Paul's final letter to Timothy, written from prison, serves as a powerful exhortation to faithfulness and godliness amidst suffering and apostasy. The sermon traces Paul's circumstances, highlighting his unwavering peace and reliance on God's power, love, and presence, even as many deserted him. It emphasizes that God's grace, mercy, and peace are the provisions for believers to live a holy life, stirred up by the gifts of the Spirit, not fear. The core lesson is to embrace the holy calling and the gospel's afflictions with boldness, becoming faithful ambassadors for Christ, reflecting God's eternal purpose and love.
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I want to say how delighted I am to be with you. The last time that we had any opportunity to visit here in St. Louis was about nineteen eighty-one when my wife and I began our return visits to our mission field in Korea. At that time, the brethren at South Side were looking for a new place. And I'm just delighted to be able to be in it with you today and to see what you have and remember you and Prayer for the work of the school, for the work with these youngsters, as well as for that of the assembly itself. So we're delighted indeed to be with you. It's also a joy for me to be with our brother Art Dillips again.
We've shared platforms together in the past and it's a delight to see Art and to be with him once again. Our brother David made the comment that this is becoming known as a salt and pepper conference. You know, the Bible knows nothing of races. The Bible knows about families and nations, and that's the way God looks at us. We who are redeemed are all of the family of God. Now we thank God for that. But I'm delighted to see that we're of different families of perhaps even some of different nations, even of a microphone, who are among us here. And we pray that this may indeed be a good time then together. My wife and I returned to Korea back in the fall on one of our annual visits.
We had a good visit with our Korean brethren, had the opportunity to visit our missionaries in Hong Kong, the Taurus, and to enjoy some fellowship with them with the assembly there, a trip on up in the China to visit some of the folks there, and then come on back home. And it was after we got home that we discovered that she has cancer, and that's why she's not with us today. She used to have a chemo treatment on Wednesday, but the blood count was too low, so we postponed it until after I returned. We do value your prayer. We believe the Lord's going to heal her. At the time of testing and trial for her, the two-one in which he's drawn close to him.
So we do value your prayer for her as well. I'd like for us to look this morning at Second Timothy chapter one. I think that we find a special joy in reading the last letters from some of the Lord's dear servants. And as we read these, we find that indeed the Lord is speaking to our hearts in a special way. Second Timothy, chapter one. Peter's second lesson brings before us important challenges to godliness and to faithfulness.
Of course, if we read John's in Revelation, we have more. This morning we're looking at Paul's to Timothy. And as Paul wrote to Timothy, he had a special message for the young brother. One frequently thinks of Timothy as perhaps a rather young man. Maybe he was. I'm not so sure how old he was. But by this time he had a good deal of travel and fellowship with the Apostle Paul. Paul was bearing his heart to him, as well as exposing to him something of his own circumstances as a soldier for Christ. His circumstances had grown worse. Many of us believe he'd had one imprisonment, had been freed, and now in a second. He'd gone to Troas, perhaps to Corinth and the Miletus, according to the record in chapter four, in verse thirteen and twenty.
He may have seen Philemon, according to Philemon XXII. He may have been to Philippi, spent some time with Titus and Crete, and then from there to Corinth and the Coppola, according to Titus III. And perhaps it was there that Paul was arrested and brought to Rome under the charge of political intrigue. He was probably no longer in his own rented house by this time as he was in the first imprisonment. But rather he was imprisoned, he was looking forward to his execution, and he writes this letter to Timothy. And so it was with both a heavy heart for Timothy and for the saints, on the one hand, the joyful expectation of soon being with Christ and entering into the joy of that victory that we all have in the Lord Jesus.
This was the last letter that we have in the New Testament. written by Paul. We find that it's generally the case that Luke was with him. Dear Luke was a faithful companion, the one who loved the apostle and cared for us. As we look at the record, Paul's circumstances were growing from bad to worse, from the human standpoint. As we look at verse fifteen of the first chapter, we find that there were many of his associates who in Asia had turned away from him. The faith of some was being overthrown by the opponents of the truth, find that demons had become worldly.
