Sermon Transcript
Well, leave it to a 6-year-old to personify a life of our dreams. 6-year-old Tenley, she was with her sister, 2 brothers. They were recently camping with their parents over at Seabright Beach. It was a Chamber of Commerce weather for a few days for those that were lucky enough to get a beach site for their trailers and their RVs that were within distance of the sand. The perfect weather made for the best time there on the sand, just for, you know, doing all the things you try to do when you’re down at the beach, hanging out, soaking up the sun, catching the waves, roasting marshmallows and hot dogs and all the rest of the stuff that you do there.
But for Tinley, her time included spending as much time as possible with the young female lifeguard who Tinley came to adore. Since she was so impressed by all that this lifeguard did, she thought, you know, This is the life for me. She gets to work on the beach. She gets to wear her bathing suit all day long. She got to tell people what to do and what not to do.
She got to hang out in the sun all day long. She got to be a hero and save people. All of that led Tinley to finally, at that time there on the beach with her mother, say to her mother, Mom, when I grow up, I want to be a lifeguard. Of course, what Tenley doesn’t know is what Paul Harvey used to call the rest of the story, right? You familiar with that?
The rest of the story she got a little taste of when at one time as she was waiting for this lifeguard, this lifeguard came in a pickup truck instead of, you know, walking down to the beach. She came in a pickup truck with sirens blaring and red lights flashing, and she raced down the beach to help some people who got trapped on some rocks when the high tide came up unexpectedly and they were stuck without any beach to walk back on. And so that situation required this lifeguard to one by one swim the people back to safety, which was risky. It was a lot of work. And as you can imagine, the ocean at this time of year is really cold.
But nonetheless, that’s what she did. That was part of the job. And that part of the job, uh, Tinley had not really done much thinking about. All she was thinking about were the sunglasses, the sunbathing, and the suntanning. That’s why she was interested in this job.
You know, many of us come to see somewhere in our journey related to work that work isn’t just fun and games. I mean, we’d like it to be a lot of fun and games, but quite frankly, I did some thinking about this a week ago, and I couldn’t think of any job where all the time it’s just fun and games. I did come close, I thought, for a moment when I thought back on my oldest son’s job at Club Disney when he was 16 years of age. Club Disney had opened this new place. It was kind of an experiment for them, real close to where we lived.
It was a place for kids to come, and the whole focus was on play and, you know, having parties and that sort of thing. And it was really a cool place, but it still wasn’t all fun and games, especially if you were an employee and you’re 16 years old. You ultimately find out there are bathrooms to clean, there are ornery people to, you know, try to make happy, there are sugared-up kids to deal with, and there’s product that you gotta shelve and reshelf and reshelf. And there’s trash to dump. In other words, there’s the rest of the story.
And that’s where we’re going to go this morning, the rest of the story, because every job has hardships and challenges and obstacles and difficulties. You could call it the fine print, the unspoken, or the unadvertised parts of jobs. And not just jobs, but ministry. And we’re going to see that this morning as we come back to 2 Timothy. If you’ve been with us, we’ve been studying through the book of 2 Timothy.
And this morning we’re in 2 Timothy 2:1-7, a little section where Paul basically tells Timothy the rest of the story. Paul’s the writer of 2 Timothy. He’s writing to a young pastor that’s at his first church assignment. It’s the first church at Ephesus. And from what we can tell by what we’re reading, this ministry hasn’t been a cakewalk.
For him, it’s been more like an unending task, a relentless hardship, a strenuous race, or a backbreaking grind. That was the rest of the story for Timothy. And I just want to stop here and say, and if it sounds familiar to your story, we all understand. Because oftentimes that’s what happens with jobs and tasks and life. The story includes all of that other stuff as well.
We’d like it to be fun and games, but it’s not just fun and games. And so Timothy— Paul writes to Timothy. Timothy is a prodigy of the Apostle Paul. He was basically his spiritual father, father to Timothy in a spiritual way. And this is what he writes to Timothy, 2 Timothy 2:1 and following.
