Salvation to the Ends of the Earth, part 2 (Acts 13:13-41, Jeff Kliewer)

God-Centeredness Versus Humanism

And not much of ourselves. God, you are worthy of all praise. As we contemplate the vastness of this universe, how big our galaxy alone is, let alone the billions of galaxies that are. You are the God that spoke these into existence with a word.

And I love how the Bible says, and he made the stars too. Lord, you spoke and they were, and we're told that you know them all by name. They obey you, they burn for you. And here we are on this small planet called Earth, living our little lives.

I pray this morning that we would see you for who you are, see ourselves for who we are, and give ourselves entirely to you. That our lives would be centered around you. In Jesus' name.

Amen.

The opposite of being God-centered is to be anything else-centered. Many people center their lives around a sport, or an activity, a TV show. Many people center their lives on things that are not God.

In fact, the most common thing that people center their lives around is humanity, whether themselves, their own life, or humanity in general. Humanism is the worldly philosophy that intentionally eliminates God.

John Dewey was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto in 1933. He was born the same year that Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of the Species, which was evolutionary and taught that there is no guiding force of God that made the universe, but rather natural selection.

Brought about the things that are.

He bought that line, hook, line, and sinker. And so John Dewey became a humanist. So what exactly is humanism? I'll read you a couple definitions. Religious humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man's life.

Though we consider the religious forms and ideas of our fathers no longer adequate, the quest for the good life is still the central task for mankind. So humanism is about mankind realizing man's potential, grabbing life, taking the bull by the horns.

Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement. He must set intelligence and will to the task.

They write elsewhere, instead of finding solace in prefabricated answers to the great questions of life, humanists enjoy the open-endedness of a quest and the freedom of discovery that this entails. In other words, do away with God, do away with the Bible.

We will experience life on our own. And humanity is all that is, or all that's important. They do have some religious people within humanism. For example, Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll, deists who believe that God created the world and then just spun it into existence and stepped out of the way.

And they can be humanists because they don't believe that God is actively involved in the world. God was merely the one who created it in the beginning, but then like a divine clockmaker who wound everything up and set it off into motion, he then steps out of the way and we're left here to fend for ourselves.

The manifesto in 1973 probably sums it up best. No deity will save us, we must save ourselves. That is the humanist mindset. It is entirely and definitionally man-centered. But guys, listen, even if you're not part of the humanist society, it's very easy for you and I to become man-centered in our thinking, to begin to think that our lives are up to us, that God is something that we encounter on Sunday morning for an hour as we sing and as we hear the Bible, but then we go back to the real world and our lives become oriented around ourselves.

Neglecting God in the activities of our day-to-day, that's man-centered too. So there's the negative example. I want to draw a sharp contrast. And the sharp contrast, the clearest example that I know of to bring this into focus is the life of a man named William Carey.

William Carey, around the turn of the century into the 1800s, recognized that the churches in England were not going to the ends of the earth to preach the gospel. He began to realize that it's okay for Christians who don't believe that man can do anything alone, it's okay for us to use means to reach the ends of the earth.

He wrote an inquiry into the use of means to reach the heathen. When he began to think this way, that it was right to be intentional about going to foreign countries, the reaction of the church was against it.

These were hyper-Calvinists. Hyper-Calvinists who said, listen, sit down young man. If God wants to convert the heathen, God will do it. And so he argued with them and he tried to convince them, no, it's good for Christians to obey the Great Commission and to go into all the earth, to use means to convert the heathen.

He was rejected, but finally a year later, he formed his own missionary society and he and a doctor named John Thomas and their families sailed to India. This is a God-centered man. When he got there, they realized that it was a lot harder than they even imagined.

They weren't able to make ends meet financially and within a short period of time, John Thomas left the mission field. So writes William Carey, I am in a strange land. No Christian friend, a large family and nothing to supply their wants.

But he also retained hope writing, well, I have God and his word is sure. Deserted by his missionary friend, left alone in India, barely able to make ends meet. He says, well, I have God and his word is sure.

