A Disciple is Hopeful

One day two men were talking. One of them was a Christian, the other an atheist. They were talking about the existence of God. The atheist said, “I find it inconceivable that God could exist and allow Hitler to kill 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. To which the Christian replied, “But if there is no God, then what would be wrong with Hitler killing 6 million Jews in the Holocaust?”

If God does not exist, then our existence on this earth is utterly without meaning. If we are merely the products of millions of years of random evolution, then it’s senseless to talk about what is right and what is wrong.

An Austrian Jew named Viktor Frankl spent several years in one of Hitler’s concentration camps in WW 2. He was a psychologist by profession, so he was a keen observer of human behavior. As he observed his fellow inmates, he made a startling discovery. He found that the survival of the prisoners, who labored under the most barbaric treatment, did not depend solely on their physical condition. He saw inmates who appeared to be strong and relatively healthy waste away and die inexplicably, while other inmates, who were physically weak and ill managed somehow to live on. It was only as he looked further into this mystery that Viktor Frankl found the answer.

He found that if a prisoner ceased to find meaning in his existence - if he somehow had given up hope in his release, or if he could no longer see a reason for living, then that prisoner would die. Regardless of his physical condition, the prisoner who had lost hope and meaning would die. On the other hand, the prisoner who clung to a reason for surviving - perhaps he hoped one day to be reunited with a loved one, or perhaps he knew that some of the other prisoners were depending upon him in some way - that prisoner would survive. Regardless of his weakness, the man who had hope would live.

When we turn to the Bible, we are turning to a book about hope. God’s Word says that our life on this earth does have meaning. In the Bible, we’re given a reason for living, and therefore, a reason for hoping. In fact, hope is one of the characteristics of a follower of Jesus Christ, and we want to talk about it today.

We’ve been studying the book of 2 Timothy, a book about what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ - a disciple. We’ve seen that God wants to build a number of characteristics into our lives that will equip us to live for Him.

So far, we’ve looked at seven of them. Let’s take a minute to think through them together.

We’ve learned that God wants to give his followers courage. We’ll need that because we live in a world that often singles us out, ridicules us, and even persecutes us for being Christians.

We’ve learned that God wants to give us self-discipline - the ability to get our priorities straight like a soldier, our will submitted like an athlete, and our purpose focused like a farmer. Without self-discipline, we’ll never be able to follow God effectively and really make our life count for Him.

We’ve learned that God wants to give us durability. God often brings suffering into our lives to build this quality in us.

We’ve learned that God wants us to be pure. Pure in the doctrine we believe, pure in the company we keep, pure in controlling our physical desires, and pure in the way we deal with frustrating people.

We’ve learned that God wants His people to be set apart. The Bible tells us that we are living in the last days and because we are, there are people all around us doing things that we cannot do if we want to honor the Lord. So we’ll have to be willing to be different if we want to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

We’ve learned that God wants His people to be models to others. Our lives as followers of Jesus Christ will only have an impact on people if they see that the way we live really measures up to what we say we believe. If they don’t sense that we are people of integrity, they’ll reject the message we stand for, because we don’t practice what we preach.

Finally, God wants us to be people who are Biblical, people whose lives are built on the Scripture, which is able to make us wise unto salvation and able to teach us how to live, because it is the inspired Word of God.

This week, we’re going to see that God wants us to be people of hope. Once again, we see this quality illustrated in the life of the Apostle Paul. Let’s look again at

2 Timothy 4:6-8 For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store 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 longed for his appearing.

In these three impressive verses, Paul is taking stock of his life. He does three things here : he looks at his present in verse 6; he looks back on the past in verse 7; and he looks ahead to his future in verse 8.

As he looks at his present in verse 6, he says:

For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure.

I want you to get a picture in your head of where Paul is as he writes this. He’s an old man. He’s probably almost blind - we think he had a problem with his eyesight. He’s in a dungeon in Rome, where he is awaiting execution. His case has been tried by Nero, and he’s been condemned to death. Pretty grim set of circumstances! But Paul doesn’t see it that way at all. He describes his present in two ways:

He says that he sees himself as being poured out like a drink offering. Now what’s that mean? Well, in the OT, every day the priest would put the sacrificial lamb on the brazen altar, which was sizzling hot. Then he would pour over the animal a cup of wine. What’s going to happen to that wine when you pour it onto a sizzling hot piece of meat? It’s going to go up in steam, right? That’s exactly what the Bible says happened. We read that the drink offering was to provide a fragrant aroma unto the Lord. The drink offering went up in steam - it was entirely consumed - there was nothing left. It just evaporated and disappeared, leaving behind only a fragrant aroma.

