Are Your Ears Itching?

There is a trend among Christians to find teachers that they “like.” Usually, what this means that the gather teachers who affirm them in whatever ways they desire it. The thing is, this trend has been going since near the beginning. In the Old Testament, Kings like Ahab would gather for themselves prophets who would tell them what they wanted to hear, while imprisoning or beating or murdering the ones that actually spoke the word of God. Paul, in the New Testament, spoke of it this way:“I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 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. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

He had to encourage Timothy to continue preaching faithfully, because a time would come (and had been, will be again) that people would not endure sound teaching. They would try to find someone who did not tell the truth and affirm them in their own desires. So, I have to ask: which one are you? Are you looking for sound teaching, or something to affirm you where you stand? Are you a preacher proclaiming sound doctrine, or trying to preach ointment for ears that itch?

Loved ones, we need to consume        the pure honey of God’s word. It doesn’t affirm us, it calls us to Holiness and Righteousness, and it tells us that we can only be Holy and Righteous in Jesus Christ. We are convicted of sin by the Law, and we have Grace and Truth and freedom in Christ Jesus. So check your hearing: seek to be transformed by Christ through His Gospel, and transformed by the Sound Teaching of His word, not quieted and quelled by someone who wants to fill an auditorium.  

1 Timothy 4:1-5

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 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. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

2 Timothy 3

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 Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose 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 impostors 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.