Our Duty to the Truth

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in 2 Timothy chapter 1 this morning. 2 Timothy chapter 1. And there are notes on the back of your bulletin if you want to follow along and fill in the blanks.

But also be prepared. I may play kind of fast and loose with the notes from time to time. 2 Timothy chapter 1.

You know, it can be. . .

We can hold deeply held beliefs, strong opinions. Probably everybody in this room has at least one strong opinion about something. And then there are some of us who are strongly opinionated about everything.

But everybody has some deeply, you can ask my wife, opinion on everything. Me, not her. Well, probably her too.

But you can have, all of us have some kind of strongly held belief. Something we just know is true. And yet it can be very easy to forget about those beliefs in a moment where we’re confronted by fear or confusion or self-interest or just not paying attention.

We can get caught off guard and walk away. Ignore those beliefs. Ignore those things we know to be true if they’re not tethered to something that’s unmovable.

And I thought of several examples of this this morning. and I won’t tell you all the examples I thought of. Do you know the game Jenga, where you stack the wooden blocks three by three, you build a tower, and then each person pulls a block out of the tower and you move it to the top?

We tried to play that with the kids last week. You want to live dangerously, play Jenga with a four- and a five-year-old. And guys, even at four and five-year-olds, even at four and five years old, they know what gravity is.

They know kind of how it works. Madeline is an expert in gravity and its effects, falling down all the time. and yet there’s one block left holding the tower up on a level and they both did this thing where they tried to pull that block out well if there’s no block to hold up that level what happens to all the levels above?

They fall down. So they know how gravity works and yet they kept insisting even after they’d seen the other one collapse the tower they kept insisting I’m going to pull this block out so consequently I won lots of times. They knew it would make the tower fall but they just wanted that piece.

and you know how sometimes you get those you hang a sweater or a shirt in the closet and it hangs there for too long without being worn and it gets those little humps in the shoulder from the from the hanger okay I’m talking about stuff you all know today especially with a sweater back before christmas I pulled out a sweater and I thought I’m I’m gonna wear that now folks I know that steam is hot and yet for some reason I thought I’ve got these little things on my shoulder I don’t want to take it off. I’ll just steam it real quick while I’ve got it. Six little spots of second degree burns on my shoulder that didn’t go away for weeks.

I knew that steam was hot and yet in that moment I just abandoned that belief and thought I’ll steam the clothes while I’m still wearing them. Don’t ever, ever do that. What about the guy who says, I know stealing is wrong.

I absolutely, I know stealing is wrong. But if I carry a few extra ones and zeros on my taxes, who will be the wiser? What about when we’ve been raised in the church and we’ve been raised around Christianity and we have these beliefs and yet life kicks us around to where we’ve lost a loved one or we’ve been through such suffering.

And we probably all know people like this that have said, yeah, I’m not doing that anymore. They knew it was true. They knew there was truth in it, and yet they walked away because life hurt too bad.

And in that moment, it became easy to walk away from those beliefs because no matter how deeply held our beliefs are, if they are not tethered to something lasting, if they are not tethered to something unmovable, we can all be convinced to walk away from them. And Paul knew what this was like. The Apostle Paul knew what this was like as he wrote to Timothy in this letter that we’re going to look at today, part of.

Second Timothy was his goodbye letter to Timothy. And Timothy was a young man that he might have either led to the Lord or certainly had discipled him as a young believer. And now Timothy was a young pastor who was serving in the area of Ephesus in a place where there was a lot of persecution in a time where there was a great deal of persecution coming.

And Paul is writing to this young man that he loved, that he called my son in the faith, writing to him, encouraging him, and challenging him to stand strong in the coming years and weeks and the coming times of his life when things were going to get difficult. And where many people had walked away from the faith because of the difficulties, Paul reminds him of what’s at stake. Because Paul, to use the phrase that I hear a lot today, Paul had seen some things.

Paul had been through a lot of suffering and a lot of struggle in his ministry. And if anybody knew what it was to suffer for the cause of Christ and yet remain true to the faith, it was Paul. And so Paul takes that example and writes to Timothy and encourages him to stand strong.

