Do you hate when a person comes up with all these books?
I should think that—oh, no.
Let’s pray, okay.
Heavenly Father, we do come to You this morning with great thanksgiving and praise because of what You have done for us through Jesus Christ. We want to thank You that the door has been opened, and we would enter in.
We, despite all that we are—all that we may think of ourselves as being, uncomely and unfit—we thank You that You knew that in the first place, and You still made provision for us. Now You have opened the door wide to us, and we would come in and ask, Lord, that You would speak to us, encourage us, and lead us in the way that we should go.
Open Your Word to us by Your Holy Spirit, we pray, and speak to us, we ask, in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.
I’m going to finish up the last section that I was doing last time from 2 Timothy. I’ve been speaking out of 2 Timothy for about, I guess, six times, and I think I have one more left after this.
I chose 2 Timothy because it struck me, as we talk so much of this being the last time, that I wanted to look at the last things that the great apostles wrote. Second Timothy was Paul’s last letter, and he wrote it to Timothy—a timid believer. And it’s not 2 timid, but it’s 2 Timothy.
I also thought of 2 Peter, and I also thought of 1 John, even though it is not his last letter. But why do these people have to say the last things? Because these are the very last things they have to say before they pass on.
This is what we have seen in 2 Timothy so far. Again, I have not been going verse by verse or giving some expository message like that, but just looking at the things that have struck me—things that Paul wanted Timothy to know before he passed on, before he was no longer there to encourage him anymore.
We remember that we started way back when he said, “Timothy, you’re beloved.” You must remember that: you’re beloved, and God is for you. Then we saw that Timothy needed to respond to God’s grace. We saw what God had provided for Timothy: God has given us the Holy Spirit, and God has given us His Word.
Last time we started looking at some practical things. Now that you know these things, Timothy, these are things that I want you to be responsible for. Last time we looked at remembering Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, and stirring up your gift. I’m not going to review those things. We have these great archives here, if you want to look into those.
Today I want to pick up where we left off. There are seven things that stood out to me that Paul was saying: “Timothy, you’re responsible for these.” Other than remembering Christ Jesus, risen from the dead, and stirring up your gift, let’s start with this one.
In 2 Timothy 1:13, it says:
Hold fast the pattern of sound words,
which thou hast heard from me,
in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.
First, he says, “Timothy, I want you to hold something fast.” Actually, I do not think the words hold fast are in the Greek. If I look at my little interlinear, it says:
A delineation have of sound words,
which from me thou didst hear
in faith and in love which are in Christ Jesus.
You do not see the words hold fast, but it is a given. Timothy, I want to show you something, and you need to hold on to these things.
Why does Timothy need to hold fast? Why do you need to hold on to these things? If you flip a page to 2 Timothy 4, let’s read a couple of verses from the beginning of the chapter.
I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ,
who shall judge the quick and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom;
preach the word;
be instant in season, out of season;
reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine;
but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
and they shall turn away their ears from the truth,
and shall be turned unto fables.
That is why you need to hold fast to these things.
What are you holding fast to? It says here, “the pattern.” The word actually is delineation. I am a word freak. I like words. I do crossword puzzles, and it keeps my vocabulary good. It is supposed to be good for preventing Alzheimer’s, too. I cannot remember where I put my keys, but I like words.
Delineation means drawing an outline. Since I am a teacher, I think of drawing an outline: point A, then one, two, three. But I want us to think of drawing a pattern.
Think of a murder scene. They draw the bodies. That is a delineation. They show where the body lies, and they give a picture of the body. Then they take the body away, and you still have that picture of the body there.
A delineation is distinguished from something careless. You do not just say, “I don’t care how I draw this. I have this dead body here, and I’m just going to make it really big.” That is not a true picture. Neither is it full of excessive stuff, such as drawing every finger and every detail. It is a set of boundaries.
The sound pattern of words that Paul is talking to Timothy about, I think, is the gospel itself. He is saying that we have a set pattern in the gospel.
