Man of God - Part 3 - Act Like Men Weekend

Amen. Amen. Well, all God's people said. Amen. It's so good to be with you this weekend. I have had a blast and I really, I don't know where to really start, where to start thanking, right? But first off, I want to just thank God who saved me and who gave me His Holy Spirit and who placed a call upon my life and through the years how He's allowed me to be used of Him and used for His glory and opened doors of utterance, doors where I could go and minister and share His gospel. And as Brother Chris said, through the providence of God, our paths have crossed. And Brother Chris has allowed me to be here this weekend. And I thank you, brother.

Your words were kind and the feeling is mutual. Brother Chris has been a very big encourager to me, especially over the past few years. I feel like any kind of question I may have, any doctrinal direction I need to go, anything affiliated with a church I need to ask, I believe I could go to Brother Chris and seek his wisdom and guidance. And he would provide me with biblical advice and sound advice that I could follow. So for that, I'm grateful and I appreciate you, brother. I appreciate your friendship and you as a church, thank God you're blessed to have a pastor like Brother Chris.

But I told Brother Chris that he's blessed to have a congregation like you. Amen. And man, you guys have been great. I mean, this has been great getting to meet some of the men and some of the young boys and just with you around the table and around a grill and a pavilion. It's just been great. So I thank everybody, man, who has blessed us with food, those who prepared the meals, the ladies that are behind the scenes, just taking care of me, the hotel accommodations, the gift bag, those types of things that mean so much. And I just can't thank you enough.

And I just look forward to spending this day with you and taking part in the celebration of the ordinance of baptism and then also eating with you again and just spending some time with you. So I'm just grateful. I thank God for Brother Travis this morning and the testimony, brother. You bless my heart and I thank God for you and what he's doing in your life, your family's life. And so let's get into the Word this morning. And again, I'm excited. And I just pray that you'll be in prayer for me as we seek to deliver the Word of God to you clearly. And I'm also thankful that my wife was here. She came down yesterday.

I appreciate she's very supportive, praying for me, standing alongside of me. I even got some folks from Trinity Baptist here with me today, Brother Tom Missarian came down. I thank them to death and I thank God for them. But take your Bible, if you would, and turn to 1 Timothy 6. And we're going to begin reading in verse 11. And I'm going to read through verse 16. However, I'm only going to be dealing with verses 12 and 14 primarily this morning. And I'll explain what we're doing as I give introduction in just a moment.

So when you find your place there, if you would, please stand and let's honor and reverence the Word of God this morning and the God of the Word. I'll be reading from a King James that's going to sound a little bit different than what you may be reading from. But just follow along with me the best you can and let God speak to us through his inspired Word and edify us and grow us through what he has to say to us this morning.

Verse 11 says this, "But thou, O man of God, flee these things and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness, fight, the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life wherein to thou art called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate, witnessed a good confession, that thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebucible, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which in his times he shall show who is to bless and only potentate the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see, to whom be honor and power everlasting.

Amen." Would you pray with me this morning? Heavenly Father, I am just so thankful to you, Lord, today for all of your workings in my life and the lives of these men and the life of this church and we're so thankful for your grace and for your mercy. God your love that you bestow upon us each and every day, your forgiveness, Lord, we thank you for that. God thank you so much for this weekend and just the joy that it's brought, the encouragement that it's brought.

God, I was brought in to minister, Lord, to these people and God, but yet you have ministered to me through them and I thank you so much for that and I thank you for this church, for their pastor and for what you're doing in their life. And I pray, God, now that you would just, God, enable me to preach your word. God, I pray as I always pray and always seek to do, you'd help me to handle it correctly, help me to rightly divide it, Lord. And I pray that when all is said and done that the Lord Jesus Christ would receive all the glory and all the praise and all the honor, for he alone is worthy of our praise and honor.

And God, I pray that you would just accomplish your purposes. I know you will. I know you're going to use your word and you're going to fulfill every desire you have and fulfill your will with it and accomplish your purposes with it. I thank you that it's not going to come back void. And so God, I just thank you for that.

And I pray, God, if there's a lost soul in this place, the one that has never repented and trusted you, that through the Holy Spirit is convicting and through the word of God convicting and that you would draw them and point them to Jesus Christ and that today, through you granting them repentance and faith, you would save them, Heavenly Father, begin a new work in their life and God, where they bring glory and honor and praise to you. I do pray for the lost that maybe not in this room, but maybe elsewhere, Lord, today I lift them up to you. I pray, God, you'd bring them to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Pray for other churches.

