Do Not Be Ashamed Of The Testimony Of Our Lord #3.

So this Sunday is our third and final sermon from this passage, 2 Timothy 1, 8-14. As we've studied this passage as a whole, the message has been pretty simple. It's been that we would not be ashamed of Jesus Christ, but rather that we would be willing to suffer for his sake. As we've studied this text, we've seen how easy it is for us to become ashamed of him. and how easy it is for us to refuse to suffer, always making a reason or giving an explanation for why. Now is not the time and this isn't the place. This week we're going to be focusing on the final two verses, verses 13 and 14 of this passage. These verses call us to guard what has been given to us. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord.

or of me, his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher. For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed. For I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day. Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me, and the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. And so our topic this morning,

What does retaining the standard of sound words or guarding what's been entrusted to us mean? What does it mean to do these things? When Paul charges Timothy to retain the standard of sound words, he's charging Timothy very simply not to forsake the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Now, we, having believed the good news, understand it to be good news. But other places in Scripture, the good news is not described as pleasant or appealing. In 1 Corinthians, the good news is described as being an aroma of life to those who have life, but an aroma of death, a stench of death to those who are perishing. And so we live in a bit of tension here, realizing from the very beginning that the good news is not always received as good news.

That the good news exists in the midst of tensions and pressures and conflicts coming from all around. And so Paul tells Timothy to retain the standard of sound words. He's telling him that he may not trim or hedge or in any way be ashamed of Jesus. He can't turn aside from the full counsel of God. He has to retain it, which is to keep hold of it or to not lose any of it. Now, there are parts of the good news that are pleasant to say. There's mercy and there's forgiveness with our God. We could say that to somebody and we'd say, that's good news. But what else is good news? It's good news as well that if you don't repent of your sins, you will be judged for them by a holy God and every ounce of his wrath against you.

You will endure for all eternity. Now you understand that that's also a part of the good news. After Peter preached at Pentecost, he stood up and he explained from the very beginning who Jesus was and how he was the Messiah that was to come. And at the very end of it, what did he say to them? He says, this Jesus, whom you crucified, he's the one. Good news? Yes, good news, but good news as we would understand it today or according to the pressure that we face as Christians. Is that the sort of thing that ought to be said, that is popular? When I say ought to be said, I mean is that what is considered good news by those that would hear it in the world? No, that's not good news. That's judgment. That's condemnation. But I contend with you that it's good news.

It's a part of the good news, and it's one example of what Paul is telling Timothy. You have to retain. There's almost a byword nowadays of pastors that preach hellfire and brimstone. Maybe in a time gone by, maybe it was our parents' age. It was a condescending way to describe men who always talked about the judgment of God and what was wrong with them. Or the one and only sermon that's recorded down for us maybe in the minds of unbelievers by Jonathan Edwards. What is it? Sinners in the hand of an angry God. And there's this opposition that resides in all of our hearts, believer or not, that says we want the good news to not contain the warnings, the dangers, the judgments. And so Paul tells Timothy to retain the standard of sound words. He's telling him you may not. As a minister of the gospel, and ahead in the church of Jesus Christ, you may not forsake the whole counsel of God. And further, you may not retain the standard of sound words privately. What good would it be for us to believe the whole counsel of God, but be ashamed to tell anyone about it? Is that any better than not believing it? I contend it's no better. Some of you may know this quote from C.S. Lewis that

They'll tell you you can have your religion in private or your Christianity in private, and then they'll be sure that you're never alone. That's, I think, it gets at the sense of it, but I don't think that's the actual quote. The actual quote from C.S. Lewis says, When the modern world says to us aloud, You may be religious when you are alone, it adds under its breath, and I will see to it that you're never alone. Which is to say, you may not be a Christian and have our approval. You may not. And the reason he says this and the reason it's so helpful to us is to realize that we all have a temptation within us to keep the truth and say, I believe that true thing. I just don't talk about it. We don't talk about it. And I'd say you all understand that if you had a tool in your garage that you never used, what good is it? What good is it? If it's too heavy to get out and too much of a hassle to use,

such that it just sits there and rusts and collects dust, then is it of any benefit for you to have it? And we'd all say no. And if your garages are a mess, your wife probably tells you, get rid of it. And so to retain the standard of sound words means that we would retain it publicly, that we would not simply believe the gospel ourselves privately. We would not conceive of religion or Jesus Christ as being something that we hold to in our hearts alone. But when it comes to living in this world, that's a whole other thing. But this way of living has become commonplace in our society. That we would be Christians and say, I believe. But never does that belief get traction in our public lives. This is the foil that liberals who are for abortion for decades have used as a cover for their support of of the killing of innocent babies? Well, I personally, and what I'd say is, who cares what you personally think? If you were standing by the side and some man was beating his wife and you personally thought that was a wrong thing to do, if you had nothing to say or nothing to do in that moment, I wouldn't give a plug nickel for what you personally are convicted of because it never bears itself out in our lives.

