As we move to this final charge that Paul has for Timothy, there is much for him to say, and he gives to Timothy multiple commandments. He will charge him to fight and to follow, to flee, to lay hold of, and he gives them many things to be doing and being about, because the Christian life is not passive. The Christian life is not one of, okay, now I'm saved. I put it on autopilot, waiting for the return of Christ. There's much to do. and much to be done. And the first thing I wanna highlight here is in verse 11, in the first of five commands, flee. Flee from these things, O man of God. There's a couple things that are important to understand before we even consider the word flee. First of all, the sentences Paul will write, it starts with you. It's put forward in the sentence in intensity, as I've told you many times. Well, in English, we have a very particular word order that must go. You know, your noun, verb, object. If you change that order, it becomes confusing. In Greek, because of the way the Greek language is, other languages are like this, such as Latin, because the role the word plays in the sentence is determined not by where it is in the sentence, but by its ending, you can move them around for emphasis. And in this case, the verse starts, you. You flee. You flee, you man of God. And so we learn right up front, he's not talking about non-Christians. This is not how you get saved. Nothing in this passage is evangelistic in nature. It has to do with how a Christian, a professing believer is to act. You, oh man of God, These things flee. The second thing we need to consider is man of God. Again, we highlight it. It's obviously not a non-Christian, it's a Christian. Some have debated and suggest that this phrase, oh man of God, is a technical term to talk about a special person in the redemptive purposes, whether it be a prophet or even a teacher or a pastor. It's used, for example, to describe Moses and Samuel and Elijah and David. Paul will use it in 2 Timothy, that all scriptures inspired of God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness that the man of God might be adequate for every good work. And then the very next chapter, and this is why the chapter divisions are sometimes not helpful, Paul begins with, I charge you in the presence of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, preach the word. Who's to be preaching the word but the man of God who's thoroughly equipped for every good work. And so some have taken it to mean as a technical phrase to refer to some type of officer whether Old Testament, New Testament, regardless of the officer. And in this case, Timothy, who is not an apostle, but an apostle's aide, serving not as an elder or a deacon, but as someone who is more of an administrator over churches. And I think they have a good case to make, and I might even be inclined to that, but this passage, regardless how we'd understand, oh man of God, we understand that those become examples for us all men to follow. Like Paul will say, imitate me, even as I have imitated Christ. Or the writer of Hebrews will say, consider your leaders and the outcome of their faith and follow them. And so we can say, whatever the precise meaning of the phrase, man of God, it certainly either applies to all of us directly or applies to us indirectly in that we all should be in pursuit of that description. What a wonderful thing. I mean, think about it. When you're gonna die one day and Lord willing, somebody eulogizes you, what will they say? Oh, he was the greatest. NDSU fan ever. Right? He loved his fishing. Right? He, whatever. You're known for this, that, or the other. And those are good things, fine things. I hope you have things like that in your life, people remember you for. But what a wonderful thing it would be. Wouldn't it be that you're eulogized, oh, he was a man of God. She was a woman of God. That the sum total of your life caused others to think about who God is and how they might pursue him. And so to that extent, this phrase applies to all of us. It's not, can you be the funniest man in the congregation, the richest man, the best golfer? You know, I spent a lot of time and money trying to become a good golfer. There's actually no evidence whatsoever that has made a difference. That's what I'm known for. He was a fool. He pursued after golf way too much. Wouldn't it be great to be known as a man of God? And this man of God that would be you, you, oh man of God, flee. to flee, to run. To keep on fleeing, it would be the grammatical nuance. It's not a one and done, I ran one time. I did run once, it wasn't much fun. But this is a constant, deliberate flight. And it's a run for your life. I've told you this story, but I don't think I've said it in a long, long time, so many of you will not have heard it, When I was in high school and my brother was in college, he was a, for the summer, he had a job of being a manager of a local pool. And the pool was being broken in at night, pool closed at nine or 10 or something like that. And then kids from the neighborhood would be breaking in and doing things when they shouldn't be there. And so the board asked my brother, the manager, to spend the night and try to get names and faces. And so my brother closed the pool, came home, got some clean clothes, got me, and we were going to go spend the night at the pool. And when we get back, there was already people in the pool. And my brother, with his infinite wisdom, had brought a starter's gun, a blank gun. I don't know why he had that, but he did. We saw the kids in the pool already, and as we're getting nearer, they saw us. And so they went running, and we hid in the bushes for a while. And sure enough, they came back. And as they were coming down the path, they