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The Lord has a wonderful way of guiding and directing our lives providentially, bringing us to the place He wants us to be. I really feel tonight that what I want to share with you is something that has been impressed upon my heart. We have been in a series on Genesis. We finished Genesis 4. I really only intended to do Genesis 1 and 2 and then I decided to do 3 and then I decided to do 4...and I think I'll go back and do 5 and 6 and keep going. But, I knew there would be many guests with us this weekend because of the special event last night, and I didn't feel that it would be fair to jump into the midst of the line of Seth in Genesis 5 without any prior background in Genesis. And because my heart has been so exercised about this matter of preaching the truth, I felt I wanted to draw your attention to a great text of Scripture. And when I was asked this week what I was going to preach on, I said I'm going to preach on why I am committed on preaching the Word of God. I gave you a little bit of that this morning in our discussions about deliverance. It was largely a digression, I confess, this morning, but next week we'll get back into it. And I think probably next week and the week after and we'll have that series finished.
But tonight I want to take this discussion this morning about the priority of preaching the Bible, preaching the Word of God a little bit further and I want you to open your Bible to 2 Timothy chapter 4 and verse 2 which will serve as an initial verse to begin our look into God's Word tonight. Second Timothy chapter 4 and verse 2, familiar words, "Preach the Word. Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction."
That one brief passage defines biblical ministry in one central command...preach the Word. That is consistent with 1 Timothy chapter 3 where it says that overseers or elders or pastors, one and the same, are to have one skill. There are a lot of spiritual qualifications, there's only one skill, only one spiritual skill, one spiritual gift that is mandated and that is that pastors, preachers, overseers are to be didaktikos, is the Greek word, skilled in preaching and teaching. That is because that's what we do, we are preachers of the Word. That is our calling. That is our mandate.
And you will notice that the time for this preaching is given, "in season and out of season." Now somebody might ask the question: Well, what does that mean? What is the seasons? We know what's in season and out of season? We might debate exactly what Paul had in mind, but we cannot debate that there are only two possibilities. You can either be in season or out of season. What he is simply saying is, all the time...all the time. When it seems to be popular and when it is unpopular. When it is seasonable and when it is unseasonable.
One of the most prolific teachers of expository preaching, I think he taught about 30 or 35 years, taught and trained many Bible expositors, some few years ago announced that this was not the day for expository preaching. And I was shocked to hear that cause I guess that was a revelation that this was a cultural mandate rather than a biblical one. It's always the season for preaching the Word...in season, out of season.
The time then is clear. The tone is clear. There is a negative tone in this preaching, reproof and rebuke. That just goes with it. If you're going to preach the Word, it has warnings, it has rebukes, it has reproof. And there's a positive tone, exhorting with great patience and instruction. So there is that negative of reproof and rebuke. There is that positive of exhortation or counsel patiently done and instruction or teaching. This is our mandate. This is what we do.
People are starving for this. Sadly, they don't know it. There are people in churches starving for this, but they don't know it because they've never tasted it. Imagine starving for the Word of God and not knowing what you're starving for until you hear it. Many of you people are in that group, aren't you? You were hungry for the Word, you didn't know it until you heard it and your heart jumped and your mind was open. And you're still feasting on the Word.
And so, we preach the Word all the time with a negative emphasis when it calls for that, reproving and rebuking. Positive emphasis when it calls for that of exhorting and instructing. Martin Luther said, "The highest worship of God is the preaching of the Word." The highest worship of God is the preaching of the Word.
I remember years ago when I was asked very often, they don't ask me these things too much anymore, but people used to say to me, "If you preach an hour, how do you have time for worship?" And I would sometimes say, "If you don't preach an hour, how do your people know what worship is?" Our mandate is not from the culture, it's from the God of heaven. And in Titus chapter 2 verse 15 we are told to speak, to exhort, that's the positive, to reprove, that's the negative, with all authority and let no one evade you, no one try to think their way around it.
Now the question comes, "Why is this important?" You must know that I'm compelled to do this, to preach with authority the Word of God all the time, whether it's seasonable or not, whether it's popular or not. Years ago it was very popular to do this, and now it's not. You well know that I have reproved and rebuked you with a negative emphasis when that is the Word of God. I have also come to you with comfort, encouragement and instruction. I do this and this is all I do and I tell you, this is all that any man of God should do because this is a command. But why is it important?
Five compelling reasons I want to give you...five compelling reasons why we must preach the Word. Let's go back to chapter 3 to find the first one. Obviously I cannot explicitly deal with all the details in this entire section of Scripture, but I'm going to pull your attention toward some very important ones.
The first reason that we preach the Word is because of the danger of the seasons...because of the danger of the seasons. Please notice chapter 3 verse 1. Now a little bit of background. Paul says, "Realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come." To whom is he writing? Timothy, that's clear. He addresses Timothy at the very beginning. Why is he writing to Timothy? Because this is the last letter he will ever write. He wrote 1 Timothy, then he wrote Titus and then the last letter ever written by the Apostle Paul is 2 Timothy. He is a prisoner. He's about to be executed. And there is a man who is to take his place, his son in the faith, Timothy. Back in chapter 2 verse 1 he calls him "my son." Timothy is struggling with persecution, struggling with hostility from the church. He is in the church at Ephesus and they're giving him a bad time. And Timothy is in a very vulnerable spot. It's a very dangerous time for Timothy.
Back in chapter 1 verse 6 Paul says, "Kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you." Timothy is actually beginning to be unfaithful to preach with Word. Why? Because he's getting criticized by people in the church and persecuted by people outside the church. In verse 7 he says, "God hasn't given us a spirit of cowardice." This is a frightening moment. Here is the Apostle Paul at the end of his life. He's put years of investment in this young man. He put him in the church at Ephesus, a very difficult place but a very necessary place, really the mother church of all the churches of Asia Minor. He put him there to straighten out some things. It hasn't gone so well. The church has attacked him and the world around has attacked him and he's beginning to falter. And he tells him to stir up the gift of God. He tells him not to be a coward. In verse 8 he says, "Don't be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord." Can you imagine Timothy, the disciple of Paul, the protege of Paul, the successor to Paul, the one who will take the mantle of ministry and carry on the work of the great apostle being ashamed of the Lord?
Then in verse 13 he tells him, "Retain the standard of sound words, hold on to sound doctrine." This is frightening stuff, folks. Here is a man, the great Apostle Paul into his sixties, the end of his life. He's given all these years to the establishment of the church and the proclamation of truth. He is passing the mantle to Timothy and Timothy's beginning to show signs of failure and weakness. He calls him to stir up the gift, not to be a coward, not to be ashamed and amazingly to hold on to sound doctrine. Because what happens under pressure is, you begin to soften your message.
In verse 14 he says, "Guard through the Holy Spirit which dwells in us the treasure." What's that? "The truth that's been entrusted to you." Verse 15 he says, "Don't you know, aren't you aware that everybody in Asia has turned away from me?" Please don't add your name to that list.
This is a frightening time. And after those statements in chapter 1 he comes to chapter 2 and says, "Be strong, my son, be strong." I'm counting on you. And then in chapter 3 he says, "Realize this, in the last days difficult times will come." It isn't going to be easy, Timothy. It isn't going to be easy, but you can't compromise, you can't get sidetracked, you can't bail out. You can't become ashamed. You can't become a coward. You can't alter your message. You can't downgrade the truth just because it's difficult.
And then in chapter 4 he sort of reaches a crescendo and says, "Preach the Word all the time whether it's well received or not received at all, whether it's popular or unpopular, whether it brings you accolades or execution." And here's why, chapter 3 verse 1, "Because these are difficult times," and let me translate that for you, "dangerous epochs." The word for time here is not chronos, chronology, it's kairos, epochs, seasons. And the word "difficult" or "dangerous" is savage, perilous. He is saying you must preach the Word, Timothy, because of the danger of the seasons. Savage seasons threaten the life of the church in these last days. And by the way, the last days refers to the time since the coming of Jesus. When Jesus came He inaugurated, He initiated the last days, the days of Messiah. The last days are synonymous with the days of Messiah. He came and initiated those days. He was rejected. He went back to glory. He'll come again to establish His Kingdom. But these are the last days. The Apostle John writes, "It is the last time." Peter writes that "Christ has appeared at the end of the age."
Down in verse 13 of this chapter he says, "Evil men during these dangerous epochs will proceed from bad to worse. It's going to get worse and worse and worse in these last days. You know, Paul knew what he was saying by the inspiration of the Spirit of God. He described something of the character of people in these days, they will be self-lovers, verse 2, money lovers, boastful, arrogant revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy. And this is one of those favorite lists of Paul as he just chronicles iniquities...unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, and he goes on down.
