Good morning, welcome to Trinity Reformed Baptist Church, Jackson, Georgia. It's April 3rd, 2016. Join us now as Brother Steve Martin brings us a message from the Word. Please turn in your Bibles to 2 Timothy chapter 2. There's a pastor in our national association who's being honored with a dedicatory volume which will come out later in the year. And I was asked to write a chapter, and I was given his life verse in these verses here, 2 Timothy 2, verses 9 and 10 especially, but I'm going to do 8 through 10. are his life verses. And so I wanted to look at those, and then we're going to go back and I'm going to explain 2 Timothy to you so you'll understand the context of why you should care about this, because the temptation would be to kind of go half asleep, well, I'm not a pastor, and this is one of those whatever sermons I'm going to listen, and whatever good I get out of it, that'll be fine. But all the Word of God is for each of us, and we apply it in slightly different ways depending on our calling. But let's read 2 Timothy chapter 2, verses 8 through 10. Paul's writing to his young disciple Timothy. Paul's in prison. He writes, Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring or seed of David, as preached in my gospel, for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. But the Word of God is not bound. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that's in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." I think it would be helpful to do two things. First of all, with your finger there, turn over to Hebrews 13. There's a verse in Hebrews 13 that was stunning the first time the Lord hit me over the head with it. and one of many knots on my head, and subsequent times, it's been a very powerful reminder. The author of this letter to Jewish Christians who were tempted to go back to becoming Jews and avoid persecution, at the end of this long letter or sermon, he writes in verse 17 of chapter 13, obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls. as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning or grief, for that would be of no advantage to you." The first sentence of that verse, Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those, as men, who will have to give an account. Now Brandon will have to give an account one day for all of your souls. all of your souls, He will have to give an account for, for He is the shepherd of this flock, and the elders will have to give an account. He will not give account for your marriage. He will not give account for your parenting. If you're a man, you're the head of your household, and you'll have to give an account for your family. I look at each and every one of you men and tell you, you will one day have to give an account for what in the world you did with your family. What did you do, first of all, with your wife? Did you Ephesians 5 her? Did you wash her in the Word? Did you pray for her? Did you present her holy to the Lord? And what did you do with your children? Did you bring them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord? Did you teach them the Word of God? Did you teach them that they were sinners and lost on their way to eternal destruction unless they fled to Christ for refuge? Did you teach them the Gospel? Did you model the Gospel? Did you pray for them? Obey your leaders and submit to them for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account." Well, where is this accounting? At Judgment Day. What did I give you? What did I entrust to you? What did you do with it? And the first place he'll go is to your family. And he'll go to your marriage, then he'll go to your parenting. If you're a pastor, you tack on one more thing. He will have to give an account for everybody. There was a young pastor right out of the seminary. who was at his first General Assembly in Scotland at the Presbyterian Church, and he was complaining to an older pastor, Horatius Bonar, that he said, you know, I thought I would have gotten a bigger church after seminary. Apparently he had a case of young man's pride, and he thought he was pretty special, and he should have a big church. And Bonar, who had been on the pastor for 40 years by that point, told him, young man, on Judgment Day, you won't think God gave you too big a church. Because you're going to have to give an account for each of their souls. And so I say this by way of introduction to our passage here in 2 Timothy. Everybody here has responsibility for somebody. Wives, you'll have to give an account for what you did with your husband and with your children. Children, who's over you in the Lord? Your parents, beginning with your dad. Did you submit to him? Did you honor him? Did you do what scripture says children should do toward their parents? For you will have to give an account one day as part of your judgment. Now our ultimate judgment's been taken by Christ. We're not talking about going to perdition. We're not talking about eternal condemnation, but we are talking about the rewards of believers who have lived their lives faithfully, or not so faithfully. So going back here to 2 Timothy, chapter 2, You can look at this letter of Paul to his young disciple who he calls his son. He wasn't his literal son. He was a spiritual son. Timothy had grown up in a Christian home, a believing home. His mother and grandmother were believers. His father was not. But he had become to Christ under Paul's preaching, and Paul was his spiritual father. So it's like a father writing to a son in one way. But this son happens to be called to be a pastor or a shepherd, even as Paul was called to be a shepherd. and an apostle, so there's slightly different responsibilities. But there's the same sense of someone who has responsibility, and Paul's trying to encourage him. So let's go back and read 2 Timothy 2, 8 through 10 a second time in the light of some things I've just said. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel. for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal, but the word of God is not bound. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that's in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." There's four things about 2 Timothy that will be helpful for you to get to put these verses in context. First of all, Paul's in prison. He's in prison in Rome. And he's awaiting execution. If you read the end of the book of the Acts of the Apostles, Paul was in prison then, but he was under house arrest. He had his own house, but it was like today. Some people are under house arrest. They give them an ankle monitor. You can't leave the house. You can't leave the property. Well, they didn't have ankle monitors, but they did have guards at the door. And Paul had his own living quarters, and it says there at the end of the book of Acts that he could preach and have guests and do different things. Please bring me some books. I'm in need of some books. It wasn't the kind of prison he's in now. Most Bible scholars believe that Paul was released from that imprisonment mentioned at the book of Acts, and that he was arrested later a second time, only this time it wasn't quite the same. He wasn't under house arrest. He was in the dreaded Mamertine prison in Rome, which was really an old pit and a dungeon that they used way underground that they kept people in. And if the dungeon didn't kill you, the sword or the crucifixion awaiting you would kill you. He's in prison. He's in the maximum security prison of the Roman Empire. Second, Paul's gone through so much. You're going to