Preach the Word

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We're thankful tonight to have H.P.
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Charles with us to bring the word, and I'd like to provide an introduction for him.
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He certainly probably needs no introduction for most of you.
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Many of you've heard him preach, have heard his ministry.
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He's had a great writing ministry on the web, and we've read a lot of his articles and also his preaching ministry, and we've heard his podcast, and we're thankful to have him here tonight.
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He is the pastor of Shiloh Metropolitan Baptist Church in Jacksonville here, right? And he actually, I wanted to share this, and I hope he's okay with this.
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He pastors at two locations.
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He goes on Sunday morning, and I think your secretary told me this, you go on Sunday morning and preach at the first, and then you drive to the second, right? Is that so correct that that's going on? It's amazing, and he has two congregations or two locations he pastors to, and just thankful that he is here tonight to share his time with us and to preach to us.
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So I'm not gonna spend any more time talking.
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I'll come and let him do the talking.
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So brother, come and preach the word to us.
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Good evening.
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Grace and peace be multiplied to each of you tonight in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
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Let me begin tonight by publicly thanking Pastor Keith for the invitation, and the brothers for the opportunity to be with you tonight, to be a part of this meeting, and to have the opportunity to open the word of God to you.
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I'm honored to be among Kindred spirits, and I am grateful for another privilege to preach God's word.
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Pastor Keith mentioned the dynamics of our church, not by any strategy that we had, but in the providence of God, a little less than two years ago, our church, predominantly a black church and a predominantly white church on the other side of town ended up merging and keeping both campuses, and they manipulated me using my weakness, knowing that I have a weakness, an eagerness to preach.
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And at this point, we have four Sunday services, and I, on yesterday, as most weeks, preached all four of them.
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And I'm glad to be here, however, tonight, to again preach the word of God, and to preach to you about the importance of preaching the word of God.
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Let me pray, and we'll get right down to our task for tonight.
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Father, we are grateful and thankful for the blessings of this day, and for the privilege to gather together tonight publicly and corporately to worship you in spirit and in truth.
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We praise you for the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our all-sufficient prophet, priest, and king.
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And we thank you for your word that is a lamp for our feet and a light for our pathway.
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Thank you for this fellowship.
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And thank you for all that has been planned for our time together today and tomorrow.
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And thank you most specifically now for this time in your word.
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And we pray that our worship would go higher as you deepen our understanding of your word.
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Help me to speak the word faithfully and clearly.
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Help each of us tonight to strip off all filthiness and rampant wickedness, so that we may receive with gentleness the implanted word that is able to save our souls.
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And help us to be doers of the word and not hearers only.
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Deceiving ourselves we pray, for Christ's sake.
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Amen.
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Would you take your copy of God's word and turn with me to 2 Timothy chapter four, verses one through five.
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2 Timothy chapter four, verses one through five.
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Reading from the English standard version of the Bible.
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The reading of God's word is this.
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I charge you therefore 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.
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Be ready in season and out of season.
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Reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching.
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For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching.
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By having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.
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And will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
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As for you, always be sober minded.
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Endure suffering.
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Do the work of an evangelist.
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Fulfill your ministry.
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Amen.
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Amen.
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I want to label the message tonight with a question if I may.
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What difference does preaching make? What difference does preaching make? One of my preaching heroes is the late James Montgomery Boyce.
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Boyce served the 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia for 30 years until his death in the year 2000.
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He is remembered as a faithful Bible expositor and Bible commentator.
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Along with his work in the life of his church, he had a broader ministry that included the Council on Biblical Inerrancy that he chaired for its 10 year existence, defending the inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility of the Bible against those who would attack the nature and authority of the scriptures.
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And an interesting twist, this was a committee that intentionally disbanded after its work was complete in 1988.
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But in 1994, in the 1994 edition of Boyce's book Standing on the Rock, he claimed that the battle of the Bible, battle for the Bible, would continue in the years to come, in the next generation.
