[0:00] So let's read it together. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
[0:15] Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing.
[0:28] As I said, this is something that Paul wrote at the end of his life, and there's something about being at the end of something. Maybe it's something as simple as the end of the year. Maybe it's the end of a career or a job, or maybe it's the end of a life where it causes us to reflect.
[0:44] And sometimes in the middle of things, and we're getting into that season, right? We just started September. We're into the school rhythms. Some of us are still kind of lagging behind, trying to get into the school rhythms.
[0:54] And we get into this busyness, and we don't really think about what we're doing and why we're doing it. But sometimes when we're at the end, we're able to reflect at that.
[1:05] We don't just have to get stuff done. We look about why do we do the things we do? What is the reason? What is the purpose? And as Paul is reflecting on his life, he's reflecting a lot on the purpose of his life, what he dedicated his life to and how he did that.
[1:19] And he's encouraging Timothy to do the same, and he's encouraging Timothy to follow in his example and dedicate his life to the same thing that Paul dedicated his life to.
[1:31] And as he does that, he encourages his protege, Timothy. And through Timothy, Paul encourages us to follow his example of a poured-out life. And this idea of a poured-out life, it makes me think of a man by the name of Jim Elliott.
[1:46] A show of hands, how many people have heard of Jim Elliott before? Quite a number of you, yeah. So Jim Elliott was a missionary, an American missionary, who was part of a group of missionaries that landed on a beach in the middle of the Ecuadorian jungle and met with a tribe that hadn't been contacted with the gospel before.
[2:09] And that tribe ended up spearing Jim and his friends to death on January 8, 1956. And Jim's death is what brought him, thrust him into the public eye and made people know about him and caused his biography written by his wife and his journals to become bestsellers.
[2:29] But it isn't Jim's death that matters to me and stands out to me. His death was just a natural outpouring of his life, a poured-out life. And if you read through Jim Elliott's journals, which I do quite a bit because Elliott has had a big influence on my life.
[2:45] In fact, if you know my family, I have two boys. And the second one, his name is Elliott, named after Jim and his wife Elizabeth. But if you read Jim's journals, you see that it was the focus of his entire life to pour out his life for Christ.
[3:02] So it wasn't that he suddenly lived one way and then gave up his life in the pursuit of bringing people to know about the glory of God. But it was the whole trajectory of his life, this poured-out life.
[3:16] And that's what Paul is talking about here in verse 6. For I'm already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is coming soon. Now this image, this drink offering, would be something that was very familiar to Paul and to Timothy and to everyone else in their culture.
[3:32] One of the types of offerings in the Jewish system of sacrifice was a drink offering. And the drink offering called for a liter of wine to be taken and to be poured out slowly over the offering and over the altar.
[3:48] And so Paul is connecting his life with this imagery. So he sees himself as being poured out over the altar of God. And we need to catch this. Who's doing the pouring?
[3:59] It isn't Paul. Paul is the liquid. And what resistance does the liquid have to the gravity as it's being poured down? It offers no resistance at all.
[4:11] And this is Paul's image. And so throughout this letter, if you read the whole letter of 2 Timothy, Paul has been encouraging Timothy to live the life that Paul has lived.
[4:23] And in some sense, Timothy is already a drink offering poured out. He's been facing persecution from outside of the church. He's been facing false teaching from inside of the church. And he has been dedicating his life to the proper teaching of God's word and bringing people to a saving knowledge in Jesus.
[4:40] And now as Paul moves to the conclusion of his letter, he gives Timothy two encouragements, two things to hold up his life so that he can continue to pour out his life as a drink offering.
[4:53] And he gives Timothy these two places to look. And we're going to look at those. And those two places are to look to others and to look to the future. But before we get to those two points that Paul makes, I think there's a very obvious objection that we need to look at.
[5:09] I mean, why did Paul live his life poured out? Why did he live this poured out life? Why is he encouraging Timothy to live a poured out life? I mean, let's think about this rationally and reasonably for a second.
