Discipline | The Athlete - 2 Timothy 2:1-7

I've been in a marriage for about ten years. It's been a super rough marriage, and it wasn't based around God. So we decided to split and go our separate ways. I knew I needed to find something. I didn't know what that something was. I'd been coming to Southland for a while, and I knew I needed to go forward with baptism. So I went forward on that Sunday, and I met Brian Moberly. He prayed with me, took me into the prayer room, and I told him I wanted to be involved in a group. I was nervous about who I was going to be with, because there's a variety of people from young 20s, maybe even younger than that, to my parents' age. And I'm like, who am I gonna be with, you know? At first, when we started sharing, everybody held back. I never shared about me going through a divorce when we first was there. Months later, I'm like, I've got to say something. I started telling them, you know, I'm going through a rough divorce. When I started opening up with our group, I felt like me opening up let everybody else start opening up more. Because when I started noticing somebody else would say something that they had been holding back on, being with that group and being able to express my emotions, I've never been able to do that before. So I'm truly blessed to have that group. They are somebody I know I can rely on, no matter what. It was in a full circle. It really was. From me going up front, to meeting Brian, to getting in the group. And Brian, who prayed for me when I was going to get baptized, is in my group now. We are so opposite, but so close. Now that we've been in this group for almost a year, it's like I never would have thought I would be this good of friends with the people that are in my group today. You guys give it up for Nick. That's awesome. And like my friend Blake often says, community is formed, not found. And we as a church, we want to help you form godly community. People are going to point you towards Jesus, and also just people are going to be with you when life gets hard. And so if you're not in a group yet, I don't know what you're doing, okay, but you need to get signed up. So make sure that you do that today. You'll be really, really glad that you did. Well, like many of you in the room today, I think it's safe for me to say that the peak of my athleticism came at some point during my teenage years. And during that season of life, around the time I was 14 or 15 years old, I was able to run a decent 400 meter race. Nothing crazy, but competitive nonetheless. Well, recently I found myself walking around the track at one of our local high schools, and very foolishly thought to myself, you know, I wonder if I've still got it. And just to give

you a little play by play of how this experiment went down, you should know the first 100 meters were challenging. It became clear very quickly. My legs couldn't quite carry me as fast as they used to be able to. The second 100 meters got even more brutal. I started breathing heavier and harder. I thought to myself, this is going to be a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be. Well, by the third 100 meters, as I was making my way around the far turn, I noticed this bright light shining in my face with Jesus standing in the center of it saying, Connor, welcome home. You're dead now. You're in heaven. And so, if you don't hear anything else I say today, I just want you to hear it from me first. Heaven is a very real place, and Jesus wants you to be there, all right? Just, you can trust me on that. Hey, I don't know how you would rate yourself when it comes to athleticism. Maybe you're in incredible shape. You work out every day. You've become addicted to running marathons. Or maybe over the years, you've become more and more addicted to the Little Debbies they sell at marathon. Or maybe growing up in class, everyone told you that someday you were going to be a first round pick. Or maybe in class, you were always the kid in gym class that got picked last. I don't know where you fall in this range of physical fitness or how you would rank yourself as an athlete. What I do know is that in the prime of his youth, a young follower of Jesus named Timothy found himself in the middle of an incredibly difficult race, tasked with leading a church in a place called Ephesus, this bustling community of new believers with all sorts of competing ideologies and different worldviews. However, Towards the end of your Bibles, an older mentor of his named Paul writes him one last letter of encouragement and reminds him of this very important truth that any good athlete will tell you, which is that difficult races require disciplined runners. And he coaches him up one last time on how he can continue to finish the race well. So if you got your journals with you, key word is still discipline. If you got your Bibles with you,

go ahead and turn those to 2 Timothy 2, verse one, where our text is gonna pick up from last week. And as it does, Paul says these words. You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. 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 sent him. And then come these key words that he says in verse five. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. When I was in middle school, I played on the school football team. And if you're wondering what exactly I looked like in the eighth grade, it's really simple. Just picture me now, only not preaching. And this is pretty much as good as it's ever gotten for me. But because I was relatively quick back then, I spent the majority of my time playing safety in the defensive backfield. But on occasion, I'd have the opportunity to rotate into the game on offense as a wide receiver. The only problem with this is that I didn't know any of the plays. I didn't really bother to actually study the playbook at all that year. My focus was usually elsewhere in practice.

