Preach the Word: An Introduction - Brandon Scalf

Preach the Word and the Crisis of Biblical Preaching

All right, everyone, grab your Bibles and turn with me to 2 Timothy, chapter 3. 2 Timothy, chapter 3. And we will begin our series, Preach the Word, which has the subtitle, The Nature, the Necessity and the Supreme Sufficiency of the Preached Word in the Context of the Local Church.

And today is going to be an introduction of sorts, and so we will be a few different places in the Bible, but primarily in 2 Timothy, chapter 3. The series will be covering 2 Timothy, chapter 3, particularly verses 14 through chapter 4, 8.

So we're going to cover quite a bit of ground, and yet we're not going to get to cover the whole book, which is what is going to make today all the more needed. So 2 Timothy, chapter 3. And if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy and all-sufficient Word.

And we will begin reading in chapter 3, verse 14, and we will conclude with 4, 8. This is the Word of God. But you, continue in these things that you have learned and become 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, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.

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. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.

Amen? Amen. Go ahead and have a seat. Whether you know it or not, we are living in an hour of great crisis. A time when pulpits all across America have become nothing more than platforms for shallow entertainment and feel-good psychology.

The sacred desk that exists to proclaim the Word of God once was heralded by men we are not worthy of, men like Jonathan Edwards, men like George Whitefield and Charles Spurgeon. But the truth is, if we are honest and we look around at our landscape, the pulpit is now often occupied by would-be motivational speakers, self-help gurus, and quite honestly, religious salesmen.

These men are, sometimes women, are more concerned with filling seats than feeding souls. More concerned with filling the church than filling their pulpit. The pulpit, which is meant to be the very throne of God's Word, has been overrun by cowards who shrink back from the full counsel of Scripture.

Afraid to offend, afraid to stand, and afraid to declare, thus says the Lord. There is much boldness missing. And the question I want to ask today is, why is that? Where is the unrelenting, unapologetic proclamation of the unadulterated Word of God?

Oftentimes, instead of exposing sin and exalting Christ with the very text of Scripture, the modern preacher entertains his hearers with clever stories and anecdotes, tickling and itching people's ears and telling them exactly what they want to hear, when they want to hear it, how they want to hear it.

As a matter of fact, this is the problem that Paul is going to find himself in, as we saw in 2 Timothy 4, verse 3. A time will come, Paul says to Timothy, 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 so, in many ways, this is a problem with the pulpit, but it's also a problem with the hearing. People, for instance, at Joel Osteen's church are not victims of Joel Osteen. Joel Osteen is judgment on those hearers, and they want it.

They love it, because they get to hear what they want. And the problem here is, with this issue, is that it is nothing less than spiritual treason against a living and holy God. The pulpit, in many places, has become a place where truth is simply traded for relevance.

Holiness is exchanged for happiness, and conviction is sold out for comfort. The truth is, in many churches, the pulpit has lost its power because it has lost the Word of God. Except they didn't actually lose it.

They hid it, because they were fearful that it might actually do what it is that it was supposed to do. Or, they did not believe that God met what He said by what He said. And my contention is that this needs to be addressed.

The decay of biblical preaching has seeped into every crevice of the church. Now, of course, when I say church, I'm speaking about churches that are professing to be churches. As we know, true and biblical churches have robust and beautiful pulpits.

But nonetheless, its consequences are catastrophic. Congregations are starving for the Word, yet they're being served cotton candy instead of the meat of the Word. They're being sold things riddled with sugar when they need protein.

Sheep are wandering without a shepherd. They're being led astray by wolves in sheep's clothing who preach half-truths and even worse, lies. Friends, what I'm trying to get you to understand is this is not a minor issue.

It's a full-blown epidemic. At its root, it is a failure to do one thing that God commanded His preachers to do.

And that is this.

The same thing that Paul tells Timothy to do here in verse 2 of chapter 4. Preach the Word. They preach themselves. They preach their ideas. They preach what you think might make you happy. But they are not preaching the Word.

So, if there was ever a time for men of God to rise up and reclaim the pulpit,.

It's now. It's now.

We need men, biblical men, strong men, who will open their Bibles and herald divine truths no matter what is thrown at them. Men who will preach with fire in their bones like Jeremiah, refusing to back down.

We need men who will, with trembling hands, open the Holy Scriptures and declare without fear, except for the fear of God. Men like John Knox who said, I never once feared the devil, but I trembled every time I walked to the pulpit.

