Step Up!

My father was a great athlete, in fact, such a great athlete when World War II broke out, he joined the Marines: Guam, Iwo Jima, Purple Heart, fifty-caliber machine gunner. He only opened up twice that I can remember and he goes, “I would set up the machine gun, it would be like mowing grass, and killing people.

And he said, “In the midst of that, my buddy,” his name was Ralph but he went by Reb, “my buddy said, ‘Reb, you’re hit!’” And they carried me out.” And uhm, he said, “I’m sure that was the good part, except no one of the guys with me made it out.” So, he lived with the guilt of a survivor and, you know, when you’re seventeen, eighteen years old, in fact, even if you get older, I do quite a bit of work with the military people here and looking back, uh, now that I have been with men without arms or a leg or head trauma from Iraq and Afghanistan, I will apologize to my father. Because the level of father that he was after what he has been through was rarest among men. And we have no idea.

And so he was a good provider, he was a functioning alcoholic, but I grew up in a home where I had a dad that couldn’t communicate love. I never heard him say he loved me. I know he did, and so, because my dad was a great athlete, when you’re a kid, you want to be like your dad. And so, unfortunately, I didn’t have his size or his strength, but I was pretty quick and I was pretty passionate and pretty driven. And coaches filled that gap.

And I’ll never forget, a coach named Neil Lance – every, I mean, all through junior high, three years, at noontime, he would play one-on-one with me. He taught me, I mean, jab step and look at your belly button and get your elbow in off your fingertips. And I was a gym rat junkie. And so, it was the same when I played in college, it was the same when I played overseas. And it was that drive, those coaches that were there for me and my dad wasn’t.

Well, there was a young guy named Timothy who had a big assignment. And his life coach was the apostle Paul. The apostle Paul, in the words of Will Durant, he wrote A History of Civilization, about twenty-six volumes. Expert. He said, “The greatest intellect of the first century was the apostle Paul.” So, what he says, whether you believe in God or not, is extraordinarily insightful.

And what we are going to learn is Timothy’s life and his job and his role in his city is a lot like what is happening in the world today. And so, what we are going to get is Paul coaching him.

And I look back at that time when Coach Lance helped me and then it was my high school coach and then it was my college coach and those coaches became people who I learned to become a man because of that coach. I learned how to treat women because of that coach. I learned what an arrogant jerk I was from that coach. And he made it very clear.

And so, what I want to do with you is to walk through life coaching and the process will be we will hear, “What did the apostle Paul say to this young pastor who was in over his head?” And then we are going to flip it and say, “What is in this for us?”

Here’s tip number one, write it, it’s in your notes. Tip number one is everyone needs a coach. You need a coach in relationships, you need a coach in life, you need coach in your finances, you need a coach for your marriage, you need a coach to be a dad, you need a coach to be a single man. I mean, everybody needs a coach.

Coaches do two or three great things. Number one, they older and have lived longer and they care about you.

Secondly, they kind of know what’s coming and they are an objective lens that, “You’re good at this, you’re not so good at this.”

And good coaches do a couple things. They put their arm around you and encourage you and, “You can do it!” and they inspire you and they do a little bit of this. They kick you right in the - you can figure out what that word would be, to help you get where you need to be.

The hardest things I have ever heard from any human beings on the planet have been through coaches speaking about one inch from my face and they were as loud as they could possibly be, and I got the point. And I needed to hear it.

We all need people that will tell us the truth. We all need people that will love us when we don’t deserve it. And we need people to give us skills and help us to understand where we’re at in our season to take the next steps.

So, here’s the context. The historical perspective. It’s from the apostle Paul, he’s going to tell this young pastor that he has left in Ephesus that there’s some false teaching going on and you need to address this false teaching.

And it’s in about 62 to 64 A.D. The situation, there’s an emperor named Nero. And Nero is a very perverted man, he likes to wrap Christians in wild animal skins, and then turn wild dogs loose on them in the coliseum and laugh and watch them die and get shredded apart.