I pray for our church back in Trinity and Laurel, Lord, we lift up them and the man of God that's preaching there this morning, we pray for him as well. And we ask it in Christ's name. Amen. And we pray for him to be seated. So this weekend, as Brother Keith mentioned, and also let me say this, Brother, I forgot to mention you. I'm so sorry. You've been a blessing to me. The music has been just top shelf. I love that I was telling my wife, Brother, when she came yesterday, I said, "The music is just so good." I said, "It's just doctrinally rich and doctrinally sound. And I thank you for that.

And you've been a blessing to me and I appreciate you and for what you stand for and how you lead in the songs of praise and worship of our Savior." But this weekend, as Brother Keith mentioned, it's a men's weekend. And the theme has been out of 1 Corinthians 16, 13, where the Apostle Paul is challenging the church there to grow up and to act like men, to quit you like men. And he is just encouraging them to grow up. Church was very immature in their everyday behavior, their everyday life. And so he's challenging them. He's commanding them to grow up, to mature, to be men.

And this church has taken that theme and they've applied it to the men in the church and the young boys in the church and with a desire that the men of this church would grow up and mature and be all that God has called them to be. And so we take that today and we realize, as we did yesterday, and we covered a lot of material yesterday and we saw that there's a need for spiritual maturity. And let me just say this too. I know that this weekend is directed to men. However, you are the body of Christ and there's a message for you too in this.

And so while we address men and tell men the things that they need to do, there's also a work that God wants to do in ladies' hearts as well. Amen. And you have to be a mist to not say that. So there's a need for spiritual maturity in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's need for growth in all of our lives. And particularly in men, there's a need in my life and there's a need in every man's life to grow up and to mature. And so a part of that process, we begin to look at verses 11 and 12.

Friday night I talked about being a man of God, that in order to be a man of God, you must be a man who's born of God, a man whose origin begins with God, a man who has been converted to Christ, who has repented of sin and believed the everlasting gospel of Jesus Christ where he died on the cross as the sacrifice for our sin and you trust him and him alone as your Lord and your Savior, you must be converted to Christ in order to be a man of God. And then yesterday we took it further and looking at verse 11, just unpacking those verses that as a man of God, not only are we born of God, but as a man of God, we must flee some things in our life.

There's a lot of dangers out there, right? And there's some things that we need to flee. We talked about fleeing from covetousness. We talked about fleeing from fornication. We talked about fleeing from idolatry. We talked about fleeing from youthful lust. We talked about all of these things, these pitfalls, these traps, these snares that are in our path every single day of our life, these things that are in our life that the culture is bombarding us with, that your television bombards you with, that your computer bombards you with, your cell phone bombards you with, the billboards, all of our culture just bombards us with these things and throws these things at us and they're grabbing at us and they're tugging at us and they're wanting the latch on to us and Paul is saying simply, "Timothy, you've got to flee these things.

You've got to run. You've got to run hard. You've got to run fast and you've got to get away." Then he said, "There are also some things that you must follow after. Not only are we fleeing, but at the same time that we're running from some things, we're running to some things and we're running to things," and he lists six things there. We run to righteousness.

We pursue righteousness being upright before God and before man, godliness, an inner purity of heart, an inner purity of motive, a god-likeness in our own lives, faith, being depending, being solely on God, but also being men who can be dependent upon, men who are faithful in their home, men who are faithful in their church, and men who are faithful in their community. We talked about love and loving the brethren. Jesus said, "By this all men shall know that you're my disciple, that you love the brethren," and that is a testimony of us loving one another.

We talked about patience, endurance, steadfastness, and bearing the weight, bearing the load, carrying the load in the midst of all sorts of trials and adversity and tribulation and persecution, but then we talked about meekness, following after meekness, that is gentleness, power under control, a meek and kind spirit of a man, that meekness does not display weakness. It is showing that there's power under control, that we're gentle and that we're kind, and all of us as men, I believe all of us in here today, maybe you weren't here, we all realize that there's a need in our life for that and more, right, and to grow in those areas.

And so picking up, we saw those two points, a man of God must flee, the second point, a man of God must follow, and I want to give you a third point, and I'll give you a fourth as well, but the third point is this, as a man of God, you must fight. You know, as men we hear the word fight and we're like, "Yeah, that's what we must do, we must fight," but we must make sure that what we're fighting for is the right thing, am I right? So we have to fight, so notice what he says in verse 12.

