Jesus Christ as Risen
2 Timothy 2:8-10 · Mike Doyle · Aug 23, 2026
2 Timothy, No. 16
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/82326174036706

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, we are in Second Timothy, lesson seven. Everybody got a list of the questions? And we're functioning or dealing through in chapter two of Second Timothy, verses six through 10. And last week, Courtney about finished up verses 6 and 7. And now we'll start today on verse 8.

Verse 8 says, Paul says, Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel. So to help set this up a little bit, what these words do, they form a conclusion of the preceding paragraph rather than the beginning of a new one. So the point probably ought to go back two verses and say that we use the metaphor of a hardworking farmer ought to be the first to receive the share of his crops. And then in verse seven he said, consider that I say, what I say for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. And then he says, remember the Lord Jesus Christ risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel.

So my question five was, how does Paul present and stress Jesus Christ's life as a motivation for the Christian life. So I suppose that's one of those questions that I could spend 20 minutes setting it up. So a guy told me one time, you have to realize that there's only one Christian in the world, in existence. Who is it? It's the Lord Jesus. and everybody else is in him.

I thought, gee, that's really cool to look at it that way because what we have as members of the body of Christ is the very life of the resurrected Christ because we are in him. So when he says, remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead. Why didn't he say remember Jesus Christ crucified or buried or ascended? Why does he focus on risen from the dead? All right, somebody go to 1 Timothy chapter 2, verse 5. 1 Timothy 2, verse 5. So whoever gets there can read it.

For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Okay, so the Lord Jesus, as a man, is in a permanent position of mediation. What's a mediator do? Let's say that, let's say that JD has a problem with me and we need somebody to referee or to mediate. What does the mediator do? Let's say we have a financial, I owe him 10 bucks and I won't pay him. And so we go to the elders and one of the elders says, well I'm going to mediate this thing for you two guys. So what does the mediator do?

He represents the JD. He represents JD. Yeah, in this case, the Lord Jesus is the mediator. Who does he represent? Believers. No, he represents God. You know why? Because reconciliation was God's idea, not man's. So what he's doing as the mediator, he's making sure that what the process that he went through in terms of his crucifixion, burial, and now resurrection, That's all on God's side of the ledger. Now resurrection is to be implemented by remembering Jesus Christ risen from the dead. Because when he rose from the dead, what took place without anybody noticing it, but it really, something began that day. What was it? It wasn't here before. No? Well, no. The church doesn't start until 45 days later.

What started the day that Christ rose from the dead? The new creation. The new creation. When He rose from the dead, He was a new race of men, without sin, and he's the God-man, and we're all members of that new creation by faith in him. So at the resurrection, Paul's saying to them, remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead, descended of David according to my gospel. What does descendant of David mean?

Well, maybe I'm jumping ahead. Let's stay with this for a minute. He's encouraging them to understand who they are, who the Lord Jesus is, and what happened at the resurrection. And the Lord Jesus, well, let's see, Romans 6, I think it's 3, I'll quote it accurately. I spent half my time on my phone. Romans 6 says, 6.3 says, Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized unto his death? That's the death part. Next verse, Therefore we have been buried through him in baptism so that as Christ was raised from the dead, or from out of the dead ones, to the glory of the Father, so we might walk in newness of life.

The noun there is newness, not life. Newness, newness, newness. What is newness? It's the resurrected life of Christ. It's the beginning of a new creation. Physically, nothing changes. All of you who belong to the Lord Jesus, you look the same. Some of you are better looking than others. But you now live, the source of your life is resurrected life, which is in a new creation. And we have to wait until the revealing of the sons of God and the creation of the new heavens and earth for the world to see it. But we already are in it. We're the first fruits of the new creation. That's who we are. Does that make sense?

It's an interesting thing because we always have a tendency, I think, to look at the Lord Jesus as our Savior. He saved me from my sins so I wouldn't have to go to hell. But now we're talking about, remember Jesus, risen from the dead. Do you ever think about that in terms of you? Why would I remember him risen from the dead? But what happened that day? He rose to newness of life. Well, so did I, and so did you. And so now the focus starts to change on me and my sinfulness to new life in Christ, risen. See? Make sense? I hope so. And they make it too hard for you or too easy? So the next question is, what's the focus of the resurrection here? Mike, can I go back to a previous statement you made and just clarify for myself?

When you said Christ is the mediator between God and man, obviously that verse in 1 Timothy speaks to His humanity and His mediator, and then we get to 2 Timothy, the verses for today, where He's of the line of David. Paul is qualifying to Timothy that Christ is the God-man, so that alone makes him unique to represent God through the line of David, but it also allows him to represent man because of his humanity.

