2 Timothy 4:1-5

Hey,
welcome back, everybody.
Thanks for joining us on the Tuesdays.
We continue through Second
Timothy, moving into the fourth chapter today.
And I just want to say on the front end,
Michael, I don’t know if I have favorite verses of the Timothys,
but I love this passage today.
This, particularly as we get close to the end of this passage,
has some of my favorite verses.
So I’m excited today to look through this.
So let me read,
probably do like one through five here.
Maybe we’ll go one through four,
and then we’ll stop and talk about it.
So chapter four, verse one, “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus,
who is the judge of the living and the dead,
and in view of his appearing in his kingdom,
I solemnly urge you,
proclaim the message.
Be persistent, whether the time is favorable or unfavorable.
Convince,
rebuke,
and encourage with the utmost
patience in teaching.” Yeah,
let’s continue.
“For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine,
but having itching ears,
they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit
their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth
and wander away to myth.” So this is
really, I think, the best way to envision this passage is a charge.
In an ordination service,
when a pastor is ordained,
there is a moment when generally another pastor who is close to them
offers a charge.
The idea is to kind of set them on the right path, to challenge them,
to give them some advice and some direction.
And I think that’s what we see here.
In view of Jesus Christ,
I solemnly urge you,
and it is worth noting what Paul charges Timothy to do,
proclaim the message.
For Paul,
Michael, that’s where it starts,
proclamation,
that he envisions not just Timothy,
not just Paul, but Paul really envisions every Christian as a proclaimer,
as a witness.
So the idea of sharing the message is really,
I think, the only place
that Paul would begin in challenging a believer,
particularly a believer with some leadership.
I solemnly urge you,
proclaim the message.
Yeah, and how is that characterized,
right?
Be persistent,
whether it’s unfavorable or unfavorable.
Convince, rebuke,
encourage.
These are not necessarily easy charges.
I think sometimes we think of the task as Christians to
be faithful today.
I think we sometimes fail to recognize that that day is every day,
that it’s in those seasons of life that it comes easily.
And there are just some moments of life
where it requires persistence and desire.
I actually just read today from a booklet,
and I forget who it originally came from,
but the substance of the quote was
that a professional is someone who does something better,
even when they don’t feel like it.
And I think that that in some way applies to the Christian life,
that we are Christians who set
ourselves to the task
of being persistent in the task of sharing with others the message that we’ve received,
regardless of what the whims of that day might be,
whether it may be a day
that we’re full of energy and vigor,
or whether it may be a day where the best that we can do
is show up and speak.
In both cases, the charge is the same,
and that is to speak the good news
that we’ve received in Jesus Christ.
And there’s a kind of solid footing,
a kind of maturity.
It
is a kind of a
reason why we’re seeing a justification for it.
We as Christians need to have had opportunities
to live in the faith regardless of the circumstance.
And there’s a kind of seasoning that comes with
that, a kind of integration that matters,
that is the reason why we need to have that. And I think it’s important to note that this is part of the faith,
and it really can’t be short-cutted,
I don’t think.
I think it comes naturally as we practice the faith,
and it’s a charge that
notably,
here I want to just make sure we don’t miss,
Paul gives this charge in the presence of
God and Jesus Christ,
judge of the living and the dead,
and the appearance of his kingdom.
And this is hot.
These are high words, right?
High stakes.
And I think it’s worth noting that what he follows
this with is essentially the word to persist,
keep on, even when it’s not easy.
Yeah, and there’s a temptation,
I think, Michael, to when Paul sets out a duality,
when he sets out A and B,
there’s a tendency to read that and think,
well, A is good and B is hard.
But I think it’s
deeper than that.
When Paul says, “Be persistent,” I mean,
think of your own life and think of the
challenges in your own life.
Comfort brings its own kind of challenge.
When the time is favorable
is the time that it’s easy not to do it.
It’s easy to forget,
to endure,
to persist, because you don’t feel like it’s necessary.
So good times can breed complacency.
Difficult times can shrink us and make us fearful.
So I think rather than saying,
you know, it’s easy when it’s favorable and it’s not when it’s unfavorable,
he’s saying they both present difficulties.
Be persistent in both.
Be persistent when things are good.
Don’t take that for granted and don’t
become apathetic or complacent.
And when times are unfavorable,
don’t shrink from the task and don’t be afraid,
but
be persistent in both seasons in proclaiming the message.
Convince,
rebuke, or correct,
and encourage.
And, you know,
anytime you mention patience,
it’s going to point itself at me with the utmost patience in teaching.
You know, I think it’s, again, a mark of Paul’s wisdom that he doesn’t just say, “Do these things.”
He says, “Do them well.
Do them with the utmost patience.” Be patient with people.
Be patient with yourself.
Be patient with circumstances, with the church.
