Good evening each and every one of you. My name is Ottavio Palombaro. For those who do not know me, I am finishing up the last semester at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. And it is my privilege this evening to bring to you the Word of God, which today comes in the second letter to the disciple Timothy by the Apostle. Second Timothy. If you have your Bible, I ask you to open to the fourth chapter of the second letter of the Apostle Paul to Timothy. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myth. As for you, always be sober-minded. Endure suffering. Do the work of an evangelist. Fulfill your ministry. Let's pray. Oh God, we bow down, we bow down and we tremble as we are faced with the throne of God and of Christ, in front of whom all the living and the dead shall appear in the last day. We tremble at your feet and we ask you, Lord, to protect us in this earthly pilgrimage from many attacks and confusion and contrasting messages that come at us from the world. As we are facing storms, the gathering storms, Lord, of these last days, when people will not endure, where people will wander off, Lord, where chaos and false teachings will abound, how can we stand, Lord? O God, help us to build our lives on Your precious Word, and to stand on the only ground that is solid, that it shall not be shaken, Your Word. And we ask You tonight that through Your Word You will speak to us, that we will have ears to hear, Lord, what You have to say to us through Your Spirit in Your precious Word, that Your Word may prevail against any false things, false thoughts, false messages around us and even in our mind, Lord. Help us to be proclaiming and heralding Your truth, Lord, both with our lives and with our voice to our watching world. We ask You this in the precious name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Brothers and sisters, how important it is to get the right instruction, to get the right teaching, to get the right instruction in this world. Think of a driver license test that you have to follow instruction and specific signposts and textbooks to read or what the police officer tells you to do. How important it is for those of us who like sports to follow the instructions of our coach, making sure that we practice what we are supposed to do. How important it is to practice for children, your parents, when they tell you and give you instructions, how important it is to listen to them and to follow those instructions. Now if all of this is true for manners of common grace, manners of life, day to day, daily bread, how much more for God? How important it is that we get the right instructions, that we listen to His instruction and we obey. And like for all these examples, how devastating it is when we do not follow the instructions. What are the consequences? Destruction for society, for ourselves, for the people around us. This is a serious matter. And in fact, this destruction is already at work within our culture today. We are headed towards times that we just read in chapter 3, where people will be lovers of money, lovers of pleasure, lovers of all sorts of things, having an appearance of godliness, but having rejected the substance of it. So, devastation and destruction is already here. And so, on what will we stand under these attacks? I know that even this church has experienced Recent apostasy. People leaving the faith. One day being Christian, the next day being atheists. We are surrounded, whether in Europe or whether in America, with universities where they are piling up teacher after teacher to fit an agenda, a specific agenda which is not anymore rooted in Christianity. It's rooted on evolutionism or on secular foundations and presuppositions which we are supposed to embrace. And so, people enter a university and they leave, they're atheists. This is a battle that we have to face in our families, in people around us. An apostasy that has many shades. Just a few months ago, a person that I knew, a preacher in this area, in Michigan, committed suicide. I spoke with him. And yet the battle that was going inside of him. Or we hear of scandals, sexual scandals in churches that once were so faithful and conservative. Money scandal. Christian writers, Christian apologists, Christian singers, pastors abandoning the faith, falling. I was reading an article the other day of this Christian singer who said, Stop making Christian leaders the source of your truth or you and your faith will fall once they fall. And this is our challenge in these days. How can the Scripture help us? How can we find guidance in these hard times? You're not the first one. In this letter, Paul is writing pastoral words to this young and timid Timothy, who has to face a coming of apostasy that we just read. Very tough time. Paul is in jail for having preached the Word of God and the Gospel. He knows that death is approaching. All people have abandoned him, around him. Those who once were close to Him, they left Him. And Christian leaders were abandoning core Christian beliefs for fruitless speculation. And so it is like a battle, a battle for the truth in an age of apostasy, as we are in this trench and many of our folks are actually deserting us. Paul, they're deserting us. Look! They once were with us and now they join the crowd of apostates and they attack us with lies after lies. How am I supposed to stand? Says the young Timothy. How am I supposed