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The message you're about to hear was preached at Liberty Baptist
Church in Easton, MA. You can find out more about us
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message from God's Word will be a blessing to you.
Second Timothy we're going to be in the book of second Timothy
again, chapter #2 tonight. Second Timothy chapter #2 Again,
if you don't know, I'm sure most of.
You do, because this is your church, but your pastor's on
vacation. So he asked me to come fill in
for him last Wednesday and tonight.
And so I'm here. This is the last time I'll be
here for a while. I, I just pop in and out every
now and then. That's, that's pretty much all
you get of me. But I'm right down the street.
So, you know, if you ever want to come visit Lighthouse, we're
right over there too. Second Timothy chapter #2 is
where we'll be 1st 13 verses is what we're going to look at
tonight. Lord willing, if you're capable,
please stand in honor of the reading of God's Word and we
will read together. If you'd read along quietly
while I read out loud. Second Timothy chapter #2
Beginning in verse #1 The Bible says, Thou therefore, my Son, be
strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and the things
that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit
thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.
Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus
Christ. No man that woreth entangleth
himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who
hath chosen him to be a soldier. And if a man also strive for
masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive
lawfully. The husbandmen that laboureth
must be first partaker of the fruits.
Consider what I say, and the Lord give the understanding in
all things. Remember that Jesus Christ of
the seed of David was raised from the dead, according to my
Gospel, wherein I suffer trouble as an evil doer even unto bonds.
But the word of God is not bound.
Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sake, that they
may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with
eternal glory. It is a faithful saying, for if
we be dead with him, we shall also live with him.
If we suffer, we shall also reign with him.
If we deny him, he also will deny us.
If we believe not yet he abideth faithful.
He cannot deny himself. Thank you.
You may be seated. One of my pastor's best friends.
This is from before my pastor. One of my dad's pastor.
My dad's best friends from before I was even born.
Was a man named Jim Booberry. He was the pastor.
That's how I said pastor. My father's best friend was also
the First Baptist pastor that my father ever sat under.
He was saved in a Southern gospel Southern Baptist church,
But then this was the first independent Baptist Church and
Jim Booberry was the pastor. That was in Utica, OH.
Utica, OH. If you don't know where it is,
don't worry because I couldn't tell you where it is either.
It's tiny little spit of nothing out in the middle of rural Ohio.
3 to 4000 people. That's about as big as it gets.
Very small town, very rural town.
Utica, OH. For around 25 years, Pastor
Blueberry pastored Utica Baptist Temple in Utica, OH.
He did all the things like going out door to door, sharing the
gospel. You know, starting a having
services Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Sunday
school, starting children's children's church and, and
King's kids and going and visiting those who are sick,
even those who weren't a part of his church.
They would, they would call him because their, their pastors
wouldn't come and he would go and he would pray with them and
he would share the gospel with them, even if they weren't a
member of his church. And you did this for 25 years.
And my father was there with him for, for a period of that time.
They went out and they did all these things together.
They didn't cancel church. My I asked my dad about this and
he was, he made a point of saying we didn't cancel church.
Didn't matter what the snow was like in Ohio, we get a lot of
snow. I we lived in Ohio for a period
of time when I was younger and we got about 8 feet of snow a
year, a lot of snow. There was no virtual services
back then, so the pastor showed. Up and if anybody else showed up
they had services. If not, I guess he preached to
his wife because she was there with him and his son.
But that was for 25 years. That's what he did, 150 year
old. That's how old the church was.
So the church building was old. I remember going and helping my
father. We, he liked to go, we would go
and help Pastor Blueberry from time to time.
And so one Saturday we drove down there and I had the
wonderful privilege of scraping paint.
Off of that. Building it was unpleasant.
I was probably 14, and I definitely did not enjoy it.
And summers in Ohio can be very hot, very humid, kind of like
they can be here. And so it was very hot.
It's very humid. I'm up on a ladder.
I don't like heights. I'm trying to scrape paint, and
that's not going very well. But we did it all day Saturday.
But my father said often times they'd have work days.
And Pastor Blueberry was the only person who showed up.
That was 25 years of that. And so one day my dad asked him,
My dad is known for being blunt. So this is a, a very much
something my dad would ask. He said, why don't you just move
somewhere else? Why are you still the pastor
here? I mean, you're doing everything
right. This is what my father told me.
He told Pastor Blueberry because I wasn't alive at this time.
But he says you're doing everything right.
You, you're going out on visitation, you're preaching is
solid. You're, you're going and, and
talking to people when they're sick and you're starting all
these children's ministries and you're, you're reaching out.
And yet it seems like no one's, no one seems to want to change.
No one. Nothing seems to be happening
here. I mean, the church averaged 10
people for 25 years, 10 people. That's it.
That's. And that included his wife and
his son. So take them away and there's
only eight people or seven people left, Not a lot.
So my dad asked him, why? Why don't you just leave?
I mean, you're doing everything right.
You seem to be doing great. You could move somewhere else.
You could be more successful. You could have bigger buildings,
bigger projects, more, more money in the offering plate,
more things to do, more, more accomplishments under your belt.
And Pastor Blueberry of my father's admission, he said God
called me here. And I'm going to stay here.
He hasn't called me somewhere else.
And so he stayed there for 25 years.
He had to work full time the entire time he was there.
He worked full time at the Postal Service.
He fixed their sorting machines. And he worked there until one
day he was out and shoveling snow and he fell and.