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But he suggested that in the future, the battle for the Bible would be somewhat different.
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While the battle for the Bible in the past was over the inspiration of scripture, the battle in the future, he claimed, would be over the sufficiency of scripture.
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Without a doubt, his prediction has come to pass in our generation.
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There are many professing Christians who will readily, readily affirm the authority of the word of God, but they neglect, minimize, and sometimes outright reject its authority by looking to anything and everything else to convert, guide, govern, equip, and bless the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Faithfulness to the gospel in our generation demands, demands, and requires a commitment to contend for the sufficiency of scripture, not just the inspiration of scripture.
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We must proclaim and we must do ministry with confidence that the word of God is sufficient to save the lost and sanctify the church.
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Unfortunately, well, let me add this.
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And the key way, the key way to affirm and defend and promote the sufficiency of scripture is to simply preach the word.
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That's the difference preaching makes.
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Unfortunately, there is a conspiracy against preaching.
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Unbelievers dismiss preaching outright as foolishness.
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Too many churches would prefer pulpit entertainment rather than biblical preaching.
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And too many preachers would rather be known these days as life coaches, motivational speakers, or self-help gurus rather than heralds of the word of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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These realities should not catch us by surprise.
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In 2 Timothy 3, verse one, Paul says to Timothy, but understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.
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Paul actually predicted that the days to come, the future season of ministry would be perilous and difficult.
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Yet, in light of that reality, however, Paul does not tell Timothy to find some new strategy to address the changing times.
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He just simply exhorted Timothy to stick with the scriptures no matter what is going on in the difficult times that he would face.
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The end of the chapter, the end of chapter three, verses 16 and 17, specifically tells us why we should trust the word of God and stand on the word of God and be faithful to the word of God no matter how difficult the times may be.
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Paul writes, all scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training of righteousness that the man of God may be competent, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
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Again, it is by the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ therein that God has designed for the lost to be saved and the church to be sanctified.
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But Romans 10, verses 14 and 15 ask, how shall they call upon him of whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without someone preaching to them? D.
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Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote that the most urgent need in the Christian church today is for biblical preaching.
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And as it is the greatest and most urgent need of the church, it is also the greatest need, therefore, in the world.
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And this is where Paul points Timothy in his last correspondence to his spiritual son and ministerial protege.
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In 2 Timothy chapter four, verses one through five, we have Paul issuing to Timothy simply a call to faithfulness in ministry.
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He is exhorting Timothy to be faithful to his call to ministry.
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And in so doing, you will find here nine imperatives, nine commands, nine directives in these five verses.
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But the first of the commands govern the rest.
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It is the opening statement of verse two, preach the word.
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The remaining eight exhortations in the text expand on and intensify and build on this fundamental charge to preach the word.
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Preaching is the primary, central and definitive function of the Christian church.
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Sure, the church is and does more than preaching, but preaching is essential to all that the church is and does.
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Paul affirms this here for us in 2 Timothy chapter four, verses one through five.
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This passage answers for us what difference does preaching make.
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Consider, first of all, the significance of biblical preaching.
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Verse one says, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge, the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom.
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Verse two, then exhorts, preach the word.
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Note this word charge, it means to solemnly testify.
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The instructions Paul will give to Timothy here are rooted in something more than their personal relationship or Paul's personal influence over Timothy.
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Paul speaks here with apostolic authority.
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Their relation was of such that in a real sense, all Paul would have to say to Timothy is, I charge you.
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And that no doubt would have been enough for the young Timothy to take heed to his mentor's instructions.
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But Paul points Timothy to transcendent realities as he issues this ministerial charge.
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The charge you see here is not based on their personal relationship.
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I charge you, he says, in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge, the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom.
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June 11th, 1989, it was a Sunday night, I won't forget it.
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I was resting in the home of Dr.
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Roy Allen, who was my father's friend and my host that week as I preached a series of youth meetings from that Sunday to the following Saturday, his church in Detroit, Michigan.
