Hello, and welcome back to Tabernacle Tidbits. Today, we are in 2 Timothy 2 and verse number 5.
In this portion of scripture, the Apostle Paul is writing to Timothy and encouraging him in, if you will, the underlying truths that he needs to know as he is hoping to lead in the Church at Ephesus that he was a pastor at.
And he started off in verse number 3 by saying that Timothy needed to share in suffering as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Verse number 4, he says, No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in the concerns of civilian life.
He seeks to please the commanding officer. That is, no soldier is looking out for their own interests. Instead, they are wanting to know, What does my CO want me to do?
What are my orders from him? And so if we're going to share in suffering, then that means that we need to be following the Lord.
And then here in verse number 5, he says this, Also, if anyone competes as an athlete, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.
He says, Timothy, you can go through a lot of difficulties in your life, but if you want the crown, that kind of crown that Paul mentioned at the end of the book, this crown of life, if you want to hear that well done, you good and faithful servant,
if you want to get to the end of your life and have joy and not regret, he says, here's how you do it. You follow the rules. He says, if anyone competes as an athlete, he's not crowned.
There is not the blessing and the happiness and the glory that there would be except if the person goes according to the rules here, as would be talked about the Olympic games, those kinds of athletic events. There was not a prize for a cheater.
If someone skirted around the rules, did illegal actions, you can think in wrestling, there are certain moves that you're not supposed to do because it would be too dangerous and you could kill someone just in a game setting and that would not be the
goal. If you were to do those things, if you're doing chariot races and you throw something in the spokes of one of your opponents, that would be against the rules. And very often we want God to bless our life.
We want him to bring good things and great circumstances and great finances into our life. But we don't have the same care. We don't have the same desire to live life in accordance with the Word of God.
And here's what Paul is encouraging for Timothy. He says, you are in, if you will, the race of your life.
You are attempting to make this time that you have on earth something worthwhile, that it would be a blessing to others and to the Lord that you existed on planet earth for a time and lived your life.
And he says, if you want to be crowned, if you, in this work that you are doing, in this Olympic match that you are a part of, you need to know and follow what God has. Don't worry about what your opponents might think or what they might be doing.
Don't fall prey to just what other people want you to do. He says, I want you to care about the rules of the one that will crown you. The one that will reward you is the only one that you need to be listening to the voice of.
So he says, don't get concerned with civilian life. Don't be concerned about the suffering. Instead, be concerned with your commanding officer.
Be concerned with Jesus. Be concerned with, there was a whole kerfuffle this past year in the Olympics. With, if you will, the credentials committee.
The ones that oversaw the rules of the game. And he says, those are the people that you need to care about. And for your life today, that is the Lord Jesus.
It is your fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord that care about you and are pointing your attention to scripture.
Not just listen to anyone that calls themselves a Christian, but if anyone's like, hey, here's what the word of God says, and I want to encourage you to be obeying in this way, that kind of person is your friend.
That kind of person is one you need to be paying attention to. Even as Paul here, Paul was not Timothy's CO, and he's not saying don't listen to anyone except Jesus. Sometimes people can be like, oh, only God can judge me.
But if you were to bring them the word of God and say, well, here's what God's word says, they would be like, oh, well, you're judging me. No, no, no.
As we hear from God's word, whether that's from us reading it, from us listening to it, from a person saying it to us, let us be obedient to heed the word of God, to take those orders, to listen to, OK, here's what I need to do with my words.
Here's what I need to do with my body. Here's what I need to do with my tone, or here's what I need to do with my thoughts. Let us be faithful to obey the rules of the race that Jesus has set out for us because he's completed it.
He's got the high score, the record, and he knows how to run it well. Let's listen to him.