We need men to preach. Because for too long, the pulpit has been a place of gross compromise. And it's time to return to what God ordained it to be. A place where the truth of God's Word is proclaimed with authority and where the full weight of it is unleashed one verse at a time.

And where the sinner is confronted with his need for a Savior and there is only but one way to salvation, not many. And you might be asking, or at least you should be asking, why is the Word so important?

Why is it so needed? Why is it needing to be preached? Why is this what Paul tells Timothy? Well, it's because the Bible is not just a collection of fairy tales. It's not just a historical book showing us all of these different things that happened.

It is the living, breathing, infallible, and inerrant Word of the Almighty God of the Bible, of the universe, of the world of eternity. It is the power of God unto salvation, Romans 1 .16. It is the very breath of God Himself, 2 Timothy 3 .16.

And when it is proclaimed faithfully, it pierces the heart, divides the soul and spirit, and lays bare the deepest thoughts and intentions of our hearts, Hebrews 4 .12. And more than that, preaching is the means by which God has ordained to save the lost and to sanctify a people for Himself.

And it is through the foolishness of preaching that God is pleased to save those who believe, 1 Corinthians 1 .21. But more than that, if you could even say more than that, powerless pulpits, and by that I mean pulpits that are not governed by the Word of God, produce powerless people who cannot stand firm on the day of trouble, who cannot live the Christian life as they ought, who don't know their God, who can't behold Him.

And more than that, you're keeping people in the dark because weak preaching produces weak Christians. And a church that is soft on the Word is soft on sin, and it is anemic in doctrine. And that church, friends, is utterly unprepared to stand in the face of cultural onslaught that will only increase as the days go by.

No, friends, the time has come to preach the Word. The time has come to preach the Word. No more, no less, and nothing else. And may God raise up generations of preachers to come who can echo along with the author of this letter, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9, verse 16, when he says, Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel.

So this sermon series is going to be a sermon series that is going to address the reality that we must, if we are going to be a biblical church, preach the Word. And we must do it in season and out of season, and we must do it to glory of God the Father, and we must do it according to the Word of Almighty God.

And so as we think about this letter, this letter to Timothy, the second letter to be more precise, we need to think about, yes, this charge, that to fix whatever problem ails us as individuals and as the church, the Word is the balm.

The Word is the solution. And the Word is the only thing that has the power to save and sanctify us through the power of the Spirit. And it's the Word that God blesses as it is preached. Not men and their silver tongues, not buildings and their banners, not culturally relevant ministers, the Word.

The Word.

As we look at verse 14 of chapter 3, there are these two words here, but you. And in many ways, we're not going to get past these two words today, because I want you to know something of Paul's heart to Timothy, and I want you to know who Timothy is, and I want you to know why Paul is contrasting Timothy with whoever came before, contextually.

There's a reason that Timothy is receiving this letter, and there is a reason that Paul is writing this letter, and we must answer that question before we can even begin to start looking at these individual verses as it pertains to the Word of God and preaching.

And so the first question that we should probably ask is, we know who the letter is written to, though we don't know much about him yet, but maybe we don't know who wrote this letter. Well, I've said it already along the way.

The Apostle Paul wrote this letter. And this may not need to be said, but I'm going to say it because you never know what might need to be heard. It's a letter. And what I mean by that is, this is a letter from a real person to another real person, which means there is heart here.

There's concern here. There's a relationship that exists here, and it's not just a bunch of verses tacked together to teach us some sort of spiritual lesson. This is someone bonding with another person and trying to get them to do something, to think about something, or to accomplish something.

And so if you look at, for example, 1 Timothy,.

It says,.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, according to the commandment of God our Savior, so he wrote the first letter, and this is the second letter, which also, interestingly enough, starts out. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, according to the promise of life in Christ Jesus.

So who was Paul?

Well, Paul tells us who he is, specifically in Philippians chapter 3, verses 4 through 11. Paul makes sure to list his resume, as it were.

He says,.

I was circumcised the eighth day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law of Pharisee, as to Zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless.

So what Paul tells us here at Philippians is that he was a Pharisee, and he was the best of the best. He was circumcised at the right time, not a day early, not a day late. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews.

He had no mixture of blood in him that would cause anybody to question his nationality, which is huge to the people of Israel. As to the law, he claims, perfect. There was nothing that you could pin on him.

He lived, as it were, above reproach. Of course, he would not have claimed to be sinless, but he would have claimed to be visibly sinless. When you looked at Paul's life, he could say, look like me. It looks like the law.

