Run, Fight, Grasp!

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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We are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek preaches from his series,

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Blueprints for a Healthy Church, following the plan from the book of 1 Timothy. Let's listen in.

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Well, good morning, everybody. And I'm Don Filsek. I'm the lead pastor here, and I want to welcome you to Recast Church.

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I'm glad that you're here. And it's really a privilege. I really am glad that we can be together this morning in the name of Jesus Christ, our

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Lord. Amen. Are you glad to be gathered together in his name? Despite all of the craziness of things going on politically in our culture and all the things swirling around us and the medical stuff and all of that,

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I am so grateful to live in a country where we are free to gather, to worship together openly, openly, without restriction.

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We're allowed to get together. We're allowed to sing praises to Jesus Christ, and I am grateful for that.

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Now we're winding down a study of 1 Timothy. This is the second to the last message.

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And then we have one more message next Sunday. And then as Linda announced, we're going to be going over to the

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Song of Songs. It's going to be a quick survey of an often overlooked book of the Bible. Some of you already have some notion of what the content of that is, and you're already starting to blush.

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And I subtitled the message Blushing Our Way Through the Song of Songs. I am going to, as Linda said, give a rating to each.

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This week in the eCast, we'll be spelling out what those ratings mean. So it'll go from G to PG -13. Nothing is going to be

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NC -17. Nothing is going to be rated R. But I want to make sure that you know that your kids may ask you some questions on the drive home after some of these sermons.

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And I want you to be ready to either A, answer those questions, or B, we're going to have some programming for them if you're like,

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I don't want to answer those kinds of questions with my kids, depending on their age. Obviously, the kids are already going to be out for programming, so there's going to be some of that.

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But it'll also be just literally like reading the text can make some people blush. And so we'll be going through that.

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I think it's a very valuable book in light of the fact that sexuality is such a significant thing in our lives and something that God writes about.

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It is his holy and revealed word, and so we're going to dive into that together. But as we approach the end of this letter from Paul, here in our message this morning, remember he's writing to his understudy,

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Timothy, and we see some strong encouragement to persevere and stay committed, which makes sense at the end of a letter where he's given

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Timothy a pretty difficult task. So the way we view our journey through life can be a mixed bag.

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I think probably all of us have some ups and downs. Some days we seem to skate by, and we have those days where things seem to be looking up.

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We have vacations and holidays and otherwise sometimes just good days, sunny with a high of 75.

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Anybody with me on that? Like, some of those days are just really great, especially when you've got time off work and you're able to get outside some.

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And when things seem to be going well for us, we can begin to think that those kinds of days ought to be the default.

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Those are really the default days. The hard days are the ones that are the aberration, and we tend to lean into that a little bit more and expect life to go good, and we're disappointed when it doesn't.

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As Americans, we've perfected the art of pursuing leisure and ease, right? We have probably more discretionary time than any humans who have lived on planet

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Earth. And I recognize that some of you are going, I don't have leisure time, man. I get to work when I'm not working.

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Like I've got projects at home, I've got stuff I like to do. Well, the fact of the matter is, even when you're working on your own projects, that's on you, bro.

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Like you have discretion, you have freedom, you have opportunity to do what you choose to do with your time, and that's reality for a lot of us.

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But nestled in this text, the reason I'm talking about that is that nestled in this text this morning, we find three commands that highlight the urgent nature of a life lived with God.

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There is urgency in our lives that often is betrayed by the fact that we have so much discretion.

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There's an urgent nature to the calling to persevere in this text. Paul tells

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Timothy, think about it, in this text he's going to say, to flee some things and pursue some things, which amounts to a command to run.

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Now, how many of you love running? There's probably a handful of us in here who love running. How many of you can't stand running? It's like, why would you run if no one's chasing you, right?

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That's kind of the notion of a lot of people. But he's going to tell Timothy to run.

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He tells Timothy to fight, and he tells Timothy to hold fast, to hold to, to grasp something.

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And so it's very clear that Timothy is meant to be an example to the church in Ephesus, and so we can rightly deduce that what is good for Timothy is indeed good for us, church.

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He receives commands. In this text he receives a charge, and he receives encouragement in the

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Lord to persevere. And so God is calling us all in this passage, church, to wake up.

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He has a race for us to run. To wake up, he has a battle for us to engage. To wake up, he has eternal life for the taking, eternal life to grasp and to cling to.

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So let's open our Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 6, verses 11 through 16. Again, we're almost to the end here, but 1

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Timothy 6, 11 through 16, and let's see what God has for us here. Recast, I love to remind you of this every

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Sunday, that this is God's holy word. When we read it, we are hearing from the

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Almighty God what he desires to communicate to us. Let that awe rest on you as we read it together.

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But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.