to stand this challenge? As Paul is almost like a general in those movies where he's bleeding and he's got no strength in him. Bleeding. And he's about to pass out. And he looks at Timothy, this young lieutenant, who is timid, who has to face all of this, and he says, Timothy, I know I'm leaving you. I know I'm leaving you. Your mentor is about to die. But guess what? This book is not going to leave you. In the Scripture, you have everything you need. It's profitable. For everything you need in your life as a Christian, this book will guide you through all the challenges that are coming upon us. The Word of God is all you need to equip you. This is the baton that is passing him. This high view of Scripture that we just read in chapter 3, which inspires, which is profitable. Now, what to do with it, Timothy? Preach it. Share it. You see how a high view of Scripture leads us to a high view of preaching and of sharing this Word and making the Word of God the centerpiece of our life in this battle. Paul charges here us as Christians to face challenges by cultivating our character. As a believer, you must do all that you can to cling to the Word of God and never, never depart from the Word of God. Even to the small, tiniest bits of doctrine. Even when you think that you are all solid, that you will never fall. None of us plan to be apostate. It's not something that somehow I say, in five years from now I will apostatize. No, it comes, and it's a slippery slope from which you must guard yourself by clinging to the Scripture as your only hope, even to the last bits of doctrine. This is our charge, and it is given in verses 1 and 2 of our text. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus. Notice, first of all, how this charge is serious, which means the judgment seat of Christ, the Lord of the Church, should convict all of us to take a closer look at our walk and at our talk. This is the seriousness of this charge. We claim to be part of the kingdom of Christ. And it's before the throne of Christ that one day we will appear. I charge you, Timothy. The same word for charge in the original text is actually the same word for martyr. Paul is about to die, remember. and bleeding words written in his pencil say, this is my final apostolic command to you, Timothy. Before who? Before God. Before Christ. Before the angels. Christ who is about to come to judge the living and the dead. Which means it is an inescapable judgment. All of us will be judged. Yes, even believers. though it will not be a damning judgment, our rewards are at stake as we will face Christ and we will stand before His tribunal, before His appearance, before His kingdom that we claim to want the kingdom of God to come, to advance His kingdom. This is the framework to this charge. I remember Al Martin, he's a famous pastor who came a few times to share and teach in our seminary. And he wrote a book called The Man of God. And in that book he records how many of his students who were approaching the day of their ordination as pastor or graduation from seminary, they were trembling, they were they were completely unable to sleep. And they come to him and he says, what is going on? And Martin tells them, you should not be surprised. This is about the life of people. You are charged to preach the Word of God to people and to give an account to the throne of Christ. John Knox, the famous reformer of Scotland, he was shaking in his room and trembling at the thought that God was calling him to share the Word of God. And to give an account to Jesus Christ. Why do we need to be careful in our walk and in our talk as Christians? Because of the omniscient scrutiny of Christ. All of us. Judgment will begin with the house of God. And so you want to make sure to deal with your walk now. And if it's already challenging for believers to come before this presence of the throne of Christ, how more challenging it is for those who do not have Christ to come before that day, to come before that judge of the old earth. And having to give an account, and perhaps having even sitting on pews, having perhaps listened to conservative and sank Christian songs, and realized, oh, I heard about heaven and hell, I read the Bible, I did all these things, but this was not true of me. What a dreadful thought, which therefore should drive us to humble ourselves before the Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ. It would be like entering the dressing without a dressing into the Feast of the Lamb. And they will call your name. You're not dressed. Where is your wedding dress? And the person has no word to say. And in great shame he has to leave the banquet. You don't want to be that person. You want to dress yourself with the righteousness of Christ. You want to be dressed by His forgiveness and His salvation and His perfect righteousness. Because that's the only way To enter the door. But what is this content of the charge now? Once we see the seriousness of this charge, the first part of verse 2 gives us the content of this charge. And hear me clear. As a Christian, your charge is this. To reflect and communicate only what the mouth of God has said in Scripture. To bind yourself to what God says in His Word with your life. Like a Berean. No matter, even if it's Paul himself that comes to preach with me, I have my Scripture right beside me. And I examine everything in my life in light of that. And what am I