Be Strong In Grace | 2 Timothy 2 - The Way of the Steadfast

Hello everyone, I'm Dr.

Steve Holt.

I want to welcome you to the Road Church Podcast.

Each week we go into God's Word.

We teach chapter by chapter and verse by verse.

And we are here to build the Kingdom of God revolution through empowering people to change the world.

So we pray this will minister to you at your heart level and change your life.

Today, be encouraged by our guest speaker.

Happy Father's Day, all the fathers in the room.

So we'll open up with a little brevity before we jump into the God's Word today.

Some funny quotes here for dads.

It's not a dad bod, it's a father figure.

Father is someone who carries pictures where his money used to be.

Dad, a noun.

A man who doesn't know where things are in his own house.

I had that conversation this week with my own son.

I'm like, dude, I put that tool there.

Oh yeah, I moved it.

Okay, of course you did.

Okay.

A father is a banker provided by nature.

Success is not final.

Failure is not fatal.

It is the courage to continue that counts.

Winston Churchill.

I love this one from Mark Twain.

Don't put off until tomorrow.

What could be put off until the day after tomorrow?

Dad, you've always been like a father to me.

And uh, Dad, the sap in the family tree.

And I love this quote from Umberto Echo.

I believe what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments when trying not to teach us.

We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

So we thank you for that.

We thank you for the dads that have impacted us in uh such profound ways.

And uh we just honor right now God, our Heavenly Father, today as He fathers all of us.

So I want to open in prayer as we get into today's message.

So, Father, I thank you for today.

Jesus, I thank you for the little ways in which when we're paying attention, you father us in those still small moments in our lives.

God, you see the work that we are doing as your sons and daughters today, and your belovedness upon us.

God, I pray that you would nourish us today with the reading and hearing of your word.

We lift it up high, God.

We ask that you would till the soil in our hearts, God, that you would open the vaults in our minds as we commit these next moments to you and understanding your kingdom, your mysteries in a deeper and greater way.

As we grow more and more and strive to be more and more like you, as we grow in the sanctification process, God, between now and eternity, when you call us all home.

And so, God, we thank you for today, and we give you all the praise and all the glory in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

We're gonna be continuing in our study in 2 Timothy 2.

And uh Pastor Josh did an excellent job communicating some deeper history as we get into the second book of Timothy.

I'm just gonna do um just a quick synopsis here as we jump into the second chapter.

This is coming five years-ish, somewhere around there after the first uh letter to Timothy.

Second Timothy is Paul's finer letter that he would write in prison awaiting execution.

His execution would fall somewhere between 67 and 68 A.D.

as he was beheaded under Nero, the Emperor at the time.

The fatherly words he is penning to Timothy are focused and carrying weight.

They are giving instruction and purpose for the mission of Paul's legacy as a missionary to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and encourage his protege to carry on in this mission with endurance, faith, strength, and to fight the good fight to lay a hold of the glory and the prize that he awaits him.

It's a letter of a father's heart to a beloved son to encourage him to be steadfast in all that he's going to face and the trials, and he's gonna have to bleed for the cause.

So as we jump in, we'll pick it up here in verse one.

Therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

We're gonna pause on this, and if you want to circle, highlight, if you don't have grace, we're gonna park there for a minute because it's important that we spend a little time camping around the grace that Paul is talking about.

Jesus' grace will be and is a source of power for Timothy and also for us in this life.

When we recognize the truth of his grace, we must also learn the process to labor after the strength of grace.

We must exercise our spirit to be strong in the understanding of his grace for all of us.

There's an abundance of it.

And so, if we're going to understand the concept of grace and what Paul is saying here, and if you go back to his other epistles and his other letters, you'll find that grace is critical for Paul.

He ends at the end of Thessalonians, first and second, he'll end Timothy, he ends a lot of his uh epistles with this blessing of grace to the reader.

So, justice, if we're to look at it from this angle, justice is getting what you deserve.

Mercy is not getting what you deserve, and grace is getting what you don't deserve.