But in all of this, they will be religious. They will have a form of godliness, verse 5, without the power. They will enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses. They will masquerade as learned men, always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. They will be like those false religious people, Jannes and Jambres, who in Egypt opposed Moses. They will oppose the truth. They will be men of depraved mind, rejected as regards the true faith. They will be false teachers. They will be filled with sin. They pose the danger to the church. The great danger to the church is not just sin, it is sinful false teachers masquerading as representatives of God, having a form of godliness without power, always passing themselves off as learned, but never coming to the knowledge of the truth. They will oppose the truth, they will reject the faith. They pose the danger. He's talking about the character, the conduct, systems of false teachers. They will bring dangerous seasons.
Can I give you a little history? Well, the Apostle under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit was giving a warning that we have seen played out in history...the damnable epochs in the church's history define the fulfillment of this prophecy. The first dangerous epoch that came into the life of the church on a massive scale was sacramentalism. That is the idea that somehow you connect with God through a mechanical means, some kind of religious ceremony. It is salvation by automatic ritual.
The Church became a surrogate Christ and people were connected to a system but not to Christ. Sacramentalism became the enemy of the true gospel, became the enemy of grace and the enemy of faith and the enemy of Christ and the enemy of the Bible and the enemy of the Holy Spirit and the enemy of God. True believers were massacred by that sacramental system and it was a grave danger that lasted all the way to 1500. There was a remnant of true believers through that history. There were people called Waldensians and other names of groups that were the remnant of true believers through that dangerous epoch of sacramentalism. But it corrupted the Christian faith. It corrupted the understanding of the Word of God, corrupted the church which corruption, by the way, didn't end in 1500, we still have it today, don't we?
Sacramentalism came like all these dangerous epochs and stayed...stayed, still here. A recent trip through Italy, I saw it in full force. Other forms of sacramentalism which believe that somehow you're connected to God through a ceremony or a ritual or beads or prayers or candles or indulgences. When I was in Italy, it was the year 2000 Millennial Celebration of the Roman Catholic Church and certain cathedrals that we visited had doors and they were absolution doors. If you went through that door you got an indulgence for your sins, forgiveness, freedom to sin is provided if you went through the doors. The more doors you went through, the more indulgences you got. And those doors, by the way, were marked so the people didn't go through the wrong door.
It was in the Reformation, 1500, that sacramentalism was given a tremendous blow in the Reformation. As we said this morning, this is Reformation Sunday in the commemoration of the church. And Luther nailed his thesis on the door of the church at Wittenberg and launched the great Reformation.
But it wasn't long after that, sad to say, the eighteenth century, there came the second dangerous epoch in the life of the church, rationalism. Coming out of the Dark Ages of sacramentalism when the Roman Catholic system oppressed people and told people that only the Church had the true knowledge, man after the back of the sacramental power was broken, after the time of the Reformation, man began to feel his freedom a little bit. And out of that came the Renaissance and man began to discover something of the image of God in him, and something of the incredible creativity that he had and something of his intellectual capabilities and began to develop all kinds of skills.
And out of the Reformation came the Renaissance and out of that came the enlightenment and out of that came the Industrial Revolution and man began to see what a mind he had. And out of that came Rationalism. And in the eighteenth century, man decided that he was God, for all intents and purposes, and that he could only believe what was rational. And anything that wasn't rational or reasonable to him should be rejected. Man placed himself above God, human reason above Scripture. And rationalism came into the church. Rationalism corrupted the church, corrupted the Protestant church, corrupted the church that came out of the Reformation. Rationalism came into the church. The higher critical theory came into the church. They questioned the authorship of the Bible authors. They questioned the inspiration. They questioned the truth of Scripture. They questioned anything and everything in the Bible. One European scholar, one rationalist scholar decided when it was all said and done there was 26 verses that were true in the whole Bible.
Out of that came old liberalism, new liberalism, neo-orthodoxy. I remember when I went to St. Andrews with Eric Alexander, the third oldest university in the U.K. at Oxford, Cambridge and St. Andrews, an incredible place. I wanted to go to Saints Alvader's(?) Chapel because they have John Knox's pulpit there, the great preacher of the Scottish Reformation. And I wanted to see his pulpit, I wanted to stand in his pulpit. I stood in some amazing pulpits, John Calvin's and John Knox, maybe a little of their power would rub off on me. I'm surprised either of those pulpits are still standing the way they beat on them. John Knox's pulpit was in St. Andrews at Saints Alvader's Chapel and I just stood there and my eyes just filled with tears, my heart's in my throat imagining him stepping in to that Roman Catholic bastion and preaching the Reformation.
I walk out of that place and I go across the little street there and in the cobblestones are some initials. And I find a little plaque and the initials are the initials of three students in their teen-aged years...three students at St. Andrews University who believed the Reformation gospel and were on that spot burned at the stake by the Church. And there is a memorial right behind the first tee, you've seen the St. Andrews Golf Course? You've seen the Royal and Ancient Club behind it, that old building, right behind that is a great monument to those three boys, really, by our standards, but men by every standard. It's called "The Martyr's Memorial." They died because they believed in the Reformation faith in their teen-aged years, they were burned at the stake.
You keep walking from Saints Alvader's Chapel where John Knox preached Reformation truth, you walk across past the pub, right next to the initials in the cobblestones, you walk across the street you're in the School of Theology at St. Andrews University, Protestant university by the power of John Knox and the power of God. Scotland went from Catholicism to Protestantism. You can go in to St. Andrews and you won't find one person teaching there who believes the Bible. And they walk every day out of the School of Theology across the martyr's initials into the pub. That's the legacy of liberalism. That's dangerous stuff.
The third dangerous season, dangerous epoch that came in the life of the church I guess we could call orthodoxism. It came in the nineteenth century. By the nineteenth century had mass-printed Bibles and they were being spread all over the western world. We think about America was founded by Pilgrim who wanted religious freedom, but, you know, it didn't take very long until liberalism had corrupted all the institutions that they had started. There were mass-printing Bibles but people didn't believe it, and there was kind of a dead, cold indifference to the Word of God and a lack of zeal and a shallow almost non-existent spirituality. And that's where you have something like Jonathan Edwards preaching powerfully The Great Awakening, preaching God in his church at North Hampton.
And at the end of those years of hearing the greatest preacher that ever lived in America, maybe the greatest, one of the three or four great minds in the history of America, certainly one of the three or four greatest writers, they heard the great Jonathan Edwards preach at the end of which they asked him to leave the church. They kicked him out of the church. You know why? Because he said that it should be required that a person make a public confession of faith in Jesus Christ before they take the Lord's table. That's not a very extreme view, is it? They threw him out. They tried to ruin his reputation so that no other church would have him as a pastor. And he wound up teaching 15 Indians or 18 Indians cause he was so struck by the power of the ministry of David Brainard, the missionary to the Indians who died at the age of 29. I'm reading his biography right now.
Some people regrouped and asked Jonathan Edwards if he would become the president of the college of New Jersey, later known as Princeton. He felt himself too humbled and too unworthy for that but finally accepted.
Those people had Bibles. They had Bible preaching, but it was a cold and dead orthodoxy...dangerous stuff. It's still around...people with the Bible in the pew, talk the orthodox talk, don't know the true God.
Follow the history of the church a little bit in Europe particularly and even over here, the church became politicized and you have the dangerous season called Politicism, twentieth century. The church gets politicized. Even Hitler started the German Christian Faith Movement, did you know that? Did you know that Adolph Hitler equated Naziism with Christianity?
And then came the social gospel and reconstructionism and today liberation theology, all kinds of politicized forms of Christianity...even some of the bizarre kind of religious rite that we have in our own country. That's a danger to the church. Our message is not political, folks, it's redemptive.
Now we move in to the 1950's and we get ecumenism, that's the next danger. Notice they come faster. The first one took about 1200 years, the next one a few hundred years, and now they're coming rapidly. Why? Because as mass communication and mass transportation begins to crank up, movements come and go faster. And you have the 1950's and in comes eccumenism, unity without doctrine, sentimentality, tolerance of error, disdain of sound teaching, lack of discernment. And the ecumenical movement just ripped and shredded the church in the U.K. particularly and in the United States.
And then we came in to the 1960's and the next dangerous season started. It started right here in Van Nuys, California at an Episcopal church called the Charismatic Movement. And that is the dangerous season of experientialism where truth is defined by one's experience. Truth from feeling, from revelations, from voices, from visions, from prophecies, from intuition. As one lady said to me years ago, "I don't really care what the Bible says, I know what Jesus told me." The 1960's gave birth to experientialism.
And, you know, none of these go away. We still have sacramentalism. We still have rationalism. Liberalism is still out there. We still have orthodoxism, that dead, cold orthodoxy. We still have people working very hard to create a politicized kind of Christianity that exists in some forms, even in Europe, in England and in Germany and other places, a kind of politicized national Protestantism. We still have eccumenism, people trying to bring about unity without dogma. That's now invaded evangelicalism. We've been talking about that on Sunday mornings. We still have experientialism running rampant, running wild like a fire that nobody wants to put out. Everybody who wants to can rise up and say, "God told them this...and God told them that."
In the 1980's came subjectivism, the next dangerous epoch. And by that I mean where a man began to look inward. That was psychology. And the 80's psychology came running into the church as the new paradigm of sanctification.
