Pastoral Responsibilities

Let me read to you from 2 Timothy and chapter 2, beginning at verse 1:

“You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you[’ve] heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.

“Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is trustworthy, for: ‘If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we[’re] faithless, he remains faithful’—for he cannot deny himself.

“Remind them of these things, and charge them before God not to quarrel about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”

Thanks be to God for his Word.

A brief prayer:

Father, with our Bibles open, what we know not, teach us. What we have not, give us. What we are not, make us. For your Son’s sake we pray. Amen.

Well, in turning to this familiar passage in 2 Timothy, I think some of you will have immediately determined that we’re going to deal with these early metaphors which are so familiar to us: The leader in the church, the pastor in the church, the Christian is supposed to be identifiable with all of the characteristics of an Olympic athlete or a hard-working farmer or a soldier under his commanding officer. But we’re not going to.

And as you read on through the chapter, you discover that Paul is still employing pictures. He introduces the issue of the way the servant is supposed to be towards the end of the chapter; and, prior to that, the picture of a vessel or of a piece or porcelain or hardware that was in a home that was set aside for use; and then, prior to that, and in verse 15 particularly, the picture of the church leader, of the pastor, as a worker. As a worker.

Now, it’s pretty common for me, and presumably for you as well if you’re in pastoral ministry or considering it, to be on the receiving end of people saying immediately when you identify yourself in that way, “Oh, what is it like to work just one day a week?” And we have to then do our very best to try and explain that that is not the case—although some of you young guys who are spending a significant part of the week with a laptop in Starbucks are arguably justifiably accused. But I’ll leave you to work that out between yourself and God. You certainly couldn’t call that pastoral visitation or hospital visitation. But anyway, the fact of the matter is, we know that there’s more to the task, despite what people say.

Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn writes a wonderful passage, remember, where Huck is engaged with Joanna. He’s got himself tied up in knots because he’s been telling lies again. He’s telling lies about this particular church and who was where and whatnot and got himself in a dreadful mess. And in the course of the dialogue, Joanna says about this minister, “Well, where was he?” and “He wasn’t where he should be.”

And so Huck immediately says, “Well, you know, there’s more than one preacher. There’s not only one preacher for each church.”

And Joanna says, “Why would they want more than one?”

And says Huck, “What!—to preach before a king? I never saw such a girl as you. They don’t have any fewer than seventeen preachers.”

“Seventeen! My word! Why, I wouldn’t be able to sit there and listen to them all even if it did mean I couldn’t go to heaven. It must take them a whole week to finish the service.”

“Shucks, they don’t all preach on the same day. Only one of them does.”

“Well, then, what do the rest of them do?”

“Oh, not much. They sit around, pass the collection plate, that kinda stuff. But usually they don’t do anything.”

“Well, then, what are they there for?”

“Why, they’re there for style. Don’t you know nothin’? They’re there for style.”[1]

Well, we’re not there for style. We’re there because we’re workers, and workers in the Word. And it is with this work in the Word that Paul is particularly concerned in relationship to Timothy.

The church in every generation is in urgent need of pastors who will study. The pace of contemporary life makes it an increasingly difficult goal to achieve. But effective teaching of the Bible is absolutely fundamental to the task to which we’re called. And if the congregation is to gain any understanding of the Word of God, then the place of the pastor’s personal study is of vital importance. If as pastors we are constantly pouring out without pouring in, we will soon cease to pour out anything of value at all. Said Spurgeon, if we do not “spend … time in diligent study,” our congregations will “get poverty-stricken sermons.” “Poverty-stricken sermons.” And then, in addressing his students humorously, he says,

I have heard of a brother who trusts in the Lord, and does not study; but I have also heard that his people do not trust … him; in fact, I[’m] informed that they wish him to go elsewhere with his inspired discourses, for they say that, when he did study, his talk was poor enough, but now that he gives them that which comes first to his lips, it is altogether unbearable. If any man will preach as he should preach, his work will take more out of him than any other labour under heaven.[2]

That’s quite a statement! “If [a] man will preach as he [ought to] preach, [then] his work will take more out of him than any other labour under heaven.”

If the congregation is to gain any understanding of the Word of God, then the place of the pastor’s personal study is of vital importance.