He says, you Then, my son, be strong in the grace that’s in Christ Jesus. And the things you’ve heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. Verse 3, endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs. He wants to please his commanding officer.
Verse 5, similarly, If anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor’s crown unless he competes according to the rules. The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. Reflect on what I’m saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this. Now, when you look closely at that, what you see are 4 challenging roles that demand the strength of Jesus Christ, the grace of Jesus Christ, which he talks about in verse 1. And these 4 roles are the fine print.
And oftentimes we don’t think about these, but when we have maybe a time like today to look at a passage like this, these could really be helpful. Because some of us find ourselves in a place right now where we’re just, you know, I don’t know if I can hold on, you say. I didn’t know this was part of the job. I’ve been thinking about giving it up. And Paul recognizes that, and he says to Timothy, like, right off the top here in chapter 2, you’re going to need strength beyond your strength.
You’re not going to be able to do this alone, Timothy. You’re going to need the strength that’s found in Jesus Christ. In fact, you’re going to need the strength that’s found in the grace, the grace of Jesus Christ. Somebody came up to me after the first service and asked me if I would pray for her husband who’s dying right now. And we prayed together, and she said, you know, I just feel like God has given me grace even right now.
And I said, you know, that really reflects the Scriptures because Timothy— Peter, actually, I said Peter wrote about how we experience multifold trials, manifold trials. We experience manifold trials. But he went on to say, but there’s manifold grace. So it’s almost like we have these very colored trials, all kinds of trials, but there’s grace for every color of trial that we experience. And Timothy begins here by saying— Paul begins to Timothy and he says, You’re going to need grace.
You’re going to need more grace than you have right now to do the task, the roles that God has before you. So you need to be strong in grace. And what kind of grace are we talking about? Well, we’re talking about saving grace first, but then we’re talking about daily grace. And saving grace is that grace that we found or find in Jesus Christ, where Christ saves us and he brings us into a relationship with God through his work for us, a gift that he gave to us when he came, lived his life, died on the cross, was resurrected from the tomb.
That grace, and that grace makes it possible for us then to receive the work of the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and God begins to work within us to transform us by his power and into his plan. That’s saving grace. But then there’s the daily grace, and the daily grace we need is the grace to become people of grace. Because a lot of times we aren’t people of grace, we’re people that are bent on performance. We beat each other up or we beat ourselves up because we don’t have strong enough grace in our lives.
And so he’s talking also here about daily grace, the kind of grace that fills us with God’s graces such as love and mercy and kindness and joy and hope and forgiveness, those kinds of graces. And by the way, if there ever was a person who needed that kind of grace, it was Peter, the person I just mentioned that wrote about manifold grace and manifold trials. You may remember that Peter, from the start of his relationship with Jesus, he messed up many, many times. Jesus actually had to rescue him on one occasion when he got out of a boat and he tried walking to Jesus on the water. And he probably would have made it had he kept his eyes on the Lord, but the Lord had to rescue him.
It was a moment of grace from the Lord to Peter. And you may remember the time that Peter rebuked the Lord because the Lord was talking about dying on the cross and Peter didn’t see it that way. And he rebuked Jesus and said, don’t talk like that, Lord. And you remember that Jesus rebuked Peter and said, get thee behind me, Satan. You don’t understand, Peter.
Peter needed grace in his life from start to finish. In fact, Even at the very finish of Jesus’ life, you remember that Peter denied the Lord 3 times. And after Jesus was resurrected, Jesus came back to Peter and he demonstrated grace to him and even asked him a question 3 times. Peter, do you love me? It’s like, for every time you denied me, I just want you to know I love you.
Do you love me? Are we gonna have a relationship or not? And this grace that Peter came to know, he came to experience and he came to believe that others needed this grace as well. So in his final book, 2 Peter, He opened the book with this first sentence that included these words, grace and peace be yours in abundance. Not in a little bit, because you’re not gonna be able to make it if you just have a little bit of grace.
