So it's just encouraging to see the Lord grow his church. And so if you're ever down in Whittier, they're a good fellowship to visit. And they're right around the corner from where former President Nixon had his first law office. So that was fun to see that. And I appreciate the prayers as my wife and I will be wheels up very early tomorrow morning for Cape Town, South Africa. And please pray that it'll be both a safe but edifying trip as we visit the Davises and encourage the work of BTF there. And look forward to coming back. Right before Thanksgiving, God willing, and then returning to the Gospel of Matthew. And we'll jump back into Matthew chapter 8, God willing, after Thanksgiving. And I've been thinking a lot about demons, because we're going to go right back into the Lord Jesus' power over the demonic. So stay tuned. That will be coming. But for this evening, we want to look at 2 Timothy 2 and finish this just very brief series I've done since coming back from sabbatical of some key texts in 1 and 2 Timothy. Let's look at 2 Timothy 2, verses 8 to 13. This is the passage I exhorted disciple Church with last Lord's Day, and I believe it's a fitting exhortation for us as well. In 2 Timothy 2, verse 8, it is written, 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 is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is trustworthy. For if we have died with Him, we will also live with Him. If we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us. If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself." This is the Word of the Lord. Let's pray. Our Father, we pray this evening You would unite our hearts to fear Your name. We ask that Your Spirit, present in His church, would open eyes and ears and hearts to receive Your Word. And we ask that the ever-powerful Word You have given us would not be bound among us or from us. We pray You would cause us to grow in the grace and knowledge of Your Son, and living in Him, proclaim His truth to others. Help us in this, even now, in Jesus' name, amen. Stop finding your identity in Christ. Yeah, that sounds kind of shocking, doesn't it? But an acquaintance of mine actually wrote an article on this topic, Caleb Morrell, with that title. Identity in Christ's language is everywhere, we know. It began really in the 1980s in modern Christianity, but the term identity and finding your identity actually comes out of the self-esteem movement in psychology. The concerns that Caleb points out in his article is your identity is the assessment you make about yourself. It's rooted in the belief that the most important judgment about you is made by you. Your self-assessment, how you identify. That language is everywhere, isn't it? That's what you discover and declare of yourself. And we've seen in our culture where this has certainly gone since the 80s and the initial psychological use of this term. The boundaries now of creation and nature and biology are cast off in contrast to what we identify as. So the danger of saying I find my identity in Christ is that it reduces the claims of the gospel to just another smorgasbord on the options of what we can discover and declare of ourselves. If it's what you discover and declare, what will hold you when your identity becomes too costly, too difficult? Are there deeper realities than what we declare about ourselves? Well, Timothy and the churches in Ephesus faced these very questions and the cost they had. One older writer put it that when 1 Timothy was written, Christianity trembled humanly on the verge of annihilation. There are men, as we see referenced in verse 17 just below our passage, Hymenaeus and Philetus, who are peddling false doctrine. And if you turn briefly to chapter 1, probably a page over, in verse 15, Paul writes this with he and Timothy aware that all who are in Asia have turned away from him. Now, what Paul calls Asia, we call now Turkey. And it was a Roman province then, Ephesus was its capital, where Timothy was. And remember, in Ephesus, Paul had spent three years there. Luke records it in Acts 19 to 20, he set up a seminary. And he trained men, and Luke tells us in those chapters that the gospel went out from that epicenter out to the whole known world. So Paul went from reaching the world with training in Asia, to no one in Asia wants anything to do with me. Later, in chapter 4, at the end of this epistle, Demas' abandonment Paul will write of, and he will give that haunting phrase in verse 11 in chapter 4, Luke alone is with me. Paul is in prison, as he notes in our passage in verse 9, bound in chains like a criminal. We know he suffers from the cold because he asks, at the end of this letter, for his cloak. And what Paul does here is charge Timothy to continue in the very thing that has brought the Apostle into such dire circumstances. The very thing that we might say Paul had failed in. This chapter is about passing the baton as the Apostle is about to pass away. It's evident in verse 2, just above our passage, that Timothy is to what he's heard from Paul in trust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also, and that collocation of faithful and able to teach ought to be hyperlinks to us back to 1 Timothy 