By: Pastor Fola
Odufuwa
This is a guest
post from a great servant of God. The message of this article has personally
blessed me and I am of the opinion that it will bless my readers also,
otherwise there will be no need to share it on this platform.
Thank you for the
privilege to share fellowship with you after a while. Our topic today is A
FAITHFUL STEWARD, and we shall be focusing on only one aspect of the life of
the servant of God. As we fellowship together, it is our prayer that the Lord
will grant unto each and every one of us an encounter with His word in Jesus
name.
Let us read our text.
I charge thee therefore
before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead
at his appearing and his kingdom;
2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of
season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.
3 For the time will come when they will not endure
sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves
teachers, having itching ears;
4 And they shall turn away their ears from the
truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
5 But watch thou in all things, endure
afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.
6 For I am now ready to be offered, and the time
of my departure is at hand.
7 I have fought a good fight, I have finished my
course, I have kept the faith:
8 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. 1Tim.4
This is the
deathbed conversation that Paul had with his son in the Lord, Timothy. This
kind of conversation can be very powerful and deep because they encapsulate the
entire life of the man that is passing away in just a few words. Paul starts by
saying “I charge thee”. What is a charge? To charge someone is to hold him
liable for something. This is no ordinary instruction, it is an earnest
command. BBE says “I give you orders”. This charge is an order, it is a serious
command.
Usually, there
are three types of road signs. Some give information – they may say this
is 3rd Mainland Bridge. Others give advice – they may say ‘slow
down’. But there are those that are commands like those that say STOP. This
charge is a command.
And Paul gives
it in the presence of four witnesses. He brings four major principals into this
deathbed charge he was giving his son. These witnesses are God Almighty, Jesus Christ
the son of God, the second coming of Christ and the Kingdom of God. These four
witnesses are here again today. They are here to hold you responsible for
obeying the charge God is giving to you.
So what is the
charge which must be obeyed at all times?
Preach the Word
We are to preach
the word, not fables, not testimonies, not stories, not philosophies,
but the word. If it is not the
word, you should have no part of it. The word is the power of God that gives
salvation.
Rom. 10:17 “So
then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God”.
It is what gives
faith to men. It is the only thing that your spirit man can hear. Your spirit
man can hear nothing at all except the word of God. It is the most important
asset of a man of God. A man of God without the word of God is an ordinary man.
When you are devoid of the word, you will resort to shouting, you will resort
to gimmicks. You will be like the little sister in Ecclesiastes who had no
breasts. If you do not have breasts to nurture life, you will resort to
entertainment when the baby is crying for food.
It says in Mt
24:35 that “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”
Every ministry not founded on the word of God will not last. Every church or
fellowship not founded on the word will eventually fade away. Every revival
that is not based on the word will never last no matter how enticing it
currently looks.
Let’s look at this matter a bit more closely.
Mt 4:4 “But he
answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
Did you see the
revelation in that passage? Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall he live alone. The only
thing that can sustain your Christian life is not activities, not ministry, not
even prayer by itself, but the word of God.
The food of the
body is what you take at breakfast, lunch and dinner. If you don’t eat, you
will leave the realm of the earth. The food of your spirit man is the word of
God. If you don’t eat it you will leave the realm of the spirit. It is the word
that sustains your health as a man of God. In any case, a man cannot give what
he does not have.
Eze 3:17 “Son of
man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the
word at my mouth, and give them warning from me.”
There are two
experiences we have when we eat the word of God. In Ezekiel 3:1-3, God told
Ezekiel to eat whatever he finds and was given a roll of the scriptures. He was
to “eat and go speak”. In other words, as a rule we are not to preach what we
have not experienced, though God allows exceptions by grace.
When Ezekiel ate
the word, it was like honey in his mouth. Some experiences with the word of God
are like that. They can be sweet and refreshing and can energize us to go and
speak. But at other times, the word of God comes to us like it did to John who
ate the same word but ended up becoming bitter in his belly (John 10:9-10).
