The Pattern of Sound Words (2 Tim. 1:13–2:13)

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Philip Ryken: Well, let’s fan the gift into flame by turning to the Word of God, Second Timothy, chapter one, and we begin this evening at verse 13.

Amen. And will you now hear the Word of God, follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us guard the good deposit entrusted to you. You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are phygelus and Hermogenes, May the Lord grant mercy to the household of onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. But when he arrived in Rome, he searched for me earnestly and found me. May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day, and you well know all the service he rendered at Ephesus. You then my child be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ, Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ, Jesus, no soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, For the Lord will give you understanding in everything. Remember Jesus, Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ, Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is trustworthy, for if we have died with Him, we will also live with Him. If we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us. If we are faithless. He remains faithful, for he cannot deny Himself. And may the Holy Spirit who inspired these words give us faith to understand and the grace of obedience, brothers and sisters, there are times in ministry, many times praise God, when we are carried along by the power of the Holy Spirit. I have felt that way in recent days, Easter Sunday, walking through the city at dawn, coming into Rittenhouse Square, and hearing the sound of the trumpets proclaiming the risen Christ. And then in days following that, hearing various testimonies of the power of the Word of God in people’s lives, a friend who experienced a call to church planting as if he was sitting in church and hearing the very voice of the living God, a man in the church who vowed, as he was hearing the word that he would not treat his little girl with unrighteous and foolish anger any longer, sometimes, as we are carried along in the power of the Holy Spirit, we even see the work of God’s grace in our own families praise God for that as well. But there are other times, many times, when God seems far away, when you wonder whether anything that you do for Jesus makes a difference. There are times, for example, maybe every week for some of us, when you wish you could preach the same passage again and do it right. There are times when, instead of following your wise spiritual counsel, people insist on falling out of the stupid tree instead and hitting every branch on the way down. There are times when you face perhaps unjust criticism, like the letter I received just a couple of weeks ago, and I quote, you teach the opposite of what is taught in the Word of God. Is that what you mean by reform? Theology,

there are times when things seem so desperate that all you can do is get on your knees and say, Help me, Jesus. And it is at those times, maybe most of all, that I sometimes look ahead to the last of all days and hope beyond anything that I could ever deserve that on that day, I will hear the Savior say, Well done, good and faithful servant, Enter into the joy of your master’s happiness. And in one way or another, everything that I do in ministry is motivated by this ambition to be faithful through suffering, in the call that Jesus gave me to be a minister of the gospel, will I fulfill that sacred trust the Apostle Paul had this same burden of concern for Timothy. And so as we consider everything in this long section of the epistle, which I want to take in six sections. I think every one of those sections has something to do with faithfulness in life and ministry, with all of its suffering. And so first, then verses 13 and 14, in which Paul gives Timothy an apostolic call to faithful ministry, an apostolic call to faithful ministry, having exhorted Timothy to that holy boldness in using his spiritual gift, Paul tells him now in verse 13, to follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus and by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. Now this call to faithful ministry is at the same time both doctrinal and practical. When Paul tells Timothy to follow a pattern, he is reminding the young man that he has been given a model for ministry, not least through the example of Paul himself. And this pattern is made up of words, of things that Paul has said, mainly, I think, the words that he has used to preach and to explain the gospel. Paul is thinking of the apostolic message of the person and the work of Jesus Christ, those true propositions of his authentic deity, of his genuine humanity, of his cross and of his empty tomb, what Paul goes on in verse 14 to describe as a good deposit entrusted to you. You see, Timothy had been given a sacred trust. Indeed, this is really the theme of this whole conference entrusted with the gospel. And this trust was not to distort the sound doctrine that he had been given, but to keep it, to protect it, to guard it for the church, and a faithful minister keeps that faith, and this is essential both to his own spiritual health and to the vitality of the people he serves. Paul speaks here of these words being sound that is wholesome and healthy, and whereas sometimes, some people say that doctrine kills this way of thinking is completely alien to the Apostle Paul who believed that it is sound doctrine that brings life and health to the people of God. Of course, that is only true when that doctrine is not merely a theological speculation, when even the very truth has been made a kind of idolatry, but when that truth becomes a whole way of life, I think John Calvin was right when he said that saving faith is not an empty speculation that merely flits about the brain, but it is something that must take root in the heart. And Paul here encourages us to that kind of faithful practice. This sound doctrine is something we follow