3, talking about elders, who are called to be above reproach and faithful and able to teach. Timothy is to train pastors. That's his task. He's to raise up more leaders. And these reminders that Paul gives here, Paul notes in verse 14, just below our passage, is to be reminded to them that this is the task that they're all called to, just as he's exemplified it and Timothy is called to endure the same. And the goal, as the chapter two ends, the goal in verse 21 is that all those who serve in the church, in office, in ministry, would be honorable vessels. that verse 24, they would be servants of the Lord who are not quarrelsome, but act faithfully, able to teach, that God, verse 25, might give repentance to those who oppose the truth and the gospel. You see what is going on here is that Paul is calling Timothy to the very same ministry he had. Raising up leaders, training them, sending them out for the preaching of the gospel. the very ministry that got Paul imprisoned by the state and abandoned by many in the church. So you can imagine the questions that would have arisen in Timothy and others' minds. You can imagine the specter of cynicism that would have arisen in their hearts. Why bother? Look where it got you, Paul. Maybe we should do something different. And of course, there's more than one way to leave the ministry. And it can be done without ever leaving the office of pastoral ministry. You just minister another gospel, another Jesus, that will allow for an easier road. That's what Hymenaeus and Alexander are doing again in verse 17. And there are many such options today. There is the life transformation Jesus, who promises victory and a whole new to you now. There's the family values Jesus, who will give you the perfect family that's the envy of all your homeschool co-op. There's the culture war Jesus. He will give you the exact tactics and justify every action and word you make to win against the libs. There's the life coach Jesus, who offers just those easily digestible principles to help you achieve your real ambition. And of course, we can't miss the tolerance Jesus, who was never against anything or anyone, except anyone who's against anything. And we could go on. We could multiply examples. There are many, many ways, and there always have been, there are many ways to make Jesus a mascot of what we really want. But none of them make him the Messiah, the Christ, Jesus Christ. And the temptation to turn Jesus into a mascot of our real desires is especially acute when life and ministry are hard. So the theme of 2 Timothy is this theme of endurance, to share in suffering. It's reinforced in the images above our passage that Paul gives of a soldier in verse 4. The soldier has no victory without loyalty to his commander. Verse five, the athlete, he gets no crown unless he competes with integrity. Verse six, the farmer gets no harvest without labor. Soldiers, athletes, farmers, these are all images of endurance, integrity, labor, grinding it out. And the theme here is the same, to remain, to endure, verse 12. And all of this implies that quitting is an ever-present temptation. Many years ago, when I was training for ministry, an old mentor of mine once said, if you've never thought of leaving the ministry, you've never been in the ministry. And 15 years later, I'd say he's exactly right. But it's not just ministers who think of leaving. It's Christians. We have seen in our day the so-called deconstruction movement of Christians. It's a why bother? Why go on? To endure, how do we find something sturdy? What foundation can we dig to? What can we have more than declarations we make about ourselves? Verse eight, remember Jesus Christ. It's remarkable that we have to be reminded to remember Jesus at all. It's even more remarkable that all the church has to be reminded is remember Jesus. Remember Jesus. I want us to remember Jesus this evening together and think about why. We remember Jesus, verse 8, to keep our heads. We remember Jesus, we'll see in verses 9 and 10, to endure the hurts. And in verses 11 to 13, we'll remember Jesus to serve with hope. To keep our head, endure the hurts, and serve with hope. Let's think first about remembering Jesus to keep our heads. Paul says in verse eight, remember Jesus Christ, and he ends that clause in verse eight as preached in my gospel. So Paul's ministry ends the same way that it began. And whether he wrote 1 Corinthians or Galatians first, both of those letters are about remembering Jesus. And here in Paul's last letter, 2 Timothy, the same thing. He's been singing one tune his whole ministry. Remember Jesus. And it's reiterated repeatedly in the New Testament that the church is sustained by the same message it ministers to others. There is no extra, there is no secret knowledge that you need to feed upon to get you to endure to the end. And those who say otherwise are lying. Remember the gospel. Remember Jesus. It's in his name. Jesus, we saw in the gospel of Matthew, given by angelic command. Jesus' name means Yahweh saves. The Lord saves. He will save his people from their sins. And he is God's Christ. That's not his last name, that's his title, Messiah, Christ, the anointed one, the