Paul tells us a day was coming when men would have a mere form of godliness and denying the power of it. Evil men and impostors growing worse and worse. And what Paul saw and what Paul wrote of was what many of us see today and speak about when we're together, what's happening all around us as we look at the circumstances surrounding ourselves. But in the midst of all this, we find the apostles in tranquility as he writes this letter. He's not alarmed. He's faithful to God, satisfied in every respect, in all the joys and the peace that God has given to him. And he encourages the younger missionary, young Timothy, in the midst of it, and brings before him the presence and the power and the love of the Lord Jesus to keep him day by day.
But the joy of this is that the Lord is the same today as he was with Paul. Hasn't changed a bit. Our circumstances are not as grave as Paul's were. And the Lord is just as near to us as he was with Paul. And the Lord's concern for the assemblies today are just as strong as they were of that day. Indeed, our assemblies today, one would say, has far less excuse for their waywardness than they had in Paul's day because we've got the whole New Testament. And we've had it. And our parents have had it. And those of us who have come from a godly heritage can say perhaps for generations they've had it and they've honored it. Those of us who have come to the faith and the first generation, ourselves as believers, can look at it and say, we thank God it's been preserved and it's for us.
And so Paul reminds Timothy of the presence and of the power and of the love of God to every one of us. And we find that brought before us here in this letter. And the word has steadfastly glorified God to live for him, that we might be found faithful unto the end, as Paul himself was, and exhorted Timothy and exhorts us. And so as we look at the opening verse, we hear from Paul speaking of himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ by will of God. We remember the apostle pointed out time and again that his was not a calling of men. He made that very clear. His apostleship was from God. And there were none that could detract from that calling that God had given to him.
And that honor which God had given to him as a faithful servant. And we remember that the apostle paid dearly in a service for God. As we read the records of his experiences, left for dead and so on. And here he brings before Timothy, one who had witnessed the apostle in his life as Paul was preaching and teaching, as they were walking and traveling, as they were in their place of abode together or wherever they might have been. Timothy had a view of Paul in all of Paul's life. And Paul brought that before him time and again. And though this same one was able to declare that he was the chief of sinners, he was able to say to Timothy and to us, to the Corinthians, follow me, be imitators of me.
Not for my sake or for what I am, but because rather I'm the follower of Christ. So the one who is the chief of sinners is the one who also calls us then to a life of godliness, even as the apostle himself sought to live it. That's a privilege that we have. You know, the world knows nothing about this and they care less about it. I have a dear friend that I grew up with as youngsters. We were kids. Kindergarten on up to about third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade. I hadn't heard from Bill for forty odd years. I received a newspaper article that he had written in his newspaper down in Florida telling about Christmas.
And I was the one who had told them there was no Santa Claus. Well, I've written to Bill. I sent him one of the letters that we had prepared after we came back from Korea and learned of my wife's illness to distribute them on some of our friends. And I sent one to him and he wrote back to me, now this was one who as a lad came to our children's meetings without gifts in the assembly there in Yonkers, New York, and who had had this testimony before him. He said, we used to be friends, but my friend we're a different breed now. I'm an atheist and a liberal. Well, I pray for Bill that God will speak to his heart.
And the life that the Apostle Paul sought to bring upon Timothy and its godliness and its faithfulness, its integrity and its honesty, and above all its godliness of character might reach him. Now this is the apostle's objective for us as we live for God, that we might be able to reach the world, whether those that we grew up with it have turned their backs upon the Lord or not, and turned them around to come unto Christ. Paul says that he was an apostle according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus. If you turn a few pages to Titus chapter one in verse two, he speaks of this hope and this promise.
He says there he's a servant of God. and an apostle of Christ, according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness. In verse two, in the hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie promised before the world began. I find it some of the greatest joys in reading the scriptures in which we find that God knew all about us before he created the heavens and the earth to put us on the globe here. It brings us into some understanding of how God views us, of all the creation. The scientists don't even know where it is and how far it goes.