Paul simply is looking at Timothy, this young pastor, and he says, "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold of eternal life, wherein to thou art called, and you've professed a good profession before many witnesses." So he says fight. And I love to study words, and I want you to think about this word fight just a moment. The Greek word for the word fight is agonizome, and you, as I said yesterday, there were a few words. You hear the English word in that, and here's what he's simply saying, that you must agonize in this Christian life. That is the actual meaning in the Greek, it means to struggle. It means that you must labor fervently.

It means that you must strive, and you must labor, and you must put forth effort, and you must agonize in this Christian life. And it's a word that was used for the athletes who competed in Greek games, that they just didn't hop out there one day to compete in the game, or it's also used of soldiers who were engaged in a battle. They just didn't walk out one day and enter into the battlefield.

There was effort that must be put into the athletic contest, and the preparation for the contest, there was effort and labor and straining and agonizing that must be put into the battle and preparing them to engage in the warfare that they were about to engage in. And so he is saying here to Timothy, "Timothy, you've got to agonize. Timothy, you've got to labor. You've got to struggle. You've got to fight. You've got to exhaust yourself and be diligent in these things." So what is it that we're fighting for? He says it's the good fight of faith. So notice the word faith. We dealt a little bit with that word yesterday.

It's the word pistis in the Greek, and it means in the New Testament it speaks of a conviction or believing in respect to a man's relationship with God. It's the Christian truth. It's the believing and the conviction concerning Christian truth and divine things, things that pertain to God Himself. Now understand what this means. He's not telling Timothy to go fight in order that you may believe. He's telling Timothy, "You fight for what you believe in." You've already been brought into the Christian life. You've been born again. You've made that good profession. You've been called by God and His grace into this Christian life.

Timothy, you must labor in it. You must struggle in it. You must fight in it. You must agonize in it. Not to believe, but you fight not for salvation or for the Christian faith. You fight from it. And he just said, "You've got to put forth this effort and you've got to labor." So therefore we must understand the battle that we're in, the contest that we're in, is one that requires us to put forth an effort. And me and we must do that. We must put forth the effort. We must strive and agonize. James Montgomery Boyce said this. He said, "The Christian life is hard work." Can I get an Amen right there?

He said, "It's hard work." He said, "Even the Bible recognizes it as hard work because it describes the Christian life," listen, "as a battle in 1 Timothy 6.12, as a race in 2 Timothy 4.7, as a sacrifice in Romans 12.1." And he goes on to say, "Bible study is hard. Prayer is hard. Witnessing is hard. Living a holy life in the midst of temptation in this world is extremely difficult, Boyce says." Now, I want to stop the quote right there, but whenever you think about all those things, you think about that as men of God and as the church as a whole. It takes striving and labor, and here's what it takes.

It takes discipline to wake up each and every day and open up your Bible and read it. It takes discipline whenever you don't feel like praying to pray anyway. It takes discipline to seek out the people that God would have you to witness to. It takes discipline to turn your back on temptations and to follow after the righteousness of God. It takes discipline. It takes self-sacrifice. It takes labor. It takes struggle. It takes agonizing at times to accomplish all of those things. Boyce continues by saying this.

He said, "Because of these difficulties, perhaps we can be excused if from time to time in our struggle we tend to regard the Christian life of an example of what Winston Church here promised England at the start of the World War II. He said it was a life that was of blood, sweat, and tears." Now there's joy that comes with the Christian life as well, but here's what Boyce says. Boyce says this, the Christian life is a struggle. He said Jesus promised his followers not a comfortable life but a cross. And you think about that, man.

We're going through the book of Matthew and the gospel that Jesus presents is a lot different than the gospel presented in many churches today. You know, health, wealth, prosperity, all these things. Jesus said, "You've got to take up your cross, deny yourself, and you've got to follow me." That takes labor. That takes struggling. That takes an effort. And so what we have to understand, guys, today and in church today is that the Christian life is not a playground. The Christian life is a battlefield. It is a battlefield.

It is a -- and it's not a contest where we're seeking award, but it's something that requires us to put forth an effort and labor and fight. And notice this, this fight for the faith, fight for what we believe in, fight for the divine things of God, fight for that which brought us in right relationship with Him. He said it's a good fight. He didn't say this is a worthless fight. He didn't say that this fight was a vain fight. He didn't say that this was a no good fight. He said this fight of faith is a good fight. Why? Because the word good means beautiful. It means excellent, precious, admirable.

It means commendable meant all for what it represents. And it's the Lord Jesus Christ, the God of grace and glory, the gospel story that we just sang about in our lifetime, in all of our lifetime, we couldn't put together a story like that. It's only through the genius of God that we have what we have. And it's worth fighting for. It's a commendable fight. It's a good fight, a worthy fight, one to be cherished, one to be prized. So it's not something that as it often does, it's not something that really should weigh us down. Although it does at times, it ought to be something that we ought to gear up for each and every day.