As to Zeal, it says he was a persecutor of the church. That means that when people started to preach Jesus, he was so overcome with an allegiance to God that he was willing to imprison, and if so, if it was needed, kill Christians because of his passion and his allegiance to God.

In other texts, it says that no one in his peer group surpassed him in learning and living. Paul was a good church boy, and yet he didn't know Jesus. He didn't know Jesus, and that's the story of many people who sit in pews and watch sermons every single Sunday.

They're good church boys. They check all the boxes. They dot all the I's. They cross all the T's, and yet their zeal is misplaced. Their sin is hidden, and they're unsaved, and they're headed to hell.

Paul continues on in Philippians chapter 3 by speaking of a conversion that happens to him. He says, but whatever things were gained to me, as in all the things that I stacked up in my resume, those things I have counted as loss.

I have counted them as loss, he says,.

For the sake of Christ.

More than that, I count all things to be loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus,.

My Lord,.

For whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having righteousness of my own,.

Which is from the law.

But that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God upon faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death in order that I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Here's the thing you need to know about Paul if it wasn't clear by what I just read. He traded in his good resume. He traded in his good church boy status for pain,.

For suffering,.

For bleeding,.

For being imprisoned, for being beaten. And you know what he said?

It's worth it.

Nothing before I met Jesus matters. Those things did not fill me. Those things did not save me. Those things did not propel me. Those things only hindered me from seeing the truth of who Jesus the Christ actually was.

And when he removed the scales from my eyes, everything else looked to me as if it was rubbish. What a waste of time. What a waste of life. That's this apostle. And he's the one writing this letter. And he wrote this letter probably around the time of his death in AD 67.

In fact, this was likely his last letter that he ever penned. The last words that he had to say were words that he said them to Timothy. So right there should clue you in to how much Timothy meant to the apostle Paul.

If you knew that you were on death's row and the blade was next to your ear and you could talk to one person, who would it be? Well, for the apostle Paul, it was Timothy. For the apostle Paul, it was Timothy.

The executioner's blade was near his ear, as I said, and the sands of time were running out. So in many ways, this letter, especially these concluding chapters, are Paul's swan song. They are the words that he wanted burned onto his memory for the remainder of his days.

And he wanted them, and they most certainly do, to ring with urgency. And he qualified it as such. I'm going to die, Timothy, he said. Listen to what I'm saying.

You've never heard anything more important.

Than what I'm telling you right now. That's what he says. If you look with me in chapter 4 of 2 Timothy here, he says in verse 6, I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.

He is not simply saying in some poetic way, I probably won't see you again, or you know, whatever. He's saying my death is imminent,.

And it's sure.

And he concludes, and 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 all who have loved his appearing.

Paul knows he's going to die, and he's going to die all alone. Just in chapter 1 verse 15, Timothy tells us something that Timothy already knew. He says, you are aware of this, that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom Spygelos and Hermogenes.

In another place, he talked about everyone abandoning him as well. Paul did not have a lot of friends. And he didn't have a lot of friends because, I mean, he would probably, I mean, if you think about it, on one hand, he just always told the truth, and he only cared about the word of God.

But on another level, he must have been an insufferable human to be around. And I say that with the most awe I could possibly have for another human being that existed. But he was so zeroed in onto the thing that mattered the most to him that he must have been thought a lunatic.

He was willing to be beaten for what he believed in. He was willing to be killed for what he believed in. He was willing to walk miles and miles across the world for what he believed in, to be mocked by his own people, rejected by his family and friends and contemporaries.

He was willing to be wrecked on ships. He was willing to walk alone and die alone if that's what it meant. And so in this letter, what's happening is, as he's looking at his own death, seeing that he's alone, seeing that there's no one else to pass the baton to, and knowing how much Timothy is worthy of the baton to be passed to, he passes the baton to his beloved son in the faith.

And he gives him one final charge.

Before he dies.

And he says,.

Essentially, if you can sum up the entire book of 2 Timothy,.

He says,.

I'm gonna die, Timothy.

So guard the truth of God's word.

Suffer for the same truth that I suffered for and preach the truth until someone puts you in the ground.

Or God does.

Because that's the only thing worth doing with your life. And the question becomes, why?

That seems hyperbolic. That seems crazy.

Shouldn't he be doing something else? I mean, that's definitely like tier three level stuff, right? Like saving for retirement, like that's gotta be number one or two. Making sure that your family has money for generations to come, that's gotta be at least number two, if not number one.

But no, he says,.

Preach the word.

