My text this morning is a very
familiar text. Here in 2 Timothy chapter 1 and
verse 12. And my prayer this morning is
that of Paul to Timothy. That he'll use this verse of
scripture to persuade you as he did Paul. And as Paul did
Timothy. And as Timothy did those that
he spoke to. That he might persuade you, as
he did him, to commit all things into the hands of our crucified,
buried, and resurrected Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Put it
all in his hands. All of it. Your soul, your job,
your loved ones, put it all in his hands not so much as a decision or
a point of fact but being persuaded to do so because you've been
persuaded and know that he's able to keep that which you committed
unto him against that day. Being persuaded. Faith has three
basic parts. The first part of faith is hearing.
Paul said in Romans 10, 14, how shall they believe in him of
whom they have not heard? Has to be hearing. Has to be
hearing. Somebody will say, well, I heard
directly from the Spirit. Really? Well, there's an interesting
verse of Scripture that you need to study over in Galatians chapter
3. Galatians chapter 3 and verse
2. Paul said, this only would I
learn of you. Received ye the Spirit by the
works of the law? or by the hearing of faith. How did you receive him? He came
to you through the gospel, didn't he? There's a hearing, and here
it's called the hearing of faith. Hearing is strategically connected
with faith. There has to be hearing. I didn't
ask these questions. The Holy Ghost asked that question.
How are you going to believe in him of whom you've not heard?
And then he said, how you gonna hear without a preacher? The spirit of the living God
works in conjunction with the gospel. Well, you're tying up
the spirit of God. You're limiting the power of
the spirit of God. No, I'm not. God's ordained these
things. God set these things into play.
It's not up to me to decide what goes where. It's up to Him. And there must be a hearing,
and that hearing of the person and work of Christ. And then
the second part of faith is knowledge or understanding. Do you understand what you hear?
Do you understand when I talk about that particular redemption,
that eternal election? Do you understand what I'm saying? Or is it a mystery? There has
to be an understanding. Over in Luke chapter 24 and verse
44, he said unto his disciples, he said, these are the words
that I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled
which are written in the law of Moses and in the prophets
and in the Psalms concerning me. Now listen to this. Then
opened he their understanding. that they might understand the
scriptures, that they might understand what he declared to them, that
their understanding. You see, he opened their understanding. That's why their hearts began
to burn within him as he walked with them along the way. He opened
their understanding. This world walks, according to
the scripture, in the vanity of their mind, having their understanding
darkened. They don't understand. They hear
you. You don't have to get louder
and louder and louder. They hear you. It's not a hearing
problem. It's an understanding problem. They walk in a vanity of their
mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from
the life of God, the character of God, the person of God, through
the ignorance that's in them because of the blindness of their
heart. This world revels in religious
superstition. They revel in it. They roll in
it. It's like sweet clover to them. This world delights in
their imaginations and feelings and experiences. They delight
in them. I've seen them shout and run
up and down the aisles. I've seen them start speaking
in gibberish. They delight in their imaginations
and feelings and experience. This world gloats in their intellectualism
and to them All of these things are perfectly logical. But the man of faith has been
given ears to hear and a heart to understand. There has to be
a hearing. And God has to give you an understanding
of what you've heard. That Ethiopian eunuch, he was
riding along in that church. You remember the story. God sent
his messenger out there to him. He didn't know who he was going
to see, and the Ethiopian eunuch didn't know a messenger was coming.
God did that. And then here he comes, and he
got up beside that chariot, and he's running along beside there,
and he looks up, and this Ethiopian eunuch, here he is, this black
man, and he's reading the scrolls, and Philip realizes what it is
he's doing. He's reading these scrolls. And
he said to the man, he said, do you understand what you're
reading? He didn't ask him if he was able
to read. He obviously knew how to read. But he said, do you understand
what you're reading? And he said, how shall I except
some man proclaim it to me? And then thirdly, the third part
of faith is commitment. Those who truly believe, those who truly understand in
their heart, they commit. They commit. What do they commit? Everything.
Everything. Everything they have, everything
they ever hoped to have, everything they are, all of their hopes, They committed all to Him, because
no one else can do Him any good. So those who hear, and those
who understand, and those who believe, commit. Noah moved with fear. He built
that ark that God told him to build. And when the day come,
God said, go in the ark. What did he do? They went in
the ark. They went in the ark. Everybody
that God said to get on the ark, got on the ark. Every one of
them. Now the greatest example of this
is the stewardship of all things given to our Lord by His Father
before the foundation of the world. If you want to see it
in its perfection. In Ephesians 111 it said, in
whom also you have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated
according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after
the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise
of his glory. Now listen, who first trusted
in Christ? Who first trusted in him, his
father? Huh? In whom you also trusted
after you heard. Now let me tell you something,
if God the Father can trust Him with all things, with His own
glory and His own character and His own purpose, if God the Father
can trust Him, let me tell you, you can trust Him. If He can
commit all things, that's what our Lord said, He committed all
things into my hand. Then you can commit all things
into His hands too. Huh? Faith is not just a mental agreement
with doctrine or some acceptance of some facts. It has knowledge
and it has understanding which moves the believer to commit
himself. It moves him to obedience. It
moves him to submission. It moves him to service. It moves
him to trust. It doesn't just leave him sitting.
