How the Church Stays Faithful to the Gospel Beyond a Single Generation | 2 Timothy 2:1-7 | Jonathan Huang | Feb 15, 2026

If you're using the black Bibles available, you can find the passage on page 935.

Page 935.

Again, the scripture reading is from 2 Timothy chapter 2 verses 1 through 7.

2 Timothy 2:1–7

Please stand for the reading of God's holy and inerrant word.

You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrusted to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

Share in suffering is a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

No soldier gets entangled in civilians or pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

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

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

Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thank you, Naomi.

It's good to see all of y'all this morning.

As we we're going to be back in the book of 2 Timothy.

And so as we begin, let me pray for us.

Father, we thank you, Lord, for the privilege of sitting at your foot of the cross and before your word, week in and week out.

And to humble ourselves before the God of this universe.

And to just ask, what would you want us to hear and learn from you today?

So we ask humbly that your Holy Spirit would come and move among us, and that these words would not just be words on a page or words on a screen, but that they would change our hearts and change our lives from the inside out.

That you'd make us individually the people you want us to be, that you make us a church that you want us to be, all to the glory of God, and for the sake of the gospel among the nations.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So we're picking up in 2 Timothy chapter 2.

2 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

2 Timothy is, as you know, the last letter that Paul ever wrote in his lifetime.

And he's writing from a prison cell.

And he's writing from Rome.

And he's writing to one of his proteges, Timothy, who he put in place in a church he planted years ago in the ancient city of Ephesus.

And he says one thing that strikes me as we start chapter 2.

Actually, he says this in chapter 1, but he says this one thing in chapter 1 that gives us a clue into what exactly is in his mind.

There's something on his mind, there's something that concerns him.

And it's in verse 15.

He writes this You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are Phargilus and Hermogenes.

One sentence, and that's it.

He says nothing more about them.

There's no more details about the circumstances, no more details about the situation.

He just leaves it at that.

Now you have to understand that back then Asia was not what we think of it is today.

No China, no Vietnam, no India.

It was a specific Roman province on the western part of modern day Turkey.

And so it's just east, if you think about modern day Greece, it was just east of Greece.

Right there in West Turkey.

One commentator points out that Paul's most likely referring here to a situation sometime after his second arrest.

You see, Paul was first in prison in Rome under house arrest around the year AD 62.

And now he's been arrested again a few years later.

And what may have happened as a result of Paul being arrested a second time is that Christians in Asia who had once held Paul in high esteem have done what the disciples did when Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane.

You remember what they did?

They fled.

They jumped ship.

They pretended like they knew nothing about the man who was just arrested before them.

Listen to what commentator writes about the situation.

He says this.

Perhaps his arrest, this is Paul's arrest, seemed to them, the Asians, to indicate that the Christian cause was now lost.

Perhaps they reacted by repudiating and disowning him.

We know nothing of Phigellus and Hermogenes, but their mention suggests they were ringleaders.

In any case, Paul saw the turning away of the Asian churches as more than a personal desertion.

It was a disavowal of his apostolic authority.

And now all in Asia had turned away from him.

And then he quotes another author who writes this quote, To every eye but that of faith, it must have appeared just then as if the gospel were on the eve of extinction.

Those are pretty heavy words.

But I think it gives us a glimpse into what the Apostle Paul might have been feeling as he was sitting there in his dark, gloomy prison cell, writing this letter to Timothy.

He was writing to keep the mission alive.

He's writing to make sure that all that's taken place up until this time in the church of Ephesus that he's planted stays alive, keeps on going.

That all this time put into the church at Ephesus wouldn't all just go to waste.

You see, it's been about 15 years between the time that Paul planted the church in Ephesus and the time of the writing of this letter.

Fifteen years.

So that's within a single generation that this church has gone from being planted with the hope of the gospel, growing towards health rooted in the Word of God, and then if you remember the circumstances surrounding Paul writing his letter to Timothy the first time, within a single generation, the church became plagued with controversy and calamity, with selfish men rising to the ranks of leadership and becoming false teachers.

So much so that some of the Ephesian church's own pastors were the very false teachers that Timothy had to deal with.

My point is if you're not very careful, newly planted churches have the very real possibility of falling into sin and error and corruption in less than a generation.

That reminds me of a situation I'm aware of in the city of Austin.

Where a young, what I don't know, a young hip, multi-ethnic church was planted out of a healthy immigrant church about 20 years ago.

This church was led by the senior pastor's own son.

This church eventually took over a former nightclub.