I've been around through some of these...you know, some advantages to being old. I remember going to a pastors' conference and I said, "I want to tell you something. The Holy Spirit hasn't needed psychology in the past, and He doesn't need it now. The Holy Spirit was able to accomplish the work of God before Sigmund Freud about 125 years ago who was an atheistic Jew who had invented psychology."
And I said, "I just want you to know that the paradigm for salvation and sanctification is the Word of God, not human psychology." And I thought, you know, I'm in safe ground...I was literally attacked on the spot by a missionary who stood up and said, "I believe the Holy Spirit ultimately does the work of sanctification but psychology is necessary to prepare people for that."
To which I replied, I remember the line because I've thought about it often, I said, "Oh, so you're saying the Holy Spirit can do His work if He can just get jump started by Sigmund Freud or Karl(?) Rogers or Jung or some variation. What happened in the movement of psychology, it swept into the church. Everywhere I went they wanted me to talk about it. I went to the Master's College, I eliminated the psychology department. It's gone. (Clapping) There's no sense in narcissistic naval watching, that doesn't accomplish anything. Then in self-esteem, then repressed memory syndrome which was a whole fabrication of lies that ruined people's lives and ruined families.
But what subjectivism did, even though the psychology trends come and go, was it produced a man-centered kind of Christianity and preachers started preaching for psychological effect. Dangerous stuff, still infecting evangelicals.
And then in the 1990's came mysticism, listening for the voice of God. The Lord's speaking... And there were books coming out on how you can learn to listen for the voice of God. And then also in the 90's came pragmaticism. Pragmaticism says truth is the servant of what works. The first priority in the church is "what works? What gets a crowd? What gets the money? What gets a response?" After you've decided that, you can figure out how the truth can come in.
The key to evangelization, they would tell you, is image, style. Appropriate means of ministry are those which are most popular with the people, those which are most likely to have success in the marketing strategies of the world.
In the nineties came syncretism, by that I mean, "Hey, we all worship one God." Ecumenical jihad, remember I mentioned that? We all worship the same God, doctrine's just divisive.
Now these are all accumulated epochs. Let me tell you something, folks. This is not a good time for weak preachers preaching weak messages in weak churches. Too much danger out there. You know why we have a seminary? Because men needed to be trained to deal with these dangerous epochs.
The purveyors of these dangerous epochs are described here as to their personal character, in verses 2 through 4. They're self-lovers. They are money lovers. Their fraudulent ministry is described in verse 5. They have a form of godliness without any power. And they are a danger to the weak, verse 6 and 7. And they're void of the truth. And they are men of corrupt minds and they have rejected the faith. And I want you to notice verse 9, "But they will not make further progress for their folly will be obvious to all, as also that of those two...Jannes and Jambres came to be." Their progress is more apparent than real. And those who can discern know that. They may be popular. They may have a big TV audience. But we know better.
So the first reason we preach is because of the danger of the seasons. Second reason is we preach the Word because of the devotion to the saints...because of the devotion of the saints. I like this point, this is a wonderful point. Verse 10, "But you in contrast to them, you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, sufferings. Such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, Lystra. What persecutions I endured and out of them all the Lord delivered me."
He says..."Timothy, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." Paul is saying...Look, you followed me up to now, why would you turn away? You followed me up to now. Verse 10, "You followed my teaching. You followed my conduct." And those two things form integrity...what you teach and how you conduct your life. You followed my personal purpose, that is, the passionate direction of my life. You followed my faith, or my faithfulness. You followed my patience, my love, my perseverance. All those personal qualities there...you followed my ministry and my integrity. You followed my personal character, my personal qualities. You were there when I was persecuted. You were there when I suffered. And anybody who wants to live godly in Christ Jesus should expect that.
Now go down to verse 14. After having said in verse 13, "And I know things are going to get worse and worse and worse as men are deceiving and being deceived, but you, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of knowing from whom you have learned them." Boy, I love that. You continue and you remember from whom you learned these things. From whom did you learn them? You learned them from me, Paul, the Apostle. Have you forgotten that I was called by God? Have you forgotten? Philippians 4:9, Paul said to the Philippians, "The things you've learned, received, heard, seen in me, practice these things."
What's he saying? I think this is so good. He's saying don't do anything different, Timothy. You preach the Word not only because of the danger of the seasons but because of the devotion of the saints.
What do you mean by that? I mean there are people who have gone before you who have done this. You just take the baton and keep doing it. You don't need to invent ministry. You just take the legacy and keep doing it...keep doing it.
Go back to chapter 2 verse 2. "The things which you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." There's four generations there...Paul to Timothy, to faithful men, to others also. I love that. The standard has been set...godly prophets, godly apostles, godly pastors, godly evangelists who have been faithful...faithful...faithful. They passed it on, passed it on, passed it on, and passed it on.
And I'm so amazed...I'm so amazed at the brash, I guess, kindly we could say unwitting folly of young men who mock the saints of the past. Who think that the genius of their ministry is the disconnect from the past. Who laugh at those who were faithful to preach and teach the Word of God and imagine their own self-styled invented approach to ministry is some advancement rather than a decline. That is astounding pride...so bold as to discard the God-ordained and God-blessed pattern. I mean, to even be imagined to be able to stand with the prophets of old, the apostles, the Reformers, Puritans, the Spurgeons, men of God of the past and even the immediate past...those like Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and beloved preacher that we have learned to love from the conference a few years ago, Steven Oldford(??) and others like that who have had a world impact faithfully preaching the Word, passing down that same great legacy.
Don't do it any different...Paul says to Timothy...don't change anything. I gave you the truth. I preached it to you. I taught it to you. I lived it. Do the same.
There's a third reason we do this. First the danger of the seasons; secondly, the devotion of the saints; and thirdly, the dynamic of the Scripture. This is obvious. Verse 15 to 17, he says, "Look, you continue in these things...verse 14...knowing that from childhood you've known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus."
You know, he says...Look, why would you do anything but preach the Word when you know from the time of your childhood that it was the sacred writings, the Scripture, that gave you the wisdom that led to your salvation?" How can somebody be so foolish as to think that you can get people converted easier by avoiding the Scripture?
By the way, he uses an interesting word here "from childhood," it's brephos which means an infant, a baby in arms. He says...From the time you were a baby in the arms of your mother you have known the power of the sacred Scriptures to lead you to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ." And what Scriptures was he raised on? Not the New Testament, it hadn't been written. He was raised on what? The Old Testament but the Old Testament was written to point to Christ. Jews used to claim that their children drank in the Law of God with their mothers' milk and it was so imprinted on their hearts and their minds that they would sooner forget their names then the Law of God. And the Law was a school master. The Law was a tutor to lead them to Messiah. The sacred writings, the hieragrammaton(??) is the name for holy Scripture in the Old Testament and named for the Old Testament used by Greek-speaking Jews...often used in the writings of Philo and Josephus.
So he says you know the power of Scripture...from the time you were an infant you have known the Scriptures what leads you to salvation. Further, look at verse 16, "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect, equipped for every good work."
Not only does the Word of God alone have the power to save, but the Word of God alone has the power to sanctify. You know that Scripture is breathed out by God and it is profitable, or useful four ways. One, for teaching, or didaskalian, doctrine, that which is taught is what that word means...not the process but the content. It is profitable for biblical truth, divine truth, content. Also for reproof. It's the other side of teaching, the exposure of error and the exposure of sin. And once the truth comes and exposes the sin, it then corrects it which literally means to restore to an upright position. You could say it this way...the Bible comes and it brings the message of salvation, it leads to salvation, we're born again by the incorruptible Word of God...Peter puts it. The Word brings us to salvation. And then the Word comes in with sound doctrine and that sound doctrine reproves and rebukes our error and our sin. And as it were, it crushes us under the weight of its authority and its truth. And then it corrects us and restores us to an upright position. And then it trains us positively in righteousness. This is the comprehensive work of the Word.
"As a result, the man of God and everyone under his influence can be made mature, whole, complete and equipped for every good work." Why would you preach anything else? The danger of the seasons demand that you preach the Word. How else can people have the discernment to sort out what's going on if they don't know the Word of God which is the standard by which everything is measured? You preach the Word of God because you stand in a long line of people who have been called by God to do just that, nothing less and nothing more, and you receive the baton...how could you possibly decide that you in the line of all of these years is going to invent another message and another approach? And how could you minimize the power of Scripture when it alone saves and sanctifies?
There's a fourth reason we preach the Word, the danger of the seasons, the devotion of the saints, the dynamic of the Scripture and the demand of the Sovereign...the demand of the Sovereign. Frankly, the first verse of chapter 4 is a frightening verse for the preacher. "I solemnly charge you," it's a dead-serious command, "I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead and do so by His appearing in His Kingdom."
Oh, and this is...this is penetrating language. It's enough to strike holy fear into your heart. It reminds me of reading years ago about John Knox in his biography. He said, "When I was compelled to preach, I burst forth in abundant tears and retired to my room, refusing to come out." Frightened at the awesome accountability of that duty.
