2 Timothy 2:1-10 • Baccalaureate - So in Love With Jesus
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
And it will be the power of God greater than you for the purposes of the gospel
in the glory of eternity.
Pray with me.
Father, for these men and women who have wonderfully come here, some at great price,
to live for you, so work in them the knowledge of your grace that they become fountains of it to a world in need.
Minister grace first in their own hearts so that it becomes breath to them, being their very reflex,
so that whether endurance comes, hurt from others, or whether they are simply hurting for others,
give them the words of life, the power of the gospel that cannot be chained, because Jesus is in them and through them proclaiming His grace for the glory of the kingdom. Grant them this power greater than they we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.
This evening I'm reading from 2 Timothy, chapter 1, verses 1 through 10.
"Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, according to the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my beloved child, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother, Lois, and your mother Eunice, and now I am sure dwells in you as well. For this reason I remind you to fan and to flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
Now would you keep your Bibles open right there, but go to 2 Timothy 2, verses 1 through 10, which is what I meant. It's not you, Eric. It's my typo.
When you and I were teasing outside and you said, "What if I do a new verse?" I thought, "Well, he wouldn't do that." You didn't. We did the wrong typo. So I'm going to keep reading in chapter 2, because I'm not ready for chapter 1.
No, you read the right verse according to the bulletin. We just had a typo. So here comes chapter 2, verses 1 through 10 also. Are you ready?
"You, then my son," this is what you and I need right now, Eric, lots of grace. It's about to come. "You, then my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses in trust to reliable men, who are also qualified to teach others, endure hardship like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs. He wants to please his commanding officer.
Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules. The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops.
Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this." Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David.
This is my gospel, for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal, but God's word is not chained.
"Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory."
Striking a general, patent-like pose, the noted seminary professor and wonderful communicator Howard Hendricks is reputed to have looked over a graduating class and said these words, "Graduates, I am not impressed."
It sounded so inappropriate, so insensitive, so cruel.
But of course what he was trying to do was to say to those going into ministry,
"If it's your talents, if it's your strength, if it's your wisdom, then the world and the flesh and the devil will overcome you."
There must be something beyond you that you take into ministry, that you utilize to serve God in something that is far beyond you, this ministry of the gospel.
And as Paul writes to Timothy, in this, the last letter, not only to Timothy, but the last Pauline letter instructing with those takeaways that John Medlock talked about, he begins to say, "What is it that you must have that's greater than you for this task that is beyond you?"
Simple words first, you have to have a mission that's greater than you for this task that is beyond you.
The words of verse 2 are familiar to us. "The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others." It's just the ministry of multiplication. But it's a reminder that no one can do this alone.
The task is bigger than any one of us. And so the apostle is saying there is a multiplication that must occur from you for Christ to be heard and ministered in the way that he intends throughout your life. You can't do this alone.
Recently in the New York Times, there was an article on the Specialty Coffee Association of America, the SCAA.
It's an organization that is dedicated to those persons who own exotic and expensive steam-taming instruments for the making of espresso.
The stated goal of this organization is to turn into missionaries, those early believers in the exotic ecstasies of espresso,
so that they will have a catalytic viral effect upon the population until all understand the nirvana of espresso.
They're just talking about coffee.
And yet there is this sense of the need for this catalytic viral effect.
And we have the gospel.
What is the apostle saying to us but that we don't serve God unless there is from us and through us a catalytic viral effect.
The gospel did not begin with us and it should not end with us. The temptation of any of us in ministry is to begin to evaluate our effectiveness by what people say of us, our reputation, our status, our abilities to proclaim the word, our ability to minister to others through counseling or teaching. And we would somehow gain status or career by what other people say of us. And our temptation is always to say, "Looky here."
But Paul is saying ministry is evaluated by saying, "Looky there.
What has gone out from me?" It's a basic ministry question. Not, "Are you successful?"
It is, "Are you infectious?"
Is there a contagion that moves out from your life to touch others so that this gospel that is so important for the eternity of souls in congregations and counseling rooms across the world, is there something that moves beyond you? You have to have a mission that's greater than you to fulfill this ministry task.
The apostle says if you're going to have such a mission greater than you, you have to have a vision greater than you. At the end of verse 7, the words that go by so quickly, the apostle says, "Reflect on what I'm saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all of this."
Now, that insight follows the things that he is wanting to be reflected upon. It's first this, the vision that you are to have is that you must be not distracted by other things.
You know the words that precede this. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs. There's this notion that to protect his life, a soldier focuses on what will preserve his life amidst great danger.
