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276.
Guide us all down.
Please.
Of butterflies.
Oh no, Glenn, thy power of all hands.
Uh-huh.
Man can't cry. It's a vowel and a bowl of a lot of money.
85 73 shrubs down your legs and stuff. Rigid in the end close. We're in rainbows and flowers.
Umm.
No for your life.
So real hard here.
Long period as well And will it be all about?
No, OK. Oh, oh, oh, Oh my greatness that I have a style of God and I know.
Unfortunately.
Our God and our Father, we have your sons. This hymn together.
And we've asked for guidance.
So we go through this barren land.
When we think of how we've done with our character as a Pilgrim, but we own our God, that, uh, that doesn't always characterize us. We just would pray that it would more and now as we would, uh.
Spend this time in my precious word. We just earnestly pray our God that it would be for a profit for each one of us. We thank Thee for the food convenient that we've had before us this day and now as we would.
Uh, open thy word afresh and we just would have prayed that uh, the lips of each one that uh would take part would be anointed.
That is now the the need and the desires of each one here, our God, we just would pray thy blessing upon thy precious word of each of our hearts. We thank thee most of all for that blessed One, our Lord Jesus. And we just would pray that as we consider thy precious word, that, uh will be more and more conformed into the image that blessed one. And so we'd ask this our God giving you thanks in the worthy and the precious names of that blessed one, our Lord Jesus.
Shall we continue with Second Timothy 2 verse 5?
And if a man also strives for masteries, yet is he not crowned except he strives lawfully?
The husbandmen that laborers must first, uh, be partaker of the fruits. Consider what I say, and the Lord give the understanding in all things.
00:05:02
Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead, according to my Gospel, wherein I suffer trouble as an evildoer even unto bonds. But the word of God is not bound. Therefore I endure all things for the elect sake, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal life. Either eternal glory is a faithful 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 will deny us. If we believe not, yet He abides 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 prophets, 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 unto more ungodliness, and their UN and their word will eat as Duff. A canker of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus, who concerning the truth of Erd, saying that the resurrection is passed already, and overthrow the faith of some, nevertheless the foundation of God stand ashore. Having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his, and let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.
But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver.
But also of wood in a verse. And some do honor, and some to dishonor. If any man therefore purge himself from these things, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work. Flea also youthful lusts, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace within the calling the Lord out of a pure heart. But foolish and unlearned questions avoid.
Knowing that they do gender stripes and the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all. Men have to teach patience in meekness, instructing those that oppose themselves, if God for adventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
A lot of cheating going on in this world in sports and you hear sometimes people who have been recognized as world champions and this and that have turned in their.
Metals and they get disqualified because they didn't follow the rules. So the question is not finishing first. It's abiding by how the Lord wants things to be done and then we have a reward.
We live in a world where ethics are accommodated according to the situation, some sometimes called situational ethics.
People think they can vary things according to their thoughts.
They don't allow that in sports world even today. They disqualify like you say, and there's people that have been using.
Enhancing drugs and they get their medals taken back.
If that's the case in the sports world, how much more so when we're dealing with the question of the things that relate to God? You cannot ignore the principles of Scripture and prosper. It doesn't work. You may look like you're getting results.
But if it doesn't conform to the word of God, it will not stand.
Stan was talking about the mega church down in.
Texas, did you say?
16,000 you said yes.
Well I heard over in Korea there's mega churches that get close to half a million people. Incredible. Looks like things are working for them.
You people are so small you think you're right.
Brother, it's not a matter of us being right and they wrong. That's not the point. The point is that we have in our hands the precious, living, abiding word of God and we cannot ignore it and prosper. In the end it stands. It will stand forever. Let's respect it. Young people go by the book. Got it in their hands.
00:10:22
I'd like to connect the verse.
That we have later in the chapter to the few verses that we have just considered.
And the 21St verse speaks of a vessel unto honor sanctified, and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good work. I've just heard that there's no honor, and a victory gained unlawfully. And so.
I'd like to connect that thought of honor with this striving lawfully.
That if we go back to.
