“I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and because of his appearing and his kingdom: Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and teaching. For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths. But as for you, exercise self-control in everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We had our regular business meeting this past Wednesday night at church. We Baptists love our business meetings. Fun fact for you: When the Southern Baptist Convention meets for their annual meeting each June, that is the largest business meeting in the world. My guess is that if you have heard of the Baptist church, you’ve probably heard about Baptist business meetings. My further guess is that what you heard wasn’t very flattering of them. They are boring at best, and at worst they are prime examples of every negative stereotype about the church that you can think of. Well, ours aren’t like that. Instead, we get together and celebrate everything God is doing in and through our little body. This past week’s business meeting was particularly encouraging. In fact, we gave so much attention to celebrating what God has been and is doing in our midst that we ran out of time for me to offer a little concluding devotion. Here’s what I was going to say.

Isn’t our God good? We’ve spent the last hour just talking about and celebrating the ways God is moving and active in and through this church. Everywhere we look we can see His fingerprints on this place and these people. At every intersection we can see how He is directing us toward becoming more fully the church He has created us to be for the season we are in. I hope that what you have just heard has reinforced this fact for you in ways that are unmistakable. Can I offer you just one more bit of encouragement here as we wrap things up tonight?

One of the individuals we know the apostle Paul mentored as a man named Timothy. Timothy was a young man in whom Paul took great and intentional interest, and who he encouraged throughout his life. We have two letters from Paul to Timothy. The second one was written late in his own life, shortly before his death at the hands of what was likely the Roman Emperor Nero.

Deathbed testimonies are a big deal in legal terms. A deathbed confession, for instance, is given a great deal of legal weight; more weight, in fact, than one given when a person is young and healthy. The assumption is that a person in that stage of life has no reason to lie. They will tend to focus on getting out what is more important.

Well, in the final part of Paul’s second letter to Timothy, written very near the end of his life, the last words we have from Paul preserved down through history are what you just read at the top of the page. Let me put them here again to make sure you’ve read them carefully.

“I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and because of his appearing and his kingdom: Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; rebuke, correct, and encourage with great patience and teaching. For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths. But as for you, exercise self-control in everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

Paul is trying to encourage Timothy to keep his focus on the things that are most important in ministry. And he does this in light of the fact that one day Jesus is going to return, and we are going to have to give an account for how faithful we have been to His call and command to be His body, advancing His kingdom on earth. Did you hear the things he set before Timothy as most important?

We are to preach the word both in season and out of season. Before your write yourself off as not liable for that because you’re not the preacher, Paul is talking about proclaiming the word of God in word and deed. That’s something all of us are called to do. It’s something we have do here on a regular basis whether that’s my doing it on Sunday mornings, or one of our many terrific teachers in Sunday school classes and various Wednesday night Bible study groups. It is something you are a part of too in how you live in faithful, public obedience to Jesus’ command to love like He did.

We are to patiently and with teaching let people know when they are in the wrong (according to the Scriptures and not merely our own preferences and opinions). We have to do it with patience because people don’t usually like to hear that they’re in the wrong. We have to do it with teaching because our goal isn’t condemnation, but restoration and grace. We don’t merely want to show them they are wrong, we want to active teach them what is right. We are to positively call them forward to embrace the right instead of the wrong. To put that in more theological terms, we want to encourage them out of sin and back to walking the path of righteousness in Christ.

And we are to do this because there’s a time coming when people—and he’s talking about believers here, although this trend is by no means limited to them—won’t be interested in sound doctrine. That is, they won’t be interested in what is true and right according to the Scriptures. They’ll prefer to hear merely what they want to hear even if that isn’t even remotely consistent with the Scriptures. They’ll prefer to be told that how it is they are living is okay with God even if the Scriptures make clear it isn’t okay with God. They’ll want to have their sin excused rather than revealed and justly condemned. They won’t be interested in walking a path of repentance.

Well, there have been many periods of history in which this has all been true. People have never enjoyed hearing that they are in the wrong and need to come to the right. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that we are without a doubt living in such an historical period right now. Because of this, it is of the utmost importance that we get the Gospel right. Our culture is reaping the bitter fruits of living apart from the word of God. We must stand firmly on that word, but we must also stand with humility and love and kindness and gentleness. The truth is never to be a cudgel used to beat people into submission, but signpost calling and pointing people to the way that leads to life. If we don’t get this right in the church, showing why and how it is good, how will the lost culture around us know it?

In order to do all of this, we must be ready to exercise self-control…in everything. We have to have the moral honesty to acknowledge when what we want is at odds with God’s command to love one another combined with the moral courage to tell ourselves no. Jesus said clearly that anyone who wants to follow Him must first deny himself and take up his cross. Then we can follow. Until we do that, we won’t be following, we’ll merely be watching from a distance. We must be prepared to endure faithfully through hardships of various kinds. Jesus along with most of the rest of the New Testament authors assured us that following Him will not be a smooth and easy path to take through this life. He guaranteed we will face trouble. The world hated Him. If we look like Him in what we do and say, it’s going to hate us too. We endure all of this with faithfulness and courage, though, because we know what the future holds. And, while all of this is going on, we must tell others about Jesus, inviting them to follow Him as we do.

In the end, we must fulfill the ministry God has given us to do. Friends, God has given each person in this church a ministry to do to see the church built up and strengthened in the love of Christ. We can’t do all God has prepared for us to do in this community and beyond to advance God’s kingdom in practical, meaningful ways unless and until each of us is doing that ministry faithfully and well.

As we hear about what is going on in this body, and as we celebrate God’s work among us, rest assured that we are not finished. We are just getting started. God is just getting started on the great work that He plans to accomplish in and through us. It will take every single one of us, though, all fervently committed to do just what Paul says here, in order to see this great work come to pass and to reap the harvest God has already prepared for us. I, for one, can’t wait to be a part of more of His work in our midst. I hope you are ready to move forward with me.