The Lord is good.  His mercies endure forever.  As we enter these last days, we know what the Word of God has spoken, saying, “In the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.”  We live in a day when they call good evil and evil good; “truth is fallen in the street.”  It’s a day where, as it’s been spoken of, that relates to the time of the judges in which men did those things that were pleasing in their own sight.  We know that the scripture says that it will be as the days of Sodom and Gomorrah; we know that the Scripture says that it will be a time when men will be “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.”

Paul, writing to Timothy, in the sixth chapter of First Timothy, is also writing to the church there at Ephesus, Timothy being the pastor of that church. He admonished him not to be timid, to hold the fellowship to sound doctrine, for “some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils” (1 Timothy 4:1).  “So,” he said, “continue to put the people in remembrance of these truths as I’ve brought them forth to you.”  In verse 14 of that fourth chapter he said, “Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.  Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all.  Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them:  for in so doing thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee.”  Take heed to the doctrine, and continue in it.

We are in that hour, Paul said, when men are turning from the true biblical doctrines to (as Romans 1 says) an attitude of worshipping the creature more than the Creator; and, because of these things, God turned them over to reprobate minds.  As he speaks to this church concerning the last days, and preparing them for this time, one of the perversions that we saw coming into the church was this doctrine that said that gain is godliness.  This is the pagan mentality that teaches that the more abundance you have, the more well‑being you have, the better standing you have with God.  It was probably best illustrated in the way “Job’s helpers” responded to him: “You were prosperous; you were the richest guy among us; people hung on your words at the gates; you were a man of honor; and now look what’s happened:  all of these tragedies in life.  You’ve lost everything.”  The counsel given to him was, “Curse God and die.”

We know the story of Job and the trials he endured, and that the real issue came down to the fact that God wanted to bring Job to a place where, when things are beyond our natural minds’ comprehension, that we would come to a doctrine that says, “The Judge of this earth does right” (amen?), and to move us away from that spirit of self‑justification to standing and justifying God in those times when we have great questions and things don’t make sense to the natural mind.  “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21); amen?  You praise Him as much when things are being taken away as when they are being given.  That’s how we know what we trust in and what are hearts are attached and what we love because, when we love God with all of our hearts, the fact that things might be removed from us doesn’t shake us at all:  we believe and know that God is good, and knows what’s best for me now, that the good for my life now is the removal of things, not the addition of things.