Introduction
Famous last words. Sometimes profound, sometimes poignant,
sometimes pathetic.
Groucho Marx’s last words in August
1977 were: “This is no way to live!”
Convicted murderer James W. Rodgers
was put in front of a firing squad in Utah in March 1960. He was asked if he
had one last request. He said, “Yeah, bring me a bullet-proof vest.” They were
his last words.
Louise-Marie Thérèse de Saint Maurice
was Marie-Antoinette’s sister-in-law to in 18th Century France. With
family solemnly gathered round her, on her deathbed, she suddenly broke wind which
quite startled her. She said, “Good! A woman who can fart is not dead.” And
then she breathed her last. Maybe an oxygen mask would have helped…
We’ve called this series on 2 Timothy
“Famous Last Words” because this was the last letter that Paul ever wrote. He
was on death row. He’d just had the verdict of his final appeal. It was turned
down and the death sentence was inevitable.
He knew he wasn’t going to be around
much longer. So he sat down and wrote one final letter to hand on the torch to
a young leader he trusted called Timothy. All the things he could have said… what
would you want to say?
A few years ago, there was a funeral
here for a vibrant Christian woman called Cath Taylor. She died in her early
fifties from cancer. She knew she was dying and she wrote a letter to be read
at her funeral which made a real impact on those gathered. The gist of it was
“You may mourn today, but I go to my death certain of God’s goodness, trusting
in his promises and confident of heaven. One day your time will come. Put your
faith in Jesus and enjoy the assurance I have as the end of my time on earth draws
near.”
Last week, we saw how Paul urged
young Timothy to fan into flame the gifts God had put in him. What gifts have
God given you? Are you using them? Are you ablaze, are on fire, and eagerly
desiring spiritual gifts? Or are you too safe? Are you coasting? Is your
spiritual flame flickering weakly under a bushel?
This week, we’re moving on to chapter
2 and, as usual with Paul there’s loads in here. I could easily give four or
five different talks on this chapter alone.
But with the one overarching thought
from v1 “be strong in the grace that us in Christ Jesus” I am going to try and
condense this chapter down to three main thoughts.
(People say that’s
the optimal structure for the human mind to absorb and retain. A man preaching on the
Prodigal Son said, “I have three headings; his madness, his sadness, his
gladness.” Then he said “under the first heading; he caviled, he travelled, he
reveled. Under the second heading, he went to the dogs, he lost his togs, he
ate with the hogs. And under the third heading, he got the seal, he danced the
reel, he ate the veal!”) So here we go…
1. Stick to the Script
Number one, stick to the script.
I was listening to an obituary of the
actress Carrie Fisher on the radio over the Christmas break and the presenter
was saying she used to take George Lucas’ script for the Star Wars films and
savage them with a red pen.
She was a gifted writer and in particular
had a feeling for the natural rhythms of human speech. George’s scripts were
wooden, stilted, artificial - they didn’t sound real, so Carrie reworked them. She took stuff out, she added stuff
in, she rephrased certain words, she shortened the sentences. And she improved
the film’s dialogue beyond recognition.
That’s fine with a science-fiction
script. But not with the gospel. Verse 2 says, “The things you have heard me
say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also
be qualified to teach others.” The gospel is a baton to pass on.
And this is a recurring theme in the
letter. Paul has to insist on it again and again. In chapter 1, verse 13 he said,
“What you have heard from me, keep (not redefine, not rework, not edit, not
update) but keep as the pattern of sound teaching…”
And the next verse adds this: “Guard
the good deposit that was entrusted to you.” Guard it. Defend it from attack.
Protect it from corruption. People hate it and are out to disfigure it.
Chapter 2, verse 14 says: “Keep
reminding God’s people of these
things.” Verse 15 talks about “correctly handling the word of truth.” Chapter
3, verse 14 says: “Continue in what you have learned… because you know those
from whom you learned it” and he goes on to talk about the Scriptures and how
vital they are.
We have no liberty to alter the gospel.
The Bible says “If we, or even an angel, preaches any other gospel that the one
that was preached, let them be under God’s curse!”
The gospel is not
a Middle-Eastern do-it-yourself counselling technique. It’s the good news about grace
offered free to anyone who will repent of sin and come to God. It not only
washes the guilty clean, it grants adoption rights into God’s royal family and
lavishes blessing upon blessing on everyone who accepts it.
