Courageously Celebrating God’s Good Design

A Message Delivered at the 2026 AMBER Spring Conference

It is a great joy to be with you this morning. I came here two years ago as a guy from Saskatchewan looking to find out more about this AMBER group he'd been hearing about. And two years later, I'm still just a guy from Saskatchewan, but instead of a room of strangers I see many more familiar faces and people who I know as friends.

It's such a joy to take part in this conference with these brothers whom, over the past two years, I've been able to work with and pray with and laugh with and cry with. Our delight in one another runs deep, and these conferences are chance for our relationships to extend to and envelop our churches as well.

So it's an honour to get to preach to you, Maranatha Baptist Church, from this pulpit. Keith Falconer is one of my favourite preachers and I hope you as a church know how blessed you are to be so well-fed.

I hope you also know that as we prayed for Keith up here this morning, we've been praying for you from afar in these recent months. The same morning that Keith shared his news with you, we were praying for you in our Sunday morning service up in Nipawin. Tears were shed as we asked the Lord to hold you and care for you as you entered in to this season of difficulty together.

That's a part of what it means to be a part of AMBER together. It means we're not alone. And I hope that as the years go on these yearly conferences will feel more and more like family reunions, and we'll have more opportunities to share our joys and burdens with each other.

Because we are united. We are united in our common salvation, and that's a unity we share with all of our brothers and sisters around the world. And through our connection with AMBER, we are united in a set of convictions that we believe are vital for churches to embrace in order to protect and proclaim and pass on the gospel with health and strength and clarity.

Over the past three days we've been celebrating some of these convictions as they pertain to God's good design for men and women. We believe that God created mankind both male and female in His image with inherent biological and personal distinctions that are very good. Men and women are equal before God, yet God has designed each with distinct and complementary traits and roles. These realities neither disparage the worth of either men or women nor inhibit their function and flourishing for the edification of the church and for the glory of God.

I love these words from our confession of faith, and I hope, after this weekend, you love them too.

But we can't ignore the obvious. We know that there are many who do not love these words. That's the backdrop for this conference that we've pointed to a few times so far. While we celebrate God's good design for men and women, we know that's not the case in much of the world today and in many churches today. Rather than being celebrated, God's good design is routinely rejected.

What we have articulated this weekend is a minority view. And not just a minority view, but often an offensive view. And we've seen pretty clearly over the past few months the kind of opposition and treatment that a commitment to God's truth on this file can get you.

So one of the important questions still before us as this conference ends is, how do we hold to this position knowing that it is a minority position? Here, we're among friends. How might we hold to this truth when we're not among friends? How do we celebrate this truth in breakrooms and around dinner tables and in denominational meetings when we know that doing do will provoke opposition and hostility?

We need to ask this, because we haven't always had the best examples of how to do this. As fallen humans, there tend to be some well-worn paths that we follow when we find ourselves holding to minority views in hostile environments, tend to follow a couple of well-worn paths.

One of these is the path of cowardice. The path of "well, this is my personal belief, but lots of good people disagree with me, and so who am I to say that they are wrong?" The path of stuffing your convictions in your back pocket for the sake of not upsetting anybody. The path of accommodation and compromise. The path that thinks Jesus said "blessed are those who ruffle no feathers, and so keeps its mouth shut while false teaching takes over your family or church or denomination.

If there was a cultural default here in Canada, this would probably be it. We Canadians are so nice. We're so good at prioritizing relationships over truth. We're so good at pretending we all agree, even though we don't, just so we can maintain our facade of getting along with people that we probably don't even like very much.

But even though this path might be our factory default as Canadians, it is not the only path. There is another path that could be taken by those holding to minority convictions. Instead of the path of cowardice, this is the path of arrogance. This is the path taken by those who all too happy to burn relationships for the sake of conviction. The path of those who itch for a fight, and revel in their bad-boy or bad-girl status, who smugly enjoy heaping ignorance and scorn on those who disagree with them. Who seem to think that Jesus said "blessed are the meme-makers." Who think that belligerence is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Now I know that nothing we've said or done this weekend could be fairly construed as an encouragement to take either of these paths. We've had such great examples set for us on how to engage this topic with conviction and grace.

