Defeating Your Opponents

Now, throughout the beginning of this letter, Paul has urged Timothy to not be ashamed of him, an imprisoned messenger of the gospel.

He's bound in chains, he's awaiting his execution.

But it's not just to be one who is unashamed of Paul, the messenger, but he calls Timothy to not be ashamed of the message itself, a message which has caused Paul to be in such a state.

He's encouraged Timothy to guard the gospel that has been entrusted to him, because there are many who have worked to alter and to deviate from its essential message, and it's causing all of those who follow after them to swerve from the truth and to stray from godliness.

Paul calls him to be steadfast in good gospel work, to endure through persecution and trials, and to suffer well for the sake of the gospel, because it alone is the hope for all of humanity.

In this letter, I think Paul is working like a gospel coach for Timothy.

Right?

The spread of the gospel throughout the culture has created opponents of both the message and the messengers.

And so here in the close of chapter two, he's coaching young Timothy in how to defeat his opponents as a servant of the Lord.

Verse 22, he says this.

So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

Have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies.

You know that they breed quarals.

So Paul begins charging Timothy to flee youthful passions.

He's commanding him to take the greatest action necessary to ensure that he doesn't fall prey to the snares of what he calls youthful passions.

Now, this call to flee, right?

It literally means to seek safety in flight.

It kind of draws imagery to mind of when Joseph literally ran out of his clothes when almost entrapped by Potiphar's wife in Genesis 39.

Paul is urging Timothy, do whatever it takes, any means necessary, with a high sense of urgency, flee from these youthful passions.

You see, it demands that you would take whatever action necessary and do so with urgency so that you do not become a casualty to sin.

Now, Paul is specifically speaking about the temptation of youthful passions that may still be present in this maturing disciple's life.

Now, when we first read this, we may be tempted to interpret youthful passions as calling Timothy to flee sexual lust.

That's not what Paul's talking about.

There's nothing in the text that would make us think this way.

We're just reading over the passage and we're assuming things without truly trying to understand what Paul's trying to communicate.

He's not talking about sexual lust.

That's not mentioned anywhere with inside the text.

If we observe in light of the context, what Paul's really calling him to is flee, a tendency to engage in arguments as a part of his youthful spirit.

Do you know a person that can't help themselves from getting drawn in to arguments and debates?

Do you know a person who just constantly gets pulled into these situations of controversy?

You might be friends with half of them on social media, right?

And you just see they can't help themselves from commenting.

They can't help themselves from engaging, they just are so easily drawn in.

It's a sign of immaturity.

That's what we're going to discover here in the text this morning.

See, Paul is calling Timothy to do whatever it takes to escape from an aggressive, egotistic, headstrong arrogance that so often takes up residence in the heart of youth.

Paul's telling Timothy that he needs to grow up.

Ultimately, that's what Paul's communicating here.

Timothy, you gotta grow up.

Because you're not conducting yourself in the way that a servant of the Lord ought to.

You're getting sucked into immaturity.

He needs to stop engaging with opponents the way that he used to when he was young and immature.

He now needs to grow up in such a way that he would engage them as one who has matured in his faith and his character.

And now is more faithfully expressing the character of a servant of the Lord.

But Paul isn't just charging Timothy to run away from something, he follows this command with a charge to run toward something.

He says, pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace.

You see, these four virtues are set before Timothy here in the passage as the mark and measure of maturity.

These youthful passions, Timothy, that you're supposed to flee from.

You're supposed to escape as if in flight.

You're gonna run toward these things, these four virtues of righteousness, faith, love, and peace.

You see, they're set before him in this stark contrast of youthful passions.

Righteousness, the first virtue, is a call to live in faithful obedience to the godliness that the gospel establishes for us.

It's centered around our identity.

It's inviting us to live out the new man that has been created in us by the grace of God and the power of the Spirit.

It calls to mind a similar letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to Titus.

In Titus 2, 11 through 12, he says this for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

Too often we approach grace and obedience as if they're in contradiction to one another.

But it's grace that allows us to be joyfully obedient.

