Imperatives from 2 Timothy

Wow. Cornerstone Fellowship Bible Church. It is awesome to be here. We're going to be looking in 2 Timothy this morning.

The letter of Paul to Timothy, the 2nd 1. It's just great to be here. It is, great to renew acquaintance, and we want to get to know you. First of all, I must say thank you, on behalf of our family for the substantial gift that you have just recently put together on our behalf, and, that makes a great big difference in the lives of your missionaries and, your, your generosity through the years and your faithfulness through the years is, It is part of what makes our life, so good, and, and you are such a blessing to us.

26 years ago, a couple of young kids from Missouri drove into town. Everything we owned was in a two-door Toyota Tercel. Spent some time with you and enjoyed it, and you became a part of our hearts. A lot has happened in 26 years.

That was 8 children ago and 2 churches, we left here, and went on to help plant a church in southern Utah, and now we are in central Utah. we were the young kids back then, just, fuzzy-faced and barely married and now we're the old people on the mission field. And, our role has recently changed in the last few years. Now, we go from young or new arriving missionaries to, now we get, have the privilege of, of coaching and, and, supervising 25 missionary families in our field, and we have the privilege of, not only, I, I have the privilege of being the teacher at, at Payson Bible Church, but we get to, oversee 14 churches on our mission field and a radio station and So we have like 2 flocks and two halves to our lives.

We have our, our local church that we pay attention to and that takes about half of our time, and then the other half is taken up with overseeing the mission field and, and serving them and making sure that they are, they have everything they need, which means we have no time, so it's all good. It is such a privilege to be here and I hope that you will, you will join us in the small groups and we can get to know you personally because I, I, I'm fully aware that we know just a fraction of you and we would love to get to know you better.

Let's pray together. Father, I just, just pray that this would be a special, special time of fellowship today.

That the flock of God that is located here would, would just, be better bound together and that our, our eyes would see heaven more clearly and better appraise the things of heaven and earth today. So, use your word, Lord, and use this, this small moment to just talk to us through this bit of scripture and thank you so much for it. Thank you so much for the trouble and the, and the actual blood that was involved in the writing of this particular passage of scripture and we appreciate The, the gravity of the moment when this letter was written, help us to appreciate it, we pray.

Amen.

Last year, I was, I, I, I was given a challenge, at least I, I took it as a challenge, a positive challenge. One of our guys in our church responded to my preaching and said that I was becoming performance-based, that I was Beginning to preach in such a way that it sounded like I was insisting things upon our people and starting to measure people's worth by, in, in terms of performance and whether people are doing or not doing. And I always take that stuff very seriously. His appeal to me was that we needed more love and more grace, and that I needed to back off of the words must or ought, and, and just live more in love and grace.

And I always, I always welcome that input and, I find that stimulating. Whenever I'm challenged or I have somebody give comment or I'm criticized, I find that really stimulating personally because then it gives me an opportunity to go, OK, all right, thank you. I, I'll take that to heart and I will evaluate and I'll take some time to study and make sure that I'm in the right place, because I don't want to just slip off into performance-based religion where you're always just checking up on people.

Are you doing what you're supposed to be doing, thing.

And what it stimulated me to do was to look at the entire New Testament because in my mind, I'm thinking, all right, if, if we go all love, and we go all grace, then what about this great big body of material in the New Testament, That are known as the imperative statements of scripture. They are the direct commands. It's like you put the word you, the pronoun you, in a parenthesis at the beginning of a command, you do this, and the, the, the word of God, when you walk through it, is full of imperatives.

And so, I, I, it took a, a number of months.

I thought, what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go on a little bit of a journey, and I'm gonna just take one of my old Bibles, and I'm gonna start marking it up, and I'm going to locate from Matthew to Revelation. And all of the imperatives of scripture. So that, that, that'd be fun to do and I, because I, I think there are a lot of must verses in there, a lot of verses that suggest ought, we ought to be doing this or really have to be doing this. Especially you run into clusters of them.

In the last parts of Paul's letters, like Ephesians 4 through 6, you find just great clusters of imperatives, direct commands and Colossians 4 through 6, and, and so forth. What do you do with those? Starting with Jesus, who said, don't lay up treasures on earth, lay up treasures in heaven, you, you gotta, the imperatives are written in such a way that you don't have an option. theologically, there are a lot of passages in scripture where we can toss it around like a volleyball and, have the option of whether we want to adopt view A or view B, but when it comes to the imperatives, that's, that's really the statement of God and, and it's, it's much more clear.

