A Faithful, Dedicated Life

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. Our New Testament reading and our text for our sermon this morning as we started this last Lord's Day when we were here, a short series out of 2 Timothy. Next week we'll be back at the Washington Church. Pastor Brian will be back for one week and then he will be off for a trip of two weeks to India, so I'll be back then for a couple of weeks then. So we will pick up and cover most of the material in 2 Timothy. As I said last week, perhaps you'll invite me back again sometime and I can finish that particular little book up. But let's hear God's word. You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And what you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men. who will be able to teach others also.

Share in suffering is a good soldier of Christ. 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 I may also 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 have lived with Him. If we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He will also deny us. If we are faithless, He remains faithful. The word of the Lord stands forever.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray before we look at that word. Father, this is your word. It speaks to us about being faithful. And we come to explore what your word teaches us today. I pray that I would be faithful in my exposition, that we would be faithful in listening and hearing and then responding, and that we would be grateful for the word that you've given to us, that it would be living and powerful and sharp as you promised it would be, for our edification and our building up to do the work of your kingdom.

Sermon

We thank you for this word today, for in Christ's name we pray, amen. As we mentioned last week when we started this short series out of 2 Timothy, this is the last epistle of the Apostle Paul. It's his last, you might say in some ways, kind of his last will and testament. As he passes on to Timothy, this young preacher, who had been sort of his right-hand man, his young protege, shall we say. And he passes on an emphasis in this portion of the word, of this epistle today, on being faithful to the calling that Timothy has as a minister of the gospel. Now, lest we immediately, all of you sitting out there saying, well, that's for you. I'm not a minister. I can tune out now. Nothing for me to learn here. Not necessarily so at all.

Because as Timothy is told to guard the deposit of the gospel, to preach the word, to be a faithful servant of God, even when others have abandoned Paul and the gospel that he preached, which is one of the things that we will see will be developed later on in this epistle, These very exhortations that Timothy receives about being faithful, being a faithful minister, are the basic principles of just what being a faithful, dedicated Christian would be. In one sense, the very principles that Timothy has to live by as to be a faithful minister are the same principles that we have to live by, all of us, as faithful believers, no matter what our role is in the church, or as servants of God in His kingdom.

So, as we look at these, there are five directives that we want to look at, or four rather, this morning, what we are to do. And the first thing that we need to see is that we are to draw upon God's gracious strength. Look at the first verse of this passage.

You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. A little grammar lesson here. the word strengthened here, he says, be strengthened. It's an imperative, which means something we are supposed to do, but it's also in the passive voice. He doesn't say, you're strong, so now show it. He says, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. In other words, we are to let ourselves be strengthened by the grace that is found in Christ. Now, some underlying assumptions under that statement. First of all, first assumption is we don't have any strength, which is absolutely true.

We don't have the strength to lead the callings that God has placed upon us. Timothy, this young pastor, I can guarantee you as a retired minister that Nobody who enters the ministry ever feels they have the strength to do that. Pastors are not superhuman beings, super spiritual people.

They're people that God has given a calling to proclaim the Word of God. Timothy is told here, be strengthened by the grace of God in Christ. All of us need that strengthening if we are going to serve God. This is fundamental to all of our lives as Christians. over and over again, the scripture reminds us to avoid the temptation to overestimate our strength. Sometimes the language is pretty strong, take heed lest you fall. In other words, there's a strong temptation for us to think we're much stronger than we are. The reality, seeing the reality of our weakness is the primary reason why we must depend upon the strength of God found in Christ.

And that grace that he has been speaking about is the grace that he talked about in the first chapter. That grace that we saw when we looked at that first chapter last week. A grace that really is grace. You might say, well, just remind me, what was that grace that we talked about?

It's something that comes to us, we often sometimes will use the phrase unmerited favor, which is true, but doesn't go far enough, because it's unmerited favor to those who deserve just the opposite, deserve judgment. We all naturally, Paul says, are children of wrath, which is a little softer way of saying people on the road to hell. People who have nothing in our hands to stand before God. And it's all because of His grace. Totally undeserved.

Grace that was there, Paul had reminded us in chapter one, verse 10, was there before the foundation. Actually, it's in verse eight. It was there before the beginning of time. God had chosen us. And Paul will refer to the elect later on in this passage that we read this morning.

This is a grace that can strengthen us because as he says in verse 10, it brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. Paul never gets far away from the Gospel, and we're going to see that in this passage as it's fleshed out. The Gospel is the foundation on which the Apostle Paul stands. Our Lord Jesus Christ, he said, brought life and immortality through the Gospel. The foundation that we have is based on what Jesus Christ has done. We have no strength, no hope of our own.

Remember when Paul, at one time, had what he called the thorn in the flesh? We don't know exactly what that thorn in the flesh was. It seems to have been some sort of physical illness, and scholars have speculated, you know, eye trouble is one thing because he talks about writing with big letters, and maybe it was, but we don't know. He never really gets specific. He just uses the language of a thorn in the flesh. You ever got a thorn stuck in you?

You can function, but it sure is irritating. It sure is something that bothers you. It sure is something that you say, I wish I could get rid of this. Every one of us has had one of those things where you get a bad splinter. That's the closest thing. And it's just irritating. Every mother has tried to help get that splinter. We just had a grandson that got a splinter in his foot. apparently this past week, and our daughter-in-law had to work to get it out of him. Her grandson fainted, apparently, a little eight-year-old boy. It bothered him. There was that splinter in his foot. And Paul says, I had a thorn in the flesh. He prayed. He prayed and prayed. God, take this away from me. This is an irritant. It bothers me. I can't do the work as effectively as you called me to do because of this thorn in the flesh.

And what was God's answer to him? My strength is made perfect in your weakness. Live with it, Paul. I will provide the strength for you to live with this thorn in the flesh. We constantly need to learn that lesson. Because just as Timothy is reminded here, be strong, be strengthened by the grace that's in our Lord Jesus Christ. He's saying, Timothy, you're a young guy. You're probably looking at this world and it looks overwhelming to you. You're being sent out to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

Knowing full well that I, Paul, because Paul is in chains. He actually refers to it here in this passage. I'm in prison. Timothy is knowing full well, if I go out to do that, if my mentor Paul is in change, what do you think is possibly going to happen to me? But be strong. Be strong in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, Timothy.

Now, there's a tendency, a natural human tendency, to respond in two problematic ways. One is to place too much confidence in our own strength. The other one is to admit our weakness And then, I'm weak, so I guess I can't do anything. I guess I can't do one single thing.

Both of those would be misreading what Paul is saying here. He doesn't say, you're weak, Timothy, so take off your shoes, get in the rocking chair on the porch and sit a spell. He doesn't say, well, pray for grace and then get out there and get cocky, Timothy. Neither one of those. He says, be strengthened by the grace that's found in Jesus Christ.

Paul elsewhere will say in Philippians 4.13, we can do all things, how? Through Christ who strengthens us.

This is quite different than just believe in yourself kind of thing. I'm not a huge sports fan, but I do follow some sports. Baseball is more my sport than anything else. Sometimes I get really sick and tired of those post-victory interviews when that, lately there's always a young gal that they send out with the microphone, and she shoves it in the face of the coach or the winning, especially the winning team, and what do you think about this?

Well, we just believed in ourselves. We just, that's why we won the championship. We believed in ourselves. And there's sometimes I feel like screaming at the TV, well, you don't think the other team believed in itself too? And they lost. They believed in themselves and they lost. Don't you ever have that response? Like, what do you think, only the winning team believed in itself? But the point is, you can believe in yourself all you want. That doesn't mean that you're going to have strength. Paul says be strong in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because it's Christ who gives us strength. Crucial. And that's foundational for all of us for taking any risks for the Kingdom of God.

Risks that otherwise would look incredibly foolish in human eyes. Sometimes the world looks at Christians and they say, what you're doing looks incredibly foolish to me. Well, sometimes it does. Why do we take those risks? Why do we put our life on the line sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively? Because we're being strong by the grace that's in our Lord Jesus Christ. God does allow hard times to come our way sometimes. We will have thorns in the flesh. We'll have those irritants, sometimes small, sometimes quite large.

I don't know how large Paul's thorn in the flesh was. He doesn't say. But he gets one response back from the Lord after praying three times, Lord, deliver me from this. The answer is the same every time. My power is made perfect in your weakness. That's the way we live. My power is made perfect in your weakness. The second principle that Paul will develop in this passage is to have single-mindedness.

He uses three specific examples. The soldier, the athlete, and the farmer. This is interesting that he has three, because I think it will cover just about everybody in here. Some of you have served in the military. A number of you have been athletes. I know some of you are farmers or have been farmers. grew up on a farm are very well aware of what's involved with farming. But each one of these three images, the farmer, the athlete, and the soldier, are all focused on the single-mindedness.

His share in sufferings is a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who called him, enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules, the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. A soldier is someone who is recruited to be on duty and is not to allow civilian affairs to distract him. Now, soldiers will sometimes, people in the Army or the Navy or the Marines or the Air Force in our setting, Coast Guard will sometimes get leaves. But those are just for times of rejuvenation. And what are they called back to? They're called back. They're deployed.

We follow the chaplaincy. prayer list that the various NAPARC chaplains, there are RP and OP and PCA and ARP and URC chaplains on this and every day in our prayer time, we pray for a different chaplain. If you've never seen this, I would highly recommend it. It's a very good thing to pray for chaplains. You can just get it.

The PCA actually, monitors it and puts it together. So just go to the Joint Council on Presbyterian Reformed Chaplains, I think is the name of it. But we read about military chaplains and they talk about the readiness and that they have to go out with the men on training. And this training is designed to get men ready. So when they need to be deployed, they're ready. There's a single-mindedness. And a soldier or a sailor, an airman, a marine, can't let civilian affairs distract him. If he's focused on civilian affairs, he won't do his job.

The athlete competes, Paul says here, by being prepared and single-minded. and does not, unless he competes according to the rules. And the rules here probably, we're pretty sure of this, include the rules that athletes at this time had to sign pledges that they would train for 10 months before they competed. You know, we have athletes that compete. Have you ever followed high-level athletes and see all the training that they have to do? It's really professional sports in particular.

As I said, I follow baseball. And I know that when I was a kid, Major League Baseball players used to get jobs in the off-season, selling cars or whatever they would do. Simply because, oh, it's October, and our team didn't make the World Series, so now I'll get a job selling cars. Then come about February when spring training, I'll get out there and shake the creaks out of my muscles a little bit, get the pitching arm going a little bit, and we'll go. Now what do they do? They lift weights, they train, they do all year round, because they are single-minded to win those prizes. As Paul will say elsewhere, those are perishable crowns. They're perishable crowns.

The farmer I think this is something many of you can relate to. You have to be single-minded putting that crop in. You don't fire up that combine in October and go out there and say, okay, I think I'd like to harvest 180 bushel corn right now. Let me fire up the combine and let me go out there. Unless you plan, found the right seed for your crop, for your soil, planted it, Work through, how am I going to plant it? And am I going to do full tillage, minimal tillage, no till? What kind of chemicals am I going to put on it?

There's a single-mindedness to say, I want that good yield corn. I'd rather top 200 bushels an acre in my crops, not just 180. I want a good yield. It doesn't happen without single-minded devotion to saying, I want that crop so that when I fire up that combine in October, there's going to be a corn crop there that matters.

You're entangled, you're focused. In other words, what Paul is saying here, if we are going to be faithful, dedicated people, just like Timothy was dedicated, we need to cultivate a focus on the glory of Christ and pleasing Him in all that we do. As this text tells us though, this is not a kind of self-denial that ends in ultimate futility, but rather a realization that a focus on Christ is a focus on what will ultimately satisfy. And unless we ourselves, no matter what calling God has placed us here on earth, no matter what we do in our, shall we say, in our Monday through Saturday work, if we don't have a single-minded focus on Christ, ultimately even those things that can bring momentary satisfaction in this earth will not bring satisfaction.

I like a lot of different kinds of music, but one of the kinds of music I like is older jazz. And there was a famous jazz singer named Peggy Lee, some of you older maybe remember her, a lady with light blonde hair, and she sang with a number of the big bands, and there was one song that she sang that has always stuck in my mind.

It was called, Is That All There Is? And she would go through a bunch of different things, and she would say, I tried this. It was like a book of Ecclesiastes almost. I tried that, I tried this, I tried that. Nah, nothing satisfied. And the chorus is pretty dark and grim in some ways.

If that's all there is, let's bring out the booze and let's start dancing. That's what she says. If that's all there is, let's bring out the booze and start dancing. In other words, if all there is is this world, might just drown your sorrows, because it's going to ultimately do nothing but disappoint you.

Paul is saying the farmer, the soldier, the athlete are single-minded in what they're going to do. Why and how should we be single-minded as well? This has implications for every calling that God has placed us in. It means that we will be diligent to watch out so that we don't get distracted. John Piper, the well-known, retired now, but he was a well-known pastor in Minneapolis for many years, he said this. He wrote a book on this called The Wasted Life, actually, and he said, The wasted life is the life without a passion for the supremacy of God and all things for the joy of all peoples. If Christ is not supreme in your life, your life is being wasted. Now, you might ask, well, does that mean I can't relax? Can't watch some sports? Can't have some occasional entertainment? Can't care for my job?

No, because God has called us to do many things in life. But what it does mean is this. We must live everything we do in light of the fact that we will stand before the judgment seat of Christ one day. And this is pretty scary if you think about it. And that we will have to get an account for every dime we spent every moment we spent, every conversation we spoke, everything that we have done. Pretty overwhelming if you think about it. In other words, having a singular passion for Christ will change everything we do.

It probably will make us more diligent at work, but it may mean there are times when we'll have to say, no, don't need to spend that much time at work. I've got other things for the work of the Kingdom that maybe I need to focus on here. It means we will do our callings with far different attitudes and motives than our colleagues, friends, and neighbors. It may mean sometimes we will turn the TV off, sometimes we'll turn the computer off.

As I said, I love sports. I love baseball. I have a colleague in my presbytery who shares that love with baseball. As a matter of fact, I grew up not far from here. I grew up in the Washington Church. Jim Mechelson, who's a pastor in our presbytery, he loves baseball, too.

He told me one time, he said, well, sometimes it's playoff time, which it is right now. He said, I wish I had thought about taking a vacation. He said, then I could just watch baseball playoffs all week. know some of you might say you know there's certain times you know i remember when i went to presbytery one time and i have a nephew and his wife they lived like two blocks away from one of our churches so i stayed with him and his wife they both grew up in christian homes but uh i don't know for sure what what they would say about their personal faith but they don't they don't ever attend church or anything and they never seem to have minimal interest in the Lord, but the one thing that they do have passion about is sports.

It happened to be in the spring and it was the NCAA basketball tournament. I remember they took time off from work and they had like two giant screen TVs and they had one game going on one and one game going on another and then the little screens in the corner games going and they're watching like four games simultaneously.

And it just sort of struck me. Because here our lives are just consumed with sports. We've all run into people like that. No, it's not to pick on sports. As I said, I like baseball. And I like watching the games. I like going to a game once in a while. And there's something good about that.

But when your life becomes consumed with some things and Christ is not the center of your life, You'll be like that Peggy Lee song. Is that all there is? If that's it, bring out the booze and start dancing. Our focus needs to be that Jesus Christ is the center of our life. His beauty, His majesty.

It'll put sin and temptation into very different lights. Because sin is really at its heart, as Paul says, falling short of the glory of God. Sin is a distortion in that we become convinced that it can give us something that it really can't. Have you ever thought about sin that way? The world constantly tells us, do this, it'll give you joy and pleasure. Yeah, 30 seconds maybe, not lasting. Christ is the only one who can give lasting pleasure. Sin is moving away our focus from the glory of Christ.

It means that we will ask questions about everything we do, all the ways in which we organize and focus our lives. How does this activity help me treasure Christ more? How does this help me live for God's glory? Even in the most mundane things that we do, If you're a farmer, we've talked about farmers, when you, this time of year, fire up that combine, you're asking, how does firing up that combine early tomorrow morning help me live for the glory of God? You gotta think through that.

That is the way we live in this world. How does it help me display that I belong to Jesus Christ? What is your own, the old Heidelberg Catechism, question one said, what is your only comfort in life and death? The answer is that I belong body and soul to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. He has purchased me with His own blood as promised that all things will work together for good. That's the central focus of our lives.

But Paul will also go on to say that this will lead to a focus to serving others. There's very much an other focus in this passage. First of all, verse 2, Timothy is told what you heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and trust of faithful men. who will teach others also. Timothy's got a job to pass on. He says, you heard the gospel from me. You heard about the truth of God's word from me. You pass it on, Timothy. I pass it on to you. You pass it on to others. They in turn will pass it on to others as well.

Faithful men, he says here. Now, the whole organizations that had taken this as a model, when I was at the University of Wisconsin many years ago as a student, I wasn't involved with the Navigators organization, but I had friends that were, and this was their model. They called it spiritual multiplication. They said, you know, I remember seeing a friend of mine who was in Navigators, and he made these neat charts. He says, got one, and he says, and you pass it on to another one. He passes it on to somebody else and then these other people.

