Man of God - Part 2 - Act Like Men Weekend

And with all God's people said, Amen. Let's try that one more time. All God's people said, Amen. Alright. I heard Vance Savver say one time, he said, "We can go to a ballgame and scream like a bunch of wild Indians and come to church and act like a wooden Indian." Right? So I praise the Lord for that. Thank you, Brother Keith. I don't want to step on your thing there, brother, and I know that'll happen. But thank you so much for the music, the worship, the song, and thank you all again for the meal. Great hamburgers and sausage. It was great. Great fellowship. Great getting to meet you some more and talk with you some more and learn from you.

And Brother Keith said to be edified. So I look forward to being with you today and also looking forward to more. So what I want to ask you to do if you have your Bible with you or your phone or whatever you may have is take it and turn to 1 Timothy chapter 6. 1 Timothy chapter 6. We introduced this last night and basically talked about a man of God. I'm going to mention that in just a few moments. I'm going to mention it again.

One of the things I want to just share with you as far as a background to this, and I know Brother Chris, if you were in church this past Sunday, Brother Chris preached from this text out of 1 Corinthians 16-13, which is the theme of your conference, the theme of your men's weekend of acting like men. I want to just touch on that just a little bit and I can't by no means add to what he's already preached and taught you through that scripture. But maybe you wasn't there last Sunday, I'm not sure. But the whole theme of this, act like men, it comes from Paul mentioning this in 1 Corinthians 16-13 to the church of Corinth.

And you know, in the King James, and I told you I read out of the King James study out of the King James, it literally says quit you like men. Quit you like men. And it's interesting that the first use of that word quit in our Bible, in the King James Bible, is found in 1 Samuel 4-9. And if you know that story, the Philistines have the Ark of the Covenant. They know the wrath of the Hebrews gods. They know how powerful he is. They know how they recognize his strength. They recognize his wrath. And they recognize the fact that judgment could and ultimately would fall on them. And so they begin to get scared, these Philistines, they get scared.

And amongst themselves comes a word, amongst the Philistine people come a word. And the word is simply this, quit you like men or be strong, quit you like men. Quit yourselves like men and fight. And those Philistines are looking at each other and they're saying, hey guys, grow up, be men, be strong and fight. Fight against this army. They ended up beating Israel in that battle. And I think under the same sense of him telling or the Philistines telling each other, you need to grow up and you need to be a man. You need to be strong. The Apostle Paul also uses that in the same sense with the Corinthian church.

He's writing to a church that's divided, that's disgraced, that's discouraged. And he's telling the church at Corinth that the church as a whole needs to grow up. The church as a whole needs to mature. The church as a whole needs to be strong and act like men. And you know, get some guts about them. And I believe in application this morning or this afternoon that I'd be right to say that, and I can only really speak for myself, but I pray I can speak for you as well, that there's still a need in my life for maturity. There's still a need in my life to grow up. There's still a need in my life to put away childish things.

There's still a need in my life to constantly be growing and maturing in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I don't have to tell you this morning the shape of our world. You know what's going on in our world. And you know what the world is telling men that they need to be and what they are and all these sorts of things. I don't have to go into the details about all that. Not only the condition of our own world, but the condition of many churches. And I think there's a day, today is a day that men need to grow up. And men need to be men. And men need to be strong. And men need to take a stand in their home, in their workplace, in their church.

And these men that are followers of God need to be exactly what God's called them to be. And not be what the world tells them to be. Not be conformed to what the world says, but be conformed to what the word says. Amen. And so, remember, as Brother Chris said, the first aspect of being a man of God, if we're going to act like a man, we want to make sure we act like a man of God. You've got to be born again. You've got to have, repent of your sin. And trust in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation. Believe in the gospel message of Him dying for you, in your place, as your substitute.

Pay in your sin fully, and repenting of that sin, and believing upon Him. And so, as I think about that, I pray that you're there. I pray that you have trusted Jesus. I pray that you can say that I'm a child of God, I'm a man of God, I'm pursuing the Lord. But if not, I pray that you would just remember that. And I pray that the Holy Spirit would move in your heart and life, and convict you, and draw you, and point you to Jesus. And you can be saved at a pavilion. Amen. You can be saved at Lake Lincoln. You don't have to be saved at the church, right?

