How to Prevent Gospel Drift: Holding the Line for the Next Generation | 2 Tim 2.1-7 | Dave Hentschel

Well, amen.

And Happy Palm Sunday.

We have a very exciting week of ministry planned at Millington Baptist Church.

Thursday night, Friday night, of course, Easter Sunday.

We hope that you'll join us for all of our special events this week.

This morning, we're continuing our sermon series through the book of 2 Timothy.

If you'd open up your Bibles and turn there with me, we'll be in chapter two today.

I want to start today by telling you a story about Princeton Theological Seminary.

This school was once a bastion of Bible-believing theological conservatism.

And I'm not talking about the Puritan era or the era of Jonathan Edwards in the 1700s.

I'm talking about the 1800s and even the early 1900s.

They had four presidents in a row that were incredible theologians.

Its founder, the great Archibald Alexander, which was a pillar in the church.

His successor, Charles Hodge, famous for his influential three-volume systematic theology, still used today.

His son, then, named after the first founder, A.A.

Hodge, his dad's mentor.

And then, of course, the great B.B.

Warfield, famous for defending the inerrancy of Scripture.

This is truly a theological Mount Rushmore on the screen.

Giants for the faith, mighty in the scriptures.

They all taught there, defending the authority of the Bible, defending sound doctrine.

This was synonymous with what is now called Old Princeton.

That was once their legacy, but over time that legacy wasn't maintained.

Over time, the seminary slowly drifted during the fundamentalist modernist controversy of the early 1900s.

And over time, German higher criticism infiltrated each of the classrooms, and soon pastors were being trained there to question the Bible.

And soon missionaries were being sent out from there who didn't even believe in, much less preach the gospel.

So what had once been a place of strength became a place of theological drift and confusion.

And it's very sad.

The word seminary comes from the Latin word semmon, which means seed.

It was supposed to be a place where lots of little seeds and seedlings were planted, and they were supposed to grow and then multiply and become new plants like the ones that were from before.

But if you were to enroll in and attend Princeton Theological Seminary today, well, one of their big new programs is that you can study their new farmonary program, a place dedicated to training faith leaders conversant in the areas of ecology, sustainability, and food justice.

Now, I guess that's okay, but never at the expense of sound doctrine.

It's largely not something that they are committed to anymore.

There are small pockets of evangelicals there, but it is a tiny minority.

The point here, friends, is that if Christian institutions do not intentionally pass the faith on intact, they will drift.

Maybe not all at once, but they will slowly drift further and further away one generation at a time.

Which raises an important question for anyone who leads a Christian ministry.

How does a church remain faithful across generations instead of drifting away from the gospel?

This is a danger for every seminary, for every church, for every Christian ministry.

And the problem is all too common.

Many once solid gospel-teaching institutions are now teaching anything but the gospel.

The solution and answer to that gigantic problem is actually found in our text today, 2 Timothy 2, 1 to 7.

This is exactly what Paul is addressing in this particular passage.

So the title of my message today is How to Prevent Gospel Drift, Holding the Line for the Next Generation.

You'll see four different parts to this passage.

First, we're going to talk about what it means to do that by depending on God.

Secondly, we're going to learn to entrust the truth to others.

Third, he's going to say you need to embrace the cost of real ministry, and finally, he will tell us you need to reflect deeply on what really matters.

What you're going to see here in this text as a preview are three dominant metaphors.

There's going to be a military metaphor, then there's going to be an athletic metaphor, and then there's going to be an agrarian metaphor.

And you'll also notice three key imperative commands in this text.

The first command is going to be to be strengthened.

And the second command is going to be to entrust, and then the third command is going to be to co-suffer.

So those are what we're going to be talking about today.

And let's pray and then we'll dive right into the text.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we thank you for your word.

Thank you that your truth does not change.

Even when the world around us does, you do not.

We ask that now you would strengthen us by your grace, just as you commanded Timothy.

Open our minds to understand your word, open our hearts to receive it.

And Lord, help us not only to hear your truth today, but to live it out and to pass it on faithfully to our children, to the next generation.

For we ask it in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Point one, depend on God.

Take a look at chapter 2, verse 1.

Paul begins this chapter by saying, You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

Notice that transitional word, then.

You may want to circle that.

That begins this verse, but tells us immediately that we need to look backwards.

You may recall what had just happened at the end of chapter one were a group of both positive examples and negative examples.

The positive example was a man named Onocephorus.

Paul says, You should be like him and strengthened as he was.

And then there were two negative examples.

