1. But watch thou. The apostasy and looseness of the times we live in must make us the more watchful. Their falls must be our fears; their levity must quicken us to constancy, and their negligence must quicken our diligence in keeping the watch of the Lord.
2. Good men desire the Church’s good after their departure. Paul is dying, yet he commands Timothy to improve his talents for the Church’s good when himself was dead. Moses, before he dies, prays the Lord to set up a fit ruler instead (Num_28:16-17). Wicked men care not what becomes of the world, when they are dead and gone let heaven and earth come together, and all be in confusion, they care not. But good men have public spirits.
3. As all persons, so ministers especially must watch. The devil hath a special spite at them; he commands his agents, as the king of Aram did his followers, to fight neither with small nor great, but against the king of Israel; so he bends all his strength against the ministers of Israel.
(1) The better the man, the more watchful must he be. The pirate sets on the laden ship, and the thief upon the wealthiest traveller. But we must watch as pastors too, and discover wolves that would destroy the flock.
(2) We must watch at all times.
(a) In prosperity, as pigeons when they fare best fear most.
(b) Watch in adversity, the devil is busy then in laying snares, as the fowler doth for birds in frosty weather.
(3) In all places, in public and private, at home and abroad; the world is full of snares.
(4) Watch in all things, so runs the text.
(5) Watch against all sins. We carry about us a proneness to all sin.
(6) Watch over all thy senses; stop thine ears; make a covenant with thine eyes (Job_31:1). Set a watch before thy mouth. The whole soul is out of order, and therefore we must set a guard upon all its faculties.
4. Ministers especially must be hardy men. We are called soldiers, shepherds, watchmen, husbandmen, all which must endure summer’s heat and winter’s frost.
(1) We must endure hardship in our preparatory studies; we must give up ourselves to reading, study and prayer.
(2) He must endure hardship in the actual performance of his duty.
(3) Most properly and genuinely this hardship in the text consists in a patient undergoing of those injuries and oppositions which we must expect from an ungrateful world.
(4) The Lord Himself sometimes is pleased to exercise us, and to inure us to hardship, that we may be the fitter for His service. But let us, like good soldiers of Christ, endure hardship--
(a) Patiently.
(b) Courageously.
(c) Constantly.
5. The ministry is a work. The sweat of the brow is nothing to that of the brain; besides the dangers we are liable to for our work’s sake.
6. Do the work or service of an evangelist. Observe, ministers are servants, and their office is service.
7. Of an evangelist. Observe, ministers must preach the gospel. We must publish the glad tidings of a Saviour (what in us lieth to all the world); this is to do the work of an evangelist, viz., soundly and sincerely to publish the gospel.
8. Make full proof of thy ministry. Ministers must fully and faithfully discharge all the duties of their calling. (T. Hall, B. D.)
Christian watchfulness
None are so likely to maintain watchful guard over their hearts and lives as those who know the comfort of living in near communion with God. They feel their privilege and will fear losing it. They will dread falling from their high estate, and marring their own comfort by bringing clouds between themselves and Christ. He that goes on a journey with a little money about him takes little thought of danger, and cares little how late he travels. He, on the contrary, that carries gold and jewels, will be a cautious traveller: he will look well to his roads, his horses, and his company, and run no risks. The fixed stars are those that tremble most. The man that most fully enjoys the light of God’s countenance, will be a man tremblingly afraid of losing its blessed consolations, and jealously fearful of doing anything to grieve the Holy Ghost. (Bishop Ryle.)
Endure afflictions.
Endurance of hardship
Some dyes cannot bear the weather, but alter colour presently; but there are others that, having something that gives a deeper tincture, will hold. The graces of a true Christian hold out in all sorts of weathers, in winter and summer, prosperity and adversity, when superficial counterfeit holiness will give out. (R. Sibbes.)
Ministerial hardship
Iboard with a poor Scotsman; his wife can talk scarcely any English. My diet consists mostly of hasty-pudding, boiled corn, and bread baked in ashes, and sometimes a little meat and butter. My lodging is a little heap of straw, laid upon some boards, a little way from the ground; for it is a long room, without any floor, that I lodge in. My work is exceedingly hard and difficult. I travel on foot a mile and a half in the worst of roads almost daily and back again; for I live so far from my Indians. I bare not seenan English person this month. These and many other uncomfortable circumstances attend me; and yet my spiritual conflicts and distresses so far exceed all these that I scarce think of them, but feel as if I were entertained in the most sumptuous manner. The Lord grant that I may learn to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ! (David Brainerd.)
Do the work of an evangelist.--
The work of an evangelist
We fancy we still see Dr. Wardlaw standing in the pulpit and beseeching the newly-ordained pastor to approve himself in all things as the faithful servant of God. Some of his sentences still linger in our recollection--“Oh, my brother I” he said, “never forget that the greatest triumph which can be accomplished on earth is the conversion of a soul; and a minister’s labours are never so highly honoured as when men are born of God through his instrumentality. It may be of importance to polish the jewel after it has been found, but the chief thing is to dig it out of the mine. It may be, and it is, important to dress up the stone for the front of the building, but be does the greatest work who excavates it from the quarry in which it lay imbedded.” (Evangelical Repository.)