They work in harmony with one another to bring us into maturity in conformity to Jesus, whose grace saved us.

He then goes on to speak of faith and love.

Faith and love are the inseparable attributes of Christian life that move us into right relationship.

Think about this for a moment, right?

Faith, it moves us into right relationship with God, and love moves us into right relationship with others.

These two virtues are supposed to be fostered in our life that we might personally know ourselves and call others into the full living that the gospel presents to us.

Finally, a servant of the Lord is to relentlessly pursue peace, to live harmoniously with all around them, even those who are in outward opposition to the message and its messengers.

It's a virtue that resides in contrast to the quarrelsome nature that we're being charged to flee, to live a quiet, gentle, and kind life.

That as we're going to see later in the passage, the Lord actually may be using that life to bring an opponent of the gospel to faith and repentance.

What we must take notice of is this that there is not an expectation to pursue these virtues in isolation, but they're pursued in community with others who desire to see them fostered in their own life.

He says, along with those who call on the name of the Lord from a pure heart, to immerse ourselves in community, striving together with others who are putting in the work to see themselves mature beyond their youthful passions and live among the culture as people of righteousness, faith, love, and peace.

Paul concludes this opening charge with this have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies.

You know that they breed corals.

I believe it's as though Paul's elaborating on the very nature of youthful passions, defining them, describing them for us as foolish and ignorant.

That they create a propensity of getting drawn into these controversies that fail to cultivate the peace that we're called to live, and instead they just breed corals.

You see, foolish being the opposite of wise.

What does it do?

It produces nothing fruitful, foolishness produces nothing useful in its efforts, because foolish behavior is the enemy of relationship.

We see throughout the whole book of Proverbs how the fool constantly harms the relationships that he's supposed to be having in his life.

Relationship with his parents, the relationship with his spouse, relationship with the people in his city.

It is the fool who is the enemy of relationship.

Fools get drawn into quarrels and arguments that only foster strife and discord.

I think one of the proverbs that sets this out before us most clearly is Proverbs 18, 2.

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.

Relationship takes listening and understanding.

Relationship takes a sense of being willing to meet them where they're at and seeking to understand what they're trying to communicate, understand the pain and the sorrow and the experience of their life.

It takes you being patient with them and seeking to listen in such a way that draws them near.

But what does a fool do?

A fool just wants to get his opinion across.

He just wants to tell you what he thinks.

He doesn't really care about what you have to say or how you feel or what you're experiencing in this life.

No, he just wants to tell you you're wrong.

And that doesn't foster relationship.

He goes on to say, ignorant, right?

It's foolish and ignorant.

Ignorant literally means stupid.

I like Paul.

He's like, these people are fools, they're stupid.

Now, Paul seems to be emphasizing the nature of the argument.

Or perhaps I would submit he's actually elaborating on the nature of the person who engages with it.

I think what this passage is communicating is that those two realities, the nature of the argument and the nature of the one who engages with it, are not mutually exclusive to one another.

Foolish, stupid.

You see, the end result of youthful passion, immaturity and foolishness, it's the absence of fruitful relationships.

Such behavior only produces spoiled fruit that propagates dissension.

And so the charge being made here is ultimately this it's the ruthless rejection of all that makes you an opponent to others, and the relentless pursuit of loving your opponent for the hope of their ultimate good.

Let me say that again.

Here's the charge Paul is making it the ruthless rejection of all that makes you an opponent to others, and the relentless pursuit of loving your opponents for the hope of their ultimate good.

Let's talk about kindness, this call to kindness.

Paul's gonna use it here in the text, verse 24.

And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

Here's what Paul's calling us to.

We're gonna refuse to be an opponent, and we're gonna resolve to love our opponents.

We're gonna refuse to be an opponent, we're gonna resolve to love our opponents.

The Lord's servant is a person of relationship.

They work to remove any hindrance that would hinder the relationships in their own life for the sake of the gospel and those whom the power of the gospel might redeem and restore into right relationship with God.

If we're gonna be a person of opposition at all in our life, it will be to live in opposition to a posture of immaturity that prevents us from having sincere and fruitful relationships with others.