die. You know it's imminent. He talks in this book about, I know that my passing, my death is imminent. It's going to happen soon. So, well, what do you think about the end of your life? Well, you go over your life, don't you? What did I do? How did I do it? How did I do with what I was given? You look back over all the stuff you've done. And that's one reason why believers need to be spiritually robust when they die because Satan, I'm sorry, I don't know what kind of naive thoughts you have, but Satan doesn't take it easy on you because you're sick and dying. Oh, poor baby, are you sick? Are you dying? Okay, I'll be easy on you. No. Believers since the Reformation have always thought it important to see how people die because you come under attack when you're dying. Let's drag out some of those sins you committed when you were a youth. Let's drag out some of those sins that nobody knew about except you and God and me. And let's rehearse those and let's see whether or not you measure up to being a real Christian. And the devil just shreds your life. Well, Paul could have, I'm sure, gone through some of that. But he's suffering in lots of unique ways. He can think back of all the times he suffered. Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 12. We're going to do a little finger walking through the scriptures here, so look back in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 rather. One of the reasons I firmly believe most laymen don't really spend much time in 2 Corinthians is because it's written for pastors and it's written for people who are going through hard times, and it's kind of a downer. And unless you're going through hard times, you don't really look for a downer. Most of us are looking, I'm going to just keep reading until I find something encouraging. Oh, here's a good verse. I can do all things through Christ. Oh, that's a nice verse. All who wish to live holy lives in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Well, I don't think so. And you kind of, you know, you do one of those. So I know how that works, because I've been there. Well, in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, beginning at verse 24, Paul's rehearsing some of what he went through just up to that point. He says, five times I received at the hands of the Jews the 40 lashes less one. Let's see, 40 minus one, 39 lashes. Do you know why they did it that way? The Jews thought if I gave you the full 40 it'd kill you, so I'll just give you 39. And that was Jewish custom. He says, five times I've been whipped with 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Several years ago, during the Clinton administration, there was a young man living in Singapore who decided to go around keying cars. He was a bored teenager and keying cars sounded like fun. You take your key and you walk down the street and you scrape the paint off all the cars. The only trouble in Singapore is not liberal United States suburbia. And in Singapore, the penalty for keying cars was being caned. And the United States went berserk. This poor young man, how can he be caned for this sin? Well, they wouldn't call it sin. How can he be caned for this small infraction? And the United States huffed and puffed and threatened to blow Singapore's house down, but in the end did nothing and Singapore caned the young man. I'll bet he has never keyed in a car since then. But he was caned. Once I was stoned. Being hit with bricks until you die was the idea. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea. Here's a 12 by 12. I'm going to hold on to that and hopefully it will hold me up as I'm treading water here in the Mediterranean. On frequent journeys and dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own people, the Jews, dangers from the Gentiles, that's everybody who's not a Jew, Danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst. You know, when you're hiking between cities in the New Testament, there's not 7-Elevens and Burger Kings and places like that. You might find a dwelling place, you might find a primitive inn, but for the most part it's what you brought with you or what you could scrounge or you went hungry. in cold and exposure, and then I always thought this amazing, Paul goes, but that ain't nothing. And apart from these things, he kind of waves his hand as if that wasn't the hardest part of my life. And apart from the other things, there is the daily pressure on me of anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak in some local church, and I am not weak. Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant. I burn with indignation. Paul says, yeah, I've been through some hard physical testings, but frankly, the inner testings of bearing the lives of these people is what really gets me. I care about the churches I plant. I care about the people in the churches. I care that they make it and get to heaven. And it's a great burden on my soul when people struggle. So Paul's looking back over his life, and he's thinking about his physical beatings, I'm sure, but he's thinking about all the churches that he's helped to plant. It's very hard to bear the psychological pressure of other people's souls. Sometimes you moms and dads know, particularly during teenage years when some teenagers, not all, it's not a universal phenomenon, but some teenagers think that they're 16 going on 30 and that they know everything, mom and dad are nincompoops. And so trying to help a person who doesn't want help, I know everything, don't tell me this, By the grace of God, I was not a real rebellious teenager, but if we were struck dead for rolling our eyes, then I would have been struck dead many a time. So I'm not pointing at you a finger that doesn't point back at me. But sometimes pride can make us very foolish and the need to be humble and listen and Paul's thinking back over his life and the difficulties. It's really hard when The people under your care don't get it. Every dad here, mom here who has teenagers and above know the times you've spent in tears by your bed, in tears with your face in your pillow. Lord, you've got to work in their heart. I can't make them hear. I can't make them see. I can't make them pay attention. I can't humble them. Oh, I can do certain things, but they don't have to be humbled even if circumstances would seem to warrant it. Lord, you've cut to working my child's heart. I'm powerless. I'm not sovereign. You are." And Paul had that experience of praying for people in churches. We have the experience of praying for our own family. And it can be very hard, very hard. You talk about parents who had a rough teenager and they get the teenager through the high school years and into early adulthood and a meaningful citizenship, and they'll tell you, it was the grace of God that got us through that time. Napoleon said, the first prerequisite of a good soldier is not bravery. The number one thing Napoleon said about soldiers, the number one prerequisite of my soldiers is not that they're brave. And if there's a man who would know something about soldiering, it was Napoleon. A soldier is in battle only about 10% of his service. Rather, the first prerequisite of a good soldier is the ability to endure fatigue, hardship, and privation, and keep on going and do your duty. That kind of sums up parenting, doesn't it? Fatigue, hardship, and privation. And put your head down and you keep on doing what you're supposed to do. But that's the role of a Christian, too. That's the role of a Christian soldier. And so Paul, thinking