Set Aflame week 5—Detox from toxic people, 2 Timothy 3.1-9

Have you ever needed to detox? There are all kinds of ways that people detox, but it’s become popular today for people to use, eat, drink, something that would detoxify their body from harmful toxins. I looked up recently—popular ways to detox. I found a wide assortment! First one was fasting. You can do a juice cleanse. You can use a dietary supplement like a pill or powder—some sort of shake that you drink. An easy one is to simply drink more water. There are certain antioxidant foods you can eat. I remember one time my wife and I did a tea cleanse—there was a tea you were supposed to drink to cleanse your system. There are all kinds of ways you can do a detox to try to detoxify your body and get healthy. ‌. . . The church is very similar—in fact, Scripture describes the church as a body. And just like we can get toxic substances in our body and every so often we just need to detox, sometimes there can be toxic things in the church. Toxic people, toxic ideas, toxic behavior that we just need to detox from. And as we come to our text for today, II Timothy 3:1-9, Paul talks about these types of things in the church, and he gives some stern warnings. In the end of chapter 2, Paul talks about people who were vessels of dishonor in the church, and in this text, he continues his discussion and goes into more detail. So let’s look at the words of life God has for us today, let us open His Word to II Timothy 3:1-9. Here Paul warns us, cautions us about the reality of toxic people with toxic influences in the church. And from this text I think we come away with one big idea that I would like you to take home this morning: sometimes we need a detox from toxic people