Be Steady

We are looking at 2 Timothy, you can find it on pages 1178-1180 of the red bibles.

When I was 22, I went to CMS summer school in Mount Tamborine, Brisbane. In my spare time, I read Paul's second letter to Timothy. I also had John Stott's great commentary open at the same time. I can recall growing to love this letter over those few days.

When I was a student at Moore College, I had a startup screen on my computer with these words, which came up every time I started up: "But as for you, be steady, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill all the duties of your ministry."

For the next couple of weeks on Sundays, let's look at Paul the Apostle to Timothy. It's all about ministry.

Now, you might wonder why Christ Church or any other church needs to know this. Is it relevant to churches? It seems to be a letter for specialists: the minister, the pastor. Maybe it's more appropriate for someone like Mawonga to explore the training of pastors. Is it actually relevant to a group of Christians?

Yes, it is, for a couple of reasons.

The Gospel is Everyone's Work

Firstly, the gospel is everybody's work. It's important that you know the sorts of challenges and difficulties that come with gospel ministry. You are well served in trying to think from the perspective of the pastor or your leaders. It's a good thing to try and get inside the head of the gospel minister to understand the pressures that your leaders are under—not just me, but everybody who leads. The pressures that missionaries are under, for example, the work in Africa. Knowing these things, you can also understand a little bit of the pressures that you yourselves can be under.

So, the gospel is everyone's work.

You might call a plumber for a burst pipe; you don't need to know about pipes, tools, or sealants. You might call an electrician for faulty lights; you don't need to understand voltage, conduit, and switches. But you do need to understand how gospel ministry works, because it's yours. It's not mine; it's yours.

The Shape and Principles of Ministry

Secondly, you need to know the shape or principles of ministry. Is it going to be Paul's pattern of ministry or Jesus' pattern of ministry, or is it going to be something different? And you yourself need to know these principles for your own life as well.

What does success look like in ministry? Is it just "dips and boss"—dollars in the plate, bottoms on seats? Is that all it is? How do you know if you're going forwards? Is there a framework that will help you to make decisions? Churches are complex organizations. Do we have any help to make these sorts of decisions? Do we have a framework?

Ultimately, you need to know ministry to appoint the right leaders, to recognize the right leaders, and how to train the right leaders, because the ministry is everyone's, and everyone is responsible for it in different ways.

When I move on from here, you will determine the future. It's you who determine that, not me. I was talking to a person a week or so ago, and they had come from a church where a new minister had just been appointed. This person said there's a group in this church who just want things to go back to the way they were. I thought to myself, I wonder what the previous minister would think about that, after all the time that he's put in, and people are just saying, "Let's forget that and go back to the way we were." So this is important.

Rethinking the Letter's Purpose

Now, I've got a question for you: When was the last time you changed your mind? It's a good thing to think about. It's not a bad thing to change your mind. I used to run a course for Year 11 students on critical thinking. One of the first things I'd say to them is, "Tell me something you've changed your mind over, and tell me something you don't think you're ever going to change your mind over." It's not a bad thing to be open-minded enough to change your mind on certain things, or are you just reinforcing what you think over and over again?

I'm actually changing my mind on what I think about this letter. I'm changing my mind on why I think Paul has written this letter. The general consensus for most people is they would say what Paul is doing here is he's passing on the message to this younger man, Timothy—the older guy to the younger guy, the more experienced man to the more inexperienced man. It's like a relay; he's passing the baton on to the next runner because he's running out of life; he's going to die, and he wants to make sure that it's passed on.

But it's strange that he would use a letter to do that because Paul and Timothy have worked together for about 15 years. What could he be telling him in a letter that he doesn't already know from this 15 years of association?

What if this letter was a rescue package? What if it was a rescue mission? Perhaps Timothy, the experienced worker, is being tempted to ditch the Paul method.

There are all these strong imperatives all the way through the letter:

• "Do not be ashamed." Maybe he's saying do not be ashamed because Timothy is tempted to be ashamed.

• "Share in the suffering." Maybe he's saying that because he thinks Timothy is tempted to take a different route.

Paul mentions a group of people who say the resurrection has already happened. It's a triumphalist position. Maybe it's a prosperity position. And Paul is anything but that; he's languishing in prison.

There is a section that speaks about the language of desertion; it's everywhere.

• In Chapter 1:15, he says "all in the province of Asia have deserted me."

• Chapter 4:9, "Demas has deserted me."

• Chapter 4:16, "no one stood with me."

Timothy, what are you going to do? Will you stick with me?

He gives in Chapter 2, as was read to us, these three pictures of the soldier, the farmer, and the athlete.

1. The soldier doesn't get involved in civilian affairs.

2. The farmer has got to be hardworking.

3. The athlete has got to compete according to the rules.

Timothy, what are you going to do? Are you going to go the way of the faithful soldier, the hardworking farmer, the diligent athlete, or are you going to go a different way?

The other interesting thing is Paul kind of subs him out. In 1 Timothy, he sends him to Ephesus, but in 2 Timothy, he says, "I'm sending Tychicus to Ephesus, and I want you to come to me." It's like he's taken him off the court and he's sat him on the bench. "We need to talk."

Maybe Timothy is tempted to take the easy road. Timothy, is it going to be hardship or ease? Is it going to be exclusion or recognition?