back over his life, can think back on some really hard times that he endured and got through by the grace of God. And why is Paul sitting in prison there? Why didn't he quit and walk away? Because God enabled him to persevere. The same grace that enabled Paul to persevere will enable us to persevere. But he's in this maximum security dungeon. His life is behind him. He's just awaiting the time when the executioner is going to come in. And while Peter was crucified upside down, church history has it that Paul was executed by having his head cut off. It will be quick and swift once it comes, but it's the end of everything I've given my life to. But it was made even more painful by something you might have missed, and I've missed it for years. Paul's final time in prison was made even worse because of the cowardice of Christians around him. Go back in chapter 1, verse 15. He says, you are aware that all who are in the province of Asia turned away from me, among whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes. He said, I've had a bunch of people desert me. Verse 16 and 17 says, Anasephorus often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains, but when he arrived at Rome, he searched for me earnestly and found me. Now James Montgomery Boyce, longtime pastor, 10th president of Philadelphia, remarked in one of his commentaries, I believe it's a Philippians commentary, do you see what Paul is saying here? Imagine if one of the great heroes of evangelical and Reformed believers, Charles Spurgeon, Martin Lloyd-Jones, somebody alive today, John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, had been in prison for being a Christian. We had heard that he was somewhere in Atlanta in prison. We didn't really want to know, and we really weren't going to go down there and check on him, because we don't want to be associated with him, because he's in prison for being a Christian, and if you go see him, that means there's a blot next to your name, too. So people just kind of go, yeah, he's in prison somewhere in Rome, we don't really know where he is. And it says, Anna Sephoris had to go search for him diligently before he found him. How psychologically defeating would it be for all these people you've given your life for, And they go, I'm not sticking my neck out for him. He's going to die anyway, so he can die without me. That's tough. You would hope the people you gave your life for would reciprocate a little bit, a little TLC, a little faithfulness. In chapter 4, Paul goes on to continue to talk about the people who had deserted him. Chapter 4, verses 16 and 17. Demas had deserted Paul because he was in love with his present world, and he left to go back to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia. Titus to Dalmatia. That doesn't mean that Crescens and Titus had necessarily deserted him in a carnal way, but they were off on ministry business. Luke alone stayed with Paul. At my first defense, he says, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me. May it not be charged against them. When I had to appear, when my arraignment came, my initial appearance in court, nobody came. Wow. Don't you think the devil would use that to make Paul's time in prison even worse? Something else about 2 Timothy to help you understand this context of chapter 2. Paul's concern in 2 Timothy at the end of his life are the concerns he's had his whole life in every one of his letters. If you go back and read Paul's letters, you'll notice a common theme, several common themes. First of all, he warns Timothy in 2 Timothy, he says, you know, there are false teachers out there, and he names some of them. And he goes, you know what false teachers do? They teach false doctrine. And that leads to false living. And I want to make sure that we have the true doctrine being taught by faithful men, because bad doctrine leads to bad living, leads to a bad testimony about Christ. So Paul warns Timothy about how to deal with false teachers and false teaching. And then he says in chapter 3 of 2 Timothy, he says that the only way that you can combat false teachers is with true doctrine. And you need to teach the Bible. You need to teach the Bible. Did I tell you you need to teach the Bible? And so 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 is how the scriptures are going to be the answer to Paul dealing with these false teachers. The first thing he does is in chapter 3, verse 15, if you look there, how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. In other words, your grandmother and your mother were both believers and you grew up in a home where you saw other people reading the Bible and ordering their life by the Word of God. And you've had this privilege for a long time. Now look how it impacted your life. Then he goes on in verse 16 to say, All Scripture is God-breathed, breathed out by God, and profitable for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. There's nothing, Timothy, you have to worry about that I'm turning over to you that mastering the Scriptures isn't going to equip you for. The deal is, I've given you the Scriptures, and it's everything you need to combat these false teachers. Charles Spurgeon once said, if I was told when I get to heaven that I would have to preach on for the rest of eternity, I would tell the Lord, Lord, give me my Bible. That's enough for me. Martin Lloyd-Jones was once asked, aren't you embarrassed by all the stuff you find in these verses? You got 14 volumes of sermons on Romans. Aren't you embarrassed by all that verbiage? He says, no, I'm actually embarrassed by all the stuff I had to leave out. There's tons of stuff in the scripture that we see over the course of our lives that you've grown in your understanding. I never saw that before. Like imagine, you know, many of us were stunned like being hit over the head with an axe when you saw the doctrines of grace. It's on every page. Why didn't I see it before? Well, God reveals things. It's not by your wisdom or your smarts. It's by the grace of God. But that's just one aspect. There's lots of things in scripture. Somebody shows it to you, you go, oh yeah, it's there. I never saw it. And so Paul tells Timothy, the cure for the things that you're going to have to face, the spiritual illnesses, are the scriptures. Now, for those of you who are patient and thinking, this is all introduction, you haven't even gotten to the main part yet. Ah, but there's more introduction to come. Besides showing him the sufficiency of Scripture, in chapter 4 he goes even farther. He says, I charge you by the living God. Do you know what it is for a man of God, an apostle, to sit you down and to look you in the eye and say, Son, I am charging you in the name of the living God to preach the Word of God. Now what does that mean? to preach the Word of God. And he says, in season and out of season. When you think it'd be the right time, and out of season means, I don't know, this doesn't seem like picking time, it seems more like, well, it's just not the right time to be doing this. And he says, when it's in season and seemingly the right time, and when it's out of season, when it's seemingly not the right time, I charge you to preach the Word of God. I'm not simply teaching it. Here's what the Bible says you can do if you want to with the Word of God. I don't care. But to preach the Word of God is to tell people, this is what it says, and this is what God says you are to be doing in light of this. If you don't do what the Word of God says, if you don't respond