'Keep your head in all situations' and don't follow your 'itching ears.'
2 Timothy 4:1-5 (NIV)
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: 2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage — with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
Listen to passage & devotional:
Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 29: The Marks of the True Church
We believe that we ought to discern
diligently and very carefully,
by the Word of God,
what is the true church—
for all sects in the world today
claim for themselves the name of “the church.”
We are not speaking here of the company of hypocrites
who are mixed among the good in the church
and who nonetheless are not part of it,
even though they are physically there.
But we are speaking of distinguishing
the body and fellowship of the true church
from all sects that call themselves “the church.”
The true church can be recognized
if it has the following marks:
The church engages in the pure preaching
of the gospel;
it makes use of the pure administration of the sacraments
as Christ instituted them;
it practices church discipline
for correcting faults.
In short, it governs itself
according to the pure Word of God,
rejecting all things contrary to it
and holding Jesus Christ as the only Head.
By these marks one can be assured
of recognizing the true church—
and no one ought to be separated from it
Summary
The epistles (letters) that Paul wrote to Timothy and Titus are called the Pastorals in the New Testament because they contain Paul's advice and instructions for the elders and deacons charged with overseeing Christ's church. This second letter to Timothy is likely the last letter Paul ever wrote. At this point he's old, tired, and near death as he awaits his execution in a frigid, dark dungeon.
But you can still feel the Spirit inspired fire in his words as he summarizes Timothy's primary job description as a leader in his local church. A pastor's job description is only three words:
PREACH THE WORD.
Preaching is often reduced to a twenty minute 'set' in between a string of high octane songs that starts with a folksy, humorous introduction, a verse or two of the Bible (often ripped from its context), and a practical application designed to give you some positive vibes to begin the week.
This isn't at all what Paul is instructing Timothy and the pastors who will follow him. Paul writes that preaching must be rooted, from start to finish, in "the Word," which has a double meaning. Certainly it means scripture itself, but the Greek word logos is also used as a name for Jesus (John 1:1, 14). So the instruction here is to preach the Bible with every passage pointing to its fulfillment in Christ.
Such preaching must and will encourage. The Bible is full of genuine and lasting encouragement, far deeper than the 'positive vibes' it's often reduced to. But notice the two actions that precede the word encourage in v2. Preachers are to correct and rebuke people; that is, call out their sin and point them to repentance and forgiveness in Christ.
Dig Deeper
Today we're considering the first, and arguably the most important mark of the true church: "the pure preaching of the gospel." I say most important, because if this task is done well, the other two marks will more or less fall into place.
But this simple three word job description is given in the context of a warning. People's 'itching ears' won't want to hear solid biblical preaching, Paul writes. They will continually gather around them teachers that will stick to the positive vibes of encouragement, uncoupled from the correcting and rebuking that is part of genuine biblical preaching. Certainly this phenomenon is easy to see in our twenty-first century North American church.
Even though Paul's instructions in these pastoral letters is geared toward the church leaders God has ordained, they have application for all Christians, not just pastors, elders and deacons. First, make sure you're located in what our Confession describes as a true church, which purely preaches the full counsel of God's Word. Secondly, pray often for your church's leaders, that they would have the courage and strength to do the hard (and often unpopular) work of correcting, rebuking and encouraging the Lord's sheep.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father and Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that both you and your church's leaders will "keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry."
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
Read the New Testament in a year! Today: 2 Timothy 2
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