Proclaiming Boldly, Suffering Bravely

I want to read—not surprisingly, after what I said yesterday—from 2 Timothy and from chapter 2. I think there’s a sense in which this section of 2 Timothy is really the great Pauline statement concerning the discipleship that needs to take place and what this conference is actually set out to do. And so I make no apology for the fact of its familiarity. In fact, as I’ve been saying all along, my role is not essentially to come and tell people what they don’t know but to remind ourselves, to remind one another, about things that we shouldn’t forget.

And so, with that in mind, 2 Timothy 2:1:

“You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you[’ve] heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. 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.”

Father, thank you that we have these moments together this morning. Thank you for your Word. Thank you for Christ, the living Word. Thank you for the Holy Spirit, who interprets truth to us, opens our eyes, illumines our hearts and our understanding. And so we humbly pray that what we don’t know you will teach us, that what we don’t have you will give us, that what we’re not, that you will make us. For Christ’s sake. Amen.

It’s pretty clear just in reading those opening verses there that any approach to the Christian life in general that is regarded as being, if you like, a soft option or something that lazy people might enjoy or even people that are not that bright might enjoy—it becomes very clear that there is no place in the Bible for that kind of thinking. Indeed, the story of Christianity is—if you like, it’s muscular. It’s demanding. It’s thoughtful. And Timothy here, as Paul gets ready to slip off his mortal coil and go to his eternal reward, is being reminded that if he is going to take, as it were, the baton—or what you say, the “ba-ton”—from the hands of Paul, then he has to recognize that if he’s going to proclaim it to the generation that is coming, it’s going to be as significant in his life as it was in Paul’s life too.

And Paul, of course, is able to tell us what it has been like for him—not on every day of his Christian pilgrimage, but it would be impossible for him to understand the notion of being a servant of Christ… As he says to the false prophets in Corinth as he takes them on at their own approach—he says, “Are [these people the] servants of Christ?” And then he says,

I[’m] a better one—I[’m] talking like a madman—with far greater [labor], far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea.[1]

And he hasn’t even finished his autobiographical run!

And so, it’s not as if Timothy has been cozying up to Paul, who has been spending wonderful evenings off the coast of Patmos on a yacht or has been enjoying somebody’s wealthy residence on the shores of the Mediterranean. Timothy knows exactly what is on here, and he needs to expect the fact that… And Paul is not gilding the lily, is he? He needs to anticipate the fact that if he’s going to “guard the good deposit,”[2] which is what Paul has said to him to do in chapter 1, and if he’s going to proclaim the gospel, then, first of all, he needs to know what the gospel is he’s proclaiming. That’s why he’s said to him already, “You know the Scriptures, from whom you have learned the truth ever since you were a child”[3]—“and in light of that, it is this truth that you’re going to proclaim.”

Now, let me just pause and say that if we are involved in any discipleship program, it stands to absolute reason that we are ourselves both converted by, convinced of, and committed to the proclamation of the gospel, the sharing of the gospel. And we’re not sharing a philosophy. We’re not sharing an ideal. We are actually sharing Jesus and sharing biblical truth. And so we need to distinguish between urging people to accept the gospel because of the benefits or warning people about rejecting the gospel on account of what happens to them if they do—we can do that vociferously without ever having shared the gospel with them.[4] And people say, “Well, I understand what you’re saying. There’s something very, very important that needs to happen here.”

And so, I make no apology, again, for saying: Let’s remind ourselves that if we’re involved in this process, we’re declaring the fact that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.”[5] We’re telling people that Christ died for sins, once for all, “the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”[6] And in that journey, which is ours to enjoy in the great transition of passing on the baton, here we find Timothy.

Now, just as Jesus was masterful in using illustrative material that was not obscure in any way (“A sower went forth to sow,”[7] “You don’t put a lamp under a basket,”[8] and so on), the apostle Paul has a very good line of his own. And what I want to do in the moments that I take for myself here is recognize that what Paul essentially is saying is this: He’s urging Timothy to proclaim the gospel boldly and to suffer for it bravely—to proclaim it boldly and to suffer for it bravely. And he does so in verses 3–7 by giving us these three understandable pictures.

