Keep sharing good news without ads.
2 Timothy 4:5
All right, everyone, grab your Bibles and turn with me to 2 Timothy. 2 Timothy chapter 3, and we will begin looking at verse 14 all the way through 4, 5, with a special eye on 4, 5. 2 Timothy chapter 3, and we will begin reading in verse 14.
And the title of today's message is Fulfilling the Ministry of the Word. And so if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy infallible and all-sufficient Word.
This is the Word of Almighty God.
But you, continue in the things you learned and became convinced of, knowing from whom you learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to make you wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped for every good work.
I solemnly 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, exhort with great patience and teaching.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, 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 myths.
But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, and do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.
Amen? Amen.
Have a seat and get your eyes on 4, 5, 2 Timothy chapter 4, verse 5. As we began this series, we examined the author. We examined Paul the Apostle, not only as an apostle, but as essentially the mentor and pastor of young Timothy.
Timothy was his true child in the faith. He cared for him, he loved him, he walked with him, and he helped him to navigate the hardships of ministry, especially in the context of the churches in Ephesus.
And not only that, but he was with him on countless missionary journeys. And Timothy got to see Paul suffer for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ, and suffer as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In fact, we said, if you remember, that this letter was the last thing that Paul ever wrote, at least that we have record of, while he was awaiting his own death, his martyrdom, for preaching the gospel.
And we know that because of the many various sources that I brought up at the beginning of the series, but also, and more pointedly and most helpful, right here at the end of the verses that we have been examining.
In verses six through eight, Paul gives us a peek behind the curtain, as it were, when he says, for I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. And of course, he's speaking about the departure of his fleshly dwelling, of his body.
He says, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith, and in the future 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. You see, Paul here is staring death in the face. He's never going to preach another sermon. He's never going to coach another pastor in training.
He's never going to sit across the table from his beloved child in the faith. Someone who he loved dearly. Someone who he bled for, in many ways. But he has a little bit of pen left. He has a bit of ink left.
And he's got some words that he wants to share with Timothy, and that is really what this entire passage of Scripture has been about. These are the last words that Paul spoke to Timothy, and they are the last words, which means they are, as I have said before, lasting words.
They are what Paul wanted Timothy to walk away with. If there was one important thing, if there was one thing that he was to do with the remainder of his life, in the course of his ministry, it was this.
Preach the word. Preach the word. In season and out of season, and let it do its work, because it's that same word that saved you, sustained you, propelled you. And it's that same word that I preached, I proclaimed.
It's the same word that did work then. It's the same word that will do work now, and it's the same word that will do work in the future. In other words, if you are going to be a faithful minister, no matter what comes your way, Timothy, Paul is saying, this is what you must do.
You must preach the word. But more than that, and we see it here, more than that, he's not just interested in him doing some things, but he's interested in him doing some things until he dies. He's interested in him doing some things faithfully and forever, until the Lord Jesus takes him home, until either he dies by natural causes, or he is martyred, crucified, beaten, and broken like Paul is about to be.
He wants Timothy to say, as he has just said, I have fought the good fight. That's what it's about. It's about fighting the good fight. And fighting the good fight means what? It means fulfilling your ministry.
It means doing it the way God tells you to do it, faithfully and exhaustively. And so the question becomes, how does one, or how does Timothy and every preacher then by extension fulfill their ministry?
Well, we saw that the content of what he should do is preach the word. And we saw how the word must be preached, or rather when it must be preached, and essentially what you are to do when you preach that word, when it's preached.
But here in verse 5, Paul is essentially saying, this is what you must be in order to do that. And this is what's going to fulfill your ministry. And here's what Paul is telling Timothy, and this is what we should all take away from this stanza if we take nothing else.
And that is this, that finishing well matters. Finishing well matters. Anyone can start. Anyone can have a zealous, desirous passion to go out and do the thing, but it's only ministers of the gospel who are sober-minded in all things, who endure hardship and do the work of an evangelist and do it to completion that in the end fulfill their ministry.
