"The Good Fight of Faith" 1 Timothy 6:11-16 Sunday Evening Worship Service

If you have your copy of God's word, please turn to First Timothy chapter six.

We will be looking at that together.

First Timothy chapter six.

Ten thousand men marched together into a small Pennsylvania town.

They were cold, exhausted, ill-equipped, ill-supplied, barely clothed.

Just twenty miles away from them, their enemy slept securely in beds that they had just captured, eating hot meals around fireplaces that were not their own, because they had just taken the capital city of a fledgling nation.

And so General Washington and his underdog Continental Army, camped at Valley Forge, were probably the most miserable people on the planet at that time.

British bullets had taken their toll on them.

Disease, hunger, and freezing temperatures even more so.

But there was one challenge that General Washington was facing that was more dangerous than them all.

An epidemic of desertion.

Desertion was a perennial problem for the American forces.

The zeal of patriotic fervor often grew cold in the face of the harsh realities of military life.

It's estimated that around twenty-five percent of the continental forces eventually deserted and abandoned their post over the course of the war.

Enlisting is easy.

Enduring is something different.

Every army, from time immemorial all the way today, has endured the reality of desertion.

Alexander's men refused to march any further.

Everyone faces desertion.

Soldiers who once upon a time took an oath to take up arms, but turned back when the times got tough.

They abandoned their duty, they forsake their comrades, and they discard their armor along with their honor.

And Paul says to Timothy, don't let that happen to you.

Don't turn back.

Let's read our passage this evening, 1 Timothy chapter 6.

1 Timothy 6 · chapter mention

We'll begin in verse 11.

Paul writes, But as for you, O man of God, flee these things.

Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.

Fight the good fight of the faith.

Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

I charge you, in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time.

He who is blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see, to him be honor in eternal dominion.

Amen.

This letter, 1 Timothy, is a word of exhortation and encouragement from the Apostle Paul to his protege Timothy.

He's reminding Timothy as well as us exactly what is expected of a pastor.

In keeping with the martial theme of the message, 1 Timothy is the standing orders of pastoral ministry.

This is what every pastor is expected to do and expected to be to fulfill his duty.

Because that is precisely who Timothy is and what Timothy has been called to do, to serve as a pastor.

That's why Paul addresses him as he does here with this title, man of God.

Now, most of you here tonight know that I had the privilege of serving in the Marine Corps for 10 years.

And Marines love our nicknames.

I take no offense if you want to call me a jarhead later.

That's fine.

And in fact, unless you're a crusty old sergeant major wielding a knife hand, I'm totally okay with Devil Dog.

Because those terms, those titles given to me, I know where they come from and I know what they're supposed to mean.

And they they connect me to a lineage of honor and courage that was forged on the battlefields of Bellawood and Guadalcanal.

I wear them as a badge of honor when someone calls me that.

Surely something similar must have gone through Timothy's mind when Paul attributes this title to him, man of God?

A mixture of both humility and honor surging through him to realize all that's captured in that title, man of God.

It's the description that is used to describe Moses in Deuteronomy 33.

Moses, now he's a man of God.

So many of the Old Testament prophets had that same moniker.

Samuel, David, Elijah, all men of God.

And so in giving this title to Timothy, Paul is reminding him that he has joined the company of God's chosen servants by becoming a pastor.

He has been bestowed with the honor as well as the responsibility to shepherd God's sheep on behalf of Jesus, the chief shepherd.

There is no greater title that anyone could receive.

And as Paul well knew, this stewardship to serve as a pastor is a profound responsibility to set the example of godliness for the flock that's been entrusted to your care.

Or the way Paul explains it to Titus that in all respects you should show yourself as a model of good works.

And so, in one respect, it is Paul's intention as the author to write here a particular calling addressed to pastors, a calling to faithfulness, which is so desperately needed today.

And so tonight, I am preaching, first of all, to myself.

But if it's true that Timothy is supposed to serve as an example, if it's true that Titus's job involved being a model for the congregation, if the shepherds are there to show the sheep what it looks like to walk following God, then Paul's exhortations and his encouragements do not terminate on Timothy, but they extend to every one of us sitting here tonight.

