CHURCH IMPROVEMENT: BUILDING A CHURCH THAT HONORS GOD AND LOVES PEOPLE BY GUARDING THE GOSPEL

2 Timothy 1: 7-14

 

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever met an obsessed person? Someone that no matter what subject comes up in a conversation, he finds it relates to the topic or person with which he is obsessed. This is a person who spends all her free time learning about and enjoying her obsession. The people he hangs out with share his obsession or he is trying to persuade them to share it. He will spare no expense to pursue his obsession and disdains all that disapprove of his fixation. She’s like the most rabid salesperson you can imagine run amok. Do you know anyone like that? Probably we’ve all met people like this. In fact, most of us have had periods in our lives where we were obsessed about a person, a TV show, or a hobby for a short time. Over the course of my life I’ve been obsessed at various times with books, hockey, hunting and basketball. However, most of us have probably not met many people who have been obsessed with the same thing or person for a lifetime. I think that the apostle Paul was such a man. He was obsessed with Jesus Christ for a lifetime.

At one point in his life he said, “I consider my life worth nothing to me if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.” On another occasion he said, “But whatever was to my credit I now consider loss compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ  Jesus my Lord… I want to know Christ…not that I have already obtained all this or have already been made perfect but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me… Forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what lies ahead I press on toward to the goal to win the prize for which Christ Jesus called me heavenward.” Not only was the apostle Paul an obsessed man, he also believed and taught that every Christian is to be obsessed with Jesus, just like he was. He goes on in that passage in Phil. 3 to say, “All of us who are mature ought to take such a view of things…Join with others in following my example brothers and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.”

It is this obsession with Jesus Christ that Paul writes about in the passage we are considering today. Paul is in prison in Rome when he writes 2 Timothy. Shortly after Paul writes this letter, he is executed by the Romangovernment for treason for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. Timothy is a young man, an apprentice of Paul whom he has left in the metropolis of Ephesus to be the pastor of the church there. Paul and Timothy relate to one another as father and son through the gospel. Their love for one another shines out of this letter. Timothy is not an aggressive person. He is somewhat timid. He is not as forceful as the apostle and is easily intimidated by others. This letter is full of exhortations and arguments to bolster Timothy’s confidence and to stimulate bold action for the sake of Christ. You can see this in v. 8 when Paul commands Timothy to not be ashamed of the testimony about Jesus Christ. In vv. 8-14 Paul gives Timothy four reasons as to why he ought to obsessed with Jesus Christ without shame. So today we are going to discover…

MAIN POINT

Christians are obsessed with Jesus Christ as he is revealed in the gospel, no matter the cost, because…

I. They expect to suffer (vv. 8 & 11-12)

The first thing that Paul commands Timothy is that he should not be ashamed of the testimony about Jesus nor of Paul, who is in prison because of Jesus. I want us to think briefly about what it is that Paul is commanding Timothy. Timothy is confronted with a number of very persuasive and articulate false teachers. He lives in the midst of a pagan and idolatrous culture. Everywhere he turns, there is opposition and indifference to the message he is to proclaim. His hero, his father in the faith is in prison. He is being seriously tempted to act like he is on the team that lost. He is under pressure to become despondent and disappointed, to be fearful and overwhelmed by the opposition. He is in danger of being embarrassed of the gospel and the church. He is in danger of losing heart in the battle. What is the opposite of being ashamed? It is being proud of Jesus. Paul wants Timothy to boast in the gospel of Jesus or to act like a man obsessed with the greatness of the testimony about Jesus. He wants Timothy to act like Packer fans have acted this week. Notice first that he must not be ashamed of the gospel but join in suffering for the gospel.

There are few worse things in life than having your expectations raised about some experience or person only to discover that the reality is nothing close to the promise. The greater the difference between the promise and the experience, the greater the anger, bitterness and despondency you experience. The woman who eagerly anticipates her marriage and is full of hopes and dreams of an attentive husband but who is then ignored or ridiculed or, in the worse cases, physically abused, will be crushed with disappointment and despair. That is why I view one of my chief goals in premarital counseling is to crush every idealistic expectation of wedded bliss that the happy couple entertains because frustrated expectations are the leading contributors to marital breakdown.