ruler God has appointed. And that's, we have proof of it because secondly, he's risen from the dead. He lived vicariously on our behalf, perfectly fulfilling God's law. He died sacrificially, enduring the penalties that we deserve as lawbreakers before God on our behalf, and he rose to vindicate that all he did in life and death was accepted by God, and he is God's ruler to bring us back to him. He has risen. So he remains alive now, he's ruling and reigning, and therefore one day returning. It's a good reminder to always speak about our Lord Jesus in the present tense. Every other leader and philosopher of every other religion is all in the past tense, but Jesus, it's what Jesus is doing now and will one day come again. And as such, he is the offspring of David. That is, he's reigning as a king at God's right hand, and with offspring in David, the apostle picks up a bundle of Old Testament prophecies as seeing them fulfilled in Jesus. That the eternal kingdom that God promised that would one day encompass heaven and earth, fulfilling his covenant with David, has come to pass in David's greater son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Beloved, this is the gospel. It's the good news that Jesus is God's King, the one God always promised. He rescues us into his eternal kingdom, and all of it is simply by faith in his perfect life, atoning death, and his risen victory. So friend, if you're here this evening and you're not a Christian, this is the main thing we want to say to you. Remember and believe upon Jesus. This is the hope we hold out to you and everyone else. That the Lord Jesus is not another option on the table of options to declare yourself allegiance to. He is the only reigning king God has appointed. And it is only by faith in Jesus that you can be rescued from the judgment your sins deserve. And you will have peace with God and eternal life with him now and forever. This is not a program, it's not a philosophy, it's not a feeling, it's a basic fact. that Jesus of Nazareth has risen from the dead and we must respond to him. And dear Christian, we are called here in God's word to always remember Jesus. You never outgrow that. We meditate and appropriate as the basis of our life and endurance in Christ the person and work of the Lord Jesus. We keep our heads, that is, our minds fixed upon the Lord and all his promises that he has brought to pass. Now, we're very clear in our generation about heartless, insincere professions. But sometimes in our day, because of our proclivities, we forget that you can't love and obey what you don't understand. Such ignorance is often the case. J. Gresham Machen reminded us in the last century, the growth of ignorance in the church is the logical and inevitable result of the false notion that Christianity is a life and not also a doctrine. That is that all Christianity is are deeds, but not truths that propel and motivate them rightly. More recently, the late R.C. Sproul reminded us that our intellect is primary in respect to order. even though our heart is the most primary in respect to importance. R.C. Sproul said this, if the character of God remains an enigma to us, all our singing, praying, and religious zeal is useless passion. To be central in our hearts, God must be foremost in our minds. To be central in our hearts, God must be foremost in our minds. Before our hearts will ever be zealous and our hands busy in service, our heads must be filled and fortressed by the great doctrines about God and His Son, Jesus. So remember Jesus, risen from the dead, offspring of David. We can't go deep enough in the truth of who our Lord and Savior is. We must go deep in the dogmas about Christ to keep our heads for Jesus, that we would continue serving Him, regardless of the costs. That's where endurance begins, with keeping our heads and remembering Christ. And it matters as we remember Him in the midst of our hurts, that second, we remember Jesus to endure the hurts. Now Paul, verse 17 again, has to address the lies of Hymenaeus and Alexander. Namely, they said, verse 18, that the resurrection has already happened. Now in order for that to gain traction, they had to have been using the Bible. Because Christians only believe it when you use the Bible. So it's likely that they took Paul's teaching about our union with Christ now, Like Colossians 3, that you've been raised with Christ, or Romans 6, that we've been raised and made alive with Jesus and perverted it into what was probably logical in their day of the Greek notions of body and soul to say, this is it. You're raised now. All our hopes are fulfilled. We're there. Now think about for a moment where that would lead. To think that the entire resurrection has happened now, there's nothing more before. Well, if we're already perfected, what does that say about our desires? Well, they're all glorified. So it lead to self-indulgence. So Paul says in verse 16 that this leads people into more and more ungodliness. Because if everything you are now is sanctified, well then, all your desires are the same. And if also, if we've arrived now, then we have to act like it. I mean, if we're raised, we can't be weak, we can't struggle, we