A Charge to Keep and a Ministry to Fulfill

Well, thank you for that lovely music.

And it's a privilege to be here.

When the kindergarten were dismissed, I wanted to go.

I'll put it to you.

I still feel uh like uh like that when I preach, right before I preach.

People at our church were surprised about that.

Now we'll take as our text on this joyful and solemn occasion, 2 Timothy 4, 1 through 8, for it's fitting that we remind ourselves of who we are and what on earth we're doing here and just why we're here.

And as Paul and Timothy were men of God, and they're drawing their strength from the Theonustos, the God-breathed word of God, to bring some sense of heaven to the people of God when they worship God on a Sunday morning, just as we do here.

We want to look at these two bookends.

The first being in verse 5, a charge to keep, and then verse 1, a charge to keep, and then verse 5, a ministry to fulfill.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge or is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

For the time is coming when people will not endure healthy or sound teaching, but having itching ears, if you could imagine that, itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to fit or suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

For I am already, passive tense, I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time for my departure has come.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the truth, I mean the faith.

Henceforth there is laid up 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 loved his appearing.

Well, Father, we pray that you would teach us what we don't know, give us what we don't have, and make us what we are not.

We pray you would give us, in the words of Samuel Rutherford, that you would feed us with hunger.

That we wouldn't hunger for something today that would transform us, namely the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit Spirit working by and with the gospel.

And we have a deep love for our brother and your church.

We're not our own.

We ask that you would come now in the power of the Holy Spirit, even pour out the Holy Spirit in revival in this area amongst the churches and the presbytery and do a new work, Father, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So here's the context: the churches were not doing well.

If you understand that Paul's writing from prison to Timothy, Timothy's at Ephesus, and the early letters of the book of Revelation tell us that the churches were not doing well in Asia Minor, and certainly not Ephesus.

Bishop Mule, an earlier generation commentator, wrote, Christianity trembled, humanly speaking, on the verge of annihilation.

So here's Paul, he's about to die, and he's writing to his son in the faith, Timothy.

And although Paul said in chapter 1, verse 11, he was appointed a preacher when he was young, he's now approaching death.

And he there's nothing like death to thoroughly convince you of what matters most.

And he's become convinced that the need of the hour in every generation is to preach the word.

And I feel like I'm preaching to the choir and yet I always doubt it.

Because I've seen people that really sway or move away from the word, at least an honest listening and an honest exegesis about life as it really matters to us in the heart.

And it's obvious that wherever the church has given primacy to the preaching or the expository preaching of God's word, there's been outpourings of the Holy Spirit that accompany it.

I came to Christ through the navigators and was um uh on Navstaff for a bit.

But level three here, I believe, is what Paul is talking about here that when Sunday worship exists, that the book is open, that people's eyeballs are on the book, that they're examining the text, that the preacher is opening up the word, that the word of God is put forth before people, and that Christ would be publicly portrayed, it's crucified as if before our very eyes, all over again.

And then it's then that the Spirit of God comes with a power, a waft of the supernatural.

And it's a beautiful thing to be transformed in the presence of God through the preaching of the word of God to the people of God.

Any cursory reading of church history, revival, the book of Acts tells us that this is the case.

And conversely, when preaching is more in the background, we enter again into the dark ages, into the Babylonian captivity, to use Luther's words.

And we become exiled, as it were.

And then someone discovers the book again, and then somebody suddenly opens up his mouth and preaches, and the radiance and the refulgence of Christ's beauty again is seen and felt in worship.

And in the darkest hours, just prior to the great awakening, two mothers, Mrs.

Whitfield and Mrs.

Wesley, had two baby boys.

The world was changed.

Well, small surprise then that the apostle's dying words to his beloved protege, Corum Deo, before the face of God, was a three-word charge.

Preach the word.

Preach the word.

And the gravity of the charge is brought home with such clarity that no one can fail to catch its solemnity.

In verse 1, we read these three incentives in light of Christ's appearing.

And we would note that this page, not one word of 2 Timothy, would be here if Christ hasn't hadn't risen from the dead and appeared to Paul and many witnesses.

