All Scripture Is Inspired By God And Profitable #2

Before I preach, there's two quick things, quick announcements, sort of pastor announcements. One is, last week I talked to you guys about Bob Kaplowitz down in Bloomington. He did go to be with the Lord last Sunday afternoon. His funeral was this past Tuesday. I know some of you were able to come. Those of you who knew Bob, it was a sweet thing to be able to go and to say goodbye. bury our friend and be reminded of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's what a funeral service ought to be. It's often not what it is today, but it should be a time where Christians get together and we say, we're planting this, our brother or sister, in the ground like a seed to die, to rot, and then to spring forth in life when the Lord returns. And so it's meant to be a time of mourning and sorrow and a time of strengthening our faith.

I was thankful for your guys' kindness in asking me how I was doing. Bob was a sort of father to me, and so my family and I are very grateful for your love and your support. Second, regarding this is just sort of a church life announcement, and I think that I'm probably best suited to give it for two reasons. One, I'm the pastor, and two, we're about to have our 10th child. Our church has a lot of little kids. Our church is young, the adults are young, and our church is young, the kids are young. And there's lots and lots of them. And I can tell you from experience, some of you may have grown up in big families, but I think most of us probably didn't. Life in big families is very different than life in small families. I grew up an only child, so my home, there's almost no touch point between the way I grew up and the way that my home functions now. I grew up not in a Christian home. Now I have a Christian home. I grew up an only child. Now I have...

About to be 10 children. There was no dad in my home. Everything is different. So everything for me is learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. Everything's new. And I think for many of us, you have a similar naivety, ignorance perhaps, about what big family life is like. And the reason I'm bringing that up to you is not to talk about my family, but to talk about church life. With all of the kids that we have, sickness is a part of life. There are other things that you end up going without in a big family. Just because you have a big family, things have to accommodate the realities of your life, okay? And so I'll tell you a lesson I teach in my family, and then I'll apply it to us. What I tell our family is, you know, I have kids, they want to do this or they want to do that, and they think like we do. They think about themselves, and they say, oh, I would like to be able to do this thing or enjoy that thing or have this thing.

And I tell them, we have to do what makes the most sense for our whole family. We can't prioritize your desires or your preferences to the detriment of the family as a whole. We as a family have to move through life together. And that means that some of us have to paddle fast to keep up, and some of us have to slow down to stick with the group. And that's life in a big family. Now, that same lesson is true for us as a church. Things like my wife and Allison work with Daniel and Michael on the CE committee, Christian Education Committee. And so one of the things they've been working on, this is just an example, is our nurseries. We have two nurseries. And they've been looking out into the future. They were doing this months ago. They were looking out and going, we're going to have all these babies that are going to be born. Thanks be to God. What are we going to do with our nursery? Because there's not going to be anyone to staff it. Because everyone's got babies.

you can easily fall into the temptation that any child in a big family falls into, which is, well, my thing that I want is not here because of them. Welcome to life in a big family. Get used to it. Learn to love it because this is what life is. And I think it's a good lesson for all of us to remember that there are others among us, the weakest among us, those who are most vulnerable, those who are most tender, little babies and their mothers that we ought to accommodate. And what it's going to mean is that we are going to have more work. those of us who aren't in that season at the moment, and that we're going to go without some things that we would appreciate for the sake of others. And so what we have before us is a great opportunity to learn over the next year how to go without some things that we may appreciate or may like or may prefer for the sake of one another. So I think I'm only saying what's obvious is the Lord's been good to us in giving us as a church lots of marriages, lots of children.

And with those blessings come responsibilities. And so I want us, as we see them, to accept them and to help out in the areas where we can with joy and not with sorrow. So don't think about yourself. When you're asked to serve and you're like, well, that's a lot. Please do if you're able, you know. These are the lessons that we teach our kids, that I teach my kids, that I trust you teach your kids. And so here's a lesson where we as adults get to have the same opportunity that we give to our children, to love each other and to care for those that are a part of our family, who are weaker and who are going through a particular season of life, a good season of life, but a demanding season of life. And so we want to be able to honor them and care for them. You men especially, it's a great lesson for you to learn about how to love your wife and how to love your children.

