An Antidote for Itching Ears
10/3/25 Bible Thought (2 Timothy 4)
The apostle Paul warned 2,000 years ago of the very days we are living in.
In the final chapter of his final letter, he gives a grand charge to his spiritual son, Timothy, and a reason for that charge.
He begins:
“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: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:1-2, emphasis added).
The apostle charged Timothy to preach the Word. The same God-breathed Word that is able to equip us for every good work (2 Tim. 3:16-17). With this, sometimes the Word will reprove and rebuke, other times it will exhort, encourage or motivate. It steers us, shapes us, and through obedience molds us into the image of Christ.
With this charge, the apostle issued a reason that came as a warning:
“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, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Tim. 4:3-4).
The apostle warned that a time of itching ears would come and certainly this is a common characteristic of “Christianity” in our day.
No matter what your sinful tendencies and temptations are, you can find a church in America that will tell you your sin is not sinful. If your ears are itching, you can find a preacher that will scratch them. In the words of Paul, many American Christians have accumulated teachers to suit their own passions.
They will tell you that God’s Word is out of date. They will say that our culture and time is different, or I have heard many times something like:
“That was just Paul writing, that’s not how God feels.”
If we come to the Bible believing that anything we do not agree with is wrong, then we will never grow to be the people God wants us to be. If we do not like God’s Word, it is we who need to change, not the Scripture.
Imagine getting on the scale to check your weight and responding, “This scale doesn’t know what it’s talking about!” Yet, that is exactly what these people do with the Bible. If we are spiritually unhealthy, do we really want someone to lie to us about the scale, or tell us the truth?
The antidote to this form of Christianity is the plain preaching of the Word of God.
This is why I personally preach through books of the Bible on Sunday mornings with very few exceptions, a conviction that God placed in my heart during my time in seminary. Many pastors will build their own topical series and while this is not inherently wrong it allows you to sidestep things that you do not want to talk about.
When you preach the Word, book by book, you acknowledge not only in your words but in your actions that, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable” (2 Tim. 3:16).
There have been many passages that I would never have preached had I not taken this approach. Certainly, I would have never have chosen to preach on Tamar’s rape at the hands of her half-brother on Mother’s Day, but that happened to be where we were in the providence of God and I trust that God’s Word is inspired, sufficient, and that I will share it unapologetically because it is not my word, but His.
As the late preacher, Voddie Baucham, would famously say, “I don’t write the mail; I just deliver it.”
We need the parts that encourage us, we likewise need the parts that rebuke us. We need to hear of the love of God, but we likewise need to hear of the judgment of God. We need to hear of grace that came through the Lamb of God but know that the Lamb is coming back as a Lion.
We need to know that it was our sin that put Jesus on the cross and that it is indeed sinful, but it can likewise be forgiven.
Sunday worship should be a priority in the life of every Christian and when choosing a church, we need churches that preach the Word. Following this, knowing that the Scripture is God-breathed and profitable, we should be diligent to study it out for ourselves.
Every time we encounter God’s Word our heart posture should be to hear Him speak, and not to hear what we want to hear.
The Word of God is the only antidote for the itching ear.
Good post, Josiah!