This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “II Timothy” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, May 15, 1988.

to the end of the chapter. And then we will be reading from the first chapter as well. 2 Timothy 2, verse 22. Please also useful love that follow righteousness, faith, love, with them that fall on the Lord out of a pure heart. The foolish and unlearned question of all, knowing that they do gender strife, and the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient. Uniqueness instructing those that oppose themselves is God for adventure. will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil. You are taken captive by him at his will. And then the first chapter, reading from the eighth verse through eleven.

He not found there for a shame that the testimony of our Lord, be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God, who hath loved us, who hath 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 us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and have brought life and immortality for life through the gospel, whereunto I am appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles. Our last message on 2nd Timothy called this letter from Paul, his last will and testament. Before Paul departs this world, he sends word to his beloved child in the faith, Timothy. A man presently pastoring the church in the city of that. The last word. Are most important. Not simply because they express his tenor. Is part of the one well-loved by him. but because they mark the end of an era, the end of an age.

It is as if Paul were speaking here for each of the apostles. As if he were speaking for all of the apostles. As if all of the apostles were in him. As if, as Paul wrote and sent this letter to Timothy, Paul and all those who bore the title and office of apostles were passing from this world and the apostolic age were coming to a close. A monumental, if not dramatic, change and shift for the Church. The Apostles were passing away and now the Church would have to survive without them.

Without them being physically present on the scene. So here we are, living 1900 years after the last apostle breathed the air of this world, far removed in time from those great foundational figures, having become accustomed to their absence. accustomed to a world without them. But… But… Do you not realize at the same time While the apostles are dead and gone, yet they are proximate to us, and we live in their proximity. That though dead, they still live and speak.

Now, whether you can fully grasp it now or not, the fact is this. There is a sense in which those apostles are as proximate to us, as proximate to us as Paul was to Timothy when he wrote this epistle. Now you didn’t come to church this morning to shell your brain. I want you to think of it. I want you to hang with it. There is a sense in which the apostles are as proximate to us as Paul was to Timothy when he wrote. Think of it. Think of it. Work it through.

Let’s take the case of the pastor, since, after all, we are dealing with 2 Timothy, and Timothy is a pastor. You will remember what we said about Paul, how all the apostles were in him, as if he embodied them all, and they are all speaking through him. as he gives these his parting words. Well, along the same lines, it is as if all pastors are intimate and being abreast as Paul speaks to him. I am a pastor.

Let me speak. I find myself living in second synod and being equally addressed by the apostles. No, so it is for all. We all find ourselves living in second. We are addressed by all as continually living in the circumstances in vision in this letter. Look at the pattern of things as they are worth as it is worth out for in that second chance.

Paul, the apostle, is charging Timothy, the pastor, with his responsibility. And as part of that responsibility, especially as it comes to expression in this chapter, Timothy is to see to it that the message of the gospel is entrusted to faithfulness. I have just explained for you the first two verses of that second chapter. But, as we consider then the sweep of the chapter and the sweep of the things we have been dealing with here this morning, what we see is that there are three different figures put before us. They are presented to us. The apostle, the pastor, and the faithful man who is potentially to be a pastor himself. Now hold on to that, the apostle, the pastor, and the faithful man who is potentially a pastor himself.

Do you now see it? Isn’t that the way it always is? Doesn’t the apostle, through the inspired word of God, to this day, continue to address the pastors who have their ordination, and isn’t the pastor that the message of the gospel is entrusted to a woman after him. That’s the way it always is, and we will be until the end.

We see. As I have been I find myself living in Second Timothy, no less than Timothy himself lives there. And as this fact comes to register upon me, I begin to realize that there is a marvelous, biblical, and I underscore that word, biblical, immediacy and relevance to the whole matter of the Word of God. Such as it brings us to live in the twentieth century, right up to the apostles who lived in the first. All of that distance, all of that time, overcome. Biblically speaking, I, living in the twentieth century, live in the immediate presence of the apostle who lives in the present. In a very profound sense, then, I, the pastor of this congregation here in Swiftly, and no more distant from all of it.