He says, "I'm charging you," simply saying, "I'm commanding you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus." By the way, the Greek says, "In the presence of God, even Christ Jesus." They are one and the same. Jesus is God.
We who preach are under omniscient holy scrutiny. That's why James said, "Stop being so many teachers, theirs is a greater condemnation." That's why the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4, "It's a small thing what men think of me, it's a small thing what I think of myself. I'm accountable to God." Hebrews 13:17 says, "We have to give an account to God for our ministry." And under that divine scrutiny, we preach the Word. We have been commanded to preach the Word and God and Christ are watching to see if we're obedient.
That's enough for me. I don't even need to think about the danger of the seasons, the devotion of the saints, the dynamic of the Scripture, just the demand of the Sovereign is enough. Finally, we preach the Word because of the deceptiveness of the sensual...the deceptiveness of the sensual. Verse 3 of chapter 4, "For the time will come...may I say it's here?...when they will not endure sound doctrine, they want to have their ears tickled so they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to fables or myths."
We already spoke about the dangerous seasons concocted by seducing spirits and propagated by false teachers. And here's what makes them so successful. Seasons come, throughout all of church history, when people don't want to hear sound doctrine. They refuse the truth that saves...the truth that sanctifies.
Back in chapter 2 verse 16, they go after worldly empty chatter that leads to further ungodliness. It's nothing but talk that spreads like gangrene. It's deadly. The word for verse 3, "sound doctrine," is healthy teaching. We're in a season like that, I believe. Doctrine is a bad word. The prevailing mood in the culture is that every person should determine truth for himself and that's crept into the church, as we've been saying.
I told you this many years ago. I was going through Arkansas one time in the rain, it was like an evening like this one. I was driving a little tiny Honda with Lance Quinn back to see my son Mark playing a baseball game and take him his car for the summer. And he thought he would be somewhere in the west, but he ends up in Savannah, Georgia. So I went all across America in that little Honda to give him his car. That's what dads are for, right? Driving through a rainstorm going through Arkansas on a country road, wasn't sure where I am. Saw a sign that said "Quilts." And I thought, "I'll go buy Patricia a quilt." And so, I went up to the door in the rain and it was a kind of a streamy rain and I banged on this screen and I...a funny lady came to the door. "What ken I do fer you?" She had more missing teeth than she possessed and she was really, really a cartoon character.
And I said, "Well, I was looking for a quilt for my wife."
"Oh, I've got jest xactly what you want. Come in."
So I came in, it was real dark and stuffy and she brought out a quilt that was the worst looking thing I ever saw in my entire life. It had no rhyme or reason...it had no particular color. It was...it was absolutely chaos fabricated. And I didn't know what to say, but I said..."Well, you know, that is a quilt." And I said, "You know, I think it's...I don't think it's the color I was looking for."
And she said, "How can that be? It's every color."
And I said, "Well, yeah, but...I think I was looking for something blue, you know."
"Oh," she said, "well I'm so sorry because every piece in this quilt is from a part of our lives through all of these years and it's all little bits and pieces of all the quilts I've ever made all made into this quilt. So it's kind of like my...my life story in a quilt."
Well then I felt worse. But I still didn't want it. And all of a sudden I met her husband...her husband was in there and I looked over at him and he was sitting in a chair and he had a pile of literature beside his chair. And on top I saw books from Moody Press and Chuck Swindoll. And I walked over and then I saw books from the Unity Church. And then I saw Mormon stuff. And then I saw...he had piles and piles of this stuff and I said, "Boy, you have some collection here."
I'll never forget what he said. His name was Johnny, he said, "Oh, there's good in all of it." And I realized she had quilted his theology. (Laughter)
What do you mean there's good in all of it? You know, we live in a time when the evangelical church wants to get together to fight abortion, to get together and fight homosexuality and its inroads into our culture and lesbianism. Let's get together and fight for prayer in the schools and let's fight against euthanasia.
You know what the most deadly form of wickedness is? Perversion of the truth. I can't convince them to get together to fight that in a tolerant climate. Here they are, they just want to have their ears tickled.
What does that mean? Ah, it just means that they want a message that makes them feel good. They're driven by their sensual desires. They want preachers who promise excitement and success and prosperity. And they want to jump up and down and run around and feel good...or feel better about themselves, get an emotional thrill or feel some bump in self-esteem. Marvin Vincent wrote, "In periods of unsettled faith, skepticism and mere curious speculation in matters of religion, teachers of all kinds swarm like flies in Egypt. The demand creates the supply. The hearers invite and shape their own preachers. If the people desire a calf to worship, a ministerial calf maker is easily found."
And it's sad because people want ear-tickling teachers so they accumulate them according to their own feelings. And they turn their ears away from the...what?...truth. That's where we are. And that doesn't change anything that we do, does it? It shouldn't. I guess at this point in my life I just feel like if this is the way the trend is going, we just need to crank up the truth louder. And that's not anything noble, that's what we have been commanded to do. When I have done everything I could do, I have only done what I ought to do. Right?
Well, was Timothy faithful to this? That's really...what's the end of the story? I mean, he's...Paul's at the end of his life, was he faithful? Turn to Hebrews 13:23, we'll close with this. Hebrews 13:23, the writer of Hebrews closing out this great epistle, this is a neat little verse tucked in here. Hebrews 13:23...well actually we'll start at verse 22, "I urge you, brethren, bear with this word of exhortation for I have written to you briefly," I like that, 13 chapters and he calls that brief. Then verse 23, "Take notice that our brother, Timothy, has been...what?...released." Where do you think he had been? In prison. He must have been faithful because he must have excited the enemy, right?, when they threw him in prison. And he was released. Suffering became for Timothy the bench mark of his faithfulness just as it had been for his beloved mentor, the Apostle Paul. The end of the story, he must have preached the Word...amen?...
Father, thank You for a look at this great text and this faithful man. Thank You for tucking that little verse in there so we know the end of the story. We feel the same weaknesses and the same frailties that Timothy must have felt when it was hard to keep going against the grain, when it was easy to sort of cave in and feel timid and a little bit ashamed and maybe even tending to compromise the truth to soften things so as to eliminate the hostility. But thank You, Lord, that when he was confronted, obviously he stood his ground, he did what he was commanded, he honored his mentor and more than that, he honored you. And, Father, that's what we want to do, and that's what we want to see You do in the lives of many across this country. We thank You for the seminary here because there are 300 Timothys there and we are doing everything we can with the blessed and gifted and capable faculty we have here to pass the truth to them so they can spread around the world and pass it on. Lord, may You take Your truth in this dangerous, dangerous time and bring it to Your people who are starving for Your Word, but maybe don't even know it because they've never tasted it. Send these men in the seminary to the strategic places in the world, not only for the sake of those outside of the Kingdom, but for the sake of those inside so they can know the great truth, the depth that can elevate them to the height of praise and we praise You in the Savior's name. Amen.
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Let's look together then at 1 Timothy chapter 4. We're going to be spending a few weeks in this section, verse 6 through 16, and I want us to get off to a good start this morning.
As we come to this section, it doesn't take much of a reading to discover that what Paul is here talking about to Timothy is basically a list of qualifications for someone who's effective and excellent in the ministry. The issue here is how to be an excellent minister of Jesus Christ. There is a phrase in verse 6 that I want you to notice. It is the second major phrase in the verse, "Though shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ." That really is the theme of the whole section from verse 6 to 16. In a sense, it's really an underlying theme of the whole epistle, for all of it is to instruct Timothy how to be an excellent minister on behalf of the church at Ephesus where he is presently laboring to correct some error and to build life and strength into that church. But in this section particularly there's a great preoccupation with the qualifies of an excellent minister.
And so, I confess to you that this sermon is more for me than it is for you. Usually you come and I preach to you, now you come and you can listen to me preach to me and you can "amen" along the way. This is not just for me, but for anyone who serves the Lord Jesus Christ. And then, of course, in a sense, this is what we are to be in order to set an example so that you can be the same way also. So it really does involve all of us, though directly specifically at the qualities of an excellent minister of Jesus Christ.
Ministers and pastors are often evaluated on the basis of the wrong criteria. Typically the effectiveness of a pastor is usually evaluated on the size of his church, his reputation, his education, what school did he go to, where does he get his training, what kind of degree does he have? Sometimes pastors are praised because of books they have written. They are assumed to be excellent because of their popularity. They're well known popular speakers or writers. Perhaps they are on radio or television. Pastors usually are esteemed because they have been engaged in a building program...that's sort of a feather in a pastor's cap indicating there was some growth during the time of his ministry in a given place.