So I did that. I found it very rewarding and I thought what we would do today is just look at one little part of that, and that is in 2 Timothy, and we can go through this and look at the imperatives of 2 Timothy. 2 Timothy is a letter from Paul to Timothy, of course, it is, it is a personal letter, man to man, pastor to pastor, and we're reading somebody else's mail here, literally. We're, we're reading something that was not meant for us and is, and directly it is not for us.

2 Timothy. but we get a lot out of it as application, because this is a, this is a statement to a letter to a pastor from another pastor, but, we get to read it and glean so much application material from it. First thing I wanna just give you a little bit of context on this, looking at Paul's situation, and first of all, he is in prison in Rome. When he writes this.

He is older, and he is nearly alone. He, he says, early on that only Luke is with him, and the, the rest of his team and the rest of his posse are out somewhere else. He has very limited resources. How do we know that?

Because he asks Timothy in chapter 4 to bring his coat. When he comes. So, so he, he's actually down to the need of a code. That's pretty basic living, isn't it?

And he's about to die. Not like I'm gonna die tomorrow guy, but he is aware that he's at the end of the road. The reason that we know it's not like I'm gonna die tomorrow because he says in chapter 4, could you bring my coat and please come before winter. So he's, he's anticipating that he's at least gonna be alive, maybe till winter, we hope.

He didn't know, but he knew that his life was about over. And this letter, Of 2 Timothy is, is grave. It, there's, there's no lightness in this letter of 2 Timothy because it's, it's full of the last statements that a man will make. And these are the last words of the apostle Paul, and so he's taking this moment to be very grave and serious.

And he is also resigned to what will happen next. He, and by the time we get to chapter 4, he just says, I know this is it. And I know that I'm just gonna pull up my tent stakes and fold up my tent, and I'm ready to travel. And I'm going to be gone.

And so he knows that. He gives no future goals in this letter. If you look at his other letters, he's thinking like an overseer of a mission project and, and he's saying, I got this goal, I got that goal. You get to Romans chapter 16, he says, I hope to just come and see you guys, and then I'm gonna cruise on by and I'm gonna go see Spain, because then I will have evangelized the entire north shoreline of the Mediterranean Sea.

He, he had small dreams, didn't he? So, here he is, and he says, I, I, I wanna be, I have all these goals, but then when we get to 2 Timothy, he has no goals. He doesn't state the next thing he's gonna do, and the only next thing he's going to do is to die. And so that there's this finality about 2 Timothy, and he is focused as, as men are when they get to the end.

And that, you're, you're about to just bump into that concrete wall that is death, and that you've got that much time before you reach the wall. You, you get really focused, don't you? You, you start to think, what really matters, and you're no longer thinking about golf or entertainment. you're just thinking about, hey, this is it.

So he's resolute. As he said in, in Philippians chapter one, he says, I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I want to stay around, I want to edify, and I want to be valuable to God's people. On the other hand, I'd sure like to be home and be with Jesus.

I've got that conflict. But now this conflict is about over and he's, he just knows that, here it goes. So that's, that's Paul's situation. Timothy's situation is that he is a teaching elder in Ephesus, hundreds of miles to the east of where Paul is in Rome, and he's about to come and see Paul, and he is facing apparent ministry challenges and, and Paul would be very aware of those ministry challenges in Ephesus because he was there for some time and had been involved in a riot.

Because some people wanted to kill him because he was preaching the gospel and that was cut, cutting into the idolatry, making trade and so, Paul is fully aware of what's going on in Ephesus and the people, actually the very people who were involved in this. 2 Timothy. Has heroes, people that someday we get to look and see in heaven. Have you thought of that?

Whenever I look at somebody who's a hero in, in scripture, I think to myself, all right, that's what I want to look up. I'm going to go talk to them when I get to heaven. I definitely want to track Titus down because I've got some questions for him. He seems like a real solid guy and one of the great guys of Scripture.

But let me give you a quick list and perhaps you can think about naming some of your children these names. One Oneisaphorus was there. He was a helper. Mark is mentioned in 2 Timothy.

