Only God's Truth Will Last

Andrew Smyth

Sermon • Submitted 6 years ago

2 Timothy 4:1–5

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As you know, tonight is the last time Heidi and I will be with you. We will depart this coming Sunday for Westminster Seminary California, where we will be for the next 3 years. I will be studying there for pastoral ministry to the Reformed church.

I know I’ve been probably one of the biggest advocates of

I was scheduled to teach tonight before becoming aware that it would be our last night here. I guess God in his providence decided that it should be this way. I guess tonight is a bit of a farewell address, a farewell lesson.

Once it became clear that we would be leaving soon and that this would be our last night, I started thinking conceptually about the concept of last words. There is obviously much made of last words, be they the last words someone says before they die, or whether they depart one place for another. And, as it stands now, tonight will be effectively my last words to this group. That’s a bit heavy. You guys have been a big part of my life now for the last 3 years and for Heidi the last 2. Now this is not to say that we will never come back or visit or anything, we would like to, Lord-willing, but we can’t say that with certainty. And even if we do, this group is quickly changing and evolving. We have brand new people here, which is great. We’ve also seen many departures in recent months, such as the Dalrymples, who founded and hosted this group for so many years. We’ve seen the Fosters, Kaufmans, others, gone. In coming weeks and months, the Foos, Matthies, and Larsen families will be leaving too.

With all of this thought of pending goodbyes, I began to think about, what is the last thing I want you to hear from me? If I am to leave, and never see any of you again this side of eternity (because, who knows) what do I want you to hear, and what do I want you to remember?

So I have decided, as my last words to this Bible study for now, to look at the last words from someone else in Scripture—Paul. We will look tonight at 2 Timothy chapter 4.

A little background on 2 Timothy. This book was likely the last of Paul’s canonical letters (letters recorded in Scripture) and would have been written in the late 60s. By this point, he was on his final imprisonment in Rome. Tradition says that Paul would have been beheaded outside of the city gates of Rome after a trial before emperor Nero who, as you might recall, was not kind to Christians. At this time, Christians in Rome were being severely persecuted and put to death right and left. Around A.D. 67, there was a fire in Rome that was intentionally started. Nero blamed the Christians for starting the fire, even though he likely did it himself. With the Christians being blamed for the fire, they were being slaughtered. They were often made into Roman candles—they would be tied up and set on fire on the side of the road for all to see.

There’s actually a recent movie, “Paul: Apostle of Christ” which captures the plight of the Christians in Rome in this time very well. It’s ugly and bleak.

Timothy was a young associate of Paul’s from Lystra. He first appeared in . His mother was a Jew and his father was a Gentile. He became a trusted companion of Paul’s. Paul would often send Timothy to places where he could not go himself to start and help churches. He would have been much younger than Paul, and Paul often refers to him in these letters as a son. Timothy served at Ephesus for a time, and this was likely where he was when Paul wrote 2 Timothy. He was a young pastor, an elder in the church.

Paul, knowing that his end is near, is providing Timothy some final instructions on how he is to lead in the church through the troubled times present and future. I selected it as a text tonight because I think it is a great biblical demonstration of, when times of difficulty and uncertainty may lie ahead, what really matters and what we as Christians should practice and prioritize, and what the church should do.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

Preach the Word

4 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

When Paul writes “I charge” he is essentially placing Timothy under oath. Essentially, “God is my witness as to whether or not you do what I am about to tell you. Paul appeals to important historical facts and future realities concerning God. God will judge he and Timothy alike.

And what is it that Paul charges Timothy so solemnly to do? 5 things, as we see in verse 2:

English Standard Version Chapter 4

2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.

Timothy is told to preach. But what is he told to preach?

The word. That is, the word of God. Paul has already in this letter laid out the infallibility and authority of scripture at the end of chapter 3.

English Standard Version Chapter 3

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

The scriptures—the whole scriptures—are vital in the life and ministry of the church. That is what the church is the preach. And as Christians, that is what we are to expect to be preached at our church.

