2 Timothy chapter number 2, and I'd encourage you to stand with me in reverence for God's Word one more time. 2 Timothy chapter 2, please. 2 Timothy chapter number 2, and I want to begin our reading this morning, if we may, in verse number 1. 2 Timothy chapter 2, and verse number 1. 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse number 1. The Bible says, Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also. Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. no man that woreth and tangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully. The husbandman that laboreth must first be partaker of the fruits. Consider what I say, and the Lord give the understanding in all things. Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel, wherein I suffer trouble as an evildoer, even unto bonds, but the word of God is not bound. Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sake, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal joy. It is a faithful saying, for if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him. We suffer, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us. If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful. He cannot deny Himself. Of these things, put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord that they may strive not about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers. My text is from the 15th verse. Study, to show thyself approved unto God. A workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Study, study to show thyself approved unto God. I bring this message to your heart this morning. Dig your own well. May we pray together. Dear Father, I stand before you today as completely inadequate to meet any need here today, let alone the hundreds of different needs, many, even thousands of needs represented in the hearts and lives of those who are here today. I'm just a voice, but Lord, with Thy power, wonderful things could be accomplished in our lives. We ask You, Lord, that we come not today just to hear and leave and go about our business this day and forget what we have heard, but may the Holy Spirit of God arrest our hearts. May our attention be absolutely captivated to Calvary. Help us to be the Christian that you've saved us to be. Help us to apply ourselves in these next few minutes together, and we'll thank you for it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you so very much, and you may be seated. The words of 2 Timothy are the dying words of the Apostle Paul to his son Timothy in the faith. If you'll find in chapter 4 verse 1, the Bible says, I charge thee, chapter 4 verse 1, I charge thee therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead, it is appearing in His coming, preach the word. Timothy is Paul's reminder to his young son in the faith of what he ought to do as the man of God. If you continue reading in chapter 4, you'll find Paul saying these words, I'm now ready to be offered and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight. I've finished my course. I've kept the faith. And he gave this charge to Timothy to invest his life in the work of Jesus Christ. But here in chapter 2, Paul encourages Timothy to charge you and I, again in verse 14, chapter 2. Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord. Now we ought not just to look at the book of Timothy as a charge of one preacher to another, but we are to look at it as the charge of God to us. Verse 15, study to show thyself approved unto God. Now it might not surprise you that the most often referenced natural element in the world referenced in the Bible is water. We all know that water is necessary for life. It's essential for living. We can live longer without food than we can without water. We have to have water to survive. And as we think of the essential part of water, I remind you that the Bible is called the water of the Word. That more necessary to your physical body than having physical water to supply our natural body. More needful from that is for our spiritual body to be infused and filled with the water of the word of God. I meet Christians every week of my life and new Christians and maybe people that have been saved for a long time. And it seems as if there's one glaring weakness, one glaring need in the lives of most Christians that I meet. It's a need for the Word of God. It's a need to have the Word of God in our hearts and lives. Now I want to be honest with you this morning. I'm a pastor. I've been a pastor since I was 24 years old. I'm 32, I'm 35 years old today. And my children think I'm old. But I've been at it a little while. And I get burdened about things. I love our people and I love my opportunity to be used of God in their lives. But let's face it, some of us only see each other for an hour and a half on Sundays. Some of us, if we come to Sunday school, we see each other for two and a half hours on Sunday. Others come back on Sunday night and we see each other for about Four hours on Sundays, and then we get together for a little while on Thursday night and study the Word of God, and that's a wonderful thing. But I have to be honest. You know and I know that you need more than that to live a victorious Christian life. And I can't be with you all the time. That's the job of the Holy Spirit of God. When I came to trust Christ as my Savior, the Bible says our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you. In other words, God is not just a part of our life. God, through salvation, if we've trusted Christ as Savior, God is very much in our lives. Our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. You see, he that wrote the Bible lives in my life. The author of the Bible lives inside of my body. and I'm to commune with Him. You see, there's a difference in bringing our water pot to church on Sunday and say, okay, pastor, you got 45 minutes now, fill her up. But wait a minute. The Bible says in verse 15, you study to show yourself approved unto God. A workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. I come back to this thought and I hope you'll take it with you on your way home today. Dig your own well. Now notice in chapter 2, Paul entreats Timothy upon several grounds. Notice carefully, first of all, in verse 1, he entreats him as his son. Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. He entreats him as a son. Then notice in verse number 2, he entreats him as a witness. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also. It was Paul's design for Timothy to take what Paul taught Timothy and that Timothy would teach it to someone else. Charles Spurgeon has become known as the Prince of Preachers. He lived in England in the 1800s and died right short of the 20th century. Charles Spurgeon would preach his sermon and could boast that the week after he preached, from that Monday till the next Sunday, he had 3,000 people in his church who would take his sermons and preach them in their communities. The things that thou hast heard of me commit thou to faithful men. He treats them as a witness. Now what is a witness? A witness is someone who tells what they know. He's a son and he's a witness. Notice number three. In verse three, thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Now he treats him as a soldier. You're a son, you're a witness, but you're a soldier. And let us never forget, when we came to trust Christ by faith as Savior, we did not invest our lives into a game of patty cakes and monopoly. We are in a spiritual battle. We are soldiers for the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he entreats him, verse number four, as an Olympic athlete, verse four, and no man Verse 5, And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully. Now Paul is using a sporting analogy. He's talking about a trained, chiseled athlete in a particular athletic discipline who is disqualified for not operating according to the rules of the struggle. He treats him as a skilled athlete, one of precision. And then lastly, notice carefully in verse 6, he entreats Timothy as a husbandman. Now this is a vine dresser. This is one who maintains a vineyard. Verse 6, the husbandman that laboreth must be first partaker of the fruits. He speaks to Timothy along these lines and then he says in verse 14, Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord, that they strive not about words to no profit, but to the perverting of the hearer's study, to show thyself approved. unto God. Now I want to give you three great truths today, and then we'll return back to the analogy of the first six verses. First of all, if you'll write it down, dig your own well. Dig your own well. Now let me submit to you this morning that in your Christian life, many other things can help you fill your well, but you have to dig your well for yourself. Now, when I'm talking about our well, I'm talking about getting alone with God and digging out that spiritual place where we commune with God. Now, the water is the Word of God and all how we are fed by the wellspring of the Word of God. But we have to first give our lives to digging out that well. Now, how do we dig out the well? Well, the Bible says in Proverbs chapter 18 and verse 1, through desire. A man having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom. Now I would submit to you that you've never arrived at greatness in any area of your life without desiring to do it. Many times we'll hear someone play the piano, and we are blessed with Brother Dave Horvath as our pianist here. And I've heard people all around the country say, wow, he's such a talented guy. As if to say he got out of bed one morning, he did a few finger exercises, sat down at the piano, and bingo, there it was. And we know that's not the case. If it's a great athlete, if it's a great writer, if it's a skilled speaker, if it's a skilled teacher, that person may have natural ability, but it was desire that led them to become great in that field. Now, let me say this, I've never met a great Christian that happened upon excellency upon accident. It's through desire. Through desire. Let me give you a New Testament illustration of this. Go, if you will, quickly just a few pages back to the book of Philippians, will you please? Philippians chapter 3. Now, in our New Testament, we have 27 books. Now, of those 27 books, we can authoritatively say that Paul wrote 13, and we could argue about another and say he wrote it, which would mean he would have written 14 of the 27. So he would have written a majority of the New Testament. if at the very least he almost wrote a majority of the New Testament, the Apostle Paul. He was an expert in the law of the Old Testament. He was saved on the road to Damascus in Acts chapter 9 when the glory of God shone like the brightness of the sun and it smote Paul to the earth and he heard the voice of God, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he trembling and astonished said, who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. And Paul said, what wilt thou have me to do? And Paul accepted Christ as his Savior. And then he says in Galatians chapter 1, he was taken by God into the wilderness of the desert of Arabia to be taught by the Spirit of God for three years. He went to Bible college, the Holy Spirit being his teacher. Now, think about what he knew about God. He wrote half the New Testament. He had heard the voice of God. He was smitten by the blindness of the glory of God. But watch this. He says in Philippians chapter 3 and verse number 10, notice carefully, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings being made conformable unto His death. Paul, having arrived at such spiritual excellence, such spiritual maturity, being taught of God and knowing the truths of God, writing half the New Testament, says when he's in a Philippian jail about to go to Rome to give his life, he says, the goal of my life is to know God. Here's what he did. Paul said, nobody's going to get up from me and spend time on his knees. getting the power of God. No one can go to God and give me the truths of God's word. If I'm going to have a well, I have to dig it out myself. It's all about desire. I have to want to know God. Do you want to know God? Is there a burning desire in your heart to know the Lord Jesus Christ? There's another example, if you can find it quickly. Go to the second book of the Bible, the book of Exodus. Moses is the writer of Exodus and he's the subject of the chapter. Exodus chapter 33. Now Moses has spent separate 40 day seasons with God in Mount Sinai. Now God said they were so close that He spoke to him face to face. He was called the friend of God. Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. The Law. The Bible says in the New Testament the law was given by Moses. Moses took tables of stone. He took them in to the presence of God and God with His finger wrote, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Can you imagine holding tablets that were touched by the finger of God? Writing Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, can you imagine the power of that great man of God? Here's what he says. Exodus chapter 33, verse 13. If I found grace in thy sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight, and consider that this nation is thy people. And he said, Being God, God said to Moses, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. Notice verse 17, And the Lord said unto Moses, Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken, for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name. And he said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass by. Now watch this. After Moses has seen everything he's seen about God, after Moses has known everything he's known about God, after he has been audience to the very King of kings and Lord of lords, Moses makes an audacious claim, God, I want to know Thee in a greater and more powerful way. Now I submit to you this morning, there is a difference. It's a basic difference in the average Christian and the great Christian. It is this. It is that one has an insatiable hunger and thirst to know God personally. Now when I was growing up, I felt like my pastor was the fourth part of the Godhead. I did. He was such an austere man. I felt like he knew God in such a real way. Matter of fact, the song I sang this morning had a line in it and I thought about him. We always called him because we knew he'd know what to do. If we were in a health need in our life, we called him. You know why? Because if there was one person six feet over that would keep us from being six feet under, anybody that could get a hold of God, we knew it was him. But watch carefully. He'd spent hours on his face before God, digging his own well. And I benefited as a young person from the water that was in his well, but I've discovered I couldn't live my Christian life based upon his power with God. I had to spend the time and have the desire to dig my own well. Can I ask you a question? Are you armed with the assurance of your salvation? Are you indwelt by God's Spirit? Are you faithfully a part of a local assembly of baptized believers? I submit to you, if you have been saved by the grace of God, have a Bible in your hand, the Holy Spirit within, and a church without, you have all the ingredients necessary to dig your own well, but you're going to have to do the work yourself. I can't make you be the Christian God wants you to be. I remember walking into Earl Holloway's house, He seemed to be an ancient man when I was a teenager. I'm not going to put an age on that because I don't want you all to be mad at me this morning, but I remember meeting him and I remember him telling my mother, now I'm from East Tennessee and I could slang with the best slangers, I mean there was, or sang with the best singers, amen right there, I mean, but he'd say things to my mother about the ability he thought I had and I thought, that man's crazy. He saw something about me I didn't see in myself. I have four children and my desire for them and what I think they could be for God exceeds their desire to be that thing. I'm praying that they'll find that great desire. Here's my point. I can desire all I want for my kids, but my desire as a parent can't make them the person that Christ wants them to be. I want you to be a success in the Christian life. I want you to be happy in Christ. I want to see your marriage happy. I want to see your kids and my kids grow up to do something great for God. But I can't do it for you. I have to do my well digging for myself and encourage you to get along with God. Number one, you have to dig your own well. Number two, we write it down, after you dig your well, then you have to fill your well. You have to fill the well. Now the water is the Word of God. You've got to fill your well with the things of God. I read this week a scientific study, they spent millions of dollars in a new research study and the study found that people who take their coffee black are more likely to exhibit psychopathic traits. And they also found that people who order a quad shot nonfat vanilla soy extra foam light whip with caramel drizzle are more likely to be their victims. Have you ever been behind someone at the coffee shop and you say, would you like some coffee with that cream? People say, do you like coffee? No, I like the stuff that goes in it. Amen? You know what we do as Christians? We like everything associated with the Word. If we're not careful, We like Christian art, we like Christian magazines, we like Christian books, we like commentaries, we like Christian music, we like Christian papers, we like Christian preachers, but guess what? We get involved in all of the sugar and fluff and we get away from the word of God. 1 Peter 2, 2, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that she may grow thereby. Let me quote it with punctuation, as newborn babes, comma, desire the sincere milk of the word. Now we have four children. The first great miracle after the birth of a child, and that is a miracle, is watching that beautiful, invisible relationship develop between newborn babe and mother. As newborn babes, desire, the