Well, turn with me, if you would,
over to Matthew chapter 10. That'll be the first verse of
scripture we'll read today. Thought we might talk a little
bit this morning about endurance. You know, a lot of times in our
life we... As me and Larry was talking a
little bit earlier, we have great struggles, battles with the flesh. Flesh and spirit war against
each other. Bible tells us that the flesh lusts after the spirit
and the spirit after the flesh. We're told by the Apostle Paul
that with our body, with our flesh,
we'll serve the law of sin, but with our mind, we'll serve the
law of God. And this struggle will go on and on and on and
on. But the great news is there is no condemnation for those
who are in Christ Jesus. That struggle and sometimes whenever
the flesh wins out in that little skirmish, there is no condemnation
to those who are in Christ Jesus because of that. Now that doesn't
say just go out and do whatever you want, send it up and do as
much as you want to do and disregard any of the commands and the admonishments
of the scriptures. But what that does is it gives
the child of grace a peace and a restful mind to know that yes,
while we still live in this body of flesh that continues to war
into sin, war after the spirit of sin, that sin is not gonna
be regarded. because Christ has died for that
and has forgiven us of those sins and that we stand justified
before God. But so often we see that in the
midst of these turmoils, in the midst of this chaos that we experience
in spiritual warfare, at least it's chaos and I feel it, sometimes we get to a place where, you know,
we just want to give up. We just want to quit. We just
want to throw it in, cash it in, throw in the towel, so to
speak. I've been, and I get this way
every year around this time around spring when everything's starting
to come back alive, things are getting, I get antsy. I'm ready
to go. I'm ready to get out. I'm ready
to get away, to go somewhere, to do something, see something
different, experience something new. I don't know, maybe it's
because of coming out of the winter and everything being dead
and gray and all like that and everything coming alive. It just
kind of brings us alive. and everything. I don't know
what that is, but sometimes I get to this place and I was telling
Lori yesterday, we were driving around and we had taken the kids
and went and got a few clothes that they were needing and had
been out and about and everything. I just told Lori, I said, I'm
ready to get away. I'm ready to get out and get
away. I'd like to go somewhere, see
something, do something, just kind of get out of the normal
routine of all of what we're in. And it just gets like that
around this time of year. I don't know. I may be crazy,
but that's how it is. And everything. And sometimes
we get in a rut And then whenever strife or discord or something
happens, we want to throw in the towel and we want to just
get away and go away. Now my going away and getting
away somewhat may be affected by some of that, but most of
it is just kind of something new, break the monotony of everything.
Go see something and spend some time with my family without the
pressures of everything else going on. But it's easy for us
to Give in and just say, I'm not going to do it no more. Matter
of fact, we may have even experienced that sometimes in our life. We've
just said, that's it. I'm just going to go back in
my shell. I'm going to become a recluse. And nobody's going to see me,
hear from me. And we might do that, but for
the child of grace, it's hard for him to stay that way. The
Lord seems to always continues to not only bring us back to
his word, to the ministry, to the gathering of his people and
the fellowship of his people. It just always seems the Lord
kind of continues to bring us to that places. So I'm convinced,
and my experience shows this, that that the Lord brings us
into these times and seasons for his particular purposes for
us. With that being said though,
the Bible still does admonish us as far as in our mind and
in our heart and in our desire, the Bible tells us that we should
endure. And enduring to the end, the
Bible says, and we're gonna read this here in just a minute, Only
the ones who endure to the end will be saved now a lot of people
make that a condition They say you have to endure so that you
will be saved in the end if you don't endure then you're not
going to be saved in the end and so a lot of people like that
like the holiness movements and the things like that, the perfectionist
movements and things like that, they put a high stress on enduring
with good works and if you don't have good works, then you're
not saved and you won't be saved. But those who are saved, they
will continue and endure and not fall and not fail. and get
to this place where they're fully sanctified is what they call
it, fully without sin and can go without
sin. The Bible teaches against that,
teaches that that's not true. That's not the experience of
anybody that has ever walked the face of this earth except
the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, we're told to endure
to the end. Now, what does that mean, to
endure to the end? That means not to give up. We
know that the word endurance means to hold out or to last
a long time. If you're running a marathon,
your goal is to endure the race until you get to the end, whether
it's a 5K, a 3K, whatever it is. Mine would be a .5K and I
would be done. But anyway, my endurance in that
would be very small. Come out here to some marathon
runner, they may be able to run a 10K or whatever. But the word
endurance means to stay in there, to hold in there, to keep going
to the end. And so we're told to endure.
And we're told in the scriptures that some things are going to
endure and some things are not gonna endure. And so I thought
we might look a little bit about not only what the Bible says
about endurance, but what it says will endure. Because I think
that if we're told to endure, and then we also know what will
endure, maybe that might help us, at least in our mindset,
to look at those things that will endure and let those be
priority. And that might help us also in
our endurance, as far as we're concerned, humanly speaking.
Of course, we know that if we endure to the end, it's because
the Holy Spirit has kept us all this time. We know that it is
God that keeps us from falling. We know that it is God that keeps
us from going away from the faith. We can't go away from the faith.