Sadly, in our day, the church is losing this. Once Heidi and I visited a very large church in another town and had a bit of a strange experience. The “sermon” consisted of about 20 minutes of a secular Hollywood movie interspersed with various commentary on the wisdom that could be gleaned from the movie, nebulously linked to some cherry-picked verses. This church had chosen to take worldly wisdom and put it as front and center instead of the counsel of God.

This was a blatant example, but there’s more sneaky, insidious forms of this. Churches might go to eisegesis instead of exegesis, where preachers will start with their conclusions and cherry-pick scripture to make their point. Or messages may focus simply on good, practical truth, but that which is devoid of God’s insight, such as, practical advice on how to have better kids, a better marriage, and the like.

What has made this group work for the years it has existed? Sure, there’s lots of great things. There’s the fellowship. There’s the service of one another and generosity. There’s the showing up to help people pack and move, which I am fully confident you show up in force for on Saturday (wink, wink). But at the core of this group, what has made it work for this long, and what keeps it working is the faithful proclamation and study of the scriptures. We’ve spent nearly 3 years doing about 2/3 of Isaiah. It is deep, rich, verse-by-verse, word-by-word study of God’s truth.

As Christians, that is our lifeblood. We are God’s people, and we need to hear God speak to us. This is how God speaks to us. So many Christians want God to speak to them in various ways, but God has already spoken plainly and clearly to us in the Bible.

When is Timothy to preach the word? The second command is to “be ready, In season and out of season.” When I hear this, I think of farming language. When something is “in-season,” it’s ready for the harvest. I like fresh cherries. This time of year they are easy to get at decent prices, about $2.00 a pound, because they are in season. Most of the cherry-growing world is harvesting about now. But in the winter, if I want my cherries, they are $5-$6 a pound and I don’t bother. The language of harvest is often used in scripture to describe people being ready to come into the kingdom of God. Jesus used it a lot in his parables, and I think that is what Paul is getting at here. Whether people will listen or not, Timothy is to preach the word. This is similar to Isaiah’s charge clear back in chapter 6, where essentially God told Isaiah that he would preach to these people, but they would not listen to him.

We have no guarantee of success when we preach the gospel to people. Preachers never have a promise of any measure of success when they teach the scriptures. But we do it anyway because it is what God has commanded of us.

The third command is to “reprove,” or as we might more clearly say, “convict.” This is to make the hearers of the scriptural teaching aware of their sins. The scripture is not shy about sin—what is and is not acceptable behavior for the Christian. Therefore, we should not be either. Much of the church is given over to hyper-grace teaching, where love and grace are exalted so high that any concept of sin and wrath are absent. Yes, we are to love and show grace, and yes God loves us and shows us grace, but what is that grace from? It is from sin.

The fourth command is to “exhort.” Once someone is in sin, they need to be corrected. We had a great discussion last week about church discipline. Correcting our brothers and sisters from the scriptures is a good and right thing to do. Sadly, much of the church has abdicated its biblical responsibility to address sin in its midst. Churches now often measure their success in attendance numbers and dollars, and church discipline might cause people to get angry and leave, so it’s a losing strategy. This is backwards. The church should never be trying to do better or smarter than what God’s word commands. It cannot improve upon it. It should humbly obey.

The final command is to “exhort,” or “admonish.” This is, as opposed to a rebuke, the more fatherly shepherding aspect. Yes, the church confronts sin, but it also provides alternatives, support, and guidance to do better. Pastors, like Timothy, are to be shepherds. Sheep are not the most intelligent animals. Pretty much anything kills them and they don’t put up much of a fight. Sheep need led and fed. This requires what the verse says, patience and teaching. As someone is growing in their faith, they will fail. They will fall. It is a duty of church leaders especially and mature believers in general to come alongside the younger, weaker, more inexperienced Christians and help them along.

