SUMMARY KEYWORDS

life, paul, timothy, god, jesus, feels, prescription, mission, competing, give, suffering, areas, rules, drift, grace, work, young, matter, athlete, week.

SPEAKER

Phil EuBank

‍

Good Morning, Menlo Church. So glad that you are with us today. Thanksgiving week, that's a big deal. We are also finishing a series we've been in for the last few weeks called "In Your Lifetime." And maybe for you, you go, there's a lot that's happened in my lifetime, and as a part of that, as a community, we've celebrated sort of in our lifetime as a church over the last 150 years, this major milestone, and I hope that maybe part of that has been a chance for you to observe the legacy that you are living and the one that maybe you're going to leave behind. A special welcome to our Bay Area campuses in San Mateo, Mountain View, Menlo Park, and Saratoga. I was praying for each one of you last week as we were celebrating the stories of life change through baptisms, people going public with their faith. We even had somebody that had only ever watched online and then came to one of our campuses and got baptized as their first time attending a service in-person. That was pretty incredible, pretty special. I hope that today, as you think about Thanksgiving and all the treats that are coming, you know, maybe the chance to reflect and the travel that's in front of you, you'll still just be able to take a moment with Christmas in just a few weeks to be able to process and think about what God has for you to perhaps calibrate for those weeks ahead.

I think that the metaphors we're about to explore from the Apostle Paul to his young pastor protege, Timothy, they may help us explore how to live out who we are in Jesus in this season, maybe in a brand new way for you, whether you've been following Jesus for a very short time or for a very long time, or you would say, you know what, I'm just exploring faith at first right now, in general, no matter what your story is, we're so glad that you're here. Before we begin, I'm going to pray for us. And if you've never been here before, never heard me speak, I pray kneeling. And the reason that I do that is because God is worth our submission and humility. So even if this is a new attitude for you or a new posture for you, would you humble yourself in the quiet of your heart as we approach God together?

God, thank you so much. Thank you that in the midst of so much in front of us, maybe for some of us, we look forward to the tables that we're going to sit around this week. For some of us, God, we have anxiety or stress/concern around that. God, you're with us and all of it. No matter what we are thinking about in the rest of this calendar year, God, you are already going before us. Give us your eyes to see people, your heart to care. And God, give us a vision for the kind of legacy you want us to walk out in these days. It's in Jesus' name. Amen.

Now, there is a phrase that I'm guessing you have heard. I grew up with it. Maybe if you grew up with it, hopefully, we don't use it anymore. But for a long time, parents and educators, there was just this phrase that you knew what somebody was going to say. I bet even though you maybe haven't heard it in a little while, you'll be able to finish it with me. When you are young, someone may have said something like this. They said, "Do what I say….. [Not what I do]." Right, some of you, you sound like you've said that kind of recently. So I want to just remind you, that's not a phrase that we want to replicate.

Because the idea behind it is: it's trying to convey the message that the message and the modeling of the person sending it can be divided. And that's okay, just listen to the message. But that doesn't work. The further the model is from the message, the less it actually transfers. As a matter of fact, we live in an era where cautionary tales about this show up all the time. It feels like every week, there's another headline. People who have big altruistic dreams about shaping the future only to be discovered as flawed people who have major unaddressed gaps between their message and the life that they are modeling. Beyond the headlines, beyond the names that you know about, are scores of people, companies, and schools where the same gap has created and the same set of problems exist as a result of it.

Now, don't get me wrong, none of us are perfect. There will always be a gap. That's why we need grace. But that doesn't take away an important truth, and that is this: that the legacy you are modeling is the one you are multiplying. The legacy you are modeling is the one you are multiplying. That may not be the truth that you want to believe. That may not be the thing you want to live out. But that is actually how it works. Even if you're not a follower of Jesus, over the long haul - I don't care what your resume says, I don't care what kind of house you live in, I don't care how much you have in your bank account - I'm telling you over the long run when you look at your life, the legacy that you are modeling is the one you are multiplying. That's the way it actually works. We can have pressure-tested phrases and clever ideas that we are diligent about communicating at work or at home, but people are paying closer attention to our lives than our lines. And they will always do that.