So, I pray that, you know, if you need to talk about that, we'd be happy to talk with you about this. So, in 1 Timothy 6, we saw being a man of God. Let's look at some other things that he says to Timothy. Paul writing to young Timothy. He provides us with some things here in this text that we must act upon, if we're going to be men who are truly men of God, right? I want you to see, I didn't bring this out last night, but in verse 11, he says, "But thou, O man of God." In my Bible, that word "but," there's a conjunction. That little bitty simple word.

And I love to study words, and I'm going to be bringing out several words to you, but it's a conjunction. And he's simply just saying this. He's telling Timothy, it is a word of contrast. He's saying, "You've got to be different." You've got to be different than everybody else. You, as a man of God, have to be different than other men. You've got to be different than the other men at your workplace. You've got to be different than other boys or young men at your school. You've got to be different. You've got to talk different. You've got to act different. You've got to be different from them.

And he's telling him specifically that, "Timothy, you are a young preacher. You've got to be different from all these guys I've been describing in verses 3 through 5, who are teaching corrupt and perverted doctrines and doing all these other things." He said, "Timothy, you're different than they are." He's warning Timothy about those guys. He said, "You're different. Be different, but thou, O man of God." And then he lists some instructions to Timothy. Now, these instructions that he gives to Timothy here, they're imperative verbs. Imperative verbs, and that's important. It's an imperative mood.

The mood is basically the expression, the attitude of the one speaking it. So, in other words, by Paul telling Timothy, he is expressing his mood to Timothy. And it's an imperative mood. It's a command. It's not a choice. It is a command. It is something as one with authority giving to someone under his authority, Paul the age writing to young Timothy and commanding him that if you're going to be a man of God, you've got to carry out these instructions if you're going to be what God would have you to be. Not only does that apply to Timothy, it applies to every one of us here today. You say, "Well, brother, I'm not Timothy. It doesn't matter.

The word of God is written to all of us." That the man of God may be thoroughly equipped, right? And so it's written to us, and these are the same things that you and I have to be obedient to. And so today, and even tomorrow, this is the imperatives that I want us to look at. There's three of them, and then there's a fourth thought that's not really an imperative, but it's just one I want to add in there to close. We're going to look at these three imperatives. As a man of God, we must flee. As a man of God, we must follow. As a man of God, we must fight. And then we're going to also look at the fact of, as a man of God, we've got to finish.

I started getting into all that last night, but I said, "I better hold up." And that's found in verse 14. We'll deal with fight and finish tomorrow. Today I want us to talk about flee and follow. What are some things we need to flee, and then what are some things we need to follow? Okay, so watch this. The man of God, the man who's been born again, converted to Christ, as you live out your Christian life through this sanctification process of God making you more like Christ, more like his son, there are some things that you and I have to flee. We've got to flee. We've got to get away from it, right? Now listen to this word.

The word flee there in the Greek is the Greek word fuego. And it means to run away from, to take flight, to find safety, to shun, or to avoid completely. The Greek word, from that Greek word, we get our English word fugitive from this word. Now what does a fugitive do? A fugitive is somebody who runs away, who tries to escape from something or someone. We hear a fugitive is on the loose from a prison or from a detention center. They're hooked up, they're running away from, they're getting away from that which is held in captive. They're fleeing from that. They're doing their best effort to get away from it.

The same word flee is the same word that's used to describe Joseph. Whenever he took Mary and made Jesus and they fled to Egypt. It's also the same word that John the Baptist used whenever he told people and warned them to flee from the wrath to come. So as men of God there's some things that you and I must diligently escape from. We got to get away from it. We got to run, put forth the effort, take flight, shun it, avoid it, and all cause why? Because we got to protect our own lives. We got to protect ourselves. We got to protect our families, your wives, your kids. Listen folks, you got to protect your testimony.

