Just south of here in Rio Doso, New Mexico, there's a tombstone that reads, Here lies Johnny Yeast. Pardon me for not rising. Hey, I don't write them, I just read them quotes. In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England, on the 22nd of June, Jonathan Fiddle went out of tune. But my favorite one is in Thurmont, Maryland. Here lies an atheist. All dressed up and nowhere to go. What's he going to say on your tombstone? What are the final words that people are going to remember of your character? There is a passage in Scripture where the words just jump off the page concerning the character of an individual. I'd ask you this morning, if you would, to turn to First Timothy, chapter six. Buried at the end of this letter from the Apostle Paul to his child in the faith, Timothy, they have a very close relationship. In fact, 1 Timothy starts, as Paul's salutation is, an apostle of Jesus Christ to Timothy, my true child in the faith. So there's a close relationship between these two. But in chapter 6, in verse 11, He says, you man of God. Now that jumps off the page for two reasons. The phrase man of God is only used five other times in all of Scripture, and all of those are in the Old Testament. Now, that's not to say that others that we read of in Scripture are not necessarily men of God. They are. But if it's only used six times in all of Scripture, this is significant that Paul says about Timothy's character that he is a man of God. The second reason that this jumps off the page is because of the culture among which Timothy was serving as a pastor. He was in Ephesus and he was in he was in a rather rancid culture. In fact, if you know anything about this epistle, you know that it's a letter to a young pastor in a community that is not a culture of faith. In fact, as you read through First Timothy, you read that these are people who are making shipwreck of the faith. They're abandoning the faith. They're following endless myths and godless genealogies. The book is filled with that kind of description of the culture. But Timothy stands in contradiction to his culture as a man of God. If Paul were to write an epitaph regarding Timothy, I suppose it would read something like this. Here lies a man of God who walked among men of Satan. You can smell the stench of death on the grave clothes of Timothy, but the aroma of his heart is one of righteousness. And so as I look at that, I wonder, what are people saying about me? What is my character like and what is a man of God? So I look more closely at this passage to try and figure out what are the characteristics What is the description of a person of God? I'd invite you to look at that with me this morning. I'd say, first of all, a person of God is somebody who flees from discontentment. In fact, in verse 11, before that phrase, man of God, comes this statement, but flee from these things, man of God. Well, what things is he talking about? You have to go earlier in the passage to get the context of what it is a man of God or a person of God flees from. So you have to go a little bit up in the earlier paragraph. If you go to chapter six, verse six, it says godliness actually is a means of great gain when it's accompanied with contentment. We've brought nothing into the world, we can take nothing out of it either. If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. But those who want to get rich... fall into temptation and a snare, and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil, and some, by longing for it, have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many a pain, but flee from these things man of God." So I would say what Paul is saying to Timothy is a man of God is somebody who has a character where they flee from discontentment. Are you content in all that you have and all that you are today? You know, discontentment is just human nature. It's just natural to not be content with what we have. Oh, we're happy with what we have until we see what somebody else has. And then suddenly we're drawn toward that. If you don't believe that discontentment is not the nature of man. I'd invite you next Sunday when the children get up and leave for children's church or wherever they take them at this time in the service, just get up and go with them and say, I'm going to take over today. Take all of those children, put them in a room, put one toy in the middle and see what happens. Discontentment. One kid will get it and all the rest won't be happy. You know what? We are just grown up children. That's just the way we are. I do a lot of driving, going from church to church. In fact, people ask me where my office is and I tell them it's out in my car because you can't do what I do from an office. And as I was going up I-25 one day, I saw a vehicle. You all know what a Hummer is? You all know what that is? These huge, massive vehicles that they now give zip codes instead of license plates. They're so big. Had a personalized plate on it. The personalized plate, as I deciphered it, said, I eat SUVs. And that just kind of brought some trouble to my mind because I was driving an SUV at the time. But that's the way we are. We're content with what we've got until we see what others have. And then we want that. Had Paul earned the right to write this to Timothy? I think he had. Was Paul content with what he had? He writes another letter to a church in Philippi, and he says this in his letter. He says, I have learned to be content, whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need. I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. People of God are people who flee from discontentment. The next thing that I notice in this passage is they follow after godly character. Paul gives a lot of contrasts in this passage. If you're fleeing from discontentment, the very next phrase that he uses is, but pursue. And then there's a list of six things that he encourages a person of God to pursue. By the way, this is typical Pauline writing. Paul loves long sentences and big lists. That's just