Every one of us is called to follow in these footsteps, to walk as a man of God.

So now hear Paul's encouragement.

Stay in the fight.

But it's a good fight.

Look at verse 11 in the beginning of verse 12.

But as for you, O man of God, flee these things.

Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, and gentleness.

Fight the good fight of the faith.

Paul in these two verses chooses three verbs.

Those three verbs become very vivid mental images for us of what the Christian life is going to look like in this fight.

He says, first flee.

There is something that you are supposed to run away from.

He says, pursue.

There is something you're supposed to run after and fight.

There is something that you are supposed to contend for.

Well, let's flee first.

Paul says, flee from these things.

Well, what is it you're supposed to run away from, Paul?

As for you, O man of God, flee from these things.

What things?

Well, the things he's just been talking about, of course.

If you were to scroll your eyes up to the preceding paragraph on your page, you'll see that Paul's primary concern at this point in this letter to Timothy is about the danger of material wealth, of material possessions, of riches and money.

That's what he is warning Timothy to run away from.

The same trap that has captured so many of the false teachers that Timothy was contending with there in Ephesus.

And Paul is saying, Timothy, run away.

You've probably heard somewhere that love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

Well, somewhere is 1 Timothy 6.

That's where you heard it.

And it is indeed true.

Paul knows something that we so easily forget that money is a quicksand for our hearts.

And it is exceptionally hard to pull yourself back out once you have let it get hold of you.

Of course, money isn't intrinsically bad.

But money is magnetic.

Not in real life, but in the metaphor.

And the more of it that you pile up, the stronger the pull it has on your heart.

And if you're not vigilant when it comes to money and the way you think about wealth, if you're not paying attention, it will latch onto your heart and it will drag you into submission because that is where money is going to take you.

That's what happens to wealth.

It begins to exert dominion over your desires.

Why else do you think Jesus calls it a master in Matthew chapter 6?

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

No one can serve two masters, Jesus says.

Either you will love one and be devoted to one, or you will love the other.

No one can serve both God and money.

Money is trying to control you.

And if you allow material prosperity to take a prominent place in your life, it won't rest until it is in charge of your life.

Eventually, you're going to start to notice that all of your conversations are about how you're spending your money, or how you're saving your money, or what you're finally going to do if you get that promotion.

Or what's going to happen if you don't get your cost of living increase approved by the congregation.

That begins to be the thing you talk about all the time.

You can't find time to read your Bible, and yet you found time to read that review about the new iPhone that's got all the cool features that are finally going to make your life easy and suit.

Greediness and worldliness are snares, Paul says.

They are traps, but they are slow-moving traps.

They don't snap it down on you.

You'd see them coming if they did.

Rather, greed slowly coils its way around your heart and squeezes it and squeezes it until there's not room for anything else but itself.

And in the upper paragraph, what Paul was talking about previously, he says to Timothy that you guard yourself against greed by cultivating contentment.

Amen.

Be content with God's good blessing and provision of your life.

If you have food and clothing and shelter, be happy, Paul says.

Amen.

But here he just cuts straight to the chase and says, Timothy, flee.

Run away from it as fast as you can.

And that's the mistake that we make so often.

We think that we can tiptoe past temptation and pick our way through without falling in.

But we never do.

If you carry fire next to your chest, your clothes are gonna smell like smoke and eventually you're gonna get burned.

Do you want to know the safest way to navigate through a minefield?

Go the other direction.

And Paul says, don't walk, run the other direction.

Flee from greed and material possessions.

Now, there are lots of other things that we're called to flee from, especially pastors, Paul says in his letters.

We're supposed to flee from sexual sin in 1 Corinthians 6.

We're supposed to flee from idolatry in 1 Corinthians 10.

We're supposed to flee from youthful lust in 2 Timothy 2, 22.

But here Paul is just reminding us that greed is the most insipid of temptations.

Don't toy with it, don't play with it, don't flirt with it.

Flee from it.

So if you're running away from greed, then you're running towards something else.

