Job Descriptions

    When you decide to go to work, that is, to get a job, you are handed an item that is called a “job description.”  It might be verbal and it might be written out on paper, but everyone has a job description if they are working anywhere at all.    On my first job, I was given a big shovel and told, “get the corn from the wagon into the corn crib.”  That was it.  On my second job, I was instructed to wipe off every part of the metal hanging on a conveying mechanism before it went into the paint shed to be painted Allis-Chalmers Orange.  Other jobs became more complex and were written down with detailed instructions.  The Apostle Paul instructed young Timothy with his job description and it is the same job description for every preacher today.  Second Timothy 4:1-5 says, “ I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;   Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.  For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;   And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.  But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.” 

         There are nine imperative verbs in this passage that instructs not only Timothy, but every preacher that stands in a pulpit today.  One of the excuses however for the church today is that they don’t have a “pulpit.”  they change the name to a “lectern” or a “podium”  We get hung up on the semantics and therefore say that we are not “preaching.”  Well, Paul’s first imperative to Timothy was, “Preach the Word….”  He didn’t instruct him to talk, or to teach, or to converse, or suggest or have dialogue with.  He exhorted him to preach the Word.  The rest of the nine imperatives tell him how to do it.  Neither Paul nor Timothy made people feel good by what they said. They preached the Word of God with power and conviction and people were being saved by their preaching.  In a recent seminar, great preachers were asked “What is one of the greatest dangers to the church today?”  the answer from all four of the preachers was, “The greatest fear for the church today is the watering down of the preaching of the Word of God.”  Some preachers are afraid to step on someone’s toes by naming the sins of the people.  We want to be more politically correct in how we address the problems of the world and fail to proclaim the Word of God.  Nothing has changed in the centuries between Paul and today.  The Word of God still needs to be preached from the pulpits of the world, America and here in my local city and neighborhood. The eighth imperative is to “do the work of an evangelist.”  Timothy didn’t have to hit the tent meeting circuit, but do the work of the evangelist in his own location.  In other words, there are many people sitting in the churches of the world, who are not saved.  For whatever reason, they are in a church but have had no personal experience with the Lord Jesus Christ.  I went for years knowing the phrases to say, the hymns to sing and was still as lost as can be.  Being in a church for your whole life doesn’t mean you are saved.  As one man put it,  “Just because you sit in a garage doesn’t make you a car so sitting in a church doesn’t make you a Christian.”  If you are not being exhorted by Biblical preaching, then go to some place where the Word of God is preached.  Praise God that He has given us the job description for those that are to proclaim the Word of God.