Everyone else is just playing a game. Everyone else doesn't have what it takes. If you're not standing on the last day, you never stood. That is what Paul is trying to get across here. And so let's look at this.
Let's look at this.
And in many ways, this text here couldn't be more pointed and more helpful.
Why?
Because in many churches, the pulpit has been replaced by platforms and personal opinions, and it doesn't really matter to anyone who stands in or behind the pulpit. Many preachers have, and this is really actually to some degree what's going on in the context as well, traded truth for applause.
They're really only interested in the tickling the ears of those who would have their ears tickled or they're caught up in wanting nothing more than good pats on the back. And so in many ways, this text is a rebuke to the complacent.
Here Paul's words to Timothy are not soft suggestions, but as one commentator I read this week says, a militant mandate. This is who you must be. And Timothy then is to reject the temptation to coddle the culture, to make much of himself, to think highly of himself, and to think that this is something that he could do today and pick up and then put down tomorrow.
No, it is something that you do with the blood of your brow. And you do it until you have no more blood left to give.
That's it.
That's it. That's why James, the brother of Jesus says in his letter that not many people should become teachers. It's why Charles Spurgeon spent most of his ministry talking pastors out of being pastors.
Ministry is not for those who desire to be innovative or say really cool things or have nice turn of phrases as helpful as they might be and as cool as some pastors think about it when they are tweeted, but it's about faithfulness, it's about endurance, and it's about willingness to bleed.
It's not a popularity contest. In fact, if we read this correctly, the guy with the Bible is oftentimes the least popular. And so let's look at our text. Let's see how one is to fulfill their ministry so that they can say, along with Paul, I have.
Fought the good fight.
The first thing that I want you to see is if we're going to fulfill our ministry, if preachers are going to fulfill their ministry and pastors, they need to understand that word work requires sobriety, sobriety.
So that's the first point. Word work requires sobriety. Look with me at verse 5. He begins as he did our first verse that we looked at. Verse 14 starts, but you, contrasting with people who came before, the false teachers.
And here in verse 5, we have another contrasting set of words, but you, but you. And who is he contrasting Timothy with? Well, he's contrasting Timothy with, of course, the false teachers that have been spoken up to this point, those who have caused a ruckus in the body, as well as those who are tossed to and from theologically and who have, in fact, garnered for themselves teachers.
They go along with their own lusts, passions, and desires. In other words, he's saying, Timothy, unlike these guys, unlike the false teachers, unlike the teachers that make them this all about them, unlike the teachers that really prize and prioritize rhetoric.
And I know that seemingly comes out of nowhere because we haven't talked about that a lot, but this is a concern that Paul had. And we see this in 1 and 2 Corinthians. This is why Paul would say, I didn't come to you with lofty speech.
I didn't come to you with words of wisdom, speaking of the world's wisdom, because I didn't want the cross of Christ to be diminished. I didn't want the gospel to be emptied of its power. But also these ones who desire to have their ears tickled.
Do not be like them. You, because you are a minister of the gospel, because you are commanded and mandated to preach the word in season and out of season and do it in this way, no matter what happens.
I find it pretty interesting that if you look at the beginning of verse 3, at the beginning of verse 3 in chapter 4, it says, for the time will come before as a connecting word. And he tells him, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and teaching for or because the time will come when no one will listen.
The time will come when people will garner for the, like that does not seem like a logical progression of thought. Like regular human beings are not going to be that way.
No one's going to listen.
Okay.
I should probably go somewhere else. People are going to hate you and work against you and persecute you.
I'm going to go here where they're not doing that. And he says, no, this is going to happen. So preach the word. And then we get here and he says, you're not to be like those who are preaching the word to your to stand above that.
And you're to be sober. He goes on, but you be sober in all things. And once again, this is what a minister must be if he wants to fulfill his ministry. And really what he's after is this is what it looks like to be a holy minister.
Now of course, a holy minister must be a holy Christian, but he also must be a holy minister. This is why Charles Spurgeon has said, a holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God, Timothy's life, who he is to be his doctrine.
