Okay, a yin, I, watch, no, shade. I have done what is righteous and just. Do not leave me to my oppressors. Ensure your servant's well-being. Let not the arrogant oppress me. My eyes fail looking for your salvation. Looking for your righteous promise. Deal with your servant according to your love. and teach me your decrees. I am your servant. Give me discernment that I might understand your statutes. It is time for you to act, O Lord. Your law is being broken because I love your commands more than gold, more than pure gold, and because I consider all your precepts right. I hate every wrong path. You hate every wrong path. That's what we should do. We should hate every wrong path. Okay, let's see here. Next week is 129. And let's see. Oh, I got some announcements. Hey, listen, first thing I'll say this. I got some of these back there on that thing by the door. We got more over there. These are, my friend sends these, and they're so easy to hand out. All you need to do is just put them anywhere. You know, if you're, just anywhere. they fit in your wallet, and they're just very simple ABCs of salvation. So just take them, put them out. There are millions of them. And so, yeah, please take all you, Sergio, take those, take all you want. And there's five more boxes or three more boxes of them back there. So just leave them out. You know, I don't care where you go. Just leave them there for people to find. Hand them to people. Tell them about Jesus. Okay, so that got that and then let's see we got a few things here. The first is listen I got a great great letter from Yvonne. She is in Ireland. She said you know I wanted to write you this year. She knew we had some trouble with the house and everything but I'd have no way except here to thank her because I don't have an email address. I don't have a an address on here, and so I just wanted to thank Yvonne for sending that. That was very nice of you, and I read it, and I appreciate your words. It's just been, you know, one of those tough years where we just didn't really have Christmas. Even me, you know, on Christmas Day, I was sick, so I didn't even go over to the family, with the family. But anyway, thank you, Yvonne. That was, that was, just cheered me up. And then we have, Jesus film meeting coming up on the 10th of January. This is the next one and it's which is in six, seven more days. If anybody wants to help with this, they need $896 in total. So if anybody wants to help with a little bit, let me know. Travel is $100. Brianna is $135. Children $28. New Believers Meeting is $30. Jesus Film Meeting is $30. Eight Bibles, $80. Ten MP3s, $130. And 33 warm jackets for needy children. He always takes pictures of everything, so if you give and you want to see what he's done, I can forward that to you, but that's $363, so it comes out to a total of $896. And we had the church paid for a What do you call it a Christmas an extra one for Christmas and they had 21 Hindu people show up seven came to the Lord So he's always doing good things. If you want to help with that, please let me know you've got just a couple days And then I got a request I have no way to vet this at this time, but it was from a friend and he knows a woman that came from Namib Namibia and she's now living in Brazil. She wants to go back to Namibia and she wants to help her community. This is something that would be big and you know you'd want to verify it but she's looking to start a clinic. The last clinic there and it's a remote area. Everything kind of shut down at COVID-19 time or COVID-19 It never opened up. So she's wanting to do this and it's going to cost about 55,000 US dollars to do that. She's got great ambitions to help her people back there. And she sent me her bio and I forgot to print that off and I apologize. I can send any of this to people. If there's somebody out there that just has too much money and wants to help somebody, this would be a good person to check into. And if so, you know, maybe sponsor this. The second thing is a real estate project. She wants better infrastructure, housing and flats for the people that can't afford it, etc., etc. Once again, about the same cost. It's going to be, for either one of those ministries, it's going to be about $100,000. So I promised that I would mention that and you would have to do the vetting on that because I don't know her personally. I only know her through a friend. So if you want to know about that, send me an email and I'll take care of that. And I got a prayer request from Ruth who attends down in Trinidad and Tobago. She lives on Trinidad, and the country has gone into martial law. I don't know if anybody has seen this, but they're under martial law. They've got gangs that have killed a lot of people, and it's just a very bad situation down there. She's not one that's anxious about things. She knows Jesus, but at the same time, it's stressful. So please keep the people of Trinidad and Tobago in prayer. So those are some requests and prayer requests there. And let's see here. Let me read this. Today is, must be 3rd? 2nd. Anybody? 2nd. 2nd of January. Well, I'm going back to the beginning of the book. 2nd of January. And let's see what they say here. Famous or faithful? Not many of you came from important families, Paul told the Corinthians. Not many, perhaps, but some, like the one born three centuries after Christ in a wealthy Christian home in Caesarea of Cappadocia, which is now Turkey. His parents named him Basil, meaning kingly. They sent him to the finest schools in Constantinople and Athens, and Basil graduated with honors. He thought highly of himself and returned home dreaming of becoming great in public life, but his sister, who led him to faith in Christ, counseled humility. It's better to be faithful before God, she insisted, than famous before men. Basil craved a quiet life of study, prayer, and writing. He settled along the bank of the Iris River on the family estate, preaching to and helping the poor. But his stature was already so great that Emperor Julian the Apostate, though a fierce opponent of Christianity, tried to recruit him as an advisor. Basil declined, but he couldn't refuse the appeal of his own bishop, Eusebius, who warned that the church faced both imperial attacks from without and dangerous heresy from within. Basil left his quiet retreat to spend the rest of his life in public ministry. He championed orthodoxy, preaching and writing brilliant messages on the nature of Jesus Christ and the composition of the Trinity. In 370, Basil succeeded Eusebius and proved himself a gifted bishop who organized the ministries of the church. Using his own fortune, Basil founded a hospital, perhaps the first in Christian history, for the care of lepers. He was a kind man, often personally treated the disease. Basil's complex of churches, schools, hospitals, hostels, monasteries, and almshouses outside Caesarea became a town within itself called Basiliad. His rules for monks and monasteries are used to this day in the Greek church. Worn out before his 50th year, Basil died on January 1st, 379. News spread like wildfire the next day and he was mourned deeply. He is remembered every January 2nd, which is designated in Western tradition as the feast day of Saint Basil the Great. It says in 1 Peter 5, everyone should be humble toward everyone else, something I'm not very good at. The scriptures say God opposes proud people, but he helps everyone who is humble. Be humble in the presence of God's mighty power, and he will honor you when the time comes. So, good stuff there. And we are in 2 Timothy. And if you missed last week, you don't have much catching up to do. We're in 2 Timothy 1 verse 2. So, we only got, oh, it wasn't last week. And I wanted to apologize about that. Last week, I, it was probably the first Bible study I have ever missed since becoming a Christian. And I'm not talking about just being a teacher. I never missed a Bible study when I I wanted to go. You know, I attended Grace Baptist Church at the time, and I never missed one there. If they had a Bible study at the church that I attended before that, I never missed. I love going to Bible study, and so I apologize. Last week, I was just sick. I didn't spend Christmas with the family. I spent it with the couch, and I just could not get the strength up, and I didn't want to get people sick, so I apologize. And so here we are, we're in 1 Timothy chapter 2 to begin the new year. No, we're in 2 Timothy chapter 1. 2 Timothy chapter, that's my dyslexia because it says right there. So I read it completely backwards. 2 Timothy 1 verse 2. There we go. I'm going to start from the beginning here. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God according to the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus. To Timothy, my dear son, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Okay, other than the word beloved, it's identical to Timothy, a beloved son. Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Okay, so here we go. Let's see here. Notes from 1 Timothy 2. After having, and we got Steve Blazing back, I should might as well acknowledge him. So much for being under the radar. Yeah, he was off the grid and under the radar until just now, but it's good to have you back. He has to go up north this time of year every year and I always feel bad about that because he's up there where it's cold and gray and Whatever, but he got back successfully. Okay, after having identified himself and his commission, Paul now identifies the main recipient of the letter. Timothy. Second time he's done this, Timothy is the pastor in Ephesus. As noted, based on the apostolic identification of himself, something Timothy was perfectly aware of, the letter was certainly intended to be more than just Timothy. Timothy may be the direct person it's being written to, but obviously it's being written to the church, and from there it was obvious that Paul's letters were being kept. and then eventually they were brought into the canon of scripture. So having said that, Timothy is never called an apostle. You don't see that title given to him, okay? Paul is an apostle, and I like to point this out and remind people that if you see people claiming the title of apostle today, you might correct them, or just, you know, it's just an inappropriate title to have because there are no apostles of Jesus Christ today. Okay, that's not something that you have to personally have been a part of Jesus' ministry. He had to have appointed you personally in order for you to be an apostle. So claiming that title is just completely inappropriate. Paul even says, you know, I was as one born out of two seasons. He never attended the ministry of Jesus, but Jesus called him personally anyway. And in essence, he did see the ministry of Jesus. He just saw it from the other side. And so, and there's no doubt that he would have seen him. He would have interacted with him, at least from a distance, if not personally. And so, Paul had the qualifications. People today do not. So, you don't see Timothy being called an apostle because he wasn't. That's not a title that we would give to him. And so, be sure that if you see people claiming to be something they're not, either correct them or ignore them or both, whatever. Let's see here. As noted, I read that. Let's see here. He was to have it available. Timothy was to have this letter available. for any and all to see and read. It is an epistle of church doctrine as much as it is a personal letter, okay? And that's what it is. I mean, that's why he wrote him, is to give him instruction in the church. Paul knows Timothy isn't going to live forever. He knows that Timothy's got a certain amount of time and he's going to get old and he's going to need to replace him with somebody else. He knows that letter is going to be there as instruction for the church. Whether Paul knew that his writings were going to someday be in the Bible I would question that. I would think he probably had no idea at all, especially based on some of the things he says in his own letters. I think he was expecting Jesus to return pretty quickly. And, you know, he was probably expecting the Jews to have a little bit of trouble and then be, you know, put back in the limelight and the Millennium would be entered in. It's just kind of, you get that sense from his writings. And here it's 2,000 years later and we're still waiting. And of course, yesterday being the first, I said to lots of people in emails, maybe this is the year. You know, we don't know. You know, some people get burned out by that because it just keeps getting delayed. You said that last year. You said that two years ago. You said, don't get burned out. He's coming. It's, you know, our lives are just temporary. They're so short. We put everything into our box and we say, this must be the time and everybody wants that at the turn of the the millennium the first millennium there was this great Jesus is going to be back it's been a thousand years and everybody thought this is the time the 1800s all these people are coming out with all these new denominations and say Jesus is going to be here everybody wants it to be during their life okay and That's fine. It's good to have that hope, but don't get burned out on it just because they've been wrong year after year after year. It may be this year. It may be a hundred years from now. We don't know. So just keep waiting on Jesus, waiting on His timing, and the Word is sure. It never said He's going to be back at a certain time, and we're not going to know when the rapture is. So, you know, stay away from that kind of stuff. But anyway, Paul knew that this letter would be there for doctrine. That's the point of it. However, it is still a personal letter written to Timothy, a beloved son. These words are similar to his opening words to Timothy in his first epistle to him. The only change is that a beloved son here was a true son in the faith in his first letter. The word translated here as beloved is the Greek word agapitos. Agapitos. It signifies divinely loved. Agapitos. Divinely loved. So he is a divinely loved son in the faith. You know, looking at these translations and stuff and trying to figure out the exact wording of things. I was talking to Sergio about this yesterday. Maya is right now posting the Bible Bites from the Book of Jonah that we did probably five, eight years ago, whatever. came to a conclusion at the end of Jonah that nobody else has come to. Okay, and I was very clear in there that you probably shouldn't trust me. You should check it out and see if what I've said is correct, because there's not a single translation that comes even close to the way that I explain the book of Jonah. However, a nice thing that happened, Bob used to attend here, he got frail and couldn't come anymore, but Bob walked up after the sermon and he says, I know that your interpretation of Jonah is correct. He said, because it's the first time that book has ever made sense. Well, I haven't thought of Jonah for probably what has been, like I say, five to eight years. And so what I did, without watching any of Maya's stuff, I went back and re-translated Jonah 4 again, and it came out the same as I did back then, and so I'm certain that it's a correct interpretation of the book, but it won't match what your Bible says. So be aware of that, and if you're watching the Bible Bites, I hope you will enjoy it, because once you start translating things, you have to take certain things into account, and those were not taken into account by the translation that you're reading. I could read it to you very quickly, and I'm not going to, but only one translation, only one out of all of the translations that I checked at the time, which was probably 35 translations, translated a certain word properly. Every other one translated completely wrong. And that sets the stage for misinterpreting what Jonah's talking about. And the reason why I'm saying this now is because we're talking about translation of the word agapitas here. And so if you know what a word actually means and you stick with it, you will understand a little better what is being conveyed. Beloved is fine, but divinely loved has more meaning. So anyway, And, you know, I'm right now doing the book of Malachi. We'll be done with that in three more weeks. And I'm also doing a commentary on the book of Matthew. And when I do the translation, I finish up each chapter with a full copy of what I've translated. And it's not easy to read. And I just want people to know that. What I do as far as translating, if it ever is published like in a full book of Matthew, it's not going to be something that you're going to want to take home and read. Okay, having a Bible like this is going to be just much easier for you. When I translate the way I do, it's so that you can know what is exactly said. Okay, it's not so that it's, oh yeah, I don't think you're going to get any more insights in it. So I wouldn't rush out and buy the Charlie Garrett translation of the book of Matthew. It's not something that I'm doing it just so you can look at it and say, I at least see what is being said, even if it, that's all. Anyway, we'll go on. March 19th, 2017. Okay, that was Jonah? End of Jonah. Okay, so it's 17, so that would be 18, 19, 20, so seven years ago. Wow, almost seven full years ago, and what a fun book. I gotta tell you what, it was just a great, great book. I wanted to do it again, and I got shot down on that. I wanted to do Ruth again, and I got shot down on that, so. Who shot you down? Huh? Lots of people. I say, well, I want to do it again. They're like, no, you've already got it out there. Just stick with it. And we want to move on. And I can't disagree with that because you only live so long and you're only going to get so much time. So, but I just so enjoy doing them. And, you know, I want to see, is there going to be something else that you can come up with? But anyway, going on, Paul truly loved Timothy as a son. and the bonds were as strong as if Timothy was Paul's own legitimate son. As he personally took Timothy under his wings, and as Timothy stayed with him while so many others departed, the bond was all the stronger." You know, you read Paul's writings. Which book is it where he says, everybody has left me except this person went to I don't remember. Demas has gone to Galatia and somebody else and just type in the name Demas and it'll come up. Anyway, you can tell that Paul did not. People just. Second Timothy. So it is this one. Okay, it's at the end of this epistle. He's going to say all the people that abandoned him. What? Chapter four. Chapter four. Okay. And I was thinking it was 2 Timothy, but I didn't want to say that and be wrong. But you can tell that he It hurt him. Here he had expended his entire life to tell these people about Jesus, to instruct them about Jesus, and then they all just kind of abandoned him when he's sitting there, you know, having his own bad time, and only a few people stuck with him. Let's read that now, so we'll get there in about a couple weeks, and when we get there, it'll be fresh on your mind. 2 Timothy 4, and he says there, hang on a sec, verse 10 or somewhere. Yep, okay, right down at the, hang on, where'd we go? Okay, no. Oh, I'm in Titus. You've got to be in 2 Timothy to read the, okay, where is it? Verse 10, for I am already poured out as a drink offering. Okay, here's what it says. Verse 9, be diligent to come to me quickly, for Demas has forsaken me. Having loved this present world and has departed for Thessalonica, and Cretans is the one that went to Galatia. Titus for Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Get Mark, which is surprising, and bring him with you, for he is useful for ministry. And Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus." So Tychicus didn't abandon him. He had just been sent off to there, but the other people had left him. Demas, you know, loved the world, and so he took off. And so, anyway, you can just kind of see that the sorrow in his writing, but at the same time there's some good in that as well, like Mark, who it was Paul and Barnabas that fought over Mark. Barnabas wanted to take Mark on the second missionary journey, and Paul said no, and they almost beat each other up over it. So, you know, there's good in there, but there's this depressing nature to it too, as he says, everybody's kind of abandoned me. But in Acts 16 verse 3, Paul even circumcised Timothy in order to ensure that the Jews would be more responsive to the message of Christ. It was not a means of making Timothy acceptable for salvation, but a means of ensuring