Crescents is a missionary. Titus is a teacher, Titicus is a teacher, Carpus is a fellow worker. Luke is there, he's the The only one beside Paul at this point. there's Priscilla and her husband Aquila.

They are discipls. They are massive discipls. there's Erastus and Eubulus and Pudin and Linus and Claudia who all worked for God, and there is, there are two all-star women in 2 Timothy. They're like major Mother's Day material, right?

And they are Eunice, the faithful mother of Timothy, and Lois, the faithful grandmother of Timothy, who gave to him the gift of a sincere faith. And so they got some heroes that we can mention in 2 Timothy, and we look forward to seeing them in heaven. And you might want to track these people down and say, hey, what's it like? Now there are some zeros in 2 Timothy as well, because Paul, like David, that was over 1000 years before, as David was on his deathbed, he was sitting with Solomon and he was saying, I want this guy dead, I want this guy dead, I want this guy dead.

Make sure this guy is miserable before he dies. And so, David is going through a checklist at the end of his life with Solomon. And Paul's doing the same thing here. he's, he's looking, he's going, I got some people in my mind that that aren't heroes.

There was Pageus and Hermogenes. Can you imagine being, being written down in the word of God forever as a bad person, like, this is not good for your resume, right? So there's Pagelis and Hermogenes, they were unfaithful men. There was Hymeneus and Philetus who were false teachers.

There was Alexander, the metal worker who was in opposition to Paul, and he did Paul much harm. There was an unnamed people who were false teachers in 2 Timothy, and then let's save the best for last, Demas, who has forsaken me. And loved this present world and gone away. Let's call Demas a flake, OK?

He's a flake. He's a guy, you, you just don't want him batting clean up, OK? And Paul is about to leave this world, and what you see of Paul is a man all stripped down to the basics here. And when he is all stripped down, you are left with just a couple of things going on in his life.

And, and that is the value of 2 Timothy, because you look and you say, OK, you take away this guy's house, you take away his money, you take away his stuff, you take away his friends, you take away everything, you reduce Paul. You take a guy right down to it, and when the preacher of the gospel is all reduced, what do you got? You've got the gospel, you've got God's people, and you have the hope of heaven, and those then become the priorities of a man who is up against that wall that is the end of life, OK?

And, and that, that's what you end up with.

Now, all of that introductory, we're gonna look at the imperatives of 2 Timothy. There are 29, so we've got a blast, OK? there, we, there are three kinds of imperatives in 2 Timothy. The first one is, is rather lightweight and, and, and more, just like a housecleaning type stuff.

When they, they show up in Chapter 4. We can go through those really quick. Bring Mark, he's good for me. that's a change, isn't it?

Because the last time we heard about Mark in Acts chapter 16, Mark was a flake. He had backed away on the ministry and Paul didn't like him anymore. Bring Mark, he's useful to me for the ministry. Change of heart on Paul's part.

Please bring the cloak, and the books and the parchments. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, greet Anissa for us, he was so valuable for me, for the ministry. And then last of all, would, could you try to come before winter? So we're, those are some of the, the, this like housecleaning type imperatives that Paul gives to Timothy.

Then there's another category of imperatives, and they have to do with ministry and decisions to be made. And, and let's look at them one at a time, if you get your fingers ready to roll. You start in verse, chapter 1, verse 13. And he says this, these, these have to do with resolution in the ministry.

He says, first of all, retain the standard of sound words, verse 13, which you have heard from me in the faith and love which were in Christ Jesus. What you want to do is just always be at the top of your game when you're preaching the Word of God, and always approach it just with this. This uprightness, this sobriety where you realize that this is the Word of God, that's what he's talking about here. Then he says in verse 14, here's another imperative, guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure, guard the treasure that has been entrusted to you.

In other words, defend it. in, into every church, especially in ours, I don't know why, it's we're like a magnet for people who have odd theologies, but there, there are people who are always coming in, and they're always challenging the basics of the truth and saying, well, I want to do this, how about this? And it usually has to do with, with, a renewing of the Galatian error of going back to works righteousness. And, and he says, you want to just guard that treasure.

This is the word of God that Jesus died and was buried and rose again. You don't ever want to fudge on that, guard that treasure. And then he said, go on to chapter 2 verse 14, remind The people of these things. Now, what things?