As a matter of fact, Stu, in his prayer today, gave us a pattern of the gospel. A couple of weeks ago, Tom Robertson recited the Nicene Creed. That is kind of a delineation of the gospel, in part.
Did you know that the gospel has boundaries? A lot of us may think, “No, the gospel does not have boundaries. It is so big and everything.” No, it has boundaries.
The first boundary of the gospel is the person and work of Jesus Christ. It does not go beyond His person and His work. A lot of people would like to add things to it, but we must ask: What do people say about the person of Jesus Christ? What do they say about His work?
In studying 1 John, we have found that there was a heresy: the Gnostic heresy. The idea was that Jesus did not come in the flesh. He was really just a spirit. He did not have footprints when He walked; you could tell He was a spirit because He did not have footprints.
But in John’s Gospel—John’s only Gospel—what does he say?
In the beginning was the Word.
And what happened to the Word?
And the Word became flesh.
That is a delineation. It is saying that, when we look at Jesus Christ, we consider that He was made flesh. We have to look at the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ: what He did, Who He was, and, because of Who He was, what that says about what He did.
That helps us define what the gospel is, what is included in the gospel, and what is not included in the gospel. It is all in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
That is only one part of the border. The other part of the border is grace. Grace is a boundary of the gospel.
Is it by grace? Is grace the thing by which we are saved? What are the parameters of grace? Are there things that say, “Hey, we do not need grace; we can work it out”? No. Grace is a border.
Look at Acts 15. Remember when Paul and Barnabas came back from preaching the gospel to the Gentiles? There became a big argument: “No, no, no, no—they cannot be saved. They have to be circumcised, and they have to keep the law and complete those things.”
They had a big meeting about it, and they went to the Word. Peter stood up and said, in effect, “Remember when I went to Cornelius’s house and the Holy Spirit fell? They had not done anything. God had already shown us that it is by grace.”
Even if we look at Galatians 5:4, it says:
Ye are severed from Christ,
ye who would be justified by the law;
ye are fallen away from grace.
The gospel has its boundaries. Work is excluded unless the work is a response to the love of Christ. Work is excluded as a way to gain favor or gain a place in the kingdom of God. Work’s only place is as a response to the love that you have received through Jesus Christ. It is a response to grace.
Paul tells Timothy, “You have got to hold fast to these things.” If we look out in the world today, there are so many things that say it does not matter about Jesus Christ, and it does not matter about grace.
If you ask a person on the street, “If you died tonight, would God let you into heaven?” I bet eight out of ten would say yes. Then you ask why, and they say, “Well, when I weigh things out, I have done more good than bad.”
That is not the gospel. That is not the parameters that God has set. All men will fall short. No man should be let into heaven.
I often think of Psalm 24 and Psalm 15:
Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?
Have you ever read that psalm? Boy, that psalm sometimes depresses me. When I get on the works kicks that I get in—the same thing, saying that I am good enough to do things, good enough that God will accept me, that His smile will be upon me—you read that psalm, and it speaks of the one who has clean hands. I cannot go with that. I can never go up.
But there is One Who could, and He did go up. He calls us up because of what He has done and Who He is.
Paul says that we need to hold fast to these things because this is our way to God. There is no other way to God but through Jesus Christ and through the grace that He gives. Do not be led astray by these other things—itching ears.
Grace also has its bounds. Sometimes we think of grace as God just letting it slide. We sin now, and God just lets it slide. “It’s okay. I’m letting it slide.”
But what does Romans 6 say? Here is this great treatise on what the gospel is. Paul sets everybody on grace, and then in chapter 6 he starts out:
What shall we say then?
Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
In other words, let us sin more so that we can have more grace. That is what Rasputin taught. You remember the Russian guy, Rasputin? He taught that you can never know the depths of grace until you know the depths of sin, so you must sin more to know more of grace.
But this is what Paul says:
Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
God forbid.