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Had been a long weekend, I had preached several times that day, and I was resting well until Dr.
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Allen knocked on the door to tell me that my father was on the phone.
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And I can't begin to tell you how excited I was to talk to my dad that night.
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The previous week, my father had gone into the hospital, it was the first and only time in my life my father had ever been in the hospital, and he had only gone home that Saturday while I was flying to Detroit, and I was eager to hear from my dad.
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And at the same time, I had my own issues.
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I was a 16-year-old boy preacher who had never been this far from home for this long to preach, and when I heard my daddy's voice on the phone, I just lost it.
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He was trying to talk to me and see how the meeting had gone so far, and I just broke down in tears and told my dad that I was ready to come home.
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Now, he reminded me that I had six more sermons to preach before I could come home, and I told him, that didn't matter to me, I wanted to come home now.
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And my father said to me that night, son, I want you to do your old man a favor, want you to do something for me.
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I said, yes, sir.
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He said, be a man and preach.
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I said, yes, sir.
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He said, no, son, promise me you'll be a man and preach.
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I promised, and we exchanged I love you's and good nights, and I went back to bed, and little would I know that that would be the last time I would ever talk to my father on this side of glory.
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As I was flying home from Detroit, God called my father upstairs from labor to his final reward, and in the succeeding years, when I think about my old man, and it is often that I do so, what naturally comes to my mind on many occasions is that final conversation, be a man and preach.
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Sure, I'm convinced that he only told me that to get his young son through a difficult week, but those words have been encouraging and challenging for the many succeeding years of dangerous toils and snares in ministry, and to some degree, that must have been how Timothy felt when he had this scroll from Paul that we know as Second Timothy, and these would be the last words that Paul writes to Timothy before he is martyred because of his witness for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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I assume, I imagine that in times of difficulty, he would go and pull out this scroll that we know as Second Timothy, and reread the words of his mentor, and be reminded of the final charge that Paul had given to him, but from Paul's end, Paul was wise enough to know that Timothy would face seasons in ministry that would require more than the memories of a dead apostle to help him be faithful, and so he does not charge Timothy on the basis of their relationship.
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He says to Timothy, there are transcendent realities that should shape your commitment to the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the word of God.
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What transcendent realities? God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, the final judgment, the second coming, the consummation of the kingdom.
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Get the sense of what Paul is saying here.
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He is saying to Timothy in a real sense that very soon I will move off the scene, but after I have moved off the scene, remember, God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ is still monitoring your ministry.
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Ultimate accountability is to the Holy Trinity.
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Beyond denominations, beyond boards, and councils, and fellowships, even beyond our own expectations for our ministries, we must remember that we are ultimately accountable to the Lord Jesus Christ.
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God the Father will make us answer for our faithfulness to this great gospel that we have been entrusted to proclaim, not merely to man, but to God the Father, to the Lord Jesus Christ.
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This is why we should remember those words that the Lord said to Samuel in 1 Samuel 16, verse seven.
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Remember when the prophet was sticking his nose in God's king-selecting business and he had to remind the prophet, you just be quiet through this process because you and I are not looking for the same thing.
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God is looking at the back, because man looks at the outward appearance, but God is looking at the heart.
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God, who will judge our hearts and judge our ministries, is the motivating factor for faithfulness, as he will say in just a moment, in season and out of season.
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We will have to answer to God.
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But you just note here as I move on that he says you'll have to answer to God and to Christ Jesus, equating the Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father, affirming the claim of the Lord Jesus in John 10, verse 30.
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I and the Father are what? One.
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Here, there are three ways we are reminded that Jesus Christ is equal to God the Father.
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He will judge the living and the dead.
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He will appear again.
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The kingdom is his.
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And with these words, Paul seeks to press upon young Timothy the gravity of eternity as he charges him for ministry.
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And the question is, what ministerial assignment could be so important that Paul calls down God the Father, God the Son, and final judgment, and the kingdom, and the second coming, and places all of it on Timothy's shoulder? Well, just exegete the white spaces with me for a minute, okay? And just consider what he does not say.