We cannot turn away. That's why it says in John, they
went out from us, but they were not of us. If they were above
us, they would not have. That right there is a promise
of God that those that are His can't be snatched away, whether
it be by someone else or by ourselves. We can't be snatched away from
Him. And so, Let's look a little bit at endurance, Matthew chapter
10. And look with me down at, let's start in verse 16. It says, behold, I send you forth
as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents
and harmless as doves. Now, just a quick backdrop. Remember,
this is Jesus is speaking to the 12 here, okay? He's speaking
to the apostles. He's teaching these men. He's
training these men. He's commanding these men. He's giving them all the things
that they need, because if you remember, they are going to be,
after Jesus' resurrection, they are going to be the foundation
They're the first church. He's training them, teaching
them all things whatsoever he's commanded. The very thing that
he's gonna command them to do once he leaves, and they're gonna
become the foundation as the churches move outside of Jerusalem
into Judea and to Samaria and into the other parts of the world. That's how it was designed by
God, purposed by God to start. The organization of the church
the meeting, the gathering, the local visible body coming together
in service to God and in ministry to God and for God, that began
here. And Christ was teaching these
men what was going to be about. And they were then turned, whenever
Christ was gone, as the church and the foundation was laid,
as this church began to go out and make disciples Bithynia,
Pergama, Thyatira, Philadelphia, Antioch, all these places, as
they begin to spread out from there into Judea and Samaria
and the other parts of the world, they would take this same commands,
these same things, and they would bring that in, and as they made
disciples with the gospel, then they would lay this foundation
that Christ give them for what the church is, how the church
was to function, and also, what we are and how we are to function. And so these things were being
taught to these men. So this is kind of the backdrop of what's
going on here. And so he says, Behold, I send you forth as sheep
in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents
and harmless as doves, but beware of men for they will deliver
you up to the councils and they will scourge you in their synagogues.
And we know that took place. That happened. And it continues
to happen. It's happened all through history.
And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake,
for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. But when they
deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak, for
it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. So here he's saying, hey, listen,
you just keep going and doing what I've told you to do. And
he says, don't worry about the oppression that's going to come
against you. And even what you're going to
have to say, because once you get there, the Holy Spirit is
going to give you the things that you need to say. A lot of
people don't believe that men can stand up and preach and teach
God's word or share and minister God's word without months and
weeks of preparation and all this gathering and outlining
and all this kind of stuff. And I'm not against any of that,
but I'm just saying, we got to get down and see that the basics
that the scripture teaches us is that number one, the Holy
Spirit is our teacher. and that also the Holy Spirit
is the one who prompts us and gives us the things to say. And
a lot of people say, well, that's just foolishness and that's unpreparedness
and, you know, all this kind of stuff. Oh, that's just gonna
be chaos. Well, talk to the Lord. The Lord was the one who said
that it's not chaos. That it's, you know, he's not
the author of chaos. The Bible does say he's, that's
not the author of, he's not the author of chaos. And so I've
seen it time and time again, men that can get up and they
can deliver and minister to the Word of God without all the preparations
and time going in other than studying the Word of God. They
don't have to do all these things. And so here, this is what he's
saying. He said, listen, don't worry about what you're going
to say. Get up there and the Holy Spirit will prompt you and you
will speak what is intended to be spoken. Verse 24, it is not
ye that speak, but the spirit of your father, which speaketh
in you. Now there you go. But unfortunately, what we look
around and see today is a lot of seminaries speaking through
the preacher, a lot of theologians speaking through the preacher,
a lot of commentators speaking through the preacher, a lot of
grandpas and grandmas and aunts and uncles and moms and dads
speaking through the preacher, a lot of education speaking and
academia speaking through the preacher, at the very end, and
now this may just be true for me. It may not be true for everybody
else, and I'm not speaking for a lot of these other men, but
it seems to me, and as I look around, and as I've ministered
in a lot of places before here, and knowing in myself, It's read
this guy, read this guy, read this guy, listen to here, listen
to there, this is my tradition, this is my tradition, get down
and study, put my outline together, get my Bible tool software out
and do this, parse this, do this, all this kind of stuff. And then
whenever I've done all that, five minutes before I've come
to preach, I bow my head and say, Lord, please speak through
me and, you know, Even Spurgeon had a thing, you
know, he said, prepare like everything depended on you and speak like
it didn't. Okay, I mean, those things, you know, that's kind
of ingrained in our mind. And so a lot of times what happens
is we put the Holy Spirit on the back burner. instead of throughout
the week, praying to the spirit, Lord, give me something this
week, give me something this week. What do you want me to
share with your people as I come forward to share and to exercise
that, what you called me to do? I'm sure Larry, he's got several
messages out there. Sometimes things just come to
you at two o'clock in the morning, don't they brother? They just
come to you, the Lord brings things to you. You know, I'll
be sitting doing something completely unrelated, and then all of a
sudden, something comes to my mind, and all of a sudden, I
get on my phone, I start whipping through the scriptures, and I
start looking, and I start like, you know, there seems to be a
pattern of what I'm seeing here, and so I'll study that a little
bit, and okay, yeah, that sounds, and here we are. The Holy Spirit
is there and we disregard that, okay? Now, all that's for free,
that's a side note, it wasn't what I was gonna say, but we
disregard that. Now, to tie that into what I
am gonna say, a lot of times we disregard the Holy Spirit
in the case of endurance as well. We think the endurance is all
on us and how well we can hang in there. But it is about the
Holy Spirit and His work. Verse 21, And the brother shall
deliver up the brother to death and the father the child, and
the children shall rise up against their parents and cause them
to be put to death. And ye shall be, here it is,
and ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake, but he
that endureth to the end shall be saved." So there is a statement
of fact by Jesus that says, he that endureth to the end shall
be saved. He's talking about persecution
coming against these men, and it did come. Did that keep them
from being killed? No. Listen, entering into the
ministry, and I'll just say entering into Christianity, is not a promise
of health and wealth and longevity. Matter of fact, just the opposite
seems to be true. Whenever you enter into Christianity,
whenever you are converted and you become one who not only believes
the gospel, but stands on the gospel, holds to the gospel,
and then defends and takes an offense for the gospel by preaching,
testifying, witnessing, whatever, whenever you do that, More times
than not, you're going to be rejected, dejected, and possibly
hurt. In some instances, you can even
be persecuted for what you believe. And so Jesus is letting these
men know, listen, there's going to be a persecution that comes. But he said, listen, only those
who hold up under all that persecution are gonna be the ones that'll
be saved. That's a statement of fact, not a condition to keep. Jesus is saying the only ones
that's gonna be able to stand when all of the pressure of this
world and Satan and all of his minions and all the worldly people
that are here that are the children of Satan come down on you for
the faith that we have been given in Christ Jesus and the word
of God that we hold to when all that pressure comes, the only
ones that are gonna be able to endure to the end are the ones
who've been saved. The ones who are the elect of
God, who have been born of God, the ones who have been given
life, spiritual life. And as I've mentioned over the
last couple of weeks, whenever you receive that life and you
see truth, you can't unsee it. You can't unbelieve it. You can't
go away from it and say, that's not right. Once that truth is
there, it's truth. Truth cannot be changed. I mean, I hold this little microphone
up and I can believe that it's a box of chocolates all I want,
but that's not gonna change it. The truth is this is a little
microphone recorder. And so once I see that's a microphone
recorder, that being a box of chocolates can't stand anymore.
