Preach The Word #5

So this morning we're going to be returning to our study of 2 Timothy 4, verses 1-8. This will be our fifth and final sermon on this section, and we're rounding the final bend toward the end of this book. And so this passage so far has largely been an exhortation to faithfulness, to the end of life. 2 Timothy is Paul's final letter. He writes it from a Roman prison just before he's to be martyred. just before he goes to receive his final reward. And so he exhorts Timothy to follow his example of faithfulness. And so this week we're going to be focusing on the last two verses, 7 and 8. And in these verses, Paul summarizes his ministry. He tells Timothy that he looks forward to receiving his reward and that that reward is not just for Paul, but for all who are like him. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true.

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction, for the time will come when they 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. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also all who have loved his appearing.

This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. You could think of these last words toward the end of 2 Timothy as Paul's final sermon, his final words. As we move on through the second half of the chapter and to the end of it, it changes tone. Paul moves away from instructing Timothy and teaching him into final matters, tying things up. preparing for his death. And so these are, in many ways, Paul's final words of ministry. And those words are a reflection of his own life. He knows he's about to die, but he's not about to die of old age. He's not about to die comfortably. He's in prison and he's awaiting what would be his beheading, his martyrdom. Now, some of you may have had the privilege of sitting with those who are ready to die or spending time with those who are nearing the end of their life.

And I say it's a privilege because it's something that's hidden from our eyes today. It's not something that we see or engage with or are prepared to do. We think that's something that should be done behind closed doors. The work of dying is not something we want to see. Even to the point that when it comes time to remember their life in a funeral, not a celebration of life, but a funeral, we say, I don't want to remember them like that. So we don't go to the bedside and we don't go to the funeral. because the work of death is difficult and it makes us feel bad. But to those of you who've had the faith and the privilege of being able to do this work, it's very difficult work because you stand at their side as they're preparing to die. And sometimes you find generally, I think, one of two things if they're lucid. One of the things you'll find is frustration and anger and bitterness or regret. You'll find unhappiness in some form or another.

But other times when you go and you sit by someone who's dying, what you find is contentment. You find them taking their hands off of the plow of life and that they're content with taking their hands off. And you look at them and you think, they seem ready to die, but I'm not ready for them to die. Both of those responses, whether it's frustration and regret and anger, or whether it's comfort and peace, are the result of people looking over their life. in their final days, final months. And they consider whether they've done what they should have done or whether they didn't. And so that's what Paul's doing in these last verses. In verse 7, he's taking his hand off the plow of life and he says, I fought the good fight. I finished the course. I've kept the faith. Now it would be good if all of us would aspire to be able to say those things when we die.

I think many times the reason we don't say these things is because we don't think we're going to die. Or that we go, well, no, that's not it. I know I'll die, but my death is, for most of us, we think decades and decades away. Though just this past week, a friend of mine had, one of my friend's friends, 21-year-old brother died having his tonsils out. Turned 21 while he was in the hospital and died. And we all go, no. And I say, yeah. Now, does it happen often? No. But we will all die. And some of us, most of us, hopefully, will have the ability to prepare for it. In fact, we all do have the ability to prepare for it. Whether that time is short or long, we don't know. But we do have the ability and the privilege, the opportunity to prepare for it. So that when that time comes, we can say, like Paul, I fought the good fight. None of us want to lay on our deathbed and say,

I didn't do what I should have done, and I knew I should have done it. And when I had the strength, and when I had the time, and when I had the energy and the ability, I squandered it. I wasted it. All of us think of the things left undone in our lives now, whether we perceive ourselves as being close to the end of life or not. If we were honest, If we're willing to be honest. And we really do have to be willing to be honest because we maintain our facade even to ourselves, you know? It's like, you ever looked in the mirror and you see one thing and then you look at a picture of yourself and you're like, oh, those are two different, like, what I see in the mirror is not what I see in the picture. I have more gray hair. Or I have, I'm bigger. That's right. What?

Well, I prefer the mirror to the pictures because the mirror I can at least turn away from, but the pictures, there it is. My point in bringing it up is to say we will deceive even ourselves about what is true. No, I'm doing fine. I'm doing well. I'm preparing. Be honest. Because there's going to come a time where even you won't believe your lies. Be honest. Be honest now. So that when you knock on death's door, you'll have the comfort that Paul has here of saying, I fought the good fight. I finished the race, I've kept the faith. Now, a few words about how he describes his life. He describes it as a fight, and he describes it as a race or a course. The course he's talking about is sort of a competition or a running race. But the first thing he does is he says, I fought the good fight. And so he says, my life, the Apostle Paul, my life is a fight. The Christian life is the same. It is a fight. It's good versus evil within us.