Say, hey, I'm ready to wake up and I'm ready to fight the fight. I'm ready to battle on the battlefield. I'm ready to live for the glory of God. I'm ready to be all that I can be for the Lord Jesus Christ and for His glory. It's a fight. It's a struggle. G.W. Knight said this. He said it's a good fight. Why? Because it's engaged in for God and the gospel. And also because it is inherent to the gospels making its way to an evil world. It's through this fight, through this struggle that we who have been recipients of the gospel take the gospel to a lost and dying world. Because it's a good fight, a fight that is good is a fight that's worth it.

Think about this with me for a moment. You think about, you know, this weekend as guys often do, we talk about a lot of things. We talk about hunting and fishing and sports and things of that nature. The gospel, great things, things that we all love and enjoy. But you know, yesterday I just watched these athletes on the football field. And man, they endure so much. You go watch one of those games. And I mean, they just don't walk up to that game on that Saturday afternoon and just show up and throw on a few pads and get out there. They have prepared for this.

For months and years, years on end developing their body, developing their mindsets and preparing for this particular day. And I think about these guys. They go out there on a given Saturday, a given Sunday. They struggle. They sweat. There's blood. There's bones that are broken and ankles and knees that are strained and tore and other parts of the body that's damaged. And they do that. They get knocked down. They get up and in order to continue the fight, in order to accomplish victory, in order to achieve what they've set as their standard for the year. I think about soldiers who fight for our country. They fight for our freedoms.

They risk their lives for a cause that they have deemed is worth it. And we thank God for them. But think about this, brothers. If athletes and soldiers are willing to risk it all for those such things, if they're willing to struggle and to labor and to fight and to agonize for things and understand me, for things that are temporal, things that are temporal, things that have absolutely no eternal significance, shouldn't we as men of God, shouldn't we as men of God, every Christian alike engage in this good fight of faith? Should we not exercise those spiritual disciplines that enable us to fight?

Shouldn't we wake up daily, ready to accomplish the will of God in our life and eagerly accomplish the will of God in our life, eagerly ready and willing to accept whatever God lays in our path for that day in order that He may be honored and glorified, carrying out those disciplines, seeking to please Him and honor Him. This is simply to me exhorting us. This is what I took from it, really. This is literally simply just exhorting us to pour our heart into the faith. Pour your heart and soul into the faith. Just give it your all. This is my life. I shared in testimony that I realized what my purpose is in life.

And oh man, how I felt so miserably in that, but I realized my purpose in this life is to do the very thing I'm doing this very moment. And I hope that not only just on a Sunday or a Saturday or Friday or a men's weekend, but every day of my life that I contend for the faith and I fight for the faith and I struggle to be all that God would have me to be. Now, I have a twofold application for this this morning. The first is simply saying this to the men, "You know, it's time for us men." And I'm going to be honest, man, you guys have blessed me. And I know, and this is not an occasion for us to say, "Yes, so and so need to hear that.

This will need to hear this." But I want us to all think about it. As men, we must step up to the plate. As men, we must step up to the plate and we must take the lead in our homes and take the lead in our churches because we're in a great battle, a great battle. Now, don't misunderstand, we have some awesome women in our churches. Amen. Man, you know, they used to say behind every great man is a great woman and I amen that. But we have great women in our churches. They're great examples of faithfulness. They're great prayer warriors, they're fervent witnesses.

I could tell you today that if I were to, if somebody were to tell you, say, "Brother who are the prayer warriors in your church?" I'd point you to some women. I'd point you to some women. That's not to say that the men are not praying. That's not to say that I don't pray, that I don't pray. But I'm just telling you, there's women in our church that are fervent prayer warriors. They're women in our churches that are faithful witnesses of the gospel message. And we celebrate that and we praise God for that. But it's often the women who are on the front lines of the battlefield. It's often the women who are doing the agonizing.

It's often the women who are doing the struggling. It's the women who are carrying the load. It's the women who are carrying out all the functions. It's the women who are leading their home spiritually. And they're doing so because the man won't step up. He won't step up to the fight. He won't step up to the plague. He won't throw on the armor. He won't take the plow by the handle. I've been in several churches and I thank God for that, but Kelly and I have talked about this a lot.