saw me and started running. I ran. Back in those days, I could run like the wind. I really could. I was the second fastest guy on my football team. I could run. And I'm running after this guy. And I am just ready to dive on him and tackle him. And I hear my brother yell. Stop or I will shoot. Can you imagine doing that today? And the next thing I hear is this blank gun going out. Blam, blam, blam. This young man that I'm chasing turned on the afterburners. He smoked me, baby. He was gone. He fled the scene. If he was running fast, he was running faster after he heard what he thought was a real gun. Flee. This isn't a stroll, this isn't a jog. It's a run for your life. From what? These things. The reason why I started in verse three was it's basically all of the things he points out. flee from heterodox doctrine, doctrine inconsistent with the Bible, run from it. From the words that do not agree with our Lord Jesus Christ himself, run as if your life counted on it. run from being or participating with conceited words and morbid interest in controversies and questions, abuse of language, evil suspicions, participating in friction amongst the brethren, from the love of money and the evil that such a love might produce. from wandering and straying from the faith and being pierced because of your concern for money. Run from these things. But the Christian life is not always just negative, it is also positive, and we're supposed to run towards something. but as well, and we'll look at that. But Paul will say in other places that we are to flee fornication. We are to flee idolatry. We are to flee useful lusts. We are to flee from all sorts of moral pollution that the world has. We are to run from them. We are to, as Paul will say in Romans 13, make no provision for the flesh. to fulfill its lusts thereof. Don't do it, but just don't do it, run from it. And in your running, he'll say, to pursue, and then he gives three doublets. Pursue righteousness and godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. Pursue these things. Some of you might have translations that talk, that use the language follow, but that's way too weak of a word. This is a word that you would use to say this people are persecuted by this other group. to pursue, to hunt it down, stalk it, overcome it, seize it, kill it, arrest it. If you follow the news, you know that right now our present government is pursuing illegal aliens to arrest them and deport them. They're not doing it casually. Oh, there's one. Let's go and talk to them. They show up in their armor. after doing investigations, they arrest them, they cuff them, they throw them in a car and they take them to wherever they are and they put them on a plane. They are pursuing them. And so we are to pursue six things. One is as hard as we are running away, we ought to be running towards righteousness. The Bible will speak of righteousness in at least three ways, maybe more. One is the righteousness of God. And we already heard from in Matthew 5 this morning, that righteousness, we are to be perfect as our Father who is in heaven is perfect. You not only love your neighbor, but you love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. There's a righteousness that God has, a holiness. 1 John 1 verse 5, God, there is no darkness. God is light and in Him there is no darkness. There is no sin. A second way we'll talk about is our provisional righteousness, or positional righteousness, that we have a righteousness that we have for being in Christ, like Paul will say in 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 30, but by his doing, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. so that just as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the Lord. Our boast is not in our own righteousness, is it? Our boast is not in our own wisdom, our own sanctification. Our boast is in that wisdom and righteousness that Christ, that we have in Christ. And if you are in Christ, if you are a believer, you have been born again, and put your hope and faith in Christ, In your position in Christ, you are as righteous as you will ever be. You will never gain an ounce of righteousness beyond what has already been imputed to you, because while your sins were imputed to Christ, His righteousness, which is perfect and flawless, has been imputed to you. But there's a third way in which righteousness is used, and that's the righteousness that we are to pursue in terms of growing in righteousness. Subduing the flesh, putting to death the deeds of the flesh, as Paul puts it in Romans chapter 8, by the means of the spirit. Those of us who have been made alive in Christ. are to all the more put to death the deeds of the flesh by the means of the spirit. And we are to be looking for and longing for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. As John will say in 1 John, that we are to be righteous as he is righteous. And because we know that when we see him, we will be just like him. And those who have fixed their hope upon this practice righteousness. And it's hard. It's hard because of the power of indwelling flesh and sin that remains with us until we bury old Adam. We have to work at it. And so we pursue it. We hunt it down to grasp it because it's elusive. And sometimes you feel like you're making great strides against sin and indwelling sin, and you feel like, I used to be this way, and I prayerfully and intentionally have sought to subdue this particular sin, and you seem to have buried it for a while, and like weeds, it comes back. And there it is. In church in which I pastored in California, there were some wild blackberry plants. And I always thought they were the greatest example of sin ever. Because it doesn't matter how much you whack those