Preached · October 15, 2012
Series · Life Verse
Text · 2 Timothy 4
The Oil Contest
We're in 2 Timothy chapter 4. But before we get there, we have a contest, and the prize is a bag of M&Ms. So I need two volunteers—a man and a woman who feel confident in the kitchen. Come on up.
Two brave volunteers came up: Darryl, from Arnolds Park, a first-time visitor, and Lisa Bleeker, from Rochester, Minnesota, also a first-timer. Good News members, take notes.
We're doing the oil contest. This is just four quick questions in rapid succession. I'm going to give you the name of an oil, and you're going to tell me what that oil is made from. If you go over about three seconds, we're going to move on to the next one. No pressure. Bag of M&Ms on the line.
Olive oil? Olives. Peanut oil? Peanuts. Palm oil? Palm juice—good enough. Canola oil? Canola… I was really hoping somebody would say "cannoli," because I think it would be fantastic. Canola oil is actually made from a seed which has a terrible name: it's called rapeseed. It was developed in Canada, and the word "canola" is kind of a synonym for "Canadian oil, low acid."
So we got three out of four. Now you have a goal to work toward. Here we go, rapid succession. Corn oil? Corn. Vegetable oil? Coconut oil? Coconut. And baby oil? No idea. Baby oil is actually a mineral oil, a liquid byproduct of the distillation of petroleum to produce gasoline. So, three out of four again. Well, we have two prizes—I planned for this—so we'll give the chocolate to the lady and the Life Savers to the gentleman. Thank you very much.
Baby oil—it was a joke from Lily Tomlin. She says you get corn oil from corn, you get peanut oil from peanuts; where does baby oil come from? Well, presumably there is not a factory out there squeezing babies for their oil-like substance. But it leads me to a question, which will be the basis of what we're talking about this morning: if you squeezed Good News—this church—what would come out? So file that away in your brain, write it down, tuck it away for a moment, and we'll come back to it at the end.
Introduction to 2 Timothy
We're talking about 2 Timothy chapter 4. The author is the Apostle Paul, the guy who wrote the large majority of the New Testament—a church planter who went around to different churches and planted them. He was a trailblazer. The recipient of 2 Timothy is Pastor Timothy, one of Paul's main protégés, a guy Paul led to salvation and mentored and trained and then left in the church of the city of Ephesus.
Paul's circumstances: it's the end of his life. He's in prison in Rome for what we believe is the second time. He's pretty aware that he thinks he's going to die; he's probably come to the end of his life, the end of his ministry. And he's writing this very personal, very heartfelt letter to Timothy. Timothy's circumstances: he's a struggling pastor of a large church that, for the most part, was healthy and had some good, strong leadership. But Timothy is struggling. He always kind of feels down on himself; he struggles with self-doubt about whether he's good at what he's doing. So these are the circumstances in which Paul is writing.
So let's take a look at the actual text of 2 Timothy 4, verses 1 through 5. And I'll tell you which one of these is my life verse. Verse 1 says:
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you—
And this is my life verse:
—proclaim the message. Be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable. Convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.
Seven Verbs
To begin this sermon, let's go through the text. We've got seven commands—seven verbs—and seven reasons that Paul gives Timothy.
Verb number one: preach. Preach the word. Preach the message. Paul is encouraging Timothy: "Take what you know, take the gospel that has been given to you, and proclaim it." The word for "word" here is the same word used in John 1, "The Word came down." Jesus is the Word. So basically we're being told, "Preach Jesus."
There are good and bad ways to preach Jesus. When I was in sixth grade, there was a kid named Mike Summers, who probably could win the "most annoying kid in sixth grade" contest. He was the kind who would pick his nose and eat it and think it was funny—and, you know, he's twelve; that's inappropriate. And Mike wanted to be my friend. I wasn't in the popular crowd by any means; I was somewhere in the middle, aspiring to be popular but at the same time looking down on people like Mike. But Mike was just persistent. He really wanted to be my friend, so he'd follow me around, and in passing period he would come to my locker and try to tell me jokes. It didn't work. It was also in sixth grade that I kind of gave my life to Jesus, that I became a Christian. And when I take on something, I do it to the best of my ability, so I was telling as many people as I could about Jesus—not including Mike. So what I did is I tricked him. I cajoled him. And if this leads to some church discipline, that's okay, I'll confess. I told him that I would be his friend if he would become a Christian. So he did; we did the whole prayer. I felt guilty. I knew what I was doing was wrong. And then whenever he would annoy me, I would pull out, "Would Jesus do that?" And that was the extent of our relationship.