So God gives the grace that is over and above the mercy that he already gives us.

God gives us an abundance of grace to his beloved sons and daughters.

And so we get mercy through the cross.

We were supposed, the cross was meant for us as sinners.

There's the exchange of the belovedness of God the Son, and he goes and he sheds and he's covered us, and we're made new in that place.

But then above that, and over and above that abundance is this grace that Paul is talking about.

Our trials increase.

As they increase, we have the need to grow stronger and stronger in the good and righteous things.

Our faith stronger, our resolution stronger, and our love for God and Christ also stronger.

As a father exhorts his son, so does Paul exhort Timothy here with great tenderness and affection.

And this is how God speaks to us.

If we were to close our eyes and we were to remove the filters of maybe our own childhood and the way that we're grown up, and maybe there's some there's some strain there.

There's pain, you know.

It's like even in my efforts as a dad to do things as good as I can as a father, I know that I'm giving wounds at times.

I know that I'm definitely not doing it perfect.

But I know that's not how the father talks.

Like our heavenly father has a special way to talk to all of us, as sons and daughters.

And so Paul here is bringing comfort, he's bringing strength, and in a minute, he's also going to secure the mission that Timothy is on as he's moving into this next verse.

But we just want to pause here and just maybe absorb the way that the Father is speaking through Paul into Timothy's heart, as the Father speaks through him today and touches our own hearts, that we would be strong in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So verse two, and the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others.

So now he comes the mandate of discipleship.

He's saying, the things that I've taught, the things that the Lord has instructed me, these divine moments of Holy Spirit interaction.

Paul wrote two-thirds of the New Testament.

Not exactly a lightweight, right?

And so he's having these divine interactions, and as Pastor Josh said last week, the thing that he wants most at the end of it all is he wants to review his writings.

He wants to review the scriptures, he wants to contemplate and meditate on those moments where the Holy Spirit has descended, come down, and given him divine and supernatural wisdom in those writings.

He wants to feel that connection again.

And so, too, he's saying these teachings, they're faithful, they're true, this is true gospel, this is divine inspiration.

And so Paul is teaching us the value of discipleship and the multiplication of saints here.

And so, church, we all need, if we were to examine ourselves, we need Paul's, Timothy's, and Barnabas's in our lives.

We need Barnabas's to run with us, to take the journey with us, to go out two by two, and we're going to go and do the good work of the Father with a brother, with a sister.

We need a Paul who's just ahead of us, who can show us the way, show us the ropes.

And then we need Timothy's.

We need Timothy's that we can pour into, that God has put into our lives and our purview and into our influence, that we can give correction, discipleship, discernment, and mentoring.

Uh and that was modeled today.

Like we saw that as Fathers in the Field.

That's a that's a beautiful representation of a Paul to a Timothy in that same way.

And uh so blessed that the opportunity to do this Fathers in the Field blessing while we're in the book of Timothy and God's alignment and all that, that was just that's awesome.

I can't think of a better illustration.

I was serving as the youth group, uh as a youth pastor here at the road, and um there was a cadet over at the Air Force Academy.

He was a senior and he was running God chasers over there, and he calls me one day on the phone and he goes, Hey, will you be my Paul?

And I go, What?

He goes, Yeah, man.

He's like, I need a Paul.

Will you be my Paul?

And so he said, and I said, Well, yeah, let's meet.

Let's talk about what that looks like for you.

What does that mean?

And, you know, he was going hard after God, has continued to go hard after God.

And he is a discipler of men and he's a lover of Jesus, but he, in his youthfulness, understood the value and the need for mentors in this process.

And so I was one of probably a few Pauls in his life, and it was an honor to walk with him in that season.

Um, you know, I think about in my own life, I have a hybrid in my uh friend and also elder Josh Personius.

He's a Paul, but also a Barnabas, and we kind of run together.

We bounce ideas off each other, but then I'll press into him, and he can I can activate his pallness in that, and it's a beautiful experience.