the way he writes. In fact, if you look at this list in first Timothy chapter six, you're going to see that it's very parallel to the fruit of the spirit that you see in Galatians. But what are we to pursue if we're fleeing discontentment? What are we to pursue? Well, there's a list here. Let's look at it. The first one in the list is righteousness. So I have to ask the question, what's righteousness? Well, Righteousness is, I guess, just simply doing what is right, correct? I just need to pursue doing what's right. I need to go out with the mindset every day of I'm just going to do what's right. But if you go to the original language, it's it's a stronger phrase than that. It's not just Timothy, just do what's right. It's do what is right out of an outraged sense of justice and morality. Are you a person who every day of your life looks at what is right and you do it because you just want to be moral and correct and following God or just think, well, you know, I'll just do what everybody else figures is right. It's a stronger term than that. The next one in the list is pursue godliness. What is godliness? Well, Godliness would be being preoccupied with conforming to the will of God. Are you preoccupied with doing God's will every day? You know what it means to be preoccupied? When you're preoccupied, you're so focused on one thing that you miss the other things sometimes of life. Have you ever seen somebody who's so preoccupied that they're missing what's going on around them? I see some wives shaking their heads right now. I'm thinking you're thinking about your husband when he's watching the TV. Have you ever seen a guy watching a sports program? He's got the clicker there and you try to get his attention. What happens? Nothing. And so you stand between him and the remote. What happens? Something like this, because he's so focused on. Guys can get pretty focused, can we get focused so preoccupied with conforming to God's will that we might even miss some other stuff that's going on during the week, such as that program that we meant to watch, but I was so focused on doing God's will that I missed that program this week. Pursue godliness. The next one in the list is faith. What is faith? Well, faith is trusting without doubt. Faith is believing that God is going to do the unbelievable. Let me ask you, do you believe that God can and sometimes does do the unbelievable? Are you a person of faith? Let me give you an illustration of believing that the unbelievable is going to happen. We had in our family at one time a pet, which I affectionately referred to as the family dog, even though it belonged to my oldest daughter. The reason I called it the family dog instead of Tiffany's dog is because this dog named Darcy spent a lot of time in my house, which I found quite curious because my daughter lives in Fort Collins. And yet, this dog's in my house a lot of the time. And what was interesting about this dog is my oldest daughter and her husband have rules for Darcy the dog. One of the rules is the dog shall not eat from the table. In fact, the dog was to keep a certain distance from the dinner table whenever we were dining. And yet, even though the dog knew the rules, The dog would gaze from afar and follow every movement of the fork as though the unbelievable was going to occur. If it's on the plate, the dog's eyes are there. If it's in the mouth, the dog's eyes. Why is that? Well, because my wife, being the consummate grandmother that she is, would occasionally toss something to Darcy the dog when she thought nobody was looking. And guess what? The unbelievable occurred! Do we have that kind of belief system, that kind of faith in our Lord? Are we pursuing Him where we trust Him without doubt? The person of God does. The next one in the list is love. What is love? Well, love is selfless sacrifice of an individual for somebody else, giving up of my own thoughts and desires for somebody else. How many of you here have ever been passionately, madly in love? If you're married, this might be a good time to weigh in on this. If you've ever been passionate, do you remember when you were passionately in love? Remember the goofy things you used to do? I mean, you do things you'd never be caught doing before that. Some of you guys were actually caught in malls at that point in your life, not because you enjoy shopping. Guys don't shop. We hunt. But we did that because we were in love. That's what she wanted to do. That's where we were. Do we pursue love? in our relationship with God in such a way that we surrender our personal desires and replace those with the preferences of Christ. The person of God does that. The next one that Paul lists in verse 11 is endurance. Endurance is keeping on keeping on regardless of the circumstances. Not giving up for the Lord's namesake. Again, I ask the question. Does Paul have the right? Has he earned the credibility to write like this to Timothy? Well, I believe he has, because Paul, once he became a follower of Christ, gave up his other life for the job, the ministry of the Lord. And I believe that he was a man of endurance. In fact, he writes to the church in Corinth. And he says this, he says, I have been in prison, I've been flogged, I've been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a night and a day in the open sea. I take that to mean he had no life preserver. He was simply treading water. I've been constantly on the move. I've been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from the Gentiles, in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea, in danger from false brothers. I've labored. I've toiled. I've often gone without sleep. I've known hunger and thirst and often gone without food. I've been cold and naked. And I'm thinking, get another job, man. There has got to be a better way. No. No, a person of God endures for the sake of the witness of the gospel. And then the final one that he gives in this list is a person of God pursues gentleness. Gentleness is being firm with the truth, but