WWUTT 707 Preach the Word? (Part 2)

2 Timothy 4 and the Charge to Preach the Word

The Bible tells us a 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 and turn away from the truth and wander off into myths when we understand the text.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you, Becky. Reading again from 2 Timothy chapter 4, beginning in verse 1. The Apostle Paul writes, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day.

And not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing. This is where we are in our study of 2 Timothy, and as I am not able to prep and record lessons for this week, I'm going to turn the teaching over to Dr. Vodie Bauckham, picking up where we left off yesterday.

I'm going to play the last 30 to 60 seconds of yesterday's sermon, just to kind of keep things in context, and then Dr. Bauckham will continue on from there.

The Two-Fold Theme of 2 Timothy

As for you, verse 5, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. So in every chapter there is preserve this gospel and proclaim this gospel, and in every chapter there is endure the suffering and the hardship that will come inevitably as a result of doing so.

This is the two-fold theme of 2 Timothy. You've got to get this in order to understand this letter. And when you understand this two-fold theme, you can understand our text today. Paul says in verse 1, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is judged living and the dead, and by his appearing in this kingdom, preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with complete patience and teaching. 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 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. There are several things that we look at. This is a very familiar passage of scripture. And there are several things that we normally look at in this text.

But as you look at it and read it again and again and again, there are some other things that are not necessarily as obvious. Like for example, there is a tendency and a temptation for those who know the gospel and who preach the gospel to wander off from the gospel.

There is a tendency and a temptation for those who know the gospel and those who preach the gospel to wander off from the gospel. Why else does the Apostle Paul have to tell Timothy, you must hold firmly to this.

And again and again in every chapter he tells him. From the first chapter, listen, God has not given us a spirit of fear. Why does he have to tell Timothy to fan into flames, right? What's in him, why does he have to tell him that?

Why does he have to encourage him again and again and again? Because there is this tendency. And this tendency happens for a few reasons. One, this tendency happens because we desire for people to like us.

And so we compromise so that people will like us. We don't like to see people leave. We don't like to see people choose to go elsewhere. We don't like to see... I don't care how secure you are as a pastor, as a preacher.

You sit there and you do your best to be faithful to what it is that God has given and you preach as faithfully and fervently as you can and as passionately as you can. And then all of a sudden people come and they listen to this faithful and fervent preaching.

And then you hear that they went over around the corner where you can't find the gospel with nothing. You can take a CSI team over there, you can't find the gospel. And these people went over there. Why did they do that?

Why did they do that? And then sometimes it's even worse. They'll say, listen, you know, we were there. We love to preach in there. We love the faithful word that we get there, but please don't finish that sentence.

Just go. You got to go. Just go. But don't finish that sentence because I'm already worried about you. Don't be even more worried about you. Now you're going to tell me why I need to be worried about you.

Because whatever comes after that is what you think is more important than the meat of the word of God. The gospel is here. Yes. The gospel is here. We appreciate that. But there's a certain feeling that we need when we sing on Sunday morning.

That's more important to us than the soundness of the gospel. That the gospel is here, but there are certain sort of, you know, organizations that they have for kids over there that are much more important to us than the gospel being for the gospel is here, but there are these other things that are much more important to us.

Here's a little secret folks. Those of us who preach the word of God, if left to our own devices, we'll stand up to that a few times, but then eventually we'll start to try to find ways to maybe incorporate some of those other things that will allow us to give the people what they want because everybody likes to be like, not everybody, everybody likes to be liked.

And so that that's the, that's the inherent danger here that's spoken of. There's also the inherent danger of those people who love the gospel. They don't preach the gospel. They just love the gospel.

They sit under the gospel. There's a danger of the people who love the gospel and sit under the gospel to run away from the gospel and forsake the gospel. Notice what he says here. The time is coming when people will not endure sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves, teachers to suit their own passion and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off in the myths.

He's not talking about folks who never heard, amen. He's not talking about folks who never heard. He's talking about folks who have not developed their appetites and their endurance because you do have to develop appetites and endurance in order to persevere.

See, I don't know if you know this or not, but your flesh is dying and there's a difference between dying and dead. Amen. The old man is dying, but there's a difference between dying and dead. There's a sense in which that old man declaratively, that old man's dead.

Amen. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. He's dead. Victory has been achieved. He's dead declaratively speaking, but his death is still being worked out. Your flesh is still being put to death. It's still being crucified day by day.

And there are a couple of things that live in you that you need to be aware of. And if you're not, they creep up on you. One is the flesh and your flesh enjoys being satisfied. And if we're not careful, there are things that will challenge our flesh and it will cost us in terms of perseverance and endurance and commitment to continue to challenge the flesh and to continue to grow.

And it's easy to not do it. You ever stop working out for a long while and then decide, you know what, that's it. I'm done. I'm done feeling like this. I'm done looking like this. I'm done thinking like this.

I'm done whatever. I'm getting back in the gym. I'm working out. I got my regimen. I got my clothes. And then you go and you work out and then you wake up the next day. And if you're really committed, you say, I'm still, I'm still, I'm still, I'm still going back again because if I work through this soreness, I can, you know, and then you go back again and then you wake up the next day and you've got the soreness from two days ago plus the soreness from yesterday.

And you know, it's a different, listen, if there is not something in you that forces you to see as more valuable and more important, that goal that you're working toward than whatever that pain is that you're enduring, eventually you're not going to do that anymore.

Folks, it's the same with enduring with the word. It is easy for my flesh to just be entertained and satisfied in the name of the Bible. And for me to get used to that, some of you come from that, some of you came from Christianity light.

