Preach the Word

We are going to focus on the first of those passages, which is from 2 Timothy chapter 4, the passage that Rosie read to us. 2 Timothy chapter 4—and that's found on page 1180 of the church Bibles—and this is the conclusion of our little series from 2 Timothy. Now I want you to think for a moment that if you knew your life was about to hit the "end button" and you could write, who would you write to and what would you say to them? If your life was about to be over and you could write to someone, who would you write to and what would you say? Well, that's Paul to Timothy in Second Timothy. The letter draws to some sort of conclusion and there are ominous signs. He says, for example, in chapter 4:6, "I'm already being poured out like a drink offering." That's a reference there to the Old Testament sacrificial system where, in the temple, an animal would be sacrificed and it would be burnt up on a big barbecue, and at the end, a cup of wine would be tipped onto the barbecue.

You can sort of picture the scene, can't you? Poured on and then up it goes, and Paul says, "I'm being poured out like a drink." He says, "The time has come for my departure." He says in verse 7, "I fought the fight" (that is past tense), "I finished the race" (past tense), "I've kept the faith." And then verse 9: "Do your best to come to me quickly." So it's serious; these are serious words. And you'll find, what is Paul's last word to Timothy? Well, it's all about a loving God speaking to a needy world, and that is the priority of God's people. Now you remember that Paul is in prison. I don't know whether you've ever been to prison. Have you ever visited anyone in prison? There was a time in my life when I did that regularly. Prisons are not very nice places, and Australian jails are pretty good compared to a first-century Roman jail. And as we've said, it seems like death is just around the corner, so it's a very, very solemn injunction that is about to come.

Look what he says in chapter 4:1—that's where we pick it up. He says this: "In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus." Paul knows he's in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus. That's a staggering thought really, isn't it? Paul says, "I'm in the presence of God." Right? He knows he's in the presence of a jail and perhaps a jailer; he knows he's going to die; he knows he's in prison. He doesn't say, "Hey, I'm in prison, it's terrible, get me out of here." He says, "No, I'm in the presence of God more than anything." It's beautiful. Paul is so aware of God's complete and utter involvement in every aspect of his life, even this. That is a life-changing truth in and of itself: to know that whenever you go, wherever you go, whatever you do, God is there with you. All your good, all your bad—there are no secrets, there is no hidden life, there is no life that you can hide from him. He knows it all, he sees it all, he's present with you. He knows you, he knows what you're like, he knows your heart and he loves you just the same.

That's the great truth that comes to us through knowing the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. So he knows he's in the presence of God—that's an amazing thing to contemplate. But more than that, he says he's in the presence of God because it's like he's calling God as his witness: "In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus." Now, you only call witnesses if it's an important matter. If it's not important, don't worry about witnesses. If it's an important matter, make sure there are witnesses. In the Anglican marriage service, for example, at the very beginning, the Anglican minister stands up and he says, "We've come together in the sight of God." In other words, this is a very important moment, it's a very important thing we're about to do, it's no small thing. He's calling on God as his witness. That's what Paul is doing here, and then he says, "In view of Christ's appearing." Again, it's a very, very solemn injunction: "In the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who judged the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom".

"I give you this charge," he says: "Preach the word." And you might immediately think to yourself, "Oh, this sounds so dry and boring. Is being in God's family like going back to school where you have to sit in rows and someone stands up and gives a lecture and gets cross with you if you talk to the person next to you?" Is that what we are talking about here? No. Paul is saying to Timothy, "Make sure you give them the healthy word of God because when people have the healthy word of God, that's how people believe." And when they've got the healthy word of God, that is how they know what God has done for them and how he wants them to trust him. It's the healthy words of God that do all the work. You might know that the Bible says of itself that it's kind of like food. You remember Jesus said, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount: "Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." It's kind of like food, it's kind of like sustenance.

