The Hope Shaped Life

Father, we thank you that we can be in this place, a warm enough place and a dry place,

after a wet couple of days and a cold sort of morning. Thank you that we can be here.

Father, more than the place, we give you thanks and praise that we can be together

to be here in the name of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit to be in your presence.

And we ask, Father, that your Holy Spirit would move mightily in our hearts,

that your Holy Spirit would be poured out into our hearts to prepare our hearts and set our hearts

to know that we are in your presence, to be receptive to the grace that you desire to give us this morning

and to respond to you in a worthy manner.

We ask, Father, that as part of your grace that you help us to fall in love with the Christian vision of life

and more and more and more to live out of that vision of what life really is.

And we ask this in the name of Jesus, your Son and our Savior. Amen.

Please be seated.

So those of you who've gone along with us, we're finishing 2 Timothy today.

We're going to be looking at chapter 4.

Just a bit of a heads up that starting next Sunday, we begin a brand new sermon series.

And with a nod to Kanye West, the sermon series is going to be called Jesus is King.

And with a bit of a break in the latter half of December and the first Sunday of January for seasonal types of sermons,

we'll start this.

And on Palm Sunday, we'll conclude the first half of Mark's Gospel by Jesus' prophecy.

The turning point in all of the Gospels is when Jesus reveals for the first time explicitly that he's going to be crucified,

he's going to be dead for three days, and then he's going to rise from the dead.

And that prophecy of Jesus that he makes is the turning point in all of the Gospels.

And sort of the first half will go right up to that.

That's on Palm Sunday.

And then we'll finish the rest of Mark, I don't know, some other time later on, 22.

Unless Jesus comes back first, which would be a vastly better outcome.

But if he doesn't, we'll keep working through.

We'll do the second half of Mark, which then the second half of Mark will be called Jesus the Crucified King.

Jesus is the Crucified King.

So that's going to be the title.

So we're going to...

You know, you're never supposed to begin a sermon by talking about boring stuff like that.

There's a Christian vision to life that is completely and utterly transformative.

And often people don't realize we get it in bits and pieces.

We get it through stories.

We get it through the scripture text.

We get it through songs.

But there's this very, very deep Christian vision that's transformative of life.

And it's shown up here in a very, very simple and unique way.

Actually, the doorway into this Christian vision.

And once you understand the Christian vision, the other things in the text, which seem very odd, become clearer to you.

And it's partially caught up by a Jewish expression.

I don't know how many of you have had the privilege of being able to go to Israel.

I know some of you have.

If you ever go to Israel, I highly, highly, highly, highly, highly recommend that you do two things.

First is that you don't just go to Jerusalem and some of the tourist sites, but you also go to Tel Aviv.

Because, in a sense, Tel Aviv is the real Israel.

If you go to Jerusalem, that's where all of the Orthodox Jews live.

Obviously, non-Orthodox Jews live there as well.

But it's very striking.

You go to Jerusalem, and everybody, no matter how hot it is, is dressed quite modestly.

And you don't see anybody with tattoos.

Or you see very, very few people with tattoos.

Because in the Old Testament law, tattoos are forbidden.

You go to Tel Aviv.

And it's sort of like being in Montreal or Toronto or New York, but it's only on the Mediterranean.

Piles and piles and piles and piles of people have tattoos.

And they don't dress modestly.

I mean, many of them do, but lots of them don't.

And you really get, in a sense, the sense of what current Israel is like far more if you go to Tel Aviv.

But even more important than all of that, if you only have time just to go to Jerusalem and see a few other things, like the Sea of Galilee,

it's really important to take a couple of hours out of your day, and you go to see Yad Vashem.

And I apologize to my Jewish friends if I'm not pronouncing these words correctly.

Yad Vashem.

It's really important.

It's known as the Holocaust or the Shoah Museum.

And it's worth setting aside about three hours in your day to go there and to go through it.

It's profoundly, profoundly moving.

And for people like us in the First World, given that, like, Germany was the elite country in terms of culture,

and yet they were able to go and do something so horrific, it is really important to take time to go see it.

Now, one of the things that people don't always know is that I think often in this side of the Atlantic,

people tend to refer to it as the Holocaust Museum.

And the word Holocaust has two meanings in English.

One of them is a Holocaust is a mass killing, like a killing of many, many, many people.

But the other sense, the original sense, is actually that it's a sacrifice.

It comes from the Tanakh.

