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Now both First Timothy and Second
Timothy are about the work of God and
the work of the church to preserve the Christian religion in the
church as a covenanted community against physical and spiritual
attack so that the individual saints can stand strong as the
church together resists apostasy. That's the heart of both books.
And when we see 1 Timothy, there's persecution that's occurring,
and there's already apostasy and opposition that's occurring.
In 2 Timothy, the persecution has gotten worse, and so has
the apostasy. And so what we find on page two,
We're reminded in the face of opposition that the thing to
focus on is, verse 13, hold fast the pattern of sound words which
you have heard from me. So we have the Apostle Paul,
we have the apostolic deposit, and it has to be held onto in
faith and love, which are in Christ Jesus. So we're supposed
to believe Christ, and we're supposed to, in believing Christ,
believe his word, which comes through his apostles. When you
believe the words of the apostles, you're believing Christ. Some
people want to differentiate and separate the apostles from
Christ, and that is heresy. It is absurdity. It denies the
very messages of Christ. We've looked at that. We've seen
the apostolic deposit texts in John. Also, the love is to be
in Christ. It's to be a love that is focused
on Christ and His body, the Church, and we obey His commandment to
love our neighbors and to love our enemies by trying to apply
the law of God to all. But the focus on the love of
God first and the love of the Church and of our houses, the
covenanted institutions, with this order of loves that goes
out. That good thing which was committed
to you, the good thing that was committed was the pattern of
sound words. It's the scriptures, it's the apostolic deposit, keep
by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. So we're supposed to keep
it in terms of our own faith and believing it, having it stored
up in our hearts. We're also supposed to keep it
in terms of our profession and to maintain the profession of
the true religion in the midst of opposition and in the midst
of apostasy and in the midst of persecution. So there's a
lot of talk about the changes that have occurred in the culture.
Some people are saying that we've recently arrived in negative
world. It's a thing that gets used online, this idea of we're
in negative world now, where Christianity has been opposed.
Well, I'll tell you what. We've been in negative world
for a long time. We're in more negative world, sure. We've been
in negative world for a long time. It has been the case that
if you assert the truth of God's Word broadly, almost any sphere,
whether it's education, whether it's politics, whether it's general
life, whether you're talking to people in general, there hasn't
been a friendliness to taking the scriptures and talking about
them to try to apply them in a realm of life in American culture
for a long time. And so it may be the case that
We have a more negative view of Christianity in significant
parts of the country now than we did in the past, in previous
decades. But it is, we've been in a negative
world for a long time. What we are in is an increasing
negative world and the nice thing is that the church is becoming
more aware of it and more aggressively Christian. So I'm thankful for
that. And so the idea of holding fast
to the word and not being ashamed is one of the key things that's
important for the preservation of the Reformed faith in the
world. So this willingness to hold fast
the pattern of sound words. Now, confessional standards are
a way that we corporately confess the truth in an efficient and
orderly way. And so this idea of holding fast
the sound pattern of words is both in terms of the scripture
and in terms of as the church matures, we want to hold fast
to our confessional standard. So the word that was committed
to Paul, that was committed to Timothy, is the scriptures. Verse
15. This you know, that all those
in Asia have turned away from me, among whom are Fidulus and
Hermogenes. Now, some people try to read
this as like everybody, every church in Asia turned away. That's
not the case. Ephesus is in Asia. Timothy is in Ephesus. He's an officer there. That's
not the point. The point is, all those who had
been with Paul, who apparently were from the Asian churches,
fled from him and they're in Asia, they were turned back,
there's sort of this running away from him. So the people
who came from the Asian churches with him to Rome have abandoned
him. This you know, that all those
in Asia have turned away from me, among whom are figilists
and hermogenies. The Lord grant mercy to the household
of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed
of my chains. One of the things that happens
during times of persecution and opposition is the officers get
attacked and the officers get persecuted because they stand
out. Leaders stand out and so they get attacked. Vanessa Forrest gives to you
an example of how to deal with officers who are attacked for
the sake of the truth of God's word. And it's to not be ashamed
of them or of their being attacked. You have to, of course, judge
what they're being attacked for. You must be careful to not be
ashamed of the things that they suffer or the attacks they undergo
for the sake of the truth. And so you look at what's going
on and the suffering that's going on, and you look at the causes
of those sufferings. Now, it's also possible, you
know, It happens a lot where people go and they throw garbage
accusations at people who are telling the truth in order to
try to shame them with garbage accusations. This is particularly
common in our time that oftentimes in politics, for example, anybody
who's a Christian who's in a particularly important point, if they're open
and vocal about being a Christian, it's particularly powerful to
attack Christians with charges of sexual impropriety. And so
to have charges come out about that, that's a common thing that
occurs. So you find things that are actually
evil being things that come out as charges as a way of trying
to discredit. Now the problem is there are sometimes true charges.