You need to be abundant in grace. You need to, as Paul wrote Timothy, you need to grow strong in grace. And his final sentence in this book of 2 Peter, 2 Peter chapter 3 and verse 18, Peter wrote, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So it’s all about grace from start to finish. And we need that same grace to accomplish the work that God has put in front of us.
And this work is likened to— and you see the 4 metaphors we’re going to look at? It’s likened to a teacher, it’s likened to a soldier, it’s likened to an athlete, and it’s likened to a farmer. That’s the word. That’s the fine print. So let’s talk about that.
Why do we need grace? Because you’re not going to be able to pull this off in your own strength. First of all, If you’re going to be the kind of teacher that is teaching other teachers and multiplying yourself, you’re going to need the grace of Jesus Christ. 2 Timothy 2:2, Paul says to Timothy, and the things you’ve heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach. What’s he saying?
You need to be, Timothy, a teacher-making teacher. Now, that’s a strange way to say that, but Hang with me here just for a minute. It’s already hard enough just to be a teacher, isn’t it? I mean, just to get up and do the work of a teacher every day. If you’re a teacher, you know what this is like.
You know how hard it is to get up 5 days a week at least and do the teaching thing all day in the classroom, then oftentimes spend the evening at home, you know, doing other things related to the classroom, preparing yourself for the next day, and so forth and so on. And that is enough to say, I need the grace of God to be able to do this. But there’s an added dimension here, and this added dimension is it’s not that your teaching alone is enough, but what you want to do is you want to teach in such a way and with people who are hopefully motivated in such a way that they’re going to multiply what it is that you’re teaching, so that what you teach doesn’t just end with this person that you’re teaching, but this person takes what it is that you teach and they pass it on to others. And Paul is saying to Timothy, Timothy, all those things that you’ve heard me teach you, in a variety of settings with a variety of people. All those things that you’ve heard me teach you, I want you to take them and I want you to pass them along to others.
Now, how long has Timothy been sitting under Paul’s teaching? Well, actually for 17 years. Now think about that. Think about having the Apostle Paul as your mentor, as your coach, as your teacher from kindergarten through college. 17 years.
That’s a lot of learnings. There’s a lot of moments there where hopefully you’re learning something and you’re being transformed is similar to a child growing up in a home for 17 years. And the parent’s been teaching this child. And what do we hope? What do we hope for our children?
Or what do we hope for our spiritual children? What we hope for them is that after we’ve poured our life into them, it’s not going to end there, that it’s going to go with them, and ultimately it’s going to pass from them onto others. And Paul says, what I’ve taught you, what I’ve entrusted, what I’ve entrusted you with, notice the word entrust there in verse 2, these valuables that are now in your possession, you don’t want to sit on them. You need to pass them on to others. So all of those learnings that you’ve had about salvation, don’t let it just impact your life, pass it on to others.
And all those learnings about loving God and loving other people, pass those on to others. And all those learnings about witnessing, pass those on to others. And all those learnings about the church, pass those on to others. Family and friendships and all of that, pass those on to others, entrust them to others. So take what you’ve heard me say in the presence of many others, and he doesn’t tell us who the others were.
Could have been Silas, it could have been Barnabas, it could have been Luke, could have been a lot of people. But all of those things that you’ve heard, pass them on to not just anybody, but pass them on to people who are going to do something with them. Now, that’s not to say that there weren’t moments like even in Jesus’ ministry where he taught people that just were a dead end. You know, I mean, they listened and that was the end of it. That’s not to say that there’s not a place for that, but there’s a place also for intentionally passing along what it is that you’re learning so that it’s going to go from the person that you’re passing it along to to somebody else.
And this is going to require a special person that you’re passing this along to, somebody who is reliable, or the word here suggests trustworthy. It means they want to take what it is that they’re hearing and they want to pass it on. So in a sense, they don’t want to be a cul-de-sac. They want to be a thoroughfare. They want to take what they’re learning and pass it on to others.