And what public figure is able to have personal convictions that they talk about? They're not. Where in Scripture do we see Paul saying, well, this is what I think, but it's just my opinion. Everything that we have recorded in Scripture, even the closest you get is when he's talking about marriage. And he says, well, the Lord says this. And then he says, well, but I say, not the Lord, but I say. It's not that he's saying I'm disagreeing with the Lord. What he's saying is the Lord laid the first course of blocks. This is what he said. Here I am laying the next course of blocks on top of it. I'm going into greater detail than he did. I'm not opposed to what he said. I'm not undercutting or undermining what he said. I'm just adding to it. And so the Christian faith is a public faith. And to retain the standard of sound words, we have to understand that.

That it's not sufficient for us. It's not good enough for us to say, well, I believe these things myself. And to think that we've been faithful in retaining the standard of sound words. So who is supposed to retain the standard of sound words? Well, I would contend, yes, all Christians ought to, but most especially the church ought to. The church ought to. It ought to be the church's priority as a first importance. Having been described as the pillar and foundation of the truth, that they would not despise the whole counsel of God. That whatever they say or whatever they do, they should be able to support from Scripture. Whether it's popular or accepted or not, they should be able to say, this is why we believe and why we do what we do. Whether it's popular or not, whether it's going to get you in trouble or not, the church ought to be the body, the place where the standard of sound words proceeds from.

The scripture describes us as sheep, needing shepherds, people needing to be guarded in many places. And if the church won't or refuses to stand on God's word and to trust him at the points where there's conflict between what he says and what the world believes, if they won't stand at that point, then they have failed in this regard to retain the standard of sound words. Plain and simply, they're failing. They have failed. Now, Not all failure looks like failure, okay? Not all failure looks like failure. Oftentimes, failure is dressed up in the garb of victory, okay? I get emails, as an example, from Citizens Go and pro-life this or that or the other organizations around. They show up in my inbox. What is the heading of all of them? We won. We did it. Look at the org.

We're almost there and we need your money. This is the sum of every email I get. You know what I never see them say is? You failed to sign our report and as a result we failed. And because of that, we need you now to sign this report and to jump on the bandwagon because you haven't done enough. I always get told we're winning. But I look around and I'm going, what are we winning? What am I winning? What am I a part of beyond those sorts of emails? Every political loss. is spun as a victory. We talk about the positive takeaways. These were the good things that happened. We talk about why it wasn't our fault, why it was some sort of collusion or conspiracy or something outside of our control that caused us to get this bad result. This happens in politics. It also happens in the church. Now, I have less interest in a pro-life agency not understanding these things or even

Republicans and Democrats not understanding things, but boy, the church ought to understand these things. That being said, the things that I've described with regard to these emails from the pro-life movement, and when I say pro-life movement, I mean the pro-life movement and the abolitionists. They both do the same thing. They're always talking about how they won, how they did the great thing, how they got accomplished what they wanted to get accomplished. I never hear them say, we failed. It wasn't good enough. We didn't do what we needed to do to get the thing done that we wanted to get done. I never hear them say it. Maybe you can correct me and tell me I'm wrong, but I don't ever hear them say, we failed. And here's the thing. If you can never say we failed, then you can never determine why you failed. It's as though failure is never even an option. Another way of saying it may be to say, it's just assumed that we retain the standard of sound words.

It's just assumed that we're doing the right stuff, that faithfulness never comes into question. But Paul exhorts Timothy to be faithful, to retain the standard of sound words, to guard the treasure that's been entrusted to him. Paul understands with Timothy that there's a fight going on and that he's going to have to engage in it, that he's not able to just sit back and project a lie. And so if we're unable to say, These are the ways and these are the areas where we failed to retain the standard of sound words. I hope that you don't think that I'm standing up here thinking that I have never failed in this way. I stand up here seeing and remembering the ways I've failed to retain the standard of sound words when I've had opportunity to speak and I've went, well, maybe I'll say it like this. Maybe that'll be a little more palatable. Maybe it'll be a little less offensive and a little less work.

