Paul gives to Timothy his son in the faith, his protege in ministry. Paul very well knows that he himself will not escape prison. He's about to be martyred. And so his ministry is coming to an end and Timothy is going to carry on the work.
We see that the extraordinary office of apostle will give way to the ordinary and regular office of pastor teacher in the life of the church. That's what Timothy is. And we need to know what any pastor is called by God to do in ministry. This book has been saying that time and again and I've been saying it too.
And we need to know that so that we can expect that of them. You ought to expect of me the things we're reading in 2 Timothy. Be gracious. I'm not perfect yet, but it is what we ought to desire.
It's what we ought to pray for. It's what we ought to encourage. And we ourselves are to look to God to receive for ourselves his blessing through pastor teachers who are faith will be doing what God called them to do. We're all to be looking to the Lord for his blessing even through the ministry of those he's called.
And so what is it he's called them to do will pick up the reading at chapter 4 verse 1 and remind ourselves of what we've already heard. Here now the word of God. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing and his kingdom preach the word be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but have itching ears.
They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth. And wander off into myths as for you always be sober minded and do our suffering. Do the work of an evangelist fulfill your ministry. Amen.
This is God's word. And he write it on our hearts. Let's look to him in prayer. Our Father in heaven grant that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be acceptable in your sight on Lord our rock and our Redeemer in Jesus name.
I pray. Amen. Amen. Well, if I say the name Tom Cruise the actor many of you will know who I'm talking about.
You know that he does all his own stunts hanging outside of flying airplanes climbing the outside of skyscrapers motorcycling off cliffs and such and Matt Damon another actor told of having dinner with Cruz and asking about all these crazy dangers. Stuncy did and Cruz mentioned one that he'd been planning and dreaming about doing for 15 years and then and then he finally had the chance to do it. So so Matt Damon asked him well how did it come to pass and Cruz turned to Matt Damon and said okay. Okay, so I go to the safety guy and tell him what this is what I'm going to do.
And the safety guy says you can't do that. That's too dangerous. And Matt Damon listening and says uh huh uh huh and Cruz says so I get another safety guy. Don't like what you're hearing.
Just find somebody else to tell you what you want to hear. We wish him all the safety in the world. But Paul here is warning us warning Timothy what will happen to pastors who teach God's word. Some people will go find other teachers to tell them what they want to hear and it won't be God's word.
That's his point. Now we've already looked at verses one to two but just by way of getting to verse three. Let me remind you of this charge that Paul gave to Timothy. It was a solemn serious urgent charge to preach God's word.
Verse one I charge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus who's to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing and his kingdom preach the word among the things Paul is saying is remember that Jesus is coming back. Remember his appearing and remember that he is the judge of the living and the dead and remember his eternal kingdom of glory and you need to remember this. He says when that happens when he comes our need for pastor teachers will be over. But until then it is by the foolishness of preaching God saves sinners as Paul was saying for sure things and so Paul is reminding him you tell people you preach to people you remind them that the judge who will judge the living and the dead all people the judge is also the savior.
Hold out the good news of God's love in sending his son to die for our sins to rise victorious over the grave to satisfy divine justice to reconcile us to God and to give us the hope of eternal life through faith in him. You have a solemn serious glorious but urgent task to preach Christ crucified from the Bible. And then we saw last week in verse two that pastors are to be ready in season and out of season and to reprove and rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching. And one of the things we said about that my way of application is this if pastors are to preach then Christians are to listen.
And today I would say as well that means pastors also must be listening to and receiving the word of God themselves. We are to be taught we are to be reproved and rebuked and exhorted and encouraged. Otherwise pastors are just the blind leading the blind. So you can pray to that and never hesitate in love to take me aside and speak a word into my ear.
Never hesitate to do that to any of our elders or officers or your Sunday school teacher. We all need to grow. Do you know the story of Henry Light? Henry Light was a pastor and once he was a pastor he eventually gave us three hymns that we sing at Redeemer.
Praise my soul the king of heaven and abide with me. Fast falls of the even tide and Jesus on my cross have taken some of our favorite hymns around here. He wrote this as a pastor but when he first started out in ministry for the first three or four years he wasn't even converted himself. He didn't have true genuine faith in Jesus to be his Savior and his Lord.
