Truth You Can Actually Trust

Transcript

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[0:00] I want to ask a question about did most people get to see the interview with the Restrepo's last week or fewer here? Aren't they delightful people and we definitely want to have them here for a Potluck one of these days whenever they're next in town. So I was I had such a fun time Interviewing them I had to I had it was it was actually 47 minutes long So if you notice some choppiness it was because I was trying to kind of trying to thin it out a little bit But it was it was really nice to get to know them and I actually had known them a little bit before this But I really feel like we know them now So I think we were in great shape with our our missionaries and our missionary moments and every month We're gonna have maybe not to that degree, but we're gonna get more Introduced or updated on our our missionaries coming up Well, let's go to if you want to look in your bulletin or up on the screen Our sermon text is from 2nd Timothy chapter 3 just a few words of introduction about this I love that Paul is writing this to a person that doesn't always happen happens in a few cases But sometimes he's writing to a church, but here he's writing to a person and this is a person he cares deeply about So there's this really

[1:06] Lovely sort of and in this in the best possible way of this word this very paternal and I mean that in a good way You and I mean like a good paternal tone in this where he loves Timothy like a son and he's just giving him advice. And so there's just a really heartfelt sense to these letters to Timothy Somebody somebody tells me that they love learning new words And I these aren't this like they're not new words to the world, but they're new words to us or they're just you sometimes They're just useful words today. We're gonna learn a word which you some of you may know which is epistemology Epistemology and you write it down EPI STM o L o G Y If my word processor corrected it and that's how it's felt just getting that is how it's about That's the study of knowledge and it asks Fundamental questions about how we know what we claim to know so epistemology is like it's like the studying of Truth or knowledge or facts and how we get at facts and truth and things like that So it's concerned with the nature origin and limits of knowledge including concepts like belief truth and justification Not in the religious sense, but in the sense of proving something in simple terms. It's the philosophical field that investigates

[2:19] How do we know? How do we know something that's epistemology? And this passage is really like supercharged instruction on truth So today we're gonna be talking about truth because Paul's talking to Timothy about truth and it touches on this question. How do we know? What we know, how do we know things? How do we know what is true? How do we know we're not deceiving ourselves to me? That's one of the most interesting questions about truth is my capacity to lie to myself is massive So, how do I know that? I'm not lying to myself How do I know that I have sins that I don't even know I'm committing, you know? There's Is Their self-awareness is really a very interesting philosophical idea. But it's also important for me as a person to live in the world in reality and not tell myself lies about myself or lies about the world that don't serve me or the world at all. So how do we know we're not deceiving ourselves? Or how do we know we're not being deceived by someone or something else? And what is a Christian's responsibility to tell the truth and to discern the truth in what we hear? So those are really big questions. We're not going to get to them all today. Sorry. You know, you're like, unless you have more time.

[3:25] It's 1109, so I always see the clock. But let's listen to what Paul has to say about this a little bit to Timothy, and we'll start to formulate some ideas about it. So let's go to our reading, 2 Timothy 3, starting with verse 14. The Apostle Paul writes this, But you must remain faithful to the things you have been taught. You know they are true, for you know you can trust those who taught you. You have been taught the holy scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus.

[3:59] All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.

[4:18] Now chapter 4. I solemnly urge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who will someday judge the living and the dead when he comes to set up his kingdom, preach the word of God. Be prepared whether the time is favorable or not. Patiently correct, rebuke, and encourage your people with good teaching. For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching, but will continue to listen to the gospel. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.

[4:57] They will reject the truth and chase after myths. But you should keep a clear mind in every situation. Don't be afraid of suffering for the Lord. Work at telling others the good news and fully carry out the ministry God has given you. Let's pray.