[5:21] What good is that wine that's poured out? How does that wine benefit us? How does it benefit the wine? How does it benefit us to live a poured out life? How does it benefit the world?
[5:32] Many people will look at someone like Jim Elliot and say, someone, a bright young man killed in the prime of his life. What benefit does that have for anybody to live this poured out life?
[5:46] And our culture, perhaps more than anything else, values two things. I'd say those are freedom and significance. Would you guys agree? I don't know. I'm not always right on these type of things. I think that our culture values freedom and significance.
[5:58] And nothing can be further opposed to freedom and significance than this idea of a poured out life. And so we object to this very idea that Paul is encouraging us to have.
[6:11] But then again, as I reflected our culture, I think we do value a poured out life. We celebrate it in our movies, particularly our chick flicks. I'm not going to ask you guys if you are a fan of those because I know nobody here would raise their hands whether they are or not.
[6:26] But you know the movie that I'm talking about. It's that movie where the man falls in love with the woman and she completely captures his heart. But then tragedy strikes and she has a debilitating illness.
[6:38] But the man is so motivated by his love for her that he pours out his life even though she can't do anything for him. Even though he could just walk away, he owes her nothing, but he pours out his life to care for the woman.
[6:52] The movie is called, what's it called? The Notebook. Or is it The Vow or A Walk to Remember or 50 First Dates? And then sometimes the illness is actually fate or another man and then it's called Dear John or The Lucky One or The Adjustment Bureau or The English Patient or Serendipity.
[7:09] There's a number we could go through but we have a limited amount of time. So this is something that our culture does value, but it's not just these idealized movies that celebrate relationships. If you're churches like ours, there's been a number of people who have stood right about where I am standing and they have dedicated their lives to each other and they have said in their vows that they will pour out their lives to one another.
[7:30] And we rightly honor and respect that. Or we celebrate young men who pour out their lives for their country. So a few years ago, the eyes of the world looked to the beaches of France where European and world leaders and veterans gathered to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day and remember and honor the roughly 10,000 allied soldiers who poured out their lives on those beaches for their countries.
[7:55] And we rightly look at those lives proudly and with thankfulness and respect. But you might say, the God I believe in wouldn't ask for such a waste.
[8:08] Though we're thankful that those men died, and we mourn that they had to. And my God doesn't ask me to make that type of sacrifice.
[8:19] My God doesn't ask me to pour out my life like that. Well, the author of... I'm sorry, I'm missing a page in my notes.
[8:35] This is why you usually would make sure you have everything beforehand. I'm going to see if it's here or not. I have a backup copy, so I am somewhat prepared. Page three.
[8:52] Excuse me. Thank you. I apologize for that.
[9:06] But hey, it made it all the way from Vancouver, so that's good. Well, let's look at it this way then. I believe that God deserves praise and glory. He deserves all of our life. And when I say that, some of us bristle at that word, deserves.
[9:19] Sure, God deserves it. We sang a number of songs about how God deserves glory and honor and praise. But God is good. He's not going to cash that check, right? He deserves our lives, but he's not going to force us to give it to him.
[9:32] But let's think of this word, deserves, in another sense. Tim Keller, an author and pastor in New York. It's funny. I needed my page, and now I'm not even close to it. But whatever. Tim Keller, an author and pastor in New York City, talks about how worship is, sorry, how beauty deserves enjoyment.
[9:53] When you see beauty, it deserves to be enjoyed. So you guys live in a very beautiful community. I think you can agree. Even just driving here this morning and seeing the mist on the mountains.
[10:04] And it was like an avatar when the mountains are just floating because you just see the mist and you see the peaks floating. And I think that's just kind of an everyday occurrence for you guys. But there's probably some times when the beauty is just so overwhelming that it just makes you stare.
[10:18] And I don't know, maybe it's the sun glistening off of fresh snow on the mountains. Or maybe it's, Dave was telling me that sometimes the chief will light up as the sun sets. And it'll just radiate the light of this beautiful sunset.