That's the thesis of my talk today. Well, I have God and his word is sure. Well, it didn't just get easier from that point on. For seven years, he never saw one convert. It wasn't until the seventh year that Krishna Pal became the first baptized believer.

Seven years ministering without seeing any fruit. Would you become discouraged at that point? After seven years? Well, if that wasn't discouraging enough, Carey contracted malaria. And then one of his children, little Peter, contracted dysentery.

And he watched him suffer and he watched him die. His wife, Dorothy, being overwhelmed by the pain of losing their son, Peter, began to lose her mind and was accusing William of adultery and even took a knife against him and chased him around the house.

She had to be institutionalized for a time. In that circumstance, writes Carey, this is indeed the valley of the shadow of death to me. But I rejoice that I am here notwithstanding and God is here. This is God-centeredness.

This is believing that God is in it. He remained on the mission field. She was healed. She recovered. They continued on. Eventually, Carey was used for the abolition of infanticide, widow burning, and assisted suicide in India.

They founded colleges. They won 700 converts during a 41-year ministry. Now, compared to the billions of people in India, more than a billion people in India, 700 seems like nothing. But how many missionaries were inspired by this first of the modern missionaries?

William Carey inspired David Livingston and Adoniram Judson. So many of the missionaries who then would go off to the ends of the earth. And now, India, we know, is being reached for the gospel. William Carey was God-centered.

Remember his line, "'Well, I have God and His word is sure.'". This is God-centeredness. So as we turn to Acts chapter 13, the theme today is centering your life and your thinking on God. I believe Paul's sermon in Acts chapter 13 is the most God-centered sermon in the New Testament.

We'll see that. If you could pull up the map we talked about. Last week, we talked about how the first missionary journey began from Antioch in Syria and traveling along that blue line that you see, they went to the island of Cyprus, arriving in Salamis.

From Salamis, that port city, they traveled 150 miles across the island of Cyprus, preaching the gospel. Would have taken months. They went throughout the whole island and finally, they arrived and preached where the proconsul was located in Paphos.

And he became a believer. But it wasn't easy going, was it? Elemis, the sorcerer, opposed them and tried to turn the proconsul away from the faith. Paul had to strike him with blindness in the name of Jesus and preaching the gospel, he came to believe.

So this first leg of the missionary journey is now complete. It's time to leave the island of Cyprus and they sail across the Mediterranean and arrive in Perga and travel up into what is modern day Turkey and arrive at Antioch in Pisidia.

That's different than Antioch in Syria where the mission began. This is Pisidian Antioch, north of Perga, moving into central Turkey. And this is where the mission continues. Acts chapter 13, verse 13 and following.

God-Centered Ministry in Antioch of Pisidia

I want you to see in this first section the God-centeredness of these missionaries. Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia and John left them and returned to Jerusalem.

But they went on from Perga and came to Antioch in Pisidia and on the Sabbath day they went into the synagogue and sat down. After the reading from the law and the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent a message to them saying, brothers, if you have any word of encouragement for the people, say it.

So Paul stood up and motioning with his hands said, men of Israel and you who fear God, listen. Notice first in verse 13, having completed months of ministry, their assistant leaves them.

That's a hit.

That's painful. There's only three on this first journey. It's Paul, it's Barnabas and it's John Mark. But John Mark loses hope, why? Could it have been the hundreds of miles of walking, the dangers, the opposition, the persecution?

Could it have been that he was a little scared by that encounter with a false prophet who's a sorcerer and the dramatic way in which Paul had to deal with him? Was it just a bit much for this young man?

In any case, he turns back and he goes home. Missionaries have to deal with this a lot. People leaving the mission field. They go out together, but some have to return. There's a lot of saying goodbye.

There's a lot of pain on the mission field. And in churches, the case is also the same that sometimes people leave and it's painful. The question is when that happens, on the mission field, in churches, in your life, when someone leaves, will you remain God-centered?

It would be very easy at this point in time for Paul and Barnabas to say, you know what? I think we need to go back to the other Antioch, back to where we started. We've reached Cyprus. God has done a great work.

Let's head back.

It's been a long and hard journey already. God-centeredness allows them to persevere through pain. They continue on. They endure in the ministry because they recognize that even the painful things come from God.