If we're going to be in opposition with anything, it is the remaining indwelling sin and immaturity in our own life.

We must refuse to be bound by the immaturity that makes us opponents of others and instead resolve to be kind and patient as we walk with those around us to an understanding of the truth.

This is where Paul's going.

He tells Timothy first, be kind to everyone.

No matter how antagonistic they are, no matter how obnoxious they are, what we have to refuse to do is get drawn in to their foolishness.

We cannot allow the absence of their kindness to create a reaction from us that would ensnare us into the temptation of which Paul's calling us to flee from.

Right?

He says, our aim here must be to be kind to everyone, not to try and destroy them or to shut them down in our own power and strength.

I think what the language actually speaks to is meekness.

Right?

Meekness is this.

Here's where maturity comes into play.

Meekness is your own awareness of your capability.

You know what power you have, you know what strength you have, you know what wisdom and understanding and knowledge that you have.

And you got two options with it.

You can wield that power to destroy others, or you can wield that power for their ultimate good.

Those are your options.

Meekness does this.

I know I have the capability of destroying you, but I'm going to wield the power that I have for your ultimate good.

That's Christ.

Why was Christ meek?

Because he could have trampled us under the heel of his boot with a spoken word.

He could have destroyed creation in every person who bared his image.

But what did he do?

That power of one word that could have ruined us, he brought life.

He wielded it for our good.

He was aware of his capability.

Many of you are like big toddlers who just storm around and trample on people.

You're not even aware of the power that you have within you.

And you're just harming people all over in your life.

The first step to maturity is an awareness of what you're capable of.

The second step is choosing intentionally to use that capability for the good of those around you.

That's kindness.

It's rooted in meekness.

There's a significant aspect of kindness that demands that we're aware of what we are capable of and consciously choose to use it for the good of another.

Second thing, we must also be able to teach.

Last week in verses 14 through 21, we covered in detail how we are to work to present ourselves before God as one approved to rightly handle the word of truth.

That reality would demand an ability to teach it and to actually transfer that truth to others.

All right, one thing about engaging with opponents of the gospel or of its messengers is that we have to be able to open our mouth and declare the truth.

It's not about backing down, it's not being quiet, it's not being gentle isn't being a pushover.

It's being able to transfer and articulate the word of truth to others around us.

It's necessary in the way that we engage with opponents.

He says then patiently enduring evil.

Patiently enduring evil.

I think this three-word phrase is the one that rattled me the most in my studies.

Because it literally means this bearing evil without resentment.

Can you think back to how wicked you were before Christ?

The sin that you fostered, that you expressed, that you embraced in your life before Jesus.

And then think about the patience, the long-suffering he endured with you to bring you to repentance and faith.

It's no doubt that we are steeped in a culture of evil and wickedness.

And Paul says that a servant of the Lord patiently endures such things.

A servant of the Lord refrains from people's unkindness to create a reaction, to be patient towards their foolishness, to even be tolerant of their shortcomings.

This is what a servant of the Lord does.

He understands that they are ensnared by the enemy, that they are remaining and bound in darkness, that they have the mind of a fool.

They don't understand.

They haven't been brought into the light of his glorious grace like we have.

They have compassion and a sense of empathy and understanding for the place that the world is in because we were in it once.

That was me.

That was me who railed against God's truth.

It was me who blasphemed his name.

It was me who was in opposition to the glory that he deserves.

That was me.

That was you.

Praise God, he was long-suffering and patient with me.

And what do we want to do?

We want to come in like some bulldozer and just run people over because we're impatient with the state that they're in and the logic and reasoning that they try to navigate the world with.

Well, duh, they're fools.

They're ignorant.

And we're only not that to some degree.

A lot of us still are, right?

Because the Spirit has made us alive.

You don't have any reason to boast.

You have no reason to take pride in the state that you're in today.

It is by the grace of God and the power of the Spirit that you are where you are today.

That's why we can be patient in enduring evil.

You see, our opponents, they're functioning out of a deep-seated foolishness and ignorance.

And we ultimately have two options before us.

We can either get drawn into their own game.

