2 Timothy 4, Are You a Success?

2 Timothy chapter 4, beginning the whole chapter. Hear the word of the

Lord. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who was to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves as teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

As for you, always be sober -minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the

Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing.

Do your best to come to me soon, for Demas, in love with his present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.

Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia, Luke alone is with me.

Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry. Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus.

When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books and above all the parchments.

Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm. The Lord will repay him according to his deeds.

Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message. At my first defense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me.

May it not be charged against them. But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed, and all the

Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed, and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom.

To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen. Greet Prisca and Aquila and the household of Onesiphorus.

Erastus remained at Corinth, and I left Trophimus, who was ill, at Miletus. Do your best to come before winter.

Ubalus sends greetings to you, as do Pudens and Linus and Claudia and all the brothers. The Lord be with your spirit.

Grace be with you. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word.

Are you a success? Are you where you wanted to be at this stage of life, at least heading there?

Can you look back with satisfaction, knowing you've accomplished what you wanted to accomplish by now? Really think about it.

Do you feel, at this point in life, that you are successful? Now let me ask you, when you think about whether or not you are a success, what standard do you use?

I mean, how do you know you are a success or not? What's the criteria? Is it money in the bank?

If you're well off, do you then think you're successful? Or is it family?

If your family is thriving and peaceful and loving, do you consider that a success? Or is it respect in society?

People look up to you. They regard you as a pillar. They invite you to all the important parties, be part of the important clubs.

They greet you happily at the store. Do you then think you're a success?

Or perhaps it's a combination of all these things. You're financially stable. Your family is great. You're popular.

So are you then successful? Well, let's take an example. We have an old man.

He doesn't have much money. He's not getting a pension. In fact, he's so bad off, he has to ask a friend to remember to bring his one and only coat.

He spent the last 30 years working hard on a new venture, and things looked good for a while.

He was so busy with it, he didn't have time to get married and start a family. So he's alone. In fact, the people he spent the last 30 years working with mostly abandoned him.

They didn't want to be seen with him. When the going got tough, they got going. What's worse, he's in prison.

All he worked for, for so long, got him thrown in jail, and he's facing the death penalty with no lawyers volunteering to take up his case.

And you know what? He's a success. He's an enormous success.

That of course is the great Apostle Paul, and that's the situation he found himself in at the end of his life. We see in 2

Timothy chapter 4. Everything from a worldly point of view looked bad, looked really, really bad.

But Paul writes with a mingling of, we just read, a mingling of desire and satisfaction.

The satisfaction is for what's behind him, his successful life, and the desire is for what's in front of him, the voyage he's about to be launched into.

Now sure, it sounds pathetic to be so bad off. You have to remind your friend to bring your only coat, and you have to report that when you were brought before a hearing, no one dared show up to support you.

And yet Paul looks at his life, and instead of desperately wishing, pathetically wishing that things would turn out differently, he smiles and nods and thinks,

I'm a success. I finished the race. I fought the good fight.

Now I'm ready for the next step, to strike my earthly tent and go on.

And that's going to be the best of all, he thinks. Timothy, now you follow in my footsteps, share in suffering, and be a success like me.

Timothy, though, is not so sure. He's been vacillating, intimidated by the threats from outside, and then discouraged by the failures inside the church.

He's not sure what to do anymore. So Paul, inviting him one last time to be a success, to be a suffering sharer, summons him, summons

Timothy with all the seriousness and the gravity that he can muster, calling

God the Father himself, and the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who will be the judge of all people who ever lived.

Timothy is charged. We are charged. In the sight of the judge of the whole earth, the one who is appearing soon, who reigns over the kingdom that is right now, putting all its enemies under his feet, witness this.

Judge of the universe, witness this. Pay attention, Timothy.

Pay attention, covenant. He is charged. Proclaim the word.

He's not charged to be a sanctified social worker. He's called to proclaim the word.

Be ready to do it, he says, proclaim the word in season and out of season, in good times and bad times.

When the church is growing and people are excited and everything is new and even Wednesday nights are overflowing and in bad times, when people are distracted and down and church seems to be dwindling, preach the word.

But what's that mean? Is it an entertaining, emotional oratory?

A sort of one -man play? No. Reformed people know better than that, but Reformed people think it's a theological lecture.