And so I don't stand here just to skewer all the other people who are failing. My presumption is that you as well as I along with everyone else has failed in this regard. Because if we hadn't, Paul wouldn't need to say this. Are we so much better than Timothy that we don't need these warnings? Well, of course we do. I want to give you a couple of examples from what would be considered probably the two most conservative denominations in society where I believe that they have absolutely failed in this area. But no one's saying they failed. The first is in the PCA, the Presbyterian Church in America. Okay? Purportedly a conservative denomination, a spinoff from the PCUSA because of the departure in the PCUSA from biblical truth. So the PCA comes into existence. And what they've been dealing with now for two and going on three years is how to process and how to handle homosexuality and homosexual ministers particularly. The question is, can a pastor, can a homosexual man tempted that way be a pastor? If you were to boil it all down to that, that is the question. Can a man who is tempted toward homosexuality be a pastor? And I'm looking at your faces and some of you are going no and some of you are going, oh, that's not going to be a fun discussion to have.

And so they've been processing through it. A couple of years ago in St. Louis, they had a conference, Revoice. And the idea of Revoice, why did they name it that? Well, to revoice, it was taken from the idea of tuning a piano. You revoice a piano when you either restring it or retune it to repair it. You give it a new voice, which is to say the old one was out of tune. didn't sound good, wasn't appealing to the ear, was unpleasant. And so this is the name of the conference, Revoice. And they have this conference, and it's a conference in which the idea that Christians can be gay and celibate. It doesn't matter how you're tempted, so long as you don't do anything about it. As long as you're not putting body parts together, that's okay.

As long as you're being pure, you can be a Christian. And the extent of your Christian witness is simply that you don't give in to your lusts, your desires, physically, with another man or another woman, as the case may be. And it's put on by men who are tempted in this way, at least some of them. And so there's a hullabaloo brewing in the PCA been going on for a couple of years now. They've had two revoice conferences now. And some of the people are saying, this is great. And other people are saying, no, it's not. And so we've got the conflict, right? So they just had their annual general assembly, which is where they all get together, the church pastors and elders, they get together, hundreds and hundreds of men, and they do the business of the presbytery as a whole. And so there was an overture brought, which is an overture is an amendment.

to their constitution. So our church has a constitution. Evangel Presbytery has a constitution. Actually, I don't know. Do we have a constitution? We have bylaws. The church does? Evangel has a constitution. Anyway, Evangel Presbytery is our governing body, and it has a constitution. And in that constitution, one of the things that is described is how you become a pastor and what sorts of temptations or qualifications you need to meet to be able to be a pastor. So there was an overture made to bring clarification to this issue. So this is what was brought originally. It says, men who self-identify as gay Christian or same-sex attracted Christian or homosexual Christian or like term. So these are the identifiers. If you identify in these ways, they shall be deemed not qualified for ordination in the PCA.

That's pretty straightforward, right? Their answer is no. So you say, that's good. Somebody's trying to retain the standard of sound words here. Now, a few things can happen when you bring an overture. It can just be gutted and voted down and dismissed, just gotten rid of. It can just never get off the ground. They can decide, we're not going to bring any further clarification to this issue. We're just going to leave it the way it is. That's one option. Another option is, you know, so that's one end. The other end is to say we're going to accept or adopt the proposal as it's presented. Then there's the middle option of amending it, changing the wording, getting in and rejiggering things, presumably to improve it, okay? So I'm going to read to you what we started with, what they started with, and then I'm going to read to you the amendment, okay?