So in light of Christ's appearing, and in light of Christ's rule and reign in his kingdom, and in light of Christ judging the living and the dead, and your hearers preach the word.

In other words, Jesus is coming soon.

Jesus is reigning supreme.

He's sovereign.

I was just in Sri Lanka last week.

And the word of God is spreading all over amongst the Hindu, the Muslim, and around the world.

I teach perspectives and world missions.

We had a missions emphasis during the Sunday school hour.

I wish you all could have been there.

This is a great time to be alive.

And Paul is saying, thankfully, to Timothy, way back when, when humanly speaking, the church was on the verge of annihilation.

Timothy, preach the word.

What a wonder, says Calvin.

What a wonder that salvation of others depends on the voice of a preacher.

Olin, this is the charge to keep.

Preach the word of God as a man of God to the people of God.

And what follows in verses two through five answers the question, how to do it.

And he gives four basic ways.

And the first is urgently, verse two, be ready.

Be ready.

The older generation used the word unction.

You're not an entertainer.

You're not to come up here and be funny.

It's not really funny times to live these days.

We don't need your charm.

And people who are witty and charming and humorous are sus.

Why?

Why?

Because what do the people leave with?

They leave and talk about what a nice smile he has.

I love my pastor.

What a charming man.

And Paul is saying to Timothy something quite different.

No.

This is Satan's temptation in Luke 4.

Fall off the pinnacle right before you go in there.

You know, and the angels, Psalm 91, oh, catching the last second.

You're preaching and sweating in your office before service, Olin.

And the devil tempts you do something spectacular.

And you remember the context that Jesus walked rather in an ordinary fashion to his hometown.

They almost threw him off a cliff.

There wasn't a lot of change that day.

And the charge is to be is to be kept by heralds who seemed to like run into a herald runs into a crowd and shouts for all he's worth.

Look, we're all going to hell.

The wrath of God is being revealed.

We all need to seek refuge through Jesus Christ in his blood.

Run, hurry, be saved.

And when people finish after a service like that, they they talk about not the preacher or the herald, but about their savior.

Now we live in a day where we say silly things like this, turn to one another and say, God wants you to prosper, or something like that.

And I remember when that fad came around, and it I've seen a lot of fads in 33 years as a as a preacher, prior from after my NAF staff experience, and it was all kinds of fads.

And I remember thinking, this seems kind of silly.

I don't even know my neighbor.

I'm sitting next to somebody snoring.

I'm supposed to say, your your uh God wants you to prosper.

And I wonder if we should say and turn to our neighbor and say, look, run, flee to Christ or your your mincemeat.

Now, people today are unaware of their sin.

They need a savior, and they need it very clear.

And only we live in a day of great confusion.

People have asked me when I go on mission trips, uh, because we have so many churches around here, I began to go on trips, at least short term, and have been to about 42 nations, and they'll ask me about Joel Olstein.

And I always say, Wow, if I had a smile like that and nice voice like that, I'd be something.

And I've heard him interviewed, and he says things like, well, he talks like you all.

Well, it's just fine.

I don't like to talk about sin.

I remind I'm reminded of the the land, they must have been campus outreach.

These men brought their friends who couldn't, this friend who couldn't walk, he didn't have legs that worked, and they they cut a hole in the roof and they dropped them down before Jesus.

Wouldn't that be something?

And Jesus opening words to the to the guy who couldn't walk, and his friends standing there like they accomplished something great was your sins are forgiven.

And you know, it's like, you gotta be kidding.

We did all this to get his legs healed.

No, your sins are forgiven.

And the the Pharisees were mad because nobody has authority to forgive sins except God.

And so Jesus obviously was saying, which is easier for me to say your sins are forgiven, or pick up your mat and take a walk, take a hike for the first time.

And he says, so that you may know that your sins are forgiven.

Because anyone could say, Hey, your sins are forgiven, have a great day.

But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins.

Pick up your mat and walk.

The older generation talked about unction, urgency, preach, be ready, that, that sort of spiritual something that is impossible to define, but you always know when you see it.