On other times, he likes to impale them and put tar around them and for his cocktail parties, they would be burning. They’d be burning to death. He’s an evil, evil man. I want you to keep in mind, so, Ephesus is this super metropolitan city, known for sex of every kind. Temple of Diana. Very secular, very powerful. It’s a port where people are coming in from all over the world.

Christianity is just getting birthed. And Paul has left Timothy there and there are some people with some false teaching and here is what he is going to say to, and notice the tender spirit. Good coaches understand: you’ve got to win their heart first.

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, according to the commandment of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus,” and you might underline this in your Bible, “who is our hope.” Timothy was living in a world like some of you are. It doesn’t feel like there is much hope. And so, he reminds them first and foremost, Jesus, what He has done and who He is, is our hope.

“…to Timothy,” and notice the heart, “my true son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And now he is going to turn his tender tone to a little bit of a strong reminder. Like, “We talked about this before and I’m going to remind you.”

“Just as I urged you upon my departure from Macedonia,” which is Philippi area, “I urged you when I left you in Ephesus, so that you would instruct certain people not to teach strange doctrines, nor pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to useless speculation rather than advance the plan of God which is,” and you might put a box around this little phrase, it’s going to come out all throughout the book, “which is by faith. So, I urge you now.”

So, basically what he says is, “Timothy, you know how much I care about. Remember when I left I said, ‘Remember to do this.’ I am now urging you, you have to address this. In a word, you’ve got to step up.”

And we know from his background he’s a little timid, we know his mother and grandmother were believers and didn’t seem like his father was. So, kind of, grew up in sort of a women-y household.

And Paul inspiring him to say, “Hey, you’re the pastor now. You have been with me. You need to address these issues.” And then notice the contrast. He says they’ve got all this stuff going on, this false teaching, but, “The goal of our instruction is threefold: Love from a pure heart.”

That means you care about people and you extend compassion and you love them for where they are at for the right motive. And then secondly, “…from a good conscience.” In other words, your internal meter that tells you what is right and wrong, how you are living and what is going on inside are telling the same story. You’re not faking it.

And finally, he says, “…from a sincere faith.” And the word sincere means it’s tested by sunlight. And so what he is saying is there’s a bunch of junk going on, but the goal of our teaching about Christ is that men and women’s lives will be changed and they would love even their enemies from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.

And now he addresses, he’s going to do a little teaching. He’s going to say, “Let’s do a little brief teaching about what is going on where you’re at.” Look at verse 6, “Some people have strayed from these things.” I mean, at one point in time they were on track with us.

Notice, “They turned aside to fruitless discussion,” they just got talking about all kind of stuff. Then he begins to develop, well, what were they talking about? “…wanting to be teachers of the Law,” ego, pride, “even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make such confident assertions. But we know that the Law is good, if it is used lawfully, realizing the fact that the Law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious.”

And then he kind of gives this sort of laundry list of various examples of unrighteousness. He says, “For the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy, for the worldly, for those who kill their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave traders, liars, perjurers, whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of our blessed God, which I have been entrusted.”

And so, basically as you study the Scriptures and this happens in other books, there was a group of people that would kind of follow the apostle Paul and for the first, gosh, fifteen, twenty years it wasn’t like Judaism and Christianity. It was Jews who believed the Messiah actually came. So, they were just good Jews following the Messiah, Jesus. Well, they get alienated from that. And so, some, they were called Judaizers.

These Jews would come along and say, you know, “Jesus is okay,” right? “I believe that’s true. But you also have to keep the Law.” And they started trying to pull people back away from salvation that is by the grace of God and the work of Christ to, “You need to be circumcised and don’t eat this and don’t eat that.” And they also had some, they mixed it with other stuff like, “You shouldn’t marry and you shouldn’t eat this and you can’t do that and you can’t drink this.” And there were all these kind of roles and rules that gave a lot of control.

