Well, I invite you to turn this morning, as we have installation of new office pairs, it seems appropriate to consider something from the pastoral epistles, and 2 Timothy chapter 2 is where I invite you to turn this morning on page 1181, and we will be looking at verses 1-13 of 2 Timothy 2. And so let's turn there and give our attention to the Lord's holy and powerful word. "You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. Remember, Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the Word of God is not bound. Therefore, I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that I also may obtain salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is trustworthy: for if we have died with him we will also live with him; if we endure we will also reign with him; if we deny him he will deny us; if we are faithless he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself."
There will end the reading of God's word. Well, there are two very special events happening in the life of the church today as we really begin 2025. The world's had a rough go of 2025 to begin. Obviously, our society seeing all the difficulty and hardship and fires that are happening. And yet, before us in the church, the Lord gives us a great encouragement today. Think about it. A beautiful connection here where we have four professions of faith and we have new office spares being installed. And that's wonderful to make that kind of connection and to see the importance of putting these two events together. This is a special moment in God's providence to understand the Christian ministry. That's what I have always thought about these kind of things: is you want to use the situation and take advantage of the situation that's in front of you to help with understanding on these things. And this seems to be the right sort of approach as we look at 2 Timothy to think in being encouraged of God's work among us.
The Lord wants us, as He is demonstrating His work among us, to give ourselves to our calling. And I'm, yes, thinking predominantly here this morning of what the passage is doing and thinking of those being set apart to be a blessing to the flock, but in many ways this applies to all of us in some way, shape, or form. That's why the pastoral epistles are so helpful. They inspire Christian service, don't they? And they give us proper understanding of Christian service and of serving one another in a way that God loves. There seems to be around us nothing but problem after problem after problem, and yet the Lord reminds us today He's working among us and encouraging us. And I think we forget what's actually happening in the ministry, the seriousness of what the Scriptures label as a warfare. Do we think about the nature of the warfare that's going on, spiritual warfare, and why office bearers are so important from the Lord for you and to you?
By and large, as Americans, we're individualists, and even more so what we call ecclesiology, our doctrine of the church among so many today in the evangelical world is not understood or appreciated. God has set apart elders and deacons. God has set apart men to love you and to care for you and to shepherd you. And this passage is really, really helpful in that regard, especially as we install this morning. What we are dealing with are eternal matters. We are dealing with spiritual matters, matters that have to do with people where they're going for eternity. And Paul wants us to give ourselves to this. Paul wants us, as those set apart in this, to give ourselves to this ministry.
In fact, you'll notice that very strong imperative given right at the beginning of chapter 2: "You then, my child, be strengthened." Notice that. Be strengthened by grace that is in Christ Jesus. Be strong, be strengthened in grace that is in Christ Jesus. And then he goes on to say, "and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust a faithful men who will be able to teach others also." We want this deposit given. We want this deposit continued among the teaching as these men set apart teach and instruct others in the faith. What a beautiful verse to begin with here: "Be strong in grace." It's a present tense, which means that you have this need in your service to continue to be strengthened. That's important, isn't it? "I want you, my son," Paul's talking to Timothy, he's encouraging Timothy, his young sort of protege in the ministry. Keep being strong in grace.
I think we think of grace as wonderful grace is. Think about it. God's unmerited favor to us that God gives us, and we have no responsibility in the matter to receive it or to grow in it. And that's not at all what is being said here, as if grace just sort of drops down like sweet dew drops upon us, and it's just wonderful. It is wonderful. Grace is something freely given by God. But notice in ministry and notice in service, he understands so profoundly how important it is that we be strengthened in grace, that we be strong, continue to use all the avenues for us to be strong in grace ourselves, especially as those who serve. It's the worst sort of thing to become drifters as servants because that affects the whole body. Paul said to Timothy earlier, "I want to remind you to stir up the gift. Stir up the gift which is given to you in the laying on of hands. Be strong in these things and you have a responsibility to stir it up because everything is working against you in that regard to sort of deaden your service, to deaden your faith, and to walk in a manner that you think that we sense at times just feels empty. Be strong. What an encouragement. Be strong in grades.