milk of the Word of God that ye may grow thereby. Peter is saying the most natural thing a believer exhibits towards God is a hunger for the Word of God. Nolan is here today. He will like Snickers bars one day. He will like hot Krispy Kreme donuts one day. He's a Baptist. He will like fried chicken one day. But he doesn't need it now. You know what he needs? He needs the sincere milk. That's what he needs. And as believers, sometimes the most dangerous thing a new convert says is, I'm going to the Christian bookstore. because they can get sidetracked by Christian music and Christian books and all of those peripheral things, spending time with things that talk about God, but not spending time with God in His Word. There's a Chinese proverb that says this, dig the well before you're thirsty. You're going to be thirsty in your life. Listen carefully, my wife and I, are not perfect people, we're not perfect parents and there are times in the development of our kids that we look at each other and we say to ourselves, you know what, we kind of forgot for a few months, Satan wants to destroy the lives of our kids. Things will go well in church and boy, they're going well and you're fruit of that today and then we get excited about the blessings of God and then Satan will stir something up and you say, There's an enemy. There's an adversary. There's a difficulty. There's a question you can't answer. There's a need you can't meet. There's a decision that you don't know what to do and where to turn to. Life has a way of making you thirsty for answers and without the water in the well, you'll draw up an empty pail and make the wrong decisions in your life. It is essential that we take the time to fill the well with the Word of God. First, we must spend time with God, digging the well, and then we must intermeddle with all wisdom. First of all, I say to you, in the filling of our well, we must be personal. We must appropriate things in a personal way. In other words, I like when people want to hear preaching, and I think a natural growth of being a successful Christian is loving the preaching of the Word of God. Christian people love the Word of God, but watch this. In order to fill the well, you have to do it personally. There has to be a time in your day that you get alone with God, take out His precious Word, and fill the well with His wonderful truth. You have to learn to get comfortable with God in a personal way. Some of you maybe that try to exercise spiritual transparency in the presence of your spouse sometimes find that a little uncomfortable. There is a discomfort to that. You know why? Because you are who you really are, not as you act physically, but what you are spiritually. Listen, I could fool you today and you could fool me. put on a suit and a tie and shine our shoes and comb our hair and be nothing that we appear to be, but not on a spiritual level. We lay ourselves bare. We open our hearts. We show each other who we really are. Listen carefully. We have to lay our heart out, open our Bible, and say, Lord, I'm laying myself bare. You know me anyway. You see me anyway. I can't hide my faults from you. God, show me the direction I'm to go. Lord, I'm bearing myself to you in a personal way. Now, let me appropriate that. How much time did you spend this week personally putting water in your well? Now, since we were together last Sunday, we've had six 24-hour periods. Did you at all on Tuesday stop and personally put fuel in the spiritual gas tank? No wonder you're so thirsty today. personally. Then number two, we must be public in putting water in the well. In other words, in our church attendance we must be faithful. I was having a conversation with someone yesterday and they were talking about the matter of preaching and preparing content. There's preachers and well-known preachers who have a committee of people that they meet with and they provide them sermon series and then the preacher okays that and he'll send this team out and they'll go do research on the body of the sermons and then this team will go out and search for the best illustrations and then this is the media team and they'll go do that. They bring all the research together and the preacher just compiles it together and preaches it. And I said, you know what? In the science of preaching, we kind of get away from what preaching is all about. Listen carefully. It's not just Brother Cox standing up and just raising his voice and talking to us for a little while. According to the Word of God, it's the man of God who is chosen by the Spirit of God who leads the man of God as he reads his word and leads that man to give you what you need for your Christian life. There's something very supernatural about the preaching of the word of God. Have you ever preached something and you say, how did he know that? My wife's been talking to the preacher again. My husband's been talking to the preacher again. My dad's been talking to the preacher again. Listen carefully. It is the spirit of God that leads us into the content of our preaching. So what God has for us from this pulpit is what you need for your life. Now my desire for you is to be a successful Christian, but I can't help you if you're not here to hear what comes from this pulpit. And I'll say this, I go back and I'll listen to sermons that someone said, oh someone preached this over here and you ought to hear it. And they'll say something like this, that service, it got on. They'll say something like that. And you'll listen to it in your car, and it's a good service, it's a good sermon. And you say, well, that's a really good sermon. No, no, he said, it was a really good sermon. I said, yeah, it was a good sermon. No, I guess you just had to be there to hear it. That's true. There's something about the body of Christ getting together and surrendering their schedule and their will to God and saying, God, speak to me. put some water in my well." If you knew what decisions would meet you this week, you'd beg God to put water in your well. And then there