It comes from the Old Testament.

It's a type of a sacrifice which is made on the altar,

where the sacrifice is completely consumed by fire.

And so as part of the sacrificial system, it's partly how people are reconnected to God,

how they're made right with God.

And that's the sense, the original sense of Holocaust, that it's a sacrifice.

And sacrifices aren't pointless deaths.

They have meaning and significance.

But in fact, at a national level, when they remember what happened to the Jewish people under the Nazis,

it's not referred to primarily as the Holocaust.

It's referred to as the Shoah.

Once again, my apologies to my Jewish friends if I'm not pronouncing this correctly.

And the Shoah is a very, very radically different word.

Shoah means catastrophe.

It means disaster.

And there is a huge world of difference between understanding something like this as a sacrifice

or as a catastrophe and a disaster.

The official day in Israel is marked as a national sort of day of remembrance and prayer and all.

And it's actually called specifically the Shoah.

That's the day that it's called.

That's what it was set aside as by the Israeli parliament.

And that's a very, very different...

You can just automatically understand.

It's a very, very...

It's like to go on the direction...

I love this analogy.

And some of you have heard it so many times it puts you to sleep.

But if you go on the Trans-Canada Highway and you're driving west, I can't remember where it is.

I think it's somewhere just past North Bay.

There's a sign on the side of the road saying that you've hit the watershed.

And that up until this point on the road, if you're going from Ottawa towards North Bay,

up until this point in time on the road, the water, any river that you see is flowing south.

But after this point in time, when you see a river, it's flowing north to the Hudson's Bay.

It's a watershed going in radically different directions.

And the same it is.

To understand an event as a catastrophe is a radically different way to understand the event and life

than to understand it as a sacrifice.

And it's this bit of a difference which is captured in this text, believe it or not.

And if you see the difference, it helps to make everything else in the whole letter.

And in fact, it's a doorway into starting to understand the difference the Christian vision makes

as it captures you and as you surrender to it.

So if you would turn your Bibles to 2 Timothy 4, verse 6.

2 Timothy 4:6

We're going to look at this, and then we'll go back and we'll read the whole chapter.

2 Timothy 4, verses 6 and 7.

2 Timothy 4:6

And it's just a small little bit, but it actually opens up into this.

It's a watershed moment in the text.

It's the watershed between a Christian vision of life and a Canadian vision of life.

And it goes like this.

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.

And just to sort of pause here.

I've said throughout these sermons that Paul knows that this time,

God is not going to miraculously deliver him from jail.

That this time, when he leaves the jail, it's only to take that short walk to where the executioner will kill him.

And this is the heart of the text that Paul understands this,

as well as the final bits at the end of 2 Timothy 4.

The word for departure is a perfectly good word,

but in the original language, there's an image attached to it.

And for those of you who are boaters or canoers or sailors,

it's when the image is of untying the ship or untying the canoe from the dock to begin the journey,

to leave the solid land to go on a journey.

And so that's what Paul is saying.

My time, in a sense, to be untethered from this world is about to come.

I'll read it again.

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering,

and the time of my departure has come.

It's arrived.

He doesn't know if it's going to be next week, next month, a couple of months later, but it's arrived.

Verse 7.

I have fought the good fight.

I have finished the race.

I have kept the faith.

Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.

Oh, that might not be on your text up there.

I'm sorry.

Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness,

which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day,

and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing.

Now, this particular thing in verse 6,

for I am already being poured out as a drink offering,

that is literally a reference to the Old Testament sacrifices.

And he's comparing the end of his life as being the same as a sacrifice.

And in fact, in the original language, you can see this here in English as well.

It's partially captured it.

It's passive language.

It's not that he has made his life a sacrifice for God,

as if he could just sort of determine that.

I'm going to make my life a sacrifice for God.

No, what the language is passive is God has made his life a sacrifice,

an offering to himself.

It's passive language.

And so what Paul is understanding is that here he is.

He's in jail.

He's in a dungeon.

He's going to be executed.

But the way that Timothy is to understand this is in keeping with the Christian vision.

His death isn't a catastrophe.

His death is not a disaster.

His death is to be understood as a holocaust,

as a sacrifice, as an offering,

given by God, made by God.

It's something that God has done in his life.

It's taken the bits and pieces of Paul's life.

And this is a very, very, very important thing for all of us to understand,

especially those of us who know a little bit about Paul.