It moves him. And he moves things that I can't
move. He moves them. How do I know
if God's working in my heart? You'll know when you move. That's
right. Now, you're not going to do that. You're not going to commit yourself
to him until you're persuaded that he's able to keep what you've
committed unto him. Now I'm telling you something's
gonna help you. Because there's gonna come a time when God's
gonna try you. He's gonna take away your child.
He's gonna take away your wife. He's gonna take away your husband.
Something's gonna happen. You're gonna go bankrupt. Economy's
gonna fall. He's gonna try you. He's gonna
try you. And I'm gonna tell you right
now, you're gonna find out when he does, that you don't have
any power over anything. You know when the scripture said
that the believer, we like to talk about strong faith. You
know when the scripture says you're strong? When you're the
weakest. When you're at your weakest,
at your weakest possible point. Then you're strong, because you're
trusting in him. We're not going to do any of
these things until we're persuaded that he's able to keep them.
Now let me give you several things this morning to think about as
we go through this verse. First of all, I want you to see
what prompted Paul to write these things to Timothy. Paul was, by the grace of God,
a great man. A great man. It's hard for me
to even imagine a man of God in our day seeing these little
groups and things and our pitiful efforts to try to preach. And
I look at the Apostle Paul and he just, he was a great man. He was a great man. He was an
apostle by the will of God and a preacher and a teacher of the
Gentiles. He was a writer of the scriptures
by divine revelation and he wrote more books in the Bible than
even Moses. Almost three times as many as
Moses. And Paul was an evangelist, or
what some would call a missionary. And as such, he established churches
all over Asia and all the way around the Mediterranean Sea.
And he didn't have a car, a truck, a plane, or any kind of motorized
vehicle whatsoever. He walked, may have rode a horse, got on a sailboat, that's it. And this man went more places
than we with all of our means of travel have ever even dreamed
of going. He was by the grace of God. Now
I'm not saying that he was something in himself. I'm just saying by
the grace of God, this man Paul was a great man. And he was used
greatly by the Lord. But the greater a man is used
of God, the greater the resistance of his enemies. No other apostle suffered as
much as Paul. He wrote to the Corinthians,
not in pride, but in deep humility. And they pretty much turned their
back on him. Pretty much told him that he
didn't love them and he was responsible for establishing them. and for
them to hear the gospel. And yet evil men had come in
and began to down Paul and to run him into the ground. And
he had to write these things and it embarrassed him to write
these things to him, but in deep humility he did so. And he told them about his sufferings
to prove his love and his calling of God. And listen to what he
says. He said in Labors More abundant. More abundant than
what? Than all the other apostles. I out-labored every one of them.
In stripes, above measure. He was beaten so many times.
In prisons, more frequent. In deaths, oft. You mean they killed him? That's
what it sounds like to me. But they couldn't. They stoned this man. He was
laying there. You know, we don't talk about
stoning when we think about these little gravels out here in the
parking lot just wearing somebody out. We're talking about rocks
this big around. All that a man could lift and
heave. They stoned him. And they took
him outside the city supposing that he was dead. Maybe he was. He was in death's oft. But God didn't let him die. God
raised him back up. Of the Jews, he said, five times
I received 39 stripes. The Jews had this beating, this
whip, this cat-and-iron tail down to a science Forty stripes
would take a man's life. He did. After forty stripes. He said five times I was beaten. Forty stripes saved one. Thirty-nine stripes. Brought
him right up to the edge. On five occasions. Three times, he said, I was beaten
with rods. Once, I was stoned. Three times,
shipwrecked. And perils too numerous to even
mention. Perils of waters, and storms,
and weather, and heat, and cold. He was in a constant state of
weariness, pain, hunger, and thirst, cold, and nakedness.
And he said, besides this, I have the care of all the churches.