[10:30] And it doesn't matter what's going on. It doesn't matter what you're talking about. It doesn't matter what you're doing. Just everything stops and you stare. And you can't do anything but enjoy that beauty. I'm from northern Alberta.
[10:41] We don't really have mountains or any kind of elevation. And the winters are long and bleak. But there's a certain beauty in that too. And there's so much empty space that sometimes you can look over and you see a whole field of completely untouched snow with the crystal still there.
[10:59] And it catches any light that shines on it. And then we get the northern lights too. How many of you have seen the northern lights? Okay. And we get them a lot.
[11:10] And they're always more vibrant in the winter. And usually it's just the blues and the greens. But on really good nights you get the lighter colors. The reds. The yellows. The oranges. And when it's really spectacular they wave and they dance through the sky.
[11:23] And if they're very vibrant you can actually hear them. You can hear them whistle. And there's a little bit of a color. And there was sometimes in that all the colors will be reflected by the snow. And everywhere you look is just this reflection of beauty and these colors dancing.
[11:36] And I remember one night that was like that. We were driving back home to our town from a swimming trip in a neighboring community. and we could see the aurora just dancing in the sky through the windows of the car.
[11:47] And we were in the middle of nowhere. There's no electric lights around to pollute the sky. And finally, my dad couldn't even drive anymore. We pulled over to the side of the road and we all got out of the van and it's like minus 20, minus 25 Celsius and our hair is still wet from the pool and we're going to get sick.
[12:06] But we didn't care. We sat on the van, we laid in the snow, and we looked up at the sky for, I don't know how long it was before finally someone's like, we better get back in because we're getting really cold. But why do we do that?
[12:17] It was because the aurora borealis was calling out to us. It deserved, it demanded to be watched and adored and enjoyed. And we were more than happy to oblige.
[12:31] Because beauty deserves and it demands worship. Or put it another way, I think of a joke, okay? Nobody intentionally snorts. That's not really a good sound.
[12:42] How many of you snort when you laugh? No one's going to admit to it. But we don't cognitively think about it. We don't say, oh, that was funny.
[12:52] I should snort. No, it just happens automatically because it's a response that we don't think about. But the humor of the joke just demands that response. So if Kim Jong-il or Eun or whoever is now the leader of North Korea tells a joke, and of course he's a great and excellent comedian.
[13:13] If you know anything about North Korean leaders, they excel at everything. And so his followers would laugh, but maybe because they were told to laugh on pain of death. So that's a very different response.
[13:24] That's an external, people are laughing because of the external pressure of the joke teller. As opposed to a comedian. If a comedian tells a joke, you laugh out as a response because of the intrinsic humor of the situation.
[13:37] An intrinsic humor of the joke teller. Let's give another example. Do you remember the fairy tale of the emperor's new clothes?
[13:49] So scammers had convinced the emperor that they could weave this beautiful fabric that was so fine that only people who were wise enough could see it.
[14:00] And they took a bunch of money to weave this fabric and to fashion this beautiful clothes from the emperor. And he couldn't see it, but he didn't want to be thought of as a fool because he wasn't wise enough to see the fabric.
[14:11] So he puts on the clothes and really he's completely naked. And he walks through the town and everybody is applauding and enjoying this beautiful set of clothes that the emperor is wearing, even though he's wearing completely nothing.
[14:26] But they don't want to be thought of as fools because they can't see the clothes. And they don't want to offend the emperor. So they are applauding and cheering because of the external pressure of who is wearing this clothes.
[14:38] And then one little girl who doesn't abide by that just points out and says, but he's not wearing anything. And everyone kind of begins to realize this and they laugh. You see, what happened is that sometimes we will follow something because of the external pressure of it.
[14:55] We will enjoy something. We will worship something because of the external pressure. But what happens with God is that it is the internal beauty of him is part of the major reason why we are driven to worship him.
[15:10] So compare the emperor's clothes to a bride who walks in on her wedding day and she's radiant in white. And we all stand and stare and enjoy the beauty of the bride, not because of who she is, but because of that intrinsic beauty on her wedding day.
