Faithful

Responsibility has sadly become a concept that is ignored and even fervently avoided these days. It is not an easy task to find someone who embraces and welcomes taking on responsibility. This malady is assuredly connected with most people’s disdain for accountability. By and large, we prefer to be left alone, we don’t want to answer to anyone, we don’t want to have any expectations put on us, we don’t want to be accountable or responsible for virtually anything if it can be avoided. We want the benefits of responsible and disciplined life, just without the accountability and responsibility, if you please.

To put it in an employment or business-related illustration, we want a paycheck, but we don’t want to do anything to earn it – which is probably the primary motivation to get into politics these days. Or we want positive results without any personal effort expended. Our nation is in peril today partly because nobody wants to work anymore if the government is going to continue to hand out exorbitant benefits, with money we don’t have.

The Apostle Paul wrote three Letters that are part of God’s Word, that have been labeled as the Pastoral Epistles because the original recipients of these Letters were pastors of local churches. Timothy and Titus were the two pastors that these Letters were written to assist them with their enormous responsibilities in leading a church, and to help them in passing along these responsibilities to other willing and capable leaders.

Turn with me in your Bible to the Book of 2nd Timothy.

2 Timothy 2:8-13

Let’s pray.

God has been abundantly faithful to this church. Each and every moment, from the lunch that Connie and I had with Kevin and Tricia Lane when the Holy Spirit instilled us to start a church in Jefferson, Colorado, all the way to this very moment more than 16-years later, God has been faithful in every respect. We have not always been completely faithful to Him in the decisions and activities of this church, but He has never failed to be faithful to us.

Every time that we have stepped out in faith on any issue that God was leading, He has been faithful to provide, to supply, and to take care of us. Every time we have failed to step out in faith on any issue that He was leading, He has allowed us to stumble in our own silly man-centered logic and wisdom, but He has remined faithful and merciful to us even when we are abhorrently lacking in faith.

In the passage that God brought to my mind when I was considering a sermon on God’s faithfulness, the passage I just read, the Apostle Paul was admonishing Pastor Timothy to stand and suffer with Him in carrying out the charge to be faithful in the ministry. If we took the time to go back to the beginning of this Letter and read it all instead of just a few verses, we would see to a greater extent how Paul used his own experiences as an example for Timothy to follow.

By all accounts, this is the last Letter that Paul wrote prior to his execution in Rome, his final words of encouragement to his child in the faith to persevere in his responsibility to Jesus, his responsibility to spread the gospel and to oversee the church. In these final words, the charge is to be strong in the Lord and to remain faithful to his calling, with faithfulness being the foundation for everything else he has to say.

With faithfulness, endurance, and perseverance as the bedrock, Paul goes on to charge Timothy with being an unashamed workman for the cause of Christ, to be prepared for difficult times that are inherent with gospel ministry, and to faithfully preach the Word in the midst of an ever-growing apathy, resistance, and even hatred for Scripture – an apathy, resistance, and hatred that is overtaking our nation today.

Paul opens this central theme of this Letter with the phrase, “It is a trustworthy statement”. He uses this phrase five time in his biblical Letters, with all five being in these Pastoral Epistles, and all five being an important truth to be held onto and applied with all diligence. In chronological order, here are the other four instances, with the one in our passage of study being the fifth and final one.

The first one is found in 1 Timothy 1:15, where Paul wrote, “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.”

We must believe this with all of our being and engage in spreading this most essential message. We often act as if the gospel is some sort of exclusive invitation only event for those who are somehow worthy of it. No one is worthy of it! Jesus came into the world to save sinners, not the righteous. If He came to save the righteous, no one would be saved. The people of this world that you deem to be evil and wicked and deserving of hell are the people that Jesus came into the world to save.

The second is from 1 Timothy 3:1, “It is a trustworthy statement; if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do.” This reveals that first, the offices of pastor and elder are reserved for those who have been given the desire to serve in such a way, among the other exacting qualifications listed after this verse, but secondly, if the man desires the work and is biblically qualified to serve, it is a good thing or a fine thing that he desires to do. But this is an enormous responsibility.

The third is from 1 Timothy 4:8-10 – “for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance. For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers.”

Godliness is our goal, being like Jesus Christ is our aspiration, over and above taking care of the physical side of our lives. Don’t neglect the physical, but make sure you are paying more attention to the spiritual, which is growing in godliness, growing in observing, following, and obeying the tenets of Scripture. Distancing yourself from the ways, the morals, the activities, and the habits that identify with worldly behavior.

The fourth one is found in Titus 3:8 – “This is a trustworthy statement; and concerning these things I want you to speak confidently, so that those who have believed God will be careful to engage in good deeds. These things are good and profitable for men.” We are called to good deeds, we have been equipped to do good deeds, God saved us and prepared beforehand good works that we are commissioned to accomplish.

