A Call to Avoid the Malady of Itching Ears

The apostle Paul, so poignantly warns in the verses following the charge to Timothy to "preach the word" of a time that is coming. The signs of this time, Paul warns, is "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" (2 Tim. 4:3-4, ESV). That time has come, and has set up camp. The malady of itching ears in pandemic. And, as proclaimers of the truth of the living God, we should not want to be facilitators of any further spread of this disease, but seek to do everything God has commanded us to do in order to beat back the advance of this disease.

I had a conversation with an elder from another church that by his own admission, was seeker-driven, seeker-friendly, and any other seeker-model out there. His concern, as with some of the other elders, was that the people that were a part of the church were not growing as they were being fed the milk of the word week after week and most of the drive and directive of the church was put into programs. He and the other elders felt it was time for a change, it was time to begin to teach the full council of God (praise be to God!). He asked my thoughts. "Be prepared for some to leave. Perhaps many to leave." He was shocked. I explained to him that it is this malady of itching ears. People have come (not all) because they are told what they want to hear. They are given what they want. You have drawn people with flash and pizazz and when that flash and pizazz is no longer the focus, they will find or shall we say accumulate, other teachers who will go back to itching their ears.

Look, the pulpit is a dangerous place. Those who have the itching ear disease will sometimes not wander away from the church, but will stay and attempt to cause havoc as they want to be surrounded by teachers who give them what they want. And if one stays committed to the clear exposition of the word of God, sometimes the itchy ear people will react with hostility. We cannot cower to men. We cannot cower to those who have a disease they may not even know. We have to continue to feed them what will break the stranglehold of the disease and that is the living and active Word of God.

Paul continues in 2 Timothy 4, "As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry" (2 Tim. 4:5, ESV). In spite of those who would come against the sound teaching of the Word of God. In spite of those who may leave because of that same teaching. You, Timothy, keep on preaching. Fulfill the ministry that God has called you to. And why? Because I am already being poured out as a drink offering. Paul says my time is over. I am about to die. You must continue to faithfully exercise the duties of the ministry. I am passing the baton to you.

This, friends, is the same charge to us. The baton has been passed to us by the faithful who have gone before. Where they have given their lives and passed the baton, so it falls to us to carry out the same privilege and honor that was theirs and keep on preaching the inerrant and infallible Word of God.

I close with a quote from John Stott:
There is an urgent need for courageous preachers in the pulpits of the world today, like the apostles of the early church who "were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the Word of God with boldness" (Acts 4:31, 13). Neither men pleasers nor time-servers ever make good preachers. We are called to the sacred task of biblical exposition, and commissioned to proclaim what God has said, not what human beings want to hear. Many moder church-men suffer from a malady called "itching ears," which induces them to accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings (2 Tim. 4:3). But we have no liberty to scratch their itch or pander to their likings.