It was in a neighborhood surrounded by prostitution and underage drinking and drugs.

They did amazing work serving and transforming this neighborhood with a Christian presence.

But then it was about 10 years into their plant, into the life of this church, the founding pastor and his team led this church through what they called a journey of discernment, where they sought to learn about gender and sexual diversity through engaging scripture, to listening to God, to engaging with their LGBTQ members and with each other.

And what came out of the season of discernment and listening to each other, and supposedly listening to God, was this statement put out by the church.

And I have it on the screen.

Quote We welcome and affirm LGBTQ persons and families to participate at all levels of community, partaking in sacraments, including marriage, serving in ministry, joining as members and holding leadership roles as you are called.

This past week I saw this Instagram post by the lead teaching pastor of this church, the founding pastor left 10 years ago or so.

And in this Instagram post, he writes this quote, I'm beloved by God, called to ministry, and queerfully and wonderfully made.

I've taken much of the last year to slowly start coming out to people as gay.

My move to Austin and calling to pastor here have provided the chance to be more fully the person God has created and called me to be with integrity and authenticity.

Those are the words of the lead teaching pastor of this church.

My question is, how did this happen?

How did this happen?

Like, how did a church planted 20 years ago by a church that certainly holds to the inerrancy of the Word of God, the authority of the Word of God, lose sight of the gospel and start failing to call out sin and sinful lifestyles for what they are?

How does a church that seemed to start off on the right track so far off that it's now being led by an openly gay pastor?

And my point in bringing all of this up is that both the churches in New Testament times as well as churches today, we have every reason to believe that it is possible for congregations to lose sound doctrine in step with the gospel of Jesus Christ within a single generation.

I mean, if the definition of a generation is about 20 years' time, the issues in both the church in Ephesus and this church in Austin sprung up within the course of one generation.

Less than 20 years.

And so the question at the heart of today's message is this.

How can our church, how can this church stay faithful to the gospel and to sound doctrine beyond a single generation?

Beyond a single generation.

That's what we came to do, to plant this church, not just for this next 20 years, but beyond.

Like, how can our church stay faithful to the gospel and to sound doctrine so that our children and our grandchildren will one day sit in congregations like this and be led to trust in the full authority of God's word and to not swerve away from wholehearted devotion to Jesus and to following Him and His teaching, no matter what society says, and no matter the cost?

So to answer this, I want to invite you to turn with me to the book of 2 Timothy, chapter 2.

2 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

2 Timothy chapter 2, towards the end of Scripture, and we'll be looking at the first seven verses of this chapter.

2 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

2 Timothy chapter 2.

2 Timothy 2 · chapter mention

And again, the question is how can our church stay faithful to the gospel and to sound doctrine long beyond a single generation?

And the first answer I see is this.

We need to care more about raising up younger pastors.

We as a church need to care more about raising up younger pastors.

Look down at verse 1.

You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

And we know that in the year 8064, the Emperor Nero, who ruled the Roman Empire, started an extreme persecution of the Christian church.

This great fire that came up that destroyed most of the city of Rome, that we think Nero actually caused.

But to cover that up, he falsely accused some Christians, and because of that, what followed were mass arrests, tortures, and even public burnings of Christians in full view.

So cold-blooded was the persecution of Christians under Nero that one historian recounts there were cities full of Christian bodies, young and old, all lying there together, naked on the open streets.

Paul was one of these prisoners taken in arrest in this mass persecution around this time.

And it's in that context that Paul writes to Timothy not to be ashamed of the gospel that he was preaching, not to be ashamed of being associated with this prisoner for Christ.

Yes, Paul was facing his own death very soon.

Yes, there was incredible persecution going on against the Christian church, and yes, the vast majority of the Asian church who call themselves Christians had deserted the faith.

But Timothy was not to lose heart.

He was instead to be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

You see, our weaknesses and our hardships that we suffer in life are yet another means by which Christ sanctifies and deepens our dependence on him.

In other words, if suffering comes your way for the sake of Christ, don't ever let it dampen your love for the Lord and make you more independent of him.

Don't let it make it more independent of him and looking to yourself or to the world to cope.

Whatever suffering comes your way for the sake of Christ, let it only increase your dependence on Christ and lead you closer to the Lord.

That you might ask him to pour your his spirit out on you so that he would strengthen you from the inside out.

That's what it means to be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

In the midst of suffering.

Verse 2.

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

Now, we know that this final letter from Paul to Timothy, it wasn't just the final words of a mentor to a mentee or a spiritual father to a spiritual child.