And Paul says, you should not be like them.

You, my child, follow me.

You should be different.

And the way I want you to be different is by obeying this command to be strengthened.

Now, if you're a theological nerd, you may be interested to know that the Greek language has not only active voice and passive voice, but they have a third voice that's called middle voice.

In the middle voice, the recipient is both the doer of the action and the receiver of the action.

In this case, this particular verb is found in the middle voice.

Oftentimes in the scriptures, when that happens, it's because there is a divine imperative happening here that assumes some human responsibility.

It assumes that we are to yield in some sense to this strengthening.

It assumes that we are to be receptive to this strengthening.

Be strengthened.

So much of what we hear today does not follow this particular command.

So much of what we hear today is that we need to be looking into our inner self.

So much of what we hear today is we need to find our own inner strength.

But the scripture, I would say, in the New Testament, does not teach that.

It does not teach that you need to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and look deep down inside for the strength that is hidden on the inside of you.

It is nothing like that famous Mariah Carey song called Hero.

Do you remember that song?

The lyrics go like this there's a hero if you look inside your heart.

You don't have to be afraid of what you are.

There's an answer if you reach into your soul and the sorrow that you know will melt away.

Hey.

And then a hero comes along with the strength to carry on, and you cast your fears aside because you know you can survive.

So when you feel like hope is gone, look inside you and be strong.

And you'll finally see the truth that a hero lies in you.

That's such a nice song.

It gives me all the feels.

When I hear that song, I think I can climb a mountain.

But can I say with all due respect to Miss Carey, I don't think that's a New Testament song.

The strength that we live in in the Christian life is a strength that is not our own strength.

We are strengthened.

We need strengthening.

We need someone to strengthen us.

And thank God He has given us the gift of His Holy Spirit for exactly these matters.

We are weak, but he is strong.

We are frail, feeble, children of dust.

Through him we prevail.

It is not I, but Christ working in me, Paul says, who is adequate to these things.

Christ has made us adequate.

He's the one who lifts up weak knees, he's the one who strengthens feeble hands.

The Bible says, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.

It does not say, be strong in yourself.

The old hymn writer said it well.

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing.

We're not the right man on our side, the man's a man of God's own choosing.

Does ask who that may be?

Christ Jesus, it is he.

Lord Saboeth his name, and from age to age the same, and he must win the battle.

Paul says, be strengthened.

But be strengthened by what?

He says, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

What grace?

The grace he just talked about in chapter one.

The grace that called you, the grace that saved you, the grace that justified you, the grace that is sanctifying you.

In the Christian life, though, grace is not just pardon, it's power.

Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 15.

He says, But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.

On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

Notice there's some work here, but it's mysterious, isn't it?

There's a synergy happening.

Even the work that we do is somehow coming from grace.

Be strengthened in the grace that is in the Lord Jesus Christ.

You cannot do this in your own strength.

Brothers and sisters, if you are feeling weak today, listen to the good news of this text.

If you're feeling the need for God's strength, then listen to these words of encouragement from 2 Timothy chapter 1.

2 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

Be strengthened by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, some of you are winning the battles of your life right now, and I'm so thankful that you're having a good season.

I rejoice with you.

But there may come a time that despite your best efforts and despite your utmost hard work, you are still sensing that things are falling apart around you.

And in those days, at that place of rock bottom, may you come to know the one who strengthens the weak.

May you come to know the one who has his power at work in you.

The song says it this way Christ in us, the cornerstone.

We go forth by grace alone.

Let me give you an example of this.

Annie Johnson Flint.

This woman was an orphan.

She had developed arthritis.

She was bent over most of her life in a wheelchair.

Not the kind of modern wheelchairs we have either.

This was over a hundred years ago.

She also had cancer and was going blind.

She spent most of her later years in bed until her body was covered with sores.

Somehow, this woman, however, found a sweetness in just choosing to trust the Lord.

And she actually was the one to encourage others through notes of encouragement and through writing poems.

Many of those poems we have taken and turned into the great hymns of the church that we still enjoy today.

She wrote this.

To added afflictions, he addeth his mercy.

To multiplied trials, he multiplies peace.

His love has no limits, his grace has no measure, his power, no boundary, known unto men.

For out of his infinite riches in Jesus, he giveth and giveth and giveth again.

Brothers and sisters, if you have the choice on your Spotify playlist to put in Mariah Carey or Annie Johnson Flint, choose Annie every single day of the week.

Depend on God.

Point two.

Paul says, And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

Notice, he says, What you have heard from me.

