March 5, 2009
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Reasons to Preach the Word
5 Reasons to Preach the Word - by John MacArthur
2 Timothy 3:1 - 4:4
Number one, we are to preach the Word because of the danger of the seasons. Chapter 3 verse 1, "But realize this...Paul tells Timothy...that in the last days," and the last days began when the Messiah came the first time, "My little children," John said, "it is the last time." Christ appeared once in the end of the age. It is the end of the age, it is the last days, they began when Jesus came. "And in the last days difficult times will come." Difficult times is the phrase that I want you to grasp for a moment. Actually could be translated "seasons" rather than times. It's not clock time and it's not calendar time, it's the Greek word kairos which means seasons or epochs or movements. And the word "difficult" is really the word dangerous. It could even be translated and is "savage," savage seasons will come, dangerous times will come, perilous times, as some translations have translated it.
From the beginning of the last days until Jesus comes there will be an escalating severity and an escalating frequency of these dangerous epochs. The first and most prominent great epoch of danger that was thrust upon the church began in the fourth century, began with the development of the Holy Roman Empire and Constantine and all of that and eventually developed into the danger called sacramentalism. Salvation was by automatic ritual. The church became a surrogate Christ and you connected to the church and the system rather than a personal relationship with Christ. It wasn't really until the Reformation in the sixteenth century that the back of sacramentalism began to be broken.
It wasn't long after the Reformation you come into the eighteenth century and you have the development of the second great epoch in the church and that's the epoch of rationalism. Out of the Renaissance and out of the Industrial Revolution and even out of the Reformation, once the back of this great monolithic institution was broken and man got his own identity back and his own life and began to think for himself and as he began to discover things and invent things and develop things and feel his freedom, he began to worship his own mind and human reason became God.
That was followed by dead, cold, indifferent orthodoxy. In the nineteenth century mass printing came in and Bibles were massed printed and people got the Bible in their hands but it didn't seem to matter, their orthodoxy was dead and cold, they lacked zeal. Their spirituality was either non-existent or shallow. Then came politicism where the church became preoccupied with political power. The church became politicized. It developed the social gospel and reconstruction and liberation theology.
And then we come into the nineteenth, the twentieth century and we come to the 1950's and the next dangerous season was ecumenism. And that was really big when I was a student and they were talking about unity and let's set aside dogma and let's all be one and let's not divide over these doctrinal issues and let's get sentimental, sentimentality became the issue. There was a new hermeneutic for interpreting Scripture called "The Jesus Ethic" and they determined Jesus was a nice guy and never would have said anything that was bad so we'll take all the bad part out, all the judgment, all the retribution. They began to tolerate evil, disdain doctrine and the legacy of that was the lack of discernment.
In the 1960's came the dangerous season of experientialism. Truth comes from feeling, truth comes from intuition, truth comes from visions or prophecies, or special revelations and you no longer look to the objective Word of God but you look to some subjective intuition to determine truth and that has posed an immense danger to the church and drawn people away from the Word of God.
In the 1980's came subjectivism when psychology captured the church and we all got into narcissistic navel watching and we were all concerned about whether we could bump ourselves up the comfort ladder a little bit and get more successful and make more money. We developed a man-centered theology and needs-based theology and personal comfort became the goal.
In the nineties came pragmatism, which basically says appropriate means for ministry are defined by the people, give them what they want, do a survey, they'll tell you what they want, you give them what they want. Truth is the servant of what works. Expository preacheing was then viewed, of course, as a Pony-Express method of delivery in a computer age to a lot of folks who didn't want it in the first place. The church decided that the key to effective ministry was image or style rather than content.
Later in the nineties came syncretism, all religions that are monotheistic all worship the same God and all monotheists are going to heaven. And one man wrote a book about it. He took a trip to heaven and he met Confucius there and he met Buddha there and he met Mohammed there and he met orthodox Jews there and he met atheists who were seeking truth there cause truth is God and they didn't know they were seeking God but they were seeking God.
This is a formidable war out there, a formidable set of fortresses, according to the terminology of 2 Corinthians 10, wherefore the destruction of fortresses, these are well designed, strong fortifications, ideological fortifications that must come smashing down. All of these dangers accumulating, worsening, and with it a lack of discernment in the church and a disdain for discernment and a growing disdain for doctrine.
Paul starting in verse 2 defines a little bit more about these dangerous seasons in general descriptions of the people that are behind them and the people that are involved in them. They are lovers of self, they are lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.