[5:18] Heavenly Father, thank you for your grace. Thank you for this word, for the truth in it, the truth that will be revealed to us through it, and we ask it in your name. Amen. Well, did you hear the word truth in there a few times? It's a few times, not a lot, like three or four times. So there it is. But of all the passages in the Bible, this one is up in the top there when it comes to this question of epistemology. What do we know? How do we know what we know? I'm going to ask us just to go through it, go through the passages for the main points. If you want to keep up, you can. We'll start back at the beginning. Thank you. Thank you, Nathan. He's always so good at this. So we're going to go through this passage for the main points. We'll start off at the beginning. Paul's instructing Timothy. And like I said, we can tell from how Paul writes to Timothy and how he actually writes to other people about Timothy. He refers to Timothy in other letters that he regards him as a son. He regards him as a son. And we know from Paul's own writing that he's not married. So in 1 Corinthians, he talks about how proud he is that he's not married because marriage is horrible in his mind. We don't know why. We don't know why.

[6:21] Maybe he had a bad marriage. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe he just, maybe his brother had a, you know, a bad marriage. And so there was once, you know, this one pastor, he was trying to drum up attention for his church. So he dressed up as the devil in front of his church on the highway. Yeah. And he held up a sign that said, don't go to this church. You know, because it's kind of like reverse psychology, like the devil doesn't want you to go to this church. And everybody's like, oh, what's going on? So this caused quite a scene. And news crew came out and were like interviewing people who were curious about this pastor in the devil costume. I would not do this.

[6:59] I'd try some other stunt, maybe not that one. And then they interviewed this man and they said, what brought you out? And he said, oh, I just, I just wanted to shake the devil's hand. This is in the south. I just wanted to shake the devil's hand. I've been married to his sister for all these years.

[7:15] So that was on TV. I'm not claiming that was a good thing. It was just funny. But maybe Paul, you know, maybe Paul's brother had a bad wife or I don't know what. Maybe his sister had a bad husband. But we don't think he was married. We can assume he had no biological children. But Timothy is like the son in the faith. Right? And that's this beautiful thing in the Christian tradition that so many people have been spiritual parents to me. And they continue to be spiritual parents to me. And so I just spoke to my godparents a month ago. And we prayed on the phone. Their health is actually declining really fast. And they're dying really rapidly here. So I may go to Minnesota in the next month or so and to say goodbye to them for one last time. Or at least to one of them, my godmother.

[7:59] So people drift, they kind of go out of your life at a certain point. Nothing lasts forever. But they're great people, the Jeffreys, Marge and John. And so it might be a good spiritual son thing to do and go say goodbye to my godmother one last time.

[8:18] But anyways, so this is fatherly advice. This is Paul speaking to Timothy. And so it's heartfelt advice. He really cares about the truth. He really cares about Timothy knowing what the truth is. Drawing on the truth that's available to him. And then using that to preach the gospel.

[8:36] So, and this, but I would say, just because this is Paul's advice to Timothy, this is advice to any believer. Right? This is advice to any believer. And if there's some special love in it, I think we can take it as a gift. Take it as if one of your spiritual parents was saying this to you. So I think that's kind of nice, right?

[8:55] Take it as if a spiritual parent or a mentor of your own was saying it to you. And I think that's the kind of thing we would want to say. This is the kind of thing we would want to say to our own spiritual children. Because if you get older in life, you'll have your own spiritual children. Children or people who look up to you in the faith and learn from you. And so your own spiritual children and mentees. So there's another new word. A mentee is somebody that you mentor, but not mentos. That's the fresh maker. That's something different. So, but here's the advice. Here's Paul's advice. Remain faithful to the things you've been taught. Remember them and live by them. Now, why are these things true? Why does Paul say they're true? Well, we're kind of getting into the epistemology a bit. Because these things are true or they're trustworthy because the people who taught them to you are trustworthy people. So the sword. The source of this knowledge is people you already know. People who have been trustworthy. People who are good people, so to speak. We're all sinners, but we set that aside. These are good role models. These are spiritual parents. They've taught you something. So that's reliable. They're not random people who don't know you and don't care about you, right?