There are oftentimes true charges. They're horrifically evil deeds
by people who claim to be Christians. So you've got this difficult
situation there. But you have to be aware of the difficulty,
both of people attacking plainly for the truth or coming up with
false attacks in order to go after true officers with bogus
charges. And then there's also the reality
that some people who are leaders need to be removed, need to undergo
punishment, have committed heinous sins. And so you have to consider
all of those things, which means that you have a careful responsibility
to seek to stand by officers through the process of dealing
with them. We were told in First Timothy
this idea of you don't receive charges against an officer, an
elder, without two or three witnesses. And we have that responsibility
for everybody. But we also, especially, need
to be careful in terms of the way leaders are dealt with. So
being ashamed of the suffering that officers undergo for the
truth is sin. And we have the approved example,
the positive example of Anesophorus, who was not ashamed of Paul,
was not ashamed of his imprisonment, was not ashamed of his harsh
imprisonment, was not ashamed to go to him, was willing to
refresh him, was willing to go alongside and help him, and willing
to suffer possible risks and harms to himself to help Paul. verse 17. But when he, Anesiphorus,
arrived in Rome, he sought me out very zealously and found
me. So Anesiphorus gets to Rome,
zealously looks for Paul who is imprisoned, and in that zealous
looking for Paul, keeps looking until he finds him. When he finds
him, he brings to him refreshment, he brings to him help, he brings
to him things for his care while he's in prison. Sometimes people
will take the verses in the scriptures that are about caring for the
saints who are undergoing persecution or in prison, and they'll try
to apply them generally to people in prison. You don't have a duty
to go and refresh everybody in prison. You don't have a duty
to go take special care of people who are in prison. But when Christians,
especially public leaders, teachers, undergo persecution, and even
go to prison, you have a special duty to care to them in that
persecution. There's a special responsibility
in the times of persecution to rally around and protect and
care for the saints who are undergoing persecution. So when Anesiphorus arrived in
Rome, he sought Paul out very zealously and found him. The
Lord grant to him that he may find mercy from the Lord in that
day. And you know very well how many
ways he ministered to me at Ephesus." So Romanists like to take this
text and say, here's a proof text that you should pray for
the dead. This is the strongest text in
the Bible to support that, because you could see how if you come
in with that doctrine, how easy it is to isogete it in. So if
you believe already that there's some authoritative teaching that
you should pray for the dead, and you see, okay, Anesiphorus
is being talked about. He's being talked about in past
tense. He often refreshed me. He was not ashamed. When he arrived,
he sought me out very zealously. the Lord grant to him that he
may find mercy from the Lord in that day." What day? It must
be the Day of Judgment. So there we are. Paul is telling
us to pray for Anesiphorus that on the Day of Judgment, when
Christ returns and resurrects the dead, that he'd find mercy
on that day. And you know, there's this grant
mercy to the household of Anesiphorus, because he must be dead. And
so there must be a need to give things to his house to care for
his household. And so you put it all together,
and you kind of go, that feels like a plausible reading. Well,
the problem is that we are, to find that doctrine of praying
for the dead, no place in the scriptures explicitly taught
for sure. And then you look at this, and it's not a necessary
reading. It's not a necessary inference. It's not a necessary
reading. And so let me present to you a just as plausible, and
I would suggest, given the rest of the teaching of scripture,
more than plausible, in fact, necessary reading. So let's walk
through how you read this in response to Rome. You say, the
Lord grant mercy to the house of Onesiphorus. for he often
refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chain." So there's something
happening where Anesiphorus is having something happen and his
household is having some sort of a loss and Anesiphorus used
to refresh and used to show that he was not ashamed of Paul's
chains. So a quick thought for you. What
if Anesiphorus was identified as a Christian as a result of
his helping Paul during this time of persecution that we're