that Timothy would be properly accepted by those Jews who needed to hear the gospel message of Christ. Okay, that's important to remember what I just said is that Paul circumcised Timothy. And of course, the Hebrew roots people will jump all over that and say, see, Paul lived as a Jew. He expected Timothy to live as a Jew. That's not at all what happened. He explains it there. He explains throughout his epistles what he is doing. and to the Jews I became like a Jew. To the Gentiles I became like somebody not under law. You know and he explains exactly why he did the things he did. He did not circumcise Timothy because Timothy was Jewish and needed to be circumcised in order to be saved. That has nothing to do with it. He circumcised Timothy because he was taking Timothy with him, a Jew, who was going to go to synagogues and speak to Jews. And they would not have accepted Timothy. They'd say, this guy is a Jewish mother and he's not living as a Jew and you guys can beat it. and he wouldn't have been able to evangelize him at all. So Paul explicitly tells why he does things, and then Timothy accompanied him in that. He circumcised because he knew that Timothy would be his traveling partner. He knew that they could go into synagogues and they could evangelize Jewish people. they could not have done that otherwise. And so that is why he did it. So be careful with these people that want to promote the heresy of Hebrew Roots movement, okay? It's just terrible theology. I'm reading right now, I've said this, it's been about a year now I've been reading it, it's the Hallelujah Scriptures. I just, somebody gave me a copy of it and I thought I'll read it just to see, you know. And what happens, you get to the New Testament, And right at the beginning, you know, they have a division and a nice piece of paper, and it says the New Covenant, right? And then under it, it says the Renewed Covenant. Berit Hadashah, the Renewed Covenant. The word berit never means renewed. It's not even close to it. It means, what does berit mean? I'm sorry, Hadashah, excuse me. New. Hadashah. It doesn't mean renewed. It doesn't, by any stretch of the imagination, it's not even close to that. But they have to say it's a renewed covenant so that they can cling to the law of Moses. If the Old Covenant is done, there's nothing to cling to. And so how do they? They manipulate words. At times he will change words within the text. He never uses the word Paul, which is a part of God's Word. Instead, he calls him Saul all the way through. He has changed the Word of God, and I get angry every time I pick that up. But I want to continue. I want to continue to know the things that are wrong so that when people come to me later and say, well, this is the true scriptures, I can say that is an abomination, and I want to be able to defend against it. So anyway, yeah, I just started Matthew, and you can tell he's got already a very bias against, you know, staying away from law observance. Instead, he's infusing it into people through his translation. So be careful with stuff like that. But just thought I'd throw that out there to you. Let's see here. Yeah, it wasn't a means of making Timothy acceptable for salvation. That's not why he circumcised Timothy. It was a means of ensuring that Timothy would be properly accepted by those Jews who needed to hear the gospel message of Christ. So much so is this the case that what does Paul say about circumcision in Galatians chapter 5? If you allow yourself, where is it? Here it is, verse three, I'll start in. And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law. You have become estranged from Christ. You who attempt to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace. That is how serious that is. He circumcised Timothy not because of what the Judaizers were saying, but as in a passionate appeal to evangelize the people that had forsaken their Messiah. And Paul wanted them to know Jesus, and so he was willing to go to extremes. But a person that allows himself to be circumcised in order to somehow be obedient to the law of Moses is now a debtor to the entire law of Moses. And if they were saved, and it can happen, there are people that were saved when they were young. They get into this Hebrew Roots movement stuff and they say, okay, I'm going to allow myself to be circumcised. I will say this, and I am adamant about it, that person will never get another reward from the Lord. The Lord cannot reward disobedience. They will never be rewarded for anything because they've rejected the gospel of grace. They haven't lost their salvation, but they have completely walked away from any chance of being rewarded for their faithfulness because they are not being faithful. They have estranged themselves, Paul says, from Christ. So if that is where you want to hang your hat, best wishes to you on that day. Let's see here. In circumcising Timothy, it would eliminate prejudgments about Timothy's status. In other words, it was a helpful tool for evangelism. That is why he did it. He didn't do it for any other reason except to help evangelize Jewish people. Timothy, whose mother was a Jew, it would help. It would be actually a hindrance to take this guy along and say, well, you know, he's a Gentile and he can stand outside. He couldn't do that. He couldn't do it. So anyway, next, after having identified himself and his recipient, he adds in his greeting, which is a close match to 1 Timothy. Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. I'll stop just in case I don't give this comment. I'll make sure I say it, and if I say it again, you'll hear it twice. When he says, God the Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. It is not saying that Jesus is not God, because you'll have like the Jehovah's Witnesses and others will say, see, this proves that Jesus isn't God. That's not what he's doing at all. He is saying that he is sending greetings from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It speaks nothing about the deity of Christ or the lack of deity of Christ. It is simply a greeting from both of them, okay? Elsewhere, you have to infer from Paul's writings and some places which are explicit that Jesus Christ is God. He is not making a distinction here between God the Father and Jesus the human or something like that. He is saying that God the Father is greeting him, Jesus Christ is greeting him. Okay, so unlike his other epistles, in his three pastoral epistles he adds in the word mercy. As the letter is written to Timothy, the words apply to him, not to Paul. Paul's petitions for mercy in his pastorals is because he knew it is a job which requires a great deal of mercy from God. If you don't believe that, become a pastor and you'll find it out. It's just a difficult job to be in, okay? I'm not complaining in any way, shape, or form. It's just, it goes with, you know, if you are a plumber, then you have to face plumbing issues, right? I mean, that's what you do. And you have to sometimes develop new ideas to get around a problem that other people haven't been able to think of and so you get the bid instead of somebody else. Okay, if you're a roofer, you're going to have problems that are unique to roofers. Whatever your job is, you are going to need it. In the case of being a pastor, you need mercy because you're dealing with human beings that are often theologically confused. They may be theologically inept, and yet they believe that they're scholars. There's all kinds of problems with dealing with people in theology, and so you have to be ready to help them with those issues, and sometimes they don't want to be helped, and they get angry, and they leave, and that's fine, but mercy is something that you're going to need to have bestowed on you, okay? Without God's mercy, I bring this up from time to time because the statistic is so unbelievable. The first time I heard it, I thought, that can't be true. But if you think about the number of seminaries in America, it's got to be true. And this was like 10 years ago, but I read an article that said 600 pastors a week leave the pulpit. They no longer preach. They give up preaching. 600 a week. And I thought, how can that be possible? Well, they're graduating, how many, 20,000 people from pastoral colleges every year? Do the math. I mean, who are they going to replace? So whatever. It was just numbers off the top of my head. That's not, I have no idea how many are graduating. But a lot of people graduate to become pastors. And 600 every single week, somewhere in America, say, I don't want to do this anymore. Okay, or maybe the church says we don't want you to do this anymore. Whatever. They're out. So it's a it's a job that requires people to be patient. They have to be willing to accept when people leave for unknown reasons. They may get upset and never come back again, and you say, well, I never heard from them again. You don't know, and that causes you grief if you care about people. Anyway, So he petitioned for a mercy for him, and in his pastoral he knew it was a job that requires a great deal of mercy from God. It is a delicate, complicated, often frustrating, always tiring, and very sensitive job. Hidiko will hear me talking on the phone to some people, and I cannot tell her what I sat there and listened to for the past hour. And she knows that. And some people will call once a week, and they'll talk. And I don't even like being on the phone. I mean, I don't like spending two minutes on the phone. But some people need to talk. They need to talk through issues, whatever. And when they get done, she can tell I'm upset or I'm concerned or I'm, you know, whatever. Then I can't tell her. That's not my position to tell another person on this planet what I've talked to that person about. And that can be hard. You know, lawyers have to go through the same thing. Lawyers probably suffer because of that. I don't know. I mean, maybe lawyers don't care about anything, but it was a joke. We've got several lawyers that attend online. So one of them. They'll sue you. Yeah. No, one of these guys. has every lawyer joke you've ever heard, and they are so good. I wish I could remember them because you'd be rolling if I remember. Well, I don't want to say it here, but I can never remember a joke. I can't remember a joke five minutes after I hear