And he begins by saying, “You need to understand what it means to be a soldier.” And, of course, as we know, Paul had spent a lot of time in the company of soldiers—not hanging out with them for fun but having to look at them straight on.

And it’s actually impossible to miss the emphasis of Paul between gospel ministry and hardship. I think that it’s possible for us to overstate that, but it is definitely possible for us to understate it—to suggest to people a sort of departure into a stratosphere that is largely unknown: the idea, of course, that if you do this, the benefits that will accrue are so many and so on, making an appeal really to the anticipations and earthly desires of folks.

But Paul is saying to him, “Listen: To serve means to suffer.” And in each of these pictures, the way in which they unfold makes it perfectly clear: Without a commitment to the race, there will be no victory. Without a devotion to the commanding officer, there will be no “Well done.”[9] And so it is that in the realm of leadership…

And leadership is essentially what we’re doing here, if we talk about discipleship. I mean, I have come here, and part of the feeling I’ve had is “Oh, goodness! I think I’ve been doing this wrong for about the last seventy years of my life.” Because the thing is “Well, who’s your man right now? Or who’s your person that you’re doing this with?” Well, I’ve been doing it with my son. I’ve been doing it with the guys who were on my pastoral team. But I haven’t been going to Starbucks at the same time every week to meet with a person. And if we’re going to call that discipleship and nothing else, then you ought to all feel bad if you weren’t in Starbucks early this morning meeting with your person.

Now, I’m not saying that because I’m dispensing with that. That is fundamental. But let me give you an example of someone who’s discipled me.

So, I was invited when I was a young man—fifty years ago, probably—to speak at a conference for medical students and theological students. The title of the conference was Mission in the Last Days. Mission in the Last Days. What I knew about the last days was small, about mission a little bit. So I had three talks that began on the Friday evening, and I was going to speak on mission in the last days. So I looked through my Bible, and I decided, “2 Peter’s got a lot of ‘the last days’ in it. In fact, that’s it. So what I’ll do is I’ll do that.” And so I decided, like a fool, I would do one chapter on Friday evening, another one on Saturday morning, and another one on Saturday afternoon.

And sitting right here on my right was a man. He had a navy blazer on, he had gray flannels, and he never took his eyes off me. I mean, he was locked in. And as I stumbled my way through this attempted exposition, I said things like, “You know, if you look carefully, you’ll see what Peter is trying to say.” And I also said things like, “And many of you are, you know, very intelligent, and you’re theological students, and you probably know far more about this than I do.” And I would say that it wasn’t one of my better evenings.

And all the time, the man looked at me. Looked at me! And there was a bookstall here—one of those opening bookstalls. It’s the old days. And so as soon as I finished, I took two steps, and I went behind the bookstall to get out the back door. And a hand grabbed me. And, of course, it was him. And he said—he’s from the Highlands—he says, “Could I have a wee word with you?”—which I thought, “No!” But he said, “When you said that thing about making an abundant entry into heaven”—which is to the eleventh verse of chapter 1 (“You’ll make an abundant entry into heaven)”[10]—he said, “That was good.” And then he said, “But that was about all that was good.” And he said, “You said Peter was trying to say something. Peter was saying something. You were trying to say something. And you said, ‘You all know more about this than me.’” He said, “Listen, let me tell you something: When you are in that position, you are God’s man with God’s Word. And whether you have a pound of sirloin hamburger or whether you have a steak, it doesn’t matter. You deliver what has been given you to do.” And then he said, “I’d like to pray with you.” And then he prayed with me. And then I went out the back door. And then I went in my bedroom, and I wept. And that man, although I was only in his company three or four times since, continues to this moment to disciple me.

