2 Timothy 1:3-12
Paul writes to Timothy from prison in
The thousand or so years from the time of Solomon through the First Century AD were marked by the slaughter of the prophets and preachers of God. There was little spirit of timidity in those times. God seemed to call certain people not only to preach a very unpopular word but to be ready to die for doing so.
Time after time we read of the prophets being killed – even hacked to death at the altar for their courage in bringing a prophecy of doom to the children of Israel. It would seem to be an easy thing for the people, when warned of God’s wrath, to repent and change their ways, but it never was. The best way to get rid of the message was to kill the messenger. That long history of killing the messenger was a harbinger of what would happen to Jesus as He preached the Gospel of peace.
What nation would not want peace? And yet, the only account we have of a nation willing to repent is the pagan city of Nineveh.
The one thing that seems consistently to stand against repentance is prosperity. Every time Israel became prosperous as the result of God’s blessing on them, they turned to worshipping the objects of their prosperity – their toys, so to speak. To become prosperous is to be able to afford to isolate ourselves from others and surround ourselves with a wall – a physical wall, an emotional wall and a spiritual wall.
We in America cannot ignore this very important lesson from history – that prosperity keeps nations and people from repenting. The culture of prosperity is a culture that builds walls around people and nations with a sign, “Keep Out!.” “Don’t tread on me!”
Building walls around ourselves carries over to churches as well. Last week we talked about legalism – the use of Bible verses strung together to form theologies that fail to honor the spirit of the Scriptures. That is a very common form of wall in Christian culture today. Once you have strung verses of Scripture together to form your theology, you have built an impregnable fortress against criticism. You can be confident of your position because you are a worshipper of the words of the Bible rather than the Word of God. Anyone who disagrees with you can be dismissed as a heathen.
Another way that we build walls against truth is to claim to have heard from God – “God told me.” Does God tell people things? In subtle ways, He tells all of us things that we are able to interpret in hindsight. But the best way to close off debate is to say that God told you something. I once was in a Bible study when a young man said that God had told him something that seemed to me to be contrary to the message of the Scriptures. I called him on it; his answer was, “Ask Him; don’t ask me!” Walls!
In ancient Jerusalem, walls were a means not only of keeping out pagan influences but of reminding the Jews that they were set apart from the world. With the coming of the Messiah, however, the walls were torn down – physically and spiritually. In Jesus, there was one people of both Jews and Gentiles, of both male and female, of both rich and poor. The wall of injustice to race, gender and class were to disappear.
The Prophet Habakkuk knew about walls. He wrote at the time when Babylon was becoming the dominant world power. The Ten Tribes of Israel had already been carried away into captivity by King Nebachudnezar. What spared Jerusalem was that it was self-contained, surrounded by a wall. The people of Judah thought that they were safe. But they were dying, and it was the mission of Habakkuk to cry out to that dying world. He was a man of many deep questions: “Why is there evil in the world? Why do the wicked seem to be winning?”
The cry of Habakkuk’s heart is summed up in Chapter 3, v. 2: “Lord I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy.”
God begins to speak to Habakkuk to answer his complaints. It may seem as though the wicked are winning, He tells him, but they will be judged. Habakkuk has heard from God, and he rejoices: “Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights” (3:18, 19).
Habakkuk is prophesying the destruction of Israel by Babylon. Yet, he waits patiently now for the day of calamity to come on Babylon. “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.”
Prophets of our day are predicting calamity everywhere. I read yesterday that all the woes on America are because of our celebration of lesbian sex. Let’s assume for a moment that that is true. Can we see the destruction of America and still rejoice in the Lord as did Habakkuk? Or are we consumed with the attitude that we have to get “them” before they get “us?”
There is a place for stirring up God’s people. We can be accused here at the NMMH Church of not doing enough stirring up. I’m not certain whether that is my fault or the fact that you may be too comfortable where you sit and we share the blame.