[15:26] It's not the external force. So when we talk about God deserving praise and worship and obedience, we're not talking merely of his external power, but of his intrinsic beauty.
[15:38] And we sang about that earlier of the glorious God. And it's not just his power and his authority that urge us to worship him and to pour out our lives in obedience to him.
[15:50] It's his innate beauty and goodness. Okay, so back to our text. Paul is urging us and he's urging Timothy to pour out our lives in reverence, in worship and obedience to God.
[16:03] And he gives us two ways, two encouragements, two places to look for strength and inspiration to pour out our lives. The first one is that we can be encouraged to pour out our lives to God by looking to others.
[16:17] We can be encouraged to pour out our lives to God by looking to others. When we look to others who are pouring out their lives to God, it awakes us in a vision of God's beauty again.
[16:30] So my wife, Natasha, she is amazed by the beauty of creation. That's one thing that I've really learned from her. You know, I used to pass by the mountains with the shimmering snow caps and all that beauty.
[16:44] Or I used to pass by the white or the yellow fields of canola just stretching out to the horizon. Or the cloud banks that looked so beautiful as they came in. And I just, I would pass them and I'm like, oh, that's nice.
[16:55] That waterfall down this sheer rock cliff, that's very nice. And then go on. But as I've lived with Natasha and I've seen her eyes light up as she sees the beauty in nature.
[17:08] I've seen her bend down to examine the intricacies of a ladybug crawling over a little yellow buttercup. And to examine these things, it awakes in me an eye for the beauty of God's creation.
[17:21] It's the same when I read Jim Elliot's diaries. And I see his desire to serve Christ and how bitter the taste of wasted time and a wasted life is in his mouth.
[17:33] It awakes me to a desire to serve Christ and to pour out my life. So if you look again in verse 6 of chapter 4, where Paul says, For I'm already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.
[17:47] That, in the original Greek, in the syntax of how Paul has written this, that I, for I am already being poured out, it's as if he bolded it.
[17:58] The way he wrote it, he's really emphasizing the I. I am already being poured out. So he's encouraging Timothy. He's saying, Timothy, look to me. Not in this vain sense, not in, Timothy, look how great I am, look to me.
[18:12] But in this encouragement sense, Timothy, as you face trials, look how I face trials. Timothy, as you go through your life and you face something that makes you desire to no longer pour out to God, look to how I lived.
[18:26] Look to me, Timothy. Look to me. Let my life be an encouragement to yours. And Paul continues, verse 7, These are all images that Paul has used to encourage Timothy to pour out his life throughout this letter already.
[18:45] All of these images occur earlier on in the letter. And Timothy is not somebody who Paul is just writing to. Timothy is someone who has seen Paul. He's seen Paul dedicate his life to fight the good fight of serving and preaching Jesus.
[18:58] He's seen him stay on the course. And seeing Paul's life is supposed to be an encouragement to Timothy. The author of Hebrews encourages us to look to people like Paul.
[19:11] In Hebrews chapter 11, the author lists out these heroes of the faith. I think a lot of you would be familiar with that chapter. And then beginning in chapter 12, he says this, Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set out before us.
[19:35] So as we look to people who have come before us and have followed in the faith, we can be encouraged to continue that pursuit. So how do we do this? Well, there's many ways that we could apply this.
[19:45] One is to read Christian biographies. So we can learn from people who have lived before. We can reach across the history of the church and let ordinary, sincere Christians teach us.
[19:56] So we can learn about spiritual simplicity from Jim Elliot. We can learn about the awe and the mystery of the nature of Christ from someone like St. Athanasius.
[20:10] We can grapple with the magnitude of faith alone from Luther or embrace the power of myth and mythology to paint the vibrant color of the true myth of the story of God from someone like C.S. Lewis.
[20:21] But this morning I want to apply this thought a little bit closer to home. How do we get encouragement from others to live our lives for God? I want to suggest we can look to Christian community.