in the faith and in the love that are in Jesus. And so this call to faithful ministry is not simply to accept a particular set of beliefs or to carry out a particular job description. It is a whole way of life that is shaped by the gospel of Jesus Christ, a life of faith in which I am called to trust Jesus for absolutely everything, the gifts I need for ministry, the vision I have for the future, the insight I need into the word, whatever wisdom I need for spiritual counsel, whatever resources I need to do, whatever It is that God has called me particularly to do, to be faithful in this calling is to trust Jesus for everything. And it is a gospel way of life that is a life of love as well as of faith, in which I give myself away for Jesus. I remember speaking with one of my. Elders who had come to the end of his term of service, and he was wrestling with the question as to whether he should continue to serve. And he went through the responsibilities that he had, to his wife, to his children, to his employees, to people that he was bound with in personal ministry. And he he wondered how he could continue to serve in the church in the way that he had, soon I won’t have any time left at all, and I could detect just the hint of a complaint in that. And I said, Now that’s really living, isn’t it, when Jesus so fills your life that you are not living for yourself at all, but entirely for others. This is the kind of life of love that we are called to in the faithful ministry of the gospel. And this is the call that God has placed on your life, a doctrinal call, a practical call, united with Christ, empowered by this indwelling Holy Spirit, the call to trust in Jesus and to love with his love on other people. And let me ask you tonight. Are you faithful to that call, my friends, we need to be clear about God’s definition for success in ministry. It has, I think, nothing to do with the size or scope of someone’s ministry. It has little or nothing to do with political influence. It’s not about being trendy or retro or traditional or non traditional, or being whatever kind of church you particularly happen to like, What then is a successful ministry. Simply this, a faithful ministry, faithful to Jesus, faithful to His word, faithful in safeguarding and living out his gospel. But now the sad reality is that although some people answer this call, many people do not. And Paul refers to this, I think, and reminds us of this in verses 15 through 18, in which he gives Timothy a personal example of faithful ministry, a personal example of faithful ministry, and also, as it happens, some examples of some people who fell away from that kind of ministry altogether. The bad examples come first in verse 15, Paul tells us here that all who are in Asia have turned away from him. We’ll see more about this when we get to chapter four, the way that people have deserted him and have left him standing alone in his suffering. Paul is not complaining here. He’s not feeling sorry for himself. He’s simply giving us the facts as a cautionary tale for Timothy that everyone has abandoned him, particularly these two men, phigelus and Hermogenes, understand that Paul was in prison at the time, very possibly, this was during the deadly persecutions of Nero. And it’s not surprising, therefore, that some Christians had abandoned him in his time of need. They they were fearful, perhaps, of their own persecution. They had distanced themselves from Paul and from his ministry. They had not been faithful, you see, to the call of Christ. And among these faithless ones were phygelus and Hermogenes. But they are not the only ones. Of course, many people do abandon ministry. It happens every day. You probably know the statistics, but let me just remind you of some of them. 1700 ministers leave the ministry in this country every month.

Only half of those starting out today will still be in ministry. Five years from now, barely one in 10 will actually retire as a minister. But of course, those are just the statistics, and if you have been in ministry for very long, you know some of the stories behind them, pastors caught in sexual sin or financial mis dealing, friends who simply grow weary of serving God again and again in a suffering situation and take a nine to five job instead. Maybe you even know someone who has left the faith completely. I’m not saying that pastoral ministry is the only good way to serve God. I’m not saying that everyone who is in pastoral ministry ought to stay in pastoral ministry, but I am saying that it is hard to be faithful in this calling. And so when Paul tells Timothy this cautionary tale, we ourselves know that there is a real possibility that we too could end up as failures in ministry. Indeed, apart from the indwelling Spirit mentioned in verse 14, we would surely fall away. And yet, by the grace of God, that grace that goes back all the way before the beginning of time, we may remain faithful to the call. And here we can take encouragement from this personal example that Paul gives of faithfulness in ministry. What an outstanding example onesiphorus was. Let me just mention a few of his virtues characteristics, I believe, of every faithful ministry here is a man who loved the men. Who preach God’s word, and so he tried to encourage them in ministry. Paul tells us here that onesiphorus had often refreshed him, possibly he had brought Paul some of the things that he needed in prison. So there was a kind of practical help. But surely the refreshment was also spiritual friendship, the fact that he was there in a ministry of his personal presence. And this example, I think, gives a good test for all of us. Do I love the men that God has put into the ministry? Or, to make it just a little more pointed, do I see some of my fellow seminary students or fellow pastors as rivals, wishing from time to time that I had the situation, or perhaps the gifts or the reputation that they seem to have, do I feel a little twinge of regret when someone else is elevated, or conversely, a little surge of pleasure when Someone has the kind