And you’ll notice there’s a 4-generational model that’s found here in verse 2. There’s, first of all, the things that you’ve heard me say. Me is the Apostle Paul. That’s the first generation. The second generation is you.
You see it there in verse 2, Timothy. Who’s you? Timothy, this faithful, proven follower of Jesus Christ. Timothy was to pass it along to men, or reliable men, not just to anyone, but to people who are more like a river of life or a flowing fountain than a Dead Sea. Pass it along to people who are going to pass it along to others, and then those people hopefully will then teach others.
There’s your 4th generation in this verse. They will then teach others also. They will take what it is that they’ve heard and they will pass it along. I noticed this was happening last night at the Couples Night Out. I don’t know if you had a chance to be here last night.
It was a wonderful event. I hope this continues to happen in the life of the church. We had a really great time together. Man, the dinner was good. I hope I’m making you hungry right now.
But anyway, so it was really, it was just a great evening. And Shannon and Steve Duran shared some information about apology, you know, and what do we need to know about apologizing? And, you know, saying I’m sorry and mean it and things such as that. But they shared a lot of what we heard last night from the Chapmans, what they had heard from the Chapmans, Gary Chapman, who wrote this book about the 5 Languages of Apology. And so in a sense, I thought about this, I said, you know, really it’s like the Chapmans were the first generation and they shared this knowledge in a book and the Durans benefited from it, and so they’re the second generation, and then they shared this information with us last night.
And we’re the 3rd generation, and we may not have benefited from it if they had just sat on it, if they had not passed it along, if they had not been active learners, but they passed it along to us. And now we have the opportunity to take what it was that we heard last night and hopefully apply it, but then pass it along to somebody else. If you have children, I think you’d want to pass it along to your children. If you have somebody in your life that, you know, doesn’t get apology, you might want to pass it along to them as soon as possible. But anyway, so you get the idea.
There’s 4 generations there. And that’s what Paul is suggesting here. He’s suggesting that one of the tasks, one of the roles that a Christlike follower should assume is the role of a teacher-making teacher. So that you’re not just teaching just for the sake of teaching, but you’re teaching to multiply your life and multiply the teaching into the lives of others. But you’re not going to be able to do that over the long haul without the strong grace of Jesus Christ.
There’s a second metaphor that’s used here. It’s a single-minded soldier, a single-minded soldier. He says this, endure hardship with us, verse 3, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs. He wants to please his commanding officer.
You know, I was thinking if soldiering was nothing more than, you know, wearing sharp-looking uniforms and marching in parades, or carrying the flag at sporting events, or better yet, flying jets for the fun of it without ever having to pay a dime but having Uncle Sam pay you instead to fly the jets. If that’s all soldiering was, then recruitment offices would be a thing of the past because everyone would be signing up to be in the military. But you all know that’s not an accurate description of the military. The military is a place that includes— soldiering includes what? Enduring hardship.
Do you see it right there? Right there. Enduring hardship. There’s no other way to look at it. There’s going to be difficulty and risk and suffering and pain that just comes with the job of being a soldier.
This is the fine print. Nobody ever told you that. They missed telling you something that’s crucial to know, that living the Christian life and fulfilling the role that God has for us in this world will involve hardship, will involve enduring hardship. Tertullian put it this way. He said, no soldier comes to war surrounded by luxuries, nor goes into action from a comfortable bedroom, but from a makeshift and narrow tent where every kind of hardness and severity and unpleasantness is to be found.
Yeah, hardship is expected. That’s just a part of the Christian life. You say, why is it a part of the Christian life? Because we Christians are a part of a kingdom. It’s called the kingdom of light, and we live in the midst of the kingdom of darkness.
And if we’re going to push back on the kingdom of darkness, it’s going to involve hardship. In Timothy’s days, that meant persecution. Some people lost their lives. It certainly meant that for the Apostle Paul who’s writing this letter from prison. But for Paul, the cost— excuse me, the cause was worth the cost.
