Hope for the Future

What a blessing it is to have guest speakers in. And Brother Sharp's served the Lord for many, many years.! I think you have a future high tenor singer over there on one side too, right?

And so that was good to see that. And so much a blessing today. We are so glad to be here. My wife Elaine and I made the trip up here this week.

And just getting acquainted with your area a little bit. And it's a blessing to be here. You all have a friendly group of folks.

That's always a good sign. Amen? A lot of you came up and introduced yourself, shook my hand. And that's a good thing. A very good thing. Good to show your pastors been working hard here to be training you to be a friendly group.

And a group of folks that love others and love people. We're from southwest Missouri. I grew up on a dairy farm. So if something comes out that's a little bit homespun, then please understand that's just part of me.

But it's a joy to be a preacher of the Word of God. God has blessed us with many good times and pastoring. And now when I'm retired, I'm not retired.

I still get to preach some. Amen? And still witness to people. And I can't help but hand out a tract to somebody else. And give the Word of God to someone that needs it.

Today, I want to share with you a message about hope for the future. And building hope for the future in 2 Timothy chapter 2. So I hope you'll open your Bible there.

We're going to read it together, verses 1 through 4. 2 Timothy chapter 2. Paul, of course, was writing to Timothy. Wonderful relationship they had.

He was a mentor for this young preacher and leader in the church there. And as he wrote, he shared some very important truths with Timothy that I think will be a blessing to us.

Would you stand with me as we read the Scripture together? And you can read along with me if you like. Just read aloud. We'll enjoy the Scripture. Verses 1 through 4. All right. Chapter 2, verses 1 through 4.

Verse 1. Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, and shall be able to teach others also.

Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that woreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who had chosen him to be a soldier.

Let us pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word. Thank you, Lord, that we are encouraged today to know that you will help us to be strong and have the hope for the future that you lay out before us.

Pray you'll bless everyone here. And if there's anyone here today that, Lord, maybe they're discouraged, I pray you'd give them help and, Lord, courage for the facing of the day. Lord, maybe there's someone here today that's never really made that important and wonderful decision to trust Christ as their Savior.

I pray that today would be their day. That they would say, yes, I want Jesus today. I'm not going to wait another day. I'm not going to wait another minute. I'm coming now. May you bless today our time together.

In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. Thank you. We are blessed to open up the word of God today with you. And I want to share with you a message about building hope for the future.

Hope for the future. I wonder sometimes if a lot of folks look at the future and they look at the future with a lot of apprehension. Some of them are just plain scared of what's going on in our world.

And some are concerned about the economy. Of course, we have wars going on in our world today and other situations that they may face personally.

You know, we notice that the days that we live in are really unlike any we've seen, and yet they're a lot like what we've seen in the past few decades.

We're watching war times, scenes around the world, bombings and things like that. I don't know about you, but I don't enjoy that.

Do you? I don't enjoy seeing the destruction that's taking place like it did back in World War II even. That was before my time, by the way. I'm not that far that old. Praise the Lord.

I was born in 1950, so you can figure that out. But I'm so thankful today that we can have hope for the future. The Scripture tells us here, and Paul wrote to Timothy in chapter 1.

I'm going to just touch a couple of things before we get into chapter 2. Paul was encouraging Timothy to just trust in the Lord and continue to be faithful and to have hope for the future.

He said in verse 7, it says, But for God hath not given us a spirit of fear, and of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. And he also said in verse 12, he said, He said, He said, For which cause I also suffer these things, nevertheless I'm not ashamed.

For I know whom I have believed. What a wonderful thing that is, to know whom you believe. I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he may keep that which I have committed unto him in the midst that day.

And so he'd been trying to encourage Timothy and us, because we're reading it now. Amen? And it's for us as well. Notice he says there in chapter 2, verse 1, he said, Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

Let me just say today, there's solid ground for hope. There's reason for you to have hope for tomorrow, for the future. Paul was inspired by God to write this.

And as he did, he gave instructions to Timothy and a plan to follow, really, some things that he could do here that would help. He was sharing with his son in the faith.

First of all, notice, he said, Building hope in your life requires the strength of God's grace. The strength of God's grace.

Thou therefore, he says, or because of this, my son, he said, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

Paul was a senior age preacher. Here preaching and teaching and writing from prison. And he knew his departure was coming.

He knew one day he would be brought up and his life would be finished on this earth. And he did this. And he came down to this point in his life. He said, Timothy, I want you to know that you can be strong in the grace of God.

You can be strong in the grace of God. He encouraged him, don't live in fear of the future. Don't live in fear of the future.

