Thank you Brian. That's the passage we're going to be spending a lot of time in this morning, most of our time and we're looking at other passages as well but that's where we're at as we look at faithfulness so now let's pray because if you want to hear God speak, open a Bible and we need his help to listen so let's pray. Gracious God we are in that perfect season of having an opportunity to produce the fruit of the Spirit. And so, Father, we pray now as we hear your voice in your Word, that your Spirit who breathed these words onto the page would so work in us, speak into our hearts. move us to trust in the faithful one, Jesus, and to produce that fruit of faithfulness. By His grace we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen. I had a dog once and his name was Ben. He's the most faithful dog I've ever had. So over the years I've had a few dogs, don't currently have dogs at the moment, I'm now a townie and our pets are two little goldfish. That's the most I think our household can cope with, you know, they're kind of just easy goldfish but dogs, different goldfish can follow you everywhere and that was Ben. and the story of Ben is too long to say and it'll take up too much time this morning, you can ask about it later, but basically, I had another dog before Ben, accidentally, we were on a farm and we found this dog on the side of the road, it was a red cattle dog, which are a fairly rarish breed and it seems the drover had left it or something, so we took it home and that became my dog and we were shearing at the time and the shearer says, and if you know shearers, this is a shearer dog, hey! That dog's no good for sheep! It's a cattle dog! It's biting those heels and it's causing me curry over here!' And anyway, Shira-speak is basically saying, you've got the wrong dog in the yards with you, that's a cattle dog. And he says to me, I tell you what, I've got a litter of dogs, I'll do you a swap.' I thought, fair enough, fair swap, you know, he's going to take the cattle dog, he'll use the catalogue somehow for better purposes, I'll get another dog. And so, I went to his place and he wasn't at home at the time but there was a note and there was this basket and there was this dog and he said, it's the last one I got left on the note, here it is. And I take it home and this dog grew up and it was a bitzer and if it was standing on the pulpit here, it'd be that tall. I looked at this thing and evidently, at full grown, we named him Ben, he was the runt. I was given the runt of the litter. This mixed up dog that was kind of fox terrier, cross kelpie, cross bit of jack, something else, was this dog and we thought, well, it's dogs, I mean, it'll be an ornament at best. most faithful dog I've ever had. Ben, that tall Ben, could jump onto the back of a Land Cruiser tray, if you know how tall that is, he would do it with ease. He would jump onto the back of sheep in the yards and he would, from sunup to sunset, doggedly work those sheep harder than other dogs I've seen before. He would not rest, In his down moments, he was quiet, which is also something you want in a dog. You don't want the dog barking all night, he wouldn't do that, he would only bark if there was someone around who was not part of the farming family. so you'd hear a bark and you knew someone was turning up, you know, driving the 2ks into where we lived. Ben was such a faithful dog, you couldn't tie him up in the paddock if he was spraying. It's actually what we think led to his death, so that he would howl, like you couldn't leave him at home, he had to be right beside you always. You'd walk around and there'd be this kind of pitter-patter and then you'd look and there was Ben, he's right there, sitting next to you. And so we couldn't tie him up, you couldn't keep him home. He wouldn't ride in the tractor, because he'd howl in the tractor, which is not a pleasant experience if you've got to put in a full day and you've got a howling dog with you. But he wanted to follow the tractor, and so he'd follow you around and around, up and down. And if we were spraying, that's what he did. Eventually, Ben got cancer. And the vet said, it's probably dogs get cancer, but we think, I blame myself, that he followed the sprayer around for a lot of his life. That was Ben. one moment I remember for Ben, he was so faithful, my dad was baiting foxes with a chemical and an engine and he, you know, he spilt the chemical on his hand and my dad instinctively sniffed it, which meant, bam, hits the deck, it took his breath away and he's on the ground, hard to breathe and Ben stayed next to him the whole time. That was faithful Ben. We all have had experiences of faithfulness, haven't we? Perhaps it was a pet for you, it was a dog. Maybe your goldfish are really faithful. Ours are. They've stayed in the tank so far. It's about this big. But the experiences we have of faithfulness are those moments, or those seasons, or those years of a friendship, of someone who's just always stuck with me by my side, like no matter where you go in life, you turn around and like, Ben, there they are, they're just there in your moments of need. What is faithfulness? You could define it, but in a sense, it's defined by its experience, isn't it? You know it when you see it, you know it when you feel it, you know faithfulness by actions and words, and it's just always there. It is a stable, enduring, trustworthiness is faithfulness, and it's a faithfulness that it holds to you, or you hold to something else. are times in your life also when you feel, experience faithlessness, aren't there? There are times in your life when, just as much as it is a strong association of someone being faithful to you or you to someone else, it's really deeply felt, that faithlessness, perhaps of someone else to you or you to someone else. For Paul, the Apostle Paul who pens these words in this second letter to Timothy, it's deeply personal. faithfulness and faithlessness is deeply, personally felt for him. When he writes this letter, it's his last letter, he's in prison at the time, Paul's been in and out of prison for a while, not because he's a criminal as he says in the passages read, he's not bound in chains because he's done something particularly wrong, not against the government or civil authorities in any form, he's in prison because of Christ. But in prison, again, He writes where he knows he's got a feeling, and perhaps it's been said, the trial is not going well, he knows this is it. And he writes to his ministry trainee, come co-worker in ministry, Timothy. Paul had previously written to Timothy and he'd written in his first letter much about gospel ministry, about church health, church leadership, and now in his second letter he writes more personally, he's speaking to Timothy of the importance of being faithful, of faithfulness. Because of all the times that Paul's in prison, as he knows he's not getting out, he knows this is where it ends, earthly speaking. And in this whole section that we read, if you actually look at the letter, I hope you've got it in front of you in your Bibles that are open there, because here's how Timothy's written, this second letter is written. It's actually in two halves. The first half goes, we actually read it, the whole first half goes right up to 2.13, where Bren finished and that whole first half of this letter is from Paul to Timothy and it's all about faithfulness. And as he writes, he encourages Timothy personally to be faithful. And as he does so, he tells Timothy stories of faithfulness. do you like to read for fun? I like to read biographies. I find them very encouraging. Christian biographies are very encouraging but sometimes biographies that are not particularly Christian are just also interesting and I learn things and they're stories of people's lives we learn things from. The stories of the lives woven into the first section of 2nd Timothy teach us about faithfulness. Paul starts by thanking God for Timothy. So you look in chapter 1 verse 3, I thank God whom I serve as did my ancestors with a clear conscience as I remember you, Timothy. He's constantly praying for you, Timothy. But notice what also he remembers as he gives thanks, he thanks God for Timothy's family, for his grandmother Lois and mother Eunice who have deliberately discipled Timothy as a disciple of Jesus. What is a disciple? A disciple is a learner, the word means learner, Someone who's learned Jesus, they've taught Timothy Christ, they've taught him the gospel. And now Paul speaks particularly to Timothy of being faithful to Christ for the rest of his life. Scholars are guessing, guesstimating, Timothy might be about 40, 40-something, this is kind of my era, Paul may be about 60s, he's 20 years ahead, And he writes to Timothy about, Timothy, the next 20 years for you, the faithfulness for your life, 20 years will go like that, doesn't it, friends? You need to be faithful, Timothy. Paul's in his circumstances, he's situated in prison, and there are a swirl of temptations to not be faithful. For Timothy, that swirl will come. It could be a temptation to just slip away from publicly identifying with Paul because some have. Those circumstances for Paul in prison are actually a source for shame for many. a source for shame. Isn't that still the case today? Like the phrase, I've been in prison. If you're having a conversation with someone and they're at our church and they say, I've been in prison, our first reaction was, we don't say, oh great, how was that? It's not like someone's, oh you know, I'm a doctor. Oh wonderful, and what field are you in? No one asks, and what did you go to prison for? Being in prison is a source of shame even today. got a friend who's applying for jobs and they ask, they have to ask, he has to say, and the phrase, I have been in prison, means immediately for him, I don't get a job. Paul writes from a place of shame. People associated with Paul might mean that you might get into prison too. So he has to write chapter 1 verse 8, "...therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God." The honest reality, friends, is we do feel shame. Shame is a very strong feeling in our society. People say, oh Australia, Australia's not a shame-based culture, not like those other cultures over there to the north or east, we're not a shame-based culture. You know, we are deeply a shame-based culture. We gotta watch out for it. People don't get what they want, they shame us. They use it as a tool of manipulation. They associate you, oh you're with them, shameful. We feel it in vivid ways. It's even the little things though, isn't it? Having a bad hair day, I'm having a bad hair day, shameful. It's the little things. Through to the big things, when we have a family member who, I don't know, they say something embarrassing in public and we go, oh, that's my family? We feel that shame. To the bigger things, when we see the media pummeling Christians on Q&A. This happened this last week, there was a Christian on Q&A, Michael Jensen, I happen to know him, he's a friend of mine, taught me at Bible college. he may not watch