How shall we, that died to sin, live any longer therein?
If you want the rest of the boundaries of grace, read Romans 6.
But the wonderful thing about grace—and this was in Stu’s prayer—is that I can now present myself to God as one raised from the dead, because my sin has been judged. One of the things that keeps us out of the presence of God is that we think, “It’s just me. I’m just too bad.”
The Lord says, “Don’t you remember? The gospel is this: Come to Me. I have made provision for you. Come to Me, despite who you are.”
You are never going to get rid of who you are, but who you are will be transformed into what He wants you to be if you come to Him. We keep ourselves out of the very thing that will transform us because we think we have to approach God in some way that makes us appealing to Him.
The only thing that makes us appealing to Him is what His Son has done, and that we are clothed in Him. That is all that makes us appealing to Him. He says, “I have given you that. Now come to Me. Do not hold yourself back.”
He says to Timothy, “You need to hold fast to this pattern. It is by My Son. It is by the grace that I have given you. This is how you come.”
Brothers and sisters, I say to you: you must hold fast to that. You must hold on to that. That is your hope. That is your expectation from God: that you can be changed by entering in.
How many times does it say in the New Testament, “If you hold fast” to your faith or to the assurance that you have? Jerry has been talking out of Hebrews, and it says, “If you hold fast to that assurance.” What is our assurance? It is Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. Hold fast to that. Come in because of that.
We are responsible to act on the gospel, to act on the truth of the gospel. That is the message to us: act on that truth. Responsibilities are actions. This part is all about actions—what you do.
Unbelievers may think, “If I become a Christian, that is so small. That is so narrow. I cannot do this, and I cannot do that.”
You remember the movie Men in Black. I know Yugurtha does. I’m making a joke, okay? In Men in Black, there was the bug man. They were looking for a galaxy, and the galaxy was on Orion’s belt.
You think of the galaxy and look at the stars, asking, “Where is Orion?” But the cat’s name was Orion, and it had a little bobble on its collar—on the belt of Orion. In that little thing was a galaxy.
We may say, “Gee whiz, the gospel reins us in so much.” Well, let’s put it this way: it limits us, say, to a galaxy. How many stars are in a galaxy? How wide is a galaxy?
What the Lord has done is put this whole salvation into the person of Jesus Christ. When we get in, we do not realize how large it is until we get into Christ.
We think of Christianity like this: “I can’t do this anymore. I’ve got to go to church. I’ve got to read the Bible.” That is how we think. But when you get in and find out what is there, you begin to find that within Christianity, within Christ, is justification, sanctification, and glorification.
It is not a sanctification that says, “You better do this,” but a sanctification that is a response to the love of God. It gets bigger and bigger as you begin to see it unfold before you, just like in that little bell on that cat there was a galaxy.
In Christ there is a galaxy. We need to understand that, and we need to hold fast to that.
“Lord, unfold to me the riches that are in Jesus Christ. Let me see those things. Not just let me see them—let me taste them. Let me touch them. Let me walk in them.”
Those are the things that we have, and we are to hold on to them until we see them enlarged and ever larger.
Then, in 2 Timothy 1:14, he says:
That good thing which was committed unto thee
keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us.
That good thing that was committed to you—keep it. Other versions say, “Guard it.”
What is to be guarded? Most people say the good thing that has been deposited, or the treasure, is the Word that has been given to Timothy. Not his ministry, but the Word could be the gospel.
What are we to guard? What has God given us to guard?
If I am trying to stay true to the Word here, and if this is talking about the Word, then Paul is saying to Timothy, “The Word that you have received, guard that.” To us, it is the same thing. The Word that we have received needs to be guarded. It needs to be kept, and it needs to be kept by the Holy Spirit.
I will say this: the Word that God has spoken to you, guard.
There are many times when we go to a conference, sit here, listen to a tape, and feel that the Lord has spoken something to us. It may not be the whole message. It may be one thing said that suddenly cuts through like a knife. It comes like that shaft of light in Wesley’s hymn:
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray;
I woke.