Cause was worth the cost. And the way Paul saw it, his whole thing in life was pleasing his commanding officer. Do you see those words used there? We endure hardship to please our commanding officer. And who’s the commanding officer?
Well, it’s the one that enlisted us. Who’s that? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ enlisted us, and He’s the one that you’ll notice there in verse 4 that we want to please. We want to please.
That’s our driving ambition. In fact, that was Paul’s driving ambition. 2 Corinthians 5:9, he said, therefore also we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, whether dead or alive, to be pleasing to Him. And to be pleasing to Him, Paul says, but we can’t get wrapped up in civilian entanglements. We can’t get wrapped up in civilian entanglements or civilian affairs.
You know, we realize that, soldiers realize that when they’re in the military. You can’t just do what it is that you wanna do. You can’t live like that as a soldier. You’re gonna live like what the commander wants. So you learn to say words like, yes, sir, and, no, sir.
You live with that kind of a mindset. You wanna please your commanding officer, and therefore you’re not gonna get entangled and other affairs. And Paul is saying here is the Christ follower must stay away from civilian affairs or from civilian entanglements. Now, that ought to make you ask, what does he mean by that? I mean, come on, what is he talking about?
Is he saying I can’t have a secular job? Is that what he’s saying? Is he saying I can’t have a hobby? Does that mean I shouldn’t get married? I mean, what is that?
What exactly does that mean? Well, you’ll remember that the Apostle Paul, he was actually a tentmaker. So he was involved in, call it whatever kind of work you want to call it. It wasn’t necessarily work that was for the church, and yet at the same time, it could be work for the Lord. Any work can be work for the Lord.
But he was a tentmaker. But you know what? His commitment to tentmaking wasn’t his first commitment. What was his first commitment? It was the Lord Jesus Christ.
And he lived to please the Lord Jesus Christ above all else. I saw this play out. My mother, she got a job at one point because we needed the income as a family. We were not making ends meet, and so she got a job outside the home. She already had a job in the home.
Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying here. Working in the home is a pile of work. Every time Bernice has ever left the home with me with the kids, you know, I understand again, this is a pile of work, you know. So anyway, she got a job outside the home as well. There came a point in this work that she was doing where the employer wanted her to start working on Sundays.
She quit her job and said, I can’t do that. She first talked to them and said, I want to worship on Sundays, but they didn’t see it that way. They said, you’re either working on Sunday or it’s just not going to work out. She said, fine, I’m not going to work here anymore. And why did she do that?
Because from her perspective, Sunday was a time where she wanted to have time with her family, to worship the Lord and to teach Sunday school, to teach junior highers. She— my mother used to teach junior highers. It’s fantastic. One of the junior highers that she taught was Bernice Simonelli. That would be my wife, future wife-to-be at that point.
But anyway, she taught Bernice. This is one of the reasons why her and Bernice had such a wonderful relationship. But she wasn’t in her mind entangled in civilian affairs. This is a tough one for us, isn’t it? And sometimes the reason we don’t want to endure hardship is because we want it different than it is right now, but the different than it is right now may actually put us outside of God’s plan for our life.
So there’s a careful balance to be found here.
So how do you do this? In the strong grace of Christ, finding the strong grace of Christ in what it is that you do, turning to him for help in your time of decision-making or whatever challenges you’re faced with. A person that is faithful to the calling that God puts on their life is a teacher-making teacher, a single-minded soldier, and also a rule-keeping athlete. A rule-keeping athlete. Verse 5, similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor’s crown unless he competes according to the rules.
Now, wouldn’t you agree every sport has its rules? And if you want to win the crown or you want to win the wreath or the trophy or the medal or the cash prize or the acclaim or the pennant or whatever it is, if you’re going to win, you’ve got to play by the rules. No rules, even at that time, no rules, no wreath. That was kind of the order of the day. So you have to compete according to the rules.