Not good versus evil just out in the world, but good versus evil inside of us. Light versus darkness, heaven versus hell. And God's glory as well as our souls hang in the balance of that fight. If we don't fight well, we'll lose. God won't lose, but we may well. And you think, well, that's not a Christian thing to say. You can't say that. And I say, that's what the Bible says. The Bible says that he who perseveres to the end, he will be saved. And so if we don't persevere to the end, we'll lose. And you do realize that the closer you get to the end, the less energy, the less effort, the less resource you have to finish. This is retirement, right? We say, I want to make a bunch of money, enough that I can live on so I don't have to work anymore because I want to retire. I don't want to have the burdens on me of work and the labors and the deadlines and the pressures and the failures and all of that stuff. I want to retire from that.

Why do people want to retire? It's a lot of work. And they're tired. They're tired of working. They hope by the time they get to 60, 65, 70 years old, they can say, I've worked long enough and hard enough that now I can remove some of those weights and those burdens. And there's a reality to they don't have the energy and the resilience and the resources that someone their child's age does. And I would tell you the same thing is true spiritually. You will get tired as you get older. And you'll think, Another difficulty, another hardship. You remember Hezekiah almost died, King Hezekiah? Almost died and he prayed and he said, Lord, free me of this. And Lord says, okay, I'm going to give you 15 more years. And then what did Hezekiah do? Was there work yet for Hezekiah to be doing as the king? Did he do it? No. He said, thank you for these 15 years. Peace in my day. I've done the hard work. Be good for me to die in peace. I'll leave the hard work for the next guy.

Because these are the temptations of old age. These are the temptations of when you get closer to death, when you feel your mortality. You say, this body doesn't work. This mind doesn't work the way it used to. And this is not a temporary thing. This is a slide into dependence and then death. And so young people sin. We spend a lot of time in our church. I could talk about young people's sins because the majority of us are young, but the fact is old people sin too. And they're tempted by different sins than young people. Generally speaking, it would be strange for me to find a young person who's bitter and resentful. But it would not be nearly as uncommon to find someone old who's bitter and resentful. Their temptations change as they age. Paul says, I fought the good fight. I stayed engaged. I fought and persevered now until the end. Note that he doesn't just say, I have fought the fight, but the good fight. He says, it's a good fight that I've fought.

Another way of interpreting maybe that he fought on the good side of the fight. That in the battle between good and evil, he fought on the side of the good and not the evil. If he had avoided the fight, the result would have been that he would have just been fighting on the evil side. The fight in your life as a Christian is inescapable. Age will not deliver you from it. Wealth will not deliver you from it. Theology will not deliver you from it. Your spouse, your children, your grandchildren will not deliver you from it. Our government won't deliver you from it. Nothing will deliver you from the fight. And so the question is not will you fight, but which side will you fight on? And it's sort of a depressing thought because you think, well, I want to fight on the good side, but I mess things up and I fail and I don't fight well. And I push us back to looking at Paul and say, did Paul always fight on the right side? And did Paul always fight well? No. Paul stood there, excited as Stephen, the first martyr, was stoned to death.

He held the cloaks. Everyone's coming and wanting to pick up their stones, and they're taking off their coats so they can really get into it. And Paul's like, give me your coat so you're free to kill him. Do it. But then Paul became a Christian, and then he never sinned again, right? That's not true. When we engage the fight, we realize we'll not engage it perfectly. We'll stumble. We'll falter. We'll get hurt. We will fail. And so when Paul says, I fought the good fight, don't misunderstand him as to saying, I've never sinned. I've never messed up, at least not badly. Could you imagine walking around, in addition to all the scars he had on his body for suffering for the gospel, with the misery of having contributed to Stephen's death and then excited about it? That's not the sort of thing that becoming a Christian makes you forget. You go, oh, I'm a Christian now, so it's all fine that I was a murderer. Paul didn't describe himself as having arrived when he became a Christian. He described himself as being the chief of sinners, the worst type of man.

