Suffer Hardship With Me #1

And in this chapter, you find a really sweet description of the Lord's possession of Israel. In the time leading up to this, the Israelites have been slaves in Egypt. They've been oppressed by the Assyrians. And the result, at least of the Syrian oppression, was their own sins. It was a discipline to them from the Lord, right? And it's sweet to see how the Lord, even though he sent this oppressor to teach them and to afflict them, how he comes to them and rescues them out of this. He tells them this is what's going to happen. And it's a sweet thing. It's instructive to us as husbands, as fathers and mothers of how we ought to be disposed to our children. And we ought to be this way knowing that when the Lord frees them and saves them, us really, from our sins, we don't respond.

With all of the gratitude and love and obedience that we ought to, and yet God is still merciful to sinners that even after he saved them, they are not perfect yet. And yet his heart is still for them, and he still loves and has affection for them. And so that's what this passage points forward to, and so I want us to take heart from it. This is Isaiah chapter 52. Awake, awake! Clothe yourselves in strength, O Zion. Clothe yourselves in your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city. For the uncircumcised and the unclean will no longer come into you. Shake yourself from the dust. Rise up, O captive Jerusalem. Loose yourself from the chains around your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For thus says the Lord, you were sold for nothing and you will be redeemed without money. For thus says the Lord God, my people went down at first into Egypt to reside there.

Then the Assyrian oppressed them without cause. Now, therefore, what do I have here, declares the Lord, seeing that my people have been taken away without cause? Again, the Lord declares, those who rule over them howl and my name is continually blasphemed all day long. Therefore, my people shall know my name. Therefore, in that day, I am the one who is speaking. Here I am. How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news. who announces peace and brings good news of happiness, who announces salvation and says to Zion, your God reigns. Listen, your watchmen lift up their voices. They shout joyfully together, for they will see with their own eyes when the Lord restores Zion. Break forth, shout joyfully together. You waste places of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people. He has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has bared his holy arm in the sight of all the nations.

that all the ends of the earth may see the salvation of our God. Depart, depart, go out from there, touch nothing unclean. Go out of the midst of her, purify yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the Lord. But you will not go out in haste, nor will you go out as fugitives, for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. Behold, my servant will prosper. He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted, just as many were astonished at you, my people. So his appearance was marred more than any man in his form, more than the sons of men. Thus he will sprinkle many nations. Kings will shut their mouths on account of him. For what has not been told, told them they will see. And what they had not heard, they will understand. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Would you please pray with me? Heavenly Father, it is.

a humbling reality to see how patient you are with sinners who continually turn away from you, who for all sorts of reasons think we know better than you and rise up to our full height in our own strength, thinking that we're able to sustain ourselves. Father, the truth is, without you giving us life and breath and every good thing, without you sustaining us each minute of the day, our lives would fall apart. We don't have strength in us to provide and to care for us. We don't have wisdom in us to make wise decisions. Whatever good we have, we've received from your hand, and we thank you and we praise you for it. You have been exceedingly good to us, giving us many sweet things, marriages and children and good work and one another and your son and your church and your word.

free country to live in. Father, we pray that you'd help us not to become haughty and to think our hands have given us all these things and our intellect is what preserves us. We're in desperate need of you each day. And when suffering comes into our lives, Father, it's revealed to us, even in some small way, how weak we truly are, how dependent on you we are for our daily bread, even to get out of bed in the morning, to have that strength as a kindness from you. And we pray that when we struggle even to get out of bed in the morning because of sorrow, because of physical pain, because of discouragement, Father, we pray that you would lift our eyes up to heaven and that you would help us to look on your son, Jesus Christ. And we pray that you would strengthen us and equip us to do your will today and tomorrow and the day after, each day giving us grace that we might bear good fruit for you. We pray, Father, for those who are away from us this morning.