I'm not gonna open it up and hope to find a little caramel
chocolate in there. I can't unsee the truth. And
so once we see that, only those who have been saved can look
in the face of opposition. and say, I know that's wrong,
no matter how much pressure you give me. I don't know how many
conversations that I've had with other men on different things,
and they may jump you from all sides. There may be four or five
of them, and they may come quoting 15 theologians with them. But the Lord has given you something
in your heart that is testified in Scripture Not by tradition,
and man, that's why I say, you know, if I can't find it here,
it may sound good. It may work well on paper. It
may fall just in line with everything else. And it may even give you
good feelings and fuzzy thoughts and, you know, goosebumps on
your arms. But that don't mean that's the
truth. But whenever I do find that there
is something that is told to me, whether I believe it or not,
if I can find that there is a testimony of that in the scripture, I'm
at the very least going to explore that and see whether that's true
and holds up through the whole testimony of God's word, or whether
that was taken out of context or not. But if it is, then I
have to put away my unbelief Of course, the Holy Spirit's
the one that's doing that. But we put away the unbelief, and
then we trust the scriptures. And so we have to change and
submit to what scripture says. That's the plight of the child
of grace. Constantly learning of our errors,
constantly learning of our inadequacies, constantly learning of our inabilities,
and the Holy Spirit bringing us through those. I would not have known what sin
was if God's word had not told me that that was sin. I was sinning
all along. Didn't know I was sinning, but
now I read God's word. I was believing this all my life. Didn't know that I was blaspheming
the grace of God and rejecting the work of Christ and all that
he had done. until the Word of God was illuminated
and truth came in. Now, that carries us. And now, whenever those times
come, and someone's telling me, oh, it's free will, oh, it's
free will, oh, how can your God, your God is a mean ogre God that
only chooses some and not others. What kind of God is that who,
you know, purposes evil and makes evil? You mean to tell me that
God predestinated the Holocaust? That all these abortions that
God purposed those things to happen? See, that's hard pressure,
isn't it? Or how about this? You mean to
tell me that God predestinated your child to be killed? That's a hard one. Or here's
one that's been done to me by some in my family before. How
can you think that way? You mean to tell me that You're
all right with a God that could predestinate your child to never
be saved? See, those are hard things to
deal with. Isn't it? But brethren, only
those who have been saved can endure such persecution and ridicule
and those things that come against us, no matter how hard they may
be to our flesh, no matter how pressing they may be from the
outside, for us to give in and to turn back. Listen, there's
been several times that I've got my Scriptures out and I've
prayed over these things, especially after sometimes long conversations
with any of my family, loved ones, friends, and things like
that. I go back, Lord, am I really off base here? Have I really
followed after some fanciful thing? Is what I grew up believing
actually true? And I've fallen away from that.
Every time I get back in the scriptures and I study it, I
go back again and look at it. Listen, the doctrines of grace,
I have went over. Not only have I preached through
these messages here three or four times since I've been here,
but in my personal life, gone back over these scriptures over
and over and over again, pouring into them. God's not willing
that any should perish. I have poured over that over
and over. Am I pressing the context? And every time I do it, I come
out of it even more firm that that is the truth. That is the
truth. That is, my brethren, endurance. Endurance, part of endurance,
is speaking the truth, trusting in the Spirit to not only keep
us, but to give us the information that we need, whether it be by
mouth or by thought, to bring us into the truth. He shall lead
you into all truth. He shall be your teacher. He
shall be your, as we see here, your speaker. I don't care if
people wanna call me a robot or not, I don't care about that.
All I know is that it is God who works in us to will and to
do his good pleasure, and I can't do anything. I may devise my
way, but God is directing my steps. Every step is directed
by God. And so whatever I speak, whatever
I say, listen, even if I speak in error, God has purposed that
that error come. The Bible even says that heresies
must come. Why? Because God's purposed them.
