Father, we thank you that we can be in this place, a warm enough place and a dry place,
after a wet couple of days and a cold sort of morning. Thank you that we can be here.
Father, more than the place, we give you thanks and praise that we can be together
to be here in the name of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit to be in your presence.
And we ask, Father, that your Holy Spirit would move mightily in our hearts,
that your Holy Spirit would be poured out into our hearts to prepare our hearts and set our hearts
to know that we are in your presence, to be receptive to the grace that you desire to give us this morning
and to respond to you in a worthy manner.
We ask, Father, that as part of your grace that you help us to fall in love with the Christian vision of life
and more and more and more to live out of that vision of what life really is.
And we ask this in the name of Jesus, your Son and our Savior. Amen.
Please be seated.
So those of you who've gone along with us, we're finishing 2 Timothy today.
We're going to be looking at chapter 4.
Just a bit of a heads up that starting next Sunday, we begin a brand new sermon series.
And with a nod to Kanye West, the sermon series is going to be called Jesus is King.
And with a bit of a break in the latter half of December and the first Sunday of January for seasonal types of sermons,
we'll start this.
And on Palm Sunday, we'll conclude the first half of Mark's Gospel by Jesus' prophecy.
The turning point in all of the Gospels is when Jesus reveals for the first time explicitly that he's going to be crucified,
he's going to be dead for three days, and then he's going to rise from the dead.
And that prophecy of Jesus that he makes is the turning point in all of the Gospels.
And sort of the first half will go right up to that.
That's on Palm Sunday.
And then we'll finish the rest of Mark, I don't know, some other time later on, 22.
Unless Jesus comes back first, which would be a vastly better outcome.
But if he doesn't, we'll keep working through.
We'll do the second half of Mark, which then the second half of Mark will be called Jesus the Crucified King.
Jesus is the Crucified King.
So that's going to be the title.
So we're going to...
You know, you're never supposed to begin a sermon by talking about boring stuff like that.
There's a Christian vision to life that is completely and utterly transformative.
And often people don't realize we get it in bits and pieces.
We get it through stories.
We get it through the scripture text.
We get it through songs.
But there's this very, very deep Christian vision that's transformative of life.
And it's shown up here in a very, very simple and unique way.
Actually, the doorway into this Christian vision.
And once you understand the Christian vision, the other things in the text, which seem very odd, become clearer to you.
And it's partially caught up by a Jewish expression.
I don't know how many of you have had the privilege of being able to go to Israel.
I know some of you have.
If you ever go to Israel, I highly, highly, highly, highly, highly recommend that you do two things.
First is that you don't just go to Jerusalem and some of the tourist sites, but you also go to Tel Aviv.
Because, in a sense, Tel Aviv is the real Israel.
If you go to Jerusalem, that's where all of the Orthodox Jews live.
Obviously, non-Orthodox Jews live there as well.
But it's very striking.
You go to Jerusalem, and everybody, no matter how hot it is, is dressed quite modestly.
And you don't see anybody with tattoos.
Or you see very, very few people with tattoos.
Because in the Old Testament law, tattoos are forbidden.
You go to Tel Aviv.
And it's sort of like being in Montreal or Toronto or New York, but it's only on the Mediterranean.
Piles and piles and piles and piles of people have tattoos.
And they don't dress modestly.
I mean, many of them do, but lots of them don't.
And you really get, in a sense, the sense of what current Israel is like far more if you go to Tel Aviv.
But even more important than all of that, if you only have time just to go to Jerusalem and see a few other things, like the Sea of Galilee,
it's really important to take a couple of hours out of your day, and you go to see Yad Vashem.
And I apologize to my Jewish friends if I'm not pronouncing these words correctly.
Yad Vashem.
It's really important.
It's known as the Holocaust or the Shoah Museum.
And it's worth setting aside about three hours in your day to go there and to go through it.
It's profoundly, profoundly moving.
And for people like us in the First World, given that, like, Germany was the elite country in terms of culture,
and yet they were able to go and do something so horrific, it is really important to take time to go see it.
Now, one of the things that people don't always know is that I think often in this side of the Atlantic,
people tend to refer to it as the Holocaust Museum.
And the word Holocaust has two meanings in English.
One of them is a Holocaust is a mass killing, like a killing of many, many, many people.
But the other sense, the original sense, is actually that it's a sacrifice.
It comes from the Tanakh.
It comes from the Old Testament.
It's a type of a sacrifice which is made on the altar,
where the sacrifice is completely consumed by fire.
And so as part of the sacrificial system, it's partly how people are reconnected to God,
how they're made right with God.
And that's the sense, the original sense of Holocaust, that it's a sacrifice.
And sacrifices aren't pointless deaths.
They have meaning and significance.
But in fact, at a national level, when they remember what happened to the Jewish people under the Nazis,
it's not referred to primarily as the Holocaust.
It's referred to as the Shoah.
Once again, my apologies to my Jewish friends if I'm not pronouncing this correctly.
And the Shoah is a very, very radically different word.
Shoah means catastrophe.
It means disaster.
And there is a huge world of difference between understanding something like this as a sacrifice
or as a catastrophe and a disaster.
The official day in Israel is marked as a national sort of day of remembrance and prayer and all.
And it's actually called specifically the Shoah.
That's the day that it's called.
That's what it was set aside as by the Israeli parliament.
And that's a very, very different...
You can just automatically understand.
It's a very, very...
It's like to go on the direction...
I love this analogy.
And some of you have heard it so many times it puts you to sleep.
But if you go on the Trans-Canada Highway and you're driving west, I can't remember where it is.
I think it's somewhere just past North Bay.
There's a sign on the side of the road saying that you've hit the watershed.
And that up until this point on the road, if you're going from Ottawa towards North Bay,
up until this point in time on the road, the water, any river that you see is flowing south.
But after this point in time, when you see a river, it's flowing north to the Hudson's Bay.
It's a watershed going in radically different directions.
And the same it is.
To understand an event as a catastrophe is a radically different way to understand the event and life
than to understand it as a sacrifice.
And it's this bit of a difference which is captured in this text, believe it or not.
And if you see the difference, it helps to make everything else in the whole letter.
And in fact, it's a doorway into starting to understand the difference the Christian vision makes
as it captures you and as you surrender to it.
So if you would turn your Bibles to 2 Timothy 4, verse 6.
We're going to look at this, and then we'll go back and we'll read the whole chapter.
2 Timothy 4, verses 6 and 7.
And it's just a small little bit, but it actually opens up into this.
It's a watershed moment in the text.
It's the watershed between a Christian vision of life and a Canadian vision of life.
And it goes like this.
For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come.
And just to sort of pause here.
I've said throughout these sermons that Paul knows that this time,
God is not going to miraculously deliver him from jail.
That this time, when he leaves the jail, it's only to take that short walk to where the executioner will kill him.
And this is the heart of the text that Paul understands this,
as well as the final bits at the end of 2 Timothy 4.
The word for departure is a perfectly good word,
but in the original language, there's an image attached to it.
And for those of you who are boaters or canoers or sailors,
it's when the image is of untying the ship or untying the canoe from the dock to begin the journey,
to leave the solid land to go on a journey.
And so that's what Paul is saying.
My time, in a sense, to be untethered from this world is about to come.
I'll read it again.
For I am already being poured out as a drink offering,
and the time of my departure has come.
It's arrived.
He doesn't know if it's going to be next week, next month, a couple of months later, but it's arrived.
Verse 7.
I have fought the good fight.
I have finished the race.
I have kept the faith.
Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.
Oh, that might not be on your text up there.
I'm sorry.
Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness,
which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day,
and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing.
Now, this particular thing in verse 6,
for I am already being poured out as a drink offering,
that is literally a reference to the Old Testament sacrifices.
And he's comparing the end of his life as being the same as a sacrifice.
And in fact, in the original language, you can see this here in English as well.
It's partially captured it.
It's passive language.
It's not that he has made his life a sacrifice for God,
as if he could just sort of determine that.
I'm going to make my life a sacrifice for God.
No, what the language is passive is God has made his life a sacrifice,
an offering to himself.
It's passive language.
And so what Paul is understanding is that here he is.
He's in jail.
He's in a dungeon.
He's going to be executed.
But the way that Timothy is to understand this is in keeping with the Christian vision.
His death isn't a catastrophe.
His death is not a disaster.
His death is to be understood as a holocaust,
as a sacrifice, as an offering,
given by God, made by God.
It's something that God has done in his life.
It's taken the bits and pieces of Paul's life.
And this is a very, very, very important thing for all of us to understand,
especially those of us who know a little bit about Paul.
You see, I'm going to talk in a moment about hope,
but this is really, if I put you to sleep for the rest of the sermon,
this is something which is really important to understand,
that when God takes you, when the triune God takes you,
when Jesus takes you, and he takes your life,
and your life can start to become a sacrifice, in a sense,
that your life now has a type of a meaning that comes from God,
it takes all of your life and redeems it,
both before your conversion and after.
You see, the thing about Paul is that Paul was complicit in the murder of Christians.
Paul was complicit in the murder of Christians.
And Paul was a persecutor and a tormentor.
And yet the final word about Paul isn't that he's a persecutor and a tormentor,
but this is the final word about Paul.
You see, this is really important for us to understand.
Some of you are young, haven't made that many horrendous mistakes yet.
Maybe some of you have.
Those of us who are a bit older, you know, maybe our kids didn't turn out right.
Maybe we never were able to have children.
Maybe we were never able to marry.
Our finances might have not been entirely good.
We've had alcohol or drug or gambling issues in our lives.
There's lots of things about our life which we aren't particularly proud about.
But the point of this, you see, is that when God takes your life,
when you get taken up, in a sense, into Christ's sacrifice,
and when you get, in a sense, Christ takes a hold of you,
that not only are those things in the past that you've done that are wrong
or the things that are shameful,
are they dealt with by Jesus on the cross,
it means that whether or not you have a week left or a month left or a year left
or five years left in your life,
that because God is making your life a sacrifice,
there's still things that you can do that can, in a sense,
completely redeem and have the final word about your life
be a very, very different type of word.
Maybe you've been a racist
and you come to faith
and you've even been a racist for a while as a Christian
and then finally you get convicted of the sin of racism.
Well, then maybe one of the things that God is going to call you to
is a deep financial generosity,
not only for efforts that try to deal with reconciliation,
but also to minister to people of very different color,
people that you would have hated before,
or to become a very, very important financial contributor
to an immigrant church,
the same people that you would have hated or despised.
Maybe you've never been blessed
and you view it as a deep failure
to have been able to have had children
or that you've been involved in alcoholism
or some other types of things like this.
But the fact of the matter is that after your conversion,
there's ways that you can be maybe as a mentor,
a supporter, a financial giver,
pouring your life into children
or ministries to children
or to teenagers or to university students.
Paul went from being a person who persecuted Christians
to being a person,
and this is part of God's profound sense of humor,
that Paul was the one out of all of the apostles
who had the greatest role in bringing the Christian faith
to the pagans that he despised before his conversion.
And here he is dying in jail.
He's about to die and he's in jail.
His life has not been a catastrophe.
It's not been a disaster.
He has been caught up by Christ
and his life has meaning.
You see, behind all of this text
is something very different.
The Bible doesn't condemn hope.
One of the things is we all know that hope is needed to live.
If we have a friend
and they start to talk
in terms of having absolutely no hope in life,
it's a very, very difficult thing for us.
And one of the things that we try to do
if we have friends who go through a very, very dark season,
first of all, we call it a dark season.
We don't call it a light season
when a person loses all hope.
To not have any hope is to fall into despair.
And when people fall into despair,
when they fall into hopelessness,
we try to cheer them up.
We try to think of reasons why they should have hope.
You should hope that you can see your sister again
or you can see your best friend
or you can go out or whatever.
We try to give them hope
because we understand at a very, very deep level
that to live a life that is...
to be able to live, you need to have hope.
But at the same time that we have this...
I mean, here's the thing.
If at the end of the day...
The average Canadian, when they talk about death,
talks like this.
Your granny or your mom...
Actually, I shouldn't use a woman as an example.
I use myself.
You know, your father, your papa has died
and he's gone to a better place.
He's in the trees.
He's in the wind.
He's in your heart.
He's watching over you.
Because as Canadians,
we have a very, very hard time actually saying,
your dad's died.
That's it.
It's all over.
It doesn't exist anymore.
Because we have a very, very basic sense
that if actually that's what death really is,
it's the final word, it's the end,
then really, what do a lot of these other smaller,
more minor hopes actually mean?
They end up being like Disney types of things,
greeting card types of things,
things to help us pass the time and get through the day.
But if at the end of the end of the end of the end,
all that means is that you die
and your death is final
and your death is the final word about you,
we all instinctively understand
that to come to think about that
would mean that hope is not real
and that our lesser hopes aren't really hopes at all.
They're not really hopes.
They're just distractions
that distract us from the true and final word
about every human being,
that every human being dies.
And when they die, that's it.
The Christian message is, amongst other things,
is that there's a reason
that human beings hope for the future
and need hope to live.
That's an event and sense how God wired you.
He wired you for more.
If you ever read the Narnia Chronicles
and you come to the seventh and final book
of the Narnia Chronicles,
which talks about basically the end of all things,
it's in a sense a Christian version of the,
a mythic type of story version
of the book of Revelation.
Once they've come to the new heaven and the new earth
and they've died and they're in the new heaven
and the new earth,
there's this constant phrase.
I think it goes higher up and farther in.
Those of you who are Narnia Chronicle experts,
that it is higher up and farther in.
That it's not as if death,
and in a sense death and the new life isn't the end.
I mean, one level it is the end,
but another way for Christians to understand it
is it's actually the beginning.
It's the real beginning.
And C.S. Lewis has perfectly captured this
by this image that we are to go higher up and farther in,
higher up and farther in.
That higher up there's even more glories,
farther in there's even more glories.
And that you go with this type of hope and expectation
of that there's more, there's more, there's more,
there's more.
And that everywhere you are is a place of joy,
but you go to even greater joy,
deeper joy, higher joy, farther into joy.
And that's how God has designed human beings.
And so in a sense,
what to understand the Christian faith
and the Christian message
and the Christian vision is this,
is that hope became fact.
That if you understand the fact that we human beings
understand that there's a need for hope,
it's hard to ground hope,
but because, you know,
in some religions like in Islam
where everything is just fate
and most people don't end up going to whatever the,
to be with Allah,
but most people are fated to be apart from him,
especially women.
I think in Islam, I don't know,
it says very, very, very few women
will actually be in their heaven.
And in Buddhism and Hinduism,
the end of all of the cycles of death and rebirth
and death and rebirth and death and rebirth
is really, in a sense, a final death,
a merging with the one
where you lose any type of being yourself
or being unique.
It's just another way to describe death,
but it's trying to describe death
as if it's somehow a positive thing,
but to completely and utterly lose your existence
and lose your identity
is just the same as a secular understanding of death.
And so we have this sense of hope,
all of these hopes,
and in a sense,
what the Christians understand is
is that hope became a fact.
Hope took on flesh.
Hope walked among us.
And it's emphasized
because in the New Testament,
time and time and time again,
they don't just talk of Jesus,
although they use his word,
and they use Jesus
and they add the word Christ.
And it's really important
that those two words go together.
You see, the word Jesus emphasizes the fact.
It means that if you were able to go back in time
and see Jesus
and you were able to learn the language that he spoke,
you'd be able to ask him,
and he would tell you precisely
why his mother's hummus
was better than anybody else's hummus.
And he would be able to tell you
in Jerusalem where the best baker was
to get the absolute best bread.
And he would be able to tell you
the types,
how much garlic he liked in his tabbouleh.
One of the wonderful things about the Bible
is that it doesn't tell us those things.
I mean, otherwise,
we'd all have to have Jesus's taste
in garlic in our tabbouleh.
Some of us don't even like tabbouleh.
I love tabbouleh, by the way.
Some of you don't like it.
Some of you wonder what's tabbouleh.
You can go and look it up.
Go to a Lebanese restaurant.
Have some.
It's delicious.
But the point is that Jesus is historical.
You go back.
He had a beard.
He had skin.
He cried.
He was hungry.
He had to walk places.
He talked.
He did things in the real world
that there's even pagan sources
that talk about the reality of the Jesus
that actually existed.
But Christians never just refer to him as Jesus.
They also call him Christ.
Christ Jesus or Jesus the Christ.
And Christ is just sort of a different way
of saying the word Messiah.
And what the Jewish people come to understand
is with the word Messiah,
it technically just means anointed one.
But what it means for Jewish people
is that in a sense,
all of the hopes of the Jewish people,
all of the promises that God has made
to the Jewish people,
all of the meaning in life that God has said
is available to the Jewish people
in their scriptures,
that all of those, in some sense,
they all know that that has been incomplete.
They're waiting for it to come
to complete and utter fulfillment and fruition.
All of the longings,
all of the hopes,
all of the dreams,
all of the sense of redemption
and of the new heaven and the new earth,
all of these things get captured
with this word Christ, Messiah.
And when Christians say Jesus is the Christ,
they're saying that this man,
the Christ,
all these hopes,
all these dreams,
all these promises
that they hope will be fulfilled,
that this hope becomes fact.
And the hope that becomes fact
meets death.
And hope wins.
In fact,
to sort of just play with a phrase,
it looks at first as if
Jesus is just like every other man
and death is swallowed.
Jesus.
But what we understand
is that on the third day,
as a fact,
the grave is empty.
On the third day,
as a fact,
the stone is rolled away,
not so Jesus can get out,
but so people can come in
to see that the grave is empty.
And what we know as a fact
is the body was never found.
And what we know as a fact
is that Jesus appeared alive,
resurrected,
to many different people
over quite a period of time.
We know the body was never found.
We know that these are facts.
And so it looked,
on Good Friday,
in fact,
it appeared,
on Good Friday,
that death
had swallowed hope.
But Christians now understand
that hope
swallowed
death.
And this means
that there is a hope
which is true,
a hope which is
thick,
a hope which has substance,
a hope upon which
you can base your life,
a hope that can draw you
into the future,
a hope
that is connected
to meaning
and significance
and direction
that can start to understand
and become the lens
by which you look at politics
and you look at COVID
and you look at economics
and you look at the arts.
It's a hope
that not only
is talking about these things,
but can be something
that can be the guide
to having your family
and how you,
to shape and structure
your marriage,
that there is this vision
that comes
that hope
is real,
not just any hope,
not just,
you know,
there can be vain
and cruel hopes.
The Nazis had a hope
that they could exterminate
the Jewish people.
That's a vile,
repulsive hope.
Slave owners
and racists
had vile,
repulsive hopes
of diminishing
and destroying
and treating human beings
as if they're even worse
than animals.
And those are vile,
destructive,
evil hopes.
And what basis
do we have to say
that those are vile,
destructive,
evil hopes?
We have a basis
to say that
because hope
is a fact
and hope
met death
and triumphed
over death
and swallowed death
and that true,
deep hope
is the hope
that judges
all human hopes.
To show some
is vain,
some is completely
and utterly foolish
and some is deeply evil
and to be completely
and utterly rejected
by Christians
and all people.
But we should be the leaders
in rejecting
cruel,
evil,
false,
vain,
self-flattering,
deceptive,
delusional hopes.
Why?
Because hope
became a fact
and met death
and defeated death
and that's the Christian vision.
And in this Christian vision,
when we understand
that hope
has triumphed,
it's come,
it's a fact,
it's triumphed,
it starts to mean
that the things
in your life
don't necessarily
have to be things
without meaning
or things without hope.
they don't have to be
understood
as a shoah
but can be understood
as a sacrifice,
something that God
takes
and redeems
and can bring good
out of.
Let's just finish
by looking through
the whole text.
So if you turn in your Bibles
or read the whole text
just to bring a few comments
to it as we bring it
to a close
because,
you see,
once you understand
this thing
about the difference
between a shoah
and a holocaust,
it helps you to understand
how Paul says
the things he says
and it helps to get
more shape
to the Christian vision
of life.
Verse 1,
Notice that,
Christ Jesus,
not just Jesus
but Christ Jesus
who is to judge
the living and the dead
and by his appearing
in his kingdom
preach the word.
That word preach,
by the way,
could also be translated
as herald,
not H-A-R-O-L-D
the name
but herald
as in the town herald.
A herald is one
who doesn't invent something,
a message,
but carries a message
from the king
to the people
and that's,
in a sense,
what a church is to do.
We are,
in a sense,
these next nine things
which are to be described
as imperatives,
it's helping us
to understand
what the local church
is to be like,
that the local church
is to study the Bible,
to study the word,
to understand the gospel
and then it's not so we can,
you know,
I think I could improve on that,
I think there's ways
that we could make that
like a little bit better,
I need to wordsmith
this stuff for God
because he got it
a little bit right,
I need to be a spin doctor
for God.
No,
the goal of the church
is to actually try to hear
the Bible
more and more clearly
and as we hear the Bible
to look out at the world
and see how things are wrong
and be willing to say things
even if it offends people.
Like,
one of the great mysteries of life
is that how is it
that Alabama
could be one of the most
evangelical states
in the United States
but also have so much racism?
Like,
how is that possible?
And we want to be a people
who look at the word
and even if the world
doesn't want us
to talk about sexuality
or doesn't want us
to talk about euthanasia,
it doesn't want us
to talk about abortion,
it doesn't want us
to talk about certain types
of things,
we need to be people
who look at the word
and then use the word
to judge
and understand the world
and not to condemn
the world in a way
that doesn't have it hope
but to come in
and to be salt and light
and say,
listen,
you know,
the Bible doesn't even
have the category of race.
Do you realize that?
The Bible doesn't have
a category for race.
There's only one category
in the Bible
and that's human.
That's the only category.
And it doesn't matter
if you're in China
or if you're in Nigeria
or you're in Argentina
or you're in Malaysia,
it doesn't matter
if you're in England
or France or Canada,
there's only human.
And every human being,
whether it's in the womb
or a person
with severe mental illness
or a person
at the end of life
ravaged body with disease,
you're made in the image of God
and have a worth
and a dignity
that should be respected.
And even if the world
doesn't like that,
we shouldn't be shaped
by the world.
Our goal is to understand
the word
and to faithfully proclaim it.
That's the job of the church.
Preach the word,
be ready in season
and out of season.
That means if it's 1951
and Christianity is on the rise
or if it's 2021
and people don't like Christianity,
do the same thing.
Reprove is another word
for correct.
Rebuke is rebuke.
Exhort is another word
for encourage.
You do this with complete patience
and teaching.
For the time is coming
when people will not endure
sound teaching
but having itching ears,
they will accumulate
for themselves teachers
to suit their own passions
and will turn away
from listening to the truth
and wander off
into the myths.
Myths of the prosperity gospel.
Myths of racism.
Myths of class superiority.
Myths that
upper class people
are worth more
than working class people.
As for you,
always be sober minded
and endure suffering.
Do the work of evangelists.
Fulfill your ministry.
The evangelist says
that we're to look beyond.
You see,
it's not just a matter
to say to the Nazi
or to the communist
that what you're doing
is evil.
What's more important
is not only say
that it's evil
but that God loves you
and he wants you
to be his child
by adoption and grace.
He wants you to lay down
your racism,
lay down your communism,
lay down your greed,
lay down your lust for power,
lay down your ungenerous heart
and allow the loving arms
of Jesus who died for you,
who defeated death,
to put his arms around you
and to include you in himself
so that you will have a hope
that is stronger
and deeper than death.
Verse 6,
Here's one of the things.
The Bible doesn't say
that all of our lesser hopes
don't matter.
What it does
is it reorders our hopes
in light of this
ultimate hope
of being reconciled
and reunited to God
in a sense that
when we die
and when the new heaven
and the new earth comes,
our cry will be farther up,
higher in.
And we run that race
and swim those rivers
and climb those mountains
with redeemed humanity.
But in the meantime,
our other hopes
are put in proper place
and put in order
and sometimes
we will sacrifice them
for that great
and supreme hope.
And in the same way,
the Bible doesn't tell you
that you never pay attention
to what other people think.
It doesn't want you
to be completely
and utterly antisocial
as if you were a person
who cannot pick up
on social cues.
But what the Bible
wants you to understand
is how people think
about you need
to be put in order
and what ultimately
finally matters
is the final word
about you
is made by the Lord
Jesus Christ
and His word
is the word
that matters the most.
And you are to hear
the words of other people
in light of your knowledge
of what His final word
will be about you.
Verse 9,
Do your best
to come to me soon
for Demas
in love with his present world
has deserted me
and gone to Thessalonica.
That's bad.
Crescens
has gone to Galatia.
See, here it is
that Paul knows
he's going to die
but he sends Crescens
to Galatia
a place in what
we would now call Turkey.
He sends Titus
to Dalmatia
what we would now
call Croatia.
Luke alone
is with me.
Get Mark
and bring him with you
for he is very useful
to me for ministry.
Tychicus I have sent
to Ephesus
and when you come
bring the cloak
that I left with Carpus
at Troas
also the books
and above all
the parchments.
Alexander the coppersmith
did me great harm.
The Lord will repay him
according to his deeds.
Beware of him yourself
for he strongly opposed
our message.
At my first defense
no one came
to stand by me
but all deserted me.
May I not be charged
against them.
But the Lord stood by me
and strengthened me
so that through me
the message
might be fully proclaimed
and all the Gentiles
might hear it
so I was rescued
from the lion's mouth.
The Lord will rescue me
from every evil deed
and bring me safely
into his heavenly kingdom.
To him be the glory
forever and ever.
Amen.
Just pause here
as part of this
Christian vision.
Paul
the people
who put him in jail
the people
who were
charging him
the people
who wanted
to put him to death
what does he say?
I want them
to hear the gospel.
If you go back
and you look
at all of those names
there's people
who had been pagans
their entire lives
people who had been
Jewish
people from many
many people
different people groups
and as you'll see
at the end
when he mentions
these last few names
in a moment
what does he call them all?
He calls them
his brothers and sisters.
that's the Christian category
brothers and sisters
that's the Christian vision
and it's the Christian vision
that it would matter to you
I mean
God will deal
with those
who
completely
and utterly
reject all of these things
and
at the end of the day
will choose greed
over hope
true hope
they'll choose racism
over true hope
they'll choose oppression
over true hope
they'll choose personal power
over true hope
and that's in God's hands
but can I tell you
about Jesus?
Verse 19
greet Prisca and Aquila
it's men and women as well
in the household
of Anisiphorus
Erastus remained at Corinth
and I left Trophimus
who was ill
at Miletus
do your best to come
before winter
Eubulus sends greetings
to you
as do Pudens
and Linus
and Claudia
and all the brothers
and sisters
the Lord be with your spirit
grace be with you
just two final things
and it's in closing
you notice what Paul has done
he's talking about
the people who are with him now
he just said earlier
that those
nobody stood by
when he actually got arrested
and almost got killed
right the first time
he uses this powerful image
of being in the lion's mouth
but God does something
to drop him
from the lion's mouth
to give him this extra season
of time
to proclaim the message
including the message
to the lion
and what does he say now
about these people
who've now come back around
and he doesn't say
you dirty rats
why did you abandon me
he calls them his brothers
and sisters
he forgives them
like isn't that
a captivating vision
that you could be so
have hope
swallow you up
true deep hope
swallow you up
in such a way
that when you think
of others
at the end of your life
it's not
gosh I wish
I could have gotten them
gosh I hope
terrible things
happen to them
but that the final word
that's on your
that the thoughts
in your head
and the words
on your lip
are forgiveness
like isn't that
a more powerful vision
to live by
that hope
became a fact
that hope
swallowed death
that there is
that there is a true hope
and that as you're
shaped by that hope
your words
are words
of forgiveness
and then the very
final word
the Lord be with
your spirit
grace be with you
that the final words
that we have
the words of Paul
now come to an end
he obviously spoke others
but the words
that are recorded
his final words
are words of blessing
isn't that a compelling vision
to live a life
that is marked
more and more
by the ability
to forgive
that's more and more
concerned with reconciliation
that is more and more
concerned to bless
and it all emerges
out of true hope
please stand
for those of us
who are Christians
every Sunday
is an opportunity
to renew the vision
that's why we need
to gather in church
whether it's in person
or through YouTube
we need to renew
the vision
and all I can say
is if you are
on the outside
of the Christian faith
you don't know
where you are
with Jesus
all I can say
to you
is this is a very
person
and you know
maybe if you're
a type of a
visual person
or a person
who likes to do
things
like
empty your hands
and get on your knees
and say hope
please take me
and capture me
Jesus
you are the true hope
take me
and capture me
you know my fears
about being captured
by you
you know my fears
about belonging to you
you know my fears
that I will be thought
of as weird
Father
Jesus
I fall on my knees
I can't capture hope
but I believe
and trust
what the Bible says
that you can capture me
and I surrender
to you
let's bow our heads
in prayer
Father we ask
that
this vision
of what the Christian
life is
this vision
of
Holocaust
of
sacrifice
versus
Shoah
of catastrophe
and disaster
Father
it's
hearts
we long
for this
at the same time
Father
it can be hard
to keep it
and Father
we give you
thanks and praise
that you know
this about us
you know
how weak
we are
it was your
intention
that we have
mentors
and discipleship
and small
groups
and
spiritual
friends
and weekly
worship
to be
recaptured
to recapture
the vision
to rekindle
the vision
rekindle
the hope
Father
we give
into your
hands
those things
that we
despair of
those things
that we
confused about
and we don't
know what to
do
Father
we give
them
into your
hands
and we
ask
Father
that you
fill us
with hope
a hope
that allows
us to
press into
these things
and to
walk towards
them
and to
deal with
them
all for
your glory
and the
furtherance
of your
kingdom
and we
ask all
these things
in the name
of Jesus
your son
and our
savior
and all
God's
people said
amen