Full Transcript

As we come to this point, we know that Paul was extremely controversial. He was in Rome, in prison. He knew that his time on this earth was short, and he was determined to preach the gospel to Nero. But as he reflected on his life’s work, Paul’s focus was to continue to charge Timothy to endure hardship and be steadfast and teach the gospel. Second Timothy chapter 4. Set free at last.

The climate was dangerous for Christians since the great fire of Rome in 64 A.D. Prior to that, they were not understood and viewed with suspicion by the Romans. But when Nero blamed them for that fire, which destroyed much of the city, things turned much darker. I’m not sure anyone in the know actually believed they had anything to do with it, but the fire provided a basis for some who feared growing Christianity to turn violently against it. I’ve always found their charge of haters of mankind interesting. That was the actual legal charge against Christians, especially since enemies of Christianity in our time are using the same kind of language, labeling Bible-believing Christians as haters because we cannot condone the worst of our culture’s sins.

In Timothy and Paul’s day, the Christians would not participate in the popular pagan feasts, which often include drunkenness and immorality and so on, and they would not sacrifice or worship the emperor, insisting that only Jesus was truly worthy of worship. Jesus alone was Lord, and somehow this made them haters of mankind. As for Paul himself, why he was arrested a second time was no different than the first time. He had been charged with disturbing the peace of the empire everywhere he went, and now, since Christianity had been declared an illegal religion, he was additionally responsible for being its key ringleader. So he found himself in that dismal Mamertine prison we were describing last time. By the way, a place you can see in Rome to this day.

Of course, the Roman Catholic Church has built a shrine above it, as they always do, but you can still visit the very place Paul awaited his execution. It’s in the heart of a city, near the Forum, on a street named Clivo Argentario. It’d be interesting to do so, but we certainly would not get the sense of that place now that it had in 67 A.D. when Paul was there. Here in chapter 4, in his last lines to Timothy, Paul urges him twice to try to get to him there in Rome. Come as soon as you can, he writes, and then later, Make every effort to come to me before winter. How very human this is.

He tells Timothy about an outer coat, a warm coat, that he had had no opportunity to retrieve when he was arrested at Troas. He wants that. He needs that. And he asks Timothy, if possible, go get that and bring it with you. He also asks him to bring the scrolls and especially the parchments. I believe by the scrolls he’s referring to his copies of Old Testament writings, possibly some New Testament ones as well, since many of them had been written by this time.

By parchments, though, he’s referring to vellum sheets. Vellum was an expensive and very durable material to write on, which was made from animal skins, calfskin. It’s what he preferred to use for his correspondence because his writings were passed around between churches and handled by many people. We learn in this last chapter that Paul had by now had some kind of hearing, not likely before Nero the emperor, or I feel sure he would have mentioned that, but probably a preliminary hearing, as we would call it. He says about that at verse 16, At my first defense no one supported me, but everyone deserted me. May it not be counted against them.

But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that through me the preaching was fulfilled that all the Gentiles might hear it, and I was rescued out of the lion’s mouth. It’s hard for us to appreciate what a celebrity, although regarded as a criminal by most, but what a public curiosity the apostle Paul was at this point in the empire. He was certainly one of the most famous men in the world. Do you remember when we read about his hearing before Roman Governor Festus and the Jewish King Agrippa in Caesarea, and that was several years earlier? I described it in our podcast for Acts 26. Everyone who was anyone was there.

They all wanted to see this fellow who was so controversial, who some had said was turning the world upside down. And not surprisingly, at that hearing, Paul seized the opportunity to share his testimony, to tell about his Damascus Road experience, how and why he had become a Christian. I am sure the same was true this time in Rome as well. Sadly, he says, no one stood with him that day, meaning no one showed up to testify on his behalf. There were a lot of Christians in Rome at that point too, but coming out in such a public way at that time would have been a great personal risk. Paul understood that, and that’s why he added, May God not hold it against them.

The Lord, though, stood with him, he told Timothy, so that through him the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles hear it. Everyone in that courtroom heard the gospel that day, you can be certain. After that, we’re not sure how long Paul was held in that dungeon there in Rome, and we’re also unsure whether Timothy reached him in time or whether Paul ever got his chance to testify before Nero. I’d love to believe he did. Can you even imagine if that happened? That young man, Nero, was at the pinnacle of authority in the Roman Empire and not yet 30 years old.