babies down, they come back. And they come back bigger and fuller and with bigger thorns on them. You don't want to fall into a blackberry plant. But it just keeps coming. And so you muster the grace of God to fight against a sin or sins in your life, and then all of a sudden it's, there it is again. Where did that come from? And so you once again put on your gospel running shoes to pursue after righteousness. And godliness, this is the eighth time, eighth and final time, Paul will use this word, in this book, and I told you in previous, in terms of back in verse, end of verse five and verse six, where one of the things we were to flee, people think that godliness is the means of great gain, and godliness, verse six, actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. I told you at the time to consider maybe thinking of that word as religious. Godliness is a perfectly fine translation. but it's a word that is more than just an outward demeanor. It's a way of life. Paul used it earlier back in chapter four when he was talking to Timothy about a good minister. And he says that back in chapter four, verse seven, but have nothing to do with worldly fables fit for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. There's our word. And notice there's a discipline to it. Getting up early enough to read your Bible or to pray, sing a psalm. Getting to bed early enough on Saturday night to be rested to come on Sunday, to pay attention. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness, for bodily discipline is of only a little profit, but godliness, or this godly religion, this religious life, forms, is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life. also for the life to come. And there's this pursuing after this discipline. I did that when I swam, as you know, I would train five hours a day. Get up really early in the morning, go to the pool. I remember mornings with going to the pool at Arizona State when the water temperature was warmer than the outside air and being an outdoor pool, there would be steam rolling off of the pool. because it was so chilly outside. And then on an occasional morning, there would be a foggy morning with cold. And so you'd have the steam rolling off and the fog, that little fog or hanging clouds would be over the pool. And it was great because you couldn't see the water. And that made the funnest workouts because you'd dive in. The coach would go, OK, swim 10 times 100 yards. So you'd swim. You'd get to the other end of the pool. He couldn't see you. So we'd hang on to the side of the pool. wait for the others to come back and then swim. And it was always kind of a fun way to add some creativity to the workout. But you train and you train and you train and you train and you train, sometimes only to be able to improve your speed by a 10th of a second. We are to train ourselves. We are to pursue after not only righteousness, but also godliness and faith and love. We are to pursue after faith. In this, again, he's talking about Christians. This isn't saving faith. This is the subjective faith of a Christian man or woman. Paul will say we walk by faith and not by sight. We, are naturally hardwired to see things through our eyes. And we interpret the world around us through what we see and hear and through our five senses. And God has made us that way, and that's a good thing. If I pull out a big knife on you, you should be scared. Because your eyes see this big blade, even though it's just a theatrical knife that totally collapses when you push it against something. But you don't know that. And so while we're hardwired to live in a physical world with physical senses, we also live in a spiritual realm where we have to trust God. And sometimes what he's asking us to trust seems to be so contrary to what we see. And we often refer, when we talk about this sort of thing, to Romans 4. And I will once again, in terms of Abraham, who was promised that he'd be a father of many nations. And he believed that God was able to give life to the dead and call into being that which did not exist. In verse 18, Romans 4.18, in hope against hope he believed so that he might be the father of many nations. Verse 19, without becoming weak in the faith, he contemplated his own body. Now as good as dead since he was about 100 years old in the deadness of Sarah's womb. His physical senses interpreted the world for him. I'm an old man. And at 99 years old, you are old. And don't give me this, I'm young at heart. No, you're old. And my wife is barren and well past the years of childbearing years, but she was barren before and she's even doubly barren now. How will I be the father of many? Yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith. Again, that's not saving faith. That's the faith of a godly man. He could look and consider the world around him and understand that it does not in any way void the reality of the promise of God. In respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, he was also able to perform. He goes on to say that this was, therefore, he was credited in his righteousness, and it was written not only for him, but for our sakes also. Those who would believe on him who raised Jesus from the dead, who was delivered over because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification. We are to pursue after faith, to be men and women of faith, to trust God, even when there seems no reasonable cause to do so. And love, we are to pursue love. To love our neighbor, yes. To love our enemy, yes. To pray for those who persecute us, yes. To love the unlovely. In all the years of my being in the ministry or going to church, there's always been one or two people who are just kind of hard to love in each congregation or group I've been in. And