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[0:00] If you recall, as we worked through 1 Timothy, in 1 Timothy chapter 3 and 14, we saw that Paul had hoped to come in person shortly.

[0:12] ! And then in 1 Timothy 3.15, he says, but if I am delayed. So although he hoped to come in person, he realized that there was a possibility that he might be delayed.

[0:23] And indeed, as we find out, he was delayed and he was not able to come. And so 2 Timothy is the letter in which he writes and which, as we'll see, is actually his final letter.

[0:39] So in 2 Timothy, we will start by reading all of chapter 1. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus.

[0:51] To Timothy, a beloved son, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus our Lord. I thank God whom I serve with a pure conscience as my forefathers did, as without ceasing, I remember you in my prayers day and night, greatly desiring to see you, being mindful of your tears that I may be filled with joy.

[1:16] When I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.

[1:28] Therefore, I remind you to stir up the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

[1:43] Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began, but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, to which I was appointed a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.

[2:25] For this reason, I also suffer these things. Nevertheless, I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed to him until that day.

[2:41] Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus, that good thing which was committed to you.

[2:53] Keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. This you know that all those in Asia who turned away from me, among whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes.

[3:05] The Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chain. But when he arrived in Rome, he sought me out very zealously and found me.

[3:19] The Lord grant to him that he may find mercy from the Lord in that day. And you know very well how many ways he ministered to me at Ephesus. Lord, we thank you again for your word that we have supernatural revelation.

[3:34] And as we seek to sit under your word, I pray, Lord, that you would indeed speak to us through your word. And that we pray, Holy Spirit, that you would illuminate your word to us. That you would help us to grow in our knowledge of truth, our right knowledge of truth and understanding of it.

[3:49] And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So in our turning from 1 Timothy to 2 Timothy, we'll spend a bit of time on an introduction to the book of 2 Timothy.

[4:03] And today we will look at verses 1 and 2. And in verse 1 and 2, So I'll say it again.

[4:21] What we'll see in these two verses is that the church is to faithfully guard and hand down the gospel promise of life in Christ Jesus. So first, the persecuted penman who wrote 2 Timothy.

[4:34] Second, his apostolic purpose. And third, the gospel preservation. So first of all, the persecuted penman. Starting in verse 1, Paul.

[4:46] Stop there. Who is Paul? Not too long ago when we started 1 Timothy, we looked quite a bit into his apostleship and what makes an apostle.

[4:57] And we're not going to go over much of that, but more the setting of Paul's ministry and where this letter of 2 Timothy lies within that space of time.

[5:10] So Paul, if you recall back in Acts 9, before Paul's conversion, he was Saul, Saul of Tarsus, who was breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.

[5:27] And on the road to Damascus, God saved him. And further, having been saved in his ministry, he conducted three missionary journeys.

[5:38] The first missionary journey, which you'll find in Acts 13 and 14. And on that first missionary journey, he went to Lystra. And with Barnabas, he plants a church in Lystra.

[5:52] And that's in Acts 14. And then on his second missionary journey, he returns to Lystra, to that church. And so he visits the church that was planted in Lystra.

[6:03] And it's there that he meets a young man by the name of Timothy. And this is in Acts 16. And then Paul goes on his third missionary journey, which picks up in Acts 18 and carries through to 21.

[6:18] And then after Paul's third missionary journey in Acts 22 in Jerusalem, he proclaims that Christ has sent him to the Gentiles, that is with the gospel.

[6:29] But he's been sent by Christ with the gospel to the Gentiles. And in Jerusalem, there's an uproar. There's an uproar against him. And the people, because he's saying this, the people say that he's not fit to live.

[6:44] So Paul then is taken into custody by the Romans. And he appeals to Caesar.

[6:55] And having appealed to Caesar, he goes to Rome. And he's imprisoned in Rome. And while he's imprisoned in Rome, this is where Acts ends, approximately AD 60 to 62.

