Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Tidbits. We are walking through 2 Timothy 2, Paul's last instructions for his protégé, Timothy.
And verse number three, he says this, share in suffering as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Share in suffering. This is not something that, you know, you won't see this on many gospel tracks.
You won't see, hey, you're going to have some difficulties in your life, and you need to, if you will, buckle down like a soldier, and, if you will, deal with it.
That is not normally the invitation that is given to us, but this is what scripture tells us. This word to share in suffering, it's to suffer together with someone. It is to be mistreated alongside someone else.
A similar kind of phrase would be used in Hebrews chapter 11 and verse number 25 talking about Moses, where it says that he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.
And here, as Paul is telling Timothy, he was in Ephesus. It was a place where Paul had experienced plenty of persecution in his time. And so he's letting Timothy know your life is not always going to be easy.
There are going to be difficulties that you're going through. He says, but you can choose to suffer alone, or you can choose to suffer with others.
And you can just allow others to go through difficulties and not enter into it, not spend time hearing about their sorrows and their hurts and the problems.
You can live your life without ever, if you will, without it ever bothering you financially that other people are hurting. And Paul says, I want you to join along with other people. Suffer together with them.
He says, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. You see, we are part of a spiritual army, but the army that we belong to, the army of Jesus, does not fight in order to achieve our goals.
We don't say, okay, well, if we just conquer this other nation and make them follow all of the Bible's rules, you know, we make all of them pray the sinner's prayer and get baptized, then, you know, Jesus' reign will spread over the whole earth.
That is not how God set up his kingdom to work. Even as we've mentioned before, Jesus telling Pontius Pilate, he says, my kingdom is not from this world. Otherwise, I'd tell my soldiers to fight.
But that's not the way that God does it. And Jesus, when he wanted to accomplish God's will, he went through suffering.
He went through tears and losing loved ones, being misunderstood and maligned by even his mother and his brothers, who said that he was crazy.
He underwent the persecution of others, saying that Jesus must be demon possessed, and that's why he's able to do everything that he can do. A good soldier follows orders. A good soldier follows the example of their captain.
And Jesus is the one that when he was obeying the Lord, it led him to be tried by the Sanhedrin. It led to him being physically abused. It led to him being put on trial in front of both Pontius Pilate and King Herod.
It led to him being beaten by the Roman soldiers. It led to him having to walk up the hill all the way to Golgotha. It led to him being crucified for sin.
He died, he suffered, he bled on our behalf. And yet so often, we don't want to go through any suffering for his sake.
Oh, you know, if it's a little cold in the sanctuary, all of our worship brain turns off, and we're like, oh man, well, it is so cold today, and that's all that I can kind of talk about.
When we recognize, man, Jesus suffered for me, I can go through some suffering for him. I can be misunderstood and mistreated by others so long as I can share the love of Jesus with them. I can give forgiveness.
I can not bear a grudge, but I am giving love to others. We ought to share in the suffering of Christ. Sometimes that means that we are rejected by people.
Sometimes it's by family members or friends that we've known for a long time, coworkers that want nothing to do with us if we're going to be a Jesus freak.
But we should, as Paul encouraged Timothy, share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus, that we follow the orders of our captain. We follow his lifestyle and his example of how he suffered, that he didn't have it rob him of all emotions.
He cried. He asked God, if it is your will, let this cup be taken from me. But he chose to still obey and follow even to the point of death.
And may we follow in that kind of way, where loving and knowing Jesus and following him is non-negotiable for us. Thanks for tuning in. Tomorrow we'll look at verse number four.