of trouble that I secretly think he probably deserves, or am I able to rejoice in the success that God has given to other ministers? Because my primary commitment is to the gospel that they preach. Brothers and sisters, we are called to be explicit and intentional in our efforts to support the preachers of God’s Word. And now this love that onesiphorus had for gospel ministry was equaled, I think, by his courage. And understand that when he went to Rome, he was really taking his life into his own hands. The church was under persecution. It explains, I think, why it was so hard for him to find the Apostle Paul. If anyone knew where he was, they weren’t saying anything. No one wanted to get in trouble with the Romans. But onesiphorus was not concerned with his own safety. If there was Kingdom work to be done, he was willing to suffer hardship himself. He was not ashamed to be associated with a man who was an enemy of the state, as long as that man, too was faithful to the gospel and ministry always takes courage, sometimes unusual courage, what courage it takes to expose idols in the hearts of men and women, what courage it takes to go into the marketplace of ideas and to proclaim that there, that There is only one way of salvation to be found in Jesus Christ. What courage it sometimes takes to cross ethnic and social lines with the gospel. What courage to take the gospel to Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and communists and all of the hard places of the world. But this is what faithfulness requires of us. And we can also say this of onesiphorus, that he was fruitful wherever he went, effective, not only in Rome, but you see at the end of verse 18, also in Ephesus. And without knowing what onesiphorus did as Timothy, apparently, did we understand the principle that people who are faithful in ministry tend to be faithful wherever they go. Many ministers move from one place to another over the course of a ministry, not always to the places they would choose to go, but whatever the situation, a faithful minister always turns out to be a fruitful minister. And everything we see here in onesiphorus is characteristic of someone who is a faithful minister. He supports the work of other preachers. He or she is courageously unashamed of the gospel, especially when it is under attack, and thus fruitful wherever he or she goes. And such a ministry is under the mercy of God. Here, Paul prays that onesiphorus may find mercy from the Lord on that day, I think rightly capitalized in some of these versions, because it means the Day of Judgment. Paul’s looking beyond the hardships of ministry. He’s looking beyond the present day to the last of all days when faithful ministers will receive a merciful reward when people like onesiphorus will hear the commendation of Jesus himself, and they will hear those words, well done, good and faithful servant. And so Paul has given to Timothy a call to faithful ministry. He has given him a faithful example to follow. And then in chapter two, the apostle Paul gives Timothy further instructions about his sacred trust, beginning with a charge to perpetuate the faith, what I want to call a sacred trust transmitted to faithful men. If we had more time, I suppose I would say more about this marvelous exhortation here, to be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ, Jesus, and how characteristic it is of the apostle to combine these two things, the hard work that ministry takes, with the empowering grace of Jesus Himself. And sure. This is the secret to persevering through all of the trials of ministry, through long years in the pastorate, the secret of persevering through a season of ministry that seems like a crucifixion. Yes, we are called to hard work, and the apostle will talk about that in a moment. But Jesus himself is our strength. His grace is sufficient for us. I mean his unmerited favor for people like us who, frankly, don’t even deserve to be in the ministry. Nevertheless, we are carried along by his mighty power. When I am worn down by the cares of life and ministry, and wonder at least on some occasions, whether I have anything left to give. And maybe some of you have come to this very conference feeling that way, hoping, secretly, as many of us have prayed, that you would be refreshed by the power of the gospel. And when you’re when I am feeling that way, I often reflect on what Paul says in Colossians one verse 29 where you have the same combination of hard work and empowering grace. It’s a verse that Dick Lucas from St Helens in London had once shared with me, and I went home and I wrote it out and put it next to my computer so that I could be reminded of it again and again. The Apostle had been talking about his preaching, about all of his labor and ministry, his struggle for the sanctification of the people of God, how he gave people Christ and wanted to warn them away from sin and the burden that he carried because of it. And he said, For this, I toil, struggling with all his energy, which he works so powerfully within me and brothers and sisters, when we have the grace that is in Jesus, we do not work out of our own natural strength, but by the power of Almighty God. But now I digress. I’m in danger of doing what Dr Piper warned us not to do, which is confuse the main thing with the thrust and burden of the verse, and I think the burden of Paul, for Timothy here is to teach others what he had learned for himself, that there is a transmission that needs to take place, in which the same gospel that Paul gave to Timothy is now carried over to a following generation. And Paul seems to be speaking here about something like public ordination, in which a man is set apart for gospel ministry and the public worship of the church. And as that kind of ordained ministry, Timothy had received something from Paul, this sound, pattern of words, this good deposit of a sacred trust mentioned back in chapter one. And now Timothy, in turn, has the responsibility to pass that core of Christian faith along to others. He is looking for a few faithful men.