All of a sudden, we have been awakened by the Word of God to us. Guard that.
In the parable of the sower, it says the sower went out to sow, and the seed is the Word of God. What happened to the seed? Some of it—the birds came and took it away.
I really think one of the most important times in a conference is right after the ministry. You have to pray. You have to give time to pray. Otherwise, we get out there, hear announcements, and all of a sudden our minds are away from the Word. Then we are fellowshipping or socializing, doing whatever, and all of a sudden the birds have come and snatched it away.
It needs to be sealed. It needs to be pressed down. I think that prayer right away is important.
If the Lord has spoken to you in a message, at a conference, or even as you are reading the Bible on your own, you need to stop right then and say, “Lord, I feel You have spoken to me. Do not let this go away. Do not let me lose this. I know what is going to happen. We are going to eat, and we are going to do this, and we are going to talk about things. Bring it back to my mind. Bring it back to my memory.”
Write it down. Some of us write down ministries, then go home and never do anything with them. Some of us go home and read the things we wrote. That is an important thing. That is one way you guard what has been given to you.
Guard what has been spoken to you. We could say, “Hide the Word in your heart,” but sometimes we hide the Word so well that we cannot find it again.
I am going to use another movie: Cast Away. Remember Tom Hanks? He was a FedEx guy, and he was plane-wrecked on an island. I looked it up on the internet last night because I was wondering how long he was supposed to be on that island. Four years. He was on that island by himself for four years.
Do you know what kept him going? Wilson was secondary—his imaginary friend. His mission was part of it. But it was Helen Hunt. Remember? He had that picture of her in that locket.
He kept it out, and he looked at it every day. That was his hold on hope: “I am going to get out of here.” He had something on which to focus himself, to say, “I am not here for the rest of my life.”
That is what I am saying about guarding the Word. It needs to be brought up before us constantly. It needs to be brought up so we can look at it—look at it again. “This is my focal point. Lord, You have given me this Word.”
We need always to bring it before us. Or, if we forget, the Holy Spirit brings it up. Guard it by the Holy Spirit.
When the Holy Spirit brings things up to us, what do we do? Do we push them aside because we have other things to do? Or, as the Spirit brings it up, do we stop and say, “Let me reflect. Let me reflect on what the Lord has spoken to me”?
Sometimes it is just to get my focus back where it needs to be. Sometimes it is to say, “Okay, the world is eating me alive. I got carried away by the world. I need to get back to what the Lord has spoken to me.”
That is an important thing. That is how we guard these things.
It is like that Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem—this brings back freshman or sophomore English—from Sonnets from the Portuguese:
How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.
That is all I am going to read. I am sure it brings back painful memories of English class for some of you.
But in the poem, her love comes before her, and then she begins to reflect on how she loves him. Do you know what that does? It increases her love for the one she loves.
Again, it is the bringing of the Word before us so that it is not lost. This is a spiritual exercise. This is something that we are to do spiritually.
I wish, when I was younger, that I had memorized more. In memorizing the Word, there is concentration. As you memorize, a word sticks out to you, and then you begin meditating on that word, and more of what it means comes out to you.
Here it is: hold the Word that God has spoken to you. I am not saying every word, but you know when God has really spoken to you. Hold it. Write it down somewhere. Come back to it. Turn it over. Look at it afresh.
The Word is many-faceted. What facet will you look at today? How will the Lord bring it alive to you today?
That word can be put aside, and a new word can come in as you have that relationship with the Lord—in the Word and in prayer. The Lord speaks to you. It is not something that happens once in a blue moon.
Hold these things before you. Guard them. Do not let them be taken away. Do not let the weeds choke them out. Do not let the lack of soil—the thought that you do not have time—keep the Word from going deeper.
You have to fight for these things. We think that everything is given to us. It is given to us, but once we have it, what do we do with it? You have to fight for the life that is in there.
