2 Timothy 2 22.
Paul had been given Timothy some instruction on how to be an approved worker.
Now in the context, these scriptures are really speaking to someone who would be in church
leadership more like a pastor or a role, I believe.
But nonetheless, there are certainly good things here we can get that I think are applicable
to all of us in some way.
And so we started this section a couple weeks ago.
We didn't come last week because of the storm, but we're continuing on with that same idea
of being one who is an approved worker.
And so these words would have been good for Timothy as a leader, good for leaders today,
and good for the rest of us.
So let's pray and we'll get started.
God we come to you.
I thank you for your good word.
And I pray that these words would instruct us tonight.
I pray that these would be words that you would use to speak to our hearts, that we
would listen to what your word says, dear Lord, that we would examine ourselves to see
the areas where we fail, dear Lord, where maybe we're not doing good.
And maybe we'll see some of these areas tonight that you'll point out to us, God, that we
need to work on.
So I pray that you would help us to do that.
I pray that your Holy Spirit would be with me, that I would preach and teach in a way
that brings glory to you.
I pray that you would hide me behind the cross and let us have a good night tonight.
In Jesus' name I pray it.
Amen.
All right.
Second Timothy chapter two, verse 22.
Flee from youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace along with those who
call on the Lord from a pure heart.
All right.
Flee from your youthful passions.
That might be another way of saying, okay, it's time to grow up.
There comes a point where you have to grow up.
There comes a point when you have to move on from childish things, when you have to
grow up, when you have to take on responsibilities, when it's time to be an adult, when it's time
to mature a little bit, especially for those who are going to lead God's people.
And this is, I think, I feel pretty confident in saying this, that this is a problem that
we have in our world today, that at some point in time from people about 40 years old and
under, the lower you get under, the worse it gets as far as adults not wanting to be
adults, adults not growing up, children not getting responsibilities.
And so then in turn what you have is a lot of people who by age would be considered adults,
but by mentality would be considered children.
Here's an example of this.
Last year, McDonald's introduced adult Happy Meals.
Now isn't that the craziest thing?
Happy Meals for adults.
So if you're 40 years old and you want a Happy Meal, you go and they give you the little
Happy Meal box with the pictures of all the characters that were popular at McDonald's
when you was a kid, 30 years ago.
And it even comes with a toy.
Now I think that that summarizes this idea, this thought here, that we need to grow up,
that we need to mature.
And everybody says nowadays about kids, well, kids just aren't as mature as they used to
be.
Well, whose fault is that?
There's parents and there's grandparents raising them.
And if you treat a child like a baby and you raise them like a baby, then they're going
to grow up to be babies.
They're not going to be adults.
And so maybe it's just on a side note, that might be a good job for us as parents and
grandparents to raise up our kids to be adults, give them responsibilities, help them to be
ready for the world.
But the age of responsibility and maturity has greatly increased throughout the last
few years.
Think about people that you know that's been married 50, 60, 75 years.
They probably got married when they were teenagers most of the time.
And you say, well, kids can't get married today when they're teenagers because they
were a lot more mature then.
Well, whose fault is that?
Where's the problem?
But how much longer can the age go?
That's another topic.
But here's what Paul is saying to Timothy here.
He's saying you need to flee from your youthful passions.
You need to grow up.
You don't need to be childish.
You don't need to be like a kid.
You need to be a man who is mature and who is ready to do the work of the Lord.
And this is good for us, not just people who are in ministry, but this is good for all
of us that we try to reach some level of maturity in our life.
Okay?
So we know what to flee from.
We know what to avoid.
We know what's unhealthy for us.
But what does he say next?
He says, and pursue.
So don't do this.
Flee from this.
This is bad for you, but pursue this.
Run to this.
Chase after these things.
Desire these things.
And he gives him a good list of things to pursue here.
The first one is righteousness.
Okay?
To seek to do what is right, what is good.
This is what we should pursue.
Are we pursuing this in our life?
Are we pursuing to do what is right?
What is morally good?
What God's word commands us to do?
This is what Paul tells Timothy to pursue.
The next thing he says is to pursue faith.
Now that one's, the rest of them, you can kind of see, okay, I can pursue this.
But how do we pursue faith?
I mean, faith is something we have or we don't have.
We've come to faith in Jesus Christ or we haven't come to faith in Jesus Christ.
