Preach the Word: In Season and Out of Season

In one paragraph

Pastor Nathan preached from 2 Timothy 4:1-8, covering Paul's final charge to Timothy to preach the word faithfully, regardless of how the culture around him shifts. He returned to the pulpit just days after a two-and-a-half-week mission trip to Kenya, and that context of worldwide, unceasing worship sat quietly behind everything he said. Paul opens this section with unusual weight. He is writing...

Read together

1. 2 Timothy 4:1-8 the main passage preached through in the sermon
2. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 quoted just before chapter 4 begins, on all scripture being God-breathed and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness
3. 2 Timothy 3:1-5 quoted describing difficult last days, with a list of vices including lovers of self, boastful, arrogant, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God
4. 1 Corinthians 1:18 quoted twice on the message of the cross being foolishness to those perishing but the power of God to those being saved
5. 1 Corinthians 4:6 referenced as Paul telling Corinthians not to go beyond what is written
6. 1 Corinthians 5:1-2 quoted on immorality among the Corinthians, someone having his father's wife while the church was arrogant and not mourning
7. 2 Corinthians 2:5-11 quoted on reaffirming love for the man who had been disciplined, forgiving him so Satan would not take advantage
8. 2 Samuel 12:1-13 Nathan's parable to David about the rich man taking the poor man's ewe lamb, leading to the rebuke you are the man
9. Jeremiah 5:30-31 quoted on prophets prophesying falsely and priests ruling on their own authority while the people love it so
10. Psalm 51 described as David's psalm of repentance after Nathan's rebuke, and the closing benediction verse restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant to me a willing spirit to sustain me
11. Isaiah 40:8 referenced in a song sung that morning, the grass will wither and the flower will fade but the word of our God will last forever
12. John 14:6 quoted as Jesus saying I am the way the truth and the life and no one comes except by me
13. 1 Timothy 2:5 referenced on there being one mediator between God and people, the man Jesus Christ
14. 2 Corinthians 11 referenced as Paul's list of hardships he had endured

Talk about it

1. The pastor said Paul's charge to Timothy to preach the word carries a weight that comes from the reality of Christ's judgment of the living and the dead. How does keeping that judgment in mind actually change the way you think about sharing the gospel day to day?
2. The sermon drew a distinction between reproving, rebuking, and exhorting, and said all three should be done with great patience and instruction. Can you think of a time when you received correction that way, or gave it that way? What made the difference?
3. Nathan's parable to David and Paul's letters to the Corinthians were both given as examples of patience and instruction working together with rebuke. What do those two examples have in common, and what can we learn from them about how to approach someone who needs to hear a hard truth?
4. The pastor said the prosperity gospel is popular because 'my people love it so,' and that people will accumulate teachers who tell them what they want to hear. Where do you see that impulse in yourself, and how do you guard against it?
5. Paul says at the end of his life that he has fought the good fight, finished the course, and kept the faith, and that a crown of righteousness is laid up not only for him but for all who have loved Christ's appearing. What does it look like practically to live with that kind of forward-looking expectation right now, in ordinary life?