Then, in 2 Timothy 2:15:
Study to shew thyself approved unto God,
a workman that needeth not to be ashamed,
rightly dividing the word of truth.
Boy, this is another thing that deals with the Word, isn’t it? “Be diligent to show yourself approved,” or some versions say, “Study to show yourself approved to God, a worker.”
What is he really saying to Timothy? First of all, he is saying that you need to be approved.
You know how I approve my history students? I give them a test. One part of the test a monkey can pass, because it is multiple guess. But the real part of the test—the part that separates the A from the B student, the B from the C student—is the essay.
In the essay, they have to show their grasp of the subject. They cannot just say, “Oh yeah, I have choices here; I will eliminate them.” When you say, “Express it. Show me and back up what you are saying,” now they really have to show what they have learned.
In the same way, the Word that the Lord gives us needs to be tested. How do we test His Word? How is the Word tested? We must apply the Word to our lives. That is how the Word is tested. That is how you can find out if you are running amiss in your understanding of the Word.
The Word has to be tested in your life. Does it hold true? Does this hold true?
The word approved actually means tested. The Greek word there means tested.
Then it says, “Be diligent.” I could give you a good definition from the dictionary, but I have lost my definition here. Where are you? Well, I will give you my definition: it means you do business with it. You take it inside, and you let it do its work. Diligence means that you must exert yourself.
Again, you may say, “But I thought we were saved by grace.” Spiritual exercise, brothers and sisters. Spiritual exercise. That is what applying the Word to our lives is.
The Word is not just going to say, “Oh, this is what it means.” You take it in and say, “Lord, what does this mean?” When something strikes you, you start asking, “What does that mean? What does that mean to me? What is the practical meaning for me?”
“Lord, show me how this applies. How does this apply to me?” That is something you have to search out. It says, “Be diligent.”
Study is not cramming. Cramming is not studying. Cramming is just stuffing stuff in your head and hoping that, when the test comes, you are able to sort it all out. When you cram, it gets tangled in there, and you are pulling out things here and there.
I know some of the essays I wrote from cramming. I am sure my teacher was going, “What language is this? Where is the logic in here?” That is what happens when you cram. It is all stuffed in there.
But studying is a line-by-line thing. This part here: I am studying this part here. Then I am studying this part here.
A study technique I teach my kids is, once a night, go over your notes. Then, when it comes to the night before the test, you do not have to take longer than forty-five minutes to an hour, because you are familiar with everything. You have been looking at it.
It is the same thing spiritually. Study to show yourself approved, or be diligent. Take those things right away and apply them. Do not try to figure them out later on. Take it when the Lord speaks to you: “Lord, You want to apply this to me. Where does it go? How do I go about doing this?”
The Word is of no value to us, really, if it does not work in our lives. It can tell us truths, and it can become creeds to us, but it becomes living when it is applied to our lives.
That is when the Word becomes that two-edged sword able to cut between soul and spirit. When we take the Word inside and start grappling with applying it, this is where the Holy Spirit comes in to do His ministry.
We are not left to ourselves to say, “Gee whiz, how do I do this?” We come to the Lord: “Lord, what do I do with this?” We look to the Lord, and the Lord opens it up to us.
I think it is interesting that, when it came to the circumcision of the children of Israel as they went into the land, it says Joshua circumcised them. He did not leave it to themselves to mutilate themselves.
Sometimes we get into the Word, and that is what we do. We take the Word ourselves, and we end up mutilating ourselves because we have no grace going over those things.
Give it to the Spirit. Say, “Spirit, You lead me in this.” Let the Spirit tell us.
Sometimes we say, “This needs to be dealt with, and this needs to be dealt with.” The Lord says, “They do need to be dealt with, but in My time. I will direct where the knife goes, when it goes, and what needs to be cut out. I am the Master Craftsman. We are His workmanship.”