I'll put it this way for you. I knew all the cheerleaders' names. Okay, I had those memorized. Just really didn't have a clue what we were doing when it came to offense. And not only did I not really know what we were doing on offense, I didn't even really look like I knew what I was doing. Like for example, I didn't know that as a wide receiver, when you line up on the line of scrimmage, that you should check with the side judge lining up on the ball. But after not one but two offside penalties, I managed to set my team back 10 yards before the ball even got snapped. And so now we're not in great field position. My teammates are frustrated with me. Luckily for me, my best friend on the team was a quarterback, incredible athlete. He at least knew I could catch. And so we get in the huddle. He looks at everyone and says, R19 on one, ready, break. And he looks at me and says, go long. I'm thinking like, man, this is an awesome chance to redeem myself. I'm gonna score a touchdown. Probably gonna be on ESPN later. And so I line up correctly this time. He hikes the ball.

I beat the corner off the jump. He can't catch me. I'm sprinting down the field wide open. No one's around me. I turn to catch the ball. It's not there. And then I look across the field and notice that my friend has hooked around the defense on a quarterback keeper and is now sprinting up the other sideline for a wide open touchdown. So we're pitching back into the field. Everyone in the place goes crazy. We all run back to the sideline, high-fiving each other. We're in the midst of the celebration. I can't help, but ask him, hey man, what gives? He told me to go long. I was wide open out there, what happened? And sheepishly, he got this guilty smirk on his face, and after pausing for a moment, he said, man, I'm really sorry, I just had to get you the heck out of everyone else's way. Good leadership on his part, to be honest with you. I probably would've done the same thing if I'd been in his position. I probably will not be getting drafted anytime soon. I know that. However, I've lived enough life,

and I've played in enough games to know that, well, anytime you or I break one of the rules that's laid out in front of us, there's some sort of penalty that usually follows. As some of you baseball fans may remember what happened a few weeks ago when Chicago White Sox manager Will Venable approached the mound during a game versus the Cleveland Guardians. Pretty routine, normal thing for a manager to do. The only problem with this was is that, well, he had already approached the mound previously that game already. Those of you who know baseball know that anytime a manager approaches the mound for a second time during a game, that pitcher then immediately has to be removed. And not only did this little coaching blunder result in Will Venable's starting pitcher Noah Schultz getting benched just five batters into the first inning, but it caused the Chicago White Sox to get absolutely destroyed that night, eight runs to two, all because of a broken rule. Or maybe you can remember the name Chris Weber. He was the incredible big man for Michigan. These fab five teams in the early 90s, one of the greatest college basketball players to ever play the game. In the 1993 championship game versus North Carolina, with just seconds left and Carolina up by two,

Chris Webber dribbled into the front court, picked up his dribble and called timeout, which immediately resulted in a technical foul being called because Michigan did not have any timeouts left. Carolina gets two free throws and the ball to ice the game. And in a post-game interview with the media afterwards when asked what exactly was going through his head when he called the timeout, Chris Webber famously responded through tears, whatever I did, well it probably cost our team the game. All because of a broken rule. If you remember what life was like in the early 2000s, you know that you couldn't go anywhere without seeing one of these yellow wristbands. That's because at that time, the world was absolutely captivated by this awe-inspiring story of Lance Armstrong, the incredible cyclist who'd not only beaten cancer, but went on to win seven consecutive Tour de France titles, completely dominating the sport and putting American cycling on the map. But as it turns out, that wasn't the full story. Because Armstrong had taken part in one of the biggest doping scandals that the sport had ever seen, and later admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs for almost his entire career. The result, stripped of all seven of his Tour de France titles, as well as a lifelong ban