that you would bring them back to us safely, that you would bless them and rejuvenate them as they're traveling, and that you would minister to them apart from us and protect them. We pray for those who are sick and who are suffering, those who are sick and suffering that are here this morning as well as those who are home, that you would give them grace and perseverance, that you would heal them, that you would give the doctors that care for them wisdom, and that you would give them... good reason to rejoice in your mercy to them, even as they suffer. We pray for Jeremy, as he's in the hospital, that you would have mercy on him and that you would restore him and heal him of COVID. And we pray, Father, that you would bless our homes, our households, our families, and especially our marriages and children. We pray that our children would walk in your ways and that they would know you, that they would have soft, humble hearts, whether they're young,

even if they're not born yet, or if they're old and have children of their own, we pray that you would help them to live by faith and not by sight, and to persevere in the faith so long as you have them on this earth. Now, as we come to your word, we pray that your spirit would be at work in us, changing us and making us new, strengthening us where we're weak, and drawing us closer to you. Help me as I preach to speak your truth without error, and we pray that you would be glorified as we consider the sweet gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ has come into this world to save us from our sins. We pray these things in his name. Amen. In case you were wondering who Jeremy is, Jeremy is the husband of Sarah Donovan. She's the director of our daycare and he was admitted to the hospital last night with COVID symptoms. He's been struggling for over a week now and will be in the hospital now for at least five days. And so that's a huge burden as I'm sure you can imagine on their family. So please do.

Remember them in prayer as you're able. This morning we're going to be continuing our study in 2 Timothy with the first seven verses of chapter 2. So this will be our first week in this section. We're going to be focusing mainly on verses 1 and 2. The next weeks we'll pick up and carry on with 3 and following. In verses 1 and 2, Paul exhorts Timothy in two particular areas. The first, that he be strong in grace. And second, that he make sure that the gospel... continues to spread after he's gone. My hope this morning is that we will grow in our dependence on God's grace and that God would continue to raise up faithful men, more men, to continue to preach the gospel and build his kingdom. As I said, our text is 2 Timothy 2, verses 1 through 7. Will you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. You, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. Also, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules. The hardworking farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of the crops. Consider what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So as I said, we start off with two exhortations. The first is that Timothy would be strong in the grace that's in Christ Jesus. And so we're going to spend the first bit of our sermon today simply talking about strength and our need of it.

That's why I was praying earlier that God would strengthen us. It's in line with what Paul tells Timothy here. He needs you, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that's in Christ Jesus. Now, why do we need strength? Why is it imperative for us to have strength? Well, because the opposite of strength is weakness, right? And what does weakness bring with it? It brings with it vulnerability. And depending on the sort of weakness, it may bring with it a greater susceptibility to danger. whether that danger is physical or spiritual. We can think of children and we can understand that their weaknesses expose them in a greater degree to dangers around them. If someone is spiritually weak, they're more susceptible to the ploys of Satan and to fall into sin. And so if our bodies are weak and we need to grow in physical strength, what do we do? Well, it's pretty simple, isn't it? We exercise. We build strength.

We pursue it because we understand the vulnerability that the weakness brings with it. What about spiritual strength? What if we're spiritually weak? What do we do? I'm afraid that we have a lot of bad answers to this question. Not that the answers we say are bad, but that the answers we do are bad. I think in many ways, if we're in need of spiritual strength, it's very similar to needing physical strength. We're to pursue it. We're to seek it out. We're to submit ourselves to it and to exercise ourselves in it. It's not good for us to be weak spiritually. And so Paul tells Timothy, you need to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Now, I want you to think for a minute. Why did Timothy particularly need to be strong? You say, well, he was weak. And I say, that's right, he was weak. But what has the theme of this letter been?

Thus far, all through chapter 1 and continuing on, even if you just look at verse 3, you'll find the answer. What has been the theme of this book? Thus far, the theme of this book has been suffering for the sake of Jesus Christ. And so Paul very explicitly is telling Timothy, if you're going to suffer for Jesus Christ and to be able to endure the hardships and the trials and the burdens that come your way, you'll need to be strong. So you, therefore, my son, be strong. If you were to read this in a different translation, it would say something to the effect of strengthen yourself. Gird yourself up. Make yourself strong. Actively pursue strengthening. So I want us to think for a minute now. When we need strength, when you feel spiritually weak, maybe that's discouragement or depression, anger, frustration, hopelessness. Where do you turn for strength? What do you do to combat your weakness?

Paul tells Timothy here, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And I think we know in our heads that we ought to turn to the Lord and plead with him for strength. But I fear that too often that's not what we actually do. We know that it's what we should do. And maybe we don't come to actually doing it until we've exhausted all other possibilities. So what do we substitute for being strong in the grace of God practically in our lives? First, I think we substitute being strong in the grace of God with being strong simply in our own strength. We look at problems or hardships or burdens in our lives and we think, you know what? I can get through this. I can fix it. I can bear it. We try to muscle our way through the spiritual battles that we face in our own strength. Now, why is it that when we're weak, we try to bear our burdens ourselves in our own strength?