That is why I always thought it was so good that alcoholic commercial of a guy going to work on himself in the dentist chair. Can you imagine that? Can you work on yourself in the dentist chair? No, and you should not.
We are not to work on ourselves. The Lord is to work on us. But we are to take that Word, bring it to the Lord, and say, “Apply it to me. You have spoken it to me. Now apply it to me. Help me see where it needs to be applied.”
That is why we should go to Bible studies, hear messages, and read the Bible. That is often where we hear the Word, where the Word is spoken, and where we give the Lord what He needs to speak to us.
So we are diligent.
Next, in 2 Timothy 4:5:
But watch thou in all things,
endure afflictions,
do the work of an evangelist.
Now, it says, “Do the work of an evangelist.” It does not say, “Be an evangelist.” Brothers and sisters, we are not all evangelists. That is a gift from God, isn’t it?
Does that mean that, if we are not evangelists, we do not witness? No. We are all to be witnesses.
What is the work of an evangelist? You might say it is to preach in front of thousands—Billy Graham. Has anybody ever been involved in a Billy Graham crusade? You know what the first thing they do is? They get everybody together and say, “The first thing you need to do—and this is the work of an evangelist—is pray. Pray for the people who are lost.”
Not generally: “Oh, Lord, I pray for all the people who are lost in the world.” That is a shotgun prayer. Who do you know that is lost? Pick five or six or seven people whom you know are lost, and pray for them.
That is the work of an evangelist. That is the beginning work of the evangelist: you begin to pray. “Lord, these people are lost.” You might even say, “Give me a heart,” but even if you do not have a heart, pray for them.
Pick five or six people. Do this. See what happens. See what happens to you personally when you do this.
Then you need to know the gospel. Do you know the gospel? If you do not know the gospel, you had better find out what the gospel is. That pulls you back to the Word again, doesn’t it?
The Word has so much for us. Sometimes, especially as young people, we say, “Oh, I have read it.” I remember when I got saved, I got that little Good News for Modern Man. You remember those? Little pictures in there. I always loved those little pictures—stick people.
I remember I read it and said, “Okay, now what do I do? I have read the New Testament. Is there something else for me to do?”
You need to read it over and over and over. “Lord, show me the gospel. I want to see: what is the gospel? Show me the gospel so that I can give words to it, talk about it, and tell people what the gospel is. Help me be able to communicate it.”
Before you communicate anything, you have to know what it is.
Before they give you a word problem, what do they do? They teach you number value. They teach you how to add. They teach you how to subtract. Then they can give you a word problem, because you know the things that can help you solve the word problem.
It is the same thing with us. We need to know what the gospel is. Read Romans. See what Paul says about it. There are books you can read about the gospel and what the gospel is.
Another thing: know what you believe. What is a Christian? What do Christians believe? What do we believe? Have you ever thought about that?
Is it just a little creed that we say, “Oh yeah, I believe that”? How do you find out what you believe? You read the Bible. But some of us say, “I need a cram course in this.” No—use that word—I need a study course in this.
There are little books. I brought two. Here is a nice little book to read: Basic Christianity by John Stott. Look at the little chapters in it:
It is all in that one little book. John Stott is pretty easy to read.
Here is another one, from InterVarsity days: What You Believe by Paul Little. It is a nice little book. What do we believe as Christians? It deals with the Bible, God, Jesus Christ, Christ’s death, man and sin, the Holy Spirit, the church, and salvation.
We need to know what we believe. We cannot just skate by and say, “I’m a Christian.” Well, what does that mean? “Well, I believe in Jesus. I go to church.” What else can you tell me about it? “That is about it.”
Is that all Christianity is? What does the Bible teach us about God? Do you know what the Bible tells us about man—about our condition? Do you know what the Bible tells us about salvation?
These are things that we need to know. This is the work of an evangelist: to know these things. If you do not know these things, how can you lead people to salvation?