But all of those, frankly, are invalid in a biblical sense as criteria for evaluating a pastor. You can basically cancel out the size of his church, his education, his books, his popularity, his reputation, his radio, television, his building programs. All of that can be just set aside and you come to the real criteria by which a man of God must be evaluated when you look at this text. And this text is not isolated, it really reframes for us and regrips things that have been laid out for us all through the epistles of the New Testament. But the key phrase is that phrase "You shall be a good minister of Jesus Christ." That's what Paul wanted Timothy to be. And this is how he told him to be that. Every young man who aspires to ministry, who attends college or seminary with a view to ministry, every one who seeks to serve Christ in leadership in the church, to be on a mission field, to have any capacity of responsibility over the flock of God must interact with this particular portion of Scripture and these great truths, and in a sense lay this down as the plumb line, as it were, by which he measures his own life and ministry.
The word "good" could better be translated "noble, or admirable, or excellent." It is used back in chapter 3 verse 1 to speak of the good, noble, admirable, excellent work of ministry and now we want a good, noble, admirable man to be in that ministry. So here is the excellent minister. Minister is the word diakonos, we get the word "deacon" from it. It means servant. It is used of those who are called specifically deacons in chapter 3 verses 8 and following. There it has to do with the specific office in the church called deacon. Here it has to do with the fact that one who is a pastor-teacher, one is an apostolic delegate even as Timothy was, representing Paul, also must see himself as a servant of Jesus Christ. Anyone who leads in any ministry in His behalf serves Him. So we're looking then at an excellent servant.
The word diakonos is different say from the word doulos. Both of them are translated servant. Doulos is often translated slave. It has the idea of subjection, submission. Diakonos has the idea of service ability or usefulness. This majors on the usefulness of the man. So we are to be excellent in our usefulness to the cause of Jesus Christ. We are called to be servants, that we know from many, many portions of the epistles. In 1 Corinthians, I'm always reminded of chapter 4 verse 1 and then verse 2, "Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mystery of God, moreover it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful." We are called to be servants and stewards, managing that which belongs to God. And we are to do it in a way that will bring honor to His name.
So although Timothy is not like a diakonos of chapter 3, he's not a deacon, a servant of the elders in the church, he is nonetheless a servant of Jesus Christ. The deacons earlier are deacons of the church, in a sense. They serve the church. He is as any spiritual leader in the church is, uniquely called to service to Jesus Christ.
Now Paul's instruction to Timothy then becomes normative. What he says to him here is standard stuff for all of us who serve the Lord. And I speak to my own heart this morning. I measure my own self and I know, as anyone knows, that I fall short of the fullness of what God would have in these areas but it is so essential and has been so healthy for me to continually be refocusing myself on the standard to which I desire to attain by His grace.
Now let me give you a little background. In the first part of chapter 4 he was talking about doctrines of demons, mentioned in verse 1 and seducing spirits, verse 2, lying hypocrites who were saying things that are not true or representative of God as shown by how they violate the Word of God, which he mentions in the rest of those first five verses. But the issue was false teaching, false doctrines spawned out of demonic sources.
And having warned Timothy to be alerted to the fact that false teaching isn't human, it's supernatural, it's coming from demons, he then turns in verse 6 to tell Timothy how to be a good and effective minister in the face of the ubiquitous false doctrine, that which will always be around. And what is curious to me is that instructing Timothy in regard to dealing with false doctrine, he majors on the positive, rather than on the negative. That's a very important thought. The thrust of instruction here shows that the critical way to face false doctrine is not by refuting and denouncing false doctrine all the time, but by positively affirming the truth and living that truth. And you establish such a high respect for virtue and truth that it becomes far more attractive, desirable and believable than heresy and lies.
Some men choose to spend most all of their ministry denouncing things they disagree with. They spend their time refuting everyone who does not agree with them and anyone who violates the truth of God. And there is a place for that. But you can have a very negative ministry where people know everything they don't believe, they just don't know what they do believe. They can do well at refuting error, but it's hard for them to keep from falling into sin because no one's ever taught them the principals and dynamics of living the Christian life. They know what's wrong but they don't know what's right.
So, the emphasis here is on Timothy's duty to make himself an excellent minister of Jesus Christ. And by setting forth a model and standard of virtue in faith, devotion and conduct, he will dissuade people from heresy and at the same time be able to give full attention to the positive ministry to which God has called him. And the ministry must be a positive building up of the people of God, not always emphasizing the attacking error.
And I confess to you that sometimes this is difficult, especially if you are a little bit committed to the truth. I know in my own life I resist with the great effort the temptation to be negative because there's so many things that bother me so greatly. Every once in a while something leaks out, and you know how I feel about an issue or a person, but I try to fight against that, establishing the truth in your hearts and minds and believing that on the basis of the truth you'll be able to spot the error. You all know the familiar thought about the FBI training people in the counterfeit currency area, they don't show them anything counterfeit, they just show them everything real. And when they see a counterfeit, it's very obvious.
The nature of ministry is to be positive. It is to be the building up of the people of God. And so this is a very instructive and positive approach to an admirable ministry on behalf of Jesus Christ. It's the kind of thing I want to see in my own life and in the lives of others who stand in the place of ministry. And certainly we want to see it as well in the people to whom we minister.
Now there are about eleven things that I've identified in this passage. I've put them together in the outline and we'll be going over them for the next few Sundays. And we'll take four of them this morning...the first four and they're very very practical and helpful.
Number one, an excellent minister will warn his people of error. An excellent minister will warn his people of error. Now having said what I just said, that ministry is not to be dominated by a negative approach, I do not want to say that there's no place for warning, because there definitely is. In fact, the transition from the first five verses into the next part of the chapter moves on that aspect of warning. Look at the beginning of verse 6, "If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, that is demonic doctrines and seducing spirits and lying hypocrisies, all that false teaching, if you remind the brothers of these things, you will be a noble, excellent servant of Jesus Christ."
So, there is necessity then to remind the people of error. And all that I've said about a positive perspective in the ministry does not preclude the essential place that warning does have. Ministry demands warning. The verb here is a soft verb, it's a mild verb. And it would read this way, "If you suggest these things to the brothers." It is a word that means to remind or to suggest. It is a continual present participle, has the idea of continually laying these things before them. In fact, that's the most literal translation of the verb, to lay before. Just keep putting before them the reality that there is error. In other words, you must teach people to be discerning. You must teach them to think biblically and make biblical application of truth to what they see and experience. This is basic to all of spiritual leadership.
That is not the idea of commanding people, it is not the idea of forcing people to buy into things. That is not the word used here. It is a counsel and advice given in a gentle humble manner. You just continually remind them to be aware of error, and you identify error from time to time and point it out as such. That's not the theme of all your ministry, but that is a recurring note, that is a reprise from time to time in the ministry. In Acts 20 when Paul was meeting with the Ephesian elders he said to them, verses 29 to 31, "I know that when I leave grievous wolves will come in not sparing the flock and of your ownselves perverse men will rise up and they'll deceive and lead you astray and I commend you to the Word." He didn't say I'm going to define all their doctrine, I'm going to give you a polemic on every bit of it, I want you to know every nuance. He said just be aware of error, it's going to come and I commend you to the Word. And there is the negative warning but the positive affirmation that the solution is not in always dealing with the error but in always dealing with the truth. And the truth supplies the foundation from which error can be dealt with properly.
So he says to the brothers, that is to Christians, to the family of God, it is the responsibility of the one who would be an excellent servant to be engaged in causing them to remember the presence of error. You don't want them to be tossed to and fro about, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, like little children, you want them to be firm and grounded and rooted in the Word of God. And if you read 1 John 2 you find that the way a person learns to deal with Satanic error is by being strong in the Word. That's what it says. You are strong in the Word and you have overcome the evil one, which means you've overcome Satan who is disguised as an angel of light, proporting to be representative of truth when in fact he is the purveyor of lies. You overcome that by being strong in the Word.
So, you warn people, that's a part of it, a reminder, a continual suggestion of error, but you keep building them up in the Word. And I really believe that the failure to have a critical mind and the failure...and I don't mean by critical unkind or ungracious, I mean analytical...the failure to have a critical mind in our generation has allowed the church, first of all, to be infiltrated by all kinds of error. It has then led to the church becoming confused. It has then led to the church being weak, and, of course, the church is even liberal and in some cases it's totally apostate. Watered down teaching, platitudes and sermonettes for Christianettes and limp theology and convictionless preaching have replaced strong doctrine, clear exposition of Scripture, profound preaching and the legacy has been tragic. Charismatic confusion, psychology encroaching on biblical doctrine, science of mind, psychic and occult ideas pervading Christianity, cultic perceptions, success-oriented motives, prosperity doctrines, positive confessions, all of that stuff has come into the church like a flood. And honestly, I believe that all of this chaos can be laid at the feet of spineless convictionless uncritical pastors who have failed to draw the lines and say there is error and speak to that build their people up strongly in the Word of God.
It is reminiscent of an Old Testament text which speaks of the responsibility of spiritual leadership. Ezekiel chapter 3 verse 17 where Ezekiel says, "Son of man, I have made thee...and the Lord's speaking to him...a watchman on the house of Israel, therefore hear the word at My mouth and give them warning from Me." God says, Ezekiel, you must warn the people. When I say to the wicked you shall surely die and you give him not warning nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way to save his life, the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity but his blood will I require at your hand. And he goes all the way down to verse 21 discussing that idea.
