Northside Church - Sydney
Leading A Legacy Week 1: Protect
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. Good evening, a new series leading a legacy and we start another five-week journey through the book of Second Timothy. This year we have covered some big issues. We've covered stuff like the significance of the church. We saw that it's not just a religious institution and it's not just a little club, but in fact it's the gathered people of God. And then we went in and we dug through the book of Galatians and we saw the significance of the gospel. And we saw that the gospel is not just the ABCs, the building blocks of Christianity, but in fact it's the A to Z of the entire Christian life, right? And then we looked at hope and we saw that how we view our future affects how we live the present. Three major areas, church, gospel, hope. You see in Second Timothy Paul is in prison. He's no longer a free man as we would have read in the back of the book of Acts. He's no longer under house arrest. It's not as much as a nice picture. He's rumored to be in, I think it's the Marmatine prison, it's called, which was just a prison with a hole in the top. It's a dark hole with a, a dark hole with a little hole in the top for a bit of light. In fact you could see it if you go to that funny big white monument in Rome and you look out over the form, it's down near the big arc type thing, if you've ever been there in Rome that you've seen there, the arc of triumph or whatever, no, that's in France. But it's a real place, it's a real, it's a real prison, you can go there and the things are not looking so good for Paul and it's in this environment where the, the Caesar has gone nuts, Emperor Nero is, is literally using Christians on top of poles, burn alive on the top of poles to light his garden at night. It, it, it, think gladiator with Russell Crow and that style of Roman, which it's just a blood bath for Christians. Remember Nero sets, sets Rome on fire and he blames the Christians for it. It's, it's in that sort of background that will, that, that will happen not long after this letter. We believe this letter to be written. That's the background that Paul is writing here and under the shadow of death. And here's the funny thing, in the light of eternity, and therefore boyed by hope, I've got to ask you the question, if, if, if, if you were writing like this, almost Paul's last will and testament, what, what would you write about? What would you put down in the letter? In a situation in which he's only going to escape this by death, in the light of eternity boyed by hope, Paul exhorts young Timothy to look after two things. The church and the gospel. I'm glad Paul could confirm for me tonight that we've been looking at the right topics this year at Northside Community Church in terms of what we're teaching about. And so in that sense, second Timothy, we're going to look at leadership lessons from Paul and I hear people saying, well, hang on, what if I'm not a leader? Well, is, well, Paul's talking about is not so much leadership out of a basis of position, but out of a basis of purpose. And we'll see that it's Timothy that he's right into this young Timothy. Paul exhorts him to preserve what he's received at whatever cost and is to hand this on to faithful people who in turn will be able to teach others chapter two verse two, we'll look at that next week. In simple terms, Paul is saying, Timothy, you are a torch bearer of the flame that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's why we're looking at the video clip tonight. We are called to be torchbearers. Now, some people already asking why the babushkas, I love a good babushka, always loved them as a kid. You see what I'm trying to say is we're in that sense, we're to produce a resemblance and a likeness and a similarity to the master babushka. That's Jesus. If you're wondering who that was right on the end. And so that's a question I have. The whole series, the next five weeks, we're going to ask this question of you tonight, each and every week that we go into this series. How do you view the Christian life? I mean, is it just a one-generational personal, spiritual journey in which you only ever reap the benefits, the underlying thrust of Paul's purpose of writing to Timothy is that he's saying, "Timothy, you've got to go and start making some babushkas for the kingdom of God here." People that are in resemblance of me, young Timothy, and I in turn, like he says in first Corinthians chapter 11 verse one, follow me as I follow Christ, I as a resemblance of the master babushka, Jesus Christ. So are you up for that? See, because all of us, whether we see ourselves as leaders or not, we're leading a legacy. The people around us, the people that we influence, whether it's for good or for bad in our lives, family, friends, we're making a name for ourselves, we're building a legacy. And my question to you this evening is, what kind of kingdom legacy are you building? Tonight, we will read through 2 Timothy chapter 1 verses 13 through to 14. I'm not going to read through the whole story, but remember it's a letter that's good to have your Bibles with you in church, to read through in those bits of my sermon where you start drifting off, at least