These things will either adorn the gospel or hinder it. It's progression.
So you must be sober.
Now let's look at this word sober. This word sober here is an important word. It's an important word because essentially what's happening here is Paul is charging Timothy with yet another imperative. And this imperative is speaking of a vigilance in clarity, a vigilance in clarity.
The specific Greek word employed here is literally meaning to be free of intoxicants. That's the literal meaning. More broadly, it's freedom from excess, passion, confusion, and other imbalances. But it's not speaking obviously of drunkenness, at least not of the fleshly kind, although it might be speaking to spiritual drunkenness.
But really as you look at this word in its broader context and you see what idiom is being employed here, it really just means you are to be level-headed, Timothy. You're to be well-balanced and in control of your own faculties.
You're not thrown to and fro no matter what comes at you. You're not given over to changing your doctrine because it's not popular in the congregation that you were in. It means to be calm, collected, and watchful.
It means to be able to look at a situation and not be moved to emotionalism. And so if you are to be a faithful minister, Paul is saying to Timothy, you must resist the temptation to be emotional. Now that doesn't mean that you don't have emotions, and Paul certainly is not arguing here for some sort of stoicism that removes you from the world that you live in.
He knows Timothy is going to have feelings, and he's not even rebuking feelings. He's saying you don't let them guide you. You don't let voices in the congregation guide you. Now if you're in sin, let them guide you, right?
That's not what he's saying. He's saying in terms of being a faithful minister who preaches the word faithfully in a world drunk on self-indulgence, in a world that prizes and prioritizes everything but the truth, Paul is essentially saying here that if you're going to be a faithful minister and you're going to fulfill your ministry and you're going to stand before God someday, as we've discussed already, you need to have your wits about you.
You cannot afford to be distracted by all of the things around you that are going to push you away from the truth, away from preaching the word. You have to be able to discern what is important, when it's important.
A lot of ministry friends of mine do not understand the ministry philosophy that me and some other people have, which is to prize and prioritize the throne of the word of God, the pulpit. But we must, if we are to be faithful, regardless of what all the new books are saying about how to grow your church, we must bury those in the backyard.
And we must be faithful.
And we must be faithful because it's God who we are after in our pleasing. It's he who examines our hearts. This is Paul's heartbeat, right? In 1 Thessalonians 2, chapter 2, verse 3 and 5, Paul says,.
For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts.
For we never came with flattering words, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed. God is witness. So being sober is a requirement, but being sober is not always met with applause. But we're after pleasing God instead of men.
We must be approved by God. Galatians 1, 10 through 11 says,. For am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Paul says,. Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a slave of Christ.
For I make known to you, brothers, that the gospel which I am proclaiming as good news is not according to man. And the reason that we must be sober is because we preach Christ and not ourselves, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, 5,.
For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for the sake of Jesus. You must be sober if you are to be a minister of God's word and you are to fulfill your ministry, because being tossed to and fro will certainly cause you to drop any sort of faithfulness that you've been able to muster.
Children, would you look at me? I want to help you understand what I'm saying here. I want you to imagine a lighthouse. You guys have drawn pictures of it before, or actually, Corey drew a picture of it before because he wanted to help you guys.
So you know what a lighthouse is. But you notice that a lighthouse does not sway with the waves or dim with the storm. It stands no matter what hits it. It remains standing steadfastly, and it's always guiding the ships to safety.
If a preacher is going to be faithful to God and fulfill his ministry, he must be like a lighthouse. He must stand as a beacon of clarity no matter how dark the world gets, no matter how many waves hit it, no matter how many bad things happen, no matter what people say, they've got to stand firm.
This right here is that thing which they stand firm in, must stand firm in and promote. It's not them that are the lighthouse. It's them inside the lighthouse. This Bible, this book, this is the lighthouse.
That's why Paul had said earlier that all scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped, for every good work.
Is that the way, if you desire to be a preacher, that you think about preaching? Do you think about preaching as a way to win friends and influence people? Do you see preaching as a means to a church growth strategy?