Through the events of that fall, I think he must have hit his
head because he ended up having to be in a nursing home and
dying in that nursing home with very limited cognitive function
left. He didn't remember his wife.
He didn't remember my father 25 years and that's that's how it
ends. So the question that I would
like to pose tonight, and I believe that Paul is trying to
encourage Timothy with is was Pastor Blueberry successful?
Was he successful? What is the measure of success?
And we live in a culture that measures success through
accomplishments, through the things that we we accomplish,
the things that we gain. We measure our success through
finances and financial stability and bank accounts and retirement
funds. Or we measure success through
jobs. You know, if you have a good
job, you get promoted, you're successful in your job.
We measure success through education.
If you had a great education, you had lots of learning
opportunities, you have the chance to grow.
We can measure success that way. We measure success through
influence. The more followers you have on
social media media. Makes you a more successful
person, a more popular person, so influence and relevance and
popularity. We can measure success through
awards and accolades. You get an award, you get a
certain accolade, a recognition. That's the word I'm looking for.
You get recognized for what you've accomplished and.
You feel like you are successful we can even get success in our
culture through relationships. We feel like if we have a
relationship that fulfills us that that makes us successful,
or we can even be very personal in our success.
If I. Feel happy.
If I feel good about what I've done, then I am successful.
We can be like that. None of those things are
necessarily bad. It's not bad to work a job and
make money and get promoted. I've done all of those things
myself. I work full time alongside of
being the assistant pastor and I've been promoted and all those
things. None of those things are bad,
but the question is, are they the standard for success,
especially as Christians? As a Christian, is the standard
for success what we accomplish in this life?
Churches can also begin to measure success, and Christians
can begin to measure success in much the same way that our
cultures does. I was when I was thinking about
this, I was thinking about me as a preacher.
Preachers can measure the success of a sermon by the
response of that sermon. Is that a good measure of
success? Just because a lot of people
come down to the altar and it makes you feel good, like, yeah,
does that really mean it was successful?
What is the measure of success? We can measure our life's worth,
our life's value by what we achieve, why we feel successful
based on what we do and based on how important it is.
At least it is how important it is to our culture.
So the question is, is that the measure of success, especially
for a Christian? Does God another way?
Could we could ask it? Does God reward His people based
on their accomplishments? If He does, then Pastor
Blueberry was not successful because he did not accomplish
very much in terms of the number of people that came to his
church, the growth of his church, the projects that his
church did, the missionaries that his church sent.
None of those things happened. So if the answer is that God
rewards His people based on what they accomplished, then he
failed. So is that the measure of
success? There's always work to be done
around the church. I'm the I want you to just
imagine this with me. I'm, I'm the assistant pastor.
So I do a lot of a lot of different things.
I have a lot of, a lot of. Things that I have a hand in.
I teach junior church, I teach Sunday school class, I teach the
master clubs during the school year.
I run the I. Well, I manage the ITI don't run
it, but I manage the ITI manage the website.
There's a lot of things that I do.
On top of that, I song lead. You saw me song leading tonight.
I lead all the singing. I do all the special music
arranging to be done. I also do go out on visitation
every week. So there's a lot of things that
I'm doing. So again, we're thinking of what
is the measure of success is the measure of success since I do
all of these things, am I more successful than somebody else
who doesn't do all of those things, who does less things Is
is the number of check marks that I can check off?
Yep, did that did that did that did that Does that make me more
successful as a Christian? I, I think you know, the answer
is no. I think we all could agree
that's not the measure of success.
Another way to think about it. I have five children and I'm
responsible, I've been entrusted by God and I'm responsible for
teaching them, for training them in the nurture and admonition of
the Lord, preparing them to be. Adults.
And to be Christian servants and it, it often means doing that
often means giving up on getting things done.
They take a lot of time. There's two of them right here
and the rest are back there in the nursery.
And they take a lot of time. And it often means giving them
the time they need means I don't get done all of the things that
I would like to get done. For example, we mow the grass at
the church when when we're able to get over there, we mow the
grass at the church. And I taught them how to use the
push mower. It takes a long time for them to
push mow the grass. I could push mow the grass a lot
faster than they could, and I could probably do a better job
than they could because they usually.
You know, they miss the corners and I have to go back and clean
it up when they're done. You know what I'm talking about.
They miss stuff. And so it has to go and be
cleaned up and it doesn't look all nice and sharp with the
straight lines like somebody might want it to look like.
And so I could. Do it all myself.
I could get it done faster and it would look better and they
would learn nothing. Say God didn't call me to mow
grass. He didn't call me to mow grass.
He called me to be a dad. He called me, Here's our
keyword. He called me to be a faithful
father, Father, a faithful husband, and a faithful servant.
Faithfulness. We're going to be talking about
faithfulness night. He didn't talk.
He didn't call me to just get things done.
God didn't call Pastor Booberry to Pastor Booberry to big
buildings and large projects and full pews, but he did call him
to Utica. OH, and he was faithful.
And that's what God calls us to tonight.
That is the measure of success. It's not how much you
accomplish. It's not what you do.
It's not how many check boxes you can check off.
It's faithfulness. Paul is encouraging Timothy here
to be faithful and I believe that that's what God wants us to
be encouraged with tonight. This is an encouraging book.
The book of second Timothy was meant to encourage Timothy.
Remember, if we remember from last Wednesday, this is this was
written with Paul in prison under the under the rule of
Emperor Nero and his. Fanaticism, he was crazy and he
was horrible person and he he persecuted Christians greatly.