Well, I thought God hated heresy. God does hate heresy. But heresies
must come. Why? So that those who are approved
of God might be approved and shown, proven to be who they
are. There is an endurance, but endurance
does not mean lack of persecution or oppression. Endurance doesn't
mean just because somebody endured to the end didn't mean they had
it easy The person that run the 10k race that endured to the
end. Guess what? They still had to
run 10k But even before that they had to train every day. They had to get up Sometimes
in the morning i'm leaving here at five, six o'clock in the morning
to head out for work, and I'll come down and I'll drive down
32nd Street here, I'll see people jogging out here on 32nd Street. At six o'clock in the morning,
I'm thinking to myself, man, you could be in bed sleeping,
and you're out here jogging. And they're probably saying,
well, look at your body. If you want one like mine, you've
got to get out here and jog at six o'clock in the morning. The
reason they endured to the end is what? They had to go through
the trial, the hardships that it takes to get to where you
can endure to the end. Well, brethren, we're going to
go through hardships. We're going to go through trials.
We're going to go through things, but only the ones who have been
saved are going to endure to the end. So this was Jesus' promise
here in Matthew 10, 22. Look, if you would, at 2 Timothy.
2 Timothy. Chapter 2, if you would. Now this is a pastoral letter
from Paul to Timothy. And he says, starting in verse
one, he says, thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace
that is in Christ Jesus. Be strong in the grace that is
in Christ. How do you do that? It's not
our grace, it's God's grace. It's not in us, it's in Christ
Jesus. So how can you tell someone else, be strong in the grace
of Christ? It's kind of like me and Larry's
little thing we do back and forth. How can you tell someone have
a good day? Have a blessed day. Have a good night. You know,
something like that. I mean, you know, it is what
it is. It's vernacular that we use.
But here, Paul is saying, be strong in the grace that is in
Christ Jesus. I mean Timothy could easily have said, thanks
a lot Paul, how do I do that? He's saying trust in the grace
of Christ Jesus. To be strong in the grace of
Christ Jesus is to not only walk in grace, but is also to hope
in grace. to look to grace that only Christ
can give. Because he's fixing to tell him
here to be a good soldier. Well I can only be a good soldier
if Christ gives me the grace to be a good soldier. And I can only do that whenever
he empowers me to do that. But yet Paul admonishes him to
be strong in that. Now, how do I be strong in that?
Well, I look to him, I pray that he gives that to me, and I'm
hoping and looking. All of this, if I want to wrap
it up as tightly as I can into a little ball, is what he's basically
saying is keep looking away from yourself and keep looking to
the one who does it. Keep looking away from you and
keep looking to Christ. See, that's the tenor of all
Scripture. Look away from yourself. Look to Christ. The flesh is
just flesh. It cannot please God. The Spirit
is life. The Spirit is godliness. He's
given us the Spirit to know and to speak and to work. Trust Him. Trust Him. He is before ordained
that you should walk in the good works that He has purposed for
you before the foundation of the world. Trust that He's doing
that. Trust that every sin that you
will ever commit, have committed, are committing, will commit,
they've all been bought by Christ in His blood and been forgiven.
And you will not be held accountable for that. We was talking about
that this morning, me and brother Larry. and what a burden that
lifts off of us to know that yes, the struggle is still there,
the failures will still come, but yet we have no condemnation
to those that are in Christ Jesus. We are being strong in the grace
of Jesus Christ, looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher
of our faith, yes, but also the carrier of us through this life. Our endurance comes by being
strong in grace, and so we look to the one who gives us grace.
Thou, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ
Jesus, and the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses,
the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach
others also. Thou, therefore, endure hardness
as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. So here, Timothy is being told
by the Apostle Paul to endure hardness. Now, there is a specific
tribulation that comes for a pastor as he delivers these things to
the congregation. and specifically in light of
what he's talking here, to other men whom the Lord calls and he
is instructing to teach these faithful men these things. See,
these young men here, as the Lord may, save them and bring
them up, and whatever gifts they may give them. If he gives one
of these young men a gift to be a pastor or a teacher, It is incumbent upon those who
have been given the gift of pastor and teacher to help them and
teach them those things. Just like it is incumbent upon
every one of us men to make sure these younger men are trained
up in how a man is supposed to be. And how all you ladies have
it incumbent upon you to train the younger women how to be godly
women. See, we all have this purpose
together, working together as the bodies fitly joined together,
working out their gifts and stuff. And so one of the things that
is incumbent upon the pastor or the teacher of the church
is that those who the Lord raises up, that they are to take and
when we see that, God's called them, God's gifted them. And
so what do we do? We train those. I'm thankful
that the Lord has raised up many men that has helped me along
the way as I was young and stupid and to take me under their wing
and to do exactly what Paul is telling Timothy to do. Now, a
lot of people, they want to disregard this whole section of Scripture.
They want to just cut this out and say, this doesn't make any
difference, that everybody's the same. Nobody's, you know,
you're making a pope out of somebody. I'm not making a pope out of
nobody. We're just observing the roles that God has given
us. I don't think I'm any better than you guys, but I have been
given a place where God has called me to preach, and you have recognized
that. By recognizing that, you ordained
me to be the minister to you of these things. That doesn't
mean I'm the only voice of these things. Brother Larry is here
to do that. Brother Mark has ministered to
us today these things. These boys have ministered things
as we've allowed them to do that and seen them willing to do those
things. That is how we work together. It's a body. It's a body. And each body has its own parts
that do certain things. This part of my body doesn't
do the same as this part of my body. Thank goodness I have this
part of my body because it can take care of any problem I have
with this part of my body. Sorry, I shouldn't have jested
like that. I didn't mean to bring it to
him. I pray that I wasn't blasphemous to get off into that. My point
here is there is endurance that's going to have for any man here
that the Lord calls into the ministry in this regard that
there are going to be those who are going to be against you.