It was also a request for Timothy to come visit him one last time in Rome.

We know this because later on in this letter, Paul clearly writes in chapter 4, do your best to come to meet soon.

This is a request from Paul to Timothy to come visit him one last time.

One commentator points out here that for Timothy to leave the already struggling church at Ephesus, well, he's gonna have to put his affairs in order.

But to do that, one of the mission critical tasks in front of Timothy was to make sure that the right men were selected and put in place to continue leading the church in Ephesus and to guard the purity of the gospel and to teach sound doctrine.

Paul is clearly thinking about the future as he writes this letter.

Do you see that?

Now we're not sure if Timothy ever made that trip to Rome to see Paul for one last time.

But for Timothy to leave the church for who knows how long would have certainly meant putting the church's future on the line.

It was a risk that he had to take.

Does that make sense?

My point is that in his final days, what the Apostle Paul was thinking about and caring about the most here is that the gospel would continue to flourish long beyond his own lifetime.

And he knows that what it's going to take to see this happen is that the present leaders of these churches pass the baton of sound doctrine and godly living on to the next generation of leaders.

Everything that Timothy has learned from Paul needs to be passed on, not just to any kind of man, but to faithful men who are capable themselves of teaching others also.

This entrusting of sound doctrine to other men was critical to the mission of the church.

I think about the nation of Japan.

A country where less than 10% of pastors are under the age of 50.

Think about that.

Less than 10% of pastors are under the age of 50.

That means more than 90% are over 50.

In fact, the average age of pastors in Japan is 70.

Think about that.

With such an aging population of pastors, there are so few younger pastors to take over leadership of these churches.

These existing churches, much less start new ones in places where there still are no viable congregations that exist.

I think about the secret house churches in Yemen, where most of the Christian converts in them are converts from Islam.

To be exposed as a Christian is basically like getting a death sentence because in that country, apostasy from Islam is legally punishable by death.

Who will lead them beyond this current generation?

You see, the task of raising up elders in the church is primarily what this command in chapter 2, verse 2, is what this command to Timothy is all about, even if there are implications for discipling and the work of discipleship in general.

And I'm going to use today the words pastor and elder interchangeably because that's what we see in the Bible.

And so the question for us is this who will be in position to pastor our children and our grandchildren long after we're gone?

That's the question.

And do we, as a church, care enough about raising up younger pastors to faithfully shepherd them?

If we want our church to stay faithful to the gospel and to sound doctrine beyond a single generation, then we've got to be in the business of preparing the church's leadership for generations to come.

We're looking for a few good men.

A few good men who have the character of Christ and who can competently teach the word of God.

These are the kinds of men who are going to be the spiritual high watermarks for this church and for the congregation as others among us learn from them and follow their example.

Surely Paul knows that the vitality of the Ephesian church and her ability to endure years and years and years beyond Timothy's tenure there are predicated upon whether Timothy can or can't successfully identify, raise up, and empower younger pastors to lead the church into the future.

In other words, to neglect raising up future leaders would risk setting up the church for failure.

Because once he leaves or once he dies, the church would be left without solid leaders to carry on the baton of gospel leadership.

Why?

Because godly pastors don't just grow on trees.

They don't.

They don't just happen.

Yes, God saves and sanctifies his people, sets them aside for the work of teaching and leading a church, but there is an element in all of this that includes the current elders of a church taking on younger men under their wings and helping them along in their journeys towards spiritual leadership.

Garrett Kell, a pastor in Virginia, describes a time during a pastoral internship where he heard an older pastor say this that part of his responsibility, this older pastor, is to send younger pastors into the land where he cannot go.

The future.

Reflecting on these words, Kell writes that pastoral training is central to our main task.

We want to protect and proclaim the gospel not only in our generation but also in the generations to come.

So we must train younger pastors to take the gospel to the land where we cannot go.

Many of you know that our very own Fred Tao was my longtime pastor at the previous church that I grew up in.

And I was looking back this past week as I was preparing for the sermon.

I still have an email from him written to me almost 20 years ago.

And he was inviting me to participate in this conference called Render in 2008.

A conference where a bunch of churches in Texas came together and gave people who had were in college or young adults who are interested in vocational ministry in a local church the opportunity to meet, to rub shoulders with, to learn from experienced pastors.

And I'll never forget that one day we sat across from each other during the conference one-on-one.

And I just, as a college student, point blank asked him, Do you think I could be a good pastor?