This is not to say, “Oh, you cannot witness until you know all these things.” We look for loopholes: “Jim was saying up there that we have to know these things, so I cannot witness. I’m off the hook.”
No. Any time you have an opportunity—when the Lord brings one of those divine appointments to you—you speak out what you do know. Speak out what is real to you. That is what witnesses.
I will tell you what does not witness: just your knowledge of stuff. I remember, as a kid in my early twenties, I got these tapes on Mormonism, and then I went out looking for Mormons. You know how you get: “I’m going to go convert Mormons.” Oh, man.
All it was was knowledge, and boy, I got beat up pretty bad. But it was good. The Lord was saying, “You do not need to know about Mormonism. You need to know about Me.”
I am not saying that you have to go conquer the world like this. You need to know about Him. That is the basic thing. If you do not know about the Lord, if you do not know what the Word teaches about Him, you are going to be stunted in your growth as a Christian. You are not going to get very far. You are not going to grow up very much.
How many of you, especially younger people, cannot wait until you are an adult? “Oh, man, I cannot wait to grow up. I will throw off those shackles. I will be who I want to be.”
What about as Christians? How many of us want to grow up? There should be that same sense in us about growing up as there is naturally: “I want to grow up. I want to know Him the way that I should know Him.”
One more thing about the work of an evangelist: an evangelist knows the problems that people face. He knows the sickness of humanity, but he knows it in a way that he is not afraid to go out and touch it.
I am not saying to imbibe the sin. But just like the Lord Jesus: “Why do You eat with sinners?” Because He came to save them. “I know you are sick, and I have an answer for you.”
Sometimes I think that, as Christians, we can get so far removed from the world that the sickness of the world fails to touch us anymore. That is why we do not witness, or our witness becomes something very legal: “You have to do this and that and the other thing.” There is not the love of God in that.
Why did God send His Son? Because He knew the sickness of this world, and He wanted to bring us out of it.
The same is true with an evangelist. An evangelist knows the sickness of this world, knows it needs to be touched, and knows it needs a doctor. An evangelist also is not one who says, “Send someone else.” An evangelist is one who says, “Lord, send me.”
Not all of us are evangelists, but all of us are witnesses. We do not have to preach in front of big crowds. But when we have the opportunity, we can say, “What gives me peace in my life is Jesus Christ, and this is what He has done for me.”
Your testimony does not have to be, “I came out of drugs and knew all this stuff.” You can say, “I was just a normal person, but I was still lost. I was just not satisfied. But I found Someone Who has satisfied me. Let me tell you what happened.”
That is all you need to do: give voice to the hope that is in you when you are asked.
Finally, in 2 Timothy 4:5, the last part says:
Make full proof of thy ministry.
Timothy was an overseer. He had oversight of the church at Ephesus. You may say, “Well, that gets me off the hook. I do not have to do this.”
The question is: What is our ministry? What is the ministry that God has for us? We can say that it is our gift and things, but I want to put it out there so that it is really graspable.
There was a rich young man who came to Jesus. This is in Mark 10, beginning at Mark 10:17, and it is in some of the other Gospels. He said, “What must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus said, “Keep the commandments,” and he said, “Well, I have done all these things.”
Sometimes we think our ministry is to do something. The fruit of ministry is that we do find ourselves doing something. But just doing things is not our ministry.
What the Lord said to this young man—first it says that Jesus loved him, and you had better hold on to that for all eternity. We hold on to this: the Lord loved him. The Lord loves us. That is a given, and it is an eternal given. It never changes. The Lord loves us.
Then He says:
One thing thou lackest:
go, sell whatsoever thou hast,
and come, follow Me.
I am not going to get on the “sell all you have,” but He said this: “Follow Me.”
What does that mean? I had this nice little thing that said the Lord does not want us only in a child-to-Father relationship, although we have that. He wants us to be disciples. That is true.
But the thing is this: this is our ministry. The Lord says to us, “Come.” What is our response?
