What Does God Expect of Me

What Does God Expect of Me
2 Timothy 2:8-15 (RCL for 10 October 2010)

Do your best to present yourself to God, as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)

Timothy is someone who Paul describes as his closest co-worker. He received two of Paul's 13 letters in the New Testament and is mentioned in eight others, as well as in the Letter to the Hebrews, whose author we don't really know. While Paul has much advice for Timothy in the two letters that he writes to him, and because these letters have been included in Scripture they become letters to us, therefore advice for us,…. for me it is 2 Timothy 2:15 which is almost a summary of Paul's advice to Timothy and thus to us we would do well to heed this advice.

Do your best to present yourself to God, as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

Do your best

Here is advice for every area of life,….. from school, to work, to sport, to marriage, to service in the kingdom of God….. do your best. Don't try and do better than everyone around you, don't turn every area of life into a competition…..just do your best. While Scripture does sometimes speak of the Christian life as a race, the emphasis is not on winning, it is on running a good race and on finishing.

A person with two good, strong, normal legs will run differently to a person with one leg much shorter than the other. They both do as well as each other if they both do their best, regardless of whether one comes 10th and the other 88th.

Are you doing your best…… at home, at school, in the workplace, in the kingdom of God?

Do your best to present yourself to God

Who, ultimately, do you feel you are accountable to…… again, with regard to your homework, your work in the office, your work in the church, in your marriage, and in the way you bring up your children. Who do you present your work too? Who is in the back of your mind as you do your work….. your boss or your God? As you wash the dishes, who is in the back of your mind…… yourself if you live alone, your spouse if you are married, or…… your God?

In all things, Paul suggests that we present ourselves, our work,.. to God, before we present it to anyone else.

Do your best to present yourself to God, as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed

I don't know whether you will agree with me, so let me stress this is a personal opinion. My opinion is that we live in a culture which is satisfied with mediocrity. We put up with the mediocre, the average…….. as long as the service isn't too bad, or we don't wait too long, or the sermon isn't too boring, we put up with it. We don't demand excellence and so we put up with average, from the highest office in the land…. or the church… to things like the post office and even our cellphone providers… ' Oh dear; there's no signal here, let me try somewhere else. ' We put up with mediocrity.

Against this way of the world, Paul suggests for us a different way…. do your best to present yourself, your work, to God…… be concerned with the approval of God in everything, rather than with the approval of people.

It never ceases to amaze me how many smokers, for some reason don't want “the minister” to know that they smoke…….. nevermind that God knows!

And so Paul says, and I suggest this morning that he says these words into every situation in your life and mine, he says:

Do your best to present yourself to God, as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed

I think there are two things to lift from this: firstly, the train driver, the brain surgeon, the schoolteacher, the State President, the preacher, the door steward, the mother, the father……… we all have this in common…..we are workers!

Secondly, Paul says “do your work”, your unique work in such a way that there is no need to be ashamed. When is it necessary for me to be ashamed of my work? I only need to be ashamed of my work when I haven't done my best. And note that my best won't always be the same, because circumstances change. So I don't compete even with myself, just as I said earlier we don't compete with others.

Let's say Derek, our organist, caught his hand in his car door this morning. God doesn't expect him to be upset because he can't play as well as he did last week, God only wants him to be upset if he doesn't play as well as he can.... today.

So, do your best to present yourself to God, as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

As we have seen in the series I recently preached on ' How Does God Guide Us ' there is a word of truth (usually to be discerned from our study of the Scriptures) about everything…… a word of truth regarding the speed limit, a word of truth regarding tik (for those of you who don't know, this is a highly addictive form of methamphetamine which has a huge number of addicts in Cape Town) a word of truth regarding our offering, a word of truth regarding tax returns, and so on and so on.

And Paul says handle the word of truth correctly.
Let me point out a few common ways of handling the word of truth incorrectly, which will in turn help us understand what it means to handle the word of truth correctly.

To neglect the word of God and to treat it casually,….. is to handle the word of truth incorrectly
To seek comfort in God's word, but to ignore its challenges,…… is to handle the word of truth incorrectly
To try to make the word of God say what we want to hear rather than be receptive to God's message, …….is to handle the word of truth incorrectly
To deceive ourselves into believing that to hear or read the Word of God is the same as obeying it,….. is to handle the word of truth incorrectly.

Handle the word of truth correctly.

So, Paul says to Timothy nearly 2000 years ago, and says to us today, to you and to me:
Do your best to present yourself to God, as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.