Do you see preaching as just something that you have to do so that you can get to the real work of the ministry, or do you actually understand that you are called to preach the Word and to be sober-minded?
Are you concerned and content with pleasing the Lord and the Lord alone? Because that is what we must do. That is what preachers must do, and they must flee the intoxication of self-promotion, and they must fix their eyes on Christ.
The second thing that I want you to see, and this is my second point, word work is costly. So not only do you have to be sober to fulfill your ministry, but you have to understand that it is costly, and you must be willing to absorb that cost.
Moving on in verse 5, he says, but you, speaking to Timothy, of course, be sober in all things. So it's not just being sober, by the way, it's being sober in everything, in every situation, no matter what comes at you.
Be sober in all things, and here it is, endure hardship.
Endure hardship.
Paul is saying something here that is largely counter-cultural, and it is really, if you think about it, bumping up against our very fleshly nature. And that is this, that if you are to fulfill your ministry, if you are wanting to hear well done, good and faithful servant, and if you want to say along with Paul, as he is looking death in the face, as you were looking death in the face, I have fought the good fight, then you must embrace suffering.
You have to stare it in the face and walk towards it. You can't avoid it. You can't. Because it's coming. And here, of course, he's speaking about a couple of different things, but firstly, persecution.
It says endure hardship. The Greek word for hardship literally means to suffer evil. That's the limit. That's the baseline definition. And it was used by Paul earlier in this letter to describe his very own suffering, specifically.
For the Lord.
If you look back at 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 9, he says, actually let's go to verse 8. Verse 8, remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel, for which I endure hardship, even to chains as a criminal.
And then maybe one of the most beautiful verses, especially to preachers, but the word of God has not been chained. The word of God has not been chained. I may be chained, I may be getting beat up, I may be getting lashes, I may be, but the word is moving.
It's moving because the word will do its work. In fact, the entire book of 2 Timothy really could be summed up in three words, persevere in suffering, proclaim in suffering, and endure as you suffer. The reality is, if you are to fulfill your ministry, you must be willing to endure, specifically enduring affliction for the sake of Christ.
That means you must put yourself out there. You must say things on Christ's behalf that the world finds appalling. And if you're not, why not? That's my question I have for a lot of preachers out there.
And everything seems to be going swell, nobody's hating them. I have a lot of friends who go through a lot of really gnarly trials and tribulations as pastors and preachers. And that seems normal to me.
It is normal, biblically speaking. What's not normal is that you're not meeting hardship, trials, and suffering. What Paul is saying here, and this is really something that if you want to be a minister of God's gospel, you've got to wrap your mind around, and that is that the ministry of the Word is not a parade of ease, but rather it is a path of pain.
Now, I want to pause here because I could wind up sounding overly hyperbolic. And what I mean by that is, the Word seems to be doing some work around heritage, and we love that, we're thankful for that.
And there's not right now at this moment any certain, you know, combativeness coming my.
Way.
I feel, for the first time in my ministry, since I started, minus some obvious hardships that are quite evident to many of us, that there are things that pop up here, no doubt about that. But in terms of the Word doing the work, this is one of the greatest points, I feel like, in my own personal ministry, where the Word is working, and I love to see that.
I love to see people grow in the Word, and love the Word, and aren't combating that this is what we should be doing, is prize and prioritizing the Word. But there's a reason that Paul says, in season and out of season.
The reality is, the status quo is not going to stay the status quo. Even some of the greatest movements in history, like the Reformation, or the great revivals of the 17th century, these were long-lasting periods of the Word digging its way into the soil of both places, on either side of the great pond.
And yet it came to an end. And the reality is, the Word keeps being preached, people keep getting saved, and then people keep trying to tickle ears, and people keep gathering ear-ticklers, and this keeps happening.
And so certainly, he's talking about, as you speak on behalf of Christ, as you preach Christ, you're going to meet hardship, and you must endure it. It may not be happening to you now, but it will. And it may be happening to you now, and it might not in a little bit, but then it will again.
