Fundamental Christian Attitudes: Strength, Part 2

Paul, simply defining for us the character of Christian living that falls into this paradigm of of warfare. We are engaged as soldiers. Point being should be surprised if it isn't easy. You shouldn't be surprised and retreat if there's conflict. This is more in your soldier have in common an outgoing personality, physical strength, but sharp mind or is it something else.

Is it more about how they stand strong in the face of disappointment, trial or temptation to compromise biblical truth today on grace to you. John MacArthur shows you that if you are in Christ God has given you what you need to exercise that kind of strength to be a spiritually stable person. Others can look to in hard times. John is helping you develop that kind of character we call it spiritual courage as he continues his series titled the courageous Christian so follow along now and here's John MacArthur with today's lesson or calls us to be strong, not weak but strong to be able to contend with difficulty faced challenges meet the enemy bear the pain suffer the hardship uphold what is right press to the goal and never compromise our convictions never equivocate on those things that are true and precious. We are not to be weak in vacillating and defeated all of that, but rather to take the risk face the attack face the difficulty triumphantly. Never ever letting go of our faith of our convictions or of our duties and responsibilities to find out how that sort of practically fleshes out were looking here in second Timothy chapter 2 need to turn to it were gonna spend the rest of our time looking at these very important verses at the beginning of this chapter.

If you want to be strong. First of all, he says you must be a teacher you must be a teacher is in the process of teaching that you become strong and not just talking about preachers and evangelists and missionaries and Bible teachers and talk about all Christians need to be teaching you need to be studying, you need to be learning and to be passing it on. Maybe it's in a Sunday school class with the children are young people. Maybe it's in a discipleship relationship with an individual. Maybe it's in a Bible study with your own family or friends of whatever it might be on a campus or at work or someplace you need to be teaching. That's how you become strong because you're forced to come into the word of God clarified in your own mind come to your convictions and then to raise your level of accountability as you pass it on. That is the crucial crucial feature that begins Paul's imagery of a strong Christian. Now let's look at the second one in verses three and four. If you're going to be a strong Christian you have to see yourself not only as a teacher with a responsibility to past truth on but you have to see yourself as a soldier as a soldier. In other words, you gotta go into this whole operation of the Christian life.

Realizing that this is a warfare that this is a serious warfare that you are engaged in a great ideological battle and so he says to Timothy in verses three and four suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. Now Paul simply defining for us the character of Christian living that falls into this the sort of paradigm of of warfare.

We are engaged as soldiers. Point being, shouldn't be surprised if it is an easy, you shouldn't be surprised and retreat if there's conflict. This is war and your soldier. Now there are number of things about being a soldier that Paul marks out the first one is suffer hardship. It is not going to be easy. It's not a cakewalk is not a waltz in the park. It's not a skip down the lane. This is war and war and war means hardship. It means difficulty. It means a high expenditure of energy. It means a lot of risk. It means that you sort of put your life on the line. It means that you must establish your priorities, it means watchfulness.

It means that you look about understanding that your enemy is a roaring lion going around seeking whom he may devour. It means understanding the schemes of Satan, the wiles of the devil and his cunning craftiness. It means being able to do to exercise discernment as it says in the first Thessalonians 5. We need to be exposed obviously to prophesying's to prophetic utterance or the preaching and we need to listen to that and not despise it but immediately after that, he says exercise discernment examine everything carefully. You are a watchman you're on reconnaissance you're sorting out what's coming at you. Everything demands the vigilance and the energy in the risk and the trauma and the difficulty of engaging yourself in a real war. Now there are some other things about soldiering not only in verse three. Does he say suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. But in verse four he adds a couple of other components is a certain measure of suffering. Obviously, in soldiering, but secondly, there is another element to this, he says, no soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life. Another thing that is true about soldiering is that it's a full-time job. When the soldier is called in the military is to cut all the cords you that this is not part-time service.

This is not being in the reserves where you may or Mont may not ever be called up to active duty.

When one goes into the military cuts all the cords, all the relationship she goes to a different place. He lives in a different environment. He dresses differently. He is under the authority and control of people who are all in charge of him every waking moment of his life. He takes orders from beginning to end of his tour of duty and he must do what he is told to do. He has no personal life.

He has no private life to speak out when he is engaged as a soldier and so it is in the spiritual realm. It is not something that is a part-time enterprise.

It is a full-time life long commitment we have been called to this duty, we have been called to serve the great general, the great King, the Lord himself and it is a total life involvement. It may take us to very extreme suffering, as in the case of the apostle Paul.