What are you gonna find in the other direction?

That's where Paul goes next.

Paul lists here six Christian virtues.

Ryan and I did not coordinate on our sermons from the Sunday morning and Sunday evening, but the Holy Spirit did.

So Paul now begins to list Christian virtues that are in response to that question: what am I running towards?

He says, righteousness and godliness, faith and love, steadfastness and gentleness.

And it is no exaggeration to say that each and every one of those virtues could be its own standalone sermon, but we'll look at them just briefly tonight.

And as you read them, it seems that Paul has intentionally ordered them to function in pairs.

Three pairs of two.

First, you see righteousness and godliness.

Taken together, these two virtues describe the Christian's attitude towards holiness and obedience.

Righteousness is the Greek word dikaiosune.

It's a very common word in the New Testament.

It's one you might have even heard.

And it can be used in a couple of ways.

In one sense, righteousness is used to describe our right standing before the holy God because of the work of Jesus counted to us.

We would say that's the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

I, though a sinner, am counted as righteous because of Jesus Christ.

But that's clearly not what Paul is talking about here.

Because Paul tells Timothy, pursue this thing, run after it, work for it, put in a little bit of sweat equity, my friend.

And nobody works for the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

In fact, you cannot work for it.

By working for it, you remove yourself from the possibility of it.

Paul here is using the word righteousness in the other sense of the word to describe that kind of qualitative behavior a person can practice that corresponds with the holy commandments of God.

It is righteousness when the things that we think and the things that we say and the things that we do correspond to God's commands for us.

That is righteousness.

Really, Paul's just saying obedience.

Run after obedience.

Chase it down.

Find all the commands of Christ and do them.

That is the mission statement of the church, to make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and then teaching them to observe all that he commanded us.

That's righteousness.

With it comes godliness.

Godliness is the kind of internal ballast on the other side of external righteousness.

It's the word that's describing the internal attitude of reverence and love for God, which is the fountain from which all of our external acts of righteousness will flow.

The good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, brings forth what is good, Jesus says.

That's godliness.

Godliness is that internal attitude in your heart that recognizes that God is indeed holy.

And while his holiness is terrifying, it is also enrapturing.

Godliness is the recognition that God is just as holy as you think he is, and even more so, and you still long to be in fellowship with him.

It is that uniquely Christian disposition that wants to march in step with God, that's godliness.

Paul says, run after that.

Pursue that attitude in your heart.

That doesn't shy away from God's holiness, but reverently longs to be in step with it.

The next pair you get are faith and love, the two cardinal virtues, virtues, if you will, of the Christian life: faith and love.

Faith here speaks of that personal, subjective trust that an individual places in the Lord.

It's that word to describe that you knowing and believing and having confidence that God is who he has revealed himself to be, that he has done exactly what he said he has done, that he's going to do everything he has promised to do.

And you cast your lot on him.

You cast your trust, your hope, your confidence, all that you have, you lean on him to be all that he has revealed himself to be.

That's faith.

Then of course you have love, faith's constant companion.

They never go anywhere apart from each other.

Love is one of those handful of words where every attempt to define it falls short and feels hollow.

Defining love is a little bit like analyzing the geometry of the Mona Lisa.

Sure, you can do it, but it's kind of weird.

It's a virtue that must be experienced rather than analyzed, and once experienced, it renders all analysis redundant.

This morning Ryan reminded us that it's more than a verb, but it is also always active.

This experience of love in the Christian.

Love is the affection for another which heats up the boilers of action and stokes the fires of service.

That's love.

Love is the flame which melts the ice of indifference and tears off the calluses of your complacency towards others.

Love is the benevolent desire for another person's flourishing, which transforms sacrifice into joy and duty into devotion.

That is love.

It is fixing your joy one another.

Love is the new commandment which Jesus left us.

Love one another, even as I have loved you.

And in so doing, love is thus the fulfillment of the law.

So pursue it.

Chase after it.

The third pair that you get.

Seem to be two virtues that govern the Christian's relationship to the world: steadfastness and gentleness.

Steadfastness is a word that's always used in reference to trials.

