Keeping The Faith, 2nd Timothy 4:1-7

1. Read 2 Timothy 4:5. What are some examples of being sober-minded in your everyday life? What kinds of habits, routines, or ways of thinking dull our minds and prevent us from being alert to God's ultimate reality?
2. Read 2 Timothy 1:6-14. What did your life look like when you first came to faith in Jesus? What changes did you experience? What habits were cultivated? What stirred your affections toward God?
3. How could you "fan into flame" or "kindle afresh" the gift of God right now in your life (v. 6)?
4. What does it mean for you to guard the treasure entrusted to you by God (v. 14)? Is there anything you need to reorient or reprioritize in your life to guard the treasure with the help of the Holy Spirit?
5. What role does Scripture play in this season of your life? What do your times with God look like right now? How would you like for these times to look?

Practice: Spend some time with God this week reflecting back on when you first came to faith in Jesus or a time when your affections toward God were especially strong. Write down some of your core beliefs during that time about God and about yourself. How did you see yourself in relationship to him? How did you engage with his word? What filled you up the most? Ask the Holy Spirit for help kindling afresh your desire for God and ask him to search you and tell you what in your life may be dulling your mind rather than being sober-minded and alert to his eternal reality.

Today I want to talk to you about a sobering challenge. But I wanted to have some fun while challenging you at the same time.

I’m going to let you in on an experience I had this summer.

I recently spent the week with my buddy Oscar, and he sent me a text with a song in it. When we were in high school and had just come to Christ, we used to listen to The Imperials. The chorus of the song goes like this:

“Finish what you started in me. I like what I see Finish what you started in me, Lord Well, I love what you’re doing in me.”

Finish what you started in me is one of our favorites. I brought it home and I got Mike and Gail to listen as I was singing and reflecting back on my early Christian life.

I was at a big concert of theirs and we had created hand motions for one of the songs. They called us up on stage to do it with them.

I had some emotional moments as I went back to listen to people I used to listen to. I started bawling as I listened.

That led to eight weeks of me going back to the first two years of my spiritual upbringing. And that song meant a lot.

I made a list of the things I learned when I first became a Christian that were important in my life.

Paul reflects back on his life in 2 Timothy.

Paul goes all the way back to the influence. Timothy’s father was Greek, and his mother was Jewish.

These were the texts. Paul is at the end of his life thinking about it, and telling Timothy to go back to the first.

There’s a connection between the beginning and the end.

Paul is at the end of his faith saying he has kept the faith. Timothy is told to go back to the beginning.

There’s something happening now that determines how you make it to the end.

Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you. Figure out what you had from the beginning and guard it.

He’s drawing a line back to faith. Paul is going to do two things in this text. He’s going to push you back to the beginning and pull you forward to the end.

What does that create in the middle? What should be happening in you if you’re getting pushed on and pulled on in your faith?

Here’s the really important thing that happens in our culture. You can’t create your own Christianity. It was given to you a certain way and you finish a certain way. People are reconstructing Christianity all the time. You don’t get to create your own brand of Christianity.

If this is what was deposited in you, this is where you should end up.

Timothy was a pastor in Ephesus. People creating their own brand of Christianity had come into the church. Timothy was a little lost.

Some of us aren’t sure what we believe anymore because of the dominate culture.

Paul brings up a few people at the end who have fallen away from their faith.

There are things that make us fearful, but that’s not what was deposited in us.

Paul talks about a lot of people in this book who abandoned the faith. Paul mentions a number of people who have swerved from the faith, “wandered off,” “itchy ears,” etc.

Notice Paul’s list of the things he does:

He’s willing to suffer, he’s not ashamed, he knows, and he is convinced.

Ask yourself, do these things exist in your right now?

• uncertainty
• cowardice
• Lack of confidence
• No conviction whatsoever

Paul starts off talking about what was accomplished in the gospel. You were saved by it and called by it, and since eternity past it was determined Jesus would save you. You need to rehearse that reality.