That's right. And so, surely, because reconciliation was God's idea, and therefore it was the triunity that decided on those courses of action for us fallen man, but does he not equally represent man in this scenario as well? Yeah, he does. Okay. What a mediator's job is, Let's go back to our, I owe JD 10 bucks. So the mediator says, well, Doyle, you gotta pay up. And I say, well, I don't have the money. Can I pay him $2 a week for the next five weeks? And JD says, okay, I agree to that. What's the mediator's job? To make sure that I pay. That's his job.

What's the mediator as the Lord Jesus Christ? His job is to make sure that everything that Christ did, and everything the Father wanted, and mankind perform like they have agreed to perform. Resurrected life. The mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of Christ is the one that will perform in you the life of Christ. That's his responsibility. His job is to make sure that the agreement between the Father and the Son is carried out. And then through the power of the Holy Spirit. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

So, I mean, it's cool to have a mediator because sometimes, you know, you go and beg God for stuff and And you get a letter like this from Paul that says, well, I want you to remember that Jesus risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel. What does it mean, risen from the dead?

It means that everything from their back, from God's perspective, is gone. Do you think he sits up there today thinking about your sins? No. You might sit around thinking about your sins, but he doesn't. So the mediator's job through the Holy Spirit begins to educate, spiritually, each believer that they can walk away from their sins. They've been reconciled. I guess you could say that what gave him the authority to do that is the eternal covenant. That's right. That's right.

Yeah, and there's another interesting part of this that I think we have to keep in mind. When you study Hebrews, it says, and I forget the chapter, I think it's seven or eight, it talks about the Lord Jesus, we have not been brought, oh yeah, it talks about we have not been brought to Sinai, which is a representation of smoke and fire and all of that. but to, what's the other mountain? Sinai and... Zion.

And then it says we've been brought to the mediator. So we're not under the covenant. We're aligned with the one who mediates. It doesn't say that we as a body of believers, individual believers, are under any kind of a covenant. But we have been brought to the mediator. We've been brought to the one who ensures that the arrangement between the father and the son is carried out in us. Donna.

Well, along that same thought pattern, if you Google mediator, It says a person who attempts to make people involved in a conflict come to an agreement or a go-between. So I was thinking kind of in the same vein that Jesus Christ, because of what he did and who he is, is himself the mediator between God and man, right? Yes, he is. So, he doesn't really represent just God or just man. He resolves the conflict. Between both of them. That's right. By his work, right? Yeah, that's right.

And so, let's look at it from man's side, risen from the dead, man's side. If you're in Christ, you're totally accepted. We are accepted in the Beloved. That's the mediation side of man. On God's side, he's totally satisfied with what the mediator did, the cross work of Christ. And the resurrection demonstrates another thing, that God is satisfied with the work of the cross. He didn't leave anything lacking. He cleaned up the whole mess. Put it that way. Hey Mike, I did have one other thought. So he's the only one qualified to do this job? Yes.

But we're also told that he's man's advocate. That Christ is an advocate for man. And I think that that makes sense because If God is perfectly righteous, which he is, then there will never be any wrongdoing or finding in God's perspective of mankind, especially from a judicial standpoint, right? So Christ stands as a mediator to resolve, to Donna's point, to resolve the situation, but he also advocates for man in that situation.

He does. Which is pretty amazing. Yeah, God is doing it. There isn't anybody other than him. He's doing it. A geeky thing here. The Greek has, remember Jesus risen from the dead. The perfect participle is used. I went, OK, what does that mean? Referring to an action completed in past time having present results. The perfect tense makes the permanent condition raised and still alive.

So the Lord Jesus doesn't, in 2026, decide I've had enough of those guys and I'm not going to advocate for them anymore. Well, if he had stayed on the cross, he couldn't advocate. That's right. And that's why the resurrection is important here. Well, and, I mean, I hate to pick on them, but the denomination I came out of keeps Christ on the cross for that very reason. Because they want to sell the idea that there are other human beings who are advocates, saints, whoever, they're the ones that advocate for you, the person. No. The amazing thing is, is I don't need any of them. Not at all. I have God himself advocating for me. So, pretty cool. All right.

Why do you think he mentions the seed of David here? That goes back to his Judaism days of Paul, doesn't it? It seems like he always gets that little dig in to the Jews, that that's where Christ came from as the Messiah. Well, I think we hit on it a little while ago, that because he's the God-man, he's both. The seed of David, let me write, I wrote a comment from Vincent, he said, not referring to Christ's human descent as a humiliation in contrast with victory over death, but only making his human visible nature along with his glorified nature and indicating that in both aspects he's exalted and glorified. So he's exalted and glorified as a son of God and as a son of man, as a descendant. And David is the guy that that the Lord Jesus, when he returns, will sit on David's throne. So he's both. He's not lacking in either one, or it isn't one or the other, it's both. That's why I think he mentions it.