You think about it for a minute. Why is it when you're struggling, you go, I can get through this. I think it's because we don't want our weakness exposed, not to the people around us. We don't want them to know where we're weak, where we're struggling. And if they have to know where we're weak and where we're struggling, we want it to present well. I fear that too often what we're always doing is we're always projecting an image of what we are. And the image that we want to project is strength, because strength, after all, is a good thing, and weakness is despised. And so we've all learned the lesson as Christians that to be weak is never to be seen. That even if we talk about our sins and our struggles and our failures and our weaknesses, we talk about them in the past tense. Well, I was struggling. Well, I did have this hardship. Well, my wife and I...

did go through, had trouble in the past. But the troubles of today, it seems as though they don't exist. Maybe every once in a while they seep out on Facebook or on Instagram or wherever. To the discerning eye, you can see what struggles might be going on. But when we need strength, I think our first reaction is almost always to try to bear the things in our own strength and to lie to ourselves saying that we can. Because it's incredibly difficult to admit. That we have need of something that we can't provide for ourselves. That's very hard. And it's often despised. And you feel like quite a failure. If you come to the point where you say, I need help. You see this even in young children. You can take them and, you know, if I tell my sons to do something, you know, change the tire on the bike. Simple task. Change the tire on the bike. There's a question in my mind of whether they have strength to do it.

You know, to loosen the bolts because I'm the one that tightened them after all. And so I don't just step in and say, let me do it. You're not strong enough. I say, go try it. Sometimes they say, I say, do you need help? And what's my kid say to me? No, I don't need help. And aren't we just like that? If someone sees even a little bit of our weaknesses, aren't we? And they say, do you need help? Aren't we quick to say, no, I don't need help. Dan likes to tease about one of my sons years ago. I think it was Micah. Dan asked him something, and Micah said, no, no, no, I'll do it myself. Me do it. He's a little kid, right, so didn't have proper English. Me do myself. You know, I can do it. And isn't that alive and well, that response in all of us? I'll take care of it myself. I can do it myself. I think that's why things like YouTube how-to videos, for men anyway, are so valuable. We wouldn't dare want to ask somebody else how to do something. We'll just go ask a stranger. We'll just ask.

the Google. How do I do this thing? Same thing's true for women, isn't it? Instagram, isn't this what it's for? Teach you how to do things? I'm insecure about being a mom. I'm going to go read mommy blogs. Follow all the beautiful lives on Instagram. I'm going to learn how to take care. I'm going to learn how to love my life and do it all well because the pictures and all the stuff they put up, they all seem to do it so perfectly well. But I don't have the strength in me to do it. But all of it's predicated on the idea that we have the strength in ourselves to do whatever it is that we want to do, that we don't need help, that whatever hardships we face, whether they're simple things like changing the tire on a bike or they're ongoing things like loving your children and caring for them and training them up when you've had a bad day or a late night or you're sick or they're sick or whatever. I think we all try to substitute our own strength for the strength that God provides.

And then we get depressed because what do we find out very quickly? We may have strength for a day. You may have strength for a few days. But after a few days, what happens? You know as well as I do what happens. After a few days, you crash. Your strength fails. And the discouragement and the things that were afflicting you before all of this come back stronger than they were before. And then you spend a day or two being discouraged and depressed and this isn't fair and why is my life so hard and everyone else seems to have it better than me, easier than me. Things seem to go right for them because that's what they post on Instagram after all. They get to go on beautiful vacations and have a great time and never have a problem when they're on vacation or whatever the case may be. And so you lick your wounds for a little while. You see that you're weak. And then what do you do?

You do it all over again. That's how stupid we are. That's how stupid we are. We fail. We say, I can do it. I know I can do it. You get up and you try again and we wear ourselves out and then we fall on our face again. And it's just this cycle that goes on and on and on because of our weaknesses. Because we don't have the strength within us to carry us through the hardships and the difficulties that we face in this life. And no matter how often we do it, we don't learn the lesson we should learn, which is that we need strength from outside of us because we don't have strength inside of us to do it. If Timothy were to face the hardships, you know, Paul's writing to him as a prisoner in Rome about to be killed for his ministry in the gospel. Which one of us thinks we have the strength in us to bear that sort of thing? When Paul says, jump on in, the water is very dangerous.