But I know how the human heart works. I know how my own heart works. I know that it's easy to celebrate God's good design here among friends, but not so easy when the environment is less friendly.

And thankfully, these two paths I've described aren't the only two paths available. We can hold fast to God's word with flint-faced conviction and treat others with kindness. There is a way for us to defend the truth without destroying people.

This is the path that God has for us. And while there are several places in scripture we could go to see this path marked out for us, 2 Timothy 2 is one of the best and is the passage that my heart was drawn to in recent months as we prepared for this conference together.

Let's read these words together. (Stand? Read out loud together?)

“So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:22–26).

The Great Race (v. 22)

Our passage opens with the well-known words of verse 22: “So flee youthful passions” (2 Timothy 2:22).

Many times I've heard this passage quoted in the context of physical passions. And while the same principles apply, the context of this passage shows that Paul has a different set of passions in mind. Look back at verse 14: “Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers” (2 Timothy 2:14). Verse 16: “But avoid irreverent babble” (2 Timothy 2:16). And then, verse 23: “Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels” (2 Timothy 2:23).

The "youthful passion" Paul addresses here is not primarily sexual lust. The context here—which we'll see even more clearly as we go on—is more about argumentativeness. It's the youthful passion to win every argument. To prove every point. To dominate every discussion. To convince people of your every opinion.

It's interesting he identifies these as "youthful passions." As I've entered my middle years and made the transition from being a young man to being not quite so young of a man, I've increasingly noticed how many senior saints are so much more settled in their identity than those who are younger. They know who they are—made in God's image, fallen and yet redeemed in Christ. They have nothing to prove. Nobody to impress.

This contrasts so much with so many younger people who have everybody to impress. Who are still figuring out who they are, who have not yet settled into their identity as God's beloved sons and daughters, and who need to prove who they are to everybody around them.

And with many young men in particular that process of proving themselves looks like going around starting fights. Or starting TikTok channels. Desperately trying to show the world how much they know and how much they should be taken seriously.

And some of this we could chalk up to neuro-social development, but according to Paul, the real root here is lusts. That's the word for passions here—it's the same word as "lusts." It's a lust that comes from being dissatisfied with the identity God has provided in Christ, and so we crave acceptance and respect and worship from others. We must be right at all costs, we must know everything, we must make our opponents look stupid.

And there is no age limit here. I've met young men and women who are at peace with who they are in Christ, and I've older men and women still desperate to show off and prove something.

But from these youthful passions, Paul calls Timothy to flee. To run. To put distance between him and them. You can't just stand still and avoid them. Like an angry bear coming your way, if you don't move, you will die.

So we talked about paths we could take. This is the path we must take: the path that leads us, with speed, away from these youthful lusts.

And this path has destination at the other end. "Flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart."

Notice that what Timothy was to pursue here are just the Christian basics. And I'll be honest that at times in my life, this verse sounded a little bland to me. "Righteousness" and "peace" sound like boring things for simple Christians to read about in Our Daily Bread. I was busy pursuing apologetical insight, and theological mastery, and a big online audience.

But this passage shows us just how opposed the lusts of youth are to these pillars of Christianity. The sinful desires that often characterize the young are unrighteous, unbelieving, unloving, and full of strife. And Christian maturity says, "I'm content to be average and unknown if I get to have righteousness, and faith, and love, and peace, and a community of brothers and sisters around me pursuing those things together."

So this is Timothy's path, and this is our path. We are runners in a great race with a vicious predator behind us, and a glorious goal ahead of us, and we flee from one as we pursue the other.

The Race on the Ground (vv. 23-25a)

What might this pursuit actually look like in practical terms? Verse 23 sharpens these instructions by pointing to a specific example of what Timothy is to leave behind him as he continues on this race. “Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies; you know that they breed quarrels” (2 Timothy 2:23).

This verse picks up on a theme that we find all over both letters from Paul to Timothy. As Timothy went to Ephesus to teach the truth and put a group of false teachers in their place, he was to carefully avoid getting sucked into the wrong discussions and the wrong controversies.

In fact, one of the hallmarks of the false teachers Timothy was to correct was that they, in the words of 1 Timothy 6:4, had a craving for controversy.