Well, let me see it says a vessel under honor. So that's driving lawful, sanctified. Now that makes makes me think of what we talked about without the soldier he wasn't entangled with.
The affairs of this life, he was set apart, committed to his, uh, his. That was his assignment.
Neat for the masters use that makes me think of what we talked about is the faithful as as the faithfulness that we spoke of in verse two. So he's he's.
Under honor sanctified meat, and for every good work prepared unto every good work. And that makes us think of the soldier also the second part of the the the training to go through endurance and suffering.
So we have a connection, I believe between verses 2 Through.
Five and verse 21.
Inverse 6 so I'd like to read it in the.
Translation it says the husband then must labor before partaking of the fruits. I think that's the sense of the Scripture, maybe not so clear in the King James translation. The thought is that you don't get immediate results. Those who are farmers have to prepare the soil. They sow the seed.
They don't sow it one day and go out to reap a harvest the next day. It doesn't happen that way.
It takes a lot of Labor for there to be results.
We are in a culture that wants immediate results.
Well, we have to learn that when God works.
Paul may sow the seed, Apollos may water, but it's God that gives the increase in his own time. So don't expect immediate results from your laborers. It doesn't happen that way. Real, true work of God is going to take time.
Somebody who sows a crop of corn.
I suppose, I don't know, I'm not a farmer, but yeah, what the labor, 5-6 months, I suppose, to get a harvest. It takes time. And so if you're going to go out and sow the seed in the gospel.
It will take time. Sometimes you see souls that get saved when they hear the gospel, but if you talk to them, you'll find that generally speaking, it was somebody that years ago sowed the seed in their heart.
And now you come along and you give them the gospel, perhaps, and they get saved. But it was because of the seed that was sowed way back a long time ago.
Let's not get discouraged if we don't see results. And I think that's the thought, the lesson we learned here with the.
Umm, husbandmen. What we call a farmer, I guess.
This is true not only as as you apply it to laboring with other people or communicating with other people, but also true of ourselves.
Sometimes a person may get away from the Lord. They may still be at the Lord's table, and they may still be going along in an upright manner outwardly, but in their hearts they get away from the Lord, and they lose their joy, and things become dry and routine and ritualistic and A and a.
00:15:19
And a chore? Well then, then the.
Then we might awaken and say, oh, I, I know what the problem is. I've gotten away from the Lord and they start to go back and do the fundamental things that we all were taught are basic things. We're going to be happy and fruitful as Christians, but the joy doesn't come back in one day or two. He does restore our souls, but it's like a person. We may let our physical body, we just may ignore our health. We may allow our weight to balloon into the point where we are are unhealthy.
And uh, etcetera, Well, we just don't go to the gym for a day or two and then expect something radical to happen. And so we need sometimes to humble ourselves as to how we can allow ourselves to get away in our hearts from the Lord and then just put our heads down and diligently seek his face again and go back to the first things, the the simple things, the ABC's.
When I was first saved, the brother who had a trucking business used to always talk about RPMS. You need to say you gotta keep your RPMS up, which he said we're reading and prayer and meditation. If you can't keep those RPMS up, you're just gonna bog down. And you would often remind us of that. And so it's uh, again, it's, umm, getting back is not easy. Uh.
Getting out of shape, it's not easy to get back so that you feel good again and umm, but the Lord will bless, uh, the diligent, uh, labor, whether it's with others in the, in the field around us or within our own souls.
James Chapter 5.
Verse 7.
The patient therefore, brethren.
That verse in Timothy, it certainly.
Speaking of preaching the gospel.
But there's increase in the field, you know, and if you sold Cornwall it it there it is. It starts and then steel starts getting green. But it'll be a while. It's gonna have to grow. And it needs rain, the first rain, so it gets moisture from the ground and all, and then it starts growing and then it needs rain for maturity, so.
Our laborers with one another include that, don't they? We want to see people say we want to see them grow. We want to see them mature and that is part of our dealings with one another and the ones around us and that the subject of our prayers that this would be true of each one of us. If we're not saying that it comes to the Lord to know the Lord is your Savior. If you know him, that should be growing and if you be, if you're growing, that should be maturing until the lightness and fullness of the Lord Jesus.