[7:10] So the book of Acts ends there with Paul and his first Roman imprisonment. And then following the narrative in Acts, Paul, from prison in Rome, he writes the prison epistles, which is Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon.

[7:29] And then he's released from prison. And he engages in ministry. And he travels to Ephesus with Timothy. And, of course, he leaves Timothy in Ephesus.

[7:40] He leaves Timothy there in Ephesus. And then Paul goes on to Macedonia, which is around the time that he wrote the book of 1 Timothy, which we just finished.

[7:50] And then he visits Crete and leaves Titus there in Crete to govern church affairs orderly in Crete. And then Paul visits Troas, Corinth, and Miletus.

[8:02] And then he's arrested again. And having been arrested again, he's sent back to Rome. And this is around AD 64, AD 65, where he's sent back to Rome for his second Roman imprisonment.

[8:18] And we see details of this in 2 Timothy 1, 16, 17, and 2, 9. But Paul has been imprisoned in Rome for the second time.

[8:29] And to go back to 1 Timothy 3, 15, it starts off by saying, but if I am delayed. So here we find out that Paul is delayed.

[8:44] Paul does not return in person to Ephesus to see Timothy. Now, his delay, around this time of his delay, in AD 64 was the great fire of Rome.

[9:00] And it started the evening between July 18th and 19th. So the full day that it started to burn was July 19th, which today would be the anniversary of the burning of Rome in AD 64.

[9:19] So that would be 1,962 years ago. And with the great fire of Rome, approximately three quarters, almost three quarters of Rome burned.

[9:30] And there's no record of how many people died, but it would have been a very large number. And Nero deflected the blame onto Christians and blamed the Christians in the Roman Empire for the burning of Rome.

[9:46] And then Nero state-sanctioned the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. Paul would have known this.

[9:57] Paul was, of course, very influential with Christians. So he would have been a prime target. So he would have known that his time would likely be coming short.

[10:11] So Paul did anticipate that his end was approaching. And Paul did anticipate that he would not be coming to Ephesus, that he would not be coming in person. And that is why in 2 Timothy, in chapter 4, verses 6 to 7, he writes, For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand.

[10:37] I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Now you could imagine that if you had been imprisoned unlawfully for the faith, for the gospel, and that Christians are being persecuted and being blamed for, being falsely blamed for the burning of Rome, and that if you had fought the good fight, you have finished the race, you have kept the faith, and you know that your time of departure was at hand, and you write one last letter, the content of that letter is probably not going to be about the gas prices and about the weather.

[11:27] But if this is your last letter, it's going to be about important matters. And that is the setting in which the Apostle Paul is in when he writes 2 Timothy.

[11:42] And Paul knew that his death was imminent, and it was there in prison while awaiting execution that he writes 2 Timothy. And I think it's important as we see in the life of Paul, and especially in the writings of Paul, that comfort and ease are not the mission and the goal of faithful servants of Christ.

[12:06] Paul's mission was not his own comfort or his own ease in life. And his mission, his aim, his goal was not that, but he was willing to sacrifice his comfort, his ease, and his very life for the sake of the gospel, for the faith, as a faithful servant of Christ.

[12:29] In Philippians 4.11, he wrote, I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. Now, the Bible doesn't tell us that we don't have inspired divine revelation of the exact details of Paul's death, but tradition has it by accumulating multiple early writings that Paul was beheaded in Rome under Nero in AD 60, around AD 65 to 68 within that time.

[13:02] So Paul risked everything for the gospel, and in 2 Corinthians 11, he itemizes all of the dangers and persecutions and threats, well, probably not all of them, but many of them, and of course, with his very life.

[13:18] So he risked everything with his very life for the gospel. And something that's important to see in all of this, because we can look back. We can look back at Saul of Tarsus' conversion.

[13:31] We can look back at before he was converted, persecuting the church. We can look at how Paul was persecuted. We can look back at Paul's death. We can look at Paul's imprisonments, and we don't feel what it must have felt like for him.

