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(upbeat music) - Drive Time Devotions is a Saddleback Church podcast. We want to
invite you to one of our weekend services. Visit us online at saddleback.

com for locations and service times in your area. Please visit us this weekend.
- Welcome to our last day of looking at Second Timothy chapter one.

We're going to look at some verses today that really talk about hope and how hope
can last in your life. Beginning in verse 13 and then going down through verse
18, Paul talks about how you can live the kind of life, the kind of hope that
genuinely lasts in life. That's the theme of this entire letter.

We talked about it a lot this week. I hope you're getting tired of it because
the only way I'm going to last is by inundating myself with God's truth about how
to last. It's not me trying harder to last.

It's me trusting God's truth about how I last. You want to last? There are three
truths in these verses.

I need to keep a pattern that I've been taught. I need to guard the deposit
that's been entrusted to me and I need to realize that not everyone's going to
last. Just three practical truths I need to live with.

First, I need to keep a pattern that I've been taught. Verse 13 says, Paul says
to Timothy, what you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching with
faith and love in Christ Jesus. If I'm going to last, I've gotta have certain
patterns in my life.

If an athlete's going to last, they have to have a pattern of exercise. If a
concert pianist is going to last and do well, they gotta have a pattern of
practicing in the right way. If a parent's going to last, they gotta have a pattern
of spending time with kids but also getting some time together as a couple or
some time together with other adults.

You gotta have some patterns in your life that allow you to last. And Paul here
talks about the pattern of sound teaching, the truth of God's word. If I'm going to
last in hope, if I'm going to last in faith, I've gotta keep the pattern of God's
truth alive in my life.

What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching. But then Paul
says something at the end of that. He says you do that with faith and love in
Christ Jesus.

This is key. If I'm going to last, I have to keep that pattern of God's truth in my
life, living it out, living out the truth of the kind of character that God
wants me to have, the kind of attitudes that God wants me to have, the kind of
way I should treat others, all those patterns that you see in God's word, all
those truths of living in the way that you live life. How do I keep that going?

These verses say you do it with faith and love in Christ Jesus. You don't keep
it all alone. You don't keep it legalistically.

You keep it relationally with faith and love in Christ Jesus. You don't keep
these rules by rote. That's just religion.

But you also don't throw out the pattern of how to live the life that God has
for us. That would be just confusion. No, you keep it with faith and love in
Christ Jesus.

That's relationship. That's where the power comes from. Now, the truth here is
first I have to be taught.

I gotta have the pattern. I can't know it unless I read it. So unless you're
spending time in God's word, you're hearing teaching from God's word, you don't
even have the pattern.

You don't know what it is. I've gotta see the pattern. And that comes through
teaching.

That comes through reading God's word. But then I've gotta live the pattern. And
the way to live it comes through relationship with Jesus Christ.

Keep a pattern that you've been taught. That's one of the keys to living a
lasting hope. Second key in these verses is you guard the deposit that was
entrusted to you.

Verse 14 says guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you. Guard it with
the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. Now, this reminds you of something
we talked about yesterday.

Yesterday we talked about the fact that you and I have entrusted a deposit to
Jesus Christ. Our lives, our faith, our hope. There is a deposit that I've
entrusted to him.

This verse reminds me that he has entrusted a deposit back to me. He's entrusted
a deposit back to you. And by the way, when we get to chapter two, we're going to
find out that I'm then supposed to entrust a deposit to other people.

This is an incredibly important concept in living a life that lasts, a faith
that lasts. It begins with a deposit I've entrusted to Christ. I put my hope, I
put my faith, I put my life in him.

But I realize that's not where it ends. Based on that, he puts himself back into
me through his spirit. In fact, if you read Ephesians chapter one, the spirit of
God is called a deposit that God has entrusted to our account.

He puts his spirit back into me. He entrusts himself into me. Why?

So that I can live out the character and the purposes of God in my life. That's
what God has entrusted you with. So you guard that deposit with the help of the
Holy Spirit.

You guard it by living it out. Living out the person that God has made you to
be. Your faith in Jesus Christ is not what you've given to him, your faith, your
love.

It's also what he has given to you. His spirit, his gifts. You live those out.

You cannot live a life of lasting hope sitting in a chair somewhere, hoping that
you'll have more hope. The only way to live a life of lasting hope is to get out
there and use the gifts that God has put into your life. We all feel hopeless
sometimes.

And sometimes that hopelessness paralyzes us and we feel like separating
ourselves from God's gifts and God's purposes. That's the exact wrong thing to
do. What you need is to guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you.

Start to bear interest on that deposit by using God's gifts in your life. You
want to have lasting hope? You keep the pattern that you've been taught.

You guard the good deposit that's been entrusted to you. And then you do a third
thing. You recognize that not everyone's going to last.