And what you can't do is let that dictate how you orient yourself to your ministry, because if you do that, you will never fulfill your ministry. But not only that, beatings. Now, in America, we are very, for how long, I'm not sure, especially with some of these CN guys running their mouth, we are very lucky to not experience persecution at the level of being beaten, and killed, and ostracized.
Well, a little bit with the ostracization there, but people across the pond aren't so lucky. And so, are you willing, if you desire to be a minister of the gospel, to be beaten, to be killed, if so necessary?
You must. You must. And you must consider it something that is worth it, and to some degree, it should bring you joy to suffer for the sake of Christ. This is Paul's, essentially, heart posture at all times.
And nobody, seemingly, seemed to suffer for the gospel like Paul. In 2 Corinthians chapter 11, starting in verse 23, Paul begins saying this. Are they ministers of Christ? Speaking of those who are essentially accusing him of some things that aren't true.
And he begins to defend himself against them. But not in the way that you would expect. You see, many ministers today, if they had a problem with something I said, they would say, well, that's cool, man.
On a good Sunday, you guys have about 130 people on here. Well, guess how many people I have coming to my church? I've got probably about 250, 300. And then when that guy says something stupid to another guy who's got a church of 3 ,000, he says, who are you?
Look at all of these accolades I've built up. Look how big my budget is. Like I must be killing it in the pulpit if we've got our own building. Not Paul. Not Paul. Paul has a biblical worldview that sees the end in mind and desires to fight the good fight regardless of what that means externally.
Even if it means getting destroyed, beaten, and broken. And so he says, I speak as if insane.
Because Paul does not like to justify himself. He doesn't like to defend himself because he believed, much like Charles Spurgeon, that he was the chief of all sinners. That's Paul's words. Charles Spurgeon's words are, if anybody says anything negative about you, you probably can let it lie.
You know why? Because you're far worse than any accusation that they could bring against you. That's why Jesus had to die. And so he says, I speak as if insane. I'm more so, in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, in beatings without number, in frequent danger of death.
Five times I received from the Jews, 40 lashings, last one, he got destroyed physically. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I have spent in the deep, the waters, the ocean.
I have been on frequent journeys and dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the cities, danger in the desolate places, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brothers.
Sometimes those are the greatest blows of all. I have been in labor and hardship, he says, something he is just telling Timothy to endure. And many sleepless nights and starvation and thirst, often hungry and cold and without enough clothing.
Does your vision of ministry include that? Would your heart be willing to do and experience and endure that? And Paul says, you're not worthy of the calling. You're not worthy of the calling. And you will never fulfill your ministry.
But more than that, not only are we talking about physical beatings, but we're talking about internal beatings, internal beatings. Paul not only suffered beatings and suffered for the sake of Christ, but just a verse later here, he says, not only that, but I have also suffered the daily pressure and concern for all the churches.
He watched everyone grow in Christ or walk away from Christ. He knew of all of the struggles and the trials that they were all walking through. And he was walking with them, through them, with a Bible in his hand, and that's what drove him, was that people would become complete in Christ.
And there were all of these anxieties, not for his own safety, not for his own safety, not for his own flesh, not for accolades. I mean, just think about that. Yeah, I've got some accolades too. I've been beat up a lot.
His anxiety was that Christ would be formed and the people that the Lord had entrusted him to. And that's hard, to know that all you can do is give the word. And yet, even in this text, we're reminded that's what they need the most.
Everything he did was for the churches. What Paul is trying to get everyone to understand through this text, and specifically Timothy, is that there is no such thing as faithful ministry that is not costly.
A painless ministry is a fruitless ministry. You're never combating anything of importance. You're never pushing Christ into hard places, and you're never letting it work on you. Word work, in other words, will make you bleed.
Externally, internally, that's just what it is. And Timothy knew this, and Timothy knew this. If you assume that Paul had anything to do with Hebrews, which you should, then it makes what he says in Hebrews chapter 13, verse 23, all the more potent.
