Several years ago, some friends of mine were at a training seminar for pastors. The leader was speaking on the importance of theological reflection, encouraging pastors to take theology seriously. During one of the discussions, a pastor stood up and said, “I’m not interested in all that stuff; I just want to love people.” In his view, pastoring has nothing to do with theology. Pastoring is about loving people. I’ve heard this man preach several times, and I’ve been in meetings with him, and the thing that is overwhelmingly clear is that his ministry is centered on people. As a preacher he wants to give people things that will help them live their lives; in leading worship, he seeks to give people music that makes them feel good. He’s a nice guy. But I’ve never sensed much of God about him, either in his preaching, his worship leadership, or private conversation. His ministry is human-centered, intentionally so. Whatever else we might say about this, it’s just the opposite of how Paul carried out his ministry and what he has in mind for Timothy. Think, for example, of his letters to the Romans and the Ephesians. Although Timothy is called to minister to people, Paul doesn’t want his ministry to be people-centered; in these verses Paul is calling Timothy to a God-centered life and ministry.
The first thing I want to point out is that Paul’s perspective is dominated by an intense awareness of God. Notice how he places this charge in the context of eternity: “I 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.” Here it is in The Message: “I can’t impress this on you too strongly. God is looking over your shoulder. Christ himself is the Judge, with the final say on everyone, living and dead. He is about to break into the open with his rule, so proclaim the Message with intensity....” The primary focus here is not Paul’s vision for the church or the future of Timothy’s career. Paul urges Timothy to carry out his ministry with an awareness of God’s call and constant presence, knowing that he will one day give an account of his stewardship.
This is intensified by the fact that Paul himself is facing the end of his life. Immediately after this passage, Paul says: “For I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come.” He’s doing something more here than passing on information. He is handing the baton to Timothy; he’s saying, “I’ve finished what God has called me to do; it’s now time for you to carry on with the work.” This idea comes across well in The Message: “You take over. I’m about to die, my life an offering on God’s altar.” Paul, knowing that he is going to die soon, is able to say, “keep going; it’s worth it to get to the end and know that you’ve completed the work God called you to do. Don’t give up.”
Our culture idealizes youth, and our society is littered with the spectacle of middle-aged adults who wish they were still adolescents. But many of the greatest examples I’ve known of godly living have been people who’ve followed Jesus for a lifetime, who have sought him and experienced His grace through the whole spectrum of life experiences and are able to look back and testify, from experience, to God’s faithfulness. I spent two weeks with a 92-year old missionary in North India in 1978, and he so deeply impacted my life that I still think about him often. Being around him made me want to seek God. There is great value in walking with God for a lifetime. The ministry of the gospel takes place in the context of eternity, in the presence of God and of Jesus Christ. God is our focus in the Church; God is our starting point; He is what we are about when we gather together for worship. Paul is reminding Timothy that this is where his attention needs to be: “I charge you in the presence of God.”
The second thing is that the problems Timothy is confronting result from the Church losing its focus on God. Paul emphasizes this at the beginning of his first letter to Timothy: “As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the divine training that is in faith” (1 Timothy 1:3-4). Some of the people have become distracted from the truth and are beginning to dabble in things that don’t promote the life of faith, things that occupy their attention and appeal to their sense of curiosity but don’t feed their souls by leading them into God’s presence. We see this concern continuing in 2 Timothy. Paul warns Timothy that a time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, or sound teaching. “They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from the truth.” Notice what the focus is here; it’s not on God, it’s on themselves. They don’t care about the truth; they don’t care about sound teaching; they want to be entertained, and if Timothy caters to them he will be guilty of unfaithfulness to his calling.
This is a great danger in our consumer-driven society, where people are increasingly programmed to see everything, including the church, in terms of buying and selling. People in America are used to getting what they want, and if we don’t give it to them they’ll go somewhere else to find it. And all too often they see ministers of the gospel as sellers of religious products, especially the religious product of a good feeling on Sunday morning, something to get them through the week that’s ahead. Many churches see this as an opportunity to draw people in, as in this advertisement from a church web site: “We’re a group of ordinary people who have discovered the benefits of an active Christian life-style....Our informal, upbeat meetings will give you the lift you need to face the coming week.... [Our pastor’s] practical, positive messages deal with the pressures and problems we all encounter. [He] shares biblical solutions that make life more fulfilling.” Here’s the question: is God at the center? What is the main concern of this church? Paul left Timothy behind in Ephesus because the church there was losing its focus on God; in trying to cater to people’s interests and desires, the church had gotten off track. And churches in America are in precisely the same position; their greatest need (even if it is not their greatest desire) is for ministers of the gospel who are willing, at all costs, to keep God in the center, to preach sound doctrine in His name and in His presence.
The third thing is this: Paul is reminding Timothy that his ministry is a stewardship. His calling is to preach God’s Word. The message he’s been entrusted with doesn’t belong to him; it’s not under his control. Paul is reminding Timothy that, as a minister of the gospel, he is not free to stand up and talk about whatever suits him at the moment or whatever he thinks people want to hear or will listen to. He’s bound by a sacred trust to preach the Word. One of the great things about expository preaching is that it forces a minister to talk about things that he wouldn’t choose to speak on, left to himself. But if it is there in the passage and he’s bound himself to preach the Word, he’s called to lay aside his own interests and desires and preach what has been handed to him.