One of the things that the NT takes great pains to talk about is the suffering every Christian ought to expect to encounter. It begins with Jesus who tells his disciples that being a Christian requires that they deny themselves and live like men condemned to die by the cross. The Christian life is a dying, crucified life. As Deitrich Boenhoeffer, the famous pastor who stood up to Adolph Hitler and was killed for doing so said, “When Christ commands a man come follow him, he bids him come and die.” In addition, Jesus tells us that the world is going to hate us because the world hates him. One of the first things that Paul and the other apostles tell their converts is that they should plan on suffering for the gospel. (Acts 14:21-22, 1 Thess. 3: 3-4) This is so contrary to the message of the gospel that is in vogue in the churches of America. We don’t tell people that being a Christian requires that we love Jesus Christ more than we love our parents, spouses, children, even our own life. We neglect to inform people that God ordains that his children suffer in many different ways so that they can have a genuine faith and not be hypocrites.

See how Paul emphasizes the necessity of suffering for the gospel by calling himself, not a prisoner of the Roman government but a prisoner of Jesus. In other words, Paul views his imprisonment as the natural consequence of belonging to Jesus Christ. He is not surprised to be there. He repeats himself down in vv. 11-12, he says that God has appointed him as a preacher of this gospel and that is the reason he is in prison. He is simply saying what Jesus said, everyone who shares in the blessings of the gospel shares in suffering for the gospel. That doesn’t mean every Christian is going to be a martyr or thrown into prison. It does mean that every Christian should expect that they are going to suffer for the gospel in a variety of ways. You cannot be a follower of Christ in this world of sin and not expect to endure the loss of worldly pleasure and suffer the hostility of the world in assorted ways. If you are planning on going to heaven with a trouble free, pain free life, then you are living in a fantasy world. Either you have believed a false gospel or you are terribly uninformed about the nature of the gospel. Our Lord is a crucified Lord and as Paul says in another place, we are “co-heirs with Christ if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

  

Christians are obsessed with Jesus Christ as he is revealed in the gospel, no matter the cost, because…

•  They expect to suffer

•  And because…

II. They are stunned by the grace of God in Christ (vv. 9-10)

At the end of v. 8, Paul tells Timothy to plan on suffering for the gospel “by the power of God.” Paul encourages Timothy that he will be able to endure the suffering because God gives his power to his children to support them in their suffering. Then in vv. 9-10 he shows how it is that God’s power enables us to endure the suffering that comes with the gospel. He is making a greater to a lesser argument. If God is able to effect so great a salvation in the face of such overwhelming obstacles how much more is he able to support us in the midst of suffering for the gospel. Therefore, don’t be afraid.

What Paul aims to do in these verses is to display the miraculous nature, stunning power and awe-inspiring benefits of God’s salvation. He is showing why it is that Timothy can be proud of the gospel, why embarrassment is an irrational response to the gospel. It makes as much sense for a person who claims to be a Christian to be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ as it is for a Packer fan to be ashamed of the Packers winning the Super Bowl in 1996. It makes as much sense for a follower of Jesus to be indifferent to the gospel of Jesus as it does for Americans to be indifferent to Todd Beamer and the other passengers who fought the terrorists on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11. Let’s look at how Paul describes the awe-inspiring work of God in our salvation.

The first thing Paul says to display the awesome power of God is that he saved us. Whenever a person says they’ve been saved the obvious question is, what have you been saved from? The greater the danger and the more powerless you were to save yourself, the more joy there is in your salvation, the more glorious is the one who saved you. Do you remember those nine miners trapped underground when the mine flooded? They were huddled together in an air pocket, standing in waste deep water with no food, no drinking water and limited batteries in their flashlights. They were entirely hopeless. Their only way to escape was if someone else came to get them. I don’t remember how long it took, but rescue crews were able to bore a hole to them and rescue them from their plight. These men did nothing to contribute to their salvation, just as we have done nothing to contribute to our salvation. If you are a person who can say, God saved me, you are the most fortunate of persons. We were trapped in sin and destined for an eternal hell and then God, with no help from us, saved us. He bored through the hardness of your heart and raised you into a new life through Christ.