This is the idea that when you come into spiritual responsibility and spiritual leadership, God holds you accountable to pass the word of warning on. And if you fail to do that, there is a resultant accountability to God for that failure. It is essential within the ministry to be involved in warning. You must establish in your people strong theology, strong doctrine, accountability to the Word of God, conviction and then the sense that there's error out there and we need to be aware of it.
Very often...very often...when you meet someone who seems a bit without convictions and a bit spineless and maybe without the kind of backbone you would like to see, someone who is a sort of a vaccilating person but maybe is a nice fellow, you hear someone say about him, "Well, he's not much of a preacher. He doesn't seem to have strong convictions, but he really has a pastor's heart." I've heard that so many times.
Let me tell you something. What do we do to evaluate a pastor's heart? What do we base that on? Listen, a pastor's heart is not manifest in how good a man is at petting sheep. A pastor's heart is manifest in how capable a man is at protecting them from wolves. That is a pastor's heart.
We received a letter that's not atypical, it's common to get letters like this. We recently put a series on the air that we felt was very important to warn people across the country in our radio audience of things that are not true and are not biblical. And we do that without apology. We are one of few that does that. But we do that. And this is a typical letter from a very strong Christian radio station. They said, "During the week of August 18, Grace To You sent a series which gave us some pause for thought and concern. Because of this concern, we did not air Friday's tape." They just didn't play the program. "The enclosed cost of service invoice will indicate such, we have not charged you for that day. Although we may personally agree with all that John said, we cannot go against our station policy of nurture and encouragement to the Christian family." Now stop there.
"Nurture and encouragement to the Christian family" means don't ever say anything that in any way might offend anybody. That's what that means. And then they went on to say, "We feel that some of our brothers and sisters were not ready for the strong meat of John's message." If I may respond to that, I would say that that wasn't strong meat, that was just simple truth. But they went on to say, "We must have advance warning of any further series that you plan to run like this."
In other words, please warn us if you're ever going to warn the church because we want to stop you from warning the church. So, warn us so we can do that.
This is typical. This is a funny time for the church. Everybody wants to embrace everything. And a man of God must develop convictions and a strong sense of theology and what is right and biblical and he must be continually warning his people of error. He is a protector of the flock.
Secondly, an excellent minister is also an expert student of Scripture. He is to be an expert student of Scripture. How the church ever lost touch with this is hard for me to believe, but very frankly, and I say this with sadness in my heart, I hear a lot of people who speak and teach and preach who from my standpoint and the standpoint of those who would look at them from the Bible knowledge aspect reflect a very minimal understanding and a minimal commitment to the study of Scripture. There was a day in the history of the church when the great students of Scripture and theology were pastors. The Reformation, all the great reformers who gave us the heart and soul of much of our theological understanding were pastors of churches. You get into the Puritan era when they were pumping out tremendous books and volumes on doctrine and theology and they were pastors, that was what a pastor did. He was above and beyond all things a student of the Word of God. He was not just a quote/unquote "communicator," he was a student first and foremost. He had capability to deal with precision in the understanding and interpretation and application of the Word of God.
And that's what Paul wants to say to Timothy at the end of verse 6. If you want to be a good minister of Jesus Christ, being nourished by the words of the faith and the good doctrine which you have closely followed. This is so basic. Present passive participle, being nourished, you need to be being continually nourished. It is a continual process of self- feeding, by reading and reading and reading and reading and inwardly digesting and meditating and dialoguing and mastering the content of the Word of God, rightly dividing it so that you are a workman who needs not to be ashamed. We are called above and beyond all other elements in the ministry to be expert in the study of the Word of God. In that sense, we are in a rabbinical tradition, a scribal tradition. We are to be the experts who have mastered the Word of God. It is essential in that regard that we be being continually nourished by the words of the faith.
That phrase "the words of the faith," the word "the" is in there, refers it to biblical or scriptural writing. The words of the Christian faith is Scripture, the body of Christian truth contained in the Scripture. We are to master the Scripture. We'll never do it but that's our pursuit. And at the Master's Seminary we are so committed to that, to that every person who graduates will have mastered the text of the Word of God. We are to be expert in that area...not just good communicators who can tickle people's ears and make them think they heard something enjoyable, but someone who can defend and divide properly the Word of the living God. We need to be able to think biblically and comprehend biblically and speak biblically. And that means we have to spend a massive proportion of our time interacting with the text of Scripture. It is a...it is a treasure that is inexhaustible and demands a life time to just begin to understand its profound and full riches. We are to bear the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God and be able to use it in any way at any time in any occasion. We are to have the Word of Christ dwelling in us richly and profoundly and deeply.
And if the Word of God is profitable for instruction and correction and all of the things that 2 Timothy 3 says, then we must know it. If it is the source of making the man of God perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works, then we must know it. And there can be no premium placed on biblical ignorance. And the issue is not how good a communicator are you, the issue is how well do you know the Word of God. But we are a generation of people who do not like to sit and think, we like to be entertained. And so there is a...there is a sort of a drift toward entertaining people instead of teaching people. We are to be committed to the understanding and the study and the articulation of the Word of God. We grow in the Word, 1 Peter 2:2. We grow through that Word. There's no substitute for this.
He says not only the words of the faith, but he says and the good doctrine...and of the good doctrine. That means that which Scripture affirms. So first he says the words of Scripture and then the theology that comes out of it, the application of that biblical truth, didaskalia, that which is taught and the authority which is behind it. So we are to be involved in becoming expert in the knowledge of the Scripture and all that Scripture affirms...all of its teaching.
And Timothy was already on schedule. He says to him at the end of verse 6, "Unto which or which you have closely followed." It all started when he was a boy and he was under the teaching of his grandmother and mother, Eunice and Lois. And then it followed through that from a child he says to him in 2 Timothy 3, you have known the holy Scriptures. And then Paul says to him also in 2 Timothy 1, "And you heard it from me." Second Timothy 2, "You heard it from me among many witnesses." From the time Timothy was a small child, all through his life he was being taught the Word of God. You've closely followed it, now he says you must be being continually nourished by that same Christian truth revealed in God's Word.
So the excellent minister, the excellent pastor has strong Bible knowledge, continually feeds daily on more divine truth. He cannot give out what he does not take in. And so it's very simple, the better the learner, the better the teacher. And it's easy for me to understand that in my own life practically because for every one hour that I teach, there are at least 15 hours of direct study in preparation for that to say nothing about a whole life time that's behind that. It's mastering the Word of God, to be able to teach people all things whatsoever I have commanded you, as Jesus said in Matthew 28.
And sadly there are many men who have no delight in their studies. They spend an hour now and then, or they spend no time. They reach into the old bag and pull out something from the past. And it may be good, but it isn't fresh. And they're not staying in the Word so there's something missing in their life. And there's nothing new that they're gaining. Study seems for many an unwelcome task. It sort of interrupts the easy schedule of activity. They like to have guests as often as possible in their pulpits so they don't have to spend time studying and they can sort of spin their way through a variety of administrative tasks and meetings. And they may study just to make a sermon and when it's done, it's not a very powerful one at that. And so they give out some soft sermon that falls on hard hearts and makes no penetration whatever.
But above all things, if the Bereans were more noble than anybody else because they as a congregation daily searched the Scriptures, how much more should we who are in the role of teachers? And the great men of God, the men who have left their imprint on the church through the years have been those men who have made impressions because of their understanding of Scripture. I think of the very familiar testimony of William Tyndale, that marvelous man of God responsible for getting the Bible in print to those of us who speak the English language in those early years. He was in prison and when he was in prison facing martyrdom, he wrote a letter to the governor and chief because he had some requests. And the letter is most fascinating. Here he is in prison facing martyrdom, which came imminently after the letter was written, and this is what the letter said.
"Here are my requests, this is what I want." This is a man facing death. "A warmer cap, a candle, a piece of cloth to patch my leggings, but above all, I beseech and entreat you your clemency to be urgent with the procurer that he may kindly permit me to have my Hebrew Bible, Hebrew grammar and Hebrew dictionary that I may spend time with that in study." Now any seminary student who has gone through Hebrew cannot relate to such a request. But later in life when you plunge more deeply into the profounder things of the Word of God, it's wonderful to be able to say to yourself the things that I cherish the most are the things that help me understand the Word of God the best. This was the desire of William Tyndale.
And I really believe that this reflects what is in the heart of Paul as he speaks to Timothy. Timothy, you need to be a man who is continually being nourished in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine which you already are closely following. Stay in the Word. Stay nourished by the Word.
Thirdly, an excellent minister is not only consistent in warning his people of error, but also he is an expert student in Scripture. Thirdly, an excellent minister avoidst the influence of unholy teaching. He avoids the influence of unholy teaching. As strong as he is in the Word, the flip side of that is he is correspondingly disinterested in unholy teaching. Verse 7, "But refuse," that is a very strong word, paraiteomai, a strong word, reject, put it away, "profane and old women's myths." He says refuse unholy teaching. Profane is bebelos, it means unhallowed, unholy, radically separate from what is holy. It is the opposite of the Word of God, anything that contradicts the Word of God.