You can ruin in five minutes what it took you 30 years to build up. In five minutes, less than five minutes. And so we have to guard our testimony and we have to flee from anything that's going to bring reproach upon it. We've got to, and most of all we got to protect the glory of God. We don't want to do anything to shame Him and to bring reproach upon Him. And so we have to flee from these things. I want to just list some things to you that Paul told tells us to flee. And there's a few of them so bear with me and then we're going to talk about some things that were to follow. The first thing Paul mentions that were to flee is covetousness.

You see that in verse 10. He said, "Brother, we ain't got to worry about that. We're not covered in anything. We're just, you know, we're not doing all that." Listen, he wouldn't put it in there if it wasn't a threat to us. He wouldn't be in there if it wasn't an issue, right? And he's telling Paul, in verse 10, he says, he tells Timothy, he says, "For the love of money is the root of all kind of evils." And he says, "While some coveted actor, they have erred from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows." He is warning him about the love and the passion for money.

The affection for silver, the affection for gold, it's literally talking about money loving. It's talking about in the adjective form just simply being covetous. Coveting and loving and just desiring to have and straining after more and more and more money just because you love it is a problem. What stems from that is the root of all sorts of evils, he says. The word root, it means that it brings forth fruit of sorrow.

And in these verses, Paul is telling Timothy, he tells him a little bit earlier, he says, "You know, you got to have godliness with contentment." He said, "It's a great game." And so he's just telling him to be content with what you have. He does not want Timothy as a young man to fall into the trap that others have fallen into and cause them to err from the faith, right? It was the Puritan preacher, Thomas Watson, that said this, he said, "Covetousness is the cancer of the soul." He said, "It's the key which opens the door to further wickedness." So it's dangerous and it's easy to be there.

He wars young pastors, he says, "No, not giving a filthy lucre," what the Bible tells us, "and we have to be careful of those things, not being in it for money and not loving money so much that it consumes us." But then he says a second one. This one may hit a little bit closer to home. Flea fornication. And he said, "Where do you find that, Brother Bill?" In 1 Corinthians 6, 18, Paul tells that church, he says, "Flee fornication." He says, "Every sin that a man does without the body, it is without the body, but he that committed fornication, sineth against his own body." He's telling this church at Corinth to flee fornication, men don't have time to go into the history of what was going on at Corinth, but it was a very perverse, pervasive, sexually immoral city.

I mean, so wicked there, and Paul is warning this church, he is telling them, "You cannot allow the cultural mindset of this city to infiltrate the church." And he wanted them to get away from fornication. And I thought about that as how, as much as Paul wanted that church to get away from to flee the infiltration of the cultural mindset of Corinth, how important it is for us today as men of God to flee the cultural mindset of America. And the world that you and I are in, right, we have to flee from that. Now think about this, the word fornication, flee, remember, shun, take flight, get away from, avoid at all costs fornication.

What does he mean by fornication? It's the Greek word porneia. You can already hear the English word in it. The English word is pornography there. It refers to all forms, all forms of sexual immorality. It includes adultery, it includes premarital sex, homosexuality, as well as other sins. Anything outside the marriage covenant regarding sexual activity is Paul, is what Paul is forbidden. He said, "You have got to get away from it. You have got to flee from it. You cannot let it pierce your soul, your heart. You cannot let it come into your life." All these sins are dangerous.

And I don't know, it's crazy, but just as they were in Corinth, we're bombarded on every side with these temptations. And I know there's no temptation such as common to man. It's not something that, that it's just that, brother Chris endears or I endear, but I think every man is faced with this, man. And godly men especially are bombarded on every side with it because it's always pulling at us. We must run and run fast as far as we can from it. Romans 13, 14 says, "Make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof." I must not be doing anything to feed my flesh to allow it to fulfill the lust that it has, right?

The unredeemed flesh, that's the unreal thing. A brother and I were talking on the way down here, our soul is saved. But your flesh is still unredeemed. And it has longings and desires that are there. And man, those things war against the spirit. Galatians 5 says that the spirit and the flesh, they're contrary to one another. And they war against each other. Romans 7, Paul talks about that great battle, the things I wanted to do, I find myself not doing. The things I don't want to do, that's what I find myself doing. Oh, wretched man that I am, that war that's going on, right?