This is hard to even imagine, but he had been proclaimed emperor by the Praetorian Guard and the Roman Senate when he was 16. Nero was a great-grandson of the former Emperor Augustus, and also an adopted son of the previous Emperor Claudius. I can only imagine that when your emperor of the world, essentially, at such a young age, it would go to your head, and it did for Nero. He was more full of himself than anybody can imagine. Nevertheless, Paul, the apostle of Jesus Christ, I can’t believe would have been intimidated. Remember what God had told the prophet Ananias at the very beginning of his faith journey?

This man is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and before their kings. I would have loved to see how Paul handled such a delicate and unique opportunity if it occurred to share the faith of Christianity with the powerful man Nero, head of the Roman Empire. But as he waited for that, hoping for that, to get a chance at that, he wrote this letter to Timothy, which he sensed would likely be their last communication. In fact, Paul may well have been dead before Timothy ever even received this. But in this final chapter of the letter, he solemnly charged his son in the faith once again concerning the gravity of his role going forward, because more than anybody else, Paul was counting on Timothy to carry the work of expanding the reach and impact of Christianity forward. Listen.

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing in his kingdom, I give you this charge: preach the word. Be prepared in season and out of season to correct, rebuke, and encourage, with great patience and careful instruction. For the time is coming when people would not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them teachers to say whatever their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure the hardships, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

The word, sound doctrine, the truth. These terms are repeated by Paul several times throughout the pastoral epistles, and each of them appear in this charge. For my money, those things are completely interchangeable. The charge was to continue teaching and preaching about who Jesus was, about why he came, about what he did and what he taught, about his atonement for our sins on the cross, about his resurrection, about how anyone who will repent of their sin and turn to him in faith as Savior will be reconciled to God and given the amazing gift of eternal life. The Word, sound doctrine, the truth. These terms also include all the instructions about how those who have received the gospel should live out their Christian faith, how they should conduct themselves in the world as God’s people, and in the church, which Paul called the pillar and support of the truth.

It was all that that Timothy was charged to proclaim faithfully, the whole counsel of God, the faith that was once for all delivered to God’s holy people, the full compendium of Christian doctrine and practice that he had heard Paul preach and teach for 15 years or more now, what we have preserved for us in the collected writings of the New Testament. I take this to be a charge to me too, and why our podcast exists, actually, is to charge to every Christian leader and preacher from Timothy’s time till the end of this age. When Paul says, For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine, I’m pretty sure we’ve reached that time. It’s harder than I imagined to build an audience by simply preaching and teaching the Word of God accurately in our day. But that’s still the mandate, like my six-year-old grandson who very much prefers candy and chips to meat and vegetables.

Most people do not have much interest in sound biblical instruction today. It’s probably because most people, at least in my society, do not believe there’s any such thing, that is, spiritual truth that is absolutely true and necessary. And most would rather listen to things that entertain them or reinforce what they want to believe. Nevertheless, the charge remains: preach the Word. And by the way, this charge is not just for Sunday mornings at 11 a.m. When Paul says, Be prepared in season and out, he means be prepared to share the truth with others at the drop of a hat, whether it seems convenient or inconvenient.

Be prepared to share God’s truth whenever an opportunity arises. Those who most need it probably aren’t going to be in your church auditorium on Sunday morning at 11, and they probably won’t be looking for a podcast dedicated to explaining the New Testament chapter by chapter either, unfortunately. But opportunities do arise in conversations at work, in conversations with your kids at home, in conversations you get into online, in situations where people you know are suddenly in circumstances that are making them think a little deeper about their life and maybe even what’s beyond this life. When these opportunities present themselves, we should be prepared, Paul says. We should be ready to speak truth into that situation. Sound doctrine just means healthy teaching.

Share what the inspired Word of God has to say, because faith comes through hearing God’s Word. So Paul challenged Timothy not only about doing the work of the ministry, fulfilling his duties as a church leader, but also to do the work of an evangelist, which means sharing the Christian faith with unbelievers at every opportunity. After such an eventful life and after so much accomplished for Christ’s kingdom, Paul realized at this point, this is clear from the tone of this letter, that it was time to pass the baton. That’s why he wrote, I am already being poured out like a drink offering. And the time of my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, and finished my race, and kept the faith.

And there is in store for me now a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day, not to me only, but to all those who long for His appearing. In the Old Testament religion, which Paul was reared in, the drink offering was the final offering to God after sacrifices had been made on the altar. It was a cup of wine that was poured out over the burnt offering. Paul felt like that at this point. His life was already being poured out, he felt, and his impending death would be his final sacrifice from a life that had been full of sacrifices to God. He had finished his course, his marathon, and like a champion, he was certain rewards from the Lord were ahead for him because he knew he had served zealously and faithfully.