And he says, starting in chapter 1, verse 8, he says, Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner. He’s talking about when things get tough, when you come under persecution by the Romans, when you come under persecution by the locals there at Ephesus with their temples and stuff and the money that they made off of the pilgrimages and people coming to the temples, they didn’t necessarily like the idea of somebody coming in and preaching that all those gods were false and that there was only one. And Timothy at one point later on is beaten by a mob in Ephesus because of his testimony.

And Paul tells him, don’t be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord. When it gets difficult, don’t be ashamed of our Lord. Don’t be ashamed to tell people what you know about him.

and what he’s done for you, don’t be ashamed of those things. He said, or of me, his prisoner. He’s begging Timothy not just not to forget Paul, but not to forget the example that Paul had set.

In other words, don’t try to distance yourself from me. And Paul writes later on about how so many people had abandoned him during his time in prison. Everybody wanted to be part of Paul’s ministry when things were going great, but when difficulty hit, people started to distance themselves from Paul.

He says, don’t be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner. But be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God. He’s telling him there are going to be afflictions.

There’s going to be difficulty that accompanies being someone who proclaims the gospel. He says, but be a partaker. Now, normally we hear that word partake, and it means something good.

I’m going to partake of the Lord’s suffering. I’m going to partake of dinner. This big feast set before me, I’m a partaker of that.

He says to be a partaker of the afflictions of the gospel. And this goes in line with everything else Paul said, that he counted it an honor to be able to suffer for the cause of Christ. Was it because he was sick and he liked suffering? No, it was because anything that he could do for the furtherance of the gospel and to honor the Lord Jesus Christ was an honor for him.

It was a privilege for him. And so he says, be willing to suffer for the sake of the gospel. He says, according to the power of God.

See, we don’t want to try to suffer for the sake of the gospel and try to just stand firm and do all the things that we’re supposed to do in our own power. I know myself, and I know that I’m not necessarily strong enough to do all the things that God expects me to do on my own. And the harder I try to do it all on my own, the more I’m going to fall flat on my face.

Just like when I was four or five years old and wanted to learn how to ride a bike with the training wheels off. And my dad took me across the street to the school that was there and we rode and he held on. I didn’t want him to hold on anymore because I could do it myself.

What did I do? I fell flat on my face. Probably skinned off the good looking part of my face and here we are today.

I wanted to do it myself. I know that spiritually it’s the same deal. I don’t have the strength to keep things going on my own. I need the power of somebody else holding me up.

And he says, he encourages Timothy to be a partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God, as God strengthens you to stand firm. And then he goes in, here’s where we come to the part about being tethered to something that doesn’t move. He comes in and he talks about the truth and the duty to the truth, excuse me, all throughout this passage.

But he comes in here in verse 9 and starts talking about what that truth, what that understanding of the truth is tethered to, what it’s anchored to. He says, who had saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. He talks about all these things that God has done for him in his ministry, in his life, and he talks about how they were all brought to him through what Jesus Christ did.

So he goes through this list for Timothy, and it’s sort of a reminder to Timothy of Paul’s testimony, of the things that God had done for him through Jesus Christ. God called Paul and drew him to himself. Do you remember that story? When Jesus first stepped out and called Paul, where was he headed?

Was he up to something good? No. He was on his way to Damascus to arrest Christians and bring them back to be tried and executed.

He was there persecuting Jesus and his followers. And yet Jesus stepped out and spoke to him. And that day that he called him to follow him, and he called him for a purpose.

You know, if Jesus had done to Paul what he deserved in that moment, he probably just would have struck him dead with lightning. And by the way, that’s the same thing that’s true for me when God called me. Not just to pastor, but when he called me to repent and follow him and to believe in him.

Instead of drawing me to himself, I deserve to be destroyed. And he looked at me and he looked at you and he looked at Paul. And he drew Paul to himself in spite of Paul’s sinfulness.