You know, I see many people today and they watch the news. And by the way, don't you notice, a lot of the news channels you might listen to today or might hear, they want you to be panicking.

You know, panicking here, the price of oil is going to go up. Then it goes down. Then it goes back up. And then it goes down. And the price of this and that. Not only that, but our young men are on the battlefield.

Young men and women serving our country. And so many other things that cause people to look at life and they say, I'm concerned, I'm worried. And a lot of people are. But notice he says, be strong in the grace of God.

Rely upon the grace of God. You know, we're saved by grace through faith. Ephesians 2.89 tells us that, doesn't it? For by grace are you saved through faith.

And that not of yourselves. It's a gift of God. Not of works lest any man should boast. I was saved in 1972. I was 21 years old.

I'd been a pretty good person, but I was born a sinner. Amen. I got baptized when I was 10, but I just came up a wet sinner. Because I never had a change in my life until I was 21.

When I bowed my knee at an altar one Sunday night and asked Christ to come into my life. Asked him to save my soul. And I want you to know that he did by his grace. By his grace he saved me.

And I can share that with you today knowing that one day we'll, those of you that are believers and saved too, we'll all meet around the throne. Amen. And we'll all bow our knees to the one who gave his life for us.

We're saved by grace through faith. Rely upon the grace of God. We serve and proclaim the gospel by his grace. Paul, as he encouraged there for Timothy, he said, we're not given the spirit of fear.

We're not to live in a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind. Of the power of God. It's amazing. And yet it's not just amazing, it's true.

God's word will do a work in your life if you'll just take it in. It has power. It is the word of God. And it will help you in so many ways.

And we serve and proclaim the gospel of God's grace by his own help. God used Paul when he was making tents. There was times that he had to be bivocational, if you want to call it that.

He was a tent maker and a preacher. And he would also go out and he would walk many miles from one town to another. Just a couple of years ago, my wife and I were privileged to make a trip over to Greece.

And we walked through some of the areas that the Apostle Paul traveled through that country from Macedonia. As you remember Macedonia, that's northern Greece. And he walked down all the way through to a place called Thessalonica.

It's called Thessaloniki today. We traveled down that way. And I thought, he was covering all this ground on foot. Not only that, but he climbed mountains. And up on top of one of those mountains, we came to a place called Apollonia.

And as we were up there, I noticed you could look for many miles on top of that hill, on top of that mountain. And you could see forever and ever. You could see so many places.

And in that place, he started preaching God's word. And they said whenever, just a few years later, there were many house churches that were started because the Apostle Paul walked through that place on foot, gave them the gospel, and then moved on to the next place.

There's only one little sentence that's been put in the scripture about that. He went through Apollonia and he went on to the next place. I want you to know, sometimes your life may feel like, well, I can't, my life is not in the limelight of the world.

I'm not in getting a lot of publicity. You may not get on, be placed on the screens, so to speak. You may not be put on that. But if you're serving the Lord by the grace of God, you can be strong in the grace that's in Christ Jesus.

You can be strong enough to continue. I'm so glad you came to church this morning. Amen? I like to be in church on Sunday. Very, very few times have I missed because of illness.

But I will tell you, today, I'm glad to be here with you today as well. We are encouraged here. We can build hope by the strength of God's grace, by the strength of God's grace.

Today, I want you to know that not only do we see that and we rely on God's strength, not our own strength, standing ready to serve Him.

The second thing I want you to notice in building hope, it involves sharing the gospel. It involves sharing the gospel message. Today, I'm sharing with you things that I learned whenever I was a believer and a young believer at that, when I had dark hair like many of you.

And those times I learned from men who were much more experienced, if you know what I mean. This stuff here is called experience, right?

And he had all of that to grow through. Notice, Paul told Timothy, the things that you've heard, the things you've been taught, the things that your pastor has been teaching you and leading you in, the things that you've learned from the Word of God, the same you share with others.

Share that with others. The things, the truths of the Word of God are too important to keep to yourself. They're too important to hold back.

I want you to know, my friend, there's so much power in the Word of God and the gospel. It's a life-changing thing. Even those of you that maybe, as you're going through your education and your time of going through different things in your life, if you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, you can share that faith with others.

Building hope for the future involves sharing that truth with someone else that you know. the condition of our culture is one that makes us realize that there's a whole lot of doubt in this world.

We live in a doubting world. A lot of times people say, well, I don't know if that's really true. I'm not sure I can follow that. Well, the Word of God is too powerful to hold back.

