2 Timothy 4:1-8--Preach the Word

2 Timothy 4:1-8
English Standard Version

Preach the Word
4 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 But as for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

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I don't think this charge is meant to be a threat to Timothy or other pastors/elders as much as it is a motivation to get about the work of fervently and boldly proclaiming the Word because time is short because those whom the Word needs to reach will one day not have the opportunity.  There is a day fixed as the end of time as we know it (though we don't know when that day is coming) when the living and the dead will be judged (this will be the judgment of the wicked).  All the wicked, including the devil and his angels and all men who followed in rebellion after them (everyone who died in their trespasses and sins without repenting and surrendering their lives to Jesus as both their Lord and Savior) will also be throw into The Lake of Fire--a place of eternal torment and separate from the blessings that God has prepared from those who belong to Him.  We see in this passage that the people that belong to the Lord have a different destiny, and that is an eternal kingdom (The New Heavens and the New Earth) that you can read more about in Revelation 21 and 22 (among other places).

With this in mind, the man of God must preach the Word both when it is easy and when it is hard to do so.  This is God's means of bringing about salvation to those who are lost and we want to see people as citizens of His Kingdom, not the kingdom of this world that will be destroyed and has its end in the Lake of Fire.  Before that final judgment comes though, there will come another kind of judgment that is mentioned in Romans 1.  Men will be given over to their depraved minds and will no longer bear to hear the truth of God's Word.  We must eagerly share the Word with everyone who will listen while their hearts are receptive, because a time is coming when men will no longer listen.

Instead, men will form their own religious groups that they will call churches, and they will pay people they call pastors and priests to tell them what they want to hear.  Instead of expositional sermons, they will hear inspirational pep-talks and all sorts of perversions of God's Word where it is used to justify them continuing to live in sin.  It will be much like the days before the Babylonian Exile for Judah when the kings, priests, and prophets were all corrupt.  Together these leaders spoke "Peace, peace" to the people and promised them nothing bad would ever happen to them because God loved them too much to judge them like He judged all the other nations when God had been sending His prophets to them to tell them that He loved them enough to let them continue in sin.  The Lord will not continue to let sin reign and ruin His beautiful creation.  He will put an end to the time of sin and rebellion and all that have decided to join themselves to that kingdom.   Then He will make all things new and beautiful and right and it will be "very good" once again.

I've really only spoken about the words "preach" and maybe "teach" so far, but the text also calls the pastors to "exhort" (like Paul is doing here--urge someone to do the right thing), "reprove" (urge someone to stop doing the wrong thing), "rebuke" (publicly identify someone living in sin for what they are doing, usually accompanied with a public call for repentance that, if not heeded, would lead to excommunication)--this one in particular must be done with patience because it may take some time for God to work on someone to bring them to repentance, but the pastors and elders must not fail to enforce good church discipline and let this kind of rebellion (that we already talked about it being like gangrene) spread through the Body of Christ.  This too is done with the realities of the destinies of the redeemed and the lost in mind.  Many will think they are saved when they are still lost, and they need to be told to no longer be controlled by the flesh, but by the Spirit if they truly belong to Christ. 

The world will hate all those who preach and teach the truth and who call people to repent.  They will persecute pastors, elders, teachers, and other preachers with everything they have--hate speech laws that punish the public proclamation of the Word of God with fines, imprisonment, or maybe even loss of life, or they will allow the persecute them and will do nothing to stop or punish the mob thereby giving tacit consent and approval to the actions of the mob.  Such actions could be destruction of property, interference in worship services, doxing of religious leaders with the intent to encourage others to do harm to them or their family members, de-banking pastors and churches, de-platforming pastors and churches from social media accounts, and refusal of service in the public square (just to name a few things that have happened or are currently happening).  Lawfare is also a big issue where members of the "mob" I spoke of bring unfounded lawsuits against Christians to force them to pay large amounts of money in legal fees to defend themselves that they probably don't have access to, and, if they get the right judge and jury that let them win when they have no legal reason for the lawsuit, the Christian is forced to pay judgments far beyond their ability so that they are forced to pay these judgment the rest of their lives (our Constitution is supposed to have protections against such lawfare, but these protections are largely ignored).  In spite of all these same kinds of things that were going on in whatever form they were happening in Paul's day, Timothy is to stay true and faithful to God and His Word, no matter the cost.  The same goes for all those who are called to be pastors today.

Paul puts a fine point on this by saying that he already knows he's going to die for his commitment to teach, preach, and evangelize.  He has run the race set before him and finished well.  He has fought the good fight and looks forward to the day that the Lord says to him, "Well done, My good and faithful servant.  Enter now into the rest I have prepared for you."  He knows a crown of righteousness (the righteousness of Christ, not his own righteousness) awaits him--the same reward all of us who are in Christ can look forward to at His glorious appearing.