An Introduction to 2 Timothy - 2 Timothy 2:1-2

Second Timothy chapter one, second Timothy chapter one, we're just going to look at verses

one and two tonight.

We concluded first Timothy a couple of weeks ago and we're just going to continue on.

This is a relatively short book.

We'll should finish it up soon, but tonight we're just going to have a little bit of an

introduction just to kind of talk about what was going on, what had been going on.

There was some time that had passed between the writing of first and second Timothy.

So we're going to talk about that a little bit tonight.

Before we get started though, we will read our verses.

Second Timothy chapter one, verses one and two.

We'll read through the text, then we'll pray and get started.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by God's will for the promise of life in Christ Jesus.

To Timothy, my dearly loved son, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus,

our Lord.

Let's pray.

God, we come to you.

We thank you for these good words.

I pray that as we go through the book of second Timothy that you would speak to us, that you

would help us to see what's going on there and help us to see areas where it applies

to our own life, dear Lord.

I pray that tonight as we look at this introduction, that your Holy Spirit would be among us, that

you would hide me behind the cross, that I would preach and teach in a way that brings

glory and honor to you.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Now when we looked at first Timothy, we saw that Paul was writing a letter to Timothy

and Timothy appears to be serving in a role of pastor or elder, overseer, kind of a pastor

type role to the people of Ephesus.

That's where Timothy was.

And Paul writes this letter to Timothy and he says, look, there are some things going

on there that need to be addressed.

You need to hold these people accountable.

You need to teach them the right things.

You need to let them know that there are some false teachers out there.

There's some false teachings that are being said, things that are not true, that are not

biblical.

And you need to make sure that you point these things out.

You need to make sure that you are a good example to them.

You need to make sure that they establish good leaders, good deacons among themselves.

You need to make sure that people are trying to live a godly life.

Now whenever Paul wrote this first letter, it was probably about three or four years

before he wrote the second letter.

Now Paul wrote several letters in the New Testament that we see.

The earliest one probably being around 49 or 50 AD.

And the last one here that he wrote, which is second Timothy, and it probably was around

67 or 68 AD.

Now Paul wrote a lot of stuff in an almost 20 year span and lots of letters to different

people.

And as Paul was doing the work of God, he was somewhat of a missionary, what we would

call a missionary.

He would go from place to place.

And he would go and preach to people and teach to people and try to encourage people.

And there are lots of people that Paul mentions with him along these missionary journeys,

is what they're often referred to.

But ultimately, Paul was going to become in prison for what he was doing, for being a

Christian, for standing up for Jesus Christ.

He was going to be in prison.

Now there's a lot of things about Paul's life and about Paul's imprisonment and about the

details of his life that we don't really know.

It is generally believed by scholars that Paul may have served kind of two prison sentences

in Rome.

Maybe he was on house arrest for a while and released and then eventually put back in prison

again.

We don't know all of the details.

But by around 67, 68 AD, there was an emperor by the name of Nero.

He was a pretty bad guy.

He was a crazy guy.

And it was during this time that Paul ultimately was killed.

Now we don't see in the scriptures what happened to Paul, but tradition tells us that Paul

ultimately was in prison and he was killed during the reign of Nero.

And the last book Paul wrote was this book that he was writing to Timothy.

He was writing to him again several years after he had written to him the first time.

Now obviously Timothy is still doing the work.

He's still on mission for God.

And Paul is writing to him, giving him some final instructions.

Now whether or not Paul knew this would be the last thing he would write, I don't know.

Perhaps he did.

Perhaps he knew his time was short.

Maybe he didn't.

But nonetheless, he continues to impart into Timothy things that Timothy needs to know.

I believe that Paul probably knew his life was soon to end.

We see that in the language, maybe even a hint of that here in the first part of the

book, in these first verses we read.

Now you may remember when we saw in 1 Timothy that Paul gave Timothy some instruction and

some advice and he told him to fight the good fight.

He says, Timothy, you need to fight the good fight.

But then as we get toward the end here of 2 Timothy, Paul applies that same idea to

himself.

And he says of himself, I have fought the good fight.

And so Paul realizes, I believe, that his life is soon to come to an end.

And with that in mind, he's writing this letter to Timothy, which is likely one of the last

things that he ever wrote and certainly the last biblical book or letter that he ever

wrote.

And so he's writing these last words.