you could go back to the Word of God. But I'm just going to read from verses 13 to 14, but encourage you to read through this whole letter. It's not a big letter, five chapters. I've got the whole thing up on my wall at the moment in the office. You could read it all through pretty quickly. And verse 13, Paul says, "What you've heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching with faith and love in Jesus Christ, guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you, guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us." Now, I was wondering if anyone here, speak of torchbearers. Was anyone here ever a torchbearer for the Sydney Olympics? Oh, dang, I hope you could come preach a sermon for me, but that's all right. You see, what I'm trying to say tonight is that I never got to be a torchbearer in the Olympics. I was ready to go. I sort of was doing my stretches each time I heard it was going to come through French as forest. And I used to practice with a little bit of the vacuum cleaner around the house, and I would hold that thing high with pride. But I never got the chance to be a torchbearer. But if I did, I figured that torchbearers would always remember where the flame has come from, wouldn't you agree? They're part of something much bigger, and if there is one word that characterizes passage, it would be "remember." Paul says, "Don't forget. Don't forget where you've come from. Most of all, don't forget who you are. You see, your sense of giftedness, your sense of your call, your sense of your heritage will determine the sorts of decisions and how you act as a leader." That's why Paul says to Timothy, "Don't forget where you've come from." Verse 5, "I've been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois, and in your mother Eunice, and I'm now persuaded also lives in you." What I like about this is that the Bible demonstrates what's taken psychology a couple of thousand years to catch up to, and that is that you're inextricably a product of your heritage, your parents. Some of us have been incredibly blessed by our parents the way that Timothy was, and what we see here is that we're often the result of someone else's legacy, whether it be parents or friends or a mentor, and from a faith perspective, the principle operates much the same way. Look, think about it. Let me ask you the question. How did you end up in church here tonight? How did you end up becoming part of God's community? I'd be willing to put money on it, not that I'm a betting man, that it was because there was someone who was an incredible influence, someone who shared the gospel with you, someone that you saw characteristics in that you looked up to and said, "What's different about them?" That's a funny thing called a Christian. You might have had a parent like Timothy's, he's single mum, that just instilled a great faith for you and prays God for that, but we're a result of a legacy. Paul says, "Don't forget where you came from," but he also says, "Now don't forget who you are." Now, why would Paul say to Timothy, "Don't forget who you are?" It's because the Timothy, to whom this letter is being addressed, is being thrust into a position of responsible Christian leadership that is going to be far beyond his human capacity. That's what is facing Timmy at the moment. He's 15 years he's been Paul's companion, he's a trusted apostolic delegate, and he's now the leader of the church in Ephesus, and even greater responsibility is going to come onto him when Paul eventually passes away. Paul knows this arrest is going to end in death, and here's a funny thing, humanly speaking, Tim is totally unfit for things. All right, what are some of the things we know about him? For example, he was young, anyone who's ever been a youth leader is quoted that verse from 1 Timothy, "Don't let people look down on you because you're young." We know Timothy, we don't know what his age is, but we know that he's comparatively young compared to the wrinkled Paul by now. The other thing is his prone to sickness all throughout the first letter, Paul's always talking about his frequent ailments. Timmy was always getting sick. He was timid by temperament, timid Timmy, naturally shy, you know, if he lived today we'd call him an introvert, so he was young, he was prone to sickness, he was frail and physique, and nevertheless he was being called in a greater responsibility for service for Jesus. And Tim is responsible to carry on the torch, the flame of the gospel that's about to drop from Paul's hands soon, and he's probably feeling like he's inadequate. My question here tonight is, do you think it's possible there's a few Timmy's in the church this evening? Are you one who's feels younger or weak or shy or inadequate? Then this letter's for you. You see, because here's the good news tonight that God, I believe this what God's saying in our God is calling you into greater, into areas of service beyond your human capacity. I hope that's good news. It doesn't sound like good news because you think, "How the heck am I going to do that?" And the given is, if we look at this chapter and the rest of the book, of course in the Christian life there's going to be fear. Of course in the Christian life there's going to be times of