Let the Lion Out (Part 2 of 2)

What does your church service look like?

What does it sound like? Is it entertaining? Is it boring? What about the teaching? Is the Bible clearly taught? Surprisingly, that's not the case in a lot of churches. And today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg identifies a warning and a four-fold directive for pastors to hold true to God's call to preach the Word.

So, to recap, the charge is solemn, it's straightforward. It is the inerrant Word that is to be preached, to be preached when the wind is with us, when all occasions do inform against us, and to be preached patiently and carefully. And the reason this is so important, Paul now sets before Timothy in the challenge that is his, verses 3 and 4. He's already been made aware of those who have swerved from the truth—that's in verse 18 of chapter 2—and now he's going to exercise the ministry in the absence of Paul, faced with people who are turning away from the truth and who are wandering into myth. The time is coming. It's always coming.

It's a recurring phenomenon. We quoted earlier from Moses' words in Deuteronomy 4, absolute clarity. As God speaks through his prophet to his people and he says, this wasn't a visual thing, this was an audible thing. This wasn't about what you would look and see, it was about what you would listen and hear. And what happened?

Well, they immediately went out. And they were intrigued by, attracted by, all kinds of visual possibilities. Instead of bowing before their Creator, they became Creators themselves, creating their own manageable little gods who would accommodate them—essentially, they exchanged the truth of God for a lie. And as Martin Luther observed, if a man will not have God, he must have his idols. So Timothy must be prepared for the times when, quotes, people will not endure sound teaching or put up with sound teaching. He's already exhorted him to follow the pattern of sound words.

And in the first letter, he had told them of those who teach a different doctrine, chapter 6, that does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ. This adjective, sound, is a very British adjective, at least in my background. As a boy growing up, I would hear of those who apparently were sound and those who were not sound. I never really understood it until I had grown up a little bit, and I realized that sound was essentially… it was a euphemism, a synonym for, they agree with me.

But no, not really. It meant they are orthodox in their view, their understanding of the Bible, and so on. Just one little anecdote as it comes to mind. I was preaching in Northern Ireland years ago, and my host was a little retired bank manager called T.S. Mooney, who was regarded as the sort of unelected bishop of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in the north of Ireland. He was a very funny man. He had all kinds of one-liners, and he was very devout and had taught young people—boys in particular—for fifty years in a Bible class up to the day of his death. And every evening as I spoke at this young people's convention in Londonderry, he would come into the little room in the back of the Methodist Church, and we would have a prayer together. He would pray very earnestly that God would help me as I preached and so on, for which I was very grateful. And then he would go out, and eventually the time would come for me to speak. And the first night, as I'd hardly got through—this is my title—and he was already in the third stages of anesthesia. He was gone. And it happened on a Monday night, it happened on a Tuesday night, and on the Wednesday—because we were living together, I was living in his flat. And eventually as I was driving with him, I said, T.S., I said, you know, every night you come in the prayer time, and you pray these earnest prayers, and then you go out, and you fall asleep every single night.

And he knew he was caught out, and he was a funny little man, and he looked at me and he says, Ah well, it's just like this, you see. I just stay awake till I know your sound. Now people won't put up with sound doctrine.

As soon as it goes sound, they have decided to exit stage left. Instead of availing themselves of teachers and of teaching that will make them godly, make them healthy, make them useful, they are now in search of the intriguing, the fascinating, the speculative, the spicy. They'll be more interested, he says, in novelty than in orthodoxy.

They will essentially seek out teachers who tell them what they want to hear. Now of course, this was not new information. This was not unique to Timothy's day. In Isaiah 30, we find God's people rejecting the instruction of the prophet, not because it wasn't clear, but because it was too clear. They didn't want him to stop preaching.

They just wanted him to preach in a manner that suited their fancy, that accommodated their passions. See, the real challenge for most of us is not that we actually stop believing the Bible. The real challenge is that we actually stop using the Bible, that we stop submitting to the authority of the Word of God in our own lives and in our proclamation. And listen to the way in which Isaiah 30 reads. They are a rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord, who say to the seers, Do not see, and to the prophets, Do not prophesy to us what is right. Speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path. Let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel. Now it's no new thing to encounter those who are in search of, and then proponents of, a spirituality that is actually disconnected from biblical truth.

That surely is the environment in which most of us are operating now. People tell us all the time, I'm a very spiritual person, I just have no interest in the Bible. I'm a very spiritual person. These individuals accumulate teachers, the way that, along the lines of the weak women that Paul has already mentioned in the letter, those individuals who were always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth, they accumulate them. You can just imagine that their Facebook page is just filled up with teacher after teacher after teacher. Did you hear this one? Did you see that one?

Oh, look at this one. They're tweeting while you preach. They're trying to find new information all the time. They have CDs from every imaginable place in the world.