Q&A and I understand why he may not watch it anymore, but if you watch Q&A and you see a Christian being pummeled on Q&A, what's the temptation for us? I'm not that sort of a Christian. Like, I'm not really associated with that and them. We feel it, the temptation comes to be ashamed. it's a temptation then that leads to, easily, a faithlessness in us. Paul says in verse 12, I suffer, it's why I suffer as I do, but I'm not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, I am convinced that He is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. See, Paul could have easily have been ashamed of his imprisonment, couldn't he? I mean, imagine, you're sitting in prison, you'd have to be asking the question, What did I do wrong here? Like all the super-apostles out there that he talks about in 2 Corinthians, all the super-apostles' ministries, they're doing well, they've got big platforms and big churches and they're going, well, why am I in prison? Have I been doing it all wrong? What have I done wrong? I need to think through my ministry. What were the steps that led up to this, that led me to here? Why is it like this? Am I not palatable enough? have I not preached the gospel? Or all those people out there who were just nice, better than me in my ministry, he would be thinking all that and he has to write verse 12. No, no, no, I'm not ashamed because I have been faithful to Christ. The story of Paul is of one needing to be faithful and encouraging Timothy to be faithful. And then Paul tells a story of whom Timothy would know, of people who have been tempted to and fallen into faithlessness. Their names get into the pages. We just read verse 15, chapter 1, verse 15. You're all aware. You know this, Timothy, that all of them who are in Asia turned away from me, among them for jealous and homogenies. You know them, their names are here. We don't know much about these two, all we know is that they were co-workers with Paul and then they see Paul in prison and then they say, yeah, I'm not actually with Paul. They turned away from him, among many others, yet Onesiphorus, he associates with Paul, he's not ashamed. But because of this, Paul writes to Timothy and he says, you then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And Paul illustrates following with the soldier and the athlete and the farmer. If Timothy's going to be faithful, he's going to need to be not ashamed, he's going to need to be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Now normally people like a soldier, an athlete and a farmer, they work harder to keep going. But do you notice what Paul says? Don't just work harder Timothy, don't just strive harder because if you strive harder you'll notice your failings more. You need to be strengthened because you're going to get weak. Be strengthened, it's a passive imperative verb which means it's something that happens to you. Timothy, let yourself receive this, receive the grace of God in Christ and be strengthened by Christ. There is no other way to be strengthened when you face the temptations that will come your way but by going as fast as you can to Jesus. It's not by human willpower but by the grace of God that we're enabled to endure. So receive it. And then he writes in verse 7, think over what I say. Self-reflect, reflect on the gospel and the Lord will give you understanding. Timothy needs to think on this. And think on what exactly? Think on God's grace to us. His covenant of grace to us. His covenant faithfulness to us. you're following along on that sermon outline you'll see that's who we are now, God's covenant faithfulness and I think that in chapter 2 verses 8 to 10 we see the Apostle Paul give one of those gospel summaries that he often does in his letters and he does it here in verse 8 starting with, remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David as preached in my gospel. read from Psalm 111 earlier. In Psalm 111 we see, throughout that psalm, words that remind God's people of His covenant faithfulness. So Psalm 111 verse 5, He remembers His covenant forever. Verse 7, the works of His hands are faithful. Verse 8, His faithfulness and uprightness. Verse 9, He has commanded His covenant forever. What is covenant? Perhaps people have explained covenants like a contract but it's so much more than that. In fact, it's so much more that's so different than a contract. It's promise-keeping and oath-making. It's a promise and so when God makes a covenant with us, He promises us And by an oath, and in Hebrews the writer says, you know, unlike Abraham who goes into covenant with God or anyone else, you know, God has no one higher than himself to swear to make that oath. He does it on his own. He has no one greater by whom to swear, so he swore by himself the right of the Hebrews' rights. God makes covenants to people. He makes promises to people and the point of the psalmist as he pens these words is, God does not break His promise. So when Paul writes, remember Jesus Christ, in a few moments we're going to have communion in the Lord's Supper and the key word is, remember Christ. Remember the promises of Christ. Here is Paul in prison who picks up the memories of God's faithfulness in the past and remembers all of God's promises to the end. Remember Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ who was in the line of King David, promises made to David, promises that there will be a King that rules the universe forever. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And so, Paul writes to Timothy, remember Christ. And as he does so, he finishes with what I think is, in verses 11 to 13, a creed. What's a creed? If you've grown up in a church background like I did, we didn't have creeds. it just wasn't something that we did. And so, growing up and as a Christian, later I was exposed to things like the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, people like Athanasius and others who wrote creeds. And what is a creed? The word creed comes from the Latin credo which means, I believe. It's a statement, a confession of belief, we all have different creeds, I guess, in life we have creeds, things that we say and we kind of believe this, like Australia might have a creed, what's our creed? Things we say, things like, we're the lucky country or a fair go, things we say that we believe, that if you sit in a bunch of Australians, they say together, I think one of them famously is, and probably the tennis has made this come to the fore, like if you were staying in a bunch of Aussies, and I know in our church, we're not all Australian background here, welcome friends, we're a church for the nations, but I know that If you get to know Aussie culture, if you're staying in a bunch of Australians and someone says something strange like this, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, the part of the creed that everyone says together is, I don't even know why, who made this up, it's, oi, oi, oi. That's a creed. We're saying, we believe, we're Australians and we're together and we're communing together, we say this together, that's a creed. The Bible is full of creeds. So, as I keep reading the Bible, I'm convinced that there's actually, the Scriptures are full of creeds. Why? Because when you think about it, particularly the New Testament, this is Paul's last letter. The letters were often written before the Gospels. So, there's a lot of the letters were written before the Gospels were written. didn't have the New Testament like we had. Paul's not going to Timothy. Now Timothy, I want you to go and look up, you know, this letter that I wrote because he may not have had it yet. I want you to look up Mark's Gospel, it may not have been penned yet. These Gospels come later and so What the early church has is creeds, sayings, trustworthy sayings, like we started our service with. A trustworthy saying, Paul says in verse 11, there's in fact five trustworthy sayings in the pastoral letters, and in verse 11 he's got this trustworthy saying. Why is it called a trustworthy saying? Because Paul's saying to Timothy, you've heard it before, yes? You've heard it before, you've said it before in church. trustworthy sayings, these creeds were said as they gathered, they had the Old Testament Scriptures, they had the preaching of the Gospel, the oral Gospel given to them and then they said these things together, friends, creed, what do we believe? And creeds have helped the early Church and still help the Church keep on the path of what Scripture disciples us in and teaches us what we believe. help us not to err into false teaching. And you can see in the Scriptures at times there are noteworthy things in the text that say this looks like, and I think it is, an early creed. This trustworthy saying. Systematic theology in poetic form. And it's a creed to be faithful. Paul says, the saying is trustworthy. For if we have died with him, we'll also live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he will deny us. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. The trustworthy saying here is, it's to be faithful. I mean, the word trustworthy can be translated faithful. a highly structured creed, it's got these conditional statements, if we, if we, if we is repeated because notice this, Christianity is not individualism for religious people, Christianity is unlike those other worldviews or religions where you can have your own personal little religion and your own little personal temple, it's not like that at all. Christianity is plural, it's community, it's church. Jesus institutes a church. That's why it's not if you, it's if we, we, us, The Creed is loaded with promises from God through Christ. The verse 11 we see is about being saved and in union with Christ. Verse 12 is about persevering with Christ. Verse 13 is that warning, how dire it is to not trust in Jesus, to deny Christ. which is if you are tuning in online or here with us and you are not yet trusting in Jesus, here is the warning, friends, and it's done with love and warmth and compassion. If you deny Christ now for the rest of your life, if you live your life denying Him, you will meet Him and then for eternity He will deny you. Don't deny Christ. Turned from your sin, trust in Him and be welcomed by Him. As we read this creed, Paul writes this creed in the context of the stories of faithfulness and he wants Timothy, he wants us, God wants us to be faithful. But here's our problem. There's a very real temptation, or perhaps a very real history for you and I, where we could know, remember moments where we have not been faithful. where we've been faithless. There are times in my life, in your life, in our church life, where we have relied less on God and we have been faithless. Where we could say, yeah, I wavered that day. Our faith in Christ failed that day. We were tempted under suffering or perhaps it was just sin to turn away. We perhaps look at Phygellus and homogenies and we go, goodness, my name could be like in that list. So how can we produce the fruit of faithfulness in our lives when that's our problem? And this is why Paul, in all his