One of the things that's a huge disappointment to me when I go into a lot of these churches to preach revivals and I don't know, it's simply God's grace that He allows me to do that. And I'm thankful and enjoy it and praise Him for it. But you know what I see in a lot of these churches? Do you know who I see that's the active ones? It's the women. Here's what's sad to me. Is the pastor often walk me out to the back of those doors? It's the women carrying the Word of God in their hand and the men walk out empty handed. It's the men who don't even have a copy of God's Word with them. You say, "Well, brother, they're on their phone." I get it.

Maybe they are, but I doubt it. I doubt it very seriously. It's the women who are leading the home. It's the women whom the husband will say, "Are we going to church this Sunday?" It's the moms who the kids say, "Mama, we're going to church this Sunday." But it's got to be the men. It's got to be me. I've told brother Chris and I wish I could go back and be a... I told brother Travis this morning that if I could just go back and I can't go back, and I can't live my life through the rear view mirror, I can't do that. But if I could just go back, man, and do some things different with my kids, I would do it.

You've got these young guys, and you've got these young boys, and these young little girls. Man, pour your heart into them and pray over them. I'm talking about fervently pray and cry to God over them now, and set the example, and let them see you reading the Word of God. Read it to them and tell them the old, old story of the Savior who came from glory. Tell them those things and pour in your life. Do not depend upon your wife to do it. Read her as well. Man if I could do some things different. I pray for God's forgiveness and His mercy, and I just trust Him in these things, but I want to just challenge you young men.

I look at you guys and I'm going to just tell you what. Now I'm getting away from my notes, brother Chris. But I'm going to tell you something. I feel like I'm a hundred. It goes by fast. It's going to be here this moment, the next moment they're graduating, they're gone. Pour the gospel, pour into them an example of faithfulness that they can see a man of God who will fight for the faith. A man of God who is fleeing impure things. A man of God who's following after that which is righteous and holy. You pour into them. And secondly, I have another application. I think about this application. I think about this and I kind of have this.

I'm going to kind of come back to this in a moment. But talking about being in the fight and talking about in the struggle, here's where some of you men are at right now. You're tired. You're whipped. And you've almost got to a place where you say I'm going to just give up. I'm going to step aside a moment and maybe you're here this morning and you're discouraged. I don't know about you. Sometimes I get discouraged over my own failures. Sometimes I get discouraged over the failures of other people, the unconcerned of other people.

But simply because of the sacrifice the Lord Jesus Christ has made for me, simply because of what it means to be a follower of Christ, we must continue to fight. We must endure. We can't give up. Listen to these scriptures. 1 Corinthians 1558, Paul says this, "Therefore my beloved brethren be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." Are you always abounding? Or are you stagnant? Are you declining? Or as men are you fighting and struggling and abounding in the work of the Lord? But the Bible says that we have an encouragement that our labor is not in vain when we do that.

The Bible tells us in Galatians 6-9, "And let us not be weary in well doing for in due season we shall reap if we faint not." So continue this. The word fight, let me just go on further. The word fight is in the present tense. I don't know if you get into the tenses of verbs and things of that nature. Man, I used to could care less about English. I mean just get me out of high school, but when God saved me, He gave me a desire to learn things and learn His word and learn what He means and these tenses and moods, they're all important.

And when He says that this word fight is in the present tense, you say, "Well, what's that got to do with this Sunday morning at the end of this man's weekend?" Here's what it means. It means the fight doesn't end. So understand this. It's not a Sunday fight. It's not a men's weekend fight. It's not an October fight. It's not a 2023 fight. It's a lifetime fight that you're engaged in. We have revival meetings and things of that nature. And you know what? Everybody's excited and we go through it and it's excited. And for a week or two, it's excitement and you know what happens? Then it starts to fizzle and fade.

The fight for the good fight of faith is a fight that never ends until Jesus returns. And so therefore, you're always engaged in this fight. A.W. Pink said this, he said, "The life of faith is a fight, a warfare in which there are no furloughs or vacations, and our success therein depends upon renouncing our own strength and counting solely on the sufficiency of Christ's grace." In other words, we have to renounce our own strength, our own discouragements, our own disappointments, our own failures, and we must solely rely on the sufficiency of God's grace in order to continue the fight of faith.

For many, we look at the Christian life as a vacation and not a vocation. We've taken our foot off the gas and we're coasting. We've got it on cruise control. We can't do that. Paul went on in verse 12 to tell Timothy that as he fights the good fight of faith, and notice this, he says, "Lay hold on eternal life." Lay hold on eternal life. Let me tell you what he means right there. Get a grip on it. MacArthur says he means to get a grip on it. It means literally the words, "Lay hold on," means to seize it with your hands. It's in the air. It's imperative, in other words, it's a command that he's telling Timothy to do it and to do it now.