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He does not charge this young pastor to lead meetings, to develop programs, to build buildings, to develop staff, to counsel, to visit, to sing.
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All of those things have their place in ministry.
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But the primary assignment of the Christian pastor for which we will have to answer at the judgment seat of Christ is how we handle the word of God.
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We must devote ourselves, as the apostles did in Acts 6 and 4, to prayer and the ministry of the word.
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And not allow ourselves to be distracted by secondary things.
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On one occasion, a young preacher, it is said, came to the famous London Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon, and complained that he did not have a congregation as large as he thought he deserved.
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Spurgeon asked, how many do you preach to on the Sabbath? And the young man said, only 100.
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And angrily, Spurgeon replied, young man, 100 souls are enough to answer for at the judgment seat of Christ.
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And while too many today are preoccupied with size and status and success, we must remember that when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, he will not ask us the size of anything.
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He will only demand that we give an account of our stewardship for his word.
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And as Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter four, verse two, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.
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May we be able to end our ministries by God's grace, by God's sovereign grace.
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May we be able to end our ministries as Paul ends with his valedictorian speech here in verses six through eight for I am already being poured out as a drink offering.
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And the time of my departure has come.
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I have fought the good fight.
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I have finished the race.
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I have kept the faith.
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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 to all who have loved his appearing.
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In verse one, then there is the significance of biblical preaching, but in verse two, there is the substance of biblical preaching.
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If you will, verse two answers three big questions about the substance of biblical preaching.
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Question number one, what should we preach? Verse two answers, preach the word.
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It's the obvious answer, of course, but that obvious answer is an important reminder.
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Here we are reminded rightly that the power does not rest in the function of preaching.
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The power rest in the content of our preaching.
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It is not our preaching that makes the gospel work.
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It is the gospel that makes our lousy preaching work.
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And so here, Paul does not merely tell Timothy that he must preach.
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He tells Timothy what he must preach, preach the word.
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It means that the content of our message must be biblical.
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The content of our message must be biblical.
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It means that the pulpit is no place for motivational speeches, self-help, religious entertainment, worldly philosophy, scientific theories, or theological speculation.
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The pulpit, said Martin Luther, is the throne for the word of God.
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And we are to preach the word.
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The verb here, preach, referred to the function of the herald who was charged to proclaim the message of the king.
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And he would show up at a village or a city or a town and lift his voice sternly and gravely and proclaim the king's message.
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The people, when the herald began to speak, had better listen and take heed because to reject the message of the herald would be to reject the authority of the king.
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But at the same time, the herald had to be careful to make sure he was faithfully presenting the message of the king.
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Misrepresenting the king's message was just as dangerous as ignoring the king's message.
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Here we are reminded, friends, that we do not have editorial authority over the message that we preach.
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The word has been given to us.
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And as Paul says in Romans chapter one, I was meditating on earlier this afternoon, independent of my time here, but I was thinking about Paul's statement in Romans one where he says, I'm ready to preach.
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I'm ready to preach to you in Rome.
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And how does one get ready to preach? Fundamentally, you are not ready to preach unless you can say as Paul says, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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For it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, Jew first and a Greek.
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For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed as a matter from faith to faith, whereas it is written, the just shall live by faith.
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The content of our message must be biblical.
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A few years ago, I had a privilege of listening to Dr.
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Walter Kaiser lecture about the significance of the word of God.
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And I will forget that in that lecture, he made it very clear that even how we stand in the pulpit to preach should reflect our submission to the authority of the content of the message.
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He says, just to make sure you're sticking with the text, he says, you should always keep one finger on the text.
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And he said, if you lift that hand to gesture, put the other finger on the text.
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Just to remind yourself as you preach that the content of the message must be biblical.
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But not only must the content be biblical, but the meaning of the message must be biblical.
