Accountability: It Starts With You

 

 

 

"I solemnly 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: ² preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction." 

II Timothy 4:1-2

Good Morning My Beloved,

 

Welcome to worship this Lord's Day!

Welcome to all of our brothers and sisters from around the world. We're so glad to have all of you here.

 

We live in a performance based world. In fact, I would go so far as to say, that our society is obsessed with performance. Both the young and the old, competitions, awards and rankings are an inescapable characteristics of this life.We are judged upon how in the classroom, at work, on the sports field or even in life in general. Our influences, not only how others perceive us, but how we see ourselves. And, in some cases, this influence can be so strong that we come to see our performance as a major key part of who we are. In one form or another, every person on this planet is being judged.

We often hear those not wanting to be judged for the actions, usually for some act outside the moral standard, emphatically tout the phrase, "Judge not, less you be judged." What I find it to be quite interesting, is that all of these people, who are not wanting to either be judged, or who say "Who am I to judge" will indeed be judged. Because that this life ends with judgement

 

I know there are some of you, who will say, "I’m a Christian, I’m not going to be judged!" And then you'll quote Romans 8:1, "Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

However, allow me to say, you will be judged. For the believer it’s not a judgment to determine heaven or hell, it’s an evaluation to determine rewards or authority once one arrives in heaven and the kingdom.  It’s something that we call, that the Greek text calls, the Bema Seat Judgment of Christ. God is watching what you’re doing.  God, who is omnipresent, everywhere all at once, is present with you, even now;  you may feel like you’re by yourself, however, God is with you, God is present with you and He’s carefully observing what you are doing.  He is carefully observing how you are behaving as a Christian, whether or not you are carrying out His commands. He is also observing me, as I carry out this particular command to preach the Word.

 

This life ends in judgment.  It does not end in unconsciousness, it does not end in nirvana, it does not end in us being reincarnated into some other life form. The biblical worldview says this life ends in judgment; every person that’s alive today will be judged. I'd like to encourage you for a moment to think about is your future performance evaluation. Because Scripture teaches us, that as living beings God will judge you and He will also judge the dead. Isn’t it interesting how we tend to think and act differently when we know an evaluation of our performance is about to take place? If you don’t think about the future judgment now, our lives can become very sloppy and our obedience lackadaisical. 

 

Allow me to share something with you, that it constantly in the back of my mind, it's what drives me to be faithful to teach the whole truth, even the parts that cause you to squirm in your seats. And that is that the teachers in the body of Christ, those that are in formal teaching positions are judged to a higher standard, not only in terms of what they communicate and say but what they do not communicate. I pray every day for those who would teach a watering down the Word of God, avoiding certain chapters or topics in the Word of God. The bottom line is I’m far more fearful of God's judgement of my performance than I am of your opinion of my message.

Let us bow our heads.

Heavenly Father,

Father, we thank You as we always do for Your Word.  We know that You have called us to present ourselves as living sacrifice, Lord, help us to make of our lives an excellent offering. Help us to understand and live every moment of each day in the consciousness of the seriousness of our calling for all that we do, we do in the presence of the One who will evaluate it. Make us people of the Word. Help us to be obedient to it, give us a love and a passion for it.  

 

Father, I pray that You would cause me to always and ever evaluate carefully the content of my message and this ministry. Help us to be accountable and to hold each other accountable to the One Who is our judge, even our Lord Jesus Christ Who will judge with perfect righteousness and justice. May we always live for You and the One Who gave His life for us, our Lord Jesus Christ.

In His precious name we pray

Amen

 

Today's Message:  Accountability: It Starts With You

I'd like to begin today by saying, if for whatever reason you feel as though you ever need to search for another pastor, I hope that the main benchmark would be that he faithfully, and preaches God’s Word of truth, passionately, honestly and in it's entirety.

As I'm sure most of you are aware, in recent years, the seeker friendly church movement has minimized biblical preaching, if any at all, so as to attract "seekers" to the services. If the potential seeker desires an upbeat, pragmatic 15-20 minute messages, "the customer is king!" If they prefer drama rather than touching stories, or "How To Do Life Better," above doctrine, give them what they want so that they will keep coming and keep giving!

And, the emergent church has moved away from the seeker church, tailoring the message for a postmodern culture that does not accept the ideology of absolute truth. Because the emphasis has shifted to a more self-serving, self-satisfying experience in a completely non-judgmental atmosphere. Many are sick of churches that make them follow specific guidelines, meet certain requirements, or you’re not welcome here. What kind of load of crap is that? Apparently, God's Word, Paul’s command here to "reprove, rebuke, and exhort" does not fit their little "Me first" agenda! These modern speakers have attempted to  reshape how to "do church" in the postmodern culture, often challenging traditional Christian understandings of faith.

Open your Bibles with me if you would to the Second Book of Timothy chapter 4 verses 1 and 2. In our ongoing study of this precious heartfelt epistle, so rich and filled with emotion. We can only imagine, what must have been going through our beloved Apostle Paul's mind as he makes his final appeal to Timothy.

