2 Timothy 2:14-19
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
October 26, 2025
God is at a disadvantage. So many things and people are noisier, flashier and more attention-grabbing than He. Though God is always and everywhere doing wonderful things, it’s easy not to notice the Center of the universe and His work in it. Seeing what He’s up to takes patient attentiveness and sustained concentration like catching sight of the figure in the magic eye picture that no one sees at first glance but that slowly emerges to those who keep focused and looking.
No wonder, then, that Paul in this, his last letter to Timothy, repeats often, in various ways, that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
Paul begins this part of his letter by urging Timothy to “remind” the followers of Jesus to major, not in the minors of life, but in the main thing, which is: remaining “faithful” to Jesus by keeping one’s eye on the ball of His gospel of grace and one’s ear on its music. The Message Bible renders Paul’s command thus: “Repeat the basic essentials over and over to God’s people.”
Timothy’s people were getting distracted from the basic essentials by their “wrangling over words”, as they nitpicked about how to articulate the faith. Because they were so entangled with talking the talk right, they were neglecting the more crucial concern of walking the walk right. Such misplaced prioritization, wrote Paul, “does no good but only ruins those who are” caught up in the wordsmithing, a mistake that can “spread like gangrene” and lead many into unfaithful “impiety”.
To fight this, Timothy was to “rightly explain the word of truth”, telling it plain and simple, with no pointless hair-splitting, or empty but impressive-sounding embellishment. If Timothy avoided “chattering” and stuck to the core truths, he’d “have no need to be ashamed” as a God-approved worker. For he’d be staying true to his assignment – unlike some others.
We know only two things about Hymenaeus and Philetus. First, Hymenaeus had, according to Paul’s prior letter to Timothy, “suffered shipwreck in the faith”, and had had to be disciplined so that he might no longer “blaspheme”. Second, both Hymenaeus and Philetus had, Paul wrote in this letter, “swerved” from a truth that was no fine point of theology but a core conviction of the faith. They were claiming that “the resurrection has already taken place”. They likely meant that the resurrection of believers is not a resumption of physical life after death but only a renewed spirit after professing faith in Christ. To them, that rebirth of one’s heart was the only resurrection anyone would ever have.
Paul concluded his exhortation on this issue by urging Timothy to stick to “God’s firm foundation” revealed in scripture and what he and “many witnesses” had taught him. Into that foundation God had chiseled the truth that He knows who belongs to Him and calls “those who are His” to focus on the main thing and “turn away from wickedness”. On that foundation of spurning evil and doing good instead, the church could be built.
The primary purpose of a follower of Jesus is then clear. It is to avoid getting sidetracked by secondary matters and to focus on Jesus and doing His will.
Today we too can get entangled with wrangling over words and wasting time in unfruitful debate. But today we have something else making it all the harder to keep our eye on the ball and our ear on the music: the endless entertainment of the Internet. Former U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, called it “the most persistent distraction in history”. It can eat up all our time and cause our eyes to flutter so fast from one shiny distraction to another that they lose their capacity to focus. If we’re not careful, it can diminish our capacity to concentrate and contemplate deep things.
Two decades ago, writer Michael Crichton observed something that is now all the truer. He said, “Everybody expects to be entertained…all the time… Everyone must be amused, or they will switch [to something else]. This is the [present] reality of Western society. At other times, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But now many only want to be entertained. Their great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom.”
The Internet can keep us from boredom. If we find ourselves growing disinterested, we can in a millisecond switch to something else; and if that fails to grab our attention, we can move on again. The Internet can keep us one step ahead of boredom forever, because it never runs out of immediately engrossing things that can preoccupy us. But in that infinite quantity of preoccupations, we miss the things of highest quality. It can give us lots of communication, but little true communion with people; spectacle, but no profundity; distracting diversion, but no consequential meaning; fast fly-overs past reality, but no slow dives through its depths.
Ralph Waldo Emerson noted, “In skating over thin ice, there’s only safety in speed.” When there is little substance to the shallow surface we’re moving over, we need to move fast or we’ll fall in. That’s why YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and other Internet apps change visual images at such a rapid pace, supply a speedy sequence of different sounds, and cut from talks the natural pauses of real time speech. With something new and exciting every second, there’s no time to grow bored – or wise and understanding.
Many apps – David McNamee, the head of a social media brand agency, admitted – are designed to be addictive in order to hold the attention of those who have lost their ability to concentrate.
The problem is that all those entertainment possibilities pull us in a thousand directions at once, and prevent us from centering anywhere for long. But, to follow Jesus, is to center our lives around Him, and keep our eye on His ball and our ear on His music. It is to revolve our life around Him and His concerns. That takes intentionality and resistance to the temptation of endless entertainment. It takes, I think, carving out time to turn off our devices for a while, avoid wasteful “chattering”, reacquaint ourselves with the main thing, and grow still and quiet enough to listen for and hear the voice of God.
Susanna Wesley raised seventeen children in a small home. But she created a listening place for herself by putting a rocking chair in the kitchen and pulling a blanket over herself to make what she called her “tent of meeting” where she’d meet with God one-on-one. Someone I know claims a corner of her living room, before her family wakes up, in order to have a few moments when God has her undivided attention; another person takes long walks by himself carrying a note pad to write down what comes to him from God; another cleans up a soup kitchen after everyone is gone and sings hymns that only God hears; and still another hikes deep into the nearby woods in order to sense the Lord’s presence.
A listening place is as unique as the one inhabiting it, but each follower of Jesus needs such a place and regular time in it. How else might we keep our eye on the ball of Jesus’ gospel of grace and our ear on its beautiful music?
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