Now please note that verse 23 is not saying that all controversies are to be avoided, or that all controversies are foolish and ignorant. The very nature of Timothy's mission in Ephesus—to "charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:3)—was inherently controversial.

Some controversies were not just worth engaging in, but absolutely necessary to engage in. For example, we know that God's good design for men and women is not a foolish, ignorant controversy because Timothy was specifically told to teach on this and shape the church's ministry around this.

But there is a difference between a willingness to engage in controversy when necessary, and being a controversialist who loves and craves the fight.

20 years ago I was a part of the "Young, Restless and Reformed" movement. Me and many other young men and women my age were discovering the great historic truths of the Reformation for the first time. And it was wonderful.

But after a while I began to question how many of my compatriots in this movement were there because they loved these truths, and how many were there because these truths were edgy and gave them something to fight about. And as these truths became more mainstream and provoked fewer and fewer arguments, they found a new issue to be a contrarian about, and always locked in the cage stage as they moved from one edgy issue to another.

In contrast, Paul tells Timothy to avoid foolish, ignorant controversies that only breed quarrels. Fighting was not the goal here, and if a fight was the only fruit, then the discussion was not worth having. The opinion was not worth expressing.

Why? Because of verse 24: “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome.” Or, more literally, must not quarrel. It is simply not an option for a servant of God to be the kind of person given to fights or wars of words.

This isn't news. Back in 1 Timothy 3 we heard that an overseer or an elder in a church needed to be “not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome.” This is a base-line character qualification for a leader in the church, which means that this is the example that all Christians are to live up to.

What would Christian Twitter (or X) look like if the people of God took seriously that the Lord's servants must not be quarrelsome?

What would our churches look like if we took seriously what Paul says next—that instead of being brawlers, we must be "kind to everyone."

This word "kind" can also be translated as "gentle" and shows up one other time in the New Testament, in 1 Thessalonians 2:7: “But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children” (1 Thessalonians 2:7).

Remember that this was written by the Apostle Paul—a man. And this is how the servants of God are to be with everyone—not just the good guys on our team, but everyone. Kind to our friends and kind to our enemies. Kind to complementarians and kind to egalitarians.

"Kindness," while describing our manner, doesn't mean standing there and letting evil win the day. Right after the words "kind to everyone," we read "able to teach." That's our first hint here about the positive contribution we are to bring to our interactions with false teaching. Avoiding quarrels does not mean staying away from difficult conversations. Being kind and gentle does not mean letting the false teachers get away with their bad ideas. Avoiding a fight does not mean avoiding the false teachers entirely.

In other words, rejecting arrogance does not mean embracing cowardice. Timothy was to confront the false teaching in his church. And he was to do it primarily by teaching. Like he's going to say in chapter 4, Timothy was to “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2).

So he had to be able to teach. Skillful in teaching the truth to those who don't know it yet.

Now, I'm saying "we" here as I apply this passage more generally, because that's what Paul is doing. When he says "the Lord's servant," in verse 24, he's not just saying "Timothy, you need to be this way." He's saying that anybody in Timothy's situation needed to be this way. This is the standard to which all servants of the Lord must aspire to.

At the same time, this does seem to have church leaders in mind, because not all Christians are required to be able to teach. And yet, teachers or not, we must be always prepared to “…make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you", in the words of (1 Peter 3:15).

This means that, rather than getting dragged into a fight, rather than tossing passive-aggressive barbs across the aisle, when we're confronted with false teaching, we speak words that instruct and explain.

And you wouldn't be wrong to be thinking, "I don't think that's going to go so well. I can think of some people in my life who are given to false teaching, and trying to teach them anything is just going to get me a metaphorical punch in the nose."

Which is why the next phrase shouldn't surprise us, where it says we must patiently endure evil. People will speak evil of us and do evil to us, and rather than picking up fistfuls of sand to throw back at them, we must patiently endure the evil, like our Saviour did. “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23).

Once again, though, our patient endurance is not passive. Look at what comes next in verse 25: "Correcting his opponents with gentleness."

The word here for "correcting" is connected to the other biblical words for training or discipline or education. Paul is telling Timothy to take his opponents to school. To educate them and set them straight where they are wrong. Don't let them get away with staying stuck in error.