I'm not looking at anybody. And if my eyes fall upon you, do not think that I've declared you to be that unloving one. But there's always one or two. I'm looking down. And somewhere along the line, I thought, God put them here for me that I might have to learn how to love them. It's easy to love some of you, most of you, but there's the one or the two. Maybe you think I'm one of the ones or the twos, but why are they there? Because God is love. And we are to love one another as God has loved us. And you don't learn a whole lot about love when you're loving your friends who treat you well and respect you. It's when they're unloving and unkind and ungrateful and demanding and a drag. You know, there's some people, they walk in the room and energy comes with them. And there's some people who walk in the room and the energy is like sucked out by a Hoover. It's gone. It's easy to love the one who brings the energy. It's hard to love the one who sucks the energy out of the room. And yet we're called to. And sometimes we have to run hard after that. And the last two is perseverance. I love the word perseverance. It's one of the first Greek words I would have learned, and therefore it always has a meaningful place to me, but it's a word that I don't think the English perseverance really captures. I guess it does, it's not wrong. But, you know, my Hebrew professor once said, reading the Old Testament in English is like kissing your wife through the veil. It's all there, but you can't quite get to it. In this case, the word perseverance comes from ahupomene'o. We know the word perseverance from the perspective of where do you live, where do you abide, right? To the meno, it would be translated normally to abide. Where do you live, where do you dwell? And the added prefix, hupa, intensifies it. And hupa is normally or often used to put underneath something. You wanna put something underneath you, you talk about hupa. To abide underneath. to make your home underneath something. That's perseverance. When things difficult, difficult times come, we usually try to extricate ourselves from that. This person's hard to deal with, so I don't deal with them. This situation's going to be hard, so I try to avoid it. This is gonna be a hard phone call, so I don't make it. That's not perseverance. Things get tense in a church. Churches often split. It's a Baptist thing, especially. This side can't get along with that side. Perseverance is willing to abide underneath the weighty difficultiness of the circumstances or the events. to live under the weight of it patiently. God will deliver us at the appointed hour. He often comes, as we see in the Psalms, in the morning, which means you had to persevere all night. And usually when you're persevering, A second seems like a minute, a minute seems like an hour, an hour seems like a day, and a day seems like a lifetime, doesn't it? So you have to pursue after that virtue, that attitude, I can wait. I can wait for the leading of the Lord Jesus Christ. I can wait for Christ to bring resolution to this. I've done what I was called to do. I went to my brother in private. I prayed for my brother. I extend loving kindness to my brother. I've done all the things that Christ has asked me to do, and I will continue to do those things to the best that I can to be at peace with all men as you are able, as Paul will say, but I will wait, I will persevere by waiting for the Lord Jesus Christ." This is a description of a man of God. And the word patience or gentleness, there is an attitude of humility with this word. of meekness. In our culture, meekness is weakness, but not so. The word translated gentleness here can be used of an ox under a yoke. I think one of the very first times I heard this preached was back at Washington Heights Baptist Church under the preaching ministry of Larry Fetzer. I'd never really been to a Baptist church before. I was just new to Dayton, Ohio, was looking for a church. I'd gone down, they had their church row like we have church row, and gone to this church, that church, this church, and I came, and he was preaching on the sermon about blessed are the meek. Same word. He says it's a horse under control, a horse that has been broken by its trainer. A horse is still a powerful animal, but he's controllable. That's what this word gentleness means, or meekness. It's not weakness, it's power. The power of God in the life of a godly man or woman under control. Then the third commandment is to fight. Not fight as in being a brawler, but fight the good fight of faith. The good fight, not the morally good fight. Remember, I've told you there's multiple words for good, and the two primary ones are agathos and kolos. Agathos is that which is morally right, morally good, to do the right thing at the right time. Kolos is beautiful. Think of a painter who's struggling to complete his painting, and he's trying to get the colors just right. He's trying to get the hues to work, and he tries this, and that doesn't, nah, that's not it. Tries that, and oh, that, nah, that's not it. Tries again a third or fourth, fifth time, and finally he says, as he paints this one little hue into the picture, and he stands back, he goes, that's good. That's good. That's this word. Fight that fight. Fight the beautiful fight. What fight? The fight of faith. The fight of faith includes standing for righteousness in a dark society. It stands for pushing back against false doctrine and those who would pervert the gospel. It's standing in the midst of a situation where people are not acting according to faith and being the one who is the adult in the room who acts with the godliness and faith and love and perseverance and gentleness. It's fighting that good fight of faith. Paul will