This is a tremendous and solemn challenge to preachers, but it can be applied to all believers; we are all representatives of Christ, bought by his blood, his children, his witnesses. Hopefully we all feel a sense of being specifically commissioned by the Lord to make known Christ, a burden laid upon us, a charge, a duty. It's a very serious thing. Have I honoured the charge? I have been saved. My sins have been washed away. Heaven is open to me. Eternal life is granted. I have a new nature, a new understanding. My soul has come to life. I have received blessings beyond anything in this world, and with them comes the commission. Do I take it seriously? Is it uppermost in my mind? Yes, if I am a parent, I am to care for my children, provide a home, to provide a living, but over it all, I'm given a commission by God. It's the chief thing I am to live for and to pray for.
All of us should be of this mind. I get up in the morning. I turn on the light or part the curtains. What do I see first? Well, yes, whatever is there. But spiritually, the thing that is ever before me at the beginning of every waking day is my commission from the Lord. It crowns everything. It's the most important thing in our lives. You have a commission to represent Jesus Christ, your Lord and Saviour, to live for him before your children, your relations, your colleagues through every word you utter, every reaction to every provocation, every difficulty. I set before you, not behind you, not to the side. This is very powerful language.
‘Oh, that doesn't apply to us. This is directed to son Timothy.’ Yes, but there's a lesson in that. The apostle Paul uses this most affectionate address to the one who was not, of course, his literal son, but his spiritual son. It was through the preaching of Paul, the apostle, that Timothy came to know the Lord. Possibly about the year AD 45, 46. About five years later, during the second missionary journey, he was approved by the elders of the church and set aside and ordained, as it were, into the Christian ministry and became a helper of the apostle Paul. At the time of writing it is about 12 or 13 years after that, and he is being reminded of these things. This is to him, personally, and to all of us, the commission is given. Christ, who died for us, has commissioned each one.
There are not prophets to assure us, but there are. The prophets have vanished from the scene because the scriptures are complete. The very things that the prophets would have said, we now have in the word of God, and that is much better. That is secure and stable. People who are not authentic prophets cannot jump up today – they do, but they are phonies. They cannot jump up today and say, ‘I have a word from the Lord. I have authority to tell you this and you must obey and comply.’ That can't happen because everything which is intended for us is now in the word of God. So we are not going to be misled by phonies and human imagination. The very kind of things that the prophets would have said at Timothy's appointment are now here in the word of God.
‘Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory’ (2 Timothy 2:10). What a fortifying word that is, not just to preachers, but to all of us. There is going to be a price to pay for being a witness to Christ. There is going to be rejection and disapproval. The apostle Paul had to bear stonings, shipwrecks, lashings, all manner of things. For the elect sakes – among the people to whom we witness and to whom we preach, there are the elects of God, whose hearts God will open. If I preach the gospel, I'm not working alone. I have one infinitely more powerful is at work in hearts, unseen by me.
‘Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth’ (2 Timothy 2:15). In our devotions and our private times of worship, do we give some thought to what we will say if an opportunity opens up? What scripture will we quote? What argument will we employ? Or are we completely unprepared? The preacher doesn’t enter the pulpit completely unprepared. Neither should any of us go about our daily business without some preparation for witness.
‘And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations … teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world’ (Matthew 28:18-20). Only Christian can claim that promise. Christ will be with you. Surely that would have been mentioned at the appointment of Timothy.
In the military – and so it was with the Roman military – you are in uniform. You are all dressed the same way; you are all armed similarly. Some people just can't live if they're not individuals. They've always got to be different. They've always got to have a life, and even an avenue of Christian service, and views and ideas which are totally theirs. It's a strange form of pride, really. Oh no, I'm now in the army of the Lord. We're not peas in a pod; we are all different personalities, and we have different ways, but in spiritual matters, we're prepared to work as a team, and to work together. We're all seeking the same objective. If you've got a singularly individual spirit, Satan will come to you and say, ‘Why don't you make this your fad, your speciality, so that you're marked out and different. You're not like all the others.’ That's a temptation for you to resist. There are rations in the military. Obedience is necessary to God and to his word, and courage, and there'll be discomforts, and maybe wounds, and suffering, and in those days, long, long marches. It may be that you wait long in your Sunday school class to see fruits, and patience is required of you, and love for the souls of the young, and much prayer. This is a war. There is a lot of opposition.