I know this is part of the burden that Don Carson and Tim Keller have had in helping to organize this gospel coalition. This is part of the fruit of that vision, as we gather here in these days, not that a coalition could ever be a church, but but maybe this group can help communicate the gospel to a rising generation. We know that the Church of Jesus Christ will endure as long as time shall last, but we also know that in any particular place in any particular society or nation, among any particular people, the church is never more than one generation away from extinction. And so one of our primary and perpetual responsibilities in propagating the faith is to pass our ministry along to faithful men, and tonight, I can’t help but think of some of my own mentors in ministry. I think of my father and grandfathers, men of good conscience and genuine faith, elders in the church. I think of the pastor in my church in my growing up years, Bob Harvey, I think of other mentors in ministry, men I’ve had the privilege to serve who have gone on to their reward. James Boyce, he was mentioned earlier. William, still, there are others. There are many mentors in ministry that are here in these days. And you would be able to give a list of your own examples, wouldn’t you? If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a company of preachers to raise another minister. But now increasingly, I see my own ministry as one, not just of reception, but also as one of transmission. I can’t really say, as John Piper is able to say, that I am anyone’s father in the faith. If I were a hobbit, you would say that I’m still in my tweens, somewhere between adolescence and senior citizenship, but I see that I have this call that yesterday I was just starting out in ministry. Tomorrow I will finish my race, and already now, as I am trying in ministry and sometimes failing in ministry, I have a sacred. Trust that I have received that I must pass along to others. I’ve been challenged in recent months by the holy ambition of a friend in a I guess, what you would call a kind of average sized church in Pennsylvania. But the burden that the Lord has laid on his heart is that over the course of his ministry, he would be able to raise up 20 men to be ministers in the church. What calling has God placed on your life? What sacred trust Have you received? How are you passing it along to others? And how are you preparing for the day when you will be able to pass it on to others? When we look at the history of the church, we we see an unbroken chain of gospel ministry, a kind of evangelical succession. To give just one example, in the early 17th century, the Cambridge preacher Richard Sibbes wrote a book about the comforting work of Christ called the bruised reed. One of the people who read that book was a common laborer. He was a tinker in his village, but he passed a copy of that book along to a boy named Richard Baxter. And Richard Baxter became one of the greatest preachers in the Puritan church. And Baxter wrote a book called A call to the unconverted. And that book made a dramatic difference in the life of Philip Doddridge. And now we’re into the 18th century, and Doddridge, in turn, wrote a book called The Rise and progress of religion in the soul, and that book was a means of saving and sanctifying influence in the Life of William Wilberforce. And of course, he became the primary human instrument in the abolition of slavery. And that influence continues, because today, many people look to William Wilberforce as a heroic example of the fight against evil in our own day, when you see that kind of example, you see that one of the most important ways to keep the faith is by passing on the faith, to take what you have heard, that gospel, that you have received, and to entrust it to faithful men, who in turn will be able to preach it to many others. And I highlight this word in verse two faithful men. You see, Paul is is dealing with Timothy in this subject of faithfulness in the ministry. He’s called him again into that ministry. He’s given him examples of what faithfulness means in ministry. He has a calling to pass it along to other faithful men. And like any good preacher, the apostle Paul often illustrated gospel truth with examples from daily life. And we see that in verses three through seven of chapter two, illustrations of faithful work. That’s what I want to call this fourth section, illustrations of faithful work. And I would call them occupational illustrations, because Paul mentions here three of the hardest working jobs that you could ever imagine. The first example comes from the military share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ, Jesus. And this comparison, I think, is multifaceted. It certainly highlights the aspect of suffering, and that’s true if you’re in the army, particularly in wartime. And that makes military service a very apt analogy for pastoral ministry, which of course, engages a man in spiritual warfare. To share in suffering is to share in the very sufferings of Jesus. And no one knew this any better than the apostle Paul, who has already spoken to us in chapter one of his own suffering. But now ministry is also like being in the military in another respect. It requires a total life commitment. And here Paul is giving us a multifaceted metaphor that repays careful consideration. And the following verse, in verse four, Paul speaks here of not getting entangled in civilian pursuits. The thinking, I think of something like the Roman military code, which stated as follows, we forbid men engaged in military service to engage in civilian occupations. You see, if he values his life, a soldier at war does not have time to worry about anything else except doing his military duty. Now, do not understand, misunderstand this verse. We don’t have here a verse that rules out by vocational ministry where that is necessary. Nor I want to emphasize, does this give pastors license to neglect their families? I remember hearing Elizabeth Elliot say that when he was in college, Jim Elliot, the famous missionary and Christian martyr, would give a girl this text, Second Timothy, two, four, to explain why he couldn’t get involved in a romantic relationship. I mean, that’s the way to win a woman’s heart, isn’t it, but never forget that the first calling of any married man is to his wife and children. And a passage. Real position should never be used as an excuse for neglecting one’s family. But now, having clarified that kind of misunderstanding, which sometimes occurs, occurs, the point of the verse still stands, and that is, don’t get distracted from the ministry that God has called you to do. Don’t waste time if you need to prepare a sermon. Don’t spend 30 minutes reading the news and visiting a theological blog site. Don’t do all the easy things before you get around to the hard things, but do the thing that most needs to be done. If there’s a phone call that you need to make to a person that you would rather not deal with, make that call first. If there’s a hard conversation that needs to take place in the life of the church, don’t just keep hoping that the situation will get better on its own, but set up a time to address that issue and ask for the help of the Holy Spirit. Limit the amount of time you spend on entertainment and outside interests to the amount of time that is really appropriate for someone who is living in spiritual wartime, and not Kingdom peacetime. Not talking about being one dimensional, but I am talking about following this exhortation of the apostle to be focused in ministry, to cut out of life anything, however good in itself, that distracts you from that service to Christ, which God Himself has called you to fulfill. And the ultimate motivation for that kind of single minded ministry comes at the end of verse four. A soldier always wants to please his commanding officer.