And I have other men in my life that way.

And then the staff team, you know, we're running together kind of as Barnabas is shoulder to shoulder here.

So if you don't have that, Paul is laying this out for us in verse 2 that we need to be looking at our lives as we live out the gospel, as we live out the example that Christ has put in us, that we've had salvation from the cross, but now we have a job to do.

There's there's the message, there's the mentoring that we need to be very intentional with and steward that well.

We need encouragement along the way.

This last week we got to attend a dear saint of the kingdom, Phyllis Stanley.

Both Paul and Phyllis were lifetime navigators and they lived this out.

They lived this mission out.

They were always having people at their house, discipling, no more than groups of three to four.

But there was always something, even until the very end of their lives, that they were very intentional with this mission and multiplication and discipleship that Paul is speaking about here.

All right, verse three.

You therefore must endure hardship.

That's not good news.

Yeah, well, there it is.

And I didn't write it, but we're gonna digest that a little bit.

You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.

So now he's getting some man talk.

He's talking to the heart of Timothy, who's gonna resonate with this, and he's gonna use some illustration around this concept of what it is to live the life of a soldier.

And there's a beautiful illustration as we cross-pollinate that with the Christian life that we're meant to walk.

Um, for those of you that read John Eldridge, you're familiar with this.

And he said, you know, we're born into a love story.

We're born into this great eternal love story of the kingdom.

Jesus, God, is so in love with his beloved creation, it is a love story, but it's set in the backdrop of a fierce war.

And we are at war.

We're at war in the fourth dimension with eternal, with eternal powers warring for our eternity and where our souls ultimately end up.

But what Paul is saying here is that the life of a soldier is one of training.

It's lived apart from the civilian life.

It is uniquely built on things like code, honor, selfless service.

As Christians, we live by a specific code, a different standard than the culture of the world.

The Bible should shape our worldview and be the filter in which we process the life around us.

Life around us is always causing interruptions, distractions, and trying to take us out of the focus, take us out of the code of the Christian life, the DNA of the gospel, the kingdom of God, and what he's teaching us.

We look at 2 Corinthians 10, 4.

We know the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.

This is where we battle.

This needs to become second nature for us.

Oftentimes, though, there are strange things.

As Peter writes, strange things start to happen to us.

We get into turbulence, we get into trials and tribulation, and yet we're befuddled by the strange things happening around us.

But he's Peter would say that we don't, we should not do that.

We need to renew our mind with the gospel and the truth of Jesus Christ because there is a supernatural war, a spiritual war going on behind the scenes, and that we can pull down those strongholds through Christ Jesus and God.

So, Christians, as Christians, as sons and daughters, we are in a different battle.

Therefore, we should not involve ourselves in the worldly things.

We set ourselves apart.

And this becomes ever more increasingly challenging as we start to think about all the things that we have access to.

We pick up our phones and we engage in the culture around us.

And there, these can be used for good.

These, you know, the our tools, our phones can be used, their powers can be honed and used for good, and a lot of us are doing that.

But also, there's instant distraction, there is instant opportunity to get divided in our hearts and get pulled away, and then things get cloudy and murky.

We feel the stress rise up, we feel anxiousness rise up in ourselves, and we start to wonder why do we feel that way?

What's going on?

This doesn't make sense.

Because now we have disrupted the alignment in ourselves with our body, soul, mind, and spirit, and we should be calibrating with the kingdom of God.

And sometimes, and this is true for me, that I have to recalibrate.

I have a reminder and a timer on my phone to recalibrate at 11 a.m.

and 3 p.m.

every day.

And just to stop and pause and have 15 to 30 minutes of a meditation, prayer time.

It's a recalibration time to say, where is my focus shifted from where it should be?

Where are my thoughts?

Where are my emotions, and where are my feelings?

Am I feeling strong?

Am I feeling weak?

Am I feeling distracted and pulled away?

And I have to take that time, look at the dashboard, and refocus.

And so that is what that is what Paul is saying here.