What we have heard from Paul is the sum teaching of the entire gospel message.

There's a movement happening here in the letter of 2 Timothy.

In chapter 1, we were instructed to guard the good news, to guard the good deposit.

But notice here, it's not just going to be about guarding, it's going to be also about passing it along to the next generation.

So we're moving here in the letter from guarding to sharing.

But I want you to see that guarding and sharing are actually interconnected.

And I want you to see that the guarding happens by the sharing.

How do you guard the gospel?

By sharing it, by entrusting it to faithful men.

Which means what?

Faithful men probably is a reference here to elders, qualified elders.

This is not a ministry of addition, it's going to be a ministry of multiplication.

Paul is not just preserving the truth, he's reproducing teachers.

Notice here we have four different generations in this verse.

We have Paul, then we have Timothy, then we have faithful men, then we have others.

This is their strategy.

The gospel always moves forward through people who intentionally pass it on.

Now, some scholars have made the observation here that in this verse, in verse 2, the word for men here is actually not distinctively a word for male.

It is the Greek word anthropos, which simply means human.

And so this is not necessarily referring only to men.

In fact, it's a collective word that I would argue refers to both men and women who bear this responsibility.

There are many examples, after all, of women passing along the faith as well in the New Testament.

Titus chapter 2, we look in the Old Testament, Proverbs chapter 1, listening to this woman.

Titus 2 · chapter mention Proverbs 1 · chapter mention

We learned in chapter 1 of 2 Timothy that it was Timothy's mother and his grandmother that passed along the truth to him.

So this exhortation does not just apply to elders in the church, it applies to all of us, whether we're men, whether we're women.

This is the strategy.

And this is not a new strategy.

Back in the book of Exodus in chapter 18, do you remember Moses' father-in-law, Jethro?

What was his strategy for his son-in-law?

Moses, delegate to other leaders, find people around you and train them and multiply yourself.

What was Jesus' strategy when he was here for three years?

I'm going to get 12 disciples and I'm going to train them so that they'll be able to go out and share this message too.

That is the strategy.

We're not going to let generations arise who don't know what this precious treasure is that the apostles once taught us.

And what is that precious treasure?

What is the message that you have heard from me?

It is the simple gospel, the simple message of Jesus.

It's the message that we celebrate this week.

It's the message that Jesus came from heaven to earth, took on human flesh, was born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, the life that you and I should have lived.

And then he died the perfect death, the death that you and I actually deserved.

And then on the third day, victoriously, he rose again, conquering death and the grave and the devil.

And then this same Jesus ascended to heaven to the right hand of the Father.

And he reigns now forever.

And then he has sent his Holy Spirit to reside on the inside of us, to strengthen us.

And through him we live and we move and we have our being.

This is what we celebrate this time of year.

This is what we celebrate even on Palm Sunday, that this Jesus came riding on a donkey, presenting himself as the king of the Jews, and not just the Jews, but the king of the whole world.

And he came to offer himself as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world on Passover week.

He came to offer himself as the ultimate Lamb.

And then later this same week, we will celebrate that this Lamb has now shed his blood, and that we now can apply that same blood to the doorposts of our heart.

And just like the children of old who had the wrath of God pass over them, when we apply the blood, the wrath of God passes over us.

And all who come to him by faith and faith alone will be forgiven and will receive God's grace.

This is the message that we celebrate during Holy Week.

And this is the message that Timothy had received.

This is the message that needs to be passed on, passed on, and this is the message that we are passing on as well.

So Paul says, Now I want you to take the same message.

Do not change one word and pass it along to faithful men.

And what will they do?

They're going to be able to do the same exact thing and teach others as well.

This is so important.

Because later on in chapter three, what we're going to read about is that times will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine.

In fact, what they're going to do, Paul says, is they're going to gather to themselves false teachers who teach them whatever their itching ears want to hear.

And so Paul says, Timothy, don't get into that.

You stick with this message, stick with the truth, stick with that old-time religion, if you will, stick with the gospel.

This is what we're seeking to do here at MBC each and every day.

There are so many examples of what's happening with this going on at our church.

I can't name them all, so I decided just to name one.

Our fifth and sixth grade boys and girls classes.

Every single fifth and sixth grade boy or girl has the opportunity to attend a 9 a.m.

children's Sunday school class.

Linda and Linda and Deirdre teach the girls, and then Mark Molillo and James currently are teaching the boys.

And these teachers have a legacy of years, some of them decades, teaching these classes to these kids.

Mark will lead them through an Old Testament survey class that he developed along with James.