Look, the gospel of Christ, the gospel of our salvation is too powerful to keep to ourselves. Many people have no idea how to be saved.

We live in the Bible Belt. Some people have called the town I live in the buckle of the Bible Belt. It's Springfield, Missouri. We've had several Bible colleges there and a lot of preaching that's gone on.

And yet I still find people in the city there that have no clue how to really be saved. They've gone to church. They say, well, I need to be a good person.

Well, that's all good. But there has to come a time when we repent of our sins and trust Christ to forgive us, take that sin away because he paid for it on Calvary. Today, we build hope by giving that life-giving message.

Many people are listening to false teachers online or maybe on the television set. They'll say, well, you can do this and be saved. And by the way, send your offering in.

Amen. There's always going to be taken up another offering. And you'll get this free gift. You can get a bucket of survival food some places. Some of you know what I'm talking about, don't you?

Did you buy a bucket, brother? I don't know. At any rate. You can send in so much money and you get this dehydrated food. Boy, it looks good. All these little packets. You put water in it and boom, press full.

You get some kind of a piece of meat. I'm not sure about it. Are you? Some of you are saying, no, that don't sound good to me. No, it doesn't. And yet, my friend, any gimmick in the world people will give money to thinking they might get a little bit of peace.

You won't get peace in your heart until you come to Jesus. Amen. Amen. Amen. You won't have the peace that you really want and desire in your life and in your marriage and in your personal life and even in the things you do at work unless you give your heart and life to Jesus Christ.

Building hope in the future involves sharing the gospel. People can be very confused about what it means to be saved. But I want you to know we can help them.

You can help them with this hope-filled message. Jesus loves you. He loves you. He went to the cross. He was nailed to an old rugged cross so that your sins and my sins could be paid for.

I can't imagine what an agony he went through. I can't imagine that. But I do know this. It's true. And he went there for me. He went there for you.

He paid the price for us. We build hope in our lives because by giving out this wonderful message of Christ, we build hope into our lives by relying on God's strength.

Be strong in the grace that's in Christ Jesus. I want to share with you something else. Building hope involves enduring hardness. Enduring hardness.

Notice it says there in verse number three, thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth him with the affairs of this life.

Notice with me, it says thou therefore, in other words, because of God's grace in your life, because of what he's done for you, because that message we have will give hope to anyone.

It'll give salvation to anyone who will believe. Remember you're a soldier. Remember you're a soldier by God's grace. And it says, thou therefore endure hardness.

I don't know about you, but I don't enjoy trial. He wasn't there with me. I don't go around saying, well, praise the Lord, I'm going through a hard time. No. But I do know this, every one of us, every one of us will go through some kind of trials in our life.

Thou therefore, he says, endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Whenever a soldier is in training, they're trained to be strong and to stand strong and stand with the other soldiers, because that's the way you win a battle.

That's the way you win in that conflict. We're to endure hard things that happen to us, problems. And sometimes it's persecution. Sometimes it's illness.

And sometimes it's just weariness. There's some times that you think, well, I'm not doing any good. I worked in a place in Springfield you've probably heard of. It's probably called O'Reilly Automotive.

Many years ago. I'm talking 50 years ago, okay. This is a long time. They didn't have a store in every town then. They had one warehouse and two or three stores in Springfield.

I worked in the warehouse for a while. And the guys that I worked with found out I was a Christian. So they would take a jab at me every once in a while.

They would say, well, you want to go out and go drinking with us? I said, no, I don't think so. I don't want to do that. I've got a wife and kids at home, a little girl at home.

They kept after me and they would finally say, well, we're all going to go out and party. Why don't you? What's wrong with you? There wasn't anything wrong with me. By the way, thank you for the water.

I'm glad that's for drinking, right? Amen. It's not for baptizing or anything. So making sure. As I was working with those fellows, I thought this isn't doing any good.

Well, I moved on to a different job and God called me in ministry. A little bit later, I went by and I called one of those stores and talked to one of the men I used to work with.

He said, by the way, he said, Bob, I want to thank you for being a witness to me. He said, I can't give my heart to Christ. He'd been saved.

Not only that, but he said, he named one after another. Three or four other guys got saved later after I'd already gone. You may think you're not doing any good.

You may think, well, I've witnessed and I've witnessed and nobody's getting saved. You just go ahead and witness. You just go ahead and share that life-giving message. And you endure some hardness.

There'll be times that they won't appreciate that. They might feel convicted about the fact that you're trying to be faithful to God in front of them. But be a good soldier.