These dangerous people are described here as to the absence of any virtue or character. They are the instruments of Satan that produce these great dangers. Verse 5 sort of sums up, they have a form of godliness. The outward form, the face that they want to portray is of godliness. But what is absent is power. They don't have the power of God because they don't know God, men of corrupt minds, opposers of the truth. We need men who can go into the fray, men who can go into the battle who understand the Word of God clearly. Satan's deceptions are not without subtlety. It takes men who understand the Word of God clearly, carefully. It takes men who understand the issues of their time and it takes men who have a holy courage who are willing to step into the battle and identify the enemy and assault the enemy graciously but assault the enemy relentlessly with the truth. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10, our job is to smash fortresses, ideological fortresses and to bring everybody captive there into obedience to Christ. We want to set free the captives held in the fortresses that these dangerous epochs have erected. We're called to guard the truth. We're called to preach the truth. We can't do either if we don't understand the truth.
There's a second reason why they must preach the Word, because of the devotion of the saints. Go down to verse 10, "But you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions and sufferings." Timothy, you followed me, you were my disciple and I went through the patterns of ministry for you. You saw my ministry duty, teaching and living, proclaim the truth and live the truth in Jesus' name. And then he says in verse 10, "And you saw my purpose, my focus." The man was focused relentlessly focused on the responsibility he had to proclaim the truth. "And you saw my faith better faithfulness, faithful to that purpose, and patient to see it fulfilled, and loving toward the people and toward God and persevering in the face of persecution and suffering." You saw how I ministered, Paul said, you saw the way I did it. I did it with love. I did it with focus. I did it relentlessly. I did it patiently. I did it lovingly. I took the flack. I took the pain. I took the suffering. I took the imprisonments. I took the beatings, the whippings, the stonings. You saw it. You were there at Antioch and Iconium and Lystra, you saw it. Lystra was where he was stoned and left for dead. You saw it.
Then verse 14, "You, however, continue in the things you've learned and become convinced of knowing from whom you've learned them." Who? From me. Timothy, you just do exactly what I told you to do. Everybody today wants to reinvent ministry. Paul just says will you do it just exactly the way I told you to do it?
Down in verse 17 he calls Timothy the man of God. That's a technical term used only twice in the New Testament, both times of Timothy, used over 70 times in the Old Testament, every time it means a preacher. Timothy, look, you're just another man of God. There's a long, long line of these men of God, series of men called by God, gifted by God to proclaim His truth, you're just one in the long line. You can't get out of step. You can't go your way, invent your own approach. You're just one in the long line of men who are called to preach the Word. That's what you do.
Thirdly, we preach the Word because of the dynamic of the Scripture. Verse 15, "Timothy, you know from childhood," from brephos, from infancy, when you were a baby in your mother's arms, "From infancy you have known the sacred writing," Timothy was raised under Jewish influence in his family, though his parents were Jew and Gentile. He says, "You know from a child the law prepared you for the gospel." The Jews used to claim that their children drank in the law of God with their mother's milk and it was so imprinted on their hearts and minds that they would sooner forget their names than forget God's law. The law was the tutor that led to Christ and Timothy had been raised on the sacred writings of the Old Testament and he had been given the wisdom so that when the gospel was preached it unfolded and he understood it because the understanding of the Old Testament law prepared him for it. Bottom line he's saying you know that the Word of God has the power to save, it has the power to lead you to salvation. What else would you preach? It's sharper than any two-edged sword. In I Peter 1:23 it couldn't be more clear. "You've been born again through the living and abiding Word of God." It is the power of the Word that produces salvation. It is the Word of God which converts the soul, Psalm 19:7 says.
When you understand that the Word is the power that converts the soul, you preach the Word. If you don't preach the Word you don't believe that no matter what you say. It is not only the source of salvation, it is the source of sanctification. Look at verses 16 and 17. "All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, training in righteousness that the man of God and everyone who follows His pattern may be perfect or complete, equipped for every good work." It is the power of the Word that saves. It is the power of the Word that sanctifies. It provides doctrine. It reproves error and sin. It sets upright and then trains in the path of righteousness. That's the sequence. You lay a foundation of doctrine, it reproves error and sin, then you correct that. It literally means in the Greek to make someone upright who has fallen down, you pick him back up, correct their error and their iniquity and then put them in the path of righteousness, train them to live an obedient life. The Word does that. The Word makes the man of God and everybody who follows His pattern complete. It prepares them spiritually. This is what we call the sufficiency of the Scripture. It completely saves, completely sanctifies. It sanctifies and saves those at the highest level of calling, that is the preacher, the man of God, and makes it possible for him to be an example of godliness that everybody else can follow. It is sufficient to save and sanctify all. And what else would you use? I can't fathom why anyone would use anything other than the Word that saves and the Word that sanctifies, and only the Word.
Fourth, we preach the Word because of the demand of the sovereign. Look at chapter 4 verse 1. This is a frightening verse. This verse helps me to understand why John Knox before he ascended the pulpit to preach fell on his face and burst forth, his biographer says, in abundant tears out of fear, the fear of preaching and misrepresenting the truth, the fear of divine scrutiny. Listen to verse 1. "I solemnly charge you in the presence of God even of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead and by His appearing in His Kingdom, preach the Word." Pretty serious. "I solemnly charge you" means a dead, serious command.
