2 Timothy 4: Preach Jesus Clearly While You Wait for His Return

Introduction

"How do you feel when you're walking through the city and a street preacher is trying to get everyone's attention?" That is how Rev. Ross Wilson, pastor of Southside Presbyterian Church in Australia, opens the second message in his series on 2 Timothy. Some think, "Keep going, brother, I'm praying for you." Others cringe inside: "This is a bit embarrassing. I wish you wouldn't do that."

It's the same discomfort when someone knocks on your door or slips a leaflet into your mailbox to talk to you about Jesus. In the congregation, the pastor admits, some wonder why the church doesn't do more door-to-door outreach, while others are relieved that nobody makes them do it. Is it because we don't care about people? Or because we are simply lazy?

Yet we have an enormous message: passing from death to life. So how do we announce it? How do we make Jesus known? Ross Wilson finds great clarity in the instructions the apostle Paul gives the young Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:1-2.

Outline of the message

1. Jesus is coming back: what you do while you wait matters

The week before, the church studied the end of chapter 3. Chapter 4 opens with a solemn charge: "I charge you in the sight of God and Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his Kingdom."
Jesus, God's king, came once to save the world from its sins. Then he went back up to heaven for a set time. He is coming back, and he will come as judge.
It is in light of this return that Paul speaks: "We are not waiting motionless, wasting our time until Jesus comes back. What you do matters."

2. The sound of gravel in the driveway

As a teenager, Ross Wilson lived on a farm at the end of a long dirt driveway covered in gravel. In the afternoon, his mother would say, "I have to go out, I'll be back at five. Your room and the kitchen need to be tidy before I get home." His answer: "Yes, Mom, don't worry."
Between the sound of the car on the gravel and the moment his mother walked through the door, he knew he had about three minutes. How long did he need to tidy his room and the kitchen? Three minutes. "Parents know. A little tip for teenagers: your parents know."
Deep down, we act a bit like that with Jesus. Before leaving, he told his disciples to go and make disciples and help them grow, with this promise: "I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). And we tell ourselves: he isn't here, we still have time.
Daniel announces the son of man coming on the clouds (Daniel 7:13). We think, "As soon as I see the cloud, I'll look busy." Paul answers: no. These are the last days, Jesus will come to judge, and we need to act now.

3. Preach the Word, which means preach Jesus

Verse 2 gives the content of the charge: "preach the word. Be urgent in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with all patience and teaching."
Preaching the Word does not mean that everyone has to climb into a pulpit. It means speaking the Word and teaching others. The charge is addressed to each of us, not only to preachers.
Nor is it about being an eloquent speaker. "The Word" refers to the Bible, God's message. Paul uses a shorthand: preach Jesus.
Put more precisely: God sent his Son Jesus, his king, into a broken, sinful world that needs to be saved. The king comes into his kingdom to save his people. He dies on the cross, the death we deserve, so that we may have life. Then he returns to bring us home. "That is the message of the Gospel."
"In season and out of season": that is not always easy. The church has gone through periods of violent persecution, and the tendency then is to withdraw. Saying "Jesus is the only Lord, the only way to life" can put friendships at risk.
Sometimes the reason is simpler: laziness. "Sometimes I feel like it, sometimes I don't." But people need to hear this message, whether they are receptive or opposed.

4. Reprove, rebuke, exhort: turn around

According to Ross Wilson, we downplay the radical transformation we are calling people to when we tell them to believe in Jesus. The Bible describes life as a road. Living for yourself means chasing your own idols.
To reprove someone is to tell them, "No, no, no. You're chasing the wrong thing. This road leads to death. You need Jesus, you need to turn around." That is what the word repentance means.
We also need to rebuke, because we keep falling into the same trap: "But I love my idol. I want to keep it while I follow my own path."
And we need to exhort, to encourage: Jesus died for you, and he loved you while you were still a sinner (Romans 5:8), without your having earned it. "How good our God is, to love a sinner like me and give me true life!"
The pastor admits it: he loves the encouraging message, and much less the one that reproves. When you turn your eyes away from Jesus toward your old idols, the Word, through a sermon or your own reading, tells you, "You're heading in the wrong direction." Turn around.
Nobody can say, "I know it all, I've mastered it, I'm fine." We all need to hear this message again and again, because it touches eternal life.
What will Jesus find when he returns? A church that talks about him and points people to the king who is coming back to his kingdom. Nothing else in creation has been given this responsibility: the church is the only one.

