Take it Easy
2 Timothy 3:10-16
Many, many, years ago, I can remember my own graduation. I walked down that aisle and was handed a piece of paper, or a diploma as some call it, and as I was walking back to my seat, I was thinking, “Finally, now I can take it easy!” No more school; no more homework; no more people telling me what to do. I am my own man.
I had no plans for any college. Which in that day was not all that uncommon. But to all the young people who are here today, learn from my mistake. Now later in life I did attend but have never completed college, but if you listen to me talk very long that is pretty evident. But now days, a college degree is just about a must. But all I wanted to do was to get married and have a bunch of kids. Now mind you, that dream went down the tubes, and I thank God for that. I wanted to just take it easy.
Now as I try to teach my own boys, my job as a parent is not to be there friend as much as I would like to be. But my job as a parent is to train them for what’s ahead of them. Life. One of my favorite old TV shows was “Wonder Years”. Kevin Arnold, Wendy, Paul. The reason I like that show is that it reminds me of my years of growing up in the 70’s. The friends and memories I made, and to me those were truly the “Wonder Years”.
I would love to go back and relive those days again. Because what I found out was that after graduation, it was far from easy. I didn’t just get to work a part time job; it was a full time job. One of my first jobs after graduation was construction. And on my first day I got to operate a backhoe. They handed me a mattock and a shovel and said see that pole over there, I need a ditch dug 24” to run a water line. It was about that time that I started thinking, “Maybe college would not have been such a bad idea”. So my jobs starting out were what they would call, “manual labor”.
And guess what. People still told me what to do. I thought when I got out of school and went out on my own, those days would be over. But boy was I wrong. Even if you have your own business, someone either the government or some other official telling you how to run your own business.
The point that I am trying to make is that life is not easy. And for those of you who have or will be graduating this year, your life is just about to really begin. In the next few years you will be deciding what you will do with your life. Maybe who you will be doing it with. Where you will be doing it at. Some of the most important decisions in your life will be made in your next few years. So this morning I would like to share with you as to how to have a successful life.
No matter what stage in your life you are at this present time, if you follow these simple instructions you can have a successful life as well.
The first thing that you need to realize is…
You have a Choice (Vs.12-13)
Life is full of choices. Some of you right now may be sitting her thinking of your choices for what you will be eating after church. And life is full of choices. Will I go to college, which one will I go to? Will I marry and whom will it be with? What will I do, where will I live? Life is full of choices.
But the most important decision in life is the one concerning your relationship with Jesus Christ. You don’t have to hope you are saved. You can know that you are saved. There is no guesswork to it, you either are or your not.
1 John 5:12 He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
Pretty simple. Maybe those who are confused about it don’t understand how you get saved in the first place. You can go and ask people if they died today where they would go and most would tell you heaven. But if you ask them why they think they would go there, you will hear many different things. I was a good person. I tried to do what was right. I always helped others. My grandfather was a pastor. You cannot earn your way into heaven and you don’t inherit your way there. John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
You either chose to enter into a personal relationship with Him by accepting Him as your Savior and spending an eternity in Heaven with Him, or you chose to reject the gift of Salvation by rejecting Him and thus you will spend an eternity in a place called hell. And despite all the jokes you may have heard, it will not be some big party down there, but a place of eternal pain and suffering.
But even if you chose to enter into that personal relationship with Him, you still have a choice to make. In the verses we just read it states that we can choose to live godly in Christ Jesus or not. You see it is one thing to make Jesus your Savior; it is another thing to make Him your Lord. By making Him your Lord I mean giving Him the control of your life to be used by Him to bear fruit.
Jesus Himself explains this principle in the parable of the Sower. He gives four different illustrations for those who hear the word of God. The first hear the word but the devil comes and draws them away before they get saved. We have already covered that part. The second is those who receive the word and get saved and they are excited about their decision about receiving Christ and then they stray away because they don’t have any root. Then it talks about those who fell among the thorns, or those who get saved then lose focus of their priorities by the things of this world. But the last one that it talks about is the ones who just don’t make Jesus their Savior; they make Him their Lord.