Just so you can compare them in your own minds. The original proposal was, men who identify as gay Christian, same-sex attracted Christian, homosexual Christian, or like term, shall be deemed not qualified for ordination in the Presbyterian Church in America. Which means that if a man comes up for ordination, you'll get asked the question, are you tempted with homosexual desires? And the man's going to say yes, or he's going to say no. And based on him saying yes, or saying no, it will be determined whether he meets the qualification. Pretty straightforward. This is what it was replaced with. Officers in the Presbyterian Church in America must be above reproach in their walk and Christ-like in their character. Those who profess an identity such as, but not limited to, gay Christian, same-sex attracted Christian, homosexual Christian, or like terms, that undermines or contradicts their identity as new creations in Christ, either by denying the sinfulness of fallen desires, such as but not limited to same-sex attraction, or by denying the reality and hope of progressive sanctification, or by failing to pursue spirit-empowered victory over their sinful temptations, inclinations, and actions, are not qualified for ordained office. Now that's a mouthful. That is a huge mouthful. Now what did it mean? What got accomplished with that? And that's the amendment that passed.

The long thing I just read, that's what got passed. It got changed. And you're all sitting here frowning like, what in the world does all that mean? Here's simply what it means. It means that what was objective and very clear has now become subjective with so many qualifiers and nuances that it's like trying to determine if a man would be qualified based on this criterion is entirely up to the judgment of the people and not the man's desires. It means it's impossible for them to discipline anybody for doing anything. Because what it allows for is, in the end, a presbytery to approve a man who's homosexual into office because they deemed that that desire didn't disqualify him because he met all of these other subjective criteria. So what happens when he falls into sin and temptation?

when he's a man who's not been blessed with the gift of singleness nor with natural desires, and he falls into sin. The question we should be asking is, is that something that we as the Church of Jesus Christ ought to seek to prevent from happening for the sake of the people? Yes, that's the sort of thing that should be prevented from happening. So who was trying to retain the standard of sound words? I would say the men who put the original proposal together. Now what happened? They lost. A majority voted in favor of this amended version, which I'm not going to trouble you with reading again right now. But what they did was they carved out room to say, here's a soft spot in our defense. There used to be a wall here, and what we did is we replaced it with a curtain that you can find your way through. Now what in the world is going to walk through that curtain? And who's going to be held accountable for it when it happens? But if you were to read, even the good men in the PCA,

who would have proposed and supported the original overture. They're not talking about the failure. Their tone is, something better than nothing, we did get some other good things accomplished, and we're going to go along and carry on. And so no one's asking, how has it become that in 30 years, I think that's about how old the PCA is, maybe 40, somewhere between 30 and 40 years, and in the life of a denomination, that's young, if it's going to last more than two or three. That's young. How have we come from the point of leaving the PCUSA because of their departure from Scripture, and now we've come to the point where we're declining quicker than they did? What happened? I contend that what happened was there was no retaining the standard of sound words. There was no suffering for the sake of Jesus Christ. There was no discipline. There was no one who said no.

The closest you get to someone saying no is not this general assembly, but a year ago, a pastor, Stephen Warhurst, just a pastor from the PCA, stood up and he preached. And he was not offensive. He was not rude. All he did was say what the Bible teaches, and brothers, we ought to believe this. And the response was that he was interrupted repeatedly, he was shouted down, and then he was accused of being unloving at the end of it all. And a bunch of people wrote a thing saying he was mean. I'm over. I'm painting with a very broad brush here. But that's what happened. And that was a year ago. And so now this year, we have this amendment. And you see the door opening. The standard of sound words just washing away. And you wonder why. The SBC, the Southern Baptist Convention, has very similar things going on. Recently, they had their annual convention. And they voted for a new president. Five candidates.

on the spectrum of conservative to liberal. They had the vote, and it was too close to call with five candidates, and so they took the top two, which happens to be the most conservative and the most liberal, and they had a runoff. And the liberal won. The one who's in favor of critical race theory, who's most liberal, who's now being spoken about all over the place because he plagiarizes his sermons. That's the whole story now. And you know what? I don't care that he plagiarizes his sermons, not one bit. And that's not an endorsement of plagiarizing sermons, you understand this. I didn't get from somebody, okay? But it's not the problem. Everyone's upset that the guy has a, they do groupthink in his big church and they come up with what he's supposed to say, much like a political speaker does. They have their speeches written for them. How is this a surprise to us? Rick Warren and Tim Keller have been selling their sermons for over a decade. Who do you think's buying them? And so plagiarism,

