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PREACH THE WORD

2 Timothy 4:1-8
Key verses: 2-3

Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

By Carlos Diaz

Let’s first talk about who Paul was in the context of his role in the bible as preacher: The apostle Paul back when he was called Saul was a zealot, early in his life it was his mission to destroy the followers of Jesus, whether by death or persecutions he made up his mind to rid the world of what he knew was heresy until a trip to Damascus where he met the very Jesus he was trying to destroy, there Paul received God and God transformed his passion against Christ to a passion for Christ, Paul was healed and later became one of the greatest if not the greatest apostle enduring all sorts of hardships working endlessly for the kingdom of Heaven.

Here in one of His final letters Paul realizes that his time is coming to an end he has finished the race as a senior shepherd, and he is giving his last instructions to his spiritual “son” Timothy. We should all put ourselves in Timothy’s shoes and realize this tremendous command, this tremendous responsibility we have as Christians to preach the Good news.

Let’s take a moment to understand the gravity of the times we are in and the urgency for the truth of the gospel –, because everyday we realize that sin is around us and is constantly multiplying, chapter 3 says.

The apostle John agrees with Paul and writes in 1 John 18: It’s the last hour and as you have heard the antichrist is coming so now many antichrist have come, therefore we know that it is the last hour – Some people read this and say “ha, I guess John got it wrong because clearly it wasn’t the last hour since we are still here.” Incorrect, John never meant hour like 60 minutes, he meant hour like period of time and Jesus used the word in the same way when he said in regards to his crucifixion “my hour has not yet come” but Jesus clearly suffered more than 60 minutes. So he is not talking about an hour, but a period of time and clearly there is a period of time from the ascension of Christ to the return of Christ that is called the church age – and it’s important for us to know what time it is.

It says in scripture that false prophets preaching a different gospel will promote the antichrist, it says that these false prophets will promote him and use all the influence that they have to promote that one person. And many people will be led astray and are being led astray as we speak, many celebrities will follow this antichrist and the lost sheep of this world will say “oh wow” and follow this. So what time is it? We know it is late in the hour because MANY antichrists have already come – the proliferation and popularity of antichrist messages is one of the defining features. So let’s ask the question, how popular and how prevalent are antichrist messages today? John writes many antichrists have come therefore we know it’s the last hour- we know it because MANY have come.

There are many false prophets out there and they are trying to keep us away from sound doctrine of Jesus Christ but we have to know what they are and know how to combat them.
The false prophets are as we speak preaching using the media to build up the antichrist, and it’s all in the name of entertainment and the spirit of what feels good must be good.

I’d like to briefly present what the other team is preaching.
1. Oprah video, where she denies Jesus
2. Jay-Z “Run This Town” music video where he says HE is a god and rules this world
3. Audio clip of Jay-Z’s song played backwards, “666, murder, murder, Jesus”

Here’s another example of the so-called “Christian “author Rhonda Byrne who recently wrote a book called THE SECRET. It reads, “You are god in physical body, you are eternal life expressing yourself as you, you are all power, you are all wisdom, you are all perfection – you do not need to ask for forgiveness nor feel shame for the earth turns in its orbit for you, the oceans and rivers flow for you, the birds sing for you the sun rises and sets or you,” and then she proclaims that none of it can exist without you because YOU are the master of the universe. That’s blasphemy, it’s an antichrist message and it’s not a new one Satan told Eve in the Garden of Eden that if you eat this fruit you will be like God, it’s nothing new, just a new package. Satan just has a few lies that he keeps reshaping and we continually fall.

Dan Brown’s world renowned “Da Vinci Code” which sold millions of copies worldwide and scored a block bluster hit movie which states that Jesus is just a mere man and not the Son of God, not the savior of the world. Yet people believe this story even though it sits in the fiction section of the library, but they refuse to believe in the bible which sits in the non fiction – 2 Tim 4:3.

READINESS

So now that we have heard the preaching from the other side we can understand the urgency of the situation and hopefully we may realize that we MUST be READY to preach, AMEN. Some of you have preaching for awhile some of you just started and some of you I know after hearing what the enemy is preaching may now want to get involved. This is the first “R” be ready to preach. We have a command to “be instant in season, out of season” this carries the picture of a soldier on duty (David and Danny Picture), ready for battle at any moment, ready to preach, pray, or die. Preaching is not something we do only when we feel like it or when the audience is receptive to our message.

Listen to what Paul writes: I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead and in view of His Kingdom, I give you this charge – Preach the Word be prepared in season and out of season.