These are, if we could call it this, Paul's swan song.

That's a phrase we say.

That's the last big thing somebody does.

Maybe there's an actor and they're getting ready to retire and they have one last part.

They're in one last movie.

They're in one last show or a singer and they're going to put on one last concert.

It's going to be their swan song.

They're going on one more tour.

The last things that they're ever going to get to say, the last place that they're ever

going to get to perform in front of people, that they're going to have an audience.

And this is it.

This is going to be the end.

And one day that's going to be true for you and I. We're going to have our swan song.

We're going to be at the end of our life.

And maybe we will be like Paul and maybe we'll have some idea that my days are getting short.

And so I need to make sure what is important.

I need to make sure that I'm imparting some wisdom on the generations that are coming

after me.

I need to make sure to tell my kids what's important.

Tell my grandkids what's important.

I need to make sure to help them to be strong, to tell them to stand firm, to give them some

encouragement, to give them some correction, to give them some guidance.

Okay?

There's going to come a day for us that we're not going to have many days left.

We're not going to have many more things that we can say.

And so we need to realize that the things we say are important.

And we don't need to wait until our deathbed to do that.

We may not know what our swan song is.

It may be something that we do today or tomorrow or next week that might be the last thing

that we do or the last thing that we say.

That's why it's important that we pay attention to the things we do, the things we say, the

examples that we leave, because we're not guaranteed to tomorrow.

So we make the most of the time we've got.

We try to do the best with what we've got.

So here Paul was at the end of his life and he's trying to give these last words of wisdom

to Timothy.

Now he says here in 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 1, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by God's

2 Timothy 1:1

will.

Now it's pretty clear.

If we read anything of Paul's writing, we know that he is a follower of Jesus Christ.

He was opposed to Jesus Christ.

He was opposed to Christianity.

And then Jesus appeared to him and it changed his life.

And once Paul acknowledged Jesus, he began to follow Jesus and he became a great apostle

for Jesus and did great work for Jesus.

And so we see from Paul's writings that he is a faithful follower of Jesus Christ.

We see here in 2 Timothy as we continue along that Paul was in prison for Jesus Christ,

that everyone else has abandoned Paul except for Jesus.

He was all alone, but he knew God was still with him.

It's a good reminder as we prepare to get into this book.

It's a good reminder for us to pay attention to Paul's example.

One, to know that even if everybody else abandons us, Jesus will not abandon us.

And two, the work of Jesus is not easy.

The work of the Lord is not easy.

Now we might like to think that I'm a Christian, God is good, everything is going to be easy.

And if we're a Christian, praise the Lord.

And yes, God is good, but that doesn't mean that things are going to be easy, especially

in this day and age.

Now in the United States, we have it pretty easy.

We're pretty blessed.

We don't face much persecution for the most part.

That's not to say that people might not mock us or might not tell us we're crazy for believing

in God's word.

We might encounter that more today than we would have 20, 30 years ago.

But nonetheless, we have it pretty easy.

But we may not always have it easy.

There may be occasions where you and I are in a situation to where when we stand up to

do what is right, it may lead to difficulty in our life.

Maybe in this country, perhaps an opportunity for us to serve in another country.

We never know where we're going to be in the future.

We never know what we're going to be up against, but there may be a day that we are faced with

the decision of, am I going to stand up for the Lord or not?

Now quite frankly, we're really faced with those decisions every day.

Maybe not in the sense that somebody's coming at us and saying, either you renounce Jesus

or I'm going to chop your head off.

That's what Paul was up against.

And what did he choose?

He chose to die for Jesus instead of renounce Jesus.

And so Paul gives us a great example in life.

And so when we see here that it says Paul is a follower of Jesus Christ, an apostle

of Jesus Christ, who is one who is in Jesus Christ, he is one who lives that out to the

fullest.

He's ready to die for Jesus.

And ultimately, he would die for Jesus.

He said Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by God's will, praise the Lord for God's will,

that it's God's will that Paul would be saved, that it's God's will for us tonight, that

we would be saved if we would come to Jesus Christ and put our faith and trust in Jesus

Christ.

God wishes that all would be saved.

He desires that all would come to Jesus Christ, that all sins would be forgiven.

But not all are going to come to Jesus Christ.

But hopefully tonight, that's not any of us.

Hopefully we recognize that we are sinners.

