"But the Word of God Is Not Bound!" (Sermon on 2 Timothy 2:1-13)

Do you ever feel like you are constrained, held back, weighed down, by forces too powerful for you? Do you feel like you’re the prisoner of things too big for you to overcome? Perhaps it’s age. You feel the advancing years taking their toll on you. Perhaps it’s sickness. You get over one thing, and then it’s something else. More pills, more trips to the doctor. You feel like a prisoner in your own body. Perhaps it’s a guilty conscience that’s weighing you down, as you sense your own failings and those past sins that keep on dogging you. Then there’s the approach of death, and you see that vision of Marley’s Ghost, shackled with chains, rattling and haunting you in the night. All these things--the sadnesses and sorrows of life, the lack of connectedness with people we know we ought to be closer to, the sense of alienation from God tucked in the back of our head--all these things are like chains wrapped around us, weighing us down, binding us up as persons whom God designed to be free and loving, alive in his love. Today if you can sense where and how you are bound up and chained, then I want you to follow the freeing word from God I have for you now. You can hear it in the lessons for today.

Let’s start with Paul. He was bound and chained--literally. The Apostle Paul was a prisoner in a Roman jail at the time when he wrote the Epistle we heard earlier. Now Paul had been arrested and imprisoned a number of times in his career as an apostle. He had been in jail at Philippi, he and Silas had been, their feet fastened in the stocks. Then at midnight there was a great earthquake, and their chains were loosed and the doors were opened. Later Paul was arrested again, taken to Caesarea, and then off to Rome, where he was placed under house arrest for two years before being released. But that was then, and this is now. Now Paul is in prison again in Rome, only this time it’s for keeps. This time--it’s probably around the year 66 or 67--this will be the last time. This time there will be no great earthquake to break the bars and loosen the chains. This time there is no semi-free house arrest that will end in release. This imprisonment will end in Paul being executed, beheaded, for the crime of preaching the gospel of Christ.

Paul is waiting for the carrying out of that sentence as he writes to his young assistant Timothy. He reports that he is suffering for the gospel, bound, he says, “bound with chains as a criminal.” But lest young Timothy get discouraged and dismayed and deterred from his course of carrying the gospel forward, Paul adds a very important reminder: I, Paul, may be bound with chains, that is true. “But the word of God is not bound!” Did you catch that? “But the word of God is not bound!” There is the freeing message that gave confidence to Paul in the face of his impending death. There is the freeing message that gave courage to Timothy in spite of the prospect of losing his mentor and perhaps facing persecution himself. There is the freeing message that will lift your spirits today no matter what you are facing. “But the word of God is not bound!”

You see, the mighty Roman Empire could chain up the leading apostle and even put him to death, but they couldn’t chain up the word of God. After Paul there would come a Timothy. And what Timothy had heard from Paul, he then would entrust to faithful men who in turn would be able to teach others also. There would be no lack of proclaimers of God’s word. And so it goes, even down to our day. The word of God is not bound. It was not bound by persecution. It was not bound to the age of the apostles. The word of God is alive and free and active, mightier than any Roman chains, and it frees up those who are captured by it. That’s Paul and Timothy; that’s you and me.

The word of God is not bound. It never has been. Even hundreds of years before Paul, back in the days of the Old Testament. Now to be sure, the nation of Israel had been entrusted with the task of being the caretaker, the guardian, if you will, of God’s word. But even so, God’s word of blessing was not limited to only those from Israel. Take the story of Ruth, for example. Ruth was a Moabitess, a woman from the country of Moab. And Moab was not Israel. And so Ruth the Moabitess was outside the covenant of blessing the Lord had established with Abraham. Or was she? For had not the Lord told Abraham: “I will bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing. In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Well, here was Ruth, from one of those other families or nations of the earth. And by coming into contact with the people God had chosen to be the carriers of his word, she too came into the blessing! The word of God was not bound by nationality, but rather was designed to cross that boundary and bring blessing to all around. Which it did, in the case of Ruth.

The word of God is not bound. It was not bound by persecution; it was not bound by nationality. The word of God reaches out and frees and blesses. That’s what happened also in the case of the lepers, whom we saw from afar in today’s Gospel. We had to see them from afar, because lepers are unclean. They have this terrible skin disease, you see, and we can’t come into contact with them. We might get the disease ourselves, and at any rate close contact will render us unclean as far as entering the temple is concerned. “Unclean!” they must cry, to keep us away. Only this time they cry something else: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Yes, they sense in Jesus someone who can do something about their problem. They sense and hope for in Jesus someone who will bring a word of mercy to them from God, a powerful, effective word that can really do something to help. And they’re right. Jesus is the right guy to ask for such a word. Which is what he speaks, and does. He tells the lepers to go and show themselves to those who will attest to their healing, and even before they get there, as they go, they are cleansed. God’s word of mercy and cleansing and healing was not bound by their disease.

But there’s even more. One of the men whom Jesus healed was a Samaritan. Like Ruth the Moabitess, this Samaritan leper was an outsider--several times over, not only unclean because of his skin disease, but also impure according to his ethnicity and his religious practice. But the word of God is not bound by any of that. Jesus overcomes the barriers, receives and welcomes, helps and even commends the Samaritan leper. Jesus is in the business of showing mercy on all sorts of people, even folks like you and me.

So where do you find yourself in these stories? What are the chains of hopelessness that would try to lock you in, and lock you out from God’s mercy? Is it the fear of what people might think of you or do to you, if you really dared to live as a faithful Christian? Then hear the message that freed up Paul and Timothy in the face of persecution: God’s word is not bound! And therefore you are not bound by fear! What is the chain that binds you? Is it the sense of being an outsider, like you’re someone whom God doesn’t want to bless or help? Then hear the word that blessed Ruth: The God of Israel is your God too! God makes insiders out of outsiders. Hear the word that helped the lepers, even the Samaritan one: Jesus wants to have mercy on you! Because your faith is in Jesus Christ, your faith will make you well. In both soul and body, your faith will save you, for eternity. Not because it is “your faith,” as though that were any great thing. But no, because it is faith in the right object, namely, Jesus Christ, who saves you solely because he wants to, apart from anything in you.

Jesus--he brings the word of God to you. Jesus--he is the Word of God for you! And the word of God is not bound! This is the gospel word I’m talking about here. The word of good news from God, centered in the Savior who breaks all your chains and sets you free! You know this word. You hunger and thirst to hear it again and again, for it is the word that gives you life. Remember Jesus Christ, the Son of God come to earth to be your Savior. Remember Jesus Christ, crucified for all your sins. Those were the real chains that tied you down, and Jesus let those chains be laid on him, in the form of the nails driven through his hands and feet--nails that bound him to the cross, where he suffered and died for you, in your place. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, having burst the bonds of sin and death that chained all of humanity to the tomb. Those chains are broken! Christ did it! Yes, this is the gospel being preached to you today, my friends! It is for you, that you also “may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.” “Be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”

God answers our prayer even before we pray it! For God’s Word, “as becometh it,” is indeed “not bound,” but is having “free course” and is being preached--once again today--“to the joy and edifying of Christ’s holy people!”

2 Timothy 2:1-13 (ESV)

You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.

Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the word of God is not bound! Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is trustworthy, for:

If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he also will deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful--

for he cannot deny himself.

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