[10:06] And I do actually think we should care more about and give more weight to things people we know and trust say rather than complete strangers. I really think that. Now, it doesn't mean a complete stranger. Can't be right. And somebody close to you can't be wrong. That can happen all the time. But the person who's closest to you, who's been a reliable person in your life, has your best interest in mind most of the time. So they're not going to tell you something that's false. They're going to tell you something that's reliable. They're going to tell you something that's true as far as they can see. Right?

[10:35] So we need to be in dialogue with people we know and we can tell that they have their best, our best interests at heart. But anonymous strangers, like if you were not saying you do this or any of us do this. But if we got all our opinions from Twitter or Instagram, by the way, Twitter is still working, still chugging along, ruining people's lives, destroying people's careers. It does exactly what it was intended to do. It just keeps going.

[11:01] So somebody on Twitter, Instagram with their opinions, they might actually be right, but they might be wrong. They might have good motives or they might be trying to monetize outrage. Do you know what I'm talking about when I say monetize outrage? Getting the clicks, it actually makes them actual money. And it makes them actual money. So then I'm not sure.

[11:19] I'm not sure if I need to trust that person. Paul says trust the people who are trustworthy. The truth came from them. You can count on that. Right? And we can get pulled into some Twitter, Instagram type stories if they reinforce our own views. That's really seductive though. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later. Me hearing something about somebody who already agrees with me. Oh, that's like catnip. Catnip to me. I love that. You got to be careful though. And this is what we're going to get into this later in the passage. Okay. So we're going to move on. Where else does truth come from? Not just from trusted mentors, but from Scripture itself. And so this is an article of faith. It is possible to logically defeat this argument if we reduce it to a circular saying. So, you know, Scripture is true. Okay. Why is Scripture true?

[12:11] Somebody in sort of a sort of a parody of an argument. Would say, Scripture is true because it's the truth. That's a circular argument. That's not going to persuade anybody. That doesn't work. Like for anybody who thinks. Now that is also true. Scripture is true because it is the truth. We have to arrive at that at some other way. Right?

[12:33] So what we have to say is we have to look at how durable and reliable Scripture is. Is Scripture true beyond just saying that it's true? Because I could write another book that says this. This book is true because it says it's true. And that's just as good an argument. Which is to say it's not a good argument at all. Now we've had a few sermons here in church and maybe we'll have some more. About the history of the manuscripts that make up the New Testament in particular. And there's a lot of good science and anthropology and archeology and literary analysis that shore up the historical claims of Scripture. It happens all the time. It's really well established that especially the New Testament. We have really good confidence. Even scientific confidence. These are authentically written and they're not made up. They were written by the people who we think made them. So you have a... It's not just simple faith. It's faith that's sort of informed by some very good facts about Scripture itself. It's really reliable. It's really durable. But there are other faith claims in Scripture that you have to take on faith almost. And the most important one would be that Jesus is raised from the dead. That's the central faith claim in Scripture aside from the idea that Scripture itself is truthful.

[13:49] Those are really the two biggest faith claims. That and that God created the universe. In my mind if God can create the universe, everything that follows from that is... That's just gravy. Because if you can create the universe, if you can create something out of nothing with your voice. Everything else you can do. You know, everything else you can do.

[14:08] So maybe that's the other... That's the third faith claim. God created the universe. Jesus was raised from the dead. And Scripture itself is true. But, you know, there were eyewitnesses to the resurrection of Jesus. Nobody was able to produce Jesus' body as far as we can tell. There's no record of it after he was raised. So the Scriptures, even factually you can kind of say, well, they're plausible. But it's not faith alone. When we read Scripture, it makes just amazing and what I would say devastatingly true observations about human nature. Like the Bible is spot on when it describes my brokenness. It's like it's reading into my soul. And I'm like, how could it do this unless this was divinely inspired? How could it do this unless it knew me so well? How could it be so literarily beautiful? Like if you read the Gospel of John. Achingly beautiful.