So, let’s make sure that we have a broad enough grasp of what we’re talking about. Because many people who have discipled me, I never met them. They disciple me through their books. They disciple me through their songs, their hymns, and so on. And again, please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not trying to take the foundation out from the very personal nature of it. I’m committed entirely to that. But what I want to say is: Relax! Because you’re doing a lot more… If you’re living for Jesus, shining for Jesus, telling the truth in your office, being devoted to your girlfriend and not violating God’s commands, there’s a lot going on in the minds of people that are watching you and learning from you. And I think that it’s probably safe for us to say that Timothy was learning a lot, not as a result of attending a seminar but by observation and by the example of Paul.

The Devotion of the Soldier

And so, here we have it. First of all, then, the devotion of the soldier.

The good soldier has to be willing to take his share of the suffering, has to be prepared to remain focused on the objective. And I’m told that the dropout for people who sign up for the military after they go to basic training is actually pretty significant and that many people have walked away in very short order because they suddenly realized, “Oh, this wasn’t what I signed up for. I thought I got a uniform and walked around and went to parties.”

And so, you will notice here that Paul is very straightforward: “Hey, you’re a follower of Jesus? I follow Jesus. You follow me.[11] That’s how it works. Are you going to be a soldier? You don’t get entangled in civilian pursuits.”

Now, what does that mean? Because we know that Jesus says, “I do[n’t] [pray, Father,] that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.”[12] So what would it mean to be entangled in that way?

Well, I think it probably means that all of our goals, all of our concerns, have to be subservient to the overarching goal of serving Christ—that we “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added”[13] unto us, that we don’t reverse that. And we have in Jesus not only a wonderful Shepherd and a kind Friend, but we have, if you like, in some senses, in the army…

And it’s not really—it’s very passé to talk about the army. When’s the last time you sang “Onward Christian Soldiers”?[14] Exactly, right? People say, “Oh, we couldn’t have that!” Well, that might be partly the reason for the feminization of the church—with due respect to all the ladies who are present! But there is a tendency in that direction, and it’s partly because we’re just not allowed to face up to these things.

All of our goals, all of our concerns have to be subservient to the overarching goal of serving Christ.

The commanding officer controls things. When I was a boy in Scotland, I used to go to Stirling Castle. And Stirling Castle still had a regiment of soldiers there. And sometimes, when they marched on the esplanade, I, as a seven- or eight-year-old boy, would march alongside them on the esplanade. I wasn’t a soldier, but I was impressed by who they were and what they do.

Then I became a member of a Bible class called the Crusaders, and I was sent there by my father, who decided that church in the morning and church in the evening was not sufficient, so I should have church in the afternoon. So at three o’clock in the afternoon, I went to the Crusader class. I was nine years old. I wore a kilt. (Don’t try and picture that.) And as I made my way into the place, because I was a junior, you sat on the front row. And then, if you were a little older, you eventually went to the back row.

And the Crusader chorus went like this. The theology is not altogether fabulous, but here we have it. It goes like this: “The Lord hath need of me.” (Actually, that’s the first place it goes wrong. He doesn’t actually need us, but he’s prepared to use us. But—poetic justice.)

The Lord hath need of me;
His soldier I must be.
He gave his life my life to win,
And so I mean to follow him
And serve him faithfully.
And though the road be fierce and long,
I’ll carry on; he makes me strong.
And then one day his face I’ll see,
And oh, the joy when he says to me,
“Well done, you good crusader”![15]

And the boys at the back had big voices, but the boys in the front—it’s so funny to think of it now, with these little unbroken voices singing, “His soldier I will be.” It’s like, I hadn’t a clue what that meant, really. But if I was nine, and I’m seventy-three, do the math. I meant it when I sang it. I didn’t know what it would really mean.