can't have failures. And so it would create this performative Christianity. You couldn't risk, you would have to avoid suffering because you couldn't let on that you aren't actually as perfect as you say you are. So, Paul says in verse 17, it's spreading like gangrene. The flesh of the body of Christ is dying. It's rotting away. It's ruining, he says in verse 18, the faith of some. So, verse eight, remember Jesus. Remember Jesus, the offspring of David. He reigns as the son of David. He's king because he's risen from the dead. The crown that Jesus wears came through the path of the cross. We remember that Jesus bore fruit in eternal salvation because, humanly speaking, he failed. He was abandoned by his disciples. He died alone. The truth is that we're saved because our Messiah wasn't. And the thing is, in the Christian life, it's no different for Christians. The Christian life and ministry has a cruciform shape. And that was the first thing that the Lord Jesus taught Paul, this apostle, when he encountered him on the road to Damascus while he was still a persecutor. In Acts 9, many of us will remember that the risen Lord encountered him, and in verse 4 said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And out of that simple arresting question, Paul learned two fundamental truths about Christianity right away. The first is that Christians are united to God's Son. That's why His life matters for ours, because what's true of Him is true of us, because we are in Him and united to Him. He lives for us, and we live in Him and His power. That means, secondly, the power of the Christian life is power to continue Christ's pattern of life. And Christ's pattern of life was the path of what? The cross. We live in him. So Christ suffered to accomplish salvation. The apostle and the apostolic church suffers to announce it. That's why Jesus also said in Acts 9 that he would show Paul how much he must suffer for the sake of his name. And beloved, if you grasp this really basic concept of the New Testament, you will understand the Christian life. that our dying in this life is concurrent, simultaneous with the power and life of Jesus in us. Because we are living in Jesus to live as he lived, that we would reign as he reigns. The entire Christian life follows the life of Christ. It's cruciform. Think of a couple passages, 2 Corinthians 4 verse 11. Paul writes, we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. Notice that, we're given over to death so that the life of Jesus would be manifested. Jesus' life is manifested as we are dying. Or Philippians 3 verse 10, Paul there writes, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death. Notice, it is in sharing Jesus' sufferings that Paul knows the power of his resurrection. How do you know the power of the risen Jesus? By sharing the sufferings that he endured in this life. Just think about it, what takes more power? Faking strength and independence like the rest of the world, the same game everyone's playing on the planet? Or endurance and weakness for the sake of Jesus? What takes more power? Why does Paul, in verses four to six above our passage, use analogies of soldiers and farmers and athletes, and not celebrities and politicians or the independently wealthy? He uses images of endurance and hardship, grinding it out now for the sake of the future victory, because that's the Christian life. He saw ministry as a recapitulation, a repetition, a living in Jesus. You see this in the latter portion of the book of Acts. In Luke's gospel, our Lord we see was arrested without cause. He was misrepresented by false witnesses. He was struck in the face. He endured five trials and announced his true identity as the king in the midst of them. And in the latter chapters of the book of Acts, Acts 22 to 26, what happened to the apostle Paul? He was misrepresented by false witnesses, arrested without cause. He was struck in the vase. He endured five trials and yet endured it all, proclaiming the lordship of Jesus. You see what's happening is in the apostle, the risen Lord is still acting. He's alive. His power is being manifest. And it was through his apostles so that forgiveness of sins could be proclaimed to the world. So it's in the hurt, not around it, not instead of it, not in spite of it, but in it, that the Lord Jesus' power is made known. Look, this is the great lie, right here, this is the great lie of the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel and all versions of it in this nation and everywhere in the world, is that God's power is not seen in the way that everyone else understands power in the world. It's seen in the way His Son lived. the path of the cross to the crown. That's the Christian life. We experience the power of the risen Christ, not going around, not skipping, but enduring the hardships he calls us to for the sake of his name. There his power is seen. It's right here in this verse, in verse nine, Paul says he's suffering, bound with chains as a criminal. And that word criminal here is a rare term, it's only used one other time in the New Testament. And that's in the Gospel of Luke chapter 23, referring to the criminals that the Lord Jesus was crucified