And then he refers to "old women's myths," which is kind of an interesting phrase. That, by the way, is the opposite of biblical truth. In 2 Timothy 4:4 the same word muthos from which we get myth is used there. They shall turn away their ears from the truth unto muthos. So truth and muthos are seen as opposite. And what he is saying here is you are to be nourished up in the words of the faith and the good doctrine, but you are to refuse the opposite, the bad stuff.
Now what are the old women's muthos? Why does he throw the "old women" in there? Well, that was a...that was a cultural thing. In philosophical circles in that time they used a little epithet, a sarcastic epithet and when they wanted to heap disdain on some viewpoint, they would call it an old woman's myth. That's something a senile old lady would tell a kid, that's a fairy tale. Don't give me any of your old women's myths. That indicated a total lack of credulity. So Paul sort of picks up that existing sarcastic epithet in philosophical circles and uses it here and the readers would have understood it.
Don't you fool around with what is radically opposed to that which is holy and don't you fool around to something that is opposite the truth. The mind is a precious thing. And for the one who serves in leadership in the spiritual realm, God wants a pure mind...a pure mind that is saturated with the truth of the Word of God. There's no place for foolish silly myths, shallow, radical, ignorant fantasies. And yet somehow in our contemporary day we have decided that old ladies' fables and all these profane teachings are scholarship. And supposedly to be truly educated you've got to spend years learning all of that stuff. We have bowed down to the elite academic establishment in theology that have been doing nothing but pumping out old ladies' fairy tales and doctrines of demons spawned by seducing spirits.
I wanted to complete a doctorate some years back after I completed seminary. And I went in the first time to meet the academic representative who would tell me about the program. And he looked over my transcript and said, "Well, you have one problem. This is going to be a problem, you have too much Bible in your curriculum...too much theology." I said, "I thought this was a degree in theology." He said, "Well, it is but you've got too much Bible and theology, so we're going to have to have some course work given to you which you'll have to make up before you can enter into the program and then you can finish in a year and a half." And he said, "I'll give you a list of books that you'll be required to read and immediately you'll have to begin a course that will start right this summer."
He gave me a list of about 200 books, a third of them were in English, the others were in French and German. Now I took a little bit of German, just enough to ask a few questions that very few people care to answer and I don't know much else. But I had a little German. I could sort of find my way through. I knew when I was going to a doctoral program I'd have to know some of it, so I took some German. But I didn't have any French. And I looked at this and I checked out the list with somebody who knew these various titles. I went through the whole thing. And I can say that of all 200 of them, none of them told the truth basically. Some of them may have intersected with the truth here and there but they were all a lot of error, they were a whole lot of profane and old ladies' fairy tales passed off as scholarship.
And then I received a letter telling me that I would have to take a course in the summer in "Jesus and the Cinema." Which sounded kind of curious to me. So I called up and I said, "What is Jesus and the Cinema?" that was a course title. "Well, what you'll be doing is watching contemporary movies and evaluating them on whether they are antagonistic to or supportive of the Jesus ethic." And so what, of course, we were dealing with was strictly the ethical Jesus. I mean, there's no divine Jesus, just an ethical Jesus and so you go watch movies and see whether they interact on one side or the other with the ethical Jesus.
And then they gave me some other assignment and I went through all of this and then I went back out there and I walked to the fellow's desk and I just put the material down. And I said, "I just want to let you know that I have spent all my life to this point learning the truth, I can't see any value in spending the next couple of years learning error, so just forget it." And I walked away. And I really think that was of the Lord because I'm grateful to God that from the time of the beginning of my training right on through to today, my mind is filled with the truth of God. And I'm not a battleground. I'm not warring in my own mind because my mind is not saturated with all kinds of things as 1 Timothy 1 says that do nothing but minister questioning and not Godly edifying. And I think that's partly where conviction comes from, that's because...I can stand up and maybe it's just blindness but I can stand up and say things with conviction because there's no equivocation in my mind. And I think part of that is due to the fact that I"m not having to battle this whole plethora of supposed intellectuals and scholars who disagree with all of that. There's a sort of a stupid simplicity in my preaching, to draw it at the bottom line. I'm not ignorant when it comes to a lot of things, and maybe that's a help.
What really hit me hard in this area was I had ministry as a young man with a fellow who decided to go away to a seminary. And, of course, very liberal, denying the faith and so forth. He came out of there a bartender. That stuck in my mind. It was never my judgment that a seminary was to train bartenders. But in his case, that is precisely what happened. He went in to prepare for ministry, came out a bartender. Frankly, he would not have been an effective minister because of that kind of background. But the point to me was what a terrible devastation of a person with some kind of positive motivation to start with.
In our little "distinctives list" at the Master's Seminary, one of the things we say is this, "Instruction is based on biblical certainties from the Word of God rather than on doubts, critical theories, or reactions." If you come to the Master's Seminary, we're going to teach you what the Word of God says. You will not be totally ignorant of error, there will be an ability to recognize error, but you will be taught the positive things of the Word of God. Your mind is a precious thing and it needs to be kept clear from Satanic lies. And so Paul says refuse to get involved in profane and mythical things, stay away from that. The excellent minister maintains his conviction and his clarity of mind and his biblical sense by exposing himself to the Word of God.
Fourthly, and this is the last one we'll have time for this morning, an excellent minister is disciplined in personal godliness. He is disciplined in personal godliness. Verse 7 picks it up, "And exercise yourself unto godliness." Exercise yourself unto godliness. Oswald Sanders says his book Spiritual Leadership, "Spiritual ends can only be achieved by spiritual men using spiritual methods." That makes sense.
So, the issue in ministry is godliness. It isn't how clever you are, it isn't how glib you are, it isn't how good a communicator you are, it is do you know the Word of God, do you have a pure mind, and are you godly? Because ministry is an overflow out of that. It's an overflow of your life, your virtue.
Now let me tell you a little bit about the background of this. Why does he use the word "exercise"? Interesting word, gumnazo. We get the word gymnasium from it, gymnasium. There's a word even in that same word group that means "naked" because they participated in athletics in those days naked, or striped down to just the bare minimum. And so the word meant to exercise, or to train yourself in an athletic endeavor, which means rigorous strenuous self-sacrificing kind of training. He uses that word. But he picks up on the whole culture that goes with that word when he does it.
For example, in Greek cultures, and of course Ephesus was right in the heart of Greek culture, every city had a gymnasium. It was a focal point of the city and youths between the ages of 16 and 18 gave the major proportion of their education to physical training. So much of life in those days was involved with physical activity. Today we have what we call service industries, where you sit behind a desk and push paper. In those days people moved and walked and worked and bent their back and whatever. And even in domestic chores that was necessary. Physical training was very vital. And there was a great great and prized and esteemed viewpoint of athletics. And so in every town there would be a gymnasium.
A sort of a sad corollary to this is that those gymnasiums became literal hotbeds of homosexuality and that's part of Greek cultural history as well. But nonetheless, and that's where that kind of pedophilia comes from, the young boys in the gymnasium with the older men, and the whole sick homosexual thing that goes with that.
But nonetheless, that was their culture. In spite of the Stoics who were forever and always protesting against the cult of the body, the cult of the body flourished in the time of the Apostle Paul. There were people into the body beautiful, into exercise, into training. Does that sound familiar? That sounds familiar. And we're in the same kind of a situation today. They were into training the body. So Paul just by using that one verb just plays off of that whole cultural illustration and says, "Look, exercise yourself unto...what?...godliness." I mean, if you're going to go into training, go into training for godliness, go into training for virtue, go into training for the inner man, the soul, the spirit, unto godliness, eusebeia means reverence, piety, true spiritual virtue. Keep yourselves in training for godliness would be a good way to translate the tense of the verb, keep yourselves in training for godliness, discipline yourself unto holiness. Beat your body to bring it into submission, 1 Corinthians 9:27, as Paul did, lest in preaching to others you yourself would be disqualified. You must maintain godliness.
We talked about this so many times. How many men in the ministry don't do that? Jay told me two days ago he got a call from a church where the pastor defected immorally and blew the whole church sky high again. It's a daily routine. It just goes on day after day after day after day. There's no great longing and pursuing of holiness. And you can be more preoccupied with the form of your body and the looks of your wardrobe and the whole shot than you can with the pursuit of godliness. So there's that necessary soul discipline for true holiness. Second Corinthians 7:1, perfecting holiness in our lives, building up the inner man to be strong and capable in serving the will of God. This means to know God's will and to do God's will, train yourself to know God's will, train yourself to do God's will.