Even if it was Luke who wrote it after listening to the apostle Paul. He says this in 13 .23. He says, know that our brother Timothy has been released, almost certainly speaking of prison, with whom, if he comes soon, I will see you.
These men, much like the Puritans who came later, knew that if they opened their mouth and they were faithful preachers, they would find themselves imprisoned, killed, thrown.
To lions.
And yet that mattered to them not. What mattered to them most was honoring Christ and bleeding for God's people. That is how you fulfill your ministry. That's what you must be. You must embrace the example of Christ in doing so, as we know he endured the cross, scorning its shame.
As he calls his servants to follow him, he calls them to follow him in suffering. As a matter of fact, many preachers have said over the years, if God is going to use you, he's going to break you. And I think that's proven to some degree in the Bible.
John Bunyan spent 12 years in prison for preaching the gospel. And what's crazy about John Bunyan's story is, one, that he was in prison for so long. But what's even crazier is he could have been essentially let out at any moment.
He could have walked out of there whenever he so chose. So long as he agreed to stop preaching. God's people are not liars because lying is a sin. So he wasn't about to do that. And he would never, never stop preaching.
If you let me out, John Bunyan would say, the first words out of my mouth are going to repent and believe. As a matter of fact, this is a direct quote. He said, I will stay in my prison till moss grows on my eyelids rather than disobey my Lord.
I wonder how many preachers in Tulsa could say that with integrity. If you desire to be a minister of the gospel, are you prepared to suffer for the sake of the truth, soberly, without things to numb the pain, whether that be emotion or drink or whatever?
The true gospel ministry is not a comfortable career. I don't know many ministers. I'll leave that one alone. It is a cross-bearing calling. And where it matters is in the trenches. It doesn't matter when things are easy.
It only matters when things are hard. It doesn't matter if on the good days you're faithful. It only matters on the bad days. Now, be faithful all the time. I'm just saying that's where the rubber meets the road.
That's when it matters the most. Next, word work is soul work. If you want to fulfill your ministry, you need to understand that word work.
Is soul work.
It is true that the Bible uses for the Christian life as well as proclaiming the gospel to agriculture, to sports and games, and so on and so forth. But it really needs to be understood that if we are to be ministers of the gospel who fulfill their ministry, we need to understand, as Paul is trying to get Timothy to understand, that no matter how hard the road, whether you're using all of these other analogies, he must and we must, or you must, if you're desiring such a thing, to keep proclaiming the gospel.
The gospel. The gospel is not something that we graduate from. It is not something that we move on from. It is not the milk, as it were, and we're moving on to meat. No, the gospel is everything. The gospel is how people are saved, sanctified, and propelled, and sustained, and it's the reason they persevere.
The gospel is the treasure above all treasures, outside of God himself,.
Of course.
So the next thing he says is that he is to do the work of an evangelist. Now, I want to pause here, and the reason I want to pause here is because this is a passage, especially in certain circles that we run in, misconstrued.
It is misconstrued because they think, some people, that what this is teaching is that every preacher, every pastor, every person who stands behind a pulpit and has a congregation to lead must also, in addition to his duties, to preach the word to his congregation, must also be a full-time evangelist.
Well, that's bogus. It's bogus for a lot of different reasons, but exegetically, it just doesn't hold up to inspection, interrogation, if you will. Now, it is true that the word evangelist is used here, so we can't just chuck it out.
Well, actually, I believe what's being said here is far more, far more, hear me when I say this, far more important than even suggesting that someone should go out and also be a full-time evangelist.
I want you to notice something. Maybe you've never noticed this before, but it's important for you to note, and that is this. Paul does not call Timothy here to be an evangelist. He tells him, or rather calls him, to do the work of an evangelist.
Now, you might be saying, well, hold on a minute. That's really just making a mountain out of a molehill. What are you doing here? Aren't they the same thing? No, they're not the same thing. And they're not the same thing because the noun that we translate evangelist in the Greek is used only three times in the New Testament.