Linda and Linda have all of these scripture memory tools that they've been faithfully teaching these kids for years and some of them decades.

In fact, just here's a quick straw poll.

If you have either attended one of their classes or one of your kids has attended one of those classes, would you just put your hand up and look around for a second?

This is what we're doing.

And we ought to thank God, amen.

We ought to thank God for teachers like that who are faithfully investing in the next generation.

Let me give you an illustration of how important this is.

Here's an illustration from the Green Bay Packers of the 1960s.

They were dominating pro football for an entire era.

Well, they had a particular play that they would run.

Maybe you've never heard of this, but they ran a very famous play called the Green Bay Power Sweep.

Everything was wrapped up in this one play that they capitalized on because of their size and their speed and their agility.

It was running a play that no one could defend against.

The Green Bay Power Sweep was like this.

You had two guards, you had Jerry Kramer, 6'4, 270 pounds, and this other guy, Fuzzy Thurston, about six foot, 250 pounds.

They'd send these two twin towers, these two giant guys on the outside of the line, and then behind them they had a fullback named Jim Taylor from New Orleans, Louisiana, and he would run right on their heels, and then you had these three guys going around the outside of the line, and then creeping right behind them was Paul Horneck.

So you had two guards, you had a fullback, and then he's leading interference with Taylor.

This was the most formidable play of the 1960s.

This play was so important to Vince Lombardi that every single summer when he would get his team together for camp right before preseason football, he would explain this play once again every year.

And no matter how many years he would explain the Green Bay power sweep, he would get just as excited to explain to the new guys the signature play on their team.

And what Jim, what Vince Lombardi did was he shared with them with such intensity and such fervor this particular sweep because he would say, Gentlemen, to beat us, you gotta beat our power sweep.

And so they would run this play in the 60s over and over and over, and nobody could stop them.

It was their signature play.

Friends, the reason why I'm sharing that illustration is because the Church of Jesus Christ has a power sweep.

We have a play, we have a signature play.

We have one essential play that we have to run, and if we can't run this play, we have one thing to do.

If we do not run this play, it doesn't matter how great our property is, it doesn't matter how much parking we have, it doesn't matter how awesome the music is, it doesn't matter how great the programs are, it doesn't matter if we don't run this play, we're toast.

The play is in verse two.

The play is guard the gospel and pass it on.

If a church doesn't run this play, it's dead.

They're like a dead tree.

It might still be standing, but in a matter of time, it's gonna fall.

And history shows us what happens when churches and seminaries and ministries stop running this play.

Princeton Seminary once stood firmly for the authority of Scripture, but over time their legacy was not passed on.

When the first president, Archibald Alexander, lay dying on his deathbed in 1851, he called his successor to his bedside, Charles Hodge.

And at that time, he handed him a white bone walking stick, literally made out of whalebone.

And he said to Charles, This is a symbol.

You my Must hand this to your successor in office in a sense that it might be handed down as a kind of a symbol of orthodoxy of our seminary.

I want you to take this stick and I want you to pass it on.

Well, Charles took the stick, went out into the hallway, and broke down in tears.

His mentor, his teacher, the guy who founded the seminary was dying.

And now everything was on his shoulders.

And he didn't know if he could handle it.

But of course he did.

And Hodge taught so well and then passed it on to the next guy, and then passed it on to the next guy.

But somewhere along the line, I don't know where this white bone walking stick is today.

Maybe it's still there sitting in a closet in Princeton.

I don't know.

But somewhere along the line, these guys traded seminary for farmonery.

We cannot do that.

We must entrust the truth to others.

You are holding a white whalebone walking stick.

Someone gave it to you.

The question is, who are you handing it to?

This is how a church must remain faithful from one generation to the next.

Is the power sweep?

Number three.

How do we prevent gospel drift?

We have to embrace the cost of real ministry, and there is a cost.

Take a look at verse 3.

Paul gets into this.

Timothy, share in suffering, he says in verse 3, share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

Suffering will be a part of ministry.

And notice it's a group thing.

With us, he says.

Who's us?

Me, Paul, Onocephorus, with Jesus, with the other apostles.

Share in suffering with us, Timothy.

This is what it means to be part of this group, this Christian group.

Suffering is going to be part of the deal.

This is such a theme in the New Testament that if you don't notice it, you must not be reading the New Testament.

I'll just give you five very quick examples of how this theme shows up, sprinkled almost in every book.

Here's one from Acts chapter 14.

Acts 14 · chapter mention

It says, When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.