It's just a worldly saying, I suppose, but even men say that only in the dictionary does success come before work. And so the point is, is that Timothy is going to take work, you're going to have to labor. It's not going to be easy.
This, uh, chapter, this book, as someone was saying earlier this morning, may have been the.
And it ends with this verse. The Lord Jesus Christ be with thy Spirit, grace be with you.
We've been exhorted by older brothers that are now with the Lord. Uh, in the last days we suspect we're in before the Lord comes. Day of weakness and ruin all around.
To be particularly careful about the spirit that we approach one another in and in the assembly and also other Christians that we might meet wherever and Paul exemplified this when he in verse 7 where he says consider what I say the Lord give the understanding in all things.
00:20:10
You connect it with the end of the chapter where he gives a distinct exhortation to Timothy verse 24. The servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all, have to teach, patient in meekness, instructing. And so it just doesn't work to try and force feed someone or ramrod them or twist their arm into accepting the things of God.
But it's beautiful that Paul displayed, even with his son Timothy, that same gracious spirit.
He felt what he was communicating. He had full confidence that what he was communicating was the truth, but he knew it had to be not just the Spirit of God giving out the truth from his lips or from his pen, but it has to be the Spirit of God enabling another to take it in. And so in peace, Paul can say, consider what I say, I put it before you. And then he as it were praised for him says the Lord give the understanding in all things. And you, you just have a helpless feeling when you speak to someone, when you give somebody the gospel, you may sit next to him on a plane or a train and.
It's highly likely you'll never see that person again, ever.
Unless they get saved and you put it before them and you just, you know, you have to leave it there. And whether it's, uh, the truth of the, of the Christian pathway or whether it's the gospel, we need to, uh, to have this spirit, as brothers have said, if the servants are proud and hasty.
Harrogate.
Overly forceful. How shall they know that the Master is meek and lonely?
I like to think of it as verse 7 as a definition of what meditation is really.
Consider what I say and the Lord give thee understanding and I'd like to encourage you young people especially. We all need to be encouraged in it is to.
Take your Bible, read a verse.
Think about it, these things that Paul has been talking about.
Faithful men in verse 2A. Soldier in verse three and four.
An athlete in verse 5A, farmer in verse six. There occupations were all well acquainted with and there's a definite lesson in each one of them to help us to go on in the last times that we're living in.
You've got to learn to get it for yourself, young people. You just can't sit in meetings like this and listen. It's good to sit in meetings and listen.
But you got your Bible in front of you with that brother's talking about. Check it out. Is that what it's saying there?
Think about it.
Consider it and the Lord can give you understanding in all things. I think it is really an important exercise. You don't read the word of God like you read another book.
Skimming it.
You read it and you consider it. It's like, uh, Stan was talking about the clean animals that chew the cud.
Cal grazing and then it sits and lays down under a tree and then it brings up its cut and it's chewing. No wonder it's got good milk to give because it's been chewing the cud. And you and I need to do that too. We know on our when we eat food, naturally speaking, there's a lot of food you don't just swallow down as soon as you put it in your mouth. You keep it in your mouth for a while, you're chewing it up.
That chicken we have this snow is pretty good stuff.
And I think we all enjoyed it. You chewed it for a while, and that's the way it does you good, by chewing it up in the same way with the Word of God. You're not gonna understand it. There's things that are very hard to understand in the Scriptures.
Chew on it. Don't force it if you can't understand it right away.
Consider it. Put it on the back burner.
Think about it a little bit longer. The Lord will give you understanding in all things.
00:25:05
It doesn't give us understanding of all things, but in all things. Is it so? He gives us understanding for what we need to understand.
We all know in part so.
We are showing things to know that we're ignorant here. We're not.
Verse eight of our chapter I think is a very important verse two, brother and I.
I'd like to see if we can get it across to our young, especially it's.
I didn't really.