One of the important things the pastoral epistles emphasize over and over is giving ourselves as leaders for the salvation of people. That's a really profound thought, isn't it? Paul looked at ministry and he said to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4, when hands were laid on you, we'll get there in a minute at 1 Timothy 4, you were given a gift. A gift has been given to you, transmitted to you, something freely given to you by grace. And you have to do your best in the ministry to continue to exercise it. Continue to work and labor at it and grow in it. This is true in a general sense for all of us in the Christian life, isn't it? You have the responsibility to stir it up your gifts, to stir up and be strengthened in grace, or you will drift. Be strong in grace because we have the propensity to drift away in all these other concerns of life, don't we? And you know what the concerns of life do. They tend to zap spiritual strength. Being strong in grace means that the heart has to be engaged in what is most important, in the calling and the gift that God has given to us, to have a heart, you might say, attuned to spiritual things and aware and growing in them.
Why do Christians drift in the Christian life? Well, idolatry can do it. At any given time, we can have all this investment in the world, can't we? We can have the worries of this life overcome us. You can have politics overtake you. And all of these things, without us realizing, when we invest so much in them, it has a deadening effect on us. And Paul specifically is thinking about leaders here. He's challenging leaders here. Why are you doing what you're doing? Think about what God has done for you. Think about what God has done. He has placed you in this. God has called you to this. We're not just rotating in and out and coming to meetings endlessly. You know what Thomas Sowell said, right? "Anyone who loves meetings shouldn't be in charge of them." I don't love them, and I guess that's why I'm in charge of them, right?
If we don't visit, if we don't set an example to the flock, if we don't demonstrate in our own lives the joy of the gospel, if we're not growing in grace, if this just becomes about the work to do it, it'll have a deadening effect on you. He wants us to think about that. He wants us to think about this. Paul here is giving a call for servants to be engaged in an eternal errand, if you will. The great purpose of the gospel is to save those who believe. And this is just a beautiful section here. If you look at verse 4, he's thinking about this. Notice what he's thinking about of the distractions of this life to the eternal errand God gives us. Verse 4 says it so clearly: "No soldier let me use a few illustrations here. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him." You know that about a soldier. You know that about a soldier, right? You can't get over Pat Tillman so many years ago. You know, what a figure he was. You know, 25 years old, set aside millions to play for the Arizona Cardinals, the NFL. He set aside all the fame and all the fortune. Charter Jets was built like a tank. Sunday roars at the games. He set all aside. lavish And a glaring, lavish life of everything he could imagine. And he joined the army. Why would he do that? Well, his statement was, "I love my country." He didn't entangle himself in all that stuff, did he? Gave himself to serve his country, and guess what? Pat Tillman's dead. "Live for something or die for nothing, that's what they say. Paul is saying soldiers and armies are committed to serve their causes. How much more should we be to serve the risen Christ? He's not saying this to shame. He's saying it to encourage.
Do we know what's happening? I guess that's the sort of question that's important in this, you know. Do you believe God's saving through this work? In 1 Timothy 4, he said something so profound about ministry, speaking to servants: "Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine, continue in them, two things: to your doctrine and to your life. Continue in them, for by so doing, you will both save both yourself and those who hear you. Giving yourselves to the doctrine and giving yourselves to grow in grace and in the doctrine and giving yourselves to, which is so hard. We need the Lord; we need the Holy Spirit to guard our lives from patterns of sin is important because through you, God is bringing salvation. That's what he's saying. He uses means. How many things get in the way?
Coming back to the distraction, R.L. Dabney, in his great work on preaching, said that in Jesus's day, there was nothing but political unrest. Listen to this. This is a really amazing statement: "And turmoil. The question everywhere was being asked, How, as God's people, could they survive under the authority of a pagan empire? And Dabney says, the Lord hardly addresses the issue. Instead, he fixed them, his disciples on the eternal errand given to them by his father to save people."
J. Gresham Mason once said that the combat for the church is the church itself. Writing in the midst of the Roman Empire, Paul has almost nothing to say about the empire. It's really remarkable, isn't it? Instead, he focuses his attention on the doctrine and discipline of the church. There was something much different, a heavenly task they were to be focused on. Now think about this. There are how many people right now trying to stop the fires? And this is devastating to watch. It's troubling seeing these images. There's a bigger fire coming. There's a bigger fire coming. The whole world is going to be destroyed by fire. What you saw in those pictures is a picture of the end and then a recreation. People need deliverance. People need help. And no one seems worried about it. And the Lord is encouraging us in the midst of this: "Be strong in grace and in this errand that I've given. Be focused on it."