Is he telling us all about the verb tenses and the participles and the conditional clauses so we can go away with an excellent understanding of the grammar of this verse?

And next week, we'll hear the next verse taken apart word by word. Now that may be the way it starts, but that's not all.

Remember the word, scripture, that he's to preach is breathed out by God.

He just told us in just a sentence or two before this, at the end of chapter three, and it's breathed out by God for a purpose, for, remember, teaching how to live, reproving, correcting, and training.

So if it is to be preached successfully, you have to do with it what it was intended to do, reprove, correct, train, not just entertain, not just be positive and encouraging.

Straighten your people out, Timothy, pastor, with the word.

To sharpen the point, Paul says, rebuke, that's a rebuke, is to confront.

There's a problem. You confront that with the word, not just with your opinion, but with the word. Tell people, like you all, that what you're doing or thinking or attempted to do or think is wrong.

Turn from it. Don't go that way. Repent of making an idol out of wealth or repent of fornication or watching pornography or being divisive or selfish, being an individualist who can't be tied down, a selfish, a self -lover, a money -lover, not a

God -lover, repent of that. Discipline your people, Paul is telling

Timothy. Discipline your people, Timothy, pastor. Don't just cater to their desires.

Don't just entertain them. Discipline them with the word. Then exhort, okay, that's more positive and encouraging, is to come alongside, help them to do it the right way, put wind in someone's sails, inspire your people,

Timothy, pastor, to keep up the good work, aspire for the best, incentivize them with the promises of God.

There's a crown of righteousness awaiting for all who love his appearing.

So let's love it. Let's cry Maranatha. Now to be a success, Timothy, you do these three things, rebuke, reprove, exhort with the word, with complete patience and teaching or doctrine.

Patience implies that success probably isn't going to be easy and fast. There aren't going to be any get -rich -quick schemes spiritually in the church and in ministry.

You are going to need to patiently keep doing it with long -suffering.

And you're going to be the one that often suffers a long time, often suffering through other people's failures to understand, to grow, to change right away.

You continue, you continue to suffer for their hard -headedness, their distractedness.

You continue correcting, rebuking, exhorting. Even when some defect, some drift away because they want to be entertained.

Some still don't get it. Even after a decade or more, you correct, you rebuke, you exhort with the word, with doctrine.

In other words, with reasons from God's word about why they should do what they do. Show them that covetousness,

I don't say don't covet, show them that covetousness is idolatry. It's making a god out of money, out of these things.

Show them that the kingdom of God is the great treasure. And so if you must close your shop on Sunday morning and make less money, that's a sacrifice you must make.

Show them that the husband is the head of the wife like Christ is the head of the church. And so to give up that headship, the husband, if he gives it up in the home just to have peace, it's like a church compromising the headship of Christ just to make some troublemakers happy.

Show them that the bodies, your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, so you can't engage in sexual immorality. Show them that since God is faithful to his word, so you should be faithful to your word.

Show them that Christ died for the church, not just for you, that you're part of a body.

You're going to need patience to be a success because in verse three, he says, the, or it could be, it should be a, there's actually no the there in Greek.

The time is coming. It's really, really a time, a time is coming here. I think he's going back to the theme in chapter three.

Remember last week, perilous, dangerous, tumultuous times, Paul says in these last days, these dangerous times are coming.

And so here, I think he's saying soon a time, literally one of those perilous times I told you about earlier with the self lovers who aren't

God lovers and all that other stuff in between. One of those perilous times is coming soon when people will not endure sound doctrine, sound teaching.

Notice that in verse three, endure sound teaching.

You might've read those two, first two verses and heard my preaching on it just now and thought, well, that's all great for you. For people are called to preach it.

You preach the word. I don't, I'm not called to preach it. I'm called to do something else. So it's all irrelevant for me.

But you have to endure it. You have to bear it. Sometimes I really make you endure it, don't

I? Sometimes you look like you're really enduring it. You need to bear it. You need to put up with it.

Enduring, bearing implies that there is something taxing about it. Something hard about it.

Sometimes you got something that has to be put up with. It's like a long run or a long swim or a bike.

Bike ride. You might enjoy it sometimes, most of the time, maybe when you're done with it.