Over in chapter 2 of 2 Timothy, do you remember what he says there? Verse 3, "Endure hardship or suffer," really it means to suffer, "as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." And then in verse 4 he says, "Don't get tangled up with the world and this life." And then in verse 5 he says, "If you're going to get involved in athletics," he uses the Greek verb athleo, again an athletic metaphor, if you're going to engage in athletics, you're not going to win the crown unless you keep the rules, so stay within God's rules, confine yourself to God's standards. That's the idea. You're a soldier, you've got to endure hardship, you've got to make sacrifices. You've got to cut yourself off from the world, please the one who called you to be a soldier, do whatever you need to train to win the crown and keep the rules. In other words, discipline, the spiritual discipline.
It's so tragic, you know, to watch our culture, to watch these people go literally off the deep end of the physical body. All these people running around jumping and bouncing and doing aerobics and women weightlifters. Boy, I mean, talk about ugly, that...where that ever came from I don't know. But how in the world you could ever...women could ever lose the beauty of true womanhood and trade it in for the size of a bicep, what a pathetic commentary on a society.
But anyway, all this instead of character and virtue, everything is physical. And it was the same in Paul's day. You know, you look at those people and you say, "Yeah, yeah, just wait, just wait," I mean, all that is for nothing...for nothing. That's what he says in verse 8, "For bodily exercise profits a little." What does he mean by that? It profits a little in two ways, extent and duration. It profits a little. In extent, it's only good for the physical body. In duration, it's only good for the time. In fact, it's a short time. You exercise and stop exercising and in a month, it's all gone. It's just for the body and it's just for a short time. It's such a brief time. It's such a little time. Excessive athletic training has value only for the body and only for a brief time, and that's it. And people spend hours and hours and hours on something that is so short lived.
But he says godliness, verse 8, is profitable unto all things. Boy, if you want to work on something, work on that...work on that. Beyond just the physical, it's profitable not just to the body but the body and the soul. It's profitable not just for a brief time but for a life time and for eternity, you see. So if you're going to train yourself, if you're going to go into training, if you're going to make a New Year's resolution, don't make a New Year's resolution to go to the gym three times a week, that isn't the priority unless that fits somewhere at the bottom of your list. Make a resolution to spend time in the Word of God every day and cultivate godliness because godliness is profitable for all things, all things, spiritual things, for time and eternity. Why? Look at verse 8 again. Because it has promise of the life that now is, that's our life right now.
Listen, you cultivate godliness, is it a blessing now? Of course. You cultivate godliness and you have a rich fulfilled God-blessed fruitful effective useful life now. And he says of that which is to come. You get involved in spiritual gymnastics and you go to your spiritual gymnasium every day and do your spiritual workout and the results will not only be blessedness in the life that now is, but blessedness in the life that is to come. Spiritual exercise benefits my true self, my soul, my inner man in this life and on into eternity.
And there's so many people, I think even in ministry, who can get so preoccupied where they've got to have their exercise, they've got to have their exercise and they're spending far more time exercising their body than they are exercising in the regard of their soul. So he just lays out a very simple principle, the excellent of servant of Jesus Christ is one who is disciplined unto godliness.
This is so obvious, this statement in verse 8, that in verse 9 he calls it a faithful saying. "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance." Now that is a little formula that Paul uses five times in the pastoral epistles: "This a faithful saying, this is a faithful saying, this is a faithful saying." Two times he says, "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance," which is just an emphatic kind of affirmation of the first half of the statement. It means it's a trustworthy statement. It's a truism. It's an axiom. It's a maxim. It's something patently obvious. Everybody knows it, in fact that is a formula referring to a common saying in the church. It's probably a proverbial statement. It's like in verse 1 of chapter 3, this is a true saying, this is a faithful saying, if a man desires the office of an overseer he desires a good work. That was floating around the church. Everybody said, "Yeah, if he desires the office, he desires a good work."
Well, another maxim axiomatic thing that everybody knew was bodily exercise profits a little but godliness profits unto all things because it has the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come. It benefits both. That was also axiomatic. So the statement then, "this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance," refers back to verse 8, not forward to verse 10. We know that because verse 8 is much more of a proverbial statement, it is much more axiomatic. Further we know it because the beginning of verse 10 with that "therefore" concept, that eis touta gar(?) really doesn't lend itself at all to verse 9, for those of you who are Greek students, the rest of you just forget that part. And the idea that you would start a maxim or axiom by saying "we both labor and suffer," no, that's a personal statement.
But the proverbial nature of verse 8 is clearly indicating that it was the faithful saying. So everybody knows that bodily exercise is only good for a little time and for a body, whereas spiritual training is good forever and for the soul.
People, it's so infantile, it is so spiritually infantile to preoccupy ourselves with the body. It just shows the level we're on. It shows an inability to gain perception of the reality of the spiritual dimension and the eternal dimension. It's just that narrow confined perspective.
So, it should be axiomatic in the church that the church is not occupied by a whole bunch of body worshipers, but that it's a group of people who are in training and what they're in training for is their soul, to be conformed to the will of God that they can be godly for that profits for time and eternity. Godliness is the pursuit of the excellent minister. He uses all the means of grace available, prayer and Bible study and spiritual discipline and sometimes fasting and the Lord's table and the confession of sin and active service and accountability and whatever it is, all of the spiritual means are applied in the discipline of godliness.
What then makes a godly minister? What makes an excellent minister? Is it the size of his church? Is it whether he's on radio, television, whether he's a clever speaker or not? What is it? God looks at him and says, does he think critically and warn his people about error? Is he proficient in the knowledge of the Scripture? Does he have a pure mind and avoids the influence of unholy teaching? And does he exercise himself with rigor, with great strain, with great effort and self-sacrifice to be godly? That's the stuff of which an excellent minister is made.
And there are seven more and we'll be looking at those in the weeks ahead. Let's pray together.
Father, thank You for clarifying in our minds any unclear thought in this area. Thank You for reminding me what it is that You desire. I confess, Lord, that I come short of my own understanding of the standard and surely that puts me way short of Yours. But, Lord, even as Paul said, I press toward the mark. Give me the strength of Your Spirit to do what in the flesh would be an impossible pursuit.
Raise up many faithful men and faithful women, too, in Your church who can serve. Father, help the whole congregation to know that all of us are called on to be alert to error, to be students of Scripture, to stay away from unholy teaching, the fire that can burn so readily. All of us are called to exercise ourselves to godliness. It's just that leaders are to be the example to us all.
Thank You, Father, for this clear word to us and so practical. And we pray for this morning's message to somehow translate itself into living that we may not be those, as James said, who are hearers only and no doers of the Word. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I do apologize for being so neglectful of this blog. I have good intentions & that's about as far as it gets!.
I have continued keeping busy, mostly listing craft things on eBay. There are lots of knitting things listed there now ... yarns, bags, & the like ... but also some cross stitch things. A couple of designer floss collections, a set of mounting frames & boxes, two Liberty Hill boxes, & a Sampler & Antique Quarterly DVD. Next I plan to sort through my charts & kits. I have no intention of giving up stitching altogether, but I definitely have more supplies than I'll need to last me a lifetime! After sorting through my cross stitch things, I will tackle my quilting fabric, my bobbin lace supplies, & then prim & home decor. If you're interested in seeing what I have listed, my eBay ID is lv2stitch53.
We spent a quiet 4th of July. The next holiday will be Labor Day. It's hard to imagine that in another few weeks the kids will be heading back to school! I am, of course, looking forward to the end of summer.
I will leave you with a photo of my latest project, a new pair of socks I am knitting. I always sit & knit for a couple hours in the evenings. John will sit & read to me for a while as I'm knitting. Very comforting : )
Saturday, July 8, 2017
A Quick Update
I do apologize for being so neglectful of this blog. I have good intentions & that's about as far as it gets!.
Posted by Shirlee at 3:54 PM
6 comments:
- marly said...
Shirlee! Holy moly. I checked your offerings and you have more than some stores! Wow. Beautiful choices.
- Saturday, July 08, 2017 7:17:00 PM
- Jo who can't think of a clever nickname said...
Our kids haven't even broken up yet! We are in the final throes of the summer term though. Sports Day and Parents' Evening and so on. Preparing for the arrival of bags of hand made somethings from the Small Boy!
Good luck with the destashing.
What a lovely way to spend an evening, being read to, bliss.
- Sunday, July 09, 2017 12:34:00 AM
- Barb said...
Hi there Shirlee,
Please could you tell me the make of wool you are using for your new socks and the colour they are just so my colours.Thanks Barb
- Sunday, July 09, 2017 2:55:00 AM
- Vickie said...
I can see you have been hard at work on ebay. Good for you! Lovely colorway on the new socks.
- Sunday, July 09, 2017 8:38:00 AM
- Vicki said...
Your new socks are gorgeous! I read your last post while on vacation. It's too difficult sometimes to leave a comment on my phone (too small!), but I was glad to see you blogging again. Good luck with your ebay sales... Enjoy your week!
- Sunday, July 09, 2017 11:14:00 AM
- Robin in Virginia said...
What gorgeous yarn you are using for your socks! Good luck with your ebay sales.
- Monday, July 10, 2017 12:46:00 PM


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