The Final Words of Paul

Brody Holloway | Be Strong Men’s Conference

In this Be Strong sermon, Brody explores Paul’s final message in 2 Timothy 4:6-13, where he encourages us to fight the good fight, finish the race, and keep the faith. Despite hardships and failure, Paul shows us that through confession and God’s grace, we can walk in the light.

Paul’s life teaches us to stand firm, guard our faith, and trust God in tough times. Like Paul, may we one day say, “I fought the good fight and kept the faith.”

Join us as we learn from Paul’s example to live faithfully and worship God in all circumstances.

Transcript – The Final Words Of Paul

All right, older you get, the worse your balance is and I was like, I was literally I went from praying that you all would receive the word to praying I wouldn’t fall coming off those steps in the dark. Morning, good to see you all, excited for today, I get the opportunity to share with you one more time this morning and then, we have an amazing teaching lineup today. Last night, I was feeling one of the things that’s difficult when you’re trying to develop illustrations for sermons, is this going to land is this going to over illustrate, is it going to under illustrate, is it not even going to connect and then, I told, literally, the most humiliating story of my life last night and I heard Spencer laugh towards the end of it, when I tried to reel it back to it’s like your walk with Jesus, you’re just filthy and I heard him laughing afterwards, he’s like, I’m sorry I laughed out loud. I just thought that was ridiculous, but I got it was, it’s funny how the Lord, will kind of, give you a little Atta boy. I got to one of the fires last night and listened for 20 minutes to six grown men tell their own poop stories. So, I guess it connected with at least some of you dummies, but I was my I don’t know my brain just, I don’t know if you’re an illustrative thinker

Life experiences just sort of, connect dots for you, but sometimes I just get cracked up at myself the things the Lord uses it to teach me stuff and we’re going to be in 2nd Timothy 4. Paul’s final words, kind of, Paul’s end of watch call, but I was thinking in light of last night and that idea of if we’re going to walk in the light, so that we can have fellowship with the one who is the light. Then there’s this, if there’s a takeaway from last night, it’s there’s this pattern or this rhythm of confession and cleansing that is for the believer and I hope you’d be encouraged by that, because I know that a lot of us, we tend to carry our own guilt. We tend to be our own worst critic and we tend to, I think, sometimes see ourselves not the way Christ sees us, which is through his blood, not the way God sees us, which is through the blood of Jesus and so, hopefully it’s an encouragement to think about even in my failure, I can walk in the light and even though I’m going to make mistakes, I can have fellowship with the Lord through the cleansing power of his blood and through my active progression and pattern of confession and I think Paul, who we’re going to shift to him this morning, at the end of his life.

The challenge he’s giving is the challenge of a dying man and but, a man who has spent himself for the gospel and my prayers that we might all come to our dying day having spent ourselves for the gospel in our communities, in our churches, with our families, but there’s a scene in1st Corinthians 15, which is one of my tier one passages in the bible, it’s an incredible apologetic for the resurrection of Jesus and the validity of the impact that had on the early church and the Roman world, but there’s a point in 1st Corinthians 15:10 where Paul says, I am an eyewitness to the resurrection of Jesus, but I’m the least deserving person, because I literally killed Christians and it’s just this one little verse where he says, I am what I am because of the grace of Jesus and I think for Paul, what Christ had done was so intimate and personal, because he never forgot what he had come from and I remember at a marriage retreat, year before last, I think reading from, I had found this blog called the weight of my sin and I don’t remember who wrote it. I think it was someone associated with maybe desiring God and the guy painted a masterful picture of how in our minds, when we picture Adam in the garden, we see Adam maybe clothed in buckskins or tanned hides.

When God clothed him in the skins of an animal, Adam and Eve, they sin. They recognize their nakedness and then, they cover themselves in fig leaves and then, the Lord Kills animals and covers them and so, it’s the first, sacrifice in scripture, it’s not the first shedding of blood. The first shedding of blood would have been the breaking of the man’s body to create the first woman when God opened his flesh and then, closed him. So, the first shedding of blood was in covenantal marriage, where God broke the man’s body for his wife, a foreshadowing of what Jesus would do, but the first sacrificial shedding of blood was the killing of those animals and this guy painted this picture of, what a personal thing that would have been because if you remember in Genesis 2 God had given Adam the task of naming all the animals. You remember that? So, this is very personal to him. I don’t know if you’re an animal person. I don’t know if you’re a hunter. As a hunter, we will run trail cameras and we will give names to the bucks that we’re hunting. Some of you all have done that, but a lot of us have dogs and they’re very personal to us. I’ve only ever cried at the death of one dog. It was a dog that was an Australian cattle dog, a blue heeler and when my wife and I first got married, we got this dog.