Proclaim the gospel – which means to declare publicly either in speech or in writing or to give an outward indication, in everything we do we are representatives of Christ we can be good representatives or poor representatives. Ladies and Gentlemen, when a patient comes in with a stage IV cancer [there is no room for wasting time, we have the cure for the sin problem] today I give this message in all seriousness with a strong sense of urgency. Later Paul specifically says that difficult times will come in the LAST DAYS – therefore knowing what time it is, is essential for our everyday living.

When the clock says 6:00 am I know it’s time to wake up (my wife is still sleeping) by 6:30 I have my clothes on (my wife at this point is now on my side of the bed) by 7:oo am I am done eating breakfast and my wife is upside down in bed.

Pastor David Baik once told me this story, and I’d like to share it with you a pastor by the name of James MacDonald visited the Moody church in Chicago and there pastor Erwin Luther has been such a faithful servant there for almost 30 years and he’s showing pastor James the building and on top of the building they built an outdoor courtyard area and as he’s getting history and such from Pastor Luther he kept hearing this noise (NOISE) right, and he was thinking what is that? But didn’t say anything, and then he’d hear it again a couple of minutes later (NOISE) and so eventually he said what is that? And Pastor Luther said well here’s the thing there are so many pigeons, so do you know what that’s a recording of? That’s the recording of a falcon killing a pigeon. So the first part you heard that was the falcon and the eek part was the pigeon and this recording goes off every two minutes in Moody church. Apparently, that’s the memory cycle of a pigeon. They don’t want pigeons on their new and beautiful roof so they constantly play this recording every two minutes because if they play the recording every four minutes the pigeons would land make a mess and then hear the recording and go oh yeah and fly away, but every two minutes is the perfect cycle so the pigeons don’t ever arrive.

O.K well I have to be honest, when I heard that story I thought about myself and I thought about us, and I thought of how soon we forget stuff we get side tracked by many things and I thought to myself that’s why I have to prepare myself I have to be ready at all times. We prepare ourselves by coming to church every week because I have to be reminded of things, I’ve got to be reminded of what matters and what will matter a hundred years from today and where this all really going furthermore not only do I need church every week but I need a small group bible study, I need a community that I meet with and pray with I need because sometimes I’ll land somewhere and I don’t even know where I am and all of a sudden (NOISE) because the enemy is constantly seeking those whom he may devour and I need some reminders to tell me, it’s not safe for me over there.

We need to trust God not every year not every month I need to trust God moment by moment – we need to be reminded and let what you heard from the beginning ABIDE (as the lady missionaries sang earlier) in you let it settle down and be at home in you more and more deeply through the years (we are constantly being refreshed by emptying out and confessing our sins through testimony sharing) and if what you’ve heard from the beginning abides in you then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father and in the Holy Spirit.

Be READY because even as we speak Satan is building his army, training and winning people over to fight for him, meanwhile what are we doing? Our mission from the beginning is to preach the gospel (a Kingdom of Priest and a Holy nation), our mission is raising up disciples and apostles who are willing and able to take on the world through the Word of God. We should ask ourselves once again, am I committed to going into battle? are we ready? Do we have the tools necessary? We need to make a decision of faith because we cannot be neutral on a moving train.

Are we ready? Lets face it you and I are more concerned with public opinion then were willing to admit; we would rather go with the flow, we would rather watch T.V then read the bible, sleep in then be on our knees, we find it easier to wink at wrong rather than deal with it, we are all inclined to let our children get away with things they should not get away with because discipline takes time and effort, we would all rather talk about self esteem then esteeming of others, we would all rather talk about positive affirmations rather than self examination, we would all rather avoid preaching for fear of experiencing rejection.

Let’s face it none of us really enjoy suffering, the Lord Jesus cried out in Gethsemane, “Father, if it is your will…” The apostle Paul prayed 3 times, “God please take this thorn out of the flesh,” three times obviously he prayed with fervor. Peter, when his chips were down, said “Who me? I’ve never heard of Jesus I don’t even know who you’re talking about.” Sometimes we’re ashamed to preach Jesus, we’re afraid to preach because he hate to suffer. Yet sometimes suffering is very part of being ready to becoming faithful to God and when that time comes to you, Paul is saying, “Be like me, young Timothy, young shepherd, young shepherdess! Stand up and be counted! Don’t give up! Don’t choose the easy path!” When you are timid and reluctant it is because you are afraid. What is it that you are afraid of? Deep down, what is the thing that causes your fear? Loss of your job? Money and property? Loss prestige? Loss of life? Fear of death? Don’t you know? Haven’t you been taught? Have you not heard Jesus has OVERCOME the grave there is no need to fear the unknown.