Or a much lighter load of suffering. As in most of our cases. But it is nonetheless a war that involves some hardship and involves a total commitment, not a part-time job on not saying you don't work, it is just that when you're at work you're a soldier for Christ.

I'm not saying you don't go to school. It's just a one year at school. You're a soldier for Jesus Christ. In other words, the primary issue in your mind is the spiritual battle. The primary issue is to confront the issues that must be confronted in that spiritual battle, whether they be the false ideologies in which men entombed themselves that must come down to the power of the truth or whether they be Christians who have gotten themselves involved in false teaching or sin and must be confronted in order that they may be rescued from the enemy at that point, whatever it might be wherever we are, were always on duty. There's no time and we can set that duty aside, there's 1/3 component that he mentions in verse four that is true of soldiering and that is that the soldier pleases the one who enlisted him as a soldier. The soldier is singularly responsible to please the commander if you're going to soldier you have to realize that only really one person that you're concerned about and that one person is the commander, the one to whom you are answerable the one to whom you are answerable and certainly it is true of the apostle Paul and of all faithful servants that they served with a view toward that day when they would face the commander they served with a view to the day when they would hopefully be able to hear well done good and faithful servant or good and faithful soldier. That's exactly what Paul is saying to Timothy and to us want to be a strong Christian understand this is a war and you are called to suffer and when it's difficult.

That's because it's what are you shouldn't be surprised by that. You shouldn't be shocked you're a soldier you have been prepared for this. You have been armed for this you have the preparedness you have the equipment you have the weaponry you are trained for this, you are energized for this is why the apostle Paul fought mightily due to the strength of the spirit strengthening him in the inner man's Seles. It's clear to us that the second picture here. The second biblical paradigm that he wants us to view ourselves in is that of a soldier, listen to the third one in verse five. Also, if anyone competes as an athlete. He does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules. The third imagery here is that of an athlete.

The Greek verb actually is the verb at the left over from which we get the transliterated English word athlete. If you were to take that verb athletic. Oh, which in the NAS is translated competes as an athlete and translated sort of in there in the original English, it would simply say, as the King James puts it to strive for the triumph to strive for the victory. It means that it means to strive and now we begin to look at the imagery of the athlete here in the first thing we see about an athlete is that he competes to win. He strives for the triumph that's how the King James thinks that strives for the mastery's or strives for the victory. And that's exactly what it's intending to say an athlete does what he does with a view to the victory. He competes in order to win. That's essential in athletics. Anything less than that will render you terrible kind of dishonor. I always always respect the athlete who pays the supreme price to be the best in the world because there is a price and it's not a difference in talent at that level. The talent is measurably similar. There's something about winners that makes them go beyond everybody else, the passion to triumph, and certainly true in the spiritual realm. If you're gonna be a strong Christian, you gotta get outta yourself and beyond yourself to a goal that is beyond you, a goal that is a heavenly goal, a reward that is an incorruptible and eternal reward.

That's going to cause you to make the necessary sacrifices to run to the very best of your ability and there's another component here in verse five. As regards the athlete that I would mention to not only does he run to win but he doesn't win the prize unless he competes according to the rules we have the because of the tremendous media exposure for the last several Olympics. All of us become familiar with those people cheat those people who are so terribly dishonored not only themselves but their whole country bears the shame when they break the rules. We knew that through the years of the Iron Curtain in Europe that the Eastern German women were bulking up in gaining immense strength on steroids and they were breaking all the rules of drug allowances and drug tolerances violating them all at the time.

For whatever reasons they were able to escape. We found out the Chinese athletes had been engaged in very similar things we remember that the story of the offense, or whose foil was rigged. And so it was scoring when he wasn't actually hitting his opponent. We remember Ben Johnson, the great Canadian sprinter who violated the rules and was terribly discredited long with him. His nation was shamed for breaking the rules. You don't win the prize unless you keep the rules. There's a there's a marvelous discipline that there's a wondrous discipline and in athletics that that point, there is a certain honor. There's a certain integrity that has to be there.

Nothing to me is more tragic then when somebody is running the race as an athlete and just violates the rules should not be an athlete, you gonna run to win, you gotta have a goal out there that's beyond yourself and it has to be something that's transcendent enough and compelling enough to drive you to drive you when you set your affections on things above and with the honor of the Lord Jesus Christ and the eternal reward that awaits those who are faithful will be given to you, and in turn, you can take it and give it back to him and casted his feet when you're moved by that it'll draw out of you all the best, you have to offer. Well then there's verse six and here we have the fourth picture that Paul gives to Timothy of a strong Christian. He is first of all teacher and he is given the responsibility to pass on truth, by which he himself is strengthened. Secondly, he is a soldier.