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Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

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I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time. He who is the blessed and only sovereign, the

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King of kings and the Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion.

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Amen. Let's pray. Father, I thank you again for your word.

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I thank you for the privilege that it is to read it together, to let it wash over us, and then the opportunity that we have to praise you in light of it.

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You have been so gracious to us. You have been so kind to us. You have been so faithful to speak into our hearts the truth of the gospel, the glory of salvation in the name of Jesus Christ, by grace alone, through faith alone, as revealed in your word alone.

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And so, Father, I pray that you would meet us here in this place together as your people. Speak into our hearts what we need to hear.

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Speak into our hearts conviction. Not just a message that makes us feel good about ourselves. Not just a message that's rah -rah and makes us miss the hard truth that you desire to communicate.

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But, Father, by your Spirit, would you bring that into the inner recesses of our hearts. Break those chains that hold us to sin.

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Help us to be those who would run the race with you, to flee the wrong and to pursue the right, to fight the good fight of the faith.

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We all have battles that we're trying to fight, and we all have causes and different things. And I know on social media there's just so many causes and so many issues and so much temptation to just make it all about other things.

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But, Father, I pray that Christ would rise above that in our hearts. That your word would rise above that in our hearts.

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That we would be a people united in the church, in this nation, in this state, and globally would be united in one message.

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That Jesus Christ is the answer. Father, I pray that that would be a reality in our midst. And now we have an opportunity,

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Father, to praise you. I pray that you would saturate our praise with thoughts of you, that this would go before your throne in a way that pleases you and makes you glad.

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Thank you that you are the blessed God. You are the one who is satisfied. You are happy. We thank you for that, and we ask that these songs would put a smile on your face as we offer our thanks to you in Jesus' name.

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Amen. Well, you can go to be seated. But if any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice, water, take advantage of that back there.

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It looks like all the donut holes are gone. So I can't say take more of those. But also make sure that your

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Bible is open to 1 Timothy chapter 6, verses 11 through 16. If you lost your place or you're spotting your device or whatever, reopen and jump back into that so that you can see and we can just take in God's word for the remainder of our time.

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But I want to start with a question. How bad can things get for us spiritually? How rotten can a church become?

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Now, some of you have seen some bad places and been bad places spiritually. Some of you have been to churches that have broken apart.

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1 Timothy reminds us that churches can and often do sour and spoil. And they become so, they do so because, well, because people.

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The church is made up of people. The church is led by people.

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And so when we're reading 1 Timothy, we're looking at the devastating effects of sin within a real church.

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Paul's assessment of that church is that they've allowed people into leadership that are puffed up, conceited.

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This is all from the text last week. They're puffed up, they're conceited. They're disagreeing with Jesus and the apostles.

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How many of you think right away, how in the world does a church get to the point where their leaders and their teachers are disagreeing with Jesus and the apostles, right?

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But it can get there. They have fostered an unhealthy craving for controversies there in Ephesus, and they're quarreling over words.

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The fruit of their ministry, he said last week, has been envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction, like a wound that will never heal, like a constant aggravation in the congregation.

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These false teachers and failed leaders have deprived their people of the truth. They don't preach the Word. And therefore, they have left them with nothing except a depraved mind.

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There is no hope. Identifying that our hope for a renewed mind is what, church?

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The Word. It's the Word. That's where our hope for a renewed mind. Without the truth, we are left with a depraved mind.

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And further, these leaders have proven themselves to be greedy. It was his assessment last week. They are in it for the money.

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So, it's important to rehearse that in order to make sense of what Paul demands of Timothy here in our text this morning.

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He begins with, as for you, O man of God, flee these things.

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Well, what kind of things? What kind of things is he to flee from? Envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, constant friction, greed, quarrels, controversies, disagreeing with Jesus and the apostles.

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He's supposed to teach the truth. He's supposed to flee those bad things that characterize the false teachers.

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And so, our first command this morning, if you're taking notes, there's going to be three kind of movements and then some summary things at the end here.

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But the first thing is going to be run, the second is going to be fight, the third is going to be grasp. So, this morning is run, fight, and grasp.

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And our first commandment this morning is to run. Paul tells Timothy to both run away from certain things and instead run after certain things.

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Leave these things in the dust in the pursuit of these other things. And he adds solemnity to it by addressing

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Timothy with the phrase, O man of God, since you're God's man, you must live differently.

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And if you're God's woman, you must live differently. As far as application goes this morning, we can start right here.

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This is a good place for us to start, jump right into applying this. First and foremost, it's a good idea for all of us to accept what

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Scripture is saying is of the Christian life so that we establish ourselves in correct expectations.

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What do you expect life with Christ to be like? Man or woman of God, the

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Christian life is one of actively running from and actively running to.