That's why he says, "Preach the word." The pressure is on the pastor or the preacher to do something bigger and brighter and more showy than that, but Paul says to Timothy, "Just guard it." He says that in chapter one and he says, "Preach it." We didn't read it because we started at chapter 4, but if you just flick back a page and look at the end of chapter 3—there are no chapter divisions, by the way, nor any subheadings in the Bible, so the letter would have gone straight from chapter 3 into chapter 4. In the last few verses of chapter 3 he says this: "All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so the person of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." And then he says, "Preach it." Often we see that first section there about what the scriptures are and we think it's some sort of treatise, a dictionary definition.

But it strikes me that it's important that these early verses of chapter 4 come straight after chapter 3 and that Paul is saying that because he's concerned not that Timothy doesn't know it, but he just might be tempted not to do it. You need the word of God; you need to know how to trust his promises; you need to know how to walk his paths. Paul says to him, "Do it, do it in season and out of season. Do it when you feel like it and do it when you don't feel like it. Do it when your people feel like it and do it when they don't feel like it as well. Do it when you have the energy and when you don't have the energy. Do it in season and out of season. Do it when the trees are full of fruit ready to drop in season, and do it when the trees look barren out of season because what it will do is it will correct, it will rebuke, it will encourage." It's easy to preach just the encouragement, isn't it? Easy to preach just the comfort and not the correction.

But Paul says it's got to do all those things. It's got to encourage but it's also got to correct and rebuke in different times. The word of God itself is a great pastor because no matter what our situation, the word of God is going to pastor us well. And he needs to do it with patience—that means he needs to do it patiently; that means he needs to keep doing it. He may not want to do it all the time. And do it carefully as well; don't cut corners. You might like to reflect on what that might mean—what would it mean to do it patiently and carefully? So the scriptures that are spoken of here are good to read; they are very powerful. I could give you story after story of those who've simply picked up the word of God and read it and been persuaded by it. That was my experience; I wasn't in a church, I was given a Bible and I started to read it and I was convinced that it was true. I could give you story after story of that. It's very powerful. Paul's saying something else here.

He's saying someone needs to declare it; someone needs to preach it. It's a weak illustration, I know, but it's the best one I can come up with. When I was in my 20s, I was in a bookshop and I saw a copy of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a play. I picked it up and bought it and read it. I never actually saw the play, but plays are meant to be performed. Reading it is somewhat useful, and you can read it, but really you want to see it performed. Apparently it's on at the moment at the Sydney Theater Company if you want to go and see it. It's one of the things on my short list; whether I get to see it or not is another matter. But you get the idea: the word of God is designed to be preached—to be read, sure, but to be preached. Someone needs to stand up and say, "God says." It's important to read it and discuss it, but someone needs to declare it. When I went to theological college, we had about four hours of lectures each day.

Most of them were about the Bible, but we also had chapel for 30 minutes every morning where someone preached. In their mind, it wasn't good enough just to be studying the Bible; it was important as a congregation to have the word preached. And you might think to yourself, "Preach? That's kind of embarrassing, isn't it?" Today in the 21st century, isn't it sort of an embarrassing term? Essentially, what I am is a preacher. When people ask me what I do, sometimes I say to them, "I'm a student," because that's true, as you are. Sometimes I say to them, "I'm a builder." "Oh, what do you build?" "I'm working on a church at the moment." Sometimes I say, "I'm a preacher." I can remember once being at a party and I was talking to this bloke and I said to him, "What do you do for a living?" And he says, "I'm a criminal lawyer." That's not a lawyer who's a criminal; that's a person who defends criminals. And I said, "How do you go at that?".

He said, "Oh, you win some, you lose some." He said, "What do you do?" I said, "I'm a preacher." "How do you go at that?" "You win some, you lose some." St. Francis of Assisi, known mostly for his compassion and service, said this: "Unless you preach everywhere you go, there is no use to go anywhere to preach." In John Stott's terrific book called I Believe in Preaching, he quotes a number of different people, but an unlikely person in this context is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famous German pastor and theologian before the Second World War. Bonhoeffer says this: "For the sake of the proclaimed word the world exists with all of its words. In the sermon the foundation for a new world is laid here. The original word becomes audible. There is no evading or getting away from the spoken word of the sermon. Nothing releases us from the necessity of this witness, not even cult or liturgy. The preacher should be assured that Christ enters the congregation through those words which he proclaims from the scripture.".