Matthew chapter 16, verses 24 and 25.

Matthew 16:24

Then Jesus told his disciples, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

John 16, 33.

Jesus says, I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace.

In the world you will have tribulation.

But take heart.

I have overcome the world.

John 15, 18 to 20.

If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own.

But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Remember the word that I said to you a servant is not greater than his master.

If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

There is this fundamental disconnect between Christians and the world.

We are fundamentally out of step.

One more.

Matthew 10, 25.

If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they malign those of his household?

So there's five quick examples.

My point here is just to show you that suffering is assumed for those of us who follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

Ephesians chapter 6 says it is not peacetime.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

There's a war, and it's not a fleshly war, but it's a spiritual war, and there will be a cost for you to enlist in this army as a soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ, because that's what soldiers do.

Paul continues this image in verse 4, as he says, No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.

It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops.

Now pause right there.

Notice there's three different images.

Three different images.

There's the soldier, there's the athlete, and then there's the farmer.

So I want to unpack those three images, and I got a chart.

There's two things that are happening with each image there's an exhortation, and then there's also a promise.

Each of them has an exhortation, each of them has a promise.

And I want you to look for those two things with each metaphor.

So look back at verse 4.

The soldier.

In the soldier, the exhortation here is that they should not get entangled in civilian affairs.

And what he's talking about there is a single-mindedness.

There is a command here that we're not to be distracted, that the Timothy is to give himself more of a narrow focus.

So the exhortation is to be undistracted.

A soldier has an undistracted devotion to a duty that precludes entanglements in what Paul calls the daily things of life, the civilian pursuits, if you will.

Are those things sinful things?

I don't think so.

He could have used the word for sinful things here if he wanted to, and he did not.

What's probably being criticized here is not so much involvement, but entanglement.

Hebrews chapter 12 says something very similar.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

When you're running, you should throw off those things which easily entangle you.

What are those things which easily entangle you?

Well, my friend James Rickershauser says, who runs marathons, that would be anything that keeps you from running.

Anything that keeps you from doing your best.

Throw off those things that distract you.

Can I talk just a second here about your phone?

I know.

I'm stepping on your toe.

Look at your screen time this week.

If you have an iPhone, you tap settings, scroll down your screen time.

If you do that, you might just like me break down and cry.

What am I doing?

Scrolling and scrolling.

Look at the top three apps that you've been using this week and look how much time you've spent on those three apps and ask yourself Am I using this device too much?

There are tools you can download and use to limit your screen time.

There are ways in which you can limit this, and I encourage you to take a good look at that because we have to make the most of the time that we have.

Paul says you're a soldier, and it's easy to get distracted by undue and overwhelming things that are in this world that are not necessarily sinful things, but they will drain your time, they will drain your resources, and they will drain your focus.

And Paul says, I want you to have an undistracted focus, a single-minded focus.

What's the promise?

The promise is in this verse, if you will do that, Paul says, you will please the one who enlisted you.

You see that?

You will hear those words.

Well done, good and faithful servant.

So let's look at my chart.

Remember, each exhortation has, each, each image has an exhortation and a promise.

The exhortation here, be undistracted.

Throw your phone in the trash.

Just kidding.

But use less, your less use your phone less.

Be undistracted by whatever is distracting you.

Maybe it's not your phone for you.

What is it though?

The promise, you do that, you will be pleasing to God.

All right, let's talk about the Navy SEALs.

What does it take?

Jocko Willink explains one of the most brutal parts of that process is something they call hell week.

For five and a half days, these candidates are pushed to the absolute limit, running miles in the sand, carrying boats over their heads, plunged into freezing water, and they get maybe a couple hours of sleep total.

They are cold, exhausted, disoriented, and completely spent.

And here's what's fascinating: most of the guys who quit don't quit because they're physically incapable.

These guys are in great shape.

They quit because they reach a point where they say, This is too uncomfortable.

This is too much.

Jocko Willink makes the point: being a seal isn't about comfort, though.

It's about the mission.

The ones who make it are the ones who have already settled in their own minds in advance, I'm not here to be comfortable.

I'm not here to do that.

I'm here to endure.

I'm here to finish.

And that's the picture the Apostle Paul is giving us right here.

A good soldier doesn't build his life around the comfort.

He builds it around the calling.

He does not ask, is this easy?

He asks, Am I being faithful?

He doesn't quit when it gets hard.

He expects it to be hard because he knows there's a mission, there's a commander, and there's something far more important than my comfort.

So the question for me is, am I being distracted?