You see, I'm going to talk in a moment about hope,

but this is really, if I put you to sleep for the rest of the sermon,

this is something which is really important to understand,

that when God takes you, when the triune God takes you,

when Jesus takes you, and he takes your life,

and your life can start to become a sacrifice, in a sense,

that your life now has a type of a meaning that comes from God,

it takes all of your life and redeems it,

both before your conversion and after.

You see, the thing about Paul is that Paul was complicit in the murder of Christians.

Paul was complicit in the murder of Christians.

And Paul was a persecutor and a tormentor.

And yet the final word about Paul isn't that he's a persecutor and a tormentor,

but this is the final word about Paul.

You see, this is really important for us to understand.

Some of you are young, haven't made that many horrendous mistakes yet.

Maybe some of you have.

Those of us who are a bit older, you know, maybe our kids didn't turn out right.

Maybe we never were able to have children.

Maybe we were never able to marry.

Our finances might have not been entirely good.

We've had alcohol or drug or gambling issues in our lives.

There's lots of things about our life which we aren't particularly proud about.

But the point of this, you see, is that when God takes your life,

when you get taken up, in a sense, into Christ's sacrifice,

and when you get, in a sense, Christ takes a hold of you,

that not only are those things in the past that you've done that are wrong

or the things that are shameful,

are they dealt with by Jesus on the cross,

it means that whether or not you have a week left or a month left or a year left

or five years left in your life,

that because God is making your life a sacrifice,

there's still things that you can do that can, in a sense,

completely redeem and have the final word about your life

be a very, very different type of word.

Maybe you've been a racist

and you come to faith

and you've even been a racist for a while as a Christian

and then finally you get convicted of the sin of racism.

Well, then maybe one of the things that God is going to call you to

is a deep financial generosity,

not only for efforts that try to deal with reconciliation,

but also to minister to people of very different color,

people that you would have hated before,

or to become a very, very important financial contributor

to an immigrant church,

the same people that you would have hated or despised.

Maybe you've never been blessed

and you view it as a deep failure

to have been able to have had children

or that you've been involved in alcoholism

or some other types of things like this.

But the fact of the matter is that after your conversion,

there's ways that you can be maybe as a mentor,

a supporter, a financial giver,

pouring your life into children

or ministries to children

or to teenagers or to university students.

Paul went from being a person who persecuted Christians

to being a person,

and this is part of God's profound sense of humor,

that Paul was the one out of all of the apostles

who had the greatest role in bringing the Christian faith

to the pagans that he despised before his conversion.

And here he is dying in jail.

He's about to die and he's in jail.

His life has not been a catastrophe.

It's not been a disaster.

He has been caught up by Christ

and his life has meaning.

You see, behind all of this text

is something very different.

The Bible doesn't condemn hope.

One of the things is we all know that hope is needed to live.

If we have a friend

and they start to talk

in terms of having absolutely no hope in life,

it's a very, very difficult thing for us.

And one of the things that we try to do

if we have friends who go through a very, very dark season,

first of all, we call it a dark season.

We don't call it a light season

when a person loses all hope.

To not have any hope is to fall into despair.

And when people fall into despair,

when they fall into hopelessness,

we try to cheer them up.

We try to think of reasons why they should have hope.

You should hope that you can see your sister again

or you can see your best friend

or you can go out or whatever.

We try to give them hope

because we understand at a very, very deep level

that to live a life that is...

to be able to live, you need to have hope.

But at the same time that we have this...

I mean, here's the thing.

If at the end of the day...

The average Canadian, when they talk about death,

talks like this.

Your granny or your mom...

Actually, I shouldn't use a woman as an example.

I use myself.

You know, your father, your papa has died

and he's gone to a better place.

He's in the trees.

He's in the wind.

He's in your heart.

He's watching over you.

Because as Canadians,

we have a very, very hard time actually saying,

your dad's died.

That's it.

It's all over.

It doesn't exist anymore.

Because we have a very, very basic sense

that if actually that's what death really is,

it's the final word, it's the end,

then really, what do a lot of these other smaller,

more minor hopes actually mean?

They end up being like Disney types of things,

greeting card types of things,

things to help us pass the time and get through the day.

But if at the end of the end of the end of the end,

all that means is that you die

and your death is final

and your death is the final word about you,

we all instinctively understand

that to come to think about that

would mean that hope is not real

and that our lesser hopes aren't really hopes at all.

They're not really hopes.