I would like to encourage you to follow along with me as I read to you to set the text in our minds and we prepare our hearts. II Timothy 4:1-2. 

"I solemnly 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, exhort, with great patience and instruction."

In our text today, Paul makes his final charge to Timothy, just before his execution. Sensing that the time of his departure has come, he charges Timothy, and every pastor, to be faithful in preaching the Word, regardless of the challenges and opposition. Not only is Paul a solemnly charging pastors, he is also solemnly charging all believers to welcome sound preaching. 

Paul begins verse 1 with "I solemnly 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." I'd like to draw your attention to the word kingdom, "by His appearing and His kingdom," the Greek word for kingdom here is basileía. 

The kingdom is Jesus reigning in the church; Jesus reigning in our hearts, the gospel going out to all the earth.  The fact is, every time you see a reference to kingdom in the New Testament, basileia, it’s always undefined. So, since its undefined, how can we know what he is talking about? We find the  answer is the Old Testament.  He is expecting Timothy, a Jew, to have a working knowledge of the kingdom from Old Testament Scriptures.  We cannot just come to the word kingdom  and assign our own meaning to it because it’s undefined.  What we have to do, is to develop our definition of the kingdom from the Old Testament.

If we were to turn to Isaiah 2:1-4, Isaiah 11:6-9, you would learn so much about the kingdom just from those verses.  What is the kingdom?  The kingdom is the time in the future when Jerusalem will be the center of world, spiritually and in political authority A time in which there will be  perfect justice. There are many today who cry out there is no justice, however, how can there be justice, when the kingdom has not come yet? Though for some, the justice the seek, may well be far different than the justice they deserve.  Social justice in the truest sense will never be fulfilled on planet earth. We are in a season of many tribulations. Let's be very honest, peace and justice is something that only Jesus Himself can do.  You see, this is why theology matters.  Because what you believe about the kingdom will influence  what you think the church needs be doing, which is preach and teach, evangelize and disciple. From the moment you move off into "kingdom now" theology and suddenly the church’s priority shifts into changing the social structures of society. 

That bring us to verse 2, "preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction." Paul shows us why preaching is of utmost importance. In verse 2, Paul answers four important questions. Why preach? What to preach? When to preach it? How to preach it? We can clearly see that the first imperative is to preach.  Greek word used is "kērussō," meaning to proclaim, herald or preach. To announce publicly with conviction. And the Greek word used for "Word" is in the accusative, it’s receiving the action, it’s "ton logon;" or lógos, which appears 330 times in the New Testament; Preach the Word. 

In Galatians 6:6, Paul says "The one who is taught the word is to share all good things with the one who teaches him." In other words, if you’re being fed through a ministry, Scripture calls you to get behind that ministry financially. In spite of what many people claim, this is not a plea for money, this is basic Bible teaching and clear instruction. J.Vernon McGee, once said, "We are not to preach about the Word or from the Word of God, but we are to preach the Word of God itself." God forbid if we limit our preaching to simply telling people about the Bible. After preaching the Word, Paul says to "be ready," 

I'd like you to pay attention to what he says, "preach the word; be ready" watch this now, "in season and out of season." Paul is not speaking about the weather as some have assumed. In other words, there are seasons where the Word of God will be respected, when people will jump on the Jesus bandwagon. Then, there will be other times, when the Word of God, is "out of season." Times when it's deemed culturally irrelevant. I cannot think of a better description for the days in which we're living. "Out of season." However, I do not want you to not to become discouraged, because it doesn't matter what society thinks. What matters is, that we remain faithful to God. He is the One Who will judge our service to Him.

We are to just preaching the Word and leave the results up to God. Paul gives us another imperative and these last three sound very similar to verse 16, which is the work of the word: "reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction." If reprove is an appeal to the emotions, then rebuke is an appeal to the mind. The Greek word translated "exhort" is parakaléō, which means to encourage; encourage through the teaching of the Word of God, those that are living in harmony with God’s truth.

In Closing...

 

Be encouraged in God.  Be encouraged in what He’s done in your life.  Be encouraged what He’s doing in this church.  Be encouraged in what He wants to do. Allow me to boldly say, as followers of Christ, need to take our Christian life seriously. One day, we will all stand before the Lord to give an account of our life, what service we have accomplished for Christ. The Word of God tells us how to live so that we will hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Master." 

Preaching is important because of the seriousness of this message. Christ will again appear and set up His kingdom to reign over all the earth. May we preach the Word,  so that others lives will also be ready.

I realize that most tend not to like the sort of messages that convict us and cause us to examine ourselves, but it is desperately needed in our society of watered-down, feel good Christianity.

 

If I didn't attempt to make one final appeal to you, I would have to answer To God for what I didn't say.. If you are sinning against God; then you need to repent! Only the Holy Spirit can take the Word and apply it to you individually, may you bear evidence of a transformed life.

Accountability, it starts with you!

May it be so...

And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;

the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;

The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.

Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen

 

 

 

 

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