It was a terrible time to be a Christian in terms of
persecution. That's what's going on in the
world. And so Paul is writing to
Timothy. He knows he's going to die later
at the end of the book, he he says, my life is dumb.
This is it. I'm not getting out of this.
He knows he's going to die and he's writing to Timothy and says
and trying to encourage Timothy. And here he's trying to
encourage him to be faithful. He uses words like.
Be strong, endure hardness and he's trying to encourage him.
Be faithful, Timothy, be faithful.
This is a key thought. This is this is the thought that
I'd like you to get. If you don't get anything else
out of this message, just get this thought.
God's servants are judged and rewarded for their faithfulness
to God's call. God's servants are judged and
rewarded for their faithfulness to God's call.
Remember this Timothy was following God's call.
He was a pastor at this time at the church at Ephesus.
He was, this is what he had been assigned by Paul and he was
doing it faithfully. First Timothy was written to him
before Paul went to prison, and it was written to encourage him
to stand up to the false teachers.
That were trying to infiltrate the church.
Ephesus was not a very nice place.
The Temple of Diana was there with all of the the promiscuity
and, and, and immorality involved in that.
And so it was just. It was a terrible place, and he
was being faithful to God there in Ephesus.
This book was not written to somebody who had the call of God
and rebelled against it. It was written to somebody who
had the call of God and accepted it.
And Paul was trying to encourage him.
So God's servants are judged and rewarded for their faithfulness
to God's call. Timothy.
Be faithful. The first thing he says there
thou therefore that therefore is there because of what was
happened in chapter 1. There, at the end of chapter 1,
he talks about all. Day in Asia be turned away from
me. And then he talks about one man,
Onissa Foris, who stuck with him.
Paul was abandoned. People were scared in the book,
in the 1st chapter he talks about fear.
We talked about that last week. People were scared about what
Nero might do to them if he got caught, he talks about.
Shame in the first path in the 1st chapter, people were
ashamed. Shame is a terrible thing.
I preached a message out on that passage and the title of it was
there is no cause for shame and there's no cause for shame.
But we're not going to preach that tonight.
That would take too long, Timothy the first thing he says,
Thou therefore my son be strong. Timothy will need to be strong.
Pay attention, Timothy, he says, thou therefore my son be strong.
That word strong there he uses the same word or the same word
is used by Luke in Acts 922, where it says this about Paul,
says but Saul before he turned into Paul he was Saul.
Saul increased the more in strength and confounded the Jews
which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ
strength strong. Paul did not confound the Jews
with his biceps. That's not what it's talking
about. Does it say when it says be
strong or his strength? It doesn't mean that he was
ripped. That's not what it's talking
about. The word strong here has to do
with resolve, an inner strength, a determination to say this is
what's right, this is what I'm going to do, and nothing is
going to change this. Be strong.
In fact, the Bible says in the
very next verse in Acts that he was so strong in his resolve and
in his knowledge of the Scriptures and improving, that
Christ was their Messiah, that he was so strong in that that
the Jews took counsel to kill him.
He was strong. And Paul is concerned again, the
spirit of fear, the spirit, the power of shame is creeping in.
And the temptation would be to shrink back, to be timid, to not
be bold, to not stand up, to not preach the truth, to not
continue to be faithful. And Paul is trying to encourage
Timothy to be faithful. And so he says, be strong.
Don't buckle under the pressure. The pressure was great.
We talked about Nero already. People were abandoning the
church. You don't know who you can
trust. Paul is concerned, so he says to
Timothy, be strong. But notice what he says after
that. Be strong in the grace that is
in Christ Jesus. In other words, Paul didn't say,
all right, Timothy, it's up to you.
You're just going to have to grit your teeth and bear it.
Just going to have to bear up under it, under the pressure,
under Nero's persecution. You're just going to have to be
strong in your own strength. That's not what he said.
Be strong in the. Grace that is in Christ Jesus.
Be strong. In other words, he say, be
strong in your dependence on Christ.
Be strong in your dependence on Christ.
The idea of the phrase is that there's this continuous
dependence on the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
If he's going to be strong, if he's going to stay faithful,
it's not going to be by his own strength.
Timothy's strength is going to buckle.
Timothy's strength is going to give in.
Temptation is going to get the better of him.
It gets the better of all of us when we try to live the
Christian life in our own strength.
But praise God, we have the grace of Christ Jesus and we
ought to be strong. Our dependence on Christ Jesus
ought to be strong. Being strong.
This, I found this interesting as I thought about that.
Being strong is a command. It's a, it's something that
Timothy has to do. It's a choice, Timothy, I want
you to choose to be strong, but I want you to choose to be
strong in something that was a gift.
It's almost, it's almost, it's weird.
It's a weird phrase. I want you to be strong,
Timothy. I want you to choose to be
strong, but I want you to be strong in the grace that is in
Christ Jesus, which was a gift, something that was given to him.
Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
The gift is given to all who trust Jesus as their Savior.
When we try to be strong without the grace of Christ Jesus, we
try to bear up under it. All that's going to happen is
we're going to burn ourselves out.
That's what happens because we don't have the strength to
continue this life that he's called us to, to be faithful.
All that's going to happen is we're going to do a bunch of
stuff, but it's going to be a bunch of stuff that we want to
do. It's going to be stuff that we
do in our own strength which will not bring us reward, which
will not bring success. It just brings self fulfillment.
It's selfish. It's about me.