God's attention is upon one planet and upon his people. He's called out for himself. And all the rest is just for us to learn something about God and his glory. You see, in the coming day, he's going to hold them all up with a garment because they're all stained with sin and create a new heaven and a new earth. But it's on this planet became that He sent His beloved Son. And as we look at the records right here in this book itself, which we're going to look at a little later, in verse ten of this first chapter, it's now made manifest by the appearance of our Savior. Paul in Ephesians one, verse four, speaks of us as having been chosen in Christ that we might be holy and righteous.
He speaks of us in first Peter as having been elect according to the foreknowledge of God before the foundation of the world. My what a heritage we have. It goes back before the history of the earth and the moon and all the rest of it. Do we treasure it? Is this the kind of a heritage that we enjoy and which we honor to the point that we're going to honor the one who has called us unto it and brought us unto it? One godly man told his son, Don't live a life for God. Exploit it. attack it and use that life for God in every way you can.
Indeed, we're pilgrims, we're not residents, and we're servants, we're not masters. And this is what Paul would bring before us. And so he writes to Timothy in that second verse of second Timothy of chapter one and says to Timothy, my dearly beloved son, perhaps a better translation is that of child, a born one. Many of us have children. We remember the joy that they were as they came into the family, as they grew up, and especially as they came to the Savior, and then go on living for God. And this is a sense in which Paul looked upon Timothy, not a natural son, but a spiritual one.
And he extends to him then the grace and the mercy and the peace from God the Father. One might question... Who needs grace and mercy and peace? The skeptic would. And we can respond that the grace of God is God's grace toward us, God's gift toward us, and all of the provision that we have for the forgiveness of sins and eternal life at the awful cost of his own son's death and sacrifice on the cross. Some have called it God's riches at Christ's expense or undeserved favor for us. And, beloved, we're in dire need of it. And the natural heart knows nothing of grace. And the natural hearts of debt are to grace, to God's grace.
And it's extended to us from the Lord Jesus. He speaks to us of mercy. And this speaks to us of one who has all authority and power and will to meet the needs of those who have no ability at all or in the deepest need and are helpless in a hopeless situation. And because of his own will and his own love, he extended that mercy to us. And you and I are in deep need of that. Before holiness and righteousness and justice, we have no stand. God and his mercy has come to meet our need. He speaks to us of peace. And this is the product of that mercy and of that grace.
For a soul to be at peace with God. is something that is utterly impossible apart from the work of Christ. The unregenerate knows nothing of it, but for the child of God, he knows the peace of God. He has peace with God, and best of all, he has a God of peace. We have it all. And in light of this, the Apostle exhorts Timothy, It's interesting as we look at the third verse, he speaks of himself reflecting on his own conduct. And again we can look at the life of Paul, particularly of Saul, look at him as he was the persecutor of the saints, as he left Jerusalem on his way to Damascus as a conquering hero to get the believers and imprison them, and God arrested him.
But he says in this verse, I thank God whom I serve from my forefathers with a pure conscience. Now it's important for us to realize what the conscience is. And you and I are accountable for our consciences. There's such a thing as a purged conscience. That's what we should all have. and which we have by the grace of God when we receive Christ, this Savior, and the Spirit of God works His work within us to purge our consciences from dead works that we might serve the living God. And as we go on living, our conscience should be ever molded and tempered by the Word of God, so that if ever there's a time when we must call upon our conscience, that conscience is reliable, because it's molded by God's Word.
Paul says here, I thank God whom I serve from my forefathers with a pure conscience. Now he's speaking then of the life before he came to the Savior, and he took the saint prisoner, and he persecuted him. He had a pure conscience in the pursuit of his religion, but he had an enlightened conscience. And he tells us that if we look even at Acts chapter twenty three one. We go back there and he speaks of what he did in that conscience, unguided by God. But nevertheless, he was able to say, and if it were not true, it would not be in the Scriptures, that he had a pure conscience, thinking that he was serving God with all the zeal of his heart.
And when God arrested him and turned around, then he began to serve God with that first conscience and that good conscience, guided by God himself. Sometimes this whole issue may present a problem to us on Paul's conscience. I think we can take with joy the fact that the Lord honored him and the Lord blessed him and the Lord turned that conscience around to be molded and tempered by the mind and the will of God and even used the man to write for us most of the New Testament epistles. Now he's one who has a conscience that to the best of his ability, void of offense toward God, and faithful to his Savior.