There are going to be those who disagree with you, that are always
saying bad things against you, assuming you think this or assuming
you are this way, there are going to be times that those things
happen. And Paul here is telling Timothy, listen, I know firsthand.
I know firsthand that there's gonna be these issues. Matter
of fact, Paul did know firsthand. Remember, whenever he was converted
there on the road to Damascus, and the Bible says that he went
up to Arabia for a while, and then whenever he came back down,
listen, he wasn't well-received with everybody. They all said,
wait a minute, that's the guy that was taking us all captive
and killing us. And they were hesitant, but Paul
continued and endured even the hardships that came against him.
And he's telling Timothy, listen, there's going to be hardships.
You're going to endure hardships as the vocal piece in the congregation,
you're gonna experience hardships. But he said, you need to endure
those hardships. How did he put it? As a good
soldier of Jesus Christ. What does a soldier? Why did
he use the term soldier? We sing, you know, onward Christian
soldiers, you know, we sing that song, or we used to sing that
song. We don't really hardly sing it
anymore, but we sing that song. Why did he choose the term soldier? Well, one thing about a soldier
is that a soldier knows that he is in submission to someone
who is over him. A soldier also knows that whenever
an order is given, that he is to comply with that order to
be a faithful soldier. He also knows that those who
are put above him understand things, knows things,
has the insight of things that he might not know, and so that
him being told to do this helps with the greater plan that maybe
only he sees this much, but there's a whole bunch out there. Whenever
you go to war, this little squad is not told what the plan of
everything is, they just know this is your part, go in, get
that done, get out. but that's a greater plan of
the whole entire campaign. And this little soldier don't
need to know what all the other soldiers are going to do. All
he needs to know is what the Lord has told him to do, or the
commander told him to do. Same thing with those who are
the pastors and the teachers. They recognize that they have
a head above them, but they are to be in submission to the head
of the church, who is Christ Jesus. and that he has commands
and that to be a faithful soldier you have to stand on and hold
to those commands irregardless of the hardship that might come.
Sometimes soldiers have to do things that are hard and they
probably wouldn't do that in a normal everyday circumstance,
but they know that because of their place, and because of what's
out there that they don't know, they do what they're told to
do and just trust in the one telling them what to do. Now,
as far as man's regard is concerned, sometimes that fails and that
flops, okay? But whenever we're talking about
the spiritual things, Christ is not gonna give us wrong instructions. And we definitely, whether it
be pastors or teachers or anybody else, We don't see the full picture
of everything. No telling what is going to be
going on down the line. I don't know where my boys are
going to be 30, 40, 50 years from now, whenever I'm dead and
gone, save the Lord coming back. I don't know where that's going
to be. So for me to stand and to be a faithful, good soldier
of Jesus Christ and to stand on the things of God and endure
hardships for their sakes may prove out to be something that
the Lord is doing on down the line that I don't know about.
Can I just cash it in and say, eh, you know, it don't look like
any of my boys are ever gonna be preachers, I don't know, I'm
not gonna. Hey, there was a time that probably
nobody thought I was gonna be a preacher. with my long hair
and all my black wardrobe and heavy metal music and death,
you know, all that kind of stuff. Probably nobody ever thought
I'd be standing here today preaching about the grace of God. I'm sure
a lot of my school friends probably thought, he's a preacher. You never know what the Lord's
going to do. So he's telling us to endure
hardness. So we have our commanded, not
only as people in general to endure to the end, but as leadership
within the fellowship, we also are to endure because listen,
there's going to be tears that come in. They're going to be
even among the sheep. There's going to be times that
we clash a little bit. And so we're told to endure hardness
as a good soldier. No man that warth entangling
himself with the affairs of this life that he may please him who
hath chosen him to be a soldier. By the way, I'll just say that
anybody that stands in this place to do this is someone who God
has chosen, not your mama, not your daddy, not your seminary
professor, that it is a call of God. And I do believe that
God calls men to be there, not women, but men to do that, to
faithfully do that. And I believe he calls men to
do other things. That's just equally as important. It may not be as open and evident,
as something like this, but it's just as important to the body,
because the Bible says that the body, even if that little toe
is gone, it's gonna recognize that, it's gonna know something's
wrong. We know whenever the body isn't
fully working properly. And so we all have our importance,
but here we're told that we need to endure as the leaders. If
God calls you to be a man of ministry, endure hardships. We've mentioned it here before,
Larry probably gets tons of hate mail over the messages that he
puts out. Well, I say tons, probably a
fair amount, because if anybody speaks the truth, there's going
to be a fair amount. Thankfully, we've not been on
Sermon Auto very long. We haven't got any hate mail
yet, but I'm sure it will come. We've had a lot of, I've had
a lot of hate mail across Facebook and things like that. We have
to endure those hardships. When you stand out and speak
the truth that God has given us to speak, then there's gonna
be that hardship. All right, let's look at 2 Timothy
while we're there. Look at verse 10. Chapter 2 and
verse 10, Paul goes on to say, Therefore I endure all things
for the elect's sake, that they may also obtain the salvation
which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. So Paul is basically putting his money where his mouth
is. Paul's telling Timothy to endure as a good soldier, but yet he
himself has been an example of that, right? That's another reason
why it's kind of a, you know, a lot of trepidation whenever
you come before people to preach and to minister the word of God.
A lot of trepidation there, because whenever I'm saying that, I'm
also your servant. I'm also the one that should
be leading by example. And that's what those terms mean
for a pastor and a teacher is to be one who leads by example.