letters, but in this letter, keeps showing us this. Verse 13, look to Jesus. If we are faithless, conditional statement which says highly likely, what's the likelihood that we will be faithless in some way? It's pretty high. If we are faithless, he remains faithful. For he cannot deny himself, he has no one higher to swear by, no one greater than... I promise that on... it's him, the promise maker, the great promise maker is saying, I remain faithful to you. Christ is the gracious covenant keeper and fulfiller, especially the stumbling people. We are often wrong. Can you admit that? I can. We're often wrong. We're always weak and yet Jesus welcomes us with His faithfulness. This is the continuous testament of the Old and New Testaments. This is the story of people throughout the ages in the Scriptures. Think of people you can think of in the Bible. Peter, Thomas. Peter, of all people, would want to be known as the faithful one. I'll always be with you Jesus! And then he wasn't. And that gets in the Bible. let alone my life, ours, yours. And look at the way Christ is faithful to Peter, to Thomas, to Russ, to us, to Reforming Church. He is faithful. Towards the end of this letter, Paul writes, he says in chapter 4 verse 16, at my first defense, no one came. to stand by me. No one came like Ben the dog. All deserted me. And then he writes this, may it not be charged against them. He's not writing in a condemning way. He's not writing, that's it, I'm done with them. I'm not going to send them a Christmas card this year. No way, no, no. No, he's saying, I don't want it to be charged. I want them to know the one who is faithful to them because then he can restore them. As he's done for Paul. as he's done for Peter, as he's done for you. See, isn't the Apostle Paul's experience of faithless friends, isn't that like a taste of the experience that Jesus had at the cross? Faithlessness, he's seen at the cross, everyone flees, even the beloved disciple flees. One of them flees like he's got no clothes on, he's going so fast. Faithless friends. That's the experience of Christ on the cross. And Jesus doesn't just say, may I not be charged against them. He says, I forgive them. Forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. See, I had a faithful dog, but we've got someone much better than that. We've got a faithful God, Jesus, and He changes everything. We aspire to faithfulness in our friendships, don't we? But what about when our friends fail us? What about when I fail my friends? We aspire to faithfulness and service. On my days off I like to read different things and I'm reading a biography at the moment by a US Marine Corps commander And of course, if you know the Marine Corps, the US Marines, what's their motto? Semper Fidelis, always faithful. Yeah, I'm going to be always faithful, but then we realise I'm not always faithful. might be aspiring to service in the church or something bigger than us or service and volunteering and we want to be faithful to that and then we realize sometimes actually I'm faithless. May I say as I look around Reforming Church and I see your faithfulness, we see your faithfulness, we thank God for you but we also pray that you would know when you have those moments of faithlessness, look to Jesus as fast as you can. We aspire to be faithful in our families, but sometimes that's difficult. Faithfulness in our community, footy clubs, social circles, and our volunteering. We like people to see us being faithful, but sometimes I see us failing. Faithfulness in marriages. We had a marriage, a wedding here yesterday. What is a wedding day? It's the first day of a married couple's lives. It's the first day of what we praise, faithfulness till death do they part them. of all the couples and counselling and the people we've cared for, we've never once said to them, your marriage is going to be easy. It's going to be good, it's going to be blessed, but it will not be easy and there are tragedies in marriages and we say to people, you will need faithfulness. So again, how? How? Paul writes to Timothy, 2nd Timothy, 2 verse 1, coupled with verse 13 in chapter 2, 2 verse 1, you then marry couple, replace the words, so it's not you my child in 2 verse 1, you then marry couple, you then church, you then families, you then friends, and notice this, it's not go and do better with a shaking finger, it is not, it is an open hand of receiving God's grace, you then be strengthened by grace! strengthened by grace, not strive better, do better, you're failing, pull your socks up, tie your shoelaces up better, look better to others. It is go to Jesus for grace and be strengthened by Him. This is how faithfulness works, do you see? You see, if you're going to be faithful, and potentially we're all faithless, the answer is not more rules, the answer is not more laws or more lists of things to do, it is not higher standards to keep, none of those things will strengthen you. Just giving people more rules or higher standards to keep doesn't strengthen you and we know this because the Pharisees tried it. Morals alone never move anyone. Even the law of love, you will fail at. The problem with failure is that failure can't make you stronger, the coffee cup says, and actually it's wrong, it can't. Because after failing, you'll fail again. Failure though, being faithless, will see you stronger if you go to the one who is faithful. We know the one, the God of second chances. In fact, he's the God of 70 times 70, seven times 70 second chances. If we are faithless, he is faithful for he is for you.