Niverville/Chatham
Center United Methodist Church
II
Timothy 3:14-4:5
II Timothy 3:14-4:5
14But as for you, continue in what you have
learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you
learned it,
15and how from infancy you have known the holy
Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in
Christ Jesus.
16All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for
teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
17so that the man of God may be thoroughly
equipped for every good work.
4:1In the presence of
God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of
his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge:
2Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out
of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful
instruction.
3For the time will come when men will not
put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather
around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to
hear.
4They will turn their ears away from the truth
and turn aside to myths.
5But you, keep your head in all situations,
endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your
ministry.
THE LAST FEW WEEKS HAVE
BROUGHT WITH THEM A GREAT DEAL OF CHANGE.
You’ve probably heard
this message more than you care to; like one of my colleagues at work so aptly
put it, “I’ve had a belly full of this,” but bear with me for a moment or
two. The attack on the World Trade Center affected me more than I
expected. I grieved deeply.
I felt like I had lost a family member. As I got past the worst of
the grief it occurred to me that I really hadn’t reacted well to the crisis.
Ø
I was not a rock of stability in
a sea of chaos.
Ø
I did not give words of
spiritual comfort.
Ø
I did not tell people that God
was in control.
Ø
I did not point out the good
news of the Gospel that could soothe and strengthen the frightened searching
people I met.
After all, I am a
Christian; the salt of the earth; an ambassador of Christ!
But I reacted like many of my non-Christian colleagues.
While I was still
struggling with all of this, I came home one evening to a letter telling me that
our Pastor would be taking another job!
Now
What!?
The change in our world and the change
right here in our church are unsettling. When
we go through change, we are never quite sure what the future holds.
Change calls into question the things we have always counted on.
Fear of the unknown always looms. As a country we took for granted
many things that now seem to be in jeopardy.
As a church we have been doing things that now also seem to be in
jeopardy.
How
can we go on? What are we to do?
As God would have it, our Scripture
passage for today tells us exactly how we can go on and what we are to do.
The Scripture tells us, “Continue in what you have learned and what you have
become convinced of …”
What have we learned?
Of what have we become convinced?
Further we find that, “All
Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and
training in righteousness” Why?…“so
that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
I came away from the events of September
11th feeling very ill-equipped to represent God.
Ill-equipped to comfort and minister to others.
Ill-equipped even to maintain my own emotional and psychological
well-being.
The news of Pastor Michelle leaving has
also made some of us feel ill-equipped. Without
a pastor, a guide, a leader, we may become lost.
Much of our work and many attempts to build our church seem without
purpose.
This is a faulty view.
God tells us that we are equipped.
His Word thoroughly equips us. He asks that we pray.
He tells us to continue in what we have learned and what we have become
convinced of.
I have often found
it difficult to identify with the Psalmist in passages like today’s Lectionary
Psalm. Listen to the joy and
goodness the Psalmist expresses about the Word of God: “Oh,
how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.” How many of
us feel this way?
Many of you know
that I ride the train to New York and back every day. One thing this gives me is plenty of time to read.
For a long time I read books that entertained me, but one day I decided
that if I could finish War and Peace in only a few weeks, I could read
the entire Bible through too! I
tried it. There were arduous parts,
but mostly I found it a fascinating exercise.
In fact, I’d encourage each of you, even if you have only a little
time, to read it like you would a novel. It
is really quite a compelling story!
I am finding that
the more time I spend reading the Bible, reading Christian books, focusing my
thoughts on the things of God, the more joy there is in it.
In a small way, I am beginning to identify with the Psalmist.
But wait,
there’s more!
We also have prayer!
I have become
acutely aware recently that people often say something like, “Well, all we can
do is pray.” They make it sound
like that’s an ineffectual, last-hope kind of thing. This is a deception
straight from the enemy! Prayer is the single most powerful and effective
thing we can do as Christians. What a privilege it is to be able to go to
the Almighty God and ask for what we want!
What an amazing thing that we can tell the living God of our emotional
trials, our temptations, our concerns, our wishes!