looking at. This is, again, before the destruction
of Jerusalem. It's after the fire that was
caused in Rome that Nero was blamed for. And Nero tried to
shift blame to the Christians. So this is the persecuting time
following that. So Onesiphorus is identified
as a Christian. And as a result, imagine for just a minute that
he was also put into prison like the apostle Paul. Would that also make it so that
he's no longer able to provide for his household? It would. Okay. So then we go to verse
17, but when he arrived in Rome, he sought me out very zealously
and found me. Okay. So this is past work. One
of the reasons that we should pray for the Lord to grant mercy
to the household of Vanessa for us. He's suffering for righteousness
sake. It took a risk. The Lord grant to him that he
may find mercy from the Lord in that day. So this could be
a prayer for his justification, but I'll tell you what, in what
day. Well, one of the things that we find, Paul's gonna talk
about his persecution, and he's gonna talk about having been
delivered from lions. And the thing is, if you are being persecuted,
and you're awaiting some sort of great punishment, like execution,
The thing you would expect people to be praying for you about is
very specifically that you would maintain the faith in the face
of this persecution. And he's using Anesophorus in
terms of an example of faithful ministry. And we're going to
deal with this idea of continuing to maintain the witness in the
face of opposition. So Anesophorus, we've The saints were encouraged
to pray, and he prays, Paul prays, that Anesiphorus, in other words,
would receive mercy on the day of his trial, his tribulation,
his suffering, his persecution to death. And you know very well
how many ways he ministered to me at Ephesus. So this is a reminder
again of the good works that were done. So there's no reason
here why you have to read this as prayer for the dead. So next,
chapter two, verse one. In fact, the only reasonable
way to read it, frankly, is to read it as Anesiphorus is in
the same sort of situation Paul is, and praying for strength
for him, is to receive mercy to be able to uphold his profession
in the day of judgment, the day of judgment temporally, the day
when he's going to suffer his persecution in the form of potentially
even dying. Chapter 2, verse 1. You, therefore,
my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and
the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses.
Commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others
also. You, therefore, must endure hardship
as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles
himself with the affairs of this life that he may please him who
enlisted him as a soldier. And also, if anyone competes
in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according
to the rules. The hardworking farmer must be first to partake
of the crops. Consider what I say, and may
the Lord give you understanding in all things. So there's a call
here to Timothy And by implication to us, to be strong in the grace
that is in Christ Jesus. So to be strong in the grace
is to have the sanctification and spiritual gifts that come
from Christ Jesus be strong in us. We're looking for a strength
of faith. This would go back to this idea
of holding fast to the pattern of sound words. And so strength
in the faith, strength in the grace that comes from Christ,
strength in our sanctification, this need to focus on obedience
to Christ as a way of being faithful. You see, there's always temptation
to compromise on what God has commanded. And when there's persecution,
and when there's social pressure, and when there's mockery, there's
an even higher temptation, and even on the edges, to compromise
for the sake of having other people think better of you or
reduce the pain they're going to bring and to try to reduce
some of those things. You go, is it really necessary
on this thing or that thing that I have to hold the line? That
seems pretty small. It's a small detail. Is it really
something I have to hold the line on? If it's been revealed
by the Lord Jesus Christ, you should not compromise. on any
proposition of truth or any commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ for
the sake of convenience. You therefore, my son, be strong
in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that you
have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful
men who will be able to teach others also." So now there's
the, again, there's the scripture teaching that's given. There's
the propositional revelation that comes from the mind of God.