He was a great man. But with great men comes great
suffering. I can't even imagine how this
man suffered. And Paul did not want young Timothy
to think that his sufferings were something for them to be
ashamed of. These were things appointed to
him by God, and these were things that he suffered because of what
he preached. And he didn't want him to be
ashamed of them, and not only that, he wanted him and exhorted
him to be partaker of them. He told him in verse 8, he encourages
this young preacher to be a partaker of the afflictions of the gospel
according to the power of God. That is, don't you hesitate to
preach the gospel of God's redeeming grace and cry, come what may. Well, if I preach that to my
uncle, he'll never speak to me again. Let him go. Let him go. My friend, you can't serve Christ
and not suffer persecution in this world. That's an impossibility. Our Lord said, if you were of
the world, the world would love his own. He'd love him. He'd
promote you. But because you're not of the
world, but I've chosen you out of the world, therefore the world
hateth you. They can't stand you. He said, you remember the word
that I said unto you, the servant's not greater than his Lord. If
they persecuted me, they're going to persecute you. And if they
kept my saying, they're going to keep yours. And then listen to this back
in our text here in 2 Timothy 1 verse 7. God has not given
us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind. Sound mind, we understand. And
those who know and understand the gospel, they know that this
world is an evil world, a condemned world, and a world which will
soon be destroyed by fire. Everything you see out here is
temporary. Just temporary. Now let me ask you something.
How do you see your life? How do I see mine? How do you view your life? How
do I view mine? What bearing does your faith
have on how you live? Does it have any bearing at all? Or do I separate my everyday
life from my Sunday life? How do I view my faith in the
way I live? Paul said for me to live is Christ
and to die is gain. All right, here's the second
thing. This is what prompted Paul to write these things to
Timothy. The cause of his suffering. He
begins in verse 9, telling us that God has saved us, called
us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to
his own purpose and grace, giving us in Christ Jesus before the
world began. And then, in God's own time,
He made it manifest by the appearing of our Savior, Jesus Christ,
who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to life
through the gospel. Whereunto I am appointed a preacher,
and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles. God told me
to preach this man and his glory. Preach him. Preach God's purpose
in him. Preach God's glory in him. Preach
salvation for sinners in him. Verse 12, for the which cause
I suffer these things. Now I do not wish to compare
Paul's suffering to ours or his individual calling to ours, but
there's a sense in which we've all been called for the furtherance
of the gospel of Christ. The Church, according to Scripture,
you can read it for yourself over in 1 Timothy 3, verse 15,
is the pillar and ground of the truth. What is? The Church. The Church. What God has committed unto us
is the truth. What God has revealed unto us
is the truth. You shall know the truth, and
the truth shall set you free. Our Lord said, I am the way,
the truth, and the life. When we preach Christ, we're
preaching the truth. We worship God in spirit and
truth. We preach the truth. We sing
the truth. We confess the truth, and we
promote the truth. The church is the pillar and
ground of the truth, and as a public place of worship, we're identified
with the truth we preach. First thing people ask you, where
you go church? Huh? Oh, over there. Huh? And for this cause, we, like
Paul, suffer these things. Here's the third thing. What's
this? Nevertheless. Nevertheless. Even though we
know it'll bring persecution, even though we know it'll be
followed by trouble and division and accusations, nevertheless,
he said, I'm not ashamed. You think Paul knew when he said
some things they gonna lock him up? Absolutely. He knew. Nevertheless. Nevertheless, I'm not ashamed. I've got family members who believe
I've been brainwashed by a cult. They told me that. They said,
we've been checking into this. There's nobody else in the world
preaches what that man preached up there in Asheville. Yeah,
there is. Yeah, there is. They're not on
every corner. Fact is, the scripture said they're
one among a thousand. maybe less than our day. They said he'd been brainwashed
by a cop. I've got children, children,
my own flesh and blood, my children, who are ashamed of what I preach
and ashamed of the way that we conducted ourselves and made
our decisions and moved here and chose this as our way to serve the Lord. They're
ashamed of it. I've got family members who believe
I've got my priorities wrong, preferring the family of God
over my own blood kin. It has to be a false religion. Why,
you prefer to be with them rather than us. Our Lord said, your enemies shall
be they of your own household. Trouble, trouble, trouble. Nevertheless, I'm not ashamed. It's not a shame to leave your
own place when you have nothing in common with anybody and move
to a place where the body of Christ gathers, where you have
everything in common. You don't need to be ashamed
of that. Be not thou therefore ashamed
of the testimony of our Lord, nor me his prisoner. Are you
ashamed when you testify to me? Do you have to put your head
down like that and kind of cover your mouth when you talk? Or
can you just tell them? Just tell them. Nevertheless, in spite of the
divisions and persecutions and accusations I'm not ashamed. Now if these things come about
by personal and character flaws, things that justify divisions,
things that needlessly cause division, then you need to be
ashamed. But if these things accompany
you because of your belief in Christ, there's no shame attached. All right, here's the fourth
thing. He says, nevertheless, now what's this? For, for. The word for at the beginning
of a sentence indicates a reason, a basis of what's about to be
said. Here's the foundation of it.