it. But if you sit down with him, tell me your lawyer jokes again. He'll rattle them off one after another, and they are classic. They're so good. There's one about being buried six feet, and it's because I can't remember. They're so funny. Anyway, let's see here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so delicate. Okay. Where those under a pastor often feel it necessary to heap trouble on him, mercy is all the more necessary from the other direction okay and that's true some people just you know they want to pick on their professor at school you saw people like that probably if you went to college they just want to be belligerent to the professor you see it and when I was young you never saw this if somebody was disobedient to the teacher when I was in school and this is what 40 years ago 40 45 years ago That kid would not be back in that class. That was it. They did not tolerate that. Now, if you go just on YouTube and type in student being bad to a teacher, you can watch videos all day long. They'll actually go up and slap them in the face. I can't believe the things that happen in schools in America. I don't know how teachers can teach for five minutes and keep their sanity, but that's what people will do to a pastor as well. They may not come up and slap you in the face, but they will egg you on. They want to have a challenge. If they disagree with you on theology, they're going to challenge you on it, okay? Especially something like the Nephilim. They're really gonna, they're gonna just beat you to death over it, and finally they're gonna get upset. It's angels, and you don't know what you're talking about, and they leave the church, okay? And that's how they want to be, okay? They want to argue. I'm not saying it's any worse than any other job. It's just a different type of situation. Like I said, I was in wastewater for 20-some years, 25 years. And you had your unique challenges in wastewater, okay? It was a very, very wonderful field. I loved being in the job. If I ever left the church for any reason, that's what I would do. And so I keep my license up every year. I've done all of the courses for them this year. and I can apply for my new license on 1 February. I've already gotten a computer. 8 o'clock in the morning, as soon as that office opens, I'm calling and I'm renewing my license because I love the job and I've got it as a, you know, what does Solomon say? Cast your bread on many waters and you want to have options in life. So, You don't know. So you have no idea what's coming. And so it's got its own unique frustrations. Things that you would think wouldn't bother you can really eat you up in wastewater. So whatever your job is, the ones where you actually have to deal with human beings They can be difficult. One of my family members worked at Target when she was young. She was a cashier. She didn't stock the shelves. She had nothing to do with the shelf stocking. But people would come up and berate her because there wasn't something on a shelf that they wanted. They'd yell at her and accuse her of being a terrible employee. She's just checking people out. When you deal with people, you have to deal with people. And so that's just the way it is. Okay, so, without this endowment from God, meaning mercy, the job will quickly lay low the pastor of the strongest faith and resolve. Therefore, Paul petitions for these things, grace, mercy, and peace, to be bestowed upon his beloved son in the faith. and the petition is from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. You know, I'm talking about this like it's something unique to pastors today, but we've already seen it with Paul talking about what's coming in chapter 4, and you see it all the way through the book of Acts. I mean, Paul got barbecued by people. He got literally skewered by people simply because he loved Jesus and he wanted people to hear the gospel and to have proper doctrine. He wanted that for people. Without proper doctrine, Things will be okay in your life, but the people coming after you, your children? Is it going to be right for them? What church are they going to go to? What are they going to learn? And, you know, proper doctrine isn't something that just ends with you. It has to go on. It has to be something that continues on to the next generation. It has to go on to the people that are going to someday be the leaders in the church, and they're going to need to have right doctrine. Paul was adamant about these things. Paul speaks of God as the Father. This then is in line with the petition for grace, mercy, and peace. As a father would grant such things to his own son, so Paul knows that God will grant such things to his sons in the faith. It is a faith which is grounded in Christ Jesus, so he includes Christ Jesus in the petition. And as God is the father of Jesus, the petition for grace, mercy, and peace will naturally flow from Jesus to his other true children as well. So, that's a logical reason why including Jesus the way he did in this sentence is because if he is giving his own son grace, mercy, and peace to get through his earthly life, he's going to want to do it for the other children who are now in Christ. So it's a logical extension of how God treated his own son. Grace, peace, and mercy. All right. So Paul's salutation is a full example of a complete understanding of the workings of God toward his ministers who are also his sons by adoption. Okay, and not just his ministers. Timothy is a son. The people in the congregation that love Jesus are a son. This is, you know, the sonship is going back to the Nephilim thing. I have to say this, I just, I got to get it out of me, is that there are two times that people claim that sons of God do not mean sons of God. In the whole Bible, it says sons of God at least a billion times, maybe two billion. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but not much. Every single time it is referring to believers, believers in Christ, except two. When it's dealing with angels, it came down and slept with men. It's not a reasonable proposition, okay? If you believe differently, that is fine, but your view on it does not take into consideration a great deal of the rest of Scripture. In fact, all of the rest of Scripture. So, I just like to bring that issue up because it's one of my little pet peeves, is that sensationalism makes people happy. It makes them feel good. It gives them things to think about, like, you know, the underworld. But it's not a healthy way of running your theology. So, there you go. Life application. The job of a pastor is a tough one. But Paul knew that Timothy could handle it, and yet he still asked for grace, mercy, and peace to be bestowed upon him. The stress of such a job requires these things, and though he is petitioning them from God, it is certain that the pastor needs these things from the congregants as well. The more difficulty they lay on a pastor, the more stress he is going to be under. Therefore, as a member of the congregation, remember that your pastor's life is full enough. Give him a bit of grace, mercy, and peace as well. Okay? I thank you God, whom I serve, as my forefathers did, with a clear conscience. As night and day, I constantly remember you in my prayers. Okay. I thank God, whom I serve, with a pure conscience, as my forefathers did. As without ceasing, I remember you in my prayers, night and day. So they did a little change up there, didn't they? It's like they took the coin and they flipped it and they said, okay, we're going to put that word there instead of there. smidge. That's a good word. There are fun words out there. You know, smidge is one of them. I'm glad you brought that up today. Use the word smidge from time to time. It's a great word. There was another wonderful word I heard this morning and I thought, that is such a fun word. We don't use it enough. I don't remember. I just remember thinking, I got to start using that word, but smidge, good word. Okay, 1-3. After his salutation, Paul begins his main thoughts with, I thank God. The words are most probably connected to the genuine faith, which is mentioned in verse 5. Thus, it would make everything between these parenthetical. In other words, I thank God when I call to remembrance the genuine faith. Okay, so he's talking about that, but everything else he's going to insert in there to make it more full and robust for Timothy to consider. Okay, that's just a possibility. I'm not saying that's correct, but it is a good possibility. Okay. You know, and one of the things about Greek, if you were to literally translate it, so even my literal translation is not actually literal. If you were, sometimes the words are, the clauses are jumbled, and we have to put them into an order that makes sense, okay? And so when we talk about things like parenthetical sentences, a lot of that has to be guessed based on, you know, how things are presented. So keep that in mind. When I say something is probably parenthetical, they're not sure, okay? Or we can't be 100% dogmatic, but it's probably the case. And one of the things that you should be aware of is when you see parentheses in Scripture, That's just quite often the people's guess, okay? And so if you'll see another translation without that in parentheses, then it's asking you, the person who is reading different translations, to think about which is correct and why. Which one makes more sense to you? And that's, you know, on Sundays especially we do that because there are things that are put as parenthetical that are not, things that are not that probably should be, and it takes really evaluating the entire context, and that is not really the job of translators. Translators' job is to translate, okay? It's the job of scholars to look at the structure of a passage, we'll say, and to say, you know, this thought actually is parenthetical, or this thought actually is referring to this over here, or these lines are parallel. And then the translators should find competent scholars and do their translation in accord with that, okay? But when scholars disagree, that's why you've got differences in translation. So I'm just telling you that so you understand why things sometimes don't match in translations. Because the guy that translated this and the group that translated that are all competent in