The unredeemed flesh within you roars and it desires and longs to feast on the sin of fornication just like a lime roars and yearns to feast over its prey. I thought about the fact that the sins of the flesh and fornication, those types of sins of the flesh, man, it's like Potiphar's wife grabbing a young Joseph's coat. They reach out, they grab at your eyes, they grab at your ears, they grab at your heart. And I keep saying here, but mine too, they grab at us and they're reaching for us and they latch hold and we must leave the coat and all and run, man, and flee and get away from it.

We can't, you know, if our eye is fizzled, we got to pluck it out. You know, if our arm, if we got to cut it off, we got to cut ourself off from those things which are allowing us to make provisions for the flesh, which are allowing us to yield to maybe some of these temptations. We must flee. You know, I thought about this. Sometimes instead of fleeing from these things, we flirt with them. You ever thought about that? You ever thought about just flirting with it? Oh, you're not going to go too far. That's your plan. Not going to go too far with it, but I'm going to just, I'm going to court it a little bit. I want to flirt with a little bit.

I want to just see how far I can go with it. And before you know it, man, you're in a trap. Before you know it, you're in a pickle. Before you know it, you're in a bind. And we can't flirt with it. I can't flirt with it. And you got to forsake it. And you got to get rid of it. Maybe you're here today and just maybe, I know you're at a men's conference, but let's just get honest. Maybe you're involved in some of it. Maybe it's affecting your life. Maybe you're entertaining some of these thoughts. God's working in your heart even as we speak, and he's convicting you of these things. And these are things you need to confess and repent of.

And you're thinking maybe yourself, not me, Brother Bill. I'm strong. It's not going to bother me. I'm completely capable of handling this. I'm not going to get trapped up in all this. You think you're safe. But Paul also wrote in 1 Corinthians 10 and 12, "Wherefore let him that thinks he's staying take heed lest he fall." I've seen some strong men spiritually fall. Strong men spiritually fall. And I don't want to be that man. I don't want to be that guy. And I don't want you to be that guy. So therefore we've got to flee, brothers. We've got to run. We've got to... I think about Joe. I love how the King James puts it with Joseph and Paul.

He says he got him out. You've got to get out, right? You've got to flee from him. Then thirdly, not only covetousness and fornication, but then idolatry. Idolatry. And probably what you're thinking about now is, Brother Bill, we're in the United States of America. We don't have idols. You better think again. You better think again. One of my favorite sermons to preach is over in Acts 17 when Paul goes into Athens. And he goes into a city that's only populated by 20,000 people, but there's 30,000 gods in the city. They say it's easier to find a god than you can find a man. And he talks about these gods and these idols.

And I've thought about not only Athenian idolatry, but American idolatry. And I think about this today, you know, to say what is idolatry, Brother Bill? Is it worshiping a Buddha statue? There's a Chinese place in Laurel, whenever... Sometimes during the week I may stop by there. I decided not to go by there here later. They say she's cooking her soup out there in the back of her van behind the shop. So I said, I'm not going to go there for a little while, right? I'm going to flee China walk. So anyway, but... Anyway, they have a little Buddha in there. So is idolatry just worshiping a Buddha?

Is idolatry having a stone or carved object in your pocket that you carry around and pray to? Is that idolatry? The answer to that is yes. But it's farther than that. It's deeper than that. You see, idolatry is the worshiping of an idol. But what is an idol? How would you define that this morning or this evening? What is an idol? Do you have an idol? Are you an idolatry? Now think about this. And an idol is anything, anything that you love more, anything you fear more, or anything you serve more than the Lord. Anything. Do you realize today that your own kids and grandkids and wife can be an idol?

If you love them more, serve them more, and fear them more, do you realize, and I hope none of you are going to shoot me when I say that, and I've been probably the main one, even our sports can become our idol. I mean, where I get more excited about Tennessee football than I do about the scripture, when I get more excited about bass fishing or turkey hunting than I do the scripture, or the Lord, and when my mind is so occupied, when I'm more caught up, I had to remind myself that I've been going to the gym some, and I know you can tell, I know you saw it immediately when I walked up, but I mean, I've been doing that kind of thing and trying to do a little bit better, until I come down here and eat two hamburgers and a bunch of sausage, and my point is this, I have to catch myself, to remind myself not to get caught up in that more than I am.