I can do a lot of things through Denwood Strength, but eventually
Denwood Strength is going to give in.
Denwood's strength is going to buckle.
Denwood strength is not strong enough to to continue on.
And Denwood's strength does everything for Denwood.
It doesn't bring me reward. It doesn't bring me success.
So I'm not I'm we can try to be strong with without the grace of
Christ Jesus and all we will do is burn ourselves out.
We're not being faithful to what God has called us.
We'll be faithful to ourselves. We'll we'll set the direction,
we'll set what we want to do and we'll burn ourselves out.
But there's another flip. We could go the other way and we
could say, all right, well, the gift of the grace of Christ
Jesus is, is a gift. So I'm just going to sit down
and I'm just going to wait for him to do everything for me.
There are people who do that. They do they, they think, well,
God's going to take care of these problems.
God's going to take care of this sin.
I don't have to do anything. So they're not being strong.
They haven't made the choice to to practice and to train and to
study. Those are all things that are in
the the book of Second Timothy. Study to show thyself approved
unto God. They don't choose to do those
things. Instead, they just sit back.
And say, well, God's given me the gift of his grace, so I'm
just going to wait for him to solve all these problems for me.
What happens to a car when you let it sit and it does nothing?
It rusts and eventually it doesn't start and it becomes
useless. What happens to a Christian when
they sit and do nothing? They become useless.
They can't be successful. They can't gain the reward
because they are not being faithful.
Be strong, Choose to be strong, Timothy.
You need to train and study and resolve to live with full
confidence in God. That's how we could read that
God will never leave you. God has promised you a future
home in heaven. God has defeated death.
God has saved you. God has called you.
I say it all the time. One of my favorite passages,
Joshua chapter 1 have not. I commanded thee if I told you
to go, if I called you, Timothy, I have the ability.
I have the power to see it through.
You just have to be. Strong in the grace that is in
Christ Jesus Timothy. If you think you have some
clever gimmicks, 10 Steps for Church growth, forget that.
Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
If you think you've got a plan for how to avoid the suffering
and persecution of Nero, forget that.
Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
God knows how to build his church.
God knows how to protect his people.
God is in control. God makes no mistakes and God
can be trusted. So be strong, be faithful.
He says in verse 2. And the things that thou has
heard of me among many witnesses the same commit thou to faithful
men who shall be able to teach others also.
You know if you were wondering what God's process for church
growth was. Paul told us right here, he
says. And the things that thou has
heard of me are. Right, so you've got Paul who
taught Timothy. So you've got 2 generations.
Then he says the same commit that of faithful men.
There's another generation who shall be able to teach others.
Also, there's four generations of Christians in one verse.
You want to know how to grow your church?
God's plan is discipleship. Tell people the gospel.
Get them saved, get them plugged into the church, get them
baptized. Disciple them.
God didn't. God doesn't have a plan that
involves activities and doing and and 10 steps.
God's plan is you and me. Discipling people.
God's plan be strong in the
grace that is in Christ Jesus, but we're under attack.
Don't worry about that. You worry about sharing the
gospel. You worry about discipling, you
worry about taking the truths that you got from Paul that that
Paul got from me and you got from Paul and passing them on to
somebody else so that that person can turn around and pass
them on to the next person you know.
This church, that this church is here because of that chain of
events, somebody gave the gospel to your pastor and he got saved.
And he chose to surrender to God and be faithful to God and come
up here and somebody shared the gospel with you and you got
saved. And if you went backwards,
somebody shared the gospel with them and somebody shared the
gospel with them. That's how you got here.
You didn't get here because of a 10 step program or some weird
activity. You got here because of
discipleship, God's plan for church growth in a world.
Where success is measured by accomplishments and
achievements, it would easy to it would be easy to see the fear
and shame he talks about in chapter 1 as being the fear and
shame and the persecution as a failure, as a reason to adapt to
the culture, as a reason to adapt.
That's what the people did at the end of chapter 1 all.
Day in Asia be turned away from me.
Why? Because they were afraid,
Because they were ashamed. Because of what was happening
and they didn't want to stand with Paul, they didn't want to
be associated with Paul because being associated with Paul
probably meant they would be in prison, that they would be
persecuted. Benjamin, stop it.
In a world where success is measured by accomplishments, it
would be easy for Timothy to see this as a failure and to adapt.
I'm saddened to say that many churches and many Christians
have adapted to our culture today because of fear and
because of shame. They're no longer willing to
disciple people. They're no longer willing to
call sin sin. They're no longer willing to
stand on the truths of the Bible beginning in Genesis chapter 1
and all the way through to the end.
They change it and they twist it to line up with what the world
thinks and what the world says because of fear, because of
shame. They were not strong, they were
not faithful. And Timothy, you need to be
strong. You need to be faithful.
God's servants are not judged and rewarded for their
achievements. They're judged and rewarded for
their faithfulness. So.
Timothy, you need to be strong. Be strong in the grace that's in
Christ Jesus. Be strong to continue
discipleship. Then he says in verse #3 Thou
therefore endure. Endure hardness.
Timothy, you need to endure. He gives him 3 illustrations, 3
illustrations. I'm going to have to go quick or
I will run out of time. SO3 illustrations.
He gives him the illustration of a soldier, of an athlete, and of
a husbandman, a farmer, a soldier.