We go back to verse 11. It is a trustworthy statement, for if we died with Him, chapter 2, verse 11, we shall also live with Him. If we endure, we shall reign with Him. If we deny Him, He will deny us.

If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. Remind them of these things. Timothy. Just go back to the basics, the, to the, the skeletal structure of the teaching of the word of God, and you, you have to remind them.

Because as people, we have an open-ended mind where stuff goes in and stuff goes out. We have to keep reminding, reminding, reminding, which is why we partake of the Lord's table and we, we eat the bread and we drink the cup on a regular basis. Why? To remind, remind them of these things.

Timothy, you've got that job to do. Chapter 2, verse 2, you have a job to do, Timothy. The stuff that you have heard from me, all the stuff that you got from me, I want you to go and entrust it to faithful men. Timothy, you have a responsibility to take the gospel that you heard.

So there are 4 levels in verse 2, Paul, Timothy, faithful men, others, OK? So let's keep passing this on, and the man of God has a responsibility to pass on the word of God. So entrust this stuff to faithful men. Verse 14 as well, solemnly charge the people.

that's another imperative. It solemnly, that's with sobriety, charge them in the presence of God, not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers. There are all kinds of concepts that we can come up with and theologians are great for coming up with big long words and, and we can sit there and chat about that, and, and lose the picture. It's like walking through a forest and you get all distracted with one tree.

Oh, look at this tree, and you forget, hey, there's so much more. There's so much more to scripture and you have to shake yourself once in a while and say, wait, are we, are we back on priority here? Charge them, don't get into word wrangling. Verse 16, chapter 2, verse 16, I want you to avoid worldly and Empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness.

so you just don't want to be a part of, everybody else is talking about stuff, and, and believers, we have a tendency to do that. Let's talk about jobs, cars, sports, stuff like that. Let's, we're all distracted by that. And Paul says, you gotta have like no ears for that.

You've got to avoid it and avoid worldly empty chatter, stay on the gospel. Chapter 2 verse 23 is another imperative. Refuse foolish and ignorant speculations. People talking about stuff that really doesn't matter.

In our church, I don't know why, but we've got some conspiracy guys, ammo and food supply, and so they're all about finding out who the bad guys are. I'm thinking, good, but what? You can't stop it because the scripture says that that one big bad guy that is coming, is coming, and you cannot take him out with your deer rifle, OK? So, you, when they start talking about barcodes and marks of the beast stuff, I'm going, yeah, good, but I'm not going to get involved with that because that scripture already tells me how that works out, all right?

So I'm gonna avoid that. verse 25, it says, The Lord's bond servant verse 24 must not be quarrelsome but be kind to all, able to teach patient when wrong, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition. You got to gently correct God's people. You can't always walk around with an ax handle just going, you're wrong, but you gotta, you gotta be gentle with them.

Chapter 3, verse 5, here's another. There are a group of men who are ungodly, and they're preaching a bad message, and he says at the end of chapter verse 5, chapter 3, verse 5, avoid such men as these. you see a guy that's a false teacher and he's, he's all speculative and, and he's teaching perhaps even a sensuality message. You be circumspect.

Stay away from the guy, just avoid him. Chapter 4, verse 2. These are really solid ones here, and we got a bunch of them, just all in one verse. Preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season. That means you're always on. And, and that's, that's something you need to know about your pastoral staff that your pastor doesn't have clock in and clock out hours technically, OK? Cause there's stuff going on 24 hours a day and the work of the ministry is always with your pastoral staff and your elders, that?

And, and, the obligation of the elders is be ready all the time, all the time, be ready, and then reprove, rebuke, and exhort. what that suggests? That suggests that your elder team and your pastoral team are watching you, and they're out there, hopefully looking with the eyes of a gentle shepherd, and they're saying, and they're, they're checking out God's people, and once in a while, they're gonna have to come up and they're gonna have to say, Can I talk to you? There's something really important I need to talk to you about.

That's their obligation from scripture, OK? They're not being abusive at that point, they're just simply obeying God, so reprove. That's one of the things. It's really like, just get right up in somebody's face and talk to them.

Then there's rebuke, and that is also a very strong word. It just means, hey, stop now. Stop what you're doing. And then there's exhort, hey, let's go.

That's what exhortation is, a, a tough cheerleader. You can do this. Let's go. We, we can, we can get this done.