So Paul addresses Timothy—and by derivation every pastor and Christian leader, I guess—as a worker whose personal goal must be to present himself to God as one worker who does not need to be ashamed.

Now, that fifteenth verse usually stands on its own, but it’s not on its own. It follows verse 14 and actually precedes verse 16. We won’t worry about 16—we don’t have time—but let’s look at 14 and 15. First of all, the directive is “Remind them.” That is the pastor’s responsibility for his flock. And then, in verse 15: “Present yourself.” That is his responsibility on his own behalf. So, we’ll deal with them each in turn.

The Pastor’s Responsibility for His Flock

First of all, then, “Remind them.”

Timothy is working in a context in which people are intrigued by error, they are disinterested in truth, and they are allured by all kinds of myths. Therefore, it must have been tempting for him perhaps to play the game of the false teachers—especially those who had proved to be successful—by catering to the itching-ear syndrome,[3] to giving to his congregation and his listeners what they wanted to hear. And Paul is heading them off at the pass, and he says, “You mustn’t do that. You must remind these people of the essentials of the faith. Remind them of these things.”

Now, he has already begun immediately to address Timothy with the priority of the gospel. He has invited Timothy to engage in pastoral ministry with the amazing welcome “Join me in suffering for the gospel.”[4] That’s his invitation to pastoral ministry: “Join me in suffering for the gospel.” Not an invitation to go and have a holiday. It’s not an invitation to let people hear you speak. It is an invitation that he gives to him to engage in the same activity and in a context that is demanding. And if he’s going to do that, then he’s going to be again and again reminding his listeners of the death of Jesus on the cross—that it has satisfied the justice of God so that we might become the children of God and so that we might then live and love the Lord Jesus.

And I want to say to you that in our day—in a day when people are confused about what to believe doctrinally and how to behave morally—the last thing they need from you as a potential pastor, or as a pastor, or from me, is one novel idea after another. I’m always really disheartened when people will say of someone, “You know, he is able to make the Bible relevant.” No, he’s not. And neither are you. And neither am I. We don’t make the Bible relevant. Our task is to show how relevant the Bible is. And many a man in a quest for relevance has made himself entirely irrelevant. No, we’re to “feed the flock of God”[5] by proclaiming “the whole counsel of God,”[6] and not as ends in themselves but in order that we might, as Paul says elsewhere in Colossians, “present everyone mature in Christ [Jesus].”[7]

Now, the constant and the regular exposition of the gospel—that is, all that God has done for us in Christ—focuses our attention on God’s mercy, which in turn instills gratitude, which in turn leads to obedience and to growth. You check that out and think about it as you’re pondering these things later on. As we continue to proclaim the gospel, it focuses our attention on the mercy of God, which instills in the heart of the child of God gratitude, which then reveals itself in the child of God in obedience and in growth.

I wish I’d understood that when I was a younger man. I think I wasted a lot of time in the early days of my ministry rebuking believers for their failures rather than setting before them the objective of Christlikeness—and that as a privilege, not simply as a duty. In other words, being like God. In that wonderful hymn that begins, “Praise, my soul, the King of heaven,” you have that wonderful verse:

Praise him for his grace and favor
To our fathers in distress!
[And] praise him still the same forever…

Here’s the line: “Slow to chide and swift to bless!”[8] He’s “slow to chide,” and he’s “swift to bless.” Some of us in pastoral ministry have got that completely upside-down: We’re quick to chide and slow to bless. And the pastor’s goal is the holiness and is the unreserved obedience to Christ of himself and of all of the believers.

And the wonderful thing, of course—and that’s why the reminder is so necessary—is that God’s Spirit does his work through God’s Word, enabling the people of God to do things that otherwise they couldn’t do: to love their enemies, because they realize that God loved them when they were his enemy; to forgive others, because God has forgiven us. And so he says, “[I want you to] keep”—NIV—“keep reminding them of these things.”[9]

The pastor’s goal is the holiness and is the unreserved obedience to Christ of himself and of all of the believers.

And then he says, “And you also need to charge them before God.” In other words, if there are things that they mustn’t forget, there are also certain things that they must be prepared to forsake—and particularly this preoccupation with quarrelsomeness. The solemnity of it is undeniable, isn’t it? “And charge them before God.” “In the presence of God,” he says.[10] He does that again and again.