And I'll never forget his affirmation of yes, it meant the world to me.

It meant the world to me.

What an important moment for me as a college student who had no idea what was the what was going to go on in the future.

But he said yes.

It was a kind of affirmation that I needed to keep seriously thinking about the possibility of becoming a pastor, even though that day wouldn't come until 16 years later.

Fred was also the man who encouraged another young man named Jason Tarn, who after he graduated college, he encouraged him to come on staff as a youth intern at our previous church.

Because of Jason coming on staff as a youth intern at our previous church, he had the opportunity, Jason did, to disciple me and other of my friends, including Sam.

Where's Sam right there?

For three years of our high school.

And after Jason graduates from seminary in Vancouver, he moves back down to Houston to come back on staff at our home church, where he now serves in Fred's place, leading the English congregation at our church.

Isn't that amazing?

I think it's safe to say that Fred has lived out in front of our very eyes what it looks like to train younger men to go into a land that he cannot go.

The future.

Amen.

Brothers and sisters, if we want this church to stay faithful to the gospel and to sound doctrine beyond a single generation, we've got to be in the business of preparing the church's leadership for generations to come.

So I want to speak to those of you who are men in this room.

Have you ever seriously considered becoming an elder of a church one day?

Why or why not?

I think you should.

I think every Christian man should give some serious thought to the possibility of becoming an elder in a church one day, not because you're gonna be an elder of a church one day, but because we need to realize what a privilege, what an honor it is to serve the church of the living God and to lead it for years on end towards sound doctrine, gospel living, and to set the church up for generations to come.

What a privilege that is.

The Bible says that those who aspired to become elders in a church desire a noble task.

And so, for those of you who are Christian men in this room today, I want to encourage you to pray one thing in response to this part of the passage.

And that's to pray that if it's God's purpose for your life to become an elder in a church one day, it doesn't even have to be ours, that he would make it not only clear to you more and more each day, but that he would grow your desire to serve a church.

Yes, to serve a church as a pastor one day, whether a staff pastor or non-staff pastor, again, I'm using the terms pastor and elder interchangeably.

Would you do that?

Yes, it is the role and responsibility of existing pastors to raise up younger pastors, but it would help us greatly if you've already given some thought to this.

And it would help us greatly if you would approach us if you have these kinds of aspirations.

That'll help us know who to have on our radars.

Now, as I said before, this passage is in mainly, I believe, about elders in a church raising up younger elders to serve the next generations of Christians.

But can these words still apply to the life of any Christian, male or female?

I think it can.

I think it can in two ways.

At least.

First, start praying regularly for your pastors.

Right now it's only me and Ben, but we pray for more, right?

Start praying regularly for your pastors to be more effective in training up and raising up younger pastors.

I've been praying this for a while now.

I learned this from another pastor that God would raise up pastors for me to invest in, to serve alongside me, to send out from us, and to one day replace me.

Pray these kinds of things for the good of our church and for the good of the qualified men who will one day serve and lead healthy churches for generations to come.

Second, if you're not already in a discipling relationship with someone, a one-on-one mentorship, I want to challenge you to get into one.

Discipling can be defined as simply deliberately doing spiritual good to someone so that he or she will become more like Christ.

And some of you are older women who have years of experience, marriage experience, parenting experience, or just life and working experience under your belts.

You have so much to offer to the younger women in our church.

Titus chapter 2 calls on older women in the church to teach what is good and so train the young women in the church to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.

Titus 2 · chapter mention

Same thing goes for you older men in our church.

By getting involved in the discipling of younger men, you may be investing in our churches or another church's future elders, deacons, small group leaders, children's ministry leaders, youth workers.

How amazing is that?

And so if you're interested in getting into one, either discipling someone one day or being discipled by someone, come talk to me and I'll happily help connect you with someone for that.

And as a church, there's one thing that's really been on my mind, something I've been praying for, is that we would be able to start a pastoral internship here at Ethnos so that we could intentionally train younger pastors for the ministry.

Something I've seen churches do with great success because you're allowing young men to basically shadow existing pastors.

You're giving them a season to read good books, to discuss them with each other, to sit in on elders' meetings and staff meetings and learn from different ministry leaders.

Just exposing them to different areas of the church.

And so, what I want to invite you to do as well is to join me in prayer this year, 2026, that our church would somehow, some way establish a pastoral internship for this church.

And that through this internship, we would be the kind of church that's intentionally doing what Paul calls Timothy to do, which you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and trust of faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

So, how can our church stay faithful to the gospel and to sound doctrine long beyond a single generation?