[15:01] How could that happen? How could just a human being have written this? So when you look at Scripture, you're brought into this sublime space. And you realize you're in the presence of God. And that's so beautiful. So then faith grows out of that. But it's still an observation that you're making. It's still based on your encounter with Scripture itself. Do you see how we're kind of getting into epistemology? How do we know what we know? Some of it's faith. Some of it's experience. Some of it's fact. Some of it's analysis. Some of it's logic.

[15:29] But in the end, mostly it's faith. Let's be honest, right? You have to come to believe. And the other thing that we believe about believing, that's a different thing, is that we don't always get that belief by ourselves. Sometimes it's the Holy Spirit that imparts it. It imparts faith to us as a gift, which is a beautiful thing. And that's even harder to explain. So anyway, somewhere along the line, we have to, we should or could or probably in this case probably should agree with the Apostle Paul that all Scripture is God-breathed. And it's useful for teaching, preaching, rebuking, and pointing out error. Scripture is really powerful. It's God's Word, you know. It has some real importance for our life. It directs us in all sorts of important ways. It's not the last word on science or geology or astronomy. You know what I'm saying? It's not the last word. It's not intended to be those things. Our denomination has this way, kind of puts this way of saying it. It says, we believe, and this is in the preamble to our Constitution of the Evangelical Covenant Church, the denomination. It says, we believe the Bible, both the Old and New Testament, is God's Word. And it doesn't use the word inerrancy. That's a different topic.

[16:45] We could talk about that somewhere. It doesn't use the word inerrancy. But it says, is God's Word and the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct. So it's kind of basically sort of a paraphrase of Timothy, 2 Timothy 3, 16.

[17:01] All Scripture is God-breathed and faithful, is useful for preaching, teaching, rebuking, and training in righteousness. So, we believe the Bible is God's Word and the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine, and conduct.

[17:14] We believe it's true. We believe it has something to say about our lives that's reliable and faithful. It's been imparted to us by faithful spiritual parents and mentors. So, what do we do with the truth in Scripture? That's the other part of epistemology. What's the obligation? What are we now obligated to do once you have the truth, right? And the truth always gives you an obligation. When Jesus tells people the truth, there's always an obligation that comes with it. There's always, go and do little things. There's always, do likewise, right? You know what I mean? There's always like, now go and live this way, is what Jesus says. And so, when we know the truth, we have to do something with it. And what does it say in chapter 4, verse 2? I know Nathan's all on top of this. Chapter 4, verse 2, what does he say? Preach the Word.

[17:58] Preach the Word. Share the truth. But there's more to it. It says, be prepared whether the time is favorable or not. And I love this. I love this. In other words, preach the Word even if most people don't want to hear the Word. Do you know that most people don't want to hear the Word? I mean, this should be no surprise to you. This is not a surprise at all. Most people don't want to hear the Word. Why? Because the Word calls us to account for our own sinfulness. It's really negative. And it makes me feel guilty and unhappy and I don't want to be anywhere near you right now because you're saying that stuff to me. That's how the world responds, I think. But you know why? It wouldn't be so upset about it if they didn't realize it wasn't true. Isn't that interesting? Because deep inside of us, I think we all know that we're sinful. We're sinners on some level. And if somebody has the audacity to say it, and it's not us saying it, it's Scripture saying it. If anyone has the audacity to say it, we really don't like that person. But I think with growth, we could actually learn to love and appreciate that person because that person is giving us a gift of life.

[18:58] Telling us not just that our lives are broken but that there's a way to be redeemed out of that. So it always has to be accompanied by that. If there's a word of condemnation, it has to be followed up by a word of grace. But the Word is always oppositional. It's always oppositional. The Gospel is always oppositional. It's always turning things upside down. The first will be last. The last will be first. Nobody likes to hear that. Well, the people on top don't like hearing it. The people on bottom probably love it. If you read the Gospels, just read the Gospels. Every time Jesus talks to somebody, almost every time Jesus talks to somebody, it's oppositional. Even when he's with Mary and Martha, his friends, and they're making him a meal. He still has to kind of gently rebuke one of them. You know? Jesus is always oppositional. He confronts every person and every evil system and he does it with words of truth.