You know, Ed Litton's plagiarism and his critical race theory are the things that are being talked about. Everyone's all upset about it. And I contend that, as I said, his plagiarism is not the issue. It's just not the issue. It's a problem. Pastors shouldn't plagiarize sermons. If you're going to rely heavily on somebody as a pastor, you ought to acknowledge the fact that, you know, in my preparations, I read such and such or so and so, and I'm going to read you a section because he said it better than I ever could, so here you go. That happens. But largely, I think pastors ought to love their people and care for them in front of them and not give them generic truths, but specific truths that are helpful to them. And so the real problem with Ed Litton is not his plagiarism. It's that he and his ministry have utterly failed to retain the standard of sound words. They've failed to guard what's been entrusted to them. And that's why he's in support of critical race theory. And that's why they don't have a problem with...

copying and pasting other people's sermons. And that's why he doesn't mind. He's soft on women being in the pulpit. That's why he has all those problems. It's because the standard of sound words has just been left. What? I mean, we need to be winsome. And so he's built his ministry on cutting and trimming and obfuscating what the Bible teaches. And the reason is because that's what the people want. And so we have to recognize, and this is a long explanation, of the problems we have and the people you would consider, we should consider closest to us outside of evangel in terms of doctrine and practice. This is what's going on in their yards. In both the PCA and the SBC, the liberals have won. And I believe it's over. I don't think there's any hope for either one of those. And to say that the liberals have won is to say that the conservatives have lost. And then the question becomes, how?

did this happen? How did the PCA go from leaving the PCUSA in our lifetimes to where they're at today? How did that happen? And how did the SBC almost die, revive itself, and now it's as bad or worse than it was and heading in the wrong direction today? How do such things happen? The standard of sound words. have not been retained. There has not been any discipline. There has not been any saying, no, no. And to say all of that is to say that it's not the liberals who have failed. It's the conservatives and those movements that failed. And their failure was particularly at the point of their unwillingness to suffer shame for the sake of Jesus Christ. They were not willing to stand up and say, we ain't going to have it anymore. Not enough of them. And so instead of repenting of their failures, publicly, what they're doing publicly is talking about, well, in the PC, in the SBC, how close they were to winning and how in two years or a year when, when the next presidential, when they vote for another president, we were so close this time and we're going to be that much closer. We just need to rally. It just sounds like one of these pro-life emails that I get. There's no repentance and sorrow and we have failed.

Where is the letter to all of the SPC churches after the fact when they didn't send their messengers saying, we have what we have because you guys all failed and you didn't come. We were leading and we didn't have an army behind us. No one says that. Why? Why won't they say, we are going to have critical race theory and we're going to have female women preachers and we're going to have all of this because you guys didn't care enough to come because of the way the SPC is structured. I haven't heard that from anybody. I thought we were close. Come on, guys, we're almost there. It wasn't that bad. We got this good thing with abolition, abortion abolition. There's good, there's good, there's good. We're almost there. Just keep trucking along. But no call to repentance. Or if there are calls to repentance, no heeding it. At some point, the people of the PCA or the people of the SBC have to be willing to suffer for their allegiance to Jesus Christ and suffer, be willing to endure the hardship of retaining sound words. They have to guard, and to guard means to fight. Think in your own life. What's more motivating to you when someone says, you almost did it, buddy. Next time you're going to be right there. That does have its motivational value, but not when you know you failed, not when you know you didn't do what you should have done. What has much more motivational value

When you know you didn't do what you should have done, it's for them to say, you didn't do what you should have done or what you're capable of doing, and next time I expect more of you. I expect you to try harder. We'll submit to it on the sports field. We'll submit to it in the workplace. Why would we not submit to it in the church? The thing any sports team dreads after they have a bad game is going and watching the film. I remember when I was in high school, we had a bad football team. My senior year, we were 2-9. And the two games we won were the two out-of-conference games. They were the first two of the year. And so you can imagine, by the end of an 11-game season, when you've lost nine games in a row, and you've had the clock go to running clock, because when you get up more than 35 points, they don't have timeouts anymore, and they don't stop when the ball gets dropped. They're just like, the rules mean we need to get this game over. That's the football team I played on when I was in high school. Can you imagine having to go watch the film the next day when you got beat 72-3?

At home. I mean, crawl under a rock. And then you go watch the film. And you watch every sorry play. Oh, it was awful. And it's what you did the very next practice. Before you got out and prepared for the next week's game, you had to watch all the failures. And then you had to listen to the coach call you out in front of the whole team. Do you see this? Do you look at what you did? How much more helpful was that than if he'd said, well, guys, I know you tried your best. They're just really good. Retaining the standard of sound words and guarding what's been entrusted to us is hard, hard work. It's dangerous work. It means that there's going to be conflict and frustration and division. We've been talking in the church largely for now. Have you not experienced this in your own families?