to the Word of God rightly, that's on your conscience, and that's between you and God. But preaching is taking the teaching of the Scriptures and drilling it into men's and women's hearts and saying, you must obey this. This is the very Word of God. when George Whitfield would preach and sometimes perhaps an elderly person who was too tired would fall asleep. And in those days, they had a sounding board over the head of the speaker because they didn't have PA systems. And he would stomp his foot or, you know, wake up. If I was here on my own commission, you could fall asleep. But I'm here by the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and he commands you to wake up and pay attention and be converted and be saved. And that's the right attitude toward preaching. This isn't a hobby. Brandon just didn't decide, you know, rather than going with this in my life, I decided I'm going to go over here and do a little bit of speaking about God. It's a sovereign call from God. We're praying for our pastor today who's sick, but we're looking at Paul addressing a young pastor and saying, this is your calling. This is what God expects you to do. Preach the Word of God when you expect it to work and when you don't expect it to work. But preach it in such a way that people will know they've heard the Word of God. Not the word of a man, but the word of Almighty God. After World War II, Europe was devastated. I'm old enough to remember watching TV shows and newsreels, so to speak, on TV, and you'd see European cities, and they're piles of rubble. Looks like places you see in the Middle East, only worse. They were reduced to piles of rubble. And people pushing carts and holding their children's hands, walking through mazes of piles of rubble, trying to resurrect a civilization. In 1948, I believe, the Secretary of the Treasury, he calls him the Chancellor of the Exchequer in London, and the Bishop of London for the Anglican Church asked Martin Lloyd-Jones if they could use his big downtown Westminster Chapel to have a thing about Christianity and the recovery from the war. And he agreed, and so he was asked to be the third speaker. So you had the Secretary of the Treasury, and you had the Bishop of London, and then you had the local pastor, Martin Lloyd-Jones. And one of the men who was there that day said, it was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. He said, the first man, the Secretary of the Treasury, stood up and said, we need a revitalized England. The economy's shot. We're bankrupt by the war. The nation is in ruins. We need the church to build up the morale of the people so we can build this great country back up to where it used to be, where the sun never sets in the British Empire. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah And he sat down. And then the Bishop of London stood up and said, we need to rebuild the churches. There's so many churches in ruins. There's churches that have been destroyed by bombings and other things. And people have been killed. And we need to get working here to build up the churches of England. And then he said Martin Lloyd-Jones got up to preach. But he got up to preach. He didn't stand up to give a political speech. He didn't stand up to give an ecclesiastical speech. He stood up to preach the Word of God. And he showed that whatever you do, you need to do it to the glory of God. And if we have any other motive for going to church than the glory of God. God will not bless our attempts to rebuild Great Britain. He will not bless our attempts to rebuild the churches of Great Britain. He will only bless those who are seeking to glorify him and do his will. And he was very eloquent and very powerful. And this man who was there that day said, it was so powerful, I couldn't look over at the two men who just finished speaking, because I expect to see little piles of ashes, because there's a tremendous sermon that galvanized 2,000 people. He preached the Word of God. But you don't preach the Word of God when there's heavy hitters. I mean, here's the Secretary of the Treasury and here's the Bishop of London. Certainly you would be nice and just have a little mealy-mouthed sermon playing the game. That wasn't his calling. The faithful and authoritative preaching of the Word of God. Preaching the Word of God, he said, do the work of an evangelist. Hopefully every time a preacher preaches somewhere in a sermon, you'll hear the gospel. Do the work of an evangelist. And finally, the last point of introduction, you know, sometimes big planes take longer to leave the runway than small planes. But maybe this is a short flight. Maybe it's a long runway for a short flight. The fourth point of context was Paul's giving his personal instructions to his most beloved and intimate disciple. He exhorts and reminds Timothy to look to Christ and to fulfill his ministry. Timothy, you're a timid person. More than once he had to encourage Timothy in his timidity. God has not given us a spirit of timidity, a spirit of Timothy, but of love and of power and of a sound mind. Timothy did not have Paul's temperament. He had the same Holy Spirit, access to the same God, but a different temperament. And so he approached some things with diffidence. And Paul had to remind him that God is with me, and God will be with you, and you need to look to our God. You're called to have boldness and endurance and faithfulness, regardless of the persecution that's come. You know, here's your hero, here's the man, and he's about to be executed for being the man. And here I am, and I'm going to follow in his footsteps, and good luck for me. I mean, the temptation to think, boy, if they kill the man, what chance do I have to really accomplish anything? But Paul was handing the baton of the gospel and the ministry of the Word to Timothy. And Timothy, you're to take it and run with it faithfully to the end of your life. And Timothy was a pastor we know in Ephesus. He was the last New Testament pastor in Ephesus. John was there. Timothy was the one who lasted the longest. And that's all the stuff that's swirling around 2 Timothy 2, 8 through 10. So we're going to go back to those verses and say, OK, now when we look at these verses we have something of the context of what's going on, where Paul is, how he's speaking to his beloved, timid, young disciple. And Paul's going to do three things in these three verses. In verse 8, he's going to look back for encouragement. He says, now Timothy, think with me. Think with me. Christians don't lay on the ground and emote. Christians think. Now, I remember non-Christians used to say, Christians have two brains. One's lost and the other one's out looking for it. And that was their way of putting down Christians, as if we were non-thinking people. Of course we believe all miracles. Of course we believe in the resurrection of the dead, because we're stupid. No, that's not why we believe in the resurrection of the dead. It's because the biblical evidence for the resurrection of the dead is overpowering. Specifically, Jesus Christ. We simply don't let our presuppositions control our conclusions. A rationalist is a person who says, if it doesn't fit into my mind, it's not true. Guys, there's a lot of things in life I would never use if it had to fit into my mind. I don't understand electricity, but I doesn't keep me from using the lights in my house or all the electronic gadgets. How many of you can explain light? Is it waves or is it particles? It's both. Does it mean you don't use daytime? I don't