And then there's the organizing work and the public teaching
work of officers in the church. And this idea that the public
teaching is more formal And there's an emphasis on being careful
to give sound words in the formal and public teaching. And so the
public ministry of the church, in terms of confessional statements,
pulling together words in an organized way, and the public
teaching of ministers, so they can be challenged by other people,
so there's opportunity for public confrontation about error, so
that other people hear it and are testing it. That is a more
sure type of teaching. It is a type of teaching that
is to be looked upon as important to give your attention to. So
taking heed of the public teaching, capturing that information, transmitting
that information, and repeating that cycle is what mature men
are called to do. The whole church is called to
do it. But there's a special duty for those who are mature
and who are going to teach others. to take heed of the public teaching,
to capture that, to transmit it, and to go through a repeating
process. So the things that you've heard from me among many witnesses,
commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others
also. You, therefore, must endure hardship as a good soldier of
Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles
himself with the affairs of this life that he may please him who
enlisted him as a soldier. We have three analogies that
are used here for the pastoral ministry and being faithful in
ministry, especially in the face of opposition in this negative
world. You look at these three analogies, there's the soldier,
the athlete, and the farmer. The soldier, the athlete, and
the farmer. And they're each used to demonstrate different
points. The soldier is used as one who is an example for enduring
hardship. The soldier is expected, obviously,
to enter into battle, right? Battle is a place where you risk
your life, where you go through difficult things, you watch friends
suffer and die, you yourself risk suffering and dying, and
may well. And you also go through the pains of combat, and go through
the various small injuries and larger injuries that occur in
combat. As you are in combat, the things
that occur, the losses that occur, we are all aware of the fact
that many who go into combat, even if they are not physically
harmed, They're often put into a place where the traumas of
the mind are so intense that it affects their behavior and
attitude sometimes for the rest of their lives. It is a great
trial to deal with a life-and-death struggle with other men. And because of that greatness
of that trial, there's a recognition of the need to endure hardship
there. But the enduring of hardship
is not merely the intense moments of combat. It is a common joke
to talk about warfare being long, drawn-out periods of boredom
with punctuated moments of terror. So the terrors are one thing,
but the long slog, the idea of having to march at distance,
the idea of having to carry significant gear, the need to deal with Difficult
overseers to deal with men who you're around or might not be
the most pleasant the difficulty of Continuing through and having
to deal with minor injuries that add up over time when you're
carrying Significant amount of gear and you're moving a significant
amount of distance you get lots and lots of minor injuries and
those pile up and they don't heal because you don't get to
stop you just keep going and you enter into a the condition
of combat, having had to deal with the long boredom, the long
slog, all of those difficulties. And so this idea that there's
an enduring through difficult, boring, painful process and punctuated
moments of terror. These are the types of things
that soldiers must endure. And so when you think about the
analogy of the soldier, We are often tempted as men to think
about if we can have one glorious moment, if we can just break
through the enemy, if we can shatter their teeth and have
a cavalry charge through and be done and be victorious, how
great that would be. And the hard thing is to be faithful
in the long slog, the glorious cavalry charge. is a moment that
you go, yeah, I might die. But the trench warfare, the grinding
it out, the long-term difficulties, frustrations, dangers, that long
slog, that is a part of the endurance that is necessary for soldiers.
And some of us may live to see glorious moments of victorious
charges. But they don't end the war. They
might be victorious moments where battles are won. But there are
more battles to follow. We will be here. The saints will
be on Earth for a long time. And so there's this call to deal
with hardship and to endure. No one engaged in warfare entangles
himself with the affairs of this life. This idea that there's
a focus on the spiritual warfare and on this engaging in this
work Now soldiers, you go, OK, well, you're not going to have
another profession. You're going to focus on this profession of soldiering.
The thing about Christianity is Christianity is not a 9 to
5 job. The pastorate is not a professional
class. This verse is sometimes used
to say you shouldn't have bifurcational ministry. Men shouldn't have
a second job. Well, the Apostle Paul did tent
making in order to pay for things while doing ministry. It might
be ideal to be able to have so much money that you can give
some men the ability to stop their other work. But this idea
of a minister who is focused purely on church work and doing
nothing else is also the kind of thing that makes it so that
when you read verse four, this is the kind of basis for Roman
Catholicism, trying to say things like ministers ought not to be
married. Ministers ought not to have their
own children. So you go, okay, celibate, no
children, no jobs except for working in the church. If we're saying, let's totally
avoid the affairs of this life, and we interpret anything except
for church work as the affairs of this life, can you see how
the celibate ministry becomes the way that you think about
it? But what if one of the great ways of waging war as a minister
is to show other saints how to work like a Christian in making
money? What if one of the great ways
of waging warfare as a minister is to show other Christians how
to be a good husband and how to be a good father? What if
this warfare is taking every area of life captive to the Word
of God and being faithful in this charge to focus on this
warfare and avoid being entangled in the affairs of this life means
trying to apply the Word of God to every area and having no secluded
spaces that are separated off from the Word of God? That would be the historic Protestant
way of reading this. And weirdly, in Protestant churches,
there have been some groups that have tried to more and more take
this and make it into a thing to make it so that ministers
have to be full time and to have no other areas where they can
potentially make money. What that does is it ties ministers
in to being a bigger burden to the church, and it also ties
in ministers to being captive to and under pressure to please
the church. As opposed to doing their duty
of actually being a good soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ and
focusing on pleasing Him. So chapter 2 verses 3 and 4 gives
the analogy of the soldier and here's the point of the analogy.