It's always used in reference to the endurance of standing up under difficulty, under distress, under affliction.

That's the word for steadfastness.

This world is going to have affliction and hardship.

And that's true for the Christian as much as it is for anyone else.

The Christian is called to stand up under it, to endure, to be steadfast.

The Christian perseveres despite the difficulties that face him because God is the one that holds the Christian fast in that moment.

Thus, we're called to pursue not our own personal security in the midst of affliction, but that attitude of determined stick toitiveness that says, I will stay with you, Lord.

No matter what comes, when waves hit the boat, when storms beat the sides of the house, you remember you're founded on the rock, and it will hold you up.

But lest we be tempted to allow our endurance to become tempered by the fires of adversity into a harsh and rigid demeanor, Paul encourages us likewise to pursue gentleness.

Gentleness.

Arrogance, ambivalence, aggressiveness, anger, they have no part of the Christian's life.

They do not correspond to the character of Christ.

The Christ who was so gentle that he would not extinguish a smoldering wick or break a bruised reed.

The Christ who was so firm with the Pharisees that he was immovable on the truth, and yet so gentle in his demeanor that the children would rush to come on him.

That's what we're called to do.

And these six virtues that Paul gives us here are not an exhaustive list, but they are a comprehensive list.

And they're not an arbitrary list.

Because in each of these virtues, righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness, what he is telling you to do is exactly what we heard this morning from Colossians, to put on Christ.

To pursue Christ-likeness.

The Jesus who was so perfectly righteous, he never violated God's law, not even a fraction of an inch away from truth.

The Jesus who was so in tuned with the will of the Father that all he sought to do was what the Father had revealed for him to do.

He could do nothing apart from what he saw the Father doing, that is godliness.

The Jesus who is filled with faithfulness to his promises and faithfulness to his words that merit the kind of trust that we're called to play.

The kind of Jesus who so perfectly loved us even when we were sinners that he died for us.

The Jesus who was immovably steadfast and compassionately gentle.

Run after that.

Pursue that.

Does that surprise you?

It's to persecute.

And that should, I hope, help you grasp some of the tenacity, the ferociousness with which we are called to chase after this kind of Christian virtue in our life.

Before Paul was saved on the Damascus Road, he was a persecutor, a pursuer of Christians.

I ask you, did Paul just kind of sit around and listlessly, aimlessly wander the streets on the off chance that he'd bump into a Christian and assume that, you know, if he didn't do anything, eventually they would come his way?

Absolutely not.

And it's certainly not the way Paul, the persecutor of the church, would have thought about the word pursue.

No, he diligently searched for Christians, door by door, house by house, town by town, until he found them and made them his.

So I ask you then, how diligently are you pursuing righteousness?

Do you seek after it?

Are you in a house by house, door by door, street by street, manhunt for gentleness?

Probably not.

Does love slip away under your nose because you were distracted?

Run after these virtues.

Pursue them.

Hunt them down until they are yours.

And here's the thing: they want to be caught.

They want to be yours.

You flee, you run away from greediness.

You pursue, you run after Christian virtue, and you fight.

The third image that Paul gives us is one of fighting.

It's the same word that's used for an athletic competition to exert yourself with maximum effort.

We must not lose sight of the fact that this is actually a conflict.

Christians, you find yourselves drafted in a time of war.

A war which Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2 is against the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Those are your adversaries.

This world system that rejects God and rejects his design.

Your own internal flesh that tempts and tries to lure you away from holiness and obedience, and Satan himself, the accuser of the brethren, those are your enemies.

That's the fight you're in.

And so Paul is telling us that we must earnestly contend to the point of agony, to the maximum amount of exertion that we have for the faith.

I think what Paul is saying here is that we are called to earnestly contend for the truth, God's truth, as well as for the life of obedience to that truth that we have been called to pursue.

We fight for it.

We don't shrink away when the going gets tough.

So you might ask then, well, what would it look like to contend for the truth against the world?

How would those battle lines be drawn out?

Well, it would look at least like not being ashamed to reject worldly ideologies and worldly values and worldly power.