understand sunshine, so I'm staying in the house. I mean, of course, you use many things you don't fully understand, but you accept them. Paul's going to be looking back to the resurrection of Christ. He's going to be looking forward. He says, do you know that no matter what opposition we have, the Word of God always wins? It always wins, it always accomplishes what God has for it. And finally, he says, there's a conclusion. You can go forward with your ministry and you can have hope and encouragement. Specifically here, Timothy, you're a pastor and an apostolic assistant, but as a husband and a father, as a mother and a wife, as a Christian kid, you can go forward with encouragement because of the things we're going to be looking at in these three verses. So, hopefully, the flaps are adjusted, the power's there, we're taking off, and here's where we're going. Paul looks back for his first bunch of encouragement. Remember Jesus Christ. You know, really? That's all he has? Just remember Jesus Christ? Like, do you think Timothy is going to forget him? No. I mean, is it even possible to forget Christ if you're a Christian? No. But consider the situation. The apostles were passing from the scene. Many of them were dead. Others like Paul would soon be dead. So who's going to continue teaching the truth when they're gone? And as these authoritative teachers passed from the scene, the cults and false teachers multiply and they spread over the Mediterranean. In fact, Paul knew in his own life, he'd leave a city and he'd go on to the next city and false teachers would come in behind him and say, well, Paul means well, but he doesn't have the full scoop. Let us give it to you. And that would happen. In fact, in chapter 2, verses 15 through 19, he talks about false teachers as tearing down the truths of the gospel. In verse 15 through 19, Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who need not be ashamed, handling rightly the word of truth, but avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among these are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They're upsetting the faith of some. God's firm foundation stands, bearing the seal, the Lord knows those who are His, and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. There's stuff going on already, even as Timothy was receiving this letter from Paul. So what do you do? Jesus Christ is the core of Christianity. You don't start with Jesus and then go on and graduate to something else. In the last 30 years, the charismatic movement has said, that's great that you've got Jesus. That's like your training wheels. But if you want to be a really, really, really, really Christian, then you have to have this baptism, this special experience. You need to speak in tongues or maybe have the laughing blessing. Or maybe, you know, all the other cockamamie things that have come down the pike. Christ is where you begin, but you don't finish with Christ, you just start with Christ. And the Bible says you start with Christ, and you middle with Christ, and you end with Christ. In 1969, when the gospel was presented to me and God chose to use that day to save me, it was crystal clear that if I didn't turn to Christ, I was history's biggest fool. I needed Him like back in the fifties kids with polio needed an iron lung to survive. I needed Christ. But now that I've been a Christian since then, do I go on to other things? Yeah, I was into Christ at one time, but I've graduated to better things. Well, for one thing, over the course of your life, you see your sins are much greater than you ever thought. I knew I was a sinner. I had three years of college. I was 20, almost 21. And I knew I was a sinner, but I didn't know the half of it. I didn't know the thousands of it. One of the godliest men who ever lived, Robert Murray McShane, said, having seen my own heart, I'm now convinced that there is no sin that I'm not capable of committing. I thought, come on, you are really perfectionistic, because look how messed up I am. There's still some stuff I wouldn't do. The Lord goes, oh, really? Shall I try you? Shall I take off my restraints? Shall I put that temptation in front of you? Do you really want to try me on this? No, Lord. Paul said at the beginning of his life, I'm not worthy to be an apostle. I'm the least of the apostles. I'm the least of all saints at the end of his life. I'm not worthy to be an apostle. I'm the least of all the Christians. That's a person who's seen his heart. Christianity is based on Christ because he's the beginning and he's the middle and he will end. If I'm laying in dead, dying of cancer or pneumonia or who knows what and I have my mind, I will say, Lord, only thing I can plead is Jesus Christ. He atoned for all my sins. His righteousness was given to me as my gift to wear for eternity. He sits at your right hand. I have nothing to plead with Christ. I have nothing to plead with Christ, praying that the Lord would use this message today. I don't use any so-called credentials or righteousness of my own. I have none. They're all tainted by my sins. But Christ's righteousness is perfect. It's enough to begin the Christian life, and to middle the Christian life, and to end the Christian life. It's interesting that the leaders of the world's various religions don't even have to be alive anymore for their religions to go on. Moses was the beginner of Judaism, so to speak, but Jews today don't look to Moses and pray to Moses. Moses isn't going to do them any good. And the Gautama Buddha or Mohammed, they laid down their laws and left, and you don't need them. But in Christianity, you and I need Christ every day. And we have the privilege of communing with Almighty God every day in the person of Christ by His Holy Spirit. Has it ever struck you, this stupendous privilege, that you know God? You don't just know about Him, but if you're a Christian, you actually know Almighty God. And He is your Father. And His Son, Jesus Christ, is your best friend. And God, the Holy Spirit, actually indwells you if you're a Christian. That's stupendous. Not fairytale talk, that's stupendous Bible truth. I've shared this before, but it still happens to me sometimes. You're walking home from class, it's a May evening, the tundra has defrosted and the leaves are on the trees, there's a warm wind blowing, and you're walking and just enjoying the evening and you see the stars and it dawns on you, God who made all this is my father and he loves me. And then later as they came to see, He loved me before time. He loved me before I was even clued in that He was God. Jesus Christ came because God the Father sent Him on this rescue mission. Bible says before the beginning of time. What does that mean? Before there was stellar space, before there was any Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Big Dipper, Little Dipper, before there was anything in space, God the Father and God the Son covenanted together to create a people. And then foreseeing their fall into sin, covenanted together to rescue a people for their glory. And this people would not be five people. It wouldn't be twelve. I don't know what kind of... Even after I first saw the doctrines of grace, my sinful heart still said, well, you know, but if God's in charge of saving people, probably only like twelve people in heaven. And one day the Lord had it out with me and said, so let's examine this. Why do you think that because I elect people, there's going to be less in heaven than, what, if you elected them or if they chose to elect