You are under the scrutiny of the God who is Jesus Christ who is the judge and He will judge all who are alive and all who have died. And I think it's best to see the Greek as "even the Lord Jesus Christ," since He is introduced as the judge in the verse. We're preaching under the scrutiny of the omniscient, holy judge. I agree with Paul in 1 Corinthians 4 who said, "It's a small thing what you think of me," and I say that with all love to you, I can't build my sense of faithfulness on whether you like my sermon. I can't built it on whether you don't like my sermon. I appreciate your commendations. I cherish them. I appreciate your criticisms, I cherish them. But in the end I want to preach to honor the One who is the judge, right? And in the end He's going to reveal the secret things of the heart. He's going to give the reward to those who are worthy of it and only His judgment really matters.
A reporter said to me one time, "For whom do you prepare your sermons?" Newspapers are written for the eighth-grade level. "For whom do you prepare sermons?" I said, "To be truthful with you, I prepare them for God, He's the judge that I have to stand before, He's the one that really matters. I just want to get it right before Him. I don't want to take the Word of the living God and somehow corrupt it, or somehow replace it with foolish musings of my own manufacture." Hebrews 13:17 says we have to give an account some day before the Lord. It's a very serious thing for me, this matter of preaching. Sometimes people say to me, "You spend so much time in preparation, why?" Not because I think you need it, I think God's Word deserves it.
Lastly, we must preach the Word because of the deceptiveness of the sensual. The great enemy of the Word of God is anything outside the Word of God...the word of Satan, the word of demons, the word of man. And we are living in very dangerous seasons concocted by seducing spirits and hypocritical liars propagated by false teachers. And here's what makes them successful...look at verses 3 and 4. "The time will come, and it does, it cycles through all of church history, when they will not endure sound doctrine." People don't want to hear sound doctrine. "Sound" means healthy, whole, wholesome. They don't want wholesome teaching. They don't want the sound, solid Word. They just want to have their ears tickled. They're driven by the sensual, not the cognitive. They're not interested in truth. They're not interested in theology. They refuse to hear the great truth that saves and the great truth that sanctifies. And according to chapter 2 verse 16, they would rather hear worldly empty chatter that produces ungodliness and spreads like gangrene.
We`re in such a season now. They tell us that being doctrinal, being clear about the Word of God is divisive, unloving, prideful. The prevailing mood in the world of post-modern western culture is that everybody determines truth for himself and everyone's opinion is as valid as everybody else's opinion, and there's no room for absolute authoritative doctrine. And, folks, that's one other "ism" you can add to the list of dangerous seasons, relativism.
And, you know, you look at the evangelical church and you can see a perfect illustration of how the church has fallen victim to this. Christians are all whipped up to fight abortion and homosexuality. We want to fight for religious freedoms in America and we want to preserve prayer in the schools and we want to fight against euthanasia and that all has a place. But the worst form of wickedness in existence consists of the perversion of God's truth. And the church today is utterly indifferent to that. It treats that with indifference as if it was harmless, as if a right interpretation of Scripture somehow was unnecessary if not intrusive into an otherwise superficial tranquility. Here we are fighting all of this peripheral stuff and given away everything at the heart that defines our whole faith. This is suicide. There's not going to be any church to fight anything if we don't preserve the truth.
The ability to distinguish between false and truth is absolutely critical. You can't speak truth, you can guard truth if you can't understand truth. Whatever language you speak and wherever you live, your heart before God is in the same needy condition and the truth of God transcends all cultures. We live in a time when people want to depreciate sound doctrine. We want to be more loving. To say that I don't want to call error error, I don't want to confront your sin or your error because I love you is just not true. Truth is, you don't love them, you love yourself, that's the issue, and what you really do is love yourself so much you don't want them not to like you. Self-love, that's sin. You're afraid if you confront something they won't like you so you'd rather love yourself and have them like you than to love them enough to confront their error, show them the truth which can lead them to the blessing and well-being that produces God's greatest good in their lives. Loss of truth, loss of conviction, loss of discernment, loss of holiness, loss of divine power, loss of blessing...all they want is to get their ears tickled. Tell me a little about success. Tell me a little about prosperity. Give me some excitement. Elevate my feelings of well-being, self-esteem, and give me a bunch of emotional thrills.
When they want that, it says in verse 3, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires. The market creates the demand. And as Marvin Vincent said in His Vincent Word Studies, "In periods of unsettled faith, skepticism and curious speculation in matters of religion, teachers of all kinds swarm like flies in Egypt. The demand creates the supply. The hearers invite and shape their own preachers. If the people desire a calf to worship, a ministerial calf maker can always be found."
You have to preach the truth to the mind. That's where the real battle is fought. So we bring God to people through His Word. That's the only way we can do it. People are starving for the knowledge of God, as I said, they just don't know it. But when we start delivering, they find out.