And in place of them to proclaim a heavenly truth and an eternal kingdom that is far superior to anything this world has to offer.

What would it look like to fight against the flesh?

It would look like putting to death your sinful desires by the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit, by practicing those spiritual disciplines, those means of grace by which God is at work in you, both to will and to do according to his good pleasure.

It would look like being on your knees in prayer, asking God to sanctify you, reading his word and letting it have its work in you who believe, coming and fellowshipping with the saints, and serving in the church and letting God do his work in you.

What would it look like to fight against the devil?

It would look like recognizing that Satan is real and active and prowling about like a roaring lion seeking to devour people.

As well as remembering that Satan is the accuser of the brethren.

He'll never bring you into his kingdom.

You've sinned more than Jesus can save.

That's the fight.

And in all of them, you run to Christ.

You put on his character, you trust in his power, in his atoning work.

Flee, pursue, fight.

Three commands, by the way, which all come to us in the present tense, meaning that they are an ongoing, ever active reality of the Christian life.

When I was in Iraq, my boss used to tell me the bad guys never take a day off, so you can't either.

Amen.

And it's true, my friends, the world, the flesh, and the devil never take a ceasefire.

Greed tries to fill your mind with beach houses, but it never takes a vacation day.

The temptation to become complacent and our cultivation of Christian character always lingers around nipping at your heels, hoping that you will slack.

And we shouldn't be surprised that the Christian life involves struggle and effort and obedience.

How did Jesus describe discipleship to his disciples?

If anyone would come after me, he must kick back, relax, have a drink.

It'll all work out in the end.

You don't have to do anything.

Of course not.

He said, if anyone would come after me, he must take up his cross daily and follow after me.

Or as Paul says it here, he must fight the good fight.

And it is a good fight.

It's a joyful struggle.

To die to self in order to gain eternal life, there could be no more glorious combat than that.

Which is exactly where Paul goes next in verse 12.

He says, Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

Paul tells Timothy to take hold of eternal life.

Of course, he does not mean here that Timothy does not have eternal life or that he needs to receive salvation as if he didn't already possess it.

He's already called Timothy a man of God.

That's not what he means.

Rather, he is encouraging Timothy to hold fast to the new gift of eternal life that he has already received, to take hold of it and grasp it.

And you can kind of get a sense of the tension in salvation through Paul's two verbs in verse 12.

Take hold, active tense, grasp it of the eternal life to which you were called, passive tense, something happened to you.

Timothy did not possess eternal life because he worked so hard to hunt it down and grab hold of it.

He received eternal life because he was called to it, irresistibly by the sovereign God who from before the foundation of the earth set his love on Timothy.

The sovereign God who in eternity past called Timothy his own and drew him in time to an eternal life, the same way he does with every believer.

And here Paul is saying to grab hold of that redemptive reality with both hands and do not let go of it.

Draw it close to you.

Take it in close to your confidence.

Eternal life, the new life of the believer, resurrection life cannot be merely an abstract concept that you keep at arm's length safely away from you.

It cannot just be an intellectual, theological idea that you affirm.

The eternal life that Christ secures for us and calls us to is an intimate, everyday, practical experience of communion with the Son of God who will never die.

It is a reality we must allow to permeate every part of us.

Eternity with Christ colors every decision we make, every thought we have, every word and action and desire the Christian has.

At least it should.

It's supposed to, it's designed to.

This truth that in the gospel we come to believe God has saved us and he has destined us for an eternity in glory with him in his kingdom reorients every perspective of the believer.

We belong to Christ.

We are united to Christ.

We have died in his death, we are resurrected in his resurrection.

That's the good confession that Timothy made.

Most likely when Paul says that, he's referring back to Timothy when he expressed those words of submission and obedience to Jesus as both his Savior and His Lord when he first came to faith, maybe at the moment of his baptism.

The Christian life, eternal life, begins with confession.

That's why Paul says in Romans 10, verses we know so well, that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

It's why when we do baptisms here at Emmanuel Bible Church, you will always hear me ask a person two questions.

Do you believe that Jesus' death on the cross was the final and complete atonement for every one of your sins?

