I have spent 12 weeks on just three verses of 2 Timothy 2:24-26, and that has been an incredible study. I have been convicted, and I’ve been putting these concepts into practice – not often successful but practicing. During the summer, as I was getting this series put together, I took a short overnight personal retreat to get away and spend time with the Lord. I preached to myself over this passage, and I began to look at the surrounding context in greater detail. It really opened up even further. I won’t cover that in as great detail as I did these three verses, but there is too much to simply pass on. For today, I’m going to look at the immediately preceding verse:
“But refuse foolish and ignorant speculations, knowing they produce quarrels.”
~2 Timothy 2:23
Even before this verse, Paul described separation from the world and former passions. He had warned against two false teachers by name who were leading people astray. He prepares Timothy for how a servant of the Lord should be by showing what the servant does not do. The servant of the Lord is not going to tolerate foolish and ignorant speculations. We are to avoid entertaining and engaging foolish banter, and there is a LOT of that going on in our world today.
Before I get into some examples, let me make things clear: this verse is not talking about any so-called “in-house debate.” This verse is not talking about whatever WE would like to make secondary issues. This is talking about things that are pure speculation, cannot be demonstrated nor validated, and, in nearly all cases, come from a position that questions the clarity of Scripture. We are not merely to not give such speculations any hospitality, we are to refuse them. We are to put them down and not give them a voice.
Jesus gives an example of these pointless speculations when He battled with the Sadducees. (John MacArthur pointed out some of these details.) The Sadducees had the political power with Rome in those days, but they were also more theologically liberal than the Pharisees. They only believed in the Torah (the first five books of our Bible) as being Scriptural, and they denied the possibility of bodily resurrection. They gave Jesus a hypothetical situation of a woman who lost seven husbands, never giving any a son, and they asked him whose husband she would have in the resurrection. They rejected the idea of the resurrection, so they were trying to make mockery of it while attempting to make Jesus look foolish. Jesus refused to answer the question because they did not know Scripture, all the while boasting to be the masters of it. Jesus refused such foolish questions by showing the ignorance behind it all. After putting the Sadducees to shame in their own game, no one dared to challenge Jesus any further.
There are several big things to notice in these “questions.” 1) They are out of ignorance, which comes from not knowing nor understanding Scripture. 2) They are foolish. They are not thought through. They are only designed as a trap and to poke holes, but they themselves are not sound. When the objection cannot stand, that which it objects to remains standing. 3) They come from a mindset or worldview that has the intention of questioning or challenging the Biblical position. They nearly always have a “Has God indeed said?” tone, even when they quote or reference Scripture.
One example is when the young earth creation group is asked, “Could there have been animal death before Adam’s sin?” Sometimes they phrase it with “What would happen if Adam stepped on an ant if no animals died?” They usually follow this by suggesting Adam had to have seen animal death in order for God’s warning against eating of the tree to have weight. This is one of those questions. 1) It has a false foundation that that man could not know anything other than through experience. 2) It requires the presupposition of old earth ideas, and thus commits the fallacy of affirming the consequent. 3) There is absolutely nothing in Scripture that indicates this is an option. 4) It denies the spiritual weight of substitutional atonement. Let’s explore these in more detail.
1) The belief system of those who make this claim can be summarized with “Science is king.” Everything is subjective to personal experience. If “science” says it, it must be true. This is a foolish position because every single person saying this does not believe nor practice their own worldview. They believe all sorts of things that they never experienced and that no one else experienced either. Yet here, they have all experienced and seen animal death, therefore everyone else must have experienced animal death. The problem is that before Adam sinned, the world did not operate as it does now. The Creation wasn’t cursed yet.
2) The old earth idea presupposed in this claim is “the present is key to the past.” They not only presume that experience is all Adam would have known, but they also presume that what they experience now is what Adam experienced. This is unfounded as well, as the Bible describes two catastrophic changes to how the world operates with the curse due to sin and then with the destruction of the flood. The present is never the key to the past. Actually, the past is the key to the present.
3) This is an argument from silence. Why would anyone even think of this question unless they were trying to make room for a different model? It is pure speculation, and it has the tone of “Has God indeed said?” There were no predator acts prior to sin and no reason to think animals died according to Scripture. Where is the reason coming from? Deep Time mythology.
4) This is the big one. This question, unwittingly or not, denies the substitutional atonement of Christ. Every old earth model has human death before sin just by looking at their own claims about geology and the fossil records. Death was the penalty for sin. If animal death, and especially human death, preceded sin, then God’s killing of an animal to provide skins for Adam and Eve would have no weight. The old earthers use this to say that God’s warning would have no weight without experience, but that experience takes away the weight of the need for substitutional atonement, not to mention that it denies divine revelation to Adam. If animals died prior to sin, then Adam would have seen the animal death as normal. He never would have taught Cain and Abel what a true sacrifice was (which Abel obeyed, but Cain did not). And then, there would be no accurate snapshot of what Christ would do.
Keep in mind, what God established in the Old Testament are pictures of what Christ would do. You can look at Christ and look back to see what God intended with all these pictures and types. But you cannot get the picture wrong, look forward, and get Christ. Many people unwittingly accept the old earth models while proclaiming the name of Christ, but they fail to see that these very models actually deny Christ and deny the work of the cross. This is why I am so passionate about origins. If we are to preach Christ and Christ crucified, then we better have the correct model of origins – the one God gave us. The wrong creation model showcases the wrong Creator. If you have the wrong creator, you have the wrong savior. You can’t just say the name of Jesus and get a pass. Many false religions use the name of Jesus, and Jesus himself warned against the counterfeits that would show up. Only the Jesus of the Bible saves. Only the Creator who created as He said He did is the one who saves as He said He did. This is not a secondary issue.
We must avoid foolish and ignorant speculations and banter. We must refuse it and not give such ideas a platform. However, even if we do so with the love, gentleness, patience, and humility that Paul calls for, we must be aware that there are many who won’t listen to anything we say no matter how “nice” we are. That’s for next week.
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