[19:54] Martha, why are you so worried? Your sister has found the thing that really matters. It's right in front of you right here, not in the kitchen. You know? He's always pointing to himself. And he's always pointing to our sin and his redemption of it through the cross. So we're called to know the truth, but we're also called to proclaim the truth. And you can say, oh, well, that's Hans-Erik's job. That's what, you know, that's what we keep him around for. No. Well, it's Natalie's job too, but nobody else's. If Wendy was here, we could say that in Victoria. No, it's all your job. You know? This is Paul speaking to Timothy. This is your spiritual mentor speaking to you.

[20:31] Share the faith in season and out when people want to hear it and when they don't. You know? I'm not talking about following somebody through the cross. I'm talking about following somebody through the parking lot, reading the Bible to their face, going, ah, you know. They're going to be turned off right quick. Don't do that. I'm not talking about that. Right? I'm not talking about being an annoying person. When we went to San Francisco about two years ago, there were these obnoxious people at Pier 31 or wherever, 32 or 23, whatever the one with all the T-shirt stands. And they were just obnoxious Christians with these giant signs saying you're going to go to hell and all this stuff. And I was like, brothers. And I. I was stretched to go brothers. You know, brothers. I said in my. I didn't. I. It wasn't even. There's no point talking to them because I wasn't going to get anywhere. I was. I was. I wanted to go up to them and go, brothers, I'm a pastor. You should listen to me because I'm a pastor.

[21:23] But even then, I didn't think that would make any difference. And just say, you are going about this all the wrong way. This is not going to work. You're just going to make people mad and make my job harder. And I don't like it when people make my job harder. I like it when people make my job easier because I'm lazy.

[21:39] And I'm like, well, I'm going to go to church. But they make my job harder. So don't do that. But I'm talking about this sort of sometimes this is the in season and out and out of season is the prophetic word. And it's a word that calls the world to account for its sin. And even we speak that word through our own tears, which we have to speak prophetic words through our own tears because we love the world and we want to work in God's kingdom to redeem the world from its captivity to sin, death and the devil.

[22:07] We love the world. We love the world. We're heartbroken for the world. The only way to save the world is to get the world's attention a little bit, even if it doesn't want to hear it. I'm talking about confronting a bald lie in the moment. In the moment, if you hear a lie to speak up and go, excuse me, I love you, but that's incorrect. That you've got the facts wrong, especially if it's spoken by a fellow believer. How fun could that be? You know, but you got to do it.

[22:34] We're committed to being inconvenienced for the sake of the gospel. That's part of our Compass for Community. That means speaking God's truth in season and out when people want to hear it and when they don't. All right.

[22:47] So now finally, we're kind of moving along here. We're doing all right. Here's the part where the scriptures demonstrate their own reliability. Remember I said the scripture demonstrates its reliability by talking about me as I really am, right? They demonstrate their own reliability by telling us what we are like. And so this is what, yeah, exactly right there. Verse three. Paul says, And this phrase, a time is coming, if you read chapter three of this same letter, the beginning of chapter three, 2 Timothy chapter three, Paul makes a list of things that are coming in this, the time is coming when these things will happen. And it's sort of this, it's when the doomsday clock for the coming of Jesus is about to strike midnight. You know what I'm saying? Like, and for Paul, I think he thought it was going to come a lot sooner. We believe the day of grace has been extended, but Paul had the sense that all sorts of bad things are going to happen in the end. And then Jesus is going to come back. And you know, I'm going to be honest, I pray for that every day almost, you know, like it's the world's a mess. I think Jesus could come back now. I think it's okay. Could it get any worse? Of course it could. But I think we're there.