So don’t let’s allow ourselves to be put off by the fact that wartime metaphors are kind of gone. We’re not being pressed here to, if you like, the offensive strategy of the soldier but rather to the devotion to the commanding officer. Sinclair Ferguson’s book Devoted to God is a wonderful help in this regard—the idea of “What does devotion mean?” And we need to recognize that the fashions of the world that are alluring to us and the people that we’re seeking to encourage in the gospel are all transient, but the things that we are proclaiming when we’re telling them the gospel and urging them with the claims of Jesus are eternal in their significance.

The Discipline of the Athlete

And when we think in terms of the commanding officer and the necessity of it, we then move to the athlete and the discipline that is involved in athletics.

Now, some of you are very able in these things, and I admire you. I’m just managing to make sure I can stand up without using my hands at the moment. So that’s the level. I don’t want to appeal to you in any other emphasis at all.

The emphasis here on the rules are not self-imposed rules of discipline. There are self-imposed rules of discipline in athletics. You have to do them. As you can see, I haven’t been doing them. But I know they’re there, and people apply them. But the emphasis here is actually on the regulations that are involved in the running of the race. All right? An athlete doesn’t compete unless he or she competes according to the rules—that there are regulations.

Now, you can’t just sign up for the Boston Marathon. There are certain things that you have to meet and so on. Ben Johnson, I remember, in the ’90s, was a Canadian sprinter, and he set a number of consecutive hundred-meter world records. And everybody said, “What an amazing runner he is!”—only to have each of those records rescinded because it became apparent that he did not compete according to the rules.

So Paul has not only “fought the … fight,” but he has also “finished the race.”[16] And he wants to make sure that Timothy finishes the race. And he’s urging him in that regard—which, of course, challenges any kind of casual carelessness or, certainly, any casual lawlessness.

There is an incipient danger that accompanies the discoveries of grace, unless aligned to the totality of Christian doctrine, that seems to suggest somehow or another that once a person has discovered the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that any mention of rules is an intrusion into the freedom that is enjoyed in Christian living. And it is important that we need to think that out, especially if we’re going to be urging other people along the path.

We know, clearly, that the Christian is not under the law as a way of justification. That is absolutely clear. In fact, we could say this in separate notes here: We know that Christ has fulfilled the law for us. We know that in Christ, we are given a new ability to obey the law. We know that we must recognize that our new freedom in Christ is expressed in glad obedience to his commands. And we must recognize that sanctification comes from communion with Christ and that when we break God’s law, we spoil but we do not lose our relationship with the Father.

Now, if we are prepared to make mention of this, then we have to be prepared to be living it out. We’re not under the law as a means of our acceptance with God. And yet any mention of it puts chills up some people’s backs.

Sanctification comes from communion with Christ. When we break God’s law, we spoil but we do not lose our relationship with the Father.

This is part of my discipleship process, if you want to know: Keep books with notes in them, because you’ll need them one day, and you won’t be able to find anything the older you get. And so I wrote this down a long time ago. This is Dale Ralph Davis, and this is him speaking of the very matter here:

I know some Christians have allergic reactions when [they are] told [that] they are subject to [God]’s moral law in Exodus 20. This, they fear, is legalism and an effort at salvation by works. But that fear misunderstands the function of the ten commandments. The law [Exodus 20] … comes in the context of grace …. Yahweh lays down [the] pattern in … Exodus: he delivers his people …, [he then] demands [from his people] …; he works his redemption before he sets down his requirements. He first sets Israel free and then tells them how that freedom is to be enjoyed and maintained. Glad obedience to [God]’s moral law is simply our “logical” act of worship.[17]

And along with that, the Westminster Confession helps us when it says, “The Spirit of Christ subdue[es] and enable[es] the will of man to do that freely, and cheerfully, which the will of God, revealed in the law, require[s] to be done.”[18]

So, in a hymn, again:

Make me a captive, Lord,
And then I shall be free;
Force me to render up my sword,
And I shall conqueror be.
I sink in life’s alarms
When by myself I stand;
Imprison me within your arms,
And strong [will] be my [stand].[19]

We all have to think this through. I get weary hearing people saying, you know, that, you know, God loves you just the way you are. God has only loved one person just the way he was. That was his Son. God loves us despite of the way we are. And that always takes us back to Jesus, takes us always back to the cross: “When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within,” I don’t say, “Oh no! But I was… I met Mr. So-and-So for discipleship on Tuesday.” We’re not trying to knock out the minus with a plus. “Upward I look and see him there who made an end to all my sin.”[20]

Okay. That’s probably enough on that. You say, “Maybe more than enough.”