What Timothy struggled with in teaching the doctrine was the heart of what every faithful pastor and elder and deacon struggles with. It's really verse 3. "You must," notice what he says, "you must share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus." It literally means, if you think of how this plays out and what he is saying here, you could translate it roughly: "you must be willing to take your share of rough treatment." Now that's where ministry usually stops for many. You must be willing to take your share of rough treatment. You need to constantly be reminded that we are engaged in a battle for people and we are in a warfare engaged and we are tearing down strongholds in people's lives with the Word of God. Do you know Satan wants to make shipwreck of people's faith? Do you know that? Paul said that 1 Timothy 1.9, "holding faith in a good conscience, which some, having put aside, have suffered shipwreck concerning the faith." And Paul says to servants, you have to engage into this hardship. You have to be willing to endure the hardship. You have to be willing to receive the hardship. Often results in a lot of conflict and taking rough treatment. You know, how do people respond when they're sinning and you're trying to speak to them about that? You can disengage and you've done no good for them. We speak the truth in love, don't we? And that requires making hard calls sometimes, hard visits. That requires even discipline for the sake of retrieval.
Carl Truman once wrote an article and said, "Churches and institutions and organizations do not go bad by coups of liberals. They go bad because otherwise Orthodox people sit on their hands. They've stopped fighting. Many churches have done a decent enough job maintaining Orthodox confession on paper, but practice hasn't done them. Every time an unrepentant adulterer takes communion, every time a session or elder board lacks the courage to stand up to those who violated the marriage covenant, then they witnessed the church's redefinition and thus rejection of the Bible's teaching on marriage."
He goes into saying the church helped all this for 2015. The very reason Paul's writing to Timothy is Timothy, we're not given a spirit of fear in this. Verse 9, "for the message of Christ," notice this verse 9, "for the message of Jesus Christ, for the message of the gospel, I am suffering trouble as an evildoer to the point of chains. I'm going to jail for this." What in the world brought that on? Well, engagement in speaking God's truth and investing in the lives of people. Sometimes it goes well and sometimes it gets very difficult. And he says in verse 8, "Remember," isn't it? This is in verse 8: "Remember, Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I'm suffering, bound with chains as a criminal, but the Word of God is not bound."
So I want you to remember why I'm suffering. Now, this is truly the shock of it all, beloved. This is truly the shock of it all. What message are we bringing to people? Jesus was raised from the dead. He died for sinners and rose again. And we're trying to bring this good news to people. Do you understand that's the heart of the warfare right there? That's the best news you could ever give. But because the darkness is so dark, that's the one news people don't want.
Luther, in his epistle to the Galatians, says this is just profound. I was reading this yesterday. "Satan doesn't rage against the lives and opinions of thieves and murderers and perjurers and rebels against God and unbelievers. He doesn't rage against them. Rather, he gives them peace and quietness. He gives them everything they want. It's only the church and the religion of Christ that he attacks on every side. Satan abuses our natural weaknesses and increases and aggravates these thoughts of ours. What is he attacking? What is he attacking? Here's what he's attacking: To our young people who profess faith, you're horrible. You have lived a horrible life. You're a failure. This is Luther. And he seeks to terrify you. And he seeks to confound you. And he wants to make you give up. Satan does this constantly against the church and all the sheep."
He ravages; he tries to disrupt the sheep. And I've told you before, if I could, in these 20 years of ministry, if I could say how many people have come in and out of church in 20 years, we would fill four or five of these buildings. I'm serious. And people have left for bad reasons. He wants to destroy people's faith. 1 Timothy 4, "the spirit expressly says in the latter times, some will defect from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons." And then what does he say? "So you got to give yourself to these things."
You know, somebody left me a Bible here at the church. It was a profession faith Bible, and the dedication page was ripped out. And they left me a note: "To Christopher Gordon. I am not this. You got the wrong one." An underline in that Bible was one verse: "Wickedness has prevailed." I don't know who that is. I want you to know I love you if you're here. And you are a child of the King. I use that to say, we're in a warfare. And I think you should know about it. We're in a warfare. And this is why he wants us to recognize he's blessing us and giving positive results through this ministry. But the devil's working hard to overthrow. And what happens at time to the faithful, the discouraged, "Is disengagement. And we think is anything really happening? And I think here the call is to believe that since God has appointed these servants for shepherding, we have to believe and to trust him and to give ourselves to this. That through us, when we tend to our callings faithfully, when we are growing in grace, when we are being strengthened in the word, and we are giving ourselves for the sheep, he's working through that. That's the encouragement. He is working through that. We'll see one day how profound the results were. You just can't see it right now. I mean, you can't come to Revelation 5 and not be encouraged when it's a multitude no man can number standing around the throne.
