2 Timothy 4:1,2

PREACH THE WORD!

‘I charge thee … before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, Who shall judge the quick and the dead … preach the Word.’

2 Timothy 4:1

You remember the context. St. Paul is near his last hour. He is dictating what is for us his dying letter, and he is close to that letter’s end. He is writing to a man whom he has delegated, now for some time, to a large work of organisation and of order. Timotheus was to do many things; but he was supremely to do this thing, to preach the Word. He was to organise Christian communities, to superintend pastors, to guard and dispense ordinances, to conduct worship. But ‘before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, Who should judge the quick and dead,’ he was to preach the Word.

I. If we ask ourselves what St. Paul meant by this wonderful Word, his own sermons and letters give the answer. It is Jesus Christ, ‘the power of God and the wisdom of God.’ It is He, not it. It is the everlasting Son of the Father, made man, and then made the sacrifice for our sins in His all-precious death, and then made the life of our life, ‘the strength of our heart and our portion for ever,’ in His risen glory. It is Christ Jesus, made one with His own by the power of the Holy Ghost. It is He for us on the Cross. It is He in us by the Spirit.

II. Is there no need to-day to read again that dying charge of St. Paul, and to resolve in his living Master’s name to act it out ourselves? Is it not too true that in the Church of England at large the sermon has declined and decayed into a shadow of what it should be?

III. We need in our English Church to-day a revival of the pulpit.—We want unspeakably an ordered ministry which is also Spirit-filled, and fully conscious of the call to preach the Word. We want preachers so filled with Christ, by the Holy Ghost, that they cannot get away from Him as their theme.

Bishop H. C. G. Moule.

Illustration

‘You remember that passage in the Pilgrim’s Progress where Christian finds himself in the house of the Interpreter. A painting is shown him there; it is the portrait of the minister of the Word; may we, by the grace of God, live and labour as those who have in some measure caught the influence of that ideal: “The Interpreter had him into a private room, and Christian saw a picture hang up against the wall: and this was the fashion of it. It had eyes lifted up to heaven; the best of books was in its hand; the law of truth was written upon its lips; the world was behind its back; it stood as if it pleaded with men; and a crown of gold did hang over its head.” ’