There is a kind of
long view in this work that Paul presents,
and I think it’s helpful.
He understands that not everything happens explosively,
not everything happens at once.
Be patient in your teaching,
both toward others and toward the end of what
you’re hoping to accomplish.
And maybe it’s,
you know, maybe it’s the reality of
living
in church leadership, Michael, but I hear in those words a great challenge and great wisdom.
I suppose it depends,
Clint, on how you want to read 2 Timothy here and exactly what Paul means.
Verse 3,
this idea that the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine.
Of course, this has been read as a reference to the end times,
and then that gets put in
conversation with books like Thessalonians,
or you might look to Revelation,
something like that.
I’m not sure what the best interpretation is.
I’m not a scholar,
and I certainly haven’t
spent substantial time reading scholarship on this book.
I just want to point out,
as someone who tries to be reflective in pastoral leadership,
and then even more so as someone who
tries to be reflective of my own faith life,
I want to just say,
whenever that will come,
it is also now.
This is not criticism of anyone else.
I include myself in this number.
When I’m self-reflective about my own faith,
itching ears is right on.
That is the right
phrase to describe that internal human desire to be looking for,
almost having that antenna up,
sort of
hoping and scanning for the thing that will be easier,
the shortcut,
the path to faith
that has a little bit more blessing in it,
or a little less suffering,
or takes a little less time,
or requires a little less prayer.
The itching ears of looking for what we want,
instead of standing in humble submission to a creating God,
is a constant temptation for the
church.
In some ways, it encourages me that the first generation of Christians
was struggling with this claim,
that there are teachers in that first wave who are already
beginning to tickle the ears,
and that the church is wrestling with how do we keep the bike upright,
how do we not lose balance as we try to live faithfully in the way of Jesus Christ.
It’s encouraging to me on one hand that we already see that in the scriptures.
On the other hand,
the task of addressing that in real Christian community is no easier,
I don’t think.
If anything, it’s more difficult.
I think we struggle,
continuing to this day,
to hear the truth,
and to whatever extent we can pray,
“God,
help me let down the things I want to be for the truth
of who you are.” That’s a dangerous prayer, admittedly,
but if we’re able to continue to
pray that and open our hearts and souls up to the revelation of God, I think
we discover
that the gospel goes far deeper than the things we would like it to be.
It cuts to the heart of what is,
and that’s not always easy,
but it is always better than what we imagine for ourselves.
I think I find some encouragement in this,
depending upon how you want to read that
time is coming, I think.
It would be easy to believe that we have somehow more options
than they did.
Because we have social media,
we have such a plethora of
avenues to hear different teachings,
different people,
different ideas.
Then, as now,
people tend to seek out what they agree with.
People tend to agree with what they want to hear.
But I think we could be in danger of underestimating Paul’s world.
When it came to a religious diversity,
we really have nothing on
them.
There were temples on every corner,
there were gods in every town,
there was just a huge
variety of religious options.
That’s part of what Paul’s saying here,
but I think underneath it is this human
tendency to say we evaluate things by whether we agree with it.
We look for truth
based on our own desire.
What happens with that?
When we turn to our own desire,
we’re in danger of turning away from listening to the truth and wandering away.
Yes,
this is a word to Timothy probably about some specific people in their congregation.
However,
I think this is a good word to all of us.
It is a warning,
I think, with how easy it is
to let this desire to hear what we want to
hear influence us and
the danger of chasing
our ears when they itch for what we already want to hear.
I love this verse.
I think there’s a lot of depth in it.
He contrasts that here at the end, Michael.
“But as for you,
be sober,
be right-minded,
endure suffering,
persevere,
do the work of an evangelist,
proclaim.” We’ve seen this already.
“Carry out your ministry fully.” I hope it’s encouraging to
Timothy.
I’m not sure it might also be daunting,
the idea that he has to do this amidst all of
these ways that he and others can get off track.
But I think this is a wonderful charge.
Timothy,
be sober,
endure suffering,
do the work of an evangelist,
carry out your ministry fully,
and be aware that there are those who are going to want to go the other way.
Part of your task is to try and help them stay connected to the truth rather than their own
desires.
So a big task, and as usual,
in five verses,
Paul has preached a sermon.
He has an amazing way of putting these things together.
But I think it’s a really strong passage.
I was really interested,
Clint, in that word myth.
So I looked it up,
and it’s exactly what
you think it is,
a story or a narrative that is mythic,
that is often a teaching kind of parable.
But it’s not rooted in what we would call fact or that had some bearing in observed evidence.
And I think sometimes we as Christians do struggle to
parse that as well,
the difference between Jesus Christ, the lived truth.
I think that Paul,
I hope we’ve done a decent job of pointing out
how often he goes back to Jesus as the center.