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The things we are to flee from are, again, those things that describe the false teachers, the greed, the envy, slander, dissensions, quarrels, controversies, conceit, constant friction.

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We are to flee from those things. It's a really strong word. It's such a strong word to translate there, flee, that I want to translate it as get to the chopper.

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It's that kind of like intensity to it, like there's only one place to go. Get there, go, right?

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Thanks, Arnold. But there are destructive attitudes and actions that can crop up within a church and even within our own hearts that are simply devastating.

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And the only solution to them is to run. The only solution is to flee these kinds of things.

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They will destroy you. They will tear your life apart. They will destroy your relationships.

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They will destroy your love for Christ. Flee these things. The man of God or the woman of God has things that they must just genuinely run from.

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But we're not left running to the chopper. We are told a couple laughs.

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Some of you aren't getting it, but that's okay. You're maybe not awake yet. There is more coffee.

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Did I mention that back there? But we're told what to run toward, and it's not the chopper. It's we are to pursue righteousness, godliness, pursue, run hard after these things.

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Righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness or perseverance, some translations have it, and gentleness.

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These are the things that the man of God or the woman of God is to pursue in their lives. Righteousness in this context.

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These all need some definition, so let me walk through the list just briefly. Righteousness in this context should be understood as a

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Godward orientation in our human interactions. We might be even tempted to call it justice, as some translations will have it.

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But it has at its heart a life lived in relationship to God that impacts the way that we live and move and breathe in society.

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And that puts it really close in explanation to the word godliness that we see in the text.

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Godliness is a life as I've been translating it. A word that Paul really likes to emphasize in this letter.

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We've talked about it a lot. I like to translate it good worship. A direct translation of the compound word there would be good worship.

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This is a way of living that I think is best described as doing all that we do for God's glory.

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Worshipping him in all things. Worshipping him in the way we drive. Worshipping him in the way we work for our employer.

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Worshipping him in the way we interact with our neighbors. Godliness sees all of life.

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If you want to be godly, then you will see all things in life as a means of worshipping

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God. That means you eat a steak differently. That doesn't mean you cut it differently. It just means you have a different attitude.

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You have a different heart about it. I mean, if you enjoy a nice steak or whatever, fill in the blank with what's one of your favorite foods.

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But you eat it with a mind to thankfulness to God for providing it. It's not just that you don't worship steak.

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You don't worship ice cream. But you can enjoy it in light of thankfulness and worship to God for the things that he has given to you.

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You don't idolize it, but you enjoy it in God. We are to pursue, the text says, something else.

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Faith. We talk here about growing in faith, growing in community, growing in service. We believe those are three avenues or three areas of your life.

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Everybody who's a maturing Christian needs to be increasing in those areas. And here we see faith is held up.

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More trust in God, which requires more knowledge of God through his word. And notice that faith isn't a static thing.

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I think a lot of times we tend to think of faith as something that I put in Jesus around a campfire when

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I was a kid. Or at VBS, or I walked an aisle at some kind of a church experience, and that was my faith.

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I have faith now because I said a prayer once, or I did this thing once, or I raised my hand with all eyes closed and nobody looking around, and I raised my hand.

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Now I have faith. But faith is an ongoing pursuit in our lives, church.

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Ongoing pursuit is to be growing in the life of a believer. More trust in him today than I had yesterday.

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Love is seeking, we need to be growing in faith, and then we need to be growing in love. And love is seeking the benefit of others, even at personal expense.

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Love is to be our pursuit, church. It is looking out for the interest of others.

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Love is to be our pursuit. Steadfastness could be translated perseverance, but that might not help a ton since probably you didn't use either one of those words the last couple weeks.

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Not very common in English to talk about steadfastness or perseverance, but maybe patience would be a good way to get around that word.

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Or maybe even better in talking about running after something, we are to pursue endurance in this race.

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To pursue endurance simply means that we're prepared for the long haul, that we keep an attitude of the long game in mind, church.

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The many times in the New Testament that perseverance is brought up reminds us that we have a long haul perspective.

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We are in it for a long duration. Till we die, we are in it with Christ.

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So pursuing steadfastness is more of a mindset. This works out, by the way, just to illustrate it, it works out in my marriage.

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In a plan on my part to forgive Linda for sins she hasn't even committed yet. We're like that committed to one another.

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We have perseverance in our relationship, and she committed the same way toward me. And so there are things that I haven't done wrong yet that she has said, till death do us part.

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You know what I'm saying? Some of you are laughing at it because you're getting it, but you know what it means. Like she is committed to forgiving me.

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That's what we said. We're going to make this work. We're going to work through this no matter what. There's an endurance there that we know is a stability in our relationship.

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I don't lose heart, and I remain committed because my expectation does not include, and here's where this gets serious about perseverance and endurance.