In spite of my sinfulness, he called me to come and follow him. In spite of your sinfulness, he calls you today to come and follow him. And he saved Paul.

In verse 9, he talks about being saved and called with a holy calling. God gave Paul a purpose in life. See, God didn’t just call him and he doesn’t just call us and say, believe in me and now your job is done.

This faith and repentance that’s all wrapped up together in believing is the condition for salvation. But it’s not the end of the Christian life and it’s not the end of God’s expectations for us. God has a purpose for you.

What can I do? With God working in and through you, what can’t you do? Jesus gave Paul a purpose.

Jesus brought Paul eternal life. See, Jesus’ forgiveness of sins, this saving that Paul talks about, doesn’t end here on earth. He also gave Paul eternal life.

He abolished death and brought life and immortality, verse 10 says. Jesus used Paul to bring a message of hope to others. It says, verse 11, where unto I am appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles.

God could have used anybody that he chose, yet he chose Paul. This guy who was so excited about being a Jew that he wanted to destroy Christianity, he wanted to destroy the Christians, God took this man and called him to spread the message of Christianity, the message of the gospel and the hope that we have in Jesus Christ to the non-Jewish world. God can use anybody to do anything, however he chooses.

God can use you in ways that you cannot imagine. Verse 12 says, For the which cause I also suffer these things. Nevertheless, I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.

Jesus gave Paul assurance. He gave Paul assurance that all of this was real, all of this was true. Paul doesn’t just go through the testimony and say, Jesus saved me, he changed me, he gave me eternal life, he forgave my sins, he gave me a calling, he gave me a reason to go forward and go on, he used me in his service, he says he’s also given me assurance.

I know. This is why the rest of this matters. Because I know who I’ve believed.

I know the one I’ve put my hope and trust in. He said, and I am persuaded that he’s able to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day. That all that I’ve committed to him, I know that he will be faithful to hold it together.

Now what had Paul committed to Jesus Christ? Everything. His life was in Jesus’ hands.

I mean, quite literally, as he would go from town to town to places that were hostile to the gospel, and where he would very often just escape with his life by the skin of his teeth. He was literally putting his life in Jesus’ hands, but more than that, by waking up every day and saying, Lord, what do you want from me today? It was all in Jesus’ hands.

His hope, his confidence of something in the future, his knowledge, his belief, his absolute certainty that he would spend eternity with the God who made him, that confidence, that hope, that was all placed in Jesus Christ. And he said, I’m able to be confident in him. I’m able to be persuaded that he will do this, that he will fulfill all of his promises, that he will uphold me because I know whom I believe. See, for Paul, all the teachings of Christianity weren’t just a position.

They weren’t just his opinion. They weren’t just a philosophical system. They were anchored in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. They were anchored to who he is.

And so looking back over his ministry, as Paul knows he’s about to die, Now, history and Scripture tell us that he’s already been on trial by the Romans. He’s already been there under house arrest. And history tells us he was acquitted, very likely went on a final missionary journey, came back about the year AD 67, and was put on trial again under Nero. Nero was a bad guy in every sense of the word.

And history tells us that Paul was beheaded under Nero’s persecution. Paul knew that it’s the end of the road now. And sitting there, whether he’s in a cell or whether he’s under house arrest, sitting there under guard, knowing that his time is about up, and thinking about this man who meant so much to him, and writing down his last words to him, thinking, I have one more shot to pour something into his life.

Think about those who mean the most to you, whether it’s your children or your grandchildren. Imagine that you knew that you were about to die. Not just I know it’s coming someday, but I know it’s probably going to be in the next couple days.

And I have one shot to say one more thing, to pour some more truth into their lives that’s going to help them. Think about how carefully you would choose those words. Think about how important it would be to get to them the message that’s going to change their lives.

And so Paul recounts the testimony of what Jesus had done in his life. But you notice as he goes through this, verses 9 through 12, Most of this is not Jesus did this for me, for me, for me. He says, us.

He had saved us and called us with a holy calling. Not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. He’s reminding Timothy that the same thing that Jesus did for me, he did for you as well.