I'm about to die. Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Come do what I'm doing. Who has strengthened themselves for that? Timothy doesn't. And so Paul tells him, strengthen yourself, my son. Be strong in the grace that's in Christ Jesus. If you look to yourself, son, for strength in these hardships and these burdens, you will fail. The strength doesn't exist inside of you. And you're not unique in the fact that the strength doesn't exist inside of you. Timothy's not particularly weak. Paul is not strong in his own strength to face the things that he's facing. Paul was strong in the grace that was in Christ Jesus. And he calls Timothy to the same thing. In another place, Paul talks about himself and he says, if I have to boast, I'll boast in my weaknesses. Because in my weaknesses, God's power is made perfect.

And yet how often and how long will we fight day by day against our weaknesses, trying to get rid of them, to redouble our efforts, to look to ourselves. You can do it. What I need is a better plan. Somebody just has a better plan for how I'm supposed to do this or that or the other thing, whatever it is that you want. It may be that you need a better plan. But that plan's not going to benefit you if you don't have God's strength to bear up when the plan doesn't go the way it's supposed to. It's so easy for us to look around and think other people have all this strength and life is very easy. This is one of the bad, bad fruits of social media. It's all a lie. I tell my wife every day, I say, it's a lie. The more I see people post about their marriage online, the more I think their marriage struggles. You should know, I'm your pastor, I watch you online. I'm glad for you to love each other and say, my husband's great, my wife's the best.

That's fine. If that's normal for you, that's great. But when I see people who don't ever post and all of a sudden there's this like gushy post about their spouse, I'm like, they just had a big fight. They have problem. Like there's a problem. They want everybody to know there's no problem. So loud that they have to put it on Facebook and lie about it. And yet everyone, all the onlookers, we look by and we go, oh, isn't that sweet? Look at them. They're so wonderful. They're sinners, just like you're sinners. And they need strength just like you need strength. And if they're showing you a picture of their best day, don't believe that's their every day. It's not your every day. It's not anybody's every day. And so we're being very foolish and treading in dangerous water when we try to strengthen ourselves for the burdens of our day. What else do we substitute for being strong in the grace of God? I think we argue with ourselves and talk ourselves into our problems not being that big of a deal. We minimize them.

If my problem is too big, I'll just shrink my problem down. I'll suppress it. Oh, yeah, that's going on, but it's not that bad. I'll get through it. We know we're weak, and instead of saying, no, I'm strong, we'll say, I don't need that much strength to get through it. It's not that big of a deal. Again, how's that go for you? We presume that we'll get through it unscathed. The question is, actually, will you? Will you get through the hardship simply because you lie to yourself? Will you get through it? unscathed? Will you get through it without doing damage to your soul because of your unwillingness to rely on God? I fear that most of the time we won't. We're in great danger and lying to ourselves if we think that we can ignore our burdens, minimizing them and saying, yes, it'll pass. It's as if you were talking to somebody about their diet and the way that they ate and the health problems that they had, and they say, you know what? It's okay for me to eat however I want. It won't affect my health.

It doesn't matter what I eat and what I drink. No big deal. If you were talking to an alcoholic and he was speaking to you this way, my drinking is fine. I feel fine. My drinking is not really that big of a problem. It's not affecting me adversely. What do you know about that alcoholic? He's lying to himself, and he's lying to you, and somebody ought to call a spade a spade and say, that's a lie. It's not true. It is a problem, a big problem. And you minimizing it doesn't make it so. Another thing to know about this, if you're talking with people or caring with them, is that they will always minimize their problems to you. Always. There are a few times I could probably count on one hand how many times I've gotten the raw version of a problem from somebody. And it's always when it's happening in real time. And they haven't had time to put themselves back together. But if you ask someone what the problem is,

they'll always say it's not as bad as it really is. We all do that, don't we? You get in a fight with your wife. How was it? Well, meh, meh. It's funny, I bet meh wasn't how she thought it was going when the fight was going on. She probably didn't think it was not that big of a deal. You probably didn't think it was not that big of a deal, right? We minimize. We're in this habit of looking to ourselves for strength, and we're in this habit of minimizing our problems to ourselves and to other people. All of this is foolishness and deception and lies. None of it is strengthening ourselves in the grace of God. And so if someone comes to you and they say that they have a problem, we would do well to assume that they're minimizing it, that they've turned the volume down to three when it used to be at ten, and see what's going on here.