And so without being hypocritical, my life has to back up what I
tell you guys. And so I pray, Lord, make me
an example so that whenever I go to tell them, I'm not telling
them, do as I say, not as I do, type of atmosphere. Now I can
say that to you kids as far as, tell my kids all the time, you
know, you do as I say, not as I do in some things. If I want
to sit around and eat potato chips all afternoon, I can do
that, but you're not going to do that. Anyway, Paul here is
saying I endure. Paul endures all things for the
elect's sake. Have you ever thought about that?
A lot of times whenever we're thinking about endurance and
giving in and all that stuff, it all comes down to a selfish
motivation. Me, me, me, me, me. I feel give
out. But have you ever turned around
and thought there is a world of people out there, and specifically
as we're gathered as a church, there is a body of people that
God has called you to and made you part of, that they too are
seeing these things. And that the endurance under
hardships also is an encouragement to them. I look at some of these
brothers that we're friends with, and I see, you know, Brother
Heath down here, who's, I don't know how old Brother Heath is,
he's probably in his 80s, I would imagine. The years of ministry
that he's had, he's endured some hardships. People not agreeing
with him around the country, you know, saying that he's preaching
the wrong message. Brother Royce, Brother McDole,
Brother, JC and all these men that have been preaching and
and there's others but these are the ones we know around here
People that we know and they've endured hardships I know of specific
instances where attacks have come against not only them but
also upon the church there because of how they stand in the way
that they are and their place in the community and But yet
the Lord has been faithful and they have been kept faithful
in all these years. And that has been an encouragement
to me. And so for the elect's sake,
they've endured hardships. And so for the elect's sake,
we should endure hardships, knowing that there are others of us who
are in the same boat. Brother Larry testifying this
morning of his battle with the flesh this week is an encouragement
to me. Not that he got in a battle in
the flesh, but that the fact remains is that that's my experience
too. I battle with that. and to see
that he felt that conviction, but still there was the battle
that was there. And so whenever I come into that
experience, I recognize and realize we're all in this together and
we're all dependent upon the grace of God. And so we endure
to the end so that others might be encouraged. Larry didn't give
up. When the flesh beat him out this
week, he didn't throw in his hands and give up and say, that's
it. I'm not going back to church. I'm not going to do anything
else. I'm just going to lay down. I'm going to take the advice
of Job's wife. I'm just going to give up, curse God, and die.
No, he's endured to the end. He's enduring to the end. Why? Because he's saved. Those who endure to the end are
saved, will be saved. Paul gives us encouragement here
and gives us an example. He says, therefore I endure all
things for the elect's sake that they may obtain the salvation
which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. It is a fateful
saying, for if we be dead with Him, we shall also live with
Him. If we suffer, we shall also reign
with Him. If we deny Him, He also will
deny us. If we believe not, yet He abideth
faithful, He cannot deny Himself. Of these things, put them in
remembrance, charging them before the Lord that they strive not
about words, to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers.
Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth
not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane
and vain babblings, for they will increase more unto more
ungodliness. That's one of the reasons I've
withdrawn myself a lot on Facebook on stuff is because a lot of
these things are profane and vain babblings. Even though they're
about scripture, they're profane and vain babblings. And exactly
what it says here, they increase into more ungodliness. What I
see happen is it causes schism. It causes men to eat each other,
beat each other up. And it says, and their word will
eat as doth a canker. of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus,
who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection
is past already, and overthrow the faith of some. Nevertheless,
the foundation of God standeth. Sure, having this seal, the Lord
knoweth them that are his, and let everyone that nameth the
name of Christ depart from iniquity." We're called to endure, to the
end. I want to read just a couple
more verses and then we'll take a break here. Look with me back
in Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews 10, look with me at verse
32. It says, But call to remembrance
the former days in which after ye were illuminated, ye endured
a great fight of afflictions. partly while she were made a
gazing stock, both by reproaches and afflictions, and partly while
she became companions of them that were so used." Here again,
we're told that things might not be very good for those who
stand on the truth. It says that we might be made
gazing stocks. Does anybody know what a gazing
stock is? Gazing stocks. Well a gazing
stock is basically make being made a spectacle of Okay, you're
saying I know what you're talking about stocks are the ones that
we put your head in your arms in Who knows that may it may go
back to that because I know that they put it out there for display
on people so You may be you may be right on that I took gazing
stock to be made just being made a spectacle. Someone, you know,
somebody that everybody's just looking at. But you may be right
on that. I'll have to look that up. But
it says here, after ye were illuminated, ye endured. Notice it was after
you were illuminated. So that's why I keep saying,
once you've been given the truth, once the light of Scripture has
been opened, and shed and shone into your heart and into your
mind, you endure the hardship that speaks against that truth
because you know that's truth. Sometimes I can't say things
to my children fully. I can't tell them, you know,
maybe we're over at someone's house and we're eating, and I
tell them that you need to do this, and they want to know why.
I said, I just can't tell you right now. Just trust me. I can't
tell you. Just don't do this. And they
want to know why. They want to know why. They want
to know why. because I've been illuminated to something that
you haven't, just trust me on this, okay? And so I stay firm
and I don't give hint, I don't tell them, but we continue to
do whatever this is. And then afterwards, I go back
and I say, the reason we didn't say that is because of this.
Oh, now I know why you told me not to say that. If we would
have done that, then yeah, that would have been, okay. There's
some illumination that's there. It's kind of like on the Wizard
of Oz, the man behind the curtain. Once you see the man behind the
curtain, you know what all's there. And you can't unlook that.