God is in those details as well. He has a purpose for this happening. They've lost John, but they haven't lost God. God is here and his word is sure. They persevere. Next in the text, notice verse 14.

I love this about when they come into Antioch, they go into the synagogue. What does it say? And they began preaching really loud. I have a tendency to get loud when I'm preaching. I'm excited. I wanna communicate what I'm trying to say.

But what does the text say about them? They sat down. Good answer.

They sat down.

See, that resting in the sovereignty of God recognizes that they can't go in there and do anything. They need God with them to create the opportunity. And that's the case with evangelism. You have to be both active and passive to be a good evangelist.

You have to be intentional to go out and preach, but also sit and wait on God. I think just recently, flying back from Florida, we called an Uber driver to get to the airport. And I had every intention of sharing the gospel.

I prayed, as a family we prayed, that God would provide an opportunity. And the Uber driver came and as we got in the car, he was a Turkish guy, talking about Turkey today. He drove us to the airport and as we sat, we just prayed and thought until finally the Lord showed me something.

His radio dial has Joy FM. So I asked him about that, and that became the introduction to the gospel. And the Lord then turned the conversation and for the rest of the ride, we talked about the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus.

He showed signs that he's believing. I don't know that he's repented and been born again, but I pray for Umut, the Uber driver. It was an opportunity for the gospel, but only God could create it. I couldn't force it.

You have to sit and wait, but be intentional, yet passive, that's God-centeredness in evangelism. Waiting for the opportunity and yet intentionally looking for it.

That's what they do.

They sit down and how are they rewarded? Look at verse 15. After the reading from the law and the prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent a message to them, saying, brothers, if you have any word of encouragement for the people, say it.

Now, what do you think Paul's about to say? This is his open door and he walks right through it. He's waited on God. He's God-centered in his methods. He's trusting that God is here. So it says in verse 16, he stood up, motioning with his hands, said, men of Israel and you who fear God, listen.

Now, before we go into that sermon, I want you to notice what the people in the synagogue are longing for. What are they wanting? What do they need? A word of encouragement. I just want to pause and take a little aside here to say, guys, almost everybody you know in your life is hungry for some encouragement.

A word of encouragement. If you can come speak some positive word, no matter what the situation, people will soak that up because they need it. There's that rule that you should speak 10 positive things into a relationship before you say something negative.

If you don't do that, the number of deposits that you've made into the love tank of the other person will not support the withdrawal in the criticism you have to offer. It's important to be encouraging.

I like to say offer nine encouragements and then one criticism.

Why?

Because in the church at Corinth, that church was a mess. Corinth was a mess. They were divided over anything and everything. There was sexual immorality. There was suing one another in court. The spiritual gifts were run amuck.

Paul is about to rebuke one thing after another, but the first nine verses of Corinthians is amazing encouragement. He has nine positive things to say before he begins exposing the problems in the church.

Guys, be encouraging to one another. Be a person who's always building other people up, speaking well into their life, but also willing to say the hard things when that time comes. That's what they were longing for.

But look, they have good news to bring here. Look at verse 16. He motions with his hand. Don't you wish you knew what that motion looked like? Why does the text record that? I figure it's something like this, or maybe it's like basketball players.

You know, they do this thing and then they point to heaven. Is it something like that? Or is it more like this? He just takes a moment to pray and to center his mind and thought on God, and his body is crying out to God, and they notice that there's something about his motions that's communicating something.

What proceeds from his mouth, as we move on now, is the most God-centered sermon in the New Testament. It's all about God. It's about God. You know, Albert Einstein never believed in the Christian God.

And one time in an interview, he said why he didn't. He said, the God of the preachers in this country sounds really small. When I look through a telescope and I see the vastness of this universe, if there's a God that made it, and he didn't doubt that there was, if there's a God that made this, how big is that God?

And yet, the preaching that I hear is therapeutic and it's psychological, and it's about do this small thing and life will be better. But so little about the God of the Bible, he couldn't believe what the preachers were selling, at least the ones he heard.

I know my ambition, and I learned this from John Piper, talks about the supremacy of God in all things. My ambition in preaching is to make much of God and little of us. Much of God and little of us. And yes, we do care about social concerns.

We do care about our lives.

God made us in his image, but let's first of all make much of God and what he has to say to us in our circumstances. You're about to see this in living color here. Look at verse 17 and following. The God of this people, Israel, chose our fathers and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt.

And with uplifted arm, he led them out of it. And for about 40 years, he put up with them in the wilderness. So much for humanism and man-centered thinking. God is just putting up with the people and their abilities.

Verse 19, and after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance. Yes, God has the right to do that. Verse 20, all this took about 450 years. And after that, he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet.

Then they asked for a king and God gave them Saul, the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin for 40 years. And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king of whom he testified and said, I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my heart who will do all my will.

Of this man's offspring, God has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus, as he promised. Notice in what we just read that God is the subject of each phrase. In fact, there's eight verbs that correlate to the subject of God.

Do you see this? It's God who chose. It's God, in verse 17, who made the people great. It's God who's active. He puts up with them. He is the destroyer of the seven nations and he gives them land. After that, he gave them judges.

There's only one place where they do anything. What's the one verb related to the people? That's verse 21. They asked for a king. So the one thing they did was wrong because God was to be their king. They were a theocracy at that point in time.

They asked for a king, but God gives them Saul. And finally, removing him, he raised up David. Finally, this lead up culminates in the ultimate gift of God that has nothing to do with our ability, our ability to save ourselves or do anything for ourselves.

Verse 23, of this man's offspring, God has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus, as he promised. The activity of God with uplifted arm, we're told. The strength of God displayed for his glory. You wanna know what the most God-centered passage in the Old Testament is?

I think it's Isaiah chapter 48, verses nine to 11. Read it when you have some time. What he does is for his sake, for his namesake, that he would not share his glory with another. Guys, you know this?

God is passionate about God. The thing that God is most passionate about in the universe is himself. Now, when we are that way, when we're self-centered, when we think of ourselves highly, that's very unbecoming, isn't it?

Because that's not the place to which we belong. But glory, in fact, belongs to God, and God is right to delight in his own glory. He is right to delight in his own glory and to be passionate about his name.

And it's for his sake that he does what he does. Notice he's the active one in our passage today. Moving on to verse 24 and 25. Why does Paul, all of a sudden, mention John the Baptist? I mean, he's already made it up to Jesus.

He's tracked this metanarrative of history to explain how God is the active one that brought them this far. He's introduced Jesus, but now he takes two verses, pausing in verse 24 and 25, to bring up John the Baptist.

Why did he do that?

In verse 24 and 25, before his coming, John had proclaimed a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. And as John was finishing his course, he said, what do you suppose that I am? I am not he, no, but behold, after me one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.

God is here, his word is sure. Paul is the most God-centered preacher you'd ever want to meet. As he is laying out the history of Israel, he pauses, and I think the reason he mentions John the Baptist is because John the Baptist, whom Jesus called the greatest prophet of all, was the least of all.

Here was a man who made nothing of himself. He went about in camel hair with that leather belt, and he was eating locusts and honey, and all he cared about was Jesus. And what did he say? He must increase, I must decrease. John said, and he could have picked out anything John said,.

But Paul focuses on these words.

No, but behold, after me one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie. I think Paul thought of John because John's so well exemplified, decreasing, becoming less important, less centered on self, and more and all about God.

The Gospel of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

And so then we come into the final section of the sermon where he presents the gospel, the gospel of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Verses 26 to 41, we're going to read it quickly. As you listen to this, I want you to think about how God-centered the gospel is.

I like to give you this mental construct to help you remember the gospel. The gospel is the person of Jesus, the work of Jesus, according to the scriptures, for the forgiveness of sin through repentance and faith.

We'll mention those five things again. But here's what I want to point out now. The gospel is entirely about God. It's who He is, the Father who sends His one and only Son, who later sends the Spirit.

It's the Trinity.

It's the story of God, Him, not about us.

It's His work.

He's the one who comes to save us.

It's nothing we bring to the table.

It's not our goodness, our righteousness.