But how he did it was important. Yes, Timothy was to correct his opponents, but he was do to it _with gentleness.

"Gentleness" is another word that describes our manner. It speaks to humility and meekness. It's the same word used by Peter when he says to be ready to make a defence for the hope within us, "yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). It's the same word translated as "meekness" in James and "courtesy" in Titus 3:2, which says “to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people” (Titus 3:2).

Once again, notice that gentleness is not a feminine trait. Gentleness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. And gentleness is not reserved for people who agree with us. How well we treat people does not depend on how right or wrong they are. Even as we correct our enemies, we must do it with a humble gentleness.

And sadly, in my experience this is one of those areas where conservative Christians can be as capable of ignoring Scripture just as much as our opponents. Just like egalitarians read 1 Timothy 2:12 and say "Ya, well what about Deborah?", so conservative Christians can read this verse and say "Ya, well what about Ezekiel's strong language? What about Galatians 5:12, where Paul says he wishes his opponents would emasculate themselves? That's not gentle, is it?"

And we use edge cases to get ourselves off the hook from simple obedience to the apostolic instruction.

Yes, there are times where the Bible uses strong language. But if every time the Bible actually tells us how to speak to our opponents, it tells us to speak with gentleness, then that's for us to obey, not try to wiggle our way around.

And when we actually look more carefully at the biblical instances of strong language, we should notice a couple of key factors. First, the audience. The Bible's strong language is typically directed to those who, like the exiles of Ezekiel's day, or the Pharisees of Jesus and Paul's day, had been patiently instructed for long ages and for whom every other channel had been exhausted.

And second, there is frequency. The prophets and apostles had some strong things to say, but how often, and in what proportion to everything else they said? Paul didn't talk the way he talked in Galatians 5:12 all the time, or very often at all. It served a specific purpose in that specific situation, but it wasn't his default mode.

It's like when we were driving out here for this conference, and I almost hit a dog crossing the highway, and my wife encouraged me to use the horn in a manner that was not very gentle.

And it was exactly right for the urgency of that moment. But nobody who knows her would ever think that she talks to me like that as a matter of practice.

So sure, there's cases where the prophets and apostles need to "raise their voices," but when the Apostle Paul gives Timothy a word that should characterize how he corrects his opponents, the word is not "aggression." The word is not "snark" or "sarcasm" or even "cleverness" or "persuasion." The word is "gentleness."

Is that the word that people would use for us? Would a fair-minded observer watch us, read our text messages, and say "yes, they corrected their opponents, but they did so with gentleness."

The Spiritual Warfare of Correction (v 25b-26)

That is who Timothy was to be, and that is who we are to be. Notice how neither arrogance nor cowardice are options here. Should we feel inclined to a cowardly retreat from confrontation, we hear the call to teach and correct our opponents. Should we feel inclined towards an arrogant craving for controversy, we hear the call to be kind, patient, and gentle, enduring evil without dishing any of it back.

And what comes next—half-way through verse 25 to the end of verse 26—is the rationale for this. Here is why the Lord's servant must act this way. Here is the foundation that informs and empowers this behaviour.

And what we find here is the glorious truth that as we, as God's servants, interact with our opponents, we're not alone. It's not a case of people against people, ideas against ideas. When God's servants patiently, gently correct those who have gone astray, we are functioning as God's agents. And through us, God may do work that they themselves are not capable of. That work is described in verse 25 as "God may perhaps grant them repentance."

In this context the word "repentance" may carry it's more basic meaning of a change of mind from false teaching to the truth. Or, it could point to the more fuller sense of a change of heart, a turning aside from sin. Either way, this repentance leads away from false teaching to a knowledge of the truth as verse 25 finishes up. Knowing the truth in a personal experiential way.

And this is not something we are capable of making happen. God has to make it happen. God has to grant people repentance— giving it to them as a gift.

We also has no guarantee that this will happen. God "may perhaps" grant them repentance. God can do this, but he might not. And that's so important, because it's the ground for our courage and humility. If people are too far gone and there's no hope for them, then we could retreat and ignore them from a safe distance. If we had some special skill to change anybody's mind, then let's put on your cape and go save the world.