But at the end of his life, he said, I've fought the good fight. And so what he's saying is I've remained engaged. And I fought against my own temptations and the wickedness in this world. And here I am now at the end of my life still doing it, still fighting the good fight. I want you to think for a minute in terms of effort. If I could stand two people up here and I could stand up here a guy who is a power lifter. And on the other side, I could stand up a guy who is... a long distance runner and they're wearing street clothes. Okay. And you don't know that that's what they are. I just want, I want you to think body types. Okay. Which one works harder? Which one looks like they work harder? It's obviously the guy who's got, you know, big, you know, you know, because you don't get all like that without working really hard. And he has worked hard. I don't mean to say that that guy hasn't worked hard, but his strength is just for a minute, just for a second. He's able to pick the heavy thing up once.

And he's done. And he's done. And that little wiry guy over there that doesn't look like anything can run for miles and hours. This guy might make it over the first hill if they were to do the same thing. So who's a better fighter? Paul says he's a better fighter because there's a course to run. There's not just one fight. There's a course to run. And that course is our life. And finishing is the goal. And by appearance sake, one guy looks like he works a lot harder because he's ready to fight and work real hard right now. But another guy has prepared himself for the actual race he's got to run. And so if we were going to prepare for the Christian life, I would say we need to look more like the distance runner than the bodybuilder. Because the fight that we're fighting is not two rounds of intense fighting and then it's over.

Years and years and years of hills and rocks and bad weather and rivers and storms and all that kind of stuff. And those who don't finish the course don't receive the prize. Finishing is the goal. I've already mentioned this passage. I'll read it again. Matthew 24, 13. He says, but the one who endures to the end is the one who will be saved. Have you ever thought that your course is harder than everybody else's course around you? I ask it. And the funny thing is I'm watching all the young people say yes and all the older people are just going. My point in asking the question is we all think that. And it doesn't really matter what the details of our lives are. We all think our course is insurmountable to us. And that everyone else, while we have all these ups and downs and difficulties and hardships, everyone else just has a nice smooth path to run on. And from our perspective, it may look like that. But from their perspective, it's not the case.

If we're to finish the course, we have to finish the course that God's put us on. And the truth is, we all have different burdens and different responsibilities and different hardships and different sins and different weaknesses and different things that make us want to quit. Which one of us can say, I've ran Paul's race? We haven't ran his race. He ran his race. He finished the course that God set him on. You remember at the beginning, if someone could come to us at the beginning of the Christian life, you remember what was said of Paul when, what's his name? The guy, Ananias. He says, Ananias, I want you to go to Paul. Ananias says, I'm not going to go to him. He kills us. And the Lord says, no, no, no, he's changed now. I want you to go to him and tell him, I'm going to show him how much he has to suffer for my namesake. That was like the life trajectory.

of the Apostle Paul. I'm going to show you how much you have to suffer for my namesake. And here Paul is, having suffered and bearing on his body the brand marks of Jesus, saying, I finished the course. I didn't quit. Through the valleys and through the storms, I persevered. None of us get to choose our path. There's a story about this in Pilgrim's Progress. If you haven't read Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, you should read it, like, regularly. It's a fun book. We have a kid's version that we read. It's fun to read to the kids. The adult version is also helpful. But there's a point at which Christian's walking down the path and the path is rough and full of rocks and his feet hurt. And right next to it, just on the other side of a fence, is a really nice, smooth lawn, grass lawn, right? And so he has the thought, I'm going to get on the other path, the more comfortable path. Now, what was the problem with that manicured lawn over there?

What was on the other side of the fence? Those of you who read the story. Giants. That was a giant's property that he was walking on. And so Krishna ends up getting taken and put in the dungeon. And that whole story is meant to teach us that we have a path that we have to walk on. And sometimes it's a difficult path. There's another point in that story where the path that he's walking on goes up the mountain. And I can't remember the guys he's with. He's with two guys. And they decide, we're not going up that mountain. We're going to go around the mountain. And at the end of it, it says, those men were never heard from again.

Because they wouldn't walk on the path that was set before them. They thought, well, we're going to skirt the hard part and go around it. To their own destruction, they did. You have to walk the path that God's put you on. Paul did. And you want to be able to say at the end of it, I've finished my course. As you walk that path, you're going to fall down. You're going to get banged up. The path is going to expose your own weaknesses and your own inabilities to do well at it. But you don't get the impression from Paul at the end of his life that he feels as though God has done him some great disservice by all the suffering that he's had to endure. He's not sitting there going, why? Why, Lord? Why all this? And now I've got to have my head cut off. Paul was content to have served God and to walk the path by faith that God put him on through many, many trials and hardships and difficulties. And finally, he says, I've kept the faith. I've told you guys many times, Satan's temptations will come to you.