We lie, we cheat, we steal, we say things we shouldn't say, we do things we shouldn't

do, we act in ways that we shouldn't act.

And so we're not very good people.

But God wants to make us into better people.

He wants to transform our life.

And so that starts with us saying, okay, God, I'm a sinner.

I need help.

Where does our help come from?

Our help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.

And that help comes through Jesus Christ, his son.

And Jesus died on the cross so that knowing that we were sinners, that we can acknowledge

our sin before him and say, I am a sinner.

I've done evil things.

Would you forgive me?

And we can be forgiven through Jesus and who he is.

And what a beautiful thing that is that God has provided a way for us to be forgiven so

that we may be saved so that our sins can be forgiven.

And then God can begin to do a work in us.

Once we come to faith in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit indwells in us.

And so we begin to look at God's word and we begin to come to church on Wednesday night

and Sundays and study God's word in all kind of areas.

Maybe we listen to our favorite preacher on the radio, whatever it may be, and we begin

to soak up the word of God.

And we begin to come together as brothers and sisters in Christ.

And God begins to work in us and begins to transform us and begins to help us to see

these areas of sin and weakness and temptation in our life.

And God begins to make us into the men and the women that he wants us to be in.

And we are ever work in progress here in this world.

God is always working on us, but we want to be those who are going in the right direction.

It is God's will that we would be saved, but we have to make that decision to put our faith

and trust in Jesus Christ.

And that's exactly what Paul has done.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by God's will for the promise of life in Christ Jesus.

Now, I don't know if Paul uses this kind of greeting in any of his other letters, and

maybe he uses this greeting in this letter because he knows his time is short.

And so he says, for the promise of life.

If Paul knows his life is short, if he knows death is right around the corner, he knows

that there's still hope.

He knows that even when we die in this world, even if he loses his life for Jesus Christ,

to live is Christ and to die is gain.

And so that's exactly what Paul lived out in his life.

He lived for Christ for years.

He went around and he did the work of God for years.

He wrote these letters that we have in our Bible that we read today and we study today

that we want to learn from today that we want to grow in today.

Why?

Because they hold the promise of life, the promise of life that comes through Jesus Christ.

And maybe Paul uses this greeting here because he knows that his days are going to be short.

And then he continues on to tell us who the letter is to.

It is to Timothy.

That's pretty obvious.

We get that from the name.

And so we look at a little bit of a backdrop tonight, a little bit of a background of what's

going on, what got us here.

Paul's been doing the work, things have gotten tough, he's in prison, he only has a little

while left to live.

And so he's writing these last words to Timothy.

He's writing his swan song, what he's going to be remembered for.

But thankfully, this is not just a one-time thing for Paul.

It's not like Paul had lived his whole life doing what he wanted to do.

And he said, okay, now I'm going to write one thing here at the end.

It's going to make a difference.

Paul had lived these last several years of his life doing the Lord's work.

And it didn't change when he got to the end of his life.

And that's the example that you and I need to follow.

We need to live our life every day doing the work of God because there's no way to know

what the last work we'll ever do will be.

It might have been what we've done today.

Did we do anything today that was worth anything?

Did we do anything to count for anything?

Did we do anything for the kingdom of God?

Well, we need to strive every day to do what we can for the kingdom of God.

Maybe it's something minor.

Maybe it's something major.

But every day we want to be those who live our life as an example, as Paul did.

So we can be those that say, I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ.

By his will, by his grace, by what he's done for me, I have been forgiven.

And I want to do the work to serve Jesus.

That's what Paul is doing.

And that's what we need to do.

Let's pray.

God, we come to you.

We thank you for your good word.

And I pray, God, that you would just help us to try to follow Paul's example, try to

follow Jesus's example, to try to follow the examples of brothers and sisters in Christ

that we see here in this world.

Dear Lord, I pray that you would help us to seek you in all that we do, dear Lord, that

we would seek to grow in you in all that we do, dear Lord.

We want to know you.

We want to know Jesus Christ.

But we don't want to just stop when we put our faith in Jesus Christ.

We want to continue to grow.

We want to continue to eat.

We want to continue to be nourished.

We want to continue to be used by you, dear Lord.

So I pray that you would help us to do so.

And as we read these words to Timothy in the weeks to come, that you would help us to learn

from them ourselves, to see areas of weakness that we may need to address.

And I ask these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Jesus Also, may the Spirit of Christ join you.