So then he says, according to my gospel, what does the term my gospel tell us why Paul suffered? What caused him? Notice he takes ownership of the good news that he preaches. From an earthly perspective, is that selling very well? In other words, he's out preaching his gospel. unique to him, the revelation that Christ made to him, is he always successful? Or is he more than often persecuted for the information that he's... Yeah, he is. He suffers. He suffers. I've been to, you know, studying the Colossians lately because I'm up next week, next couple weeks.

It's interesting that I can't get past the fact that if you want to know why, if you look in the world today and you want to know why there's all these groups and people that are against against God, all you've got to do is read Genesis chapter 3 or the first three chapters of Genesis. If God thought about it, created it, endorsed it, they're against it.

It doesn't matter what it is. It does not matter what it is. So here comes Paul with this gospel and his gospel is unique. It's different than Peter, James, and John. identification, the church, grace, all those things are unique to Paul. And he's preaching this, and the center of his gospel is the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you're going to attack Christianity, that's who you attack. you attack Christ. You try to make sure that somebody else has more power than he has, somebody else has more influence than he has about your salvation, some other thing, human philosophy, your knowledge, like Gnosticism, or your emotions or whatever, anything but Christ. The focus is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he recognizes that when he presents the gospel, he presents the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's the pushback. That's the pushback. And I think a lot in contemporary Christianity, one of the subtleties is we've lost sight of who Christ is. The Brethren call it, you don't behold the head.

I was just thinking about, because a lot of this with Timothy, from Paul to Timothy, has to do with the stewardship side of The stewardship side of carrying sound doctrine moving forward. Absolutely. But for him to say, and he says it multiple times, not just here, but my gospel means that it's been handed to me, and I'm handing it to you, and it needs to remain consistent with what I was given from the Lord Jesus personally. So there's a very personal side to what Paul is talking about here with regards to the stewardship of... because there were a lot of good news that people were passing around, and there still is today. There's a lot of... we would call them false. But they operate as good news, like, oh, if I do these things, if my performance is up to par, then these things will happen to me, and God will reward me for them. So there's a lot of good news, Gospels, that are propagated, but Paul's saying, this is the one handed down from me personally.

Stay with it, Timothy. Stick with it. Yeah, verse two says exactly that. It says that the things which you have heard from me, you heard from me in the presence of many witnesses. Entrust those to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Notice there isn't any slack.

And oh, and your opinion's okay too, Timothy. No. the precise, exact information that I gave you about the gospel, you are to, and interesting that you say that, because in this, this is a present tense command, which means keep doing what you're doing. Keep relating the exact truth that I've given you. Keep on doing that.

That's the right thing. So you look at this verse, and Christ being raised from the dead, it puts a stress on his deity. And that he is descendant of David, it stresses his humanity. And Timothy is to contemplate not a dead Christ, but a risen one, a living Lord.

Keep doing that. See that? And so you will find, like I said before, you will find where a dead Lord is what's presented, not a resurrected one. See that? Now, we remember the death of Christ when we do the Lord's Table, but that's a remembrance. We don't put up a period after that. He says here, Remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead. Oh, that's the next thing. I see. Okay.

And then he says, for which I suffer hardship even to imprisonment as a criminal, but the word of God is not imprisoned. So my question there was, what crime did Paul commit? He says he's a criminal, a malfactor, a technical term. What evil did he do? The authorised version portrays him as an evildoer, which expresses the notion of criminality implied in the word. And so Rome found it crime and evil.

So, yeah. So here's where you get into the conflict between God's word and the government. If the city and county of Denver said churches cannot preach Christ, well, they tried to do it with COVID. They said, we can't meet. you know, all over the world said that you can't meet.

And if you do, you're a criminal. We'll arrest you and put you in jail. So Paul says, I'm a criminal. I'm arrested and I'm in jail for doing what? For preaching the gospel. Well, Who decides on criminality? I think it's the state that says if you do this, if you violate this statute, you're a criminal.

But Paul wasn't a criminal. No. But he was bound as one. Well, at this point in Paul's history, this is the last writing Who is Caesar? Nero. Nero's a fun guy. He takes Christians and dips them in tar and lights them up so he can have lights at night in the garden. He's a fun guy.

And so preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ is a capital offense. If you get caught, they'll put you to death or put you in jail. And in this case, Paul's in the Mammothine prison, and the Mammothine prison was notorious for the only people that ever got out of there went to the gallows. It's a cave. It's a hole in the ground. That's what it is.

Well, it's also interesting that Jesus was treated in the same way. Convicted as a criminal for his person, for who he was, and who he claimed to be, and he suffered the same death for this very thing. I mean, different in kind, but still, it had to be in the back of Paul's mind, right? Yeah, it's interesting because if you're a Christian and you live in Nigeria today, in a Muslim area, you can't preach the gospel.