We worked at a camp that was kind of, like a dude ranch and that dog was just awesome and she would, you could work cattle with her. She was incredibly well trained and I just got really bonded to her and I remember when, when she got hit by a car and I ended up having to shoot her, to put her down and I remember it was very emotional, remember holding that dog and having to put that dog down and it was, I was after that day, I was like, I’m never going to get attached like this to a dog again, because I’m like,. best case scenario, one lives 12 or 14 years and then, you got to go through, so I’ve never gotten attached to a dog like that again, because it was so personal and I remember reading this blog and the guy was saying, it wasn’t that when God killed the animal that then clothed Adam and Eve that it was just some random animal skin. It was this visceral picture of God took an animal that was seriously intimate to Adam. Adam had named that animal. God then butchered it and hanged those wet, fleshy, dripping garments over them to cover their nakedness and it was a very visual picture to me, of the gruesome nature of what it takes to cover our sin and it was a picture that correlates to the gruesome nature of the cross, that your sin and my sin is forgiven in Christ and we are clothed in his righteousness, but that is a bloody personal affair for Jesus to do that for us.

It wasn’t just that Adam knew what he was wearing, he knew who he was wearing, he had laid with that animal, he had petted that animal, he had named it as personal and so, Jesus is our personal savior and so, my sin is personal, but thanks be to God, my savior is personal and Paul understood that and so, he said, I know what I came from. I know what I did, I am, where I am and who I am because of what Christ has done, it was very personal to him and so, we come to the end of his life in 2nd Timothy 4 and I want to just take a few minutes and walk through the words that he leaves for us. Now, I went back and looked through the log of be strong messages in the fall of 2021 I preached a message. I preached two messages focused on verse 7. That might be good follow up on the drive home you go, all of our stuff. You can look it up by text or by event. The 2021 fall be strong work through verse 7, but today we’re going to open up and look at Paul’s, I guess what we would call his end of watch his last words. I had a brother in law that got killed in the line of duty, he was a state trooper and I remember and I know we have some guys in law enforcement here and I remember being at the memorial service and it was crazy.

There were guys in units agencies represented from all over the country, including federal agencies and I remember they did that end of watch call at the end of his memorial service, where they key a mark, they call his, g5, 33 then it’s silent and then, they call again and it’s silent and then, he’s out and so, it’s very, I remember, it’s very emotional and so, for Paul, this is an emotional time and an emotional letter, because he’s writing to the young man that he has turned over responsibility for the church at Ephesus to. This is one of the young men that he’s mentored and so, he’s sending, as he’s facing his own death, he’s sending sort of, his. Last commission or call to the church through Timothy. We’ll pick up in verse six, for I am already being poured out as a drink offering, for the time of my departure has come. The drink offering was something that you might know as one of the types of offerings that could be given in the Old Testament. It was the pouring out of a drink offering as an act of worship to the Lord. So, he’s painting this picture of his life as being emptied now it’s being poured out. Then he says, the time of my departure has come, there’s an urgency, if you’ve ever been trying to get, you’ve landed and you’re trying to get to your next flight

You’re trying to get there, but you’re not sure you’re going to make it. There’s an urgency to get to the gate or maybe you got there and you got there earlier, like me, you they say, get to the airport two hours early. I get there four hours early and they say you can’t check in yet. I’m that guy, I’m scared death and we’ll get left and so, you’re sitting there and then, they call boarding for your flight. There’s that departure that is at hand. I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I’ve kept the faith. Three things that we key on there in verse 7 I fought the good fight. Paul would never move far in any of his writings from the idea that the spiritual journey is a fight, he uses warfare terminology, spiritual warfare terminology, I alluded to this last night and most of our social media that goes out, our team does a good job of putting stuff in the social media world, but most of it to this point has been, we don’t run advertisements. It’s just for the extended Snowbird community and a week or two ago, there was a post that was made on Instagram and I don’t have Instagram on my phone, so I will go look on Instagram in the media office to see the things we’ve posted, just so I can stay caught up and there had been an advertisement run that, I guess, then opened our stuff up to a bigger audience.