on any form of competitive cycling, as well as the public shame and humiliation that immediately followed. You see, Paul recognizes that every athlete has rules, and every broken rule has some sort of penalty that usually follows. Some sort of flag or penalty that gets handed down as a result of that rule being broken, and sometimes those penalties are small, sometimes those penalties are really big. Sometimes those penalties can affect one person, and sometimes they can affect a whole team full of people, but they always cost something. They can cost us position from being wherever it is that we eventually want to be on the field, they can cost us the outcome of something really, really important to us, they can even cost us our reputation and good standing among other people, but they always come at a cost. Which brings up this really difficult, but still really important question for each of us this morning, which is a question that goes like this, what rules do you know you've broken, and what did it cost you? Because we've all been there. I mean, maybe you crossed boundaries with someone physically before you were married, you broke up, it turned every relationship

that you were in from that point on into something super complicated, so much so that you eventually began finding your whole identity in the opposite sex, found yourself hooking up with complete strangers, and not only did it cause you a ton of pain and confusion along the way, but you know because of that one little compromise, well, there's a long list of people who were deeply hurt and wounded because of it. Or maybe you've gossiped about somebody else behind their back, made jokes at their expense, said things in public you knew that they only shared with you in private, but eventually word got back around to that person, and when it did, they not only lost trust in you as a believer, but it created this distance between you and them until you eventually lost them as a friend. Or maybe you've just held onto a secret for way too long, something you knew that wasn't that big of a deal, something you knew you really needed to just share and bring into the light, but instead you went the opposite direction and just became an absolute pro at keeping it hidden in darkness. You just buried it deeper and deeper, just hoping that no one would know,

and the only problem is is that ever since you decided to keep it hidden, well, you don't sleep well anymore. Because every day you wake up, you wonder if today is gonna be the day that the other shoe is gonna drop and you're finally gonna be exposed. And before you determine that I'm guarding or covering you just a little too closely today, before you try to hit me with some sort of personal or unsportsmanlike conduct, can I just be really clear about something? I'm not reading your highlight reel today, okay? I'm just giving you mine. Like these are just some of a long list of things that I've personally done that have caused me and others an enormous amount of spiritual pain. These are just a few of the many rules that I've broken, all of which have stacked up some enormous penalties. Make no mistake, I'm not up here with a whistle blowing it in your face or like an MLB umpire pointing in your direction and saying you're out. That's not why I'm here. But what I am saying, just speaking from personal experience, friends, is this. If I just would have known how much playing dirty would have eventually led to feeling dirty, I would have never stepped over the line to begin with.

If I just would have known how hard my words were gonna hit the people I deeply cared about, I never would have tried to go after such a defenseless. If most of us in this room would have known just how far back that penalty was gonna set us in life, we would have never broken the rule in the first place. So why on earth do we just continue to break them and break them and break them again? Well, because here's the problem. Following what this book says is just a lot harder to do sometimes, isn't it? Like, just be really honest. Like, it's a lot harder to not cut corners in the business world and try to manipulate your way to the top, especially when it feels like everyone else your age has already been promoted and is making more money than you are. It's a lot harder to not engage in mindless chatter on social media with people instead of just having a face-to-face conversation, especially when you know that all of your Instagram followers will immediately come to your aid in the comments section. It's a lot more difficult not to just go ahead and live with that person before you're married, especially when it feels like that's just what everyone else does these days. It's a lot harder to actually follow what this book says

instead of just going out there and running our own plays. As a matter of fact, let's make something really clear. If you've ever felt like following what God's game plan for your life says is a lot more difficult than just doing what everyone else is doing, you're absolutely right. In the short term. In the long term, not even close. See, much like an Olympic sprint, sin is flashy. Sin is impressive. Sin grabs our attention, but make no mistake, just like an Olympic sprint, it cannot do that for very long. Just ask anyone who's battled addiction, anyone who's chased after money or status or possessions or greed, popularity or porn or possessions or people-pleasing, the feeling never lasts long and it always leaves you and I winding up feeling more empty and exhausted. What you and I have to remember, friends, is that the moment you and I accept Jesus, we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, we enter into the waters of baptism, we say, Jesus, I not only trust you as my savior, but I wanna follow you all the days of my life. Friends, that is the moment that you and I began running a completely different race. Race that looks far different

from what everyone else in this world is chasing after. I'll put it this way, when everyone else is running meters, you and I are running miles. That's because we are running a race towards eternity and not emptiness. Paul puts it a different way when he continues on in his letter and says this, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Henceforth, there is 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, but also to all who have loved his appearing. And that all, that includes me and you. So with what little time we have left today, I wanna carve out a training regimen that all of us can follow as we run towards Jesus with everything that we have. The first rule of that training is really simple, and it's just that Jesus is Lord. Several years ago, I had an older gentleman reach out to me because he was interested in volunteering in one of our student ministries. And so I met him for lunch one day, and immediately when I sat down, I just began to notice that something was just off about the conversation.