Secondly, to preach without wavering with the times.

Verse 2, in season and out, verses 3 and 4.

People will wander and go this way and that way with the times, Olin.

In my 35 years, the secondhand bookshops testify to these fads, the purpose-driven church, the this and that, and they're like leaves on wintry trees up north, just a few brown ones hanging around selling for a dime or a dollar.

And listen, it's never wise to exegete the people's desires and to preach what they want.

Rather, because you're convinced of the unwavering way that in exegeting the scriptures, you presuppose that God knows best what your people need.

Urgently, and second, without wavering with the times, thirdly, extensively in applications, verse two, four words to describe the applications.

Reprove.

You're wrong.

This is right.

Don't go there.

Go here.

Rebuke.

Not here.

Not now.

Exhort.

Let's move.

Let's go.

Let's obey.

Let's worship.

Teach patiently.

Long suffering.

Teach and teach and teach.

And then fourthly, we're to do it sensibly.

I get this from verse five.

As for you, one of those phrases in 2 Timothy and 1 Timothy often, but for you, you're differentiated.

As for you, always be sober-minded.

I like the NIV, it would say, keep your head in all situations.

Inappropriate behavior is always dangerous.

And Olin and all of us, as I'm preaching, who are preachers, you know the danger of cortisol.

The cocktail mix in our bodies, and when we're preaching.

I don't really feel it right now, but sometimes I do.

And the reason is the pulpit's like an airplane.

I mean, it's gonna take you way up on Sundays above the heavens and above the clouds, and it's like you're outside of yourself.

And then it brings you down Monday, crash landing in your office on Mondays.

And Lina, remember Katie Luther, Martin Luther's wife.

He was always depressed on Monday, and he would be at the breakfast table pouring salt and writing the letter B, remembering he was at least baptized.

And Katie came down one day dressed in a funeral outfit, all black.

And Luther said, Katie, my dear, what is it if someone died and I don't know?

And Katie said, Martin Luther died.

I used to get morning calls from Alexander the Coppersmith, who's mentioned in chapter four, who will go by that name.

And he was one of the elders when I began at 33 years old.

And he would call on Monday morning, and I would hold the phone like this, and he would tell me what a lousy preacher I was.

And I thank God for him because it took me back to this text.

Olin, keep your head, be sensible.

No, Alistair Beg uh did our wedding and had a big influence on me when I was young, but he would say, No, afterwards, don't have an award ceremony with your family.

If you preached a good sermon, don't gather around your Family and say, Well, no, everybody tell me what a good job that one was.

And he said, Also, don't have a funeral service where you go in the backyard and you're like, Oh, okay, grab hands.

We're gonna bury this one.

And your wife says, That wasn't your best.

Peter's first sermon was before three thousand.

Mine was about thirty people who gave me sympathy after.

Endure suffering.

True preaching is not for the faint of heart.

And God has given you a preacher, one of the best, and he needs your support.

True preaching is described this way.

The pulpit calls those anointed to it as the sea calls it sailors.

And like the sea, it batters and bruises and it doesn't rest.

To preach, to really preach, is to die naked a little at a time, and to know each time you preach that you must do it again.

Every Monday morning makes me cry.

I wanted to quit every Monday.

Pretty much did quit every Monday.

And I'd push my voicemail, and I had an elder and his wife who would call.

She was one of those ladies like that Wendy's commercial, you know, if someone preached and they didn't, they buried Jesus.

She would say, Where's the beef?

And she would say, Thank you, Pastor Bob, for preaching the word.

She gave my outline.

And then she'd sing a hymn.

Worst voice you could imagine, but would you do something like that for Olin?

Would you encourage him on Monday mornings when the airplane crashes?

So he'd keep his head in every situation.

Well, how are we to preach urgently, without wavering with the times, extensively, sensibly?

And you'll need to remain sensible if you're to endure.

And if you do the work of an evangelist, and that's pretty hard, isn't it?

All these campus workers going out to people who never asked them to come, raising money to go, and then they go.

The students sometimes don't care give a lick about them and sharing the gospel and facing rejection.