Where as you come online spiritually and you come to believe what the Bible says and that it matters, have you not seen there be problems in your homes? Have you not experienced where Jesus says, brother will turn on brother and father against his son and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law? Have you not had these conflicts because of your commitment to Jesus Christ, because you desire to retain the standard of sound words? Have you not suffered for it? And so Paul tells Timothy, guard. Through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you. Everything I've talked about up to this point, I've not been advocating for men standing up and fighting in their own strength. What man could? What man has the strength to fight himself? And this is why Paul says guard, and then he inserts this phrase, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, teaching us that this is the only way that we will be faithful in our guarding and our retaining of sound words.

It's very common among us to look at the men who stand for the truth and we think, they're strong men. They're godly. We want to follow them. They've got all this in them. Those men don't stand in their own strength and in their own wisdom as they defend the truth. They stand in the strength that the Holy Spirit provides for them. I remember when John was, we went to a school board meeting years ago when they were officially saying, you're fired because You won't call the transgendered kids by their preferred pronouns. And we go to the school board meeting. And there's probably, and a number of you were there, 300 or 400 people. And it was maybe 60, 40 in favor of you. There was a lot of people come from a long way away who were opposed to what John was doing. And so at the school board meeting, there's this time when a majority of the meeting, three or four hours or however long it was, and this is televised publicly, live on TV.

People stand up and you get your two minutes or whatever it was to talk. And the line is wrapped around the room of people from both sides going to go up and say their 90 seconds or two minutes. And I remember standing there going, I ain't going up there. Nothing in me, nothing in me wanted to say a thing in defense of John. Now, it's not because I don't love John. It's not because I disagree with what John did. It's because it was a hostile environment. And I just didn't want to go say anything. And so I stood there, and I stood there, and I talked with Dan and whoever else at the back, and people had gone up and thanked, and you did a good job, and doing all my cheerleading. Then it comes to the end, and I've got to figure out, like, the line's starting to dwindle, and am I going to go say anything? You understand, I didn't want to say a word. And against my own desires, I went and got in line. I had no clue what I was going to say. No clue at all. And there had been good things said.

in support of John, and there have been things that were not so good things, but they were said in support of John. Some things that were Christian and helpful, and some things that weren't Christian and weren't necessarily helpful on John's side. And so I've got to stand up and I've got to say something. And I don't remember what I said, but I do remember that one pastor came up to me afterwards, and I was tearful. It was like I was an out-of-body experience to have to stand up in front of in this conflict and say something for one minute, two minutes. It was very, very difficult for me. And so I stand up and I said something. And then I come back and there was another pastor that was there. And he thanked me for what I said. And it meant the world to me. He did the same thing that I'd been doing for everybody else. Thank you. I appreciate it. It was very, very difficult. And I can tell you that in my own strength, John, I would have never went and gotten that line. But God did give me strength at that time. And I don't remember what I said. And I know that it wasn't well received by everybody.

But God did provide strength to give testimony to me and to many others in that moment to give testimony to God's truth. And it was painful to watch wickedness become the way it was going to be. We went into that meeting knowing John knew. He's like, everything that gets said here is just an after-the-fact thing. The school board has already decided. And so we were there for three or four hours, and a number of you spoke. and gave glory to God and sought to retain the standard of sound words. John still didn't get his job at the end of it. But I do believe that God was, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do believe that God was glorified by his people and that his word was honored by many in that meeting. But it came with a cost. And it came with the end of there being difficult relationships. Did we go get your stuff after that meeting? I think it was afterwards.

They turned off John's code. He couldn't get into the building to get his stuff out of there. So I had to go with him, or went with him, because he needed help carrying stuff. And he had to be escorted through the building. It was just awful. It was just awful. And to the world's eyes, you say, well, that was a loss and a waste of time, and you did the wrong thing, because look what happened to you. And I was never ashamed of what John did or thought that he did wrong. I was happy to call him a brother, as I know many of you were as well. And he lost the fight that day, but God was glorified.