Have I quietly made comfort my goal?

Someone once said, Christianity is like a long obedience in the same direction.

What is distracting you from this spiritual investment?

Be like the soldier.

Number two, the second image that he used here is the image of the athlete.

And the exhortation to the athlete is to compete according to the rules.

The rules.

Now, some of you do not like rules, and you resist with a certain kind of fleshly lawlessness that comes up with a rebellious spirit anytime there's a rule.

What this means, though, in the Christian life is that God's law is for my good.

The rules here in the image, I would think would refer to an uprightness in every facet, in every situation.

Spiritually, this would refer to a consistent manifestation of godliness in my life.

If I do that, here's the promise.

There's a crown.

The victor's crown.

This in Roman times would be the victor's wreath.

The same image comes up in chapter four of this letter.

There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, but not only for me, for all those who love his appearing.

That's me and you.

So if we go back to our chart, when it comes to the athlete, the exhortation is to be upright.

And the promise is you will earn eternal rewards.

Let me try to illustrate this one.

For years, he was one of the most celebrated athletes in the world.

He won the tour de France, not once, not twice, not three times, seven times in a row.

Something no one had ever done.

His name was Lance Armstrong.

His story was incredible.

He had survived cancer.

He came back to dominate the most grueling cycling race on the earth.

People didn't just see him as a champion, they saw Lance as an inspiration.

But in 2012, the truth came out.

After years of denial, investigations revealed that Armstrong had been using performance-enhancing drugs all along.

Not only that, but there was a sophisticated system behind it of doping and then blood transfusions and then efforts to avoid detection.

And the result?

He was stripped of all seven Tour de France titles.

Every single one gone.

Think about that.

Years of victory, years of training, global admiration, a legacy he built over time, and it's all erased.

Why?

Because he didn't compete according to the rules.

That's what Paul is getting at right here.

Armstrong rode the race, he crossed the finish line, he stood on that podium, but in the end, he was not crowned.

Because in God's economy, it's not just about the results, it's about righteousness.

It's not just about achieving something, it's about also achieving it in the right way.

And so the question for me here is sobering.

Am I trying to reach my spiritual goals, growth or influence or success?

But am I cutting corners in things like character and truth and obedience in the meantime?

Because you can build something that looks like victory, and still in the end, you'll find out it doesn't count.

Because the crown goes not to the one who appears to win, but to the one who runs the race God's way.

So that's the athlete.

Third, the farmer.

The farmer has an exhortation here that's really clear.

Be hard working, be diligent.

Get up early, stay up late during those seasons.

What's the main character trait here?

I would say it's industriousness.

And if I do that, there's a promise for me.

What's the promise?

Well, I get to eat.

I get to enjoy the first share of the crop.

I get the fruit of my labor.

So here's my chart.

Exhortation, be industrious.

Promise, you will enjoy the fruit of your labor.

A few years ago, there was a lot of attention on modern farming through people like Zach Johnson, a fourth-generation farmer who shows what the work is really like.

And one of the things he emphasizes is this farming is not dramatic work, it's daily work.

It's no work that involves like shortcuts.

No.

You don't plant seeds on Monday and harvest on Friday.

There are long days of preparing the soil, planting carefully, monitoring the conditions, fixing your equipment, watching the weather, and then waiting and waiting and more waiting.

And even when you don't see anything happening above the ground, something underneath the ground is happening under the surface there.

Roots are forming, growth is beginning.

But it's invisible at the beginning, isn't it?

Here's the key a good farmer doesn't dig up the seed every few days to check on it.

He trusts the process.

He keeps working, he stays faithful.

That's what Paul is getting at right here.

Steady plotting.

It's the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops.

In the Christian life, it's not just about intensity, it's about consistency.

It's not just about the big moments, it's about quiet faithfulness every day, over time, stuff that nobody sees.

You pray and you don't see immediate results.

You disciple somebody and their growth seems really slow.

You fight sin and then your progress feels incremental.

But the farmer reminds us God's work often is happening under the surface, under the ground, before it ever shows up above the ground.

So Paul says, be industrious.

Don't quit.

Keep sowing, keep trusting, keep laboring, because in due season there will be a harvest if you don't give up.

So back to my chart.

All of these promises are supposed to be motivators for you to follow the Lord Jesus.

All three represent a person committed to something much greater than him or herself, willing to sacrifice, willing to endure for a greater cause, for a greater goal.

One commentator summed it up this way: quote, the metaphors, when duly pondered, suggests that beyond warfare is victory.