Notice though that Paul emphasizes not only that God saved us but tells how he did it and what the result of salvation is. First he tells us that this salvation is effected by God’s calling us. This is one of those occasions when Paul is referring not simply to the fact that we heard the gospel of Jesus but that God made the gospel of Jesus effective in our lives. He is referring to the fact that God not only commanded us to repent and believe the gospel but he gave us the desire and power to repent and believe. In 2 Cor.4: 6, Paul compares this call that saves us to the call of God that created light. In the beginning, there was nothing but darkness. Then God said, let there be light and light blazed into existence. Every person who is saved has had that same miraculous thing happen to them. Into the darkness and deadness of a human heart, God speaks and suddenly this dead heart is full of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Jesus was a nothing and a nobody to us but suddenly he becomes everything to us. We were blind to the greatness of God, the horror of sin and hell, then we heard the gospel and through it God gave us light to see our true condition and the glorious love of Jesus Christ. It’s the same call that Jesus gave to the nine-year-old daughter of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. He commanded this little girl, who lay dead upon her bed, “Little girl, arise!” Dead people cannot obey commands and yet she obeyed the command and arose. This is what happened to everyone who is a Christian.

Then the call of God results in a holy life. This is the evidence of the miracle. Rather than being taken up with sin and the pleasures of this life, we are now taken up with Christ and a life that pleases him. My dear friends, if you are a saved person, you are a walking miracle. There is no greater miracle in the entire universe than that a sinner is saved from sin and into a holy life.

Now Paul multiplies the astonishment by not only emphasizing the hopeless condition we were saved from and the power exercised to save us and the result of that salvation but he tells us that this salvation was not due to anything we ever did. Why did that community in Pennsylvania expend such effort to save those nine men? These were their friends and their family down there. Imagine with me a different scenario. Imagine that the nine trapped men were responsible for flooding the mine. Imagine they were terrorists. What if they had intentionally blown open that underground reservoir and intended to flood the mine and kill everyone it? Their plan had gone awry and they were trapped by their own misdeed. What if prior to this deed they had blown up the town hall where hundreds of townsfolk had gathered for the annual town party and dance? In short, what if these men were the worse sorts of criminals you could imagine? What if the rescue crews knew this is who they were rescuing and what if those doing the rescuing had lost wives and children and brothers in the carnage perpetrated by these men? What if they knowingly rescued these men, celebrated their rescue, gave them a parade, and treated them the way the actual men were treated? The wonder and astonishment we would feel at such a salvation would be overwhelming. We would have understood if no rescue attempt was made. We would have understood if once rescued they were arrested and given the death penalty. But to be rescued and rewarded and loved, that makes no sense. Yet that is exactly what Paul says about our salvation. We were rescued from death and hell and given a holy life, not because of anything we ever did, in fact it is contrary to everything we deserve. The cave we are in is a cave of our own making. The darkness of our hearts is a darkness of our own choosing. The deadness of our life is due to our own suicidal addiction to sin.

He tells us why weren’t saved then he tells us why we were saved by God. He tells us first it is according to God’s purpose. God is the one who determined to save each person who is saved. No human ever decided to be saved. God decided to save those who are saved. He did it out of, on the basis of his own grace. Contrary to what we deserve, he decided to save because he delights to show mercy and love to undeserving sinners. He gave us this grace before time began. In other words, every person who is saved, God determined to save prior to the creation of the world, prior to their existence. God’s love for his people is an eternal love. He planned to save us before he planned creation. Everyone who is saved has been the focus of God’s attention and mercy for eternity. Christian, before you existed God determined to shower his saving grace upon you and to save you.

When did this hidden and eternal purpose and grace become known? God’s grace towards his elect people appeared in its fullness when Jesus Christ was born into this world. It became known to each of his people when they heard the gospel and believed. Jesus is the visible manifestation of the eternal grace of God for his people. Jesus came into the world and effected our salvation by destroying the just curse upon us due to sin, which is death itself. By his death he destroyed death for all his people. Then he brought to light by his resurrection, life and immortality. It is the willing and voluntary coming and dying of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ that is the expression of God’s grace and the means by which we are saved and called into a holy life. Jesus’ life and death makes it possible for this just and holy God to forgive and reward with eternal life, criminals like us. How can we be ashamed of this great God and this great Savior and this great salvation? There is no place for despondency and faint heartedness. There is never reason to believe you have been abandoned by God. If you are a saved person, nothing and no one can harm you, which is Paul’s next point.