So we're going to live a focused life as a soldier for God.

And then pleasing your commanding officer, which is the Lord, is about submission to his will, God's word, and God's spirit, essentially living in alignment and union with God, abiding in him.

I love what A.W.

Tozer says about this word abide.

He says, now this word abide means to continue.

And since a Christian is joined to Jesus by a union of life, in that we get resurrection through the cross and his resurrection, then abide means to continue in that union.

Live on in that union.

Continue in that union.

You must desire to abide in the vine.

You must also, you must will to do it.

You must will to do it.

So there's a desire that needs to be cultivated in all of us.

There's a desire that must fan the flame of our will to engage and remain and abide in Jesus.

And some of you have your own resets, some of you have your own processes, but with the way that the things are happening outside of us, we step outside the four walls, I mean, from everything to frustrated the little things that we struggle with as a first world country, where we get our neighbor's Amazon shipment to our doorstep, or it comes damaged, you know, or the little things that set us off.

Those are just little fractures and fissures of a bigger issue that's happening in the culture around us.

And we have to be sensitive.

We have to be tuned in because if we allow those things to add up, those little fissures, those little crevices start to create maybe a deeper earthquake that's going to erupt in us eventually.

And so we have to bring ourselves back into the kingdom frequency of God's kingdom, align there with our spirits, and let our spirit control, connected to an alignment with the Holy Spirit in God, and then our soul and our mind and our will come into alignment with the King.

Verse 5.

And also, if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.

The hardworking farmer must first partake of the crops.

So here he's giving some analogy.

First it's the soldier, then we're going to move into the athlete, and then we're going to talk about the farmer.

All of this is a process.

All of this is the instruction manual that Paul is giving to Timothy.

So if we want the harvest, we must be faithful to labor for it.

And if you want to gain the prize, the eternal crown here, he's referencing the running the race that all race, right?

But not all everybody competes, but not everybody gets the crown.

He goes, you must be willing to run the race and be disciplined to run by the rules.

So God gives us guideposts to live by that are for our own good.

So there's a race to run and there's also rules to follow.

So we had this fun conversation by a show of hands.

Some of us love rules.

If I was to take a poll right now and I said, you know, who likes to follow the rules?

Thank God for the rules, and I asked you to raise your hands.

So raise your hands who loves the rules.

It's good, right?

Rules are important.

All right.

Now, those that didn't raise your hand, now we know who the criminals are in the room.

Rules are flexible, right?

Uh, some for some.

Who thinks rules are flexible?

Okay, yeah.

Pray for your pastor.

It's fine.

So, you know, we had this fun conversation in our house, and it's a dialogue between me and my wife.

She would love the rules.

She likes the rules, is where she is where she feels comfortable, and I respect that.

Um, and I do too.

I think there's an appropriate amount of that that's needed.

But sometimes, as a critical thinker, I think, well, sometimes there might be some flexibility needed around certain sets of rules.

We found ourselves at a um pool this weekend.

We were out of town, we were up at a like a hot spring, and we were just kind of splashing around, we're having a great time, and the lifeguard comes over and he starts to rebuke my youngest daughter.

He's like, hey, I saw you running around the pool, I've been watching you, I've been watching kids slip.

I want you to go read the rules on the board over there and then come back and report to me.

And I was like, pump the brakes, bro.

Whoa.

My my dad hair's bristled up, and I was like, you know, I'm like, what, dude?

I was fired up for a minute, and my wife looks at me and she's like, okay, and and my daughters, she didn't know what to do.

She's like, holy cow, this guy's like flexing hard on me.

So I go, okay.

I said, We'll go, I'll go with you.

You're not gonna go by yourself to report to this guy.

So, and I respect, I respect the process, I respect the authority.

So she goes over, we read the rules, and we walk over, and uh he's like, Thank you, thank you.

He's like, I know.

He's like, I'd rather you be mad at me than get hurt.

I've watched four other kids slip today, and I just, you know, there's no running.

I want you to be careful and all that stuff.