Be willing to endure hardship for the sake of your captain
and be willing to give your focus to waging war and applying his
commandments in every area of life and having no spaces where
you keep yourself separated off from the commandments of your
captain. Analogy of the athlete. No one engages in warfare, sorry,
verse five, and also if anyone competes in athletics, he is
not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. So, in
other words, if you're an athlete, and you're required to follow
a certain set of rules to win, if you then, let's consider,
for example, some type of a race. If there's a race that has multiple
legs, and let's say one of them is running, one of them is cycling,
and one of them is swimming. Let's just make up an event that
has those. If you go, well, running is slower
than cycling, so I'm just going to cycle through the running
part. And swimming is slower than cycling, so I'm just going
to cycle around the swimming part. And so you cycle the whole
time and you're passed by the runners and you laugh. Then you
get to the cycling part and the other guys are just getting to
their bikes when you're basically finishing the cycling part and
you laugh. And then they all get into the water to start swimming
just at about the time that you hit the finish line and you go,
I got here first. I am the winner. I cycled faster than you guys
cycle ram swam." Nobody's going to give you the trophy. They're
all going to say, you're disqualified, you're a loser because you lost,
because you cheated. They're going to say, you didn't
follow the rules. Trying to accomplish the goal
without following the rules is a great way to be a loser. That's
the point of the analogy. So if we want to run the race
so as to win it, if we want to be like athletes who seek hard
to develop skill to be able to win following the rules of the
race, following the rules of the game. And what we're going
to do is we're going to say, I want to win the race of glorifying
the Lord Jesus Christ with my life. And so what I'm going to
do, as opposed to trying to glorify God with the arm of the flesh,
or with inventions of men, or with things that are pleasing
to humans but not to God, I'm going to carefully try to run
the race by using the rules of the game that the Lord Jesus
Christ has given. And that's the regulated principle
of life. That's the regulated principle
of worship. That's the regulated principle of government. The regulated
principle of doctrine. We officers, all Christians,
must learn that when we seek to fight, to compete, we must
play according to the rules. The way you get the crown, the
way you get the honors of honoring Christ, the rewards for honoring
Christ come for those who actually seek to apply the rules that
Christ has given. And so we want to be careful
to do things in ministry using the methods that Christ has given. That's the point of the analogy
of the athlete. The analogy of the farmer. The
hardworking farmer must be first to partake of the crops. The
analogy of the farmer is the point that, you know, we see
Paul talk about the farmer in 1 Corinthians. He talks about
how some plant some water and some reap the harvest. And he
says, you know, if you're the one who does the work of planting
and watering, it is appropriate to make sure that there is reward
there. The hardworking farmer must be
first to partake of the crops. So the principles of ministry
that we get, the minister must focus on obedience to Christ
in the warfare, in every area of life, he must endure hardship
and not run away, and he must focus on the commandments of
Christ in every sphere. As an athlete, he must apply
the rules to seek to win the prize by applying the rules that
Christ has given and not inventing his own methods. And as a farmer,
he must receive the rewards of the harvest. And so the idea
here is sometimes we're tempted to say, this is hard. I'm going
to give up. Sometimes we're tempted to say,
I'm going to give this area, but not that area. Sometimes
we're tempted to say, I want to compete, but I'm going to
do it the way that I think is effective or pragmatic, as opposed to the
way that Christ has commanded. And sometimes we're tempted to
say, well, you're a minister. You should have done that. Why
do you expect to be rewarded for it? And so the ascetic temptation,
the temptation of not honoring, not rewarding those who do ministry
work is one of those things that's supposed to be meditated on by
officers so as to avoid a twisting of a view of the Christian life
or Christian officers. Paul finishes these three analogies
saying, in verse seven, consider what I say and may the Lord give
you understanding in all things. He tells him, hey, hold on to
the word that I've taught in public, hold on to the sound
pattern of words, and consider this. He just ends that analogy,
just consider this. So the soldier, the athlete,
and the farmer, the points of those three analogies are things
that should be meditated on by officers. Why? All saints would
benefit from this, but especially those who have any leadership
responsibility. First of all, because it's going
to be hard, it's spiritual warfare, and there's going to be temptation
to not endure. We must meditate on the need
to endure in the faith. And we must meditate on the need