Wives and young children don't move at the pace that you do. They just don't. And I think it took me until about four kids for me to realize that my family wasn't going to continue to move at my pace anymore. And that I could either be angry about that, or I could drag them along miserably, or I could slow down. And so I'm usually doing one of those three things. Aiming in the direction of slowing down. And so as you see changes come up or you see people missing or you see there being lots of needs for meals or whatever, I want you to see it as an opportunity to serve and to love your brothers and sisters. Because God's given us to one another for this purpose. Now, moving on to our sermon. This morning we're going to be continuing our study in 2 Timothy 3, verses 10-17. Last week we saw how Paul drew out...

drew Timothy's attention to his behavior in the face of persecution. You remember last week, Paul says, you followed my faith and conduct and love and perseverance, all this stuff, and my persecutions and sufferings. And we came to the point at the end of the sermon where he said, you realize all that good stuff, that faith and that love and that patience and all that good stuff was as he suffered and as he was persecuted. That's when Timothy was watching him. He saw love in that context. He saw patience in that context. He saw mercy in that context. This is what we saw last week. And Paul summarized, we concluded last week with Paul's statement, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. We will suffer. This week, we're going to be moving on to verses 13 to 15. And in these verses, Paul exhorts Timothy and us to persevere in the things that he believes and that he knows to be true. Because it's those very things

that will lead to salvation. And so my hope is that God will strengthen each one of us to continue in the things that we've come to know and believe in the face of adversity when it's difficult as well as when it's easy. 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. Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, and sufferings. Such has happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra. What persecutions I endured, and out of all of them the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, but evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation.

through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. And so this whole section is an instruction to Timothy about... how he's to conduct himself, how he's to behave. Paul gives himself as an example. In verse 13, we have this aside, this sort of comparison. You know, Timothy, you followed my teaching. You observed these things. But evil men, and then he continues on after describing the evil men, he says, you, however, continue. So this whole thing is an instruction to Timothy about how to live and how to behave. But he gives this juxtaposition, this example, this counterexample of what not to be.

And it is worth noting that we need to not just be told what to pursue, but what to avoid. What are the dangers? What are the pitfalls? If we don't do this, we're going to end up doing this. And that's what this verse 13 ends up doing for us. But evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worth, deceiving and being deceived. Paul in this section is hearkening back just to verse 9, just before... this section where he talks about Janice and Jambres, when they were with Moses. He gave them as an example. And he says, but they'll make no further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Janice and Jambres' folly was also. He's talking about these evil men and these imposters. These people are in the church who are teaching, who are instructing, who are, in the end, leading people away. They're going to go from bad to worse. And as their wickedness takes root, As they proceed from bad to worse, it will become obvious to more and more people. And so sadly, this is something we ought to expect in the church. Now that's kind of a nasty thing to say. We ought to expect evil men and imposters to go from bad to worse in the church. But that is what Paul is teaching us here, is that there are men in the church who are going to do harm, which means that we have to be on guard against being swept away.

By them, by their teaching. The people who are led astray by evil men, by imposters, by those who have clung to a form of godliness, Paul describes, but denied its power, just earlier in this book. The people who are led away by them should be a grief to us. I think it's very easy for us to look at people and say, well, they're getting what they deserve. They believed lies, they did foolish things, they're getting what they deserve. And there is a sense in which that's true. If you were in Sunday school and we were talking about sowing and reaping, you're like, yeah, that does happen. But it ought to be a grief to us. Do you remember when Jesus went out and he looked on the city of Jerusalem? And what did he say? What did he do? What did he say? He looked on Jerusalem and he wept. And he wept for them because he says, you know, I've desired, like a mother hen desires, I've desired to gather you together under my wings, but you wouldn't have it.

But you wouldn't have it. And it was a grief to him that his people were being led astray. They were going to hell. Why would he weep? He wept because he understood what hell was. He understood what the consequences of sin were. And we should never look at people with cold hearts and say, you know what? You get what you deserve. Because what they deserve is awful. What we deserve, apart from Christ, is awful. And we shouldn't look on it with cold hearts and say, oh, well, that's just how it is. It may be that that's how it is. But we shouldn't be callous toward it. The reason we shouldn't do that, I'll tell you, is I would bet most of you have people in your family that you have a hard time relating to, that you don't get along with, there's tensions with, or maybe it's in the church or wherever. There's people that you're made to be in contact with and you're like, eh, they're not my people. I mean, they're not the people I get along with the most. They are my people, but I struggle. If you've cultivated an indifference to destruction, to people's souls being destroyed,

When someone near to you walks away from the faith, you won't find any sorrow or grief inside of you. You'll find, good, you're getting what you want. You're getting what you deserve. And that's an awful thing. It causes us not to fight for them, not to care about them, not to pursue them. Jesus said, you know, if there's one sheep that goes astray, the Good Shepherd leaves the one and goes, leaves the 99 and goes after the one. If we've got cold hearts, if we don't care about people's destructions, if we don't think, eh, evil men and imposters and the people they lead astray, yeah, it's just part of it.