But if God, and not us, might, but not certainly, do this, than we can approach anybody with humble expectation that he might perhaps do this supernatural work. We say with Jonathan, "It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few’” (1 Samuel 14:6).

And it has to be God who does this work because this repentance and knowledge of the truth is not just about ideas and thoughts. This is a supernatural event in more ways than one. Look at verse 26: “and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:26).

Being duped by false teaching is serious business. These opponents of Timothy had been snared by the devil, captured by him to do his will.

What comes to your mind when you think of someone caught in Satan's snare, doing his will? Don't immediately think of pentagrams and candles and occult rituals. One of the key things we learn in 1 and 2 Timothy is that Satan-inspired false teaching is often way more bland-looking than we might think.

Think about the endless genealogies some of the Ephesians were caught up in. That sounds like a boring hobby, but Paul sees it as Satan's snare. Or the people who were forbidding marriage and telling people not to eat certain foods. That sounds like an over-zealous, but certainly sincere approach to holiness. But Paul calls it doctrines of demons (1 Tim 4:2).

See, this is exactly the way that Satan works. He is a deceiver. He makes the forbidden fruit look like the best thing in the garden. He makes God's instructions look like slavery. He makes disobedience look like common sense. He catches ordinary, well-intentioned people in his snare such that they do his will and the whole time they think they're taking the most natural course of action.

Let's think about that in the context of our weekend's theme. I wonder if some might read this passage and think, "Ok, that applied to Timothy in Ephesus, but God's design for men and women is just a matter of differing interpretations of the Bible. Egalitarians believe that women can do anything a man can do, and vice-versa, and while we disagree, that's just a different way of looking at things, right?"

Not right. Brothers and sisters, I'm going to say clearly what we've been implying all weekend: egalitarianism is false teaching. And not just false teaching, but Satanic false teaching. And I say that because do you know who the first egalitarian was? Satan. Think of 1 Timothy 2:13 which says "and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived first."

Deceived first, by who? By Satan. Satan knew what he was doing when he went after Eve instead of Adam. And Satan knows what he's doing today as he goes around convincing churches and denominations that disobedience to the word of God is something to be celebrated, and obedience is something to be rejected, using, like Keith showed us yesterday, the exact same methods he used in the garden.

It's all a direct assault on God's intended order. It is a snare of the devil. It is his will. And the fact that it looks so harmless is a key part of its deviousness.

Brothers and sisters, that means that what this weekend is about is spiritual warfare. As we celebrate God's good design in a hostile world, we are standing up to the powers of darkness. As we go from here to live faithfully, some of us in hostile environments, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

And that is not a scary thought. That is an exciting thought when, as Shaun reminded us on Friday evening, we remember the story that we live in. We follow the woman's seed whose victory was long foretold, the snake-crusher who stomps on the head of the ancient serpent. We serve a Saviour who has already put the forces of darkness to open shame as he conquered them through His cross.

And who is in the business of bringing people to their senses—which has this sense of helping them come out under the influence of something, of becoming sober-minded again. Of helping people escape from Satan's snares, of freeing them to do God's will instead of Satan's will.

We can't make that happen, but God can. And that's good news for all of us this morning. Some of you might have come here this morning and this topic of men's and women's roles feels so far from your mind because you're just worn out and looking for encouragement for the week ahead.

Christian, remember what story you live in. Whatever struggles or challenges are going on in your life today, they are but skirmishes in a long spiritual war that began in the garden and will end when Satan is cast into the lack of fire forever.

And as we wait for that final victory, living in the shadow of the cross, we serve a God who is in the business of freeing people from Satanic deception, of transferring them from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son. This room is full of people who have that as their basic testimony. So many of us can tell of the times that God made us come to our senses and escape from the snare of the devil.

And he's still at it. So with courage we can go out to battle this week—celebrating God's good design, sharing the good news with those who need to know it, discipling our families, loving our neighbours, doing the next good work God has prepared for us.

The Lamb has been slain, but the Lamb is standing again, serpent underfoot. Jesus is victorious. Jesus will always be victorious. So let's turn to Him now to find the grace we need for all that's ahead.