must be water that is pursued. Now after we have fallen in love with God's Word, Then we can begin to add in books that speak about God's Word, commentaries that speak about God's Word, preaching CDs that speak about God's Word, audio books that speak about God's Word. I wrote this down. I hope it'll help you. I don't think there's ever been a generation of Christians who have been more needy of music to worship God than our generation is today. Listen carefully. Music cannot replace the ministry of the Word of God in your Christian heart. Turn the music off and start talking to God in the car. Sometimes God says to me, turn that radio off. Turn that newsman off. Turn that thing off. I want to talk to you. Sometimes it's really hard to get personal with God. Because I don't want God reading my mail. I have to dig the well and every day of my life I have to fill the well. Do you desire that for your life? Number three, once you have dug the well and filled the well, number three, then you get to share the well. This is where it gets exciting. Once you have spent time with God, you've placed the Word of God into your heart and life, then the Lord starts bringing people along who have some questions and you say, give me a second, let me get my pill. Let me get my spiritual pill. I've got an answer for that. down in my well." 1 Peter 3.15, but sanctify the Lord God in your heart and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you of a reason of the hope that's in you with meekness and fear. You see, the greatest thing about having a well is watching the Lord use it to quench the thirst of a dehydrated world. You see, the goal is not the accumulation of knowledge, it's the sharing of God's wisdom. It is, God, work in me so you can work through me. God, put something in me so it can be a blessing to someone else. I'm not here to show how smart I am because I'm not too smart. I'm here so that God could give me something that'd be a blessing to you. Now, how many of you know someone in your life and they need God in their life? Will you raise your hand? Where are they going to get the water that they need? They're going to get it as they take a pill and inspect your spiritual well to see if you have an answer from God. See, someone might just observe what you draw out of your well in time of need and desire to have the same answers for their problems. You get to share the well. My problem is, and I'll be honest, My problem is people are drawing out of my well all the time. And I'm privileged to do this and I'd have it no other way. But I teach Sunday school. I preach in church. We're one of the few churches left that has church on Sunday night and that's preaching and Thursday night and that's teaching. And sometimes I like Thursday better than all the other ones. And then I go to Haines City, Florida, and I teach for four hours on Tuesday to Bible college students. And I write an article two times a month, which is just basically an extra sermon. I write two extra sermons a week to be published in the Sword of the Lord magazine, and other meetings that I have, and other questions that I have, and you come to my office, and you say, Pastor, I need some water. Do you have any answer to this? And we go to the hospitals, and we make visits, and people are drawing out of that all the time. Guess what the danger is for me? It's giving out, but not spending enough time with God to be replenished in my well. And in that, I wish you'd pray for me. Because the person who puts nothing in that's dry is no worse off than the person who gave everything they have and are dry too. Are you sharing your well? There's people in your life right now, they need answers to their questions. They need hope and help. Are you sharing your well with others? Now I want us to go back very quickly and I want you to look at those relationships that Paul speaks of having with his son Timothy. And how the water of the well could be a blessing to the son and the servant and the soldier. Notice carefully. 2 Timothy chapter 2. Notice what the Word of God says. 2 Timothy chapter 2. He says in verse number 1, Thou therefore my son be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. First of all, a son needs instruction to grow into maturity. draw the well. He speaks to Timothy regarding being a witness in verse 2. You see, a witness needs to know godly answers that he may be a faithful witness for Christ. That witness better dig a well. The soldier is mentioned in verse 3, Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier. A soldier needs courage and drive and that ability to rise above the storm and endanger himself for the cause. He needs to dig the well. Verse 5, If any man strive for masteries, yet he is not crowned, except he strive lawfully. An Olympian needs details for precision. He needs to dig the well. The husbandman, in verse 6, the husbandman that laboreth must be first partakers of the fruits. The husbandman needs seed and fertilizer and water so that the crop can be successful. He needs to dig the well. The idea is this, carefully, please get this and don't miss it. If you will work in the Word, the Word will work in you. Can we say that together? If you will work in the Word, the Word will work in you. Let's say it again. If you will work in the Word, the Word will work in you. But you have to have a desire for that. You have to have a hunger for that. You have to have a disciplined life for that. There'll be a time in your life you'll hit the wall as a Christian or be so reminded, I better get off the interstate and fill up before I run out. But at one time or another, you'll come face to face with the reality, I haven't done enough in my life to dig the well. If our children grow up to be godless and we didn't dig the well, it's too late. If our marriage meets with failure because we did not desire to dig the well, God will forgive us, but in that relationship, it's too late. If our nation falls into absolute apostasy, Hello? And we lose it. It's too late. Dig your own well.