The Diligence of the Farmer

Devotion in terms of the soldier, discipline in terms of the athlete, and diligence in the realm of the farmer.

This is very routine: I keep saying, “Well, I’m reading what it says about a soldier, but I’ve never been a soldier. I’m reading what it says about an athlete, and I’m not much of an athlete. And now I’m reading about a farmer, and I’ve never been a farmer”—which is good! Lloyd-Jones talks about the fact… He says it’s the utmost silliness to say that you could never speak to somebody about the gospel unless you were whatever you were[21]—like, you know, if you drive a big car and have a corner office and you’re a capitalist, that you can never go and talk to the Transport and General Workers’ Union, because you’ve never been a union member, or you couldn’t speak to students because you weren’t really a good student, or whatever it might be. The fact of the matter is, the heart of man is “desperately wicked,”[22] and it is the same no matter what the outfit is on the outside.

And so, in that respect, when we come to the issue of the farmer, we learn by observation. There’s no immediate results in farming, apart from dairy farming. Dairy farming, you get immediate results, because they produce milk, as you would know. But in arable farming, when you think about it… And I think this picture is perhaps the most challenging when we think in terms of being involved in the lives of others in discipleship, because there’s no drama attached to farming—not in the sense that the drama of a soldier in warfare or an athlete in breasting the tape. But the farmer goes out in the morning, usually earlier in the morning than most of us, and he’s often there, depending on the circumstances, by the end of the day. The daily routine of the farmer is just plain old practical hard work, as far as I can tell.

And when we think about the people who’ve discipled us that we’ve never met, including the guy whose name I keep mentioning while I’m here… The rope guy!

(Say that again. That’s it! Yes. It’s partly because you say it wrongly. It’s a very strong r in it, brother. William Carey. Yeah, William Carey. Carey! Yeah. Take care to say “Carey.” Yeah. No, maybe you say it right. I’m sorry.)

Well, you remember Carey: “If [God] gives me credit for being a plodder, he will describe me justly. Any thing beyond that will be too much. I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To [him] I owe everything.”[23] And, of course, as we know, his first seven years of plodding, of discipleship-making, gave him no indication that what he was doing was a worthwhile exercise, would be rewarded in any way, and certainly not in any immediate way.

So, we could say of the picture of the farmer that it is, first of all, in one sense, a daunting picture. Because it’s a reminder that much of the work of Christian discipleship is plodding.

I remember years ago meeting with a young fellow in Edinburgh. Michael his name was. I’ve lost touch with him until I met somebody in Scotland in December and found out that she was married into the family. And I said, “Oh, please tell Michael where I am, and ask him to get in touch with me.” And he got in touch with me, and immediately he said, “Do you remember reading Luke’s Gospel with me early in the morning in Edinburgh?” Well, I’d actually forgotten we did that. (But I’ve found I’m forgetting a lot at the moment, so…) But the thing about it was, there was nothing special about it. I remember, as I think back on it, he was always kind of half-asleep. I never felt that he was really paying much attention. But I plodded on with him, and like a farmer week after week, watering what had been planted, facing stony territory, running up against all kinds of things that stand against us.

You know, part of the challenge of living as we do now in such an instantaneous world is that some of us don’t really have much patience for the long haul in the raising of our children. I mean, I used to say to my wife—that proverbial statement about “[raising] up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it”[24]—I used to say to her, “How old does he have to be before he quits departing from it?”