So I was like, okay, fine.

We respect the rules, all good.

And I think at the same time, it's like, I've been around my kids all day.

And I'm like, they haven't been running, they've been with me.

We haven't been running around the pool deck.

So a couple minutes go by, about 10 minutes, and then he comes over and he goes, I'm so sorry.

It wasn't your daughter, it wasn't your kids.

I'm like, he goes, I wanna, he goes, I feel so bad about this.

I said, I understand.

He goes, please forgive me.

I need the dude apologized sincerely and kept apologizing, apologizing.

He's like, I want to go get you ice creams.

The whole family, ice cream's on me.

We'll put sprinkles on.

I said, That sounds good.

So he said we could go get them under his name, but then he actually delivered them to us and brought them back to us because he felt so bad.

And I was like, Okay, so here's a moment to teach.

It's like, yeah, we follow the rules.

It's like we weren't intentionally breaking them and we weren't breaking them.

And so two things were happening was that the value of following the rules for my kids and doing the right thing and even honoring his authority.

My my daughter didn't discern what was happening inside of me when that guy was coming after her.

But you know, there was some grisly guy behind me that was about to get hairy and come out on this dude, but it worked out, and then also I noticed in him that he was unable to like receive our forgiveness.

He kept apologizing all day, and I'm like, dude, we're good.

Like, it's cool.

But if you feel that bad about it, we'll take another round of ice cream.

So so when you really know the rule giver is good, i.e.

God, then you can trust that the rules he gives you are for good or now are good for you.

And so that's where that's where I have.

To realign myself and that I know that God, in his benevolence, in his grace as a loving father, puts boundaries out there for me to protect me from myself.

So we run for the eternal crown, we run the race with perseverance for the victor's crown at the end.

And deeper still, beyond that, church, we need to labor with diligence and patience, being steadfast, steady and consistent before we are able to partake of the fruit.

And Galatians 6, 9 says, Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.

So we will all go through times of plowing the soil.

That's not always a good experience.

Seeding time can be enjoyable.

But then there's the watering, the rains, and the weeding that come in between the harvest.

But then at the end of those things, at the end of those processes, we get to partake in the harvest in its due season.

We must do the will of God before we can receive the promises he offers.

Which is the very reason why we strive to grow our patience and our endurance.

Paul writes a lot about this in all of his epistles in Romans.

You can find this concept that he is teaching us, and he's as he's labored as the greatest missionary the world has ever known then and since.

His labor of love, his ability to endure, his ability to grow, his strength in and out of prison, shipwreck, snake bit, all the things.

Stoned, came back into the city after he was stoned.

I mean, the guy knows how to endure, and he's speaking from a place of experience here as he's encouraging his brother.

He's like, You will bleed for the cause.

I have bled for the cause.

So don't expect to not have a hardship, my son.

And that's loving in a way.

Because, you know, if I know from my dad, if my dad told me, like, hey, I've been down the journey, I know the adventure, I know the thing, the route you're about to take, it's gonna cost you.

It's worth it.

So stay the course, but don't expect to get out, you know, scot-free.

Don't expect to get out without a few scrapes, bruises, and some blood.

I think that's loving to give him awareness of what that looks like.

Hebrews 10 36, patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God's will.

Then you will receive all that he has promised.

So we have we have to labor for God before we can receive and step into the promises that he gives us.

Moving into verse 7.

Consider what I say, and may the Lord give you understanding in all things.

So this is awesome.

I love this because it is God who gives understanding.

The most intelligent man needs more of this gift.

We need more and more of this.

And if you give revelation in the Word, if you give revelation in the Word, do not provide, and do not provide understanding in the heart, we're missing the point.

So what is he saying here?

He's like saying that that as we read and teach the scriptures and we give the revelation, but we don't connect it to our soul, we don't connect it to the heart, which is where it takes place.

They say the greatest distance, right?

The greatest distance of understanding God is the 12 inches or six inches, depending on how long your neck is, between your head and your heart.