For, that is for this reason, I know whom I have believed. That's why I'm not ashamed. I
know whom I have believed. Do you? Do I? I know whom I have believed.
I hear people say all the time, it's not what you believe, it's
whom you believe. I'd be real careful about saying
that if I was you. That statement troubles me. This
whole religious world believes in Jesus. You can't hardly find
one that don't. They all believe in Jesus. They
all call him Lord, they all call him Christ. Some even call him
the Lord Jesus Christ. Are they saved? Paul said there would would be
men who would preach another Jesus, another gospel by another spirit. So how can you tell which person
it is that you believe? In 2 John 9 it said, whosoever
transgresseth And abideth not in the doctrine
of Christ. What's that about? That tells
you who he is. Tells you why he came. Tells
you what he did. Tells you where he's at. That's
the gospel. Now, whosoever abideth not in
the doctrine of Christ, he don't know God. He doesn't have God.
He that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father
and the Son. There's no way you can tell the
difference between a false Christ and the real Christ except by
the doctrine of Christ. Is that right? The doctrine of Christ tells
us who He is. He's the eternal Son of God.
He's the Son of God. He's the Son of Man through whom
sinners were chosen and made provision for. He's the Sovereign
Mediator. He's the only Mediator between
God and men. He's the Angel of the Covenant. He's the Covenant Charity, the
object of every promise that God has ever given. Well, you
say, now wait a minute. Scripture said God made promise
to Abraham. Scripture never said that. The
Scripture said that the promises of God was made to Abraham and
his seed. He saith not unto seeds as of
many, but as of one, and thy seed, which is Christ. It was
given to Abraham through Christ. And that's how we get it too. All God's promises, Paul said,
in Christ are yea and amen. That babe born in Bethlehem's
manger is the eternal Word made flesh. That man who came from
Nazareth to Galilee is a representative man. He's a federal head. What he does, he does for his
people, and what he does is to fulfill the redemptive will of
God. I come not to do my own will,
but the will of Him that sent me. And this is the will of Him
that sent me, that of all which He hath given me I should lose
nothing. I'm going to raise it up at the last day. You see what Paul's saying? I
know whom I have believed. Do you? Or are you just trusting in Jesus? You see why that statement troubles
me when people say, well, you just believe on Jesus. Ah,
there's a little more to it than that. A little more to it. God
said, this man, this Jesus of Nazareth, God said, he bears
my name. And anybody that'll call on my
name gonna be saved. I don't care who he is. None
other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be
saved. He bears that name. Now how you gonna call on that
name until you hear it? Huh? I just believe in Jesus. Boy, I tell you what, that don't
give me any hope. When people tell me that, I ask
them, which one? Which one? Mexico's full of them. Only they pronounce it down there,
Jesus. It wasn't just any old Jesus
that Paul believed in. It was Jesus of Nazareth, the
Son of God. The Son of Man, the Redeemer,
the Lamb of God, and this Jesus, having risen from the dead, ascended
back into glory, triumphant, salvation accomplished in Him. He reigns in glory over creation,
providence, and salvation, and He reigns over the dead and the
living. And he's the head of all principality and power, and
we're complete in him. If you have him, if you have
this Jesus, you've got everything God has for sinners. Other foundation, Paul said,
can no man lay than that which is laid in Christ the Lord. And
I'm gonna tell you something. I'm not ashamed to structure
my life to determine my place of residence or preach the gospel,
which I know is offensive to men and will bring division.
And I'm not ashamed of whatever men do or say because of it,
for I know whom I have believed. And there's nothing I want more
than for you to be able to say that. As soon as you do, you'll commit.
Isn't that how it is? As soon as you know him. In whom you also believed after
you heard. The gospel of your salvation. Then here's the fifth thing,
and I'll quit. And. And. See that word, and? And
what? And am persuaded that he's able
to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day. my message, my service, my hope,
my soul, my reputation, and my eternal destination, all in his
hands. I committed it to him because
I know he's the only one able. I'm persuaded. What persuaded you? The preaching
of the gospel, for one. The word of God, primarily. I'm persuaded. I found out who
he is. Find out who he is, you'll be
persuaded. Who he is? This is the son of God. This
is the son of God. He's victorious. He's the king. Whatsoever he will, that's what
he does. Whatsoever he pleased to do,
that's what he does. He does it in the depths, and
he does it in glory, and he does it in our everyday lives. He's
the king. Boy, I tell you, when you find
that out, when you find that out, you'll commit yourself to
him. Nothing else will do it. If I
thought something else would do it, I'd do it. I'd do whatever
it is. But this is what it takes. This is what it takes. The gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ.