I charge you in 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 command you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing and his Kingdom:I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;I charge thee in the sight of God, and of Christ Jesus, who shall judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom:
5 sermons cite this verse
… couple of pages to 2 Timothy, in chapter 4 and verse 1, you find a similar kind of statement, where he says, In 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. Now, what he is doing is simply letting Timothy know and his readers understand that while they may be staggered by the thought of these things taking place publicly and other people finding out about what was going on, he says the really significant factor is that all that is taking place, whether it ever comes to public censure or whether it remains hidden in obscurity as a result of the continued sinfulness of men and women—all of that, he says, takes place before God, Christ Jesus, and the elect angels. Now, we don't want to delay on this this evening, but it is of interest—and you can do this, if you like, for your homework—to recognize that the angels are referred to both as having a place in the exercise of the judgment—for example, in Matthew 13, 27, and in Hebrews 12, 22, and in Revelation 14 and 15—these angels who are going to have a place in the judgment are the elect angels. There are other angels who are going to be on the receiving end of God's judgment. And these are referred to in Jude and in the sixth verse. He says, And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home, …
… Paul says, I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word. be ready in season and out of season. Timothy, here's your mandate. Like the Lord Jesus himself when he was with the crowd, preach the word. Don't preach your opinions. Don't preach clever sayings. Explain the text. Tell us what the text means. Why preach the word? because that's how God speaks. God speaks through what God has spoken. People say, how does God speak today? God speaks through what God has spoken. J.I. Packer used to say, the Bible is God preaching. It is God preaching. So preach the Word because the Word is how God speaks. and yet so many churches preach anything but the word of God. This is the age of the sermonette. I had a guy call me from, I think, the Chicago area years ago and he said, I want to preach longer sermons. …
2 Timothy chapter 4. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort. with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. just a brief prayer, an old Anglican prayer. Father, what we know not, teach us. What we have not, give us. What we are not, make us. For Jesus' sake we ask it. Amen. Well, to come to an opportunity like this is to recognize that my responsibility, as with others who've had the privilege of this pulpit, is not so much to come and try and introduce one another to things we have never known, but rather to exercise a ministry of reminder, so that we remind one another of things that we must never, ever forget. And there is a sense in which these first five verses that I've just read encapsulate Paul's concern for the ongoing ministry of the gospel. He has, as you know, urged Timothy in chapter 2, as we heard yesterday, to make sure that the baton of faith and gospel …
… in a very dramatic way. We could actually say that what he's doing here is along the lines of what Paul charges Timothy to do in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who's to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, to preach the Word, ready in, season out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort. Now, the Word of God will do these things. I don't think what we need to necessarily do is stand up and say, Now, we're going to have a reproving sermon this morning. Or I'm looking forward to a bunch of rebukes this morning. No, we're going to allow the—let a clubhead do the work. Just swing. Let the Word of God do the work of God by the Spirit of God. But that means that when it rebukes, we acknowledge the rebuke. That when it reproves, we make it clear that this is reproving, because it runs counter to the way in which people think. And the extent to which this is actually the case in our culture, I think, is far more endemic than we realize. He says—he quotes history here. You know, he says, well, think about Solomon later on. I'm reading this little book. It's not one of the books through there, but it is from the Banner of Truth. …
discharge all the duties of your ministry. The goal for us is sound doctrine. And to understand what we're talking about. And today we're looking at the doctrine of salvation. And that's why we're calling this collection Jesus Saves. We took our graphic from Big Bethel AME Church. Does anybody know about it? This is an Atlanta landmark. If you didn't know, when you're going downtown on the connector, if you're going southbound, look to the right. If you're coming northbound, look to the left, and you'll see Jesus saves right in the heart of downtown Atlanta. And that's where we're kicking off today to talk about the doctrine of salvation. More specifically, and you're going to want to take some photos along the way because a bunch of information is coming really fast. Going to have a great heart in it, but head and heart today as we talk about soteriology. I just thought I would pull one back out from the old seminary days. Soteriology, let's just say it together. Soteriology. What is that? Ology, we know, is in theology, is the study of something, and sotere here is salvation. So soteriology is the official word, if you're in seminary, for the study of salvation. So welcome to grad school, everyone. You're getting a little extra today. It is theology dealing with salvation, especially as affected by Jesus Christ. That's according to Merriam-Webster. That's what soteriology is. And I want us to be excited about the doctrine of salvation. Now, I know today that I'm speaking to people …