timidity. Of course in the Christian life there's going to be times of suffering. Of course in the Christian life there's going to be times of doubts and opposition and all sorts of things that have come against you. But yet it's at those times most of all people who are carrying the torch of the gospel need to remember where they've come from and who they are, what they're a part of, how you were called, how did you have come from, and most of all who you are. Verse 70 says, "Timmy, chin up, for God didn't give you a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline." And I love that Greek word for power, "dunumus," it's where we get the word dynamite from. He's saying, "Come on, Timmy, your God's dynamite." You're going to explode with his power and say, "God is calling you into areas beyond your capacity." But the great thing about it is whenever God does that, He gives you the resources, He gives you the power to cope with it. So there is power. Have you ever seen an Olympic torch run a doodling? All right, I'll carry the thing if I have to. No, no, they're not doodling, they're excited, they're jumping up and down, they almost look a bit goofy in the silly Olympic outfit. But nonetheless, they are excited. There is a joy, there is an excitement, there's a power. Because they understand where the flames coming from, they understand that they're remembering that they're part of something much bigger than they are. That is the joy and the confidence that Paul has as a Christian. And for Timothy, he was to catch that fire as well. Timothy knew that he was an inextricable product of his heritage. And for the Christian, we also know that we're the product of someone that's passed on their faith to us, right? You've got to remember. Now the other thing that I would have practiced in my moments of being the ultimate Olympic torch runner, Lycra and all, was that I believe torchbearers, as we see, we saw from the clip there, torchbearers light the torch in close proximity. That's how it happens. You see, they touch the flames next to each other. That's the nature of the relationship between the addressor and the addressee of this letter. They were in close relationship, listened to verses 2 to 4, to Timothy, my dear son. There's a bit of a clue. This mercy and peace from God, the Father, Christ Jesus, our Lord. I thank God who I serve, as my forefathers did with a clear conscious, as night and day, I constantly remember you in my prayers, recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. You know, look, come on. It's still true back then in the Bible, we're supposed to be thinking, come on, big boys don't cry. But there was tears. There was a closeness. There was an intensity of the relationship there, and look, what I'm trying to say is that the flame of the gospel is passed on in close relationship. Now, I'm not saying that people can't receive the gospel apart from close relationship, but here's the thing with torch bearing, like apart from the remember of the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, Migos Paris temporary, the way they let the torch was just the most phenomenal thing I've ever seen. And the guy came up and he lit an arrow and the archer just pegged that thing up and into the cauldron. The whole thing just took off and the crowd erupted. Apart from the Barcelona Olympics, torches are not lit at a great distance. That was an exception. And it's in the same way, people often don't get the gospel from a distance. Why? Because there are two things necessary to go from unbelief to belief. You see that that is credibility and plausibility. You see, the credibility of the Christian faith, is it true? Is it intellectually coherent and plausibility, the simple question, does it work? Is the gospel credible? Is it plausible? Now, in order for these things to happen, the Bible shows time and time again, you need two things, you need communication and you need relationship. You see, communication is the credibility aspect of it. Part of my job, part of the burden that I have is to get up here on a Sunday night and to try and convince whoever might be listening, particularly if you're a non-Christian, that the gospel is true. It makes sense that it's not just a nice set of little principles or fairy tales that we Christians live by, that in a sense it's true. As someone said, that one of the great things about Christianity is in one of the great selling points of Christianity is not that, well, it makes your life exciting and it makes life wonderful and look, all those sorts of things are true about it, but at the heart of it, Christianity is true. There needs to be credibility and that's part of what this job of communication is doing, preaching the Word of God. Whilst the purpose and the goal of communication of the Word of God is to demonstrate that it's true, it's credibility, that's not enough. You have to develop and argue its plausibility. You have to show its plausibility that it can work and that only happens in close relationship. You see, the Christian message really spreads and gets into the very guts of the city and the society around it when the church's relationships get so remarkable that they're inexplicable. In a society in which people don't get close to