He had a conscience that was directed to Timothy. By this time, many of the apostles, dear friends, had left him. These had not left Christianity. They had left Pauline's truth and Pauline doctrine and Paul himself. And beloved, you know, we're in that problem today. It's the apostle Paul who gave us assembly truth. We find today there are so many who are willing to abandon us. Well, they're still Christians and we thank God for that. Why settle for second best when God's given us the best? And let's be faithful to what he has done for us. Paul prayed for Timothy.
Paul's concern with the Timothy might be that faithful testimony, that faithful witness for which God had called him. Remembrance of the, another term is in that language that he's had a remembrance brought to his mind in Timothy. What does he say about Timothy? First of all, that he remembers them in his prayers night and day. And then in verse four we find something of this tender relationship between Paul and Timothy. As children and as parents, we've had this between parents and children.
Perhaps we've known it ourselves. It came through very strong to us from time to time. Paul says in verse four, greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy. Paul said, he greatly desired to teach Timothy that he might be filled with joy. It remembers Timothy's tears at the time of the last party. You know, he sometimes tells people the most difficult part of missionary work is leaving your children at home. Whenever I read this portion, I'm reminded of our leaving once for Korea and leaving one of our daughters after we've had lunch together.
We took her to our college classes. elected the building and then drove on to the west coast for a flight back to Korea. And everything was going well until that one tear came down. And I believe this is what the apostle had in mind. How Timothy loved Paul and how Paul loved him. And the beauty of this relationship is that it was established upon a common love for God and for God's work. And so in that context, Paul writes to Timothy.
They were very fond of each other as labors together in God's vineyard. And he's able to remind Timothy of his own heritage. He speaks of his faith. And the remarkable thing about it is here that he's able to go on to his mother and to his grandmother as well. Thank God for faithful mothers. My own wife has said time and again, she's convinced that young people will not grow up convinced of the assembly truth and biblical truth for God's people unless the mother believes it and teaches it to her children. And I think there's a great deal of merit to that statement.
Our wives, the mothers of our children, bear a tremendous load and a responsibility and a privilege before God. May they have that joy and see the fruit of it for God's glory. Paul speaks here of the faith of Timothy. It was a faith that he had had that he had been taught from his mothers and his grandmother's knees. It was a faith that had gotten such a grip upon Timothy that he served the Lord faithfully in several assemblies. And as we get to Acts XVI, we find the Apostle then asked Timothy to join him in his journey.
Timothy, having been commended by several assemblies, because of the faithfulness to God and the labor for God among these, they in turn release him to the Apostle for the work of God there in the work of Asia. He was a man of faith. He trusted God. Young men, young women, you'll find no greater resource, no greater purpose in life, no greater reward than a sound faith in the Lord Jesus. Not only for the life we now live, but for eternity to follow, as we see the riches and the glories into which God has brought us in His tender love.
Well, we go on to the next verse. Timothy's faith is brought before us. And until we come to that point, we'll never serve the Lord. There's a great deal of service going on today, apart from a faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And sometimes where that is, there's a lack of faithfulness to the Word of God. Paul could speak to Timothy as being not only a man of faith, but a man of faithfulness to God and to his word, and of faithfulness to Paul himself as God's chosen servant, and vessel by which he's brought to us so much of God's mind for the assembly and God's mind for men and women, God's mind for nations and families.
And so he speaks to Timothy in this next verse, and he exhorts him, I put thee in remembrance. Here's the call to his faithfulness now. This coming from one who had written the last letter in the New Testament, perhaps one of the last letters of his life. And as he would speak to Timothy, he'd speak to you and me as well. This is the ancient apostle preparing his last letter to the assemblies of God's people. and urging every one of us on to faithfulness, stir up the gift of God which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.