It was just a post. It was a video of me talking about spiritual warfare and it was like nine straight comments of people blasting me like, whether it’s toxic masculinity or one guy did have a good joke, he said, You guys are like, It’s like LARPing, he’s talking. That’s where Live Action Role Play, where people dress up like they’re going into battle. It’s like reenactment or something. I thought that was a pretty good joke. I was like, okay, you got me on that one. That’s pretty funny, but the one guy, talked about the armor of God in Ephesians 6 and he said, the armor is for defense, buddy and I thought, except for in verse 17 of Ephesians 6 where it says, take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God and except for verse 12 in Ephesians 6 where he says, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. If you wrestle only defensively, we got a lot of wrestlers here. If you just wrestle on the defense, you’re not going to win. It is spiritual warfare. Consider 2nd Corinthians, 10:4 and 5 the weapons we fight with are not of this world. They have divine power to demolish strongholds. Consider Romans 8:13 If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live. This is violent, combative communication and so, Paul would say, I fought the fight in 1st Timothy 6 which is the previous book to this one. I believe it’s in verse 12, but in 1st Timothy 6 he said.

That a man of God is determined, is explained, or defined by four things. A man of God is defined by what he flees from. A man of God is defined by what he fights for and the word for fight. There is the Greek word agōnízomai, which is to agonize in anguish in combat and then, he says, the man of God is defined by what he takes hold of, take hold of eternal life, take hold of the word of God like that guy, remember that guy that fought until they had to pry the sword out of his hand because it was just locked down, just a death grip. Man of God is defined by what he holds on to and then, the man of God is defined by what he pursues after. What are you running from, what are you running towards, what are you fighting against and what are you taking hold of? Paul said, I fought the fight, I hope all of us will be able to say in our dying day, I fought the fight. I fought. I did. I got beat up and I lost some battles, but I fought. Paul could say that and then, he says, I fought the fight. I finished the race. Paul would often paint this picture of life as a race. I run the race with my eyes on the prize of the upward calling of Christ Jesus, he’s running. I’m not a runner, my middle son, who he’s 14. Malachi, some of you might meet him this weekend. We’ve only had him since he was 10.

We got him when he was 10, he’s local kid and I was picking on middle school and high school boys last night and right before I made, poop jokes or whatever, so like jokes on me, I guess you know, it’s a pot calling the kettle black, I remember this kid. We hadn’t had him long and he came up to me and some of his buddies were going to run cross country and he come up to me and said, I think I want to run cross country and I said, now, do you know what that means? It means that, after school, you got to, have you noticed how big your feet are. Malachi, you haven’t started to grow into them like son, you’re not a runner. God did not make you and go. I know what I’m going to do with this one. I’m going to make him a runner. Some of you got to know your lane and kind of, stay in it and but, Paul, painted this picture of being a runner, running the race and so, he’s, he’s able to now say, I’ve run my race, he’s already preached, run the race, run the race, run the race that’s set before you. Now he says, I’ve run my race and he says, I’ve kept the faith and I love this because that word kept to me, my mind goes to several other places in scripture where it means to guard. Like in Proverbs 4 it says, guard your heart or keep your heart or in Genesis 2 God tells Adam.

Keep the garden, or guard the garden, protect the garden. One of the things that God has called us to do is to keep the faith and that means to guard and protect. No doubt there’s a component of garden or protecting the faith in the philosophical world or in the secular realm, where we defend Christianity with a good apologetic, but I also think the greater battle for most of us is going to be to guard my own faith, that I might not be deceived by Satan’s lies. Be aware of his lies. You can be aware of his schemes, Paul tells the Corinthians, so that you can keep or guard the faith, henceforth, there’s laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous judge will award to me on that day and not only to me, also to all who have loved his appearing. There were two words used for crown in the New Testament. One had to do with the royal crown. You think of the diadems that Jesus is wearing in that scene in Revelation 19, where he rides in on the white horse and he’s wearing, it’s this royal crown of a conquering king. There’s that scene in Lord of the Rings where the king is crowned. It’s the crown that is royal, it’s the crown of a conquering king, but this is not that crown. This is a crown that makes reference to what was known as a victor’s crown and most often it would have referred to that crown of leaves.