But to pursue faith, I think, is just simply to continue to strengthen our faith because
there are days that our faith is weak.
And so how do we pursue faith?
Well, we pursue faith by continuing to have faith, even in those times where it's really
difficult, which is why chapters like Hebrews 11 are important for us as Christians.
Because what we see in Hebrews chapter 11 is a long list of people who are celebrated
for their faith, praise the Lord.
But yet even people in scripture that we see sometimes that are celebrated for their faith,
even some of those disciples who walked closest with Jesus had doubts sometimes.
Even their faith wasn't strong.
And so even some of the people who saw Jesus every day sometimes didn't have strong enough
faith.
And so we shouldn't feel quite so bad when we have a lapse in faith.
But we should not be content with having a weak faith or with doubting.
We should be like the scripture that says, God, I believe, but help my unbelief.
This should be our desire that we pursue faith, that we pursue to grow in our faith, that
we see the areas where we do doubt and we don't trust in the Lord like we should.
And Paul says, okay, here's something you need to pursue.
You need to pursue faith.
You need to pursue love.
Okay.
Are we pursuing that in our life?
Are we pursuing a love of God?
Do we love God?
Okay.
If we love God, then how do we see that playing out in our life?
Is there some actions in our life?
Is there some fruit being produced in our life by the way that we live that shows that
we love God?
Are we pursuing love?
Are we pursuing love for one another?
Do we love people?
Do we love our spouses?
Do we love our children?
Do we love our grandchildren?
Do we love our neighbor as ourself?
These are questions that we need to ask ourself.
Now the church answer would be, yes, I love, but the real answer may be, not really.
There may be some people that I don't really love.
I know I should love them and there's a part of me that wants to love them, but sometimes
there's a part of us that have people that we don't really want to love because they
do some really rotten things to us.
They're pretty nasty to us.
They're pretty mean to us.
They've hurt us in a lot of ways.
They just continue to do evil things and they're not deserving of love, right?
Sometimes it's hard for us to love people, but at the same time, by our own standard,
we would be those very same people in God's eyes who do some pretty evil things, who are
pretty rotten, not deserving of God's love, yet God loves us.
God gives us the example of love through Jesus Christ and then here we're called to pursue
love.
We need to pursue love and we need to do the things that accompany love.
If you love somebody, how do you treat them?
If you love somebody, you're there to support them and to help them and to encourage them
or to correct them sometimes.
These are things that come along with love and so we need to be pursuing love and that
needs to be evident.
Love is not just a feeling, it's an action.
Love is shown by how we treat people.
If you tell somebody you love them and they're hungry and you say, man, I see you need food,
but I love you and then you go on your way, well, that's not really showing much love.
Now, maybe you do have some level of love in your heart there, but true love would say,
there's a need there.
I'm not just going to tell you I love you, I'm going to help meet that need.
Love is an action word and we need to remember that.
We're called to pursue love here.
What else does he say?
He says to pursue peace.
All right, that's a hard thing to do.
It's a good thing to do, to pursue peace, to try to be at peace with everyone so long
as it's within our power, but sometimes it's not.
Sometimes it's not.
Sometimes you can do everything just right and you try to keep the peace and some people
just don't want to be peaceful, but sometimes we're the ones who aren't doing a good job
of pursuing peace.
Sometimes we should keep our mouth shut.
Sometimes we shouldn't stir the pot, but sometimes somebody comes at us or says something or
we hear something going on and we have to jump right in there.
We have to open our mouth and next thing we know a situation boils up, but we need to
not try to fall into that trap.
We need to try to pursue peace.
Maybe there are times that we could bring peace to situations.
Maybe we could not say anything.
That might be a good idea sometimes.
Maybe there are other times when situations are beginning to boil up that maybe we need
to interject.
Maybe there needs to be somebody to come in with a level head to try to calm things down.
We need to pursue peace.
We don't want there to be strife.
We don't want there to be arguing and complaining and all these things going on.
We want to make sure that we are not the one fueling the fire.
You can't control what somebody else does, but you can control whether or not you're
going to throw fuel on the fire or not.
Are you going to be one who helps situations to explode into something that it shouldn't
be or are you going to be one that helps to bring peace?
These are the things that Paul tells Timothy to do.
These are good instructions for all of us that we flee from our youthful things, that
we flee from childishness, that we mature a little bit, and that we begin to pursue
these things that he says.
