He is Faithful

 

Text: 2 Timothy 2:8-15

Focus: Faithfulness

Function: to help people see the promise we have that God will keep us

⁸Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, ⁹for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained. ¹⁰Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. ¹¹The saying is sure:

If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
¹²if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
¹³if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
he cannot deny himself.

¹⁴Remind them of this, and warn them before the Lord that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. ¹⁵Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.

Well, I remember Bible College and Seminary. They drilled that last verse into us, and rightly so.

Everyone needs scripture with imperative commands, especially preachers because in response to the love that we have for God, everyone needs something to do.

I love the stories of how Jesus trained the apostles. He sent them out two by two right at the beginning of the ministry and he gave them a chance to succeed by the power of the Holy Spirit on their own.

It was Jesus empowering them that gave them the onus to spur on toward greater and greater things.

God, I believe, wants to do the same thing in us.

So we learned this verse and I apply it.

I take it to mean that it is my job to continually study and be enriched myself by the Scriptures so that I can continue to grow.

And I have grown a lot. I have grown a lot even since I have come here to be your pastor.

God calls us to growth in God’s love, grace and power. We move line upon line and precept upon precept as we continue to seek out the salvation that God is providing us through the knowledge of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Starting at verse 11 of our text, we have a quote that was a common saying, apparently among the early church. It appears to be a song, or a poem.

And it contains promises and warnings.

Let us consider them:

If we have died with him.

That is the question that precludes our Christian growth. Dying to self because of the example of Jesus’ own death and resurrection.

He showed us that even death cannot separate us from the Love of God.

He died in faith, forgiving His murderers and entrusted His own soul to God.

He showed us that we don’t need to seek our own revenge, but to rest in the just actions of the Loving God.

Do we reckon ourselves dead to evil and corruption?

I grew up to hear that meant that we don’t cuss, smoke, drink or chew.

But God has called us to much more. Look again at the example of Jesus as He confronted evil in His day.

God has called us to that same kind of love and forgiveness. It is only when people relax their arms and fists in fight mode and open their arms in charity that we can overcome the evil warlike nature of our human evolution.\

It is the power of the Spirit that calls me to be an anti-racist. God wants us to confront evil.

The Bible says that God created us and called us Good. God believes in humanity and wants humanity to succeed.

And so, Jesus came and showed us how to live and die.

The next line of the poem says that if we endure we will reign with Him.

It speaks of the condition that we have been talking about, the fact that we will endure trials and struggles in our faith. Some of these are tests, but most of them are just the result of living with degrees of brokenness.

The promise is that we will reign with Him. It is the promise of eternal life. It is something that we all sense inside of our spirits and the poem seems to confirm that existence.

And then the poem takes a negative and makes a warning. It is simple: Don’t deny Christ. If we do, then we will face the consequence.

But there is hope!

I love the next line and it is my favorite line from both books written by Paul to Timothy: “If we are faithless, He remains faithful for He cannot deny Himself.”

That line is pregnant with promise. And we can draw conclusions from God’s promises.

There are times when we have doubts, struggles, and our fears get the best of us.

I think the opposite of faith is fear. “If we are faithless” is a result of giving in to our fears and letting circumstances stand in the way of our trust in God’s sovereignty.

And God understands the human condition. I was reading Psalm 103 Saturday morning in my devotions. It says, “For He knows how we are made and He remembers that we are made merely of dust.”

In other words. Our bodies are not eternal. We are frail compared to God. And we can be weak at times. Because of that frailty, we can shrink back in fear.

I have never thought of it before, but Jesus on the cross was an incredible act of bravery to trust that God would indeed raise Him from the dead and that His death would have some sort of meaning.

Bravery in the face of fear. It is a good virtue.

But it doesn’t always happen according to this passage, and the promise is that when we fail, God will still keep us in God’s love because we are God’s children and we belong to God.

To deny us, for God, is for God to deny Himself.

It is important to point out that Jesus died for the sins of the world entire. Everyone is a child of God. And God cannot deny God’s own self since we are part of God’s family.

I love the way the Eastern Orthodox church explains salvation, the prospect of God saving everyone and what that means for people of other religions.

It says in Philippians that every knee shall bow and every tongue, in the original, Willingly, confess that Jesus is Lord.

The Church is the family of God on earth and according to that scripture, at the end of the days when we stand before God everyone will confess Jesus as Lord.

They, and I too, believe that God will reveal Jesus to the world entire and the world entire will accept Him.

The advantage of being the Church, then, is the power of the Holy Spirit to make a change in this world.

There is a contrasting theological position which I also believe. And that is that people, as they read and believe that words of Jesus will apply them and lay down their arms and a day of peace will come.

We sing it in the hymn “We’ve a Story to tell to the Nations” when we sing: “For the darkness will turn to the dawning...”

The hope is that humanity will survive long enough to see this new day dawning.

But the promise is that we are God’s children, believers are part of God’s family and God will never abandon any of God’s own children.

Let us take comfort in that.