This brings us to the final trustworthy statement that is given in four parts. Let’s quickly and briefly touch on each. And by the way, each of these qualities or characteristics are evidence of true conversion. These are not hoops to jump through, to earn salvation, but are markers to prove your salvation is genuine.

2 Timothy 2:11

Paul is no doubt referring to what he wrote in Romans 6, that we, as believers, have died to sin and been raised to obey His Word.

Hold your place and turn with me to the Book of Romans. The entire chapter is well worth your attention, but let’s just read the middle of the chapter.

Romans 6:4-14

I trust you understand even in a small way that if you have died with Christ and been raised with Him, signifying salvation, you are no longer a slave to Satan and sin, meaning that as we submit to the power of the Holy Spirit, we now have the equipping and the ability to avoid sin, always! Obviously, we do not surrender and submit to the Holy Spirit 24/7, but we can. Sin no longer has hold and sway over you, if you have confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believed in your heart that God the Father raised Jesus from the dead. You are free from sin by His grace.

There is so much more to glean from that passage, but we must move on.

If we died with Him, we will, also live with Him.

2 Timothy 2:12a

We won’t go there, but in Revelation 2-3 we have the Letters from Jesus to the seven churches represented there. Towards the end of each of these letters you will see a qualification that reads something like, “To those who overcome”. All seven churches have a phrase of this sort and in all seven instances it is simply saying that those who endure to the end are those who prove that their salvation is genuine. God gives those who have been saved, justified, redeemed, the power to endure and persevere to the end. God’s keeping power will protect and provide and carry His true children through all the way to physical death or the return of Jesus Christ – none who are genuine in their faith will be lost. And those who endure, again meaning those who are genuinely saved, will rule and reign with Jesus in the kingdom.

2 Timothy 2:12b

Paul says, If we deny Him, He also will deny us.The Greek verb rendered deny is in the future tense, and could be more clearly stated, “If we ever deny Him” or “If in the future we deny Him.” It looks to some kind of situation where the cost of confessing Christ very high and puts to the test a person’s quality and genuineness of faith. A person who fails the test and hold onto his confession of Christ will deny Him,because he never belonged to Christ in the first place.

2 John 2:9 says, “Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son”. Those who remain faithful to the truth that they profess give evidence of belonging to God and of a genuine conversion.

Like Peter, we can be saved and have a moment when our faith wavers in the face of persecution, but also like Peter, if we are genuine in our faith, we will repent and through the power of the Holy Spirit, return to being sanctified by His grace. Peter’s denial was a momentary failure, followed by repentance. And remember, Peter did not at that time have the fullness of the Holy Spirit within him. It was not until the day of Pentecost that he had the Holy Spirit living within and he so boldly confessed Christ, it eventually cost him his life of which he was more than willing to give.

The sense and seeming context of what Paul writes to Timothy is concerning those who have made a false profession of faith, those who have given lip service to their belief and trust in Jesus but were never truly saved, never truly surrendered to Jesus as Lord and Master of their lives. Those who deny Jesus in this sense are like those that John wrote about in his first Epistle – “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us” (1 John 2;19).

Jesus warned on more than one occasion that there will always be tares among the wheat and goats among the sheep, meaning that the church will always have people within who are only playing the game but have never truly been saved.

2 Timothy 2:13

The context here seems to demand that the faithlessare the same as those who deny Him, meaning the unsaved, not simply those who have wavered temporarily in their faith under pressure of some kind. And so, God remains faithful not only to the saved but to the unsaved, meaning that He will always remain faithful to His Word in every aspect of it.

God is faithful to His Word in loving for His own, in providing for His own, in carrying His own through to the end, and guaranteeing through the gift of the Holy Spirit that the saved will unfailingly be with Him in heaven when they die.

God is faithful to His church, His true church who commits to following His Word and commits to honoring, adoring, praising, and worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful in rewarding the faith of His children, in rewarding the faith of His church, in rewarding those who walk by faith and not by sight.

God has been so abundantly faithful and good to His church in this tiny mountain community. We do not deserve all of the amazing blessings that He has lavished on us by His grace. We are not worthy of the sixteen years of mercy and graciousness and love and provision and protection. He is worthy of our praise.

But God is also faithful to His Word in judging and condemning those who reject His Son, Jesus. He is faithful to His Word in unleashing His righteous wrath on all who refuse to acknowledge Him, who refuse the free gift of salvation through the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, who never truly respond to the call of the Holy Spirit unto salvation.

God is faithful, He is always faithful.

Let’s pray.