Why do we minimize it to other people? Because what would they think of us if they knew the truth? What would they think of us? Instead, it's very good for us to speak truthfully and candidly about our weaknesses, not minimizing or deflecting them. And when we hear that sort of speech, we shouldn't recoil from it, but instead we ought to strengthen our brothers and our sisters in grace, not despising them for having weaknesses that they haven't hidden. There's been occasion I've been with men doing counseling, other elders or pastors with me, and there are times where I look at whoever I'm talking to and I say, listen, whatever you have to say or whatever's going on, you're not going to surprise me by being honest. I'm not going to go, I didn't know you were that kind of sinner. And there's never any laughing when it goes on, right? We're not sitting here going, oh, ha, ha, yeah, we're all sinners.

all I'm saying to them is, I know enough of my own sins that I'm not going to be surprised when you come to me and tell me that you're a real sinner and that you actually don't have it under control and that your life's being torn apart by it. I'm not going to go, well, what's wrong with you? And the only reason I can say that is because I've had men in my lives that have gone before and who've been willing to hear the truth, the weakness, to see the mess, and to not be put off by it. And so as a result, they were able to strengthen me and to help me.

And so are we willing to be strengthened? When we're looking to our own strength, or when we're minimizing our trials and our burdens, I want you to realize that what we're doing is actively, actively rejecting God. We are fighting against him when we do these things. Our hearts are angry at the circumstance that we're facing, and we're saying, it is not fair. It is not right. And our anger and our frustration is at God, because we know that these burdens have come to us in some way from his hand, whether he sent them or whether he's allowed them. We know that they are because of his will. And so why in the world would we go to the one who's allowed such tragedy into our lives for strength? We think, well, he's the one who sent this. Why would I turn to him now for strength? Because it's never occurred to us that he sent it so that we would turn to him for strength.

so that we would be broken of looking in the mirror and thinking that we can manage our own lives ourselves, muscling through life and pushing, keeping our head down and just going to work. In Mortification of Sin and Believers, John Owen says that one of the reasons God doesn't free us from sin is because he wants us daily to remember our need of him. That our pride is such that if he actually freed us entirely from the sins that plague us, we would walk away from him and forget that we ever needed him in the first place. And so he allows us to struggle with sins day by day to remind us that we need his strength to overcome them. That that's actually his mercy to us, that he doesn't just free us from all of our afflictions, but he keeps us low because we would not keep ourselves low. He humbles us because we would not be humble otherwise.

And so when we don't pursue strengthening from the Lord, down below that rejection of, you know, that denial of his strength is to say, I don't want his strength. And I'd go further and I'd ask you, when you're struggling, when something's hard in your life, what do you want strength to be able to do? What do you want strength to be able to do? I fear that too often what we want is strength to be able to free ourselves from our own burdens. We don't want strength to endure or strength to persevere. We want strength to resist and get away. You think of Samson being tied to those columns as he was dying, right, toward the end of his life. They cut off his hair. It was the key to his strength. The Philistines have him, and he's chained up, and they're at a party. What does Samson need? What's he want more than anything? He wants strength. Strength to do what?

To get away from the Philistines? No. What did he want strength for? To kill them, right? That's what he wanted strength for. He said, give me the strength to pull this building down on top of him, knowing that he was going to die as well. He didn't want strength to get away from his circumstance. He wanted strength to be faithful to God in his circumstance. And for him, it meant pulling the building down on top of himself and God's enemies. And so when we want strength, it is worth asking, if I had strength, what would I do with it? We'd ask this question of people with money, wouldn't we? If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it? And if we were all honest about what we would do with it, it would reveal what's in our hearts. It'd be a great way to see what we love. And so, if you had strength, what would you do with it? Would you use it to serve the Lord, or would you use it to oppose him? That's not the kind of strength that Paul's telling Timothy to acquire for himself.

He's not saying be strong so that you can resist the sorrows and the sufferings and the hardships that come with your calling. He's saying be strong in the grace of God so that you're able to endure those hardships and those trials and those sufferings. And so when we ask for strength from the Lord, we should know what we're asking for. We're asking for strength to be able to stand and to be faithful in the face of grief and sorrow and pain and hardship. I often wonder why would God be merciful or provide any strength to people who oppose him at so many places. It just seems so counterintuitive and wrong that we would even go to him and ask for strength when we see in our own hearts how much we don't want it. How much we would write the storyline of our lives so differently. From our childhood on up, we would say, nope, scratch that chapter, write this part in there. Nope, that was bad, pitch it. No, I want it to be like this.