They're going to come kill you anyway. We in America have been protected all these years. But around the world, all of these socialist people that are trying to get elected this time, if they end up in charge, Guess what? We're criminals. Yeah, you're going to be a criminal. So we're going to all have to meet at Jade's house.

The bunker. I think that actually might be in Elizabeth. Good thing that Brian and the family just got us to safe space down in the south of Denver. I don't know that you want to be up north the next day. So sorry we're coming to your place, bud. I guess you could say that Paul's crime was that he was loyal to the truth of the gospel. You know, that was his crime. Okay, verse 10.

For this reason, I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus, and with it eternal glory." It's interesting that when he makes this statement to Timothy, It substantiates a couple of the leading facts in the gospel, especially connected with the exhortation amid the false teachers by assumption that Timothy was in danger of being intimidated. Don't be intimidated. The incarnation and resurrection of Christ were two truths especially imperiled and indeed denied by their by their teaching. Incarnation, when God became a man, and we've already talked about the resurrection. But Paul says here, there's a reason for this information. At the same time, though, here you have the truths that are flourishing And Paul is being steadfast.

You know what was cool about this whole thing? It seems like Paul, when he first was imprisoned, his imprisonment wasn't in a jail somewhere. He was chained to a Praetorian guard every day, a different guy every day. And he had to go wherever the guard went. It wasn't the other way around. But he was free to talk to people, but he was linked up with this guy. Well, over time, the history is that Paul converted most of the Praetorian Guard, that they were believers. And so he knows the spread of the gospel is happening in spite of what Caesar is saying is illegal.

Now, notice he starts his sentence for this reason. What is the reason? Now notice what he says, I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ and with it eternal glory. So what's the reason? You don't really see it in the verse. The reason is because I know that God is carrying out his own work. That's the reason.

And I think we need to roll back that bunker comment because Paul didn't see himself First of all, he wasn't a criminal, and he didn't have to go hide. He was purposefully chained, and he understood the reason, to your point. The reason, the gospel wasn't chained, he was, but the gospel message and this message to Timothy was free to move forward. He was, but the message that he had been given was not. And so, he didn't go hide. He faced the reality of his own being chained, but he knew that the purpose was that there would be many that would come to know his Savior through his enslavement.

Do you think that Paul was like some of these fanatics that we see today, like this woman, white woman dressed like a muslim bought a bunch of stuff she was going to blow up, what was she going to blow up? Oh, the state capital of New York. So she's a zealot. Do you think Paul was considered a guy like her? Or someone who is out there with incredible zeal, with an agenda that is not rational? Or did his message ring true to those who it was directed towards, to the elect?

There aren't a lot of effective preachers of the gospel today. I mean, we were channel surfing last night, went through the Christian stations. Every one of them, they ought to be off the air. They're awful. No. Well, and you wonder if any of them ever read the Bible. Or they ever read it enough to sort of put the pieces together so that it, you know. Yeah, it's really interesting to There are a couple of things that are true of most of them. One is they're trying to raise money. And two is most of them have big egos.

So the last question, 13, which probably would take up, I've got a lot of notes. Who are the elect? Who are they? I'll say it in the simplest way, I suppose. Those who are in Christ. Yeah. Now, notice the verse that says, I endure all things for the sake of the gospel, for those who are chosen. In Christ. Yeah. But he's not preaching the gospel to people that are already believers. He's preaching the gospel to those who aren't believers. It's like he's out there looking for the chosen. Who are they?

Well, and if we were to take the perspective that many do with that term, elect, then Paul would have no interest in preaching in that way. The offer wouldn't be to unbelievers in that way because the elect will... God will will them into his family or his kingdom in many cases. But Paul would never have assumed that this one is elect, this one is not, and I have to be very careful about whom I tell my gospel to.

He offers it to all. Yeah. I wrote a lot of notes for this. I'll read some stuff from Schaeffer's Systematic Theology. It is God who has chosen his elect. And while this selection is both sovereign and final, nevertheless, not one human being who desires to be saved or who complies with the necessary terms of the gospel will ever be lost. A guy said to me one time, well, it's pretty simple. He said, if God didn't choose, nobody would come and everybody would be lost.

OK. It's an interesting question. And for Paul to bring up election right here is really kind of interesting, I think. And he uses the term elect. So we're out of time. So I think we'll spend a little more time next week on that and then start on the next lesson. I'll get it out this week. That's close. Father, how thankful we are for your word and how thankful we are for who the Lord Jesus is and what he has done and that we are in him, in the beloved, in your presence forever. We're thankful for that. And we pray in your son's name, amen.