That’s it, beautifully simple, and perfectly
plain. There’s no “gospel –plus…” We talk about the prosperity gospel, the
social gospel and the eco gospel but they are not the gospel. There’s one
gospel, and that’s it.
Furthermore, there’s no “new,
improved” Bible either. Fine, let’s translate it in modern speech and help
people understand it. But it’s complete as it is. There’s nothing to add. God
has said what he wants to say and has sat down.
One of the founding documents of the Church of
England, written in 1563, is the Thirty-Nine Articles, and it states this: “The Holy Scriptures containeth all things necessary to
salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby,
is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of
the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation” (Article 6).
In other words, what it’s saying is this: everything
you need to know to have a relationship with God is in here. And if it’s not in
here, no one can say you have to believe it. You don’t.
All the way through 2 Timothy there
is this passionate appeal to stick to what God has revealed to us, never mind
what anyone else says.
Someone said, “Truth is like poetry. And most people
hate poetry.” People hate truth. Everywhere you look people have opinions and
ideas they think are better than the truth God has revealed to us here.
Everywhere you turn people will tell you what they think about spirituality, and how they think we can live well. People hire
lifestyle gurus and personal coaches and spiritual directors. In every bookshop
there’s some new self-help best seller paperback.
“Never mind the latest fads and philosophies” says
Paul. Hold on to what was passed down to you, and pass it down to others
uncorrupted.
Einstein once wrote, “I cannot conceive of a personal
God who would directly influence the actions of individuals or who would
directly sit in judgement on creatures of his own creation.” But what matters
is not Einstein thinks about God, but God thinks about Einstein!
The second half of the chapter is subtitled “Dealing
with False Teachers.” So he says to avoid quarrelling about words (v14),
godless chatter (v16), teaching that spreads like gangrene (v17). Gangrene is life-threatening
condition caused by a critically insufficient blood supply to the limbs. If it
goes unchecked, they go black and drop off. Bad teaching is like a choke on
your spiritual blood supply that sends you into spiritual A and E.
There’s talk of keeping away from foolish and stupid
arguments (v23) that just produce squabbles and arguments. Some Christians get
sucked in to spending all their life absorbed by some political issue, or who
should get voted off a reality TV show, or whether Apple is better than
Samsung, or some trivial theological nuance. Don’t go off on tangents and get
distracted by side-issues.
Build your life on a foundation that’s going to
endure. As John MacArthur says, “Satan
continues his efforts to make sin less offensive, heaven less appealing, hell
less horrific and the Gospel less urgent.”
In the Episcopal Church in the USA, the Bible has been
undermined and attacked or ignored for decades. It has led to a whole
denomination drifting completely from the apostolic faith handed down. Those
who routinely dismiss the Gospels as mythical and legendary have all the
positions of power.
One of their priests left his wife and children to
move in with his male partner - and they made him a bishop. It’s a denomination
in membership freefall. Attendances are collapsing, churches are closing. The
presence of God has long gone.
By contrast, in 1949 all missionaries were ordered out
of China. Christians went underground, meeting secretly, and disappeared from
view. Persecution continued with varying severity.
There were no church buildings or training centres.
Churches met in houses or wherever they could. They had the simple gospel and
untrained local leaders. But they had the Bible and Holy Spirit. In the 60
years between 1950 and 2010, that underground church grew from 1 million to 50
million.
There is no future for a country, or a church, or an
individual who substitutes human wisdom for God’s revealed word. Stick to the
script!
2. Expect Hardship
Number two, expect hardship. Let me spell this out as
best I can. If what you want above everything else is an easy life, following
Jesus is probably not for you. Life is hard, and there are particular hardships
and costs involved in following Jesus.
So chapter 2, verse 3 says “Join with me in suffering,
like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” Look back to 1.8. It says the same thing,
“join me in suffering.” What an invitation!
What did Paul mean? A blacksmith called Alexander
betrayed him leading to his arrest. He was in jail, just for being a Christian.
People were afraid or ashamed to associate with him. Everyone had deserted him.
He says in 2.9 “I am suffering, even to the point of being chained up like a
criminal.” His appeal had failed. The death sentence was pronounced. He had weeks
to live.
He’s saying, “Look, there’s a cost involved in
following Jesus. Taking a stand will make you unpopular. It will lead to
ridicule. You will be pigeonholed as old-school. Your views will be considered
unacceptable.”