And his goal is not only to make you miserable, but to make you quit. So I hope it's not offensive to you, but your pastor's been tempted to say, I quit, just like all of you have. How else would it be any good to say, I've kept the faith? Our temptations are such that they make us want to quit and say, this is not worth it. It is too difficult. It's too hard. It's too slow. It's too painful. Why am I going through all of this? What's the point of all of this suffering, all of this sorrow, all of this pain, all this agony? When as I look around, everyone near me has ease and comfort. When you have that thought, read Psalm 73. Okay? Because Asaph, who wrote Psalm 73, addresses that very point. My feet came close to stumbling. I almost slipped. There's no pain in their death. Speaking of the wicked, of the unrighteous. There's no pain in their death. Their eyes are fat.

They have every bit of comfort while surely I've kept my heart pure in vain. And he's going, it's not worth it. This is not worth it. I feel like this is not worth it. As I look around, it seems like I've got the worst lot in life. And he says, but when I came into the sanctuary of the Lord, when I came into the presence of God, then I perceived their end. then his perspective was changed. Instead of him looking and being jealous, he looked and says things like, surely God has set their feet in slippery places. And so keeping the faith is something that you want. When it's all said and done, you don't get to say, I want to do well. You're going to have to say, I did do well, or I didn't. And Paul's looking back and saying, I've done well. I've kept the faith.

Now one thing that might rub you the wrong way about all of this is how self-referential Paul is in all of this. He doesn't talk about God at all in this verse. I fought the good fight. I finished the course. I have kept the faith. How? Let Satan tempt you to think that Paul is something different than you. How is it that Paul fought a good fight, finished the course, and kept the faith? Because God kept him in the faith. You shouldn't look at Paul and think, oh, Paul is this sort. He's something other. He's not. He's not. He wasn't. He's an apostle. And that is different. But he was no less sinful. He was in no less need of salvation than you or me. And so when you look at this and you say, I've got to fight the good fight. I've got to finish the course. I've just got to knuckle up and try harder. You will fail. If that's what you think, that's what I'm going to do, you'll fail. And the sooner you fail, the better. Because then you might have hope of doing well.

As Paul spoke these words, he never would have thought that anyone would look at him and say, look at Paul. He was about to die. Who's going to say, I want to be like Paul. I want to go to a Roman prison and be beheaded. After all, he was there for his faithfulness to God. That's where I want to go and that's how I want my end to be. No. Timothy and we ought to understand that if Paul was to fight a good fight, to finish his course and to keep the faith, it was God who kept him and sustained him and gave him grace each day.

Because when left to his own desires, Paul's no different than us. He says things like, I despaired even of life. And so as he dies, he's comforted as he prepares for death or to be murdered. And to have the whole world say, we won. We got rid of that scoundrel. You realize the Jews didn't like him? The Christians didn't like him? Here, no one really liked Paul. And he was content with it. Why? Because in the future, There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness with the Lord. The righteous judge will award me on that day. This is his explanation for why he lived his whole life the way he did. He looked forward to the resurrection. He looked forward to the day when God, the righteous judge, who's going to take all of the things that are wrong in this world, all of the sins that have been committed, all of the injustices, all of the oppression, all the tyranny, all of it.

No matter how bad the sins are, there's going to come a day when God will send his son to return to this earth. He will come as a judge, a righteous judge, and he will mete out justice to everything. Everything. And he'll divide the sheep from the goats, and he'll welcome some into his heaven, and he'll tell the others, get away from me because I never knew you. Go into your final resting place. He will come and he will judge the world. And he'll set everything right. And Paul looks forward to that day and says, when that day comes, I'm getting a crown of righteousness. That's going to be a good day for me. But Paul had to give up what he had in this world to receive that crown. In Philippians 3, he says, whatever things were gained to me, those things I've counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish.

So that I may gain Christ and be found in him. Not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ. The righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death in order that I might attain the resurrection of the dead. This is what Paul's talking about. And as Christians, the only way that you're going to be able to reconcile and make sense of your suffering and your pain and the result of sin in this world is by looking forward to a day when your bodies and you will be made perfect. But you realize that those who have suffered in this life and who've had to live under the same burden of sin as you have but haven't repented aren't getting new perfect bodies. All of the hardships and all the sufferings and all the sorrows and all the brokenness that sin has created in them, that's not going away. They get to keep that forever.

and be the objects directly of God's wrath for their sins forever. And Paul says if that's the cost, if what I'm left with is I can have my comforts, my ease, my joy in this world, but I have to go to hell for all of eternity, then I count it as rubbish, as garbage, as the dung heap. Get rid of it. No value. But it's a very difficult message for us today because in our day we're taught that suffering and hardship are not things that we should have to face or endure. That it's not fair. But we measure fairness according to our own standard and not God's. And that's the only way we can come to say it's not fair. Because we've taken salvation and his mercy and his kindness and willingness to send his own son into the world to die for us and we've devalued it and said that's not important to me. What's important to me is whatever is important to you.