Know for a long time why this verse? It seems like it's just kind of dropped in there. Didn't know what the purpose was.
Remember, Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel. What does he say that for there. This is what's come to my own soul, and perhaps others can help too. But.
The Apostle Paul was about to pass off the scene.
He was about to go.
It looked like the work he did was a complete failure.
All those in Asia had abandoned him. Here he is in prison. He's going to be taken out according to history.
Had his head taken off.
Doesn't look like.
His life was any success by any practical means.
But he says here he directs his attention to the Lord Jesus.
And was the Lord Jesus any different? Think of the arduous laborers that the Lord Jesus went through and His light at the end of 3 1/2 years of ministry.
How many disciples?
12 Is that all?
Couldn't you do any better than that?
One of them was a trader.
And another one said he would never deny him and he ended up denying him three times and the rest they all took off and ran away.
The alert failed it.
There he died on the cross. It looked like it was complete failure. But brethren, this is the point. Remember, Jesus Christ is the seed of David, raised from the dead according to my gospel.
God's answers and resurrection. Let's not necessarily expect big results down here. It may never happen.
The point is.
God's answer is in resurrection and all. What an answer it was for the Lord Jesus. Oh, what an answer is gonna be for the apostle Paul.
And you and I need to be encouraged.
You don't see much results in being faithful to the Lord and to the Scriptures. Don't get discouraged. Remember Jesus Christ of the seed of David according raised from the dead. According to my gospel, God's answer is in resurrection.
Notice you correctly left that word that out of the verse. You did that on purpose, didn't you breath, Bob? Well, I saw it wasn't in the Derby, but that's right. The point is that we are to remember him.
Not that we have to remember.
Not that we don't remember that he's raised on the debt, but that's not the point. The point is to remember him. And it's a very similar thought. And uh, in Hebrews chapter 12 where it says, uh.
Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself. Let him be worried and faint in your minds. We've been having an exhortation in this chapter about.
Being patient as a labor, uh, as a farmer and, uh, having endurance like a soldier and so on. And now we're given an example. Consider him, remember him. And this is what happened to him. Uh, there the, he was raised from the dead, but.
It is his example that we follow. Not, uh, well, I shouldn't, I should leave it there. The point is to remember him.
00:30:08
There's a verse in the two verses in Isaiah.
To connect together with that, uh, verse and Timothy first one is Isaiah 49 and it, it's speaking prophetically of Israel, but also of the Lord Jesus.
And what they go through in the tribulation and it seems like all that they suffer is, is, uh, just coming for nothing but the Lord. The Lord's own thoughts are echoed in, uh, verse four of Isaiah 49. Then I said, I have labored in vain. I've spent my strength for not and in vain. Yet surely my judgment is with the Lord and my work with my God. Then he come over few chapters. Isaiah 53.
He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied. So there it is in resurrection. The laborer now is a partaker of the fruits.
1St Corinthians 15 verse 19 it says it's in this life only we have hope in Christ. We are of all men most miserable.
Not here it's there, but the next group says but now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept for only a Christian for down here we've missed the point completely. It's in resurrection and it's in eternity and it's in glory that all of this has its true purpose and and future and here it's only a very short period of time.
He sent out a receipt of David in connection with the Kingdom too that everything that the Lord was supposed to have, He didn't have it, but his resurrected from the dead and he's all going to have it. And here's the apostle Paul is a minister. He found the change. Is the Kingdom going to happen? Of course it's going to happen. He's going to rule and the the Saints are going to rule with him. But as you say, it's in resurrection. So I want to come.
That's his time of rejection. Now there's a connected thought with that brother you think of, uh, of, uh, Elijah, you know, after calling.
To go out and answer by fire on Mount Carmel. And that sacrifice was consumed. And all the people say the Lord, he is the gods in contrast with the idols that they had gone after. And then he sees finally that it's really going to come to nothing. And he he runs away and he says I'm not better than my father's. I have thought that God was going to use me in a wonderful way to restore Israel to himself. And it's not going to happen. And he said I'm not better than my father's. And he was cast down.