[13:44] But we can look back and we can see what comes of it, and we can see looking back that God is sovereign. And whether we see it or not, God is sovereign. But God is sovereign in Paul and Saul persecuting.

[13:58] And God is also sovereign in Paul being persecuted. And just as much as God is sovereign in that time, so also God, who does not change, is sovereign even today.

[14:14] So God is sovereign when Saul himself was persecuting before his conversion, and God is sovereign when Paul, after his conversion, was persecuted. So Paul risked everything for the gospel and its promise of life in Christ.

[14:31] Which brings us to our second point, his apostolic purpose. The persecuted penman and his apostolic purpose. As apostolic purpose, we see the authority and the aim of his apostolic purpose.

[14:47] So first of all, the authority. And again, we're not going to go over everything about, which we did in 1 Timothy, about apostolic authority.

[14:58] But we see here Paul, an apostle. So Paul is an apostle. An apostle bears the authority of the one who sends them. So, his apostolic authority is on behalf of the authority of who?

[15:17] He says, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. So, Paul, as an apostle of Jesus Christ, bears the authority of the one who sent him being Jesus Christ.

[15:30] So, the authority of the apostle Paul is the authority of Jesus Christ. And it's by the will of God. He was not self-appointed. Not like current day apostle, so-called apostle Janine, whose ministry is, what was it, prophetic art with the interpretation through dance.

[15:52] Paul was not self-appointed, but he, not by his own will, but he was, his qualification as an apostle with the authority of Christ is on the account of God as the source of his apostolic calling.

[16:05] Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. And his authority was to inscripturate and circulate the free promise of life in Jesus Christ.

[16:20] So, some may ask the question, well, is, is Paul truly an apostle or is, are the epistles the inspired word of God?

[16:31] You might hear some try to make an argument and really it's pitting the, the apostle against Christ or pitting the epistles against the gospels by saying, really, if there's, the black letters, if, if I just, I forget the exact argument, but basically saying that they prioritize the red letters over the black letters that, if, if they don't understand the black letters then they're, they're wrong according to the red letters.

[17:04] But anyways, it's kind of split my mind, but the, the argument that they try to present is pitting the apostle against Christ, which, what that does is it really denies the inerrancy and the inspiration of all of scripture.

[17:17] So, we have to ask the question, are the writings of the apostle Paul inspired? That is, are they scripture? And not to go into all the details, but if you remember from our evening service, the definition of scripture, what it comes down to is the inspiration of scripture.

[17:36] So, are the epistles scripture? Well, in 2 Peter 3, 15 to 16, he wrote this, Peter wrote this, as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of things in which are some, some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction as they do also the rest of scriptures.

[18:08] So, what Peter's saying here is that with all of Paul's epistles, wisdom was given to him and all of his epistles are scripture. So, by the testimony of the apostle Peter, the epistles of the apostle Paul are scripture according to the wisdom which was given to him.

[18:30] So, with his apostolic purpose, we see his authority and also the aim, the aim of his apostolic purpose. It says, according to the promise of life. Now, the Old Testament, with the Old Testament and the New Testament, with that single sense of scripture, the Old Testament promises the Messiah to come and the New Testament testifies that he has come.

[18:57] So, the promise in the Old Testament, the promise of messianic salvation is promised through the prophets and that promise we see starting back in Genesis 3.15.

[19:09] The promise of the skull-crushing seed of the woman who is then revealed by farther steps and further promises. For example, with Abraham that through his seed all the families of the earth would be blessed, all the nations would be blessed.

[19:25] So, there's a promise and we don't have the time to trace it, but there are many promises and typology of the Messiah which is to come.

[19:37] And we see here, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus. The Old Testament promises the Messiah and the New Testament testifies that he has come and that promise is in Christ Jesus.

[19:53] The promise of life is in Christ Jesus. And in Luke 24, if you recall, then he said to them, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken, ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and entered into his glory?

[20:13] And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning to himself. So, here we see divine interpretation of the Old Testament that it speaks about Christ.