They're just distractions

that distract us from the true and final word

about every human being,

that every human being dies.

And when they die, that's it.

The Christian message is, amongst other things,

is that there's a reason

that human beings hope for the future

and need hope to live.

That's an event and sense how God wired you.

He wired you for more.

If you ever read the Narnia Chronicles

and you come to the seventh and final book

of the Narnia Chronicles,

which talks about basically the end of all things,

it's in a sense a Christian version of the,

a mythic type of story version

of the book of Revelation.

Once they've come to the new heaven and the new earth

and they've died and they're in the new heaven

and the new earth,

there's this constant phrase.

I think it goes higher up and farther in.

Those of you who are Narnia Chronicle experts,

that it is higher up and farther in.

That it's not as if death,

and in a sense death and the new life isn't the end.

I mean, one level it is the end,

but another way for Christians to understand it

is it's actually the beginning.

It's the real beginning.

And C.S. Lewis has perfectly captured this

by this image that we are to go higher up and farther in,

higher up and farther in.

That higher up there's even more glories,

farther in there's even more glories.

And that you go with this type of hope and expectation

of that there's more, there's more, there's more,

there's more.

And that everywhere you are is a place of joy,

but you go to even greater joy,

deeper joy, higher joy, farther into joy.

And that's how God has designed human beings.

And so in a sense,

what to understand the Christian faith

and the Christian message

and the Christian vision is this,

is that hope became fact.

That if you understand the fact that we human beings

understand that there's a need for hope,

it's hard to ground hope,

but because, you know,

in some religions like in Islam

where everything is just fate

and most people don't end up going to whatever the,

to be with Allah,

but most people are fated to be apart from him,

especially women.

I think in Islam, I don't know,

it says very, very, very few women

will actually be in their heaven.

And in Buddhism and Hinduism,

the end of all of the cycles of death and rebirth

and death and rebirth and death and rebirth

is really, in a sense, a final death,

a merging with the one

where you lose any type of being yourself

or being unique.

It's just another way to describe death,

but it's trying to describe death

as if it's somehow a positive thing,

but to completely and utterly lose your existence

and lose your identity

is just the same as a secular understanding of death.

And so we have this sense of hope,

all of these hopes,

and in a sense,

what the Christians understand is

is that hope became a fact.

Hope took on flesh.

Hope walked among us.

And it's emphasized

because in the New Testament,

time and time and time again,

they don't just talk of Jesus,

although they use his word,

and they use Jesus

and they add the word Christ.

And it's really important

that those two words go together.

You see, the word Jesus emphasizes the fact.

It means that if you were able to go back in time

and see Jesus

and you were able to learn the language that he spoke,

you'd be able to ask him,

and he would tell you precisely

why his mother's hummus

was better than anybody else's hummus.

And he would be able to tell you

in Jerusalem where the best baker was

to get the absolute best bread.

And he would be able to tell you

the types,

how much garlic he liked in his tabbouleh.

One of the wonderful things about the Bible

is that it doesn't tell us those things.

I mean, otherwise,

we'd all have to have Jesus's taste

in garlic in our tabbouleh.

Some of us don't even like tabbouleh.

I love tabbouleh, by the way.

Some of you don't like it.

Some of you wonder what's tabbouleh.

You can go and look it up.

Go to a Lebanese restaurant.

Have some.

It's delicious.

But the point is that Jesus is historical.

You go back.

He had a beard.

He had skin.

He cried.

He was hungry.

He had to walk places.

He talked.

He did things in the real world

that there's even pagan sources

that talk about the reality of the Jesus

that actually existed.

But Christians never just refer to him as Jesus.

They also call him Christ.

Christ Jesus or Jesus the Christ.

And Christ is just sort of a different way

of saying the word Messiah.

And what the Jewish people come to understand

is with the word Messiah,

it technically just means anointed one.

But what it means for Jewish people

is that in a sense,

all of the hopes of the Jewish people,

all of the promises that God has made

to the Jewish people,

all of the meaning in life that God has said

is available to the Jewish people

in their scriptures,

that all of those, in some sense,

they all know that that has been incomplete.

They're waiting for it to come

to complete and utter fulfillment and fruition.

All of the longings,

all of the hopes,

all of the dreams,

all of the sense of redemption

and of the new heaven and the new earth,

all of these things get captured

with this word Christ, Messiah.