No big deal. We will never leave and go after the one. And it shouldn't be that way. Maybe this whole perspective seems kind of foreign to you, and that may be because this is probably a pastor's perspective. After all, you have Paul writing to Timothy, an apostle writing to a pastor saying, this is why you should contend for the faith. There are going to be evil men in the church. There are going to be imposters, and the net result of their conduct is that people will be destroyed. And that gets... me upset. And I hope that in time that sort of thing gets you upset. When I say upset, I don't mean angry like I want to punch somebody. I mean grief like what we're talking about and what's going on here is important and serious. And it's not the sort of thing that we can just take it or leave it at your own cost. No big deal. No skin off my nose. When I read these words as a pastor, I look at them and I say, how often has it been no skin off my nose when people have walked away? I've been like, yeah, well, you'll figure it out or you won't. I see my own hardness of heart, my own coldness. And then I think, if that's true of me, then how about you?

How easily and how often do we say, well, whatever, you're just going to have to go figure it out yourself. That is what it means to be deceived, to have missed the end of all things, which is heaven or hell, which is joy and peace and rest or eternal destruction and misery. That's what the evil men and the imposters are going to produce. And Timothy, like every one of us, needs to be warned against becoming one of those men or at least acting like them. This is one of the places where you look at the wisdom of God and you marvel at it because you think this is not my wisdom. If it were up to me, I would think of the church, the church would be a place where his people would be protected from this sort of thing. But yet in the church, even still, it's a war zone. There's dangers. There's things we have to be on guard against. There's things we have to resist. There's things we have to fight. There's things we have to contend against. And one of the most discouraging things that happens in the church.

that's discouraging to me, is that those who cling to a form of godliness but deny its power, those men who would be considered evil or imposters, have a much easier time gaining a following than the faithful men. That frustrates me. Why? Why? Why is that? I'll tell you why. The Scripture tells us why. We'll come to this passage in just a few weeks. For the time will come when they, you, we, will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. That's why. That's why. And so it is a difficult time that we live in because the pastors face dangers to become evil men and imposters, going from bad to worse, shifting, growing, changing. And the people like it that way.

In fact, they put pressure oftentimes on the men to do just that. So this passage is not meant to warn Timothy about all the dangers out there. It's meant to warn him about his own dangers, his own temptations, and the temptations of his hearers. I'll tell you a story about our men's retreat this past year. We were having a discussion, as we're wont to do, which usually when a bunch of men get together, at least from our churches, can easily turn into an argument. Not like a nasty argument, but an argument nonetheless. And so we had a conversation going on, and the conversation that was going on, I don't know how it got to this point, but it got to the point we were talking about what we would do if we worked with someone who is trans. How would you interact with them? How would you treat your employer? What would you say? What wouldn't you do? You're a Christian. And some of the men were like, well, I just wouldn't this and that, and I just, you know, I just, that's no. And then we said, you do realize that this young man over here, he's living it right now. He actually works with them.

within this situation, he's actually dealing with it. He's actually gotten in trouble with his bosses. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, oh, oh. And everyone's attitude changed because now theory turned into reality. We think that our commitments are so clean and neat and tidy and ironclad and never going to be assailed by any sort of tension. But the young man who lived in the situation has to figure out not just how to stand for the truth, but how to maintain what he believes to be true, what the Bible teaches, and what he's become convinced of without becoming a miserable witness to his employer and to his co-workers. And he's got to live in the tension of it and figure it out.

