2 Timothy 3:1-17 - Homiletics

Holy Scripture the strength of the man of God.

There is marvellous force in the application to the Christian bishop and evangelist of the title THE MAN OF God When we remember the course of faithful and untiring labour, and patient unflinching suffering, which was run by those to whom alone this title was given in the Old Testament—Moses and Samuel and Elijah, and other prophets of God—we feel at once that the application of this title to the ministers of Christ under the New Testament teaches them with incisive power that the like spirit must be found in them if they are worthy to be classed with the men of God. Evidently the "man of God" must not be afraid of a man that shall die, or a son of man which shall be made as grass; he must not shrink from bearing witness for God before an unbelieving and gainsaying world; he must not be a lover of ease or pleasure, or of the praise of men; he must not be greedy of gain or covetous of reward; he must not be a man of strife and brawls, but a man of love and peace; he must be zealous for God's honour and glory; he must be a staunch upholder of God's truth against errors and false doctrines; and he must be a man of prayer, and very devout towards God; for otherwise how shall he be called a "man of God"? But how shall this unearthly character be maintained? When those perilous times are at their height in which all the natural affections of men seem to be blighted, and all the natural safeguards against the growth of evil seem to be overborne by the floods of ungodliness, when a proud boasting spirit, as empty as it is pretentious, carries men into all kinds of unseemly action, and when religion itself, far from guiding men in holy paths, degenerates into hypocrisy and faction and opposition to that which is good, how shall the man of God maintain his integrity, abide in the true doctrine of God, and hold his own against the teachers of lies, and the seducers of weak and silly souls? God has provided him with an all-sufficient weapon of attack and of defence. In those holy Scriptures which were given by inspiration of God, the man of God finds a spiritual furniture suitable forevery need. By the study of it he acquires fresh wisdom for his task, and by its spirit his own spirit is nourished and refreshed. In the light of its bright truth the pernicious errors of seducers are exposed; by its counsels waverers are established, the weak are strengthened, the crooked are set straight again. Conversant with its heavenly doctrine, the man of God is never at a loss for a word of rebuke, of comfort, or exhortation. And while, on the one hand, he is able to refute every new heresy that arises, by reference to the unchanging Word of God, on the other he daily acquires some new insight into the depths of revelation for his own edification and that of others. He finds that the manifold and many-sided wisdom of the Scriptures is as able to cope with the intellectual difficulties of the nineteenth century as it was with the Gnosticism of the East in the first centuries of Christianity. And so, while some turn away their ears from the truth, and turn aside unto fables, the man of God finds his faith daily strengthening and increased, and looks forward fearlessly to the time when the folly of the sceptic shall be evident to all men, and the truth of God's Word shall be vindicated before the whole creation at the appearing of Jesus Christ in the glory of his kingdom.