alongside of. Paul puts himself there, walking the path of the cross. And in verse 10, just like his Savior, Paul's suffering is for whom? The sake of the elect. for his sheep, for the church. Christ died for the sheep. Paul is given over to death so the sheep may hear. He's continuing the very ministry of Christ who suffered for salvation. Christ died to accomplish it. His church has died since to announce it. That's the Christian life. And to this, he calls Timothy and those that Timothy would train to the same ministry. And he does so with the same confidence. Remember Jesus. Remember his power for endurance. Remember it for the sake of the elect, suffering for the saints. And that same logic that we saw in 2 Corinthians and Philippians, it's right here in verse nine. Notice, he says he's bound with chains as a criminal, but the word of God is not. Now, that's not ironic or unexpected. That's a causal relationship. It's the efficient means. Paul is bound with chains so that the Word of God would not be bound. Because if Paul had bound the Word of God, well, I'll just start, I'll just quit talking about this message of the gospel that makes everyone so mad and want to kill me. He could be free. He is bound so that the Word wouldn't be bound. It's a causal relationship. So remember Jesus. Jesus didn't suffer and we happened also to be saved. No, he suffered so that we would be saved. We are saved because he wasn't. So the Word spreads, not in spite of Paul's suffering, but because of it. His suffering is the cause of the Word going forth. He'll say in chapter four, verse 17, the Lord strengthened me so that through me the message would go to all the Gentiles. The elect will not believe by God's grace if they don't hear the gospel. And they won't hear if there's no preacher. And there's no preaching or testifying to the gospel without suffering for it. That's the deal. That was the deal for Jesus, and that's the truth of everyone who lives in Him. Nothing stops the power of God in the spread of His Word, except Christians and churches that refuse to suffer to spread the Word. If we don't want to be bound, we just bind the Word. but if we'll be faithful to spread the word, we will suffer for its progress. We especially need to hear this as we are, as John Piper once put it, surrounded in a society of emotionally fragile quitters. He went on and described it this way. One of the pervasive marks of our times is emotional fragility. We're easily hurt. We mope easily. We break easily. Our marriages break easily. Our faith breaks easily. Our happiness breaks easily. Our commitment to the church breaks easily. We are easily disheartened. And it seems we have little capacity for surviving and thriving in the face of criticism and opposition. That's true. And when everything is about self-determination, when nothing concrete constrains us, when it gets too difficult, we can just determine to be something else. We can identify as something that's easier. It's less hard and hurtful. That's probably why today, eight out of 10 missionaries leave the field after less than four years. Four out of five seminary graduates leave pastoral ministry in less than five years. So few Christians remain in the churches. We are emotionally fragile quitters. Remember Jesus Christ. Remember the crown comes only, only by the cross. Glory comes through Golgotha, not apart from it. We walk the same path our Lord did. Remember in the Gospel of John, that after Jesus miraculously fed thousands with a few loaves and fish, people were ecstatic. I mean, this guy can produce breakfast, nothing. He's the king. So John records in John 6, verses 14 and 15, that Jesus perceiving then they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew. Jesus refused the platform. Jesus refused to be the king that the people demanded, because that was a kingdom of this world. And instead, he came to be the ruler that God has promised, the son of David. And that crown only comes after you rise from the dead. The crown comes with the cross. We must resist the crowns of this world for the one of the world to come. We take our cross and we remember Jesus. The crown and glory are coming. Not now. Now we endure the hurts and we remember Jesus. And we do it thirdly. We remember Jesus in verse 11 to 13 to serve with hope. We serve with hope. All of this that we've looked at thus far sounds a bit scary, doesn't it? Paul says, come on, join me. I'm bound with chains like a criminal. Get in the waters fine. I don't know. What about the prospect of failure? What if our weakness is discovered? What if we're not the image we've tried to portray? What are the facts that hold us against our fears and give us hope? It's not what we identify ourselves as. It's who we are. It's our union with Jesus Christ. And what Paul does is he counters the hopeless teaching of Hymenaeus and Philetus, that the resurrection's already happened, good news, we're already there. He counters that hopeless teaching and he moves to the hope that we share with every saint as he has the we here in verse 11. And it's likely that what Paul has here in this trustworthy saying, this is the fifth of the five that are in 1 Timothy