“Finishing Well”
(2 Timothy 4:6-8)
Series: Faithful to the Finish Line (2 Timothy)
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
Henderson’s First Baptist Church, Henderson
Take your Bibles and join me in 2 Timothy, chapter 4 (page 801; YouVersion).
We are preaching through the Book of 2 Timothy, the Apostle Paul’s last letter in the New Testament, a letter written to a young pastor named Timothy—Timothy serving as pastor in Ephesus; Paul imprisoned, locked up in a dungeon 1200 miles to the West.
Last time we said we could sum up this letter by understanding what Paul is saying to Timothy: “Timothy, they’re coming to kill me for preaching the gospel. When they do, take my place—until they come and kill you.”
Paul was awaiting execution at the order of Roman Emperor Nero. It could come at any day, any moment. It could happen before he finished writing the letter: “Timothy, they’re coming to kill me for preaching the gospel. When they do, take my place—until they kill you.”
Talk about a succession plan! Business CEOs understand the importance of getting other men and women in place so that when the CEO steps aside, the organization continues to run smoothly. How much more important should this be in the greatest organization on earth—the church? We are each of us to be about the business of pouring into others, reproducing ourselves in others, developing others, discipling others. We exist to develop disciples who make disciples.
Paul is about that very task in this letter; disciple-making. He is getting ready to die. His death will be easier knowing that Timothy will pick up and carry on where he has left off. He had written to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:2, “And the things that you have heard from me among may witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
Paul is handing off the baton of Christian leadership and discipleship. And especially in these last words in Chapter 4, especially the words of our text this morning, a passage regarded as “Paul’s valedictory,” his farewell address, we read Paul saying, “Okay, Timothy. I’m getting ready to die. Keep running the race.”
So we left off at verse 5 with Paul’s saying at the end of the verse, “Fulfill your ministry.” And he goes on now to say in verse 6, “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering,” that is, “I’m getting ready to die. I have fulfilled my ministry, Timothy. You fulfill yours. It’s over for me.” Well, let’s hear from Paul now as we read these verses of his farewell address, focusing on verses 6-8 this morning.
Please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand.
7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
8 Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.
Pray.
I really think it is helpful for us to imagine we have but one more day to live, or one more week to live, one more month. If we knew for certain we would die say, in three months, we would almost certainly live the next 90 days so differently than before. This kind of reflecting, brings into clear focus the things that really matter in our lives.
If we knew we were going to die in the next 90 days we would so order our lives around the Lord Jesus Christ and so be sure that those around us knew Jesus too and we would do everything we did with a view toward eternity and the final judgment to come. We would be sure that we finished well.
I want to talk about that this morning and I hope this passage helps us to that end. I hope ever one of us makes a decision today to finish well. Many of us may not have started well—or, like me, you have often stumbled along the journey. Well, we may have done some things for which we are not proud, but we can all decide this morning to finish well. How many of you want to finish well? Alright, let’s talk about it.
**How do Christians “Finish Well?”
Live with a heart that is Fearless (6)
This is a gift from God. A heart that is fearless. What do I mean by that? Simply that if we are following Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, then we will fear nothing—not even death. Many people fear death.
Woody Allen is often quoted for saying, “I don’t fear death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Well, the Christian not only doesn’t mind when it happens, there is a sense in which he even looks forward to it. Not in a morbid way, but because he knows death is not the end, but in many ways merely the end of a beginning. Look at verse 6:
6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering (that’s a way of saying, “I’m dying”), and the time of my departure is at hand.
I’m always struck by Paul’s fearlessness as he pens these final words. Summary: Timothy, it’s time for me to die. And I’m ready.
“I’m already being poured out as a drink offering,” this is Paul’s way of talking about his death. He reaches back to the Old Testament sacrificial system for a picture of his present situation. As when the Israelites sacrificed a lamb upon the altar and wine was poured out over the base of an altar—so am I being poured out as an offering, my blood will be poured out as Nero cuts off my head. But this is an offering of my life for Jesus. I am happy to go. I am, after all, already a living sacrifice.