It is used only three times in the New Testament, and it is always in reference to a specific office or ministry. We saw this in Ephesians chapter 4. If you remember, he gave some as apostles, some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastor-teachers, or pastors and teachers.
But the related verb, to evangelize, and its other compounds are used 54 times, and the noun for good news or gospel is used 76 times. And so in each of these areas, the word is used differently to describe different things depending on the context.
So really what's happening here is he's not saying that you must also, in addition to everything else I've laid out in both 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy, you also need to be a full-time evangelist out on the streets, handing out tracts, doing all of these things.
Now, do I think pastors should do that?
Yes, I do.
I think that every pastor should go out and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. I just don't believe that that command or that expectation comes from this text. Good argument, bad exegesis. There's plenty of other places that talk about this.
Christians, in general, should go out and be evangelists or do evangelizing. They're not going to be evangelists, but they will do evangelizing. But here, what he's trying to get him to understand and to get him to believe in and to continue to do in order to fulfill his ministry is to, in the context of those whom he leads, those whom he preaches to, those who are wanting their ears tickled, those who are teaching and promoting false doctrine, be evangelists to those people.
It makes no sense why Paul would talk about the church, how it ought to be run for a book and three quarters and then all of a sudden just decide for two words, I'm going to talk about something entirely different.
That makes no sense. No, he's saying, in the context of your congregation, don't assume that everyone is saved. Don't assume that everyone that you are preaching to actually understands and believes the gospel.
And always make sure that you are pressing in and helping them see their heart idols and the beauty of Christ and pressing upon them the reality that you may not actually know Christ, or rather, as Paul would say, Christ doesn't know you.
So, as he preaches, as he teaches, and as he pastors, he's to evangelize. His preaching, in other words, ought to drip with evangelism. In particular, in context, he's to preach in this way to nominal Christians inside the church to continually promote their need for a savior.
The Puritans were great at this.
They never let it...
As a matter of fact, most people probably thought they weren't saved by the time they got done listening to a Puritan preach, because they weren't letting anybody walk out thinking that they're okay if they're not okay.
They're not letting anybody walk out the door with an assurance of salvation if they shouldn't have an assurance of salvation. And that's what Paul is trying to get at here. As you preach the word, do it understanding that there are people in your midst who are false brethren, who want to have their ears tickled, and who do not know Christ and who are just here because their spouse made them or because this is what you do in the Bible belt.
And praise God, you have that ability to preach the gospel to them. And so a person, a preacher, a minister of God's gospel is going to, if he is to fulfill his ministry, prioritize gospel proclamation.
This phrase, the work of an evangelist that we've talked about for a minute here, certainly underscores that the labor involved in reaching the lost, even if they don't think they're lost, is imperative.
He's to rest in and promote the gospel. Despite opposition, despite people saying, who do you think you are? You're going to suggest that I'm not saved? Does the Bible not tell us to sort out our own salvation with fear and trembling?
Paul knew when he said this that there was going to be difficulty in the task, which is why he said, endure hardship. Many will reject such a message, yet the preacher must sow the seed of the gospel in everything that he says.
An interesting story about George Whitefield. George Whitefield, the great evangelist, he faced much slander, much stones, and even physical assaults. And he did so because in many ways, especially when he was back from America, his best friend and the one he gave his ministry to had convinced everybody that was around at the time, especially to the churches he used to visit, that he was basically a heretic.
And they would literally throw dead cats and stones at the guy. And he said this at the end of his life. He said, I am tired in the work, but I am not tired of the work. This is what you must do. You must do the work of an evangelist.
And lastly, this is my last point here. Word work, rather, sorry, must be completed. Word work must be completed. He finishes verse 5 here by saying, fulfill your ministry. Now, what you need to understand is really he's just been talking about how to fulfill your ministry.
This is like an exclamation point at the end of a long presentation. How you fulfill your ministry is by doing everything that Paul has just said. To know the word has done its work in you, to preach that word, knowing that it's God's word, and preach that word before God, right?