And that’s how Paul saw his life. He saw it as a drink offering poured out on the lamb, who is Christ. He was entirely consumed in his commitment to the Lord. He was holding nothing back. And when his life was over, there would be nothing left behind but the pleasant aroma of a life lived for God. That, and the lamb upon the altar. He would be nothing, but Christ would be everything.

Some Christians try to leave behind great memorials to themselves. They have their names chiseled into elaborate tombstones. If they are wealthy, maybe they give great sums of money and have buildings named after themselves. Some of them perpetuate their own memory financially in the form of non-profit foundations. But Paul wasn’t interested in any of this stuff. His epitaph was to be totally consumed for Christ, with nothing left behind.

One day a chicken and a pig were walking along the road and they came to a church. They looked at the sign in front of the church saying that the pastor’s sermon that Sunday would be “How to Help the Poor”. Well, the pig said to the chicken, “I wonder what we could do to help the poor?” The chicken said, “I have a great idea! Why don’t we provide them with a delicious breakfast of ham and eggs!” Well, the pig replied “That’s easy for you to say. A ham and eggs breakfast represents a contribution for you. For me, it’s total commitment!”

Being a disciple of Jesus Christ demands total commitment of the kind that Paul made. He goes on to say in verse 6 that

the time has come for my departure

Interesting word that he uses there. The word departure means a ship that is loosing its moorings at the dock and sailing out to sea. Or it can also mean a squad of soldiers who break camp and move out.

We often talk about death as “going home”. Sometimes you even hear preachers talk in terms of a soul that is out on the restless sea finally coming into the harbor of heaven. Now there’s a lot of truth in those images, but here’s an image that conveys just the opposite: death as a moving out. When you think about the fact that God has created us for eternity, you have to say that the time we spend here on earth is like a prelude to that. It’s a time when we get ready for eternity. It’s a time that passes very quickly. But when death comes for the child of God, he unties the cords that bind him to earth and he moves out onto the ocean of eternity for which God created him. He breaks camp. The Bible talks about our bodies as a tent. When death comes, we take down the tent and move out. That’s how Paul saw his departure.

So for Paul, his present circumstances, as bad as they were, held no fear. Because he knew where he was going. He had hope.

In verse 7, Paul looks back at his past.

2 Timothy 4:7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith

We have three images here:

fighting the fight - a soldier

finishing the race - an athlete

keeping the faith - a steward

Remind you of anything else we’ve read in 2 Timothy? It should. Remember back in chapter 2 we read about three people - the soldier, the athlete, and the farmer. Each of them had a special lesson for us as disciples. Now here in chapter 4, as he describes his own life, Paul uses that imagery again.

He says just like a soldier, I’ve fought well. I haven’t let my priorities get distracted by other things. I’ve served my commanding officer. I’ve done what he wanted me to do.

And just like an athlete, I’ve run well. I’ve finished the course. I’ve submitted my will and I’ve obeyed the rules of the game.

And as a steward, I’ve kept the faith entrusted to me. I’ve planted the seed of the Word of God, and God has brought a harvest from it.

Isn’t it wonderful that Paul could look back on his life as a Christian with no regrets? His mind was not plagued with doubts. He didn’t wrestle with what could have been or what might have been. He knew he had done his best. Do you think that will be true of your life at the end? The only way you can arrive at this point at the end of your life is if you determine to live for Jesus Christ each day.

We sometimes talk about committing your life to Christ. You cannot really commit your whole life to Him. All you can do is commit today to Him. Now is the only time that you can control. The past is gone and you can’t change it. The future isn’t here yet and may never be. All you can do anything about is today. And Paul was looking back at about 30 years of todays; 30 years of living for Christ today. 30 years of saying every day “Lord Jesus, today I’m going to live for you.”

Just as the present held no fear for Paul, the past held no regrets. And in verse 8 he talks about his future:

2 Timothy 4:8 Now there is in store 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 longed for his appearing.

In 1976, the Olympic games were held in my hometown of Montreal, Canada. That was an exciting summer! I attended several events at the great Olympic Stadium, filled with 80,000 people. Flags were waving everywhere. What a colorful spectacle!