say this summing up his life in the end of the next book, 2 Timothy, where he knows he's dying. He's about to go home. He says, I have run the race. I have fought the fight. What was the fight of Paul? All that he did in the book of Acts from the time he's converted to the time he's about to die at the end of 2 Timothy, that was his fight as an apostle, as an evangelist, as a church planter, as a witness and defender of the faith. And we all have that same call. Now, not as apostles, not necessarily as church planters or evangelists, although we should all be involved in that probably some way or another, but that's not our career or calling like it was for Paul. It might be in your home, it might be in your marriage, it might be with your children, it might be at work, it might be in this church. Advancing the cause of Christ. in the way that God has called you to do this. And young men, and old men, especially men, you need to know what that fight is. If you don't know your role in the fight of God, how is it that you can ask a woman to follow you? Where's she going with you if you don't know? As a man, if you're clueless into who you are and your role in the fight, Your wife doesn't know how to fight with you. And so she'll probably fight you and you'll fight her. And that usually doesn't end well. We're to fight the good fight of faith. And we all have a different calling. Whether male or female, we're not all fighting exactly the same fight, but just as in the garden, God gave Adam a fight, a call. Go and care for the garden. Tend it. Subdue it. Fill it. And Eve was called to be his what? Say it. To be his what? Roommate, right? Best friend, right? That's what the modern Christian counselor, well, you need to be best friends in your marriage. Well, that would be nice. Help meet. Help him do what? Tend the garden, subdue it, fill it. And so that's what marriage is. Marriage is not just cohabitating, It's cooperating in the call of God. And so a woman has every right to say to a young man, what is your role in the kingdom of God? Because she may not like your role. She likes you. I watched people get married. One guy wanted to be a business guy and the other girl wanted to be a missionary. And I'm going, this ain't gonna end well. We fight the good fight. We take hold of eternal life. And another command, we are to grab it, grab eternal life. Now remember, this isn't evangelistic. He already described Timothy here as a man of God. So this grabbing eternal life, this taking hold of it, this seizing, is something other than the initial stages of salvation. I've told you in the past that the two main words, there's more, for life are bios and zoe, right? And we know these words because bios, biology, zoe, often a girl's name, or zoology, zoo. Hopefully when you go to the zoo, there's a bunch of bios happening. You don't wanna get there and all the animals are dead, right? But bios life is what everyone in this room has. As far as I know, I don't see any dead people, although it looks like there may be one over here fading fast. No, we all have biological life, right? We are alive, we're well. But not everyone in this room has zoe life, spiritual life. or in this case, eternal life. Some are not yet converted. And so there's a life that they do not have that some of the rest of you have. And that when I talk this way, I always try to remind you that, and notice the text says, that they are to seize or grab hold of this eternal life. It's not a long life, it's a quality of life. Again, as I often will say in quoting this and dealing with this, you maybe even know what passage I'm going to, but Ephesians chapter four, in Ephesians 4. In verse 17, so this I say and affirm together with the Lord that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles walk in the futility of the mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart. And they have become callous, having themselves having given themselves over to every kind of impurity with greediness. Notice that this being separated from the love of the life of God is described in a rather negative quality of life. Ignorance is not a good quality of life, right? darkened in your understanding, probably not a good quality of life. Callous, given over to sensuality and every kind of impurity with greediness, not a good quality of life. So when you hear this seizing, grabbing hold of, grasping this eternal life, it's not bias life, it's not Salvation life, in the sense I'm getting saved, is the life of a Christian. It's the quality life that only somebody, having been born again, can have. But just because you've been born again doesn't mean you live like what you are. That's why the New Testament has so many chapters on exhorting us to live, like Romans 12, based on the mercies of God, right? I exhort you, I urge you to not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, right? In order that you might prove what the will of God is and the things that are excellent. Or as he says to Philippians, you need to dwell on that which is good and right and beautiful and all that. We can be Christians and not really live much of a Christian life. And so we pursue after that. We pursue after it, we fight for it, and when we get it, we grab onto it and we hold onto it. I was telling someone, it was on Friday night, I was telling you when I went down to Lakeshore with some of you and we were helping rebuild Lakeshore after Hurricane Katrina. And as a pastor, they wouldn't let me go out on the work teams. I had to go on the visitation teams. And I'd go and visit the people who had visited the church or their outreach ministries and talk to this one lady. And they would always tell their stories. It was always fun to hear their stories. Some