called to? It says here, preach the Word. A hasty command, which follows all these other commands, which are like a machine gun given. Preach the Word. Proclaim it out loud. Cry it out loud like the prophets of old. Don't hold back from the mountaintop. Don't apologize for it. Not just a personal meditation. This is what Stephen Lawson said. He says something very interesting. He says, if you're a barber, but you do not cut hair, you're not a barber. And then he says, if you're a taxi driver, but you do not drive taxi, you're not a taxi driver. And guess what? If you're a preacher of the gospel, but you do not preach the Word of God, then you are not a preacher. But even for Christians, we hear of a... I was reading a YouTube video where they have a kind of a satire of a woman Bible studies, where They talk about anything other than the Son with this kind of shallow type of communication. And the Word is not even read. The Word of God is not the center. And it's a cultural meeting. No, this is a shouting and abiding in the Word of God in the Scripture. Realizing that what we share with people, what we make the centerpiece of our life is not our Word, but God's Word. This is, it doesn't say, preach the Scripture, notice our text, but it says, preach the Word. And that points not just to the text of Scripture, but to the message that is contained in the Scripture. That line of message, the letter that is written by God to man, and it focuses on the redemption and Christ. In fact, that same Word which created everything that you see in this world. Genesis 1 says that God created the world and the heavens by His Word. And guess what? That Word now is incarnate and became flesh. Which means that when Paul says to focus our attention on the Word, he's saying, communicate Christ. Communicate His Word. Because Christ and His Word are intrinsically connected. Tell people about Christ. Tell people that you have no other rock to stand but Him. And His Word message, it is a self-authenticating message. It stands by itself. It doesn't need your cleverness. It doesn't need your wisdom. It doesn't need some sort of skill. It is the Word. It is the Word. Not man's word. This is what the Reformers, after dark ages of complete oblivion, rediscovered. The concept of sola scriptura. The idea that Scripture is our ultimate guide for life and godliness. All of our life and practice is built upon the Scripture. Is this real in your life? Or is this just a doctrinal statement? Scripture alone, all your matters, this you keep at the forefront of your interaction with people, with your co-workers, with people in your family. The Old Testament has this imagery of sitting down and standing up and always bringing the Word with you and sharing the Scripture, whether you sit down, you stand up, you are in the street, all the conversation, everything revolves around Scripture. This is what you must share with people, not just hobbies, not retirement plans, not some sort of speculation of pure passages of the Bible or philosophy, trendy ideas of today that we must fit into the Scripture, not a piece of Scripture, then to declare to people, like North America Christianity does today, God has a wonderful plan for your life. Well, that wonderful plan may be to be like Paul and left in prison alone and ready to die. This is the Word of God that we need to stick to. And the fact that here it points to this preaching of the Word. It's not just the Word, but the message. The message that the Word unfolds and unpacks as you read the Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. Day after day. Sunday after Sunday. Brought under the exposition of Scripture. Chapter after chapter. So that you learn how to read your Bible. It's what brings you to Christ's likeness. It's what brings you to maturity. It is what is the essence of your Christian life. Remember that in the first century they had no commentary. That they had no elaborate libraries of books and things that we, praise God, enjoy today. What they had is one book. And with that book, they gave their life. They were ready to die for it. But secondly, the content of the charge points to the second part of verse 2 of our text. And it says, Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. Be ready. to share this Word, whether it is a convenient time, whether it is an inconvenient time, whether it is a popular topic, whether it is not a popular topic, whether it is something that goes against tradition, or something that supports tradition. You must share and be ready to share the Word no matter the cost. In front of your peers, in front of your co-workers, and how? by reproving, by not being afraid of challenging the sin of God's people, and of people that are in clear sin. You are not afraid to tell them the road you're headed, it's going to bring you down, even in a preventive way. This is the point of rebuking. My mom is a nurse and says, it's better to prevent than to cure. And that's what rebuke is about. That people who not necessarily are in sin, but are under a danger of embracing false ideas, you warn them not to go that way. And then it says, "...rebuke and exhort with all matters of patience and encouragement." Encouragement. Which means you do not hammer the Word of God on people's throat, but you make sure that you have a wise word to bring, seasoned with salt and grace and doctrine. Because again, zeal without