Greek, they're all thoroughly trained in Hebrew, and yet they're translating it differently. And you have to say, well, why is that? It's because people may not have a full understanding of the context, they may not have a full understanding of, you know, the nuances, or they may just, you know, just blown it. Quite frankly, they may have just blown it and gotten the wrong idea about what's being presented altogether. So, it's good to not accept everything right away and don't disregard anything right away either, because the minority opinion may be the correct one. Young's literal translation. Many times I've gone there and he is right. He's one guy that did the whole translation of the Bible, just like John Darby or somebody else. All the other translations say this, all of them except Young's. And when you do the study, you find out Young's is right. There are times where I've seen Young's is wrong. Okay, so don't accept anything at face value, and don't reject anything just because it's different. Think about why things are there, study if you want to know the passage more fully, and then from there come to your conclusion. So he begins with the word, I thank God. In other words, I thank God when I call to remembrance the genuine faith. Verses one, three, and then verse five. Paul rejoices over the faith of his young protege and where it has led him in his life. From his thanks to God, he then explains his relationship to him by saying, whom I serve. Paul is an apostle of Jesus Christ at this time in his life, but throughout his life he had dedicated his time and energy to a pursuit of God. This is one of the things I tell people. You know, you get the Calvinists that say that you have no choice in free will. You have no choice in salvation at all. You cannot come to God unless He calls you. And that is nonsense. Okay? People all over the world are pursuing God. Paul was pursuing God. Paul was just doing it it. Incorrectly. He was doing it wrong. Okay. There are people that I was going down Boniva today. I don't usually go down that way but I went to visit Aunt Nita today and so I was coming down Boniva. Okay. And so I'm going down Boniva and what do I pull up right when you get to Boniva and Gulfgate Drive? What is on the other side of the road? It's right there. the Church of Latter-day Saints, okay, the Mormons. And I was sitting there thinking, you know, somebody lives in the neighborhood, okay? He doesn't know anything about anything. And he has a bad experience and he decides, I'm going to go to church on Sunday. And there is a church right there. And he goes in there and he spends the rest of his life in a Mormon church, okay? He doesn't know anything. He's not trained in anything. He just wants to know God. He is pursuing God. He's just done it wrong. He wasn't willing to check out, are these people correct? And so, and that really breaks my heart. I sat there and I thought about that. I thought, here we've got this darkness sitting right on the corner of that street. Absolute darkness because of their theology. And people don't know it. We see it in the projects when we see the Jehovah's Witnesses showing up. And it's either light or it's darkness. And if we're not there, darkness is going to be the only thing these people hear knocking on their door. Okay? And that's a sad thing, is that people don't intentionally say, I'm going to run off and I'm going to join a cult and go to hell. That's not why people do that. They want to know God, and they go into a place and they're, you know, wooed into this belief that they're doing the right thing. having no idea that the Mormons are a cult and they don't believe in a trinity, they don't believe in the deity of Jesus Christ in the way that we do. Just so you know what Mormons believe, Jesus was a man. Jesus became a God. And you too someday can become a God. Okay, that's Mormonism in a nutshell. There's a lot more involved in it, but just keep that in mind. It is a very, very sad theology that was perpetrated on the people of the world by a guy named Joseph Smith. Like I said, people don't intentionally follow things like that. They just, they want to know something. They hear something. Somebody sounds like he knows what he's talking about and the rest of their life they are pursuing darkness. Paul was pursuing darkness. Why? Because the light had come. If Jesus hadn't come, Paul would be living his life under the law and he'd be doing all the things that Jews do and he wouldn't have known any different. He sees Jesus, he rejects Jesus, And Paul had to be called by Jesus personally because Paul thought he was doing the right thing. He would not have been doing it if he knew it was wrong. Okay, you can see it's not the nature of the man to want to do wrong. He sat there blinded waiting to be healed and he probably thought, I can't believe I was wrong. I can't even imagine the thoughts that ran through that guy's head. Here I'm doing this thinking I'm doing God a service and instead I was wrong. So don't trust Charlie Garrett, don't trust the Mormons, don't trust anybody unless you have checked it out yourself. Check it out yourself. Make sure that you read the Word and take things in the context that God has given them, okay? Who was it that I was, what's his name? Tom comes down here from Ohio, okay? He's always posting Jesus on Twitter, all day, every day. He's just posting Jesus, okay? And he will do it on sites of people that are following Jesus wrong, trying to get them to read, maybe a tract about evangelism or something. And yesterday he put one, I know this because when he posts something, I can see it because I follow him, right? Okay, so I wouldn't see these people otherwise. He goes out looking for people like this, I guess, and he finds them and he gives them a voice. But yesterday there was a guy talking about how Protestants don't know what they're talking about, that the Catholics have it down. Mary, gotta follow Mary, gotta follow Mary. He's talking about Mary and My only comment on there was this is typical Roman Catholicism. Anything to violate Hebrews 12 verse 2. And I'm hoping that they will just go read Hebrews 12 verse 2. I'm not going to quote it to them, okay? But what does it say? It's right there. You can read it right there. Hebrews 12 verse 2. Catholicism seems designed to violate that verse. Everything they do is to take your eyes off of Jesus. It's to have you look somewhere else except to Jesus. They throw Jesus in, don't get me wrong, but everything about it is designed to take your eyes off of him in the process. And so I felt bad about that too. I mean, I just want people to know that they need to check things out. If you just say, well, you're going to hell and you don't know what you're talking about, you stupid Catholic, that's not going to solve any problems. But if you give them a verse from the Bible that tells you what to do, maybe they'll read it and say, maybe I'm wrong, right? I mean, arguing with people isn't going to do anything normally. So just give them a verse that might redirect them and hope that it'll help. Give them a tract. I had a friend that was visiting the Vatican last week, actually this week. He was in the Vatican this week, and what was he doing? He was putting gospel tracts all around the place at the Vatican, knowing that those people don't have the light of Jesus Christ. Anyway, So, here we go. Let's see here. Where was I? I wasn't serving God. Oh, yeah. So, he had dedicated his time and energy to a pursuit of God. That's what Paul had done. He was pursuing God. He was just doing it wrong. The fact that he missed Jesus in the process for a time doesn't mean he wasn't serving God, but that he was simply doing it incorrectly. Okay, same thing as Muslims. This guy just killed a bunch of people in Louisiana thinking he's going to heaven. He thinks he's going to be a martyr and he's going to have 72 virgins for the rest of his life. If he knew that he was doing it wrong, I don't think he would have done it. I really think that he would not have done what he did if he knew that what he was doing was wrong. I'm not going to get any reward for this, then why would I bother? I might as well just stay out, go fishing on the bayou, right? He didn't do that. He really believed that he was going to please God with what he was doing. He wasn't. But that's probably what he was thinking. I'm just going to do this because I'm going to get to go to heaven. Speaking of Paul, his service was and is, what Paul says, with a pure conscience. Paul did what he did with a pure conscience, he just didn't do it properly. Rather, the Greek here reads, in a pure conscience. Okay, rather than with, the word is in. Okay, in a pure conscience. It isn't that he merely had a pure conscience and he served God with it, but that he had a pure conscience and it was in that sphere of spiritual recognition that he served God. He was in a sphere of a pure conscience. I believe that I'm doing this right. I believe I'm following the right path. He found out he wasn't. Paul had to find out that he wasn't doing it. Okay. Jews, you know, Jews today, they, whatever they think, they're not doing it right. Okay. They find out about Jesus and they either get belligerent and they walk away or they say, what? I haven't heard this. And we've got all these messianic Jews in Israel that are following Jesus. They're not in the graces of the government, I can tell you that. They're not in the graces of the people in general, okay? The Hasidic Jews go over there and I've seen videos of them taking things, you know, gross stuff like dog poo and stuff and putting it on their doorsteps. And, you know, these people go out and want to talk about Jesus and they end up getting yelled at and condemned and all that kind of stuff. but they found out the truth. They want to share the truth of Jesus, all right? So he's doing this in a pure conscience. He served God with it, but he had a pure conscience, and it was in that spiritual recognition that he served God. One could say, I served my nation with the United States Air Force. This would mean that he served his nation and it is by the United States Air Force that he did so. Or he could say I served my nation in the United States Air Force. The United States Air Force became the sphere of his