This sermon explores Paul’s encouragement to his young disciple Timothy amidst persecution and difficulty. It explores the depth of the Christian’s commitment through the metaphor of a soldier. What separates a Good Soldier from a Bad Soldier? Listen to Paul’s counsel.

<p>This sermon explores Paul’s encouragement to his young disciple Timothy amidst persecution and difficulty. It explores the depth of the Christian’s commitment through the metaphor of a soldier. What separates a Good Soldier from a Bad Soldier? Listen to Paul’s counsel.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Great Lakes Adventist Academy

Fall Week of Prayer 2012

Sebastien Braxton

In the Midst of Chaos

The Heartless, the Spineless, and the Nameless

Reality Check

Why People Don’t Do Right

The Divine Process

Yes, Lord

The Questions of God

I Need A Miracle

Christ in Job

The Good Soldier

Father in heaven, we are ever so grateful that you orchestrate in your providence situations in life where we encounter people that bless us, where we encounter people that remind us of the goodness of Jesus, of his love, and they inspire us.

And this week, Lord, we have been inspired.

We've been moved by the presence of your Holy Spirit.

We've made some tough decisions, we've made some great decisions, and we've made some hard decisions.

For many of us, this is the beginning of healing through a lot of painful experiences.

For others of us, this is the beginning of true, sincere, and genuine spiritual life and revival.

And we want to ask and pray, Lord, that you would keep each of us, including the preacher, close by Jesus' side.

That we would never stop trusting in him, leaning on his everlasting arms, to bear us through the times ahead of us.

Tonight, Lord, we pray that you would use this man 1 more time.

But even if he doesn't know, Lord, we pray that you would use him in spite of himself and that you would not only speak through him, but that you'll speak to him.

I originally wrote this sermon for missionaries that I had trained.

Because after you train people for an entire year, you ask yourself, what in the world do I need to say to you?

I've said everything there possibly is to say.

I've blasted you, I've corrected you, I've supported you, I tried to encourage you.

Now that our time is up, what am I gonna say to you?

And so, as I was thinking about what to share with you all, because I feel like some of you guys are like my missionaries.

Some of you guys ask ridiculous questions.

Some of you guys just ask questions just to ask questions.

And reminds me a lot of the missionaries that I get the privilege of working with from around the world every year.

And so I thought I'll speak from my heart just as I spoke to them on this theme of the good soldier.

Because we are, though we preach the good news and we're thankful for what Christ has done on the cross and we're thankful for the love of God, it is undeniable that we are in the midst of a war.

And as we are in the midst of a war, the Bible employs the metaphor of a soldier.

A soldier to describe the Christian life and therefore to teach us lessons about how we ought to carry ourselves and how we ought to move forward in our journey.

So I take you to the book of 2 Timothy, some of the last words of the apostle Paul to his young disciple before he died.

2 chapters later, Paul would tell him, my time of departure is at hand.

I know that I'm about to die, and I fought a good fight.

And so he's counseling his young soldier.

All right, it's a lot lower than it has been all week.

5 qualities of a good soldier as they are enumerated by the Apostle Paul to his young disciple Timothy.

This is what the text says, Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

No man that wars entangles himself with the affairs of this life that he may please him who has chosen him to be a soldier the first quality of a good soldier we find it in verse 4 right there at the end Paul tells Timothy you were chosen to be a soldier.

In other words, we call it in Christianity, you were called.

And he starts off with thou in the old King James.

In the New King James or modern translation, it is you, therefore.

In other words, he is calling us as individuals.

This is about you and I, our individual commitment to Jesus.

And he says, you were chosen to be a soldier.

Tell you right now, when I enrolled in the Marine Corps, everyone didn't get accepted.

Everyone couldn't do 100 pushups in less than 60 seconds.

Everyone couldn't do a certain number of pull-ups in less than 60 seconds.

Everyone couldn't even finish 3 miles of running.

And the slowest person finishes in about 25 minutes, which is pretty slow in the Marines.

3 miles in 25 minutes, you're running by yourself the whole time.

There are many people that were not chosen, But Paul tells Timothy, you were chosen by Jesus to be his soldier.

Recognizing that we are in the midst of a war and So the first quality is to answer the call to be a soldier.

Nothing worse than a man who puts on the uniform, professes to be in the military, and when the time of battle comes, he doesn't wanna go to war.

He doesn't wanna answer the call to be a soldier.

According to the military, you are considered a coward.

You are an individual who has now violated military law and code, and even further than law, you have dishonored yourself, that you lack courage.

I love this statement in 1915 from Sir Ernest Shackleton when he wanted to scale The continent of Antarctica and he put out this ad there's debate about whether he actually put this ad out or not But regardless of the fact it serves for a good illustration and He says in the Newspaper looking for people to go with him to Antarctica.

He said this men wanted capital letters for hazardous journey small wages bitter cold long months of complete darkness constant danger safe return doubtful honor and recognition in case of success.

I'm like, that's how you're recruiting people?

He had so many people recruiting, he couldn't even take them all.

Because everyone, when they saw this ad in the paper, they said, look, this is something that I want to live on the very edge of life.

Whenever you see Marine Corps advertisement, what do you see?

That's why they say, What does the army stand for?

And so when Jesus gives this call to be a good soldier, to be a soldier at all, you remember when that 1 disciple came up to Jesus in Luke chapter 9 and he says, Master, Master, I'll follow you with us wherever you go.

And Jesus turned at him and he said, Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

Series

Fall Week of Prayer 2012

The Good Soldier

Transcript

Description

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