5. With patience: accurate in doctrine, warm toward people

So should we go and preach in the street tonight? That would be only part of the verse, which ends with "with all patience and teaching." The way we do it matters. The goal is not just to preach, but to make disciples of Jesus and help them grow.
Paul explains earlier: "The Lord's servant must not quarrel, but be gentle toward all, able to teach, patient" (2 Timothy 2:24). He is speaking to Timothy, but the word applies to each of us.
The hope is that God grants them repentance and that "they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil" (2 Timothy 2:26). Ross Wilson tells of a video: a python catches an opossum and slowly squeezes it. The opossum looks relaxed, as if saying, "The snake wants to spend time with me, it's giving me a hug." It doesn't even try to escape. Then it can no longer move, can no longer breathe, and it dies.
Satan does the same with our sins. "I can live with sin, it doesn't control me, I just like playing with my idols." Before we realize it, the grip has tightened and leads us to spiritual death.
Announcing "Jesus is coming back, and if you don't believe in him, you'll go to hell" on a street corner is roughly the message, but the goal is not to shock people. The goal is for them to be transformed, and that takes patience and careful teaching.
"We want to be theologically accurate." No watered-down message like "Don't worry about sin, it's just an ugly word that makes you feel guilty." We talk about sin, and above all about its solution, the death of Jesus on the cross. But we also need to be warm: patience, grace, no grudges, no arguments.
The street preacher who stops you on your way to work, the person who comes into your home to convince you of their religion: they may have the truth, but is it warm? Rarely. Even so, there is no question of sitting back with our arms crossed while we wait for Jesus to return.

6. Southside: a simple church where Jesus is clear

Ross Wilson puts more trust in the discovery course the church offers, where questions are welcome: inviting people to come to the church premises, offering them hospitality, truly loving them, getting to know them and answering their questions.
The same principle holds for the Sunday service, children's church, the youth group, the English classes and the growth groups: theologically accurate, warm in manner.
This conviction comes from his own story. He grew up in a church where he went every Sunday without understanding who Jesus was, the Son of God who died for him. He only understood it much later, at a camp, at the age of fifteen. "How could I have been just a church kid who knew all the answers without having received them in my heart? I don't want others to miss what I missed."
When he arrived at Southside to lead it, the church was very small. Asked "What do we want for this church?", he quickly answered: "I don't want my children to go through what I went through at church. I want them to know Jesus clearly." The other desire was for children and families to feel welcomed, loved and part of the community, so that everyone would see Jesus clearly.
Simple, relational, warm, but always focused on Jesus: "That is non-negotiable." For years, this has been the culture of Southside.

7. Children and teenagers: living out your faith where they can see it

Two leaders share their experience. The first serves in the youth group (8th and 9th grades) and in children's church (4th to 6th grades): "Foundations matter for our children, they are the next generation," so that nobody settles for looking busy when Jesus returns.
The second looks after the boys in 10th to 12th grade and the young adults. Adolescence is the time when a person forges a worldview and lays the foundations for their whole life. These young people will become the leaders of the church.
With the children, the first often gives them something to do to hold their attention. They seem distracted, but that is where they retain the most. A parent sometimes comes to tell him, "My son was really encouraged by what you said." "I didn't even know they were listening."
He also advises parents not to take it personally if their children seem not to be listening: they are watching everything you do. Nobody listens to someone who doesn't really believe what they say. He quotes 2 Timothy 3:14: "But you remain in the things which you have learned and have been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them."
The second tells of a game of gaga ball at the youth group the week before. The rule: the ball must bounce three times before the game starts. He hit it too early and eliminated a player. On the next round, a boy hit it after only one bounce. "You're out." "No, you didn't let it bounce three times in the last round." Children are the best mirror of your relationship with God.
His advice: live out your faith intentionally in front of your children, and read your Bible in front of them. Set aside an hour a week, or every two weeks, to go out with your child to the park or a cafe, with your Bible. Ask how things are going with their friends, at school, with God. At first, the answers will be one word. Ask deeper questions. "The impact will be unimaginable."
Ross Wilson concludes: it is not only about intellectual knowledge, but about the heart. The church wants to see lives transformed.

Key takeaways

Jesus will return as judge: what you do while you wait matters, so don't wait for the sound of gravel to get going.
Preaching the Word concerns every Christian: it means telling about Jesus, the king who died in our place and who is coming back.
The Word reproves, rebukes and exhorts: it calls for a turn that takes us from death to life.
The way we do it matters: accurate in doctrine, warm toward people, patient, to transform and not to shock.
Children watch your life: a faith lived out in front of them speaks louder than speeches.

Personal application

When you think about Jesus' return, are you waiting for "the sound of gravel" before you get moving?
What holds you back most from talking about Jesus: the fear of losing friends, or simply a lack of desire?
Is there a sin or an idol you think you can live with, like the opossum in the python's grip?
When you talk about your faith, are you more accurate but cold, or warm but vague? What can you change?
What hour can you set aside this week or next to ask a child or a teenager how they are doing with God?

Verses cited

Frequently asked questions

What does "preach the word" mean in 2 Timothy 4:2?

For Ross Wilson, it is not reserved for those who climb into a pulpit. Preaching the Word means telling the message of the Bible and teaching others. Paul uses a shorthand: preach Jesus, the king sent by God, who died in our place on the cross and who will return to bring us home.

Why does Jesus' return change the way we live?

Paul gives his charge "by his appearing and his Kingdom." Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead. Ross Wilson concludes that our waiting is not motionless: what we do now matters, without waiting until the last moment to look busy.

How can we share the Gospel without pushing people away?

The verse ends with "with all patience and teaching." Ross Wilson urges us to be theologically accurate, without watering down sin, and warm in manner: patience, welcome, answers to questions. The goal is not to shock people but to see their lives transformed.