My own personal study, my own personal growth, my own personal reverence for the Lord and my worship for the Lord. You see, it's anything you serve more, fear more, or love more, than the Lord Jesus. So let me ask you that question again, is there any idols in your life? Any idols in your life? Anything that you're serving more that's consuming you right now? If you say yes to that, then that very thing's an idol. That very thing's an idol. We have to be very careful. You see, we're really an idolatrous people. Here's the deal.

There's nothing wrong with the gym, nothing wrong with hunting, nothing wrong with fishing, nothing wrong with football, nothing wrong with any of those things. They all have their place, but that place can't be first place. That's the deal. It can't be first place. That place is Jesus' place, right? He comes first. He's priority number one. So we flee covetousness, we flee fornication, we flee idolatry, but then there's another one that he talks about when he's writing to Timothy and second Timothy. He talks about flee youthful lust. Youthful lust, you say, what about youthful lust?

Well, Paul is the aged apostle writing to young Timothy, as I said earlier, and he's warning him to flee lustful desires that are characteristic of young people or someone who's not yet maturing. Now listen to this carefully. It would include everything we just mentioned, covetousness, fornication, and idolatry, but it still goes deeper. It would also include pride. Anybody got an issue with pride? You know, you'd still be saved and have pride. I've been guilty of that. Nellacy, envy. Anybody struggle with anger? You've got to flee youthful lust. There's a proverb I like in Proverbs 4, verse 20 through 27.

I think it covers all these really well. This is what Solomon says to his boys. He says, "Attend to my words, incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not depart from your eyes. Keep them in the midst of your heart, for they are alive, for those that find them, and help to all their flesh." And this is what he says. He says, "Keep thy heart with all diligence." Guard it. Guard your heart with all diligence, for out of your heart are the issues of life. And then he says this. "Put away a froward mouth, a perverse lips put far from thee. Let your eyes look right on, your eyelids look straight before thee.

Ponder or consider the path of your feet, and let all your ways be established, and turn not the right hand on the left." And then he simply says these words, "Remove thy foot from evil. Get away from anything evil." So guys, all I'm saying when it comes to being a man of God is we've got to identify those things which are dangerous to us spiritually, which are dangerous to our Christian health, dangerous and which is sin and high treason against the court of heaven. And we've got to flee those things. We can't flirt with them. We've got to get away from them. As men of God, we've got to be men that flee.

You say, "Well, men don't run." No, you run. You've got to run. You've got to flee. You've got to get away from them. But then number two, there are some things we must follow. Some things we must follow. He gives us about six things here that we're to follow after. Now, notice this. The word "follow after" in the ESV, maybe what you're reading, it says "pursue." It carries the idea of seeking after something eagerly and to press on as one who runs a race to reach the goal.

I think about, we've talked a lot about hunting, and think about guys right now as you get ready today's opening day of bow season and you're getting ready for the next couple of months to deer hunt or whatever it may be. Think about how you are pursuing after that animal. I mean, he's playing mind games on you. He's either out there in the mornings, he may be out there in the evening, you don't know when he's going to be there. You're pursuing him. You're watching him on camera. You're feeding him that yellow gold. You're doing everything you can to try to get him because you want that trophy buck. So you're there early in the mornings.

You're there late in the evening. You're smelling all right. You've got all the perfect scents out, all that stuff. You want that animal, right, and you're pursuing him. Well, the same way, Paul tells Timothy, there's some things you need to seek after. You need to run after. You need to pursue. Run after them hard as a runner who desires to reach the goal. You're to run for these things. These things have been called the essence of the Christian character. They're very familiar to the fruit of the Spirit over in Galatians chapter 5. So we've got to pursue these things. Notice what they are. The first one is righteousness.