You know you need it. You know it's good for you. But still, sometimes, you know, you're about two thirds of the way through a run or a swim or a bike or something and you just, oh, can

I stop? I'm tired of this. I don't wanna do this anymore. It's pushing you.

It's stretching you. It's exhausting you. Sure, it's building you up in the long run, but right now, it's tearing you down and you wish you could just have a break.

Come on. Can I get a break from all this sound doctrine? Please, give me some.

Some of that have your best left now spiritual junk food stuff, can I have some of that? Sound healthy strengthening teaching takes endurance.

It reminds you that you're a sinner. It crushes your pride by constantly telling you that there's nothing in your hands you bring only to the cross you cling.

It takes you back to the constantly to the cross, lest you forget, lest you forget

Gethsemane, lest you forget his agony, lest you forget to take up your own cross.

It tells you that if you've been, if you've really been made a good tree, you need to be bearing good fruit.

And not only does it exhort encourages you, it corrects you, which implies that you've been doing or thinking something as we all have that needs correction.

It's wrong. It rebukes you, which implies you need a spiritual spanking.

Sometimes sound teaching will remind you of all that. It will humble you. If you endure it, but a time is coming,

Timothy Paul says, in which people will not endure it. They'll want to hear how they can be, um, how they can be right by their works, how their morality is good enough.

They can please God just by good behavior, how they can be perfect, how God's word will make them rich and healthy and give them their best life now, how they can escape suffering and how they can know tomorrow's headlines today, how they can always claim grace as an excuse not to change, not to give, not to sacrifice, not to take up a cross, not so they can indulge themselves.

They'll want to hear how they, they'll want to hear what they want to hear. And so they will heap up and the word there, heap up, they'll just pile one on top of another teachers who will tell them what they want to hear.

And today this is easier than ever. You know, he needs to bear with a pastor preaching the word when you can stay home and listen to preachers on TV or on the internet and the internet has made it really easy.

Constantly telling you what you want to hear. You know, if people go to church, they have a, they have that form of godliness in chapter three.

Maybe they don't stay home on Sunday morning and they have that form of godliness, but they still, if they come to church, they hear something that offends them.

They have fins, their selfishness, their individualism, their ego, something that challenges them. Well, they can always comfort themselves.

They can sit there and think, yeah, that's what he says, but I know a guy online I can find will tell me, tell me what

I believe. Just a couple of seconds of a Google search and they can find someone to confirm what they already believe.

No use having to change. There is ears itch to be flattered, to be told that they are little gods who can earn their own planet if they only follow the right steps or that they can speak what they want into existence or that generations of Christians, maybe those old guys back then, they suffered persecution and maybe there's some unfortunate people on the other side of the world in other countries right now, they have to face it, but we won't.

We'll get to escape it all. Maybe they want to constantly hear about justification through faith alone if they're reformed.

They think they are. They want to constantly hear about justification through faith alone.

They hear it in some Latin sola fide, but they don't want to hear about the works that faith produces.

If anyone tells them something different, that everyone who desires to live a godly life in Christ in this world will suffer persecution or that saving faith makes believers doers of the word, they won't endure that.

They'll go look for someone to scratch their itch for escapism.

In verse four, they will turn away from the truth on the one hand and turn toward,

Paul calls it here, myths, tales, entertaining stories, motivational pep talks.

Maybe in America, the myth of the rugged individualist, spiritual individualist who imagines he needs no authority, no accountability, that he is a body all into himself, whether it is whatever it is that scratches their itch, they can find someone now to give it to him.

You want to be a successful Christian. You must be careful not to follow your desires, the flattery, the self -centered, ego -puffing, practical need -driven, spiritual junk food messages that many offer.

You have to endure sound, healthy teaching.

A time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but will heap up teachers who will tell them only what they want to hear, preferring myths to the truth.

But as for you, Timothy, in verse five, a great contrast, you be clear -thinking, not like those people intoxicated by myths, you know, by their ego or their yearns for motivational speaking disguised as preaching.

Suffer evil. If you want to be a success, suffer evil. Do the work of telling the good news.

Fulfill your ministry. For him, preach the word,

Timothy. For you, endure sound teaching and help the church preach the word.

Are you a success? Well look at verses six and seven and tell me that those aren't the words of a man satisfied that he has succeeded.