He had this arrogance about him that made me uncomfortable, but wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt, I just humbly asked him, hey, why don't you tell me a little bit more about why you wanna serve in student ministry, and very quickly he responded, oh, I'm about to get divorced, and I've gotta have a lot more free time on my hands, might as well give back to my community. So somewhat sympathetically, I responded, man, I'm really sorry to hear that, to which he immediately replied, oh, don't be, best decision I ever made. We've been married almost 30 years, and all she's done is nag. As a matter of fact, she really started to let herself go lately, and I don't even find her attractive anymore. Then he continued on and said, when I hit her with a divorce paper, she was devastated. She wanted to try to go to counseling and make things work, but I'm already dating someone else now, and she makes me feel a lot happier. I'm just ready for a new chapter, just ready for something exciting, something fresh, just ready to start something new. And so gently, I did my best to explain to him that unless there was something he wasn't telling me about his wife or his marriage, that biblically speaking,

he did not have grounds to divorce her. Then trying to lead the conversation towards redemption, I just gently told him, hey, even though serving in our student ministry is not an option for you right now, his church would love to come alongside you, and your wife helps send you to counseling so that you can begin to restore your marriage in very arid times. he responded, well if you're not gonna let me serve over something as silly as divorcing my wife, well then maybe I'll just run that up the chain and talk to Scott Nichol the next time I see him. To which I responded, well sir, if you think that conversation is gonna go any better with him than it is with me, well then clearly you've just never been to our church before. So I'm kind of a good cop in this situation. I really know. And arrogantly folded his arms and he looked at me and said, you're really not gonna let me serve over something as silly as a divorce? I said, sir, you don't understand. Divorce has nothing to do with it. I'm not gonna allow you to lead students right now because right now you're not following Jesus. Jesus never said it was okay to break your covenant just because you feel like it. As a matter of fact, when he said

what God has brought together, let no man separate. And if you're that willing to give up so easily on your marriage, I can't imagine how easily you'll give up on a group of high school boys. Then before I left, I told him to please call me if he ever changed his mind about going to counseling, but he never did. As my friend Matt Williams often says, it's awful hard to reason with someone whose mind is already made up, and his was. See, every week I'll sit with people who have already decided in their head what play they're running without ever consulting God. They've made these little agreements in their head that all sound the same and they say, God, I'll submit to what your word says about most everything, but stay out of this one little area. Like just endorse whatever I decide to do when it comes to dating. Just look the other way when it comes to how much I drink. Just stay out of my business when it comes to how I spend my hard-earned money, even though you're actually the one that blessed me with it to begin with. Just keep out of this one little lane, just stay out of this one little area. I'll keep showing up to church on Sundays, and you and I'll just get along just fine, but then they get really upset

when they finally open God's word and they discover that, well, God is just never gonna do that. Loves you and I too much to do that, and he didn't send his one and only son, Jesus, to die a criminal's death on the cross so that he could have just part of our lives. No, he wants all of it, which means when it comes to the role that Jesus is willing to play in our lives, friends, it's clear. He will be Lord or he will be nothing, but make no mistake, he will not allow you or I to pretend that he will be anything in between. See, I've been doing a lot of running myself lately. I've been trying to improve my mile time. I've been sharing those times with a friend of mine who's also doing it, and what that friend and I both know is that if you're actually wanting to improve your mile time, well, you actually have to push yourself in order to be able to do that. You have to push yourself to try to get faster and stronger, which means there's nothing perhaps more frustrating than getting to the end of a run and thinking to yourself, man, I actually could have run a lot harder when I was holding back. Man, I got tired, I got lazy,