The apostle Paul basically saying is, “Timothy, you’ve got to address this. And you’ve got to think about what it’s like.” I mean, imagine you have been an assistant coach maybe at a good program and then you get a job at a pretty significant school and you are young. And you realize, man, you’ve got issues on this team. And you’ve got issues with the boosters. And you’ve got issues over here. And guess what, you’ve got to step up and make some really hard decisions. That’s the environment. That’s what he is dealing with.

So, notice next he is going to give a little personal testimony. Don’t coaches do that a lot?

But the apostle Paul is going to remind Timothy that, “You know, I have been there. I have not always been this confident, driven apostle who gets beaten up and gets back up and God does miracles through me.”

Verse 12 he says, “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has strengthened me because He considered me faithful, putting me into His service, even though previously a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor.” How is that for, “I’ve got some issues of my own, Timothy”? “Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant with the,” put a little box around it again, “the faith and the love which are found in Christ Jesus.”

Basically, he is saying, “Timothy, don’t look at me and think that I have always had it all together. I want to remind you where I came from. And God was gracious to me.” In fact, notice he now is going to sort of squeak in a little theology.

He says, “It is a trustworthy statement,” this happens three different times throughout the book. And basically, by this time, the Church is about thirty years old. Now they have codified some of the doctrine, some of the most clarion things that everyone needs to know. “This is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance,” and you might underline this in your Bible, “that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

I grew up in a church where everyone pretended to have it together. I grew up where they said one thing and lived another way. I grew up thinking, boy, by the time I was fourteen or fifteen it was like, “This bunch of hypocrites; I don’t need this at all. I don’t need religion, I don’t need God, I don’t need Jesus.”

He didn’t come to make nice people a little bit better. “This is a trustworthy statement: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” People who have blown it, people that have addictions, people that log on to porn, people that lie, people that have stolen, people that have murdered.

Notice he goes, “Among whom I am foremost.” Did you get the tense of the verb? Did you hear what the apostle Paul said? He didn’t say, “Among whom I was.” He said, “Man, you don’t understand, I killed a lot of people.” This was what gave my dad hope! It was actually receiving forgiveness. That’s why He came for me!

And then notice the reason. “Yet for this reason I found mercy,” purpose clause, “so that in me as the foremost sinner, Christ Jesus might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life.”

He just said, “You know what? Hey, Timothy, I know it’s hard, I know there’s a lot of pressure, I know I’m asking you to step up, I know you’re a little timid, I know you’re struggling, but here’s what you’ve got to understand; here’s what’s at risk. You can’t let that stuff go on because this is why Jesus came. And these guys are trying to feed this garbage religion: do this, don’t do that.” I actually grew up where the theology that I got out of my very social, non-biblical church was if it was any fun, God was against it.

My image of God was like He had like this gigantic ruler. And if a thought came to your mind that might be halfway fun, He was just ready to blap you. And you were always just guilt, you’re always messed up, you never measured up. It was like, I don’t need that. Because the people that were telling me, they were doing the things they said I wasn’t supposed to do.
And he’s straightening him out. He says there’s a – Jesus was the God of love and a God of grace. He didn’t minimize things, but He came to rescue us. And then Paul does this, I think he just went off. I think there are times where he remembers: This is where I was.

And as he was rehearsing it for Timothy, he just paused and notice what he says. “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”

I think when he realized afresh, “This is what happened to me,” and he understood who God really is. He just broke out into praise. I don’t think this was in Paul’s notes. I think the Spirit just, whoo.

And then notice he ends with a charge. “Okay, Timothy, I reminded you what you need to do. We addressed what the problem is. I’ve told you I love you and I’m for you and I have talked about where I’ve messed up in the past and what God has done for me.”

Now, get this, this is the fourth quarter, time out speech when you’re down two and all the guys are looking at you like, “Coach, I’m really tired.” “This command I entrust to you, Timothy my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight.”

Well, how? “Keeping,” you might put a box around this again, “faith and a good conscience.” And then notice the bookends, “Which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, so they will be taught not to blaspheme.”