And so he's trying to sort out the, you know, okay, I know what's true, but now reality has come to bear, and I've got to figure out if I'm going to just go along to get along, keep my mouth shut, whether I'm going to be an obnoxious, miserable person or what. And so we all face these temptations. Some of us might be inclined to say, I'm just going to keep my mouth shut, not my circus, not my monkeys, that's not my job. And others of us might be like, ah, no way, I'm going to say something. And I'm going to keep saying something until they fire me, and then I'm going to call it persecution because I was miserable and awful to all the people I worked with. Both you and I have to be on guard against our temptations to follow men that will lead us astray, that will make it seem as though that situation I just described is just as easy as can be to sort out. It's not as easy as can be to sort out. Many questions in life are very difficult to sort out and have different answers for different people.

Sometimes the answers are not simple, but quite complex. And I think one of the marks of evil men and imposters is they will make you think that everything has a simple, easy answer. But many times it doesn't. And so Paul's point here to Timothy and to his hearers is that they need to be on guard. On guard with one another, on guard with themselves. That they not be the kind of people that prefer to be misled. And you might say, well, I don't prefer to be misled. And I say, well, none of us would think we would prefer to be misled. But when the other option is being confronted, We might well prefer to be misled at that point for a little while for the sake of a little more rest and a little more peace. And so Paul sets this aside, these evil men and imposters, and says, don't become like them. See it as a danger. Guard yourself against it. Don't be that. You, however, continue in the things that you have learned and become convinced of. It's one thing to know the truth, and it's another thing to be convinced of it. Okay? Faith.

historically has been defined as knowledge, assent, and trust. That those are the components of faith. If you're asking the question, does this person have faith? You would look for these three things. Knowledge is, do they know the facts? Do they know the gospel? Can they tell you that they're a sinner, that Jesus is a savior, that it was God's plan for him to come and to die in their place? Do they know the story of the gospel? Do they understand it? That's knowledge. That's not faith. That's just knowledge. Then you look for assent. Do they believe these things to be true? Do they say, I know that that's the truth? You remember, even in James, he says, even the angels knew the truth. They shuddered. They knew. They weren't just like, there's that story. They were like, and we know it's true. And it caused them to shudder. So did the angels have faith? Of course not. The angels didn't have faith, though they did have knowledge of the truth.

And they did acknowledge it as the truth. What they lacked was trust. Do you trust in those truths? Are you going to put your stock in that account? And so it's not enough for us simply to have learned things. Paul says, you continue in the things you've learned and become convinced of. It's not enough for us to know the truth. We have to be convinced of it. And convinced here is not like... Oh, well, I believe that it's true. It's that if it's not, my whole life is organized around this truth, and if it's not true, then I'm going to suffer as a result of it, because I have followed the path. In a parallel passage to this one in 2 Timothy, Jesus, in Matthew 24, teaches this same lesson. He says, Jesus answered and said to them, See to it that no one misleads you, for many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and will mislead many. You see the evil men and the imposters who will...

Mislead many. And then he goes into this explanation of wars and rumors of wars and all these kinds of things. He's talking about the end times. And he says when that happens, at that time, many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. And then he gives this analysis. Because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end, he will be saved. Now, how is the one... How is one to endure to the end? In the face of great tribulation and trial and hardship and suffering, how is one to persevere? Only because they've become convinced of the truth. That's how they can endure. That's the only way that they will endure. That's the only way that we will endure our hardships, our trials, is if we've become convinced of the truth. We live in the same fallen world that Timothy lived in and faced.

And our lives, like his, though the particulars may be different, can at times be quite difficult and sometimes very scary. It's in those times precisely, in those times, that Paul is showing Timothy that he's to continue in the things he's learned and become convinced of. I don't look forward to a time of persecution for the church. I don't look forward to life being hard for Christians. But in one sense, I do. And the sense in which I do look forward to it is it will be much easier when the cost is higher to know who loves God. that will be easier and nicer. And I think a lot of the things we argue and fight about and fuss about will fall by the wayside because there will be a cost associated with following Jesus Christ. Those who are not convinced of the truth will fall away. They will be like the seed that grew up in the thorns and the thistles and that was there for a time, but then the cares of the sorrows of the world choked it out. It will be a time of greater clarity.

