Pastor Thanael Certa-Werner
Scripture | 2 Timothy 4:1-18 (NIV)
4 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 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. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
6 For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
9 Do your best to come to me quickly, 10 for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia. 11 Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry. 12 I sent Tychicus to Ephesus. 13 When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments.
14 Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done. 15 You too should be on your guard against him, because he strongly opposed our message.
16 At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them. 17 But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth. 18 The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Today, we’re wrapping up our series looking at 2 Timothy and how to endure. In the first week, we looked at how to endure and said that the three steps were to 1. Fan the Flame of Faith, 2. Know There Will Be Suffering, and 3. Guard Your Hope by The Power of the Spirit. The second week, we looked at staying focused. Our three points were: 1. Staying Focused on our Task, 2. Follow God’s Rules, and 3. Remember the Promise. Finally, last week we explored using scripture to choose to follow God. Our three points were: 1. You have to get dirty to get clean, 2. Scripture is Our Greatest Tool, and 3. Following God not me. This week we’re learning to endure by placing our trust in God.
Threshing the Harvest Failures
Have you ever been to a tractor pull? Or a farm show? I would go every year to a couple a year with my uncle in South Dakota. He loves tractors, and so we would go to look at all the different models and years. Every tractor we would come by, my uncle would make sure that I knew the name, the year, and the noise the exhaust would make.
These are bonified fairs. There’s food, games, exhibits, and car/tractor shows. One of my favorite parts were the steam engine exhibitions where old lumber mills and threshing machines would be hooked up to an old steam engine and used for the first time in forever. I love hearing the put-putting sound of the steam chugging out of the chimney.
What was so interesting to me, through the few years I got to go to these tractor pulls, was how they changed and didn’t change. One of the most remarkable changes always occurred whenever there was a drought, a bad harvest, or flooding. In those years, when the farmers had worked their hardest and come up with less than expected – one would think that there would be a dampened mood. But those years, the celebrations were heightened.
I came to realize that it was because of that hard year with lots of work, long days and long nights, that the celebration was that much more a celebration. Because the farmers and the whole community had made it through the terrible year and was already looking forward to the days to come. It didn’t mean that anyone there forgot what the year had been like – they all talked about it nonstop. Yet, they celebrated with each other at their making it through the hard times and the progress towards a new year and a new growing season.
Failures of the Church
Just like there are great harvest years and terrible ones for the farmers of our world, the same is true for the Christian Church. There are years when the harvest is huge – things seem to be working out left and right and no matter what you try, you can’t seem to fail. And there are other years, when it seems like nothing you do works. Nothing you try makes it through and the harvest is slim to nothing.
It’s not just years, it seems like the harvest can change from month to month. I know we have experienced these shifting experiences here at Bethany-Calvary – and Christians around the world and through all time share with us in that experience. As we turn to the last chapter in 2 Timothy, we see that Paul also experienced this sense of failure and challenge. Staring at verse 9, “9 Do your best to come to me quickly, 10 for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, and Titus to Dalmatia. 11 Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry. 12 I sent Tychicus to Ephesus. 13 When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls, especially the parchments. 14 Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done. 15 You too should be on your guard against him, because he strongly opposed our message. 16 At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them.”
If you want to sum everything up quickly, Paul is saying that he’s been abandoned by everyone but his closest friends. The churches which he helped to start are being corrupted and don’t trust him anymore. His friends and supporters have almost all abandoned him. He sits in jail while he’s writing this letter as he awaits his impending death. To say the least, Paul – the Paul who we know to be one of the greatest apostles, who brought the faith to Europe, helped shape our theology, and brought the Gospel to the gentiles – feels like a failure. When he looks around at all that he has worked to do, it seems like nothing has worked out. That is how his life will end. Paul will die at the hands of the Roman emperor not long after the letter. He would never live to see the fruit of the harvest he helped to plant, but the way in which he deals with this failure has enormous value in teaching us our final part in enduring through hard times.
Enduring Through Trust
The New Interpreter’s Commentary has a wonderful way of talking about this section. It says, “What is so refreshing about even that final jumble of complaint and request is its honesty – the unashamed confession of reliance on others, the note of bitterness at betrayal, the concern for precious belongings that might seem trivial to others, the lament of the lonely. As with the honest prayer of the psalmist, Paul makes no attempt to impress or excuse; his relief at being able to pour it all out even in this intimate little note is almost tangible. When communication between Christians and in prayer can operate at that level, then real fellowship, healing, and wholeness can be experienced.”
This last bitter ramblings of Paul about the state of the Church, the state of his relationships and belonging – they all harken back to a form we find in the Psalms. We know many different Psalms which aren’t so happy and wonderful. There are Psalms that talk about smashing the babies of our enemies against rocks. There are Psalms that cry out to God asking where He is. There are Psalms which proclaim that God has allowed for the enemies to surround and capture us. These kinds of Psalms are known as laments and they teach us, along with Paul, our final way of Enduring: Trusting God enough to be cry out.
We talk about trusting God a lot in the Church, and often when we talk about it, we’re talking about trusting Him to lead us in the right paths, or to be with us in hard times. But in this case, we’re talking about trusting God enough to be honest with Him. Hard times have that name because they are hard. Challenges and failures hurt – yet we often feel like we shouldn’t complain to God about them. Often, we just say that they are our trails or part of God’s plan for us – which means that we shouldn’t complain but just grin and bear it. But in the Bible, we see that the people who were faithful to God and experienced failures cried to God and to their friends about the situation.
As the commentary says, we can almost feel the relief Paul has in writing to Timothy and letting him know of the challenges he is facing. In the Psalms, it is clear that crying out to God opens us up to healing because of our opening up. In trusting God enough to handle all of our problems, no matter what they are, we open ourselves up to His intervention in our lives to help us endure because the reality is that the most important part of enduring is reliance on God.
Paul points to this as he says, “But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth. 18 The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
Seeing Things as They Are
Finally, the lesson we learn from Paul is that we cannot always see things as they are. At his death, Paul ends his life feelings like a complete failure. His only hope and trust were in that Jesus could use what Paul had given Him to bring change to the world. And that was what happened.
Sitting here 2,000 years later, it is easy to laugh at the thought that anyone could see Paul as a failure of a Christian – yet that is because the yields from his work are still being harvested to this day. And that is the reality of our work. What we do today has implications for the Church of 2,000 years in the future. The smallest bit of progress may be the bit that changes the world and wins over millions to Christ. So we must not let ourselves be discouraged – we cannot let fears or failures rule our decision making. Because the smallest victory is a victory – a win by one point is still a win.
As Paul charged Timothy, so he charges us: “I give you this charge: 2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 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. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.”
Let us keep our heads calm in all situations – always ready to turn to God in moments of happiness and sadness, hardship and ease. Let us go from this place to do the work of the Church – to make disciples and transform the world. Let us go ready to endure all things for the sake of Christ, for we know that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Let us go. Amen? Amen.