It’s a contrast, isn’t it, with the weightlessness of so much contemporary Christianity? If you go to the average funeral, you could be forgiven for thinking that somehow or another, you were at his twenty-first birthday party.

“Well, what are all these slides and everything here for? I thought the guy died.”

“Yeah, well, he died. Yeah, but we don’t want to think about the fact that he died.”

Why not? Haven’t you read your Bible? Don’t you know that it is better to go to a house of mourning than to a party, because death is the destiny of every man, and the living must bring that to heart?[11]

When’s the last time you saw a contemporary church build a graveyard on its property? Why not? Solemnity. Solemnity in praise that doesn’t impact exuberance, doesn’t impact joy, but it makes it perfectly clear that what is happening here is an encounter between the living God and those who are his servants.

It’s a really sad experience, loved ones, to gather with the people of God when we travel and to feel that those who are leading us either from their preaching or from the praise are too close to the laughing gravediggers in Hamlet, of whom you will remember when… Isn’t it Hamlet and Laertes, or whoever it is? They come on them, and they find them, and they’re singing, and they’re joking, and they’re laughing, and one says to the other, “How is it that gravediggers can be like this in such a job?” And the reply is “Custom hath made of it for them a matter of easiness.”[12] In other words, it’s just so routine to them. Now, clearly, the gravedigger can’t cry at every funeral. But you would think that there would be a measure of respect that would attach to the job.

“And charge them before God. And make sure that you do so in such a way that they realize that it is absolutely vital that they’re not a quarrelsome group of people there in Ephesus—not quarreling about words, because it actually does no good.” Now, that’s pretty straightforward, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t they be quarreling about words? Well, it doesn’t do any good. That’s a good reason, isn’t it? Why waste your time and waste your breath? The people of God are not to be engaged in tearing each other up but actually in building each other up. That’s Ephesians 4.[13]

And also, it actually “ruins the hearers.” When the people are listening to those kind of arguments, they’re just ruined by it. The word in Greek is actually katastrophē. It’s a catastrophe! It’s a catastrophe when older people who apparently love Jesus and should know better gather in little clusters in local fellowships and talk in such a way that is quarrelsome and unhelpful and ruinous, and it impinges upon the generation that is coming up behind them. Because people get like their forebearers. And if you grow up in a church that is marked by quarrelsomeness about peripheral issues, unless you leave, you will become like that as well.

No, you see, Paul is very concerned about these things. And he comes back to it in verse 16—but I told you we won’t go there, and so we won’t, because I said we wouldn’t, and I’m a man of my word. But you check and see whether you can’t find sad and glaring examples of places where the central issues of the gospel become peripheral, and as a result, the peripheral issues become central.

The Pastor’s Responsibility for Himself

“Remind them,” and then, secondly and more briefly, “Present yourself.”

Now, once again, “Present yourself to God as one approved.” Some of us are having a dreadful time or will have a dreadful time in the church because we want to present ourselves to everyone other than God as one approved. We want the approval of everybody. You can’t have the approval of everybody, unless you’re just a complete walking disaster. If you’re going to hold the line on anything at all, you will not have everyone’s approval. You recognize that?

No, “The concern, Timothy, is that you would be approved by God, that you would present yourself to God. Keep a close watch on yourself. Keep a close watch on your teaching.”[14] He said that when he wrote to him in his first letter. “Make sure that you are consistently and persistently in this pathway, because in this pathway lies salvation both for you, Timothy, and for your people.”

Charles Simeon, who was a minister in Cambridge for a very long time, for fifty-four years, at the beginning of his ministry—and he was a very gifted fellow from the very outset—at the beginning of his ministry, a man in his congregation, John Thornton, a wealthy man, a benefactor of good causes in nineteenth-century England, wrote to his pastor this note, part of which reads as follows: “[Charles,] watch continually over your own spirit, and do all in love; we must grow downwards in humility to soar heavenward. I should recommend your having a watchful eye over yourself, for generally speaking as is the minister, so are the people.”[15]

The unashamed workman doesn’t set out to impress but to instruct, not to bamboozle but to clarify.