And so head knowledge only uh doesn't only does not bring total healing of the soul.

We need heart, we need to understand God is after our hearts, not just our minds.

And in our prayers, we ask the Lord to give us understanding in all things because he promises to do that, he offers that.

So time in contemplation, focused attention to the Holy Spirit is the way to understand, remember, and practice what we hear and read.

We have to pause, we have to chew on this.

We have to haga.

You've heard Pastor Steve talk about times of meditation and just chewing and digesting.

We'll read a passage, we'll unpack a chapter, and we'll pause and we'll just pray that for a second.

May we pause there and that's all we do in times.

But when we practice engaging the presence of God in our lives, we are setting a firm foundation from where we draw in times of the storms.

So when the storms come, the hardships come, we have to know how to reset.

We reset our souls and bring our spirits into alignment with his spirit.

And so for me, in my times of meditation, I have to focus my spirit towards Jesus, the cross.

And I understand, like he unpacks in John 17, where Jesus is praying for others, right?

But he's now praying as he explains his connection with the Father.

You know, I and them, them and me.

And he's, and so there's this invitation to all of us to join this connection between Jesus and God the Father.

And where do we join?

We join him through the Holy Spirit, and where he offers me the same connection, inviting, then I invite the Holy Spirit to bring me into alignment with the Trinity.

This is where understanding is unlocked.

I remember his words to me, and I am dwelling in his presence, feeling his delight and restoration in me.

A couple Tuesday mornings ago, I shared with the Tuesday morning men in the room how where in my house I go down to like our storage room.

There's like no windows, it's pretty dark, there's some lights and whatnot, but I have this framed picture of Jesus, and he's standing, there's a storm around him, and he's above the water, and he's just kind of he's got the kindest eyes, and his hand is reaching out.

So it almost looks like it's coming out of the picture, and there's a storm around him, but in that he's the refuge, he's the rescue, he's the reset.

And when I go there and I take my spirit into that place, and I receive and know that is good and trusting, then I get centered, I get stabilized, and and I can take all the stress, all the anxiety, and Jesus is just lifting me out of the storm with him.

And it's a very precious place for me.

Um, it's a place where I do some some great meditation.

And I would say that we all need those places in our lives, whether it's a virtual place for you in your mind, or there's a very physical place that you can go in your own home or a space that you have.

Uh, I can't encourage you enough to have and get a place like that.

As we have to find a place to recalibrate, close the closet, walk in, go to our secret place, right?

What's the secret place where Jesus hides us and promises us to take us into his tabernacle, put us upon a mighty fortress, hide us in a rock.

Okay, verse 8.

Remembering that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel, for which I suffer trouble as an evildoer, even to the point of chains, but the word of God is not chained.

So he's saying that my words are in correlation, are in design, and are standing on the gospel, right?

Uh the line of David, Jesus Christ, he's kind of calling, kind of like scoreboard on this, bringing everything back into focus.

It's not just I that am speaking this.

God is moving through all of these things, and which I suffer trouble as an evildoer, even to the point of chains.

The word of God is not chained.

Paul came under rebuke and criticism as a prisoner.

When he went into prison, some brought doubt about his message due to his incarceration.

Paul's imprisonment caused some to doubt his calling.

However, the reality was that Nero had been blaming Christians for the burning of Rome, even though he's the one who set the fire, and then had them jailed and eventually executed.

Paul was also going to fall under that same group, and those would be his cohorts, these Christians that were to be blamed for the burning of Rome.

He said, Therefore, verse 10, I endure all things for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

In 1 Thessalonians 5 9, he writes, For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

He's saying that there's a gospel here, and that it is for all of God's children, and God did not create us to experience his wrath.

Sadly, some will, but it was never his intent, it was never his design, but that we would attain salvation through his son Jesus Christ.

Now we get right to the middle of this chapter, and I want you, if you have your books out, you have your highlighters and pens, I love this because Paul puts this little poem in the middle of this chapter, uh, verses 11 through 13, and this is awesome.