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My expectation does not include the idea that one day Linda will finally wake up and be just perfect and sinless, and vice versa.

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She does not expect that of me as well. Steadfastness acknowledges that we have a lifetime of good and bad in living in relationship with one another in a fallen world.

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Endurance, perseverance, and oh how many problems among the church and among Christians could be resolved with the last thing that he tells us to pursue here.

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What's the last thing, church? Do you see it in the text? Gentleness. The word evokes the idea of a humble strength.

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The one who is gentle will not lash out responsibly at others even when they are suffering. Even when you're hurting, your knee -jerk reaction is not to lash out.

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And how many of you would just say that what you've observed recently on the interwebs does not lend itself well toward gentleness?

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Anybody with me on that? It is not a significant source of gentleness.

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Church, church, church, we must respond to one another with gentleness. So we are to run.

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There are things that we are to flee, and there are things that we are to pursue. But this is an active life of pursuing these good things.

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Second, we are called in the text to fight. You see it there in the text. Fight the good fight of the faith.

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You may reasonably be wondering how in the world gentleness and fighting can appear this close together in the text.

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Do you see it? The verse breaks were not there in the original, so literally the word gentleness is right up against the word fight in this text.

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A command to pursue gentleness and a command to fight might be a little bit confusing to us, right?

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But Paul is telling Timothy and us that the trajectory of our lives needs to be toward righteousness, toward godliness, running after faith, love, steadfastness, and gentleness.

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But equally, we need to acknowledge that we are indeed engaged in a battle day by day.

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And the fight he calls us to is a specific fight. He declares it to be a good fight, the good fight.

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Well, that implies, of course, that there would be a bad fight. There is wrong fights to be had.

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And we need to make sure that we are engaged in the good fight. And it is defined as the good fight of what?

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The good fight of the faith. The good fight of the faith. The fact that he calls this a good fight demonstrates that God values and acknowledges the struggle of our lives, the struggles of our era, the struggles of our days.

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And there are certainly some things that are worth fighting for, church.

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There are things that are indeed worth fighting for. Now, this is not a physical battle, not a physical fight, but a spiritual battle of the faith.

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Paul is reminding Timothy that the faith will indeed be assailed. There are going to be battles that come up.

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The faith of the individual as well as the Christian faith, both will be under assault.

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Your personal faith will be attacked by the evil one. You will be enticed towards sin.

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There will be an ongoing battle with sin, as David was talking about up here. An ongoing battle with sin that you must wage war with your tongue.

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You must wage war with the members of your body. You must wage war with the internal propensity to give in and to entice yourself.

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There's all kinds of temptations out there. That's a real fight. Paul is telling

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Timothy to be spiritually scrappy. Defend the truth from lies and liars.

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Defend the truth from false teachers. Defend your heart and your mind and your life from sins and from temptations that would so quickly drag down a believer, would so quickly drag down a church.

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Do you feel the urgency in these instructions? We are in a battle, church.

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Are you spiritually scrappy? Do you know how to use the sword?

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Do you go on the offensive through prayer every day? Prayer is our offensive weapon.

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Do you go to the one who can make a difference in your day? Or is that kind of like plan

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E? After you've tried everything else, maybe I'll pray. And this is a fight of the faith.

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This is very vital for us to grasp, church. This is not a fight of politics. It is not a fight of masks.

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It is not a fight for America. This is a fight of the faith.

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There are bad fights for the church to engage in. This is the good fight of the faith.

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Think of it this way. This is a genuine question. I want all of us to be as convicted as I am on this question.

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I start with myself. I never ask you a question that I haven't already asked myself. But if you were to take, if I were to literally pull 10 people who see you on a daily basis, 10 people who interact with you on a daily basis, and I ask those 10 people, what does he value?

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What does she value? Or even, let me rephrase the question. What does he value most?

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Give me a word. I want one word. What does he value most? What does she value most? You have an idea what it might be?

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What would win? What are you passionate about? What do people know you're passionate about?

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What do they know that you're enthusiastic about? And then let me ask you this question. Where would the word be?

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And where would Jesus be? I'm convicted by that, church.

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Would it be politics? Would it be a specific brand of politics? Would it be, what would they know you're passionate about?

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Are you getting me? I'm getting a lot of blank stares. I don't know if they're just shocked thinking about it or what, but are you getting it, church?

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Go ahead and respond. Are you getting it? That's a tough question to answer, right?

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How would people respond? What would make your list? What would people say you are passionate about?

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I believe that the church is increasingly, and the reason I even say this, this wasn't in my original notes. I actually just jotted this in here in the margins this morning, but because I feel strongly convicted about it, but I believe that the church is increasingly becoming fractured.