Habakkuk hits us where we live. The charge that is laid on us is that what entangles men is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life. Those are the entangling snares that hold us captive.
Habakkuk talks a lot about wealth and land. “Woe to him who builds his realm by unjust gain to set his nest on high, to escape the clutches of ruin.” He is talking about nations that place their destinies in the acquiring of more land. Woe to those who are bent on increasing their own possessions by invading their neighbor’s rights. All they accomplish is to burden themselves with more responsibility.
What he condemns applies not only to nations but to people. He speaks to us by reminding us that the American Dream is not about acquiring wealth or land. We can’t even take care of what we now have. The American Dream is about freedom to think and to act according to conscience and to allow our neighbor to do the same.
How tempting it is to build our nest up high so that we can raise our families out of reach of the danger and power of evil. Habakkuk condemns this kind of thinking because it works to the ruin of others. Once we begin to acquire, we can’t seem to stop. We may feel safe, but we never feel safe enough. The world keeps barging in.
He tells us that we should not feel smug and secure that nobody has condemned us for our isolation. The stones of the walls that we have built and the beams of the fortresses we have built will cry out against us.
The answer the prophet brings to us is very simple. Whatever calamity we think we are facing in the future, rejoice in the Lord. “The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer…”
God is not going to remove any wall that we have erected to insulate ourselves from others until we recognize that we have to begin tearing down those walls ourselves. That is what it means for a people of God to be stirring themselves. Do we need these walls? Do I have all I need, or am I angling for more? Because, at the end of the day, our walls may keep out the outside world, but they cannot keep out death. Take a look in the mirror if you don’t believe me.
We have to stir ourselves with regard to this church here in North Manchester that it not become a fortress against the world, but that it become a beacon of light. If we are going to minister to others, we have to be willing to tear down those walls. Stir things up inside this church, and the problem of how to get more people will take care of itself. I need to stir you up; you need to stir each other up. Those walls that protect us against the discomfort of being a Christian need to be torn down.
Paul seems to be making a point in his letter to Timothy that calls us to action. Timothy has a sincere faith in Christ that has been passed down through his mother’s family. That is not enough. He has the Holy Spirit living in him. That, also, is not enough. He has been called of God to ministry. Not enough! It is enough to get him into Heaven, but it does not go to the root of following Christ.
Paul has laid his hands on Timothy to receive the Holy Spirit. Now something is required of Timothy. He has to go all the way – to fan into flame (to stir) the gift of the Holy Spirit. Paul makes his point very clearly. Serving God with a spirit of timidity is not going to cut it. Timothy is called to stir up the spirit that God has implanted in him and in all His children – a spirit of power, love and self-discipline.
He goes on to tell Timothy that part of this business of stirring ourselves is to join Christ in his sufferings because we have been called to a holy life. Death has been destroyed; we need not fear death nor anything short of death. Paul describes himself, not as a believer, but as a herald – one who shouts the message from the rooftops, so to speak. It is because he is a herald that he, like the Old Testament prophets before him, is suffering.
The message is clear. The Christian life without suffering for Christ and others is belief only – not service. The Christian life without a willingness to share it with others is not living the life of faith.
If we don’t stir thing up – move people to action, we have failed in the ministry of this church. People don’t like to be shaken up. They would rather sit still. They would rather come to church on Sunday morning, be entertained or just listen for an hour, walk out the door, go home, eat dinner and dive into the next week until next Sunday morning.
God calls us to stir people. Around us are dead, lifeless, struggling churches that need to be awakened, moved and stirred into action. They have become walls to keep our a dying world.
The problem is that we have become too satisfied with the building, the budget and the program. We are on a journey that is being held back by decay. We cannot be content just to be good Christians. We must be asking God all the time, “What should I be doing? What can I do?”