And beyond athletic effort is a prize.

And beyond agricultural labor, there's a crop.

And in the same way, Timothy's share of hardship will be followed by a reward.

God's greater reward.

And so will yours.

So will yours.

So will yours.

That's point three.

How do we prevent gospel drifts?

Well, we have to depend on God.

We have to entrust the truth to others, and we need to embrace the cost of real ministry.

And then fourthly, we have to reflect deeply on what really matters.

One more point.

Look at verse 7 as Paul wraps up this section.

He says, Timothy, think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.

Here we have an exhortation to think, to consider with an intensified exhortation.

And when you do that, you will have what from the Lord?

He says, understanding.

What Paul is talking about here is the theological doctrine of illumination.

It is the work of the Holy Spirit to, through our minds, give us insight into the text of Scripture.

It is the answer to the prayer of the psalmist, Lord, open my eyes that I might see wonderful things in your word.

Archibald Alexander, the first president of Princeton, said it this way: quote, all we need is to have the illumination of the Spirit to accompany the reading or preaching of the word, to cause us to see wonderful things in texts which have often been heard or read without emotion.

And in the contemplation of them, the mind is filled with unspeakable joy.

Think, reflect, meditate, ponder.

I emphasize this because some people think Christianity means disengaging the mind and just feeling with the heart.

And that is not true.

Or it's only half true.

Of course we have the heart, but Christianity is a religion that also taxes and engages the mind.

The mind is actually the entry point to the heart and the soul.

We are to renew our what?

Minds.

We're to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

God has given us minds.

He's given us the ability to reason.

The Christian faith is not disengaging our mental faculties and launching into some mystical experience.

God's people must think.

But many Christians don't do this.

Mark Noel, in his scathing rebuke, wrote a book called The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, when he said basically the scandal of the evangelical mind is there's not much of a mind.

And there is a trend that he observed, and a trend that seems to be getting more and more acute in the younger generations to emphasize only the emotional, sometimes to a fault.

There's that phrase, follow your heart.

But the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, right?

The heart is one thing, but that's not the only part I have.

Or people say, you know, I just want a job that I love.

Sometimes it's like, dude, you gotta go to work.

Like it's called work.

Or even the I've noticed the way we express our opinions nowadays, even in like not heart areas, we say, I feel like.

Notice that.

I feel like.

What do you mean you feel like?

What do you think?

I want the feels.

I love the feels.

Give me some Mariah Carey.

It gives me the feels.

Now there's nothing inherently wrong with feelings.

But the problem is the feels are sometimes driving the bus when they should be in the back of the bus.

So if that's you, what you need to know is yes, there are parts of you that desire to feel the feelings and values, feeling safe, and all of that.

But my dear friend, that's not the only part of you.

There are other parts of you too.

There are other values that you have too.

Now, sometimes we swing the pendulum, right?

The older generation had exactly the opposite problem.

They had no idea how to self-reflect and have really an awareness of their feelings.

And I'm grossly generalizing here.

That's not true of every single person.

But sometimes the older generation struggled with the opposite thing.

And sometimes, if that's you, like you need to hear, God gave you your feelings, God gave you your emotions.

It's okay for you to have a feeling.

It's okay if something bad happens to you as a Christian and you say to God, Ah, God, I wouldn't have preferred this, right?

It's okay for you to express that.

That's if you can be honest with your feelings, it's okay.

Read the Psalms.

But for everyone, we all need to remember the mind is the part of us that is in control.

Paul's point here is that Timothy should think because Christianity requires thoughtful engagement and the feelings will follow.

As Christian leaders, we must be reflective, not reactive.

Understanding is given by the Lord, but it's going to take effort.

So Paul says, I want you to think about these things.

And what that means is slowing down and meditating and taking time.

Recently, I read an excellent book called Deep Work by Cal Newport.

It's a fascinating book about the need in an age of constant texting and emailing to set aside undistracted time to study and to do what he calls deep work.

His thesis is that to produce at your peak level, you need to work for extended periods of time, not in front of the final four, not distracted by all kinds of multitasking things.

He says you need to work for extended periods of time in a cave somewhere with full concentration on a single task where you are free from distraction.

Now apply that to your life.

What does that look like?

What does that look like spiritually speaking?

This is holy week.

This is the most important week of the Christian calendar.

Will you choose to set aside any time this week to think about, to meditate on?

The work of your Savior on your behalf.

When will you do that?

God's people are a thinking people.

So Paul says, I want you to reflect on what deeply matters.

That's how you prevent drift.