You look in our world today and a lot of times what you see is just the opposite of this.
You see childish people who are doing what is immoral, who doubt God, who hate one another
and stir the pot all the time.
That's what you see a lot in our world today.
If you don't believe me, get on Facebook sometimes and look at some of the stuff that people
post.
It's the exact opposite of what Paul calls Timothy to and us as well, I believe, in this
passage.
We don't be those who pursue the things of God and not the things of the devil.
Sometimes it might be easier for us to hate than love.
Sometimes it might be easier for us to jump right in the middle of a conflict and stir
the pot than it is to bring peace, but that's not what God calls us to do.
God calls us to a higher standard.
We need to look at these things and we need to try to pursue these things in our own lives.
Verse 23, but reject foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they breed quarrels.
We already saw that kind of a similar thing a couple of weeks ago.
That is, don't argue about things that don't matter, about quarrels, about trivial things
that are not of any significance.
Sometimes even Christians can fall into those traps.
The Bible is full of a lot of scriptures, some of which are not easy to understand and
some of which leads to multiple interpretations.
That's one area sometimes where you might have some quarreling about things.
Maybe sometimes we have serious things we need to talk about, but that's not the intention
here.
This quarreling about disputes, about things that don't amount to a hill of beans, but
that can destroy people's relationships, can destroy bodies of Christ.
Those are the things that we must always be on guard, that we do not fall into that trap.
There are people that have arguments and disputes with people and they hold grudges against
those people for 20, 30, 40, 50 years and go to the grave holding a grudge against somebody
over something that did not make a bit of difference.
Now, you probably know some people like that, but I hope that you're not a person like that.
If you are, well, then you need to work on yourself.
Life is too short to hold grudges over insignificant things, but when it comes to church and brothers
and sisters in Christ begin to quarrel in such a way that affects our relationships
with one another, it affects our relationship with God, and it can affect a whole church.
No church is immune to that.
The devil is at work and he is so good at finding somebody he can work through and who's
it going to be?
Is it going to be me?
Is it going to be you?
Well, we'd all say, the devil's not going to work through me.
Well, we have to be careful.
We have to make sure that we're pursuing the things of God.
So long as we're pursuing the things of God and we're trusting in God and we're seeking
God and we're striving to live by his word, then we're not immune from temptation, but
we'll be much better off to fight against it when it comes.
But the moment the devil begins to work, then that's a problem because then we begin to
have quarrels and feuds and disputes amongst one another and that can destroy a church.
And Lord knows we don't ever want to be part of anything like that.
So we want to avoid those things.
All right, verse 24, the Lord's slave must not quarrel.
Okay, that's what we just saw, but must be gentle to everyone.
Okay, well, that's a good requirement.
Now in the context of someone who's going to be a leader, then you want someone who's
going to be gentle.
Now Jesus was certainly one I think we would look at and say that he was gentle.
He was compassionate.
Brother Ernie is one that we would look at, I believe, and say that he is gentle and that
he is compassionate.
And that's an important thing because you got people and they're going through sin and
they got things going on and you know how it is because you've done stuff you shouldn't
do.
And as a leader, you got people coming to you saying, hey man, here's what's going on.
Would you pray for me?
I need help in this.
And you have to be able to have some compassion and some gentleness to realize that, look,
people struggle.
What you don't want is somebody said, I can't believe you did that.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
I just didn't just go off and not have any compassion whatsoever.
I just can't believe it.
No, that's not a good quality to have.
You want somebody that's going to follow the example of Jesus.
You don't pretend like sin's not sin.
You don't push sin under the rug.
But there has to be some gentleness there, some compassion there to point somebody to
the love of God.
If you got somebody who's a hothead, that's not gentle, that's always like a bull in a
china shop in every way that they want to handle every situation and deal with people,
then that's not good.
That's not going to be good for the kingdom of God or for a body of brothers and sisters
in Christ.
Paul says here that the one who is the Lord's slave must not quarrel.
Now this is not just good advice for those in leadership.
This is good advice for all of us.
Must not quarrel, but must be gentle with everyone.
Are you gentle with people?
I don't know.
Some days I'm gentle with people, some days I'm not.
Because some days you have a bad day, right?
Some days you have a bad day and somebody does something you don't like, somebody pulls
out in front of you, somebody messes your order up and you're not gentle.
