2 Timothy 2:8-13

Hey, all.
Welcome back as we continue today on Wednesday through the book of 2 Timothy
in the second chapter.
As we saw yesterday,
kind of a word to Timothy personally,
an encouragement,
some good stuff yesterday.
I think we covered some interesting texts.
So if you didn’t get a
chance to be with us yesterday or watch that one,
you might want to jump back at some point and do that today.
We pick up in verse 8
and a short section.
Let me read a couple of verses here,
probably read through 13,
and then we’ll see what we find in them.
“Remember Jesus Christ, even to the point of being chained like a criminal.
But the word of God is not chained.
Therefore,
I endure everything for the sake of the elect,
so that they may also obtain the
salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
The saying is sure,
if we have died with him,
we will also live with him.
If we endure, we will reign with him.
If we deny, he will deny us.
If we are faithless,
he remains faithful,
for he cannot deny himself.”
So,
another appeal today of Paul’s situation.
Remember Jesus Christ, and I think it helps to
be reminded that the word Christ is the word Messiah.
It’s the Greek version of the Hebrew word Messiah.
And so,
remember Jesus the Messiah,
raised from the dead,
a descendant of David.
That’s my gospel.
That’s the good news,
Paul says, that I preach.
That’s what I share.
That’s the foundation.
That is this,
we saw this yesterday,
that is the faithful proclamation that I,
in which I stand.
In fact,
that’s the reason I suffer hardship,
even to the point of being chained, being imprisoned.
And then he goes on,
“The word of God is not chained.” And Paul,
we said this a couple of days ago,
maybe on Monday, I think.
Paul has, it might have been yesterday, even.
Paul is,
in many cases, imprisoned when he writes,
and he often references it.
This is a nice contrast.
What he does here,
I think, Michael, is
relatively close to poetry.
You know,
I suffer hardship for the gospel,
even to the point of being chained,
but the word of God is unchanged,
the work of God,
the movement of the gospel.
Paul wants people to know that though he may be hindered,
the work of the gospel is not,
that it’s bigger than him,
that it is active,
that it is moving,
that even though he may be stopped,
the work of God in Jesus Christ and the sharing of the good news by,
as we saw yesterday,
faithful witnesses will not be stopped.
And that work continues even in a moment where he is
shackled.
I just think verse 8 here is unbelievably interesting.
If you really are willing to slow
down for a second and interrogate what’s happening here,
I think it really,
it’s really, really interesting.
Let’s look at it here.
So we have, “Remember Jesus Christ,
raised from the dead,
a descendant of David.” Those are the two things that Paul follows up with,
“That is my gospel.”
I would be interested if we would take a straw poll of our own individual accounts of what the gospel is.
I suspect most of us probably would include raised from the dead in that list.
I think that’s central to the church’s proclamation on Easter.
I mean, I think we have that built into us.
A descendant of David though might surprise us, quite frankly.
A belief in the lineage and
the history and the connectedness to the people of Israel.
That maybe would be a surprising fact
if you figure that Paul is the apostle for the Gentiles.
He’s the one spreading this news far
outside of the Jewish synagogues that the earliest church counted as their places of spiritual worship.
I think what is fascinating about this very simple accounting of the gospel,
Clint, is you have that central proclamation that Jesus Christ did die and was raised from the dead,
and then the idea that he connects to history and time and God’s plan.
Those are the two things.
Man,
the church throughout history has gotten way deep in the weeds,
far from that center.
Now, it’s not to say that it’s not important that we ask questions unrelated to that.
Certainly you could argue that the rest of this letter is Paul working that out for the particular people in this congregation.
But I do think there’s some deep and insightful wisdom in this idea that at its core
the gospel is simple.
The gospel is not shallow,
it is not easily contained,
but it is also not so
complicated as to not be able to be understood.
I mean, it is at its core what we discover in Jesus
Christ, a very concrete, simple kind of truth,
and that’s what we put our faith in.
Sometimes we make faith too complicated, I guess is the point I’m trying to make.
Paul does an interesting thing, not only here,
but a thing that’s counterintuitive to us in the Western church,
in the American church.
We have had such a steady diet through the years of the idea that
being blessed means things going well,
that being in Christ means
some sort of
increased likelihood that things work out the way that we want and that we live an easier and a more beneficial life,
I guess, or a more comfortable life in some sense.
And what’s really interesting is Paul makes the exact opposite assumption.
Paul says, “This is my gospel for which I suffer hardship,
even to the point of being chained,
though the word of God is unchained.