One day I remember quite clearly. It was the final day of competition for the decathlon - the series of ten gruelling events held over three days to determine the best all-around athlete in the world. That day, just before the competition began, a buzz went through the huge crowd, and then applause broke out. Across the stadium, in the royal box, Queen Elizabeth and her party came in and were seated. It was the first and only time I had ever seen her. As I looked at her through my binoculars, all I can remember about her was that she was wearing a pink dress and a pink hat.

Then the competition began. The final event of the decathlon was the 1500 meter run. Bruce Jenner, the American, finished second in that race, but his overall performance in the decathlon won him the gold medal with a world-record score. I vividly remember him taking a victory lap around the track. Somebody had handed him an American flag which he carried proudly. We all stood up and cheered for him, no matter what country we were from. He had just completed an amazing performance. He was the victor. He had won the crown.

At that moment, nobody was cheering for Queen Elizabeth. She was forgotten. Queen Elizabeth has a crown. Her royal crown has 2,783 diamonds in it, 277 pearls, 18 sapphires, 11 emeralds, and 5 rubies. But it wasn’t worth a thing in that stadium that day. All the glory went to the victor of the games.

The crown that Paul talks about in verse 8 is not a royal crown, it is a victor’s crown. In the ancient Olympics, instead of handing out gold medals, they placed a laurel wreath upon the head of the winner. They called it a “stephanos”, not a “diadema”, which was the crown of a king.

The Bible clearly teaches that Christians will get rewards in heaven. These rewards will be in the form of crowns. There is the crown of righteousness, which Paul talks about here. It is for anyone who longs for His appearing - for the Second Coming of Christ. The Bible calls that great event the Blessed Hope of the Christian. How do you long for his appearing? By loving Him and by living for Him. By living in such a way that when He comes, you’ll be glad to see Him.

Then there’s the crown of life, which we read about in James 1:12 and Revelation 2:10. That’s for Christians who persevere under trial and persecution. I think Paul was in line for one of those, too! Getting back to the 76 Olympics in Montreal, those were the games where Nadia Comaneci, the Romanian gymnast, was such a sensation. Did you read about her this week? She fled from Romania to escape the harsh conditions there. And she was enjoying the best that country had to offer because, as perhaps the most famous Romanian in the world, she was one of the privileged few. It’s quite a commentary on conditions in that land that she would flee.

But we met Romanians who cannot flee. Christians who not only have to put up with the poverty and hardship that all Romanians struggle with, but who are persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ. The great C.H. Spurgeon said “There are no crown-wearers in heaven who were not cross-bearers here below.” These are the people who will receive the crown of life when they get to heaven.

Then there is the crown of glory. We read about it in 1 Peter 5:4. It’s given to the spiritual leaders who devote themselves to caring for God’s people. We’ve heard alot in recent days about spiritual leaders who haven’t done this. They’ve abused their calling. Instead of feeding the sheep, they’ve been fleecing the sheep. But then there are the elders who shepherd God’s flock, not looking for personal gain or wealth, but seeking to be examples, eager to serve the church. They will be the ones to get the crown of glory.

Finally there is another a crown that is described in Philippians 4:1 and 1 Thes. 2:19. Let me read you these verses:

Philippians 4:1 Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown…

1 Thessalonians 2:19 For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you?

Paul is saying that the Philippians and the Thesalonians themselves were his crown. He had brought them to Jesus Christ. Anyone you introduce to the Savior will be your crown on that great day when Jesus Christ returns to reward His people. Will you be wearing this crown?

Paul looked at his present circumstances, and even though they were terrible by any human standard, he wasn’t daunted. Because he had hope in the future. He had placed his trust in God the Righteous Judge. He had lived his life for Christ, His Lord and Savior. His future was bright. And because of that, he could say as he said in chapter 1 of this letter…

I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.

You may be laboring under a load of care this morning. Perhaps the present isn’t looking very good for you. But if you are a child of God, you can have a hope in a glorious tomorrow. This isn’t wishful thinking. This isn’t merely the power of positive thinking. This isn’t a psychological game we play to fool ourselves into feeling better. This is God’s truth, revealed in God’s word. Paul himself said in 1 Corinthians 15 that if we were to put our hope in something that isn’t true, then we’re of all people most miserable - we’re to be pitied.

A disciple of Jesus Christ is one who has hope. Hope that transcends present circumstances. The French novelist Tristan Bernard was arrested by the Nazis during World War 2. When the Gestapo came to his door to get him, he said to his wife “Now, the time of fear is over. The time for hope has begun.” The Christian life is a time for hope from beginning to end. Because it is based upon the promises of God for eternal life and a home in heaven through what Jesus did on the cross.