“Remind them, but watch yourself.” Paul was able to say this because he provided such an amazing example for Timothy. Remember, when he writes to the Corinthians he says, “According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building [on] it.”[16] “And Timothy, now, as you present yourself to God, you do so as a worker. And there can be no excuse,” he says, “for slipshod, halfhearted endeavor in the service of God. You need be making sure that you’re aiming for the approval of God.” And again and again Paul has been able to model this before Timothy.

And the distinguishing feature, you will notice, of the approved workman is the manner in which he handles the Scriptures: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” So there must be a right way and a wrong way to handle the Bible, right? We know that in terms of exposition. Some of us use the Bible as a trampoline: We get a couple of verses, and we bounce up and down on them for as long as anybody can bear, and then we go on our way. And the person sitting in the pew says to his wife, “What was that about?” And his wife says, “Nothing.” And he says, “I thought so.” “Rightly handling the word of truth”—not tampering with it, not diluting it, not distorting it, not fiddling with it, not seeking to press it like a Plasticine nose into a shape that we want, but rather the servants of the Word.

The unashamed workman doesn’t set out to impress but to instruct, not to bamboozle but to clarify. And no matter how good you may be or I may be with words, there is no way that our words can pierce the hearts of men and women. We may stir, we may excite, we may annoy, we may intrigue, but we can’t save.

And it is—as Gresham Machen says in one of his books—“It is with the open Bible that the real Christian preacher comes before the congregation. He does not come to present his [own] opinions. … He comes to set forward what is contained in the Word of God.”[17]

In other words, he comes

   to tell the story
Of unseen things above,
Of Jesus and his glory,
Of Jesus and his love.
I love to tell the story,
Because I know [it’s] true;
It satisfie[d] my longings
[Like] nothing else can do.[18]

I’ve been doing this for a long time now. I was ordained at twenty-four. I’m sixty-two today. (Not my birthday today. I’m sixty-two in May. But because I was sixty-two in May and I’m still alive, I’m still sixty-two.) I don’t say that to impress you but simply to make this point: that if I had the opportunity to start all over again, I would do it in a moment. I’m jealous for you young guys, for the opportunities of the gospel, for the privilege of being a servant of God’s Word. And I urge you: When you have the opportunity, remind them of these essential things of the gospel, and make sure that, with God’s help, you present yourself to God as one approved. Because remember: What we are, as M’Cheyne said, on our knees in the privacy of our bedrooms is actually what we are, and nothing else.

Father, thank you that the Bible shines like a light onto our pathway,[19] stirs our hearts, and turns us again and again to Christ. And as we think about the variety of gift that is represented in this room this morning, we pray, Lord, that you will help us both to be the receivers of your truth as it comes to us and then that you will make us the proclaimers of your Word in such a way that our hearts might be increasingly conformed to its truth and our lives transformed into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ,[20] in whose name we pray. Amen.

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[1] Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), chap. 26. Paraphrased.

[2] C. H. Spurgeon, “‘A New Departure,’” in An All-Around Ministry: Addresses to Ministers and Students (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1960), 133–34.

[3] See 2 Timothy 4:3–4.

[4] 2 Timothy 1:8 (paraphrased).

[5] 1 Peter 5:2 (KJV).

[6] Acts 20:27 (ESV).

[7] Colossians 1:28 (ESV).

[8] Henry Francis Lyte, “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven” (1834).

[9] 2 Timothy 2:14 (NIV 1984).

[10] 1 Timothy 5:21; 6:13; 2 Timothy 4:1 (ESV).

[11] See Ecclesiastes 7:2.

[12] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 5.1. Paraphrased.

[13] See Ephesians 4:12, 16.

[14] See 1 Timothy 4:16.

[15] John Thornton, quoted in Hugh Evan Hopkins, Charles Simeon of Cambridge (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977), 43–44.

[16] 1 Corinthians 3:10 (ESV).

[17] J. Gresham Machen, introduction to J. Marcellus Kik, The Narrow and Broad Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1934).

[18] Arabella Katherine Hankey, “I Love to Tell the Story” (1866).

[19] Psalm 119:105.

[20] See 2 Corinthians 3:18.