They couldn't unlook the Wizard of Oz. He was the man cranking
the cranks. He wasn't the man up there in
the big giant head, okay. They couldn't unsee that. The
word of God, whenever it illuminates us, there is an endurance that
the Holy Spirit gives to us because we see it is the truth. And it says, endured a great
fight of afflictions. Again, the Bible is telling us
if you stand in the truth, there's going to be a fight of afflictions. I know there's a lot of people
who claim the name Christ, who call themselves Christians, who
believe that they're in the Lord's churches, but yet they never
see affliction in what they preach and teach. They never see any
hardships. And I say, well, the reason you're
getting hardships is because you're preaching to God that
predestinates all this stuff and chooses some over another.
Well, of course you're going to get hardships and find affliction. It's because you're preaching
an ogre God. No, whenever you preach the God
of the Scriptures, the natural man is always going to be at
enmity with that, no matter how religious they look, no matter
what religious organizations they're a part of. And so here,
again, Paul is telling us, says, while you were made a gazing
stock, both by reproaches and afflictions, and partly whilst
you became companions of them that were so used. Looks like
sometimes even the afflictions are going to come close to home.
Even among our own. But it says here that we, once
we're illuminated, that we endure. We are, it's exemplified that
we endure. Let us be an example to others
that we endure. Now, let's go back to, I tell
you what, while we're back in that vicinity, let's look at
James 1 and verse 12. James 1 and verse 12. It said, Blessed is the man that
endureth temptation. For when he is tried, he shall
receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them
that love him." Okay, so enduring, we're called to endure temptation,
but when we endure temptation, it says, we shall receive the
crown of life, which the Lord has promised them that love him. Now, if you would, turn back
to 2 Timothy 3, and let's read verse 11. 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 11.
I'll start in verse 10 actually it
says, But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life,
purpose, faith, long-suffering. Long-suffering is very close
to or synonymous with endurance. charity, patience, persecutions,
afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at
Lystra, what persecutions I endured, but out of them all the Lord
delivered me." Now, I'll stand for correction here,
brethren, and I'm open for it. And if you have another view,
you can definitely give that to me. In Hebrews, it says that
the reward for enduring temptation and enduring hardship was that
we were given a crown of life. that the Lord, what did it say
exactly there? I'm sorry, back in James. It
said, I don't want to misquote it. Blessed is the man that endures
temptation for when he is tried, or whenever he is, that word
tried, he is proven, or whenever he is afflicted, or whenever
he is tested, he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord
hath promised to them that love him. Now, here in 2 Timothy, it says,
or we could assume that the reward that Paul received as he endured
the persecutions, afflictions that came to him at Antioch,
Iconium, Lystra, was that the Lord delivered me from those
persecutions. I had to go through them, but
it delivered me out of them. I didn't die. I lived through
them all. I made it through. My question is, is the crown
of life God's preserving and sustaining our life in this age? Is the crown of life given to
us that He sustains us and brings us through hardships and allows
us to experience these things and go through them without falling
prey to the persecutors and the afflictors until it sees fit
for Him to let us do so. I mean, we know that there are
martyrs. We know that there are those who aren't given the crown
of life, I guess you could say, forever. But maybe the reward
of life is a, you've endured this hardship and I will bring
you through it to see another day. Live to find
another day is what we used to say on the football field. Whenever we would lose a game,
live to find another day. What does that mean, live to
find another day? Well, we might've lost, we might've experienced
You know, a hardship and a big loss, but we made it through. Nobody got injured, nobody got
killed, nobody got, you know, and we're able to do it another
day. I don't know, but I know one thing. It says right here,
Paul says, he says that he endured these afflictions and hardships
and persecutions and that the Lord delivered him So to me,
it seems that the deliverance was a reward for going through
the persecutions. Now again, brethren, these aren't
conditional things. God isn't telling you, go out
and look for affliction and go through it. And if you go through
that, then I'm gonna give you something for doing a good work
of battling affliction. That's not what he's doing it
because the Lord not only brought the affliction, He's the one
that delivers us and teaches us through the affliction. It's
all of His work as well. But we are told that there is
a reward for afflictions, and again, as I mentioned before,
most of the things that you see in the scripture whenever it
talks about rewards are, I think, and I believe, as I understand
scripture, until the Lord shows me something different, I see
it as rewards that we get in this lifetime. It's not necessarily
all these crowns that are piling up in some bank account in heaven
that one of these days we're gonna get there and God's gonna
come out with this wheelbarrow full of gifts and he's gonna
say, oh, you good and faithful servant, here's all your rewards
for all that you've done for Jesus. That's the mentality that
we have. At least that's how I grew up
believing. I thought that I didn't get all
these rewards. I'm racking up all these rewards in heaven.
The Bible says that we store up treasures in heaven. Is that
what it's talking about? I don't think so. I think that
we receive a lot of these rewards this side of heaven. They're
temporal things that we receive. We receive temporal blessings.
We receive health and life. We receive friendships. We receive
the word of God. We receive the fellowship of
the brethren. Those are things that God gives to us and blesses
us with in this lifetime. Things that we might not have
in the next lifetime that we might have here. And so Paul
said that he endured and the Lord delivered him and he thanked
the Lord or was appreciative of the Lord for bringing him
through the affliction. But again, we see that endurance
was tied to the work of the Lord. We only endure by the work of
the Lord. All right, we'll stop right there.
And we will anybody have anything you'd like to add? And you wrote?
Yes, sir. Amen. Amen. Yeah, it just kind of flabbergasts
me that there's a whole religious sect out there that believes
that we do these things in and of our own self, that we can
attain to these great feats in our own spirit, in our own flesh,
in our own nature. that it isn't God who does that.