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I'm watching it before my eyes. Not this church, the church at large, the church in America.

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We're being fractured. And I feel like my role as a pastor is to increasingly unite our church under this one mission.

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We need to be all about the Lord, the word, and the community.

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Come what may, whatever's coming for us. How many of you just kind of have a generalized notion, like just some kind of feeling in your gut that something's coming for us?

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Isn't that just kind of the way that our culture's feeling right now? Something's coming. It just feels like we're getting surrounded.

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What's gonna help us in this moment? Everybody having their own cause? Everybody having their own thing that they're pitching for?

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No, church. What's gonna sustain us in the day of persecution? What has sustained his church through all persecutions?

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The Lord, the word, and the community. That's what we need. Make that your thing.

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What's gonna prepare you? Isn't gonna be able to be like five years from now or three years from now to look at everybody and point and say, told you so.

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I mean, I feel like a lot of Christians right now that I'm seeing, I'm reading social media, I'm looking and it's like, that's what it amounts to is like you're gearing yourself up to be able to say,

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I told you so. I predicted this. Good for you. Great job.

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What else? Do we have a message to bring? Do we have a savior to offer? Do we have a remedy, church?

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Only in as much as we know this will we be ready to engage our world with love.

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The message that they need is grace, grace, grace. And I fear that in our fracturing, we might be saying politics or Trump or masks or vaccines or a whole host.

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I mean, I'm just, I'm throwing those out there not to pick on anybody. I'd go both sides on that. Some of you here might just think

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Biden is the solution. I don't know. A whole host of things that we could lean into right now in church.

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We need to be all about the Lord, the word, and the community. That was a major side note. The rest of this sermon is probably gonna have at least 50 words per minute with Gus up to 100, okay?

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Just to get through my notes. So just let you know, we're gonna end up talking a little faster through the remainder of this.

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But you can fight the good fight and still be gentle, church. Do you hear that? You can fight the good fight.

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Be engaged. Be all about the fight and still be gentle. Because this is a battle for thoughts and for hearts and for minds.

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This battle will not be won with harshness. It will be won with love and truth.

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The battle in your own heart will be won with the truth as you believe God's word more and more. And it will be won by love as you realize how much

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Christ has loved you at the cross. And you will want to love him in return.

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So we are to run. We are to fight. And the last thing is we are to grasp. We are to cling. Grasp, ESV has it in verse 12, take hold of.

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But Paul commands Timothy to grasp the eternal life to which he was called. Seems like a strange phrase, but I believe that the phrase take hold of the eternal life is similar to the phrase work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

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Paul here is telling us all to daily and moment by moment live out the eternal life that we have already received.

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We've already received it. You already have eternal life. It is yours to live now.

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Claim the prize that has already been won for you. Cash in the lottery ticket to come into the prize.

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How many of you know that you might have won the lottery, but until you take the ticket in, it doesn't mean anything. You get it?

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The battle has been won for you. Are you claiming the victory? Are you there grasping the prize?

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In this sense, the Christian life is looking back at what we have received to empower us in the present with an astonishing hope for the future.

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We have been given eternal life. We are told to take hold of it in the present, and it will be ours forever.

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The good news of Jesus Christ, by the way, many of us, I think I was raised in a context where I fashioned it in my mind as like, how many of you played

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Monopoly and you ever got the get out of jail free card? And it was like, okay, next time I go around to jail, I don't have to stay there.

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It's not a get out of hell free card. That is not what eternal life is.

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It's not something that we have. I believed in Jesus at a campfire. Here at the pearly gates, you show them your

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ID card and they let you in. The good news of Jesus Christ is a bloody cross, an empty tomb, an ascended savior who set our feet on a course of eternal life when we trusted in him as our

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Lord and savior. The good news is the power with which we flee. It is the power with which we pursue.

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It is the power with which we fight. Taking hold of eternal life is like saying, plug into the power source.

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You've got the eternal power source from the day you believed to forever. Eternal life doesn't start when you die.

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Eternal life started when you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ and he saved you and he sent his Holy Spirit to dwell within you.

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That is when you received eternal life. This is eternal life that we may know you,

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Jesus Christ, the Father, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. You received eternal life when you received

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Jesus. You need to plug in.

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Grab the lead and don't let go. Grasp the end of the live wire of eternal life and hold on tight.

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The remainder of verse 12 is Paul reminding Timothy, that he made a confession in the presence of many witnesses.

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This was maybe a public confession of faith at his conversion. Maybe it was at his baptism. That seems quite likely because there's a formal, some of the words there are kind of formalizing.

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But either way, our baptism, I would just, I would commend to you your baptism as a good place to remember that you professed

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Christ in the presence of others there. It's meant to be that to us. It's meant to be that kind of an anchor.