life. Okay, perfect example. I saw a girl in uniform. I mean she put this on the internet just last week and maybe it was an older video but it came out last week. She's in uniform, United States Army, and her comments were, I didn't join the military to serve the military and to serve the government. I joined the military to get the benefits. I joined the military so that the military can take care of me. And I thought, what a disgusting attitude, and I hope she gets discharged for what she said. I hope they get rid of her because when you join the military, you are making a life commitment to serve your nation no matter what happens. You stand up there, you raise your hand, and you say, I will defend this nation against all enemies. foreign and domestic. You're required to say those words and it's not being drafted like it was in the past. These people are volunteers. They make a commitment, they raise their hand, and if they are openly saying that I am not following that commitment, they need to be removed from the military. I don't care if there's a shortfall. There's already a shortfall. That person is a shortfall. She's a hindrance and a damaging influence to the United States of America with that type of an attitude. That should not be allowed to continue. at all. If I was in the Air Force, Charlie Garrett, I was in the United States Air Force. I served in the United States Air Force. I did it. It was my job and I did what was expected. Sometimes I didn't like it. Sometimes they asked me to do things that I didn't want to do and I never said, well, I'm not doing that or why don't you find somebody else to do it? That wasn't my position to do. My position was to do whatever I was told to do, do it. I don't understand the thinking of people that they have a right to not go out and pick up the rifle and fire it when they are told to do so. It's about me and it's about nobody else. I don't understand that thinking. You're the one that raised your hand and nobody made you do it. So, same thing right here. The USAF became the sphere of that person's life. everything that comprised who he was as a person serving his nation was dedicated to the sphere in which he had united. Okay, I worked in the Air Force. I served in the Air Force. I tried to get promoted within the Air Force while doing the very best job that I could do in the Air Force. I never thought of anything other than this is my duty. This is my responsibility and as long as I'm wearing this uniform, I'm going to do my best at it and I didn't even like it. I didn't even like it. I wanted to go in. I joined the U.S. military so that I could go to Japan. I wanted to go to Japan. But once I was in there, I said, you know, I'm the one that raised my hand. I'm the one that decided that I'm going to serve this nation and whatever they tell me to do, that is what I'm going to do. Okay. I was going to get out after four years and we adopted our first child and I had to extend 12 months so that we could, it's called retainability. I had to have retainability. We stayed 12 months and what happened? Our second child came at the 11th month. I have to extend 12 more months but I can't because you can only extend 23 months. So I had a choice, adopt her second child or leave the Air Force. I re-enlisted. Oh, the commander was, she was beaming. Here's the guy that was never going to re-enlist, ever. And here she is, she was laughing as she was re-enlisting me for four more years. We're still friends to this day. I talk to her a couple times a year and she's a wonderful person, but she was beaming the day that I had to re-enlist. But it was worth it. We got a couple of really wonderful children, don't we? I think they're the best kids in the world. Anyway. Everything that comprised who that person was serving his nation was dedicated to the sphere in which he had united. In Paul's case, he served in a pure conscience. From there, he explains that this was as my forefathers did. Okay, now there's obviously a disconnect here, at least in how God is approached, because his forefathers were not followers of Jesus. Jesus didn't exist. when I'm talking about the human Jesus, the Messiah that came. He didn't exist in their sphere of influence, and yet he's saying, I served my forefathers as my forefathers did. I served God as my forefathers did. So, it seems like there's a disconnect, but there's not, because those people were waiting for the Messiah. Paul just missed the fact that he had come, okay? So anyway, let's see here. Two possibilities exist concerning what Paul says here, as my forefathers did. The first is speaking of his forefathers in the faith, such as Abraham, Jacob, David, and so forth. The second is his line of ancestry through his parents. He was raised a Pharisee. He was schooled from a young age in this capacity. His parents would have sent him to school for this, and they would have been schooled before him, holding fast to the traditions of this sect. It is hard to be dogmatic on which option he's referring to, but We do get a clue from Galatians chapter 1. He says here, whoops, I got to go forward, that's the New Testament, Charlie. Give me a second here, Galatians chapter 1. And he says in verse 13, For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. So, the hope of his fathers either of the faith or of his ancestry was in the coming of Messiah. He had missed that coming, and a special call by the Lord himself was needed to correct this. But it was his hope nonetheless. During his time before coming to the Lord, his life was directed in a pure conscience. He did what he did in a pure conscience, even if what he did was incorrect, okay? That continued on, but with a new direction in which to live it out. To finish this verse, he then says, his thanks to God were heartfelt and they were ongoing. This is seen in the words, as without ceasing, I remember you in my prayers day and night. And speaking of prayers, I just realized right now, I don't think we opened in prayer today. I don't think we did. So we've got to have a double super secret prayer to close today, that's for sure, because I apologize, I just went right past me. It should open in prayer and I didn't do that, so please forgive me on that one too. Timothy must have come to mind, his mind, a great deal. Okay, Paul obviously had Timothy on his mind a lot, but he must have come to his mind a great deal, and as he received reports of him, he would stop and pray for him. As he remembered their travels, he would stop and pray for him. As he worked or walked, he would mentally connect with the Lord and pray for him. The two thoughts, as without ceasing and night and day, are intended to be taken in this way. They're set in parallel. Without ceasing, night and day. It's just constant, okay? Whenever Timothy came to mind and in whatever Paul was doing, he would also be in prayer to God for him. There you go. Life application. Our minds are always being filled with something, like forgetting your prayers. Even when it seems we are not really thinking of anything, something is going on up there. If we train ourselves to be thankful, then thanks will be a part of who we are. If we train ourselves to remember others as we live out our lives, then those types of prayers will become as common as inhaling. You breathe all the time, right? Well, if you learn to just pray, come here. I need you to come here because I got this up here. I forgot to leave it there, so come here. Actually, I didn't forget. That would be a terrible lie for me to say I forgot. Look at what Daddy has for you. Here you go. Yeah, no, come over here. Daddy loves baby. Come here, give me a kiss. All right, get out of here. Thank you. All right, she brought us dinner, okay, so there you go. What? No, no, no, no, no. Just us. That's our dinner. We'll have dinner again soon. Don't worry. It's a new year. We're going to have a dinner coming soon to a Bible study near you. But we just had one at the end of last year or so. What's that? Two weeks ago. Two weeks ago. Yeah. I don't want to overdo it. So, anyway. Oh, good. I'm glad you got to see Tom. She was talking so highly about you a couple weeks ago, weren't you? Look at my little daughter. What a good girl. Anyway, she was talking so highly of Tom there, and so I'm glad you got to see her. Let's see here. So, where was I? Oh, life application. Yeah, if we train ourselves to be thankful, then thanks will become a part of who we are. If we train ourselves to remember others as we live out our lives, then those type of prayers will become as common as inhaling, okay? gotta breathe all the time, just keep praying. Just pray. Let us mentally redirect our daily thoughts to that which is honoring of God and productive as Christians. If we do that, that's the sphere in which we are going to live. We're going to be in a good state before the Lord. And it's just natural to want to, you know, you're a believer in Jesus, there are a couple of things that ought to be natural in that state. One of them to me, which it's just not the case in most churches in the world, this is not the case, but one of the things to me that I would say should be natural is I want to know Jesus more. and it never ceases to amaze me. When I would go to Bible study, like at a Grace Baptist, the pastor of the church, and it was a big church, so of course it's a big deal if you're gonna get to sit in a room with the pastor giving a Bible study. So he says, I'm gonna start a Bible study on Wednesday. Wednesday at whatever, we'll say it was six o'clock. Okay? And so the next week, the class is full of people. You got probably 55 people in there. And after about a month, it was down to about 12 people. And it is always that way when it comes to Bible study. I never missed, I never wanted to miss Bible study, ever. That meant so much to me to say, I am going to get to know this word from a different perspective today. than I have. Maybe I'm wrong about something. Maybe I'm going to hear something that, you know, today is a little different. I admit this. There are people in Sarasota here that attend online. They are here right now, hello, watching on Bible study. I can't be angry at them for not showing up because they want to sit at home in their pajamas, but they're still with Bible study. And how do I know this? Because I'll get home and they'll say, well, you know, can you send me that? Something I talked about. Can you dare? I know they're there right now. Okay, so it's a little different in the world today, but it never ceased to amaze me. No matter what church I was at, no matter who was teaching, and no matter how interesting that person was, Bible study would always start out big, always, if they were starting a new one. And within a very short amount of time, a handful of people would be coming. It's just not important enough to me to know God. It's not important enough to me to hear this person's perspective of this passage in the Bible. You know, I can go Sunday morning, that's all I need. And I don't understand that thinking. I do not. But once again, I cannot condemn people today because I know that they're watching. I know they are. And so that makes me happy. Even if they're not here, I'm elated to know that they are watching because they are getting fed God's Word instead of watching, you know, a movie about robots or something. Not that robot movies aren't cool, okay? I like robot movies. It's just, you know, you got Bible study? Pay attention. Learn the Word of God. Check what you hear, though. Check what you hear. So, let's see here. Yeah, if we train... I read that. Let us mentally redirect our daily thoughts to that which is honoring of God and productive as Christians. I can say this. I have been attending Bible studies now with this guy for probably 12 years. 