He says, "Pursue righteousness or follow after righteousness." What is righteousness? It's upright living. It's holy living. He's telling you to live right. He's telling you to live holy. Now think about this. This is a great truth to me. Positionally, you and I in the eyes of God are already holy. Isn't that amazing? Did you realize today that you are a saint of God? Catholicism tells us that you must die and they have to approve you to be a saint and so forth. There's more to that than just what I said.

But you and I, the moment God saves us, the moment we place faith in Christ, we become a saint of God and we become positionally holy in Christ. We're justified immediately in His eyes. And He sees us as He sees the Lord Jesus Christ and He sees us as whole, as perfect, as without reproach, as blameless. He sees us that way. He sees us as absolute righteousness because of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So if I'm positionally holy, I ought to pursue and be striving daily to be practically holy. Practically. If I am who God tells me I am, then I need to be holy in every aspect of my daily living. Upright living.

You know, living right before God, living right before man. It's easy to live right at a pavilion at Lake Lincoln with men. It's easy to live right at Grace Life in the morning, on a Sunday morning. But it's hard to live righteous all the time whenever you're around the public and when you're around unbelievers. But you know what? That's who needs to see it. Right? That's who needs to see the upright living. That's who needs to see that positional, that practical holiness in our life. Not only do they need to see it, but that also is honoring Christ, honoring our Lord. The second thing that we must follow after is godliness.

Now these two words are almost kin to each other, but godliness simply means to live a reverent life. It means God-likeness. It cares an idea of being devout. W.E. Vine said this. It denotes a piety which, characterized by a godly attitude, does that which is well pleasing to him. Dr. John MacArthur said that while righteousness that we just spoke of looks to the outward behavior, godliness has to do with the attitudes and motives of the heart. He said it refers to a reverence from God flowing out of a worshipful heart. Now watch this.

Whenever our actions, our internal actions, our internal motives, and our heart attitude is that of godliness, it affects naturally the righteousness. If it's right on the inside, it's going to affect the outside. You see, outward righteousness is a byproduct of inward godliness. They're going to go together. If I'm not living outwardly righteous, then I'm not living godly either. My motives and my internal attitude is not right. If I'm not living the way that's going to please God and be a testimony to other men and a witness to other men, then something's wrong internally, right?

But if I'm living right with God internally, my attitude and my motives, why am I doing what I do? Then that is naturally going to affect the righteous living that I have before man. But then thirdly, he says this, follow after faith. Now what is faith? You know, we say, well, this conviction of the truth, and it is, and it relates to man's relationship with God the Father. And there's been some that interpret this a couple of ways or really I say interpret, apply it in two different ways. And we're going to do that today. We're going to look at a couple of ways.

It does mean that it refers to our faith and our trust in God and our reliance on Him for salvation. That's what faith is, is we rely solely upon Him. We take Him at His word. We cling to His word. We trust His word and trust who He is and trust Him as Savior. And our faith is the very, is the beginning aspect of salvation. But also it means to trust Him not only in salvation, but in every situation of this life. And I'm going to stop right there. How many of you, and I'm preaching the Brother Beal right now, how many of you trust Him for salvation, but you don't trust Him for the situation, especially in the time of tomorrow?

You trust Him in the greatest, most miraculous thing in the world. He's the Savior of your soul, but you can't trust Him with a decision at work. You can't work with your kids, with issues with your kids. You can't trust Him with things going on in your marriage. And then we start worrying and get consumed by anxiety and all those things. But yet we trust God, but we really have not only a saving faith, but a sustaining faith in everyday life. You see, we have to work on that, right? We make it easy.

We say, "Oh yeah, believe me more, but then don't trust Him for what's going to take place Monday through Saturday." Are any of y'all with me there? But then there's a second aspect of that word. And I think this gets home to a lot of men. I think it's very important. The second way that this word has been used is to refer to personal faithfulness and dependability. That means as men of God, not only are you a man who trusts God and has your faith in God and are trusting Him in everyday life, in situations in life, but you also are a man that can be trusted. You are a man that can be depended upon. You are a man that can be relied upon.