In season and out of season. So let's think about who Timothy was. We've got a glimpse into Paul and his heart and a little bit as to why he might have written this letter. But Timothy, who was he? Who was Timothy?

Well, Timothy was introduced to us in the book of Acts. He was a disciple at Lystra. And according to Acts chapter 16, verse one, Timothy was the son of a Jewish believer who was his mother and the son of a Greek father.

He was likely converted on Paul's first missionary journey, which is recorded in Acts chapter 13 and 14. And it most likely happened under the ministry of Paul and Barnabas. Paul loved Timothy, so much so that on his second missionary journey, he sends a request to have Timothy come help him along with Silas.

And he made the right decision. And he made the right decision because Timothy believed what Paul taught. He believed the word of God and he believed God to do what it was that God said he was going to do in his word.

And he did not hold back from doing that which it was he was asked to do. For instance, Timothy was circumcised just so he could go preach at places who I could only assume, I guess, check that sort of thing before they let you preach.

He was the real deal. He was like a little Paul. He wanted to be like Paul because Paul was like Jesus. And if you add up the time, scholars believe that Timothy probably journeyed with Paul upwards of 10 years or more.

But what is more is that Timothy is mentioned in eight of Paul's letters.

Eight of them.

What that means is there are only three that he doesn't mention him in, which is somewhat mind-blowing because one of those is Titus. So now we're down to two. If that doesn't show you how much he cared about Timothy, I don't know what does.

And there are a few books, for instance, where Timothy is either helping him write or he is with him when Paul is writing those letters. Outside of Luke, there was no better companion than Timothy to Paul.

And yet you don't hear too much from Paul. He doesn't have a book. He doesn't have quippy sayings that we can plaster on coffee mugs anywhere. As a matter of fact, a brother who I was talking to this week said something that I wrote down because I thought it was very helpful.

He said Timothy was everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. He was behind the scenes at every turn. He needed no credit. He was okay carrying the scars. So long as it meant people knew the truth of Christ and his word.

Friends, the love that Paul had for Timothy cannot be overstated. In Philippians chapter two, verses 19 through 22, this is what Paul says from another prison cell. Mind you, if I haven't made it clear, Paul is in a prison cell right now in Rome awaiting his death.

But in another prison cell, he's writing to Philippians,.

And he says,.

But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly so that I also may be in good spirits when I learn of your circumstances.

For I have,.

Listen to this guys, I have no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be concerned about your circumstances for they all seek after their own interest, not those of Christ Jesus. But you know of his proven worth that he served with me in the furtherance of the gospel like a child serving a father.

And here he is,.

His last words, his last words to Timothy. And as a mentor once said of mine, last words ought to be lasting words. And these are indeed lasting. And so what prompted this letter? Well, of course,.

Love,.

Camaraderie, connection,.

But more pointedly,.

The state of the world.

And the state of the church. And here's what Paul knew. Paul knew he wasn't gonna have him anymore, but he knew he had something better of the word. And he saw this true child in the faith.

And what did he do?

He gave him the best advice he could possibly give him,.

Preach the word.

The Last Days, False Teachers, and the Call to Preach

Now let's dig in. Why might that be the best advice? Well, I like it because I'm a preacher, but that's not helping you understand anything. The same reason that Paul told Timothy to preach the word in season and out of season is the same reason that it has to be the bread and butter of the ministry that exists at Heritage Church because it is the best weapon against evil.

It is the best weapon against unconverted sinners, and it is the best balm for those who would fall on their knees and confess their self-inflicted ailment,.

Their pride,.

And their rebellious nature. But more specifically, look with me at chapter three, verse one. Paul is aware that something was happening and was only going to increase in constancy. He says, but know this, that in the last days, difficult times will come.

Now let me pause here. Anytime we see the last days, we either understand what it's saying, think we understand what it's saying, or we start to get scared because we're starting to think, oh no, we're getting into eschatology, and I don't quite know what to do with that phrase.

When are the last days? Are the last days right now? Are the last days 100 years from now? Or are the last days right before the millennium or after the millennium? Or how do you parse this thing out?

Well, if you read the Bible, this becomes very simple. The last days are literally anything that precedes the definitive last day. That is, surprise, you are living in the last days. I can make this argument because the Bible makes this argument, but it makes it specifically, and I mentioned this text early this morning.

But in Hebrews, for example, chapter one, it tells us that God, having spoken long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days, spoke to us in his Son. In these last days.