[20:31] In all of the Old Testament, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, it speaks of Christ, of his sufferings and of his subsequent glory. And in Galatians 3, if you have time later, read Galatians 3, it outlines how that promise finds its fulfillment in Christ.

[20:49] So, that promise of life in the Old Testament, the promise of the Messiah to come in the New Testament, it testifies that he has come and that is in Jesus Christ.

[21:00] That is, that the promised skull-crushing seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, the descendant of Judah and the Lion of David, the Messiah King is Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God, who came into the world to save sinners by his incarnation.

[21:24] He assumed human nature. He took to himself a body. He obeyed the law. He suffered and died as a substitute. He was buried and he rose in power, victorious over sin and death, has ascended and is seated on high and reigns with all authority and all power and he will return to judge the living and the dead.

[21:48] And in his coming, his doing, his suffering and his dying, he accomplished the work of redemption. That is, the obeying of the law, the perfect righteousness which is required to be right before God and the paying the penalty of sin of his people to satisfy divine justice and redemption.

[22:13] The benefits of redemption in Christ is received by faith alone. We are justified, we are declared right before God, not by any of our works, not by anything that we do to merit or to earn righteousness, but by the righteousness of Christ which we receive by faith as the instrument and rest on Christ for salvation and all the benefits in Christ.

[22:39] So the gospel ministry handed down by apostolic teaching is preserved by faithful ministers of the word. Which brings us to our third point, the gospel preservation.

[22:52] The gospel preservation, first of all, through the affirmed recipient. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus to Timothy.

[23:06] So this is written to Timothy and it starts off in verse 2 by saying to Timothy. But then if we look at the end of the letter, just like 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, it ends by saying grace be with you all or grace be with you all.

[23:27] It's a plural there for you. So while it starts off by being addressed to Timothy, by extension, it's for the church, for you all, plural.

[23:41] And Timothy, so to go back to Timothy, written to Timothy, Timothy was duly set apart and sent into the ministry of the word. Timothy was not self-appointed. Timothy was not self-sent, but he was duly set apart and duly sent into the ministry.

[23:57] So, Paul's absence is not because Timothy wasn't duly set apart and sent and is acting in a way which Paul doesn't agree with. And Paul's absence is also not out of a lack of love for Timothy, as we see to Timothy, a beloved son.

[24:17] Very similar to 1 Timothy 1.12 which says a true son in the faith. Now, Timothy would have been influenced by Paul in his first missionary journey.

[24:27] If you remember the persecuted penman, his first missionary journey, the planting of a church in Lystra, which is where Timothy was. So, Timothy would have been influenced by Paul's first journey ministry, which would have been instrumental in his salvation.

[24:45] Now, we know that he was taught the scriptures at a young age, but scriptures that were taught him when he was young would not have immediately produced regeneration in him.

[24:57] But in time, the word was made effectual by the light of faith through the spirit of God, through the faithful ministry of the word as faithfully proclaimed by Paul in Lystra.

[25:10] So, the gospel preservation through the affirmed recipient, Timothy, and the gospel preservation through the faithful proclamation. The faithful proclamation by pastoral faithfulness in the church by preaching the word, which we'll see includes to convince, to rebuke, and to exhort.

[25:31] And the church militant, church militant on earth, the church militant is consistent in the means of grace, that is, being faithful in the means of grace week after week in God's prescribed manner of worship.

[25:48] So, how is this done? How is the church militant being faithful and consistent in the means of grace, the faithful proclamation of the gospel for its preservation?

[25:59] What is the strength in which the church does it? Does he tell Timothy to look within or to dig deep or to, does Paul offer ten steps to be a better youth so that you can be faithful?

[26:10] He doesn't do that. The strength which is supplied, which he indicates here, is grace, mercy, and peace. Matthew, the annotators of Matthew Poole's commentary on grace, mercy, and peace.

[26:26] Elaborate and say, by grace, he means the free favor and goodwill of God with all the spiritual gifts that proceed from it, either requisite for salvation or the great work of the evangelical ministry.