But that's not how Paul thought and that's not how Paul reasoned. That's not what motivated Paul. He looked forward to the day in the future, far away, at a time which only the Father knows he would receive his crown of righteousness. Where all of his brand marks and all of his suffering and all of his sorrows would be turned into his glories and his rewards and his blessings. And Paul looked forward to it and said, everything I've had in this life is worth it. It's worth it. It's worth it. I'll take it. And I'm content with it being the way it is. He'll receive a crown of righteousness from a righteous judge. I think many times we think of our sins and we think, you know, to get into heaven, people like me are probably going to get in like the back door or the side door. That there's going to be these like real godly people who get to come through heaven's gate, but me, I'm going to be this, well, yeah, you belong in here. Come on in. If there was anyone who should have expected that sort of treatment, it would have been Paul. He did much good for the kingdom.

But before that, he did much harm. And he said, what's going to happen when Jesus comes back is he's going to give me a crown in righteousness. The righteous judge is going to stand up, not be ashamed of me, and it's going to be his joy and mine for him to say, welcome into my heaven, and it's all yours forever. And this is true not just for Paul, but for us, for all whom... who love Jesus Christ for all who are Christians. It's not true for anybody who's not, but it's true for everyone who is. God's not ashamed of you. He's not ashamed of his children. He loves his children. Even as he gives them suffering and sorrow to make them more holy, he loves them. And he doesn't say, oh, you get suffering because you're a bad kid. He's saying, you get suffering because you're my kid.

And all of their suffering is to prepare you, to whet your appetite for rest, to pry out of you the worldliness that's rooted down to the very core of your heart. You know when we suffer, we go looking for relief. And people will spend their whole lives looking for relief, and they'll do all kinds of crazy things, dangerous things. They'll take their own life. Why? They want relief. I heard a story one time of a guy who had a kidney stone. And he begged his wife, just shoot me. Just shoot me. It hurts so bad. I want relief. Now everyone knew he wasn't serious. But you understand, we're willing to go to anywhere we can to find relief. And what I'm convinced about suffering in this world, as God gives it to his people, is to show you there's nowhere else you're going to find relief except in him. You can run to the ends of the world. You can try to get relief from any sin you want. It will not give you any relief.

It will make you more miserable. It will corrupt you. It will dig you further down into a pit. And if you don't repent of it, it will destroy you. And if you think you'll stand before God that day and say, I have suffered so much. You are not allowed to cast me into hell. Then you will be sadly mistaken on that day. And it will be too late at that point. There will be no crown of righteousness, but perfect justice. And so Paul looks forward. Do you remember Jonah when Jonah was in the belly of the fish? Do you remember what he said when he was in the belly and he prayed? He had thought, I'm going to get away from God. I'm going to get away from his commandments. I'm going to get away from him. And it wasn't until he was in the belly of a fish in the bottom of the sea that he went, wherever I go, you're here.

You're here, even here. Now, have you ever thought about being eaten by a fish? Not a pleasant experience, right? And even there, it was through that suffering that was precipitated by his rebellion that he went, oh, God is here. And it was because of that that he repented. I can't get away from you. I can't run and I can't hide. And so Paul expects to be welcomed into the glory of heaven. And it wasn't because he thought he wasn't a sinner. And it wasn't because he'd done such great things for the Lord. Paul says, you know, if anyone had something to boast about, it would have been Paul. But he says, if we're going to boast, let us boast of our weaknesses, that Christ might be magnified, that we might look and see, oh, we think this guy is something. He says, no, I'm nothing, but my Savior is. Because look at who I am, and he's going to save me. Paul believed what he wrote in Philippians, that he who started a good work in him was faithful and righteous to bring it to completion.