[20:35] So there's a reason why when we come to Christ, we don't come to him alone, but he puts us as a part of his body, his bride. There's a reason why the New Testament always assumes that a Christian is a committed member of a particular local Christian community.
[20:52] Because we serve as examples, albeit imperfect examples, we encourage each other to keep on living a life as a poured out life. So if you look around this church, now I don't know very many of you in the congregation, but I'm sure that if you look around the church, you'll be able to see others who are pouring out their lives for Christ.
[21:12] Maybe people whose faith in Christ has kept them strong in times of financial difficulty or humble and generous in times of financial prosperity. Maybe you'll see people who have held tightly to God's promises that Christ's victory over death, and that will be passed to us, and they've been comforted by the staff of the one who has walked through the valley of the shadow of death before us.
[21:39] You might be encouraged by parents who have walked hard and lonely and sometimes difficult roads as they parent and raise up their children in a way that honors God. You might see men or women with depression who still seek out to pour out their lives for God.
[21:54] If you look around you, I know that we don't pour out our lives perfectly, but the encouragement as we gather together and we see people who see the beauty of God and they pour out their lives in response to it.
[22:07] Sometimes in the midst of suffering, sometimes in the midst of success, sometimes in the midst of depression or in lack, and sometimes in the midst of abundance or success.
[22:19] And those are two different things, two different types of experience in life that both highlight our need and our desire for God. But don't only look to the Christian community, we also want you to be involved in deeper Christian community.
[22:34] When we gather here together on a Sunday, we often call this church, this activity church. And that's right, but this is really technically a gathering of the church because we are the church, right?
[22:47] The church is the body of Christ together. And so as we gather here together, that's an expression, a meeting, a gathering of the church. So this Sunday morning is for teaching, for corporate worship, for praising God together through singing, through praying, through the teaching of the Bible and listening to God's word.
[23:09] And then at times taking communion together or celebrating people's transformation and step into the Christian community through baptism. But to really be able to see people's lives and to learn from them and to follow Christ in the good and the bad, to see them fail and to see them repent, to see them follow Jesus in all of life, then you need to see them in all of life.
[23:34] You need to see them at work. You need to see them at home, both when home is clean and ready for visitors, but also when it's been a busy day and everything is sitting out. It's not ready for hosting.
[23:45] And as Christians, we need to be involved in this type of community. We actually need to be able to see other people's lives. There have been so many times when I've been talking to somebody before or after a service or at some time, and they say things like, nobody knows what I'm going through.
[24:00] Or I want to talk about this with somebody, but I don't think that anybody will understand. No one in this church is experiencing the type of things that I'm experiencing. And a lot of the times I look at them and I say, yeah, I know two or three people who are going through exactly the same thing you are, or they have gone through the same thing you are, and you are sitting two rows behind them, but you don't know about their life because you haven't been involved in deeper community.
[24:26] So earlier, Pastor Dave was encouraging you to join a growth group. That's what you guys call them, right? Growth groups. That's an opportunity to be involved in deeper community and be involved in each other's lives so that you can encourage each other to continue to pour out your lives to God.
[24:42] The second place that Paul encourages us to look is he says that we can be encouraged to pour out our lives to God by looking to the future. Look with me in verse 8. Paul says, Now this is a future, but it's also a present.
[25:04] The way that Paul writes this is he is saying, there's something for me in the future, but it's already there for me. So put it another way. If you look ahead, look what we've just read through when Paul talks about his death as a departure, the image that he is giving is of pulling up anchor.
[25:23] And Timothy has seen Paul pull up anchor a lot of times and sail off to a new place. And what Paul is saying is, I'm about to take this really long journey. And when I go there, there's already something waiting for me.
[25:36] So it's future because I don't have it yet. But it's present because it's already there. It's not just waiting to come. It's there. It's waiting for me. Okay? And, excuse me.
[25:46] And that's how Paul saw his life. It wasn't just a euphemism that he's saying, I'm going to depart. I'm going to pull up anchor and go somewhere. Paul saw his death as departing one place for another.