And for those who would say, well, no, we recognize that it's
God, then why don't you preach it that way? Why don't you teach
it that way? You're talking about people making
themselves perfect. You're talking about people doing
their own work, and you're castigating others who aren't as high on
the level as you are, as if they can make it faster or slower. See, once you start comparing
holiness between each other, that assumes that we have the
ability to go up or down in our holiness and attain greater heights
to catch up with the next guy. So again, that brethren is all
the work of God in us. If he wills that I have a hundred-fold
faith, then I'll have a hundred-fold faith. But what if he has for
me to be thirty-fold faith? You think I'm going to change
that? You think you're going to change that for me? You think
some preacher is going to make you a It changed from a 30-fold
to a 100-fold. I don't think that either. See,
we're so dependent upon Christ. And that's why I said at the
beginning, we relegate the Holy Spirit to nothing anymore. We
don't look to the Holy Spirit for nothing. We think that it's
all of us. That everything depends upon us. But the Holy Spirit,
I mean, it's almost in most of these circles that the Holy Spirit's
over sitting in the corner with a dunce hat on. You know? He don't do nothing. Oh yeah,
we want the Holy Spirit when it comes to the new birth. We
have to have Him because He blows wherever He lists us. But by
golly, He's not going to blow unless the preacher preaches
it. Then He can blow. He has to blow when the preacher
preaches. Or He has to blow whenever the tract is given. He can't
blow whenever He wants to blow. See, we want to take the Holy
Spirit and say, you don't have any job in the Godhead. You don't have any place in the
Godhead to work in us, to convict us. Oh, that's the preacher's
job too. He's got to get up there and scream about sin for an hour.
That's his job. He don't have any, he don't have
any place in bringing a church together. Oh no, that's the church
down the street. They have to authorize you to
be a church. The Holy Spirit can't do that. See, we just disregard the Holy
Spirit. According to the Word of God,
the Holy Spirit is as much a part of God than the Son and the Father. And all three of those is in
the man Christ Jesus. So whenever we exalt Christ,
and we look to Christ, we look not only to His authority as
the Father, His redemptiveness as the Son, but we also look
at His ongoing work as the Holy Spirit. The three in one. There are three that bear record
in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these
three are one. Christ Jesus is the image, the
express image of the invisible God, and He is the fullness of
that Godhead, and it is to Him that we give credit to, but yet
we want to cut part of that out and say the Holy Spirit, nah,
we don't need Him. Well, if you don't need the Holy
Spirit, you don't need the Word or the Father either. because
they work in connection with each other. One covenant of grace
being outworked by three, the Father, the Word, and the Holy
Spirit through the one Jesus Christ. You deny one, you deny
all of them. And Baptist are bad about disregarding
the Holy Spirit because they think we're going to get charismatic.
You start talking about, oh, preachers don't preach on the
Holy Spirit, people think we're charismatic. Even worse yet, someone might
get up and dance or something, shout or something, say amen.
God forbid somebody say amen, they might be carted to the door.
See, we delegate that away and say we don't need that anymore.
Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox. Anybody else have anything? I
appreciate that word, brother, that is true. I will make a comment on that
though. It is kind of strange. The Lord
shall deliver me from every evil work. Does that mean we are sinlessly
perfect? What is he talking about there?
Or does that mean that anything that the elect does is a work
of God and whatever God's work does in us is not evil? Again, I come back to the fact
that it was a sin for men to kill men without permission by
God, but whenever God said, go kill, God wasn't, his work wasn't
evil. Anyway, all right, we'll end
right there. Let's bow and have a word of
prayer. Father, we thank you for the day. We thank you for your
mercy and grace. We thank you for the Word of
God. Again, that is our rule of faith. And Father, we thank
you for the Holy Spirit who teaches us and guides us and directs
us. Father, we do pray as we've read this morning about endurance.
Father, we pray that you might cause us to endure to the end
as you've promised you would do to your people. Father Lord,
I pray that as hardships and trials and temptations, testings
will come. Father, I pray that you'll give
us much grace through those. And that while yet we know we
will endure to the end because you've promised, Father, may
you give us grace to be a testimony and a witness of Christ through
those hardships and afflictions. And that we might be an example
of grace and not an example of the flesh. Father, so often times
we do fall prey to our flesh and we know that that too is
because you have withheld your grace from us and allowed us
to experience our sinful nature
coming out and the lust of that nature being fulfilled in our
sin. But Father, we pray that You'd
keep us from that. You taught us to pray, deliver
us from evil. We even see here, as Brother
Larry read, an example of asking that You might keep us from every
evil work. Lord, I pray that You would help
us. Lord, I'm so thankful for these
brothers and sisters that you've gathered here today. I thank
you for the things that we learned together, for the witness that
we have between each other, and the love and the bond that you've
created here. And Lord, I thank you for the
safety that we have in coming together and being able to not
only open the word of God and be able to speak truth to one
another, but father, that we're able to open up even our personal
lives and even tell some of the things about ourselves that we
don't like and know that we have brothers and sisters who love
us, will pray for us and understand because we're all in it together.
And so father, we're grateful for that blessing that you've
given us here. And Father, again, we always
thank you for Christ. We thank you for the work of
atonement. We thank you for the saving grace that's been given
to us. And Father, we ask that you might
save all of our friends and our family, Father, that they too
have been found in that covenant of grace and that you too will
bring them in your time to the truth of the gospel and that
they might believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and that they might
glorify and worship Him And Father Lord, we just ask you to be with
us now as we gather around the table and as we eat that you
might bless the food to the nourishment of our bodies. In Jesus name
we pray, Amen.