He is armed and armored for this.

He is willing to suffer hardship. He disentangled himself from the affairs of everyday life and he does what he does to please the commander. He is an athlete who has a goal in mind a transcendent goal that makes him set aside the weights and all the encumbrances so that he can run with alacrity and speed and he always keeps the rules and now we find him defined as a farmer in first thing it says he is a hard-working farmer.

What do farmers do very simple.

They sow seed and they harvested verse supports a magnificent imagery and it's really what we do we associate and we harvested that's hard work.

By the way the hard-working farmer is busy sowing seed is busy sowing seed view in your mind can go back to Matthew chapter 13 remember in Matthew 13, the parable of the soils.

It's a very magnificent parable. It tells us something that you cannot forget is this very simple lesson.

There are all kinds of soils. Some of them will reject the truth and some of them will receive it. That's what that tells us there were six soils and that parable, there was hard ground which immediately rejected the truth. There was a weedy ground in which the truth found some of what some welcome began to grow sprouted up a little bit at least. The stock did in the sun came out and burned in the died because there was no depth, but rather that the stony ground, not the weedy.

That's the third one, the stony ground literally means a rock bed under the soil and the roots could go down and they went as far as I could couldn't get to the moisture. The sun burned in it.the third one was the weedy or thorny ground where when the farmer till the ground. He didn't get the weeds out in the weeds grew faster than the grain and choked it out and killed it. Those are three negative responses. Some people are hard, they just react immediately with indifference and they have no hearing of the word.

Some people hear it.

They respond with joy for a little while when tribulation comes they disappear. Some people respond momentarily, but the love of the world and the deceitfulness of riches takes over the noxious weeds of materialism, and the seed is choked out, but then there are three good soils and some produce a hundredfold and some 60 fold in some 30 faults have six soils now it's all about soils and what is most most wonderful about that parable is it and say anything about the skill of the sower. Nothing about it is in the parable it says now look if you want to win the world folks if you want to be effective in evangelism is what you need to do. You gotta learn how to throw seed so our number one did this, he wasn't very good so Noah doesn't tell that that's not the story is nothing to do with skill. The sower because not the skill of the sower's state of the soil. Okay to put the illustration in a simple and graphic figure.

Imagine a very skilled farmer, sowing seed and is very very good at it.

He's got good dexterity is done all his life he reaches in his pouch and he scatters it almost perfectly in the rows behind him as his son was five or six years old. His father's made him a little pouch a little fat hand was short fingers like little guys have and he doesn't do it very well with those in his father's hair down his father's back all over the place chunks of it here chunks of it. There the bottom line is the little guy isn't very good at it. But here's the principle whenever seed kits good soil, it produces fruit, whether thrown by the skilled sower or the unskilled one is not the skill of the sower that makes the difference. It's the condition of the soil, the Lord plows the soil. You throw the seed.

The moral of that story is the more seed you throw, the more likely you are to hit soil that is prepared right so throw as much seed as you can in as many directions as possible.

Work hard at it.

Never pass up an opportunity to speak a word for the gospel, whether it's hard ground, whether it's temporarily responsive, or whatever.

Just keep throwing seed you say I'm not very good at it, but the sea do its work. You don't need to mess with the seed, and you can't determine the soil. All you can do is throw truth more you do it, the more likely you are to hit the good ground you don't know where the good soils God knows God plows and sometimes it's an very unlikely place but hard-working farmers just keep sowing seed will be strong Christian work hard at sowing seed work hard at harvesting work hard if I can extend the metaphor in watering building on somebody else's sowing this a second compelling issue about farmers not only do they sow seed. But as I said they harvested there to be the first to receive their share of the crops. You know what this is really good. The good part of farming you get the get the bring in the crop. But that is a compelling thing to me. I love that that is such an exhilarating joy that is such a wonderful reality to be involved in leading people to Christ. That's one of the reasons I love the sow seed because I like the harvest know you anything more exciting than leading someone to Jesus Christ anything more exciting than finding out that in some hardware you sow the seed, God allowed it to grow into eternal life. That's what we do, were farmers we so seed we so seed and God produces life and we taste the harvest tremendous joy. Well, my time is gone just sum it up, you will be a strong Christian. Here's the image here's the image be a teacher be a soldier be an athlete be a farmer now listen carefully as I close for pictures gone.

We rolled into one. Just need one picture verse seven. Consider what I say, the Lord will give you understanding and everything Paul is just that's just a way of saying get this, will you let me drive this one in let me drive this home. You've got to understand this.