[26:00] And so he says, When I go, already there and waiting for me is this. And then he goes on to describe what's waiting for him. And he talks about the reward, the crown of righteousness, and the giver of the reward, the righteous judge.
[26:15] So first we look to the reward. A friend of mine, quite a while ago now, posted a quote on Facebook. Apparently it was from Matthew McConaughey's character in a TV show called True Detectives.
[26:27] And in the show, McConaughey's character's friend gives an apologetic for religion. Essentially saying that religion helps some people from being liars and thieves and generally being a nuisance in society.
[26:39] And so here's how McConaughey's character responds. He says, If the only thing keeping a man decent is the promise of a divine reward, then brother, that man is a piece of work.
[26:51] So he's disparaging this idea. So basically what the character is saying is that the doctrine of heaven is just like bad parenting. It's like saying when your kid is throwing a fit in the grocery store, I'll give you a chocolate bar when you get home if you just stop crying.
[27:06] You know? And doing this over and over again. And so he's saying, Isn't this doctrine of heaven just like bribing your child? And that's just maybe a bad way to parent. But look at what he's saying.
[27:18] He's saying that the behavior and the reward are completely separate. The reward is external. And that is what is motivating the child, not the behavior.
[27:31] You see, that's why that idea is bad parenting if you use it over and over again. And so this character is accusing God of buying friends and buying obedience with a promised reward. But is that what Paul is talking about here?
[27:44] Well, let's look again. I'm going to read the first part of the sentence. Do not look down at your Bibles. That's probably the only time a preacher has ever told you that before. But don't look down at your Bibles, and I want you to finish the sentence. There's an important...
[27:54] I can't tell you too much, otherwise I'm going to give it away. But I'm going to read the first part of the sentence. You finish the sentence without looking at your Bibles, okay? Now there is in store for me... Oh, okay, we need to try that again altogether, okay?
[28:08] Now there is in store for me... Okay, you guys, I sounded... It was a little hard to make out exactly what you're saying. But this is how, if I did it from memory, before kind of looking at this more, this is how it finishes.
[28:23] I'd say, now there is in store for me a crown of righteousness. But that's not what it says. If you looked at the text, now you can look at the text. If I tell you not to, then I have to eventually tell you too. It says, the crown of righteousness.
[28:35] Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness. Now if you pay attention in English class, you'll learn that the small words are the ones that are often the most important ones in the sentence. And the idea here is that Paul is saying it isn't just a crown.
[28:50] It's not like we get to heaven and there's this kind of big pile of gold crowns and you pick through to see the one that you want and you take it and then you go from there. Paul is saying that in heaven there is the crown.
[29:03] There is one crown of righteousness. And it isn't, I already told you that, but it isn't just a gold crown, but the crown is made of righteousness. The crown itself is righteousness.
[29:15] In the verse before, Paul talked about running the race. This is the good race of living a life that's poured out for Christ. In the Greco-Roman Empire, when you ran a race, you didn't get a medal, you got a crown, a crown of olive branches.
[29:33] And that's what Paul is talking about. He's saying, I am running the race of righteousness and at the end, I will receive the crown of righteousness. It's the symbol that his righteousness is made complete.
[29:46] You see how the reward is not separate from the behavior? It's not that bad parenting that was being accused of it. It's the reward. This crown of righteousness is the fulfillment of what Paul has been living his whole life for.
[29:58] The reward is just the completion of the obedience of the life. Okay? It's the fulfillment of the behavior and the completion of it. So some of you even look disappointed right now.
[30:10] You're like, but I was looking forward to that gold crown. Like, sure, Paul's a first century Jew. Righteousness was a big deal in his culture. It mattered to him. But for us, righteousness doesn't really hold the same cachet that a gold crown does.
[30:27] Well, we often think our culture isn't motivated by righteousness, but are you so sure? Maybe we just need to understand what righteousness is. I mean, what is righteousness? What do the words mean, the Hebrew and the Greek words?