to, in a sober-minded way, focus on building and continuing to
trudge and to focus on winning the war and not being distracted
by other stuff. Because it's so easy to be distracted
by other stuff. So focusing on winning the war,
focusing on the spiritual warfare, Enduring the hardship must be
focused on. Also, we're tempted to be wiser
than God. The athlete is worthy of meditation
because we're tempted to be wiser than God and to invent our own
methods of doing things. One of the big things that was
invented by men in the period that people call positive world,
the 80s and 90s to some extent. This idea that mega churches
were successful because you could have a general positivity about
Christianity, and then if you just tried to put on a show that
was entertaining and that met the felt needs of people and
provided services that met the felt needs of people, that you
could pragmatically quickly build a crowd. And in building that
crowd, you would be able to gradually kind of do a bait and switch
on, I'm giving you this show, and I'm giving you this stuff
or services you claim to want, and then I'm going to sprinkle
some Jesus in and try to get you to care about Christianity
in the midst of that. That kind of methodology is a desire to invent a way of
avoiding the rules that are given to the church for how to do ministry
work. And if instead you focus on the
idea that the church is called to teach the doctrine, to lead
with right worship, and to have right government, and you focus
on that, and you focus on building up Christian homes in the way
that God has commanded, and applying the law of God to the whole of
life, then those are how the race is supposed to be run And
that's how you fulfill that duty of the athlete. The temptation
to compromise for the sake of success or ease or pain avoidance
is the reason ministers and anyone who wants to lead must meditate
on the athlete. And for the farmer, the reason
you must meditate on the farmer is because Jesus Christ underwent
the shame and the cursed death of the cross because of the reward The reward. The way that wise people think
is they think I'm going to risk, I'm going to suffer, I'm going
to do things that are unpleasant for the time because it's worth
it because of the reward. The fool must be moved around
with being whacked. Pain is the principal motivator
of the fool. Foolish people do the minimum
to get by to avoid great pain. The wise take on pains in order
to gain great rewards. And so you must focus on the
idea of the reward in order to be motivated as a wise man to
do the work. So thinking on the need to endure
and to have every area under the authority of the captain
as a soldier, thinking on the need to apply the rules to advance
and to win the race as an athlete, and thinking on the work as a
farmer enjoying the reward, thinking on the reward as that which helps
you to be motivated. Soldier, athlete, farmer, every
Christian benefits from meditating on these things. But officers
especially must meditate on these things. Page 3, verse 8. Remember that Jesus Christ, the
seed of David, was raised from the dead, according to my gospel,
for which I suffer trouble as an evildoer, even to the point
of chains. Paul is being accused of being
an evildoer. He's being accused of being an
evildoer and is in chains because of the fact that he's preaching
the gospel because of the fact that he's preaching Jesus Christ.
Now, here's the thing. We all think of like martyrdom
and persecution and we think it's going to be great. I'm gonna
go out there, I'm gonna preach the gospel, and people are gonna
say, don't preach the gospel, how dare you, Jesus is bad. And
you're gonna go, no, Jesus is awesome, and here's the gospel
again, deal with it. And they go, we're gonna persecute
you for the gospel. And everybody sees you there
publicly, and you're being persecuted. It's like, this guy's persecuted
for the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is bad. And you go, Actually,
that's not true. The gospel is awesome, and you
should believe it, and you get to say the gospel, and then all
of a sudden they pull the rope in your hand, and you're like,
wow, that was really great. That's not how it goes. You know how
it goes? You preach the gospel, and people
go, that guy is a liar and a robber and a murderer and an adulterer. And you go, no, that's not true.
Hear the gospel. And they go, why should we listen
to you? You're a liar and a murderer and an adulterer and a thief.
And you go, those things aren't true. The gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ should be heard by all the nations and everyone.
And they kill you. That's the kind of thing that
happens when you're in the middle of fighting for this thing. And
they just say, no, what's wrong is that what you're doing is
evil. You're using religion as a cover
up for righteousness. These are the kinds of things
that normally happen. The covenanters weren't persecuted
explicitly for the sake of Jesus Christ. They were persecuted
because they were rejecting the authority of the king. King Charles
II has commanded you to submit to the proper religious worship
laid out in the Book of Common Prayer. How dare you reject the
authority of the king? And look at your rebellious spirit.
