Living Waters of Grace 01-28-2026

This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Lewis

Harold, assistant pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland

County in Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Lewis as he

continues teaching through God's Word.

He's basically saying, OK, look, for me, it's just about over.

I'm about to reach my goal, which is to be with Jesus

Christ. But for you, Timothy, I'm

passing the baton. And before I do that, there's

another charge that I want to give to you.

And he says, I charge you therefore before God and the

Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead.

It kind of gives you an idea of the weight or of the importance

of this charge. I'm sure you've never done this,

but you know, some people are pretty forgetful.

I'm sure you've never forgotten to do something that you were

asked to do by, say, your spouse or maybe your parents as a

child. But what if you had something

really important to do? What if you were given a task

that was a bit more critical than just taking out the

garbage? Today, Pastor Lewis wants to

convey to you the weight of those things that have been

commissioned to you from God himself in His Word.

Now here's Pastor Lewis in the Book of Second Timothy, Chapter

2 Timothy 4 · chapter mention

4, with today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.

I pray that you would speak, that you would preach to us,

that you would teach us your doctrines today, Lord, that you

would give us a picture of just what it is that you want to

share with us today, Lord, that we would go home changed, that

we will go home more in love with you, that we will go home

looking more and more like your Son Jesus.

Have mercy on us, Lord, extend your grace to us today.

Manifest your spirit. We need you Lord, we need you.

If you don't manifest your spirit Lord, then we have

gathered for nothing. So feed us in Jesus name we

pray, Amen. So we are in chapter 4.

Let's just start to read there beginning at verse one.

Paul says I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus

Christ who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing

and his Kingdom. Preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort

with all long-suffering and teaching, for the time will come

when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their

own desires. Because they have itching ears.

They will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn

their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables or

myths. But you be watchful in all

things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist,

fulfill your ministry. We're going to stop there.

As we go back and begin to just make comments.

I was just thinking about Paul as we get into this study.

Paul's coming to the end of his life and he continues to really

relish this time that he has. And, and he's alone at this

time. And I'm sure he's with his

thoughts and his thoughts are bombarding him about his life

and he's thinking about the things that he's experienced.

And even more so, he's thinking about the things that he can

impart to his son in the faith, Timothy.

And I was just thinking about Paul.

You know, if Paul was, if we were to see the highlights of

Paul's life in ministry, what would that look like?

Well, it would look, it would look entirely different from

what we see with these, with these athletes and, and, and the

people, the coaches and the people that are involved in the

NFL. It will look totally different.

Their highlights all glorify them.

It, it, it, it, it makes them look grand.

It makes them look great. Paul's highlights would probably

not be the same. When you watch the highlights of

a athlete you're thinking about, wow, wouldn't it be great to be

able to do that? Wouldn't it be great to

experience that? Wouldn't it be great to have

that in my in in my repertoire? But I don't think you would feel

that way about the things that Paul had to go through in his

life. You know, his highlights would

be glorious to the Lord and glorious to to heaven.

But to the common man, his highlights wouldn't be anything

that we would run into trying to do.

You know, we always say here, I always say here that, you know,

the Bible is not about great men who do great things for God.

It is not about that. The Bible is about a great God

who does great things through mere men.

That's what the Bible was about. So we don't glorify men as we

talk about the Bible, but we acknowledge the power of God

working through these men, just like we acknowledge the power of

God who works through each and everyone of you in your

ministries. Paul was a special brother.

There's no question about that. We call him the gospel

globetrotter. Paul's the one that went from

place to place and spread the gospel every single place he

went. But his highlights would be

about his stoning, getting stoned.

His highlights would be about enduring his persecutions.

It would be about being imprisoned.

It would be about being beaten, being scores.

It would be about him being dragged out of synagogues when

he's preached the gospel. His highlights would be about

calling out demons and calling out devils and preaching the

gospel to people and people getting saved under his

ministry. It would be about him setting up

churches and developing elders and all these special things

that Paul has done in the ministry.

And all these things didn't glorify him.

It glorifies the God who works through him.

And if we see how special Paul is, we have to acknowledge the

fact that Paul was working through the power of the Holy

Spirit. Every time he preached, every

time he prayed for somebody, every time he called out a

demon, every time someone was healed, he did it through the

power of the Holy Spirit. And we need to understand that

we too need the Holy Spirit in our lives and whatever ministry

it is that we are in. So Paul comes to the end of his

life now. And this is probably the very

last chapter that Paul will write ever that he will write.

This is it. This is it.

Paul knows that he's looking at his mortality, but yet his

charge was to a young man who he's going to be passing the

baton to. He's basically saying, OK, look,

for me, it's just about over. I'm about to reach my goal,

which is to be with Jesus Christ.

