. – Genesis 2:24, NASB

Yes, there will be a time when earthly marriage will be no more, but Christ gave a specific time frame:

But Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. – Matthew 22:29-30, NASB

He said “in the resurrection.” That’s after His return. That’s not now. And given that, this goes completely against Koresh’s teachings:

But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE. FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH; so they are no longer two, but one flesh.  What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” – Mark 10:5-9, NASB

Koresh was a man and he was separating married couples, declaring them no longer to be married. If only those couples had clung to Scripture! If only they had seen in God’s Word that what this man was preaching did not measure up to God’s instruction! The Scriptures would have provided them protection. It would have provided them safety. And the Scriptures will do the same for us. God’s Word will protect us from false prophets and those who seek to do evil in His name. But we have to know the Scriptures. We have to understand them. And that means we have to read them and study them. They have to be part of our lives. Otherwise they can offer us no protection. Cling to the safety of the Scriptures. Know them. Meditate on them. Store them in your heart.