That wreath crown that would be placed on the head of someone who had won in the Olympic Games and there’s a strong Roman undertone, because Paul is in Rome as he’s writing this and he’s saying, I’m going to receive my crown and it is the crown of a victor. It is a crown of one who has run the race. It is the crown of one who has finished his race and who has fought his fight and I’m going to receive that now and the bible teaches us that we will receive a crown of righteousness, but there’s a picture in the book of Revelation where we’ll take that crown and then, we will lay it at the feet of Jesus as a further and future act of worship and Paul understood that, verse 9 do your best to come to me soon and he gets real personal here, come to me. Timothy. Timothy is in Ephesus. Paul is in Rome. Do your best to come to me, for Demas, in love with this present world has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. So, Paul’s alone, he’s lonely, he has very few people there to support him and he’s in a Roman prison awaiting execution and he points out what I think I did a podcast episode last year on demos and I was looking through those notes from that this morning early and looking at the progression of Demas, who the first time we see Demas, he’s with Paul on the team doing ministry and then, the next time we see him.

He’s sort of, in the corner, moving away and then, now at the end of Paul’s life, Paul says he deserted me and I know that most of us that have walked with Jesus for any period of time have experienced personally and have seen desertion by brothers who have turned and walked away from the faith, turned and walked away from their wives, their families, the church, ultimately, they’ve turned and walked away from Jesus and you carry that somebody you care about a whole lot abandons the faith. It’s hard not to take it personal and I think that’s okay to a degree, because it is personal, because we’re bound together by the blood of Jesus, we’re knit together by the Spirit of Christ and when someone walks away, we ache and we hurt and we feel that and so, you feel the anguish in Paul’s voice and then, there’s these other guys that had served with him that have now moved on to other callings and tasks and he says, Luke alone is with me and then, I love this, get mark and bring him with you for he’s  useful to me for ministry. If you remember the story of John Mark when Paul was on his first missionary journey this guy Mark, abandoned the team and went home and a lot of historians think, because of the area, the region where Paul and his team were serving.

That there was a lot of difficulty, it was a really hard place to serve, they faced a lot of conflict and Mark, he quit and he went home and sometime later, in the book of Acts, they’re going to start another missionary journey and Barnabas wants to bring Mark along, because Mark is a young relative of Barnabas’s and Paul, do you remember this story and Paul says, no, he can’t come with us, he quit. I don’t want quitters on my team. Talking to a guy last night that was talking about he quit dipping and then, another guy said, I don’t believe in quitting. I hate quitters and I thought that’s pretty good joke and but Paul was serious about the missionary work and he didn’t want anybody on the team that wasn’t proven and it takes time to prove yourself, doesn’t it? It takes time to prove yourself, if you’re a dad to a daughter and a boy wants her hand he you better give him time to prove his self, because you’re her caregiver, her protector and there’s going to be a point where there’s a transition of that responsibility and that young man better have proven himself to you. It’s a big deal. There’s nothing wrong with requiring and expecting someone to prove themselves before you give them responsibility and maybe on the other side of that, the word that some of us might need is, I really want a pastor.

I really want to be the supervisor on my job, or I really want that coaching job, or I really want that promotion it’s like, then prove yourself and know that in God’s time it will come. Paul said, the only thing Mark has proved us is that he’s a quitter, he’s a quitter, he’s not coming on the team and it’s the first time in scripture, in the New Testament church where we see a sharp disagreement comes up between two ministry leaders and they go their separate ways. They part ways and God does a great work through Barnabas and he does a great work through Paul, but they don’t do it together and we don’t know what happens, but in Colossians 4:10, Paul writes his first letter from a Roman prison and in that letter, he says, Mark is here with me. So, we know that somewhere over the years, Mark reconnected, he proved himself and he got reconnected to Paul. I love this, because working with young men, you look into the eyes of a young man, you have conversation with a young man who’s serious about the scripture and often times you get excited thinking about, what might God do through this young man I don’t know, but it’s going to be exciting to see and so, now, at the end of Paul’s life, he says, Send mark to me, he is useful to me for ministry. What a powerful testimony for Mark, for Barnabas for Paul. Paul said, no, he can’t be on our team. He’s got to go prove himself.

Barnabas said, I’ll take him, I’ll grow him up and Mark said, I’ll do whatever it takes, probably a lot of us are in one of those situations in our lives right now and so, at the end of his life, he’s useful for ministry. I love that progression and then, he says, in verse 13, Tychicus, I have sent to Ephesus, when you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books and above all the parchment. So, he said, I need you to come to me, but I’m sending your replacement. So, Paul’s in prison, cold, lonely, but he’s still staying in the fight, he’s still doing the work and so, to the end, he’s working, he says, I’m going to send this really faithful brother who’s a ministry leader, a pastor, he’s going to come take your place. I want you to come to me and when you come, I need you to bring my coat. I left it because, typically, from what I’ve read in the commentaries, it was normal that when someone be arrested and thrown into prison, the Roman guards and soldiers would take their stuff and gamble over it or bid on it and they would take their stuff and leave that person naked or barely clothed and destitute. So, when Paul was being arrested, apparently he gave his cloak to someone to hold.