You could line an entire trailer truck with them all, of all the information. But if you ask them, and what do you know of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, they know nothing at all. Now, they're always learning, but they're never able to come to a knowledge of the truth.

John quotes it, and it's worth re-quoting it, isn't it? An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction, and my people love to have it so.

Now, I have the unfortunate distinction of living in a city that has more losing sports teams than, frankly, is manageable under any circumstances. But far more devastating is the fact that in Cleveland we have the headquarters of arguably the most liberal Protestant denomination in America, namely the United Church of Christ. Their current marketing slogan, which is all around me as I drive in Ohio, is, God is still speaking. And the byline is, never place a period where God has placed a comma. We got that, actually, from the papers of Gracie Allen, a well-known theologian who was married for most of her life to the comedian George Burns. It all sounds very apropos, doesn't it?

It seems very accommodating. At a recent gathering in Cleveland, where representatives of the denomination, high-ranking representatives, clergy people, were arguing in favor of a gay rights agenda, a friend of mine happened to be going down on the elevator with this man and his husband, who had been there representing the church in this discourse. My friend, taking his courage in his hands, said kindly to the man, what do you make, sir, if I may ask, of Matthew 19, where Jesus said, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and went on to say, For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother, and the two will become one flesh? And my friend said, The man looked at him quizzically for a moment, and then he said, But of course we don't believe the Bible at all. Well, that's clarity, isn't it?

That's helpful. And yet those churches have people in them every single Sunday. Not many, mercifully. But it is in that environment that we find ourselves ministering. I say it without any spirit of condemnation. It applies far and beyond there.

It rings out sadly in my native land as well as in my adopted home. Well, the charge is clear, isn't it, verses 1 and 2? The challenge is great, verses 3 and 4, and so, verse 5, Paul says it provides him with an opportunity to display his character. This fifth verse adds four more imperatives to the five that are present in verse 2. Timothy is assigned a tall order, a man-sized challenge. Here in this fifth verse we have, as one commentator put it, a realistic statement of what Christian ministry is all about. Confronted by opposition, by isolation, it would be all too easy for Timothy just to throw in the towel, to quit the fight, to lie down in the grass, to exit the race.

But this is no time for self-pity. This is an opportunity to stay steady, to face whatever suffering may come, to keep on preaching the gospel, to complete the task. And so, without much elaboration, let's just notice this fourfold directive. Number one, always be sober-minded. He was surrounded by some who had become intoxicated with all of their mythological notions.

They had wandered away, they had drifted off. This wouldn't be a good time for Timothy to use a pastoral cruise control or automatic pilot. He daren't fall asleep for his own sake and for the sake of those under his care. He must be vigilant, so must we. He must be alert. He must be prepared to endure. He must make sure that he's not susceptible to the speculative notions, nor that he is unduly influenced by the numbers of people who flock in the direction of these kinds of teachers. Always, always be sober-minded.

Or in the NIV, keep your head in all situations. Secondly, endure suffering. Paul began his letter by inviting him to join him in suffering for the gospel. He's spoken about his suffering all the way through.

"'This is my gospel for which I am suffering,' he says again and again." Timothy would not have been able to recognize many of our approaches to what it means to be a gospel minister. In Paul's case, the suffering was obviously physical. In Timothy's case, it may not be. For many of our brothers and sisters in the world, it is physical.

For us, it may be more mental, more emotional, but it's real, nevertheless. As people chase around in search of a more politically acceptable gospel, there's a cost involved in guarding the good deposit. There's a cost involved to declare in public and then in private the Bible's assessment of man as being sinful and guilty and responsible and lost. It's hard to do that and say, Come in and bring your coffee and your donuts. We want you all to just have a lovely time this morning. Don't want anybody getting upset or anything. But by the way, you're sinful, guilty, responsible, and lost. Don't spill your coffee. You see, you can't do it.

You can't do it. And that's why superficial worship and silly introductions do not set the scene for decent biblical preaching. And half of the context in which worship takes place is so unlike anything that the Bible would regard as worship that it makes it far harder to actually bring any kind of solemnity or godness into the experience of the Scriptures. Timothy, you're gonna have to endure suffering. You'll be on the receiving end of accusations, the insinuations of the evil one who comes to deceive you, to discourage you, to derail you if he possibly could. As I read and reread this this week, I thought how often Timothy must have taken to himself the way you would take a piece of hard candy and keep it in your cheek. Take to himself the opening statement of Paul in his second chapter, Timothy, Be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. He would have said to it again and again, That's it, I'm strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Sober-minded.

Endures suffering. Thirdly, do the work of an evangelist. Oh, so Paul wants him to get a new job. He's in a change of role, is it? He's not going to be a pastor-teacher, he's going to be an evangelist.