through Titus, that it's likely a early church confession, maybe part of a hymn. But Paul is likely drawing from their Sunday worship to remind them what they confess and even maybe sing, and remind them the importance of it. And very deliberately, we see in these lines, it moves chronologically in the first three lines. You can see it in the verse tenses, verb tenses, excuse me. There's past, verse 12, present, and then the end of verse 12, a future. So first, in verse 11, we have our past, and it's nearly an identical quote of Romans 6, 8, where there Paul wrote, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. So this confession has, if we have died with Him, we will also live with Him. It's just taking Romans 6, 8 and putting it into song or prayer or confession. United to Christ, we've died with Him. The old man who served himself and lived under the reign of sin, he deserved to die and be buried under the judgment of God. And he has, in Jesus. If you're united to Jesus, what's true of him is true of you. He died suffering the judgment of God and so you have. Judgment's been born, it's been taken care of. So resurrection life does begin now. We are alive to God. We can be strengthened by His grace, relying on His Spirit. We have died, we will live with Him. This is true of every Christian. So He moves from the past, then in verse 12, to the present, our present endurance. If we endure, we will reign with Him. To live in Jesus is to be alive in Jesus. And those who live in Him, live in Him. They remain. They endure. They keep going. And Jesus said this very thing in Matthew chapter 10. We'll get there soon in verse 22. And so this is an interpretation, if you will, a summary of this. If we endure, we will also reign with Him. Christians remain. They endure in faith and repentance. They stand even when the world hates them because they know the hope and promise of reigning with Jesus. So they go to the end. And as a reminder of this, at the end of verse 12, there's a future warning. In that same chapter, in Matthew 10, verse 33, Jesus said, but whoever denies me before man, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven. Now, to deny here means to disown or to renounce. It refers to someone who's renounced the faith. It's a picture of apostasy. And this is a warning that Paul has here that the church had that must have to strengthen the church. that there are worse things than suffering for the gospel, like hearing the Savior say, depart from me, I never knew you. There are worse things than being bound with chains as a criminal, like being bound in hell with the devil and all the demons. And there is no other option outside of Jesus. So if we deny Him, we forsake and renounce Him, If we neglect this great word of salvation, there's no other hope. This is it. He will deny us. So you see here in these first three lines, really just, it's a basic summary of the Christian life. You've died and risen with Christ. We live and we remain in Him and endure to the end, knowing the hope of the promise of the gospel. And we do so knowing that it's real. That if we deny Him, we will be denied in the end. But in verse 13, the pattern is broken for emphasis. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. The question about this stanza is this. Is Jesus here faithful to punish unbelief because he can't deny his holiness? That is, is this a strengthening of the warning at the end of verse 12? Or is he faithful to restore us if we act faithlessly because he cannot deny himself and by virtue of our union with him, we are in him? Which is why he told Saul that persecuting the church was persecuting me. Now we should read this with the majority of interpreters in history as that, as the latter. It's a promise of grace. It's a contrast with the prior line, and what it does is it speaks to Christ's faithfulness even in our failure. Now, there are many reasons for this. Here's just a couple. First is that it returns to the present tense of the second line. That is, if we are presently faithless now. It's not a future tense like right before it in verse 12. If we deny him, he will also deny us. That is, he's talking about our present experience of endurance. Secondly, Christ's faithfulness to his grace and his faithfulness to his promises to save are what the New Testament speaks of when it calls Christ faithful, not to judge. So 1 Corinthians 10, we read of the Lord's faithfulness to give us escape from temptation. In 2 Thessalonians 3, the Lord is faithful to guard us from the evil one. I'm sure most of us know 1 John 1, 9, if we confess our sins, he is what? faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. In the New Testament, faithfulness always refers to Christ's faithfulness to save, to guard, to redeem, never to judge. It's not wrong to say that God is faithful in his justice, but that's not the language the New Testament uses. And third, faithless, faithful in these letters, 1 and 2 Timothy refers to moral action, obedience, not a final pronouncement or profession like unbelief. So we should understand if we are faithless here as acts of infidelity, sin, cowardice, failure. Now why does Paul emphasize