not harsh or caustic. And that's sometimes difficult for us because as humans, We tend to, again, have that human nature. I remember distinctly one conflict situation that I was dealing with. We'll say that it was in Wyoming, even though it might not have been. And I was I was dealing with some church elders that were just they had a problem person in their congregation. And as they described the situation to me, I remember uttering something to this effect. Well, they you know, they have a saying in Texas, some people just need shooting. And the elders went, huh? And I said, I'm sorry, did I say that out loud? Yeah, you did. OK, that's not what I meant. That's not that's not what you need to do here. That's not that's a bad example of gentleness. That's not the heart that we are to have if we are people of God. So we flee from discontentment. We pursue godly character. The next thing that he says Timothy is to do is he is to fight for faith and truth. Verse 12. Look at verse 11 versus verse 12. Verse 11 begins with flee from. Verse 12 starts with fight for exact opposites, as I said, this is a passage of contrast. There are some things we just want to get away from. There are some things we want to run to pursue faith and truth, fight for faith and truth. In verse 12, he says, pursue righteousness. Excuse me, verse 11, he says, pursue righteousness and all of those things that we listed. But then verse 12, fight for the good fight of faith. Wow. What is the good fight of faith? Well, you've got to understand, Paul was living among people who were faithless, who were fleeing from, in fact, I'm just going to list several references in this book of the type of culture around which. Timothy was living at the time. Chapter one, verse three, Paul says you need to command men not to teach false doctrines any longer. Chapter one, verse ten, whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. Chapter one, verse eighteen, you need to, here's that phrase again, fight the good fight of faith, holding on to faith and good conscience. Chapter four, verse one, Some are going to abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits. Chapter four, verse seven, have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives tales. Chapter six, verse three. If anybody teaches false doctrines, do you understand the culture, the community in which Timothy was living? People who just didn't want to face the truth. The reality is, folks. We live in that same culture, though we don't live in Ephesus 2000 years ago. We live in what has been termed in America the postmodern mindset or the postmodern culture where values are not absolute. In fact, value the only only thing that's absolute is my experience. And because my experience changes, therefore, the absolute shift. You know what? It's easy to get. influenced by the culture around us. Frankly, there are things that are happening in your neighborhood, in your family, in the place where you work that are contrary to the principles in God's Word. I'm not going to come up with a list. I don't I don't think we need to have this list of things that we're against. But I think we do need to be aware of what the absolute truths of righteousness are and to fight for those, to stand up for them rather than to become chameleon and just blend into whatever the situation is, whether it be at work or in a neighborhood meeting or whatever, and just kind of go along with the crowd. There are times when we just need to stand up. That's what Paul says to Timothy. And then the final thing that I see here is that we need to be faithful to our calling in Christ. He goes on in verse 12 to say, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. Be faithful, Timothy, to your calling in Christ. And you're thinking, well, I'm off the hook on that one because, you know, I'm not a pastor. I don't have a calling in Christ like Timothy did, and my response to that is, if you're a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, you absolutely have a calling in Christ. Because Paul writes again to the church in Corinth and says we all have a spiritual gift or multiple gifts that are given to us by the Lord that he has entrusted, empowered us with, and expects us to utilize. So we all have a calling in Christ. It's interesting how we describe ourselves. When you introduce yourself to somebody that you've never met before, the first thing you tell them, of course, is your name, because there's that moniker by which we go. But what's the second thing we usually do to describe who we are? What do we usually tell them? Where we work. You know what? What you do for a living is not who you are. That's what you do for a living. Who you are is your calling in Christ. I think sometimes we often mistake that. What is your calling? What is your gifting? What is your ministry? What is the purpose for which Christ desires to use you while you are walking terra firma, while you are walking this earth? We all have a place and a position, but many of us I see this in Christianity in America today that there is a great discontentment even among Christians. We tend to be unfulfilled and we tend to run from one great thrill or highlight in our life to the next, never really experiencing what it is we're looking for. Why is that? I think it's because we're looking at the activities and the accoutrements of life rather than looking at our calling and focusing on doing that. It reminds me I was out of the county fair in Callahan last summer. And I was walking through the midway, overheard a conversation, wasn't meant to be overheard, but you couldn't help but hear it. It's a dad about my height dragging his son through the midway. You know he's dragging him because you can see the heel marks in the dirt. And the son is half his height. Daddy, I'm hungry. I need some cotton candy. And I thought, oh, isn't that like Christians? We're going after the fluff of life instead of the stuff of life. Let me ask you a question. How many of you want to go to heaven? Raise