He has. He says, thou therefore endure
hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
Romans. The Romans were at the time of
Paul, they were in control of much of the world at that time
and they had secured world domination largely through their
military might and through their roads that allowed them to move
their military around. But because of this vast
military force, they also had to have lots of discipline, lots of
training to be able to hold the land that they had taken.
And so they, they, this picture would have been very familiar to
both Timothy and to Paul. Paul was arrested by Roman
centurions a couple of times and they were in prison with Romans.
They were familiar with Roman discipline, Roman soldiers, how
Roman soldiers looked, how they operated.
So this would have been a familiar sight.
For both Timothy and Paul. To maintain this huge empire,
they had to train, they had to discipline, because there could
be no weakening of resolve. There could be no weakening of
skill or strength. There could be no diversions.
They needed to. Follow orders.
They needed to endure the hardness that was commanded of
them. That's what it meant to be a
soldier. A good soldier Imagine if you
will, a soldier today, doesn't it could be a soldier in.
Any in any branch doesn't matter.
But he enlists, Somebody enlists, they enlist in the
military. They go to boot camp, they get
trained, they're ready to be shipped out.
Their commander comes in and says, all right, we're shipping
out tomorrow. And that soldier looks at his
commanders and says, but I've got a date, so I'm not going to
be able to be there. That's not going to go over very
well with the commanding officer.
That's not OK. You're a soldier.
You don't get to just decide, well, I'm not going to go with
the the the unit. I'm not going to be involved.
I'm going to take a step back because I've got other plans.
That's what he's talking about in verse 4 when he says no man
that woreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life.
A Roman centurion, a Roman soldier, had restrictions on how
what he could do, on what he could do with his time.
He didn't have just free time that he could spend doing
whatever he wanted because he was under someone's authority.
And that person told him where to go and what to do.
That's what it meant to enlist and to be a soldier.
He didn't get to decide how he was going to spend his free time
or what kind of occupation he was going to have.
When the commander said go, you went.
And he says here, Timothy, you are now a soldier.
Be a good soldier of Jesus Christ, Timothy, you're a
soldier now. Soldiers don't quit because it's
difficult or because it's dangerous.
Soldiers don't tell their commanding officers they're busy
when the order comes down to move.
Timothy, you're a soldier and a soldier is faithful as to his
commander and to the commands he gives.
He's very specific about that. Verse 4 again, no man that worth
entangleth himself with the affairs of this.
If you're in the army, you don't go in and tangle, tangle
yourself up with with all the cares and worries and and
difficulties of this life because he goes on that he may
please him who has chosen him to to be a soldier, who chose
Timothy to be a soldier? Jesus Christ did, He says be a
good soldier of Jesus Christ. You're in the Lord's army now.
Going and tangling yourself up with world's affairs is not
going to please Jesus. That's not what he's looking
for, remember. What is he looking for?
He's looking for faithfulness, for faithfulness, for endurance.
You're a soldier, Timothy, and a soldier is faithful to his
commander and to the commands he gives.
When you got saved, you were enlisted in God's army.
If you're saved tonight, this could be said of you.
If you're saved tonight, then you are a soldier of Jesus
Christ. Tomorrow night I'll be teaching
a men's Bible study at our church.
We're going to be talking about angels, elect angels and fallen
angels and oppression on on Christians and how to overcome
that. And part of my study, I've been
watching some videos on on spiritual warfare.
And I was this one pastor I believe is back in Oklahoma City
where I'm from. He listed 1010 things, 10 signs
to know that you're under attack, that you're involved in
spiritual warfare. And I was expecting, you know,
some, some great thing. And no, he said things like,
well, if you're telling the truth, you're preaching, if
you're going out soul winning, if you're praying.
Those are the kinds of things he said.
You're involved in spiritual warfare just by doing those
things. You're in the battle.
You're in the battle and you must learn, just like Timothy
had to learn to endure, to not be distracted.
No man that woreth entangleth himself.
That was the first illustration. The second illustration is in
verse 5. It says and if a man also strive
for masteries, yet is he not crowned except he strive
lawfully, strive for the masteries.
The phrase there comes from the Greek word athleo, which is
where we get our word athlete. So it's an athlete.
He's talking about an athlete. Paul is probably picturing the
public games, Another thing that would have been very familiar to
both of them. Ephesus was a city, a major
city. They probably had Olympic Games
there. And there would have been
people, men who came from all around the, the, the, the
countryside, all around the, the nation of Rome and came there to
compete in these games, whether it be wrestling, whether it be
whatever other games they were playing.
They came there for the purpose of competing to to with all
their might and to be victorious.
They would have followed strict diets and they would have
exercised multiple times a day and they would practice to
perfect their art. And the winner of the game was
crowned with a little ring of leaves.
That's what you got. That was that was the sign that
you won in the in the Olympic Games.
Paul doesn't. Draw attention to anything I
just said, he says. You're using the picture of an
athlete, but he specifically. Says if a man also strive for
the masteries, yet is he not crowned except he strive
lawfully? He doesn't draw attention to his
workout or the hardness that he has to endure or or the waking
up early or any of the things that you might think of when you
think of an athlete who's working hard to gain the
victory. He draws attention to following
the rules. Following the rules.
Run in a. Race, but you disqualify
yourself because you didn't follow the rules.
See, the The thing is, an athlete would know this.
You can be the best you can practice the most and get up the
earliest and still lose. Not because you didn't come in
first place, but because you broke the rules and you
disqualified yourself. I think a great example, modern
example today would be Lance Armstrong.