And so as we go about our own ministry, whatever that happens to be, we should ask ourselves questions like this, is this something that will please Jesus as my commanding officer? Am I doing this the way that my commanding officer wants me to do it? He is my great captain in the fight. He is my warrior in salvation, am I living out the kind of ministry that he has called me to fulfill? But now there is a second occupational illustration. Here it comes from the world of sports. Verse five, an athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. And here, the apostle uses another very demanding calling to highlight a slightly different kind of faithfulness playing by the rules. Maybe he has in mind the rules of the game itself, like the official rules of Major League Baseball, for example. But it’s often thought here that Paul is referring instead to those regulations that govern the whole training regimen of athletes competing in the ancient Isthmian or Olympic Games. You see, in order to maintain high standards of competition, athletes typically began their workouts, which could last for as long as 10 months, by taking an oath that they would train according to the rules or else they would be disqualified. Now, how can we apply this illustration to gospel ministry, perhaps as a reminder to play by the righteous rules of the Christian faith, not giving in to envy or greed or hypocrisy or all of the other sins that are so tempting for people in ministry. But maybe it would be better to take this as an exhortation to work hard in ministry, as hard as an Olympian in training. Work hard to understand the word. Work hard in the spiritual labor of prayer, work hard at discipleship and training and evangelism, as I think of the difficult calling of working hard in ministry, I often remember a little aphorism that the Puritan William Perkins liked to use for himself to remind himself to do his duty. You are a minister of the gospel. He would say to himself, and then he would quote this little Latin epigram Hoke agye. In other words, do this, or, as I sometimes loosely translate it, get with it. You see, you have this call to be a minister of the gospel, and it requires this kind of of hard work. And when you approach it with this kind of work ethic, you remain eligible for the crowning prize. It’s another image that Paul uses so frequently, this image of the athlete crowned with victory, and it’s part of the legitimate motivation for ministry that we are looking ahead to the crown of glory, not as a reward of merit, but as a gift of grace for the faithful, we are looking for the crown of glory that will follow the cross of suffering. I love the advice that the Puritan Richard Sibbes gave when he was advising his fellow pastors not to seek immediate rewards in ministry, but to wait for the reward. That would come at the end of days. Let us commit our fame and our credit to God. He said he will take care of that. Let us take care to be and to do as we should. And then Sibbes closed with these encouraging words, we will have enough glory by and by. Well, next, the apostle turns from athletics to agriculture, an illustration that comes from the farm. It’s the hard working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Now I happen to come from good farming stock and from everything that I have seen, farmers are about the hardest workers of all up before dawn, working all day, exhausted by nightfall, just like pastoral ministry. In fact, J, n, d, Kelly makes, in his commentary a provocative comment that, for Paul, the word for work is virtually a synonym for pastoral ministry. It is the work, and here again, faithfulness in that work has its reward. Paul mentions the first, the first share of the crops. Many take this as a way of indicating that ministers have a right to receive financial remuneration. Paul certainly uses similar metaphors and in other letters that make that point. But I think these metaphors here of hard working faithfulness also have a wider application. The most important harvest for a hard working pastor is the one that he reaps for sowing the good seed of the Word of God, as Jesus called it, the harvest of the gospel. And notice that all three of these occupations that Paul mentions require faithful, hard work. They require dedicated, undistracted labor. They entail hardship and a kind of suffering. But all of them also hold the promise of a reward. For the warrior, it is victory for the athlete, it is a crown, and for the farmer, it is a harvest. Brothers and sisters, are you working faithfully for the gospel reward? I love the story of Luke short, converted at the age of 103 short was sitting under his hedge in colonial Virginia, and he happened to remember a sermon preached by the famous Puritan John Flavel. And as he recalled that sermon, he asked God to forgive his sins right there under the under the hedge through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And short lived for three more years, and when he died, his tombstone read, here lies a babe in grace, aged three years, who died, according to nature, 106 but now here’s the remarkable part of the story, that sermon that old Mr. Short remembered had been preached 85 years earlier, not in America, but back in England. And so almost a century passed between flavels sermon and shorts conversion, between the sowing, you see, and the Reaping of the harvest. Keep working hard, and in due season, God’s word will have its reward. Now it is good for us to hear these exhortations to faithful ministry, but there is a danger here that we will receive them as law, rather than living them out by grace. And so all through this section, indeed, from the very beginning of the epistle, Paul has taken pains