Therefore, I endure everything
for the sake of the elect.” Paul says,
“I know that sharing the gospel may bring hardship into
my life.
It may put me at risk.
It may cause discomfort.
It may lead me to be imprisoned.
It may lead me to be ridiculed.” If you’re really interested in this,
go to the second
letter of the Corinthians and get in the 11th chapter,
and he has this very long rundown of
what it means that he has suffered for the gospel.
But I think it’s interesting, Michael,
that Paul makes almost the exact opposite assumption that we often make,
in that there will be difficulty in sharing the word,
but that it will be done and that it’s worth it,
that for the sake of the elect,
for the sake of others’ salvation,
it is worth whatever troubles
it brings upon him.
And again,
keep in mind that he’s doing this in the context of a letter to a young leader,
encouraging him to understand the same,
that it may not always be an easy task,
that it may not always be
bringing you good things,
that it may not be simple and it may
not be comfortable, but it is worth it as you’re calling in Jesus Christ to take that risk.
And I think,
you could easily read by that,
but I think it’s good to be reminded that for Paul,
the gospel is not a promise of healthy, wealthy, and wise.
It is a struggle in which we engage
to bring the truth and the good news to people who don’t yet have it.
Yeah, Clint, the word that is used explicitly to that end here,
we’re going to see in verse 10 and verse 12.
Therefore, I endure in verse 10 and then 12 from the saying that we’re going to talk
about in a moment, if we endure.
The word endure is the word that I think is counter-cultural.
We often do not think of life as a series of challenges which must be endured.
Perseverance or stick-with-it-ness is not a thing that we as Christians particularly
cherish, though that is central to the gospel.
And Paul makes it very clear here that believing in
Jesus will bring in the midst of our lives moments that must be endured,
that they may not be
cherished in the moment that exists.
I mean, I know that both of us have had several incidents
in the course of ministry where you see someone and there’s no better word than enduring.
I mean, their world is collapsing,
maybe vocationally, maybe personally, maybe relationally, diagnosis,
and all of these things that can happen in life,
that’s the right word.
It’s getting up today,
trusting God to be faithful,
taking the next step,
doing what you can to be good and do right
and be faithful in the midst of the struggles of that day.
And if that’s where you are,
take hope that God is with you.
That’s not God being faithless.
Remember, I mean, verse 9,
of the word of God is not chained,
that even in the midst of what is human chains,
we can find the kind of freedom that comes in an eternal God at work.
I mean, it’s very counter-cultural,
but I think it is core to what Paul understands as the gospel,
that if we’re proclaiming the good
news of Jesus Christ rightly,
once again, raised from the dead to the son of David,
that that will at some point bring us in contradiction to the world,
that it will bring us into a moment
of some kind of suffering that needs endured.
And when that happens,
we should not lose faith,
but we should have faith,
because ultimately it should be a reminder to us that God is not
chained.
God is at work even in the midst of that difficulty.
Yeah.
Paul, again, I think Paul takes that for granted.
He assumes that there will be hardships in life.
Then we have, as Michael alluded to,
we move to verse 11,
and we have this saying,
“It’s inset in my Bible,
probably yours as well,” meaning that it is likely this came
from a source that perhaps Timothy or the Ephesian church was familiar with,
maybe a liturgy of something,
maybe an early doctrinal statement.
But Paul gives us the
impression that he’s quoting something here rather than authoring it himself.
If we have died with him,
we will live with him.
If we endure,
we will also reign with him.
In other words, as we persevere, we share in victory.
If we deny him,
he will deny us a warning
against back-stepping in the faith,
about leaving the faith,
about this sort of exit,
or leaving much of the first letter,
if you were with us through 1 Timothy,
much of that first letter was a warning not to follow different gospels.
And then given that that tone,
an interesting turn as the last word here,
if we are faithless,
and you think maybe it would be a continuation of the warning,
but notice it says instead,
he remains faithful.
So our deliverance is not based on our own faithfulness,
though we are called to be faithful.
Ultimately, we put our trust not in ourselves.
We’ve seen this consistently from Paul.
We put our trust in Christ.
If we are faithless,
he remains faithful for he cannot deny
himself.
In other words, he gave himself for us,
and he’s not going to turn his back on that work.
If we are faithless,
he remains faithful.
And of all the things that are wonderful in this chapter,
this is, I think, the most profound promise that Christ’s love,
that God’s action on our behalf,
though it compels our faithfulness,
it is not dependent upon it.
And for those of us who
continue to struggle as humans,
this is the most wonderful news we can receive.
