Preach the Word

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 longsuffering 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. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. (2 Timothy 4:1–5)

Paul's last words to Timothy press us to preach the Word with patient persistence, even when the world refuses to hear it.

A Flyover Passage with a Deep Truth

It is written in 1 Kings 22 that for three years there was no war between Syria and Israel. In the third year King Jehoshaphat of Judah visited King Ahab of Israel, and Ahab proposed they go together to recover Ramoth Gilead from Syria. Jehoshaphat agreed, but added, "First let's find out what the Lord says." Ahab summoned about four hundred prophets, and they all said, "Go up, the Lord will give the king victory."

But Jehoshaphat asked, "Is there not also a prophet of the Lord here?" Ahab replied, "There is one more man, Micaiah the son of Imlah, but I hate him—he never prophesies anything but trouble for me." When Micaiah came, he first answered sarcastically, then told the truth: "I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains like sheep without a shepherd." Ahab turned to Jehoshaphat and said, "Did I not tell you he never prophesies anything but trouble for me?"

This is one of those "flyover" passages in the Old Testament—the kind you skim when you're three weeks behind on your read-through and just trying to check the box. But there is powerful truth here, and it sits at the very center of our text in 2 Timothy 4. Like it or not, it is part of our nature—our fallen nature—to only want to hear good news. We don't like challenging, hard words, and the Scriptures are full of them. Paul knows this, so he gives Timothy a simple but very serious charge: Preach the word!

Therefore: The Charge Looks Back

The passage begins with the word "therefore," which always sends us back to what came before. In 2 Timothy 3, beginning in verse 14, we learned that the Scriptures are able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus, and that they are inspired—God-breathed. For 2,000 years Christians have held in all their creeds that holy men of God wrote as the Holy Spirit moved them, that we would know the mind and will and heart of God. And the Scriptures are useful—profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness.

Therefore—because the Scriptures are inspired and useful—Paul gives the most solemn admonition. Remember, this series is called Last Words, because these are the final words the Apostle Paul wrote. He penned thirteen letters over nearly twenty years, and here are his last, written under duress from prison, knowing he would soon be executed for his faith—not for anything evil, but simply for being a faithful messenger of the gospel against the powers of his day.

So to Timothy, his son in the faith, Paul gives a stern charge: "I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom." There is a compelling calendar event ahead. Just as a vacation on the calendar gives us a compelling reason to get into physical shape, the promise that we will one day stand before the Lord is a compelling reason to get into spiritual shape. The statistics are staggering—ten out of ten people die. There will be that day when we stand before Him.

The Scriptures Were Inspired to Be Proclaimed

The Lord had a purpose in inspiring the Scriptures. The words were not given merely to be read, studied, memorized, or known—they were given to be proclaimed. Of course, to proclaim them effectively we must read, study, memorize, and know them. That is why Paul earlier said in 2 Timothy 2:15, "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." The unashamed gospel worker rightly divides the word so as to help others, that they may be made wise to salvation and thoroughly equipped for every good work.

This was Paul's entire aim. In Colossians 1:28 he writes, "Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily." This is why Paul says, "Preach the word." The Scriptures were inspired to be proclaimed.

Be Ready, In Season and Out of Season

Paul does not only say preach the word—he says, "Be ready in season and out of season." To be ready means to do this with persistence, whether or not the circumstances are favorable. And when Paul wrote, the circumstances were not favorable.

We have been a privileged people. In our lifetime, here in the United States, we have enjoyed freedom of religion, freedom of worship, freedom to gather, and freedom to declare what we believe in the public square. That has not been the case for many throughout church history, and it is not the case for many today, where being a public witness for Christ is against the law. But Paul says: because it is becoming difficult, you must be ready and persistent even when circumstances are unfavorable.

This is a recurring theme in both letters to Timothy, because reading between the lines, Timothy was timid, worried, reserved. And I suggest many of us are the same. Even though we face no persecution, we still grow a little reserved when a coworker mocks the things of God, belittles faith, and we feel a stirring to speak up—but we shy away, afraid people might look at us funny. That is not abnormal; Timothy had it too. So Paul gives him this stern charge. We must stand ready and persistent with the Word of God.