You're not willing to kneel down at the Lord's Supper? Do you
not love Jesus? Do you not think Jesus is worthy
of being honored by kneeling down as you come to the Lord's
Supper? Okay? How about this? The idea that
Christians get persecuted because you say you're rejecting church
authority. Think about Protestants against Roman Catholicism. You
won't accept all the work of the holy saints and of Mary,
the mother of God, and you won't accept the Holy Father, the Pope.
And you go, no, I won't. I think that the papacy is a
contrived human invention. And I honor Mary as the mother
of Christ and the mother of His divinity. by his hypostatic union,
but not in the sense that his divinity was made by her, and
yet I honor the saints and the faithful confessors of the faith
that came before, and I believe that we should honor them, but
their merits are not a part of my basis for my salvation, and
I'm not gonna pray to them. And you go, okay, well, we're
gonna kill you, because you're rejecting this, right? The plain, simple,
I'm dying for Jesus, That was the kind of thing that
happened to some extent in the first century, and the second
century, and the third century. But the saints that die most
of the time in places where there's persecution from some sort of
a group that kind of pretends to be Christian, or is Christian
weakly, is a persecution for things that are not right there
just about Jesus Christ. Now, right now, You look at the
Sudan, and there's Christians that are being killed just for
being Christians by the Muslims. But even the Muslims who kill them come
up with reasons. Oh, this town is holding rebels
in it, or supporting rebels. It's like, are they rebels? Or
is it a militia that's resisting Muslims that are killing Christians?
This is what happens over and over again. It's the propaganda
war. You need to realize that the
propaganda war is how Christianity gets fought. And so when you
stand up for Christ, rarely is it, this guy is being persecuted
because he's a Christian. They come up with other stuff. So remember that Jesus Christ,
at the seat of David, was raised from the dead, according to my
gospel, for which I suffer trouble as an evildoer, even to the point
of chains. But the Word of God is not chained.
People can try to shut you down, slow you down, stop you, and
you can be chained, you can be stopped, you can be YouTube banned. The Word of God is not YouTube
banned. The Word of God is not chained.
The Word of God cannot be stopped. Human beings have no ability
to stop the advance of the Word of God. They can chain the Apostle
Paul, they can chain saints, they can punish you, they can
do whatever, and the Word of God goes forth. If you've spent
any time around me at all, you've heard me tell you the story about
Martin Luther and how everybody came to him and said, Luther,
everything's going bad, things are happening, this is happening,
this is bad over there, everything's terrible. You gotta go do this, you gotta
go fix this, Luther. We need you to go fix this problem
and to overcome this difficulty and to solve this issue over
here. And you need to do this. And Luther's response was to
go, okay, you don't need Luther. The word of God is what does
these things. The word of God is what fixed
these things. Martin Luther and Melanchthon sit in the garden
drinking beer and the Word of God still goes forth. That attitude,
we must work hard because we're commanded to. We must have the
attitude knowing that God does not need you. God does not need
me. He could slay us all right now
and He would make it so that His Word still goes forth. He
would build His church He would cause the truth to advance and
to fill the earth. I am not necessary. You are not
necessary. Graveyards are filled with indispensable
men. And so the reality that the glory
of God will advance, the glory of God will fill the earth. The
word of God is not chained. And therefore, knowing that the
victory is guaranteed, therefore I endure all things for the sake
of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which
is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. Paul has the attitude
of a soldier enduring. Paul has the attitude of an athlete
trying to win the race according to the rules. Paul has the attitude
of a farmer who wants to partake in the benefits of the harvest. And so he endures for the sake
of the elect, for the knowledge of God to fill the earth, for
the glory of Christ. So he goes to the faithful saying that helps to
say, here's something to remember in this, another thing to meditate
on. And I'll spend more time on this next time. But I want
to leave you with it. This is a faithful saying. For
if we died with him, we shall also live with him. If we endure,
we shall also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will
deny us. If we are faithless, he remains
faithful. He cannot deny himself.
Faithful in Negative World
Series 2 Timothy
| Sermon ID | 112524319145596 |
| Duration | 48:02 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | 2 Timothy 2 |
| Language | English |
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