Now that doesn’t mean that Timothy’s journey looked exactly like Paul’s. Just like ours don’t look like Paul’s or Timothy’s. My journey with Christ doesn’t look the same as yours.

But there are certain things that he’s done for all of us. He’s brought us through different circumstances, but if you’re a believer this morning, there are certain things that he’s done for all of us. Not just for a select few.

He’s saved us. He’s given us eternal life. He’s given us a holy calling in him.

These are not things that were specific to Paul because he was an apostle. These are things that he does for those who trust in him. So he was reminding Timothy, Yeah, by the way, the things that he’s done for me, he’s done for you too.

And because Jesus has upheld Paul, because Jesus has strengthened Paul for ministry that he could never have imagined, he recognizes that Timothy is able to serve him too. And so he turns in verse 13 and says, Now because of all that, hold fast the sound of sound words, which thou hast heard of me in faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus. that good thing which was committed unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost, which dwelleth in all of us.

What he’s telling Timothy here is that we have, as Christians, we have a duty to hold fast to the truth with God’s help. And this really is the center point of the passage here in verse 13. Hold fast to the form of sound words.

Now we need to look a little deeper into that because we don’t talk that way. We don’t use those words anymore. But the sound words he’s talking about are the message that he’d received from Paul.

In other words, they were the truth, and not just the truth about life and the truth about this, the truth about Jesus Christ. Because already there were people going around teaching all sorts of false ideas about Jesus Christ. Oh, he was fully, he was completely God, he was not man. Wait a minute, then he couldn’t die for our sins. Well, he was fully man, but he wasn’t God, okay, then he couldn’t forgive our sins.

And you see the problem? If he’s not man, he can’t die. If he’s not God, he can’t forgive us.

There’s a problem either way. Well, he switched back and forth. What?

He’s the Father and he’s the Holy Spirit and he’s the Son all at the same time. No, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are separate persons in the church. Already, people were, instead of just believing what was revealed to them by God, were trying to come up with these logical explanations, and really it led them to some troubling conclusions, things that were not true, and things that led them away from the message of what Jesus Christ had come to do.

See, you can tweak the truth about a lot of issues, and it doesn’t change a whole lot. I watch a lot of historical documentaries in my free time, and I like watching different ones about the same subject, and a lot of times they’ll present it just a little bit differently, and this person will say, well, this is true. Well, they give a slightly different fact over here, and really it doesn’t change my life that much one way or the other.

It doesn’t change my life that much one way or the other, whether Kennedy got us involved in Vietnam or whether it goes back to the Truman administration. It doesn’t make that much difference to my life or yours. It doesn’t change my life that much whether Hitler died in his bunker of a gunshot wound or whether he died of cyanide poisoning.

It really doesn’t change my life. But you start tweaking the truth when it comes to Jesus Christ and immediately it changes everything about our eternal hope and eternal destiny. If you start changing even the slightest bit about who he is, you get into big problems. And so he’s telling him, you’ve got to hold fast to the form of sound words.

These sound words are truth without any mixture of error. You go back and look at what that word sound means. It means uncorrupt.

And so he says, the truth that you’ve already heard, that you received, that I taught you. Because Paul, by the way, had received the truth directly from Jesus and said, these are not man’s words. The other apostles didn’t teach me this.

Jesus appeared to me. And Paul tells Timothy, the gospel that you’ve already heard from me, hold on to that. Don’t listen to what all these other people are bringing in, teaching new stuff, changing the.

. . Don’t buy into it.

He said, you want the full, uncorrupt gospel. You want the full, uncorrupted, unchanged, untainted message of Jesus Christ. And he says to hold fast to this truth without error. It’s not a partial truth.

It’s not a half truth. It’s just the plain, whole, unvarnished truth that lifts up Jesus and points men to himself. And then there’s this idea of holding fast. Again, that’s not a term we use all the time.

Tell somebody, hold fast. Hold what? I guarantee you, if I went home and told my children, hold fast, I’m going to get looked at like I just landed my spaceship in their yard. We don’t talk that way.