Now we've been in a letter called 2 Timothy for the last few weeks, widely considered to be the Apostle Paul's final letter that he writes in the New Testament. He's writing it to his young pastoral protege, Timothy, and in it, he's going to ask us two questions really about how we share our legacy today. And the first question that he asks of Timothy, and I think God would ask of you and me is, who is your next, who is your next?

Paul always had his eyes open for the next person or the next group to share with, and he wanted Timothy to inherit that same mindset. I've had to wear glasses for basically my entire life. When I was born, I had two lazy eyes. When I was delivered, if you look really closely, actually, you can still notice, but don't tell me about it. That'd be embarrassing. I'm one of the few documented cases that had surgery as young as I did, where they didn't come back, knock on wood, that's still working out okay for me. But basically, ever since then, I've needed some sort of help to be able to see normally.

See, the prescription that I have helps me to see the world as it actually is.

Now, don't get me wrong, I can see without my glasses, I just don't see clearly, right? I don't see accurately, but I can still see. My prescription is required in order to see accurately. Some of you, I'm married to one of you, you have amazing vision. And you tell me about it all the time. You're like, I have 20/10. And honestly, I'm a little annoyed by you. So just keep that to yourself.

But Paul is talking to us about a spiritual prescription because no matter how good your physical eyesight is, your spiritual eyesight, your capacity to see the world through the Kingdom of Heaven's lenses, is always going to need help. And so Paul is trying to talk to Timothy about that very problem. When he says this, he says, "You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also."

Now, it's tempting to skip the first part of that, but there is something really important in the middle of it. If you were here last week, you heard how the Apostle Paul talked about people who had betrayed him in ministry, how the Apostle Paul was literally naming names of people who had walked away from him when he was in the thick of it related to ministry. And here he is challenging Timothy to live differently than that, to not make that list on somebody's letter.

What we translate "You then" could probably be better translated "as for you." In contrast, if you're a follower of Jesus and you've been in church for a while, there's a passage that really underscores this idea from the Hebrew Scriptures. It reads this way: "And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Some of you have that on a coffee cup, right? Like that's a line. That's one of those things we say. And just like Joshua, it's not a question of whether or not we will choose to live with God at the center of our lives in a vacuum. It's about whether or not we will choose to live faithfully to God in a culture that doesn't. We are choosing to live in contrast to the world around us. Paul is saying that even when it is tempting to don't give up, don't let in to the pressures that compromise who you are.

Giving in would be so easy, but so unhelpful to your life. But the call on Timothy is to experience strength from the grace of God. Grace is undeserved favor. It's easy to think about that if you're a Christian from when you initially decided to follow Jesus. But Paul

regularly reminds us of how central this grace, this undeserved favor is every single day. Even if you are, you know, somebody that says, "Me as a Christian, I feel pretty solid in that," I'm telling you, when we gather together, when we open the Scriptures ourselves, or with other people, it's not a math problem. It's not a history lesson. We actually need God's grace to help us walk this out every single day. Maybe for you, even now, you're saying, "God, would you give me the grace to model something different in my life because that's the only way you will do it?" See, we never graduate from grace; we graduate into greater awareness of our grace. Many of us understand that there is this kind of prescription we need to be able to see about our lives, maybe you wear lenses, maybe you just understand intuitively, as a Christian, I'm going to view the world differently. But for Paul, one of the prescriptions that he wore was who was next in line for this legacy. And he knew that this idea for Timothy, it was going to require God's strength for him to walk out and model this well and to see the people he should be investing in. He gives him a call to a multi-generational mission. Paul had taught Timothy, and now Timothy was going to teach others. This wasn't a one-to-one vision of life in the early church. This was Paul is going to teach Timothy, but he's telling Timothy, the kind of ideas about who would qualify for that.

So many of us, we understand that there is a reciprocal nature in the way that when someone does something nice for us, we do something nice back for them. That's just a normal part of society. But what Paul is saying to Timothy is not, "I don't want you to just do something nice back for me what I'm teaching you, I want you to be faithful to teach others also, but only a certain kind of others." See, Paul is talking about something bigger than just sharing the gospel, the good news that God sent His Son to live a perfect life, to die on our behalf, and then to come back from the grave so that anyone could turn from their own way of life, choose to receive and believe this gift of Heaven in Jesus that's available to all of us, and follow Him for the rest of our lives, and experience abundant life today and eternal life waiting. That's for everybody there. We tell that to everybody. We communicate that all the time. What Paul is talking about when he says Timothy there’s a qualifier for you in the way you teach people is about teaching faith foundations, about really investing in certain specific people. He knew how easily the truths that he was sharing in the earliest pages of the New Testament could be manipulated. He knew how quickly they could be distorted. See, the rest of the Bible wouldn't be a mask to what we think of as the Bible today for hundreds of years. And it would take hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years after that before people would largely have that in their own language. And so he knew how quickly distortion could take place. As a matter of fact, most of the letters that Paul writes in the New Testament are to regions or to churches to address specific distortions and abuses.

He's saying, I'm writing to you because you're doing this incorrectly. I'm writing this to you because the teachings have been distorted.

My dad, he wasn't a Christian until the very end of his life, and growing up in a home as complicated as mine was meant that the kind of investment I needed was by and large going to come from men and women outside of my home. I had men and women who invested in me, that cared about me, and told me about how life works and the best ones - the people I knew I was getting time from them that was very costly - they had an

expectation of me if our relationship was going to continue forward with them investing in me, here's what they expected: they expected me to show up prepared, and they expected me to be present for the conversation, which was before smartphones, so it was a lot easier. They expected me to carry out what we talked about; that I was going to do something with it. They didn't want to waste their time because there were other people they could have been spending time with. I've had people in my life like this basically, ever since.

A few years ago when I was no longer the youngest leader in most of the rooms that I was in, I started to have younger leaders reach out and ask me for time. Because of how I grew up and how pivotal this was for me, I usually tried to say yes and just figure it out on my schedule. But what I would soon discover is that not everyone who wanted to spend time wanted to grow. There were people who wanted to spend time for any number of different reasons, but we would keep having the same conversations. There were things they needed to do differently or ways they needed to view life differently, areas they needed to hand over to God, and they weren't willing to. So I had to learn how to give a strategic “no,” as well as to gauge the level of investment that I would make based on the level of investment they were making. I wasn't going to pour out my soul into a leaky cup, you know what I'm saying?

See, this kind of vision for who is next in your life is what Paul is challenging Timothy to live with. Some of you are investing in people that, if you're honest, you know it's just going nowhere. And it doesn't mean you don't care about them; it just means your time is valuable too. That's what Paul is telling Timothy. You see every year or so if you wear glasses you have to get your prescription checked to make sure that it's still a valid prescription. The real world hasn't changed, the lenses haven't changed, but your eyesight may be degrading. And again, some of you have amazing vision; you're like, "My eyes never degrade; keep it to yourself. I don't want to hear about it, okay?" But you have eyes physically that do that. You also, if you're not careful, have spiritual eyes that can do the same thing for how we have eyes for people, to be able to see the kinds of investments and areas that God wants us to invest in relationships.

For some of you, sharing your legacy is about getting your spiritual prescription checked against how you are living your life. Because the legacy you are modeling is the one you are multiplying. And for a long time, you've had the right message, but the wrong model, and nobody has called you on it but you know it's true. And so what we see Paul sort of pivot the conversation to is the second question about sharing our legacy, which is, who are you now? Not who did you used to be, not who do you hope to be someday, but an honest assessment of who are you now. It's an important question because it's always changing, just like our eyesight. See, I want to believe it's not degrading; I want to believe I don't need new lenses. But it doesn't take very long in that checkup appointment to realize how much my eyesight may have faded, how quickly I can drift from being able to see one way to another way. And for you, maybe that's happened because of the stress of work, or because of the season of life that you're in, or because of the obstacles that you have not wanted to acknowledge the weight that they have

brought into your life. But if we're not careful, we will just keep drifting without intervention. And so the Apostle Paul is trying to give Timothy some intervention.