This is what the Lord wants. It is an old hymn that most of us older people know, though probably some younger people do not know it because we do not sing these hymns anymore.
I come to the garden alone.
I know you guys know the rest of the hymn, but I am just using that line: “I come to the garden alone.”
Our ministry is to come by ourselves to the garden where He is. This is the neglected ministry of most Christians today: not having that relationship with Jesus Christ.
We will say that going to a meeting is our relationship. I am not saying do not go to meetings, but we will exchange that and say, “This is my relationship.” The Lord says, “That is true. It is part of your relationship. But the relationship I want is the one-on-one.”
“I saved you. I have your name inscribed in the palms of My hands. I do not have just the church; I have your name—your individual name. I know it. I died for you as an individual, as well as for the world. I did not just lump everybody together and say, ‘It is just the whole world.’”
But He knows everybody for whom He died. He knows you personally, and He wants you to know Him personally.
That is our ministry. All service comes out of that one ministry. All service to the church comes out of that ministry. All service to the world comes out of that ministry.
Nothing that God accepts will come out outside of that ministry. The things that are worth to God come out of the things that He gives to you in that time when you come to the garden alone.
The Pharisees would pray on street corners so everybody would see how spiritual they were. But the Lord Jesus, in giving the Sermon on the Mount, says, “But you—you go into your closet.” God sees in secret.
So many of us do not go there because we feel we have other things to do, or we feel that God does not want us, or we just do not have the time. But this is what God—this is what Jesus Christ—aches for. This is what He aches for: that ministry.
What is the fruit of this? This is what I want to close with. Here is this one little hymn.
What do I get out of this ministry? You know, we are all somewhat mercenary. God is saying, “Come to the garden alone.” What is the fruit of that? Listen to this hymn:
I cannot breathe enough of Thee,
O gentle breeze of love;
More fragrant than the myrtle tree,
The Rose of Sharon is to me,
The balm of heaven above.I cannot gaze enough on Thee,
Thou fairest of the fair;
My heart is filled with ecstasy,
As in Thy face of radiancy
I see such beauty there.I cannot work enough for Thee,
My Saviour, Master, Friend;
I do not wish to go out free,
But ever, always, willingly
To serve Thee to the end.I cannot sing enough of Thee,
The sweetest name on earth;
A note so full of melody
Comes from my heart so joyously,
And fills my soul with mirth.I cannot speak enough of Thee,
I have so much to tell;
Thy heart, it beats so tenderly,
As Thou dost draw me close to Thee,
And whisper, “All is well.”
We often say, “Oh, I want to know the Lord. I want to know Him more.” You want to know more? Come to the garden alone.
When you come to the garden alone, you will see Him in ways that He will reveal only to you.
Out of that, you will be so swept up, like the person who wrote this hymn and said, “You are so beautiful. You are so wonderful. I have tasted of You in a way I have never tasted, and I have come alive because of it. Because of it, I want to serve You.”
Service is not something that is wrenched out of us. It is something freely given because we see the worth of the One to Whom we are giving service.
When Paul talks to Timothy and talks of these things, these are our responsibilities. Yes, we are to hold fast. We are to do these things. But most of all, come to the garden alone.
Let’s pray.
Lord, it is funny: when Naaman was going to be healed, he thought You had asked something so simple of him, and he was so upset about things. Then his servant said to him, “If Elisha had told you to climb Mount Everest, you would have done it. You would have done all these things, and you would have done the hard things. Here he has asked you to do this one simple thing.”
Once he thought twice about it, I thank You that the record shows Naaman did. He dipped himself seven times, and he was transformed.
Father, I pray in the same way that we would be so drawn by this simple request of Yours to come, that we would just take You up on that Word and come in, and let You do all the other things.
Lord, forgive us for not doing this, for neglecting these things. Lord, sometimes it is just hard because we cannot see You, and we do not know what to expect.
But Lord, draw us into that place. Bring us there, and help us to find all the things that this hymn writer found. We ask it in Your name.