You are a man whose word is His bond. When I grew up, handshakes meant something. When I grew up, if I told Brother Chris, "Chris, I'll meet you at 5.30 to go deer hunting, I'm going to be there at 5.15." My dad would say, "If you tell somebody something, you make sure you fulfill it." We need to meet men that we can be depended upon. Listen to what the proverb says. Proverbs 25.19, this is so good. Confidence in an unfaithful man in a time of trouble is like a broken tooth and a foot out of joint. Any of y'all have a broken tooth or a foot out of joint? In other words, here's what he's saying.

There's no such thing as confidence in an unfaithful man. You've got to have, if you've got to be a man of your word. So I ask you a couple of questions. First off, are you trusting Him in every detail of your life? Secondly, are you a man that can be depended upon? You've got to be a man that's faithful to your Lord first and foremost. A man that's faithful to your wife. Man, you owe your wife faithfulness. You committed to faithfulness. She is your bride. She is, you know, my wife is my best friend. And God helped me never to be in any way unfaithful to her. But to always exemplify faithfulness to her. Now, I'm not perfect, neither is she.

But I want to be faithful to her. I want to be faithful to my kids. They can depend upon me to your work, your vocation, to my church, to the community. And we can go on and on down the line. We just got to be faithful. When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Church of Colossae, he referenced the brethren there and he called them faithful. That's what he called them. He named a couple of those men Apaphras, Tychicus, Onesimus. He listed these men out amongst the faithful. Now, here's a question for you. If the Apostle Paul penned a letter to Grace Life Church of Brookhaven, would your name be in that list of the faithful?

Would your name be in that list as among the faithful brethren? Not just among the saved brethren, that's great. But are you a faithful brethren? Are you a faithful man that can be dependable? Then we see another one, that's love. Love, he says follow after love, follow after faithfulness, follow after godliness, follow after righteousness, follow after love. Love is speaking of sacrificial love. 1 Corinthians 13, I'm not going to go read that text, but 1 Corinthians 13 gives us a very good definition of what that love looks like. It's a godlike love, the agape love that chooses as an act of self sacrifice to serve the recipient.

It's an actual choice, a volitional choice where you choose to sacrifice for the recipient. And the Bible says that we need to be men that are pursuing after, following after love, love that's extended to God, love that's extended to our family, love that's extended to the lost. Man, do you love the lost? We have to be very careful in our churches. We can almost become hostile to some people, depending on what their background may be, what they may look like, what country or culture they're from. You can almost become hostile, but you've got to love them.

I listened to a guy's testimony this week, and he'd come to a morning Bible study or church, and he did so many tours. I can't remember how many he did in Iraq, and he talked about that at times he'd be engaged in battle with them. And he talked about a little hate for Iraqi people. He said, "But God began to work in his heart where he could sit across the table from them and actually love them, because of the condition they were in." Men of God, we've got to be men of love. Somebody says, "That's too soft for a man." No, no, no. That's the character of God, brother, to love. He first loved us, right? Love is not God. God is love.

Love does not define him. God defines love. And so we've got to be men of love. Listen to what John 13, 34 through 35 says, "A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, is I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all men know that you're my disciples if you love love." You want to know how you have this? This man is a cyclo-praculant because he loves one another. "By this, by this love for one another, shall all men know that you are my student, you are my people, you are my follower because you love one another." 1 John 3, 14, we know that we've passed out of death into life because why?

We love the brethren. It's an evidence of salvation, loving the brethren. Then fifthly he says, "Follow after patience." We've got to be following after patience. Now patience is not just sitting there twiddling your thumbs, right? And waiting for the hamburger to cook. Patience means to abide under. That's what it means, abide under. It speaks of endurance and steadfastness. It's the idea of bearing a heavy load in a steadfast manner and under no circumstance whatever giving up or succumbing to the load. You're carrying a heavy load and you've got to, under no circumstance, give up, drop the load. You've got to carry it.

You cannot succumb to the load. Now Paul is writing to Timothy and there's a lot going on with Timothy. A lot of false teachers, a lot of persecution. And he's just telling Timothy, "Timothy, you can't fold. You've got to bear it up. You've got to act like a man. You've got to grow up. You've got to mature. You've got to follow after and pursue this patience. And you cannot give up. Be steadfast, unmovable." William Barclay said that this patience is an unswerving constancy to faith, piety in spite of adversity and suffering.