You have to keep your head in these things, and it can often be disheartening.

And I think of Rusty Milton, an example to us of an evangelist as a pastor.

Now, listen, most leaders in a church like this, and this strikes me as a very young congregation, tend to only make it up mountain one in an individualistic culture that you pretty much work hard and you're told if you study, and most of you seem very privileged in my mind, and you you make it up the top of the hill, and a lot of you look pretty successful.

And the next way is down and tragedy and self-centeredness.

And unless you have a rebirth, unless you you come along in humility, and unless you start to focus on being faithful in your marriage and loving others and self-sacrifice and giving yourself for the sake of others, you won't make it up the best mountain.

And meet with God.

We tend to overestimate what we can do in five years and underestimate what God can do in thirty.

So be sensible people.

And so the text begins with a charge to keep, but one senses as Paul's rushing, kind of flinging out smaller exhortations until he says finally at the end of verse 5, fulfill your ministry.

Olin, there's a charge to keep and a ministry to fulfill.

And in light of Christianity at that time, and in light of Paul's approaching death, we gaze down in his final words, and perhaps he's sensing with young Timothy that Timothy must have felt overwhelmed with the second half of his life without his mentor.

So let me just say a personal word to both you, Olin, and Lina, because I know from my wife when we gave the baton to our senior pastor and they ended up keeping us around.

There's something that both of you have that it's hard to name, a responsibility, a weight.

And CO supporters are here.

And some of us feel like empty nesters, as you soon are experiencing, the kind of an achiness and a sadness about you coming here.

And although we're absolutely thrilled for your life and ministry here, many hearts are still longing for you and know your absence in other spheres.

And so I just remember meeting you.

I remember meeting you, Olin.

You were so much younger, probably 20 years ago, and Ryan Akers was a young man, and now in Scotland, he's one of your missionaries.

And Seth Terrell, who's here, and a man named Clayton Dye, and Justin Hawar, I think, and and others.

I can't remember, but I would just say what a legacy you've left.

Thank you for your years of ministry.

And flying back that long ago, I remember asking two things.

Is this a faithful man I can invest in?

Second question was would you please pour out the Holy Spirit in your ministry wherever you are, that God would truly bring genuine revival again in our time.

And now, 20 years later, I find myself, after all this accountability and travels and co-laboring together and earnest daily prayers for your dear family and your children.

I found myself on my knees asking God to give the Cahaba Park Church leaders affections to fall on you to be the next senior pastor.

And God has answered that.

And so these final words of the apostles should fortify you with a sense of love and grace.

And we find them actually in verses 17 and 18, because I was looking for the gospel in this passage and I needed to go to verses 17 and 18.

And verse 17 says, kind of by way of testimony, Olin and Lina, the Lord stood by me that through me the message might be fully proclaimed.

The Lord stood by me, that through me the message might be fully proclaimed.

That's a good word, isn't it?

And then verse 18 the Lord will rescue me from every evil and bring me safely home.

I couldn't help but thinking of the love of Christ as rich and free, fixed on his own eternally, nor earth nor hell can it remove long as he lives his love, his own he'll love, he'll love you.

His loving heart engaged to you to be your everlasting surety.

Twas love that took your cause in hand, and love maintains it to the end in the last verse.

At death beyond the grave, he'll love in endless bliss.

His own you shall prove the blazing glory of that love, which never could from them remove.

And this is one of the beauties of pastoral ministry that I think you'll discover a bit more.

Because you're thrust into these situations that you never would have experienced in campus outreach.

I found myself in a hospital with a dead baby on the bed.

Or I found myself with a lady whose glasses are like Coke bottle lens, wanting to sing hymns until she finally came to faith in Christ.

Or taking my family to play, I think it's called Romy Cubes, with a lady that could only read lips, a widow, and driving home and thinking James 1.27 that this is true and undefiled religion, to love widows and orphans in their distress.

I've been with widows and those in death, near death.

One lady, it was like walking into heaven with her and her husband that she was in her last days.

This woman was so godly, I thought she was unfallen.