this? Remember, there's widespread desertion around him. There's many under the sway of false teaching. And Timothy and others are called to being endure in hard things. What do they need to hear? If you fail, you can come back. He will be faithful to you. He has you. He is faithful. He will restore all who turn to him. in this call to suffer, to endure, to endure everything for the sake of Christ's sheep? He guards it with this word of promise, and don't worry, the Lord has you the whole time. And in the heat of battle, if you fail, He will be faithful. He can't deny Himself, because you are in Christ. You don't need to worry, dear Christian. You're in Jesus. Jesus is not going to deny Himself. So you're secure. You're safe. in the midst of hardship, against the fear of failure, against those who are being tempted by false doctrine, those who are wavering, maybe those who have already gone over on the other side and they need to hear the hope, you can come back. The Lord will restore his own. Even in our faithlessness, our cowardice, our failures, our sins, our weaknesses, Jesus remains faithful. He won't deny himself. Dear Christian, that means you and I. We may fail, but Christ never will. What do we need for hope? We need to know that our failures are not the end. To endure in days ahead, what do you need to hear when you've failed in the past? He will be faithful. Jesus says He loses nothing of all that the Father has given Him, but He will raise them up on the last day. He will never deny Himself, and by virtue of our union with Him, we are Him. We are in Him, we are His. And what that is to communicate to the church, go ahead and risk failure. Go ahead and risk cowardice. Go ahead and make mistakes. receive correction, confess with honesty, give your life to serve the Lord, because He will never deny Himself. And our cowardice, our faithless acts, our failures, they're never the end of us. Never. Not because of anything in us, but because He is faithful. Jesus determines the end. In verse 12, if we endure, we will reign with Him. And that means endurance even mid-failure and weakness and cowardice. So, remember Jesus. Stop finding your identity and receive what God has declared of you. You are His creation. And if you're a Christian, you're His new creation, united to Jesus Christ, You are able to endure, and even when you falter, you are his, he will never deny himself. Thomas Cramner was a great leader of the English Reformation. He wrote the first two editions of the Book of Common Prayer, which you may have heard of. During Bloody Mary's reign, he was arrested with his friends, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. Latimer and Ridley were taken for execution, and Cramner was forced to watch his friends being burned alive. Afterward, he sent a letter in which he said, I pray God would grant we would endure to the end. Now sadly, Cramner later gave way to private pressure and he recanted his beliefs and he submitted to papal authority. He was brought to the University of Oxford to publicly declare his recantation. But Cramner regretted the lapse and he repented of his recantation. and he publicly denounced his recantation. He recanted of his recantation. He went back to the gospel. And what he did from the pulpit is he then stood up, and where everyone had gathered to hear him affirm papal authority, he denied it. They had to physically yank him out of the pulpit, and he was taken right out to the same stake where his friends had been burned. And the first thing he did was put his hand in the fire, the hand that had signed the recantation, and he cried out as he died, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Now, Cramner died probably not as he would have liked in the latter weeks of his life. He probably liked what we would like, to be bold and faithful and courageous all the way to the end. He showed cowardice just before his death. But Jesus never denies himself. He didn't abandon the faith and he came back in the end. Cramner's life and story is a reminder because it's like our lives and stories. all us failures and cowards. That Jesus is faithful to his own. And that though we often falter, we're all full of faithlessness in many different ways depending on the day. We're full of failure. The Lord is faithful to his own. So wherever and however we are, verse eight, remember Jesus Christ. Trust him. He will bring us to the end. We can endure all the hurts He calls us to, and we can do so with hope, because Jesus will never deny Himself. Amen, let's pray. Our Father, we thank You for the grace and promise You give us in Your Son, Jesus. We thank You for the assurance of Your Word and the promises that we might take deep into our hearts and even to the verge of the grave itself. We ask that you would garrison our minds and our hearts to remember your Son, to meditate upon Him, to know that the life you have called us to in this life is the life of the cross, but the crown is coming because our Savior has risen from the dead. We ask that you would help us fix our eyes on Jesus, that our feet might follow and we might endure to the end by your grace. And we ask this, our Father, in Jesus' mighty name, amen.