That he's not ashamed of his children. And that he will, in his time, give them release and rest. And so Paul described earlier in our passage, he describes his death as a departure. A departure. My plane's taken off and I'm leaving. He didn't see his death as the culmination of all of his suffering. You know, as the pinnacle of it. And then destruction and misery and terror, you know. That there was anything wrong with it. He said, this is... My time's come. My flight's leaving. I've done all I'm supposed to do. I trust God, and I'm ready. Because I know that when I land on that day, whenever it is, there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness. God promised there would be. And Paul says, finally, and not only for me, but also all who have loved his appearing. So this is not something we observe in Paul and say, good for him. This is something that will or will not be true of every person in this room.

You've either loved his appearing, which is just what Paul uses to describe a Christian, someone who's believed in Jesus Christ. The joys that he looks forward to and the rest and the comfort, eternal rest that he looks forward to is available and will be given to all of God's children. And so do you love his appearing? Do you love Jesus Christ? Is he your Lord and he's your Savior? Have you come to the end of yourself? You've lived your whole life as a sinner and you've tried all kinds of things to... find relief to work your way around it, have you come finally to the cross of Jesus Christ and said, this is the only place that I can find help for my sins. And I'm thankful that there's a cross to come to. And I'm thankful that there's a Savior nailed to it who bled and died. And I'm thankful that his Father loved me enough and his people enough to send his Son into the world to do that work for me.

That's what it means to love his appearing. You loved his first appearing and you anticipate his second appearing. You look forward to it because then you say, okay, finally, all of the mess and the weakness and the sin in me that I can't get rid of and don't know how to will finally be done. Finally done. It's hard for us to conceive of because we've never even had one breath of that fresh air. We've never woken up in the morning and go, I'm without sin. But you will. You will. If you love Jesus Christ. And if you don't love Jesus Christ, there is nothing in the world that'll get you even one breath of that fresh air. And so my exhortation to you is simple. Fight now so that you can rest later. That's what it means to be a Christian. I know you're tired. I'm tired. We're all young and we're tired. Some of us are older and we're tired. Fight now so that you can rest later. You should be worn out by the time the Lord calls you home. He'll renew your strength as you need it, okay?

He'll renew your strength as you need it in this life to give him glory. Fight now so that you can rest later. Trust God and hope in him until the end. This is not a short-term calling. I'm not telling you do this now for a short time. Just work real hard. Just get over this next mountain because you do know what's beyond the next mountain. More mountains. More mountains. And there will be mountains and mountains and mountains until you reach the river of death. I think one of the sweetest and most poignant pictures of this in... in Pilgrim's Progress, is finally he comes to the end of his journey and he can see the celestial city. And between him and that land is a river. And the river represents death. And what's he have to do? He's got to walk down into the river. That's all Paul's doing is walking down into the river because he sees what's on the other side of the river. I'm scared to walk down into the river. God will walk you down through the river and out the other side. I can't see it.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Trust God and hope in him until the end, until God says, you're done. And finally, whatever difficulties and blindness you feel in terms of the goodness of God, you should look forward, if you're a Christian, you should look forward to receiving your reward. You'll feel like all the suffering in your life is in vain. That's normal. I'm sorry. Your suffering is not special. God's people have been suffering for millenniums. Our suffering is not special. It's unique to us. Look forward to receiving your reward. When you say, oh, well, no one appreciates what I do. No one sees what I do. No one reciprocates what I do. It doesn't bear any good fruit. God does see it. Every bit of it. Every bit of it. And if no one in this world ever sees it, it won't diminish your reward in the least. Because they're not going to give you your reward.

God is. And so when you're suffering, you ought to say, by faith, Lord, give me faith. Help me to suffer, to sorrow, to press on, to fight today. And give me hope that you will reward it at the end. I trust that you will. You've promised that you will. Paul looked forward to it as he was about to die. Help me trust you and to live by faith today. But I'm going to have to do this for 10 years. You might have to do it for 20. Ask for your bread by day and ask for strength each day. You don't have anywhere to store up extra strength anyway, do you? I mean, if we're honest, fight now so that you can rest later. Trust God and hope in him till the end and look forward to receiving your reward. Tell other people about it because that's what Paul did. I look forward to receiving my reward and it's not only for me, but for all who love his appearing.

This is the gospel message. If people want to know what's it mean to be a Christian, it means that there's a purpose and God is glorified in our suffering. He's not going to be any man's debtor. And when he sends his son back into this world, it's all going to be worth it. However we've reasoned it out in our head now, at that day we will say it's all going to have been worth it. And brother, I want for you not to be on the side where they say, that's your place over there in the eternal fire. That's the gospel. That's what Paul hopes in. That's why he suffers.

That's why he has comfort in his death. If you want comfort when you die, do these things now. Let's pray.