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Remember friends, just because a man stands up and reads the scripture and quotes the scripture and talks about the scripture or maybe talks around the scripture doesn't mean he's preaching the word.
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He is only preaching the word if the point of his message is in alignment with, rooted in and flows from the meaning of the text.
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The word of God is to be the governing factor in the preaching moment.
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We're not to preach our ideas, we're to preach the text.
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We're to preach the word of God.
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What Paul is affirming here in 2 Timothy 2.15.
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Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved.
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A worker who has no need to be ashamed because he rightly handles, rightly divides the word of truth.
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I travel regularly away from home to speak other places during the week and my sister makes sure as best she can that she has all of the details that she puts on my calendar before it's time to travel but there's a detail she never puts there that's very significant for the travel.
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She has a report for me on who's gonna drop me off and what airlines and what time and who's gonna pick me up and all of those details but she never puts on there something significant, the gate number.
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It may sound funny, we don't think about the gate number weeks and months in advance but the gate number becomes all important when you are getting ready to travel.
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You don't just show up and say, well, it's the right day and I'm at the right airport and at the right airlines and I'll just pick a gate.
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No, no, no.
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No, when you get there, the next priority becomes, when you get to the airport, the specific gate number and you don't veer from one gate to another because if you are assigned gate seven and you just go to one gate pass to gate eight, just one gate from the gate you're supposed to be on can put you on a flight that is actually going in the opposite direction of where you intend to go and any variation from the meaning of the text of God's word can lead people away from God rather than closer to God.
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So we must make sure that not only is the content of the message biblical but the meaning of the message is biblical and then at the same time, we must make sure that the focus of the message is biblical.
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Of course, when Paul says, preach the word, he is referring Timothy to the Old Testament.
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The New Testament canon is not complete but as ministers of the new covenant, he is to read Old Testament text with New Testament eyes.
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Colossians 1 verse 28 says, him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom that we may present everyone complete, perfect, mature in Christ Jesus.
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On one occasion, if I may quote him again, someone criticized Spurgeon's preaching claiming that all his sermons sounded alike and it is said that Spurgeon replied and so they should because in every sermon, I do the same thing.
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I choose the text and as soon as I can, I make a beeline to the cross.
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May that be the pattern of our preaching.
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That's a focal point of our preaching.
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It's not a system but a person.
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May we faithfully preach the divine nature, the virgin birth, the righteous life, the vicarious death, the physical resurrection, the glorious ascension, the intercessory ministry and the imminent return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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That's what we preach.
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Here's the second question, verse two.
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When should we preach? You see it in verse two? Preach the word, be ready in season and out of season.
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This verb here speaks of urgency and earnestness and immediacy.
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In fact, the Bible I learned this verse from as a boy said be instant in season and out of season.
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On one hand, it is a subtle call to prepare when he says be ready.
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You gotta get ready in order to be ready.
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But literally here is a call to perseverance.
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Be ready in season and out of season.
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In season refers to an opportune time.
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Interestingly, it is the same word used in Mark 14, verse 11 where we are told that after meeting with the religious leaders and agreeing to betray Jesus, Judas started looking for an opportunity, an opportune time to betray Jesus.
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We're to preach in season and then we're to preach out of season.
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That is, we must be ready to proclaim the message of God is the bottom line of this, whether or not people wanna hear.
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In season, not of season.
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Oh, if God is gracious and permits a harvest of souls in your ministry, do not be like the rich fool and become preoccupied with building bigger barns.
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Preach the word.
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And if there seems to be no response, whatever you do, don't try to manufacture fake fruit.
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Preach the word.
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In Exodus chapter two, rather Ezekiel chapter two, verse seven, the Lord says to the prophet that you should speak my word, whether they will hear or whether they will not hear for this is a stiff neck people.
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William McDonald comments here simply that the word of God is in season even when man deems it to be out of season.
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Of course, friends, we wanna be faithful and fruitful.
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That should be our desire, to be faithful and fruitful.