That is not what Paul's talking about. That is not what it means to preach the word. If there's some cajoling, some tricking, some slimy salesmanship, that's not what we're talking about. To preach, to proclaim, doesn't even necessarily mean to stand up on a platform with a microphone and talk to 400 or 500 people. To preach was an action, something you did with your whole life—something that, this is a nasty word, but it kind of oozed out of you because it was part of your being. It was just naturally who you were, so that when you were proclaiming, it just couldn't help but come out. And Paul is telling Timothy: be like this with Jesus, with the message, with the gospel. No salesmanship, no tricking, no cajoling. Live your life in a way that says, "Oh, that's what a Christian looks like."
The second verb is to be prepared. I thought of the mail service—in rain and snow and sleet and hail, they come; they're always ready to deliver the mail, no matter the weather. Paul is telling Timothy: in season and out of season, whether the time is good or doesn't look that good, preach the word. May your life always look like Jesus, always look like the gospel, whether it's convenient for you or not.
The third is actually a series of verbs in quick succession: correct, rebuke, exhort—bang, bang, bang. And the way Timothy is supposed to do this, according to Paul, is with great patience and great instruction. I thought of doctors. Doctors are one of the few people we actually pay to insult us—"Well, you've gained a little weight there. What's that mole?" It's one of those places where we're actually willing to give money to be really uncomfortable, because it's good for us. We recognize that there's a need to go to a doctor, for them to look at us because they're the expert and they say, "Hey, you should cut back on the M&Ms." (Sorry to whoever just won the M&Ms.) Church might be the other place. But the way Paul tells Timothy to do this is with patience, with great instruction—not this harsh, mean-spirited "you're ugly," but something that says, "I see this thing in your life; maybe it's time to let it go. I see this habit you've got, and it's destroying you; maybe it's time to have some release from that." That's the correction, the rebuke, the exhortation. Parents, you know what I'm talking about—it's when you take your child aside and say, "Man, I just see that you're making the wrong choice here." It doesn't have to be forceful. It doesn't have to equal mean-spiritedness. It's a calming, life-changing rebuke.
The next one, in verse 5, Paul says, "Keep your head"—literally, "be sober." What Paul is talking about is: in your life, in your conduct, in what you do, do it responsibly. Keep your head. Don't lose your cool. Admittedly, Timothy was in a church where there were difficult people—one of the few churches in the world where there were difficult people; that's a joke. And Paul was saying, "You keep saying you want to quit, you keep saying you're losing confidence, you keep saying you just want to give up hope. No—just stay calm. It's going to be okay. God's on your side. Keep your head. Be sober-minded."
Continuing in verse 5, Paul tells Timothy to endure. This is the image of the ship Endurance, which back in the early 1900s was one of the last great treks to Antarctica. The ship was stranded, sealed in by the ice, and Captain Shackleton and his burly men of courage survived. They actually managed to get a little dinghy off to the islands off of Argentina and bring back a rescue party, and they all survived despite living for about a month—I think it was 28 days—in just frigid temperatures. And what Paul is saying to Timothy is: endure. Endure hardship. Kind of like "keep your head"—stay calm, and don't run away. Hold your ground. You're going to be fine.
Next, Paul says, "Do the work of an evangelist." Here's confession number two: when I was about 14, I had this great idea that I would go on a crusade, that I would just call up churches and preach to them. I'm not sure how well I would do anymore, but that was my great idea. And this is why this verse became my life verse—from very early on in my own life, I just felt this burning need to tell people about Jesus. The crusade didn't work out. We'll see how this sermon goes, though. Paul's telling Timothy: "Do the work. You have a message, you're preaching the gospel; you need to keep your head, endure the hardship, and keep working. Do the work of an evangelist. Tell people about Jesus."
And then finally, the seventh verb is to fulfill. Through the Star Wars trilogy, Luke is meant to fulfill his destiny, his fate. And we don't preach or believe in destiny and fate here, but what Paul is saying is, "Fulfill your ministry." You've been called to do something; now fulfill it. Do what God has enabled and called you to do. There's this idea of fulfilling: God's got something planned, something in store; now it's up to you to do it, to take action.
Seven Reasons
So those are the seven verbs, the seven commands. Now let's quickly go through the seven reasons.
The reasons in verse 1: God and Christ are present now. So because God is in this place, because God is in this earth, do these things. Number two, God and Christ will judge in the future—there is coming a day when Jesus will return and judge the living and the dead. And number three, God and Christ will reign in the future. So because God is here now, because God and Jesus are coming to judge the living and the dead, and because God and Christ are coming to set up his kingdom in the future—in view of all this, Timothy, preach the word.
And then the next reasons, in verses 3 and 5, are because people will do the following. Number one, they will not put up with sound doctrine—literally, they won't bear it; they're not going to take it upon themselves to hear good truth and do it and believe in it. And because of this, they're going to gather a bunch of teachers. Because they won't put up with truth, they're going to create their own form of truth: they're going to get a bunch of people who already say things they believe, things that are easy to believe, and say, "Okay, we'll pay you, you teach us." And through this, they're going to turn their eyes away from truth and turn aside toward myth—toward falsehood, toward lies.
What Does This Have to Do with Us?
So, seven verbs, seven reasons. Now, the thing about passages like this is that we're dealing with a church planter writing to a pastor, and the question that always comes up is: what does this have to do with me, average Joe, average Jane, sitting in the church pew? What does it have to do with the normal Christian who's got their job, their family, their normal Christian life?
Well, let me review some things. In the book of Matthew chapter 28, we have Jesus giving his Great Commission to his disciples. It's what Matthew closes his entire book with. Matthew 28:19-20 says, "Therefore go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." And before you think, "Well, that still doesn't apply, because the disciples were these great people who dedicated their entire lives to ministry—how could I ever reach the levels of dedication they had?"—don't put them up on too high a pedestal. They still had jobs. Some of them were still fishermen; one was a tax collector. They still had things they had to do. We know Peter at least had a wife, and therefore probably a family. These were pretty average dudes. And we know the Great Commission was given not only to the twelve, but to the entirety of Jesus' disciples from his time on earth—Paul attests it was a group of about 500. And again, these are just dudes and gals. This is what Jesus is asking them to do: make disciples.
The book of 1 Peter chapter 2. Peter is writing to a church of average, normal people. He says, "You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." So in verse 9, Peter calls this church a chosen people, a royal priesthood. In Ephesians chapter 1, verse 6, it says that Christ has made us a kingdom of priests. And again, this isn't just referring to the church staff who sit in an office and get paid; he's talking to the entirety of a church—all of us, all of you.
In Ephesians chapter 4, Paul gives his vision of what ministry in a church should look like. Let me read it:
He's given each one of us grace—grace can also sometimes be translated "gift"—to become the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity, maturity, and fullness. We must no longer be children, blown here and there by every wind of teaching—that gathering together of teachers. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we must grow to become, in every aspect, the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.
So here we see Paul's vision for what the church should be made up of. Notice it says Christ has given each one of us—every single one of us—grace, or gift, to become apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. There's an acronym for those five words: APEST. It's a good way to look at your own life, your own giftings, your own callings, and see, "What is my part in this church? What's my role? What is God calling me to do?" Christ has given each one of us one of these graces. Which one's mine? And the harder question: am I living up to it? Am I living up to the grace that God has given us? We'll come back to this.
Second Timothy chapter 2, verse 2, says—Paul is telling Timothy—"And 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." Quick survey: how many generations of learning do we have in this one verse? I count four. We've got Paul himself—"the things you have heard me say"—to Timothy. That's two. And then to Timothy's students—"pass on to reliable people." And then Timothy's students, who will go on to teach others. So we've got four generations of learning in this single verse. This is the model. This is what we'd love to see Good News become: a place where there are generations after generations of learning, where someone teaches you, and then you entrust that to reliable people, and then those people go on and entrust it to more people, on and on. This process of multiplication, of duplication.
So in all of this—being reminded that we're given a commission to make disciples, being reminded that we are a royal priesthood, a kingdom of priests—we begin to see that maybe 2 Timothy chapter 4 is not just to a struggling pastor of a large church. Maybe Paul is writing to all of us. Preach the word, in season and out of season. Preach the word.
Things to Be Cautious Of
So, some things to be cautious of. First, assuming that if you like what you're hearing, it must be true. We see in this passage that Paul gives a warning that there's going to come a day—and I think Paul is being a little tongue-in-cheek, because Timothy was already dealing with this—when people will not put up with good teaching, good doctrine, and so they're going to go find teachers they do like. Paul's caution is that that's not the way it should work. If it's true, you should listen. So the caution for you and me is: just because we like what we're hearing doesn't mean it's true. Or the inverse: if you don't like it, it can't be true. Be cautious of that. Just because you like it doesn't mean it's true, and just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's false.
Second thing to be cautious of: always wanting to hear something new and different. Paul warns of itching ears—kind of the idea of sitting in the salon, the barbershop, wherever people sit these days, and you hear a conversation and your ears begin to itch, so you pay more and more attention: "Oh, that's what so-and-so said. Oh, that's how that came about." Itching ears—that curiosity that drags you into gossip, into lies, into things that aren't true. Paul says be cautious of that.
Third, basing your decision solely off of what feels good to you. This is a lot like the first one: don't just make a decision because "that seems right" or "it feels good here." That doesn't mean it's true.
And along those lines, thinking that teaching shouldn't include rebuke, correction, and exhortation—shouldn't include the doctor saying, "Time to lay off," or "Time to pick up the treadmill." Sometimes we need that.
Things to Work Toward
So, things to work toward. Live with the return of Jesus always in view. This is how Paul starts this message to Timothy; it's a recurring theme throughout the entire book. Because we know that Jesus is coming back, preach the word.
Always be ready with an answer. First Peter 3:15 says that whenever somebody asks you why you have this hope, why you live the way you live, why you believe these things—Peter says, and Paul agrees—be ready, be prepared to give the reason, to give an answer.
And finally, live like the heirs, the priests, the APESTs—not pests; I'm not calling you pests—the APESTs that you really are. There's a great website; write this down: www.fivefoldsurvey.com. It sounds intimidating—it's 80 questions—but you can do it in about 10 minutes. It's a quick survey that will give you an idea of your primary and secondary roles. An apostle is somebody who likes to start things, who sees something that needs to be done and gets it done. A prophet is somebody who knows the truth and is willing to speak that truth courageously. An evangelist is somebody who is willing to gather people and say, "Okay, this is what Jesus is about." A shepherd is somebody who cares for people, who loves on them, who sees the need and then fulfills that need. And a teacher is one who teaches, who knows the truth and is willing to give instruction. And I firmly believe that every single one of us in here fits into one of those roles broadly. It means different things depending on your personality, your talents, your gifts. But every single one of us—Christ has given us a grace to build up his church, to grow up, to mature into the head that is Christ.
If This Church Were Squeezed
Which leads us back to our first question: if this church were squeezed, what would come out? If this church got pressure—say it was financial pressure, government pressure, pressure from the society around us—what would come out? Would people who have itching ears come out? Would people who want to hear things that sound good come out? Or if this church were squeezed, would it reveal the apostles and the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers that are here? And if that squeezing would bring that out, then why not bring it out now? Why not live up to the full calling of what Christ has made us able to do—to be a church replete, filled, overflowing with people who are ready to minister to the world, who see its brokenness, its hunger, its pain, its need for Jesus? Every single one of us would stand up and say, "I see that need, and we are going to meet it. I see the darkness, and we are going to shine light into it. I see the work of the enemy, and we are going to overcome with the power of Jesus." That is what this church is capable of: seeing the needs of this community, this county, this state, this nation, this world, and being the light that it needs.
So my encouragement to you is: preach the word, in season and out of season. Rebuke, exhort, correct. Stand firm, be sober-minded, endure, and do the work of an evangelist. This is not only my verse; this is a verse for all of us.
Prayer
Let's pray.
Good and gracious Father, you have called us to far more than we even knew. And Father, you have made us able to accomplish your work by the power of your Spirit. So my prayer for myself, my prayer for my brothers and sisters before me, is that we would be bold and courageous, standing firm in the truth that you have called us to be your ambassadors, to be the message of reconciliation to this world. Father, would you anoint your people? Would you call them up and out and into this community, knowing their task, and give them the ability to do their task well? We pray in your name. Amen.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