And as a matter of fact, as I was trying this week to say, okay, how do I explain this concept of holding fast? What’s a synonym? What’s another word that we would use here?

I realize there’s really not one that explains all the nuance and all the meaning of what they would have understood this word to mean. And as Paul’s talking to Timothy, I see three things that this word means when he’s telling him to hold fast. And that’s, first of all, persevere in the truth. Persevere in the truth.

There’s a time when it gets difficult. There’s a time when our faith is challenged. There’s a time when even our belief in Jesus is challenged.

And when he says to hold fast, he’s telling him to persevere. Now, in their day, everybody knew that Jesus had really existed. The debate was whether or not he was who he claimed to be.

And I submit to you that the empty tomb stands in bold contradiction to anybody who would claim that Jesus is not exactly who he said he was. The empty tomb proves that Jesus was who he claimed to be. But there were already people coming in saying, no, no, there’s more to it than this.

See, what Jesus said about believing in him and never perishing, that’s not enough. You’ve got to participate in the Old Testament laws and rituals. You’ve got to be circumcised.

You’ve got to celebrate Passover. You’ve got to do this. You’ve got to do that.

There were others who said, yeah, there’s more. He didn’t tell you. There’s this secret knowledge.

And it would have been, it was easy for far too many people to get caught up in those things and say, yeah, that sounds good. That sounds right. He’s telling Timothy, no, no, you’ve got to stick with the truth.

Now, we live in a different era. I read a few years ago somebody talking about the evidence for Christ who said the evidence that he existed is so glaring, it’s so, that no historian who values his reputation would claim that Jesus was not a historical figure. And yet you go online or talk to people you know, and I’m not talking about historians, I’m talking about everyday people like us.

There are tons and tons of people who believe, who spout the line that Jesus never even existed, let alone was the Son of God. And we are challenged by people who say, well, he never existed. It was all made up.

Yeah, made up by people who were going to die to prove that he was. I’m sorry, if I make up a story, I’m not dying to validate it. But the apostles died because they said, no, he existed and he did all the things that he said he did.

And they went to their graves. Some of them horrible murdered them. They persevered.

And we’re challenged. Our faith is challenged on every side. Now, Jesus isn’t real. Jesus was real, but he’s just a good moral teacher.

I listened to a lecture on Islam this week at the State Evangelism Conference, and the belief of Islam is that he was a prophet of God, but he wasn’t the Son of God. And we’re challenged on every side by people who say, no, no, this faith in Jesus is not right. It’s not real. They were challenged in Timothy’s day, but for different reasons.

And when he says hold fast, there’s an element of perseverance in there. You’ve got to hold fast to the things that you believe. You’ve got to persevere in the things that you know are true.

Would it be easier to surrender in the culture and say, okay, he’s probably not real. It would probably be easier, but we know it’s not true. I know it’s not true. I’ve looked at the evidence.

I’ve read the Christian writers and the atheist writers and all that they say about it, and I’m more convinced than ever that not only was Jesus Christ real, not only did he exist as a historical figure, but that he claimed to be the Son of God, that he was crucified for it, that he was buried in a borrowed tomb, and that his tomb was empty, and he was seen by people who would have known who he was, who went to their death, rather than deny what they had seen. When you know what’s true, you persevere rather than abandon it because it’s easy, and more so because not what we know is true, but because of who we know is true. Second of all, this morning, we treasure the truth.

We treasure the truth. We value it. You ought to value the message of Jesus Christ above everything else.

It should be the most precious thing to us as believers. The fact that Jesus Christ was God in human flesh, that he came and lived among us and worked miracles, and as I said, claimed to be the Son of God, taught that he would forgive sins, was crucified, was buried, and rose again. That should be the most precious message and the most precious belief that we hold in our hearts.

and in our minds because we know he’s true. There are a lot of things that I believe and believe very strongly, but that should be the one I treasure the most. As I said, we all have our beliefs and opinions. I will sometimes watch comedians, which can be dangerous.