Amen. You came from that and you, you got sick of that and you decided I need more than that. And so you come in and you're ready and you're committed to more than that. And then you find more than that.

And there was the word and there's doctrine and there's theology and there's depth and there's all of this, there's conviction of sin. There's all of these things that you know you need. And then sometimes you wake up on Monday morning and you're sore.

I didn't feel this convicted in the other environment. I didn't have to think this hard in the other environment. I didn't have to come home and look up verses and sometimes look up words in the other environment.

I was just fine living like that and going to church. Now all of a sudden I'm convicted of stuff that I used to just be comfortable with. And all of those people who I used to know and love are still in that other world.

And I'm being denied things. I'm sore. I'm sore. And I want to go back. And it's easy to go back. Especially when you're going back. It's not like you're going back to Hinduism or Islam, right? They're using a Bible too.

Amen. They talk about Jesus there too, right? But it's that pattern of sound words that matters. You can use the Bible and use the Bible wrongly. 2 Timothy 2 .15, that's why I alluded to that verse. It's important.

You need to handle the word like somebody who doesn't need to be ashamed. There are people who handle the word who need to be ashamed. Because they're not handling it accurately. The false teachers, folks listen, false teachers are not successful when they come out and acknowledge their falsehood.

The most successful cults and the most successful false teachers are the ones who come right alongside and just veer off slightly. Because people who know and love the Lord are not going to walk with someone who says, yeah, we don't believe that Jesus is who the Bible says that he is.

But you give them, hey, we believe in Jesus and we believe that Jesus is God and we believe that he's, you know, he's a God. See, that's how the Jehovah's Witnesses can survive. That's how the Mormons can survive.

It's the meat of a lie in the skin of the truth. As Hank Hanegraaff often says, the skin looks familiar and appealing, but inside there is something false. There's another thing. Not only your flesh in that regard, but also inside you is a raging legalist, a raging legalist.

And you desperately desire for someone to give you the means by which you can justify yourself and make it known. You don't want to see the raging legalist inside me doesn't just want to justify himself.

He wants to be able to make it known. So if you can tell me that here's five things that I can do and I can do those five things and let other people know that I'm doing those five things, therefore I am number one, self-righteous in that I'm justifying myself.

And number two, my pride is being served because I'm able to show you just how justified I am because of the list that I keep. Inside every one of us lives that person. It's interesting. We always think about the other side of the boat, right?

We always think about the false teacher who's leading people over in that regard, but not the one who's leading in terms of legalism, who's adding things to the gospel, who's adding this outward standard to the gospel.

That's the one we're less aware of, especially when those things are good things and you can find them in the Bible. Amen. But there's a difference between, you know, the Bible is important. Reading my Bible is important.

Having time in the word of God is important, right? And I haven't missed a day of quiet time in 27 months, right? Can't say amen, you ought to say out. Why do I need to know that? Why do I need to know that?

That's like you telling people randomly about your level of intimacy with your spouse. You want to know how healthy our physical relationship is? Well, in the last, are you smelling what I'm stepping in?

Do you need healthy intimacy in that part of your life? Yep. But is it necessary for you to go around telling everybody just exactly and precisely how healthy your intimacy is in that part of your life?

Nope. No, it's not. But there are other areas where we have come to the place where that's how we identify ourselves. Look at me. I'm righteous. Let me get to the last thing that I want to do here, because I want to apply this as we continue to unfold this text.

Same-Sex Marriage, Divorce, and the Church's Drift

He says, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with complete patience and teaching. Why this time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

What are these myths? I want to apply that in a couple of areas in our life. Verse five, as for you, always be sober minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. A couple of myths that we're dealing with.

One of the myths that we're dealing with, I've already alluded to this idea of same sex marriage. And that's one that I find very interesting on a number of different fronts. People have asked me about, you know, my worries.

Are you worried? You know, if you're gone for five years, 10 years, and you come back to the United States that you'll come back and, you know, we'll have this and that and the other. Here's what worries me.

Here's what worries me. I don't, I don't like what has happened. I believe it's wrong. I believe it's, it's wrong on a number of levels and ought to be rectified. But that's, that's not what worries me.

What worries me is not so much that our civil government has, has done this erroneous and sinful thing. They, they have a duty under God, according to Romans chapter 13, second Peter chapter two, very clearly to reward and encourage those who do good.

And they need to know what good is in order to do that. And to punish those who do evil. They flip that on its head and God's gone, God's going to get us for that. Amen. That's not what worries me. What worries me is not that I come back, you know, five, 10 years from now and all of a sudden, you know, the government has gone crazy on same sex marriage and all the things that will follow.

What worries me is that five, 10 years from now, this issue becomes what divorce became. You see, California, no fault divorce passed and churches held firm almost universally on divorce and remarriage.

There was some slight disagreement on whether or not, you know, there was one exception or two exceptions, but for the most part, before California is no fault ruling in the early 1970s, churches did not accept divorce and remarriage like we accept divorce and remarriage.

And if you were going to get a divorce, you had a problem with your church, period, end of discussion. Now several decades later, it's hard to find a church that doesn't justify divorce and remarriage for any reason, any circumstance it's hard.

It's hard to find one. And what worries me is not that our civil government continues to go crazy on this particular issue, but that within a half a decade to a decade, a church that's holding firmly to the biblical understanding of marriage and a biblical understanding of homosexuality is hard to find and is considered narrow-minded, bigoted, and outside the mainstream because of it.

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Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study When We Understand the Text.