And as you get older and you look and you think of how long and how persistent you are and you're grumbling and complaining and resisting and struggling against God and his will, it's astounding that he would be merciful to the people who are so hard-hearted and much of the time. And yet that's exactly who he's come to save and be merciful to and to give grace to. What sense does it make? How often are you willing for someone in your life, to take advantage of your mercy and your kindness and your blessings before you go, enough. You've found oppression because of your foolishness. Live out the term. Pay it all out yourself. I'm done. When we read in Isaiah earlier, and this was prophecy looking forward, and you think when God delivered his people from the hand of whatever oppressor they faced, did they respond appropriately?

and persistently the way they should. The fact is they never do. They never do. So quickly, they return back to their former manner of life. This is the whole story and theme of the book of Judges. It's just time and again and again and again. It's very important for you and I to realize that we are no different than those people that we read about in the pages of Scripture who are constantly turning away from their Lord and forsaking their master and going their own way. And so when Paul tells Timothy, be strong in the grace that's in Christ Jesus, he's calling Timothy to know his sins and his failures and all of the ways he repeatedly betrays Jesus Christ, knowing that God has never abandoned or forsaken him as a result. That's where strength comes from, is knowing that all of the ways you've turned away from your God and all the ways you failed to serve him, as you should have, he has never forsaken or turned away from his children. He's been gracious to them.

Whatever sins they've committed, whatever ways they've abandoned him, he remains the same, faithful forever. Because in a few pages we'll read, if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. His faithfulness is not dependent on our faithfulness. And so when we are unfaithful, when we don't do what we should do, when we turn aside to whatever it is we want, he remains faithful. gracious, and merciful to sinners, however much they sin, provided that they repent of their sin and that they return to him. And even if that's to happen, it's him that does it in them. And so when Paul says, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, he's saying to Timothy, listen, your life is going to be filled with hardships and trials. And the only thing that will bear you through it, is remembering what kind of sinner you are and what kind of mercy you can find in Jesus Christ. There is nothing else that will strengthen you or sustain you through this work. And so be strong, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. This is Paul's message, time and again, not just to Timothy, but wherever he goes and whoever is around.

You're a sinner in need of Jesus Christ. He's come to save sinners. Thanks be to God and praise him with all that is in you. This is Paul's message to Timothy here. And this is what he said, as verse two says, in the presence of many witnesses. And so Paul says, Timothy, you've heard me say these things. You've seen me live these things. Even now I'm in prison writing to you in the strength that God supplies to carry on this work because I'm about to die. And what does he tell Timothy to do? Well, essentially he says, Timothy, you're going to die too. I don't know that anyone would think reading verse 2 that's what it says, but that's really the implication of it. The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust these to faithful men who will also be able to teach others. What's he saying? Well, we all have a shelf life. And there's something more important that we need to be paying attention to than our shelf life and when we expire. We need to see to it as ministers of the gospel that the gospel continues to go forth.

when we're not the ones carrying it anymore. And so he tasks Timothy to find men, faithful men, and entrust these things to them. Men who are strong in the grace of Jesus Christ, just like he's talked about. To be strong in the grace of God. is a higher calling than simply men who believe. You remember if you were around when I preached through 1 Timothy and I was preaching through the qualifications for elders, I said too often we want men who have a sad story of how sin has ravaged their lives. And I say what we want instead of men who are weak and broken is we want strong men to lead the church. The very best men. The most godly men. That's who we should want.

to lead the church, not men who parade their weaknesses around. What can we get behind and follow when all that's spoken of is our weaknesses and our failures? We need men to lead the church and to build God's kingdom, faithful men who are strong in the grace of God, who know that they're sinners, who don't deny it, who are very honest, but honest not just about their sins, but about the strength that God provides to overcome those sins. Entrust these things to faithful men. The very best men you can find. Those who are strong and not weak. Because if they're weak, they will not be able to do their jobs. And so as Timothy goes about his work, his job is to look around and find and identify other men who fit the bill. This is what Paul did when he discovered Timothy. When he showed up in Timothy's hometown, Timothy had a reputation of being a faithful man. He had distinguished himself from the other men. And that's why Paul took him with him.