12, you think? He's always there. He's always there. He was always there at Grace Baptist Church. He's always, when he's here, he always shows up unless he's sick or he's in Baltimore or something. Whoa, man, I'd rather do anything than go to Baltimore, but I guess when you have to do something, you gotta do it. But if anybody's online from Baltimore, I apologize. It doesn't mean I don't like you. I just can't imagine going to Baltimore. Is it a nice city? I mean, other than the bad parts? It's a quilt work of, Areas you could be in a really nice neighborhood and go two blocks. So there are nice neighborhoods. I Mean, I was just like it's like every other block is a different world altogether Yeah, I I have no I know the only thing I know about Baltimore is every time I see it in the news It's bad news. I've never seen anything good. They have a Team though, don't they baseball or something? Ravens football Okay, Orioles, so they got to have some good parts to the city then but every time I see something in the news it is always negative always, you know, 47 people killed last night at this bar in Baltimore and I'm like, oh So I'm glad to hear there is good there because then I know people that live in the area of that But I don't think they live directly in Baltimore. But anyway, um, okay. Well, we city were actually saw somebody get shot. Oh see There you go, point made. Baltimore, here we go. Point made. Okay, yeah, I just don't, I don't want to go up there and get filled with holes, okay? Doesn't interest me. It's a holy experience. Okay, here we go, 1-4. Recalling your tears, I long to see you that I may be filled with joy. Okay, this is, they did the same thing here. They've turned two of the clauses around. Greatly desiring to see you, being mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy. Okay, so there you go. One, four. This continues Paul's thoughts concerning his relationship with Timothy of the previous verse. Here, he next says to him that he is greatly desiring to see you. The Greek word he uses indicates a longing for or a yearning. We can greatly desire something we see at the store without having yearned for it. But those things we long for are the things we set our mind on continuously. Paul's mind was brought back time and again to his fellowship with Timothy, and his heart was stirred for more of it. And there are two reasons for this. First, he says, being mindful of your tears. It can be inferred that upon their last parting, Timothy openly broke down and wept. His heart was broken that Paul, his teacher and friend, was being separated from him. This exact same thought is conveyed to us concerning the very church that Timothy was now given charge of overseeing. That's found in Acts chapter 20. And it's such a tender passage. And you think, just think of this while we're looking at this. Acts chapter 20. Give me a second here. 17. It's just unbelievable. It's almost ironic, but it's sad irony when we get to this. We're going to go to verse 36. I think we might go back a little bit more. Yeah, I'm going to go back a little bit more, and for a reason. So I'm going to take you to 25. and indeed now I know that you all, he's speaking to the church at Ephesus, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God will see my face no more. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men, for I've not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. So he's just told them, I've been here, I have evangelized you, I've given you the whole counsel of God. You know the gospel, you know the truth, you know what is important. They heard it directly from Paul. Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. for I know this that after my departure now Paul is telling them after my departure and you could say well is it going to be a week is it going to be no it'll probably be 50 or maybe 200 years it'll be a long time from now After my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among you yourselves men will arise, speaking up perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone, night and day with tears. So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I have coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. Yes, you yourselves know that these hands are provided for my necessities and for those who are with me. I have shown you in every way by laboring like this that you must support the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus that he said, it is more blessed to give than receive. And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. Then they all wept freely and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spoke, that they would see his face no more. And they accompanied him to the ship. Okay, so Paul said that to them. They loved him. They mourned over his leaving. It was, he warned them so much that obviously the church is never going to fall apart. It's going to continue. It's going to go. And they are going to be the great church forever and ever. Amen. Right? So what does it say here in Revelation? It says, where is it? Let's see. Are these things I say to you? I don't know. It's one of these first and last. Okay. The angel of the church of Smyrna. Oh, first letter. The first letter. To the angel of the church of Ephesus. Now this is within the lifetime of the apostles because John is recording this. It's not long after Paul spoke to him. To the church in Ephesus, he who holds the seven stars in his right hand who walks in the midst of the seven gold lampstands, I know your works and your labor and your patience that you cannot bear those who are evil and you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not and have found them liars and you have persevered and had patience and labored for my name's sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless, I have this against you, that you have left your first love." He's telling him, your first love, you're doing all these good works, but you've forgotten me. The one thing that Paul said above everything else, focus on Jesus, and within one generation, not even a generation, because John is still alive and he's still receiving the message of the Lord, the church had fallen away. that quickly. And they had talked to the apostle that was personally picked by the Lord to evangelize the Gentiles. It's hard to imagine, but this is how short-termed our thinking is in the world, okay? It just is that way. You can have somebody stand up in the pulpit in a church today and say, hold fast to the Word of God. Love the Lord Jesus with all your heart. He dies, and five years later the church is whatever, they're just completely gone the wrong path. How quickly it happens, because we're not willing to listen to sound advice. We're not willing to hold fast to our first love. Take care, Paul, I'm sorry, the care Paul had for the churches he ministered to, for the people he had fellowshiped with, and especially for Timothy, whom he traveled with and mentored, would overwhelm the hearts of those people when they realize their parting may be permanent. It stands as a testimony to the beauty of Christ being reflected through this great apostle. Timothy's tears of parting rent Paul's heart, and he longed to see him again, and to instead see and experience tears of rejoicing, and in turn that he may rejoice. That is his second reason for wanting to see Timothy, as he said, that I I may be filled with joy." In seeing Timothy again, there would be joy in abundance. There would be talks of missionary travels, of conversions, of baptisms, of love feasts, and of doctrine. You know what? Yesterday, we have Jose, the guy that he comes here once or twice a year, and he went with Sergio to Israel a few months ago, and he's always over in Kenya, he's in Israel, the next day he's in Rome, the next day he's He's in Texas for the next month and he's going to be at every big event that they have, every sporting event, every whatever. When Sturgis comes, he's at Sturgis. It doesn't matter what's happening. If there are a bunch of people, he will be there. On Inauguration Day, guess where he is going to be? He stands out there and hands out tracts to thousands and thousands of people literally every weekend. Okay? He sent his email yesterday. about his itinerary for the next three months. I'm going to be here, here, here on these days. And when it said March 9th, I'm going to be at the Superior Word in Sarasota, Florida. I immediately emailed him and said, woohoo. Okay. You know, I understand Paul's thinking here. When you love to have somebody that you love around, you want to see him. And when you don't see him, you know, nowadays we have YouTube and I can watch him evangelizing people because he just carries a body camera and he hands out tracts and he has engagements with people and I can watch