And he says, pretty soon you got all kinds of faithful Christians. And he said, and he was pretty enthusiastic. He said, it isn't far along before the world was dominated by faithful Christians. Now he was maybe being a little overly optimistic on how long it takes mature Christians to grow. But his point was made clear.

That's the way the gospel spreads through spiritual multiplication. We see that in our families. We pass the gospel on to our kids. The gospel of Jesus Christ, some have said, is only a generation away from extinction. But by the grace of God and the diligence of faithful men, it spreads. Think about this. At the time Paul was speaking this to Timothy, you could count on the fingers of a few hands the number of serious Christians in this world. Think of how the gospel has spread since then. It is spread throughout the world. It's still spreading throughout the world.

Not every generation comes up, needs to be taught the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our kids need to be taught the gospel. They need to teach their kids. That's a faithful passing on. And our grandkids need to be told the gospel. Faithful grandparents will do that. They will not only teach their kids, but they'll see how they can be used in the life of their grandkids. But the main point that we ought to see about this is this is taking the focus off of our needs and seeing that it's far more important to be prayerfully focused, to be attentive on the needs of the others that we will pass the faith on.

Paul exemplifies this when he says in verse 10, he says, I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they may obtain the salvation. Did you catch what he said here? Just as I told you, Timothy, that you need to pass on. Pass on to faithful men who will teach others. I've been trying to do that.

He said, God has His elect and I'm willing to do or anything that they would be brought in. The ultimate statement of that is in Romans 9, that opening those opening few verses. Did you see what Paul said about that? He says, my countrymen, my kinsmen, the Jewish people, he said, I would rather be damned. That's literally what he is saying. If they would be saved. Now, God doesn't work that way. There's only one Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. We can't say I'm willing to be damned so that my grandkids or my neighbors would be saved.

And that's kind of a figure of speech Paul is saying, but you get what he's driving at there. It's the same thing here. He says, I would do, endure everything for the sake of the elect. Now, this is, as I said, it's not an idle chain claim here. He says, I am in chains, but he says the word of God is not bound. Do you see this play on words that he's doing here? I'm bound by chains, I'm in prison, but God's word isn't bound. God's word is going forth. Now, some people who don't understand the logic of Biblical thinking scratch their heads. They tend to say, OK, Paul, you believe you got these elect people out there.

Why in the world are you willing to be chained? Don't you think God can save them without you needing to be chained? Maybe you need to work harder to get yourself out of chains. Tone down your message somehow. just ease off a little bit, so you're not chained. God's gonna save those people whether you become bold and end up in prison.

And this has been said before, but it was William Carey, the Calvinistic Baptist missionary, a man who started the modern missionary movement in the late 18th century in England, was speaking to his Baptist association, and these people were not only Calvinist, but some of them tended toward hyper-Calvinism, because he got up and said, I believe God, he wrote a pamphlet on this, God is going to use means to bring people to saving faith. And I believe God has called me to be a missionary. And God did. He spent the rest of his life in India as a missionary, dying there.

And a man supposedly stood up, another member of the Baptist Association, and said, well, Brother Carey, don't you think God can save those people without you having to go over there? And that's a loaded question, because the answer is, of course God could, but that's not what God says He's going to do. He's going to use a man like William Carey, who would burn out his life, and Carey understood this, to preach the good news of the gospel.

Carey didn't see a lot of converts. He spent years trying to learn the languages, even. He translated the scriptures into the Bengali language and some other languages. He didn't see a lot of converts. But I believe God has said there were going to be people there. I'm reminded of a professor at the Seminary Trinity Divinity School where I went. Pastor Brian did some of his studies there as well. There was a professor there named Don Carson. And his dad had been a pastor in French-speaking Canada. Dr. Carson's a little older than I am. He's been retired for a few years.

So his dad would have been about my parents' age. maybe a little older, but his dad preached and preached and saw minimal converts. The Protestant churches in French speaking Canada were tiny. Make your church here look like a big church. They were small.

And he asked his dad one time, dad, his dad believed in the doctrines of sovereign grace. He asked his dad, well, why do you do this? Why do you preach so that 10 people can show up at your church Lord's day after Lord's day? And he said, his dad, looked at him in the eye and said, well, Don, you know, and he said, he spoke in King James language. And so he's used King James term, just like Paul, when he was told, I have much people in this city.