The pastor. We were well. to acknowledge and recognize that the Bible I’m talking about the Bible I’m talking about only really I’m talking about fired word and communication here from the Apostle Paul God and the world. We would do well to acknowledge and recognize that the Bible, the living Word of God, possesses in and of itself a radical relevance that cannot be improved upon. There is a dynamic at work in the Word of God that draws the yet future times and personages into There is a dynamic at work that simplifies our vision of life and our relationship to God so that that word, the word from God, establishes for itself a sufficiency and an adequacy for life.

Now you may not understand why I am so emotional about this forum. But if you grew up as I did, you would understand. I was subjected to one great youth, director after another. And every one of them, without fail, told me that it was his purpose to make the Bible relevant and make it meaningful for my life.

The Bible is not in need of being made. It is not in need of being made practical. It is relevant. It is practicability in its essence. And I doubt if this could be said too loudly or too often these days. For sadly, the Bible is approached now by many conservative or liberal, evangelical or sacramentalist, Reformed or Arminian, as if it were an anemic book, almost as if it were influenced by a platonic soul that had to be liberated from its tusks of mortality by the modern day masters of the practical, the modern day practitioners of relevance. Without them, so it seems, from what they are saying without them the Bible would be useless and remain mute. It could not speak.

So thank God that he has given us these wizards of modernity. No. A thousand times no. The Bible does not stand back there as a volume in need of your operations in order to make it meaningful. The Bible stands back there beckoning you to be enveloped with it. So that you would live There. That’s God’s approach to life. And you see, if you understand His approach to government, you’re never a hero. The Bible, therefore, has an inherent usefulness by its very definition, by its very existence. It has an inherent usefulness that is ignored in the detriment of the Church, her pastors, and her people.

But there’s another aspect to this immediacy of which I disagree. For on the one hand, you know, the Church is put off because she lives 1900 years from the actual events and things are getting a little stale, are they not? How am I expected to hang in there all this time? But on the other hand, going the other direction, what about all these promises about the end of the world? You know what Paul does in writing to Timothy?

He takes up that matter, moves into the third chapter, and I know that you were fearful that he would never make it to the third chapter. But, in a bold move this morning, We are crossing that boundary. Look at that first verse of the first chapter that realizes that in the last day… You see how Paul is seeing things, how the Word of God is presenting things? We look at them in terms of the personalities involved. The pastor and those who aspire to be.

The situation is never any different. But likewise, now if we move here into the third chapter, this matter of immediacy gains a new aspect. moving in one direction, the last days are brought up against us coming from the other. So the last days are always the same. And it doesn’t matter whether you live in a hundred, two hundred, five hundred, sixteen hundred A.D. or in nineteen eighty-eight.

There is no circumstance that the Church can encounter between now and the end of the world, between the time of Timothy to the end of the world, that has not been addressed by the world. Absolutely not. There is a perfect, complete adequacy for life, for the Church, for me, four years in the Bible. In the Bible. Now many people who are even religious are consent to live without the Bible. And if you witness the funeral at Richard College area this last week you saw a whole crowd of people who are living without the Bible. LITURGY has been placed on the Word of God. LITURGY! Completely sufficient in and of itself. Having a life all of its own. Completely capable of explaining life and all reality. But without the Word of God. But what about you? And what about me? Why have you come here? Oh, what’s the story? Why have you come here? Out of habit. It’s a nice place to spend 20 minutes. Look, there’s better shows in town.

I can guarantee you that. The Word of God. And the encouragement that you receive from this pulpit to this ministry should be that you avail yourself of that gift. Both corporately as a congregation and individually as members of the body. Well, there’s a great deal that could be said about these matters. It’s keeping in mind the immediacy and the relevance of the universe. It’s adequacy. It’s completeness, sufficiency for life.

Father may we not lose track of where we are may we not lose track of the fact that we in a very deep and real sense live in the immediate presence of the apostle who writes and addresses even us. For surely he wrote to Timothy that Timothy pastored a congregation and Ephesus sent him. Though the pastors may feel especially addressed, still that message comes through loud and clear to the people that were congregated in the assembly gathered in Ephesus so many years ago. No less so, we who gathered here. So let us take up residence in the world. Let’s dwell there and live. And that’s by the power of your spirit, for the glory of your name, for the good of the church.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.