But you know, he appears on the mount with the Lord. The Lord had said there were those that were standing there that would see the Kingdom. And then they do. They're taken up to that mountain. They see the Lord transfigured who's there in that Kingdom to see it as well. That one who said I'm not better than my father's, everything's come to nothing. He's there to see the one who's going to make it all good.
Connected to verses, just consider what I say the Lord will give you understanding in all things.
Misunderstanding in Christianity that Christianity should be reigning on the earth. Apostle Paul says to the Corinthians that God will allow you to reign, that we reign with you. But that's going to happen when the Lord reigns. Not gonna reign now, it's future to come.
So we need intelligence for our behavior down here. We're trying to change the world to make the Kingdom happen. It's not going to happen that way. It's going to happen when the Lord comes.
He had the hidden key, he had the knowledge of resurrection. And as, uh, David was quoting from First Corinthians 15, he he could see it in the life of Christ as it was revealed to him sown in dishonor.
Raise in glory, sown in weakness, raised in power. You applied that to his own life, into his own ministry, and is here exhorting Timothy to do the same. Be content to be plowed under. Be content to labor. Be content to not see fruit now.
You're surely going to see it in the future. And, uh, in the book of Philippians, he writes in a similar manner. He expresses that he was content to be like a drink offering poured out on the sacrifice of your faith. And that's what he's exhorting Timothy to do in these next couple of verses. I suffer trouble even as an evildoer, even under bonds. That's me. What? The word of God is not found. And he knew that, that, uh, that answering glory.
00:35:14
For him, for others.
Everything redounding to the glory of Christ was going to happen.
You could see that it says of Moses in Hebrews 11. He endured as seeing him who was invisible.
Book of Proverbs says where there is no vision that people cast off restraint or the people faint.
So without that, as a hymn writer puts it, without that view of faith, to look beyond the long dark night and hail the coming day.
We need that. It's not just an optional thing for us to have that forward view to the way things are really going to be when God turns out, uh, turns right side up. All these things that today are upside down.
And the ability by faith to live in some measure in the enjoyment of those things.
Is sustaining to us now.
Take out those 5 loads and two fishes we're speaking about. There's the Apostle Paul.
We can't travel, we can't speak to crowds. He doesn't have the Internet. He can't send out emails on his mailing list. He doesn't have all his communication power. He can write little notes to some of the assemblies there. What has God done to that? God has done that. He's instructed and spoken the truth of what he's revealed to the apostle Paul, to millions and millions and millions, and that's the word of God.
To the Apostle Paul, who faithfully, while imprisoned, had a concern for his brethren and was led to write to them. He didn't lament, and he continued to labor for the Lord and the measure that he could.
And the Lord just made it prosper so much so I was encouraging for us and everyone in our little measure. Whatever we are able to do for the Lord, the Lord will make that prosper in His own time.
You know what you're saying, Bruce, about keeping our eyes on that coming day of glory. And it's so important, isn't it? It seems like Paul had that always before him. Look back to the first chapter of this epistle and then verse eight he says to Timothy.
Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner.
Don't be ashamed, Timothy. Now notice what he says in verse 12.
For the witch gods, I also suffer these things. Nevertheless, I am not ashamed.
For I know whom I have believed.
And am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day, that coming day of glory. We need to really keep that before us, brethren, things in this world are going downhill.
They're going towards their end and I really believe we're getting close.
To the time when things are going to change drastically in this world.
Things are not going to last, young people.
They are going to change.
And for the worst in major form. And we need to set our sights.
On something beyond something that's going to last. Christ and his glory, that coming day of glory.
And live for that day.
So often young people are presented with challenges of making good in this world for themselves.
Material things.
Brethren, materialism has been a tremendous bane of the Christian testimony in our time. It's not having a bunch of stuff that will make you satisfied or happy. It doesn't happen.
Traveling different countries around I I notice young people in the states in Canada are.
Unsatisfied.
Board, they often say.
Why they get so bored? I don't think any any culture has the entertainment as this. This one does is the one we live in the United States.
00:40:10
Millions and billions poured into entertainment.