We have nothing.

We are wretches.

He comes to save us, and He dies, and He rises from the dead.

It's a story of His work.

It's according to the scriptures. That's His word. What He says is true. It doesn't begin with our intellect. What we can make for ourselves, it doesn't begin with human reasoning. It begins with the word of God, the scripture, His word.

And what's the problem it solves? That we have sinned. David says it's not against other people, although he did sin against Uriah the Hittite. He did sin against Bathsheba. He did sin against the whole army and the whole nation of Israel.

David knew he needed to be cleansed with Hesop, Psalm 51, because his problem was he is a sinner who has violated the holy and righteous law of God,.

The Creator of the universe.

This is the problem, the distance between a holy God and a sinful man. So forgiveness of sins is the issue that needs to be solved. The sin problem needs to be solved. The issue is forgiveness. It's a God-centered gospel.

And finally, the solution, the way you're brought into that is by repentance and faith. It's not by what you do. It's by what Christ has done. And your part is only believe. Like Moses lifted up that serpent in the wilderness, our part is to look to Christ, lift it up, and believe upon the one who died for us.

It's a God-centered gospel. Now hear Paul say at verse 26 and following. Hear those elements as we read. Brothers, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to us has been sent the message of this salvation.

For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning him. And though they found in him no guilt worthy of death, they asked Pilate to have him executed.

And when they had carried out all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God, oh, I've got to pause right there for a second. But God, the Ephesians 2, 4, but God, when we were dead in our trespasses and sin, but God, being rich in mercy, raised us up.

That but God is the core of the gospel. We're dead in our sins, but God steps in to save. You see it throughout the scriptures. But God raised him from the dead. And for many days he appeared to those who had come up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people.

Verse 32 and following. And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us, their children, by raising Jesus. As also it is written in the second Psalm, you are my son.

Today I have begotten you. And as for the fact that he raised him from the dead, no more to return to corruption, he has spoken in this way. I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David. Therefore, he says also in another Psalm, you will not let your holy ones see corruption.

For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers and saw corruption. But he whom God raised up did not see corruption. Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.

And by him, everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. Beware, therefore, lest what is said in the prophets should come about. Look, you scoffers, be astounded and perish, for I am doing a work in your days, a work that you will not believe even if one tells it to you.

You see the person of Christ. He's raised up a Savior, Jesus. You see the work of Christ, how he was killed, how he was buried in a tomb after being taken down from the tree. Verse 30, how he rose from the dead.

That's the gospel. Thirdly, you see according to the scriptures. Do you notice how Paul bases everything he's teaching out of the word of God? Look at verse 27. It was the utterances of the prophets that they failed to see.

God, on the other hand, at the end of verse 27, God fulfills the utterances of the prophets. God keeps his word. Verse 29, they carry out all that's written of him. And then a little farther down, you see a quote from Psalm chapter 2.

It'd be worth reading that later about you are my son today.

I have begotten you.

That Jesus is the Davidic king, the promised son. The nations will come to him. Ask and I'll give the nations to you. The end of the earth will be your inheritance. He quotes, I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David, quoting from Isaiah 55.

Then he quotes from Psalm 16, you will not let your holy ones see corruption. For David, after he served the purpose of God, just like you see the parallel in verse 26 with verse 25, John finished his course.

David served the purpose of God. God's purpose. All of this is a fulfillment of scripture. And why do I want to stress this so much? Because beginning in the 1800s and maybe a little earlier, there was a movement afoot in Europe.

And it came to America called higher criticism that takes the Bible and uses it like a specimen to dissect it, not believing in the word of God. It criticizes the word of God and rejects the authority of God's word.

It was happening in Charles Spurgeon's day in the 1850s. Here's what he had to say about it. A chasm is opening between the men who believe their Bible and those who are prepared for an advance upon the scripture.

The house is being robbed. Its very walls are being digged down. But the good people who are in bed are too fond of the warmth to go downstairs to meet the burglars. Inspiration and speculation cannot long abide side by side.

We cannot hold the inspiration of the word and yet reject it. We cannot hold the doctrine of the fall and yet talk of evolution of the spiritual life from human nature. One or the other must go. Compromise, there can be none.