The crown of righteousness Paul mentions here, it refers to a reward, a commendation. Those who live their lives well in view of Christ’s return will receive from Him one day in heaven. Crowns, by the way, have never been ordinary headwear or for ordinary people. They’re symbols of honor and worn by people to whom honor is due. The New Testament actually mentions five crowns, and there may be others awarded by Christ in the future. Paul will, I bet, receive all of them.

It’s hard to imagine, in fact, another Christian who will be as commended and as rewarded on that day as he will be. What a contrast that day will be, the future day in the brightness of heaven when Jesus is handing out those awards, to the day when Paul wrote these things. He was alone in that dreary dungeon called the Mamertine Prison, and don’t think of it as just a dingy lockup. It was actually a deep hole cut out of the earth under a building in Rome where the condemned were left until their sentence was ready to be carried out. Paul was thinking and writing to Timothy there about people who had served with him and others who had opposed him. He names some of them here in this last chapter, commending some of them to Timothy as allies and warning him about others, people we don’t even know much about, if anything about, but who apparently Timothy knew.

I hate the line in the midst of that where he told him, Demas, someone who had been a trusted coworker of Paul’s, apparently until recently, Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world. Demas ghosted him, as we would say. I hate to think of Paul being in such a situation at the end of his glorious life. How seemingly unfair, how wrong, how unjust. And you have to know the enemy was attacking his mind there just as he had attacked Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before he was executed. But I also have to believe Paul was answering back with the promises, Get thee behind me, Satan.

I know when my earthly tent is torn down, I have a building from God, eternal in heaven, awaiting me. Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory? Thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. And I know whom I have believed. I’m persuaded He will guard what I have trusted to Him against that day.

The Lord is my shepherd. Even when I walk through the valley of death’s shadow, he will be with me. Surely his goodness and mercy will follow me, and I will dwell in the Lord’s house forever. And as he had written earlier, Christ will now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, but to die will be gain. The day came when the order came regarding Paul.

The best accounts we have from extra-biblical writers were not told this in the Scripture, is that he was condemned by the Roman Senate on the charge of treason against the divine emperor. Hard for us to understand that, yes, but that would have been based on Paul’s preaching everywhere, everywhere he went, that there was another king, a King of Kings, a Lord of Lords, who was in fact above Caesar. Because of the riots too and the turmoil that seemed to follow him wherever he went, the Romans demanded subjection. They prized peace in their empire above all. Paul was a troublemaker. In June of the year 67 A.D., he was pulled out of that hole.

He was loaded onto a cart. He was taken about two miles west of the city on a road called the Ostian Way. It was very early, at an inconvenient hour so as to attract as little notice as possible. And there by the side of the road, still manacled, he was instructed to kneel. He was tied fast to a low pillar. And an executioner swung his sword, severing Paul’s head from his body.

Then, as someone has written, his heroic soul was finally freed from that worn and battered body. Absent from it, he was now at home with the Lord. At that point, Paul had spent most of the last decade in prison in three settings, each worse than the last. Now, finally, he was free. According to early Christian stories, Paul was buried there in a family tomb of a woman named Matrona Lucilla, who lived near that execution spot. And there’s a monumental basilica built there marking it to this day.

What a legacy this man left behind. It’s hard for us to fully appreciate it. We’re still greatly the beneficiaries of Paul’s life and work to this very day. Who else could dare say to the next generation of believers, Follow me as I followed Christ? Man, I thank God for such a man, and thank God for leaving us much of his life and his teachings on the pages of the New Testament. Because, wow, what an inspiration, and what an example to all of us who follow Christ.

This has been Paul for Share the Word. What an emotionally charged podcast. If you’re a student of the Word of God and you follow the Apostle Paul’s life, it’s impossible not to be emotionally affected. He has charged everyone to preach the Word, to endure in ministry even when people aren’t accepting of the truth. And he reflects on his life not as an accolade for his accomplishments, but as a demonstration of his faithfulness and dedication to God. If I can do it, so can you.

He speaks of judgment and reward, and he gives a personal accounting of his situation. Hey, can you bring me my coat? We all need a Timothy, and we here at Share the Word need your help. Please take part in this ministry. How? Simply share the podcast.

Send a link out to everyone you know with a message, Hey, I just heard this great podcast. Take a listen. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.