one another, in a society when people are trying to keep a distance, in a society when people are trying to tear each other down, our relationships in the church and with one another should be so amazing and so beautiful and so wonderful that that makes no sense. Because ultimately, communication without relationships is like a tyre without air. You see, we could keep doing the communication thing, it's not just a preaching, we could do the music and we could do all the whole setup of doing church and we could sort of communicate that and a tyre can run along with a hole in it if you just run it hard enough. If we just run this baby hard enough, then we might get somewhere, but when you stop for a second, the whole thing begins to go flat. You see, you need communication and you need the relationships at the same time. Relationships relate to the communication as the air does to the tyre. You can't have one without the other one. Why do you think, we see it in our fearless leader, that he's such a relational leader. Relationships are so key in this place and it works the other way. If you have a place that's all relationships and no truth, no communication, then unless you're in that inner circle, unless you're part of that in group, unless you're part of the click, then you're going to walk right back out the door. We need both. Now, look, let me try and ground this here. You see, it's one thing to communicate the gospel, but people won't get it if they can't see how it works. It can be credible. The question everyone wants to ask you is it plausible? Does it work? And I think it's plausibility that Timothy needed because later in this book, Paul says to Timmy in chapter 3, verse 10, "Are you, however, know about all my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, my faith, my patience, my love, endurance, persecutions, suffering, what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Listera, the persecutions I endured, yet the Lord rescued me from them all." Now, the question is, how did Timothy know about all those sorts of things? I mean, did he go down to Khurong, pick up a little book that said the life and times of Paul the Apostle? Oh, he was with him. He was with him. Read through the books of Acts that he was converted by Paul at Listera in the first place as a teenager. He joined Paul on his first missionary journeys and to stop all the brew ha-ha from the Jews that they were trying to evangelize, Paul even got Timothy circumcised. I mean, talk about hands-on ministry, talk about closeness of relationship, get into that level of shared. Now, I'm not sort of promoting that level of vulnerability, guys, but they were in close relationship with one another, and why would Paul encourage Timothy like this? Put yourself in Timmy's shoes, he's seeing all this sort of stuff happening to Paul. He's seeing the suffering and the persecution, and here Paul's in prison. This is hardly a good advertising campaign for discipleship, right? And if I was in Tim's shoes, I'd be saying, Paul, you're a great teacher, your theology is amazing. You'd write a great book to the church in Rome, intellectually you're a genius, but if I could potentially end up like you, then how do I know the gospel's going to work? And then he would have got this letter, and in a sense he would have seen the confidence and the security and the passion and the joy and the hope. And whilst having witnessed all the suffering and stuff that went on in Paul's life, Timothy would have looked at his beloved mentor and his disciple and his literally pseudo-father and discover that the gospel is not only true, but the gospel actually works. You see, people don't get the gospel from a distance. You might get the credibility, but we won't get the plausibility and look quickly at verses two to four again, quickly, dear son, thankful for you, constantly remember you, pray for you, long to see you that I may be filled with joy, you know? That is a closer relationship, wouldn't you agree? And here's the thing, relationships with that kind of emotional intensity only exist where there's been a deep commitment to a level of proximity and vulnerability. And you seriously think that we can get to this level of relationship, let me just be blown here by just turning up every Sunday, and I'm being tongue-in-cheek because that would be good if it was every Sunday. But do you think that that's going to happen just in this, it can't happen in this context? Paul and Timothy shared all of life. And so why do you think that we go on here so much about connection groups? Why do you think we go on so often about accountability to one another? Why do you think in these times of winter blues are we saying you guys are going to make a conscious decision to commit to one another because you are not going to see the levels of the deep levels of commitment to proximity and vulnerability outside of that context and you know what you are denying if you don't want to commit to that, you're denying yourself the opportunity to see the gospel at work in people's lives. You can come here Sam, and if I get the presentation slick enough it can sound really credible but it's only through the relationships that you will have with these brothers and sisters in