Paul was concerned with faithfulness, and he chose Timothy, and he tells Timothy to do the same. Be concerned with faithfulness. Look for men who are faithful. Choose them. So is faithfulness to the grace of God in the face of our sins what we look for in men who we want to be pastors and lead the church? Too often today, pastors are not measured in terms of their faithfulness, but instead in terms of their popularity or their persuasiveness or their attractiveness. or their nuance, their ability to communicate well, or their pedigree, where they came from. But you realize this is not how Jesus chose his disciples. Where did he find his disciples? Where did the apostles come from? They came from the seashore, the tax bench. It should be that we look for men who are faithful. And when we see men who are faithful and suffering for the gospel, we ought to then think, that guy might make a halfway decent pastor. Men like Isaiah who

when he saw his sin and the sins of his people, said, woe is me, for I am unclean. My lips are unclean, and I live in the midst of those who are unclean. And God calls out and says, who will go? And Isaiah says, I'll go. And then it was all beautiful, because they all listened to Isaiah, right? Everyone heard Isaiah and went, oh, what a persuasive man. We should do what he says. No. There are men like John the Baptist, who when he saw the Pharisees coming out to be baptized, spoke to them in the face of the crowds. Who warned you to flee the judgment of God? You brood of vipers, who warned you? Says this wild man from the woods, who then to his face opposed Herod for his adultery. It's not right for you to have your brother's wife. That's faithfulness. Cost John his head. We could go on and list men throughout history who fit the description of faithfulness here that Paul gives.

Timothy's job and our desire should be to identify men who are strong in the grace of God, who are faithful, and then see those men set apart for gospel ministry. Take whatever gifts they have, whatever strengths they have that probably are such that they could provide for themselves a much more comfortable and easier life in the world if they weren't pastors, and to set them apart for ministry. I was thinking about this this week and thinking, what makes for a faithful church? Like, what's a... What should our expectations for church be? What's healthy? And I think too often we think you have to always, always, always, there has to be growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. And I don't want you hearing me say I don't think churches should grow. I do. I believe in the Great Commission. But where did we learn how to grow churches from? How do we think churches should grow? Is it through the children's programs, the children's ministries?

I remember one time I got a phone call from someone that, I don't remember her name, it was a mother of a family, and they were moving to town. And we, I don't even think we had Sunday school at the time. It was very early on. And she said, well, I just wanted to know what you guys had for our children. You know, children's ministry. Those are questions, fine question, gets asked. Well, of course, we didn't have any of that, right? So my answer to her was, what we have for your children is a commitment to teach you how to raise them. in the Lord because we think that you will be the most influential person in your child's life over the course of their childhood. That's what we have for them. She never came to church, but I thought it was a good answer. And I wasn't ashamed to give it to her because it's still what our commitment is, even though now we do have some children's programs. But where does that question arise from?

When did we as a Christian society, Christians in this society decide that the quality and breadth of a children's ministry was how we ought to choose a faithful church? Is that an indication of faithfulness? Is that the indication of faithfulness that we ought to be looking for? What do you have for my kids? I don't think it is. I think in our society, we have over-prioritized gathering people and we have severely devalued discipling people. And to what end? What do you get if you gather a bunch of people but don't disciple them? You get the satisfaction of going to the big church. But if disciples aren't being made, it's no good. It's of no benefit. It's harmful even. Entrust these things to faithful men who will be able to teach others as well. Find men who love and desire to see the kingdom of God built such that their vision for it extends beyond their life. Whether their life is lived until a good old age or whether their life is cut short because of their faithfulness. Find faithful men. We ought to want faithful men. When you have friends in churches and they wonder about their church or you talk to them about it or what have you, you should say, you want a faithful man leading you.

That's what the Bible says. You want faithful men who are willing to suffer for Jesus. That's what you want. Big church, small church, children's ministry, this kind of music, dynamic speaker or not. You want faithful men. We need men who will guard the good deposit, who proclaim the gospel, and the people who will protect not just the truth, but the people, their sheep against the attacks that assail them. That's what defines faithfulness. In the qualifications for elders, it warns against pastors. and elders being brawlers or pugnacious, the kind of men who love to fight, who look for a fight, who are always out for it. And yet, pastors do have to be fighters. Not the kind of men who love fighting, not the kind of men who go out trying to stir up strife, but they do have to be men who will fight. Because if they won't fight, what it means is they won't defend.