I try to watch clean comedians, although even the ones that are labeled as clean nowadays will slip language in there for you. But I’ll watch comedians, And I don’t have a problem laughing at myself. I will be honest and tell you, in case you haven’t guessed, I’m a little bit conservative.

I know y’all are shocked. People are falling down in the aisles. I used to say I’m slightly to the right of Attila the Hun, which is a line from a song.

But anyway, I can watch comedians, and I’m not one of these people who gets mad because they’re making fun of conservatives or they’re making fun of Republicans. Some of the stuff we do is funny, and I can laugh at it. Even when they make fun of us.

Somebody’s told me before, don’t you realize they’re making fun of you? If we can’t laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at? I can laugh at that.

They can make fun of my politics. That’s fine. They can make fun of Oklahoma, and sometimes I get a little offended, but most of the time I think it’s funny, especially if it’s coming from somebody from here.

They can make fun of a lot of the things that I hold dear, and I can laugh with that. When they start making jokes about Jesus, I get angry. And I’m not saying I hate them.

I’m not saying that I want to shut them up. I’m a big believer in the First Amendment. But I get defensive inside.

And I think it’s because of all the things that I hold dear, of all the things that I treasure, of all the beliefs that I stand on, that’s the most important one. My position on tax policy isn’t going to change anybody’s eternity. It’s just not.

You agreeing with me on the Second Amendment is not going to get you into heaven. It’s not. But why you believe about who Jesus is?

Man, we can’t surrender that one. We should treasure the truth about who Jesus is. We should defend the truth of who Jesus is more than anything.

And when we hear it being taught wrong, when we hear it being blasphemed, when we hear it being disrespected, I’m not saying we shut people down. I’m not saying we silence people. Man, it ought to bother us and we ought to defend it.

We ought to not let the truth be obscured by lies. Third of all, we show the truth. When he said hold fast, it wasn’t just a challenge to Timothy to believe the right thing.

Hey, make sure you hold it in yourself and you believe the right thing and you know what’s true. He’s writing to this young man and saying, you’ve got to promote the truth. Because that was part of what God called Paul to do.

That’s part of the holy calling that he gives us. Is to make the truth known to the world. To make Jesus Christ known to the world.

We’ve got to show the truth. It’s important to believe the right things, but folks, we can’t neglect the calling to live the right things. Because I submit to you that what you believe will show up in what you do.

I don’t believe there are rattlesnakes on this stage right now. Pretty sure. I’m looking around at those potted plants back there.

I don’t believe that there are rattlesnakes on this stage right now, and that belief shows up in the fact that I’m standing here reasonably still. But if I had even the slightest glimmer of a belief that there was a snake anywhere in this building, we’d have to sell and move the church somewhere else. We just would.

I’d probably be out that door. But wait, you’re not done preaching. I can’t think about that right now.

I’ve just got to be out that door. See, my beliefs will show up in how I act. And what I believe about Jesus Christ will show up in the way I act.

Am I making, I’m not going to be perfect, but am I making an effort to live for him? Am I trying to live by his teachings? And you know what?

It’s not easy. I’m 31 years old. I’ve been a believer.

I trusted Christ and was born again 26 years ago when I was five years old. And I’ve been studying his word since then, and I’m still finding things that I think, why didn’t I see that before? And oh my goodness, that looks hard.

And one of the ones, and I’ve mentioned this to you before, one of the ones that’s recently come to the forefront in my mind is his teaching on not saying to your brother, Raka, and thou fool. If I can say this in church, I don’t know how many times I’ve called somebody an idiot in traffic. I’m just being honest with you here.

And I heard that verse, that passage for the 30,000th time, and God sort of nailed me in the conscience about it. And now I realize, okay, if I’m going to follow Jesus, I have to do something about that. And now I’ll drive down I-40 and somebody will cut me off.

You, okay. Seriously. I am not perfect, but there should be an effort there to live by what he taught us.

And to tell the world with our mouths and with our lives. Don’t neglect either of those. I witness by the way I live.

No, you need to witness with you

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