And then a friend of his who was also in the ministry was dying and begin to ask the question how can I be sure of a happy eternity? And then he put that question to Henry Light and Light was stoned into silence as the man went on to say that they had both been misleading their people. This man had been studying the scriptures and discovered that only the death and suffering of Christ could have toned for sin. And so then Light's friend died happy in the gospel.
And Light says of him he died happy under the belief that though he had deeply aired there was one whose death and sufferings would atone for his delinquencies and be accepted for all that he had incurred. What was the loss of that friend along with the loneliness of his situation? He wasn't yet married. He was in spiritual crisis.
It was a cold wet climate. He came down with asthma and tuberculosis which he eventually died of just after just weeks after finishing a bide with me. Fast falls the even tide. Well because of his illness he took a long break to a warmer city in France and there he pondered the scriptures and then he said reflecting about himself this.
I was greatly affected by the whole matter and brought to look at life and its issue with a different eye than before. I began to study my Bible and preach in another manner than I had previously. Christ had taken away my sins even mine and saved me from the law of sin and death. I tell you that story because pastors and people need this word, God's word to teach us, rebuke us, correct us.
And train us in righteousness that the man or woman of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. I'm not above the need for that and you aren't either. Let's pray for one another. These pastors must preach the whole council of God to the whole person.
One of that brings us then to verse three. Why is this so important to the Apostle Paul? I mean these are dying words. He doesn't have much time left.
Why these things? Well not only because as we already heard because of the coming of Christ, the return of Christ in light of that but also because the coming days of darkness and difficulty that Timothy will experience. It's clear that these days he talks about have already begun in Timothy's generation. What days the days when people cannot bear to hear the truth and refuse to listen to it?
Notice verse three and four. For the time is coming. When people will not endure sound doctrine but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. Now that expression there, sound teaching, they won't endure it.
Sound teaching, that just means healthy teaching. It means life giving teaching. Sound doctrine is medicine. For the sick.
It's effective surgery for the injured. It's the healing of wounds by good nursing care. It's the prescription written by a skilled physician and taken by a compliant patient. It nourishes the inner life of the person like exercise and good diet nurtures the body.
The Apostle Paul was reminding us that there is such a thing as healthy, life giving sound doctrine that we need to receive and believe if we're to grow and flourish as Christians. And Paul has mentioned this before of course in second Timothy chapter one. We saw it verse 13. Follow Paul says to Timothy, follow the pattern of sound words, healthy words that you've heard from me.
And he'd said it before in first Timothy chapter six. He says it verse three. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with Godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words which produce envy and dissension and slander and evil suspicions and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth.
And then he says in chapter one verse nine among the qualifications of elders. He says an elder must hold firm to the trustworthy word is taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound, healthy doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. And there are going to be people who need to be rebuked for their contradiction of it. Paul mentions them here for people he says will not endure sound teaching but of itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to see their own passions.
Their ears will itch for something different, something new, something other than God's word. It's a figure of speech here that for a kind of curiosity that looks for interesting and spicy tidbits of information. They're going to want to hear teachers. They're going to listen to people spout off.
They'll have their preacher of something and it won't be orthodox. It'll be novelty. They'll want something not as good as what God's word is for them. But their ears will itch and they'll scratch that itch and how will they do it?
They'll accumulate teachers to see their passions. Teachers who won't correct them, won't reprieve them, won't rebuke them. But teachers who will tickle their fancy and tell them what they want to hear. And it won't just be one teacher.
Oh no, they will accumulate for themselves teachers. They will keep up teachers. We might say just as misery loves company. So heresy loves company.
It doesn't want to stand alone in the truth and against the truth. No, it wants to be propped up by others who likewise have gone a stray. And so by way of application I have to say to us in a generation where a lot of us, what we listen to comes to us in one brief meme after another or tweet after another or short video after another and what comes to us is arranged by a mathematical algorithm that identifies our itch and then scratches it. We are vulnerable people.