knowledge, it's useless at best, but it can become very dangerous. So how are we doing in sharing the Word of God and making the Word of God the center of our life? Is the Word of God the center of your family? If I were to observe your family, is Scripture the first thing? And the common thread of your relationship, whether at home, whether at work, or even in churches. This is how we are to filter the Christian content that come to our mind, as we will see in a few minutes. Because there is a lack of urgency in North America in the majority of Christianity. People just go around and they go through the motions, and sometimes one wonders, how can this reality that he claimed to believe, and the unbelievers look at that and say, he probably doesn't believe it for himself. Nothing worse than having practiced Christianity, used the right language, and not making it a reality. We must earnestly share the Word of God. And this is not just for pastors. We are called to make the Word our of our life. Fray not from rebuke for the fear of men, of what they may do to you, of the job that you may lose, and the promotion that you may lose. If you stand up for biblical principles, have you bought into this tendency of our days of apologizing for the Word? Apologizing for those harsh parts of Scripture? Now God says, no, remove every timid hindrance from you. But at the same time, you may be, as a Calvinist, we're very good at rebuke and calling out bad things, but how are you doing in encouragement? Because this is the other flip side of balance. Urgency with balance. What I notice in this area is countless flock, that grew up in Protestant churches with so much depression, so much being hammered down and feeling so unable to live the abundant life of Christ and the grace and the kindness and the mercy of Christ is completely absent from their lives. They just don't know. They just don't know how to live as Christ was. We just sang, an example of gentleness He was. So you see the urgency in our text is no excuse for insensitivity. Now you may come to this point and say, okay, I read the Bible. I believe the Bible is inspired by God and that's enough. Well, it's not enough to just have an understanding with your head and kind of an idea of and a belief in the Bible. The question is, are you protecting this Word? Are you guarding it? Are you abiding in the Word of God? And this is our challenge. Our second point is the challenge in verses 3 and 4 of our text. The time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. Which means, the torn between sin and their claim to Christianity, the majority of what today comes to be known as evangelical Christianity, will be gone. Do you hear me? Gone! After false teachers that are arising one after the other. This is why we need to be so diligent in ordering into Scripture. Because of the apostasy that we are facing. a time that is already among us, that professing Christian leaders will not endure with teaching that is free from error, but they will pile up one after the other a great crowd of teachers. And those teachers are intended to do only one thing, to fit their own lusts, to fit their own sinful lifestyle, to tell them what they need to hear, what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. according to their own lust, their opportunistic desire. And notice in this text, therefore, how many times false teachings has a root that is not necessarily some sort of theory, but a sin. Karl Barth was one of the greatest theologians of the past century, they call him. Great and creative, wrote thousands of books, systematic theology of 20 volumes. And in his library, together with books you will find in Morality, he was an adulteress. And then he wrote this theology which mixed truth with error. And thousands and thousands of people went after that. And the church was completely swallowed up by it. By a teaching that was driven by people who have itching of ears. Itching of ears is a figure of speech. A figure that points to the unbridled curiosity. Please give us something new. Please give us something that is beyond the Bible. Give us something that will somehow trigger us. Something that is rooted in human wisdom. Something going after the next bit and pieces of doctrinal novel, interesting and sensational bits of ideas. Does that sound familiar? How many voices around you are saying right now in this moment, the Word of God is not sufficient? Let me build on something else. It's not enough. These days I've been sharing the Gospel with a priest, a Catholic priest, who has been quite famous in his rejection of coming from Baptist to become a Catholic priest. I mean, how can you do that? And we've been talking and keep pushing the idea. Well, you know, I mean, on what are you standing? You've got no church father, you've got no this, no saint so and so, you've got no tradition in the church. We've got counseling, we've got this. What do you have? What do you have to offer me? Scripture! Scripture is the only thing that I need for my life and godliness and piety. Scripture is enough. Now, praise God, if in His kindness He would raise countless teachers who are sound. Through some sort of revivals, we think of the Puritans. Oh, it would be a nice squad to be part of. But what was different then and today in North America? The cult of personality. On the pulpit will be shown a show and people have to build their own