And when Christians say Jesus is the Christ,

they're saying that this man,

the Christ,

all these hopes,

all these dreams,

all these promises

that they hope will be fulfilled,

that this hope becomes fact.

And the hope that becomes fact

meets death.

And hope wins.

In fact,

to sort of just play with a phrase,

it looks at first as if

Jesus is just like every other man

and death is swallowed.

Jesus.

But what we understand

is that on the third day,

as a fact,

the grave is empty.

On the third day,

as a fact,

the stone is rolled away,

not so Jesus can get out,

but so people can come in

to see that the grave is empty.

And what we know as a fact

is the body was never found.

And what we know as a fact

is that Jesus appeared alive,

resurrected,

to many different people

over quite a period of time.

We know the body was never found.

We know that these are facts.

And so it looked,

on Good Friday,

in fact,

it appeared,

on Good Friday,

that death

had swallowed hope.

But Christians now understand

that hope

swallowed

death.

And this means

that there is a hope

which is true,

a hope which is

thick,

a hope which has substance,

a hope upon which

you can base your life,

a hope that can draw you

into the future,

a hope

that is connected

to meaning

and significance

and direction

that can start to understand

and become the lens

by which you look at politics

and you look at COVID

and you look at economics

and you look at the arts.

It's a hope

that not only

is talking about these things,

but can be something

that can be the guide

to having your family

and how you,

to shape and structure

your marriage,

that there is this vision

that comes

that hope

is real,

not just any hope,

not just,

you know,

there can be vain

and cruel hopes.

The Nazis had a hope

that they could exterminate

the Jewish people.

That's a vile,

repulsive hope.

Slave owners

and racists

had vile,

repulsive hopes

of diminishing

and destroying

and treating human beings

as if they're even worse

than animals.

And those are vile,

destructive,

evil hopes.

And what basis

do we have to say

that those are vile,

destructive,

evil hopes?

We have a basis

to say that

because hope

is a fact

and hope

met death

and triumphed

over death

and swallowed death

and that true,

deep hope

is the hope

that judges

all human hopes.

To show some

is vain,

some is completely

and utterly foolish

and some is deeply evil

and to be completely

and utterly rejected

by Christians

and all people.

But we should be the leaders

in rejecting

cruel,

evil,

false,

vain,

self-flattering,

deceptive,

delusional hopes.

Why?

Because hope

became a fact

and met death

and defeated death

and that's the Christian vision.

And in this Christian vision,

when we understand

that hope

has triumphed,

it's come,

it's a fact,

it's triumphed,

it starts to mean

that the things

in your life

don't necessarily

have to be things

without meaning

or things without hope.

they don't have to be

understood

as a shoah

but can be understood

as a sacrifice,

something that God

takes

and redeems

and can bring good

out of.

Let's just finish

by looking through

the whole text.

So if you turn in your Bibles

or read the whole text

just to bring a few comments

to it as we bring it

to a close

because,

you see,

once you understand

this thing

about the difference

between a shoah

and a holocaust,

it helps you to understand

how Paul says

the things he says

and it helps to get

more shape

to the Christian vision

of life.

Verse 1,

Notice that,

Christ Jesus,

not just Jesus

but Christ Jesus

who is to judge

the living and the dead

and by his appearing

in his kingdom

preach the word.

That word preach,

by the way,

could also be translated

as herald,

not H-A-R-O-L-D

the name

but herald

as in the town herald.

A herald is one

who doesn't invent something,

a message,

but carries a message

from the king

to the people

and that's,

in a sense,

what a church is to do.

We are,

in a sense,

these next nine things

which are to be described

as imperatives,

it's helping us

to understand

what the local church

is to be like,

that the local church

is to study the Bible,

to study the word,

to understand the gospel

and then it's not so we can,

you know,

I think I could improve on that,

I think there's ways

that we could make that

like a little bit better,

I need to wordsmith

this stuff for God

because he got it

a little bit right,

I need to be a spin doctor

for God.

No,

the goal of the church

is to actually try to hear

the Bible

more and more clearly

and as we hear the Bible

to look out at the world

and see how things are wrong

and be willing to say things

even if it offends people.

Like,

one of the great mysteries of life

is that how is it

that Alabama

could be one of the most

evangelical states

in the United States

but also have so much racism?

Like,

how is that possible?