And if you don’t keep the rules and you win and you’re found out later to have cheated, then in the end you’re going to lose. And this is a very interesting picture as it connects with heaven because some of what we’re going to experience in heaven is going to depend upon how we competed while we were on earth as an athlete. In other words, how we played the game, did we keep the rules? Winners play by the rules. Now let me ask you a question.
Have you ever lost a match, a game, a race because you broke the rules? You know, maybe it happened in Monopoly or something. You know, somebody saw you grabbing cash from the bank or something thinking, ah, it’s just a game. Well, it may be a game until that moment. When people get a little competitive, you know, and things start changing.
Fine, if you want to have fun, that’s good, no problem. You don’t have to always be competitive in what you’re playing, but there are times where you decide, you know, you’re playing in a competition. In order to win the competition, which many of us like to do, you got to, you got to keep the rules. I still remember the time I was playing in a golf match between Northern California Golf Association and Southern California Golf Association. I was a part of the Southern California Golf Association, and competing against the Northern California Golf Association.
The reason I was a part of that wasn’t because they selected me, it’s because I paid the money to get in. So don’t, you know, get the wrong thought here right now. I’m not that good. But anyway, so I was doing okay in this particular match. We’re playing match play, and match play is where you play one hole at a time.
Essentially, it’s whoever wins the hole, and you could either win or draw the hole or whatever it is, or lose the hole. And hopefully by the time you finish the match, you’ve won more holes than the other person, the opponent, and therefore you win the match. So it was one of those kind of matches. We’re going along and I hit a great shot on a hole, got it right next— I got the ball right next to the pin, which is pretty unusual for me. It was about 6 inches from the pin, which is good.
Now if you don’t know anything about golf, you just got to know the next thing you’re going to do is try to put the ball into the hole. So if you’re only 6 inches away from the hole, you got a good chance. Okay, that’s what I’m saying. You got a good chance of putting the ball into the hole at this point. You can’t even miss this over at miniature golf, all right?
So anyway, so I come up to the green and I grab the flag. I remove the flag because back then at this point in time you couldn’t have the flag in. That’s a new rule this year. Anyway, that’s a whole nother story. And so you got to get the flag out.
So I got the flag out, put the flag right here. I took my putter, I putted the ball into the hole, tapped it into the hole, and I’m thinking inside, this is fantastic. I’m gonna win this hole. Until the guy that I was playing against said, you broke the rule. I said, what are you talking about?
He said, you cannot hold the flag while you putt the ball in. That’s called improving your stance. There’s a rule against that. You can’t do that. I lost the hole.
Well, that was about 20 years ago. And as I was thinking about this whole thing about keeping the rules and all of that, this thing came back to my mind. Yeah, I remember that deal, and that led to Ultimately, it was depression that set in and all kinds of things. But anyway, we’re not going to tell you. And so what happened was it was not a happy— it was not a happy moment for me because I like to win holes and I like to win matches if I can.
And so it didn’t happen. I actually lost that match. I know, that’s okay. So I usually lost anyway, but you get the idea. So I lost, I lost the hole, and so I wasn’t happy.
And this week as I was preparing, I went back and I just double-check the rules on this because I never double-checked the rules. And you know what I found out? I found out that that was not a rule, that this guy cheated me, that this— he thought that was a rule. I thought that he thought was right. But anyway, I, I— and so it really, really ticked me off even more this last week than it did 20 years ago.
Why would it still tick me off? Because we like to win. We like to win, don’t we? Yeah, we do. By the way, one of the websites that talks about this thought-to-be rule said this in parentheses: It’s actually one of the many old wives’ tales told throughout the golfing world, that you can’t, you know, hold on a flagstick and putt your ball into the hole.
Now, why would I even care about that? Well, I just do, but here’s something we should care about all the more. We should care about keeping the rules Because ultimately it’s going to make a difference in what happens in heaven.
I don’t know if you’ve paid attention to this, but it’s not that we win our way into heaven. We don’t earn our way into heaven. That, that’s not the case at all. That’s all by the grace of God. And quite frankly, even keeping the rules is by the grace of God.