ran for it. They evacuated when they were told to. Some tried to write it out. And their stories were all quite interesting. But this one lady tried to write it out. the big crest came and pushed her right out of her house and she hits a tree and she holds on the tree. I can't remember if it was for five hours or eight hours, it was a very long time. And I asked her, so when you're hanging on to this tree as the wave goes in and then the wave goes back out with the same kind of force, did you pray to God? She said, no. I was too busy hanging on. She was grasping that tree for all she had, and so much so, she didn't feel like she could do anything other than grasp on and hold on for safety. That's what we do with eternal life. And he gives a couple reasons. Take hold of eternal life, first of all, to what you've been called. This is God's effectual call, not the general call, the effectual call of God, who's called He's called us in a way, over in chapter one of 2 Timothy, notice it, verse eight, therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, or of me, his prisoner, but join us with me in the suffering for the gospel according to the power of God. All right, so we're gonna, the testimony of the Lord, we're prisoners, we join together with Paul, according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which he granted to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity. What is Paul calling Timothy to do? But to work with Him, to join with Him, suffering for the Gospel according to the power of God. What is that Gospel? What is that power of God? The Gospel of God is that He's called with a holy calling, not based on works or what we would do, but according to His own purpose and grace, granted to us in Christ. Where? When? in all eternity. He will talk about this effectual calling elsewhere. One of the greatest and most beloved passages, right up there with passages like John 3, 16. 23rd Psalm, Romans 8, 28, right? For we know that God causes all things to work together according to those who love God to those who are called according to his purpose. And we use that verse so wrongly so many times. I remember, again, I think a story I told you about, I remember doing jail ministry, Green County Jail, Zena, Ohio, and a man had just been arrested for his third felony, and that was right at the beginning of Three Strikes and You're Out. He was a three-time loser, as they say. He was busted for selling drugs. He told me his story, which, you know, when you're getting stories in jail, you always have to kind of, you know, is it true or not? But his story, as presented, was he'd been busted for different things twice already. He had a hard time getting a job because he was a felon. That's his story. He started to sell drugs. He says, I don't use them. I don't let them in my house. But I need to be able to provide for my family. So I'm selling drugs. I'm busted for the drugs. And now they're going to put me in prison for 65 years. And I will never see my young baby girl grow up. And this guy, probably about my size, is bawling like a baby. We're not having an intellectual conversation, we're having an emotional conversation, which let me think that maybe this was at least mostly true. Gosh, I hate to admit this. All I could think of to say, well, God works all things together for good. Shallow, even as the words come out of my mouth, I'm going, this isn't good. Because that's not what the verse is even talking about, and that's certainly not what he needed to hear in the moment. But as Paul will go on to say, those who are called according to what? His purpose. Those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son so that He would be the firstborn of many brethren. There is the purpose of God, to conform us to the image of the Son, that He, Jesus, would be the firstborn of many brethren. It's His purpose to exalt Christ, to bring glory to Christ. That's his eternal purpose and part of that purpose and where he brings glory and honor to Christ is to give Christ many believers, many brothers, many redeemed who would be conformed to his image and radiate back to him the glory as the son himself radiates the glory back to the father, Hebrews chapter one. And then it says, so that he'd be the firstborn of many brethren, verse 30, and these whom he predestined, he also, what? Called, and those he called, these he also justified, and these whom he justified, he also glorified. Any slippage? Any increase or decrease of numbers? This is why it's called the effectual call. All that he called, he justifies. And all that he justifies, he glorifies in order to fulfill his purpose of bringing glory and honor to his son by having those who will be conformed to the image of his son. And when does he determine to do this? In eternity past, 2 Timothy. And this is all the more reason back in our passage that Timothy is told to take hold of this eternal life because This is what this eternal life to which you were called. This is what God has been doing from eternity past in his decrees, in his providences, in the creating of the heaven and the earth, and the establishment of the times and the places and the seasons in which nations would live and dwell, as Paul says in Acts chapter seven. In him we live and move and have our being. All of those things are established for us, for the glory of Christ. Seize on to that life, that eternal life, that quality of life that can only be had or known in union with Jesus Christ. And secondly, to which you were called, and you made a good confession in the presence of many witnesses." We are to confess our faith, and there's a variety of ways in which we do that. One is, and if I may use your name, Carmen, when you came to express faith the