He had a lot of medals under his belt and now he has none because
he disqualified himself. He broke the rules and
disqualified himself. When I was a school teacher back
at our church, we have a little private school and I, when I
first came up here, I worked there as a school teacher and I
taught PE and we had a large range of kids.
We had kids that were 5-6 years old all the way up to high
schoolers. So playing PE was difficult
because of course a high schooler is a little more
athletically accomplished than a 5 year old.
And I needed to find ways to make it fair for everyone.
So we would play kickball and I quickly realized that, you know,
somebody 16 would get up there and boot it and it would go
soaring off into the distance and you'd watch these five year
olds. And by the time it hit the
ground, the guy was already back at base.
There was no way. There's nothing they could do.
So I I am modified kickball, much to the 16 year old's
chagrin. I made the bases backwards.
So you ran to 3rd, then second, then first.
You've no idea how many times somebody would run to 1st.
I'm safe. You're on the wrong.
Base, you're out. They didn't like that very much.
I changed the rules so that as soon as the ball was picked up
by someone you were out if you were not on a base.
They didn't like it, but the point was there were new rules
and if you didn't follow the rules, you were disqualified.
You couldn't play the game. You had to be out and go back
and kick again. Paul said that very something
very similar about himself in First Corinthians 927.
He said, But I keep under my body and bring it into
subjection, lest but by any means when I have.
Preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.
What was his concern? His concern was he'd be out
doing all the right things, but he would fail to follow the
rules and he would be disqualified.
He would miss out. He would not be successful.
He would fail simply because he did not follow the rules.
You know, we're not running a race, the Christian race, if we
wanted to use Paul's illustration, we're not running
this race to be famous. We're not.
We're not Christians to be famous.
We're running to please Jesus Christ.
That's why we're here. And if we're going to please
Him, we have to follow his rules.
We can't pick and choose which rules we want to follow either.
There's plenty of people today who pick and choose well.
I don't like this one. It's not called.
It doesn't match with our culture today.
So we're going to ignore that one.
We're going to change that one you don't get to do.
That you have to follow the rules.
We have to know the rules. An athlete would study the rules
because he wants to make sure he knows this is what I need to do.
This is how I win. This is how I'm successful.
This is how I can finish the race and win the crown.
There's no shortcuts, there's no cheat codes, there's no ends
justify the means. There's no picking and choosing.
We must be faithful. Faithful to the law, faithful to
the rules, faithful to the the manner of running that Christ
has prescribed for us. The third illustration is a
husbandman. He says in verse #6 the
husbandman. That laboreth must be first
partaker of the fruits. A farmer.
Farmers work a lot. They work outside in the field
all day. Rain, snow, whatever it is,
they're out there working. There's always something to be
done on a farm. I'm not a farmer, but my
father-in-law is a farmer. I may have told you guys this
story before, but it's a great story.
So I'll tell you again. When before I married my wife, I
went, I, we lived in Oklahoma City.
We went to Heartland Baptist Bible College together there.
And so one of our breaks, I went home with her to visit with her
family and, and see her dad. This is the first time I'd ever
met him and he thought it would be a great idea for me to go out
and work on the farm with him. Now he he had a farm, but he
worked for a farmer and he was a maintenance guy.
So a lot of what he did was working on these massive
sprinklers, like half mile long of these huge sprinklers pumping
out hundreds of thousands of gallons of water.
I'd never seen anything like it. And so I go out there and he's
like, I'm pretty sure he planned this.
He decided that this was a great day to replace the sprinkler
heads. On the sprinklers.
Long sprinkler. And so he's sitting in this
little four Wheeler just coasting along and I'm walking
along and I'm trying to unscrew these things and they're all
calcified so they don't want to come off.
And I'm trying to RIP these things off and it's not working
out. And then he gets off and he just
goes pink and pink and it makes me look like a fool.
And you can see I'm not hurt by it at all.
But farmers work hard. And he did that every day for
many years. They work hard.
It takes a lot of work. And back then it would have
taken even more work. Nowadays they've got fancy
tractors that do everything for you.
Back then, you, you planted by your, you planted by hand.
You watered. If you had to water, you watered
it by hand. You had to go pick it by hand.
You had to bail it by hand. Everything was done with
manpower. That was it.
That's all you had. The labor had to come before
there was a harvest, he says. The husbandman that laboreth the
labor comes first. There is no harvest without
labor, without work. Long hours must be spent tilling
the soil, planting the soil, wedding the soil.
And the work is never done. There's always another field to
plow, another field to prepare and plant, another garden to
fertilize and weed, another field that needs protection from
pests, fences that need to be mended.
And then the harvest comes and you start it all over again.
Farmer. Long, Tedious.
But if he was going to see the reward, the husband and the
laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits.
There will be no harvest without the labor.
He must be faithful to the labor if he wants a harvest.
You know, the work God called Timothy to.
Was. Long and tedious and.
Often times very uncomfortable. We don't know a whole lot about
everything that happened there in Ephesus with Timothy.
We have first Timothy, which tells us about some nasty false
teaching that was trying to infiltrate the church.
We have knowledge about Ephesus from history and what kind of
place it was and about what was going on at that time with Nero
and what we know. Again, Ephesus was not a great
place, and Timothy had a long. Hard road to hoe, you know.
A parent's work is never done either if you've ever had
children. My children are young, my dad
tells me all the time and I'm 34.
He says I'm still a dad. It never stops.
