Timothy: The Pastor's Primer

Almost every Christian alive has heard the famous quotation from Charles Spurgeon, the great English preacher, about defending the Scripture. Spurgeon said, "Scripture is like a lion. Who ever heard of defending a lion? Just turn it loose; it will defend itself." That oft-quoted word has a great deal of truth in it. Notice that it does not deny that lions sometimes need defending; it merely recognizes that the best way to do that is to turn a lion loose and it will defend itself.

The business of Christians in any age is to guard the truth which has been entrusted to them. That was the Apostle Paul's charge to Timothy in Second Timothy 1:14: "Guard the truth which has been entrusted to you." In Chapter 2 of that letter we are exploring four ways by which this is accomplished. As Christians, it is necessary for us to understand that must be done in every age.

In our study of the Apostle Paul's second letter to Timothy, today we come to a major division of the epistle. Paul has been addressing the question of how to stand firm as a Christian, how to maintain the truth in a world that is falling apart. That is a very relevant issue to our own times, and we have seen much of great help to us in this letter. But now, at the fourteenth verse of the second chapter, a new subject is introduced, because Paul is addressing a new tactic of the enemy. The devil is very clever in his attack upon Christians and Christianity.

I want to speak this morning to all who want to be used of God. I would suspect that deep in every person's heart here there is a desire that God might use him. That is a normal and a proper desire. There is no thrill like the thrill of being used of God. There is nothing that remotely approaches, in terms of excitement, satisfaction and fulfillment, the consciousness that one has been the instrument in the hands of the Almighty to do some of his work -- to change the direction of someone's life, perhaps, to prevent an injury, to resolve an argument, to answer a challenge, to heal a weakness, to rebuke a ruler, or to turn a nation.

When the Apostle Paul wrote his second letter to Timothy from his dungeon in Rome, he realized that Timothy was living in a world that was about to explode in conflict -- a world that was very much like the one we live in today. Timothy had another problem too: he was teaching a church which was threatening to split apart and divide into factions over arguments and divisions which were separating believers. So, in this letter, the apostle tells how to handle both of these problems -- how to live in a world that is threatened with conflict, and how to live in a church that is threatened with controversy.

There was a full-page advertisement in the Los Angeles Tim of thes last week that heralded in large black print, "Christ Is Already Here." The ad went on to say that Christ is now in some secret place on the earth, and that within two months a worldwide announcement as to where he is will be made over television and radio. Not only that, but this Christ will also be revealed as Buddha and several other major religious leaders of the past. I do not know who placed that ad. I do know that a full-page ad in the Los Angeles times costs tens of thousands of dollars; and, according to the advertisement, a similar ad was to appear in major newspapers all over the world. Somebody is either attempting to perpetrate a gigantic fraud, or else to arouse interest in some religious announcement that may perhaps launch a new cult.

Last week we looked at the passage in Second Timothy 3 which describes, in very graphic terms, the times of distress which will come repeatedly during this period of "the last days," that is, the period between our Lord's first coming until he returns again. Without a doubt we are going through one of those times of stress today. The evidence is visible on every side:

The question being addressed by the Apostle Paul throughout his second letter to Timothy is, "How can a Christian survive during stressful and pressure-filled times? In a world gone insane with hate and passion, amidst a race that is destroying itself with moral filth and shameless self-indulgence, in a church which 'maintains the form of religion but denies the power thereof,' how can a Christian maintain his integrity against the current of the day?" When these times of stress -- which the apostle describes so eloquently in the opening words of Chapter 3 of the letter -- come upon us with their pressuring, smothering, overwhelming push to sweep away our faith and destroy all that we believe in, what are we to do?

We are now approaching the climax of the Apostle Paul's second letter to Timothy. From the loneliness of his prison cell in Rome, and in view of his approaching martyrdom which he knows is coming, Paul addresses these solemn words to Timothy, who is far away in pagan Ephesus:

This is the time of the year when people are concerned about graduation, the time when seniors move on to bigger and better things, leaving their battered desks, their frustrated teachers, and their schools' academic and athletic honors in someone else's hands. We can all relate to that. All of us remember how thrilled we were when we learned in school that the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. We could not wait to get out and see if it worked in life.

Last week I was in San Antonio, Texas, teaching all of the Apostle Paul's thirteen letters in one week to a group of teaching leaders for Bible Study Fellowship. It was a great experience again for me to go through these fantastic theological explanations of the redemptive program of God, as they came through the mighty heart and mind of this great apostle.