But for you, Timothy, I'm passing the baton.

And before I do that, there's another charge that I want to

give to you. And he says, I charge you,

therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will

judge the living and the dead. It kind of gives you an idea of

the weight or of the importance of this charge.

It gives you an idea of just how significant this urging is that

Paul is giving to Timothy. Look at the audience that he's

giving this oath to that he's giving this this testimony to.

He said, I'm charging you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now those are one, it may sound like it's two different people,

but in this in the Greek, this is actually one God and the Lord

Jesus Christ who will judge the living and the dead.

In other words, Timothy, I'm giving you this charge.

I'm giving you, I'm urging you to do something here.

And you have to remember, the one that I'm urging you in front

of is going to be the very same one that's going to come and

judge you as he's going to judge me.

So this is a very serious charge.

And what is that charge? It's the same charge that he's

been given Timothy all along. It's the same thread that goes

through this entire book, throughout the entire Pastoral

Epistles. It's the very same charge.

He says preach the word, Timothy, preach the word.

I can read this over and over and over again, and every time I

read it, it has significance to me.

Preach the word. He's telling Timothy, first of

all, what to preach, Timothy, preach the word.

Don't preach your experiences. Don't preach little short

stories. Don't preach clever lines.

Don't preach motivational speeches, preach the word,

Timothy, don't preach a word, don't preach A sermon, don't

preach a message. Preach the word, the word.

And and he's like I said throughout the entire Scripture,

this is what he's been encouraging Timothy to do.

And in First Timothy chapter 1 he says teach no other doctrine.

1 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

No other doctrine. In First Timothy chapter 3 he

1 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

said leaders should be able to teach.

In First Timothy chapter 4 he says, till I come, give

1 Timothy 4 · chapter mention

attendance to reading, exhortation, and teaching.

And then in Second Timothy chapter 1 he says, hold fast the

2 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

pattern of sound words. Second Timothy chapter 2 rightly

2 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

divide the word of truth and then in Second Timothy here in

chapter 4, he says preach the word.

So he has always encouraged Timothy to first of all stay

with the word and to preach the word because this is what Paul

did. No matter where he went, the

first thing he would do was walk into a synagogue and he would

preach the Word regardless of the circumstances.

And then he gives Timothy the conditions in which he should be

preaching. He gives him the conditions.

He says be ready in season and out of season.

There's two times, Timothy that you should be preaching this

word. Preach it in season and preach

it out of season. Those are the two times you

should be preaching this Word. It's not always convenient to

preach the Word, but you should preach the Word.

It's not always easy to preach the Word, but you should preach

the Word. The word that you're teaching is

not always easy to hear. But Timothy, preach the Word.

Preach the Word. Don't sugarcoat it.

Don't make it easier to go down. Don't put bread with it or some

other kind of sweet sauce to it to make it more palatable.

Timothy, preach the Word, preach the word, He says, be ready in

season and be ready out of season.

Do it all the time, he says. And the word should convince or

convict or correct. It should rebuke and it should

exhort. Every time one of us comes up

and teach this word, one of those three things should be

happening. It should either correct us.

It should either exhort us or encourage us or should warn us

or caution us. But the word should always have

impact is what Paul is saying. The word will always have

impact. And this is to be done with

long-suffering and teaching, or in other words, patience.

Paul is talking about patience because he understands that as

Timothy, as you speak to your congregation, everyone is not

going to be at the same place spiritually.

So people will need to be, you will need to be patient because

people are going to mature at different levels.

As we mature at different rates, we're going to mature

differently. So Timothy, be patient, but be

patient through teaching. Don't always want to just call

somebody out. Let the word change people,

Timothy. So do it through teaching.

Let the word help people to mature.

That's the importance of teaching the Word with patience.

And then he said for the time will come when they will not

endure sound doctrine. And that's why you should teach

the Word now, Timothy, because there's going to be a time when

there's going to be people who will not want to endure sound

doctrine. There will be a time when people

will want to not hear a word that convicts them.

They're not going to want to hear things that will hold the

mirror up to their lives and cause them to be able to see

what they look like or what we look like.

They might not want to hear that, Timothy, after a while,

they're not going to want to hear about righteousness.

They're not going to hear about holiness.

They only want to hear, you know, they're going to be

looking for people who will only teach the, you know, the

goodness of God or the mercy of God or the grace of God or the

love of God. They don't want to hear people

that's going to teach about the holiness of God and the law of

God or the righteousness of God. They're not going to want to

hear that. Want to hear people talk about

sin, things that I want to do. Don't call it sin.