And so, what Paul is actually coaching Timothy to do is the very thing that God wants to coach us to do.
Verse 12 he says, “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has strengthened me because He considered me faithful, putting me into His service, even though previously a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor.” How is that for, “I’ve got some issues of my own, Timothy”? “Yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief and the grace of our Lord was more than abundant with the,” put a little box around it again, “the faith and the love which are found in Christ Jesus.” “This is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance,” and you might underline this in your Bible, “that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

Notice he goes, “Among whom I am foremost.” Did you get the tense of the verb? Did you hear what the apostle Paul said? He didn’t say, “Among whom I was.” He said, “Man, you don’t understand, I killed a lot of people.” “Yet for this reason I found mercy,” purpose clause, “so that in me as the foremost sinner, Christ Jesus might demonstrate His perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life.”

And then notice he ends with a charge. “Okay, Timothy, I reminded you what you need to do. We addressed what the problem is. I’ve told you I love you and I’m for you and I have talked about where I’ve messed up in the past and what God has done for me.”

Now, get this, this is the fourth quarter, time out speech when you’re down two. “This command I entrust to you, Timothy my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight.”

Well, how? “Keeping,” you might put a box around this again, “faith and a good conscience.” And then notice the bookends, “Which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith.

And so, what Paul is actually coaching Timothy to do is the very thing that God wants to coach us to do. And so, I hope you have a general understanding of the chapter and then you’ll notice each time I’m going to give you what I call “coaching nuggets”. So, what I want to do is I want to pull out what I think is the most important truth and then our response.

The most important truth – i.e., if you don’t remember anything else – but the goal of our instruction, the reason you read the Scriptures, the reason you go to a Bible study, the reason you have fellowship, the reason you go to a men’s retreat, a women’s retreat, the reason that you have a mentor, the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.

It’s not that you’re religious, it’s not that you’re a little bit nicer than most people, it’s not so people think you’re a nice person. The goal is that you love God and you love people and that’s not a feeling. It’s sacrificial, others centered relationships where the life of Christ in you gets poured out to demonstrate His love for other people.

Let me give you my definition for love. I’m sure I stole it from multiple different places, but I’m claiming it as my own now. Love is giving another person what they need the most when they deserve it the least at great personal cost. Roll that out and see if it works for the cross.

Love – a choice, not a feeling – is giving another person what they need the most. Your wife might need acceptance, your son might need forgiven, your boss might need understanding. When they deserve it the least! After the way she is treating me? After what he went and did after I told him this is the third time? After my boss has ripped me off? Love is giving another person what they need the most when they deserve it the least at great personal cost.

And if you follow it what you realize is you can’t do that and I can’t do that, but God, by His Spirit working in you, through His Word and the community of God’s people, can supernaturally do that through you. That’s what the Christian life is all about.

The second truth is that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. I don’t know your background, I don’t know if you’re a masker or a non-masker, I don’t know if you’re a vaccine-er or a non-vaccine-er, a blue state or a red state, I don’t know any of that stuff. But I’ll tell you what, whoever “they” are in your mind, God loves them. And He wants you to love them. We can disagree with people, we can even be passionate in how we see things, but we are called to love everyone.

Our response is to fight the good fight. Can we just start off saying it’s really, really hard to be a follower of Jesus? It takes a real man. Fight the good fight. Keep the faith in a good conscience. And then notice, some have suffered shipwreck, regards to their – what? Their faith. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. You need to understand that you’ve got to be really careful who you listen to, what you allow into your mind.

Some of the words we are going to find is they get shipwrecked. They drifted, they turned away. A lot of these aren’t like someone woke up and said, “You know, I’ve been really following Christ for the last seven years, the last thirty years, I think today I’ll just blow it all off.” It doesn’t happen like that. It’s incremental.

Most of the men that I have sat in tears as they have lost their families, often lost their job, lost their reputation after a sexual addiction or an affair, and some that I have worked with recently – they didn’t get up one day and go, “Hey, I think I’ll just mess my whole life up. It’s a harmless flirting. Just a casual wonder-what-she’s-doing-after-twenty-years-from-high-school, it was just a little pop-up thing.” Don’t you, do you guys get these all the time? Even from foreign countries, you know, “Click on this text” or something like that. If you don’t know who it is, delete. At every level we are bombarded.