Is Jesus your Savior?

Yes.

And is it your desire to follow him in obedience and love for the rest of your life?

Is Jesus your Lord?

Yes.

That's the good confession.

It's the confession that every Christian must make.

And without which saving faith does not abide.

And then Paul turns up the heat on Timothy and calls both God the Father and Jesus Christ as witnesses to his command to Timothy to fight the good fight.

And if you notice in that verse, that Paul also reminds us that Jesus likewise made the good confession before Pontius Pilate.

And what does that mean?

Jesus made the good confession?

Do you remember that scene in the Gospels?

Jesus, beaten, exhausted, tortured, mocked, humiliated, is dragged before Pontius Pilate, the governor of the Roman province, who asks him, without any sense of the irony, are you the king of the Jews?

Everything hangs in the balance.

Pilate was looking for an excuse to release Jesus.

All it would have taken was one word, one denial, one equivocation, one vague response, and the cross goes away.

The cup could pass.

But with it would pass salvation and atonement and deliverance for his people.

No redemption, no rescue, no glory.

But in that moment, Jesus, who is himself the faithful God, again shows himself to be faithful to his word, faithful to his promises, faithful to his father.

My kingdom is not of this world.

You say that I am a king, for this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth.

That was Jesus' good confession.

And on it, your salvation hung.

And with that, as the example, with the good confession of the faithful King as his example, now Paul calls Timothy, and all of us fight the good fight.

With Jesus as the one you are following, now keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach, verse 14.

Hold fast to that confession of faith that you have in Jesus Christ.

You call him your Savior from your sin.

So keep your sin far from you.

You call him your Lord, so obey his commands.

And all the while you do it, looking forward for the day when the good king is going to return.

You fight the good fight.

You hold fast the good confession, and you hope for the good king.

Who is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see.

To him be honor and eternal dominion.

Amen.

Christian, you are in a fight.

That is where you have been placed, but the outcome is not in doubt.

God has appointed a day when Jesus is going to return.

What Paul here calls the proper time.

And on that day, the war will be over for good.

Of that day, no one knows the hour, the day, only the Father in heaven knows.

So you do not know when that day is going to come, but you know exactly what is going to come on that day.

That the very same Jesus who ascended into heaven from the Mount of Olives is going to break open the heavens and descend, ringed in fire on the clouds and attended by holy angels.

He will carry in his hands both justice and rescue, condemnation and reward.

And on that day, every impotent weapon of the world and the devil will fall harmlessly to the ground.

Even the struggle against your own sinful flesh will be no more, because the King of kings and the Lord of Lords will have returned.

And Paul calls him here the blessed and only sovereign, for so he is.

He alone possesses all goodness and all power.

His purpose is always good, and no one and nothing can stay his hand from doing all he proposes to do.

Paul says, He possesses immortality.

Do you know why?

Because he is the one who conquered death.

In him there will never again be decay or dying.

He comes to give everlasting life.

He is the one who dwells in unapproachable light, radiating with a pure, blazing holiness which would utterly consume any who would dare approach his throne, and he will come and make his glory known on the earth.

Herein, then will be the fulfillment of Jesus' promise in the Sermon on the Mount.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Dear friends, you could not imagine anything more beautiful, more rapturous, more glorious than to see the King, the true King, the King from which all earthly rulers and crowns are but vaporous shadows.

The King of kings is going to come and finish the fight and be with you.

And when he does, he will receive honor and eternal dominion.

Amen.

So, friend, don't abandon your post now.

Don't turn back from a victory that's already won.

Fight the good fight.

Finish the race and hope in Christ.

Let's pray.

Father, we give you praise and honor and glory now and every day.

Because you have sent us your son, the King of Kings, to be our perfect and righteous Savior.

Father, we hear Paul's words to Timothy, and we want to fight the good fight.

But our spirit flags, and our obedience waxes and wanes.

We need your spirit to be at work in us to hold us fast to the good confession.

We need you to give us the hope that doesn't fade in the Son who is coming.

We ask that you would do these things in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Savior.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.