the conditions got to me, I got uncomfortable, I just, I gave up, but I know deep down I could have actually run a lot harder, which brings up a really important question to anyone who follows Jesus. Are you running after him with everything that you have? Is there still a part of your race that you know deep down you're still holding back from him? Do you have a tendency to gravitate toward verses in the Bible that only bring you comfort and altogether avoid verses that challenge you? Are you obeying what God's word says perfectly about some things, but then completely disregarding what it has to say about others? See, we're in the middle of this discipline challenge that many of you all, thousands of you all have been doing with us, and some of you all, it's been going great, I think we're on like day seven now, but for others of you, you've been really vocal about the fact that we're only seven days in and you're already sick of Proverbs. I get it, I'm right there with you, I understand. But you wanna know why we chose the book of Proverbs other than the fact that discipline is mentioned more than any other book in the entire Bible? Because you can't read through even one of its chapters and pretend that none of it applies to you. I should be honest, it can sometimes make the book of Proverbs a really difficult book for us to sit with.

That's why we're reading it. Because as it turns out, discipline is difficult, but guess what, it's also the only way that we get any stronger. Friends, I say this in love, I don't want you to get to the end of your race someday and think, man, I could have actually run a lot harder. I don't want you to get to the finish someday and think, man, I wish I would have run after Jesus with everything that I have, with all of me, instead of just some of me. Because just speaking from personal experience as somebody who's running a lot of lanes that he shouldn't have, what I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, friends, is there is nothing worth running towards more in this world than Jesus, and you or I will never be able to make it through this world without Jesus, which brings us to the second rule of our training, just as equally important as the first, which is not only is Jesus Lord, he's also our savior. See, one of the things I love about this church is that every weekend across all of our campuses, well, there's someone in the room today who, well, you've never even had the opportunity to open this book and see what it says. You're not even really sure who Jesus is or about this Christianity stuff, but you know that you're the last person you ever thought would wind up in a church,

especially one like this one. You're not really sure about Jesus, you're not really sure about religion, you're not really sure about being a churchgoer, but here's what you do know deep down, you're really tired. Tired of constantly chasing things that have just left you empty and returned void. You're tired of running after things that you thought were gonna bring you hopefulness and happiness, but have just continued to make you more and more depressed. Then finally one day you just said, I can't do it. I'm done, I give up, I'm not as strong as that social media influencer told me I was and I can't do this on my own anymore, I'm done. Then something cool happened. Somebody invited you here. Someone you know, someone you work with. On paper they're just like you are, they got a regular job and a regular family. On paper they're just a regular person, but deep down in the back of your mind you know there's just something different about them. I mean their life isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they've just got this piece about them that you just can't explain or put your finger on. Their conversations are simple, they don't speak eloquently,

but you always leave conversations with them feeling more important and significant to them. And then one day they finally just worked up the courage to ask you, hey, will you come to church with me? You don't know why they asked. You're not sure about all this Jesus stuff. You're pretty reluctant to come to church, but here's what you do know deep down in the back of your mind. You desperately want whatever it is that they have. On behalf of that person who invited you here today, can I just let you in on a little secret? They desperately want you to have that too. Because they've tried all the same stuff as you've tried. They've chased after all the same stuff that you've chased after. They've made all the same mistakes that you've made, but then one day they came out of that water and they started running towards Jesus with everything that they have and they have never looked back. And now their life looks different than everyone else's because they're not chasing after what the world is chasing. They are running towards eternity. But what you need to know about that friend is that when they think about eternity, well, they cannot picture what eternity would be like without you in it. And I know you don't know him very well yet, but can I just let you in on one more secret?