This is a faithful saying.

For if we, and I would circle or underline or highlight, died with him, we shall also highlight, live with him.

If we highlight, endure, we shall also highlight, reign with him.

If we deny him, highlight, deny him, he also will highlight, deny us.

If we are faithless, highlight, faithless, he remains, highlight, remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.

And so now he's restating the call, he's restating the focus, he's honing the promises of God.

If we allow ourselves to go to the cross of Christ with him, then we will also be raised to life with him.

If we endure the hardships here, we are also then appointed to the royalty, and we are now sons and daughters, and we will reign with him in due season.

However, if we did if we deny him here on earth, then when every knee and tongue confess in front of the multitudes at the great day of judgment, he will deny us.

If we are faithless and we lack faith, he is still faithful.

See, God honors his side of the covenant with his people, even when we fail to on our end of it, even when we fail our side of the covenant to honor him.

So time and again, God is rescuing and redeeming his beloved because he has promised to do so, and God does not lie or fail from his word.

He is steadfast in his examples.

Approved and disapproved workers.

14.

Remind them of these things, charging them before the Lord not to strive about words to no profit, to the ruin of the hearers.

Be diligent to present yourselves approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

So upon our salvation, church, we received the approval of God and are adopted into his kingdom, and we are royalty.

Some of us choose to live small as sons and daughters, but the invitation to God is to live big, there's a bigger opportunity that if we're willing to risk that, he wants to show, use us for his glory, and we are approved by God through his son Jesus Christ.

He's saying, Don't be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ here.

This is where, if we were just even to reflect, like this is denying him.

If we're ashamed of the work that he did on the cross and we can't bring that out, we can't live that out, we can't live from that, let the light of his salvation, his resurrection in us show forth, then there will be a denial of our own when we get to see him.

And so he's saying, Don't deny that.

Do not be ashamed of the gospel.

And then lastly, he's talking about correctly handling the word of God, rightly dividing.

So if you're look at that, that actually means to cut straight, to cut a straight line, and seeks to understand the word and with the Holy Spirit.

So as we hear teachings, as we read it ourselves, we need to ask for Holy Spirit understanding so that we can rightly discern, that we can rightly cut it, it can be rightly divided and separating truth from falsities.

16.

But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness, and their message will spread like cancer.

Homanius and Philetus are of this sort.

And we heard Homanius or Hymeneus, sorry, Hymenaus was referenced in the first book of Timothy, and he was rebuked then.

So this is just restating that these guys are off their doctrine.

They are not of sound doctrine, they're bringing apostasy.

They have strained, they have strayed concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already past, and they overthrew the faith of some.

So they have misguided as pastors of their own churches.

They have brought misteachings, misunderstandings, and it's muddy and it's messy from probably, again, there's probably some leakage into their Greek philosophies that are coming in, and that's what he's kind of referencing here.

So again, it's just this continual rebuke.

Be aware of these kinds of people, is what he's saying.

Nevertheless, the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal, the Lord knows those who are his, and let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity.

So, nevertheless, God's church will not fail.

The true and living church will continue on its missing mission.

As we remember, like, as as God is establishing in Peter on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail.

The likes of Hymenaeus and Philetus and those that have followed since will not take down the true living church of God.

God knows who belongs to him, he knows them by name, and if you call him by name, then turn away from evil thinking.

He's saying, Depart from iniquity, doing, speaking, and walk in holiness uprightly with Jesus.

Be a good soldier, and turn away from the wickedness and the work in godliness.

Verse twenty, picking up here.

But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay.

Some are for honor, some for dishonor.

Therefore, if any one cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel of or honor, sanctified and useful for the master, prepared for every good work.

So, Paul is saying here that we need to take inventory of ourselves.

Clean out the junk that we might be usable vessels of God's glory.

We work on the things in our lives that cause dishonor to God.

We have a responsibility to bring honor to God as honorable vessels.

That's his desire.

That's what he needs of us.

God will not use an unworthy vessel to carry his glory.