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It's meant to be a place that you go back to routinely and identify, I do belong to Christ. If you haven't been baptized as a believer, we do people a disservice,

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I think, in a lot of evangelical churches by separating baptism, a distance from faith, where the

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Ethiopian eunuch in the book of Acts goes, hey, I believe that. There's some water. Why don't I get baptized? It was like, yeah, sure, says

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Peter. And he baptizes him on the spot. He didn't make him go through classes. He didn't make him wait for a year to prove it.

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He said, I'm gonna take it at your word. You said you believe. Let's get baptized.

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The New Testament doesn't have a big gap there at all.

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It's like, let's drop some water and let's get baptized. If you, and come to me and talk to me.

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Within the app, there's actually information there about baptism that you can find on the app if you wanna know more.

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But I think all of us should be baptized if we have professed faith in Jesus Christ.

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This is a means, by the way, for our encouragement. Keep fleeing, keep pursuing, keep fighting, keep grasping because you have confessed that you belong to Jesus and you have received eternal life through him.

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It's for our encouragement. And now in verses 13 through 14, Paul strongly charges Timothy to keep these commands.

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And he charges him before God, who is the author of all life and in the presence of Jesus Christ, who did not shy away from the truth when his very life was on the line before Pontius Pilate.

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That's why he's talking about that there. Jesus stayed true right to the end even when faced with death.

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According to John's gospel, Jesus declared himself before Pontius Pilate to be the embodiment of truth.

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That's John's the only gospel that records that interchange where Jesus basically says, I am indeed the truth.

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In the other gospels, Jesus identifies himself as a king before Pilate and doesn't correct him, doesn't change course.

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The reason to bring this up here is that we may very well along with Timothy be tempted to forsake the confession and give up the fleeing, especially as pressure gets turned up in our culture, pressure gets turned up in our society.

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And how many of you just want to be liked? Just being honest. You kind of want people to like you. Only really, really there's three of us.

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How many of you like, you want people to like you, right? So that's the place that the pressure comes in. The place of the pressure for Americans is not like, oh no, somebody's going to beat me over the head and kill me if I believe in Christ.

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No, it's like, people aren't going to like me. Sorry, mocking everybody.

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I asked you to raise your hand and then I mock you. I'm sorry. That's me too, guys. I'm not mocking anybody unless I'm mocking myself as well.

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I want to be liked. I want people to like me. But we're going to be tempted to forsake the confession and it's probably for us going to be on the point of trying to fit in.

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And then we'd be tempted to give up the fleeing. Give up the pursuing. Just throw in the towel with fighting the fight.

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So Paul points to Jesus who didn't surrender a shred of the truth in the face of impending torture.

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In the face of impending crucifixion, Jesus stuck to the good confession even to his final breath.

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Never wavering from the truth. There's a lot of debate about what the singular command is.

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It's singular in the Greek in verse 14 that Paul is so strongly urging Timothy to keep this command.

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And I personally think that when the entire letter is taken as a whole and Paul is summarizing and wrapping things up, it's summarized by the single command to remain steadfast in his charge to correct the false teaching in the church at Ephesus.

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There are many prongs to this one command. Many different things that Paul has said to Timothy in this book.

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But at the core is a singular charge for Timothy to remain in Ephesus to repair the false teaching.

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Keep at it, says Paul here. Keep up. I charge you in the presence of God and in Jesus Christ who did not waver.

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Keep up the fight for truth. And this involves fleeing the attitudes of the false teachers, pursuing righteous and godly character.

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It involves fighting the good fight of the faith. It involves grasping the eternal life that Timothy has already received.

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And he has to do so while staying out of the mud, to remain unstained, the text says here. Stay unstained and staying in a position that makes him difficult to tackle, it says, above reproach or without reproach.

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I mentioned in a sermon on an earlier chapter that above reproach means to not be easily tackled, not easily brought down.

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Anybody watch any football yesterday? Some players are easy to tackle, others are not. A life lived free from reproach is a life that just doesn't give others easy handles with which to bring them down.

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They are squeaky clean, as we might say, hard to grasp, hard to tear down. Paul calls

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Timothy to remain unstained and don't make it easy for people to tackle you, dude. Timothy is also to be in it for the long haul.

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He has to keep at it until the appearing of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Paul says. Here's the duration till Jesus returns or you die.

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If the text ends here, we might think we found an error in scripture, by the way. It looks like Paul expected Timothy to be alive when

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Jesus returns, but he makes sure we don't misunderstand that by acknowledging in verse 15 that the return of Jesus is completely according to the timing of God.

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He makes sure that we understand that the appearing of Jesus will be displayed by God according to his timeline.

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Jesus will not come too early, he will not come too late, but he will return precisely when it is fitting and proper.

