Pattern for Perilous
Times
Paul, the veteran apostle, is nearing the end of his race. He has run it with patience, and now he is about to pass the torch to his son in the Gospel, Timothy. It is a fine thing when a minister has a son of his own who is also a son in the Gospel, but if he has no son in the flesh he may have one in the faith.
Paul is helping Timothy to get his bearings. He tells Timothy that the time will come when men will not endure sound doctrine. He was under no illusions about the future. He had told the elders of Ephesus that after his departing, grievous wolves would enter in, not sparing the flock, and that within the church false leaders would arise (Acts 20:29-30). Some preachers today would never think of warning against false doctrine. They say it is the wrong approach, is not psychologically correct, that we should be optimistic about the future. If such procedure is wrong, then the New Testament is wrong in a lot of places.
Paul said the time would come ''when they can't take it,'' and that time has arrived. The Gospel message is foolishness to this world, of course, and, incidentally, if the message be foolishness what can the messengers expect but to be called fools? But the time has come when the church cannot endure sound doctrine, not
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the liberals alone, but plenty of fundamentalists. Alexander Whyte spoke of those who ''will be thankful to you for telling them the particular times when the Gospels were writ or for explaining the meaning of Euroclydon or anathema maranatha. They will be glad,'' said he, ''for such useless instruction. But if you touch upon such subjects as try the state and way of their lives, these religious people cannot bear to be thus instructed.''
In such a time what is the preacher to do? ''But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.'' He is to be a ''gospelizer'' and if the people won't endure it, preach it anyway! Such was the charge given to Isaiah and Jeremiah. Read the second chapter of Ezekiel. The prophet was to face an impudent, stiff-hearted and rebellious people and not be afraid of them, but ''whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear,'' he was to speak God's words until they should know that a prophet had been among them.
I have already mentioned Alexander Whyte. One would think that after eighty a minister would face no more crisis in his ministry. But in his old age Dr. Whyte wrestled with the question whether he should for the remainder of his ministry preach more on the gentler and more hopeful aspects of Christian truth and less on sin and its fruits. He says:
What seemed to me to be a Divine Voice spoke with all commanding power in my conscience, and said to me as clear as could be: ''No! Go on, and flinch not! Go back and boldly finish the work that has been given you to do. Speak out and fear not. Make them at any cost to see themselves in God's holy Law as in a glass. Do
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that, for no one else will do it. No one else will so risk his life and his reputation as to do it. And you have not much of either left to risk. Go home and spend what is left of your life in your appointed task of showing my people their sin and their need of my salvation.''
It is not easy to keep a charge like that in a day like this. We have heard of an army officer in the thick of a battle who called to his superior and said, ''The flag has been carried 'way ahead of the regiment. Shall we bring it back?'' His superior thundered back, ''No! Make the regiment catch up with the flag!'' The tendency today is to bring our flag back to our faltering battle lines. We need to bring the regiment up with the flag.
If we are to be faithful in such a time let us remember that there is a price to pay. ''Endure afflictions,'' is Paul's word to Timothy. He was to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Paul knew from experience. He had suffered the loss of all things, had endured hardship and suffering.
It costs us nothing to be saved. Eternal life is the gift of God. It cost God aplenty. It cost our Saviour His life, but it is free to us. But if we are to be soldiers of the cross and followers of the Lamb, it will cost us everything we have and we shall be in for plenty of trouble.
The preacher who stands for God and righteousness and exposes sin thereby ''sticks his neck out,'' and becomes the target of all the subtle and sinister attacks of the Adversary. Sometimes we dodge the issue by deciding to specialize in a ministry of comfort. Dr. John Watson felt in his late years that if he had his life to live over, he would give himself more to such a ministry.
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But John Henry Newman said, ''Those who make comfort the great subject of their preaching seem to mistake the end of their ministry. Holiness is the great end, comfort is a cordial, but no one drinks cordials from morning to night.'' It is easier to comfort the afflicted than to afflict the comfortable, but there is need for both.