This would have been a heavy garment that would help him in the winter months and so, he said, bring that to me, he says, real personal picture and he said, bring me my copies of the scripture. Some people even think and this, we don’t know this, but some people think maybe there were even manuscripts that he was working on that we eventually have in our hands as part of the canon of scripture. What a cool thought, but certainly it would have been his copies of the Old Testament scriptures, he needed the word of God to this point, he’s doing it from memory and he just wanted the scripture, bring me my coat, bring me some scripture copies. I’m lonely, my soul needs nourishment. I need the word of God to help me finish this thing strong before my head literally rolls. I’m sending someone, so that you can leave and come to me and I imagine what it would have been like when Timothy and John Mark arrived and what some of those conversations might have been like. There’s some moments and scenes in scripture I’d like to go back to I’d like to go sit and listen to Paul in his dying days, Mark and Timothy and just what those conversations look like, he says, Alexander the Coppersmith did me great harm. The Lord will repay him according to his deeds, beware of him yourself, for he has strongly opposed our message, he’s like, there’s a guy that did me harm.

I’m going to, leave that in the hands of the Lord, but I’m going to name him before I go. Sometimes it’s okay to name someone. I think that we have to be careful with that, because the scripture is also very clear that we don’t slander or gossip or backbite or sow discord, but there are times in scripture where you will see someone called out by name because of the damage and the harm they’re doing to the gospel, in our context, that might mean false teachers that need to be named, or it might mean someone who has committed such an atrocious sin that we need to know who they are, but Paul names either way, I don’t know exactly Paul named that sucker. I always thought how crazy it’d be to get your name in the book and then, I’m like, but not Demas and not Alexander and not them, two dudes that have been like gangrene, I don’t want to get in the book like that and so, he names him, at my first offense, no one came to stand by me, but all deserted me, may it not be charged against them and so, you see this dichotomy, he says, Alexander, bad dude, Demas gone, but in my last imprisonment, I stood before the tribunal or the judge or whatever, everybody deserted me. I was by myself. It’s reminiscent of the night that Jesus was tried and everyone abandoned him.

I love it, because Paul says, don’t be too hard on him for that. It was an intense moment. It was a scary situation. See the sort of, the balance of he’s calling one guy out and he’s and he’s saying, go easy on these other guys, he’s giving instruction in his dying days and he says, the reason he can say that in verse 16 is because of verse 17, but the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So, I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. So, he didn’t die and that he thought he was going to die, his life was spared and we know that he went on to do more ministry and now he’s back in prison and he believes, this time he indeed will be executed and so, he says, the Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. I love that picture of in your life, there are going to be things that you can’t get out from under. There are going to be things that I can’t get out from under. There are going to be things that seem greater than we can bear and Paul was facing one of those moments and he said, the Lord will rescue me because ultimately, we know that we’re going to one day see Jesus face to face. We’re going to bow before him; we’re going to behold him.

We’re going to worship him and we’re going to rule and reign with him. We’re going to have fellowship over food with him and we’re going to walk and talk. Walk with him and there’s going to be no sorrow, no pain, no sickness, no temptation, no pornography, no addiction, no fighting, no adultery, no kids turning away from the Lord, it’s going to be a place where Christ has wiped away every tear and all is well and it will truly be well with our soul eternally. Paul understands that and so, he erupts right there at the end, to him, be the glory forever and ever amen. Love that to him, be the glory forever and ever amen, he worships Jesus even in his dying moment and then, it’s funny, he’s like me and most preachers, then he’s like, oh, to hear me the glory, guys. I’m dying. I fought the fight and he’s fired and then, he goes, oh, also tell Priscilla and Aquila I said, hey and all those guys that on this Onesiphorus’s house and Erasmus and so, it’s just this. I love it, because it’s such a picture of the humanity of this larger than life figure in the Christian life, but in Paul’s words, I think we have some things that will help us for our own journey, so that we might one day be able to say, I fought the fight, I’ve run the race, I’ve kept the faith. I’m going to go get my crown and lay at the feet of Jesus, amen.