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But what Paul is saying here is that we must remain faithful even when it seems we are not being fruitful.
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We must be like Noah who just kept preaching.
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He didn't have no converse outside his own family, but he kept preaching.
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And we must be faithful in that regard, remembering that the harvest is at the end of the age, not at the end of the service or the end of the year.
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Be ready in season and out of season.
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How do you preach? Here's the third question.
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Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.
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The word reprove is the idea of showing a person the error of their ways, either an error of the truth or a failure to obey is to show the error of one's ways with the hope of turning them around back to God.
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It is the term used in 1 Timothy 5.20 where Paul talks about publicly rebuking sending elders.
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The term here, rebuke, the sister term really is to show a person their error, whether or not they will respond.
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Here, Paul is saying that it is our task to preach the word unapologetically.
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We can't suit the message to fit the times.
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Whether people will hear or not, we must rebuke error.
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We must confront sin.
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But he's not telling us to be fault-finding, hypocritical, self-righteous Pharisees.
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He says while you prove and rebuke, you should also exhort.
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You should come alongside to help.
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Don't just point when people have fallen.
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Don't just declare the fact that they are lost, but point them to the cross where the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ opens for us a new and living way to God.
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Reprove, rebuke, and exhort.
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How do you balance those three faithfully? Paul tells us at the end of the verse with complete patience and teaching.
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Because of this verse, in the Bible in front of me, the first word of verse two is preach, and the last word of verse two is teaching.
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Because of this passage and others, I just don't see in the scriptures a hard distinction between preaching and teaching.
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They are related to one another.
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And here, Paul is clear that you can't preach the word without being committed to teaching the word.
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It cannot all be exhortation.
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You must teach the cardinal, essential truths of the word of God.
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Our exhortation must be rooted in explanation.
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We're to teach.
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This is the great commission we've been given by the Lord Jesus Christ.
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To go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
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Matthew 28, verses 19 and 20, and teaching them to practice all that I have commanded you.
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And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.
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What if teaching is not enough? Well, it's not enough.
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He says teaching must be married to complete patience.
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Literally, long suffering.
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The term here is patience with people.
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God has the last word.
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We must not give up on people.
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We are to be as ambassadors of Christ, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 and 20, pleading with men on behalf of Christ to be reconciled with God.
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Why? Because of the message.
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The message that he God made him Christ who knew no sin to become sin for us.
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That we might become the righteousness of God in him.
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And so in verse one, we see the significance of biblical preaching.
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In verse two, we see the substance of biblical preaching.
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Let me summarize verses three through five to say a word about the struggle of biblical preaching.
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He tells us what to preach.
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Preach the word.
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When to preach, be ready in season and out of season.
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He's teaching us in how to preach, approving, rebuking, exhorting, with teaching and patience.
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Now he's gonna tell us why this is so important.
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Verses three and four, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but have itching ears, having itching ears.
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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.
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Paul predicts the coming day when preaching the word of God will be out of season.
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People will not endure sound teaching.
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They just won't put up with it.
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What people? I think that's the key to understanding these two verses.
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I think if you get that, you'll get the rest of the two verses.
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What people? He is talking about unbelievers in Ephesus.
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But he is not talking about unbelievers in the streets.
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He is talking about professing Christians who are walking in a false presumption of salvation.
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Fake Christians in the church whose hypocrisy is exposed by their unwillingness to endure sound teaching.
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Give them a show, give them entertainment, give them programs.
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They'll love it.
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They just can't put up with sound teaching.
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Boy, as a young pastor, as a young pastor, my confidence in the word, I was just convinced if you just faithfully preach the word, you'll draw people in.
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But here, Paul says, if you faithfully preach the word, you'll also run some people off.
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And he says, they won't go home either.
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Mm-mm, they're not going home.
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They will pile up for themselves teachers.
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Who will say what their itching ears want to hear.
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The idea of the itching ears is a curiosity for something new and novel.
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That's why I get nervous when I hear any preacher talking about, I got a fresh word from the Lord.