That's what Paul's calling Timothy to stop, to get away from, to run away from this.

Don't get drawn into their own game.

And the only way that we do get drawn in is because we're too immature.

And when we do that, we end up ruining the possibility of relationship.

Or number two, we establish a healthy distance between our character and theirs.

And we draw Them in relationship by the way that we're kind and gentle toward them.

You want to know what's going to be the standout aspect of the church in the culture today?

It's men and women who are firm in their faith.

And when the foolishness and recklessness of the culture is going wild, you're not getting drawn into it with them.

You're standing over here with this steadfast calmness.

And you're loving them.

Hey, look, I understand you're angry.

I understand you're confused.

I understand the pain and the experience that you've gone through.

I understand those things.

Come here.

Let me be gentle and kind.

Let me wield the power and the strength that I have for your good.

Let me bring you into relationship.

Because here's the reality.

We can either become an opponent or we can resolve to love our opponents.

Now, why would this work of building relationships through kindness and gentleness even matter?

Right?

Why would we work to this end?

The second half of verse 25 and 26.

God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.

Here's what Paul's saying.

Think about that for a moment.

The way that you engage people around you, are you hindering or are you helping the work that God might be doing in their life?

Think about that for just a moment.

Because our work is to set the stage for God's work.

Here's the reality: you can try with everything in you and all your intellect and reasoning and all your philosophical thought or your biblical knowledge.

You can do anything that you possibly can to try and beat them at their own game and destroy their argument and win the debate and be able to crush them where they stand, right?

You can do all of that.

But what's the fruit in that?

Number one, we have to realize we make a really bad Holy Spirit.

You trying to force them into some type of repentance and conformity to your faith and understanding is not going to produce life.

It's the Spirit's job to make them alive.

It's the Spirit's job to give them a new heart.

It's the Spirit's job to bring them understanding.

It's the Spirit's job.

Your job makes space for the Spirit to move.

How do you do that?

You're gentle, you're kind, you speak the truth, you correct in gentleness, you build relationship with others.

You see, the why behind all of this is that God actually may be using your relationship with that individual to liberate them out of the bondage of sin and Satan.

You see, it's God who grants them repentance, not your eloquent argument.

It's God who causes them to be awakened out of their own foolishness, not your ability to reason with them.

It is God who causes them to embrace life-giving truth.

But here's the mystery.

But he calls us to, he invites us into his mission.

But it isn't your relationship alone that God uses, right?

It's not just being nice for nice sake, it's not just having relationship for the sake of relationship.

It necessarily and rightly incorporates your ability to teach and correct with gentleness.

You have to open up your mouth and declare the truth of God's word.

You see, the phrase used here that Paul says, come to their senses, it actually means for them to come to sobriety.

This is what we have to understand.

This is what's going to foster compassion, biblical empathy in our hearts.

That our opponents are intoxicated by foolishness.

Our opponents are ensnared by the inebriating lies of the devil.

And we are sent as messengers of truth, servants of the Lord, as he uses us to grant them freedom from their bondage.

What a beautiful reality we get to live in with the God of the universe.

Yet many of us struggle to engage with those around us who oppose us, the messengers, and the gospel, the message that we carry.

Because ultimately, I think we fail to engage our opponents in maturity.

We fail to engage our opponents in maturity.

I think this has been a struggle for the church from the very day that the gospel was delivered to us.

We allow our immaturity to dictate the ways in which we engage with an opposing culture, and in that we are often very frustrated by the absence of fruitfulness and mission that we experience.

I think one of the ways that we engage the culture in immaturity is this way: we cower from our opponents.

We cower from our opponents.

I would submit that there's actually two ways that we tend to do this within the church.

The first way is this we simply remove ourselves from engaging with the culture because we have both observed and we have experienced its hostility toward the truth of God.

And so what do we do?

We cower from the culture and we become insular within the church community in this form of anti-kingdom self-preservation.

We become hyper-homogenous in the way that we live our life, in the relationships that we have, in the engagement that we have with others.

We become so insular.