Exhort, with all, with great patience and instruction. Chapter 4, verse 5, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist and fulfill your ministry. Those are 4 in a row, right, right, right there, imperatives. Just do the work of an evangelist is the one we want to look at there.

Fulfill your ministry. Timothy was apparently, if we look at chapter one, getting a little distracted and that happens. Do that the majority of guys who graduate from a theological education will not be involved in full-time ministry at the end of their adult life. Most of them are gonna bail, in the course of that.

Because, because they lose their, lose their thought, it's like, they, they get demotivated or they get discouraged or stuff happens and they start to lose their eye on the ball. They're not looking anymore. He says, Timothy, fulfill your ministry. And then he says, in chapter 4, verse 15, you want to keep an eye out for Alexander, the metal worker, because that guy is bad news.

Now that leaves another category of, of, of imperatives that I hope we can get to really fast, and that is these imperatives having to do with the character of the heart of man in 2 Timothy. And if you're underlining, let's go through those. And he says, first of all, in chapter 1 verse 6, Timothy, I want you to stir up that gift of God. It's like a campfire.

If you've ever gone camping and you got this nice old fire in the evening, and then you go to bed, and you wake up in the morning and the, the fire pit is all quiet and you just got gray ash there. What do you got to do? Take a stick, stir it up and throw some fresh stuff on there and it'll get blazing for breakfast, right? That's what it's supposed to do.

He says, Timothy. Once you take that gift of God that was given to you by the laying out of hands. This was not just any old recreational gift of God. I put my hands on you.

I gave you this gift. I want you to put some new wood on that fire and I want you to start that bad boy up again, OK? So even Timothy can get distracted, so kindle up the gift of God. Chapter 1 verse 8.

Do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord. Chapter 1 verse 8 as well. Join me in suffering. He says, Timothy, I know you're going to be thinking, you're gonna be tempted.

Here's Paul in chains. You're gonna be thinking like everybody else, I'm not so sure I want to be with Paul right now. He seems compromised. He seems like he's been lowered.

I don't want to, I'm not sure I want to be with him. He's definitely not a mega church pastor at the end of his life, right? And Paul says to Timothy, I want you to just don't be ashamed. Join me in suffering.

He says in chapter 2, verse 3, I want you to suffer hardship. And when you go through the book of 2 Timothy, you start to see a lot of hardship type words, suffer, hardship, be diligent, endure. He says, suffer hardship. In other words, get yourself mentally geared up.

So, because it's gonna be hard. The first time you put on your track shoes and you go out to run, you're gonna think that you're gonna die really fast, right? It's really painful. What do you do?

Keep going, you just keep going, suffer hardship. Chapter 2 verse 7. Consider what I say. Just keep it in mind.

Timothy, would you just install this in your mind? Consider what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. Chapter 2 verse 8. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David according to my gospel.

Chapter 2, verse 15. Timothy, be diligent to be approved by God, not ashamed, handling the word of God. Just, just man up again. I've, I've just now begun to pick up weights again after some decades of dormancy.

what? And, and, you just gotta stay at it, stay at it. Chapter 2 verse 19, another one. He says, I want you to abstain from wickedness.

Let everyone who names the name of the Lord abstain from wickedness. Chapter 2, verse 22, flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Flee the lust, just run away. I've read some astounding statistics on men in America, and even church men in America of late.

guys, most of us are looking at some really bad stuff on our computers. In fact, as much as 90% of us are, are sneaking around and looking at stuff on our computers. Verse 22, it says, run away, just run away from that stuff, flee youthful lust and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace. Chapter 2, verse 24, you gotta be kind to all, be kind to everybody, even the people who bug you.

Chapter 3, verse 14. Continue in what you have learned. Chapter 3, verse 14, just stay on what. Chapter 4, verse 2, be ready all the time.

And then chapter 4, verse 5, be sober in all things. Ministry, really what Paul is saying here, ministry is not a game. And, and, and, I needed to be taught that during our time that we lived here years ago, that was probably the biggest lesson that I learned while, while serving here at Cornerstone was that ministry is not a game. As I came from a context where I was a youth pastor, it's like, let's just always have fun and be goofy.