themselves? Why do you think there'd be less? And I was driven down into my seat like a giant screw into a board. Because I don't think you're very loving, very big-hearted, very generous. And probably the things you've done for me, you're not going to do for tons of people. Well, why does the Scripture say, as many as the stars in the sky and the sands of the seashore, so shall your descendants be, Abraham. And that very promise in Genesis is repeated in the book of Revelation. Like the stars of the sky, the sands of the seashore, so shall your descendants be. A host that no man can number will be there on Judgment Day to thank Christ that they're not being sentenced to condemnation, they're being taken to glory. Christ entered space and time history, suffered at the hands of the Roman Empire with the help of the Jews, crucified between two thieves, buried in the tomb of a rich man. And the good news that I can tell, that Brandon can tell, that any preacher can tell, anybody who will listen, is that men and nations If you look to Jesus Christ, no matter how guilty you are, no matter how vile your sins have been, if you come to Him for pardon and cleansing and new righteousness and eternal life, He'll give you all these things and more. He will give you pardon, and He will give you cleansing, and He will give you new life, and He will give you eternal life. Have you ever just marveled at the fact that you're a Christian and that you have a new life? Can you remember when you were first converted and it's like, I can't believe I'm thinking these things. I can't believe I have these desires. I can't believe I don't want to do those bad things anymore. I'm shocked that I want to do these good things. I'm changing. And I know God, and God's the reason why I'm changing, and this joy of knowing God and seeing Him work in your life. All sinners who trust in God's Son exchange their sins for Him, receive His righteousness, and they're accepted by the Father forever and ever and ever. So that's why Paul said, remember Jesus Christ. Timothy, you're not going to go beyond Jesus Christ. Preach Christ and the gospel to yourself daily. Timothy. That was Jerry Bridge's theme before he died a couple of weeks ago in his many books, and it's certainly been a part of my life. Preach Jesus Christ to yourself every day. If you get up in the morning, you're having, and some of you say, good God, morning. Others say, good Lord, morning. And so you try to get your thoughts acclimated for the day. Do you remember Jesus Christ? He loved you enough to come and purchase you with His life and death and resurrection? Do you think of Jesus Christ giving you His righteousness and atoning for all your sins? There's not one sin running around out there that God's just waiting to hit you over the head with a club for because that sin wasn't atoned for by Christ. Christians are to work at thinking about Christ. Remember, why does the Bible say remember? Because we forget. I forget stuff and go, oh, that's why I have no hair follicles left in the front going, oh, there it goes again. I'm to work at thinking about Christ. It's not that I'm tempted to forget about Him altogether, but He doesn't occupy the rightful place in my mind many times. He should be right here, but too often I'm into other things, and other things have my attention, and other things have my concern and my worry, and He's way out here. There's a pastor and Bible commentator in Ohio named John Kitchen. He wrote a helpful commentary on the pastoral epistles for pastors. And he said, Paul was not worried that Timothy would entirely forget who Jesus was. Rather, he was concerned that under pressure, Timothy might not allow Christ the place of preeminence and supremacy in his thinking that Jesus rightly deserves. Bingo. That's where I live too many days. Forever and always, Jesus Christ is to be the first and foremost in our thinking. But then he says, remember Christ risen from the dead. Not just remember Jesus, but who he's risen from the dead. Now why is that important? Well, the Bible tells us why that's important. If I say, destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise it back up. Now at first some people thought he meant the temple in Jerusalem, but later they understood the temple of his body. If I make a prophecy about what's going to happen to me, and it doesn't happen, you kind of go, well, I thought he was kind of lonely anyway, but he didn't rise from the dead. So first of all, his claims to be deity, his claims to be God would be false, because he said, if you kill me, three days later I'll be raised. And he was killed on the Roman cross, and three days later he's still dead. So it proved his claims to be God It also proves another thing. He said, I'm dying in order to pay for your sins. And the Father will accept you based upon me. And then Jesus stays dead. Well, I don't know. He stayed dead and I would have thought he might have come back to life or something if the Father had really accepted his payment in our place. Was he pleasing to the Father? Did God like what he did for us? Or was maybe he dying for his own sins? No. It's the whole culmination of the crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection package that saves God's people. And we know that the Father accepted the Son's payment for our sins because He raised Him from the dead. This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased. A third thing, though, is even coming from that. The Bible says that not only did he show his claims to be God to be true, it shows that the Father accepted his payment. It also shows that he conquered the devil. It says in Colossians chapter 2 that Christ has disarmed and put to open shame and triumph over the devil and his minions. Christ has triumphed over the devil. The devil is like a demented bounty hunter. I've got a whole world of sinners who are guilty, and I'm going to haul them all in and get them all killed, or kill them myself. He's like a demented bounty hunter. But Christ has saved a people. He has received their punishment. He's given them His righteous standing. They're perfect in the eyes of Almighty God, and the devil has no claims on them. There are not any sins running around loose that believers have committed that Christ didn't pay for on the cross. Because all of your sins were future tense when He did it, so there's even sins you may commit in the future are under the blood of Christ. And finally, the last enemy to be defeated is death. The Bible says that, in 1 Corinthians 15, that the last enemy we have to face is death. And so in your deathbed, it's important how you do death. And many saints have written out, or people who are taking care of them have written out how they died. One famous Scottish preacher asked for his fingers to be placed on Romans 8, 31 to 39. Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? Not Christ. He's the one who died for you, who was raised for you. You were justified because of Christ. And he goes on to say, there is nothing that shall separate us from the love of God and Christ Jesus. And he put his finger there and he says, I'm trusting this here in my death. And it was the last words he spoke and he died the next day. You read the last words of many saints in history and how they face death is by trusting in Christ. We have no other hope but Christ. Risen from the dead Christ, the king of God's kingdom was raised from the dead. He's victorious over the devil. He's victorious over sin. He's victorious over death. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, our champion, one. The offspring of David. Most versions read the seed of David. What's that about? Well, offspring is a good translation. So what do I care whether or not Jesus Christ was the offspring of David? Because Jesus Christ is not simply God. The miracle of Christianity is that God became a man. C.S. Lewis said rightly, the most stupendous thing that has ever happened in human history was the fact that Jesus Christ came on that first Christmas. For once he determined that he would save and he came to earth to save. Easter and the cross was a done deal. It was a foregone conclusion. The question was, would God really do this? Would he set aside his glory? Would he set aside the worship of myriads of angels? Would he come and be a nobody? And would he represent a world full of sinful nobodies and die for them? Yes. The most stupendous thing that's ever happened in the face of this planet was God becoming a man. And this speaks, first of all, of Christ's true humanity, which I need and you need, and Christ's covenant blessings, covenant faithfulness. I need someone who's a man to represent me before God. And Christ is a man. He became a man. And you know what? If I'm Timothy, It's encouraging to see that God the Father stood by Jesus and His humanity. Christ went through far more junk than you and I will ever go through, and He made it to the end. He didn't quit. He didn't give in. I once preached on Matthew chapter 4 and the trial there, or the temptation there. And like so much stuff I used to teach before I came to see the doctrines of grace, people want to take stories of people in the Bible and make them moral examples. Dare to be a Daniel. Well, but I'm just in third grade. Well, I don't care. But there it'll be in all the things we throw on to kids. I never liked to study Old Testament saints because they seem like sinners like me, but they're supposedly heroes. And then I came to see whatever they did, they did by the grace of God. They did by the grace of God. But the idea that... Excuse me, I just lost my place here. I need Jesus Christ to be man to represent me. And the fact that he could be given grace to persevere to the end, then I can have persevering grace to go to the end. And it's not a matter of if I'm a great person or not, it's a matter of is Jesus Christ on my side? Am I one of his? Is he giving me his grace on a daily basis? How did you make it this far? Are you smarter than other people? Are you more spiritually sensitive, more humble? just a more spiritual person and that's why other people have dropped away and you haven't? Or is it by the sustaining grace of God? Christ is an example that I can look to. But besides being true humanity, there's a promise here of the descendant of David. God made a promise to King David, one of your descendants will sit upon your throne forever. My son had a college roommate who used to throw that verse in the Old Testament at him because he said, well I took this religion class and it says that he made a promise to David and he didn't fulfill it because there is nobody, there's no king in Israel. You go over to Israel, there's no king. There's a representative democracy like in America but there's no king over in Israel today. So that promise didn't come true. And my son tried to show him, well, Jesus Christ is sitting at the right hand of the Father. He's occupying David's true throne, and he will occupy that forever. So, what does that mean? God fulfills his covenants. God fulfills his promises. I solemnly swear that I will fulfill this covenant with you, David. Well, if God doesn't do it, then he's not faithful and he's not God. But here, he's reminding Timothy, not only is Christ raised from the dead, God made a covenant promise And he fulfilled that with David, and he will rescue you from persecution as you rescue Jesus, and he will fulfill his promises to you. Did he say he'd get you to glory? He'll get you to glory. Did he say you'll triumph over all your sins eventually? You will. Why? Oh, I don't know. I don't feel very powerful. That's not the point. Is Christ a faithful God to his promises? Human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ now sits at the right hand of the Father's eternal majesty. You and I will make it because Christ has made it for us. And my final sub-point here, Brandon said I could go until 2.30, so I'm going to finish my points. Paul says it's preached in my gospel. Ed's going, oh no. The roast will burn. as preached in my gospel. Paul didn't own the gospel, but he's simply saying, the stuff that you've heard from me my whole career, it's still true. The stuff that changed your grandmother, that changed your mother, that changed you. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, as you heard preached in my gospel. It didn't belong to him personally, but it was sacred deposit entrusted to him. You know, when Brandon gets to the end of his trip, spiritually, end of the road, when I get to the end of mine, all gospel preachers, the question is, did you hold on to the gospel? Did you faithfully preach the gospel to the end of your life? You'd be excited about, excited, you'd be surprised, excuse me, how many people who start out well don't finish well, even as famous preachers. There are people who are on TV who one time were orthodox preachers, but they went bad. And there are people who seemingly start out well, but they don't finish. But Paul says it's important that we finish preaching the gospel. Paul didn't see himself as a teacher merely. He didn't see himself as a polite spokesman. He didn't see himself as a person who wrote articles for the paper once in a while about how Jesus is special. He saw himself as a preacher, as a herald, a person who would lift up his voice and preach the gospel. Charles Spurgeon saw a conversion one day when they had finished his Metropolitan Tabernacle in London. It was the biggest building in the world for a church. It sat 5,000 people in a day when there were no megachurches. Turned away 1,500 to service. You had to have a little card given you by one of the deacons at the door. Once the fire marshal said it's full, it's full. And they would cram them in so tight that many weeks it was three quarters men. Why? Because women wore big voluminous skirts and you don't want people sitting on your dress. So you can't cram as many women in that kind of pews as you can men. Here's this huge church service. Well, he's going to test the acoustics of his brand new building. And he walks in, and he's oblivious to the fact there's a workman up doing something in the back in the corner. And he tries out the acoustics. Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. That man came under conviction of sin that day and was converted the next Sunday. Preach the gospel. Lift up your voice. Paul's second major point, and I'm going to skim these more quickly since I want you to like me. Paul will be looking forward in verse 9. I think we can do this more quickly. He says, this gospel for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. He was. He wasn't simply in a house arrest. He was chained. and his circumstances were being used against him by his critics and glory-stealers. I mean, if you're going to have a hero, does he have to be a criminal? I mean, your big-time hero got crucified, and now this junior hero's in prison? Couldn't you guys come up with better leaders? Couldn't you come up with better examples than a bunch of ex-cons or cons? How could the gospel of Christ be so special when one of its chief spokesmen was in prison? Well, Paul goes on to say, I may have been in prison, that's true. I'm just a human being. You can do all kinds of stuff to me as a human being. But the Word of God is not bound. What does that mean? The Word of God is the Word of God, and once it's let loose, once it's proclaimed, you can't control where it goes and what it does. And Paul says the Word of God is not bound. When it's preached to His appointed servants, it may seem impotent, it may seem like nothing, but God uses it for His sovereign purposes in ways you can't imagine. Martin Luther said, this is how the Reformation went. I would preach, later I would drink good Wittenberg beer, I would go to sleep at night. And the Bible did its work. The Word of God did its work and changed Europe, changed Western civilization. One magazine had him as the man of the millennium because the Reformation changed Western civilization. Our suffering, our impediments, our imprisonments don't slow down or impede the supernatural working of God. Paul says, this is still working out. I may be chained, but it's working out. The Bible says, as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. And the book of Philippians records there were Christians in Caesar's household. There were Christians who were members of the Roman army. You know, if Paul was chained to the guards, the guards were chained to Paul. Imagine having this disturbing person, every six hours they change the guards and he whips out a four spiritual albuckle and he would start preaching the gospel to them. And what are they gonna do? La la la la la la. I mean, they're chained, they can't do anything. So Paul's witnessing to people all day long. They're chained to him and he's chained to them. And Dr. Howard Hendricks and many others have called that a chain reaction. Ah, you've grown, but some of you will use it later, I know how this works. Finally, Paul's reasoning conclusion. He's thinking back, remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, us of the seed of David, according to my gospel, and then he says, you know, look here, he says, I know that I'm in prison, and I know that I'm bound, but God's word isn't bound, you can't put chains around the word of God, you have no idea where it's going. Therefore, conclusion, I've thought about this. Timothy, this isn't just, I'm bored today in prison, I'm gonna scratch off a few lines. I've been thinking about this as I look back over my life. Therefore, I endure everything for the sake of the elect that they may also obtain the salvation that's in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. I endure everything for the sake of the elect. When I was converted, I was amazed for months that God saved me. And all I wanted to do was tell people about Christ because it was so wonderful. I wasn't thinking about avoiding hell. I was just thinking about the wonder of new life in Christ. And then the realization, well, if you reject the new life in Christ, you get a really bad eternal life in hell. And your earthly life can be very miserable too. But it just dawned on me it's worth the price to get the truth to these people. And so some of your friends in college don't like you anymore. Well, it's not the end of the world. And some of the people who you used to hang with don't hang with you anymore and they don't want to be around you. Well, it's not the end of the world. You know, Paul went over his list of imprisonments, stonings, beatings, starvings, whippings, shipwrecks, and inner psychological pain. Because he said, all that still, it's worth getting the gospel to people because it changes their lives. Preaching the gospel to people is God's appointed method. I actually had a seminary professor who I really respected, but he still didn't get it. And he said, you know, we need to get with some new methods because preaching doesn't cut it. We need to get into TV and other forms of new media, new media in the 80s. We need to get forms of media that are going to make the gospel come alive because preaching doesn't cut it. Well, God hasn't promised He'll be with TV, and He hasn't promised He'll be with radio, and He hasn't promised He'll be with cassettes. He hasn't promised He'll be with laptops, or any kind of electronic gadget. But He has promised that He will be with His anointed preachers. And as stupid and foolish, to use New Testament words, as it may seem for someone to preach the gospel, God says, that's my sovereignly appointed means of saving people. Go back and read Romans 10. The sovereignty of God in chapter 9. The sovereignty of God in chapter 11. I remember when I used to read those, I'd go and get one of those oven mitts where you reach in the oven and grab pans, and I would read Romans chapter 9 like this. Whoa. And Romans chapter 11. Whoa. God's being very God-like in these chapters. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will harden and bypass who I will harden and bypass. Yes, sir. But I will save people through the preaching of the gospel. And somebody's got to go tell them. Somebody's got to go to the ends of the world. There are a lot of people living in places that are God-forsaken now, but one day God's going to have His appointed person go there and tell them about Christ, and they will hear and be given grace to believe and receive it and have eternal life. That they may obtain the salvation that's in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. One day I was with my in-laws and for some reason I felt I had to get my Bible and go in the back room and read my Bible. And I wasn't trying to be antisocial or spiritual. Where's Steve? He's reading his Bible. They're watching TV. He's reading his Bible. I was self-consciously not trying to do that. But what God did show me that day was in 2 Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 2, Paul's telling the Thessalonians, at the end of my life, What do I look forward to? And he refers to something of the first century equivalent to a family picture. You know, when you have family gatherings, some person always says, let's take a picture. So everybody kind of, oh, am I getting that? And then you take a picture. Now Paul says, I'm imagining the picture at the end of my life, and who's going to be in it? You Thessalonians. You are my glory and my joy. I gave my life practically to see the gospel come to you, and you believed it, and your lives were transformed for eternity. For what is my glory? What is my crown of rejoicing? Is it not even you, Thessalonians? You are my glory and my joy." But he could have said that to the Romans and several other peoples, too. Who's going to be in your picture? Are you going to go to heaven by yourself? Have you taken anybody with you? Have you taken your wife? Have you taken your kids? Have you taken any of your neighbors, any of your extended relatives? I hope you do. Let's pray. Father, these people have been patient as I've gone over my time. I pray that you would help them to take good from your precious Word. We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David, according to Paul's Gospel. And though we at times may feel imprisoned or unchained and limited in what we can do, the Word of God is never chained or bound, and it will accomplish all that when you send it forth. We thank you for the privilege of being reminded from your word today. Bless us now as we meet at the Lord's table. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.