So, what I tried to do is basically say, okay, I did my best to study this passage and say, “In the first century, this person called the apostle Paul, with his dramatic conversion and his writing of thirteen books of the New Testament, had a personal relationship with one guy named Timothy that he loved deeply, who he left in a very volatile situation in a metropolitan area in Ephesus. And he said, ‘This is what you need to do.’” And then what I tried to do is say, okay, there’s a map there. That what was true in the first century, what are the takeaways for us? Where’s the application?

So, Paul’s coaching for us? First of all, the subject is false teachers and teaching. Is that fair enough in this chapter?

The underlying issue is truth. I mean, the underlying issue is they have drifted, they are confident, they say this, they are saying that. And the issue is truth, “according to the glorious gospel of our blessed God.” That’s the underlying issue.

Here’s the underlying question: Am I willing to defend the truth of God’s Word in a hostile environment? That’s what I’m asking me. I put it in first person. Are you? Are you willing to defend the truth of God’s Word in a hostile environment? Truth about what is right and what’s wrong? Truth about marriage, truth about the value of life, truth about false teaching, truth inside and outside the Church.

Now, by the way, what we’re going to learn is the apostle Paul is going to say, “You really have to stand for truth,” but don’t jump to maybe how you think you do it. He’s going to say, “If the vise of truth doesn’t have velvet bumpers around it, then you don’t understand what you’re doing.” But it kind of presumes that in order to stand for truth you would know the truth and you’d believe the truth.

In a cancel-culture world, when you say one thing like – it’s not – you don’t even have to be mad. I just don’t agree with you. And you can get canceled. What I’m watching a lot of Christians do is: Here’s how not to get canceled.

You’re in conversations at work, you’re in conversations here, in our day you’re in conversations in church, and it kind of comes up, you’re in conversations around the table. We are going to learn how to point things out.

“I don’t want to be disagreeable; I certainly understand where you’re coming from, and you have every right to hold that position. Could I ask you a few questions about why you believe that, because I’d love to share if you give me the opportunity, with your permission, why I don’t think that’s correct.”

And instead what we are having is people just, “You know what? I don’t want one more argument. I don’t want people to cancel me. I don’t want to be viewed as…” Are you willing?

And, by the way, I’m not talking about “out there,” I’m talking about in your churches. There is a drift in the churches today like never before. There is a drift in some, I mean, bellwether institutions and universities that have drifted from what is very, very obvious and very, very true. Not on minor things, on big things. And I wonder, am I willing to take a stand for the truth?

Here’s the action: Step up. I mean, we all hear that, right?

Every NFL season, “Well, coach, what are you going to do? You lost your quarterback last week and…” “Well, we’re just going to have someone step up. They’ve just got to step up.”

I mean, we so understand that in sports. Do you understand, basically, if there were two words, you know what Paul was saying to Timothy? “Step up, man! Yeah, I love you, I’m for you, I have been there. But at the end of the day, I command you in the presence of the living God who lives in unapproachable light, invisible, immortal, fight the good fight! Keep the faith! Step up.” That’s a word for me.

If I had a really good day I think I could get us in a frenzy: Who is going to step up?” “We will! We will!” “Who is going to step up?” “We will!” I’ll get you! Okay! “Hey, everybody’s going to stand up! Stand up! Stand up!” Right? I could get you all pumped up. And you’d leave out of here, you know what? It doesn’t mean you step up. It means we had a rally. Anybody can have a rally.

There’s a world of difference between believing something, even believing something sincerely, and convictions. You believe something until it’s tested. And by the way, can I tell you, for all of us, you don’t know what you believe. I know you think you know what you believe, but you don’t know what you believe until it costs you something big and precious and are you willing to stand on that belief if it means rejection or a loss or alienation or even a job or money.