You are needed in this church and in the work of God. Whatever your age, even young, old, wherever we are in life, you are needed in this conflict we have in this world where we are fighting against the forces of evil that don't want people to be saved.

They don't even like it that you showed up today. There's some folks that just didn't like that and the devil sure didn't like it. But I want you to know that we can be strong in the grace of God, enduring hardness.

He said, beware of entanglements. He said, no man that woreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life. Well, there's some things if you get tangled up into them, they're going to mess you up.

Here lately, we've heard of two different families where someone in the family got hooked on pornography or one thing or another and their life was totally wrecked.

Totally wrecked. I want you to know it's not fun to listen to a tearful wife on the phone saying, I don't know what happened.

But he's not what he used to be. Beware of entanglements. Beware of entanglements. We today are in a great conflict.

And a lot of things will distract you. They'll distract you from the things that you ought to be doing. Sin entangles the mind. It eats away at your peace.

Sin will eat away at the desire in your life to serve Jesus. Remember, this is a war. This is a war.

And a war, it takes effort. It takes your attention. It takes the fact that, you know, you just kind of slide through life and not really pay attention to what's happening.

Sooner or later, you're going to find that your peace has been gone. You don't have any peace in your life. You don't have the joy that you once had. Beware of the entanglements of life.

No man that wars, that wins. Hey, fellas, you got a wife. I want you to know. She's your best friend. Amen.

Ladies, you got a husband. Make sure he's your best friend. Amen. A little marital advice on the side, by the way. I'm just telling you, after 55 years, that girl right there is still my girl.

Amen. After 58 years, actually, because we were dating for three years before we got married. Yep. And I'm sure glad we did.

Because I've had a best friend with me through life. Her and Jesus. Amen. I want you to know that you today, your life can be so blessed.

As you beware and stay away from the entanglements. 1 Corinthians 10 verse 13 is a verse I want to share with you too. 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 13.

So many times folks say, well, how do I go through life and I wonder, am I the only one going through a hard time?

Are you the only one? Are you the only one that faces temptation? 1 Corinthians 10 verse 13 says, it says, and she'll find it maybe sometime, but if you found it, that's good too.

It says, there is, there hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man. But God is faithful. But God is faithful. Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it.

God is faithful. There's no temptation that comes to you that isn't also coming to someone else. Someone else is facing the same things you are facing.

Someone else is going through the trial you're going through. Someone else in God's family has, has been, or will go through what you face today. It's common to man, but God is faithful.

I put a big amen after that. Amen. A big hallelujah. God is faithful. He won't suffer you to be tempted above that you're able by his help, by his grace.

Oh, you just be a faithful husband. Amen. Be a faithful wife. Be a faithful church member. And beware of the entanglements of sin that are in the world.

Remember, this is a war. It's not a game of cards. This is a conflict. And there will be a way. God will make a way of escape from temptation.

He will help you get away from that. God will make a way. Endure hardness for Jesus Christ. And you say, well, what's in it for me?

Pleasing him. It's not self-glory. It's not to say, I'm going to get the praise for this. If you go for self-glory, you'll get that, but it won't be real.

It'll be pretty empty. If you serve the Lord just for self-glory, it will be empty after a while. And you'll say, well, what's the use of doing this? But if you serve the Lord by his grace to please him who has saved you and called you into his wonderful family, then that brings wonderful joy.

It brings peace. We don't endure hardness for fame and fortune, but we do so because he endured so much for us. He endured so much for us.

Notice it says there in our text, Oh, there's so many things you can get tangled up with.

You're tangled up in. Because today, endure hardness because someone you may meet has never heard or understood how to be saved.

I'm still amazed. I still run across people that don't really understand what it means to be saved. I talked to them about being saved. They said, well, I used to go to church. Going to church won't save you.

Well, I went to church. I got baptized down here at so-and-so church. Baptism won't save you. You say, well, I'm trying to be a good person.

You know, I don't cheat anybody. Haven't robbed any banks. Well, I'm glad you haven't done that. You've tried to be a decent person, being truthful.

But I want you to know that the Bible says we've all come short of the glory of God. The purity, the wholeness, the holiness that would allow us to go in the very presence of God.

And so he wants us to be able to share the gospel with someone who's never heard it or doesn't understand. I want to share one more thing with you.

Our hope is to please him. I just touched on that, but that's my fourth thought. Building hope in the future involves pleasing the one who's chosen us to be a soldier.

You know, soldiers still salute the flag. My father was a World War II veteran, private first class, expert marksman with a rifle, also trained with a bazooka.

