Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
2 Timothy 2:1-13
October 12, 2025
Have you ever met a timid pastor? A pastor who is so scared of cracking eggs, so scared of stirring the pot, so scared of offending others or making others angry that he never says what needs to be said, never does what needs to be done, never speaks a word of offense out of fear that people might up and leave?
Well, if we read through St. Paul’s letters to Timothy, we get a sense that Pastor Timothy might have been such a pastor. He was young and time had not tested him all that much, and he was a pastor at a church that was relatively stable, the church in Ephesus.
I think it good that we consider the young pastor’s life, where he came from and who he was growing up, which might help us get a good sense of who he is in the Epistle.
Not a lot is known of St. Timothy. What is known doesn’t come strictly from Scripture. And that’s okay. We can employ the use of extrabiblical sources to learn about people, places, and things in Scripture, provided we don’t change Scripture to do it.
There was a book compiled in the 4th or 5th century which was a collection of writings from earlier church fathers, pastors, and other Christians. In this book, a work is included written by a man named Pol-ick-ra-tes, who lived from 130 to 196 AD and who was the presbyter or bishop of Ephesus, and the letter he wrote is about Timothy and his life.
We discover that Timothy was born to a Jewish mother who converted to Christianity, and Scripture tells us her name was Eunice, and that he had a Greek father. Timothy was raised as a Gentile believer and thus not circumcised, which created a controversy in Jerusalem which you can read about in Acts 16. He followed Paul and travelled with him on his missionary journeys and was even jailed for his confession of faith, as we discover at the end of the Book of Hebrews. Timothy served as the pastor of Ephesus in 64 AD and remained there, becoming bishop over the Ephesian churches, until his death in 97 AD where he was murdered by Greeks when he tried to stop a pagan celebration for the goddess Diana; they stoned him to death for proclaiming the Gospel at their festival.
Timothy was in his 40’s when he became pastor and perhaps in his 60’s when he became bishop, and somewhere around 80 when he was martyred. Timothy also had some sort of health issue, perhaps an unsettled stomach or ulcers or something, and Paul told him to “drink a little wine” to help.
Timothy seemed to be a timid man. He was perhaps the second full-time pastor for the Ephesian church, after all, and that’s a high calling to be sure. It’s not that he was unsure of what he believed; it’s not that his faith was weak, but that he was a bit shy, maybe nervous around people, or perhaps he was fearful about what could happen to him should he boldly confess the faith.
I mean, most of the Apostles were dead, martyred for the faith by the time Timothy was installed as pastor of the church in Ephesus. Many others had also been killed at the hands of the Romans and the Jews. Perhaps he had every right to be a little bit scared. After all, Paul himself suffered greatly for confessing the faith, preaching the Gospel, and Timothy was often a witness of his suffering. You understand that Paul was in prison in Rome when he wrote this letter to Timothy; Paul had every reason to be timid, to be scared for his life when it came to the Gospel, and yet he tells Timothy to “be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”
Paul wrote this letter knowing full well that he would not taste freedom again, that he would soon die at the hands of the Roman emperor. But he wasn’t scared; he wasn’t timid. And so, with full confidence in the Lord, Paul wrote this letter in order to encourage and strengthen Timothy in his call so that he not be afraid of what the world could do to him, but that he should stand faithful in Christ, confessing His name, even if his life is on the line. And Timothy certainly took his words to heart as is told by Polycrates the later Bishop of Ephesus.
Since Timothy was a pastor, it would do us well to first consider pastors and what it means to be called into the office of holy ministry.
I’ve met timid pastors. I’ve met pastors who are more concerned that people like them and get along with them so much that they don’t really teach or preach sound doctrine. I’ve met pastors who are so scared of getting hurt or hurting someone’s feelings that they never preach the full council of God, they don’t preach law and gospel. Instead, they preach what the people want to hear, and they will make darned sure that they preach or say or do nothing which might upset or offend – especially the folks who give the most money in the church, or who have the most influence.