He said, I believe God has much people among the French Canadians. And now there are thriving Bible believing churches. There's an evangelical reform church of Canada, French-speaking. Evangelical, you know, my French is pretty rusty right now, but it's a French-speaking reform church. There are Calvinistic Baptist churches in French-speaking Canada. Dr. Carson's dad's ministry had fruit later.

Paul says, I endure everything for the sake of the elect. God is at work in this world. He's gonna bring his people in. We are called to glorify God, but God is going to be most glorified as his grace is displayed. And of course, the ultimate display of God's glory is in the salvation of totally undeserving sinners. We need to see then that serving others is what God calls us to do. He calls us to glorify Him as we are willing to pour out our lives for others.

Paul says, the gospel compels me. The grace of God constrains me, he will say in Corinthians, because I know the gospel and it drives me. God knocked me flat on my back, blinded me on the road to Damascus. I was the chief of sinners, but God called me.

This goes against, of course, our modern culture that always asks the question, what's in it for me? Maybe people have always asked that. What's in it for me? Lots of people do. What's in it for me? I just recently read about a man who said he was called to study theology and someone asked him, well, why do you want to do that? There's not much money in studying theology. Someone asked him that. There's not much money in studying theology. We can get that as well.

I'll never forget it. My aunt has been long gone, but I had a cousin who was a minister in another denomination, and I understand he preached the word of God, but we were at a family gathering. My cousin wasn't there, but aunt. She wasn't the parent of either me or my cousin, but at a family gathering, she asked me one time what I was going to do, and I mentioned about taking a call to church, and she said, well, is this a bigger church than you had before? I said, well, no. She says, well, you know, I don't want to be like Buddy. That was my cousin's nickname in the family.

He got a bigger church on his second call. It was sort of like, huh? Is that the way pastors are supposed to think? We're supposed to think my church has to be a bigger church on my second call, or my third call, or my fourth call, whatever. How many calls a pastor has? Paul's not thinking that way.

We need to be willing to pour out our lives into faithful people so that the faith will be transmitted from generation to generation. And to do that, we need to have a mindset that says, I am willing to pour out my life for others. God clearly honored those attitudes. But only by graciously seeking His power, going back to that first point, we don't have any strength in our own, but we seek His power and the Holy Spirit will use us to have that faithful attitude that says, I'm going to pour out my life for others.

This leads us to the last point we want to make and that's where Paul comes back full circle to the Gospel. He says this faithful Gospel of Christ is our only foundation. After he says he will He would be willing to do anything for the sake of the elect. He says this is a trustworthy statement. If we died with Him, we will also live with Him. If we endure, we will reign with Him. If we deny Him, He will deny us. If we are faithless, He remains faithful.

This is clearly an interesting statement, the way, and even in the form that it's here. Scholars have kind of wrestled with this and said, this clearly sounds like something that was repeated in the church. Some have said it's an early church creed. Some, I'm sure they were not RPs though, but they said it may be an early church hymn. But the point is that This has a very interesting statement. It has an if this, then that. There's a technical grammatical term, a portosis and an apotis, if you're a grammar grammarian. But the form here, if this is true, then that will be true.

It's the last of the faithful sayings in the books of 1st and 2nd Timothy. You know, scholars of studies, I first ran into this was a young pastor when a noted reformed New Testament scholar, George Knight, wrote a book on the faithful sayings in the pastoral epistles. These were faithful sayings, pithy statements of basic Christian truth that may have been some sort of slogans that everybody could memorize and get in their mind. The focus of this both calls us to faithful living while warning us what failure would look like. Did you see what he said here? If we guide with Him, we will live with Him. If we endure or reign with Him, if we deny Him, He will deny us. But if we are faithless, He will remain faithful.

That last phrase, I think, is the key to understanding what this faithful saying is all about. Some have said this is probably referring that God will be faithful to bring His judgment. That's possible. But I'm not convinced by that. I think this is because Paul almost always uses the faithfulness of God in connection with His grace. That Paul is saying here, yeah, we understand our weaknesses. We understand our failures. But God in His grace is always faithful. He never lets us down. This is so crucial for us. He says, we know, we've died with Him.

Romans 6 is the great chapter. A couple of weeks ago in second service at the Washington Church, I preached on Romans 6, that great passage where He says, you have been united with Christ in His death. Christ died. You were united with Him. When He went to the cross, He went to the cross for you and me if we are Christians. He died so that sin could be broken. The debt of punishment is taken care of. Christ died for us, but He says we will live with Him.