A month ago or so, I turned 40 years old. And some of you, you're like, "Wow, you're so young." And some of you are like, "You're so old." And I'm going to pretend that it basically balances out across all of our campuses; pretty much everybody's cool. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. You hear a lot about what happens when you turn 40 and so far, I'm doing pretty well. But there are definitely moments, moments when I feel like I'm 25 and so I stay up too late, or I do something physically that I suffer the consequences of for several days, you know, like sleep awkwardly. It's also a weird middle ground in life where you feel like you're still cool enough to hang out with 20- year-olds, and you're not objectively not like, "Hey, do you want to go do that?" And they describe something, and I'm like, there's nothing in the world I want to do less than that. That sounds awful. And then at the same time, I feel like it doesn't feel like I'm really a grown-up yet. It's this weird middle ground in our lives.

So I am particularly sensitive to the kind of self-examination that Paul gives to Timothy because I'm thinking about even as a person right now. And he gives these three metaphors to Timothy that I think are really helpful for us as we think about what legacy we are living and leaving behind. He says it this way; he says, "Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything."

Now, sometimes the Apostle Paul will give us one idea, and he feels like he spends paragraphs breaking it down for us. And then there are some times like this where he gives us something so dense in just a few words that's worth kind of teasing out. It doesn't start with the most optimistic example either, right? But it's a sobering reminder that if you understand your pursuit of Jesus in some ways as a devoted soldier, then suffering won't surprise you, and the need to focus and avoid distractions comes with the territory. You're not surprised by it. See this phrase "share in suffering." It can also be translated "endure suffering." In other words, don't be surprised by it; expect it, understand it. It's a part of how God will grow you and a part of how you will share your legacy of faith with others. Honestly, I think that this aspect of following Jesus is a really important part of our creative resistance in a world that is obsessed with finding fault and offense. Instead of instantly blaming others or claiming your status as a victim in a situation, what does enduring suffering look like?

Now, I always wanted to offer a disclaimer here as an abuse victim myself. This doesn't mean that you don't get help in an abusive relationship or you don't speak out when abuse is taking place, I want you to get help and get help right now. What the Apostle Paul is talking about is sort of the broad human condition that suffering is taking place in our normal lives. And then, on top of that, as a follower of Jesus, you are going to uniquely face suffering in life that you shouldn't be surprised by. And the reason that Paul says this is because soldiers, see, they understood that they have a mission. They

have orders that come with that mission. The mission drives their decisions; their orders are not an accessory to their life; they are a necessity of their life. And if you're a follower of Jesus, I just wonder, what is the mission that your life is modeling? If you're not a follower of Jesus, or maybe you would say, "I made a decision to follow Jesus, but it doesn't, if I'm honest, it doesn’t get incorporated into my life as much as it should." Most of the time, the mission that we are living is the mission of our culture, and the mission of our culture is to be comfortable. It's a very different mission than the mission of Jesus. The mission of Jesus is that you would walk closer with him and help other people to find Him. That’s the mission of your life.

And for lots of us, when we have comfort as our mission, well, then all of a sudden suffering is completely antithetical. And so now we have comfort as our mission, and our orders are compromise wherever necessary in order to experience comfort. Can you see why it would be difficult to pursue both of these things? My father-in-law is a retired police officer, retired pastor, retired Special Forces soldier. I know. He's very intimidating and incredible. And when he talks about his time in the military, it is clear how singular his focus was, how important understanding his mission, and how diligently he stayed focused and faithful to it. And I just wonder, has your prescription for your mission shifted and drifted over time? Is Jesus an accessory to your life, or is His mission the necessity of your life? That's what Paul is challenging Timothy to think about. Who are you most devoted to? Because you have an answer. And if the answer is you, or the answer is your job, or the answer is some other thing other than the person and work of God in your life, you are making a very, very dangerous choice for your life.