How Paul remember Jesus Christ.

Why does he say that you tell me who is the greatest teacher that ever walked the earth.

Jesus Christ is the greatest soldier for the greatest battle one the greatest victory was the greatest athlete ran the greatest race one the greatest crown never broke a rule was the true farmer who really plants the seed and brings in the harvest and gets all the glory. Jesus. Paul says look consider what I say in the Lord give you understanding and if you want that understanding just take all four pictures roll them and want to remember Jesus Christ. He's your model. Was he a teacher.

Was he a teacher, a faithful teacher who always spoke the truth always penetrated every situation with the truth he pass it on so that others capacitor on yes. Was he the soldier was he always in the battle was he always waging war against the lies and the deception and the enemy. Yes, see the athlete who runs the truest, purest race with the greatest amount of effort never distracted from that final goal always doing what he did to please the father who sent him, never breaking a rule absolutely see the one who always sows the seed to see the one who energizes every sewing that ever takes place, and gets credit for every harvest, and rejoices in every harvest eternally. Indeed he is so summing it up.

It's right back to where you thought we might get your strong Christian urine look a lot like Christ increasingly being conformed into his image. That's the way the church needs to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and we end up in verse eight where we started in verse one. Father, thank you for a time. It's been so refreshing to be with your saints to be with your beloved people so refreshing to sing songs of praise and hear songs of testimony and hear the words of these young people who have spoken of your love for them and your work in their hearts. It's been challenging to hear again that you want us to be strong Lord, keep us strong your glory in your price that's John MacArthur the Bible teacher with grace to you since 1969. He's also Chancellor of the Masters University in seminary in Southern California and today he showed you how to become a Christian who doesn't break when life storms all around you.

It's part of his current study, titled the courageous Christian John near the end of today's lesson you talked about living and working in light of the end using our time to prepare for the return of Christ, explain what that kind of forward thinking ministry looks like here at Grace to you while it may seem a little bit oversimplified to say this, but we don't live with the kind of fear that something is going to come out of nowhere from the devil. Maybe, and then halt the work of the Lord.

We it. We also don't feel and this is really important that there's something going to come up in the culture that's going to cause us to want to rethink how we do everything right and if you listen to this supposedly church growth experts these days they would tell you that what were doing is archaic teaching the Bible verse by verse. Come on, give me a break that you can't reach this culture.

This way, so we don't have any interest in altering anything because we know the power is in the word of God.

We see now for decades and decades and decades and so you could say were getting closer to the end. What would you change and the answer would be absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing worth thankful for how this ministry has flourished for 50 years. Really amazing. Half a century and we been doing the same thing for that whole entire half a century and just accumulating more and more and more teaching from the word of God. But, along with all that teaching have come people gracious, loving, faithful partners who support the ministry in and then hundreds of of radio stations English station Spanish stations and Spanish-language stations and people have invested in this ministry so that we could translate the messages now into Chinese, Arabic, French, Portuguese, and now are working on Russian Farsi and Romanian translations.

It will go out over the Internet. So what is expanding is the translation work here and we're really thrilled about that is that you think about year-end giving you have a couple of days will actually maybe one more day you want to make a year-end gift to help us carry this forward in multiple languages. That is a great project were in the middle of it and your gift can go directly to making that a reality as we endeavor to reach the world and more languages this year than we ever have in the past. Pray for the ministry of grace to you and stand with us as the Lord enables you. Yes friend if you'd like to partner with us in taking God's word and the life-changing truth of the gospel to people from North America to Europe to Asia and beyond, make a tax-deductible donation when you get in touch today. You can mail your year-end donation postmarked by December 31 two grace to you. Box 4000 panorama city, CA 91412 four donate@ourwebsitetty.org pastors, businesspeople, homemakers, students, people from all walks of life are taking the biblical principles they learn from these broadcasts and using them as they serve their churches leave their families and evangelize the people they know that's the kind of personal and powerful ministry make possible. When you give again to make a tax-deductible donation for 2020. Simply mail a check postmarked by December 31 or go online and make a credit card donation before midnight on December 31. Our address again. Box 4000 panorama city, CA 91412 and our web address Jide TY.org one more time. That's Jide TY.org and special thanks. If you're one of our grace partners now for John MacArthur on Phil Johnson reminding you to watch grace to you television this Sunday on NRB TV that's DirecTV channel 378 or check your local listings for channel and times and then be back here tomorrow as John shows you how to experience victory in spiritual warfare. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on race