But I say that because when we’re dealing with one another, we recognize that we so desperately need the wisdom of God and also the patience to keep going. Because it’s daunting.

But it’s also an encouraging picture. It’s an encouraging picture. Because we might not see the end. We might not see the end of the project. It seems to me that if you were going to turn around the city of Cleveland, which could do with being turned around—he said humbly. The great days of Cleveland were at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century. And we can read of that there. The great days of Cleveland are in the rearview mirror, in those terms. If one was able by some mechanism to set in process a mechanism for the social, racial, financial, intellectual, medical, structural realignment of the city of Cleveland, you would have to acknowledge this: You’ve got to be prepared to invest in it, in the knowledge that you will never see its outcome. That you’ll never see its outcome.

Simple gifts exercised with humble diligence will produce more than we may expect and will produce a harvest if we don’t quit.

And in much of our discipleship stuff, surely one of the greatest joys—posthumous joys—is going to be that somehow, across the ramparts of heaven, you see that guy or that girl that moved away after you’d met with them regularly and so on. And you thought, “Oh, gone and lost forever,” and they came across and they said, “Hey! Did you remember when we met in the shop there?”

If you’re gifted at this, make sure that you don’t add to giftedness laziness or pride. Frankly, giftedness and laziness is a bad combination. Simple gifts exercised with humble diligence will produce more than we may expect and will produce a harvest if we don’t quit.

So, the rigor of the soldier, the rules of the athlete, the rewards of the farmer: a share of the crops.

Paul had worked hard. He’d enjoyed a harvest of souls, Timothy being one of them. The fruit that Paul knew was the work of God, but it wasn’t the work of God apart from the privilege entrusted to Paul. And there is toil, and there are tears. (And I’m reading my notes now, ’cause I’ve gone on too long, and I want to hear your questions. I want to hear your answers, actually.) There’s toil and there’s tears, but there’s great joy in being present to witness the first signs of life and the evidences of the harvest. The evangelist, the disciplemaker, like the farmer, lives with an eye to the harvest. Whitefield, on Christmas Eve 1739 in North Carolina, wrote in his diary, “Oh, how it will rejoice me to hear that some … soul this day was born again. Then it would be … Christmas Day indeed.”[25]

And I’ll leave you to deal with verse 7 on your own, but notice it: “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding.” You see that all the way through this, really. Our part is to plant and to water; God’s part is to make it grow.[26] Our part is to preach the gospel; God’s part is to open blind eyes. Our part is to do the thinking, and God’s part is to give us the understanding, so that in understanding, we might be solid citizens for the kingdom and make much of the gospel in the company of those entrusted to us.

I said on Friday night—although Friday night seems like a week away now—I said on Friday night that I owed my understanding not of the gospel itself but of the ability to do what this conference is about, to share my faith… To share my faith. And I came to know the work of Campus Crusade through a couple who in due course became my mother- and father-in-law. They met me in England as a sixteen-year-old, and obviously, they saw that I needed a lot of work. And so they sent me to an institute of biblical studies at the university in Linz in Austria. And there I met these American guys who told me what I’m supposed to do. And I was immediately Scottish in my response—that’s sort of inherently rebellious.

They said, “Now, I want you to write your testimony in a hundred words.”

I said, “I’m not writing my testimony! I can’t write my testimony in a hundred words!”

The guy said, “Write your testimony in a hundred words.”

I said, “Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.” “Write your testimony in a hundred words”—which I did.

And then they taught me the Four Laws, and off we went: “God loves you, has a wonderful plan for your life. Do you know you’re sinful and separated from God? Therefore, you can’t know his plan for your life. The good news is that although you can’t jump the gap between your sin and God’s holiness, he’s jumped it for you. This is the story of the cross. But hang on! You must individually receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior to enter into this. It’s not simply intellectual assent. It is a personal trust and commitment.”

