Page 88 - Pastoral Epistles student textbook

Study Section 13: 2 Timothy 4 - Practicing what you Preach

13.1 Connect

Billy Graham preached to 215 million people in 185 countries in crusades, rallies, and live
satellite feeds. Of those, some 77 million saw him face-to-face in 53 countries. More than
three million souls responded to his invitation to profess faith in Christ. He broke
numerous attendance records, sometimes speaking to more than 100,000 people in a
single service. Indeed, twice he spoke to more than 1 million in one event.

For virtually every year since the 1950s, he has been a fixture on lists of the ten most admired people
in America or the world. Thus, it is hardly surprising that a Ladies Home Journal survey once ranked
the famed evangelist second only to God in the category "achievements in religion."

Even so, Graham said that he always saw himself speaking not to audiences, let alone to nameless
multitudes, but to individual hearts. That is where enduring change ultimately had to begin—with
each person making his or her own decision to follow Christ. Or not. “This is not mass evangelism,” he
liked to say, “but personal evangelism on a mass scale.”

He surely believed every word he said. But at some level, he also knew that the sermon stood at the
center. Faith, after all, came by hearing. Until his death at 100 years old, Billy Graham preached the
gospel of Christ to a lost world. He preached until he could preach no more.

Today Paul exhorts Timothy to preach the Word! For how shall they hear without a preacher? Let’s
be encouraged to preach God’s Word…

13.2 Objectives

1. The student should be able to explain the importance of preaching within the life of the
Church.

2. The student should be able to describe how a believer really never retires from the Lord’s
service.

13.3 Practicing what you Preach

I Timothy 4:1-5 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge
the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be
2
ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience
and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but
3
having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own
passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for
4
5
you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
Have you ever heard the saying, “Your life speaks so loud, I cannot hear what you are saying!” Paul
closes II Timothy 4 with exhortations to live out your faith.

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