REVIVE

The next “R” stands for revival; now this is my favorite word and it has a special meaning for all of us today because healing comes with revival AMEN. And God has promised to give us revival (we’re looking to your promise of old that if we come and humble ourselves you will come and heal our land) We are crying out for revival, we want to be ignited once again with the same passion, the same zeal we once had when we first met Jesus. Gosh, I remember hearing so many Christian friends describing when they first met Jesus and how there was this fire in your eyes, there was something in your step something different when you spoke, you were unstoppable ready to take on the world. But sometimes during long periods of struggle that fire that we once had is harder to keep lit, it hard to keep that intensity because sometimes bad things happen and it compromises our own testimony, the world makes us bitter and our light is dimmed.

Why do you think we go on retreats? It’s because we are NOT of this world. Since we are called to be different we are in daily battle with this world. What should I compare us to? We are like salmon who swim against the current. Many of us maybe are wounded from battle; some of us might be hurting some might be in despair, discouraged, and disappointed. So we come together to obtain revival, we join together tonight in order to obtain healing we must come to God and poor out our hearts and admit we are in need of personal revival. We are constantly struggling against the world and it’s temptations – we have supervisors, teachers, our grades, co-workers, mortgages, bills, and other worldly cares that are insignificant yet these thoughts creep up and divert our attention away from God.

But here, we are able to retreat from all the things in our daily life that just really bring us down and turn our attention away from God – here we are together in like-mindedness for one purpose to be healed of our heart, which is constantly being broken by this world. There is absolutely nothing that God cannot heal or fix is His arm too short, is His arm too weak? We must say ENOUGH, enough is enough I am up to hear with sin breaking up relationships, breaking up families, make us slaves making us invalids to shame, to curse I WANT TO GET WELL JESUS HEAL ME! JESUS USE ME!

REMAIN

Finally the last “R” stands for REMAIN, [If you remain in me then I will remain in you]. Let’s read verse 4:6 “I am already being poured out like a drink offering…” I pray that we do receive revival and healing in this retreat because we need to work together, we need to stick together now more than ever because we must remain in the race that we started … I know some started their race many years ago, some have only started recently – that doesn’t matter, what does matter is that we finish – you all do realize that there is no social security in the Kingdom of Heaven. We are all called to work together, pray together, sing praises together until we all reach the FULL MEASURE of the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

I was looking through my Dad’s old picture albums and in them I saw pictures of so many young and handsome and beautiful missionaries, those who started the race many years ago (Photos of the FIRST NYUBF bible conference in 1974, the NYUBF Christmas worship service of 1978). This is our heritage, this is our trade: we are fishermen of men and we are together with the responsibility to go out in faith and preach the good news any and everywhere.

Yvette explained it so clearly – God’s gift to us is life, He gave up His only son to die for us to reconcile us to the Father and we gladly received this gift knowing that we did not deserve this awesome gift and so we run around and tell people about this awesome gift we received free of charge from God – we testify to the power of this life by our transformed life: We proclaim to others do you remember me? I was the invalid who was addicted to alcohol, I was the invalid addicted to smoking, sexual immoralities, judging others thinking I was better than others because of some hierarchy, I was the invalid addicted to pornography, I was legalistic, fatalistic but look at me now I have OVER COME!

And so we run our race proclaiming the healing power of God through the sanctifying blood of Jesus Christ we have our vision our goal and we expect to win the crown of life. This may sound selfish but we should understand that the Kingdom of Heaven is not like communism where everyone gets the same pay no matter how much or how little we do. If this were so when we accept Jesus we would become complacent, and say, “Hey, I’m already saved, I should relax why should I go out and preach, correct and rebuke? I already did my part years ago I don’t need to work let the others worry about this or that.

You see this attitude works against our spiritual growth … and we may never end up finishing the race we first committed to finishing. If we think this way then we are like the living dead, physically we are alive but spiritually we are dead. We must continually pursue inner transformation and we must continually pursue Holiness because you cannot separate true happiness from holiness so we run the race (preaching the word of God seeking to win Gold crown of life).

We are running the race to gain the crown of life – but remember what we said earlier? Life is God’s gift to us, do we really want to enter Heaven without returning with some gift? Therefore, what we do with it is our gift back to Him. So when we receive our crown of life the book of Revelations says we place our crowns at his feet and we cry out HALLELUJAH LORD for you alone are worthy to receive honor, praise, glory, wealth and worship.

I don’t know about you but I want to run this race so hard and so fast and so straight so that I can receive the biggest crown I can get so I can go to my daddy and say here dad thank you for giving me life, love, purpose thank you Lord for using my life for making me count for giving me a purpose.

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