That's the painful, honest truth. Verses 15 to 18. Paul writes, "You know that
everyone "in the province of Asia has deserted me, "including Falleges and
Hermogenes.

"May the Lord show mercy to the household of Anisiphorus "because he often
refreshed me "and was not ashamed of my chains. "On the contrary, when he was in
Rome, "he searched hard for me until he found me. "May the Lord grant that he
will find mercy "from the Lord on that day.

"You know very well how many ways he helped me in Ephesus. " Realize that not
everyone lasts. If you don't realize that not everyone lasts, you're going to end
up in disappointment.

But I don't want you to end up there. So when you realize the honest truth that
not everyone lasts, instead of ending up in disappointment, instead of giving up
in disappointment, you begin to pray for those who struggle. And you draw
strength from those who are doing well.

Here's the apostle Paul, one of the greatest believers, greatest lives of faith
that has ever been lived. And everyone in all the province of Asia deserted him.
Why would they do that?

Why would they desert Paul? Remember, Paul went to Ephesus in Asia and because
he was in Ephesus, all of Asia heard the good news. He was at the beginning of
all of those churches.

Why would they desert him? They deserted him because he was in prison. They
deserted him because it became dangerous to become connected to him.

They were afraid of what might happen if they were connected to the apostle
Paul. Or maybe it wasn't that. They deserted him for some others because it was
confusing to be connected to him.

Why would God let Paul be in prison? Why is this happening? And so they deserted
him.

Maybe you've done that. Maybe you've deserted someone because they're going
through a time in their life and you don't understand why God would let them go
through that. So instead of walking through it with them, you desert them.

It could be as little a thing as not being willing to go to a funeral with a
friend 'cause death confuses you because it makes you feel uncomfortable to be
there. And so, yeah, you love them and you say, oh, they'll know I love them,
but you desert them in that moment. That's just a small thing.

This became a much bigger thing for the apostle Paul. Everyone in an entire
province deserted him. But I want you to notice, Paul did not focus on that.

Oh, he says, they deserted me. I know this happened. He didn't ignore it.

He said it was true, but he focused on a man by the name of Anisophorus. He
focused on the fact that Anisophorus was not ashamed of him. And you can almost
feel the excitement and the positive heart that he has towards Anisophorus
building.

On the contrary, he was in Rome. He searched for me. He found me.

He ministered to me. It says here that he found me in chains. What does that
mean?

Well, in prisons in that day, you were literally chained to a Roman guard. So
Paul couldn't escape. He was chained to a guard.

Or at night, he might be chained within his prison cell. Maybe the bars of the
cell were not as strong as the bars of our cells today. But the chains that held
you to that person or to that wall, they were strong.

And they kept him from going anywhere. And Paul said, even in spite of my
chains, in spite of my imprisonment, he came to see me there. Someone could have
arrested him.

Said, you're seeing the apostle Paul. You must be one of those Christians too.
We're putting you in chains also.

It didn't keep Anisophorus from being there. Now, here is the amazing thing
about the apostle Paul in these verses. And here's where I want to be like the
apostle Paul.

Instead of letting all of his critics be the only voices that he heard, he
looked for the one supporter and he let that be the voice that he heard. Now, I
often do the exact opposite. I could have a hundred supporters, but if there's
one critic out there, that's the only voice that I remember.

That's the only one that I listen to. That's the last voice that I hear in my
mind, not the apostle Paul. Oh, he knew the critics were there.

A whole province of them had deserted him. But that's not the last word in his
life. The last word is Anisophorus, a man who continued to support him, a man
who he says often refreshed me, a man who searched for me.

So what is it for you? Are you letting the critics' voices outshine, outlast,
outshout all the other voices in your life? Or you're looking for that one
encourager in your life, the encourager of what God's doing in your life.

You want to last, you want a faith and a hope that lasts. You keep the pattern
you've been taught. You guard the deposit that God's entrusted back to you.

And you realize that although not everyone lasts, some do. And you're going to live
life and faith together with those who do. That is your decision.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for this chapter of scripture about hope, genuine hope
in a real world. In a world where Paul's circumstances were not what he wanted,
he was in prison. And where other people didn't always treat Paul as he would
have liked, he had some who deserted him.

But in that world, he found the ability to have hope. Because our hope is not
based on our circumstances, as difficult as they might be. Our hope is not based
on the people that are around us, as critical as they might be.

Our hope is based on you. And Jesus, we say it one more time. We know you in
whom we believed.

And we know that you're able to guard what we've entrusted to you until that day
forever in heaven. And so in that hope we live. We choose to live today.

In your name, Jesus, amen. And be back next week. We're going to be talking about
Second Timothy chapter two.

Second Timothy chapter two is one of my favorite chapters on faith and growth in
all of the Bible. See you back next week.