that. Okay. But it doesn't replace talking to him personally. Right. And we have, he and I and two other people have a chat. One is in Israel. One is here in Sarasota. And one is here in this chair, and then you got Jose, and all day long we're sending something to each other and we're talking. But it's not the same as seeing each other in person. And Paul's writing him a letter. He sees Timothy in his mind, but he wants to be with him and be filled with joy. So, you know, wonderful stuff. You read the Bible and it's just so human. It's so human because it's exactly the way that we are just being expressed in paper for us to say, I understand how Paul felt. Anyway, let's see here. There would be joy in abundance. There would be talks of missionary travels like Jose, of conversions like Jose, of baptisms. You know, I'm sure he baptizes people when he can, of love feasts and of doctrine. You know what Jose did a day ago? He sent a message and he said, I'm gonna get this wrong, the content, so don't take anything wrong, but he was like, I'm going back to family for Christmas, or maybe it was New Year's, New Year's I think, New Year's, and he said, it's gonna be a great reunion with all of the old druggies, and all of the old, and he said, what a great chance to evangelize. while they're there still smoking pot 40 years later he's there telling me you know you don't need to do this he's just he's on all these years later 40 years he's been doing this now 40 full years as of a month ago and he hasn't lost his first love It's unbelievable to see him out there. Everywhere he goes, he puts out a track somewhere and he'll take a picture of it for us and say, I've serviced this area. And he's got some really funny tracks. I don't want to say here because somebody will take offense at it, but he's got things that catch your eye on the front. appropriate to the location that he is putting it. They're just great. Anyway, so we'll be seeing him again, the Lord willing, on March 9th. Or maybe the Lord will come first and we'll all be out of here. Then we'll see each other anyway. Let's see here. Yeah, there will be times of rejoicing in the fellowship of the Spirit and in the blessed hope of being united once again with the Lord upon his return. And obviously that's something that they talked about there at the time of the apostles. And like I said at the beginning of this class, Paul The way he wrote his letters, it really seemed like he thought that the Lord would be coming soon. Yeah, you get that too then. Okay, it's not just me. When you read his letters, it's like Paul anticipates the coming of the Lord. And yet, 2,000 years we've been waiting. But there has to be a day when the Lord is coming. And now, I'm not one to take things out of context and to say, well, the Lord is coming because, you know, there's a bloody moon on...you can do that any generation throughout the past 2,000 years. But mom sent me a email yesterday, I think, and I answered it this morning, or maybe she sent it this morning, and I answered. And she said, what is Hosea 6-2 saying? It's, after two days I will come to you, on the third day I will raise you up. And I said, I have always taken that verse, always. And other people have too as well. I found out that it's kind of common, but the first time I read it, from that time I've always taken that as the Lord telling Israel, Two days equates to 2,000 years. It does it twice in the Bible, 2 Peter 3, 8 and Psalm 90 verse 1 or 90 verse 2. A day to the Lord is like 1,000 years, 1,000 years is like a day. After two days, I will come to you. The Lord has promised to return to Israel on the third day, meaning at the beginning of the millennium, I will raise you up. So I do think simply because of the timeframe in the Bible, and that could be a completely wrong reading of that verse, okay? I'm letting you know that. But from the first time I read that, I thought, I think that's telling us that the Lord will be back at some point in the near history. And we still have time. It doesn't have to be this month or this year or next year or whatever, but I would take that as an indication that the Lord's return is in fact near. Plus there are other things that, yeah, we got four more minutes, might as well just, there are a couple other things that show us this. Is it God created in how many days? I'm talking about according to the Bible. Six actually, but yes, the seventh day he rested. That is done for a reason. There's a lot of reasons why God did this, but one of them was to give a pattern of redemptive history. Okay, you've got the six days leading to the seventh, the rest of God in the millennium. Christ came at the fourth day, which is exactly in the middle of those seven days. If you want to understand all of that, go watch the sermon on the menorah, the construction of the menorah from Exodus, and I detail all of that. There's so much involved in the six days of creation plus the seventh day. And Jesus came at that fourth day, right at the beginning of it. That tells us that if God has a plan of redemption and he's promised a thousand years to Israel, we probably are right at the cusp of his coming. I'm not a predictor of the rapture and all that kind of stuff. I tried that once many years ago and I said I'd never do that again. But I do believe that we are really close to the coming of the Lord. So when I said yesterday to all those people, maybe this year, I mean it. Maybe this year. And if not, I'm going to keep telling people about Jesus until whenever. But I was thinking about Jose especially today. Still four minutes. He has always been one to evangelize. When I first met the Lord, that's all I did. I just went out and told people about Jesus. I evangelized a lot. And eventually, I got beyond that. I still evangelize, but I wanted, and I was thinking, when Paul says that, you know, you have the eye, you have the ear, you have the, Every position is important in the church. My position is doctrine. I believe that that is why the Lord sent me here in the world today, is to teach doctrine. But I'm almost jealous, in a good way, of Jose. I don't know his doctrine. I don't know how deep he is in it. I've never sat down and had a long talk with him about doctrine. But he's so devoted to converting people to Jesus. I mean, you want a ministry to just help When, if he has a need and that's a guy, if you believe in evangelism, you believe in getting people saved, that is a guy that I would be willing to support. I think you should, you know, but everybody has their own. My thing, I love doctrine. I absolutely love the thought that people will be trained for the next generation and that it'll be done hopefully. I wouldn't teach something wrong intentionally, but hopefully I'm teaching you properly. And that is where I love to be. But I'm kind of jealous about how Jose, he's everywhere. I'm telling you, if there is something coming up this month that's gonna have 50,000 people, he's gonna be there. Baltimore yeah maybe Baltimore if they have something big there he'll go I he just he's and he does it he said I'll be in the car at 9 o'clock in the morning I'll be there at 2 o'clock in the evening we'll be starting at 6 the next morning. He knows already what he's going to be doing and when I'm not like that all I know is I'm gonna be here on Sunday morning and I'm gonna be here on Thursday night rest of the week you know it's all just the same thing nothing changes but he's got his life all figured out because he wants to be precise in what he does. Wonderful. Anyway, life application, we're done. Ecclesiastes says there is a time for everything. This includes times of permanent parting. Okay, we went through that with Burke just recently. There's a permanent parting there. It's permanent in the sense of this life. Anyway, if we knew when that time would be, would we act as we do towards others around us, right? I remember when Kelly Carlin died and, you know, I'm trying to think, what was the last thing that we talked about together? And, you know, that ought to teach me. There are other people around me and either I'm going to die first or they're going to die first and how am I going to treat my last few minutes with them if indeed it is our last few minutes, right? I mean, that's why death is actually a good thing at times is because it reminds us that we need to cherished the people around now. Anyway, if we knew that, would we act the way we do? Even if we plan to see someone in the morning, the morning may never come for one of us. Let us be careful to hold those we love with a special note of care as they depart our presence. We don't know what's coming, and it would be good that we try not to leave people with enmity when we're saying goodbye, because that may be the last goodbye. Anyway, Heavenly Father, We pray for Ruth down in Trinidad. Forgot to pray about that earlier, Lord, and forgive me, I get myself distracted in many things and it's hard to keep focus at times, but we do pray for Ruth and the people of Trinidad that they will get through this martial law and that the miscreants will be rounded up and taken out of society so that people can live peacefully again. And Lord, we certainly pray for the upcoming, it's another two weeks away or so, but a safe transition of power in this country. government and that people would refrain from destroying more people's lives just because of agendas and because of Lord we just pray for that safety as things transition there and we just thank you for this class we thank you that we can talk about your word in this country and share it with others and that we have that freedom still and we would pray that that would continue and that maybe even expand in the next four years with a government that is more friendly towards people that want to talk about you. Anyway, Lord, we're very thankful to you for all you've done for us. We praise you, we love you, and we just give you much praise for who you are. We do so in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, we'll say goodbye to the folks online here. There we are. Okay, everybody. Have a great, great week. Be blessed in all you do. Weekend, I guess. And then we'll see you here Sunday. Be here or be square. Bye-bye. Oh, almost dropped that. OK, this stays and this stays, all right?