Introduction
Well, good morning
everybody. I hope, whatever
circumstance you find yourselves in, that you are experiencing the Lord's
presence with you. God has said, I
will never leave you nor forsake you. Jesus said, I will
be with you always to the end of the age. Promises to hold on
to.
We've come to the
end of this series on 2 Timothy; and I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I
have.
If you’ve followed
the series so far, what do you think God has said to you most clearly over the
last few weeks?
- Is it ‘fan into flame the
spiritual gift that God has given you’?
- Is it ‘be unashamed of the
gospel and unafraid to tell others about Jesus’?
- Is it ‘give the Bible
greater prominence and priority in your life because it is breathed by
God’?
- Is it ‘be clear about truth
in a world that says “the only truth is what seems true to me”’?
- Is it ‘be strong in the
grace that is in Christ’?
As we have seen,
this is the last letter Paul wrote as he faced death. And it's to a
younger leader called Timothy to pass on a baton, hoping (and in fact trusting)
that he will not drop it, but grip it tight, and run his lap with all his
energy before he in turn must hand it on to the next generation.
But though this is
a personal letter, it's not a private one. Paul is consciously
writing, not just to an individual, but to the whole church in every era.
And we know this
because, in very last verse of the letter, Paul says, “The Lord be with your
spirit.” The word “you” there is singular. But then he says,
“Grace be with you.” And there (in the original manuscript) the word “you” is
plural, so the NIV translates it “you all.”
This is God's voice
speaking to all of us.
Let’s read chapter
4, verses 1-5.
“In the presence of
God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of
his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2 preach
the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and
encourage – with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For
the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to
suit their own desires, they will gather round them a great number of teachers
to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will
turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But
you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an
evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
Well, Timothy, we
have seen, has many good qualities. He takes a genuine
interest in others, he has a caring heart. Timothy will not
let you down. He's reliable. He’ll tell you,
“I’ll be there at two o’ clock - and at two o’clock, without fail, there he is
waiting. Paul says elsewhere
as he talks about his apostolic team, “I have no one else like Timothy.”
But he does not
have a strong personality at all. He seems to need a
lot of encouragement. And protection.
Paul has to tell the Corinthians, “When Timothy comes, see to it that he has
nothing to fear while he is with you.” He’s young,
inexperienced, frequently ill, very sensitive and a bit introverted
perhaps.
We sometimes
imagine that God only really calls dynamic characters. Self-confident
extroverts with heroic personalities. But that’s not the
way in the Bible at all.
When God says to
Moses, “I’m sending you,” Moses says, “But
I’m no leader; I’m useless up front, I get my words tangled up and I st- st-
st- stutter. Could you maybe send someone else?”
When God says to
Gideon, “I’m calling you,” Gideon says, “But
I’m nobody. My father is a nobody. I come from an insignificant family and I’m
the least impressive of the lot.”
When God says to
Jeremiah, “I’m appointing you,” Jeremiah says, “But
I’m obviously much too young, Lord. I’ve got no experience, no one will take me
seriously.”
But each time God
does not take “no” for an answer. He appoints and
then he empowers.
Don’t ever say,
“Oh, I don’t think I’m the sort of person God would want to use.” We need to
understand that if God calls me, it’s because of his grace, not my giftedness,
and he will supply what I need to prevail.
1. Preach the Word
I’ve got two points
coming out of these 8 verses and here they are: 1) preach the word and 2)
finish the race.
Verse 2 says
“Preach the word...” Preach the word. Not a word.
Not any old words. The word.
Preach God’s eternal,
inspired, indestructible, omnipotent, forever dependable, unimprovable,
heart-transforming, life-imparting word.
You might say
“Well, I’m not a preacher, this doesn’t really apply to me.” Fair enough. But these verses
tell you what kind of qualities you should want to see in a preacher and what
kind of leader you should follow.
The great 20th Century
preacher W. E. Sangster once interviewed a candidate for the Methodist
ministry. It was a shy and
retiring young man who evidently did not have a lot of self-confidence. He said, “Oh, I'm
not the sort of man who'd set the Thames on fire.” Sangster looked at
him and said, “My dear young man, I'm not interested to know if you can set the
Thames on fire, what I want to know is this: if I throw you in the river will
it sizzle?”
Some sermons I’ve
heard in my time you could throw the preacher in the Thames, and they're so
cold, so frigid, they'd actually lower the temperature of the river!