It's not the answer. God is showing us eternal glory. Didn't it interest you? Are you gonna strive for something down here? It's gonna last a few short years at best and be gone forever.
The Lord challenge our hearts to live for that day might have to suffer down here and fall in these verses, verse nine he says I suffer trouble as an evildoer.
Even unto bonds. But the word of God is not bound. Our brethren in many parts of the world are suffering. Brother, we need to realize that.
Rather than in Muslim countries, in red China.
Are suffering.
We think we can live it up over here, be Christians and live it up.
Something's not right if that's the way we're thinking.
Not only in things too, but man not only likes the material part, but he likes his own glory. And you know, the danger for the believer and the service that the Lord gives him is to try and seek his own glory even in that. But there was only one who really deserved earthly glory and he didn't get it. Peter says God gave him glory, but he's speaking about on the Mount of Transfiguration where it wasn't before this world, it was shut off from the world.
But other than that, he did not get it. Here He was glorified in heaven, and so.
Part of remembering Jesus Christ raised from the dead is Timothy. You'll not get glory down here.
That waits for another day, and the Lord's first. First. There's only a safe place for us, you might say, to get glory or be in glory when the Lord hands out rewards. Not today, when there's no flesh left in US.
Dangerous for us to ever have that here.
All describes himself in another epistle as a nurse.
Or a nursemaid cherishing the believers like a nurse would little children.
But here it's more along the soldier line, his sense of enduring things for the sake of the elect.
I can remember when we were in university and had gospel meetings and Bible meetings and.
We get ever onto the subject of election. It was hard at first for people to take in.
But no one in this room today would be a believer would have laid hold of the hem of his garment.
The Lord didn't actively intercede in your life and say, left to yourself, you're going to continue down the Broad Rd. You're going to end in destruction.
But I'm God.
And it's proper to me, and it falls within my scope of authority and prerogative that I can intercede in your life. And so he puts his finger out and he arrests us, says, no, you're not going down that road.
He made that possible by sending his own son.
And so Peter and John and others in the in the New Testament write of God's prerogative to choose.
Uh, a member of Brother Adrian Roach used to repeat, at least I heard it a number of times from him, a way that was helpful to understand. He would say all may with respect to the gospel of the grace of God. He would say all may, none would, some shall. And then he would develop the scriptures for each of those things.
All may because that's important in accordance with the heart of God. God is not willing that any should perish, but that all men might be saved. And so it says in John 316 that God didn't just love the elect.
It says For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.
But the sobering thing is that such was our nature.
Like the the leopard, we couldn't change our spots.
And a man can't physically pick himself up by his bootstraps. If he's real strong, he'll pull the bootstraps off of his boots, but he can't pick himself up that way. And so left to ourselves, none of us would come. And the Lord Jesus looked out upon men when he was here, and he said you will not come.
00:45:19
At that point God would have been just and righteous, so to speak, to just close up shop.
Said I have stretched forth my hand all the day. So Lord Jesus says prophetically in the psalms, and no man regarded.
But grace were sin abounded, grace did overabound.
And the grace of God comes in and has come in in my life. And many of yours said, OK, you're going to come with me. Some shout, my house shall be filled. And so it is that as Peter writes, so we were elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.
We thought it was all something we did. And if you were older when you were saved, you can remember the, the, the, the moments of decision or agony or going back and forth. Shall I, is this right? Shall I not? And all of that.
But really?
Once you come inside, you realize it was.
He that drew you, and he that drew me.
And so when people hear this reality, this truth, sometimes they say, well, then why preach the gospel if if it's just gonna be, you know, God is going to just choose himself and that's it. There's nothing for us to do.
But this first illustrates that it had the opposite effect upon the apostle Paul. Rather than say, well, God is gonna choose and he's gonna elect, so I can just chill out here. And as as Steven was saying this morning, it's 4:00 time to go home. You know, I'm gonna have, you know, dinner and relax. Paul just the opposite, he said.
There's the elect out there. There are ones that God has his eye on. They must hear the word. And it inspired him it it motivated him to suffer the indignities and the humiliation and eventually even lost his life.