Don't wait. Don't put it up. Don't say, "I'm going to wait until next weekend," or, "I'll wait until the next man's event." But he's saying, "Guys, if you have been called by God's grace to salvation, whom you before many witnesses have made a profession and made a great confession that Christ is your Lord," he said, "now lay hold, seize what's already yours, that eternal life, and live your life with that in view." And press on. Get a grip of it. It means to get a grip on the reality of eternal life so that Paul is telling Timothy that he would live and minister in light of eternity. With eternity in mind, we live our life.

You see, one of the things that happens, and I'm going to get on this a little bit more, but we feel like this is it. This is it. We feel like we're just going to keep going through this routine. No, that's not it, folks. There's coming a day that we're going to be in glory, but it's already ours, and we live this life now. We fight in this life now with that in view, and getting a hold of who we are in Christ now, seizing that. Warren Wiersby said, "What encourages us in the battle?" He asked the question. What encourages us in the battle?

He said, "Because we have eternal life and need to take hold of it and let it work in our experience." So guys, we must flee, we must follow, we must fight a continuous fight, continual labor, striving, struggling for the good fight of faith, for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. But then fourthly, if you notice in verse 14, verse 14, we see that we must finish. And I shared with the guys yesterday that the first three, flee, follow, and fight, are all imperatives. They're all commands that you see right there in the Scripture. However, you don't see the word finish here, but men of God must finish.

The word finish is implied here, as you'll see. It's implied here. He says this in verse, let's read 13, "I give thee charge in the sight of God who quickeneth all things before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession." That. Now, the word that, he's about to tell the purpose in this. He says that thou keep this commandment, keep this commandment without spot, unrebucible until the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. That word keep is a military word, military term, and it means to guard or to garrison.

It means to attend carefully to, it means to take care of, it means to guard these things, to the these things could be, you say, well, it's everything Paul's told Timothy in his letter, but primarily speaking, I believe it's right here what we've been looking at this weekend. These things, these commands, he says that you're to keep them without spot, without blemish. You're to guard them, put a garrison around them. They're important. They're key. And you're to keep these things.

John Stott, I like the way he, his commentary on this portion of the verse, he said that Paul was simply telling Timothy that I charge you to obey your orders without failure or fault. I charge you to obey your orders without failure or fault. He is urging him that you do this, you do this now, you keep it, you do it. It's where you're not, there's no reproach upon you. There's no blame upon you. There's no fault upon you. There's no, there's no failure upon you. You must obey these orders and you must do it now. And I understand something guys. We also, as I brought this out this weekend, this is speaking to us.

So this, these are our orders as well. These are our marching orders. This is our game plan that we must carry out, keep guard, and we must do so to the best of the ability of God as he strengthens us without fault or failure. And I want to say this, these commands is not a buffet. Every man loves a buffet, right? What do you do, what do you do at a buffet? What do you do at a buffet? Don't tell me you commit the sin of gluttony. I already know you do that. But what do you do at a buffet? You walk down that line and you do what? You take what you want. You take what you want.

The thing about this is, is these commands are not buffet style commands. These are not things you say, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to follow after righteousness and godliness, but I'm not going to flee. I'm going to flee, but I have no sense in worrying about meekness and love and faith. I really don't care much about struggling. Brother, he mentioned that word struggle and agonizing. That's not for me. I don't feel like struggling. I don't feel like agonizing. I don't want to labor. Let somebody else do that. Let Brother Chris do that. Let some of the other men do that. Let this guy do this. He doesn't do that. No, no, no.

He's telling every single man that these are things that you must keep, strive to obey without fault or failure. Now notice carefully this. Paul also gave Timothy a timeline. I told you that this was not a fight for 23, a fight for October, a fight for the men's weekend. What I meant by that, as long as we're breathing this air that we're breathing and we're living this life here on this earth, we're going to always be engaged in this, right? But he did give Timothy a timeline. He did give Timothy a timeline that he was to keep these commandments. Notice what it says in verse 14, "Until," do you see that word?

"Until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ." Until. I love that word. Until. We're waiting for the great until. Until. It's a word that refers to a specific time. We don't know what that specific time is. We don't know what day. We don't know what hour. But it's referring to a specific time. And the specific time of this event and the event of this specific time is the appearing of Jesus Christ. The appearing of Jesus Christ is one of many words that is used in the New Testament to describe the return of Christ. And this appearing and this charge to keep these commandments until this time does two things.