this place that you will get its plausibility. It's only in the trials and the sufferings that you will see in your fellow Christians and the joy that emerges out of that that you can say hey, whilst I'm not going through that the gospel actually works. That's why we do groups. It's not a religious exercise. That's why we do church. It's not a religious exercise. Torchbearers pass on the flame in close proximity. Is that true of you tonight? Is there a Timothy in your life? Is there someone you long for and pray for and wish you could be with? Desperately want to hand over the very heart of the gospel that you've been guarding? Is there a Timothy in life? Is there a Paul in your life? Are you in close relationship with someone who's older and wiser and is like the rails and the bumper bowling? I was talking about that. They can sort of keep you in check if you're a young person like me and you're on an emotional roller coaster every month. Have you got someone who's wise and steady and stable in your life? Have you got a Paul? Throw it out there. Finally, guys, you've got to headbands the whole lot. I was ready to carry this torch and I never got the call, but if I did, I would protect that flame. I would protect that flame so that no one got in between me and that precious flame. I was ready for it. I studied kung fu or sorts of martial arts and like we saw in those protests in London, the massive security details that would have had police around me, there would have been sirens, there would have been the whole lot because torch bearers protect the flame at all costs. That's what Paul says, verse 13, "What you have heard from me keep is the pattern of sound teaching with faith and love in Christ Jesus, guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you, guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us." So Paul talks of guarding the gospel in a talk to this gospel, this flame in two ways, sound teaching and also a good deposit. And so there are two implications here. What he's saying is that this flame, the gospel, is a treasure to be held onto. And the other thing is that it can be easily lost. Now firstly, how's it a treasure? You see the gospel is wealth and riches for whoever embraced it. In part of Jesus gospel, I came to give you life and have life to the full. The gospel is God's way of living life and whoever is believed in the gospel finds a new wonder and new life and a new victory over death that they didn't have before. Hope and joy. We know all the benefits. We throw the words around at church, part of our Christian needs dictionary, but it's a treasure, right? The gospel's a treasure. But how can it be easily lost? That's what he says also. Some of the ways, again, can I be really blunt? She lays in this, you know, the things I lament in my own life, the lives that I know that I'm traveling with is just so often we couldn't be bothered picking up the Word of God. And if I was to say to you that they're a Word so amazing, so incredible that could keep a guy in the middle of a rotting, dark, dungy, wet prison, absolutely brimming with hope and joy. If I said those sorts of words floating around out there and you won't find them on the shelves of borders and not just because they've gone into liquidation, but you won't find them on secular shelves. You will find them in the Word of God. If I said those words were available to you, would a friend Christian, would that wake you up to the joy and the benefit that can be found from reading the Word of God? We forget the gospel because half the time we're not reading what the gospel is. The other one is, I experience this week, it can be these, I call it atomistic tiny approaches to the Bible. People on the other end of the spectrum, there are some people that get so caught up in the little bits of the Bible that they get so obsessed with it, you know, creation or the book of Revelation or some particular word that they just get so obsessed with it they miss the bigger picture. The gospel gets lost in all that and see, we've been having some funny calls at the office lately. Mikey would attest to this. Susan would as well, she answered it this week for me, but I got a guy who'd been reading our website and our statement of faith in there and he started quizzing me on all these sorts of questions. Why do you believe in the Holy Spirit and prove to me why the Holy Spirit is there and show me the verses that are talking about it and it started getting more and more heated and more and more heated and it's all this church teaching and you and your phony Bible colleges tell you what, it's just a waste of money and I was feeling pretty down because I got my hex bill from the government, it's almost tax time and so, you know, there is a cost for the gospel here for years of university and you know what, it wasn't helping me understand it more, it was just plain offensive. Have you ever been around people like that that want to sort of explain the minutiae of the Bible to you so much that you actually lose a gospel? You see, what people like that are missing here and I hope I never become one of those sorts of guys, that's my accountability to you guys, if ever I do shoot me. Paul says verse 13, what they're missing, what he's saying