agenda and they are there to fit a specific agenda. And this is a tragic syndrome that plagues even conservative churches. When everything is used for politics, an endless strive for something more up-to-date to fit the felt needs of people instead of sticking with the eternal and imperishable Word of God. dealing with unrepentant sin, which flourish and flourishes and flourishes as a root until it's out of control. And so, what often people have to do is they have to adapt their own belief to their practice, which is everything almost everyone does, or adapt their practice to their belief. And people end up adapting their practice and becoming a servant of sin, which leads then to apostasy. We see in verses four, they will turn away the truth into a lie. We're not supposed to live by bread alone. But these men, instead of sticking to the manna that comes from heaven, they take a little leaven of the teaching of the Pharisees. And I do not care how small of a leavened piece they introduce in their Christian beliefs. And I do not care how many years it may take for that leaven, but it will leaven the whole lump of dough. So that they're not feeding us people with the manna from heaven, but you're feeding upon rotten, poisonous messages which are not from the Scriptures. They will turn away from the truth, they will wander off into fascinating myths, tales, not rooted in the biblical texts. And who has not turned into myth? But the liberal theology of the past centuries, when we were told every miracle in the New Testament is a myth. The first 11 chapters of the Bibles are a myth. Actually, the Gospel itself is a myth. The real reason we are here is to make money, be prosperous, be wealthy, and we just need to use the Bible to fit this. There's preachers out there today which are very unqualified and they go around and they tell people that Jesus broke the law. Thousands of young people listen to them. That we need to un-itch the Old Testament from the Bible. These were people that once were considered Baptist, conservative preachers. End time preachers who used the pulpit as a politics. Christ is not there. Or preachers who fly down the ceiling. I saw this video of a preacher that was flying down the ceiling to make a point before his people. Wow, what a show. Now before you say it's their problem, what about us? Being reformed will not keep you from apostasy. It will not keep you from stumbling. As I said, stumbling and apostasy is not something that we plan. And you perhaps have heard what is going on currently among the New Calvinist movement. How many pastors and teachers who are conservative, we consider them from our camp, and they're stumbling after sexual scandal, money scandal, and all sort of intention and agreement with other preachers, shaking hands with prosperity gospel preachers, and even You know, I was watching Benny Hinn in past days. I don't know if you watched, but this Benny Hinn was a prosperity gospel preacher. Apparently, he came out and says, I repent of this. Right? We have a saying in Italian. The wolf changes his skin, but not its vice. And that's what is going on. These clouds of teachers. He's got so many competitors and he has to find a way to deceive more and more. But the gospel is already gone. Not to talk about the social gospel. The social gospel, resurgence of the social gospel that these days is happening. Which many of the things that they are saying are rooted in things that are Marxist. They are anti-Christian. And they're dividing. All conservative. from all camps, and even the prevailing infatuation that we have with going back to the history of Puritans and Reformers and Church Fathers, as praiseworthy as it is. Are we filtering everything that we read in light of the Word of God? Are we filtering that? And then, we can become carnal, and we say, I follow this teacher, I follow that teacher, I follow this other teacher, and when one teacher dies, we flock to another one, because we cannot stop the itching of hearing. And before you know it, we're not following the greatest and only teacher, the only rabbi, Jesus Christ, but we are following men. And so, we end up with people like Joshua Harris, who was a Reformed preacher. who divorced his wife, attended a homosexual parade, and said, I'm not a Christian anymore. What went wrong? You know what went wrong? It's not so much, okay, let me answer to that with some apologetics and stuff. It's the character. Which leads us to our last point, verse 5. Character, character. This is the way you answer a world that is going down the way of apostasy. It's through watching, first of all, your attitude. Be sober-minded in all things. A sober view of yourself is the antidote to apostasy. When everybody is there to feed their own flesh, because that's what it's all about. You're not here to follow your own lust, your own flesh, your own ego, your own person. You're here to serve Christ with a sober view of yourself, which means it's not just in your words that you need to share with people, but with your personal walk and life and your character. This is how you are to go about the challenging time. by being sober minded so that you're not like those servants which see the master delay and they start to eat and drink and beat their servants or you know the second coming of Christ is so far away and so I will start to basically lay back so that the master comes at an hours