[24:00] So Jesus, what are you waiting for? Does anyone agree with me? No. Okay. You want to live your life? Okay, fine. Go ahead. I don't know. But Paul thought this is, the world is going to get worse sort of in a dramatic way. And then Jesus will come. And one of the signs would be in chapter three, that people are going to become lovers of themselves and lovers of money. I feel like, like when I'm saying all these things, I'm like, I feel like these are already happening. Like, I feel like we're there, but whatever. Okay. So there'll be lovers of themselves, lovers of money. They'll be wicked and arrogant, boastful, proud, abusive, and blasphemers. They'll be disobedient to their parents. Yeah. No, I'm just kidding.

[24:40] That happens, everybody. Disobedient to their parents, ungrateful and unholy. And then this is kind of the personal side, without love, unforgiving and brutal. Or they'll be hedonistic, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. This is what the end looks like. This is one minute to midnight. And then now he would add to this. This really is the end. This is the real problem of epistemology. And I think that's very interesting that this was the one that comes last, because if you can't even figure out what truth is, how can you figure out any of the other stuff? How can you even know if you're being a hedonist if you can't even tell the truth to yourself or tell the truth about anything? So this is what Paul says will happen. The days will come when people will follow their own desires. And this is really devastating. They will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their desires are.

[25:37] Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? saw that movie, Steel Magnolia? You probably haven't. But where I think it was Sally Field says, if you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me and tell me what it is. Tell me my itching ears want to hear all the latest gossip. But it's not just gossip. It's like the world view. And so the Bible describes this. And I'm like, that's me. And then I think the Bible's pretty right on. The Bible has me figured out. Maybe the Bible is written by God. Like just a little bit of logic kind of working that way, epistemology.

[26:35] This week, you're all going to be saying epistemology like five times a day, aren't you? You're going to be like, epistemology, I see it now. No, you're not. OK, so here's what I'm seeing. And I'm going to talk just a little bit about rejecting the truth and chasing after the myth. And then I'll pop back to sort of the previous part of that. If you know me, you know I don't like conspiracy theories.

[26:54] I kind of loathe them. And I think that's OK to say loathe. Maybe I'm deeply concerned by them. Because do you know what a conspiracy theory, it can't be disproven. That's the problem with them. You try to talk to someone who has a conspiracy theory, and you try to talk them out of it, they're like, well, prove a negative to me. And so there's a really smart kid who said, OK, let's just play that game. He said, any time I meet somebody who has a conspiracy theory, I'll just tell them, oh, yeah, did you know that birds aren't real? That's what he says. Do you know that birds aren't real? And then people are like, of course birds are real. No, no, no, birds aren't real. They're just machines that are created by the government to fly around and spy on you. Well, no.

[27:34] I had turkey for Thanksgiving last year. That was definitely a bird, and I ate it. No, no, it's full of little micro-manites things in it. You could just keep going. You see what I'm saying? You could just keep going and deny any kind of logical argument. This is how conspiracy theories work. Now, here's the thing. I'm speaking to Christians now. You cannot repeat conspiracy theories. You cannot do it because you're breaking the commandment about bearing false witness about your neighbor. Your neighbor is everybody. And every conspiracy has something about some shadowy force out there that's trying to control things and do things. Those are real people. And you can't tell lies about those real people. You can't do it.

[28:14] And even if you say, well, it might be true, that's not good enough. The Christian standard for truth-telling is much too high for you to even say, here's a bad thing that might be true about somebody else. You can't say that. That's breaking the commandment. It's one of the 10 commandments. You can't break it that way. You just have to say, I don't know. That's all the best you can say, even if you're tempted to repeat it. I don't think anyone in here is a conspiracy theorist, but this is what it says in those last days, that people will be chasing after myths.