So whatever is we're deceived with, or whatever we are, we can't see in the moment. We have to trust. Great things are being accomplished in the ministry of the gospel. And I think he wants to motivate us. And he does very practical things here to motivate you to the calling, brothers. Notice he uses athletics and agriculture.
In verse 5, "if anyone competes in athletics, he's not crowned unless he competes according to the rules." I've shared this before, but I think it works. You know, the worst idea ever created, an idea of man under the sun, was to create the 800 race. It's a horrid race. You have to build up enough quick speed in your training to be able to turn it up around the last corner, and then you have to have the endurance to make it. So you've got to run out, go out and run these LSDs, long, slow distances, 5, 10 miles, then short wind sprints. Now, this is where Darcy would say, "Don't go into telling them that you ran in the nationals because you just want to show off." And I do, for a minute. I had the fastest time in the nation that year as an eighth grader. So I get to the UNC track, and I got arrogant, and I said, "I'm not training anymore," and I got last. So there you go.
You see what he's saying? If anyone's going to compete in athletics, you have to put in the time. And you all know that. I've watched my son, and I've watched the Bittners, and I've watched Mason run, and the hours of training that went into that. Not my cup of tea anymore. There are rules. "The hardworking farmer must first partake of the crops." Farmers enjoy the harvest and what's all brought in, but do you know the long, hard work that went into that and all the difficulty in there? We know this in life is what he's saying: to give ourselves to this.
But Paul loved these metaphors because ultimately, especially with an athletic one, what motivated him was a crown that awaited him. But what was the crown? Well, he tells us, "Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, my joy and my crown: stand firm in the Lord." The people are the crown for Paul. And that's the encouragement here, no matter how challenging it gets.
Did you notice what he said? This is the great encouragement in this: "The word of God is not bound. It's not chained. I could be chained. The word of God is not chained. It will not return void. It will do what God sends it out to accomplish." That's Isaiah.
So nevertheless, to close this out, verse 19, "The solid foundation of God stands having this seal. Now notice this encouragement here: The Lord knows those who are his. And so let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity." This is an unchangeable seal. And Paul wanted us to remember something from Israel's history, and we'll close out on this thought. That is taken from number 16. Without a doubt, that was the rebellion of Korah. Korah had led a rebellion against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. 250 of Israel's leaders, all strongmen, stood up behind Moses and Aaron. In a moment, the devil had brought the whole camp into disarray. In fact, all the congregation rises up against Moses and Moses weeps. And he spoke to Korah and his company, and this is what he said: "Listen, and then think about it right here. The Lord knows those who are his. Let everyone name who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity. Here it is: In the morning the Lord will show who is his and who is holy and will bring him near to him. The one whom he chooses, he will bring near." And then he said, "Depart now from these tents of these men."
See, he wants to encourage us that behind all this, the Lord is bringing his people, and he's not losing one. They are known by God, and that means we should then depart from iniquity, right? But the encouragement here is that he uses you, brothers, as means to accomplish this. And the word, through the word, which is the means, but as is through his people, and we endure. Notice what Paul said, "We endure all things for the sake of the elect." A lot of tares and a lot of goats will do a lot of bad things, but we endure it all for the sake of the elect. And the Lord is proving this. We had four professional faiths this morning. How beautiful. They're calling on the name of the Lord, as they should.
The driving force of this to close today: Remember, beloved, Jesus Christ, the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to my gospel, for which I suffer. That's a faithful saying. Jesus Christ came. Jesus Christ died and paid for sin, and he rose victorious. What a message. He loved you. He came here to die for you, and he set up a whole church to minister to you with servants who care for you. Remember that. If we died with him, we're going to live with him. If we endure, we shall also reign with him. If we deny him, he'll deny us. If we're faithless, notice this, he remains faithful. He can't deny himself.
Now our Lord's going to give public witness to everything we just heard. Olders and deacons are going to have hands laid on them, and the Lord in the midst is setting apart these men. I hope you're encouraged today. I hope you see that the Lord cares for his flock, and may you servants be given the strength and wisdom to do so for his glory. Amen.
Let's pray. Gracious Lord, thank you for your word to us, and thank you for setting apart these men to serve for the glory of your name. And may they be given great encouragement and strength from you to minister well to the flock whom you love. Thank you for giving us these eager men to serve. Bless us now as we see their installation. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you.