We must not
avoid the ‘bitterness’ of God’s word. In fact, many times the symbol for the
word is scary. It calls it a hammer, a fire, a battle axe, a double-edged
sword. These are not items with which you pet people.
The word of God
is what cures us from errors. In 1Timothy 6:3-5, we see four things that errors
do to a man of God. A man who has an error will teach things that are
“otherwise”, things that are contrary to the wholesome words of our Lord Jesus,
things that are against solid instruction.
So when a man of
God has an error in relation to the word of God, what will happen? He will
immediately have a wrong assessment of himself. He will go about with an
exaggerated view of his value. He will become puffed up. Why? Because he is
ignorant and is in error?
Secondly, error
brings unnecessary arguments and strife. It is then that the man of God will
come up with “revelations” and “doctrines” that actually have the overall
effect of dividing the body of Christ altogether. He may even think he is
serving God in the process.
Thirdly, error
will make you to become destitute of the truth, that is, it will rob you of the
truth. It will collect the truth of God’s word from you.
Fourthly, it
will eventually lead you astray as it did to the men of God in 1Timothy 6 who
were led into covetousness and the commercialisation of the gospel. Any man of
God that monetises his anointing has been led astray by error which resides in
his own heart.
So how do we conquer errors? 1Timothy 6:11
& 12 gives five things but let me take only the first three, which are all
in the letter ‘F’. The man of God is to flee, follow and fight.
What are you to flee? These things! What things?
The love of money. What are you to follow? We
are to pursue after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, and
meekness. How are we to fight? We are to fight the good fight of faith. So you
are simultaneously an athlete and a boxer. Meditate on these things and the
Lord will give you understanding.
So let’s close
by returning to our text.
Preaching the Word
Your only
occupation is to preach the word. You have no other job. If as a man of God,
you have no word, then you have no job to do for God. You must not be lazy when
it comes to finding and delivering the word of God.
The sower sows
the word (Mk 4:14). What are you sowing into people’s lives? What is the
principal investment you make into the hearts of God’s people?
So our text says
we should preach the word and be instant in season or out of season. We are to
be urgent and zealous in preaching the word whether it is convenient to do so
or not.
And many times, it is not actually convenient to preach the word, which
is why Paul actually charged Timothy to be like Jesus who professed a good
confession before Pontius Pilate. We must be ready to preach the word in the
presence of big men and people who hate the truth of the gospel.
Read: Faith
of our fathers
We are to
reprove the people. To reprove is to ‘gently criticize or correct’.
Pr 19:25 “Smite a scorner, and the simple will
beware: and reprove one that hath understanding, and he will understand
knowledge.”
Eph 5:11 “And have no fellowship with the
unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” That is, we must not
join ourselves with people who live in sin because we are benefiting from them.
We should reprove. But we should reprove not out of suspicion or fleshly
oversight.
Isa 11:3 “And shall make him of quick
understanding in the fear of the LORD: and he shall not judge after the sight
of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears”
So if reprove is gently correction, what is
rebuke? Rebuke is a ‘sharp reprimand’. It is an advanced form of correction
which should be reserved for the most wayward. Why must we do this? Verse 3
& 4 answers this question. It is because “the time will come when they will
not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to
themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from
the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”
We are in a time
that people do not want to hear the truth of God’s word. Which is why it is now
more urgent for us to not only preach the word, but to preach it with the tools
of reprove and rebuke. A man of God who does not know how or does not want to
reprove and rebuke his congregation will not last very long.
Finally, we are to exhort with patience and
teaching. To exhort means to invite or call near and we are to do this as
teachers of the word and with a lot of long-suffering.
Conclusion
This is where we are going to stop today. May
I ask you to make a fresh commitment to the word of God today? Let us pray.
The post: How to be a Faithful Steward appear first in JONADORC's blog. I would like to hear from you also as your opinion can help many of my readers out there.
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