Neither can God. Neither can God. That's why he sent his one and only son to die a criminal's death on the cross and run a perfect race on your behalf so that you would not have to be separated from him any longer. And that friend, that friend who invited you, they've been praying. They've been praying for some time. Not only that you would show up here today, but that you would slowly but surely begin to know what Jesus has done on your behalf. And they've been praying for a long time. That Jesus has done on your behalf so that you would not have to feel empty any longer. And right now that friend is just desperately praying that I don't mess up the end of this sermon. So I'm gonna do my best not to. While I've got you, can I just ask you one really more important question before you go? Are you tired of running through life on your own? Tired of feeling empty? Are you tired of feeling tired? Most importantly, are you finally just ready to admit you just can't do this on your own? Because if so, just look around. You're not alone. As a matter of fact, you probably feel a lot

like a famous runner named. Derek Redman felt in the 92 Summer Olympics, this incredible sprinter who had to pull up in the 400-meter semifinals due to injury, tragically ending his Olympic career. But as he did, I want you to see what happened as soon as his father, Jim Redman, saw that his child was hurting. Take a look at this video. I'm having a Craig Mass back, back at Olympic Stadium in Barcelona, coming up to the men's 400-meter semifinals. Here are the lane assignments. Steve Lewis in lane three. Top four to Wednesday's final. Steve Lewis in lane three. Roberto Hernandez out quickly in four. Now down the back stretch. Ismael on the left of the screen is running very, very quickly. And inside of Lewis, Sunday Bada, Nigeria. And Derek Redman of Great Britain has pulled up with an injury. Redman is out. Derek Redman, the British record holder, and an important member of that British four-by-400-meter relay team, as he doesn't want anybody to help him. It'll be Lewis to win in 44.50. Look at this.

He's going to try to finish his semifinal race. The British have a certain tradition of running, which you have to respect. A bizarre finish to this first semifinal of the men's 400 meters. Derek Redman of Great Britain pulled up with an injury halfway down the back stretch. He's fighting off those trying to help him to finish the race in his lane. And now the pain too much. The applause swelling throughout Olympic Stadium as Redman, with assistance this time, approaches the finish line he had wanted so desperately to reach. That is the Olympic spirit. Sometimes the pain is just too much. As much as I'm sure as Derek Redman would have loved to have limped his way to the finish that day, his dad knew that his son was never going to be able to make it there on his own. So what did he do? Exactly what our Heavenly Father did. He took his son to the finish line. He took his son to the finish line. He took his son to the finish line. He took his son to the finish line. He took his son to the finish line. That's exactly what our Heavenly Father did. He ran to where he was and he carried him. Put his arms around his son and embraced him,

said, don't worry, I've got you. Don't listen to what all these other people are doing. Just listen to my voice. Just follow what I'm doing. Put your weight on me. I'm steady. I'm strong. I'll lead you. I'll carry you. I'll walk with you. I will not leave your side. What did Derek Redmond do? Leaned into his father and suddenly began running a very different race than everyone else was that day. It's exactly what we're supposed to do. Friends, I don't know what your race has looked like so far, but maybe today is finally the day that you just need to trust what his word says and submit to his authority as Lord, which is the only rightful place that he has in any of our lives. Maybe today you just finally need to come clean and accept the fact that you desperately need a savior and can't do this on your own. Maybe, just maybe, today's the day that you go get in that water. And when you come out, you start running towards Jesus with everything you have. I don't know what your race has looked like so far, but I know who I'm running after.

And I know how I wanna finish the race. Today, just like Derek Redman, limping and leaning, because this world is a race that I cannot finish on my own. Luckily for this washed up mid-distance runner, I don't have to. You don't either. All you have to do is lean on your father's shoulders and run towards Jesus with everything you've got. If you do that, you're a winner in my book. More importantly, you will be crowned according to what his book says. Let me pray for us. God, thank you for running towards us, meeting us where we are. God, you knew that this was a race that we could not finish on our own. So you came to us. You sent your one and only son, Jesus, to run a perfect race on our behalf so that we didn't have to. God, I just pray for any person in this room this morning that just feels heavy. I pray that they would begin to put their weight on your shoulders because you're the only person strong enough to carry it. God, I just pray for any person in the room who is invited by a friend that they would know this church can't imagine spending eternity without them and you can't either.

So God, as we run this race, help us to run it differently. Help us to look different than the world that surround us and play by a different set of rules, your rules, your guidelines that are there to keep us safe. God, help us to fully submit and trust you, trust what your word says as Lord and help us to finally accept the fact we desperately need your son, Jesus, as a savior. Most importantly today, God, help us to run, run hard and run fast at you because only you will give us the crown of victory. It's in your name we pray, amen.