And we want to be a people

who look at the word

and even if the world

doesn't want us

to talk about sexuality

or doesn't want us

to talk about euthanasia,

it doesn't want us

to talk about abortion,

it doesn't want us

to talk about certain types

of things,

we need to be people

who look at the word

and then use the word

to judge

and understand the world

and not to condemn

the world in a way

that doesn't have it hope

but to come in

and to be salt and light

and say,

listen,

you know,

the Bible doesn't even

have the category of race.

Do you realize that?

The Bible doesn't have

a category for race.

There's only one category

in the Bible

and that's human.

That's the only category.

And it doesn't matter

if you're in China

or if you're in Nigeria

or you're in Argentina

or you're in Malaysia,

it doesn't matter

if you're in England

or France or Canada,

there's only human.

And every human being,

whether it's in the womb

or a person

with severe mental illness

or a person

at the end of life

ravaged body with disease,

you're made in the image of God

and have a worth

and a dignity

that should be respected.

And even if the world

doesn't like that,

we shouldn't be shaped

by the world.

Our goal is to understand

the word

and to faithfully proclaim it.

That's the job of the church.

Preach the word,

be ready in season

and out of season.

That means if it's 1951

and Christianity is on the rise

or if it's 2021

and people don't like Christianity,

do the same thing.

Reprove is another word

for correct.

Rebuke is rebuke.

Exhort is another word

for encourage.

You do this with complete patience

and teaching.

For the time is coming

when people will not endure

sound teaching

but having itching ears,

they will accumulate

for themselves teachers

to suit their own passions

and will turn away

from listening to the truth

and wander off

into the myths.

Myths of the prosperity gospel.

Myths of racism.

Myths of class superiority.

Myths that

upper class people

are worth more

than working class people.

As for you,

always be sober minded

and endure suffering.

Do the work of evangelists.

Fulfill your ministry.

The evangelist says

that we're to look beyond.

You see,

it's not just a matter

to say to the Nazi

or to the communist

that what you're doing

is evil.

What's more important

is not only say

that it's evil

but that God loves you

and he wants you

to be his child

by adoption and grace.

He wants you to lay down

your racism,

lay down your communism,

lay down your greed,

lay down your lust for power,

lay down your ungenerous heart

and allow the loving arms

of Jesus who died for you,

who defeated death,

to put his arms around you

and to include you in himself

so that you will have a hope

that is stronger

and deeper than death.

Verse 6,

Here's one of the things.

The Bible doesn't say

that all of our lesser hopes

don't matter.

What it does

is it reorders our hopes

in light of this

ultimate hope

of being reconciled

and reunited to God

in a sense that

when we die

and when the new heaven

and the new earth comes,

our cry will be farther up,

higher in.

And we run that race

and swim those rivers

and climb those mountains

with redeemed humanity.

But in the meantime,

our other hopes

are put in proper place

and put in order

and sometimes

we will sacrifice them

for that great

and supreme hope.

And in the same way,

the Bible doesn't tell you

that you never pay attention

to what other people think.

It doesn't want you

to be completely

and utterly antisocial

as if you were a person

who cannot pick up

on social cues.

But what the Bible

wants you to understand

is how people think

about you need

to be put in order

and what ultimately

finally matters

is the final word

about you

is made by the Lord

Jesus Christ

and His word

is the word

that matters the most.

And you are to hear

the words of other people

in light of your knowledge

of what His final word

will be about you.

Verse 9,

Do your best

to come to me soon

for Demas

in love with his present world

has deserted me

and gone to Thessalonica.

That's bad.

Crescens

has gone to Galatia.

See, here it is

that Paul knows

he's going to die

but he sends Crescens

to Galatia

a place in what

we would now call Turkey.

He sends Titus

to Dalmatia

what we would now

call Croatia.

Luke alone

is with me.

Get Mark

and bring him with you

for he is very useful

to me for ministry.

Tychicus I have sent

to Ephesus

and when you come

bring the cloak

that I left with Carpus

at Troas

also the books

and above all

the parchments.

Alexander the coppersmith

did me great harm.

The Lord will repay him

according to his deeds.

Beware of him yourself

for he strongly opposed

our message.

At my first defense

no one came

to stand by me

but all deserted me.

May I not be charged

against them.

But the Lord stood by me

and strengthened me

so that through me

the message

might be fully proclaimed

and all the Gentiles

might hear it

so I was rescued

from the lion's mouth.

The Lord will rescue me

from every evil deed

and bring me safely

into his heavenly kingdom.

To him be the glory

forever and ever.

Amen.

Just pause here

as part of this

Christian vision.

