SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/01/2025 10:35 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “The Content of His Commission”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
2 Timothy 4:2a
Message of the verse: “preach the word;
I am beginning a new section this morning in my
Spiritual Diary and as you can see it is a short title, but a title that has a
great deal of meaning, not only for Timothy, but also for Pastors throughout
the church age. The truth is that the
faithful minister of Jesus Christ is commanded to preach the word, and this
focuses on the content of what is proclaimed. Now as we look at this command we
will see that Preach translates the first of nine imperatives Paul uses in this
passage, five of them in verse 2 which are preach, be ready, reprove, rebuke,
and exhort, and four in verse 5 which are be sober, endure, do and fulfill.
Now the word preach is from kerusso, and this means to herald, to proclaim publicly. In the New Testament times, the herald,
acting as imperial messenger, would go through the streets of a city to
announce special events, such as the appearing of the emperor as an example. Hid duties also included public announcement
of new laws or government policies and actions.
John MacArthur writes:
“Paul himself not only was appointed an apostle but also, like Timothy,
was appointed a preacher (1 Tim. 2:7; cf. 2 Tim 1:11). But because of Timothy’s timid spirit, that
task was especially challenging for him.
He did not have the naturally strong and aggressive personality or
constitution of his mentor. He also may
not have had the formal training or intellectual skill to argue successfully on
a human level with more sophisticated and experienced errorists in and around
the church. He doubtless felt inadequate
and intimidated when they presented arguments for which he had not yet
developed a successful apologetic or polemic.
And in the eyes of some believers in Ephesus, he also was handicapped
because of his youthfulness, although Paul had earlier counseled him to
disregard such criticism (1 Tim. 4:12).” “Let no one
look down on your youthfulness, but rather in speech, conduct, love,
faith and purity, show yourself an example of those who believe.””In
addition to resistance within the church, Timothy faced growing hostility from
unbelieving Jews and from the Roman government.
It was persecution by those enemies that had put Paul in prison.”
That is not all for there were other reasons why Timothy might
have been tempted to soften his proclamation, especially that of evangelism, which
Paul mentions in verse five, “But you, be sober in
all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your
ministry.” Timothy realized that the
idea of salvation solely through God’s grace runs totally counter to the
thinking of natural men and is often met with anger or indifference. Now that continues to be true in our world
today, and the closer we get to the return of Jesus Christ as the Rapture the
more this will be seen, and all one has to do is look around the world to see
the truth of it. However when preaching
to unbelievers, whether Jew or Gentile, Timothy was to be like Noah, who “was a
righteous man, blameless in his time [and] walked with God” as seen in Genesis
6:9 and also Hebrews 11:7. Timothy also
was to be like Noah in being “a Preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5). It was long before God made His covenant with
Abraham, before He made His covenant with Israel and gave them the law at
Sinai, and even still longer before He made the final and perfect covenant
through His Son, Jesus Christ, Noah preached God’s righteousness to the ever-more
wicked antediluvians, which means before the flood. As far as we know, Noah was not persecuted,
but we do not know that his preaching for a hundred years while he was building
the ark fell on completely indifferent ears, because not a single soul outside
his immediate family trusted in the Lord to save them. Now in earlier Spiritual
Diaries I spoke of two views on why this happened, and one of them was a view
from John MacArthur who thought that somehow certain angels were having sexual
relations with some of the women before the flood. In looking at Dr. Warren Wiersbe comments he
did not think that this was possible. I
have to say that right now I am leaning toward what Dr. Wiersbe had to say
about this subject.
MacArthur writes “Like every
preacher of God’s truth to unbelievers, Timothy also was to be like Jonah, who
declared to the wicked pagan city of Nineveh, ‘Yet forty days and Nineveh will
be overthrown’ (Jonah 3: 4). In great
contrast to that of Noah, however, Johan’s preaching produced an amazing
response of repentance and faith in the true God. ‘The men of Nineveh shall stand up with this
generation at the judgment,’ Jesus declared, ‘and shall condemn it because they
repented at the preaching of Jonah’ (Matt. 12:41).
Lord willing we will continue looking at this section in tomorrow’s SD as
this again is a rather long section to read over and study, but well worth the
time to do so.
Spiritual Meaning for My Life Today:
Now as we compare these two men we have looked at, that is Noah, and
Jonah it can be understood that at least to me that Noah was more willing to
preach the “gospel” than Jonah, but that shows me that it is God who gets the
results because it is God’s message, and it is the Holy Spirit of God who moves
hearts.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
It is my desire to continue to write the truth in my Spiritual Diaries,
and in order to do that I must continue to study God’s Word so that what I say
is the truth, and then rely on the Spirit of God for the results that He will
produce. It is my pleasure to put these
Spiritual Diaries onto my blogs and even some of them on Facebook, so that the
Spirit of God can use them for the glory of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
7/1/2025 11:24
AM
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