I thank God for
leaders here who love God’s word. Who feel the weight
of this solemn charge to preach it. Who believe it
passionately. Who take seriously
the thought that God will judge with greater strictness those who preach and
teach, so they work
diligently and prayerfully at this ministry.
But the value of
God's word is contested in our time. There are three
types of people who are uncomfortable with this charge to preach it.
Firstly, and
perhaps most common in evangelical circles, is quite subtle; a kind of casual
replacing of God’s word for whatever the latest fashion is.
A few years ago, a
well-known speaker at a popular Christian summer conference took to the stage
and said, “I’m not going to open my Bible tonight, I’m just going to share my
heart.” My heart
sank. I thought,
Seriously? I’ve come a long way for this. I don’t really want
to hear your heart while I look longingly at the closed Bible on your
chair. I wanted to say,
“Open your Bible or shut your mouth!
Obviously, being
English, I didn’t stand up and make a scene in front of thousands of
people. I just sat there
annoyed - and bored - for an hour. But God’s people don’t
gather in their thousands and endure a week of camping purgatory just for human
wisdom, or precious thoughts or personal anecdotes.
Jesus said, “Heaven
and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” We want every word
that comes from the mouth of God. So Paul says to
Timothy, “preach that.”
The second kind of
person who doesn’t like this charge to preach the word is found in more liberal
circles, where there is a selective approach to the total truthfulness of
Scripture.
Bryan Chappell, of
Covenant Theological Seminary in Saint Louis, Missouri, was once challenged by
a student who complained that the Bible is outdated and full of errors.
So Chappell took
some scissors from a drawer and he said to his student, “Here, take these and
cut out from your Bible everything you don’t think should be in it. But you should
understand that by the time you are done picking and choosing what should be
included, and what should be left out, the only wisdom you will have left is
your own.”
No, as we saw a few
weeks ago, ALL scripture is God-breathed.
And the third
attitude pervades society. The dominant mood in our postmodern world is to
reject clear, authoritative beliefs about anything. Many people are
sceptical when we say that we can be sure about truth.
They prefer a
flexible world where you can’t be certain about anything and each person has to
find the way for themselves. But the Christian
worldview says, God has spoken and his word is true.
So preach the word.
Then v2 says “Be prepared in season and out of season.” In season and out
of season means when it’s convenient and when it’s not, in promising
situations and unfavourable ones, when people are
responsive and when they seem closed. Always be ready.
The former Olympic
decathlete Daley Thompson was once asked what his favourite day was. He said,
“Christmas Day.” The interviewer
said, “Ah, one day in the year you can allow yourself some mince pies and a
glass of wine!”
He said, “No.
That’s not why I like Christmas Day. On December 25th I train
harder than any other day while all my rivals are taking a day off. It gives me
a competitive advantage. That’s why it’s my favourite day.”
“Be prepared in
season and out of season, correct, rebuke, encourage…”
Of course, we would
all rather be encouraged than corrected and rebuked but “All scripture is
useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
The natural state
of the human heart is to be in rebellion against God. So it’s
understandable that this book, which tells me what God doesn’t like as well as
what he likes, will sometimes offend me. Preachers have to
say is as it is.
A woman once went
up to the great evangelist George Whitefield and complained to him, “Every time
I’ve heard you preach, all you say is, ye must be born again. Why don’t you
ever say anything else?” Whitefield looked
at her and said, “because, madam, ye must be born again!”
And it says this:
(v3-4) that a time is coming when preaching will be unpopular. We are in those
days now actually. It says, “People
will shut their ears to sound teaching.” They will call for
a message that merely recycles the norms and values of the prevailing
culture.
Every preacher
battles the temptation to skate over uncomfortable truths in a passage when the
body language of the congregation is disapproving and negative.
Jesus was once
approached by his disciples who said to him, “Do you know that people were
offended by what you just said?” Jesus
replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be
pulled up by the roots.”
In other words,
religious tradition and pious wisdom that’s not in line with the Word of God
will come to nothing.”
That won’t cut it.
Preach… the word.
As I said earlier,
you may not be called to be a Bible teacher. But you are called
to be discerning about who you let shape your thinking and values. Either you stand up
for what you believe, or you become part of what somebody else believes.
2. Finish the Race
Second and last
point - and more briefly; finish the race. Verse 6:
The time for my
departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race,
I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that
day…”
A well-attested
tradition records that Paul was beheaded around 64 AD about 3 miles outside
Rome’s city limits.