And if they won't fight, they won't defend the truth, and they also won't defend you. And so you want pastors who are not brawlers or pugnacious, but who are fighting men, particularly who are faithful at the points of conflict in our society. Men who at that point say, this is what the Lord says, and this is what we believe. Popular or not, dangerous or not, I stand with the Lord. We've chosen this day to follow him. These are the men that Timothy is supposed to look for. He's supposed to identify. And so these are the men we ought to be praying for, and we ought to be searching out, asking God to raise up strong men like this, to lead in his church and to protect his people, to shut down and silence the lies and the manipulations that his people are sucking in. And so faithful men in our day are men who are willing to stand and to fight.

Fight what, you might wonder. I'd say fight where Satan's attacking. And you might go, well, where's Satan attacking? And I'd say Satan's attacking you at the points of anthropology, all kinds of things. What is a man? We believe the Bible teaches man is made in the image of God and that that image is to be protected all the way through life. So that means men who are willing to be faithful with regard to the issue of abortion. And men who are willing to not make exceptions for instances of rape or instances of incest or instances of fetal abnormality, some sort of diseases or sick children, something's wrong with them. Men who are willing to defend life at the other end when someone's dying or about to die who doesn't say, yeah, I think that the quality of life arguments are such that if you think your life's not worth living anymore, it's okay to...

Take your own life. You want men who are willing to say very simple things like that that cause a lot of trouble if you say them. You want men who are committed to marriage between a man and a woman, who are committed to men and women, if that makes sense, men being men and women being women, men not being allowed to be women and women not being allowed to be men. You want men who love children as the fruit of a faithful marriage. such that the Lord provides for them. Any one of those things will cause problems if you were to go out in society and to say these things or talk about these things. These are just some of the simple ways. It's not these profound, deep, hard, spiritual truths that we measure our faithfulness by. These are the things that everybody's talking about, that everyone's got opinions about. You want men who are faithful on those things to start with.

And who don't say the things they say because they like to fight, but who say those things because they love Jesus and they trust in his word. You can go on and describe faithfulness more and more detailed than that. What types of men do you want? You want men who will fight for your souls at the point at which you're being attacked and having pressures put on you. Men who will call you to be faithful. Not men who will say, yeah, yeah, yeah, go fight. But men will say, you have an obligation to serve God and to be faithful to him in this area, whether that's in your workplace or your home or at the Thanksgiving dinner table or wherever it is. Faithful men will teach you as God's people to be faithful. That's what you want. That's what you have to have. You have to have it. That's what it means to be faithful. I'll close with a short quote from Martin Luther talking about faithfulness, though he never uses the word faithfulness. But he talks about...

fighting in conflict and where it ought to be happening. He says, if I profess with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God, except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing him. And so faithful men, you need them, you want them. I commend our elders to you as those type of men. But you, as God's people as well, must be faithful in these same areas. It's easy to say these things and probably safer to say these things here. But we don't live here. We live on the other side of those walls. And faithfulness is required of you and of me outside this place, in these areas. And so faithfulness outside these walls will bring suffering.

And so we come full circle to Paul telling Timothy, be strong in the grace that's in Christ Jesus. He's able to provide strength for you to be faithful to him outside the church building, saying and believing and living according to his commands and suffering probably as a result of it in some form or another. He's able to give you strength to endure it, not to free yourself from it necessarily, but to endure it. And so be strong in the grace of God, and you'll be able to bear up under the burdens and the trials that you'll face in this life. Let's pray. Father, there are many hardships that we face, and we are quick to faint underneath them, quick to turn aside and to reason out in our hearts why now is not the time, these are not the people, those are not the words or the stands that we ought to make. Father, forgive us where we failed you. Strengthen us to endure, not to flee.

but to endure. Father, we pray that you would raise up more men for gospel ministry who are faithful, strong in the grace of God, willing to suffer along with Paul and Timothy and even our Lord Jesus. Father, equip us to do your will. Help us to be faithful in small things. When we sin, help us to be tenderhearted and quick to repent. Use us to build your kingdom as ambassadors of the gospel of Jesus Christ, to see sinners saved. in our own homes and in our communities, our coworkers and our neighbors. Help us to love them as you've loved us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.