Parents, work is never done and sometimes it's a long hard Rd.,
a long bit of work to raise your child and the nurture and
admonition of the Lord. And sometimes you wish you could
just sleep in. You wish you could just take a
break. You wish.
It could just be. Peaceful.
But you can't. You can't stop.
You have to be faithful. If you want to reap the reward,
you have to work. There's always.
Someone else who's needing prayer.
We had a prayer meeting tonight. There was only a couple prayer
requests. Praise the Lord, God's been
good. But there's always somebody who
needs prayer. There's always another prayer
request that could be prayed for.
There's always another person who's sick, another person who's
lost, another person that needs to get saved, another person
that needs to come back to the church, another person that
needs to repent. There's always work to be done.
It's hard. There's always a person who
needs a kind word and needs the gospel.
If we are to see the reward of our labor, we must be faithful
to the work. Faithfulness, He says in verse
#7 consider what I say, and the Lord give the understanding in
all things. Consider what I say.
Consider. What it means to be a good
soldier, A soldier who endures hardest and isn't distracted.
There are many good things that can distract Christians, but
they're not. And they're not all bad.
Some of them are even necessary. But it didn't Jesus say, seek ye
first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these
things shall be added unto you. How often do we find ourselves
seeking those other things and we've given up the first thing
that we ought to be seeking? We get distracted.
Many Christians today are soldiers whose focus is torn,
parents and spouses who are not faithful to the responsibility
God has given churches, and Christians who are not faithful
to the gospel God has commissioned us with.
Be faithful, there will be no victory.
Without focus, consider what it means to strive for the
masteries. If an athlete can bring his body
into subjection, Timothy, you can too.
If he can do it just to win a little circle of leaves.
You're trying to win a crown. You're trying to win the Lord
looking at you and say well done, my good and faithful
service. If he can bring his body in
subjection for a ringlet of leaves.
You can do it too, Timothy. Consider what it means to strive
for the masteries. Later in the book, Paul tells
Timothy, study to show thyself approved unto God.
Be faithful to the commands of God because you can do
everything right, but you can do it in your own strength.
You can do it without following the rules.
You can do it without the way and in the manner that in a
manner that God did not prescribe.
You can get a big church. You could have a full church
tonight if you just gave up on the Bible, had some rock music,
changed the lighting, nobody in suits, we could fill this place
up. You'd have success, but you
wouldn't be faithful. You wouldn't be the athlete who
followed the rules. You would disqualify yourself
from the reward of your labor. To Timothy, consider what it
means to be a husbandman, that labor to be diligent, patient,
getting every up every day, doing the same things over and
over and over again. Not giving up because you know
that eventually, somewhere, maybe even after you're long
dead. There will be a reward.
There will be a harvest to reap. God will open the books and he
will. He will make wrong or make right
that which was wrong, and He will reward His servants for
their faithfulness. Nothing for God will be
accomplished in this life without effort and sometimes
hardship. We need to be faithful like a
soldier, faithful like an athlete.
Follow the rules, follow the purpose.
Faithful to the work, confident of the harvest.
He was trying to encourage him there.
Be faithful, He tells him to consider what I say, go back and
just think about it. There are so many.
Ways that that. Those 3 verses, those 3
examples, illustrations could be applied.
A soldier, an athlete and a farmer.
And we don't have time to go into any more than what we
already have. Next he gives him 2 examples.
Gives them the example of Jesus Christ.
Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised
from the dead. Jesus endured hardness.
Jesus was a good soldier. He was sent here by God the
Father to die on the cross for the sins of all mankind.
That was His purpose. That was why He came.
He didn't allow himself to get distracted by other things, by
the politics and by the the the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
He said of himself, I don't even have a place to lay my head.
The Son of Man has no place to lay his head.
He endured hardness. He disciplined Himself when it
came, when it came time to suffer.
It says that when he prayed, He sweat drops of blood.
He endured hardness as a good soldier.
He labored patiently in the fields.
He said they were ripe under harvest, and he was there so
that that harvest could be brought in.
That's what he came to do. So he gives the example of
Jesus, who he says he was of the seed of David, and he was raised
from the dead, according to my gospel.
Then he gives his health himself as an example, wherein I suffer
trouble as an evil doer, even under bonds, But the word of God
is not bound. Therefore I endure all things
for the elect's sake, that they may obtain the salvation which
is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
Paul's in prison. Paul is suffering.
But Paul is also enduring, and he says he may be bound.
I thought this was great. Here he is.
He's in prison. He's bound.
I'm bound for the gospel. But the word of God is not
bound. The word of God is not bound.
You know, there have been a lot of people down through the years
who have tried to silence God's word, stamp it out.
They burned it. They made it illegal.
They put it into languages so no one else could read it but the
papacy. They have done everything they
could to keep it out of people's hands.
When people translated it into into the language, the original,
the people who began to translate it into English for
the common man, they persecuted them.
They killed them. They burned them at the stake.
Silencing God's Word. God's word is not silenced.
It is not bound. Yeah, I'm in prison, Paul said.
But Timothy, you're still out there.
You're still discipling, you're still preaching, you're still
teaching. I can endure, Timothy.
So can you. Be faithful if I must endure for
God's word to move forward. This is Paul.
Say, this is what he's saying here.
If I have to endure for God's word to move forward, I will as
a good soldier, he says. Therefore I endure all things
for the elect's sake that they may obtain.
They also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with
eternal glory. I can win the prize and not be
disqualified. I can endure.