He very clearly wants to prune away the stuff
that tends to get grown around the truth of who Jesus is.
And I think we do underestimate
how substantial the fight for truth in the early church was,
because I think we underestimate how
much legitimate competition there was for religious devotion in the time.
And so we talk
about how this is rooted to a real community,
real people are reading this,
and they’re in a real
city.
And I just, I thought maybe it’d be helpful to illustrate here today,
Clint.
So I’m going to
throw this up here.
This is the temple of Artemis in Ephesus.
And I just,
we might think, right,
that, well, yeah, of course the early church is living in a pluralistic time and they have to deal with stuff.
When Paul writes this letter,
he believes that the worship happening in this temple
in their city is a myth that it’s false,
but it is the most real and powerful and dominating
presence in the city.
I mean, you know, this is the tallest point,
the most ornate building.
The point I’m trying to make is the myth often looks like the thing that has control or power or the
thing that must be bowed to.
And when Paul claims Jesus Christ died and then resurrected as the
ultimate power of the universe,
he is making a both counter-cultural claim,
but a revolutionary
one in the very lives of the people hearing it.
It goes against the grain of everything that
they’ve known and believed growing up in a cosmopolitan, religious,
pluralistic society.
And there’s a sense,
I think, in which if we’re willing to hear that today,
we can actually find
some comfort in that,
that the church will and can continue to thrive in our own time.
If we’re, to your words, client, willing to return here to what we find in verse five,
to be sober,
to endure suffering,
to continue to do the work of an evangelist,
to carry out our own individual ministries as fully as we’re able to do that.
There’s some wisdom in,
hey, take the step today you’re called to do.
Listen and be careful.
I go back to what we talked about
yesterday.
Be careful who teaches,
right,
and seek to live in the depth of Jesus Christ as the
revealed truth.
And if you do that,
that’s enough.
And that will ultimately be
the thing that God uses to bring the kingdom to bear.
So I think it’s incredibly practical if we’re willing
to see it.
I would agree, Michael.
In fact, I want to maybe end with just a word of closure here
that connects us to the text.
Obviously, this is Paul speaking to Timothy.
Maybe in the context
of the letter, this is one of the most clear places where it is one person speaking to another.
And yet,
in the mystery of the Scripture,
in the presence of the Spirit,
this is a word to all of us.
You may not serve a church.
You may not be in leadership.
But each of us can read these verses and be challenged and encouraged.
Proclaim the message.
Be persistent in good times and bad.
Convince.
Rebuke.
Encourage.
Be patient.
Be sober.
Endure.
Evangelize.
And carry out your ministry fully.
You may not think of yourself as having
a ministry, but I assure you that you do.
It may not be in a church building.
It may not be in a congregation.
But you interact with people.
You have a witness.
And this is the word,
I think, that Paul would use most frequently.
We are witnesses.
Yes,
those of us who work in a church
and maybe try to do that a little more publicly.
But each of us have this calling at some point in
our life and in many different ways.
And yours may be a different version of it than your
neighbors or than ours.
But it is a word to each of us.
I think we do this passage short service
if we think of it only as one pastor speaking to another.
And we don’t hear in it the idea that we
are all called to be at some level ministers and
sharers of the gospel.
I try to think what
things does a Christian need in their toolbox to be faithful throughout a lifetime?
And I’ve got to think that everything on this list,
being sober,
enduring suffering,
doing the work of
evangelists, doing your best to carry out a thing as fully as possible.
I mean, Clint, that’s
what it takes to run the marathon.
That’s the thing that will ultimately bring our faith
through this life and into the eternal one.
There’s something beautiful about a faith that
can encompass all of our human experience.
The itchy ears would love instant gratification and
would love for all things to be easy.
But the deep and mature faith is one that is readily
present and powerful in every moment of life,
from the graveside to the baptismal font to the wedding.
There’s no moment of life where the grace of Jesus Christ does not have power.
And here,
Paul is giving us an image and a vision of what that looks like.
And I think any wise
Christian would set our hopes and desires on that.
I would add to that,
Michael, and at the risk of being self-serving, I’m not suggesting
we fit the bill,
but one of the important aspects of a life of faith is who you turn to as your teachers.
I mean, part of the theme woven through this passage is for Timothy to be a kind
of teacher who can be trusted when there are other teachers leading people with itching ears
away.
And so who we give authority in our life,
who we allow to speak to us in a way that builds
the faith and encourages and corrects us,
who we allow in that role has a significant bearing
on the directions we will go.
And I think it’s not explicitly stated in the text,
but I do think
it’s implied that each of us should consider carefully who we allow authority to speak into
the faith and direction of our life, because ultimately we
want to make sure that we’re
following sound teaching and wise counsel.
Well, friends, thanks for being with us.
I hope you’re encouraged and challenged.
We will see you tomorrow.