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God will get it done in the right timing, in the right way. And what

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Paul does next is more than just a tendency. I see this tendency in him to get caught up and distracted as I've studied him and as I've walked through books that he's written.

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Sometimes I wonder in his writing if he suffered from ADD a little bit. He seems to often distract himself mid -sentence and off he is on another subject, but his distractions always serve a good purpose as this one does here at the mention of God and it is proper timing to display the appearing of our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Paul launches into a doxology. He launches into a word of praise and he declares that God is the blessed.

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He is the happy one, the satisfied one, the content one. The implications of the word blessed for God is immense when understood in terms of what

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Paul is saying here. Church, we don't serve a God that is needy. We don't serve a

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God that's ticked. He is not sulking nor is he pessimistic.

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God is happily contented. God is the blessed one.

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How many of you just think of God as happily content? You know, I think a lot of us have thought of, has conceived of a lot of ways of God and happily content is not one of the primary ones.

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Ticked might be more like it. Angry at us might be more like it. Frustrated with us.

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Pessimistic might be some of it, but not according to Paul. He is blessed.

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Further, he is the only sovereign. He is the capital K King over all kings. He is the capital

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L Lord over all lords. All human authorities have a derived authority.

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Somebody has to give it to them, but not God. He has not been granted authority by any other.

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He just is sovereign. The only one who just is sovereign.

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He alone is self -existent, the text says. He is the only one who always has been and of himself always will be.

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He dwells in unapproachable light. The Old Testament used a Hebrew word, Shekinah, to describe the glorious light emitted from the presence of God.

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Nobody has seen him as he truly is. And no mortal can behold all that God is with our created eyes.

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And I can hear you kind of wonder when you read this, just a little bit, if you're thinking, didn't Moses see him,

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Don? Well, he saw what God wanted to display of himself. But even God told

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Moses to himself, he said, none can see my face and live.

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Well, what about Isaiah? Didn't he have that Isaiah chapter six, I beheld the Lord seated on the throne, high and lifted up.

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He saw him in a vision. He saw a vision of God. What about the burning bush? Well, I don't think any of us would be willing to say that that was all that God is.

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He has to manifest himself in some lesser way for us to apprehend him.

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And it's always just an approximation of him. And I want to be careful when I talk about Jesus because he is indeed the imprint, the very nature of God.

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It's apparent though through his transfiguration that Jesus didn't walk around the countryside preaching and teaching and healing people, shining out the full bright glory of the omnipotent almighty

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Lord of hosts. He did something unique at the transfiguration to show a little bit more of his glory, a little bit more of his brightness, a little bit more of awe and wonder at who he is.

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So hear me carefully, church. All manifestations of God to humanity have been on his terms and not on ours.

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We are limited to what he has conveyed to us through his son, through his word, and through nature to a much lesser degree.

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But the very nature of who God is requires that we approach him with trust that what he tells us is true.

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That's why faith is necessary. You must trust that what he says of himself is true.

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Now hear me. If you hear anything about this section about God, we can know

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God truly. We cannot know God comprehensively. Do you hear the difference?

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We can know God truly. We cannot know him comprehensively. We can see

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God in part accurately, but we cannot see God comprehensively.

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Does that make sense? What we do know and what he has revealed himself is true, is knowable, is beneficial, is valuable for our lives, but you're not knowing all of God.

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You can read this from beginning to end and go, oh, I get it. I need to sit down and talk with you if you get him.

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Like if you're getting all of him, wow, okay. You're doing something Paul says can't be done here.

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We cannot understand God comprehensively. We know what he tells us, what we need to know of him to be saved, to spend eternity getting to know him.

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And so to our God be honor and eternal authoritative power or might forever and ever and ever.

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And Paul ends with the so be it, amen. So why end this text with a hymn of praise to God?

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Well, let me ask you another question that might drive that home so that you can kind of come to some conclusions yourself. What is the fleeing and pursuing for?

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What are we running for? What are we fighting? What is the good fight of the faith for?

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What is the grasping of eternal life for? It's all for him, church.

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It's all for him, for his glory, for his honor, for his might, for his power, for him to be elevated and lifted up and glorified for eternity based on his saving work in the church.

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It is for our God. I fear that we can forget who we're running for. We can forget who we're fighting for.

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We can forget who we are eternally living for. If we're not careful, we will flee wrong and pursue right for the fundamental reason that we'll look better to others in the church.

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We can get so narrow and so myopic that we can begin to act in certain

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Christian ways so that others like us better. That would be a pretty paltry motivation to run.

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That would be a pretty paltry motivation to fight or to cling to eternal life.

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If we're not careful, we will fight the good fight of the faith so that we fit in with other fighters. And I'm convinced that there are unbelievers, by the way, who run harder than us.