Always Ready to Give a Defense

How do we do that? Peter gives an answer in 1 Peter 3:15: "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear." Lift God high in your heart, value Him and His Word, and then be ready—the same readiness Paul commands—to give a defense.

The word "defense" is apologia, from which we get apologetics. Give an answer for your belief and your hope, with meekness and reverence. You don't have to be a jerk about it. If you are a Christian, you trust in God and in Christ who rose from the dead, and you have a hope of being redeemed for eternity. People in our culture think that is nuts, and they have questions, opinions, and views they are quick to share. Be ready to give an answer.

You may say, "I don't know the answer to that question." Then find it. There are volumes of books and hours of teaching from faithful men and women of God who have studied these things for centuries and produced incredibly good answers. Every difficult question about faith and God has a valid, good answer. If it did not, that would call into question the truth of God Himself. I have found that every time someone brings me a hard question I had not considered, and I look into it, there is a good answer that satisfies not only their question but the question they planted in my heart. If God is real, He should be able to stand up to questioning.

People do ask, and they genuinely want to know. Often those who are the most skeptical, with the biggest questions, are those who never got a satisfactory answer when they were younger. They went to church and found no one to give them the apologia, so their biology, psychology, or philosophy class seemed to offer a better answer—not actually better, but better to them.

Convince, Rebuke, Exhort—With All Longsuffering

Back in 2 Timothy 4:2, Paul says to be ready to "convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching." There are three imperatives here. Because the Scriptures are profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, we must be ready at all times to use them in the way they are most effective. Doctrine establishes the true plumb line of what is right; reproof exposes where we are out of alignment; correction brings us back; instruction trains us in righteousness.

Now, some people think the Bible's value is as a moral code. Listen to the political pundits who speak of the Judeo-Christian ethic on which the nation was founded, and who say we are in a mess because we have drifted from those values. There is some truth in that. Others see the Scriptures as a helpful aid to understanding history—and there is truth there too. The Old Testament is one of the longest written histories of the ancient Near East, giving us much of our knowledge of Babylon, Assyria, Syria, the Medo-Persian Empire, and Egypt. Still others treat the Bible as allegorical mythology that proposes important truths about human nature, as taught in many universities today.

All of those views contain some truth. But I suggest to you the greatest value of the Scriptures is that they are most profitable for establishing what is true and right—doctrine by which we measure our lives, reproof to realign our beliefs and practices, correction to lead us into rightness before God and man, and instruction in righteousness. That is why I urge you, my students, and everyone I meet to read, study, memorize, and meditate on the Scriptures: so we can be made wise to salvation, and so we can patiently convince, correct, and call others to trust in Jesus Christ.

They That Sow Reap Only by Patience

Notice those words: "with all longsuffering." One of our biggest problems—both with ourselves and with others—is that we want instantaneous results. We feed our impatience in American culture in a big way. Remember when, if you wanted to see a movie, you had to drive to the theater, wait in line for a ticket, wait in line for a seat with your feet sticking to the floor, and sit through previews? Then came the little black boxes with tape inside, but you still had to drive to a store, find the title, and rewind it before returning it or get charged. Then came discs, then mail-order envelopes that took days, then streaming—and now we get angry waiting three minutes for it to buffer. We live in the 21st century; we want it now.

We want the fruit of God's Word in our lives and others' lives immediately. But God's powerful Word is not quick—it is effective and powerful, yet it works over time. I have seen it in my own life and in yours: as we submit to the teaching of the Word, its doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction, our lives change and transform for the better—but not all at once. They that sow God's Word reap only by persistent patience.

James understood this. In James 5:10 he writes, "My brethren, take the prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord, as an example of suffering and patience." Take Isaiah, who prophesied to Judah some 2,800 years ago through the reigns of four kings over fifty to sixty years—and nearly nobody listened. Or Jeremiah, who came after him, with some forty-five years of ministry and essentially zero converts.

At the very start of Isaiah's ministry, in Isaiah 6, God told him: go preach to people with hard hearts and dull ears who will not listen at all. Isaiah's response was the same one we would give: "How long, O Lord?"—hoping for maybe five weeks. And God answered, "Until they are all consumed and destroyed." One commentator summarized it: "Isaiah, this is your calling—preach them to hell." That is sobering. Yet God promised a remnant—a tenth would remain. Let patience have its perfect work in you, that you may be complete, lacking nothing (James 1:4).