Some days you just go with the flow.
Some days I order my breakfast platter, I always get eggs over easy, I get sausage,
I get grits, I get toast.
And some mornings they give me bacon and I like bacon but I don't want bacon on my breakfast.
And some mornings I just eat it.
And some mornings I say almost, now I ain't ever rude when I say it, but some mornings
we just have a bad morning and some mornings we can take it and some mornings we say, no
I want my sausage.
And we need to be able to have a gentle answer.
I try to be gentle.
I say, you know I didn't order that bacon, I ordered sausage.
But sometimes we're not so gentle.
We go to McDonald's and we get our adult happy meal and they give us McNuggets instead of
a double whopper and we say, I ordered McNuggets.
And we're not so gentle.
We go back up there and say, I'll order, get your head out of your phones and get back
to doing what you need to do and pay attention to what you do.
And sometimes we're not so gentle in how we deal with people but what we need to remember
is sometimes people have a bad day and sometimes you have a bad day and sometimes you do things
that are not right and you act in a way that is not right and your mind is on other things.
And so we need to remember that.
And maybe we give somebody a little compassion.
That might make all the difference.
They may be having the worst day in the world and what they expect is for people to come
and treat them like that.
What they don't expect is for you to say, Oh honey, it's all right.
I'll just eat these chicken nuggets.
It ain't a big deal.
I'm just glad I got some.
I appreciate you working and we'll get it next time.
They're not expecting that.
A little grace and a little compassion.
So what Paul calls Timothy to here is to be gentle to everyone.
And we need to make sure that we're doing that.
Check ourself to see if we're gentle when we encounter other people.
Able to teach.
Now this is certainly more applicable to someone who's a leader, someone who's a pastor, an
elder in a church type position.
They must have some ability to be able to teach God's word effectively.
Not everybody has that ability.
That's not saying that people that don't are stupid.
It's just saying that some are called in that way and those in the case of Timothy or others
who are in those leadership positions need to have at least some ability to be able to
teach God's word.
Able to teach and patient.
Must be patient.
Okay.
This is a good one for us to work on.
Not just for those who are in leadership, but all of us.
How's our patience?
How long is our fuse?
Well, some people have a really long fuse.
Some people they can put up with a lot.
Some people have a really short fuse.
Some people it does not take much.
Some people can be having the best day of their life and all of a sudden they're at
the red light and the light turns green and the car in front of them takes more than two
seconds to pull off and next thing you know, oh, oh, you didn't learn how to drive.
Let's go.
The light's green.
Why don't you go?
And just like that we lose our patience.
But we need to work on those things.
We're patient with people.
Give them a little bit of slack.
Show some patience.
I have to pray for that a lot.
I don't do good at that.
That's something y'all can pray for me about.
I want to be more patient than I am and some days are better than others, but some days
I'm just not as patient as I'd like to be.
But these are things that Paul says is important.
And what does he say here in verse 25?
Instructing his opponents with gentleness.
Okay, here's some good advice, especially for those who are in a leadership or anybody
really who is ever trying to share the gospel with somebody or share God's word with somebody.
Sometimes you face opposition.
Sometimes people are coming at you.
They're trying to attack you.
All right, well, are you going to butt heads with them?
Are you going to start that arguing kind of like we talked about a while ago and begin
to quarrel?
Or are you going to have a gentle answer for them?
Not to be argumentative.
We're not going to make much progress if we're argumentative, but to sit down and have a
good conversation and to give a gentle answer to those who come and begin to teach things
or say things that are opposed to you.
Sometimes people might knock on your door and they may say, hey, we want to tell you
about Jesus or we want to tell you about God.
And you let them in and they begin to tell you, well, here's what the Bible says.
And you say, well, I don't know about that.
My Bible doesn't say that and I don't believe that.
And how are we going to respond?
Is it going to be a knock down drag out or are you going to say, well, let's look at
it in my Bible?
And will gentleness begin to work through the scriptures that others may come to you
saying, hey, here's what God's word said.
You say, this is not what God's word says.
Now you're going to make a lot more progress with somebody if you're gentle than if you
say, you don't know what you're talking about and if you believe that you're going to hell.
Maybe they are going to hell if they don't trust in Jesus Christ.
But is that going to win them to Jesus Christ?
Maybe not.
Maybe so.
Maybe that gets their attention.