And she told me, she said, I'm so glad you came, Pastor.

The sense of God's presence was all over the place.

And she gave me Jonathan Edwards sermons and said, Could you, you got a PhD on him, could you read some of these?

And reading Edwards in the sense of the Holy Spirit was was quite impossible, actually.

But more particularly in verses six and eight, we are given a word for today.

That just as there was no greater thrill in those days as the Olympics, so today there's no greater prize than for you as a church to enter into the fight with agony, to enter the race that is worth running.

And so Cahaba Park Church, most of you appear kind of middle-aged, and you've run a fast race.

You're halfway.

The church is what, 10 years old?

Something like that, maybe older.

And so you've run well.

They asked Eric Little, what was the secret to your 400-meter?

Uh, the chariots of fire protagonists.

And uh he said, Well, I run the first 200 as fast as I possibly can.

And the reporter asked again, then how about the second 200?

And he said, The second 200, by God's grace, I run even faster.

Now, Olin and church, you've you've run well.

You've run fast.

It's a beautiful facility, and there's a lot of missionaries, a lot of wonderful things.

And you could look around and see all the people that have come to Christ, Olin.

It's wonderful.

But it's halftime.

I wish I had more years.

And can you say, by God's grace, I'll run even faster.

The passive tense is being poured out.

So how will you run?

How will you run, church?

I I try to understand um different parts of the country.

And here in the South, I I I I read uh of a southern gentleman, his book, and he said life shouldn't be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely, pretty and well preserved in body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and shouting, Wow, what a ride.

C.T.

Studd said, Let us make sure that we don't glide into heaven, that Satan throws a Thanksgiving celebration when we go off the battlefield.

So Paul, he gives us two things.

Verse 6, a departure is coming, where sailors are cut off mourn mourns and drift out to sea.

Pilgrims pack pitch the tent and head home.

A departure is coming.

And the second in verse eight, a crown of righteousness.

A crown of righteousness will be laid up on each head here, who know the Lord and love is appearing.

He will usher us out of earth's sorrows and usher us into heaven's joy and to see the beauty of Christ's face, which is the Father's great delight.

And for all who love is appearing, he himself shall crown each of us, a real righteousness, not the imputed righteousness of Christ, a righteousness beyond that, for those who run, for those who exercise pain and agony, for the kingdom of God and for his sake.

And for you, Olin, after keeping the charge and fulfilling your ministry, Christ shall lay on your head such a beautiful crown and making it all worthwhile.

And I close with this, and that's John Punyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

There's a point where Christian in the allegory comes to the interpreter's house.

The interpreter is like the Holy Spirit.

And the interpreter shows him this picture, and it's a picture of a grave man.

It's a picture of a man with his eyes lifted up to heaven, with the best of books in his hands, with the gospel truth on his lips, and he stands as if he's pleading with people.

And behind him is the world, and above his head is a crown.

And Christian asks, What does this mean?

And the interpreter says, the man in the pictures, this is, is one of a thousand.

He can beget children and travail in birth with children and nurture them himself after their birth.

And whereas you see his eyes lifted to heaven and the best of books in his hands and the gospel truth written on his lips, it is meant to show you that his work is to know and unfold the deep things of hope to sinners.

Just as you see him standing pleading with people, he is to do the work of an evangelist.

And whereas you see him with the world on his back cast behind him and a crown hanging over his head, it is meant to show you that in despising present comforts for the love he has for his master's ministry, he is sure in the next world to come to have glory as his reward.

Olin, you are one in a thousand.

And Lena behind every great man is a great woman.

You're a great Ezher, Jem, and you're both so blessed to be in this church.

So fight and run.

Agonize, preach the word and pray.

And you'll have a sense of what Charles Wesley wrote in his hymn: A charge to keep have I, a God to glorify.

Father, please use this word and thank you so much for presbyters here and the beauty of church government as unfolded in Acts, especially by verse 15 or chapter 15.

Thank you for this, dear church, and we pray that it would make sense to them that we are accountable and belong and connect to a graduation of courts, all being ruled by elders.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you.