which you do not expect him to come so that people want to observe you They don't see a person obsessed with its own needs and selfish ambition. And selfish, easily drawn by sensational things. Easily drawn by something new, something better. No. They see people who are sticking and holding on to the Scripture with all they can. A person that is able to filter. Like all these spam emails that we receive, you filter them in the light of Scripture. But secondly, our practical exhortation from this text in verse 5 is, pay the cost. Not only watch your attitude, but pay the cost. Which means persisting in the Word as a cost. Brothers and sisters. And so counting that cost now will guard you from apostasy later. will guard you from apostasy later. It says here, suffer evil. In general, no. For holding on to that Word of God. Just on the next verse, Paul will say, I have been already poured out. Like an offering on the altar. His head is going to go down and he's going to be cut off. This is the cost. I bear the marks of Christ. This says Paul to Timothy, I've been shipwrecked, beaten, and stricken. And so Timothy, you are not to be ashamed of my sufferings. But carry that cross. Count the cost of being a disciple of Christ. Carry that cross and follow Christ. If you hold on to the Word faithfully, you must be ready for opposition. Especially in this day and age where we're not anymore living in this cultural Christian framework where it was acceptable to go to church. It was acceptable to be kind of a professing Christian. No. You will be marginalized. You must be ready to suffer. You will be a target of attacks. Anyone who sticks to the Scripture, target of attacks from Satan. Like that preacher who committed suicide. Who knows what was going on in his mind before that? Targets of attacks from your own mind will be the center of battles in your own mind, your thoughts. Things that are not true, that you need to battle with the Scripture so that you feel, I'm going to be abandoned. God doesn't love me. Go back to the Scripture and answer with the Word of God. The Word of God says the opposite. Answer. these attacks with the Word. This is your only weapon. Your only weapon. And people will not appreciate you telling them what and how they're supposed to live their life. As you step up in this call to share the Word of God, you will face a position. Your personal test in life will test like fire the nature of the things that you treasure so much. And there are things that are going to fall down and fall apart and be evaporated. But the Word of God, if you make it your center, it will stand every test. Treasure it. When you get this courage, you'll feel like, Jeremiah, I don't want to preach your word anymore. I will never mention your name. He's so discouraged and depressed. I'm never going to have anything to do with Christianity anymore. I'm never going to come to church. I'll never have anything to do with this anymore. But where does Jeremiah in his depression find strength? And yet I had a fire in my chest that I could not stop, that I could not quench. The fire of God's Word, brothers, the fire of the Word of God, which gives us the only strength to face these challenges. We will not stop. But the risk for someone in this very room is to end up like Demas in this very same chapter, who, in order to avoid suffering, falls in love with the world and abandons Paul. Because Paul, you're so shameful. Look at you. Right? We were reminded last week by Pastor Chansky about this internal conflict. And then thirdly, use your gifts. Persisting in the Word, brothers and sisters, will not only protect from outside attacks from apostasy and from within your own life, but will also, if you persist in the Word, you will see people come to Christ. You will see people added to the Church as you fulfill your work as evangelists. Now this word over here is not talking about the office of being an evangelist, Evangelizing, which is the duty and bits and piece of all of us as Christians, to share the Word of God with our unbelieving friends, our persons that do not know Christ, and make that our priority. But even in preaching, we will discover that the essence of preaching is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That there is a minister of reconciliation that is listening to the Word of God, and this is the mean that God uses to save sinners. that Christ Jesus came to save sinners, that we have hope because He paid the wrath of God for our sins and He died on the cross and He was raised and triumphant over the grave and over every possible enemy. The heart of of this sharing the Word of God. The heart of the Word of God is Christ and Him crucified. So that people look at your life and they say, He keeps telling me about this. Christ and Him crucified. They will hear us share the good news. And as you have done all these things then, lastly, as you have obeyed to these things, then you win the prize. You win the prize. Your goal in your Christian life is to come on that day without regrets. Yes, there will be failures. Yes, there will be moments of discouragement. Yes, there will be moments of backsliding even. And why? Because you didn't stick to these texts. You think that you are above it? I wasn't above it months ago. I almost felt tempted to go back to Peter's baptism. Because we do not remain and abide in the Scripture and what the Scripture has said over