But maybe the best way to get their attention is with gentleness to be able to teach the
word of God effectively to them and say, let's look at this.
Let's look at what God's word says.
And what does he say there?
He says, instructing his opponents with gentleness, perhaps God will grant them repentance, leading
them to the knowledge of the truth.
So what's the goal in dealing with your opponents with gentleness?
That they would come to the Lord, that they would see the truth of God's word, that they
would come to the knowledge of the truth of God's word that would lead to repentance,
that they would trust in Jesus Christ.
And how does Paul say that that needs to be accomplished?
Through gentleness, that you respond with gentleness.
This is good, good instruction for us to pay attention to, not just people who preach and
teach, but all of us when we encounter people who might tell us things that the Bible doesn't
say, things that are just clearly false, things that are untrue about God and God's word.
How do we respond to those things?
Well, we need to respond to them, but we need to respond with gentleness in the hopes that
we can lead someone to Jesus Christ.
Verse 26, then they may come to their senses and escape the devil's trap, having been captured
by him to do his will.
Okay?
So Paul gives Timothy a lot of instruction here, a lot of instruction on how to be an
approved worker, how to flee from the childish things of your past, how to mature, how to
pursue all these different areas that he gives us to pursue so that we can grow in God, so
that we can work on ourselves, that we have a gentleness about us, that we have patience
about us, that we don't get into quarrels or arguments, but that we can rightly divide
the word of God so that we can gently lead others to Jesus Christ so that, as Paul puts
it here, that they may escape the devil's trap, that they may come to their senses,
that they may come to their senses.
We see that language sometimes in scripture about people who are going in the wrong direction.
I believe that language is used of the prodigal son, I think.
I'm pretty sure it is, when it says that he was out there eating a pig's slot, and I'm
pretty sure the text says, and he came to his senses.
And I think there's one other account.
I can't remember that off the top of my head.
But this idea is that there sometimes in our life has to be times that we come to our senses.
Now here it's talking about those that Timothy or anybody else is going to try to reach who
are coming with some kind of teaching that's not of God.
But perhaps sometimes even for those who are of God, maybe for us sometimes we need to
come to our senses.
Maybe tonight some of us need to come to our senses.
Maybe we hadn't been living right.
Maybe we hadn't been doing right.
Maybe we see some things on this list today that we failed a test.
Have we been pursuing righteousness?
I don't know.
You can answer that for yourself.
You don't have to lie.
Just answer yes or no.
Be truthful.
You're the only one that's taking the test.
You and God are the only one who knows.
And if you lie, He's going to know you're lying, so you might as well be true.
Are you pursuing righteousness?
Are you pursuing faith?
Are you pursuing love?
Are you pursuing peace?
Are we pursuing these things in our life?
Maybe we are pursuing some of them.
Maybe we are.
Do we have patience?
Do we have gentleness?
These are things that are important.
Maybe we have these things.
Maybe we don't have these things.
Maybe we see passages like these in their wake-up call.
Maybe we're acting childish.
Maybe it's time to grow up.
Maybe it's time for some of us tonight to come to our senses, to remember the love of
Jesus Christ, to remember the gentleness of Jesus Christ, to remember the compassion of
Jesus Christ, and to pursue those things so that God can work in us and that through what
God works in us, we can share those things with those that we encounter and the hopes
that they, too, would come to Jesus Christ.
Let's pray.
We come to you, dear Lord.
We thank you for your Word.
I pray that you just bless God that what we've read tonight, that we would look at our own
lives, that you would help us, dear Lord, to be those who come to our senses if we are
acting foolish tonight.
I pray, God, that you would help us to grow in all of these areas, that we would pursue
righteousness and faith and love.
God, I pray that you would help us in all of these ways, that we would try to be patient,
dear Lord, that we would try to be gentle with others and help us, dear Lord.
It's hard.
It's hard sometimes to do that.
So we need you to help us, help us to strive to do that tomorrow.
Let it be our goal, dear Lord, to try to show somebody a little grace tomorrow, to bite
our tongue, dear Lord, maybe when it's easier to speak, to give somebody a little bit of
mercy, dear Lord, when they don't move as fast as we want them to at the red light or
they mess our order up or whatever it is, dear Lord.
There are a lot of ways that things get us all bent out of shape that don't really amount
to anything.
So help us to be those who grow in you and have compassion like you.
And I ask these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.