[30:40] Well, they're actually built on this concept of meeting a standard, of fulfilling a standard. So think of an acceptance letter that you get from a college. Maybe there's a particular program that you want to go through and has very high standards.
[30:54] And even if you meet all the standards, it's so sought after, so highly coveted that so many people apply that very few people get in. And then you submit your test scores and you write essays and you do interviews.
[31:08] And then you wait for this little piece of paper to come into the mail and it comes and you're so excited and you want to open it but you don't want to be disappointed that you don't meet the standard. And then you open it and it says that you're accepted.
[31:18] You have met our standards. I said earlier that our culture doesn't value anything more than freedom and significance. I might have misspoke because acceptance and approval are pretty big draws in our culture too.
[31:32] A lot of people dedicate their lives to being accepted and approved by whoever they think is worthy of that. whoever they want to be accepted and approved by. So when Paul looks forward to this receiving this crown he's looking forward to the confirmation and completion of God's approval and acceptance of him.
[31:54] But here's the question. Paul seems certain that he's going to receive the crown. How does Paul know that he's going to get that crown? How does Paul know that he has is going to receive God's complete acceptance and approval?
[32:08] This is why Paul also tells us to look to the giver of the reward. So look again in verse 8. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge will award me on that day and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.
[32:26] This is Jesus that's going to give Paul the crown. And look how Paul describes Jesus the Lord the righteous judge. So he's saying Jesus is the embodiment of righteousness.
[32:39] He is the one who is going to judge and he is everything that it means to be accepted and approved by God. His very name his very definition is righteousness.
[32:52] He's fully accepted by the Father. He's a picture of what humanity is supposed to be and it is Jesus who will give Paul the crown. Earlier we looked at Hebrews 12.1.
[33:03] I want to finish that sentence by looking at Hebrews 12.2. So remember one said therefore since we are surrounded by such a great crowd of witnesses let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.
[33:21] Looking to Jesus the founder and perfecter of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
[33:31] What's happening here? Jesus goes to the cross he conquers and then he sits down at the right hand of the throne of God the exalted seat proof that Jesus has met God's standard.
[33:44] That shows his acceptance and his righteousness. He has met God's perfect standard. But what does it mean when it says for the joy set before him? What motivated Jesus to go to the cross?
[33:57] Was it to have that crown of righteousness? Was it to to demonstrate to earn God's approval and his acceptance? No, he already had those things.
[34:09] So what was the joy set before Jesus? His joy was to return to the Father to stand before the Father and to take off his crown of righteousness which was only his it only belonged to him but to stand and to take it off and to give it away.
[34:33] Paul had spent his whole life seeking to be righteous in himself. He was rigorous in following the law. He was zealous to try and meet God's standards. But in the middle of his life he changed the path that he was on for righteousness.
[34:47] When Jesus met Paul on the Damascus road Paul switched from trying to be righteous in himself to living with Christ's righteousness. righteousness. After he met Jesus Paul realized that even with everything that he had been doing he was still horribly unrighteous.
[35:04] He still was horribly broken. He fell from meeting God's perfect standard. But he learned that Jesus though Jesus had no need to found it joy to pour out his life for us.
[35:18] That Jesus the Prince of Heaven whose life was more valuable than anything else poured out his life for Paul for Timothy and for us. So what Paul is saying is saying when I recognize when I realize that Jesus who owned the crown poured out his life for us so that he could take off the crown of righteousness take off the crown of God's perfect acceptance and to place it on our heads not because of what we had done but because of what Jesus had done.
[35:52] Then Paul says when I reflect on that when I look to that I can't help but pour out my life. Every time that I think of what Jesus did on the cross every time I think about how Jesus is taking his perfect acceptance and is giving it to me I can't help but pour out my life in service to God.
[36:11] And Timothy and Squamish Baptist Church when you face things that that rob you of your love for Christ when you face things that make it more difficult to pour out your life to God look to the reward and even more importantly look to the giver of the reward and when I remember that I can't help but live righteously I can't help but pour out my life.
[36:35] Let's pray.