Paul

the people

who put him in jail

the people

who were

charging him

the people

who wanted

to put him to death

what does he say?

I want them

to hear the gospel.

If you go back

and you look

at all of those names

there's people

who had been pagans

their entire lives

people who had been

Jewish

people from many

many people

different people groups

and as you'll see

at the end

when he mentions

these last few names

in a moment

what does he call them all?

He calls them

his brothers and sisters.

that's the Christian category

brothers and sisters

that's the Christian vision

and it's the Christian vision

that it would matter to you

I mean

God will deal

with those

who

completely

and utterly

reject all of these things

and

at the end of the day

will choose greed

over hope

true hope

they'll choose racism

over true hope

they'll choose oppression

over true hope

they'll choose personal power

over true hope

and that's in God's hands

but can I tell you

about Jesus?

Verse 19

greet Prisca and Aquila

it's men and women as well

in the household

of Anisiphorus

Erastus remained at Corinth

and I left Trophimus

who was ill

at Miletus

do your best to come

before winter

Eubulus sends greetings

to you

as do Pudens

and Linus

and Claudia

and all the brothers

and sisters

the Lord be with your spirit

grace be with you

just two final things

and it's in closing

you notice what Paul has done

he's talking about

the people who are with him now

he just said earlier

that those

nobody stood by

when he actually got arrested

and almost got killed

right the first time

he uses this powerful image

of being in the lion's mouth

but God does something

to drop him

from the lion's mouth

to give him this extra season

of time

to proclaim the message

including the message

to the lion

and what does he say now

about these people

who've now come back around

and he doesn't say

you dirty rats

why did you abandon me

he calls them his brothers

and sisters

he forgives them

like isn't that

a captivating vision

that you could be so

have hope

swallow you up

true deep hope

swallow you up

in such a way

that when you think

of others

at the end of your life

it's not

it's not

gosh I wish

I could have gotten them

gosh I hope

terrible things

happen to them

but that the final word

that's on your

that the thoughts

in your head

and the words

on your lip

are forgiveness

like isn't that

a more powerful vision

to live by

that hope

became a fact

that hope

swallowed death

that there is

that there is a true hope

and that as you're

shaped by that hope

your words

are words

of forgiveness

and then the very

final word

the Lord be with

your spirit

grace be with you

that the final words

that we have

the words of Paul

now come to an end

he obviously spoke others

but the words

that are recorded

his final words

are words of blessing

isn't that a compelling vision

to live a life

that is marked

more and more

by the ability

to forgive

that's more and more

concerned with reconciliation

that is more and more

concerned to bless

and it all emerges

out of true hope

please stand

for those of us

who are Christians

every Sunday

is an opportunity

to renew the vision

that's why we need

to gather in church

whether it's in person

or through YouTube

we need to renew

the vision

and all I can say

is if you are

on the outside

of the Christian faith

you don't know

where you are

with Jesus

all I can say

to you

is this is a very

person

and you know

maybe if you're

a type of a

visual person

or a person

who likes to do

things

like

empty your hands

and get on your knees

and say hope

please take me

and capture me

Jesus

you are the true hope

take me

and capture me

you know my fears

about being captured

by you

you know my fears

about belonging to you

you know my fears

that I will be thought

of as weird

Father

Jesus

I fall on my knees

I can't capture hope

but I believe

and trust

what the Bible says

that you can capture me

and I surrender

to you

let's bow our heads

in prayer

Father we ask

that

this vision

of what the Christian

life is

this vision

of

Holocaust

of

sacrifice

versus

Shoah

of catastrophe

and disaster

Father

it's

hearts

we long

for this

at the same time

Father

it can be hard

to keep it

and Father

we give you

thanks and praise

that you know

this about us

you know

how weak

we are

it was your

intention

that we have

mentors

and discipleship

and small

groups

and

spiritual

friends

and weekly

worship

to be

recaptured

to recapture

the vision

to rekindle

the vision

rekindle

the hope

Father

we give

into your

hands

those things

that we

despair of

those things

that we

confused about

and we don't

know what to

do

Father

we give

them

into your

hands

and we

ask

Father

that you

fill us

with hope

a hope

that allows

us to

press into

these things

and to

walk towards

them

and to

deal with

them

all for

your glory

and the

furtherance

of your

kingdom

and we

ask all

these things

in the name

of Jesus

your son

and our

savior

and all

God's

people said

amen