Those are Paul’s five commands:

English Standard Version Chapter 4

2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching

But why do these things? Paul gives the answer in verses 3 and 4.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

People often do not want to hear what the Bible says. Look at our day. Look at the issue of sexual morality. The world teaches that sex outside of marriage is a good, right, desirable thing. The Bible disagrees. The Bible states that homosexuality is a sin; the world thinks that it is a civil right. The world thinks that abortion is nothing consequential, but as we have been reading in Isaiah, God knit us together in the womb, assigning us unique standing and personhood even then. Many who call themselves Christians will ignore what scripture clearly says and twist it into saying something else. Paul warns about “teachers to suit their own passions,” and we all know that there are lots of teachers catering to lots of passions that are not sound doctrine. Paul’s words were true in the first century, and they ring just as true now.

They have itching ears—ears wanting to be tickled. They basically want teachers to tell them exactly what they want to hear.

They wander into myths. That is, they get into false teachings, pointless speculation; the things that are unprofitable as opposed to the teaching of scripture, which is profitable. Lots of people want to come up with new weird interpretations of scripture, or ways to say it has been corrupted, or ways to make it mean something other than what it does. Others will add to it, like the Mormons, who have their own additional book, or the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who have their corrupted Bible, or Islam, which has its Quran. Now we have scientism—the de facto false religion that science is to be the ultimate arbiter of everything, including God’s truth.

To these errors, Paul offers Timothy the remedy:

English Standard Version Chapter 4

5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

Another series of commands:

“Be sober minded” Be calm. Be steady. Be stable. Don’t get caught up in the latest fads or trends. Do not trade God’s truth for the new thing that gets more street cred.

“Endure suffering” This is something in America that we really don’t have a concept of. Sure, there is some persecution of Christians, such as the various lawsuits against Christians. But nobody here is getting set on fire on the side of the road. No one here is getting beheaded for their faith or fed to the lions. But, when suffering does come, we need to endure patiently. We need to recognize that this world is not our home. Whatever happens here is at worst a few bad decades compared to the trillions of years that we will have in eternity with Christ.

“Do the work of an evangelist.” This is from the Greek “euangelion,” meaning good news or Gospel. Christians are to proclaim the gospel. We are to tell people about what Christ has done.

“Fulfill your ministry.” Timothy has been given a role to fulfill in the kingdom. So have we. We are each a part of Christ’s body with gifts and responsibilities to carry out. We must be obedient. We must not quit when it gets difficult. We must not see someone else’s ministry and wish we could do that instead of our own.

The reason I chose this text tonight is that I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know what it is for Heidi and I, other than it appears that we are going to California for a few years to prepare for ministry. Many others here are leaving soon or have left recently. This passage lays down the formula of what we should be and what we should expect from our churches, our pastors, and other believers. If a church is not practicing these things, it is not fulfilling its biblical duties, and it should be corrected. And if it won’t be corrected, it should be abandoned. The church will stand on the word of God or fall on anything else.

This passage lays down what is expected of us, even in uncertain and difficult times. While Paul’s particular instructions are to Timothy as a pastor/elder, they can guide all of us. And, for that matter, some in this room are heading for a future that may very well involve being a pastor or elder, serving in the church, and this passage is necessary guidance.

Finally, Paul’s words here provide perspective. Here he is, mistreated, in a filthy, cold prison, facing his own death, and his concern is not for himself, but for God’s people. He’s not worried about what’s going to happen to him. He’s concerned about the church remaining the church after he’s gone. And, if you read the following verses, Paul knows full well that he will be gone soon.

I thought I had more time to be a part of this group. It has very suddenly been cut short. So the words I have chosen to leave you with are Paul’s, and I think they are a great measuring stick of what this group is and what it needs to remain as going forward. If you lose the scriptures, you might as well close down. If you become a place for needless speculation and myths, you are better off not having a group. Stay grounded in the word of God. Remain faithful to it in places, be it here in Cheyenne or elsewhere, where it is desperately needed. Take the gospel to a lost and dying world. Do not fear what the world can do to you.