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If it's that fresh, you might need to let it sit for a few centuries to see if it stands the test of time.
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The Bible has a lot to say about false teachers.
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Here we see the other side of the coin.
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False teachers would not have influence if church people didn't give them a platform.
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Remember Jeremiah chapter five, verse 30 and 31, where the prophet says a terrible thing has happened among the people of God.
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A terrible thing has happened.
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The prophets prophesied falsely.
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The priests rule according to their own authority.
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That's bad.
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The priest and the prophets are going AWOL.
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And he says, that's not the worst.
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He says the worst part about it is that the people love it so.
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Vincent in his exegetical notes on this text simply says that whenever the people desire a calf to worship, there will always be an ecclesiastical calf maker on hand.
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That Jeremiah five, 30 and 31 says the prophets and priests have gone rogue and my people love it.
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And then it ends with this question, but what will you do at the end? That's all that matters.
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You can't be a faithful Christian.
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You can't be a faithful minister.
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You can't be a faithful pastor or preacher or teacher without a steady eye focused on the end.
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That's the economy of scripture.
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In scripture, what is most valuable is that which lasts the longest.
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What will you do at the end? How do you make it successfully to the end? Paul says four ways.
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As for you, verse five, Pastor Keith began by saying, you know, this is a small fellowship and the crowds don't come here.
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But I was thinking about verse five as he said that, which is an encouragement to me because here Paul says, let the crowds do what the crowds gonna do.
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But as for you, people are going with itching ears to pile up false teachers, but as for you, you must always be sober minded.
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The word here is the word for sobriety.
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But here, which is used metaphorically, it is not about abstinence.
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It's about alertness.
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It is the picture of a soldier on his post, ready for battle.
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The Greek scholar Kenneth Weiss simply comments here interestingly.
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His explanation of this phrase is simply this, there is no place for clowning in the pulpit of Jesus Christ.
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We need men who are sober minded, men who will endure suffering as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, men who will do the work of an evangelist, preaching the gospel to the lost and teaching the gospel to the saints.
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And then he says, finally fulfill your ministry.
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Here again, we're reminded that you get no credit for how well you start the race.
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Anyone can start fast.
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The question is, can you finish strong? It was the first round of the 1500 meters, 1972 Olympics.
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There was 10 men on the track, but the eyes was on one man, Jim Ryan, who was a world record holder.
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He had not been defeated for three years until he lost in 1968.
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Everyone was waiting for a rematch in the finals that did not come because in that first round, he stumbled over another runner and fell to the ground while the rest kept going and he didn't qualify for the later rounds.
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The shocked crowd watched him on the ground where he stayed there for several seconds, curious how he would respond.
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And their surprise turned to respect when Ryan jumped up and started running again.
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He didn't stop running until he crossed the finish line.
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He knew he couldn't win a medal that day.
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He kept running because he determined to at least finish what he started.
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May that be our determination.
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But let the crowds do what the crowds are gonna do.
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May you always be sober minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist.
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May you always fulfill your ministry.
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Thank you for your word tonight.
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Thank you for your written word that points us to the living word, the Lord Jesus Christ, who became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.
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The glory is of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
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May we proclaim your word faithfully, lifting high the name of the Lord Jesus Christ as preeminent.
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May we proclaim the word with the conviction that one can search the scriptures diligently thinking that in them they find life, but there is no life unless they come to Christ.
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It is all about him.
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May we be faithful heralds of this divine message of sovereign grace in which you have intervened on the behalf of rebellious sinners and chosen for yourself those who should be saved by the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ at the cross to the praise of your glory.
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Lord, we recognize that we are living in critical, serious, difficult times.
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We also recognize that the world at its worst needs the church at its best.
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And may those who you have entrusted to be servant leaders in your church carry out our stewardship faithfully by preaching the word and teaching the word and defending the word and leading by the word and governing the church according to the word and faithfully passing on the word to the next generation.
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In Jesus' name, amen.