Luke 8:15 But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.
To do that you not only have a choice, but you also…
You have a Challenge (Vs.14)
“Continue in the things which you have learned”. This is so important to all who are here this morning. Let me share with you what I feel this challenge is so important.
First of all let me talk to our graduates or our young people who are here this morning. There will be a time in your life when you will be able to make your own choices. Once you get out on your own, (that means you put your own food in your belly and your own roof over your head), you will be faced with a lot of choices or opportunities you might say. At the age of 21 you will be considered adult enough to make the choice of where you go and what you will do once you get there.
And if the truth be known, that is where we lose you. The world has a lot to offer you, a lot of fun. But I will tell you that is not a lasting joy. In the parable of the Lost son, he was probably having a blast before he found himself in the pigpen. So you have a challenge. A challenge to continue what you have learned. Weather it is something that your parents taught you or something that you have learned in church or maybe from a good Christian friend. Stay the course. Keep Christ first in your life. It will save you a lot of headache and heartache.
Then I want to talk to you who are older. Parents, teachers, grandparents, those older Christians in the church. We need to be the one who teaches them. Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.
How do we teach them? First and most important thing is by our example. You can say, “Don’t do as I do, do as I say”, all you want. But they usually do as they see you do. As the old saying goes. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”. What you see, (or are) is what you get.
If you drink, more than likely your kids will grow up to drink. And there have been many parents who have stood over their own child’s grave who got killed while drinking some booze from their own parent’s house. Is God some motion that you go through on Sundays or is really part of your life. Is the only time you pick up your Bible on Sundays on the way to church, or is it your daily bread? Do you pray only when you need something or do you go to Him daily, and not just for your needs, but to praise and worship Him?
You see, whether you are a parent or not, kids, the church of tomorrow is watching you. They watch and they learn. So what and how do we teach them? This leads me to my last point.
You have a Guide Book (Vs.15-16)
This tells us that God gives the Bible to us. In the Greek, it literally means, “God-breathed”. It is the how to book of all time. There has never been, nor will there ever be a book like it. And in our text it gives us four different ways in which it is profitable.
a. Doctrine- Doctrine is teaching. Even if you never had the example in your parents or anyone else, the Bible, Gods word teaches us everything we ever need to know.
b. Reproof-Reproof is conviction. It tells us what we should and should not do.
c. Correction-this refers to setting something strait.
d. Instruction-this refers to the process of training a child. Not only does it tell us what we should or shouldn’t do, but also it tells us how we can live the life that is pleasing to Christ.
But we need to back up because before we can make the Bible profitable there is something we must all do. God’s Word and the Spirit of God are both essential for our Salvation. The Word of God with out the Spirit of God is useless. You must first apply the principle found in God’s Word in Romans 10:9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
Then after you apply that into your heart and life by accepting Jesus as your personal Savior, then you need to apply what you read. For those of you who actually read the instructions before you assemble something, how would it be to read the instructions…. Then never begin the assembly. Worthless. And we do the same thing with God’s Word.
But when the Word of God is empowered by the Spirit of God then it becomes a living force in our lives. A living force, that as it states in verse 17, will be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. Not for good looks, for good works.
When the Bible talks about putting on the whole armor of God so that we can stand against the wiles of the devil. In this armor, all of it, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of Salvation, the shield of faith, all but one is meant for our defense. The only one that is used for offence to attack is the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Jesus when tempted by Satan quoted the Bible.
We have in our hand the greatest book there ever was and ever will be. But for most, it is not our daily bread. It is something we pick up on our way out the door going to church. Use God’s word as your guidebook to live your life that is pleasing to Him.
You have a choice. You can chose to accept Christ, or you can chose to reject Him, either way you make the choice and either way you get either the rewards or punishments for doing so. You have a choice to live for Christ to bear fruit for Christ. You have the challenge to do so. Continue in what you have learned. Use Gods word, the Bible to help you do all three.
Let’s Pray