verse 13 is the pattern of sound teaching and so it's not just about laziness and it's not just about the minutiae but there's another thing here is that people often are not taking the time to work out how to learn how to read your Bible, you get caught up in the little bits and so this responsibility to guard the gospel in the little bits can turn into defensiveness and negativity and it's demanding and it's condescending and it's judgmental but there's a pattern, it's not tiny bits of data, it's how you understand the whole thing and it's done in a spirit of faith and of hope and if love in Jesus Christ and so the exercise, it's not just an intellectual exercise of the Bible here, there's a spirit here that helps us, there's a spirit that helps us tease that out, the connection groups on Sundays, there's a final way that the gospel can be lost, we talked about this, I won't go into great length because we talked about in the book of Galatians, remember in the early parts of Galatians, Paul you know he's talking about Demtel Christianity, he says that a different gospel is no gospel at all, he said what he was saying is there are always voices that are going to pull you offline with the gospel, that was Peter's story, right, he got racist and Paul said you were not also walking, you're not walking in line with the gospel, there are always voices that are going to pull you off the gospel, voices that want to, you know, you're going to have subtraction, I'm a good person but I don't need the work of Jesus and then there's the work of addition, the gospel's a really powerful thing but if you do my counseling calls on understanding the self, you really get to know God in a whole new way and you really feel right with him, like no that's the gospel plus, there are always going to be voices pulling you off that and there's a pattern of sound teaching and so what I'm trying to say here is how do we guard the gospel? It's found in the first letter in chapter 4 verse 15, he says, "Be diligent in these matters, give yourself holy to them so that everyone may see your progress, watch your life and your doctrine closely, persevere in them because if you do you will save both yourself and your hearers," Now Paul's simple answer in terms of guarding the gospel is what's your life and your doctrine closely, guys the Bible, doctrine, sound theology, it might sound boring but it's a matter of life and death as far as Paul is concerned, these voices that can pull you either side of the gospel he says protect it with the utmost importance because the gospel is the truth of God and when you start messing with the truth of God, you start messing with a message that is life giving, Paul says that in the first verse it's a life giving message and when you start messing with that message then you start mucking around with people's lives, it's a matter of life and death. Have you ever seen that comedy show Just for Laughs? Sometimes you see it on a plane, they set up all these different pranks in the theme of torches, I saw one on YouTube where they actually set up a fake Olympic torch flame and they gave it to someone and they were running through and they turned a sprinkler on them and so they're running through and then they deliberately put a little latch which snuffed the flame out and they had people cheering and they had all the Olympic gear and that sort of stuff going on and they were just zooming in on the faces of these people when they realised that they let the flame go out and they were absolutely horrified like the people with their heads in their hands, they were just absolutely horrified. Here's the question, should you leave here tonight feeling petrified that you're going to muck this thing up? Should you have that same sort of face that I've got to get out of here and there's going to be a spiritual spring and there will be sprinklers in your life by the way. It's not some crazy guy in London that wants to put a fire extinguisher on the torch and I skipped over this but suffering and opposition to the gospel in this world, we're going to hear more about it in this letter but there are people with fire extinguishers out there guys, there are people that want to snuff out the message of Jesus Christ in this world and so should you leave here that you're going to cop a fire extinguisher when you're going to work tomorrow. Now what Paul does is he reminds us in verses 12 and 14 that it's God who guards the gospel. In verse 13 he says, "God it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us, it all costs, protect the gospel but do so with the confidence to know that God, he knows the gospel, he's God, it's his story, he's the one that's going to see it continue to move forward and it will never be snuffed out. So, protect the flame at all costs. Jiu jitsu, whatever martial arts you currently know, hey, before we finish up I was wondering a bit of trivia, where did this whole torch relay thing come from? And I was looking up Wikipedia and I got a bit of a surprise, it was a bit of an irony if you know and you might be chuckling because I didn't realize that the whole torch relay thing actually started during the 1936 Berlin Olympics so in simple terms the torch relay was started by the Nazis and you