There will be a cost to the truth. There won't be any such thing as a fair-weather Christian. If you ask somebody and you say, right now, you can still ask in our day, do you believe in God? Yes. Are you a Christian? Yeah, I'm a Christian. But there's no cost associated with identifying that way right now. When there is a cost associated with identifying as a Christian, then we'll know who's convinced and who's not. If you've become convinced of the truth, then you're obligated to walk in the truth, to continue in it. And to bear the costs that come with that commitment. That's what it means to be convinced. Years ago, I had a very difficult situation. I wasn't the pastor. I was the one being pastored. And after it was all said and done and the dust had settled from that situation, there was one thing that was very clear to me. And it was that that pastor was convinced of the things he said to me. He believed that they were true because they were costly for him to say to me.

And he said them anyway, and I couldn't figure out. This was sort of my inauguration into the church. He actually believed what he said, and there was a cost to him saying it, even if the cost was only that I would mock him and think he was a fool. He really did believe it, and therefore he really did say it, and he really did look me right in the eyes and tell me the truth. And it was the truth. He was right. It was not a pleasant truth, but it was the truth. That's what it means to be convinced of. To be convinced of the truth, to go back to the analogy of the man in the workplace, to be convinced of the truth, but then when you're faced with reality, we'll see how convinced you are of what you're convinced of. It will become evident. Conviction is essential to being a Christian. We can't be ashamed of what God said or what God's done and think that we're doing ourselves or anyone else any good.

Which one of us hasn't felt the pressure in some conversation at work or at home or with extended family or in our neighborhoods to, you know, someone says something and you're like, you know, your Christian faith inside of you is like, and you're like, oh, but if I say that, then all of the pleasantries are going to be gone because now I'm going to say that, you know, I don't even have to say it nasty. I just have to say, no, I don't think that's right. Or the Bible says, or something meek. And you know that if anything approximating, witnessing to God's truth comes out of your mouth, we're going to have tension. These are the times in which we decide whether we're ashamed of the truth or not. Or whether when we demonstrate or manifest where our allegiance lies, what we're convinced of, what's most important to us. There's a lot of pressure in our society today to have you have your Christian faith as a private thing. It's never been a private faith.

One of the things that I admire about liberals, if you want to know what I mean by conviction, compare conservatives and liberals and you tell me who has conviction in the things that they say and the things that they do and the way that they pursue whatever it is they want. It's not the conservatives. Liberals get what they want. As wicked and corrupt as it is, they get it because they are convinced of what they're saying and they convince other people of what they're saying because they realize the weakness of people and they go, If we just say it and if we just push it and we just tell you this narrative and make people feel the pressure, they'll go along with us just to get out of the pressure. Now, am I saying that's how we should go about the gospel ministry? No, I'm not saying you should put pressure on people and exploit their weaknesses. That's not what I'm saying. But there's conviction that leads them to do that. That's conviction. And we would do well to find that sort of conviction for the word of God in our hearts and coming out of our mouths. Now, that's weighty.

And that's hard. And if you're like me, that's intimidating because you go, okay, so that means life's going to get real, tense, uncomfortable. And one of the first temptations you'll have when you consider opening your mouth is you'll think, I'm going to be all alone. I'm going to say it and then nobody's going to be there with me. I'm just going to die a slow, miserable, solitary death. And so Paul says, continue in the things you have learned to become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them. Now why does he bring up whom Paul has learned from? Or who Timothy has learned from? Who's Timothy learned from? He's learned from Paul. He's learned from his mother and his grandmother, which we'll come to. He's not alone. But it's a temptation to always think you're alone. To think that your suffering will be in vain. Your hardship will be without any good fruit because you're just one man. You're just one woman. And what can your words or actions really accomplish?

I'm going to tell you a story, a Bible story, about Elijah. So what was Elijah known for? He's known for a couple of things. One of them is killing 400 prophets of Baal up on the mountain. You remember the story. They come and he says, let's have a competition, okay? We'll set up two sacrifices, and you guys can have all day to try to get your God to cast down fire on this sacrifice. And Elijah... when they fail, and he mocks them, when they fail, he says, guys, go get water. And they douse his sacrifice with water until it's pooled up around it. You know, he's really backed himself into the corner. One man against 400 prophets and King Ahab and Jezebel, who absolutely hate his guts. And we look at that story and we say, good man, Elijah. And it was.