God used the apostle to gift Timothy. God, through the Spirit of God, gifts each one of us. In any event, whether it's Timothy or we, we're called upon to stir up the gift of God. which is given to us. That's our responsibility. It's the responsibility which God has given to us, from which we cannot in any way escape. It's the stewardship that he's given to us. And a stewardship brings us into accountability to the giver. And we're going to be judged for it in the coming day. The Christian life is serious.
But it's not dark, it's bright. We serve the king of kings. Stir up the gift. He tells us in verse seven, God has not given us the spirit of fear. You see, fear doesn't come from God. It's a natural condition. It's from the flesh. And this we put aside for the spirit of God, a power of love, of sound mind, of self-discipline. Self-discipline is something that's so often overlooked. You know, our youngsters will never learn self-discipline unless they get training and discipline from their parents. Proverbs make that very plain.
You let a child go his own way and he's going to keep on going that way. And we're told that God loves us, that's why he chastens us. When I speak about abuse, we're speaking about training. As we love them, we train them, we love them, we discipline them, we love them, we guide them. But they know that there are certain restrictions upon the life in the family because the name is Jones or Smith or whatever the name is. And more than that, there are certain restrictions and guidelines we follow because we belong to the Lord. And we train those youngsters so that they will be aware and appreciative of these guidelines. are established for them so that as they're older and on their own, they're self-disciplined.
And that's essential if we're ever going to serve the Lord. We'll never serve the Lord without self-discipline. We've got to be self-starters. We've got to be self-disciplined. Look at First Corinthians nine, twenty-seven and see the way the Apostle Paul disciplined himself. He was ruthless with himself in order that he not be a castaway. This would be in morality, in doctrine, in every facet of life. He controlled himself for the Lord. God has given to us the spirit of power. And that's of the Lord himself.
The Lord Jesus said in the end of Matthew that he ascends back to his father and that all authority is given unto him. Then he says, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. You see what our resources are. The God of omnipotence, and He'll never fail us as we're faithful to Him. The spirit of love. Love is something that we need from the day we're born, and be before we're born. And the tender love of mothers and dads for their children as they grow up should be an expression of God's love for them.
And as we love them and train them and care for them, we would point them to God, the God of love. And we would hope they would then raise their eyes not only upon mother and dad, but above, to the God of love and come to know him. It's wonderful to be loved. And our God is a God of love. You know, the world knows nothing about love. They've got perversions of all sorts representing what they think to be loved. But God's love is genuine and God's love is permanent. It's changeless. It's ever with us. And the beauty of it is that God loved us when we were in the depths of our sin. When we were hopeless and helpless in ourselves, he loved us and gave his beloved son to pay our debt that we might be delivered from the debt, from the judgment, from eternal examination, and brought home his dear children.
Oh, how he loves us. He will never understand it. we have the measure of it in the gift of his son, the deep, deep love of God. And that spirit of a sound mind would form us in our character according to what he has given to us and power and love to live that life for him. May we be faithful as God exhorted Timothy to be. And then we find the call that the Apostle Paul had given unto Timothy in this next verse. And beloved, the Apostle is not speaking of Timothy, just following a life of service for God, as might be the general of the norm.
But he says, Be not ashamed of the testimony of our Lord. How many times have we been afraid of the testimony of our Lord in which we've been reluctant or a little hesitant to be a testimony for him? Be not ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, that witness for him that will clearly show that we're believers in Christ, that we own him as our Savior, and we're living for him. And we want others to do so too. Then he says, nor am I a prisoner. Perhaps that's one reason why many in Asia left them. They were ashamed of him as a prisoner. Then he says, be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel.
with me. That's the sense of it. With me. Be willing to go with me into the depth of the gospel's afflictions for God. And faithfulness unto the Lord. Be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God. Paul was not ashamed of the gospel. He declared it was the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believed. And that's the power by which you and I have been saved, indeed, if we're his. And by which everyone in the past and the future will be saved. Or has been saved.