So how do we do it?

How do we prevent the gospel drift?

And how do we hold the line?

Well, first we have to depend on God because it's his strength.

Secondly, we have to run the power sweep.

We have to entrust the truth to others.

Third, we've got to embrace the cost of real ministry.

And finally, we've got to switch on our minds and reflect deeply on what really matters.

Church, let's be strengthened by grace.

Let's endure the cost.

Let's commit ourselves to passing the faith on so that long after you and I are gone, the gospel continues to go forth from right here on this corner.

One more story.

See, history doesn't only give us examples of drift, it also gives us some really exciting examples of recovery from drift.

In the late 20th century, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary faced its own theological challenges.

And a generation of leaders made a deliberate effort to return the school back to biblical fidelity.

It was called the great conservative resurgence of the 1980s.

We're talking about theological conservativism.

We're not talking about politics right now.

This conservative resurgence did not happen accidentally, though.

It happened because people took seriously the responsibility to preserve and to pass on the truth.

It took more than a decade for this to happen.

It started in 1979.

They came up with a strategy.

The strategy was that they were going to get the majority of the delegates to go to the Southern Baptist Convention and they were going to finally elect a president of the SBC who believed the Bible.

And in 1979, through a slim majority, in a surprise upset, Adrian Rogers, a stalwart conservative, was elected to the presidency of the SBC.

That strategy of electing a conservative president allowed that particular person to elect all the other trustees on all the other committees.

So Lifeway Christian Books has a board, and Southern Seminary has a board, and New Orleans Seminary has a board, and you know the Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee had a board, hundreds and hundreds of trustees.

All of them essentially left their faith in the Bible, all of them liberal.

So the president had the strategy of as soon as a liberal term expires, I'm going to plop a conservative down there.

Plop them down there.

And each year, the majority of Southern Baptists would show up to the convention and they would elect another conservative president year after year after year.

Since 1979, they have never elected a non-conservative president since then.

And it took them probably about six years to see any difference at all.

And slowly, like around 85, 86, all of a sudden these boards were majority populated by conservatives.

And they started raising some issues and some concerns with what was happening in their books and in their seminaries and in the institutions.

And they started making a difference.

And so year after year, slowly over time, those terms of the liberal theologians would expire, and the majority of the boards became conservative and they started to gain control.

And slowly they replaced each board with a Bible-believing Christian majority.

All of a sudden, faculty members who couldn't previously sign the doctrinal statements were forced to either sign the doctrinal statement or lose your position.

And faculty members started to go away and be replaced by conservative faculty members at all six of their seminaries.

Together, in 1979, they saved the largest Protestant denomination in the United States of America.

There are 50,000 Southern Baptist churches.

There has never been another denomination to do that.

Every other denomination, including ours, had to break off and start something new.

No one has been able to turn the ship all the way around 180 degrees and turn it back to the truth.

But they did it.

And they did it by applying the principles here.

Thousands now are supported missionaries through the new SBC.

They have 12 million church members right now.

They stopped the drift and they came back to the truth.

And one of the heroes was President Al Moeller, who lived through it all.

And he says this it was a reformation achieved at an incredibly high cost.

The seminary was founded about the same time as Millington.

And one of their founders wrote a hymn for the students who were preparing for gospel ministry at the time.

And as we think about this hymn, I want you to think about it because it was meant to remind the students of their mission to proclaim Christ and to pass the faith to the next generation.

So I want to close with these words as we think about these words as a charge for us as well.

So let me read you the words of this hymn as the worship team comes back on stage to lead us in one more song.

The hymn says this Soldiers of Christ, in truth arrayed, a world in ruins needs your aid.

A world by sin destroyed and dead, a world for which the Savior bled.

His gospel to the lost proclaim.

Good news for all in Jesus' name.

Let light upon the darkness break that sinners from their death may wake.

Morning and evening sow the seed.

God's grace, the effort shall succeed.

Seed times of tears have oft been found with sheaves of joy and plenty crowned.

Church, may that be true of us as well.

Amen.

Would you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, how grateful we are for the gospel that's been entrusted to us.

We confess this morning that we are weak, but you are strong.

We confess that your grace is sufficient, though.

So would you strengthen us, Lord, to live faithfully as your people in our day?

Help us to guard the truth, to endure hardship for Christ, and to pass this faith on to our kids and grandkids, so that the gospel will continue long after we're gone.

And may our church be a place where your truth is preserved and where your truth is proclaimed generation after generation until you come.

For we ask it all through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And everyone says,