You have a mission, and soldiers understand that they are in a war. And Christians, if you don't know this, you're in a war—good versus evil. And we know how the war ends; God is going to win. But you may be in a battle where it feels like you're losing. You may be in a battle where it feels like the odds are stacked against you, and I'm telling you, stay committed, stay devoted. Figure out what in your life needs to drift so that your focus can resume back to the mission that God's given you.

Second metaphor that Paul gives to Timothy is that of an athlete, specifically a disciplined athlete. In the context that Paul is writing, it's probably about an athlete competing in the Olympia, where we get the concept for the Olympics. And in order to compete, you needed to complete a required 10-month training program, that you would swear an oath that you had completed the training program because otherwise, other people would try and compete and actually get hurt. It was not a casual athlete, playing football with friends on Thanksgiving pulling a hamstring five minutes in; like these were committed athletes. See, it's probably actually even bigger than this idea of what is the hobby that I like to do? What's the sport I play occasionally; this was a whole life pursuit for a very specific goal. See, there was a reward for competing and winning according to the rules of the Olympiad. And that's what Paul is trying to help Timothy understand. There is this long-term, bigger-picture thing that you are thinking about; you can't do it overnight. It would take time to get into and to stay in shape. I think sometimes we forget that. That's another area honestly, as I get older, that's pretty easy for me to

forget about too. When I was in my 20s, if I didn't work out for a week, my body basically was like, "Don't worry about it, Phil, I'll be here when you get back to it."

At 40, if I don't work out for a week, my body's like, "I guess we're never working out again." See, this idea of competing about a specific set of rules, you have to think about it through the lens of: I'm not just going to pursue God one time; I'm going to stay in spiritual shape. It means that there's a regular, ongoing commitment. It's not just about choosing to follow Jesus one day in the past; it's about following Jesus every day of our lives. And when you miss a day, you get back on the horse; you keep following; you keep training so that you can stay in shape for the race that you're already on. Because no matter how faith has been described to you in the past, the scriptural metaphor athletically more and more is not that you're in a sprint but that you're in a marathon; that you have to run at a pace you can run at for a long time. How is that going?

Would you say that in your life, when you look around you, you have small little bursts of following Jesus? But then, after a while, you sort of drift again until some crisis in your life, and then you sprint again? Or would you say, "You know what, there's a pace, and sometimes I'll run a little bit faster. But I'm always pursuing Jesus; my faith never hibernates." That's the heart that God has for you. And I know that some of you love rules. For you, the moment that I said, "You have to compete according to the rules," you're like, "Oh, that's exactly. Tell him, Phil, tell them about all the rules." And then there are others of you that really don't like rules. I've driven around in California now for almost a year; I know that there's some of you that don't like rules. I do want to just let you know that stop signs, let me just give you a tip: they mean stop; just try it out. I think that they made it as clear as they could. It's red too, like the light. But you know, whatever. A lot of times, we marry someone who has a different understanding of rules than we do. Early on, it feels like an attraction thing. Like, "wow, that's wild that they can just live however they want. That's so crazy."

But I think that what we see as rules in the scriptures, often God gives us as boundaries. And whether we want to admit it or not, boundaries are blessings. Boundaries from God are blessings in our life. If you've never heard me say it this way, when God says do, He means He designed you that way. And when God says don't, He means don't hurt yourself. And we may think I can do it however I want, and you absolutely can. But the consequences of your choices are still going to exist. Like the thing is, at the core of Silicon Valley, I know that breaking the rules feels like a just a staple. It's a thing that we're supposed to do. But the prize that Paul is talking about is much bigger than the next funding round or your next IPO; it's eternity.