That word sounds so bad when you call it sin, but it's things

that I want to do. They don't want to hear that,

Timothy. So preach the word because

they're not going to hear sound doctrine.

But because of but, but, but according to their own desires,

because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves

teachers. They'll just listen to the

teachers, Timothy, that they want to hear, the ones that's

going to make them feel good when they leave every time.

They'll never hear about things that I need to change in my life

or or never hear a word that convicts me or challenges me

about things that I'm doing or things that I'm thinking about

the way that I'm treating people about my unforgiveness.

They don't want to hear a word that challenges that.

They want to hear something that just makes them feel good, that

just makes them feel good, something that just motivates

them, you know, 5 steps to acquire, you know, to acquiring

wealth, 5 steps to a good marriage, 5 steps to, you know,

to, to really being able to excel in business, 5 steps to

making myself a better person. Hear things like that instead of

the things that the Bible teaches us about change, about

holiness, about the things the Bible teaches us about

obedience. They're not going to hear that,

Timothy. And then they said they're going

to turn away their ears from those things.

They're going to turn away their ears from the truth.

And they're going to turn to fables, turn aside to myths, to

fables, to turn aside to things that are not lined up with the

word of God. Turn aside to prosperity

teaching or turn aside to, you know, it being OK to live with

somebody or turn aside to those things that say everybody's

going to heaven. You know, turn aside to teaching

like that because it's easier for them to listen to as opposed

to being challenged through the word.

But then in verse 5, he says, but you Timothy, so he's

switching gears here, Timothy. That's what they that that may

be what they want to hear. That may be where the false

teachers are. That may be where people were

the unbelievers are or people who are being challenged in

their faith. That may be where they are.

But you, Timothy, as a pastor, I want you, Timothy, to be

watchful in all things. In other words, that that that

that word means to be sober in all things to be sober.

And there's a lot of things that can be intoxicating to us that

causes us to not think clearly and a lot of things that causes

us to not have self-control. To be sober means to have to

think clear and to have self-control.

To be sober mean to not be under intoxicating influence.

That's what it means to be sober, to think clearly, to act

clearly. But there's things out there

that we can listen to or things that we allow to get into our

hearts that will cause us to not think clearly, that will cause

us to not act under self-control, and it causes us

to act like we're under the influence.

We can be under the influence of bad things.

Intoxicating teaching can put us under the influence and cause us

to act that way. And he says, Timothy, be careful

that. Be watchful, be watchful.

The things that you allow to come into your ear gates.

Be watchful. Parents, be watchful.

The things that come into your kids ear gates.

Be watchful the things that come into your eye gates, the things

that you allow your eyes to look upon, David said in Psalms 119.

Turn my eyes away from empty things because he knows that to

look at things that are empty can be intoxicating and it can

change you. And he says, Timothy, I want you

to turn away from those things. Guard your ear gates, guard your

eye gates, guard your heart. For out of it are the issues of

life. So, Timothy, be careful and be

watchful. Be aware of the things that

people were saying around you, the things that people were

teaching. Be aware of that.

Be aware of the things that you listen to, the things that you

read. Be aware of those things.

You know, one thing, I, I, I look, you know, Pastor Clark is

very well read, very well read lot more well read than I am.

And there are books that can sometimes appear to be OK, but

once you get into them, you read them, you'll find out that it

that it's not that it does not line up with the word of God.

It does not. And a lot of times, before you

even have to open up the book and be exposed to that, Pastor

Clark will have known something about it in some degree.

I mean, it's amazing how many times that he's been able to

hear an author's name or hear a book that has that has come out

and he's aware of where that book goes, how that book

separates from the Word of God very well read that way.

We have to be careful of those things.

That's why it's so much easier to just stick with the Word of

God. We don't have to worry about it.

You know, if I swim in my swimming pool, I don't have to

worry about, you know, having to worry about any drop offs or any

surprises. You know, if I'm swimming in my

own swimming pool, you know, I have to worry about anything

that's going to surprise me. You know, I know what's in it.

I know what's in my pool, so I don't have to worry about it.

But if I'm swimming out there in some place that's open, where

anything can have access to me, that can be a problem.

That can be a problem. But he said be watchful in all

things. Then he says, endure

afflictions. And this is another thing that

has been consistent throughout Timothy's life and throughout

Paul's life as he has endured afflictions.

Paul can definitely talk about enduring fictions.

Back in chapter 3, we just talked about the afflictions

that he endured over in Antioch and in Iconium and in Lyster

where he actually suffered the stoning that took his life or

could have taken or we think that actually did take his life.