Noah had no converts and perhaps it was because he was ''a preacher of righteousness.'' People do not like to be called to holiness and righteousness and will not flock to the prophet who calls to a straight and narrow way. It costs to do that kind of preaching. It costs in popularity. There is a mistaken notion that the world will honor the man who stands for God. It will break his neck if it can. Jesus said they hated Him and would hate us. Our Lord had a crowd at the beginning of His ministry. They came to Him from every quarter, and His disciples said, ''All men seek for thee.'' But there came a day when even His disciples forsook Him and fled.
Sometimes it costs at home. A man's foes may be those of his own household. When Sam Jones entered the ministry his wife told him she had married a lawyer, not a preacher, and would never be a Methodist minister's wife. Sam told her he would preach the Gospel if he had to travel as a grass widower. The night before he left for Conference she was taken violently ill. She had said that if Sam became a preacher she would have to be removed first. It looked as if she were going to be removed. She promised God then and there that if He would save her life she would be the best preacher's wife she knew how to be. She recovered and kept her promise. God mightily used Sam Jones
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all over America because he was ready to pay the price.
There is a price to pay in loneliness. Look at Paul in the fourth chapter of Second Timothy. He calls the roll of his friends, and most of them are conspicuous for their absence. Demas had forsaken him, having loved this present world. Crescens had gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Tychicus had been sent to Ephesus. Paul needs his cloak and parchments. Alexander the coppersmith has done him much evil. ''At my first answer no man stood with me,'' he says. Does not that remind you of Another of whom we read ''And all his disciples forsook him and fled''? But Paul does not end here: ''Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me and strengthened me.'' There is not only a price to pay, there is a promise to plead.
God has said, ''I will never leave thee nor forsake thee,'' and so precious is that word that it shows up in Genesis and Deuteronomy and Joshua and the Psalms and Isaiah and Hebrews. Our Lord has said, ''Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.'' If we pay the price, we can plead the promise.
I started out ten years ago to travel over this land in an itinerant ministry under no particular auspices or sponsorship. The devil said, ''You mean well, but the religious world is so organized today that you will have to pull a few wires and get under somebody's wing in order to keep going. If you preach plainly they won't receive it and you'll starve.'' Well, I may look as if I am starving but I am not. I have had three meals every day, and God has gone before and opened doors I couldn't have entered with a crowbar. I turned my
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reputation, my calls, my future over to the Lord, and He has never left me nor forsaken me.
Got any rivers you think are uncrossable?
Got any mountains you cannot tunnel through?
God specializes in things thought impossible;
And He will do what no man can ever do.
''I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.'' One thinks of the old lady whose pastor tried to explain that the verse could really mean, ''I'll never, never, never forsake thee.'' She replied, ''The Lord may have to say it three times to get you Greek scholars to believe it, but once is enough for me.''
Not only is there a price to pay and a promise to plead, there is a prize to possess. ''Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.'' We are to so run that we may obtain. I don't want the booby prize when I get to heaven. There is for us the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, and we are to let nothing take our crown. Discouragement can do it: Elijah almost lost his under a juniper. Success can do it: David almost lost his in a king's palace. The wrong kind of books can do it. Eating and drinking can do it. We can be so busy even with the good that we miss the best in a round of glorified piddling. The fear of man can do it. Ecclesiastical pressure can do it. The wrong school can do it. ''Look to yourself, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.''
Some of the saints seem so smug in positional truth
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that it doesn't matter to them whether they receive a reward or not. Indeed, we do not work to get to heaven, but rewards will be handed out at the judgment seat of Christ, and I don't want to miss anything God has for me, nor do I want to let the devil cheat me out of my crown.
Paul wanted to finish his course with joy (Acts 20:24). We are never safe in that respect until the last step. Some who started gloriously ran well until within sight of the goal, only to finish miserably. It may have been money or morals or modernism. What fools we can be on the home stretch! No wonder a dear old saint prayed, ''Lord, keep me from being a wicked old man!''
Paul ran well, but he kept his body under subjection, lest, having preached to others, he himself should be a castaway. He ran with patience, looking unto Jesus, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. He won His prize! Let us consider Him, lest we be weary and faint in our minds. And considering Him, let us pay the price and plead the promise and possess the prize.