2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that all Scripture is God-breathed. This gospel is deposited in you. God does this eternally phenomenal act, Scripture begins to determine your world.

The Gospel was deposited in you and then Scripture ought to be directing you to be a certain kind of person along this journey.

A gospel gets deposited in you. Then Scripture determines who you are to become.

Here’s Paul’s list that should be happening.

There’s a lot of crud going on in the world, but this is for you.

Four things here. The first is to be sober-minded in all things.

This is what I believe about God’s word. I believe it’s true. What it says is reality. It’s the basis of all reality. Nothing exists that God didn’t speak into existence. There’s no academic discipline that exists until God creates.

Sam Harris is a “new atheist” who believes that everyone who believes in the Bible is stupid. He’s not even close to understanding the Scriptures.

God created you. You’re made after his image, not yours. You’re a dependent being. Everything wrong with culture’s perspective on reality is screwing us up.

My dad read the Bible to me before I became a believer. Kirk Nowery was my youth pastor and started teaching it to me. Then I started reading it for myself.

They both gave me a Bible and I would read a chapter a night trying to understand.

If you opened up 2 Timothy and knew nothing about it, you start reading it and you would get to verse 19 about those who name the name of the Lord. Or get to the part about fleeing from youthful lust.

How are you going to be sober-minded if you don’t have the Bible in your life? You don’t have to be an academic. You just have to read it. You don’t have to go to seminary to do that.

Just see what the Bible says to do and do it.

Sober-minded means clear-headed and controlled. The word for sober-minded is in a different tense than the other imperatives in the verse. It’s a present tense that is always true and it governs the other imperatives.

When I was Aspen this week, Oscar and I would eat dinner together. We had get to dinner early enough to beat the crowd and we would sit at the bar in the restaurants because it’s cheaper. The greatest things in the world happen there at the bar. When I get there, I always order unsweetened tea with lime. That’s as strong as I get. After three of those I’m the life of the party.

Sitting at the bar night after night, you see people are hurting and lonely and willing to talk about anything. I don’t generally like to be around people who drink a lot.

We’re sitting in the bar and this guy sitting next to Oscar wants to buy everyone a drink. He finds out I’m not drinking and he isn’t having it. He wants me to take a shot and was peer pressuring me.

I was very confident I wasn’t having the drink, but I had to be sweet to him as well.

Oscar had a separate experience with an art guy who had cocaine laid out and a guy bringing in girls. Oscar had conviction and they couldn’t talk him into anything.

You have to be able to suffer and know and be convinced.

Once you’re sober-minded and clear and convicted and certain, you are going to have to endure suffering. That may be a little ridicule or something more, but you’re going to have to be able to suck it up. You’ll lose face with some people and lose some relationships. You might lose a little popularity. Let it go and be strong.

If you die to anything serving him, you’ll live. If we endure, we’ll reign with him. But if you get ruled, you’re not ruling. If you deny him, he’ll deny you too.

You also do the work of an evangelist. You can’t get all the way to the end without sharing this incredible message you’re carrying.

You’re not going to be around me and not hear the gospel. I was sitting next to this guy who was drinking all day. We had a great conversation. Somebody is always ranting about somebody at the bar, whether their own wife, a sports team, or whatever. Oscar always says, “That guy needs Jesus” and it shuts everyone up.

One time Oscar tells a guy I’m a pastor and the guy said he goes to church. So we started talking about this church in Arizona. He’s asking about my teaching process and I’m going through it trying to get the gospel in there.

Just put something out there and let God do what he wants with it.

The last thing Paul says to Timothy is to fulfill his ministry.

Some people are crystal clear about what they should be doing. Others don’t seem to have a clue. One of the greatest images of the church in the New Testament is a house. No one gets to live in a house without doing something in the house. There’s almost nothing as constant as housework. Don’t you live here?

When the gospel comes into your life, you get sober-minded, you endure suffering, you share the message with others.

Somebody in the house is taking out the trash. What are you doing?