What we're really doing is we're functioning in an anti-kingdom state for the hope and belief of some sense of self-preservation.

We cower from the culture, living more functionally like separatists who believe that the foolishness of the culture somehow has more probability of negatively affecting us than we do of bringing positive transformation to it.

We are the light that dispels the darkness.

We are the life that overcomes the death that plagues the culture.

It is the Spirit of God in us, the truth of His Word that fills us.

We push back all that stands in opposition to the glory of God.

We don't have to cower from this culture.

I believe the second way is by misunderstanding what it means to be a missional church.

A sacred mission, we would say we are missional, meaning this: that we meet the culture on their turf and on their terms while we work to build intentional relationships with those who don't know Jesus.

I'm not expecting the world to come to me on my turf and on my terms.

No, no.

The way that the gospel advances forward is we meet them where they're at.

And we build relationship with them and we declare truth and we correct in gentleness.

This is how the gospel has advanced since it was handed over to the church in the book of Acts.

They went where the people were, they met them where they were at, and they delivered the truth of God's word there.

Yet I believe that one of our shortcomings of the missional movement is that we have misunderstood the nature of the relationships that we are called to form with others.

As I said, it's not relationship for relationship's sake.

We aren't building a relationship with them to win them over to ourselves.

And that's what it's shifted into.

If I can just be relevant enough, if I can just be cool enough, if I can just present myself in a way that they would actually, like me, maybe somehow during this process of relationship, they'll think Jesus is cool too.

That's not what we're called to.

And the missional movement has shifted from being gospel-centered to man-centered.

And if we can just find a way to hang out with them at the local brewery and they think that we're cool, we've done a good job.

But we're missing something.

And even Paul's charge to Timothy: the ability to teach and the correction in gentleness.

At some point in time, within the relationships we build, we have to open our mouth and teach the gospel of Jesus.

We are building relationships with them to win them to Jesus, not to win them to ourselves.

And that relationship demands truth, it demands correction.

But it demands those things drenched in kindness and gentleness.

You see, if we take the passage here in regards to those who oppose both the message and the messenger, there is nothing in this about cowering away from them.

We stand firm.

We don't run and hide.

That's not the church.

It's about how we're to engage when we work to teach them and correct them.

The charge is to press in, not to cower from.

Secondly, I think some of us we work to conquer our opponents.

We work to conquer our opponents.

So the other side of immaturity deals exactly with what Paul's writing to Timothy about.

Many of us, we care significantly more about winning the argument than we do about winning the person.

We have to recalibrate the way that we look at other image bearers.

That's a soul before you.

That's someone who is ensnared by Satan himself.

That's someone you're supposed to have pity and compassion on.

They're an image bearer of God.

They deserve dignity.

They deserve for you to love them.

You see, we get drawn into their foolish immaturity, and we fail to represent what a true and faithful servant of the Lord is actually supposed to look like.

Now, I know many of you in this church, and some of you may be thinking as you hear me say these words, well, Pastor Justin, what about Paul's second letter to the church in Corinth, where in chapter 10, verse 5, he says, We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.

You've probably used that in your apologetics class, or you've joked with others about how some unbelieving person was owned in this debate or confrontation or argument that you watched on one of your social media reels.

Well, let's talk about it.

Paul saying we destroy arguments in every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.

If context is king to a faithful biblical hermeneutic, then we have to seek to understand the context of what Paul is speaking to.

And in that passage, Paul is speaking directly to his own warfare against the flesh and any remaining ungodliness in himself.

Study it.

Paul says, Did we not live as those among you who served you?

Who sought to destroy the arguments and any lofty opinion that raised itself against the knowledge of God?

Did we not work to take every thought captive and discipline ourselves into complete obedience for Christ?

Was this not how we lived among you?

What is Paul going to war against?

What argument is he destroying?

It's whatever remaining opposition remains in his brain that would put himself against God.

What does Paul fight against?

What does he contend against?

What does he make war against?

Not an opposing culture, it's the remaining opposition in his own chest.

That I might be disciplined into complete and perfect obedience to Christ.

You see, you still have arguments reigning in your mind.