In bringing the Word of God to those whom He knew would be destined to receive them.
I endure all things for the elect's sake, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
Clearly the command is to carry the gospel to every creature, isn't it? God's heart is shown in that He is not willing that any should perish, and so the message is gonna go out in that way. But I love this verse 9. The word of God is not bound. Isn't that beautiful, brethren? They combine the servants of the Lord. They did fall. The word of God is not bound.
And the word continues to go out. They continue to oppose it. They do war in any way they possibly can to.
Get rid of the word of God.
I'm sure many of you heard that the atheist, the French atheist Voltaire, said he was going to do away with the word of God. In one generation it would not exist any longer.
Well, I think you probably heard what happened is very home turned out to be.
The uh, place where the one of the Bible societies function from sending out millions of copies more of the word of God.
Most published book in all time continues. You cannot bind it, you know. Wonderful to send it out to have a part in it, brother.
Alert. Encourage us to have a part in it. It challenges me, frankly, when I hear about the cries for Bibles over in China. You young people.
Have you ever put yourself in the Lord's hands and say, what can I do, Lord, what would you have me to do?
I really think that we need to be exercised. There's a world out there and the Word of God is not bound.
Get it out in any way you possibly can. The Lord can use it.
These verses in this chapter, uh, starting with verse 11, it says this is a faithful saying and it's interesting going through Timothy's 2 epistles.
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How often that is, uh, mentioned? This is a faithful saying. I think it's four or five times anyhow.
We remember the one in First Timothy 1:15, but here is one of the faithful sayings.
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.
A lot to think about in those verses.
Lot to exercise our hearts. It really hits me that one in verse 12. Brethren, if we suffer, we shall also reign with him.
Ask how many want to reign with Jesus. We can open up our hands.
But there's an if there.
If we suffer.
Like to suffer.
You were talking about that brother Michelle.
I don't think any of us naturally speaking like the suffering, but in the world that we live in, it's inevitable. You cannot escape it.
Are you interested in raining in that coming day? There's an if here that we need to pay attention to.
Philippians chapter one.
Verse 29.
Philippians one and 29.
Run to you. It's just giving it on the behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him.
But also to suffer for his sake, having assumed conflict, which he saw in me and now here to be in me, believe we suffer and we reign.
These verses look on to.
Time of raining and, and, uh, when he says in verse 11, it is a faithful saying, it's connected with verse 10, what he suffered for the elect's sake and, uh.
The desire that they would obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
And if we just, uh, refer back to a couple of verses in Romans 6 connection with it.
Romans 6 and verse.
22 But now, being made free from sin and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto holiness and the end.
Everlasting life.
Are the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord?
There's two aspects of eternal life that these verses illustrate. There is the end everlasting life, and then there's the present possession of it. The gift of God is eternal life. So the apostles desire and his labor for the elect's sake is not only to come to Christ, but it's to see them all the way home, you might say, in glory.
As was brought out earlier, preserved.
Spirit, soul and body unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so I think that salvation is that which encompasses not just the salvation of our soul, but the whole man and eternal glory that's connected with it. It looks all the way on to when we're with the Lord. It's future aspect, you might say.
Perhaps we could sing to gather hymn #226.
And then for a little bit.
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Whoa.
I don't have to be able to run.
Whatever the car I get out of my computer.
I know I have to get it. I know how I can see it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
1217.
12 together.
0019.
Four may be the 2nd.
For all of those related issues.
17000.
Well.
I'm proud of my life.
And I'm afraid I don't know.
What would be a?
AM.
Glad that you're waiting for a financial Uh-huh.
3-1, 5.
Chance of eternity and glory in our souls, that in the short time that's left to us while we're here, we might have the joy of anticipation of what it will be to be there. And that in our lives the things that are so unimportant might find their place, and that the blessing of others might be uppermost in the gospel. And for thy people, Lord Jesus, we just pray for strength for Thy preserving care, spirit, soul and body, until the moment that we're there. We ask it, Father, in Jesus name.