Similarly, an athlete does not receive the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules. There has to be focus of staying in the path according to the rules without distraction. Even the farmer, if he's to eat, has to be focused on what he is doing. I haven't been a soldier, I've been a little bit of an athlete, but my background is much more the farming.
And I think what it means to say that you must be so concerned for ministry that you believe it is your very life, that you don't eat apart from it, that this is part of your being for the sake of Christ and the gospel and others, that you would be about this ministry. I've seen it in my grandfather, a farmer, when he got old and his mind wasn't processing so well anymore. I've watched as he would take a pill out of his pocket, down it with a glass of water, put the pillbox back in his pocket and say,
"Did I take my pill?"
And yet despite that loss of short-term memory, if you walked into his garden, to his dying day, you would see rows, straight, well cultivated, weedless, because the soil was a part of his blood beyond his thought, beyond his cognition. It was simply a part of his being, this profession of being a farmer.
And for those of us who are saying, "This gospel which saves souls eternally is so important that I'm not to be evaluated for my status, but for my ability to multiply this into the lives of others, that becomes breath to me. That becomes life to me." It's not a matter just of salary, it's not a matter of just reputation, it's my very being, this ministry. I hear it often even in the pronouns of those that I recognize are struggling in ministry, as they begin to objectify the church away from them. And they will talk about the struggles of the church and the people who are not doing well, the people who are not approving my programs, those people over there who are not excited about what I am proposing.
And the church gets objectified away from the person.
Instead of the pastors that I know to be ministers for whom ministry is their blood,
in which they say, even in struggles, we as God's people haven't quite accomplished this yet.
We are struggling to understand all that God is doing in the place and all that He is calling us to do. And instead of saying, "I am a hireling of the church there and I am working for the salary," yet they have seen their lives so invested into a church and to a people that they are saying, "Their good is my life. I so identify with them."
When that becomes what we are seeing, that we have this kind of undistracted focus and recognize we are not alone in needing such focus. Anyone truly dedicated to a purpose will have such focus. The Apostle is also saying to us, "For you to truly be able to know what ministry is about and to have success in it, you must know you will struggle in it." Before he listed, excuse me, right after he listed all of those professions, there were these preceding words of verse 3, "Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Jesus." An Apostle is saying, "Endure hardship like a soldier."
Not only is working without distraction something that everyone is called to do,
apparently we are to understand with the vision from heaven itself that we will have to endure hardship.
And that will be true of every one of us who is faithful to this gospel ministry.
Not pleasant to hear, not easy to say, and yet the Apostle reminds us simply of words such as from James, "Don't be surprised if you have various trials. Jesus, in this world you will have persecutions." As a matter of fact, the fact that you will suffer for the sake of God's people is the development of Christ's likeness in you.
So that to be Christ to his people, there is a degree of suffering, of difficulty that is just the norm. And you know why you have to hear that is because we are in a culture in which this gospel is increasingly viewed as bigoted.
You preaching this gospel of faith in Jesus Christ as the hope of the world will be viewed as being intolerant and prejudicial.
And you cannot preach this gospel without persecution in this world.
And when you face it to say, "But I'm not alone," this isn't unusual, this isn't odd. In an increasingly pluralistic society, we as Christians are simply moving back to the new normal.
It's been the way of Christianity through most of history that it's not the consensus of the culture. It is always moving against other gods, moving against other idols. And so now we are called to serve in this age in which we are faithful to this gospel. Trial will come. And if you know that, then when you go through it, you don't say, "It's just me, I just did something wrong here."
I think of the things that have typically been the greatest challenges for my own ministry. They may sound like strange, but you'll understand them. The greatest challenges, the things that have almost overwhelmed me time and again, are fire codes and fire breathers.
Fire codes, all those regulations of various sorts that you have moved a program, a ministry, a building, somewhere down the road, almost to completion. You think you've got enough money, you think you've got enough resources, you think you've got the power of the people behind you, and suddenly there's this huge roadblock of somebody with a rule book of some sort that won't let you progress. And in those moments to feel, "Everything is gone, everything's over, we can't proceed."
And then to believe in a God who says, "I am greater than your trials."
And it's not odd that you're going through this, or the fire breathers, the well-intentioned dragons in everybody's life, who have a view of the gospel that is running counter to yours, and you are trying to do so much so well, and you're such a nice guy.
And they do not believe it, and they suspect your motives as well as your plans, and the accusations come, and the relationships begin to fray.
And you wonder, "What did I do wrong?" Have this vision, Paul says, reflect on these words. "Endure with us like a soldier this battle for the gospel." It will be a battle. Yes, there will be blessings, but always, always, both these things, blessings and battles together.
And our goal, our ministry, is to help people around us understand that. It's not one or the other. There will be battles.
Sometimes through the battles come the greatest blessings. Sometimes in the blessings come the greatest temptations.
And so the Lord lets us endure like a soldier, that He would be reflected in us. If we are to endure, we must recognize it's worth it for some reason, this mission that requires endurance.
And so after giving us the vision of the soldier and the athlete and the farmer, he says, "You have to have a message greater than you."
It's so simple. Verse 8, "Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David, this is my gospel."
After three or four years of seminary education, I think you would say, "Surely there's more to it than that."
I mean, we have been here for years studying, defending, proving, communicating, and now the apostle boils it down into two sentences. Now wait, what is he saying?
But here at the end of this ministry, to this young minister, Timothy, and to the churches throughout Asia and Greece, he is saying, "This is the gospel. Listen to me. Jesus is the Christ.
He is the Messiah who came for His people to save them from their sins, and He rose from the dead. Not only did He come to rescue them, He rose the victor over sin, and He's descended from David." This wasn't happenstance. This didn't just come upon a man. This was the sovereign plan of an eternal God to bring His merciful promises to His people. And the message we have, this gospel that is greater than us, is saying to the world over and over again, "Jesus is the Messiah, and He rose from the dead that your sins would be put away."
And God did this out of a sovereign mercy, looking down the annals of history so that He could save one like you, and like me, and it's no surprise. It's what God in His wonderful mercy designed the gospel to do. In essence, what the apostle is doing for Timothy is in the midst of his heartache, in the midst of his trials, simply reminding him of the character of God. It's so necessary for us to do over and over again,
and to begin to recognize the power of that gospel, simply recognizing the character of God in behalf of His people, because the temptation in everybody, including us when we face trial, is to begin to evaluate God based on our circumstances. It's tough, Lord. It's hard. Mark stood up here and spoke so easily about the things he has been through.
Hard, hard things. Surely there have been the moments to say, "Lord, why? Why me? Why these things?" Others don't seem to be going through them. I look across your faces and I recognize some of the things in your families, some of the things in your health, some of the things that you have faced with friends, and I'm so proud and thankful for your endurance in the gospel, but you know the feeling.
"Lord, if this is being good to us, if this is being my friend, then why do these circumstances come?"
And so the apostle says, "Look at the character of God, not the circumstances. Jesus is the Messiah. He rose from the dead, and He did this with God's purposeful plan from all eternity." My early ministry experience was in a mining farming community, and I think it was the hardest thing, other than explaining salvation itself to people, was trying to help them understand how God could be loving in a hard, hard existence that they went through daily. And it's not my story, but one that I learned to tell over and over again that seemed just to somehow connect with those people in their difficult lives was this.
Once was a miner who early in life was injured in the mines and became an invalid for the rest of his life.
And he watched in his ramshackle house through a small window as the friends of his youth aged with finer incomes and better homes and expanding families,
and all that time proclaimed the faithfulness of God despite his handicaps.
When he was older, a young man in the community began to question who God was and why he would let such things happen.
A man said, "Go talk to me." Asking why he still trusts God despite all his pain.
The young man went to the older one now and invalid in his house and said, "Why do you still have faith in a God who would let you go through this?" And the man said, "It's true. Sometimes Satan comes to my bedside and he sits right where you're sitting, and he points out my window to those men that I worked with who have fine homes while mine is crumbling down, who have grandchildren while I have no child and no marriage.
And Satan says to me, "Does Jesus really love you?" And he points to my legs, twisted and hurt, depriving me all in life that seems to have been precious to others. And Satan says, "Does Jesus really love you?"
And the young man in astonishment, gasping that there was such candor from this hurt man, said, "And what do you say to Satan when he comes and speaks to you that way?" And the man said, "I take him by the hand.
And I take him to a hill called Calvary. And I point to the nails in the hand, the thorns in the brow,
and the pool of blood at his feet. And I say, "Doesn't Jesus love me?" This world and life is but a hand's breath. And God will use some of us enduring great trial, some of us expressing great witness through our messages, some through our lives, faithful in hardship. And those of us who will be able to multiply the grace of God that touches eternity will be those who can point and say, "Remember Jesus is the Messiah, and he rose from the dead, and he did this with the eternal promise of God, and mind doesn't Jesus love me?" And it's this God who will love you too. And the reason we can say that is because this ministry of Christ is coming through a word that is greater than us as well.
You know these words, those of you who are seated in front of me. For he says in verse 9, "I'm suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal, but God's word is not chained."
This truth of God in those in whom the Spirit dwells will be received as though it were life itself. And the reason that we have some ministry, some ability to minister against the world, the flesh, and the devil in a pluralistic society is where the Spirit is moving. The Word of God is power. You remember some of you from my very first preaching class how Luther would say it, the church is God's mouth house, that it's God yet speaking to his people when his word is proclaimed. The second Helvetic confession, the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God. Couldn't you face anything if God were speaking to you? If he was walking with you? If he was whispering in your ear, "I'm still here with you," remember Jesus the Christ rising from the dead, descended from David. He's still here. So that Calvin could even say that God is so chosen to anoint the lips and the tongues of his servants that when they speak, the voice of Jesus comes out. So that what we are doing with this Word that is greater than us is that we are able actually to minister Christ to his people. It's an amazing thought. Not only do I represent Christ by suffering for them, but this Word, this Word of God is actually the ministering presence of Christ that he has committed to us for his people so that we recognize that what can happen, what actually can happen, is that we can stand in a pulpit and people can see Christ more than us, that we can minister in a counseling room and there can be more of Christ than of us.
That our homes where we are as parents ministering to children can actually be a sanctuary in which Christ dwells by his truth, witnessed and lived out from us. So that what we actually begin to believe because the Word of God is saying is you can be chained like the apostle Paul was and the Word of God is like Christ still powerfully moving among his people and not able to be chained.
If that is so, ultimately the apostle is saying the ministry that we are being called to is not just belief in a mission greater than us, a vision greater than us, even a message greater than us. It is a love greater than us. That we become the ministries of Christ to his people in such a way that those people who we cannot endure are actually perceiving the love of Christ through us by the faithful proclamation of his Word.
So that he can actually say, verse 10, "I endure everything for the sake of the elect that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory."
Here at the end of his ministry of epistles to his people, we know exactly what Paul is talking about for the sake of the elect I endure everything. He's talking about the people at Corinth
who have betrayed him and the gospel. He is talking about the people at Ephesus who have struggled with deep and persistent sin, with those at Philippi who have heard the gospel and yet turned to infighting with one another, with those at Jerusalem who despite hearing the gospel, rejected it seems at times and those that God is calling into his kingdom, he has known hardness and betrayal and ridicule and hurt not just from the outside, from the inside world, and yet Paul for the sake of people from different races and nationalities and classes and backgrounds for the sake of all these different kinds of people who seem at times to hate each other and sometimes hate me yet I endure everything for their sake." What is he saying? "I become Christ to them for their sake. It is now my very essence to do that." As the apostle would say in Galatians 4 and verse 19, "I am like a mother in childbirth,
in pain, that Christ would come to maturity in you."
He so much looks at these people with love that it just can't be contained because it's greater than him, his desire for their good and to be Christ to them. I think of what it can mean for us. Some of you saw that wonderful, awful PBS special just a week ago, sometimes in April,
awful genocide in Rwanda, and to watch a school teacher keep a wounded student alive
just by having her repeat the Lord's Prayer when there was no water and there was no food and all hope seemed lost to say, "This is the Word of God. This is the promise of God. This is Christ even in your dying ministering to you." And it was as breath again. It was as life-sustaining power. And you think, "How can we have such power for God?" He already told us it was the verse I skipped. The very first one, "You, then my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." How can we be such ministers of the gospel by recognizing this gospel has ministered to us? In our weakness, in our sin, in our pride, Christ still came to us and still comes to us and ministers to us his mercy and his love. And when I have drunk deeply of the grace of God, it becomes my strength, it becomes my message, it becomes my reflex. And so God calls you to it. What's the takeaway that John talked about? I hope it is that you would recognize this is the gospel.
Jesus is the Messiah. He rose from the dead for your sin and he descended from David. This was according to the promise and plan of God for such as we. And when we know that, it is power beyond us as God is ministering his grace through us. Many of you, your first semester here,
you heard that old account of Polycarp, faithful for the gospel, martyred for it at a stake burning.
And even as he faced the flames, urged to recant the faith and his simple words were, "How can I speak evil of my king who saved me?" Think of it, he's bound. He's being consumed.
He is in pain. There is nothing impressive about him. And yet he is strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus and his ministry moves through the ages, through the power of Christ.
Wonderful graduates, be strong in the grace.