But God in his grace God in his grace is going to reward his children. He’s going to reward them by how they live their life. And here’s the deal: you can’t win the game of life by compromising or cheating or changing the rules. Boy, we need to think about that. Today we live in a world of cultural adaptation.
People are making up the rules. I met with a person this week who was explaining to me why he is involved in immoral relationships, and it was nothing more than cultural adaptation.
And that is just so common today. You may want to go all the way back to that one rule that God gave Adam and Eve. Do you remember that? One rule. One.
You guys can eat off of any tree in the garden. Anyone, go ahead, just have a good time. Except for one, tree of knowledge of good and evil. Do not eat off of that tree. What did they do?
They ate off of it. They broke the rule. They looked at it and said, it looks so good, so appetizing. Certainly the Lord wants us to have that. Why would he keep that from us?
They ate, and we’ve been living in the aftermath of their sin ever since.
An athlete, if they want to win the prize, they got to keep the rules. And then he says this last rule, verse 6, the hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. A person of impact, a person that sees God use them in ways that the Lord has designed them to be used, is also a hardworking farmer, a hardworking farmer. Now, a lot of us don’t know a lot about farming, but we can take this one by faith. Farming is a lot of work.
It’s a lot of work. If you want to produce a harvest, if you want an abundance of crops, guess what? Skill is not enough. Sweat is going to be a part of it. You can’t expect an abundance of harvest without hard work.
A sluggard never makes a good farmer, according to the book the book of Proverbs. He’ll be asleep when he ought to be working. He’ll be too lazy to pull weeds, and thereby his field will be overgrown with thorns and weeds, and the crops won’t grow. What Paul is saying to Timothy here is, Timothy, you’ve got to be willing to dig in, and you’ve got to be willing to work hard. And it’s not going to be easy, but it will be worth it because there’s a harvest potential to come.
And so, as commentators have looked at this, they’ve talked about this farmer’s life in different forms. For instance, a farmer’s life involves constant toil. There’s plowing and sowing and tending and reaping. However poor the soil or the weather, you just got to keep at it if you’re a farmer. And there are long hours.
The day usually starts before sunup, and you use all of those hours, especially those fresh hours of the morning, to get the work in, to get as much work in as you can. And sometimes you just got to work at anytime because there’s work that needs to be done. And farming includes frequent disappointment, disappointment caused by frost and pests and weeds and crop damage and crop failure. And here’s a big one: not enough profit. And farmers need infinite patience.
They can’t reap a crop in a day or a week. It’s going to take months, months. First you sow and then you cultivate and then you water and you wait and then you reap in time. But this reaping comes after a lot of working and a lot of waiting and a lot of working and a lot of waiting. And farming also involves perpetual humdrum, little excitement unless something goes wrong, and then everybody’s excited.
Bishop Muehl said it this way, and like the soldier and athlete, the farmer’s life is totally devoid of excitement, remote from all glamour of peril and applause. And you know what we’re looking for most of the time? Often we’re looking for fame and ease. A farmer’s life just sounds like, that’s too hard, I’m going to avoid that. But Paul says to Timothy, but Timothy, don’t avoid it because a hardworking farmer will be the first to receive a share of the crops.
Doesn’t that sound good? That if you hang in there, you give the hard work, you’re going to be the first to share a harvest from the work that you’ve done. You’re gonna see the fruit of that, and that’s when it’s wonderful. When you as a parent, you hang in there and you continue through the grace of God and God’s strength, you hang in there and you continue to try to teach your children and help your children get it. Lord willing, there’s gonna be a day of harvest, a harvest of love in their lives for God and their love for other people, and it’s going to lead to impact in their lives from your life.
You know, that’s one of the reasons why I still love the ministry. I love the potential of what we are doing in the lives of people, where that can go. I absolutely love that. It doesn’t mean that a farmer’s life is easy. Farmer’s life will create exhaustion at times.