I often wonder how much we would really put up with it if we went through some of the persecution that other churches go through in other parts of the country and the world. And it's putting up on that. It's endearing it. It's taking it. MacArthur said it does not describe a passive, fatalistic resignation, but a victorious triumphant, unswerving loyalty to the Lord in the midst of trials. No matter what the trial is, you remain faithful to the Lord and you do not swerve or veer from it. We stay on course. We cannot be given in, right?

2 Timothy 2, 3, Paul says, "Thou for endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." 2 Timothy 4, 5, "But watch thou in all things endure afflictions." James 5, 10 and 11, "Take my brethren the prophets who have spoken in the name of the Lord for an example of suffering, affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count them happy or blessed, which endures." So as men of God, we must also be men who patiently endure the hardships, the trials. We must bear the burden. We must set the example. We must take the lead and we must be steadfast. And then lastly, he says, "Follow after meekness." ESV calls it gentleness.

It describes composure, a mild composure, a disposition of mildness, gentleness of spirit. It has been described as composure in the face of wrongs, submissive attitude that's not actively seeking retribution or vengeance in the face of being done wrong. I've always referred to it as having power under control. I think about a big old horse. A big old horse, there to me, an example of gentleness. That big horse is so powerful, it's unbelievable, and that one man that's pulling back on those reins and that bit in that horse's mouth, he has no strength whatsoever that even compares to that horse.

But yet he's controlling that horse, and that horse has power under control. Gentle. And I believe Paul's telling us that we're to be strong, but gentle. I'm not always that way. Maybe you're not always gentle. Paul told Titus, he said, "Speak evil to no man. Don't be brawlers." He said, "But be gentle, showing meekness unto all men." Just because you're gentle and you're mildly composed doesn't mean you're weak. Meekness does not mean weakness, right? So we have to follow all these things. There's six of those things he gave us there. Three of those things, four of those things we've got to flee from. Final application is this.

We have to examine ourselves today and this weekend and seek to discover, "Oh, there's some things we've fled after." So let me ask you this. Having heard that, would you say, "Hey, there's some things I need to be fleeing after." I mean, excuse me, "fleeing from." There's some things I need to be fleeing from. Or, "There's some things, Brother Bill, I need to be following after." As I, over the past several months, been thinking about this weekend and praying about this weekend and studying for this weekend, I was on my lawnmower and you all know how long that's been. I was on it just locking down a few sprigs of it.

It's been so dry at our house, I ain't had to cut grass. I mean, that's been the only good thing about it being dry. I don't want to spend five hours or four hours on a lawnmower. But I was on my mower and I was thinking about this weekend kind of just pondering the thoughts of the text and it hit me. On that mower, it hit me what Paul's saying here. This is what I really believe with all my heart. I believe that Paul is simply telling Timothy this. I think he's simply telling Timothy, "Be like Jesus." I think it comes down to that. I think he is just simply saying, "Be like Jesus." Jesus had none of these things in his life.

You've got to flee from that. Jesus was the perfect example of all these things. He was the complete follow after that. He's just telling us if we want to be men of God, that's our origin. We need to act like men of God with him being our example, with Christ being our example. So you could really ask yourself this. A man of God is someone who is born of God, but a man of God is also a man who lives like God and thinks like God and talks like God and acts like God. Oh, you're not God, but he as your father has set the example for you. My daddy told me growing up, I told you last night my dad was saved when I was four years old.

And he told me last night, I mean he told me as I was growing up, he said, "Anything I can say, anything you hear me say, you can say it. Anything you see me drink, you can drink it. Anywhere you see me go, you can go." And you know what my dad was telling me? I'm your example. You look to me. If you see me do it, you're free to do it. Does that mean it was always right? No. But he's just saying, I'm your example. If I do it, you can do it. If I don't do it, you stay away from it. And in the same sense spiritually, that's what the word of God is to us. It's that example. What it tells us to do, we're to be obedient to it.

What it tells us to not do, we're to be obedient. Amen? Amen.