Of course, I’ve known pastors who fall on the other side of the spectrum as well, who never give a second thought to what they say or how they say it and end up killing a congregation in the process. This is why Jesus teaches us pastors to be shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves, because sinful people will use and abuse their pastors and if pastors aren’t prepared to work through the abuse and suffering that comes from the office, they will be crushed.
See, for most of you, I suspect that you don’t really think about the church all that much throughout the week. A little bit perhaps, but your attentions are on kids or careers or broken pipes in the basement or rowdy neighbors or the next big game, and for better or worse, whether it’s sinful or not, church is not the first thing on your minds on any given day.
But for pastors, church is often what occupies our minds day in and day out, because this is our job, this is what we do, and so every facet of what a church is, from governance to boards, to worship and education, to fellowship and outreach, to budgets and expenses, and pastoral care, it is on our minds.
And most pastors do have some sort of escape, to shut it off for a little while, but it’s a very short moment to say the least. For me it’s playing video games, for others it’s fishing or camping or sitting in a hammock in the back yard. We cherish those short moments; we need those short moments. It’s sort of like parents raising kids. You need those brief moments where you can step away from the kids and be refreshed.
And speaking of people who are not pastors; speaking of you all, Paul’s words to Timothy are for you as well. Consider your life and faith. What causes you apprehension when it comes to confessing the faith; what causes you to be anxious as you share Christ with your neighbor? What causes you to grow weak in the knees when following Christ on His path?
You know that Jesus never said that following Him was going to be easy or that it would fit perfectly with living in this world. In fact, we will hear more as we approach the end of the church year about what the cost is for following Him. And if we take even a moment’s look at history and how Christians have suffered over the ages, we know that suffering is part of believing.
To use an analogy, when we mix an acid and a base together such as vinegar and bleach, it creates a reaction, and in the fallen and evil world, when grace and mercy is added, it creates a reaction, and that reaction is persecution, and the only way out of it is to renounce Christ by not confessing Him before others.
For as Paul writes, “if we deny him, he also will deny us.”
When it comes to confessing Christ, what causes you to pull back, to have second thoughts about faithfulness? Is it the spirit of tolerance or indifference in our world today, the spirit of relativism or individualism which has taken over even among churches?
Or, how about this? Are there things in your life that you should certainly give up, things that you know are wrong or sinful, things that you know are taking your attentions away from the Lord? Are there people in your life that you should forgive but you refuse to forgive? What are you not so willing and not so ready to give up for the sake of following or confessing Christ?
Perhaps it is income. Perhaps you aren’t all that willing to walk away from that really great salary even though doing it would mean being more faithful at following and confessing Christ. Perhaps it’s family. You have family members who would disown you if you confessed Christ faithfully and so you don’t say a word against their false beliefs or the churches they attend which spews out false beliefs. Maybe it’s your friends. You have friends at school who are rabid unbelievers and laugh and mock anyone who confesses Christ as Lord, so you say nothing, and you compromise your own faith to fit in with those friends.
Or, maybe it’s just laziness. Maybe it’s the need to be entertained. Or maybe it’s the thought that doing good works, responding to what the Lord has done for you in Christ, isn’t all that important.
Would you be willing to go to prison for confessing the faith or would you back off just to save face? Would you endure violent threats and the pain of thrown stones for proclaiming the Gospel, or would you hide yourself behind good intentions and “just trying to get along”? Would you give up a beloved activity, a job, a house, a possession, a friend on account of the faith, or is that just simply too much to ask?
It is clear as day that violent persecution is on the rise against people of faith in the United States. We may not experience it here, locally – though I would say it is certainly in the schools – but it’s out there and it’s coming to a doorstep near you sooner than later. And since we are a church that preaches against the vices of the world such as LGBT and Abortion and Cultural Marxism, believe you me, when it does come to this town – the violence against believers – it will come here first, and it may be endorsed by our own state government.
Does this mean we shouldn’t speak of these grave evils, that I shouldn’t preach against such evils in order to save face, in order to keep the violence away?