Because he begins his charge in verse 4 by charging him in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who is the judge of the living and the dead. And he is to preach this word in season and out of season, when it's popular, when it's not, when people want to hear it and when they don't, when it heals and when it hurts.
You preach the word and you do it by reproving, rebuking, exhorting with great patience and teaching. You promote sound doctrine. You don't let people's desiring ears captivate you and you preach to those ears.
You don't meddle your life up and your doctrine up with myths. You're to be sober in everything. You endure hardship and you must do the work of an evangelist. That is how you fulfill your ministry. And the reason I'm using the word fulfill is because Timothy is being charged here by Paul to bring his God-given task under this God-given charge to completion.
The word fulfill here means to literally bring to its fullest measure. Timothy is to be eager and he is to be hold-hearted in his task. But more than that, he is not to leave his ministry half-finished.
He must run the race, as Paul has said, and he must do so to the very end. Because the last day is what matters. The last day is what matters. And it reveals the heart posture that you had on day one.
So many ministers of the gospel walk away as apostates, get too stressed out because they can't endure hardship. They lack a certain level of sobriety and so they get ejected, they succumb to some sort of moral failure.
And the reality is that's not a ministry. It's not a ministry. Fulfilling your ministry means saying it to the end and being able to stand before this judge and before this king and hearing, well done, good and faithful sermon.
Being able to say, I have fought the good fight, I have been poured out as a drink offering like Paul, and I would do it all over again if given the chance. That's the heart of a minister who fulfills his ministry.
I remember hearing Paul Washer speak one time about this and to some degree I've had a lot of interactions with Paul. In fact, he's one of the reasons that I've taken this health thing so seriously. He gave me some rebuking of my own.
And he had like, I mean, he has a heart attack like every other week at this point. And he literally died at one point so long that they were telling his wife, like, we're not going to be able to wake him up.
And if we do, he won't know his name. The oxygen has not been here where it needed to be in order for this to succeed. And I was on a Zoom call actually, and he was saying, you know, he struggled with a lot of neurological things that made preaching exponentially harder.
His balance was completely off. I mean, there's a lot of things that come along with having that kind of a thing happen to you. I mean, I don't even know what they all are. I'm not a doctor, even though I use medical terms sometimes up here.
But one of the things that I will, but one of the things that he said will likely stick.
With me forever. At least I hope it does.
And he said, my story is kind of like a cowboy who was tasked with going on a great journey and given two horses and a shot both of them. And he's like, what I mean by that is I ran myself ragged. And the reason I'm having all of these health problems is because I didn't take care of myself in the ways that I probably should have.
And he said, and as I look back over the course of my ministry, he said, I'd do it all again. And he said, he said, I only wish I would have been able to give him more. That's where I'm at today. Because now I know I can't give him as much.
Is that your heart posture? If you want to be a minister, that's what he's saying to Timothy, but his heart posture.
Should be.
Shoot your horses. Shoot your horses and give everything you can give. As George Whitfield said, I'd rather wear out than rust out. Yes, take care of yourself, steward your body. Maybe what better than Paul Walsher did.
Although who am I to talk, I suppose. But do it so that you can give more. Not so that you could live longer, so that you can give. That's how you fulfill your ministry. That's how Timothy is to fulfill his ministry.
And that is this charge summed up. Pray with me. Father, we thank you. We thank you for your word. And we thank you for the ministry that you have given to the church. And Lord, I ask that you would help me, that you would help me to be like Timothy and Paul.
And that you would help me to be a help to these people and to do it till I die so that I might fulfill my ministry and say on my deathbed, I have fought the good fight. And Lord, if there is anyone in here who desires to be a minister of the gospel, that they would have that same heart posture.
And for everyone else who is not a pastor, doesn't desire to be a pastor, to preach the word, that you would use this sermon series to impress upon them the importance of gospel ministry and to find pastors who believe this, to help them disciple their families so that they would prize and prioritize pastors who think like this, and that you would help your gospel work flourish, the work of the word flourish here at Heritage as it already.
Has.
And we ask this in Jesus' name.