to ground ministry in the Gospel. Now we heard it this afternoon, from back in chapter one. It is not because of works. We heard it in the verses that I have been expounding this evening, this call that was given to Timothy to have a faithful ministry that is a call in Jesus and by the Spirit. This example of the man in sciris. It’s an example of someone who is under the mercy of the Lord. But when you look at the these exhortations to hard work in chapter two, all of them are grounded in verse one. They are all strengthened by the grace that we have in Jesus. But now, as we turn to Verse eight, this fifth section that I want to consider Paul is even more explicit about ministry by grace, and here he gives us His command to remember a faithful savior, a command to remember the faithful savior. Remember Jesus Christ. He says, risen from the dead, offspring of David, as preached in my gospel. And brothers and sisters, every faithful ministry is founded on this faithful. Savior from the beginning of the letter, Paul has been reminding Timothy of many things that he ought to remember, his his friendship with Paul, the faith that lived in his family’s heart, the flame of his spiritual gifts. And now he tells him to remember the most important thing of all, not to forget the very facts of the gospel, but to remember Jesus in His saving work. He speaks here of Jesus risen from the dead, calling to mind both the crucifixion, when Jesus died for sinners, and even more so, highlighting the resurrection, when Jesus came up out of the grave with the power of eternal life. This is the Gospel that Paul was preaching again and again, the gospel of the cross and of the empty tomb, the gospel of death leading to life. And so we are called to remember this faithful saving work of Jesus, and this is the life giving source of our salvation and the power behind all ministry. This remembrance of Jesus is not simply a kind of mental exercise. It is a heartfelt lifelong commitment to live for him. Remember not just what Jesus did, but also who he is, the offspring of David, a title testifying to his true humanity and also his royal majesty. Jesus came from the royal line of David. He is the rightful heir and eternal King of the most noble of all kingly thrones, the throne of the house of Judah.

This is the Gospel that Paul was preaching, also the gospel for which he happened to be suffering. He talks about that in verse nine he can hardly help, but as he’s talking about the gospel that he wants Timothy to remember, then it calls to mind all the suffering that he is doing for that gospel. He tells us that he is chained like a common criminal, but he also says that the Word of God is not chained. It is not bound despite all of the best efforts of Satan, to shut out the gospel by locking down the servants of God, the word still does its work in the world, and that is why it is such a mystery to me when people think that there is something apart from or additional to the Word of God that will actually accomplish anything in the spiritual work of the church, the word works, indeed, it is the only thing that does work. What is it that teaches us about the character of God? What convinces us that we are sinners in need of forgiveness? What What shows us that there really is a Savior who is sufficient for our sins. What what teaches us the way to worship, the way to live, the way to serve, what makes preaching and evangelism and discipleship effective? It is the word that the Holy Spirit has unbound and unchained for the salvation and the sanctification of the people of God. Oh, how many stories I could tell about the freedom of God’s word to do its work. Let me just tell one of them that made a deep impression upon me when I was a child, something I’ve remembered all my life. It was the story of a man who was in communist Russia and had been encountering a little bit about Christianity here, and a little bit about Christianity there in the communist propaganda that he was reading. And he began to write down these quotations from the Bible. And he assembled for himself a kind of a kind of scriptures just from those testimonies and those words, those words of the Holy Spirit brought him to faith in Jesus Christ. You see, the word cannot be bound. You try to shut it up. That’s what Satan is always trying to do in the world. But the word itself, as it goes out into the world, is unfettered. It has the power of the Holy Spirit with us, and thus with it, and thus it always is able to do its work. And when you have such a powerful word to share in evangelism, in teaching, in counseling, and you will do, you will endure any suffering to proclaim that very word. And this is what Paul was doing, remembering Jesus reminded him why he was in the ministry. Therefore I endure everything. He said. I will suffer whatever it is, whatever shame, whatever hardship, and I do it. This is in verse 10, for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ, Jesus with eternal glory. You see, this is why we endure the suffering of ministry. It’s for the sake of the glory, not our own glory, but the glory that Jesus has promised to share with his people. Here, when Paul speaks of the elect, he is thinking, I think primarily of people who have not yet come to. Faith in Jesus Christ, those chosen ones, those ones chosen from before the foundation of the world. It is for those elect people that we remember the gospel of Jesus and preach the word indeed. It is for their sake that we are here tonight, not simply that we would be fed, that we would be built up in the ministry, although we pray that we will be but it is not for our sake that this is done. It is for the sake of a lost world. It is for the sake of that neighbor who has