Vulnerable to this sort of trap. Getting on the bandwagon, that's exciting and new and fun and funny or whatever, but devoid of any thoughtful engagement with scripture and truth is an easy bandwagon to get on. It's a hard bandwagon to get off. And I would just say to us, be aware of developing that appetite.
That appetite for that sort of titillating information and education that is separated from. It has nothing to do with the truth of God's word. Now, if all we listen to comes and just sound bites, just flashes of other people's opinions and rants and isn't according to scripture, we're not going to be fed on the food that can make us grow and give us health. And so we'll actually be endangering ourselves and impoverishing ourselves.
God has spoken to us in this book and it's a collection of 66 books. And it is simple enough that a child with an elementary education who can read can read the whole book. And as we grow and mature, increasingly understand it by the help of the Holy Spirit of course. And we can ask for that help.
But God has given us his word for our edification, for our building up, for our blessing, for our good. But the taste of our culture is not for literature and it's not for instruction. It is for popcorn and peanuts while we sit back and watch the show. Now, listen, I'm not faulting anyone for enjoying a good laugh or a great performance.
I love all that stuff too. But I am asking us, is social media and Hollywood entertainment our food and drink? And is all that we're listening to, devoid of God's word and God's truth. The prophet Amos warned in his day, chapter 8, verse 11, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord God.
When I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, from north to east. They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord and they shall not find it. God warned them that he would withdraw the blessing of his word if they despised it.
He would take his words away if they didn't listen. He would send them a famine and they would wander. And Jesus makes just this same point in Matthew 13, verse 12, when he says, for to the one who has, more will be given and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not even what he has will be taken away.
They will, as Paul says in verse 4, turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. And so Paul presses Timothy here because of this, because there will be people seeking to draw away disciples after themselves, people teaching new and strange things, people teaching anything, anything, but sound healthy doctrine. And so Paul says, in line with that, you must preach the word Timothy. And you must remember this as well as a pastor.
Sometimes your words will fall on deaf ears. There will be people who listen to you who stop listening. When some of your congregation members leave for other places where God's word isn't the standard for teaching or where no one has ever challenged in their beliefs, never corrected or rebuked for going astray in their thinking or in their living. And Timothy, you've got to remember this.
There will be losses in ministry. Not everybody's going to stick around and listen to the Word of God. Some will leave, he says, and they will listen to the silliest, craziest, most absurd kinds of things. So what should you do?
What should Timothy do? What should a pastor do? Well, notice this last thing in verse 5. It's almost a staccato-like statement of commands that sum up Paul's charge.
Four things here. What should the pastor do besides preach the gospel? Well, first, be sober minded, he says. Verse 5, as for you, always be sober minded.
Keep calm and sane while others are drunk with mental and spiritual mythical potions and elixirs. Keep your cool. Be clear thinking. Don't be hot-headed when people are pig-headed.
Don't panic. Keep your head when everybody else is losing theirs. And so we ought to ask ourselves, where can we get this kind of sober mindedness? And I want to suggest to us that surely, at least in part, it is confidence in our loving heavenly Father and in our risen reigning and interceding Savior.
That can give us this kind of sober mindedness. I told you before the story of the man during the great Chicago fire when everybody was rushing around in the streets in a panic and one calm dignified man walked past another calm dignified man and then he turned back to me and said, sir, what is the chief end of man? And the answer was, man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. And the guy said, I knew you were a sort of catechism man.
I knew you knew the truth is what he was saying. I knew you had a stability in your life because you knew that God does all things for his glory and God's purpose that his people will enjoy him forever. And that can bring a kind of stability and a kind of sober mindedness. So you know, you drunk on the wine of all sorts of crazy stuff and then go ballistic and panic.
And you might have asked him a different question, what is the providence of God? God's works of providence are his most holy, wise and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions. Timothy, I'm not a hare of your head. We'll fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.
You're in his hand. Or he could have asked him today's question, how does Christ execute the office of a king? Christ executes the office of a king and subduing us to himself and in ruling and defending us and in restraining and conquering all his enemies and ours. Do we have these kinds of convictions settled in our heart that God is on his throne doing all things for his glory?