Okay. So I got that. Now fast-forward some time, and I’m in America, trying to track down the girl who’s my wife now for fifty years. I’m staying in her home. We are involved in life with all different people, playing tennis—young people, different things. My mother-in-law—who passed away just a couple of months ago at the age of ninety-five—my mother-in-law announced to me one afternoon, “I’ve invited Mr. X over so that you can share the gospel with him.” My reaction to that was the same as my reaction to the hundred words thing, which was like, “Don’t tell me who to share the gospel with! I mean, I’d rather…” She said, “Well, he’s coming at two o’clock.”

This guy was Belgian. He was a very good tennis player, and he went on to become a pilot for US Airways, flying out of Pittsburgh. But on that day, he was, like, maybe twenty years old, and he was just on the fringe of Christian things.

And so, he comes over, and we went out on the back patio. We got iced tea, I think. And he’s like, “Okay, well, it’s good to see you.”

I said, “Well, you know, I was just going to go through this little booklet with you, if that’s okay.”

He said, “Yeah. You know, that’s good.”

So I went through it, and I got to the circles. And I said, “Which circle represents your life?”—one where Jesus is on the seat in the circle and one where self is on the seat in the circle.

And he said, “Well, it’s the one with self on the seat.”

And then, of course, I’m supposed to ask. I’ve got to get bold now. I’ve got to ask, “Which circle would you like to represent your life?”

And he said, “That one with Jesus on it.”

I said, “Ooh!” I said, “Well, you know, maybe we can, like, meet—we’ll meet again, you know? We’ll have a follow-up.”

He said, “No! No! Do it now.”

I’m like, “Are you…”

Anyway, so, right there and then, with the iced tea and my mother-in-law in the living room, I, the most reluctant evangelist and disciplemaker, stepped into the territory, and there he was.

God, in his goodness, blessed him—gave him a wife, gave him children, gave him a job, gave him an eldership in a church in the greater area there. And then God gave him cancer—allowed him to have a cancer and took him to himself as a relatively young man.

But I say that just in case there’s anybody who has a mother-in-law like my mother-in-law, and she has already scheduled a number of appointments for you to launch into your sharing of the gospel and discipling.

All right. Hey, thank you. Let’s go—coffee or something. Thank you very much. Thank you.

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[1] 2 Corinthians 11:23–25 (ESV).

[2] 2 Timothy 1:14 (ESV).

[3] 2 Timothy 3:14–15 (paraphrased).

[4] Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture: The Application of Biblical Theology to Expository Preaching (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 95.

[5] 2 Corinthians 5:19 (ESV).

[6] 1 Peter 3:18 (ESV).

[7] Matthew 13:3 (KJV). See also Mark 4:3; Luke 8:5.

[8] Matthew 5:15 (paraphrased).

[9] Matthew 25:21, 23; Luke 19:17 (ESV).

[10] 2 Peter 1:11 (paraphrased).

[11] See 1 Corinthians 11:1.

[12] John 17:15 (ESV).

[13] Matthew 6:33 (ESV).

[14] Sabine Baring-Gould, “Onward, Christian Soldiers” (1864).

[15] Cecil John Allen, “The Lord Hath Need of Me (High Barnet Crusaders’ Chorus)” (1934). Lyrics lightly altered.

[16] 2 Timothy 4:7 (ESV).

[17] Dale Ralph Davis, 1 Kings: The Wisdom and the Folly (Fearn, UK: Christian Focus, 2002), 83n5.

[18] The Westminster Confession of Faith 19.7.

[19] George Matheson, “Make Me a Captive, Lord” (1890).

[20] Charitie Lees Bancroft, “Before the Throne of God Above” (1863).

[21] D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1971), 130.

[22] Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV).

[23] Quoted in Eustace Carey, Memoir of William Carey […] (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1836), 417.

[24] Proverbs 22:6 (KJV).

[25] George Whitefield’s Journals (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1960), 378.

[26] See 1 Corinthians 3:6.