[28:46] Almost all of those conspiracy theories have some sort of anti-Semitism at the root. It's always there. The Jews are out there. They're controlling Hollywood. They're controlling the banks. They have space lasers that are starting forest fires. They control the weather. It's all there. One person went. He went and found the people who believe the Earth is flat. And there's like 15% to 20% of America thinks that, which breaks my heart. I cannot get through that. And they're asking them, how do you know this? It was an epistemological question. How do you know? Oh, I heard it. I heard it. My own observations about the Earth and the curvature. It looks really flat to me. It looks flat to me, too. Look out the window. The Earth is flat. OK. Well, don't go to the ocean and watch a ship go over the horizon, because you won't know what to do with yourself. But whatever.

[29:32] And the interesting thing is that this is an article I read. The more they got deep drilled down into this, and this is just flat Earth people. They're like, eventually it was because of the Jews. That's what they said. That's what they said. Somehow the Jews had something to do with the Earth being flat or not flat. I don't really know. I have no idea. But it was like it always ends up there.

[29:56] So there's this chasing aftermath. And there's all sorts of reasons people do this. But my guess is how do you know that? It has to do with this desire to make the world seem less chaotic to themselves, because there's some vast, if they can figure out that there's some vast network of evil people pulling the levers of the world, doing all this stuff, and then they can name it, then it's predictable. I know who's doing this. But the alternative is that the world is chaotic and unpredictable, which is reality. Did you notice that? The world is chaotic and unpredictable. And you can't control it. You can't control what the rest of the world does.

[30:30] We don't have much control over what happens in it. And that's scary. If you like controlling things and other people and systems and things, when they are not controllable by you, that's scary and hard, difficult. So another good question is why am I trying to control things that I shouldn't control or can't control?

[30:51] And answering that question can lead to this incredible freedom, but that's for another time. So that's, I think, a little bit of the answer. What Paul is saying is like this chasing of myths, this latching on to crazy and false ideas is a sign of the degradation of epistemology, of the degradation of life on earth before Jesus comes. This is a sign of sort of the brokenness of humanity.

[31:18] And then the other warning, and I said I'd flip this around, there's one last warning, and there's not enough time today to talk about it. So this is a two-part series, and next week we're just going to talk about the first part of that last verse. And this is the one that worries me the most because I think it's the most current in our situation right now, which is this idea of creating our own echo chamber. You've heard this before, especially in social media, it happens all the time. You can just kind of focus on the voices that agree with you. Only listening to people we agree with, not being challenged by reasonable ideas that are different than ours, we don't like that, but it's good for us actually. So next week I'll talk about just that. So we'll actually look at this again, but just in that realm.

[31:57] So I'm just going to sum up for now and kind of leave us on a cliffhanger. Like I have this much left, it's right here, that much left. So just to sum up, the truth is in our grasp, and it matters for how we speak and live, and the scriptures are reliable and true. I'm not going to say they're, you know, it's not like a device manual on your marriage, although it could be, but like try not to make scripture do things that it wasn't designed to do. But in general, the truth of the scripture is so powerful in this world. It's amazing. It can really permeate into a lot of parts of our lives. And then our epistemology, which is the question of truth and how we arrive in it and speak it, is important for our Christian life and witness. This is an important topic to cover, okay? And we don't talk about it all the time, but this is kind of an a priori kind of topic because you actually have to figure all this out before you do the rest of it. So why did I wait this long, 14 years? By the way, I've been your pastor for 14 years as of a week ago. Isn't that great? I'm very happy to be here. I just forgot. I can't remember that right now. So anyways, and the last thing it says here is to be continued. So next week, we're going to look a little bit more at that.

[33:00] And sorry to leave you on a cliffhanger, but then you're going to come back wanting more or not. If I don't see you next week, I'll be like, they're like, he was terrible. I'm not wanting more of that. Okay. Well, let's pray. Let's pray.

[33:12] Father, thank you for, I'm just struck, Lord, by Paul's loving and earnest advice to Timothy and that it can be directed to us by our Savior. And that it can be directed to us by our spiritual mentors. So thank you for this word. And Lord, I pray you bring us back hungry for more next week. In Jesus' name.