The resources and the call of Timothy call him to a life of godliness with all the needed provisions to accomplish the task for God. And so it is with us as well. Then as we look at verses nine and ten, we look at this great salvation and a little bit more of the calling of God. God who has saved us called us with a holy calling. Sometimes we overlook the fact that the calling that we have is a holy one. And that holy calling of each of us as a child of God tells us that others might do things but you may not.
because you're a child of the king. And the Lord Jesus said, Be ye holy, for I am holy. That's not an option, that's a commandment. And if we're faithful to God, we're going to be holy. And the lives that we live are going to be impeccable for him. We recognize we have natural human fault, but we're going to do the best that we can. So live that life for God, that holiness will be characterized in our lives. And where we sin? We'll promptly confess it to God. And if we've offended a brother, assist it to them as well. In order that this holiness of character might control and motivate our lives for God.
Paul reminds us that it wasn't according to our own works. There's nothing of our works that are going to bring us to salvation. But after we're saved, our works are to speak of our salvation wherever we are and whatever we do. It was James who said that faith without work is dead, even as the body without the Spirit is dead. God expects works of us to glorify him. A great deal of it is given to us in the New Testament. Let your lives so shine for him. Our calling is not according to our works, but it's according to God's own purpose.
And God's grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. My what a lovely expression. Before God created the heavens and the earth, he knew all about every one of us as a child of God or we'll be. And he arranged all things for our redemption and for our joy and for our blessing to the coming of the Christ our Savior at the time that the last one in this age comes to Christ. But in the counsels of God before the creation took place, we find here that according to God's own purpose, we read the language according to his own counsels, his good will in other places, given us in Christ before the world began.
What a heritage we have. And how it should humble our hearts and bring us joy for him. Now that's what was done before the world began. God and His purpose and His grace gave us all these things. And then He says, but is now made manifest by the appearance of our Savior Jesus Christ. In the fulfillment of God's purpose and God's counsel, Christ came. Oh, remember the words of His own lips, I come to do thy will of God. And that was the purpose of his life and the purpose of his will as he walked among men and his own disciples. He came to do the will of God and beloved that will, included even the laying down of his own life for us.
How marvelous. We think of Abraham as he was about to slay Isaac and God said, Touch not the lad. When it came to his own son, There was no intervention. He had to be slain. He had been delivered up by the determinate council of the foreknowledge of God to suffer the judgment of our sins. That holiness might be vindicated, and you and I might be justly forgiven, and God might remain righteous. Had he forgiven one sinner apart from the death of Christ, his righteousness would have been violated. He'd no longer be a holy God. But in the judgment of Christ for our sins, God can now forgive us to believe in him and be the holy just God that he is and always has been.
Praise God for that. He's the same holy God with every sinner that he forgives that he was before the foundation of the world because Christ died for our sins. Paul said is now manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ. You and I were known of God before the foundation of the world, according to God's foreknowledge. If he didn't have that foreknowledge, he'd not be God. He knew who was going to trust him, and he knows who will yet. And according to that knowledge, he has elected those to become the children of God, predestined us to be conformed to the image of a son.
to live into walk in holiness in this life and hereafter, when we're changed to be like Him. The appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. What a victory! Why do we die? What's the one proof that we're all sinners? Do we die? Paul gave us that statement in Romans five twelve. For as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin and so death is passed upon all men.
That's a fundamental statement of every academic discipline. Whether it's archaeology or sociology or whatever it is or geology. Incidentally, it does away with the gap theory and all that would be associated with such things. There was no death before Adam. Life began at that creation week, and death didn't occur on the planet until Adam had sinned. The record tells us, of course, of Cain's murder of his brother. Christ has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. We were in the darkness and the depths of sin away from God. We had no light, no hope, and no light until Christ came and he accomplished it for us.
He brought immortality to light so that we could see it and we could grasp it and make it our own. And by faith in that blessed one who came and brought it to us, We have been transformed under the children of God, out of the kingdom of darkness, into the kingdom of God itself. Those are the facts. Those are the joys and the privileges which we have as the people of God. And so Paul says, where unto I am appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles. God appointed him for a work. Turn with me, if you will, to Second Corinthians. Let's look at what God appointed you and me for.