I can be faithful, patient. So he gives them these two
examples. He's trying to encourage him to
be. Faithful, so he's so far he's
given him these three illustrations of enduring of
being faithful. He's given in these two
examples, Jesus and himself. And then he gives him this last
thought, God's assurance, a reason to be faithful.
God's assurance, he says in verse 11, it is a faithful
saying. There are five faithful and true
sayings inside the three prison epistles.
It's worth studying it someday if you're ever interested.
We are not going to look at them tonight, but there are five of
them, faithful and true sayings. This is one of them.
It is a faithful saying. For if we be dead with him, we
shall also live with him. If you're saved this evening,
then when Jesus died, you died. When Jesus rose from the dead,
you rose from the dead. When we baptize people, what do
we say? I baptize you in the name of the
Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, buried with him in
the likeness of his death, and. Raised to walk in newness of
life. Thus the baptism doesn't save
you. It doesn't make you more saved.
It's a picture of what actually happened when you got saved.
You died and you were brought back.
If we, if it is a faithful saying, if we be dead with him,
we shall also live with Him. Physical death is of no concern
to a Christian. It's nothing.
So be faithful. Then he says in verse 12, if we
suffer, we shall also reign with him.
If we deny him, he also will deny.
Us, There's this contrast, suffering and denying.
Those who are strong in the context, those who are strong,
those who endure hardness, those who are faithful will one day be
rewarded. Those who are faithful, if we
suffer, we shall also reign with Him.
I mentioned this already, but there's coming a day at the
Great White Throne. I'm sorry, not the Great White
Throne, but the Bema seat where Christians will be judged, the
books will be open and we our name will be in the Lamb's book
of life. So we're going to heaven.
That's what the next verse is going to teach us.
Verse 13. God isn't going to kick us out
no matter what we do, if we're. Saved.
We're going, but there's going to be a reckoning.
What did you do with the responsibilities I gave you in
this life? What did you do with the
opportunities I gave you in this life?
Were you faithful to the calling I had or did you waste it,
piddle it, chasing after the things that you wanted?
He's not saying that we'll lose our salvation.
The next verse again makes it very clear, but he's saying we
will be judged and we will be rewarded based on our
faithfulness. The last thought, if we believe
not yet He abideth faithful. He cannot deny himself if we
believe not. The phrase there believe not is
not talking about losing salvation.
In the context, it can't mean that it's talking about
unfaithfulness, Unfaithfulness if we believe not, if we, if we
are unfaithful to him, if he has given us opportunities, he's
called us, he's saved us, he's given us responsibilities, he's
given us the opportunities to do what he's called us to do.
And we are unfaithful to those we set back from them because of
fear, because of shame. He says he abideth faithful.
He cannot deny himself. We are all unfaithful.
From time to time, all of us, myself included, there have been
times where we knew God wanted us to do something and we chose
not to. We were unfaithful to Him.
We were not strong and enduring. We were not like the athlete who
followed the rules. We were not like the husbandman
who went out there and did the work because it was the work
that needed to be done. We were unfaithful because of
sin or because of weak flesh or the influence of the world and
of the spirit of fear and the power of shame.
We. All.
Fail to be strong and to endure hardness.
But no matter how much we may disappoint our Lord, he abideth
faithful. He abideth faithful with God's
assurance of life, God's assurance of reward, and God's
assurance of His faithfulness. Timothy, you can be faithful.
You can be strong, You can endure hardness.
God has not called you tonight to grit your teeth, bear it,
bear up under it in your own strength.
He's called you. He's given you His grace.
He wants you to live tonight with full confidence that His
grace will carry you through. Trust it.
Be strong in it. Oh, there's so many great
thoughts. So we could go down with that.
I have one of my favorites. So taste and see that the Lord
is good. I think I talked about it last
week. Just try it out.
That's what he's saying. Taste and see that God is good.
God is pleased when His soldiers are ready to answer His call,
when they're not distracted. There will be no victory in your
life, no reward, no success without focus, without enduring
hardness and not being entangled in this world.
God is pleased when we know the rules.
And when we follow the rules, when we don't take shortcuts or
try to cherry pick what we want, but we read the Bible, we study
the Bible. Study to show thyself approved
unto God. The workmen that needeth not to
be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
God is pleased and we're diligent and faithful day in and
day out to the harvest, to the work that He's called us to.
Because there will be no harvest without the work.
Whatever God has called you to tonight, Paul is encouraging you
to be faithful. You're a husband, you're a wife,
you're a father, you're a mother.
You, you teach a Sunday school class, you work in the nursery,
you work back there in the sound booth.
You're a soul winner, you're a Co worker, you're a friend.
You give, you pray. God is calling you to be
faithful. Faithful.
One day in heaven we will be rewarded not for what we
accomplished, not for how much we did, but for how we were
faithful, what God called us to do.
It may seem like a small thing, may seem like it's nobody
notices. You come and you clean the
bathroom and nobody notices. God notices if that's what he's
called you to do. Be faithful, Be faithful.
It might be a big thing and you think I don't know how I can do
it. You can do it.
Be faithful. It might be easy.
It might be hard, but tonight I'd like to encourage you.
The measure of success is faithfulness.
Thank you for listening to the sermon from the pulpit of
Liberty Baptist Church. If this message was a blessing
to you, or if there's any way we can serve you, please let us
know by contacting us at info@mylibertybaptist.org.
Or you can visit us this Sunday at 800 Washington St. in Easton,
MA. May the Lord bless you as you
grow in His Word.