You’ll be weary. You’ll need to get some rest. God would say, get the rest. You need maybe some time away. Get some time away.
You can’t do this without prayer. You need others’ help. All of that’s a part of farming, but for the hope of seeing it turn into an abundant harvest. Isn’t this a great picture? All 4 of these pictures.
How does this sound to you? Well, this is kind of the fine print. This is the toil. This is the struggle. This is the labor.
This is what oftentimes does create weariness and exhaustion. But Paul’s saying to Timothy, don’t run from that. Embrace it. Embrace it. Be a teacher-making teacher.
Be a single-minded soldier. Be a rule-keeping athlete. Be a hardworking farmer. Now, I think those 4 roles, as much as we might understand them, might not actually translate into our lives unless we are strong in grace, verse 1, and also verse 7 here, unless we do this. Notice these words.
On what I’m saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this. All this that we’ve just talked about, this matter of being a teacher and a soldier and an athlete and a farmer, all this, all this is the part of a Christian’s job description, a Christian’s role. All of this the Lord will give you insight into. You don’t have to try to figure that out alone. The Lord wants you to have insight, but what you must be willing to do is reflect, is to take some time and reflect, to think this through.
Because potentially on the other side of reflection, just reflecting, meditating, contemplating these roles, on the other side of this reflection perhaps is greater impact. On the other side of reflection, instead of writing a letter of resignation, is a letter of recommitment.
Instead of saying, I’m out, I’m in. On the other side of reflection, hopefully, is a ministry that leads to the salvation of others and their growth in Jesus Christ. What a great picture. And as we reflect on the roles that God has given us, we want to reflect with the realization That the Lord is going to empower us as we turn to him for the strength that we need to carry these roles out faithfully.
So one of the things I want to encourage you to do is simply this: before you get too far into this day, why don’t you just schedule— if you don’t have time today, just schedule at least 10 minutes to just reflect on what we’ve been talking about this morning. It could be one of the best things that you could get out of today. It really could be. To just be able to sit down and say, you know, Lord, I guess I’ve been trying to do this in my own strength. It’s not working well.
I get that you want me to be a soldier, but I’ve been trying to do it in my own strength. Forgive me. Help me get back on track with you. Just those kinds of thoughts can reap huge benefits. And by the way, this assumes that like Timothy, you have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
If you don’t have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, that’s where you want to start. You want to turn to him and say, Lord, save me. I want to be one of your children. Adopt me into your family. Give me the grace I need.
Change me into a person of grace.
So often I find myself, Lord, living a performance-driven life. I don’t want to— I don’t want to live that way. I don’t want to beat myself up anymore. I don’t want to beat others up anymore. I want to be a person who manifests grace and experiences grace.
And when I’m in the midst of pain, I want to experience your manifold grace that matches the manifold trials that have come into my life. Make me a gracious teacher, a gracious soldier, a gracious athlete, a gracious— what’s the last one?
Farmer. Let’s pray. Lord, thanks for this time this morning to just contemplate this wonderful passage of Scripture. It speaks to us today as much, we hope, as it spoke to Timothy, who had a gigantic task in front of him, one that he was trying to sort out and was at the point of giving up on, but your word came through the Apostle Paul at just the right time, and he continued to endure and have impact there in Ephesus. And Lord, in some ways we feel like your word has come to us this morning at just the right time here in the Bay Area, where it’s not easy to live a life of grace.
It’s not easy to live in your grace. And there’s so much that’s put on us, so many demands. But God, in the midst of hardship, in the midst of the challenges that we come up against from the kingdom of darkness, may we be people who stand strong and represent you well. We pray that through our lives Things would happen that would be beyond us. We pray, Lord, for anybody here that’s not yet received you as their Savior, that even right now would be a moment of salvation for them.
They would ask you to save them from their sins and begin a brand new life with you. Thank you, God, for this wonderful time to encourage each other this morning. May it not end here. May it continue as we leave this place. In your name, amen.