write a whole message on this sort of stuff and then you go oops if anyone knows what I'm talking about, you've been talking about a tradition started by the Nazis just before World War II broke out and that was the whole irony because here's the head of the guys there at the Olympics saying the supportive nightly battle awakens the best human characteristics, it does not separate but unites the combatants in understanding and respect and it was of course Adolf Hitler who wrote that quote as part of the 1936 Olympic Games, here's the irony, a man talking about global unity through the Olympics plunges this world into the greatest level of disunity and horror and suffering that human history has ever seen. And suddenly I realized that Olympic flames and isn't it funny how I remember the big cauldron there at Sydney and Kathy Freeman and her wonderful moment and the way people can talk about the torch and the values that it has and all that sort of stuff isn't amazing we lift that flame up and we almost worship it when it comes to Olympic time and even the values of unity and all the things the Olympics stood for in that time in 1936 could do nothing against the terror that was going to be inflicted on this world later on, did nothing for unity, did nothing of bringing the human race together you know the funny thing is the flame that we carry, it gets lifted up as well, in John's gospel chapter three Jesus, John says that the Jesus said when the son of man is lifted up he will draw all men to him, there is a different type of flame, the flame that we've come from here that was lifted up and that is a cross of Jesus Christ, there is a flame that's more than just big motherhood statements and issues that come out of the Olympics it's a flame that what is it it's the one that Paul was so concerned that he could pass on to Timothy and onto the others and that where the recipients of it says in verses 9 and 10 but join with me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God who has saved us and called us to a holy life not because of anything we have done because of his own purpose and grace and then there's a verse in here that I just I love in verse 10 he goes on not because of anything we've done but because of his own purpose and grace there's a gospel right there but then he says this grace was given us to us in Jesus Christ before the beginning of time what he was saying is that God's purposes the this sort of torch relay that he was on God God had a direction to his love towards you not just before you decided to start thinking about the church thing God set the direction of love towards you not not just before you decided to to recognize what Jesus did on the cross what the gospel says he denied is that God set the direction of his love towards you before the beginning of time and at the cross at the great flame the great Olympic cauldron as far as values and as far as the message is concerned that was lifted up on that hill in Calvary it was from that a flame that 12 young men and a bunch of other women eventually went talk a piece of that and as apostles were sent out into the world and took the flame the message of the cross into the very darkest parts of this world they took that flame they carried it into the world and that if anyone that calls himself a Christian here tonight has been a recipient of that legacy you are a torch bearer for the gospel protected protected over the next five weeks we're going to continue to ask ourselves what sort of legacy are we living torch bearers remember what the flame has come from that they are carrying it came from that hill it came from the cross of Jesus Christ torch bearers also light the other torches in close proximity are you in close relationship with someone this week but most of all are you protecting the flame are you taking the time to read the word of God are you taking the time to live it out in your life to protect the gospel that was given to you the flame that is carried this torch relay all the way down the years from Paul to Timothy to his various babushkas all the way down to us guys guard the gospel protect the gospel let's pray Heavenly Father it's a solemn charged Timothy and it's one that we as Christians don't take lightly tonight our Lord as we move into this series over the coming weeks father I pray that you open up our eyes to the opportunities to light someone else's torch to stop thinking about our Christian faith just as a one-dimensional thing father God but to think of a multi-generational process father God a multi-generational calling a multi-generational commission father that we are currently on Lord it'll all happen by the power of your grace and the way that you instill that into others and father we recognize it tonight for those that we are investing in Lord God that we may never see the fruit of the words and the life like Paul's that has been modeled to those around us but father may we take these quiet moments now in this time of ministry to reflect on the sort of kingdom legacy that we are building in our own lives and ultimately the lives of those that are around us for the flame that will never go out father God we thank you for your gospel and we pray these things in Jesus name amen [BLANK_AUDIO]