And it was simply from a love of Jesus Christ and faith in him that John spoke, that a number of us spoke, and that's exactly what Paul tells us to do. Retain the standard of sound words which you've heard from me in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. The question to you is, and to me is, who do you love? Who do you love more? Would you rather suffer the scorn of man or the judgment of God? You will suffer one of them. At some point, you will suffer one or the other. And so I exhort you, as Paul exhorted Timothy, to retain the standard of sound words and to guard through the Holy Spirit the treasure that's been entrusted to you. Paul does an interesting thing here at the end of this passage with the wording. If you go back up into verse 12, he speaks about himself, the character's change. He says, for this reason I also suffer these things, but I'm not ashamed.

For I know that I have believed and I'm convinced that he's able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day. And you remember that last week I said what Paul entrusted to God was his whole life and ultimately his soul and the condition of everything that was come to pass in his life. He entrusted to God himself. And then he turns around and says that we are to guard in the same way that God guards us. We're to guard what's been entrusted to us. We've entrusted ourselves to him who is able to to protect and to preserve, to guard us until that day. And the appropriate response from us is that we would then guard what's been given to us through the strength that he provides. A couple of applications for us then. The first is, look for churches that have an active principle of guarding the truth. Now, you all go to church here, and I hope that you're here because you find this to be true of us.

But you have people around you, friends and neighbors, and this is the sort of thing that you ought to teach them as well. Here's what you want in a church. Most important, top of the list, first priority. They preach and teach and believe the whole counsel of God. But it's not a Presbyterian church. Oh well. If they won't guard the truth, they will not protect you. And as a result, they will lead you astray. In line with that, my second application is, Don't look for a place where your ears can be tickled. In 2 Timothy 4, just a few chapters after our text, Paul warns, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they'll accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. And so all of this could be heaped onto pastors and say, well, pastors need to be faithful and retain the standard of sound words and suffer for Jesus and all that sort of thing. And it's true. And amen. But there's also exhortation to you.

that you not put pressure on those that lead you to let the wickedness in. The warning to you is don't desire evil things. Don't accumulate for yourselves people who tell you what you want to hear. Instead, accumulate for yourselves those that will tell you the truth, even if it costs them personally from your hand. Accumulate for yourselves men and elders and deacons who will tell you the truth. It's of the utmost importance. Third, encourage and strengthen the elders and the deacons and the pastors that do this work. It's hard work, and God helps them. Like I was describing when I spoke for John, God did help me. But your encouragement is also a great help to them, and so thank the men who stand and who do the work. And finally, learn to discern the causes of failures within the church. I believe that...

the SBC and the PCA are running a game, that they're not doing the work they should be doing. Or if there are men doing it, they're not getting the traction that they need to get for real change to happen. And at some point, you have to recognize if the ship is sinking, it's time to get off the ship. It's not the goal to only note the positives of conflict. If I sit and watch film from a football game where we lost by 50 points, No one needs to say, you did your job on that play when you lost the game by 50 points. Good job is just not the thing that's the order of the day. Figure out why the failures exist, what's really going on, and then look for repentance and for men taking responsibility. When there's failures, look for the guy who's saying, I can do better and will do better. Don't look for the guy who says, I did the best I could and I just, it was these other people you gave to me.

They didn't show up, even though it's true that they didn't show up. The truth in denominations, I'll tell you, is often that the people are more conservative than their leaders. They actually believe the Bible more than their leaders. The problem is they won't discipline their leaders. That's actually what's going on in the PCA and the SBC. I think many members in SBC churches and members in PCA churches are not pleased with what's going on in their denominations, but no one has ever told them, you don't have to stand for that. You can speak and should speak and have a responsibility to speak. And then the question is, while they may be more conservative, are they willing to be conservative privately or are they willing to suffer the conflict in their own churches with their own pastors and elders for the sake of godliness? And so the man who sees a problem and says nothing, he gets what he really actually wants, which is peace in his day at the sake of destruction in the days to come. And so I exhort you not to be those kind of people.

that we would not be the kind who seek after comfort and ease and peace when there is no peace. If there's a problem, say something. If you think I'm wrong about something, you can tell me. I won't punch you. I may disagree with you or I may defend myself and say, I don't think so, but isn't this how we're supposed to live together? Loving and honoring and respecting and helping one another. This is our work according to the Bible and what it says. And if it means suffering, then pray that God would give you strength to suffer and give glory to him as you face it. Let's pray.