That's also in Romans 6. He was raised to newness of life. So we live in the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is crucial for us when we think about the fact that Paul has been calling for this single-minded, dedicated focus on Jesus Christ. Our temptation is to say, isn't that the temptation? Yeah, I know.

I've been encouraged about that before, but you don't know me. You don't know what kind of a failure as a Christian I am. Every day I look at myself in the mirror And I say, hmm, another day, I know I've wasted, Lord. If we're honest, we can look back and say there was that time, there was that opportunity, there was that way where I was focused on myself, not on serving you. The temptation is, of course, to give up or to despair. If you end up in despair, the temptation is to say, I must have denied him.

Christians will struggle with that sometimes. There are Christians who do struggle with despair. Every pastor has that. In one church that I served, I knew if I had a sermon that had even a whiff of self-examination, on Tuesday I was gonna get a phone call from someone in the church.

It was a female, and she was a dear, godly woman. But she would start out like this, I'm not sure I'm a Christian. And her husband knew about this, and he was a godly man too, and he would try to counsel her. But she struggled on such a failure. And everybody else would look at her and say, huh? Here's a model of a godly woman. But she had a really super tender conscience. And she tended to see herself as a failure. I must not be a Christian.

I remember the first time I shared that in the Evangelical Pastors Fellowship that we had in the Iowa City area, and I shared this with some of my colleagues, and they said, well, you just have to have her memorize all the assurance verses. I thought, okay, that sounds good, but I looked at them and said, yeah, that's the first thing I did when she, the first time she called, and she said, oh, you mean the ones that my previous pastor had me memorize? She had learned them all in King James, and she could repeat all of them word perfect. It wasn't a matter of not knowing the assurance verses in Scripture.

It was a sense of looking at herself and saying, I must be a failure. When we are tempted, we will say, it must be no use in trying to be single-focused on Christ because my attempts at single-minded devotion fail over and over again. But this is where the gospel comes in. Because this passage reminds us, if we are faithless, He is faithful. Let me read that again. If we are faithless, He is faithful. He cannot deny Himself. He's pledged Himself for us. Just as we mentioned last week. All Christians who are members of a church, most churches anyway, there are a handful of churches that get sloppy on this, but have been baptized. What is that baptism? Among several things we can say about. One crucial thing is this.

That's God's pledge to us. That's God's way of saying you may be faithless at times. I am faithful. You know, I said this last week, but I'll repeat it again. When Martin Luther, who struggled with a certain amount of despair in his life, when he would have despair, you know what he would tell himself? I've been baptized. You might say, that seems odd. Why would you tell yourself you've been baptized? Because Luther understood that baptism was God's way of saying, I'm faithful. You may despair. You may be faithless at times.

I never am. He can't deny himself. That is the great hope when we think about living this dedicated life that he's talking about here. God can't deny himself. He hangs in there with us even when we fail. This is more than just forgiving us. It also means transforming us.

God isn't done with you yet, just like he's not done with me. You may feel like, oh Lord, you probably by now washed your hands of me and said, okay, what in the world am I gonna do with her? What am I gonna do with him? They seem to be failures all over the place.

That's what some Christians are tempted to think sometimes. But if we are genuine believers in Jesus Christ, we have been united with him, his spirit has been poured out on us, we are forgiven, and we have the hope that He will never leave us nor forsake us. We can anticipate that we can, by depending on Jesus Christ, make progress in our genuine devotion and developing more single-minded dedication to Him. Now, when I go back, not this coming Sunday, a week from now, but when I go back to Washington after, before their new pastor who will arrive sometime probably in December, I'm gonna get into Romans 7.

You know, that's that great chapter where Paul wrestles with this. And he says, the things I want to do, I don't do. And the things that I find myself not wanting to do, those things, those are the things I do. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

And then he says in chapter eight, begins chapter eight, with thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. You know, there was a strand of Christian thinking, sometimes it's called holiness thinking, that somehow you live in Romans 7 and then you can, as I said last week, apparently Pastor Brian posted this in some little Twitter quip or something like that, my flying carpet analogy. So I'll give it to you again, if he liked it, it's good. That means, you know, where people think, you know, by an act of faith I can jump on this magic carpet. and just goes, no struggle, single-minded devotion, we fly over all the struggles. That's the idea that says you get out of chapter seven and get into chapter eight.