Three Imperatives for Ministry

Over the next couple of Sundays, I want to focus on three imperatives. The text is not a small piece of text; it's the whole letter.

1. Be steady

2. Be strong

3. Preach the word

Today: Be steady. Next week: Be strong. The week after: Preach the word.

If you want to turn over to Chapter 4, verse 5, you can see it there: "Always be steady." That's what the RSV version says. The NIV says, "Keep your head in all situations." I think they're the same thing, but "be steady" is shorter.

"Keep your head in all situations." It brings to mind that poem by Rudyard Kipling, "If..."

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, you'll be a man, my son.

Keep your head. Be steady.

In the old film from the 1960s, Zulu, there is a British commander watching a multitude of Zulu warriors coming towards them, and he is saying, "Steady, steady. Be steady. Don't panic. Keep your head." And Paul is saying that to Timothy: "Be steady."

Why Be Steady?

Why be steady? Well, because there are a lot of crosscurrents that could sweep you off your feet—a lot of weird and strange ideas.

See in Verse 3: "For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear."

They follow their "itching ears." There are a lot of strange ideas going around. People who just hear what they want to hear.

The tendency for us humans is to make a God who is going to agree with us. God is kind of like a divine echo chamber. That God is just saying what I think.

I used to have a toy parrot, a parrot you turn on, and when you talk to it, it tells you back what you've just said. And you can say to the parrot, "You're very handsome," and the parrot says, "You're very handsome." We can kind of do that with God, can't we? We just hear him say what we think we would like him to be saying to us.

Lots of weird ideas. So Paul says to Timothy in Verse 5:

• "Be steady."

• "Keep your head in all situations."

• "Keep the Bible open."

• "Hold the rudder."

• "Find North."

• "Keep telling them about Jesus."

• "Don't stress out."

• "Be steady."

He says in the chapter before, Chapter 3:4, people will be lovers of pleasure. They'll have no self-control. But he says in Verse 10, "You know my teaching, my way of life. Continue in what you've learned." Chapter 3:14: "Be steady. Keep your head. Continue in the pattern that you've learned from me."

It's strange that, in our world today, steadiness doesn't often get the attention it should, but it's so important. How often does a steady innings win the day, rather than the very flashy one?

Endure Hardship

If you're steady, if you can keep your head in all situations, you'll be able to endure hardship.

Someone might have said to trust in Jesus, and life will just be better. Not necessarily. Some things, the really important things, do get sorted out: the things between you and God, and often the things between you and other people. But there are no shortcuts.

We all want shortcuts. None of us want to endure hardship. That's why there are 26 million diet books on the market, all telling you this is the way to lose weight very quickly.

Life is not that simple. We want to have things easy, and that's promised to us: "You can have everything easy. Weight loss is easy. Make a fortune easy. Get the perfect look easy. Just 19.95, and we'll throw in the steak knives as well."

But life is a lot of work. Sometimes following Jesus is a lot of work. You know you're committed to a zone of discomfort, because he's not going to say everything that just agrees with me: "Just do whatever you want. That's fine. Idolize yourself? Sure. No drama. Greedy? Sure. No drama. Be selfish? Sure. That's fine. Be painful to your family? Sure." No, it is more difficult than that. This is not the sitcom version of reality.

In real life, things take a while. They take time. You know what it's like sometimes to press fast forward in a sporting match to go through the boring parts. But in the Christian life, there are no fast-forward buttons. There are some things you just have to get through. There is blessing and there is joy and there is life, but you need to get through some things as well. It's not often the coolest thing in the world to follow Jesus.

The Work of an Evangelist

Part of being steady is to do the work of an evangelist. That's the next thing he says: "Do the work of an evangelist."

This is not yelling at people and being obnoxious. Someone once said that it's just like one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.

"Look, I don't know much, but around the corner there is this guy. He's giving out bread. He seems like the real deal to me. Why don't you go and check him out?"

Look, in all humility, there is this man called Jesus. He really seems to know what life is about. He really seems to know what God is about. He really seems to have died and risen. Why don't you go and listen to him for a while? And there you'll find rest for your souls. That was true for me.

Fulfilling Your Ministry

And then lastly, he says under this heading of being steady: "Discharge all the duties of your ministry."

Sometimes I get a really bad case of the "I don't want to." Yesterday, I made an error while preparing and lost a good proportion of my material because I didn't save it properly. So I set the alarm for 5:00 a.m. this morning to finish, but actually woke up at 4:30 a.m. beforehand. As I lay there looking out the window, I thought to myself, "I don't want to do this. I just want to sleep in... Endure hardship."

Then it started to pour with rain, and I thought, "What if I just duck downstairs, open up my computer, and send out an email and say, 'Listen, everybody, we're going to call off this morning'?"

And then, often, my thinking goes like this:

• Do you have any new information that Jesus didn't live? No.

• Do you have any new information that Jesus didn't die? No.

• Do you have any new information that Jesus didn't rise from the dead? No.

• Is it true that by the proclaiming of the word of God, by telling people about the promises of God, that's how people put their trust in God? Yes.

• Is that how people come to believe in God? Yes.

• Is that how people become mature in their relationship with God? Yes.

• Is it true that that's how God's kingdom goes forward, through his word? Yes.

So, who is going to do that today if you don't do it? You need to get up and you need to get going.

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