An earnest evangelist
While waiting on one occasion in a gentleman’s parlour, Vassar opened conversation with his wife, a very fashionable and proud-looking lady, who was sitting in the room. With great concern he began at once to urge the necessity of the new birth and immediate acceptance of Christ upon her. She was thunderstruck, and protested that she did not believe in any of those things. Then followed a most fervent appeal, texts of Scripture, warning against rejecting Christ, the certainty of a wrath to come for any found in impenitence, till my friend said he was fairly alarmed at the boldness of the assault. Suddenly the gentleman came in for whom he was waiting, and called him out. When the gentleman returned to his wife, she said, “There has been an old man here talking with me about religion.” “Why did you not shut him up?” he asked gruffly. “He is one of those persons that you cannot shut up,” was her reply. “If I had been here,” he said, “I would have told him very quickly to go about his business.” “If you had seen him, you would have thought he was about his business,” was her answer. (Memoir of Uncle John Vassar.)
Make full proof of thy ministry.--
Fulfil thy ministry
Thisword “ministry” does not refer exclusively to what we are accustomed to call the Christian ministry, meaning the teaching and pastoral office in the Church. That is but one of ten thousand forms of ministration or service, which may be rendered to our fellows at the call of God. To minister to any one, is to help or serve him; and so every course of action by which we can help and serve others is a ministry, and every such service is truly a Christian work. And as we cannot all render the same service, but can each render particular kinds of service to particular people--relatives, friends or neighbours--that particular description of service which each of us can render is our “ministry.” It is a ministry, the object of whose functions lies without us, in contrast to activities which centre in self as their object. And it is “thy ministry,” because it is that particular form of helpful activity which it is open to each, separately, to prosecute. Paul’s was different from Timothy’s, and neither has belonged to anybody since; nor will your ministry, or mine, ever be allotted to anybody else; for no one will be situated as We are, or have exactly our opportunities. But, in some respects, our ministry is like Timothy’s and Paul’s. It is directed to the same objects: the spread of Christ’s truth and Christ’s Church. And we are summoned to it by the same Divine Lord, to whom also we shall reader an account of its discharge; All the high, sublime elements, then, which belonged to their ministry or service in life, belong to ours, though ours may take less striking outward forms, and be rendered with no eye but God’s to watch our performance of it. The sublime considerations, moving to fidelity in it, which Paul urged on Timothy, bear, then, on us. “I charge thee before God, make full proof of”--thoroughly fulfil--“thy ministry.” (T. M. Herbert, M. A.)
The appeal of the elder to the younger generation
In the charge of the aged Paul to the young disciple Timothy, there seems to be an appeal which, though unexpressed, is perpetually addressed from the elder generation to the younger. What the one old man said to the single young one, all Christ’s servants, whose work is nearly done, seem to say to all those whose work is just beginning. “Fulfil thy ministry, for I am now ready to be offered.” Choose what time in the world’s history you like, you will always find those two classes well represented; for it is always true that “one generation passeth away, and another cometh.” And while the old are always passing to their rest, and the young rising to do their parts, the great aims for which Christian men strive and pray, and the great institution of the Church, through which they further them, lives on; and it is, or should be, the concern of each generation to hand it down invigorated and enlarged, to their successors. But if that is to be done, these successors must be ready to take up these toils and aims; to adapt them to the needs of the coming time, and engage in them with a spirit at least as devoted as that which their fathers showed. So they seem to hear from their father, “Fulfil thy ministry, for I am now ready to be offered.” Now if we take our own time, and apply to it these considerations, which hold good of every time, what shall we say? New, as ever, there is a passing and a rising generation. And the great Church and kingdom of Christ, which has been in the hands of the fathers, will soon be in the hands of the children. That glorious institution will live, though the hands which now sustain it decay. But young hands must receive it from the failing hold of the elders, and by their efforts it must he upheld. Are they ready to take it? Are they prepared to “fulfil their ministry,” because their predecessors will soon leave the task in their hands? (T. M. Herbert, M. A.)
Fuelling one’s ministry
Severalancient rulers did not find management of their dominions sufficiently burdensome, and so one of them became a fiddler, another a poet, and another an orator. The world never had a worse fiddler than Nero, nor a more wearisome poet than Dionysius, nor a more blundering orator than Caligula; and we might fearlessly assert also that the world never had worse princes than these three. Such instances are exceedingly instructive, and remind us of the sculptor’s advice to the cobbler to stick to his last. Each tub had better stand on its own bottom; for when tubs take to rolling about they spill all that they contain, be it either wine or water. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