I don't think so. Rather, he's reinforcing the charge to preach the Word. J. B. Phillips paraphrases it again, and you can tell I like J. B. Phillips' paraphrase, Go on steadily preaching the gospel. Go on steadily preaching the gospel. Be a gospel man, Timothy. If you're going to be known for one thing, be known as a gospel man.

Packer in The Quest for Godliness has that wonderful quote where he says, If one preaches the Bible biblically, one cannot help preaching the gospel all the time, and every sermon will be, as Bolton said, at least by implication, evangelistic. So that we are ultimately saying, We beseech you on Christ's behalf. Be reconciled to God.

You're not here simply to be informed a little, with a few practical tips to take home for conversation in the car. We preach to you, as McShane preached, as men who will soon die, to those who are on their way to death. Therefore we beseech you on Christ's behalf. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting our sins against us.

He who knew no sin became sin for us, that in him we might become the righteousness of God, that the only safe haven for the sinner is in the mercy of God himself. And when this begins to dawn on the preacher and on those to whom he preaches, then we're moving in the realm of useful, effective biblical evangelism. In my lifetime such as it is, I have watched, sadly, many good, godly, effective gospel ministers deviate from their course, either determining that it is now their calling to chase down the heretics so their ministry becomes one of denunciation, or simply to curse the darkness. Do you realize what a mess we're in? And their ministry becomes one of condemnation, or, at the same time, to embrace political agendas so that it now becomes politicization.

And what happens? The work of evangelism is not done. Timothy dared not neglect this work, declaring that the Son of God came to die for us and for our sins, that he offers to clothe us in his righteousness, that all that God has done for us, as Calvin said, is of no value to us as long as we remain outside of Christ. To misquote John Murray, the passion for evangelism—he said the passion for missions—the passion for evangelism is quenched when we lose sight of the grandeur of the gospel. He said, evangelical. And for some of you young men, let me just say this final word to you. Some of you have rolled over in your beds and discovered biblical theology.

And for that I rejoice. One of the incumbent problems that has come with it is that somehow or another you're stymied when it comes to pressing upon people the claims of Christ and the free offer of the gospel. Beware of this, loved ones.

Choose your mentors well, and listen again to Murray. It is on the crest of the wave of divine sovereignty that the unrestricted summons of the gospel comes to the weary and the heavy laden. This is Jesus' own witness, and it provides the direction in which our own thinking on this subject must proceed.

Any inhibition or reserve in presenting the overtures of grace should no more characterize our proclamation than it characterizes the Lord's witness. Finally, fulfill your ministry. Which in my case means, stop. Keep going, finish the job, carry on to fool the commission that God has given you in the secular Greek. The verb sometimes denotes the fulfilling of a promise or the repaying of a debt.

Well, I think we can finish there. Timothy had promised in his ordination, and so have we, those of us who are called to this task. Timothy was indebted to Paul, just as we are indebted to those who led us to Christ, who have nurtured us, who continue to encourage and inspire us.

Jesus, in paying a debt he didn't owe, kept his promise to the Father, and in turn he received the promise of his Father, granting him the nations as his inheritance. So perhaps an old mission hymn seldom sung can serve as our conclusion—do you know these words?—facing a task unfinished that drives us to our knees, a need that, undiminished, rebukes our slothful ease. We who resolve to know him declare before his throne the solemn pledge we owe him to go and make him known.

We bear the torch that, flaming, fell from the hands of those who gave their lives proclaiming that Jesus died and rose. And ours is the same ambition, and the same glad message ours, and fired with the same ambition. To you we yield our powers. The challenge that we face is clear. The character that we forge is in process.

The charge that we find is solemn and straightforward. I say to you, my brothers, let the lion out. Let the lion out. That is Alistair Begg with the final message in our Encore 2021 series. You're listening to Truth for Life. We hope you'll keep listening. Alistair will be back in just a minute to close with prayer. If you've enjoyed listening to some of Alistair's most requested messages from the past 12 months, I want to recommend to you a USB drive that contains some of Alistair's most popular teaching from the past decade. This is a collection called 10 Years of Favorites, and it's our most comprehensive compilation of Alistair's teaching. It includes 123 messages on dozens of topics from many books of the Bible.

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Visit truthforlife.org slash donate or call 888-588-7884. Now here is Alistair with the closing prayer. Father, thank you that your Word always accomplishes its purposes, and for this we are immensely grateful. We cast our bread upon the waters. O God, look upon us in your mercy and define and redefine and refine us, Lord. Prove us and reprove us, for in many cases we have less in front of us than we have behind us.

We don't want to waste our time or waste our days or besmirch your name, spoil in any sense the wonder of your amazing love. And we pray in your Son's name. Amen.

I'm Bob Lapine. Hope you enjoy your weekend. Hope you're able to worship together with your local church. Join us Monday as Alistair begins a series titled Lessons for Life. Find out why God's providence doesn't invalidate our choices. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.