There was a famous Presbyterian minister in Scotland who every time he would get a new book in the mail that dealt with the Christian life, he would open it up and see what does it do with Romans seven. And if it said that that was something not that every Christian struggled with, he would package it back up and send it back to the bookseller and said, this book is not for me. That was Alexander White. He wrote a commentary on the Shorter Catechism.

But there's some truth to that. Well, so what do we mean? What does this mean then? We live simultaneously in Romans 7 and Romans 8. The struggle is there and the victory is there, both at the same time. We know the Spirit has been poured out. We know that God will never leave us or forsake us. Romans 8 crescendos up to that huge, who can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus?

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Hallelujah. Who can separate us from the love of God and Christ? Nothing. After that long list that Paul gives, angels, principalities, powers, things present, things to come, you can go back and read that. Nothing. That's his answer.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God and Christ Jesus. If we are faithless, He is faithful. A Gospel centered approach should constantly remind us that every good thing we have is because of the work of Jesus Christ. That's why Paul says, I can glory in nothing but the cross.

He says that a couple of times, 1 Corinthians 2.2 and Galatians 6.14. Nothing but the cross of Jesus Christ.

Now having a Gospel centered approach like this to our lives will enable us to take the risks that God calls us to take. We know we've been purchased. His spirit has indwelt us so that we can glorify Him with our lives. Bearing the cross is paradoxically the source of the greatest joy, at least it should be, in our lives. After all, Christ bore the cross for us.

Now, you might say, wait a minute, all this talk about bearing risks, that's not me. You don't know me. I'm not a risk taker. Some people are risk takers. I am a student of history. Have you ever wondered why people living in Ohio would decide in 1846 to get go to Kansas City, Missouri, buy a covered wagon, and eight yoke of oxen, and decide to go across the Oregon Trail to a place in Oregon that maybe at best they had read about in a book, in a handbook, not knowing what they're going to face. You might say, ooh, those are risk takers.

Or immigrants. I have eight immigrant great-grandparents. Some of you, some of your families, fairly recent, some of your family maybe goes back two or three hundred years, but everybody, all of us who are here, had ancestors who were immigrants. They got in, at least, I'm assuming most of our ancestors got on boats. And I can look at the ship passage and see Peter Weir's, I did, I saw the ship's manifest of my great-great-grandfather, Peter Weir's, there he was, right in the ship's manifest. 1857, I think is when it was, when he emigrated to Northwest Indiana. You might say, those are risk takers.

That's not me. I've never lived more than five miles away from Morning Sun, Iowa. I'm not one of those risk takers. I always look at things and say, let that other person take the risk, not me. When I look at my accounts, I always say, take the low risk one. Some people are like that. I'm not a risk taker. And you see the high rollers who, when they look at their retirement, say, give me the high risk stocks and bonds. Yeah, I might lose my shirt, but man, I can make a big buck off of that.

You know, there's some people who just seem to have this risk-taking and others of us are averse to taking risks. What are we saying here as Christians? We take risks sometimes for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of Jesus Christ, not because of self-glorification or because we have a sense of adventure or because we are naturally risk-taking people. We take risks in weakness, knowing that God is faithful, and believing that he is going to accomplish great things through his people. Paul had a thorn in the flesh. Timothy must have had a weak stomach, because Paul elsewhere talks about stomach remedies. Great heroes of the faith had troubles as well. It doesn't matter whether you're a risk taker by personality or not. God is going to use each and every one of us. To summarize, we are called to be faithful and dedicated to Christ. It's a huge task. It's one that's impossible from a human perspective.

Yet our inadequacy has more than adequate provision in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is faithful and His grace is what we can be strengthened in. It's that sustaining grace, grounded in the gospel, that means we can be single-minded in our focus, glorifying God as we serve others. Only knowing the gospel of our totally faithful God, who is always faithful, even when we are unfaithful, can we begin to have this focus. We can be thankful that he is faithful. He says it. If we are faithless, he remains faithful.

Closing Prayer

Just like Paul was not bound, the gospel, he says, is not bound, no matter how much our sins or the sins of millions of other people in this world try to bind the gospel of Jesus Christ. Well, let's pray. Father, we thank you for this message. We thank you for your word. We pray that we would really believe that the gospel is not bound, really believe that we can be strengthened in the grace that's found in our Lord Jesus Christ, that even if we are faithless, you will be faithful. From Christ's name we pray.

Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural Southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.