That God numbers the very hairs of our head and not one of them falls to the ground but by his will. And even a sparrow will fall to the ground and we're worth much more value than many sparrows. That Christ is upholding the universe by the word of his power. That Christ holds us in his hand and no one can snatch us out.
That Christ is victorious over all the powers of darkness and Christ will bear us safely through death until even death is no more. These kinds of convictions will put steel in your backbone and sobriety in your head. Don't lose your mind, Timothy. Be sober minded.
And I would say to all the elders. This is a part of a qualification for an elder. Eventually, perhaps the summer of this congregation will be invited to vote on elders. In 1 Timothy 3 and overseer must be sober minded.
And the lives of church officers 1 Timothy 3, 11. Likewise, the lives must be dignified not slanders but sober minded faithful in all things. And likewise, all the older men Titus 2 are to be sober minded dignified self-control. In fact, all Christians are called to this.
This is one of Peter's favorite words. 1 Peter 1 13. Therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded. Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Being sober minded. Set your hope fully on the grace that is coming when Jesus returns. When he says it in 1 Peter 4 verse 7. The end of all things is at hand.
Therefore be self-controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers. People in a panic. He says may not sober mindedly. Pray for the things that they ought.
Peter says in 1 Peter 5 6. Humble yourselves therefore into the mighty hand of God so that the proper time he makes all of you. Casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you be sober minded. I think in part it's casting all your cares on the Lord in the confidence that the Lord cares for you that you can be sober minded.
Paul says Timothy, here's what you need to do. And then you also need to endure suffering. You see that verse 5. Be sober minded and doer suffering.
Whatever or whenever the biblical faith becomes unpopular. Pastors are always tempted to water it down. Delude the truth. Mix in some sugar and spice and everything nice so that they don't get push back.
So they don't get feedback that's negative so that people don't get up and walk out and never come back. And so Paul says to Timothy, you need to be prepared to endure suffering for the sake of the gospel. He said this time and again in the book. You remember this.
Chapter 1 verse 8, 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. How are you going to share in suffering? You got to do it by the power of God.
You got to have the strength of God and your weakness. And chapter 3 verse 3, sharing suffering is a good soldier of Christ Jesus. Keep on about the business of your commander in chief. Whatever opposition or persecution or difficulty may come.
And some of that may be persecution. It may be the opposition or people. Some of it will just be the hardship of doing the labor and work of ministry like a hardworking farmer. And Galatians 6.9 says, let us not grow weary of doing good for induced season.
We will reap if we do not give up. Be sober minded, endure suffering, and Timothy do the work of evangelist. I don't think he means here that Timothy isn't to be a pastor of a church, but to be only an evangelist if that's a separate calling. But that's actually part of the work of the calling of a pastor is to do evangelism.
To do evangelism and to herald the gospel. Don't lose your head. Don't quit because it's hard. Do hold out the hope of the gospel that we have in Jesus to other people.
Shout it. Blast it like a trumpet. Lift up the Savior and his love and tell the world that Jesus loves sinners. Be sober minded, endure suffering, do the work of evangelist.
And so fulfill your ministry, he says. Don't give up. Persevere until the task is accomplished. Don't be discouraged by defectors.
Don't be silenced by naysayers. Keep preaching. You have good news for people who are discouraged. You have good news for people who haven't been listening.
You have good news for people who have wandered away and squandered the blessings like prodigal sons. Tell them, tell them we have a Savior who is sober minded. And he never panics. He's clear headed.
A Savior who endured the suffering of the cross to redeem us from sin, to purchase people for God. A Savior who is in himself and his work. And his work, the good news, a Savior who fulfills his ministry, who builds his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Who on the cross said, it is finished.
I have done everything necessary to save. And who always now lives to intercede for his people. Preached to them the word about Jesus Paul says. So we sinners can put our hope in him.
That's what you have to do. Let's pray. Father, we pray by the Spirit that the word would bear much fruit. 30 fold, 60 fold, 90 fold.
That you would give us ears to hear eyes to see hearts to believe and that it would indeed bear fruit. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen.
Let's stand together and sing.