other day, what's one of the first things I asked you to do? Go home and tell your mom and Jared, right? But she didn't. Can you imagine? She didn't obey the pastor. She went to Chick-fil-A and bought a sandwich. No, she went to Chick-fil-A, got a sandwich, but she started telling everybody at work. She was confessing her faith. Again, as Paul says back in Romans 10, that if we will believe in our heart and confess with our mouths, Jesus is Lord, we shall be saved. And the Christian life is one of confessing Christ. And the word to confess means to say the same thing. So we confess Christ and say of Christ exactly what the Father says of His Son. He is Lord. He is my Lord. He is my Redeemer. He is my God. And we say that once when we are converted. And we are to say it the rest of our lives. Our whole life is a confession. And you see here, the confession in the presence of many witnesses. One of the reasons why we confess our faith every Lord's Day, it's not to be endlessly repetitious. When we stand to confess the faith and the gospel of the triune God with the Nicene Creed, We are having an opportunity to fulfill this requirement of confessing our faith. I meant to bring out the book to read it to you, but I believe it's by Cranfield's exposition of the Apostles' Creed, where he talks about the Lutheran Church in 1930s Germany. And in the Lutheran church, it was the practice of all the different Lutheran churches for the Apostles' Creed to be confessed on Sunday. But at the time of the rise of Nazis, it was only the minister who confessed the faith as part of the worship service the way we do. So instead of all of you would do it, it would be one of the ministers. But there will become a split in the Lutheran church over the fear and intimidation of Hitler and the Nazis. And part of the church will continue to do what they've always done. And another part of the church said, no, we need to stand against Hitler and the Nazis. And they changed their liturgy to include everyone standing to confess their faith each and every Lord's Day. By the end of the war, those who had only the minister confessing the faith were all liberal and denied Christ and had started to move away from the Bible and the God and Christ and everything. They apostatized, became the lukewarm liberal version. And those where the Christians stood each and every Lord's Day to openly confess their faith against or for Christ and his gospel, Not fearing the wrath of the Nazis, turned out to be the conservative church that remained faithful, endured until the very end. And we confess our faith before others when we share the gospel, we talk to them about God. And I've told you one of the best ways to evangelize, there are many ways to evangelize, there's many ways. But one simple way that we all can do is talk to your non-Christian friends at work like they're Christians. They ask you, so what's new? Or they say, how are you doing? Tell them, oh, it was great. I just had the most wonderful Lord's Day yesterday at church. The sermon was on 1 Timothy 6. And just talk to them like they're a Christian. How are you doing? Oh, I've got a burden. What's your burden? Well, listen, would you pray for me? Tell your non-Christian friend, would you pray for me? Just ask them. That will freak them out. Or you're at work or play or whatever, and you're not Christian, and you say, oh, I'm really having a hard time. Can I pray for you? Can I pray right now? Then a few days follow up. I've always been praying for you. How's that situation? Just little things like that, where you are publicly confessing your faith by just talking the way you would talk to other Christians will open up all sorts of opportunities to share the gospel. You don't need to memorize anything, any formulas. Remember when I tried to give you the outline of Evangelism Explosion? I told you I'd never forget because it was so ingrained in me and I couldn't get the outline out. I did that in the pulpit, remember that? Grace, man, God, Christ, faith, I couldn't get that out. A senior moment before I was even senior. We confess our faith. A godly man, oh man of God, a godly man, godly woman, we confess our faith because it's who we are. When I was a new believer, there was a lot, we talked this way. There's no such thing as secret service Christians. No such thing as undercover Christians. What's an undercover cop do? An undercover cop, nice, You know, middle-class, wholesome guy, dress-ups like some drug-ridden, you know, flea-infested, you know, unclean druggie to go hang out with them to try to uncover something, undercover. There are no undercover Christians. There's no secret service Christians. There are confessing Christians. That's who and what we are. And confessing it is part of one of the ways in which we grab hold of eternal life and hold on to it. Because wherever we are at the end of the day, our life is reduced to this one very important and glorious truth. We are Christian men and women redeemed by the love of God in the person and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and dwelt by His most Holy Spirit, protected and preserved until the day in which Christ returns. and we are looking forward to the coming, the resurrection and the coming of the life and the age to come. That's our hope. Amen? And this is not how you get evangelized. This is the life you live once you've been converted. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that our hope is not in ourselves. Our hope is in your purposes, in your grace, which You granted to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity. The life that we are to live, Lord, is grounded in Your purpose to glorify Your Son. Give us ears to hear and hearts to believe. In Christ we pray, amen.