He needs a worthy vessel to pour into so that we would spill out onto others.

God came after us.

He pursued us, giving his son to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.

And we receive the work of Jesus' blood, by which we are now new, covered, and of great worth and value.

Not a perfect person, none of us are perfect, but we're in a process.

But one who is in the sanctification process, willing and able to be used by the master to do any good work.

I was thinking about this analogy that in here he's talking about gold and silver as well as some other lesser vessels, but even silver vessels, after they're created, after they're purified, they go through and all the things have been brought out.

Now you have pure silver.

Silver tarnishes when set out from the elements around it.

And so you have to renew the silver, you have to renew the vessel.

And I felt like this was a word, this was a word for us today of the chapter.

I was kind of wanted to park here for just a second.

That tarnish silver being exposed to the elements.

So we too tarnish from exposure to our surroundings and need restoration.

So if you're out of, if you're at home and you need to polish your tea set or you need to polish some silver, dad hack toothpaste, my wife's a hygienist, so I know all the values of toothpaste.

Two, minerals are added back into the material or the metal of what is needed or lacking.

And then three, there is a protectant that seals it in.

We need to work with the Holy Spirit to bring this kind of restoration to some of our vessels today.

Some of us are working, some of us actually even probably don't even here believe that our vessels are shiny or could be because we doubt the very nature of God the Father and how he sees us as his sons and daughters.

But he doesn't see what you see in the mirror anymore.

What he's seeing is through you, he has to look through his son to see you.

And all he has for his son is just absolute love and adoration.

And that is exactly what has passed through Jesus to you from God the Father and how he sees you today.

And he wants us to receive his restoration, his care, his polishing, and sealing us with the Holy Spirit.

He goes on to say, flee also, youthful lusts, but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart, but avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that they generate strife.

The pursuit of the Christian life church is to be lived with others, not siloed, but with those who are living with pure hearts, pursuing the things of God, living in righteousness, love, and desiring peace in their lives.

If you don't have relationships like that now, God is calling you to maybe examine those relationships, pray for healthy restoration in those, or in the meantime, find some healthy people in your life that can speak and share this road that we all have to walk together.

It's not meant to be walked alone, and there are people that need relationships restored today, that you need godly relationships to pour into and have you yourselves poured into as well.

We respond to God's love discerning Jesus' work on the cross, but we also are called to walk in holiness as we live this out.

So there are things that we need to lay down that have followed us from our youth.

There are things that we have attached to, there are things where the youthful lust he's talking about.

We need to put those away.

That's one of the aspects of cleaning the vessels, cleaning ourselves as a vessel for God's glory.

And then as a servant of the Lord, must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient in humility, correcting those who are in opposition.

If God perhaps will grant them repentance, so they may know the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.

So as a servant of God, we should strive to possess the qualities of his nature: gentleness, teaching the truth of his word, not quarrelsome, but with humility towards those we encounter who oppose the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That we would have more of his nature in us.

I want just I would invite you to stand as we get ready to enter into worship, and I want to read you this quote from Jean Goyan.

She was a French 17th century Christian author, a great woman of the faith, and penned this in one of her letters about intimacy with Christ.

No matter what has been said about my experience in Christ, I cannot doubt its reality.

Somewhere deep within me, I am utterly convinced that it is true.

It is Christ at work in my heart, and that work is as unshakable as he is.

It seems to me that these theological discussions concerning the validity of an inward experience with Christ arise from people who are tempted to look at men when instead they should be looking at the giver of love.

So today, as we press in, we contemplate the words of Paul to his beloved son.

As we think about those words as they penetrate our own hearts as Christ's beloved, we take a posture of contemplation, and we think about the Giver of Love, the Giver of Love who sees us wholly and completely.

That if we call him Father, we've asked Jesus to be the Lord of our lives and the savior of our lives, that we can press in and grab a deeper reality, a deeper understanding of his love for each of us.

Thank you for listening to the Road Church Podcast.

We pray today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

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