You still have lofty thoughts that are trying to tear God down in your mind.

You still have remaining opposition in you.

And you want to be focused on conquering your opponents and culture when you have yet to be conquered fully by Christ.

Shame on us.

If we finish out verse 5, we read, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

Paul's contending against all foolish arguments, all towering pride, all lingering disobedience that is working to take a stronghold in his own life.

He diligently works to destroy these arguments in his own mind that are working against him in his pursuit of obedience to Christ.

Church, if we're going to conquer anything, can we please be strong men and women that allow ourselves to be fully conquered to a joyful obedience to Christ?

Like, can we put our energy behind that?

Can we put our studying behind that?

Can we put our prayer life around that?

You see, we're not called to conquer our opponents.

We're called to build a relationship with them where the truth of God is taught and correction is tempered by gentleness so that Christ might conquer them.

That's what we want.

I know we believe that deep down.

Ultimately, we want our opponents not conquered by our own cunning argument.

We want them conquered by Christ.

So, what do we have to do?

We have to refuse to get drawn into a fool's foolishness.

That's what we have to do.

We must reject church, cowering and conquering.

And instead, we must labor to engage our opponents with an embodied display of the same way in which Jesus loved us when we opposed him.

Because when we oppose Jesus, he loved us.

You see, a central theme to the scriptures is this theme of remembrance.

We see this theme starting in Exodus.

Israel, remember, you were enslaved in Egypt.

Do you remember that?

The pitiful state of which you were in?

Slaves making bricks day in and day out.

And what happened?

I came to you, Israel, and I delivered you with an outstretched arm and a mighty hand.

I, the Lord your God, did this.

I brought you out of the land of Egypt and into the land of promise.

Now, Israel, when a sojourner and a foreigner comes into your land, remember what I did.

Remember how I loved you and how I treated you and how I brought you to myself.

Do that with them, Israel.

We're supposed to do that here, even now today.

Do you remember how you were ensnared and enslaved by sin?

Do you remember the pathetic state you were in?

And Christ, with his outstretched arms and pierced hands, delivered you out of that state and brought you to himself by the mercy of his grace, and he seated you with him.

Now remember when you go into the world, that's how you were.

And what did Christ do?

Oh, he patiently endured your evil and wickedness.

He was kind to you in his meekness.

He did not wield his power to destroy you.

He wielded his power for your good.

He was gentle to you.

Do you remember that?

Now love them the same way.

You see, you were an opponent of Jesus.

But he was the true and better servant of the Lord.

He was the one who showed you kindness, patiently endured your shortcomings, and treated you with gentleness.

Jesus drew the sinner around him into relationship.

There's something about the story of Jesus that when people were drawn into relationship with him, they didn't want to sin anymore.

They wanted to understand truth.

They wanted to be in his presence.

They wanted to run away from everything that had ensnared them in their former life.

They wanted him.

He opened his mouth to teach and to correct.

And his words brought faith and life for all who believed.

I love the way that John Stott, a British Anglican priest and theologian, said this about the greater servant of the Lord.

He would never break a bruised reed or quench a dimly burning wick.

And when people rose up in opposition to him, he did not resist or retaliate.

He gave his back to the smiters, his cheek to those who pulled out his beard, his face to those who spat upon him, and eventually allowed himself to be led like a sheep, silent and unresisting to the slaughter.

Such was Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord's servant.

You see, he could have crushed me right where I stood.

But though we were his opponents, he chose to love us.

And so for us this morning, my prayer is that we would love those who oppose us.

Here's the reality, church.

We're gonna have opposition in this life.

If we're living for Jesus our Lord, we will have those who oppose his message and those who oppose us his messengers.

Let us not shrink back in fear and cower away from a world who needs to be liberated from what has ensnared them.

And let us not be drawn into immature foolishness by working to conquer those who are quarrelsome and contentious.

No, let us resolve to courageously love them, taking heart to engage them with truth and correction that is drenched in kindness and gentleness.

Let us walk as a people of peace in a world that only seeks to bring us tribulation.

And church, let us take heart because Jesus has overcome the world.

Let's pray.