Christians are obsessed with Jesus Christ as he is revealed in the gospel, no matter the cost, because…

•  They expect to suffer

•  They are stunned by the grace of God in Christ

•  And because…

III. They are secure in God’s love and power (vv. 11-12)

God appointed Paul to announce this good news to all who will listen and it is because of his commitment to do so that he has suffered and is now suffering. He is suffering for the gospel. He is in prison and awaiting his execution for proclaiming this world shattering news. However, he is not ashamed of this gospel, even though it has resulted in his being thrown into prison. There are two reasons he is not ashamed. First, he knows God. From the human point of view, Paul’s condition is hopeless. He is in prison. Later in this letter, he says that everyone has deserted him, so he is alone. It would appear that God has abandoned him. There is no earthly evidence that God is caring for him or that God loves him. In fact, one of the reasons Paul uses the language of being ashamed is because of how this word is used in the OT. Throughout the OT, the idea of shame is not primarily the idea of being embarrassed. Rather, shame is connected most often with suffering God’s judgment against you due to sin. Paul’s use of this language does not simply refer to his emotional state. He is stating that in spite of appearances he knows that God has not abandoned him. His suffering is not the result of God’s displeasure or his judgment against him. He knows it because he knows God.

How do you know that God exists, that he loves you, that you have a glorious future ahead of you? Do you know it because you’re not sick or you have a good job or because you bought a new house? I’ll be quite honest with you. I am frightened by how much talk I hear among Christians that they know God loves them because of the earthly benefits we receive. It doesn’t take a supernatural work of God for a human to be excited about good health, sufficient money or many friends. Listen, every good gift comes from God. However, the ultimate and primary way that you know that God exists and that he is for you is because of what he has done for you in Christ. Paul knows that God is for him because contrary to what he deserves and against every expectation; God gave his only Son to die for his sins. God sent his Holy Spirit to him and spoke light into his dark heart so that he sees the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Second, notice that Paul knows that God has not abandoned him and he does not feel abandoned by God because he is convinced that God will guard what Paul has entrusted to him until the day of judgment. If you compare English translations, you will see that there is a divided opinion about what Paul means here. The Greek is ambiguous. He knows God will guard what Paul has entrusted to God or he knows that God will guard what God entrusted to Paul. In other words, Paul knows that God will keep him safe through all his trials and safely bring him to heaven or he means that he knows God will guard the gospel and even though Paul dies the gospel will continue to spread. I think he means both, that is why he uses the language he uses. Paul is confident that he will continue to trust in Christ and not deny him, in spite of his severe suffering and eventual martyrdom because he knows that God will keep him in the faith. God will complete the salvation he began. In addition, Paul knows that the cause of God, the salvation of all God’s people from all the nations of the world will be effected because God is going to guard the gospel and make sure that others take up where Paul leaves off. The church will spread over the face of the earth until all the scattered children of God are brought safely into the church. The God who sent Christ into the world to save his people will save Paul and will save all his people from throughout the nations of the world, even though Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, is in prison and about to be executed. Even though Timothy is a timid man and is confronted by false teachers and lives in the midst of a hostile and indifferent world, God will save all his people. God’s saving purposes in the lives of individuals and in the history of the world will not be thwarted.

Christians are obsessed with Jesus Christ as he is revealed in the gospel, no matter the cost, because…

•  They expect to suffer

•  They are stunned by the grace of God in Christ

•  They are secure in God’s love and power

•  And because…

IV. They experience Christ through the gospel (vv. 13-14)

Paul concludes this exhortation to Timothy by giving him two commands. In v. 13 he commands Timothy to keep or follow the pattern of sound words that he has heard from Paul. What is the pattern of sound words? Look back one page to 1 Timothy 6:3. “If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing.” What Paul is saying here is that there is a true doctrine that comes from Jesus to the apostles and then through them to us. Paul tells Timothy that he must keep or possess this true doctrine and reject every false doctrine. The verb that is used is the simple verb, “to have”. It is the verb of possession. The idea here is that Timothy is to thoroughly know, delight in, and have as his personal possession the true doctrines of God as revealed through Jesus Christ and contained in this book. He is to have his fingerprints all over this doctrine. It is to occupy his attention. He is to study and think about and work at knowing what has been revealed. Timothy is to be a student of the truth that has been revealed. This is the first duty of every Christian. We are to learn the gospel. We are not all called or gifted to be theologians and teachers but we are all called to study doctrine.

This is why we are promoting the use of a portion of the Westminster catechism. Let me say a word about what a catechism is and why we are using it. A catechism is a tool that has been used in the church for its entire existence. The method is simple. Doctrine is learned through a series of questions and answers with supporting Bible verses. There are dozens of different catechisms in existence. We have chosen to use the Westminster because it is one of the simplest and clearest expressions of Christian doctrine. There are over 100 questions and answers in the original catechism. We are currently learning just 48 of them. There isn’t a person in this room over the age of 5 who cannot understand and memorize the answers and verses to these simple questions.