The first thing it does, and this is very important, this is very important for us to get this morning, is it reminds us and reminded Timothy that Jesus Christ is returning. We have lost sight of that. And it's also a reminder to Timothy, or could I say it's also motivation for Timothy to keep these commands given to him. You see there's coming a day and what I believe is a near future that the Lord Jesus Christ is going to return. Now I didn't come here to preach on eschatology today or end time things. I don't know what your eschatological views are.

But I'm just going to speak this morning and just tell you I believe that God is about to rapture His church. I believe in the great snatching away of His church, His bride of the living God and the catching away of the saints before that great and terrible tribulation of the Lord. Maybe you agree with that, maybe you don't, I'm not sure. But that's the belief that I have, the conviction I have through scripture. And understand this, when that takes place there will be no need to flee, there will be no need to follow, there will be no need to fight. It's all going to be consummated in Christ Jesus and our gathering together unto Him.

And he's just telling Timothy, he said, "Timothy, until that day you flee son. Until that day you follow. Until that day you keep fighting. And until that day you finish. You make sure you complete it." We need to understand this. Paul would later tell Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, 7 and 8. This great testimony, he's about to be martyred for the faith. This is his last letter he wrote. This is it for this great apostle. And he gives these words to Timothy, he says this, "Man, this is so awesome.

I pray that every man of God, I pray that this could be my testimony on my dying day or when Christ returns." Paul simply says, "I have fought a good fight. I have fought a good fight." And not only that, watch this, I have finished my course. You see Paul was fighting, he was engaged, but now he had come to a place where my course is over, my time on this surface is over. I have finished and I can say this. Paul says, "I kept the faith.

I guarded it, I protected it, I lived for it, I struggled for it, I fought the fight, I have finished the course that God has laid out for me, I've kept the faith." And then he goes on to say this, "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge shall give me," watch this, "at that day, and not to me only, but unto all them that also love his appearing." The Apostle Paul had two days on his calendar marked, two days. This day that he was living in, and you know it, that day, two days.

He had two days marked on his calendar that was guiding him and leading him, directing him, motivating him, challenging him. And those days was the very day in which he was alive because he only knew he didn't know the next day and neither did you. He didn't know if he was going to have the next day and neither did you. So therefore he took that day that he was this day that he was living in and he lived it to the glory of the Lord, to the ability that God enabled him to live it. He lived it and he fought and he kept and he fled and he followed all these things in light of that day. He was looking for that day. He was waiting for that day.

The way he looked, the reason he looked for that day is because it affected the way he lived this day. And I believe, guys, if we all look for that day, it'll change the way you live this day. He that hath his hope, John says, 1 John, he that hath his hope, purifyth himself, even as he is pure. If you live each and every day, as if Christ is coming back today, it's going to change the way you live. It's going to change the way you fight. It's going to change what you flee from. It's going to change what you follow after. I believe that we ought to have those two days marked, amen?

Those two days on our mind, we ought to be anticipating the day of the Lord and we must, listen, we must be motivated to finish. We've got to finish. We don't need to stop. We don't need to stop. We don't want to fail the Lord. And when we do fail him, guess what? Thank God that his grace is sufficient. Thank God when we do fail him, man, we can go to him and confess our sin and he's faithful and just, righteous, who forgive us and cleanses of all of our sin and unrighteousness.

You're going to think I'm crazy when I say this, but Chris told you I was in mental health for 25 years, so that kind of helps you there to know that I really am, right? And Kelly's over there, amen, and right now. But as I thought about this weekend and I got to this point and I hope this application or illustration to help you a little bit, it helped me because it was like, you got to use that to understand what I mean by finish. How many of y'all have ever seen the movie, Rudy? Father, we need to pray for these people because they hadn't seen Rudy. Okay. How many of you have seen Rudy, right? Okay.

The great football story based on a true story. One day I had been thinking about this message and I came in and sat on the couch and cut the television on him. Man, that movie's on. I'm a football fan and I loved it. I mean, this dude, five foot nothing, just nothing athletic, but he had something on the inside. He had a heart and a passion for the game on the inside and his heart's desire was to play football at Notre Dame. Why not Tennessee Volunteers? I don't know, but it was Notre Dame. And so you know the story.

I'm not going to replay the movie to you, but you know that he did everything he possibly could do to get admitted to the college, had to go get some other classes, gotten to the college and wanted to dress out, be on the practice team. But his heart's desire was, watch this, to dress out and play for the University of Notre Dame, not just stand on the sideline, but get in there and play. And y'all know what happened. Every week when that football change of coaching, disappointments, discouragements, this, that and the other things would happen.