Paul’s basic charge is “preach the Word,” and he expands on this in the following phrases: “be urgent in season and out of season, rebuke, warn and encourage, be unfailing in patience and in teaching.” Timothy isn’t being given a list of separate duties; he’s being told how to go about preaching the Word. He’s to preach it with conviction and urgency, whether or not it comes at a convenient time. The 4th century Church Father, John Chrysostom, said this in a sermon on 2 Timothy: “Therefore, let food, and bathing, and banqueting, and the other necessities of life have a definite time. But let instruction about the love of truth from above have no set hour – let all the time belong to it.” God doesn’t bow to our convenience. He often breaks through into our lives at the most inconvenient times, as Paul himself experienced on the way to Damascus, while he was zealously pursuing his career as a Pharisee.
Paul goes on: “rebuke, warn and encourage.” He is to rebuke those who have fallen into sin, like the prophets did over and over during the period of the Kings, when Israel fell into idolatry. He is to warn those who are in danger of turning away, as we see, for example, in the repeated warnings in the letter to the Hebrews. And he is to encourage those who are gripped with a sense of their own weakness and frailty, who wonder how they will ever make it to the end of the journey. Notice the proportions: two negative terms and one positive. Preaching the Word involves telling people things they don’t want to hear. Promises like the one I mentioned earlier, “Our pastor’s practical, positive messages deal with the pressures and problems we all encounter. [He] shares biblical solutions that make life more fulfilling,” are a commitment to unfaithfulness. A minister of the gospel does not have the freedom to preach only “practical, positive messages.” He’s bound by the Word of God to preach what he finds there and to apply it to people who are responding to God in different ways. To those who are persisting in disobedience, the message is not a positive one; it’s a message of rebuke, a call to repentance. Those who are facing temptation need to be warned of the danger of following through. But then, there also needs to be a message of comfort. God’s conviction of sin always leads to an invitation to grace.
All this is to be done with patience and careful instruction. Careful instruction is rooted in a knowledge of, an immersion in, God’s Word. Paul reminded Timothy of this in the passage immediately preceding this one: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the Sacred Writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” Timothy has been instructed in the Scriptures, and Paul urges him to continue immersing himself in Scripture, equipping himself for the preaching of the Word.
But these things are not a prescription for instant success. Contrary to our American desire for instant results, the ministry of the gospel is a slow work that requires patience. We may get off to a good start with “40 Days of Purpose” or something of that sort, but that start needs to be followed by a lifetime of cultivating God’s presence, following Jesus in the way of the cross. However much we might wish otherwise, there are no shortcuts in the life of faith. One of the best illustrations I’ve heard of this is from Eugene Peterson: "About a month ago we were just home from vacation and refreshed, ready to go again. The telephone rang. It was about 10:00 at night and on the other end of the line was a woman to whom I have been pastor for 26 years. When I entered this parish, she was 12 years old. Now she is 38. I confirmed her, married her, went through her divorce with her, went through a couple of deaths, depression, attempted suicide, ordained her into the leadership of the church, stood by as she left the church one year, opened the door as she came back the next year, prayed with her, listened to her. This night listening to her on the telephone I thought, ‘I have been her pastor for 26 years and she is not any better.’ After I hung up my wife said, ‘Who was that?’ I said, ‘That was Regina. We are not very good at this, are we?’ And Jan said, ‘Remember the kingfisher?’ And I remembered the kingfisher. We had been sitting at the shoreline of a lake in Montana and watching the kingfisher fish. The kingfisher is the ‘king’ fisher, the best fisher, the bird that knows how to fish. This kingfisher was sitting on a dead limb out over the lake, preparing to fish. It is fun to watch a kingfisher fish. This kingfisher plummeted to the water and missed his fish 27 times. The kingfisher missed and missed and missed ‑ and then, on the 28th try, he got one, a little three inch fish. Jan said, ‘Remember the kingfisher?’ I said, ‘I remember ‑ and it has only been 26 years.’ That is the context for spiritual formation. If you are in a hurry, you probably should not do it, because it is messy and lengthy and marked by much failure ‑ burrowing into the soil of your place, your people, your congregation, your own life, sticking with it creatively, waiting for creation and covenant to form.” “Preach the Word... with great patience.”
So Paul gives his charge to Timothy, then warns him that a time is coming when people won’t tolerate sound doctrine, when they will gather to themselves teachers who will tell them what they want to hear, and he says, “but you....” “All these things are going to happen, but don’t go along with it; don’t be swayed by it; don’t cater to what these people want.” “But you – keep your eye on what you’re doing; accept the hard times along with the good; keep the Message alive; do a thorough job as God’s servant” (The Message). Don’t panic; keep your head. Don’t scramble to fix every problem that comes along. Keep preaching the Word, even when people are pressuring you to do something that seems more effective. Endure hardship; don’t expect everything to work the way you want it to; don’t expect to have an easier road than Jesus did. Follow Him in the way of the cross. Do the work of an evangelist; preach the Gospel. Discharge all the duties of your ministry; the stress is on faithfulness in fulfilling his calling. The work of the ministry is not measurable; it can’t be judged by the world’s terms. It’s measured by faithfulness in following Jesus in the way of the cross.
Time is passing quickly. Some days and weeks seem to last forever, but our lives pass by sooner than we can believe. “I 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” live in the light of eternity, knowing that you are all stewards of God’s grace. May God enable us all to say on that day, with Paul, “I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. From now on 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.”
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