So the last days are anything after Jesus Christ's crucifixion and ascension and everything before his second coming. So Paul is not necessarily painting a picture of something that's going to happen in the eschaton where Matthew 23 and 24 are fulfilled.

But that's another sermon for another time. What he is saying is there's some very present realities happening right now that are proving the last days to be on you and they are only going to increase in nature.

Understating it in a way that I guess only Paul can. Difficult times will come. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. To say the least, difficult times are going to come. People are going to be killed for claiming Christ.

They're going to be hung on crosses and cut on fire and made to fight lions in the Colosseum. Yeah, difficult times are going to come. And he goes on, for men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemous, disobedient to parents.

Now that's an interesting one that's in there. That's just thrown in there. It seems so unlike all the others. Ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips without self-control, without gentleness, without love for good.

Treacherous, reckless, conceited. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Holding to a form of godliness, but having denied its power. What's interesting here is that there is a list. 19 negative characteristics to be exact of worldlings who will also double as we continue on through this passage, false teachers.

Now, there's a lot of academic work done on this list, of course, as is always the case. And people try to figure out what's going on here. What's Paul getting at? Like, what's at the base of this list?

Some have argued that simply he's using a lot of different individual sins that point to a misdirected love. When you don't love God, this is what you will look like. Others have said it's a lack of godly virtue.

Others say that it is an attitude or inner disposition in speech or actions that God abhors. And of course, you could keep reading and find many different opinions as to what's going on here. But I think what we just need to understand before we get into the meat of our text as we work through this series is to say really what's happening here is Paul is pointing to the reality that false teachers and worldlings in the world who reject God and hate Him are simply godless, self-centered people who worship themselves.

And that will infect and affect absolutely everything. It's going to affect the culture, and it's more than that going to affect.

The church.

These men are going to pretend, and here's the worst part of it, right? In verse 5, to be godly people. And yet they're going to deny its power. That is godliness' power. And Paul says in the end of verse 5, keep away from these men.

Interestingly, he talks about false teachers in other places or people who have fallen into sin or people who have not come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, and he seemingly holds out hope for them. Not here.

Not here. He says keep away from these men because these men are dangerous. These men are profane. And these men will destroy everything around you, and they will wreak havoc on your churches. For among them, verse 6, there are those who enter into households and take captive weak women, weighed down with sins, being led on by various desires, always learning and never able to come to a full knowledge of the truth.

Now this is an interesting set of verses. What in the world is Paul talking about? These men are going to enter into households and take captive weak women, always learning, these women will be, and never able to come to a full knowledge of the truth.

I'm going to be honest with you. I have always, I've memorized this, and this always learning and never able to come to a full knowledge of the truth has stuck with me, and I think on it often, I use it often, but it wasn't until this week that I actually got to the bottom of what is being said here.

Apparently in the early church, the first century, it would be custom for men to kind of become friends with people in the church, and hypothetically speaking, they wanted to be ministers of the gospel, or they tutored people in math or English.

It would be customary for the mother and the father to invite this man to come live with them and to tutor their children and to teach their children the Bible and so on and so forth, and what he's saying is, these men are going to show up in your church, and they're going to try to tutor your children.

They're going to try to be one of the family. Remember, they're claiming to be godly, but they're going to seduce your children. They're going to seduce the women who are weak and weighed down with their sins, being led by their various desires, and it says because the men do this and take advantage of women in these ways, these women will not be able to come to a full knowledge of the truth.

They will always be learning from these men, but they will never be able to come to the full knowledge of the truth. Why? Because they don't have the truth, and they're not there to tell them the truth.

These are wicked men, have nothing to do with them. They not only not love the truth, but they oppose the truth, and they use truth-like things to twist and to harm, and so Paul says in verse 8, just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the truth.

Men of depraved mind, disqualified in regard to the faith. Sounds horrible, but this is just shop talk, and what I mean by that is, Timothy is not reading this for the first time and going, oh, no. He knows.

He's watched Paul suffer. As a matter of fact, that's what he's going to say in the sermon that we're going to look at next week, right? In verse 11 of chapter 3, he talks about persecutions and sufferings that he had suffered.

Such has happened to me, Paul says, at Antioch and Iconium and Lystra. What persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

Timothy knew that he was going to meet persecution. He knew that he was going to meet hard times. He watched Paul suffer. He knew that this was his lot, and he did not slow down, but Paul encourages him.

He says in verse 9, but they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, just as theirs was also. Speaking of these people who opposed Moses and the truth. But you, you weren't like these men who opposed the truth, Timothy.