He would get beat down, bloodied up, all this sort of stuff, walk around with ice all taped to him in the struggle, in the battle, in the fight, in the agony and trying to achieve the ultimate goal of his life to play for Notre Dame. And then all of a sudden, the change of coaches, that discouragement happened. And one thing after another, each and every week he'd walk up and he'd walk up to that door and he'd look outside that coach's office and he'd look for that dress list and he'd come down and he'd come down to Rudiger and he would not find his name. And each week he'd walk away discouraged, walk away discouraged, walk away discouraged.

Got time for the last game. Looked at the dress list, his name wasn't there. And he was going to quit. He was going to quit. He got some encouragement from a guy he used to work on the grounds crew with, but he was going to quit. He was going to throw it all up. He was going to drop it all. He was going to lay down the pads, lay down the helmet, hang up his cleats. He was done. But guess what? He didn't quit. Guess what? He got to dress out. Guess what? He stood on the sideline, ran through to the cheering crowd of the fighting Irish. Guess what? They put him in and he fulfilled his dream.

As men of God, your dream, your passion, your pursuit should be nothing more than to bring glory to the Lord Jesus Christ. Honor, praise, glory to his name and to live your life each and every day in the battle, in the contest, in the fight so that he'd be glorified. Some of you are at a place where you're almost wanting to quit. Maybe some of you are here today to say, "You know what? That used to be me. I was that. I was on fire. I was in the fight. I was in the middle of it." Can I tell you what you need to do? You need to get back to the plate. You need to throw in your armor. You need to get back in the game. You need to finish.

When Jesus Christ comes back, how is he going to find you? When he comes back, is he going to find you being lazy? Is he going to find you standing on the sideline watching everybody else? Is he going to find you in a trench, cuddled up, huddled up in a fetal position while all the others are out fighting the good fight of faith? Or is he going to find you fighting? Is he going to find you struggling, contending earnestly for the faith? I want to close with just a few things and I'm done. This is application. I'm going to turn it over to Brother Chris. This is a review. Brother guys, I'm asking you this question.

Are there some things in your life you need to be doing different? Are there some things in your life that's not working? I don't mean things that you're trying to do in order to gain the acceptance of God. I'm talking about as being accepted in the beloved already. Are there things in your life, those disciplines that you need to be doing differently? Your Bible study, your prayer life, your worship, your witness, just your everyday walk, how you conduct yourself? Are there some things you need to be fleeing? Some temptations, some trip falls, some hazards? There's some things you need to be following after? Are you in the fight?

And then how will you finish? How are you going to finish? And I want to ask, I'm going to add one more thing. And to me, this is the most important thing of them all because all the others mean nothing if this hasn't, if you can't answer this. And it's simply this, is Jesus Christ the Lord of your life? Is he Lord? You know, everybody wants to talk about Jesus being Savior and he is Savior. And thank God he is a mighty Savior, amen? But you realize he's referred to more as Lord in the New Testament than he ever is Savior? He's to be Lord. You don't receive him as Savior whenever you're 14 and make him Lord when you're 44 or 54.

It doesn't work that way. There's no such thing as a divided Christ. He's not divided. You don't get part of him as Savior and then you quote make him Lord as you get 40, 50, 60 years old and you come back and quote rededicate something I don't even really believe in and then I make him Lord now. No, he's either, when he becomes Savior, he becomes Lord. Whenever he was Lord, he's Savior. You get a completed package. That's why Colossians 2 says you're complete in him. So maybe you're here today and you can't answer that question.

You know the gospel story how the Lord Jesus Christ came to this earth and died on the cross as a substitute for sinners. Christ Jesus came in the world to save sinners and this morning if you've never been in Christ, if you're not in Christ, you are a sinner. You are a sinner and the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is not only a physical death but is an eternal separation from holy God in a place called hell, a place where the attribute of God's wrath is found and it's God's wrath being poured out on unbelieving Christ-rejecting sinners and if you've never trusted Christ as your Lord and Savior, that wrath is on you this morning, on you this morning.

You're condemned this morning but God who is rich in mercy made a way to where you can be reconciled to a holy God and it's through the blood of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And through the convicting of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God that's proclaimed, he will draw you to Jesus and point you to Jesus. And God in his grace and God in his mercy will enable dead men and dead women, he will quicken you and enable you to repent and believe the gospel.

If you've never trusted Christ today, simply realize where you're at as a sinner, lost, separated and cry out for the mercy of God upon your life and just beg God to be the Savior of your life, the Lord of your life and he'll save you. Amen. I want to pray and Brother Chris, I'll turn it over to you. Father, we love you. We thank you for loving us. Thank you so much for your Word and how it speaks, how it convicts.