If you maybe found a little difficult or maybe it was a bump in the text as we were reading,
and maybe the David stuff didn’t make sense to you,
here I think it comes into view.
Verse 13,
because there is no more full picture of human faithlessness than the people of Israel as they
represent the continued turn to complaint,
the continued backsliding of judges,
that the people who over and over again seek to raise up a king and then that king giving in to
external forces or idolatry or then later the prophets calling out the people for faithlessness.
The one person who represents the perfect faithfulness of all time is Jesus Christ.
And you see in Romans,
Paul makes the argument that that faithfulness of Christ is for Jew and Greek alike.
I think that’s the beauty of this image of that Jesus Christ is the son of David, is that ultimately
he lives in the lineage of the promise of God.
If you were with us in Genesis,
that story that we saw
beginning that arc in the beginning of the Bible only continues throughout the narrative
of the people of Israel through its kings,
through its judges,
through its prophets.
And once it gets to Paul’s day,
what he affirms is that ultimately no matter how far our human faithlessness
takes us,
ultimately the
faithfulness of Jesus Christ is the last and most important word.
That’s the good news.
And that’s why I think verse 11 here is so important,
because ultimately what has happened to Jesus is our hope for what will happen to us.
And notice that sometimes we forget that what happened to Jesus was suffering.
I mean, he even took upon himself
suffering to die on the cross,
yet that is,
though our reality,
the suffering of this world,
on the other hand is the promise of resurrection,
the promise of those who die with him will also
live with him in the present and in the future.
And that is great,
great, good news.
That is hope,
yet it is often the kind of hope that comes in the midst of the dark night.
It’s not the hope that
is colored on a beautiful canvas,
that beautiful sort of Thomas Kincaid painting.
Life often turns dark,
but that is the very moment where we can trust the promise
that in the very darkness that Jesus experienced,
there is the very same light that we will share
with him on the other side of resurrection.
There’s always in Paul an honest recognition
of the possibility to get it wrong.
He’s referenced people in this letter who have
another reference to people in the church who have taught a different doctrine.
Paul is very gracious,
very committed, very optimistic about the work of Christ,
but Paul has a deep appreciation for our ability to get it wrong,
for our ability to turn inward
and become selfish, for our ability to leave the truth when it asks difficult things of us.
And so I find it interesting,
whenever Paul gives us, often,
I won’t say every time,
but often when Paul gives us these sort of liturgical words,
there is folded in with them
a warning or a recognition of our own brokenness and sinfulness.
And for Paul, we’re never fully
beyond that on this side of the resurrection.
We are secure in our place in Christ
and yet we are capable of leaving the truth,
of wandering from the fold,
of going our own direction.
And speaking to a young leader,
I think this is a very important
moment as Paul continues
to remind Timothy that you will navigate your work,
not only in the context of your own striving
to get it right and endure,
but in the midst of other people making other decisions as well
and trying to balance all of that with being the body of Christ and being within the church.
So I think in its own way,
a pretty profound little section here.
And wouldn’t you say,
Clint, also very pastorally sensitive?
Absolutely, yeah.
Because it combines this idea of if we deny Him,
He’ll deny us.
Yes, there’s a threateningness in that,
but it’s sandwiched between if we endure,
we’ll reign with Him.
And if we’re faithless,
He will remain faithful.
I mean, that is Paul the pastor,
I think, at his best.
That is him reminding us that what we do matters.
And also,
what we do is always
contingent upon the grace of the one who has done the one perfect work that none of us could have done.
That’s pastoral at its deepest level.
I think it’s beautiful.
It’s good news in the
fullest sense of that gospel that he speaks about.
So I think in many ways,
I see Paul here as the
older pastoral sort of mentor speaking very wisely in this instance.
And I think we would be
foolish to not mirror that in our discourse.
If we ever find ourselves on one side that all grace
with no personal commitment or accountability nor enduring,
we’ve missed it.
And vice versa, it’s always a combination of those things that we’re called to endure but trust the faithfulness
of God.
That’s the right place to be,
and Paul says it as clearly as it could be said.
Yeah, and speaking of saying things,
I don’t know if it’ll take us two or three days to get
through the rest of the chapter,
but I hope you can join with us because it’s very challenging,
has to do with some really great themes of how we speak,
what we say, how we talk to one another,
the kind of things that we pursue.
I think that if you’ve been hoping for a sort of
sermon-like word in Timothy,
I think if you haven’t heard it yet,
I suspect in this remaining
piece of chapter two,
you might hear something like that.
So I hope you can join us.
Don’t miss it.
We will see you all tomorrow.