Isn't that an amazing thought? John Stott goes on to mention lots of these, but one of them that caught my eye is three famous Methodist ministers, postwar London. I've never heard of any of these people—Sangster, Weatherhead, and Soper. Have you heard of them? I've never heard of them; maybe you can fill me in. He said they were famous for their three loves: Sangster loved the Lord, Weatherhead loved the people, and Soper loved a good argument. But preaching is important, isn't it? It's important because it causes you to sit still for a while and listen. It's a good discipline. As some of you know, I used to do this with teenage boys. They get very restless and it's almost like they needed a seat belt to hold them down, twitching away. It's kind of like they're there and they're going, "Is he done? Is he finished yet? Can I go out and have lunch now?".

As he said, "May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and..." Oh, just tricked you there! You thought it was over, but it's still going. I went to that school with a simple plan; I can only cope with simple plans. It was to say to those people: "God loves you, he sent his son, and you need to work things out with him. You don't have a lot of bargaining power because he is God." And that's my topic, and I'm just going to tell you that in different ways and we're going to explore that together. I'm a simple man with a simple plan. Some of you today might think to yourself, "Well, preaching, that is so old and so authoritarian. Don't you know that preaching is a very bad communication technique? Of course, we only remember 10% of what we hear." Well, actually that's not true; it's just one of those myths that people believe. There's no evidence for that. Or maybe you say, "Look, I'm a visual learner".

"I'm not an audio learner, or I'm a kinetic learner, that means I can't really sit still, I got to be moving around, or my attention span is only seven minutes." That's how long it is between TV ads, or YouTube videos only go for about seven minutes, and comments on social media only for a few lines, so "Make it fast." But it doesn't worry me because preaching the word of God will change the world. That is how God gets at people. There's a very important truth and it goes like this: Paul mentions it in his letter to the Romans. He says faith comes by hearing and how will they hear if no one speaks? Hearing what the real God has to say brings about faith; it produces faith. Up at the back you can check it out on the way out; there's a board with my name on it. There's my name and it says "2023 dash". Everybody else there has got a number that comes after... they have a number dash another number, but me, I've just got 2023 dash.

I don't know what my second number's going to be, neither do you. I just know that whatever that number is and whyever I'm here, what I have to do is preach the word because that is how God's kingdom goes forward. There's lots of things I could do, but if I do none other than that, that is the most important thing. That is what will change this group of people and the people who meet here at Christ Church Lavender Bay. Now you might have been watching online for quite a while, or you might be visiting here or have visited here in the past, and you might look around and you might say to yourself, "You know, this group doesn't look like it's going to change the world, or even this little corner of the world." But what I want to say to you is we're all on a journey together and we would love that you would join us in this noble experiment of sitting under the word of God and seeing where it takes us. I don't want to make life miserable for you, but I do like you all a tremendous amount.

And if Jesus is right, we're all going to appear before him one day and I want to make sure you're ready, so I need to preach the word. Timothy is called to some pastoral ministry—that's the point of what's going on for him—and there's lots of things he could do. What will he do and what will success look like? That's like the open question: which way will Timothy go here with this letter? In some ways that's like the open question that's being asked of all of us: which way will we go? It's the word of God that brings about the purposes of God; it's the word of God that causes people to trust God, to believe his promises. It's extraordinarily powerful to read it; it is extraordinarily powerful to hear it preached is essential. We can reach out to people, we can invite people, there's all sorts of things we can do, but unless we come under the word of God nothing else really matters. God speaks. Whatever God would condescend to speak to his creation, and yet God speaks.

Paul says to Timothy, "I give you this charge: preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season, with great patience and careful instruction.".

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