In Acts chapter 20, verse 24, as many years earlier, Paul, when he's on one of his tours, told the elders from Ephesus, in which

Timothy may have been, maybe Timothy was there, but Paul said to them, I do not account my life of any value nor is precious to myself.

If only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the

Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. Here he says, for I'm already being poured out as a drink offering and the time of my departure has come.

I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course, the same word, course or race that he used in Acts 20.

I have kept the faith. What was a rough, arduous course in Acts is now here in 2

Timothy 4 completed. It lay behind him as a memory, an obstacle course, successfully finished.

And notice the satisfaction. He says, I'm ready. I've succeeded.

How do you become a success? We're shown two keys to success here. Proclaim and bear the word.

We've seen that already. Second, love his appearing. If, as a

Christian, you want to be able to look back at your life and feel like Paul, that you finished the race, that you stayed in the good fight against sin, against the world, the flesh and the devil, you weren't knocked out, you didn't give up when things were difficult, that at the end you are a success, then you must love his appearing.

Cry from your heart, Maranatha, our Lord come. Paul knows he's a success.

He is already, he says in verse six, being poured out, uses several pictures here for what he's about to go through, being poured out like a drink offering, a drink offering was a type of sacrifice.

The priest in the temple, he poured out the offering before the Lord, spilling it onto the ground. So Paul's blood is to be spilled out onto the ground as he bowed before the executioner and allowed the ax to take off his head.

Imagine, you know, we read those words, so picturesque, and we think that he must be talking about something that's beautiful, something that's satisfying.

He's talking about being beheaded. He's seeing his coming beheading as a graceful ceremony of worship.

His departure is now here, and the word there, departure, is an image of a ship, it's reached its scheduled time to leave.

It's being loosed from its moorings, you can see them throwing off the ropes from the pier.

The voyage is about to begin. Everything up until now is preparation.

Now he's about to embark on a cruise to a new life. How do you know you're a success?

Are you on the right course? The one that ends with you looking back with satisfaction, you know, so satisfied, even the beheading before you is, oh, that's being poured out, that's a departure.

I finished the race, that's more satisfying. I've been in races where people went the wrong way.

I once went the wrong course myself in a race. It's frustrating to put out the effort to have endured and realized

I didn't stay on course, I didn't finish the race. But Paul sounds so satisfied in verses 6 to 8 because the finish line is in sight.

There it is. It's a great feeling in a race to finally see that finish line.

It gives you hope to push through those last few yards. You can push the fatigue and the pain of what you've been enduring aside and sprint to the end.

Last year, 2017, I ran the sledge 5K trail race up there on those trails in Angler's Park.

Two rough trails for me, but I was just coming out of the bathroom about 50 yards behind the starting line.

When the race started, I come out of the door and there they are, and there's horn and everybody starts.

Whoa. So I started late. I fell twice during the race, tripped up by those many roots there.

Once picked up by another runner, being nice to me, and I ran this winding trail. It's up and down, very rough.

When finally it empties out into this gravel road and about 200 yards to the right, back into Angler's Park, is the finish line.

Now they have this big thing, kind of arch you pass through. And that's a great sight to finally see after over three miles running on those trails.

You're not really there yet. Paul's really not there quite yet either. You're here, but you feel you can say,

I finished the race. You know you'll be able to make it to the end now.

So when I turned, I glanced behind me as I turned and there was no one close behind me and there was no one between me and the finish line, and I won.

Here Paul sees it up ahead. The end of the race. It's been a hard race.

He started late, you know. There were lots of obstacles to trip him up, but now he knows he's finished it successfully.

But Paul wasn't so otherworldly, so uncaring about his body that he didn't know that this last sprint to the end would be hard, that it would be a genuine sacrifice.

Indeed, in the second half of the chapter, we see Paul's practical concerns for the last days of his life.

He wants a cloak to be kept warm. It's a small request, you think, but to him it meant a lot.

He genuinely felt a sense of abandonment when his friends were too timid to stand with him. He wanted his books.

He was feeling bad for some people. Some of them were just too scared to stand with him.

He prayed for them that the Lord would not hold it against him. He remembers Mark, who at one point, he didn't want with him.

He had an argument with Barnabas. He didn't think Mark was worth taking with him. Now Mark is valuable. He wants him back.