But the run-up to that story is not nearly as flattering toward Elijah. In the run-up to that story, Elijah's hiding in a cave. And the angel of the Lord comes to him and says, Elijah, what are you doing here? Oh, I'm here because it's not safe to be anywhere else and they're going to kill me. I mean, those aren't his exact words. I'm paraphrasing. But that's basically what he says. And the angel then says to him, okay, Elijah, leave here. Go out. Anoint the new king. Oh, what you want me, translating to what that means for Elijah, what he'd be thinking is, you want me to come out of hiding, and you want me to anoint another man to the throne of the kingdom. When the man who sits on the throne right now absolutely hates me, I'm all alone, I'm the only one left, and he's just going to kill me. What you want me to do is go out and die. And the answer is?

Yes. Accept that you won't die because you're not alone. Not only are you not alone because God is with you, but you're not alone because there are still 7,000 people in Israel who are similarly oppressed and have not bowed their knee to Baal. They're alone because you're hiding. They've not bowed their knees to Baal and their mouths have not kissed him. See, too often we think that we're alone. That no one else has suffered, no one else has any conviction, no one else has any strength. In our day and age, the thing that is most desperately needed is leadership. That's it. If you want to know why Donald Trump got elected, that's the whole answer. He's willing to do hard stuff and say hard things. That's it. He's all full of all kinds of corruption and all kinds of wickedness and he's not a believer and all the rest. But what he had was a mouth and he used it. That's it.

We're in desperate need. How many people were oppressed by what was going on in our society? When they got that loudmouth, orange-haired man, they went, relief! They all thought they were alone. Then someone stood up and said, nope, nope, not going to be like that. Same sorts of things. You could go into a business and see the same sort of example with mask mandates. I think it was Southwest Airlines. All the people were like, no, we're not doing it. Southwest Airlines went, oh, okay. Guess you're not. Guess we won't. But the lie that we all want to believe is that we're all alone. That the things that we believe and the things that we're convinced of, we're the only people, poor us. We're the only ones. And if we stand up, we'll be left all alone, which is a denial of the attendance of God on his people. But in addition to that, there are other people who will appreciate it and will be helped by it. And so Elijah wasn't alone in the time of Ahab.

Paul wasn't alone. Timothy wasn't alone. He had learned these things and become convinced of them through all of the people that had gone before him and were still around him. And I'd ask you, don't you appreciate men and women who are willing to stand up and to say, this is the truth. You're not alone in your sufferings. You're not alone in your trials. You're not alone to die a wasted life, to spend it without any benefit. There are those who've gone before you that have taught you, that have suffered like you're looking at suffering, and who've been faithful. And they were described in Hebrews as men of whom the world was not worthy. So you're not alone. The world might hate you, but Jesus told you to expect as much. You're not alone. And then Paul goes on and he says, and also, you know, there's one reason you're not alone.

And two, and that from childhood you've known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Timothy's mother and grandmother, we learn in a different passage, taught him the scriptures from his childhood. His mother was faithful. His father was not. His mother was a Jew. His father was a Greek. And what I want to say to you is those of you who are here right now, those of you children, those of you who have parents who teach you or who taught you the word, just like Timothy's mother and grandmother did, have a great advantage over those who didn't receive that benefit. A great advantage. And to whom much has been given, much will be required. Now, I know that nobody's upbringing or instruction in the Word has been perfect. That's not the standard. I had a friend one time describe the difference between growing up in the church and the difference between someone who's grown up in the church and they come to faith versus a person who didn't grow up in the church and then comes to faith. And he says, you who grew up in the church,

It's like you had a whole big toolbox full of tools that you've been given. You just never had a key to open it. But when you come to faith, you get the key to open it and all of a sudden all the tools are there. All of the years of instructions and prayers and teachings and all of the stuff that's been given to you. There it is for you. But the person who comes to faith having not received that, they've just got a hammer and maybe a screwdriver and they need more tools. They want more tools. They value their tools. But they don't have everything that everyone else had. Timothy had been given a lot. And many of us have been given a lot just like Timothy. If you bring your children to church, you're giving them a lot. And a lot will be required of them. And so parents, give that gift to your children. Teach them. Show them. So that they'll continue in the things they've learned and become convinced of.