As we read all that we've been looking at so far, indeed it was a personal letter from the Apostle Paul to Timothy, but it was also a letter to the Assemblies of the Bloods People. That includes every saint of God from the day of the writing on. But if we look at the Apostle's letter to the Corinthians in his second letter in chapter five, the Apostle brings before us, perhaps even a little more pointedly, the stewardship and the responsibility that God places upon our shoulders as we're going to live for him. Verse fourteen, the love of Christ constrains us because we thus judge that if one died for all, then all were dead.
That was our condition. We're all dead. Verse seventeen, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. Another translation writes, there is a new creation. into which we have been brought, established by the Lord Himself. Old things are passed away. And behold, all things are become new. Very similar to what the Apostle wrote to the Romans in chapter six. And speaking to them there, he reminds them, don't you remember that when you were baptized, that you testified that you died to the world, you're dead to all of these things and you're living in Christ. We're living in newness of life.
The world has no hold upon us. You see, we're to be pilgrims. That means we're on a journey. We don't have any permanent home here. We're strangers. We're not known here. We're on our journey. Heavenward. You might think of the early settlers of this country as they moved from day to day as they journeyed westward. That's the kind of a journey we're on. that the natural sense, we have a spiritual sense. Our journey is on the globe and our destination is heaven. And we're to live here as pilgrims and strangers. That concerns our money. That concerns our lifestyle.
That concerns our interests. That concerns our heart. You see where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And if my treasure is in glory, that's where my heart's going to be. And my treasure is in the material things of life. That's where my heart's going to be. That's why we have Christians sailing boats on Sunday mornings instead of being in meetings. They can't get away from it. It's just as natural as you and I are in the flesh. You may try it and say, but not I, I'll do it this way. But you're trapped by the flesh that you're living in.
But here Paul tells us any man who is in Christ is a new creation. We're told to live that life, both in Romans six and in this chapter. Old things are passed away. Have we put them away? Have we turned our backs upon them? All things have become new. All things are of God who has reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ. What does it mean to be reconciled? You see, the reconciliation that you and I as the people of God enjoy isn't Christ as the mediator, holding God's hand up here and holding ours and pulling us together.
That's not divine reconciliation. Our reconciliation is where Christ gets our hand and pulls us up to God. God's not compromised. We're elevated. And that's part of that call to us to be holy and to live holy, for He is holy. And so He continues here. He's given us the ministry of reconciliation. You know, every one of us have that ministry. That's a stewardship that we all have, no matter who we are, no matter where we are. There's no exclusions here. Everyone's included. And you have your peculiar gift in your ministry of reconciliation, and I have mine just as we're different people.
But one does not exclude or supersede the other. They're all needed. They're all essential. And God intends to use all for His glory as we are willing to commit ourselves to Him. We're reconciled to Himself by Jesus Christ. He's given to every one of us that ministry of reconciliation. We close with the twentieth verse. Now then we're ambassadors for Christ. And though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead be reconciled to God. You know, I think if any of us were at home and sitting in the living room, rather comfortable, and the phone rang at the other end that said, this is President Reagan, I want you to be an ambassador for me at the Court of St.
James. We'd be quite glad. Look at the fact where we came from. Our will there is not ours, it's to serve the one who sent us. Our presence. All that we do is determined by His instructions so that we'll be the representative of Him before that government that He expects us to be. Our energies, our interests, our time and all are directed toward representing Him. Because He's called us and set us and commissioned us. Now our blessed Savior, you see, is the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords.
And he's called us to an ambassador. He sent us here, left us here after he saved us. Otherwise he'd have taken us to glory. And he said, now be ambassadors for me. So my will now is governed not by my will, but by his will. It's molded by him. I represent him. And I'm back in that context again of being in a foreign land as a temporary residence, a stranger trapped. I'm an ambassador to Christ. May we, by the grace of God, seek to be those faithful ambassadors that God has called us to be and privileged to be.
And our privilege is far higher than that than any ambassador appointed by our government or any other. It's of a far greater duration. It provides a far greater reward, a much higher honor, and a deeper joy than the rest I'll ever know. Beloved, may we be faithful to Him as we would seek to live for Him. And younger ones, there's nothing that will exceed for you the joy of life than that joy of serving Him. Be the best of