Paul viewed his very life as on offering to God. He challenged us to see our lives the same way. Do you remember back in Romans 12?
Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
You can live with a heart that is fearless when you regard your very life as a worship offering to Jesus. You live for Him not just at the point of death, but at every point of the living journey. You live your life for Christ.
You impact your family, your church family, your neighborhood, your workplace, such that you are always shining the light of Christ—so that when you are gone, people genuinely miss you. They miss you because of the Jesus you shined upon them through your very life!
Will people miss you when you die? Can I ask that again? Will people miss you when you die? There are some people who, when they die, others say, “Thank God he’s gone.”
In a cemetery in England, there’s a tombstone for a woman named Anna Wallace. It reads:
The children of Israel wanted bread
And the Lord sent them manna,
Old [man] Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
What about you? How will you be remembered? What kind of legacy are you passing on? Are you reproducing yourself—pouring into others, making disciples of others? Fearlessly living your life for the glory of God?
Paul was ready to die. Some of you may not be ready. You have not yet turned from your sin and from your self. You must turn to Jesus Christ to be fearless at death!
This phrase in the second part of verse 6, look again at it: “the time of my departure is at hand.” What a great phrase: the time of my departure. The original word there is a word that was often used in Greek to describe a number of actions—most notably referring to the way a sea captain weighs anchor, or raises up the anchor, takes it up so that the ship can depart out into the sea. Like a ship departing from one harbor to arrive at the next, so the Christian’s death is simply his or her departing from here to arrive there, to arrive in heaven.
It’s like a poem I sometimes use at funerals called “The Arrival.” It ends this way:
Say not, “He has gone,”
Nor [even] think of him as dead;
But say, “In the Father’s House
He has arrived”—instead.
That’s what this word “departure” means: to arrive. The Christian never really dies, just departs from one harbor to the next, the harbor of heaven. Are you ready to go there? Paul longed for that departure to come. Remember what he had written to the church at Philippi? He had said in Philippians 1:23, “I have a desire to depart and be with Christ.” Why did he have that desire? Because, he said, it was “far better” than remaining alive. What a perspective, a heavenly perspective!
Living that way makes one fearless. Finishing well means living with a heart that is fearless. Secondly:
Live with a pledge to be Faithful (7)
Verse 7 is about faithfulness to the Lord. Three times Paul essentially says the same thing in different ways:
7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
Paul is saying, “I have been faithful to the finish line.” I have lived out this Christian life, persevering to the end.
The verb tenses convey completed action with continuing results. “I have fought, I have finished, I have kept.” Paul is not bragging here. In fact, in the original the nouns precede the subject. Literally, he writes: “the fight I have fought, the race I have finished, the faith, I have kept.”
The Christian life is often a fight and a race. The word “fight” is the word from which we get “agony” or, “agonize.” So again more literally Paul says, “Over the good agony, I have agonized.” And he had. Paul’s life for Christ was no easy journey.
Often when I read a passage like this I like to compare it to Paul’s writing over in 2 Corinthians. Listen to this from 2 Corinthians 11. Paul is there describing his life as compared to so-called false apostles. Sometimes it’s helpful for me to read from the paraphrase “The Message.” Listen to this paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 11:23-27 where Paul describes the difficulty of his Christian journey:
I’ve worked much harder, been jailed more often, beaten up more times than I can count, and at death’s door time after time. I’ve been flogged five times with the Jews’ thirty-nine lashes, beaten by Roman rods three times, pummeled with rocks once. I’ve been shipwrecked three times, and immersed in the open sea for a night and a day. In hard traveling year in and year out, I’ve had to ford rivers, fend off robbers, struggle with friends, struggle with foes. I’ve been at risk in the city, at risk in the country, endangered by desert sun and sea storm, and betrayed by those I thought were my brothers. I’ve known drudgery and hard labor, many a long and lonely night without sleep, many a missed meal, blasted by the cold, naked to the weather.
And yet, Paul can say here in verse 7, “I have kept the faith.” I have pledged to be faithful and I have kept my pledge.