We ought to be stirred by sin within and outside the church. We have so many distractions that it takes all our time to keep up with them. Radio, TV, books, magazines, the Internet, snowmobiles, ATV’s – these are all things that are keeping God’s people away from Him and from the journey of faith. Our mission is to keep the church unspotted from the world, not through a long list of activities, but through pushing the envelope of faith.
We ought to constantly be stirred to repentance. We ought to repent for failing to care for the souls of others. Instead, most of us are wrapped up in thoughts of our money, our possessions, our health and our buildings.
“Let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus,” Paul writes. It is a mind that is focused on the will of the Father. We Christians ought to be confessing the coldness of our hearts, our critical spirits, our lazy, lukewarm attitudes – the sins of commission and the sins of omission.
There is another prayer that is vital to our growth in Christ – one that I preach about all the time. It is the prayer that God will stir our hearts to the basics of the Christian life. We need to return to the Word of God, reading it and considering it and obeying it and following it. We need to return to the altar of daily prayer. We need to search the Scriptures for core, Christian beliefs.
We need to live in an attitude of expectation – expectation that God is doing something wonderful in each of us and that a new experience with Him is right around the corner.
We need to be ready to give an answer when anyone questions us about the hope that lies within us, and to give that answer in humility and respect.
America needs to get back to church if it is going to make sense out of this corrupt world – not just a comfortable church, but a church where the Gospel of hope is preached, where the people are learning to love each other and where our neighbors are being prayed for, not because they are sick in the hospital, but because they are without hope. We have had several presidents and presidential candidates who claim to be Christians, but they don’t go to church. What kind of example is that? That is worship of the god who can help me lose weight – not the God who can redeem America.
We have churches that pray that God will revive the other guy. But that is not how revival works. Revival begins with the individual and spreads to the church and on into the community. A revival can be going on without the rest of the world noticing it until it hits them over the head.
We can use a revival of our faith in this church, can we not? A revival excites! A revival ignites! A revival unites! Grudges are forgotten; church people get right with each other; pastor and people come together. Guess what! It becomes an epidemic that catches on like a grassfire.
Sometimes I feel that I have been spending too much time on doctrine and not enough on action. We can have all the doctrine in the world, but until it propels us to action, it is useless. Until we begin to care enough to pray for that poor neighbor who seems to have it all together but no Christ and no hope, the doctrine hasn’t helped, has it? We’re all guilty of that, and we all need to be stirred to the purpose for the church.
We live in a world where some pretty rough characters have ruined the beauty of a call to the altar in repentance. I have never had an altar call here because it has been so abused over the years that it is meaningless anymore. But we don’t need altar calls. We need prayer warriors – people who will pray that God will lead the pastor; people who will pray that God will lead us to those who need us; people who will pray that God will give them courage to give straight answers to those in need.
I plead with you this morning to think about how you can help me stir this church to make full use of the Holy Spirit that has been given us. I plead with you this morning to pick one person or two people who need prayer and don’t let up. I am one of those people who need prayer.
I plead with you this morning to repent of the things that are wrong in your lives; the things that are doubtful about your faith; thse things that hinder you and me from living the dynamic Christian life. Begin with this little prayer: “Lord, send a revival to the NMMH Church, and let it begin in me.”
By this time Monday, I will be in one of the most religious parts of the world but also one of the darkest. I am going there to find the little conclaves of faith that I suspect are there but flying beneath the radar. I am going there so that I can get a first-hand education as to what the church in America can do to help before these people blow the world sky-high.
What is happening there is that the kind of action to which they have been stirred is not to live out their faith in love and compassion. It is to fight with each other over land, pretending it is God’s land or Allah’s land. God and Allah are fighting with each other over land! How ridiculous is that?
We can take a lesson from that kind of belief system. And that lesson is this. The Church of Jesus Christ is headed down the same path of acquiring money, property and power, and it needs to stop and repent. It can begin here in this little old church.
Only then will the prayer of Habakkuk be answered:
Lord, I have heard of your fame;
I stand in awe of your deeds.
Renew them in our day,
In our time make them known…
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