sometimes talked about maybe coming to church, but has never actually followed through. It’s for the sake of family members who have not committed their lives to Christ. It is for the sake of all the people who are lost in the city, whether they are lost in poverty or whether they are lost in prosperity. It is for the Forgotten children of a suffering world. It is for the 10s of millions who will sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow morning without ever having heard that the very Son of God was born as the son of David, that He died for their sins, that He rose again with new life for the world, it is for their sake that we are here tonight, remembering Jesus well enough to be faithful In the ministry of his gospel. But now at last, we are brought to one of the most beautiful passages in the entire Bible, one of Paul’s trustworthy, trustworthy sayings. Maybe it was part of an early Christian hymn, or perhaps used at the time of baptism. But whatever it is, brothers and sisters, we are on holy ground for here, the Scripture bears witness to the absolute faithfulness of a faithful God and promises His grace to people who do sometimes fail in ministry. Can you follow the logic of these verses all the way to their surprise conclusion? Paul begins, and he takes that faithful savior that he preached in verses eight through 10, and he unites us to that savior for our salvation. Jesus died, Jesus rose again. Jesus ascended to glory. That’s the faithful one, the one that he was preaching back in verses eight through 10. But now, when Jesus did these things, he did them for our salvation, and we are actually by faith and by the Holy Spirit joined to him for everything that he did in that salvation. We died with Jesus. Our sins were put to death in the death of Christ, we rose with Jesus. We have received the eternal life that he brought with him, first up out of the empty tomb. And if we endure, if we persevere through suffering, if we continue in the faith, if we remain faithful in the ministry, then we ourselves will come into a kingdom. We will reign with Jesus Christ. All of that is here. If we have died with Him, we will also live with Him. If we endure, we also will reign with Him. And here the apostle is simply proclaiming our union with Christ, and He is relating that to our endurance through suffering in the ministry of the gospel, by faith, we are joined to Jesus for everything that he ever did, for our salvation, death, resurrection and dissension, but will we remain faithful? You see, that is the question, because verse 12 begins with a condition, if we endure. But will we endure? Paul’s urgent concern throughout this entire section of Second Timothy has been faithfulness in ministry. He’s, he’s called us to that faithfulness. He’s, he’s warned us that not everyone is faithful to that call, especially when it is so demanding, when it involves suffering like the military, or training like the Olympics, or working like a farmer, and sadly, some people, including some pastors, end up denying the Christ, and sadder still, the consequences of their apostasy mean that they themselves will be denied at the final judgment. You cannot argue with the logic or the justice of this verse. Can you if we deny Him, He also will deny us. Jesus said it himself in Matthew chapter 10, whoever denies Me before men, I also will deny before my Father, Who is in heaven. You have Jesus’ word for it that those who deny him will be denied at the last day. That’s why what we do for Jesus is a matter of life and death. But then Paul adds another category, and at first it seems to stand as a parallel if we are faithless. But now here is an unexpected turn of phrase, a gospel twist that opens up such wide mysteries in the love of God that it is actually possible for people like you and like me to be. Used in ministry and still accepted by God. If we are faithless, what? Then we will be rejected. We will be disqualified. We will be condemned, no if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, and for this reason, he cannot deny Himself. Now understand what when Paul talks about being faithless, he’s not talking about a final, irrevocable and fatal rejection of Jesus Christ. No, he is talking I think it’s clear from the way the verse ends about all of those times that we fail in life and ministry, the times that we fail to trust God or to obey God, or to serve God the way that we know that we should. He’s talking about all of those times that we wimp out because we are not white hot. He’s talking about the half baked sermon,

the unprayed prayer, the self defensive response that puts somebody down. Nevertheless, God is still faithful. And how could he be anything except faithful? It is His very nature to be consistent with himself and with all of the promises that He has made before the world began, he would have to ungod himself to be unfaithful. And now understand what this means for ministry. It means that our unfaithfulness, even that, cannot stop the gospel work that God will do, including all of the work that he is still planning to do through us. And tonight, I think of many faithless men who could testify to the truth of this great claim, men who in some way failed in life and ministry and yet still offered useful service to the kingdom of God because of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. I think of Adam, the father of us all. If he were here tonight, Adam could say brothers, I was faithless in my calling as a husband and father. When Eve ate that forbidden fruit, I should have offered my life to God as the atonement for her sin, but I chose the idol of reason. I wanted to know what she knew, and so I sinned to the ruin of us all. But God is still faithful. He