The unspoken need is to develop – write the word – convictions.

I can’t tell you over the years, I have pastored for, gosh, almost forty years. And I have had all kind of families, “Do you belief in life at conception?” “Absolutely.” And it’s interesting how people’s theology changes when their daughter, who has a full ride gets pregnant. And they urge their daughter to have an abortion, so she doesn’t lose her scholarship.

And I could give you a dozen examples and if all of us were honest, beginning with me, I really thought I believed certain things and I found myself in sort of a situation where, wow, if I step up and out on this one, I think I’m going to be the only one in the room. I just kept my mouth shut.

See, it’s one thing to, okay, how many of us believe we should be generous? There’s a good one. Right? Jesus is generous, right? Although He was rich He became poor, that we, by His poverty might become rich. Right? It’s better to, more blessed even, God’s favor rests upon you. Better to give than to receive. So, how many believe that?

Some of you are so smart. I ain’t putting up my hand, because I know where that next question is coming. So, then my next question would be: Well, how many of you, off the top, give the first portion of your income to God’s work? And are looking for graduated ways to keep increasing that percentage, realizing it’s all God’s and you long to help other people.

I was doing a series on generosity so I took a clipboard and I just hoped no one would ever recognize me from our church. And I just said, “I have a survey. Excuse me.” And people are walking away like this, like, but I had a clipboard. I said, “Please. It’s just one question, just yes or no. Would you consider yourself a generous person?” I just, random people.

Ninety percent of everyone I surveyed said yes. And so, I asked all the people of our church. But what they didn’t know over half of them don’t give anything. Zero. Nada. What they didn’t know that only two-point seven percent of Bible-believing Christians even tithe.

There’s not a conviction. But what the people that do have experienced this, how does it work that I give? And, by the way, don’t just think, if you think money is – generosity is just about money, money is the training wheels of generosity. You start with your money, then your time, then your reputation, then…

And then the more generous you become, “Give and it will be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over back into your lap.” God does amazing things. But just my point is convictions.

So, let me give you a head, heart, and hands to develop convictions. Number one, know the truth. John 17:17, Jesus’ last prayer. Here’s what He prayed, “Father, set them apart,” or, “sanctify them by Your truth; Your Word is truth.” So, first of all, you’ve got to know the truth. The 2 Timothy passage talks about study to show yourself approved to handle God’s Word. Learning the Scriptures.

Secondly, living the truth. He would say to a group who had believed on Him, living the truth, John 8:31 and 32, “To those Jews who have believed on Him, He says, ‘If you continue in My Word,’” in other words, put into practice or abide in it, “you’ll know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

Hebrews 3:13. This is why we are here. “But encourage one another day after day lest anyone of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Left to myself, unless I hang out with other guys and have times to be honest and share, I just get thinking I’m doing way better than I am. And then I get, I find myself in the ditch.

So, you know the truth. You live the truth. And notice, the first has to do with God’s Word. And the second, I think you’ve got to have a coach or a mentor. I think you need someone – who am I doing life with? Who can I be honest with?

And then finally, the hands is: Share the truth. Jesus didn’t tell His group, “Well, you’ve been to this three-year seminar. I’m checking out. I’ll see you later. Make sure you have all your green, yellow, and purple notebooks in order when I get back.”

He said, “I want you to go and make disciples of every people group, every ethnos.” And as you go and it’s not like you don’t need to go to China, you don’t need to go to LA, you don’t need to go to West Virginia, you don’t need to go to Afghanistan. Verbally, grammatically, it’s, “As you go,” verb, “make followers.

And the way you make them is you baptize them, you help them come to the point of this used to be my identity as a sinner and now Christ has come into my life and now I have a new identity as a saint. And I’m going to just physically be baptized to die to my old way of life because I have been resurrected with Christ and it’s in His power I live. And then it’s not just this big event, but then, I want you to teach them to actually live out and obey everything I taught you. And when that happens, man, it just gets so rich. And is it easy? Absolutely not. Is it awesome? Absolutely, yes.