First, we as a church need to care more about raising up younger pastors.

And second, we need to know what kind of men we're looking for.

We need to know what kind of men we're looking for.

I see this in the rest of our passage for today.

Look down at verse 3.

It says this share in the suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

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

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

Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding and everything.

One commentator explains that Paul now moves on to give three different metaphors describing the duties of the Christian worker.

These are three aspects of wholeheartedness that should be found in Timothy, and by extension in all those like Timothy, who seek to pass on to others the good deposit they have themselves received.

And that's the dedication of a good soldier, the law-abiding obedience of a good athlete, and the painstaking labor of a good farmer.

And so I just want us to think about each of these one at a time.

First metaphor, the good soldier.

In verse 3, Timothy calls on, Paul calls on Timothy to share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

This is less to do with a physical battle and more to do with a spiritual battle.

If you think about it, the battle against false teaching in the church is ultimately a battle, not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

It's a battle that's been going on since the serpent successfully tempted our first parents in the Garden of Eden to rebel against God.

It's a battle that's continued on throughout the pages of the Old Testament and the New Testament.

And it's a battle that continues to rage on as Satan desperately tries to keep people blinded to the beauty of the gospel, to keep churches from becoming bastions of God's truth, and to keep qualified men from taking their rightful place in leading the Church of Jesus Christ from one generation to the next.

Verse 4 says that no soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

Now just think about the difference between the life that civilians live and the life that soldiers live.

Civilians are busy pursuing lives that revolve around work, around family, around leisure, around friendships.

Not to say that those are wrong in and of themselves, but civilians don't actually have to think about going to war.

Because war is just somewhere else.

It's on the news, it's for someone else to think about.

Soldiers, on the other hand, are actively engaged in combat, defending territory, strategizing for the next skirmish, understanding enemy forces.

Their aim is to please their commanding officers and accomplish the goals for which the country has set out for them.

Second metaphor.

The good athlete.

An athlete is not crowned in verse 5.

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

And so Paul's bringing here to mind, and this is wonderful because we're in the middle of the winter Olympics, these are the ancient sports, ancient sports where athletes were to play by the rules, and unless these athletes played by the rules, just like they are to do today, they would not have any chance of being crowned.

Now, this image of being crowned comes from ancient times, the ancient Olympics, where instead of a winner getting a gold or silver or bronze, there's only one winner each event.

And that winner would be awarded not a medal, but an olive wreath.

An olive wreath taken from a branch near the temple of Zeus, and it would be formed into a crown that would later be placed on the head of the winner of the event by the judges.

And so what's Paul trying to say here?

I think the key to understanding this metaphor is figuring out what rules, the word rules in verse 5 are analogous to.

One of the ways to think about rules here is to say that they refer to God's moral commands, the ways by which he calls his people to live in holiness, to abide by his word.

And I just want to say this out loud.

I want to say that if there are any and ever pastors or elders or teachers who start to not abide by the word of God and start to teach extra-biblical things, the unbiblical things, you should figure out a way to get rid of us.

You should.

Please.

For the good of this church, for the sake of the future generations that come.

Get rid of the kinds of pastors who are not like these athletes who abide by the word of God.

Does that make sense?

Please.

This is not about any one of these pastors, any one of future leaders.

It's not about the church of the living God.

Third metaphor.

The good farmer.

Verse 6 says this.

It is the hardworking farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops.

And this reminds me of another letter that Paul wrote to the Romans, where he says, quote, do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit.

Serve the Lord.

There's something about zeal and hard work for the Lord that seems to evade the average American Christian.

I mean, working hard for the Lord is somehow relegated to super spiritual people.

Maybe the friends of ours who are called to full-time ministry or to the mission field.

But here the Apostle Paul is calling Timothy and by implication all of us who are followers of Christ to be like a hard-working farmer who ends up reaping the first share of the crops.

John Stott gives us two ways this reward of getting the first share of crops or the first share of the harvest can show up in our lives.

So I want you to listen to this first.

This kind of harvest can come in the form of personal holiness.

Yes, the Holy Spirit produces the fruit of the Spirit in us, but as good farmers, we have a role to play as well.

And that's through doing all we can to grow in spiritual disciplines and pursue a life dependent on the Spirit.

J.C.

Ryle says this.

I should as soon expect a farmer to prosper in business who contented himself with sowing his fields and never looking at them till harvest, as expect a believer to attain much holiness who is not diligent about his Bible reading, his prayers, and the use of his Sundays.