kept his promise to provide a savior, to crush Satan under his feet and to bring many of my sons and daughters to glory. And so I tell you it is true, if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny Himself. Or I think of Abraham, our Father, in the faith, if he were here tonight, Abraham would say, brothers, I was faithless in life and ministry. I idolized control, doubting the promises of God. I tried to come up with my own way of fulfilling the promise, and in doing so, I sowed seeds of discord that divide the human race today. But God is still faithful. He has given me children in the faith as countless as the stars of the evening sky. I tell you, even if we are faithless, he will remain faithful. I think of David, the royal king. If he were here tonight, David would say, brothers, I was faithless to do my duty to my own shame. I confess that I was a murderer and an adulterer, idols of power and sex, but God is still faithful. He blotted out my transgressions, He cleansed me from all my sin. He kept his promise to put my son on the everlasting throne. I tell you, even if we are faithless, he remains faithful, but you know, the best proof of the absolute faithfulness of God is not the testimony of mortal men, it is the cross of Jesus Christ. Do you understand what it cost your savior to make good on this promise that God remains faithful? The penalty for unfaithfulness to God is death. Adam knew that he he had heard the word of God that in the day of sin, you shall surely die. Abraham knew it as well. He, he understood when God made a covenant with him, when he separated the sacrificial animals, and then God passed by himself through the pieces of those animals that he was promising to take responsibility for both sides of the Covenant, not just his own side of the bargain, but also Abraham’s, so that if Abraham proved faithless, God Himself would have to suffer the punishment for Abraham’s sin or else be unfaithful to his promise. And so it was that remaining faithful meant for Jesus death and the cross, although they are faithless, he said to the Father, I will remain faithful. I cannot deny myself. I cannot deny the promises that I have made to destroy the devil and to bless the nations and to give a forever kingdom. And therefore, I will suffer and die for my people’s sins. I. Know that, that when Jesus hung naked and bleeding on the cross, it was for the sins of Adam and for Abraham and David, and for your sins and for my sins, including all of the sins that we commit in ministry, even to the death. Jesus did not fail, but he was faithful to pay for all those sins, and the father did not fail either. He kept the promise of His word given by the psalmist. What a wonderful verse. Psalm 89 verse 33 I will not be false to my faithfulness, a promise fulfilled for us in second. Timothy, chapter two. And so when Jesus offered that sacrifice for sin, the father accepted it. He he saw the son suffering and dying for sin, he said, Well done, good and faithful servant. And as a proof of his of his faithfulness and of his approval, he raised the son from the dead. In a sense, he had to do it, because, having promised salvation, he must follow through on the resurrection. This is the absolute faithfulness of God, and now we are accepted by that grace. Oh, I love the words of the Westminster larger catechism. It’s explaining the present ministry of Jesus Christ as the high priest. It says that Jesus is standing at this very moment before the Father’s right hand. He is in his crucified and his risen body, and he is there to defend you against the judgment of God. And Jesus pleads with the Father to do what the Father loves to do, and that is, apply the merits of his perfect obedience and His substitutionary atonement to you. And Jesus does this, the Catechism says in spite of the fact, indeed, I would say, He does it because of the very fact that every day we are faithless in life and ministry. And when Jesus does this, here is what I love in the Catechism words, he procures for us the acceptance of our persons and and our services. You see, it is not just your person that is accepted by God because of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, but also your service, your ministry, the things that you do for God, those things are accepted by God in Jesus. And some of you are just starting out. You’re you’re just receiving the sacred trust of gospel ministry, and know that you are called to be faithful to that trust, but know this as well, that the acceptability of your ministry does not depend on your faithfulness to God, but on his faithfulness to His Word. The rest of you have been in ministry for a while, and know better than anyone else, except for maybe your wife, that your ministry isn’t what it could be. And maybe sometimes you wonder whether everything you have ever done for Jesus is worth anything at all. Brother, remember Jesus Christ, know that you are loved and accepted by God that even your ministry, as my ministry is, is accepted on the basis of His perfect life and atoning death and glorious resurrection. Maybe you are not sure if you could ever really be any kind of success in ministry, but I pray that you will at least try for Jesus, and that when you fail for him, you will remember that if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot deny Himself. Our Father in heaven, we give you praise for the absolute faithfulness of your promise, the perfect faithfulness of your son and for the acceptance of our persons and of our services in Him, Lord, Lord, give us grace that we may be faithful. But above all, we pray that you would be faithful to yourself in using what we offer for Jesus and for His Kingdom, it’s in his name that we pray amen.