I can't imagine that. He was trained on that and so forth, some of those other things. World War II. Came home with an honorable discharge. Came home, couldn't hear out of one ear because of being wounded in action.

I want you to know whenever that flag was flying, it meant something. Amen? It means something to us. Salute that flag.

Put your hand over your heart when we sing the national anthem and whenever we say the pledge of allegiance to the flag. Soldiers bear the scars of battle.

Soldiers are faithful men and women of God who know what sacrifice is and what discipline is. Endurance, ready obedience and cooperation.

Soldiers follow the command of their commander. And I want you to know we have the greatest commander. His name is Jesus. He said, go you therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.

He said, go you therefore. That means go here and go abroad through all the world. I see your missionary letters. You support those missionaries.

Pray for them and then go yourself to that person next door down the street. Be a faithful believer at your job. The people you work with should know that you're a child of God.

The people that your neighbors should know that you're a child of God. The people in your family, in your neighborhood, in your school, in your circle of friends.

Be a faithful believer to please Him. Remember, it wasn't always easy for God's people to be faithful.

Remember Joseph? Joseph was one that he was sold into slavery by his brothers. Boy, that's a dysfunctional family if you ever saw it.

Amen. And then he was sold into slavery. Then he was bought by Potiphar. Potiphar's wife accused him of wrongdoing and their morality and things like that.

And so he was thrown in prison. He spent years in prison. Finally, one day they needed someone to interpret a dream for the king. And he did that.

He was called up. He was called up and said, can you tell us what this dream is all about? And Joseph said, it's not me, but I know the God that does.

I want you to know that he endured hardness. He went through hard times. He was put in prison and he was put in locked up in shackles for a while.

Beware of those things that will harm you. Stay focused in your faith on Jesus Christ. Stay focused upon Him. He is our steadfast hope.

He will never fail to be with you through whatever you go through. I want you to know that there may be a time, listen carefully, I'm almost done.

But get this, there's going to be a time when you may have to face the world or the hostilities of those who don't want Christ and don't want anything to do with Him.

You may face that alone. You may have to stand alone. And when you do, and if you do, and when you do, I want you to know He will never leave you.

He will always be there with you. He will carry you through whatever you go through. Whatever it is, He will be with you. Maybe you face a difficult medical situation in your life.

He will never forsake you. The Scripture says, Let your conversation, your lifestyle be without covetousness. And be content with such things as you have. For He has said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.

He will be with you. He will be with you when you pay all the bills and there's nothing left. Maybe a few pennies or a quarter or two or five dollars, ten dollars.

And you paid all the bills. If you've never been there, bless your heart. Praise God for you. But if you have a dollar in your pocket today, be thankful.

Amen. If you have a family today, be thankful. Do you have a church to come to like this? There's so many places that they don't even have, they don't have the church to come to where they can hear the Word of God and sing those praises, those wonderful thoughts from the Word of God.

Today, you and I have hope. We have hope that He will carry us through. He will be the one that will carry you through. I want you to know we can follow Him today.

Building hope will be something you can do in your own life by the strength of God's grace, by sharing the living hope of the gospel message, by enduring hardness, enduring the hardness that comes in your life.

And to please your Savior. To please your Savior. Not for self. Not for self. I am, today I'm so thankful I could share this message with you.

God allows us to live in His grace and His love and His mercy and His peace today to serve Him. I wonder, do you have that peace today?

Do you know Him as your Savior? Do you know if you were to die today, you'd go to heaven? You say, was that very important? Oh, yes, it is. It's the most important thing in all the world.

If you've never trusted Him, my friend, today would be your day. Today would be the best day for you. And if you need hope today, maybe you're a child of God already, but you just need some hope.

You just need some hope. You just need some assurance. It's going to be all right. You need some help right now. It's going to be okay. Let's bring your needs to the Lord.

In this troubled age we're living in, when everyone's saying panic about this and panic about that, God's people can live by faith. We live by faith in Him and what He's done and sharing a message that gives life.

Would you bow your heads with me, please? We're going to have a brief time of invitation. If you've never trusted in Christ as your personal Savior, let me encourage you today to take this time in your own life to trust Him, to believe in Him, to give your life to Him.

You say, will that cost me anything? The only thing it costs is to humble yourself before Him and say, Lord, I need you.

Please forgive my sin and save my soul. If you've already done that, you're saved, you know you're saved. Maybe you need a church home. Maybe you need a place like this to be a part of a godly pastor that leads this flock and also a place you can find friends and family.

This invitation will be open for you as well.