I do not expect all of us to understand the complexities of every doctrine of the church, but all of us need to understand the basic teaching of Christ as it is contained in the gospel. As you know, I have spent thousands of hours in personal conversations with people about the gospel over the last thirty years. The most distressing conversations I have are those with people who have professed to be Christians for years but when I ask them to answer some of the most basic questions about the Christian faith, they cannot do so. What is sin? Why was it necessary for Jesus Christ to die in order for us to be forgiven? What is faith? These are basic questions that every Christian ought to be able to answer. These are things we ought to want to know. I have often felt like Martin Luther did when he wrote his shorter catechism in 1529. In 1528, he went into the villages of Germany to find out what was going on in the smaller churches. This is what he wrote when he came back and as the introduction to his shorter catechism, which is the first Protestant catechism:

“In setting forth this Catechism or Christian doctrine in such a simple, concise, and easy form, I have been compelled and driven by the wretched and lamentable state of affairs which I discovered lately when I acted as inspector. Merciful God, what misery I have seen, the common people knowing nothing at all of Christian doctrine, especially in the villages! And unfortunately many pastors are well-nigh unskilled and incapable of teaching; and though all are called Christians and partake of the Holy Sacrament, they know neither the Lord’s Prayer, nor the Creed, nor the Ten Commandments, but live like the poor cattle and senseless swine, though, now that the Gospel is come, they have learnt well enough how they may abuse their liberty. O ye pastors, how will ye ever answer for it to Christ that ye have so shamefully neglected the people, and have not attended for an instant to your office? May all evil be averted from you! You…never inquire whether they know the Lord’s Prayer, the Belief, the Ten Commandments, or any of the words of God. Oh, woe upon you for evermore!

Therefore I pray you for God’s sake, my good masters and brethren who are pastors or preachers, to attend to your office with all your heart, to take pity on your people, who are commended to your charge, and to help us to introduce the Catechism among the people, especially among the young; and let those who cannot do better take these tables and forms, and instruct the people in them word for word.”

Notice at the end of v. 13 that Timothy is to learn and keep this doctrine “in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.” In other words, the purpose and point of learning and keeping the doctrine isn’t so you can win Bible trivia contests. It is so that you can trust Jesus and love Jesus. You cannot trust or love Jesus if you do not know the truth of Jesus. Yet, simply knowing the truth will not guarantee that you trust and love Jesus. There are two errors to avoid. If I know true doctrine then I know Jesus. That’s no more true than the baseball fan who knows the stats and history of his favorite player saying that therefore he knows the player. At the same time, you cannot know Jesus if you don’t know the true doctrine of Christ. You can claim to know Jesus but when you show up at his throne on the judgment day you will simply hear those fatal words, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”

But not only is Timothy to possess the pattern of sound words about Jesus, he is to guard those words. The gospel is always under attack. Satan is out to destroy God’s work in the world through deception and so we live in a world full of competing claims about the nature of God and of Christ and of the gospel. There is a war going on in which ignorance and naiveté are the greatest threat. If you do not know the true gospel you will never recognize false gospels. If you think that just because someone uses the Bible and talks about Jesus he must be a Christian, you are in mortal danger. There is only one Christ who can save you and one gospel and to remain ignorant of it is to expose yourself to the danger of eternal hell by being deceived. This guarding of the gospel is done by the power of the Holy Spirit. There is a play on words between vv. 12 & 14. In v. 12 God guard’s both the message and the messenger and in v. 14 the messenger is told to guard the gospel. You must think, study, memorize. However, your only hope of being kept in the truth of the gospel comes from the supernatural, light giving work of the Holy Spirit. The only hope that your guarding will succeed is that God guards you and his truth by his Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s purpose, as Jesus said in John 16 is to take from belongs to Jesus and make it known to us. His goal is to make Christ appear glorious to us in and through the gospel. We must daily plead with him to enable us to behold Christ in the truth we study and learn.

Therefore, we study and we pray for God’s help that we may know, love and trust the true and living Christ who is revealed in this word. We turn off the TV and lay aside our hobbies and our work in order to spend time reading, studying and memorizing the truth about Christ so we can know him better. Let’s all of us, together, make it our goal this year to learn these 48 questions and answers so we can trust and love Jesus as he actually is.

Christians are obsessed with Jesus Christ as he is revealed in the gospel, no matter the cost, because…

•  They expect to suffer

•  They are stunned by the grace of God in Christ

•  They are secure in God’s love and power

•  They experience Christ through the gospel