So Paul knows a lot about enduring afflictions.

And these are all along with these, you know, the commands

that Paul gave to Timothy. The first was breach the word

and the second is be watchful in all things.

And now the third here is endure afflictions and endure

patiently, not just go through them complaining, not go through

them, you know, murmuring, not go through them, you know, with

a bad attitude, but endure afflictions, endure it in a way

that it brings glory to God. When you go through changes on

your job that may afflict you, that may cause some discomfort

to your may interrupt the way that you do things on your job,

how do you do it? Do you do it with, by

complaining and murmuring? Do we talk about the boss?

Do we, you know, do we get with the water cooler crew and, and

put down the people who are making the decisions?

Or do we go through it patiently, just trusting the

Lord that he will work it out, that he will work it out.

That's what makes us different. That's what makes us different.

And so he says endure afflictions and then he says, do

the work of an evangelist, do the work of an evangelist.

Now the word evangelist is only mentioned three times in in the

Bible. The first time it's mentioned is

in the book of of Acts in chapter 21 where he refers to

Philip as an evangelist. The next time it's mentioned is

over in Ephesians chapter 4. When, when, when, when Paul

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

talks about the gifts that Jesus left with the church and one of

those gifts was an evangelist for the purpose of equipping the

Saints. And then of course, here in

second Timothy chapter 4, he mentions the evangelists or, or,

2 Timothy 4 · chapter mention

or evangelism. Now, evangelism is very

important. It's very important to the whole

gospel. It's the what they call the pre

salvation preaching is what they call evangelism, pre salvation

preaching because it's the, it's the word.

It's the one that introduces you to the gospel.

People were introduced to the gospel through evangelism.

And then, of course, once they become believers, they are

discipled through the word of God and they're learning the

doctrines and they're coming here and they're being taught

the gospel are coming other churches and they're being

taught the, you know, how to live the life that they were

just birthed into. But the purpose of evangelism is

to equip and encourage believers to share the gospel, to share

that good news and to live that gospel out.

He preaches the gospel and calls for repentance is what an

evangelist does. He calls for repentance.

He, he causes us or lets us know that we can repent and we can

turn from that old lifestyle and, and, and, and anyone who's

listening who have not given their hearts to the Lord or not

trusted Jesus Christ for your salvation, repentance is open

for you. It's available for you.

Evangelism is what we're doing right now is just sharing the

gospel. Jesus Christ died for your sins

and we are all sinners and Jesus Christ died for those sins.

He died for those sins and we all are sinners.

Everyone of us have sinned and I've come short of the glory of

God and that sin will have to be dealt with.

The wages of sin is death according to the word of God.

That's the wrath that unrepentant sinners have to face

is death. But Jesus Christ came and died

for our sins. He was buried three days, He

laid in the grave, and then he arose.

And that gives us our hope for eternal life.

Anyone who's listening who have not trusted Jesus Christ for

your Savior, you can repent right now.

You don't even have to say it out loud.

You can repent at home, but it's available through the grace of

our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

So he says, do the work of an evangelist and then he says,

fulfill your ministry, fulfill your ministry, finish your

ministry. You know, have your ministry,

you know, whatever it is that the Lord called you to do.

Here on Living Waters of Grace, we're in the books of First and

Second Timothy. Pastor Lewis Harrell is walking

us through these letters written from Paul to Timothy.

Toward the end of these letters, Paul is anticipating that his

time here on earth is coming to a close.

He's giving some final words of advice to his mentee.

Paul writes in Second Timothy 4, verse seven.

I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race.

I have kept the faith. Wherever you are in your journey

of faith with God, our hope is that you have the willingness to

fight for what's true, not compromising, but holding fast

to the Word of God. Paul was reminding Timothy of

this, and it's a good reminder for you and for me today, too.

For helpful input throughout this series, why not listen to

all of these teachings from First and Second Timothy on our

website? Go to calvarychapelonline.com to

access teachings, download our app, and more.

If you'd like to visit us this weekend, we'd be delighted.

Living Waters of Grace is a ministry of Calvary Chapel

Westmoreland in Greensburg, PA Come to our service held at

10:30 AM on Sundays. We're located at 400 E

Pittsburgh St., Ste. 6B. For any other information on our

weekly service, visit calvarychapelonline.com.

You can also join our e-mail list, give online, or submit a

prayer request right from the site.

If you can't make it in person, be sure to tune into Calvary

Chapel Westmoreland's YouTube channel.

Subscribe so you never miss new teachings.

We thank you for tuning in today and ask that you come back for

more solid and biblical teaching from Pastor Lewis right here on

Living Waters of Grace.