I love to picture
the scene in heaven, moments afterwards. Just as Paul’s
arriving, high fiveing a few old friends, the crowds part and there’s Jesus in
all his triumphant glory. “Paul!” he says.
“You made it! You fought the good fight. You finished the race. You kept the
faith. Here's your crown!”
It’s what he’s
going to say to you one day, if you keep battling, stay in the race and cross
the line. Fight the good
fight. Finish the race. Keep the faith.
At the 1968 Olympic
Games in Mexico City, at the 19-kilometre point of the marathon, one of the
runners John Akhwari dramatically fell to the ground, dislocating his knee and
shoulder. The heat and lack
of air at altitude were so brutal that 18 of the world’s most elite
long-distance runners failed to finish at all. But John Akhwari
kept running for 23 more kilometres, in searing pain and cramped up because he
had never trained at altitude.
He finished last
(of those who actually completed the course), over an hour after the winner,
after the medal ceremony, and in fact after the sun had set. The stadium was all
but empty when he finally entered it. But as he limped
crossed the finish line there was an emotional and appreciative cheer from the
small crowd still there.
They interviewed
him and asked him why he bothered to keep running. He said, “My
country [Tanzania] did not send me 5,000 miles to start the race; they sent me
5,000 miles to finish the race.”
That’s your mission
and mine.
Some people wish
they had a more exciting testimony of how they came to faith. But it doesn’t
matter how you started the race of faith as much as the fact that you keep
running till it’s done, keep the faith.
Are you still
running the race? Are you going to
finish it and win the crown or will you drop out and lose everything?
Ending
If you’re a
Christian you look at life - and death - differently.
There’s a church
leader down in Bournemouth called Tim Matthews whose grandfather fought in the
D-Day landings in World War II. He got a finger
shut off and so many terrible things, but survived to tell the tale. He used to tell his
grandson war stories including one about arriving in a French village, driving
his truck in a convoy to resupply the front lines.
They were told that
the village had most probably in mind by the retreating German army and had not
yet been cleared. There was no viable
alternative route and the front lines had to be re-supplied immediately, so the
convoy had to take its chances and drive through the village.
The commanding
officer approached Tim’s grandad in the cab of his truck and said “Albert,
you’re a Christian, aren’t you?” Albert replied that he was. So the commanding
officer said, “well, since you know where you’re going when you die, you can
drive an empty truck through the village and the rest of the convoy will follow
your tyre tracks. If you get blown
up, we all know we have to take a different route!” Albert said a prayer, set
off, utterly at peace, and drove straight through the village without incident.
And what if you’ve
not yet become a follower of Jesus Christ? Maybe you’ve been
thinking about it for ages.Why don’t you give
your heart to Christ today?
You might say to
me, “But I’m very happy in life, I’ve got everything I want. Why do I need
Jesus? Everything’s just fine.”
But that’s talking
as though our life on this earth goes on forever. Chances are we’ll
live a bit longer than our parents did, but none of us can keep the sand
running indefinitely. Last time I checked
the death rate was the same as it’s always been; 100%!
Then we get to see
that nothing we owned was ever really ours. Everything we have
now and call ours is just on loan. And it all has to
be returned when we leave this world for the next one. Jesus said, “What
good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet lose their soul?”
You may have shut
him out of your life for years. Is today the day
when that changes? The Bible says
“draw near to God and he'll draw near to you.” You may have
drifted far away from God. Come back to Christ
today. He’s waiting. It’s not too late.
I remember the
evangelist Billy Graham was interviewed on BBC Radio once and the presenter
said, “Billy Graham,
- you’ve travelled the
globe,
- you’ve preached to
millions,
- you’ve seen countless
conversions to Christ,
- you’ve appeared on
Gallup’s Most Admired People in the World for thirty-two
consecutive years,
- more than any other
individual in the world,
- you’ve spoken personally
with world statesmen,
- you’ve led prayers at the
inauguration of several American Presidents…
when you finally
get to those pearly gates, what do you think will be your finest
achievement?”
And without a
moment of hesitation, Graham said, “Just to have got there, just to have made
it.” Billy died three
years ago; he was still running; he completed the course and is now with the
Lord. Those who persevere
to the end will be saved.
Finish the race,
keep the faith.
Let’s pray…
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 28 February 2021