Our God is a God who works by means, and he will never bless the soul of that man or woman who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them.

Second, this kind of harvest can come in the form of winning souls for Christ.

Stott says that, quote, in this harvest it is, of course, God who gives the growth.

But we have no liberty to be idle.

The sowing of the good seed of God's word and the reaping of the harvest are hard work.

Souls are hardly won for Christ, but by the tears and sweat and pain, especially in prayer and in sacrificial personal friendship.

So here's how I want to land our time together as we think about these three metaphors: the good soldier, the good athlete, and the good farmer.

I just want to actually focus on the first one, the good soldier, and just think for a moment about this idea of being a good soldier and not being caught up in civilian pursuits.

And I want to ask all of you, do you feel like your life looks more like the life of a good soldier for Christ, ready to share in suffering for the sake of the gospel, or do you feel like your life looks more like the life of a civilian presently entangled in worldly pursuits?

And I just want to take a moment to speak to kids and the youth in this room.

Though what I'm about to say, I think really applies to all of us, and you'll see why in a moment.

So kids, youth, I see you guys.

What does this passage mean for you?

Being a good soldier for Christ means that you no longer chase after the things in this world that everyone else around you, all your other friends at school, in your neighborhoods, are chasing.

And as you get older, you're gonna feel more and more pressure to get good grades, so you can get into the best schools, the best college, so you can position yourself for the best career and the best job and the highest paying job that you can get.

So you can get a lot of money.

How can I be so sure?

Because we live in America.

And the American dream is all about chasing after more comfort and more status and more wealth so that you can get to retirement as soon as possible.

But listen, God has a bigger vision for your life and it's mapped out in Jesus' great commission.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.

And so my plea to you, young followers of Jesus, my plea to you is to not waste your life chasing after the American dream like everyone else and getting entangled in it.

There are still 3,100 or so unreached language groups in this world without a translated Bible in their language, which means their gospel has not reached any of them, which means there's no viable church or congregation among them.

What are you gonna do to make a difference in that reality?

You may not hear this from other people, but I want you to hear this from me.

I want you to know that becoming a missionary is a viable career option for you.

And even if you never go overseas one day to do international missions, you can still work hard and make money and support those who do.

You can still pray faithfully for your friends who do.

You can still write letters and emails to support those of your friends who do.

Live for something bigger than the American dream.

Because why?

Our goal in life should be to please the one who has enlisted us, who's called us to serve him as good soldiers for Christ.

And here's the last thing you want to say, church.

By invocation, I think the three metaphors we've been looking at the good at the good athlete, the good soldier, the good farmer, they point to the kinds of men, the things in the kinds of men that we especially need to be looking for in finding younger pastors to shepherd this church beyond a single generation.

Because remember, godly pastors don't just grow on trees.

They don't.

They don't just happen.

And so, as current elders of this church commit ourselves to taking on younger men under our wings, discipling them, empowering them for ministry.

Please, please, please give yourselves to praying that God would raise up younger and more pastors, qualified men to serve this church for the years to come.

And as you do so, pay attention to the kind of men who especially exemplify those qualities and what it looks like to be a good soldier for Christ, a good athlete, and a godly farmer.

And if you spot someone who stands out to you, please don't ever hesitate to come tell us that you see a potential pastor.

So, how can our church stay faithful to the gospel and to sound doctrine beyond a single generation?

How can our church stay faithful to the gospel and to sound doctrine so that our children and our children's children, our children's children's children, will one day sit in congregations like this and led to be trusting in the full authority of the Word of God.

We've got to care more about raising up younger pastors.

Let's plead to the Lord of the harvest to send more labors out into the harvest in this way.

And let's make sure we know just exactly the kind of man we are looking for.

The steadfast soldier, the godly athlete, and the hardworking farmer.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you, Lord, for the privilege, the privilege of your word that speaks to us and to this church the things we need to hear.

We know, Lord, we are not immune to the kinds of things in this world that happen to churches.

We're not immune.

And so help us, Lord, to humble ourselves and to plead with you, to raise up men, qualified men, who will take this church and other churches into the future.

Keep us from being selfish about our own lives and just being happy about this generation.

Help us think about the generations to come and the kind of men who are gonna lead them.

Would you raise up from among us more and more younger pastors and elders for the sake of the gospel, the purity of the church, for the hope of the nations in Christ?

We pray.

Amen.

I want to give you just a minute.