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There are unbelievers who fight stronger than us. But the key is to ask, who are you running for?

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Because that makes all the difference. Who keeps you in the fight? Because that makes all the difference. Who is the one calling you into this eternal life?

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And who are you living this eternal life for? Our lives will be defined by the good news or they will be defined by bad news.

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We are either heading towards doxology and praise and all honor and authoritative might credited to him or we are serving and spotlighting another master.

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More often than not, ourselves. Where does the spotlight point in your life?

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So before you take on the commands, like this is one of those messages that could be misapplied in a heartbeat.

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You could just run out of here, go out of here and go, I need to run better, I need to fight better, I need to grasp more. And go about your business trying harder.

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But before you take these commands on to run and to fight and to grasp, first make sure you're running in the right direction. Make sure you're fighting on the right side and make sure you're grasping at the right life.

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Are you running to Jesus, church? Are your eyes fixed on him? Is he your hope for righteousness, for godliness, for faith, love, steadfastness and gentleness?

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Only in Christ through the spirit will these things be ours. So if you belong to Jesus, then let me encourage you to keep running to him.

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If you have not asked Jesus to save you, then today would be a great day to run to him. Ask him to save you in your sins.

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Ask him to save you of your sins and ask him to be your Lord and your king. Pray to him.

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Say, I'm a sinner, I'm broken and I need your forgiveness. And I've made a mess of my own life.

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I need you to take the reins. I need you to run this thing. Pray to him and say that. Ask him to save you and he will.

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Anybody want to raise your hand and testify that yes, he is faithful, he will. He will. So are you fighting on the right side, church?

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If you're fighting with Jesus, then you fight from a place of calm and gentle victory. You know the battle has been won.

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You know the battle belongs to the Lord and so you move out into your world. You'll move out into this week with a humble strength.

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By the way, I would suggest to you that a telltale sign that you are not fighting for team Jesus is desperation.

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It's fear. It's anxiety in your fight. If you are fighting for team

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Jesus, then you're fighting on behalf of the winner. He's the champion.

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He's already accomplished it. You're grabbing the live wire and he's pulling you along for the ride. Fighting the good fight of the faith presupposes, of course, that you have faith.

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Practical application then would be to pray and give over to God your efforts at overcoming sin. To give over to him your efforts to win others over with your arguments and then with confidence engage your heart and your world with trust in Jesus.

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If you've indeed been given eternal life to grasp, then I encourage you here at the end of our service to come to one of the tables during this next song to remember how it is that you were given that eternal life.

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It was through Jesus. It was through his sacrifice for us. So at the cross, his body was broken in our place so we take a cracker to remember.

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And at the cross, his blood was shed for us so we take the cup of juice to remember.

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Only come to the tables if you have asked Jesus Christ to save you and to be your king. But if you do take communion this morning, let me ask you to take another step.

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Take a moment before you eat that cracker and drink that juice to consider your run, consider your fight, consider your grasping eternal life.

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Is there something you need to flee? Write it down. Is there something you need to be pursuing that's absent in your life?

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Write it down. Have you given up the fight in some area of your life? Write it down and re -engage.

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Do you need to be reminded of the eternal life which is yours and need to reconnect to the power source? Dig back into the word, write it down, and then live it out this week.

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Be sure that any and all action that comes out of this sermon is for the honor and glory of our blessed

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God who is indeed the only sovereign. Let's pray. Father, I do pray that all honor and glory and majesty and credit goes to you from any product of this message.

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But I do pray for a product from this message. I pray that anyone listening that does not belong to you would run to Jesus today for salvation.

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And then for those of us who have maybe become apathetic or have started to pursue the wrong direction, we're running the wrong direction, we're fighting the wrong fight,

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I pray that this would be a day of renewal of that focus on running the race and pursuing the good things that you offer us through your spirit.

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That we would engage in the right fight. There are so many bad fights out there for us to engage in.

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I pray that you would move us as a person to the good fight of the faith. Engaged in bringing the glory of your word and your truth and your son to the world that desperately needs hope and grace and love.

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All of those things that we're to be fleeing are even to some degree values of the world.

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There is envy, there is coveting, there's a striving, there's a struggling, there's a backbiting, there's an injuring, there's an abusing that happens in our culture and our society.

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Pray that it'd be better here in this church because your spirit restrains, pulls us to a place of running from and pursuing the good.

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Fighting that good fight. I thank you for the eternal life that's granted to us through Jesus Christ. And I pray that now as we take communion that you would help each mind and heart to really dig down into or really open up in terms of what you desire to communicate to each individual here.

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I believe that the application as loose as I've laid it out can be used by your spirit to pinprick each person here exactly what they need to focus on.

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So I pray that your spirit would shine a light and illuminate for each one of us where we need correction, where we need change.