No matter how difficult the Christian life is, we must keep moving forward. Don’t stop. And when things are not difficult, it’s equally easy to stray from the path.
Meadowlark Lemon died last December. He was perhaps the greatest of the Harlem Globetrotters. I remember seeing him when I was just like 9 years old in California. Got his autograph. Meadowlark Lemon was a gifted athlete and Christian. Became an ordained minister in the 80s. He had this statement I really like about life. He said, “Life’s most meaningless statistic is the half-time score, and as far as I’m concerned it’s always half-time.”
So whether you’re behind at half-time, or ahead at half-time, it really doesn’t matter until the game is over. Keep playing. Keep striving ahead. Keep moving forward.
Paul kept on moving, running the race of Christian life. He is like, “I have run the race and the finish line is now within sight! I can see the tape!”
The more I run the more I appreciate Paul’s use of the metaphor to illustrate the Christian life. I’m a slow runner. Really slow. 10 minute miles. You’re familiar with the tortoise and the hare? I’m the tortoise. I ran a marathon last year in Illinois and during the first couple miles there were these younger guys ahead of me, all running with ease and laughing and goofing around. Zig-zagging back and forth and just having a blast. I remember thinking, “We’ll see how long that lasts.” Sure enough, about mile 17 or 18, there they were. And as I slogged past them at my remarkably slow pace, I couldn’t help but smile a little bit—I mean I need all the encouragement I can get it!
The Christian life really is a marathon. It’s certainly not a sprint! Like those youthful, energetic runners, I’ve seen a lot of professing Christians start the race with great verve and energy, only to sputter at mile 17. I myself have nearly slipped and run out of bounds many times in the Christian race. But by God’s grace, I manage to keep running. I want to finish, don’t you?
I feel at times like Pastor Geoff Thomas who once was remarking on ministers who had fallen morally in some way or other, he said to a friend, Derek Thomas, he said, “Derek, when I was a young man first going into the ministry, I wanted to do something great, but now I just want to cross the finish line.” It was an honest admission of his own vulnerabilities coupled with a pledge to be faithful to the Lord, faithful to the finish line.
Paul says, “I have kept the faith.” He probably means not only faithfulness as we live for the Lord but also faithfulness with regard to what we preach and teach. Faith as a body of doctrine. Faith as that “good thing” which was committed to Timothy (2 Timothy 1:14). The core truths of the gospel. I have kept or guarded the truth.
Paul says, “So Timothy, you keep it now. You guard it now. Stay faithful to the Word of the Lord and stay faithful to the Lord of the Word. Keep running! Don’t stop! Persevere! Don’t be like others.
See when we couple verse 7 with verses 9 and 10 we read about others who did not keep running, others who did not persevere, others like Demas in verse 9 and following: “9 Be diligent to come to me quickly; 10 for Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world, and has departed for Thessalonica—”
I don’t know what happened to Demas. Something happened. He abandoned the apostle and the teaching of the gospel. He fell in love with the present world and abandoned trust in the world to come. He started well, but he didn’t finish well.
Don’t stop running! Don’t stop fighting! Keep moving! Keep asking God for more grace to run well. It is grace that keeps us in the race.
God help us be like Paul who said to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:24, “I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me.” It’s grace that keeps us in the race.
That’s what John Newton was saying in his hymn: “Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.” Pray, “God give me grace today to finish well. Grace RIGHT NOW to lead me home, to finish well!”
And here is a helpful transition to our third and final point. To finish well we must:
Live with an eye to the Future (8)
Live with an eye to our final home. Christians look beyond our lives to the final state when Christ returns and rewards us for our faithfulness.
Verse 8:
8 Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.
Paul’s talking about the final state when all is said and done. The final state begins with Christ’s second coming. That’s depicted by the phrase, “That Day.” See that in verse 8? “Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord (Jesus), the righteous Judge, will give to me”—when?—“on that Day,”
“That Day” is a reference to Christ’s return, His second coming. He has come once already, the first time, 2000 years ago, Christ came as a suffering servant. That’s what we celebrate in this season, these four weeks preceding Christmas are the weeks of Advent, a word that means “arrival,” God’s arrival to us in the flesh, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity taking on humanity. First coming. First arrival. Advent. Jesus came to die as a suffering servant. He will come again on “that Day,” coming next time as a conquering King, coming as “the righteous Judge.”