The Time Will Come

Why must we maintain this patience? Look at verse 3: "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." Underline the word will. It is certain.

Many read this as an end-times prediction. But I suggest this is not merely an eschatological forecast. It is a statement of a recurring reality throughout all the seasons in which the church works in the world: there are times when the world is simply not receptive to the Word of God. We saw it already in 1 Kings 22, in the days of Jehoshaphat and Ahab. Ahab kept four hundred prophets of Baal—soothsayers who spoke soothing words to make him feel good—because people would rather hear that.

It was the same in Isaiah's day. In Isaiah 30:9–11, the people say to the seers, "See no more visions! Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel." The New Living Translation puts it bluntly: "Tell us nice things, tell us lies." And in Jeremiah's day, Jeremiah 5:29–31: "The prophets prophesy falsely... and My people love to have it so." People would rather hear lies because it makes them feel better. It happened then; it will happen again; it is happening now.

The Sower Expects Seasons of Drought

Paul says, "Timothy, I don't want you to be unaware—it will happen. It is inevitable. They will not accept what you have to say." The persistent and patient sower expects seasons of drought. There are times of famine. I believe it is in the book of Amos that Scripture speaks of a famine of the hearing of the Word of the Lord.

We do not live at a time when there is a famine of the Word of the Lord—we have an unprecedented wealth of good resources, with solid Bible teaching available online twenty-four hours a day. But there is a famine of the hearing of the Word of the Lord, because people can shut their ears and harden their hearts.

What should we do in such a famine? Verse 5: "But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry." A lack of receptiveness on the part of hearers does not justify a withdrawal of the workers from the work God has called us to. We live in a day when people say, "I don't want to hear what that has to say. What does a book written thousands of years ago on another continent have to do with my life in 2019? That's just the ramblings of people in the middle Bronze Age. We're so progressive." But the unreceptiveness of the hearers does not justify our withdrawal.

The Persistent Sower Endures Until the Harvest

If the farmer wanted instantaneous results, he wouldn't be in farming—he'd be a grocer. Paul wrote in Galatians 6:9, "Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart." Paul gives Timothy four exhortations.

Be watchful. Our tendency is to fall asleep, like the disciples in Gethsemane. Jesus said, "Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation," and went off to pray. Each time He returned, He found them sleeping—offering a "sleep offering" to the Lord. I'm right there with Peter on that one. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:6, "Let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober."

Endure afflictions. Timothy, "all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution." If you stand on the side of Scripture and boldly proclaim the truth, even in a culture without physical violence against your faith, you will suffer affliction at some level—the derision of a coworker, being thought a fool. Our natural inclination is to flee difficult things; Paul says endure.

Do the work of an evangelist. You may not feel gifted or called as an evangelist. An evangelist is simply one who speaks forth the gospel. You picture Billy Graham or Greg Laurie and say, "That's not me." Timothy was probably geared as a pastor-teacher and didn't see himself as an evangelist—which is exactly why Paul had to tell him this. Not seeing yourself as gifted does not excuse you from the work of evangelism.

Fulfill your ministry. Another translation says, "Make full proof of your ministry." One commentator put it: discharge all the duties of your ministry until the work is done. In the next section, Paul immediately models this: "For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing."

Paul says, "Timothy, the race is yours now. I've finished mine; my departure is at hand. But you carry it on." And Timothy faithfully discharged the duties of his ministry—how do I know? Because we are here today. The baton has been handed down, generation after generation, for twenty centuries. Now it is ours, in our day, to preach the Word, to be ready in season and out of season, to convince, rebuke, and exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine—even when people are not receptive to the truth.

Closing Prayer

Lord, we need Your grace and Your strength, Your empowering, to discharge the work You've called us to—to make full proof of this ministry, to do the work of evangelists. You have called every one of us who have trusted in You; as we have freely received, may we freely give to others this week. You have good works prepared before the foundation of the world that we would walk in them, and I pray that by Your directing and empowering we would walk in those things for Your glory, because there are many people here in our county who need You, Jesus. God, help us to be a light to those in darkness, for Your name's sake. We pray this in Jesus' name, and all those who agreed said, Amen.