This was what was called the downgrade controversy. The Baptist Union was rejecting the authority of scripture. And Spurgeon saw it happening. And he fought it to his death. And it brought him to an early death.

And it happened here in America too.

There were battles fought as evolution.

Was taught in the schools. And the word of God was rejected. There was one denomination that fought back in the early 80s. It was the Southern Baptists. Had problems of a different sort. But here they stood for the word of God.

And in 1985, at a convention that had, I think, the largest ever. Tens of thousands of people there. Because the battle was afoot. Which direction would the denomination go? The preacher Criswell took to the stage.

And he quoted from Spurgeon from the downgrade controversy. And he says, he's gone to India where William Carey went as a missionary. And if this movement in the church continues, he said there will be no more missions.

There will be no more missionaries. There will only be social workers. Those mission agencies and those places of evangelism that William Carey opened in India were closing at the time. But by God's grace, the Southern Baptist Church did turn at that point.

And they elected Albert Moeller to be the head of their main seminary. He was only 33 years old. And the conservative resurgence began in the SBC. Here's the point. There are still people today who are trying to unhitch the gospel of Jesus Christ from his word.

But it cannot be separated. If you take the word of God away, and you do not believe in what the prophets have written and what is written in the New Testament by the apostles, you have lost the Christian faith.

It is gone. There will be no more missions. There will be no more Christianity. The gospel itself, the person of Christ, the work of Christ, is according to the scriptures. It's God's word that establishes it all.

We're talking here about epistemology. How do we know what we know? The only way to know that Jesus is the Son of God, that God is Trinity, that Jesus died and rose, the only way to know these things is by the word of God.

This is the authority upon which everything else stands. And if any church goes and departs from the word, you'll notice it die a slow, painful death. History attests to it. The gospel is God-centered and the word of God is the basis, the foundation of our knowing.

The last two points he makes in verse 38 and 39, forgiveness of sin, verse 38. God is the one with whom we have to do. In verse 39, everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed.

The path of salvation is by believing. It's by faith alone, sola fide. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what Paul preaches. Next week, we'll get to the response and we'll look at that carefully for the remainder.

Of the chapter.

But look here in verse 41. It's almost like Paul knows. Look, you scoffers, be astounded and perish. He quotes from Habakkuk 1. They're going to be just like the Israelites who asked for a king, just like the Israelites who had to wander because they rejected God in the wilderness.

You're going to be scoffers. A couple of days ago, I was out at Laurel Acres Park. We were witnessing, sharing the gospel with a young man. And there was like a hyena off to the side, a friend mocking and heckling the gospel as we were sharing it with this young man.

Oh, are you really listening to them?

He pulled his friends aside and they laughed at us. But the one young man was hearing the gospel. We continued to share the gospel with the one while the many heckled. There was a point where I turned to him and I said, let me tell you about how long hell is.

After 1 ,000 years, it's no shorter. And after a million, it's no shorter than it was before. And a billion years from then, the fires of hell are just as hot. He didn't say another word. I pray God takes that and reminds him that the gospel is nothing to be mocked.

But in our society, it is. And so in closing, we preach a God-centered gospel, a gospel of salvation. It's about a Savior. We must go out in boldness to preach that gospel, not making it about ourselves, but keeping it all about Him.

I don't know what each of us are going through. There's pain. But turn your eyes on Jesus. Don't depart from the faith. The way John Mark left them, there's actually, we'll get to this when we study Acts chapter 15.

There's actually good news to the end of this story. John Mark has abandoned them, and Paul won't take him on the next missionary journey. But by the end of 2 Timothy, as he's signing off, there's one person he's asking for.

Paul is asking for John Mark. It was a good ending to that story. But it was God-centeredness that allowed Paul and Barnabas to persevere. Keep your mind and your thoughts on Jesus. Don't be conformed to the culture.

Drive worldliness out of your thinking. And this is the hard part, because once we leave this building, there's a lot of influence to make us humanistic. There's a lot of things that will come creeping in on our minds and steal our attention.