And I learned with, with death and divorce and serious stuff going on in the ministry, and the fact that the servant of God is, is dealing with real human life and you're making really big decisions, Ministry certainly is not a game, it's serious business. Be sober. Well, those are the imperatives of 2 Timothy and we just barely skimmed them. Well, let's, let's apply some of these things, and take it home.

Paul is writing from the, thought of a guy who is really reduced in his thinking. And he has trimmed his thinking down to that which truly matters, just totally, really, really matters. Everything else to him is superfluous. It's just like, just ignore all that stuff.

Let's just, let's just get really right on with what matters, that heaven and hell are real. The gospel is the most important thing that we can hold on to in advance and think about and live and do, and the gospel is the deal. So heaven and hell are real, and the gospel is the deal. Jesus is God.

And the church is his body. It really, it, it gets, when you boil everything else away, that's, that's what the Christian life is and, and, and Paul then becomes for us an example of a guy who has really trimmed all the fat off of his thinking. Could it be that the reason that we are not persecuted, and that the reason we don't struggle more in, in advancing the gospel, And, and could it be the, the, the reason we're not really enduring hardship for the gospel is that heaven and hell are not that real to us, and the gospel is just much less a prominent feature of our lives.

And, and Paul becomes for us, this example of, of a guy who is, is totally trimmed down.

And so then we look at Paul, we say thank you, Paul, for writing this because you're a great example. We ask the question, is my life sufficiently pruned down to the essential, so that the, the truth sticks out like Mount Everest in my life because there's nothing else competing with the truth in my life and the gospel. Am I fleeing my youthful lusts? And do I hate stuff that distracts me from the Christian life?

Do I hate it? Do I, do I look at my possessions and go, you're, you're not really an asset, you're more of an anchor that's keeping me from being free to serve God. Do I hate this stuff that distracts me? years ago, I used to be a real sports geek and, and, yeah, all fired up about sports teams and After a couple of my favorite teams went down in flames in championship round, I thought, I, I found myself being really mopey.

like, oh my team lost. Then I thought, what are you doing? what are you, why are you letting a sports team affect you the next day? So I, I officially divorced my favorite sports teams.

I'm done with you. Now, I, I barely even know the players, it's like, I'm done with that. Do I care about the flock of God, as his lambs, really, that's what Paul's all about. He says, if you really want to focus on something important, it's right here.

The lambs of God, that's so much more important. And do I eagerly anticipate heaven? Because you got, you gotta look at chapter 4 with me, and look at verse chapter 4, verse 6. Here's a guy that's really trimmed down in his thoughts and so he says, I am already being poured out, verse 6 as a drink offering and the time of my departure has come.

I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course. I have kept the faith. I love that.

There are no regrets in Paul's life, and he says, in the future, there's laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day and not to me only, but also to all who have loved his appearing. Man, do I eagerly anticipate heaven? Does my spiritual gift burn hot? Paul tells Timothy, stir up your spiritual gift.

Studies tell us that about 1 out of 41 out of 5 people in the American church actually practice their spiritual gift. Which means that 3 out of 4 are vegging. I'm guessing, I'm wondering more every day whether a lot of the people who don't practice their spiritual gifts is because they're not saved. Are my eyes wet with tears over the last Do I ever just go through the checkout at the grocery store and look at the person who's checking out my groceries and just pray for that person?

That they will get saved. The imperatives of scripture are written to move us. They're written in such a way that we have no option other than to just get it done. If I walk into one of my children's rooms, I'd say, clean this room up.

What else is there to do? You got option one and option one. Option two, you never want to go there, OK? And that's the imperative scripture.

They ought to rock our world. And I just want to invite you to take a Bible and mark it up and look at all the imperatives of the New Testament and, and, and there are a lot. And just say, God, please take these direct commands. And changed my life in a very radical way, and, and caused me to be like a private in the Marine Corps where I just say, ay, sir, I'll just get it done.

Because the imperatives are meant to do that, to state God's word very clearly in God's will. Very clearly, that God wants us to trim our lives down so that the truth stands out more distinctly. Trust that God will just take this little introduction to 2 Timothy and use it in our lives. Let's pray together.

God, please take the imperatives of your word. And like branding irons burn our hearts, just stab us through the heart with the direct commands of scripture. They are your word and we must do none other than to obey and cause us, Lord, to reflect your glory in obedient living because then the world will know. That we are your disciples.

We just praise you for Paul's example and Timothy's. Amen.