Children, don't despise what you've been given. Whether you're an adult here and you're thinking of your parents or whether you're a little kid or middle-aged kid, don't despise what you've been given because there are those in this room who were not given what you were given. Don't take it and bury it. It'll be worse for you in that day, in the day of judgment, than for those who've never known. If you come to church and you listen and you study, and you pray, and in time you commit yourself to the Lord, and you're baptized, the judgment will be worse for you if you deny Jesus Christ. The judgment will be worse for you than it will be for someone who's never heard of him. I don't want that to be the case for you. You don't want that to be the case for you. We don't want that to be the case for the ones that we love. So don't treat lightly the things of God. Salvation, in the end, is the goal.

You've known the sacred writings, which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation. The Bible is the path to this goal. Timothy isn't supposed to presume that he's safe just because he grew up in the temple. He has to take what he was taught in the temple, and now in the gospel, and live it out for the rest of his life, just like you and me. There's a place in 1 Corinthians where Paul talks about himself, and it's sort of off-putting to me as a pastor. I don't like it. I hope there are places in Scripture where you recognize that there are things you don't like, because it means you're paying attention. I'm not commending that you don't like Scripture, but that you see the tensions. And so the place where he talks about preaching, and he says, I want to preach in such a way and teach in such a way, is that after I've preached to others, that I myself might not be disqualified. And I don't like it. It cuts across the grain, because I think, well, if you're doing all this good work, I mean, the apostle of apostles, the man, if we could say, who is most like Jesus Christ,

since the time of Jesus Christ, I think we'd point to the Apostle Paul and say, it's him. And for him to say, therefore I discipline my body so that after having preached to others, I myself am not disqualified. I think, man, the level of tension that you have to live in if Paul feels that way and acknowledges as an aware that he has to persevere to the end, that he's not, he hasn't reached the safe zone where he is free of temptation, then how much more so us? Paul doesn't take it for granted in his own life. He teaches Timothy not to take it for granted and neither should we. Now, am I saying that you can't have any assurance that you're a Christian? No, I'm not saying that. But your assurance that you're a Christian must be tied to the wisdom that the Bible provides. That's the only place it will come from. It can't come from anywhere else. It can't come from your traditions and it can't come from your own righteousness and your own rules or that you're better than these other people or that you serve or that you... None of that.

It comes from the sacred writings which are able to give you wisdom that leads to salvation through faith. Do you trust in the Lord? Not how righteous are you, do you trust in him? When you see your sins, do you trust in him? When you see him again, do you trust in him? And in 50 years, when you're still sitting here, do you trust in him? Have you trusted in him? Nothing else will lead you to salvation. So two points of application are related. Your goal, your aspiration, as a Christian, should be to love and to serve God faithfully until you die. Those are the terms of the arrangement. And you don't know what the future is going to hold or what hardships will come or what sorrows will come or what temptations or what persecutions. We just don't know. But your aspiration should be to serve and to love God until you die. Whatever troubles come your way, this is the cost that Jesus says we are to count. To that end, that you would love and serve God until you die.

You have to cling to the truth when it's costly and not just when it's convenient. Well, that might mess up my relationships. That might make Christmas unpleasant. It might. It may well. What's the other option? For me to stand here and tell you you're doing it wrong? That's why there's tension at Christmas? It may be that you're doing it right and that's why there's tension at Christmas. Cling to the truth when it's costly, not just when it's convenient. Surround yourself with people who do the same thing. It's a lot easier to dispel the temptation that you're alone when you're around other people who are doing the same thing. Now, it's probably not the kind of thing that they're going to put on Facebook or Instagram, but it is the kind of thing they'll tell you about a small group or men's and women's group. Cling to the truth. Fight the good fight. Paul's writing these things as a seasoned, faithful Christian who's about to die, who's staring down the barrel of his departure from this world.

And he tells Timothy, in effect, it's all been worth it. I'm about to die for what I'm telling you to do. Come with me. Come with me. Come on. We'll go die together. That's what they said to Jesus when he was like, we're going to go into this place. And he says, sure, let us go with him. We can all go die together. Except that I don't think that they were being obnoxious about it. I think they were saying, if you're going to go die, we're going to go with you. He went to death. And then he went to heaven. Come on. Let's go. That's the message of Paul to Timothy here. Hardships will come. Come on, let's go. God will be faithful. You're not alone. This will lead you to salvation. Come on, let's go. Pay the cost. I'm about to pay the cost. You pay the cost. Let's pay the cost together. And then we'll go be with our Lord. And we'll have been found faithful. Let's go. Let's pray.