The final reminder from Paul is that of a diligent farmer. If you've ever known a farmer, they are so incredibly impressive. The level of day-to-day diligence is pretty unparalleled. They have to take into account seasons and soil, immediate weather patterns. And if you think about it, really all they're doing is trying to get ready for what God's going to do; they have a very limited level of influence on the harvest, they're just kind of getting ready to prepare to collect it. Paul says that a benefit of being a diligent farmer spiritually is that you and I, we get a share of the crops, the best share, the first

share of the harvest. And that's true in your spiritual life. And if this is the only experience that you have in your spiritual life, is that occasionally you come and you sit in a room like this, and you study the Bible, or maybe you watch online or maybe for you, it's when life gets really difficult, you think, "I need to go jump into that conversation again." You're missing out on the idea of the daily bread of God. That's why we pray for daily bread. God wants you to experience this all the time. So if Paul is telling Timothy to shape his life by his devotion, discipline, and diligence in his pursuit of Jesus. How are you doing?

Remember, it's possible to have all of these things and have them directed at the wrong thing, the wrong person, the wrong company. Some of you, you're taking all of your devotion, all of your diligence, all of your discipline, and you are aiming it at something that's just not God. And it's not producing what you thought it would because it's at the wrong thing. Like I said, I know that the idea that the legacy you're modeling is the one you're multiplying. It's very strange here because we want to push that off as far as possible. We live in a culture where the ends justify the means. But that's not how it really works; when you cut corners, you are left bleeding, and usually, so are other people. This isn't a new tendency by the way, sports is usually the place that we see this show up most regularly. As a matter of fact, regardless of how we think about cheating, like in specific lanes, or the ways that it shows up. One of the stories that stands out to me is Rosie Ruiz from the 1980 Boston Marathon. She won the Boston Marathon after only ever having competed in one other marathon, which is completely unheard of. She also finished with the best time ever recorded by a female athlete at the Boston Marathon, which was amazing. It was an incredible feat. But there was only one problem; she didn't actually run the marathon.

Just sort of a problem, I guess, right? She cheated. Eight days later, she would be stripped of her title. It turns out that she had popped out of the spectators' area about a half a mile from the finish line and crossed before everybody else did. As a matter of fact, her qualifying run at the New York City Marathon, she had also cheated. Imagine the level of devotion, discipline, and diligence it took to devise that kind of scheme to cheat. Imagine if she had put that in towards competing with the rules. She had just taken those things and aimed them at the wrong target. Some of you, that's the story of your life if you're honest. But it's not too late for you. It's not too late for you to change the life and legacy that you are modeling. Because of Jesus, we can still turn back from patterns that don't honor Him and choose to follow Him with the practical decisions that we make every single day. And give our greatest devotion, our greatest discipline, and our greatest diligence to God. For some of you, it feels like you made that decision - what the Bible calls repentance - a long time ago. You chose to go from one direction to another and follow them for the rest of your life. And what today is a reminder of is it's a prescription checkup to ask whether or not you are still doing that. And what are those areas in your life where maybe things have gotten a little bit out of sync, where you have drifted just a little bit more than you realized. There's still time for you to recalibrate. Even as we think about heading into the Advent season, even as we think about celebrating Thanksgiving.

The last section from Paul to Timothy says this, he says “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” And I want to give you a moment to do that very thing. I want to give you a moment to say, "God, this is more than a history lesson. This is more than a math class. This is you showing up in my life."

And so for just a moment between you and God, take time and say, "God, would you surface in my life those areas that you need to course-correct my priorities?" Even if you're not a Christian today, God loves you. And He would love for you to approach Him with honesty and humility in your heart, that He might be able to show something to you that you didn't know walking in. So take a moment right now, and in just a minute, I'll close our time together.

God, for so many of us, there are things in our life that we run as fast and as far as we can so that we don't have to look at them. We try to push the pace so that those areas of focus and reflection that you want to do something with, we can pretend they don't exist. And just like Paul was trying to give Timothy another chance, maybe his last chance in life, to be able to look at this paradigm of being diligent, being devoted, being disciplined. God, would you help us to see that not that we do those things without you; we do those things with you, because of you, for you. Help us to see that potential today. God as we sing to you, as we are reminded of your faithfulness in our life, God, would you grow in us a sense of faithfulness because of it. Would you help us to live in light of that, that the legacy we live today, not just someday but today, and the one we will leave behind someday would actually be able to be committed and connected to an incomplete but honest model of following you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

‍