every issues and how it guides us. And so we have the goal of completing all of the duty. Never take our hand off the plow. Never finish this life until every soul, every person, all the possible people around us have heard about Christ. And we have a burden for that. so we may fulfill our service to Christ, so that we realize that our life is not successful if we get rich, if we get some sort of men trophies to put on the shelf, not our successful being like Paul. Even when you're left alone, even if everyone has abandoned you, you look to Christ on your deathbed and you're like, I did what I was supposed to do as an unworthy servant. I used the talents that God has given me, whether it's one talent or five, I did what I was supposed to do and I am not ashamed. before the Lord. So that like Paul we can say, the crown of righteousness which belongs to everyone who longed for His appearing, who do not fall asleep, who do not get lazy. Brothers and sisters, before you go back to this coming days, this week, this year that is coming, consider closely. Make sure to deal with these things and be prepared to appear before the judgment seat of Christ and give an account of your life. and how you spend it, watch over your witness to this world. What will remain of the Babel Tower, of all the things and projects and works and accomplishments or everything that we have done once we are dead and gone? On what will you stand when all the attacks from immorality, the apostasy of this world, people in your own families and things that you could have never saw coming? On what will you stand? Your faith will be shaken, dare I say again, cling to the Word of God. Because this is the only thing you have. I shipped all my library to Italy. I had a lot of books. And now in my room I only have this little small Bible. sitting at my desk, morning to morning, to remind myself that this is my all in all. Praise God for learning, praise God for books, praise God for good teachers, but if we do not cling to the Word of God, and we contend for the truth, while everyone else goes after man's word, if we do not do like Ezra, that we set in our hearts to meditate upon the Word of God, and teach it to others, practice it for ourselves, so that every circumstance in life we can have a verse to point to, that we can have holy discussions among ourselves over the Scriptures, over the Word of God, and never depart from it, never tampering with it, never adjusting it to fit my own sin or some sort of agenda or pressures from people, because our life depends on the Word, so that no one may seize your crown, Christian. You must put the most of your energy not to fall into the slippery slope on which many before us have fallen. And the one who stands, take heed lest he fall, so that we may have a good conscience before God." And remember, this is a struggle that we all go through. I went through and I keep going through day after day. Even the prophets of old, they were terrified. Moses was terrified to go and proclaim that word. All of us are. And yet, as we were reminded last week by our pastor, in verses 17 and 18 of our texts, I mean, of the same chapter, the Lord stood by me and strengthened me. The Lord stood with me in my preaching in the face of all these obstacles and the battle for the truth in the age of apostasy. Where do I find strength? In the Word, yes. But who is pointing to that Word? Christ. Where can we find Christ? In His Word. And in His Word that we cling because we ultimately are clinging to Christ who gave us that Word in order not to fall. But even if you fall, even if you fall, you have nothing else to fall. But this book, the Scripture, fall upon Scripture. Don't get lost in a tangent with your life while you lose the eternal dimension of why are you here. The main thing, remember, is to keep the main thing. The main thing. As simple as that. And what is the main thing in our text today? Well, first you must take off the unitching of hearing. the looking for something else as if this is too basic. And realize that you can battle false teaching and the lies of apostasy and the very gates of hell only by clinging to the message and the person of our only teacher, our only rabbi. Jesus Christ. He is the Word made flesh. He is the one we cling to. He is the one we share. He is the one we make the very center of our life, the cornerstone, the cornerstone of our life. Let's pray. Oh God, we bow down at Your Word and we thank You, Lord. I pray that we will treasure Your Word. We pray that Your Word will become our first and last joy for revitalizing when we are backsliding, when we are apathetic, when we do not know what to do. Oh, I pray, Lord, that we will dive into Scripture, even in these coming weeks and every quiet time and moments, that we will drink from the fountain which will never disappoint us. because man words often, if not always, disappoint us. Lord, we are facing struggles and we are torn left and right. We do not know where to go. Help us to hear your voice and in discouragement to face it with the Word of God, to go back to the Scripture. and not be trapped in our despair, but answer with your word to keep us and help us to fight the good fight of faith, Lord, as many around us. Some fall, some shipwreck, some deny the faith even, Lord. Oh, give us grace to serve you through your word and your son, Jesus Christ. It is in his name that we pray, amen.