And in verse 8 Paul again is using athletic imagery when he refers to this crown of righteousness. There are two different words for crown. One is the word from which we get diadem. A diadem is the crown of a king. That’s the crown Jesus wears. The other word for crown is “stephanos.” If your name is “Stephen” your name means crown or wreath, the kind of crown used for athletes in Paul’s day. When a runner crossed the finish line first, he was crowned with a wreath, a wreath of leaves.
Christians are not worthy of wearing the same kind of crown as our Lord Jesus! But we will receive a crown, a victor’s crown. Now I do think Paul is writing metaphorically here. It’s not so much a literal crown for which we run, but rather the crown symbolizes the Christian’s final, future, heavenly reward. Christians will be rewarded in the final state, rewarded for their degree of faithfulness to the Lord.
So when the going gets tough, see beyond your present circumstances and live with an eye to the future. And keep running!
Recall as Paul wrote in Romans 8:18, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”
I like when we sing that hymn, “O Church Arise,” a hymn about our running the race together.
So Spirit, come, put strength in ev’ry stride,
Give grace for ev’ry hurdle,
That we may run with faith to win the prize
Of a servant good and faithful.
As saints of old still line the way,
Retelling triumphs of His grace,
We hear their calls and hunger for the day
When, with Christ, we stand in glory.
When the going gets tough live with an eye to the future. And when the going is easy—perhaps for us in America this is our greatest challenge; when the going is easy—live with an eye to the future. Don’t fall in love with this present world. Be warned! That’s what happened to Demas! Remember verse 10 that Demas left the faith, “having loved this present world.”
Live with an eye to the future. Look forward to Christ’s crowning you in glory! That crown of righteousness, Paul writes in verse 8, is not for him only. See that in verse 8? “Not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing,” it is a crown that will be given to every person who believes in Jesus, lives for Jesus, and looks for Jesus to return!
Live with an eye to the future.
Take home these two letters: DQ. It doesn’t stand for Dairy Queen. But that may help you to remember. DQ. See if there’s one thing I’d challenge you to do it is DQ. What do I mean? Well, our main action points are that if we are to finish well, we will:
Live with a heart that is fearless, live with a pledge to be faithful, live with an eye to the future.
How can we be helped to do that? DQ. A time of DQ. Here’s what it stand for? Daily Quiet. We all need a time of Daily Quiet. DQ.
If you’ll take time each day to get alone somewhere and be quiet. A few minutes a day. 10-15 something like that. Get your Bible. Read God’s Word. Listen to Him. Reflect on your life lived thus far. Ask yourself if you’re ready to go. What legacy are you leaving behind? Are you reproducing yourself? Pouring into your children and grandchildren? Are you discipling others to live with an eye to the future.
We’re going to end here. Here is the invitation to respond.
Response:
Live with a heart that is fearless, live with a pledge to be faithful, live with an eye to the future.
“Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I am weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed, but, through you, I am more loved and accepted than I ever dared hope. I thank you for paying my debt, bearing my punishment and offering forgiveness. I turn from my sin and receive you as Savior.
Live with a heart that is fearless, live with a pledge to be faithful…
Steve Green, Find us Faithful:
Let us run the race not only for the prize
But as those who’ve gone before us
Let us leave to those behind us
The heritage of faithfulness passed on through godly lives
[Chorus]
Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful
May the fire of our devotion light their way
May the footprints that we leave
Lead them to believe
And the lives we live inspire them to obey
Oh may all who come behind us find us faithful
COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER: The text contained in this sermon is solely owned by its author. The reproduction, or distribution of this message, or any portion of it, should include the author’s name. The author intends to provide free resources in order to inspire believers and to assist preachers and teachers in Kingdom work.