Scripture tells us to cast all our anxiety on Him because He cares for
us! (I Peter 5:7)
This verse from
First Peter 5 freed me earlier this year. I
had struggled with the concept that God has promised to meet all my needs, yet I
felt great emotional need. One day
after praying about this I read First Peter and saw this passage.
What wonderful news!
I remember as a boy
seeing a picture that hung in my grandmother’s house. It was a picture of “praying hands”. Under the picture was the statement, “Prayer changes
things.” I remember my father
responding, when asked about the benefits of prayer, “Well, I guess it might
be coincidence. All I know is that
when I stop praying, the coincidences stop happening.”
James 5:16 tells us
the “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”
This is a problematic passage for many of us because we often don’t see
ourselves as righteous.
Let me ask you a
question. Please don’t answer
this aloud, but answer it with complete honestly from deep within that part of
you that really knows the Truth. “Do
you believe that your sins are forgiven?”
I mean, do you really believe it… at the level of something you
know to be fact?
If you said
“no”, then I would encourage you to seek out Pastor Michelle or someone else
you respect spiritually and discover how to be certain.
If you said
“yes”, then you are the righteous person discussed in James 5:16 and your
prayers are powerful and effective.
In Jeremiah we read
this morning that God’s covenant with us is that He will forgive our
wickedness and will remember our sins no more.
We know that God cannot lie. We
know that God does not change. If
He forgives our wickedness, cleanses us from all unrighteousness, makes us
whiter than snow, then we are certainly righteous.
Each Sunday after the Prayer of Confession we hear Words of Assurance.
If we are serious about the confession, we need to believe the assurance!
The work of our
church, like the workings of our country can, and must, go on in whatever
situation we find ourselves. (Some
of you may remember last week that our reading from Jeremiah was something
Pastor Michelle called “the Bloom Where You are Planted” passage.)
We find ourselves in
the midst of change. Change is
often frightening, but like the people of Israel, we need to bloom where we are
planted. We need to count on God to
be the doer. Our job is simply to
talk to Him and hear Him through His Word; to stick with what we know; to shore
up our conviction.
It is God who
causes the increase. It is God
who gets the glory. We are mere
vessels to be used by Him in whatever way He wishes.
You may have noticed
that I have left out a large part of the passage from the sermon this morning,
but I’d like to touch on it briefly now. Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of here on time… or
pretty close <grin>.
As Pastor Michelle
moves on to a new role, there is much for her in this Scripture as well.
Like each of us, she is charged to continue in what she has learned and
become convinced of. Like us, she is to pray and meditate on Scripture.
Pastor Michelle is also to heed the message that concludes this morning’s
passage:
4:1In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the
living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you
this charge:
2Preach
the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and
encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.
3For
the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to
suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers
to say what their itching ears want to hear.
4They
will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
5But
you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an
evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
We need to pray for
Pastor Michelle and ask God to give her the grace and faith it will take for her
to carry out this awesome charge.
But we are not let
off the hook simply because our name is not on the sign out front.
This second part of the passage is incumbent upon each of us as well.
At the beginning of this sermon I mentioned my lack of performance during
and after the events of September 11th.
I found that I was not ready “in season and out of season” to preach,
rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful instruction.
As we strive to move
forward through the current changes and into our future, we need to deepen our
faith. We need to focus our
attention on the things of God, not on the things of the world.
We need to grow up and seek spiritual meat rather than some milky form of
“religious faith.”
Christianity is not
following an order of service every week, saying the correct thing in response
to promptings from the pulpit, or even merely participating in the sacramental
means of grace Baptism and Communion. It
is not helping out at the next church dinner (although Bob will really
appreciate it if you do!) or supplying various items to those in need.
In truth, each of us
is a minister. Are you prepared, in
season and out of season?
So we come down to
the answer to the question asked when I entitled the sermon. What next?
Pray; and do not give up in doing it.
Fill yourself with the Word of God, which will equip you thoroughly for every good work.
So equipped, be
prepared in season and out of season to minister to others in the name of
Jesus Christ. Not for your own
glory or praise, but solely for His.
A message as
much for us as for Pastor Michele. A
message as much for Pastor Michelle as for us.
Godspeed,
Pastor. Amen.