your hands. God's watching as you vote. A couple more hands. Good, good, good. How many want to join the group that's forming to go this afternoon? Not so many hands. Why is that? Maybe. Because we're not totally fulfilled in our calling in Christ. That was Paul's challenge to Timothy, and so I come back to. What's it going to say on your epitaph? What are people saying about you now? What will they say about you when you're dead and gone? And by the way, you don't get to weigh in on that one. You're gone. The final words are the final words. That's a reflection of who you were as you walked this Earth. Will people remember you as a person who was content with what you had or discontent? He says, flee from discontentment, flee from these things, Timothy. Here's how to be content. Very simple. It's a quick devotional that you start the day and end the day with just a few words. When you get up in the morning, as your feet hit the ground, you can do this on your on your way to the bathroom. You can wake up. You know, we all wake up with the same words, but a different attitude. Some of us wake up with good morning, Lord, and some of us wake up with good Lord. It's morning. Why is that? What would happen if for the next seven days you were to wake up with good morning, Lord? Help me to look for and find in today all of the blessings that you have stored up for me. That's it. Quick devotion. And then think about that throughout the day, looking for those. And then as you go to bed that night, as your head hits the pillow, just say, Lord, thank you for and reflect back on the day and just thank him for. The way in which he's provided for you in so many ways, so many ways. Do that for seven days and see if you don't come back here more content next week than you are this week, rather than looking for what everybody else has around you and saying, how come they've got that? Will people say about you when you are dead and gone? Will they remember you as a person of character? I don't know how. how much attention you've been paying. How many are in that list that Paul gives in verse eleven? How many? Anybody have a clue here? These are math questions, I know I didn't ask you to study, but somebody's got it. How many? Say it out loud. Six. Yeah. So questions are going to get a little tougher. How many days are there in the week? And there are how many in the list? So if today's the first day of the week, how many days this is a this is a math question. How many days are left after today? Very good class. We got six days left. What would happen if you took one of these each day this week and just focused on that one? Do you think your character would be different at the end of this week than it is today? In other words, Tomorrow, Monday, you said, I am going to focus on doing what is right out of an outraged sense of justice and morality and just did that. And then on the on Tuesday, you said, I want to be so preoccupied with conforming to the will of God that I might miss some stuff in my daytime or today, but I'm just going to do God's will regardless. And so on throughout the list. I think by the end of the week, if you've practiced each one of these traits or characters, You're going to find you're much further along in following after God next Sunday than you are today, just because you've been focusing on it. Are people going to say when you're dead and gone that you confronted the lies of the culture or you compromised at work? You cut corners in your personal area of finance. that you were a person who kind of, well, you know, everybody else is doing it. And this is just the way the culture goes. Or you said no, just because what? Remember what mom said when we said everybody else is doing it? And we all said that. Right. What did mom say? Well, if they were all jump off a bridge, you know. But as adults, we do that. Well, everybody else does it. It's accepted in my culture. The question is, is it accepted in God's word? There are some things I think we need to really look at carefully in our personal lives. And then finally, are you complete in your life with Christ or can you imagine what your life would be without Christ? You know, Paul was complete. He was ready to join the group that was forming to go whatever time that might be. He writes a second letter to Timothy. It's second Timothy. And in chapter four, verse six, he says to Timothy, I'm already being poured out as a drink offering and the time of my departure has come. And he's not talking about from D.I.A. OK, he's talking about he's he's he's in a Roman prison. He knows that he's being persecuted for his faith and he's probably going to be martyred and killed. The time of my departure has come. And here's what he says. I fought the good fight. I finished the course, I kept the faith. He was ready. He had fulfilled his calling in Christ and whenever God called him home, he was ready to go. Here are two things I challenge you with this week. I want you to write down two things. First of all, and you might go to somebody who knows you well and will be honest with you. Ask them this. Somebody who knows you very well and can be brutally honest with you. If you were to write my epitaph this week, what would it read? And see what they say. And then do a second thing. Actually write down what it is you want people to remember you for and by. In other words, what do you want your epitaph to read? And then begin living your life like the second one. Bow with me in prayer. Father God, thank you that we have examples in Scripture of men and women who followed after you without hesitation, regardless of the challenge that would come their way, who could stand as examples, not of perfection, but certainly of truly being transformed because of the touch and work of your hand in their lives. Help us as men and women who are following after you in the 21st century in a culture that is increasingly becoming hostile toward the work and word of Christianity to be those kind of people we pray in Christ's name, Amen.