[26:40] By mercy, his compassionate, tender love, pardoning, relieving, supporting, and assisting us in our Christian course. By peace, he signifies principally the peace of God, that divine calm of conscience, that tranquility and rest of soul which proceeds from the assurance that God is reconciled to us in Christ and our freedom by the sanctifying spirit with the tyranny of carnal lusts.

[27:09] So to be faithful and the means of grace to be faithful in the gospel preservation, you know, it's not about looking within but about looking to God, to looking to Christ, to looking to being reconciled through Christ.

[27:23] And what is the source of this? If the gospel preservation, the faithful proclamation of the gospel is by the strength of grace, mercy, and peace, what is the source of this grace, mercy, and peace?

[27:35] How does a church that desires to be faithful find grace, mercy, and peace? Well, it says to Timothy, a beloved son, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

[27:51] Now, all blessings flow from the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit. Now, it doesn't say here in the Spirit, but when we think of the Trinity, it is one God subsisting in three persons, or when we read in Scripture about a work being attributed or appropriated to a member of the Trinity, it's not to the exclusion of one of the persons of the Trinity, because God is one in essence, and that one divine essence subsists, or modes of subsisting in three persons relationally.

[28:35] So it's not that the Holy Spirit is excluded, or is not involved, or is not present, because God is one in essence. But where we read the Father through the Son, we can also understand that it is by the Spirit.

[28:50] The Spirit is the bond of the Father and the Son, and to lean on Augustine and Aquinas, Aquinas wrote that the Spirit is the bond or the bond of love of the Father and the Son, the Spirit, the Father being unbegotten, the Son being begotten of the Father, and the Spirit eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.

[29:16] So Aquinas wrote that the Spirit is the bond, the bond of love of the Father and the Son, and before Aquinas, Augustine said that the communion, the communion of the Father and the Son, the communion of love of the Father and the Son, the expression of the mutual love between the Father and the Son.

[29:35] It's not that the Spirit is an impersonal force, but the Spirit is a person of the Trinity proceeding from the Father and the Son. So God, the one divine essence, is the source and fountainhead of all blessedness and good.

[29:52] Blessedness and good flowing from the Father through the Son by the Spirit. And that all, that all goodness, that all blessedness flows from God as the fountainhead is on account of God having sovereign power over all of His creation by right of being creator as well as by redemption being a new creation.

[30:18] So God is sovereign. God's providence extends to all His creatures and all their actions by right of being creator and as well as redemption as a new creation.

[30:30] So new creation, citizens, all blessings, flow from the Father through the Son by the Spirit. So some concluding uses that we can take from this.

[30:41] First of all, the Apostles' point in 2 Timothy is to fortify Timothy and by extension the church. As we see in the last of grace be to you all, plural, is to fortify the church in faithfulness and the ministry of the Word.

[30:59] What's important for the church's leadership is to guard the good deposit committed to its trust. This is 2 Timothy 1.14. Second of all, the Apostle Paul knew that his delay was certain and that he would die soon.

[31:17] But the church would continue. It's not that the church would cease to exist when the Apostle Paul died. He would die, but the church would continue. And the church's continuation would not be by revelatory prophecy, but by guarding the good deposit.

[31:33] So this necessitates the training of faithful men as ministers of the Word. As the church continues, the church also then needs to continue in training faithful ministers of the Word for the preservation and proclamation of the Gospel.

[31:51] And third, the faithful proclamation or the passing along of the Gospel comes with suffering, which necessitates then perseverance and enduring suffering.

[32:04] So whether that be in the times of the Bible or after the times of the Bible with the early church fathers or throughout history, the faithful proclamation of the Gospel, it comes with suffering.

[32:20] And because there is suffering that necessitates the perseverance and enduring suffering, so how is the church equipped to to to perseverance and enduring suffering?

[32:37] That is, how is the church equipped and from what source? And remember, to Timothy, a beloved son, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

[32:50]  Amen. Amen.