Sermon Tone Analysis

Paul described three features that would develop as evidence of a restless craving for novelty.

First, listeners would no longer “put up with sound doctrine” (“listen to wholesome teaching,” Williams).

They would find the content and demands of the gospel unpalatable to them.

Second, they would amass teachers “to suit their own desires.”

They would pack the pulpits of their churches with preachers who would tell them only what they desired to hear.

Third, they would do this because they wanted only to satisfy the “itching” in their ears.

This description refers to people who crave spicy bits of information due to mere curiosity.

This statement explains the reason for which people have gathered around them teachers who suit their desires.

They have a desire to dabble with novelty.

They covet new, fashionable ideas and long for the excitement of having their ears teased by the satisfying but harmless mumbling of pseudoscholarship.

Such speakers toy with the minds of the hearers but leave the intellect uninformed, the conscience unchallenged, and the will set in a direction away from God.

It is important to recognize that Paul was speaking these words to believers.

In 2 Tim 3:6–9, 13 Paul had described the actions of false teachers.

Now he warned that even professing believers would feel the influence of this wanderlust for unfamiliar ideas and the unbeaten moral path.

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.

3 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.