About a century ago, a band of brave souls became
known as the one-way missionaries. They bought boat tickets to the ends of the
earth and never expected to return. Instead of suitcases, they packed a few
earthly belongings into coffins they took with them. They waved goodbye to
everyone they loved and all they knew, knowing they’d never come home.
Mark Batterson, who spoke at New Wine last year, wrote
in one of his books about a Scotsman called Peter Milne, who was one of these
one-way missionaries. He went to the New Hebrides in the South Pacific, a place
known today as Vanuatu, knowing that head hunters there had killed and eaten
every missionary before him.
Well, maybe he didn’t look all that appetising, but he
survived. After 10 years of faithful service, making their home his home, learning
their language, adopting their customs – not the cannibalism bit – he didn’t
have a single convert to show for his labours.
But he stuck at it. He lived there 50 years, and eventually
led many to faith in Jesus Christ and planted churches. It’s said that when he
died, they buried him in the middle of the village and wrote on his tombstone:
“When he came there was no light. When he left there was no darkness.”
They say that life begins… at the edge of your comfort
zone. Do you believe God wants you to settle in safe places, and do easy
things? Or kick the gates of hell down and give the devil a hard time?
In v4-7, there are three examples of the kind of
hardship we can expect as followers of Jesus. Following Jesus is like serving
in the military, training hard for athletic competition and daily graft on the
farm. All three demand discipline, dedication, hard work, long hours and
commitment.
No one says, “I want a cushy job. I know, I’ll join
the army and risk my life on a tour of Afghanistan.”
Or “I’m looking for a comfortable desk job. I’ll train
hard for the triathlon and go through the pain barrier to make the Olympics in
Tokyo 2020.”
Or “I’ve always wanted a stress-free career. I’ll get
up at 5am every day to milk the cows, muck out the pigs, feed the chickens, shear
the sheep, plough the earth, do the books, and flop down every day at 9pm.”
Look, life is hard. Following Jesus is demanding. He
said it would be. He said the world will hate you because it hated him first.
It will and it did. But he also said you will not be left alone like orphans, your
joy will be complete, you’ll have life in abundance, you’ll have peace not like
the world gives, you’ll be fruitful, you’ll be free indeed, and dozens of other
promises besides.
John Piper said it really well recently: “If you live
gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be
high, and your joy will be full.”
Stick to the script, expect hardship and, number three,
keep your eye on the prize.
3) Keep Your Eye on the Prize
The squaddie who is sent on a tough tour of duty comes
home to a hero’s welcome. It’s worth it in the end.
The athlete who trains hard all through the cold, dark
winter stands on a podium and fights back tears as the anthem is played. It’s
worth it in the end.
Farmer Giles who works like a Trojan all year produces
a bumper crop and is on the cover of Farmers Weekly. It’s worth it in the end.
“Look, I’m suffering even to the point of being
chained like a criminal” Paul says in v9. Whenever life is especially hard, you
can focus on the injustice, the humiliation, the disgrace.
You can nurse a grievance and go around with a chip on
your shoulder. Or you can keep your eye on the prize. …”OK, I’m chained like a
criminal but God’s word is not chained” he adds. It’s worth it for that.
We’re not stuck in a miserable loop of Good Friday looking
at a failed Messiah strung up like butchered meat. We are Easter Sunday people.
Jesus is alive! He came out on top.
Broken lives are being mended. Prisoners are getting
released. People are getting saved. The gates of hell are getting battered and God
is on the move.
Halfway through the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon could
see he had victory in sight and, in a moment of hubris, he dispatched a
messenger off to Paris. “Tell the nation that I have prevailed” he said. But it
was premature. Prussian reinforcements arrived to strengthen Wellington’s beleaguered
troops, the battle turned, and Napoleon snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Well, on Good Friday the devil sent message off to Hell.
“Victory is ours!” But that too was premature. Three days later, Jesus ripped up
the form book, threw off the grave clothes, and strode out of the tomb laughing
and triumphant.
Ending
You see, to slightly misquote Hubert van Zeller, if
you live independently of God, life can disappoint you when it all goes wrong.
If you live for God everything can still go wrong - but not in a way that will
disappoint you.
That’s why Paul can say in v10 “I endure everything”.
Betrayal, beatings, desertion, unfair trials, harsh sentences… “I can put up
with that” he says. “Just a flesh wound. Because, look! I can see salvation and
eternal glory.”
Let’s pray…
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