He was a real person with real needs, thinking about real relationships. He didn't misuse his religion to pretend he wasn't.

He didn't pretend the cell was warm or he didn't need the support of friends. And yet, here he was, satisfied despite it all.

There was, after all, a crown. To us, maybe a trophy, a medal.

He will receive a crown of righteousness. The world might convict and execute him, but the only truly righteous judge will give him a crown.

The crown is, he calls it the crown of righteousness. That's the award from God of Christ's righteousness on us.

That crown, as he wrote in chapter 1, verse 9, is not gained by our works. And it's not just by our ordeals we go through, but by God's grace.

And there it is, he says. He can see it. It's on the trophy stand, right past the finish line.

It's waiting for him there. And that's the only thing left. He suffered much.

He struggled. And he made it. He continued on course. The finish line's inside.

Henceforth, from now where I am, to the end, to that crown, there's nothing more

I have to worry about. Never mind that little part about getting your head chopped off. He can hardly see the ordeal of execution because of the radiance of that prize.

He's overlooking being beheaded because being crowned on that restored head is better to stand before the

Lord and be declared righteous. Otherwise, the Lord would say, you're right with me.

He's so satisfied with the joy of seeing that crown that even the last obstacle of his own beheading sounds like the charming call, all aboard.

He compares his coming martyrdom to the thrill of hearing the call of a ship about to depart, to the most picturesque of sacrifices, a graceful pouring out of a drink offering.

That's, when you can do that, that's success. It's not that he's earning the crown by persevering, that he will be declared righteous and acquitted on judgment day because he went through so much that he didn't give up.

No, he persevered because God had already saved him. God had already declared him righteous.

God had already rescued him. Notice in verse 18, he will rescue me from every evil deed.

Sometimes God literally rescues Christians from the mouths of lions, as he says he was in verse 17.

But even when the lion mauls his servants or God sends them to the chopping block, he still rescues them from every evil deed.

When the Lord makes us undergo rejection from some friend because we proclaim the word, when he makes us lose relationships or be scoffed at because we believe the word, when we have to go to church alone because a spouse refuses to join us or have to simply suffer from a lack of support from others or sends us eventually, as he will to everyone, to our deathbeds, we can go through all that and know that he will rescue us from every evil deed, even from getting our head cut off.

And that when we have that crown of righteousness placed on our heads, it won't be because we had mustered up the strength and pushed ourselves through, but because God graciously purposed it for us.

Henceforth, Paul says, from now, sitting in this prison cell to the crowning, to that crowning, nevermind the beheading between now and then, he sees that crown and he knows he'll be rescued from every evil deed, including that beheading.

He's not the only one whom God has purposed will be rescued from every evil deed. He doesn't see himself just alone, as though God just saved him.

All those who have loved his appearing will also be graciously given that crown of righteousness.

Everyone who looks forward to the Lord Jesus coming and then fully setting up his kingdom on earth so that everything is done exactly as he decrees.

Everyone who delights in the idea that finally evil, including their own evil, their own sinful nature, will be wiped away.

And the Lord Jesus will rule with a rod of iron that no longer will everyone be doing what is right in his own eyes.

Even in our day, the church turning away from sound doctrine because they're tired of being corrected and rebuked.

Everyone who longs for everything to be done precisely as the

Lord Jesus orders, for the government to be on his shoulders, for his will to be done, not their own.

Everyone who seeks first God's rule, starting in their own lives, in their own hearts, everyone who loves that prospect, who longs for it, they too will be saved.

They will be rescued from every evil deed and crowned as right.

Even if on formerly decapitated heads. Those are the saints.

Those are the ones whom God will preserve to the end. But not everyone's a saint.

Not everyone loves the Lord, the Lord's appearing, the appearing of Jesus. Some openly hate it.

Some like Alexander in verse 14 are dangerous foes who work to destroy the proclamation of the word.

They will try to do us much harm. Now we can be grateful that in this nation, such people do not have the power to harm us with imprisonment and legal persecution yet.

But let's not imagine that all Alexanders have disappeared. They are still with us. They are with us as college professors who mock our faith and lead young people astray, or as journalists who insinuate that we're all hateful, bigoted people, or as judges who try to squeeze us into smaller and smaller places out of the public light.

Human nature has not changed in 2000 years. And there are still people who will, as much as they can, try to harm us precisely because we declare the word of God.

