NEW ORLEANS -- Robby Gallaty, born in New Orleans, raised in nearby Chalmette and now senior pastor of Brainerd Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tenn., was back in New Orleans last week to preach in New Orleans Seminary’s Oct. 28 chapel service and lead a discipleship-focused Replicate Conference.
Speaking first to seminarians at the chapel service, Gallaty urged those present to be passionately dedicated to reading, learning and preaching God’s Word. To illustrate that dedication in dramatic fashion – and to set the context for his message – Gallaty began his sermon on 2 Timothy 4 by quoting 2 Timothy 1 through 3 — from memory.
After he reached the focal passage for his message, Gallaty posed three questions connected to 2 Timothy 4.
“I want to give you practical ways to answer three questions as we go through 2 Timothy 4,” Gallaty said. “What is the mandate that Paul gives Timothy? What is the message that we are to speak? And finally, what is the mess that we are in? When you leave here today, you will understand the mess we are in and you will be challenged to preach the message God has for us.”For that mandate, Gallaty first pointed to verse one of 2 Timothy 4, in which Paul gives Timothy a charge “in the presence of God and of Christ ... and in view of his appearing and his kingdom.”
“Did you know that we have someone watching us at all times? It may not be your pastor. It may not be your seminary professor. It may not be your mom or dad. But it’s the Lord Jesus Christ,” Gallaty said. “Paul said, ‘God’s watching you.’”
The mandate in light of the watchful eye of God: “Preach the Word,” according to verse two. And Gallaty made sure it wasn’t just vocational preachers who tuned in to that mandate.
“We’re all called to preach the Word,” he said. “That word ‘preach’ is the word for ‘proclaim,’ it’s the word for someone saying ‘good news’ to another person.”
Gallaty then turned to the message that believers are to speak. He focused first on the content of the message, and then to the response of the messenger, which includes a readiness to reprove, rebuke and exhort.
The content of the message is, simply, the Word of God.
Gallaty asked, “Do you love the Word? Do you labor over the Word? Do you delight in reading the Word?”
Gallaty later paraphrased Paul’s challenge to Timothy as, “Before you preach the Word, you have to know the Word, Timothy.” And that challenge led into Gallaty’s emphasis on readiness, which comes from consistent study and meditation on the Word over time.
“Why do we need to have readiness? Because we never know what’s coming around the corner,” he said.
And for the messenger, that readiness, according to 2 Timothy 4:2, leads to offering reprove, rebuke and exhortation. To reprove, Gallaty said, involves convincing or correcting false doctrine or false behavior using biblical arguments. To rebuke, then, is “correcting someone’s motives by convicting them of sin and leading them to repentance in the Word,” Gallaty said. Finally, to exhort is to offer direction. All this is to be done with “great patience and careful instruction,” Paul said in verse 2.
Paul’s instruction to Timothy isn’t just for his own benefit either. The motivation for verse 2 is found in verse 3, where Paul wrote, “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”
“In this text, there is a downward spiral of degradation with the people who have started with the truth,” Gallaty said.
The people first began to avoid sound teaching. They then began to accumulate false teachers, reject biblical truth and accept false teaching.
“You don’t just wander overnight. You don’t just stray away overnight. This happens in churches all across the country. They say the Word is not supreme,” Gallaty said.
Gallaty said the reasoning goes something like this: “We don’t need to preach the Word. We need to reach people. We need to find out what people need and what they feel.”
“So the Word is not supreme, and they start to incorporate videos and music and drama and every other thing. And I’m not against those things,” he said. “But when they circumvent the Word of God there is a problem.”
And to combat that slippery slope, Gallaty challenged those in attendance to rededicate themselves to the Word and let God take it from there.
Replicate Conference asks ‘Christian or disciple?’
Over the weekend, Gallaty and a host of other pastoral leaders from across the Southeast led Replicate Conference, which urged followers of Jesus to commit themselves to discipleship, rather than being Christians in name only.
Besides Gallaty, Replicate featured speakers Bill Hull, NOBTS President Chuck Kelley, Nicholls State University campus pastor Tim LaFleur and Temple Baptist Church senior pastor Tony Merida, in addition to a host of breakout speakers.
For more information about Replicate Conference or Gallaty’s “A Word From His Word” organization, go online to replicateconference.com.
-30-
Frank Michael McCormack is the assistant director of public relations at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.