Or how about my preaching to you? Should I not preach against sin and disobedience because you might get upset at me? Should I not preach against spending too much time with the fallen and broken world and not enough time with the God of grace and salvation because I might hurt your feelings? Should I not preach against the things of the world simply because you enjoy too much the things of the world? Should I not preach against the constant pull and drag of the world to keep Christians away from church – Christian children away from church which hurts their faith, which is witnessed by the past several generations of youth who aren’t even connected to a church anymore as adults, simply because it upsets people?
Yeah, the easy and broad path is for me to say nothing, to let you keep on keepin’ on without challenging you to a higher calling and a more profound faith. The easy and broad path is for you to say nothing, to let your family, your friends, your co-workers keep on keepin’ on without rebuking them, calling them to repentance and proclaiming the love of Christ into their ears and hearts. The easy and broad path would be for this church to say nothing against false teaching and the false preachers and false churches that propagate false teaching, to let them keep on keepin’ on without trying to draw those poor, lost sheep away from false teachers and into a better situation.
What do you think Jesus did as He preached repentance and faith? He drew people away from the false teachers and the false religion of the Jews. And yes, He offended people, He upset people to the point of His own death on the cross. But today we want timid pastors with no spine, no voice, because we want an easy, nice, comfortable, uplifting Christian religion that doesn’t challenge us or call us to change. We want pastors who turn a blind eye to sin and say nothing about it, who throw communion wafers at anyone and everyone without any rules, who embrace cultural autonomy and smile at kids who live for the world because they have no time for the Lord. And you, the flock, the members, you want to be the same way. You want Christ and salvation, but you also want the world. But you can’t have both.
Paul, Timothy, Silas, Peter, John, James, they could have had it easy; they could have had it easy if they would have just zipped their lips and said nothing, preached nothing, taught nothing. They could have had great lives, a great and full retirement, lots of money in the bank, beautiful homes and hob knobbed with the rich and famous, but no. Instead, they chose to preach Jesus to the lost, and their lives were filled with persecution and pain and suffering.
Timothy was martyred by a mob – the very mob he was trying to save by sharing the truth of Christ. John died on a prison island for speaking the truth. Peter was crucified for opening his mouth. Paul was likely beheaded for preaching the cross to the Romans.
And yet, if they were alive today, they would do it all over again, they would. Because whatever the cost is in this life, it is nothing when compared to the reward that awaits in the life to come. And they believed this, and it changed their timid and worldly hearts into well-armored and ready hearts driven by faith in the God who does not go back on His Word, not ever.
They remembered Jesus Christ. They remembered that He came as God hidden in flesh, and that he preached forgiveness and mercy and salvation to all who believe. They remembered His suffering for the message, that He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, to the cross where He died. They remembered that His death meant atonement for their sins, that His resurrection meant the death of death forever, and that He promised a triumphant return on the Last Day to bring all who rest in Him to a glorious and eternal life with Him.
And the Jesus they remembered is the same Jesus who remembered you when He died for you, that you might live forgiven and free from this world. Jesus never changes; His message never changes. And His message brings life and salvation to all who believe.
When the Lord puts you in situations where suffering and persecution might come, remember Jesus Christ. He will not abandon you or leave you. Confess Him before family and friends and let Him do the hard work of converting the lost and dead to living and hopeful people of faith. Confess His name even when the world tells you it’s not worth it or it’s too costly or you might lose your job or might lose your friends or might lose your position on the team. Confess His name. Confess the Lord in how your live your life, in how you hold yourself before the world, as one who trusts in Jesus’ saving blood and exhibits that trust through your good deeds and devotion to Him.
Christ IS king, and the world can do nothing to change that, no matter how much screaming and threatening it might do, Christ is and will forever be king, and you have been made a citizen of His kingdom, and He will never be unfaithful to you.
When trouble comes because of His name, remember…remember Jesus. Remember His life, His suffering and death, His resurrection and ascension, His final appearing, remember His Words, and remember how He loved even the most loveless, forgiving the sins of even the most sinful, and changing sinful hearts to hearts of faith and holiness for even the most broken of hearts, and He did it all without running an inch from His persecutors. Remember Jesus Christ – for this brings perspective to your life. Remember Jesus Christ – for this brings joy to your soul. Amen.