But really sadder and harder to take are the deserters, those who betray us from inside.

Paul mentioned two by name in chapter one, and he mentions another here. Rather than loving the

Lord who will bring in a new age, a new era in which things are done

God's way, Demas loved this present age. The word translated world there is really age.

He loved the way things are currently run. I mean, he may have liked being a Christian for a while.

He looked like he was a Christian. Paul thought he was for a while, up until a point. He liked it for a while, you know, until it came into conflict with this age.

More than anything, he loved the comfortable, quiet life of the Roman world. He loved that in this age, man is the measure of all things, that if you can get enough people to say that something is okay, then it's okay, even if the word corrects and rebukes it.

That's the world, right? The majority rules. Why should we wanna change it?

Besides, the price is just too high to be a Christian, to proclaim and endure the word.

After all, you could worship Jesus in ancient Rome. You just couldn't say he was the only one to be worshiped.

Just don't say the idols aren't gods. Now, why not try to fit in? Why not hedge a bit?

Let your tax money go to support a temple to Jupiter. Call the idols a visual form of worship.

Pretend it's part of the wonderful diversity of your country that I have my

God, Jesus, you have yours, and we're all live and let live. Why suffer so much?

Why get your head chopped off? Just because you won't bend a little. Just because you won't be a little more tolerant of diversity.

Well, Paul's answer was clear. I'm not living for the approval or the comfort that this world might give me.

I love the appearing of the Lord Jesus, his kingdom to come. I love that day when he comes and he vanquishes all his enemies and wipes away all the

Alexanders and imposes his way on creation. And when that day comes, I don't wanna be caught collaborating with the enemy.

I don't wanna be found to be a traitor who loved his present age, what it could provide, instead of trusting in the great treasures the age to come will bring for those who love it.

I don't wanna sell my assurance of being a success then for the slim reward of being a temporary success now.

You know, you have to make your choice about which age you will love, about when you really want to be successful.

You wanna succeed now or later? There is an age now that offers us rewarding relationships and comfort and warmth and respect and money and things and some freedom to have some things our way, what it calls a success.

You know, so that at the end of your life, you can sing my way. I did it my way and I'm a success.

That's this age. The age of man is the measure of all things. But that age is passing away.

One day the Lord Jesus will fully establish a new age. And in that age, the crowns will go to those who loved his appearing.

And because they loved his appearing, proclaimed his word, lived his way and endured the hardship that this present evil age meted out to those who loved him.

One day the rebellion will be over. This age will be gone. And the measures of success then will be very different.

Your success in this age, you can acquire all the money you want in this age and the age to come, that money will be as valuable as Confederate money was after the

Civil War. Your final success will stand or fall by what you hear from the

Lord Jesus on what Paul calls that day. Are you a success?

Well, Paul was. What about Timothy? Now, although we don't know for certain, one church tradition is that he led the church in Ephesus for a long time that he didn't cave in or desert.

He was bolstered by Paul's words. He renewed himself.

And then as an old man, after a lifetime of service, as an old man like Paul is here, during a pagan idolatrous festival, he ran out into the midst of the revelers in Ephesus and called for them to repent of their sins, turn from their idolatry.

He reproved and rebuked with sound doctrine. They instead turned from the truth as Paul warned

Timothy they would, and they stoned him. Timothy died a martyr.

He proclaimed the word. He loved the Lord Jesus' appearing. And he too was a success.

So, are you a success? Do you love his appearing? Do you love the idea that finally the rebellion of this world would be put down and the

Lord Jesus' way will be the rule? Do you proclaim and endure his word, seeking for the knowledge of the glory of the

Lord to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea? Do you? If you do, it's been a fight, hasn't it, sometimes?

It's been a rough course to run, sometimes. Sometimes you've been lonely and disappointed and insulted and betrayed.

Sometimes maybe disappointed at yourself, betrayed by yourself. Sometimes maybe exhausted, discouraged, feeling taken for granted.

Sometimes wondering if you can endure anymore. But keep going. The Lord will stand by you and strengthen you.

I hope no one here is as close to the finish line as was Paul when he wrote this letter.

But I hope you can all see that finish line. You can see the crown waiting for you.

There it is. Open your eyes, see it. And keep running for it.