WORD Conference 2019 | Dr. Joel Gregory

0:07 Well, bless the Lord, O my soul, and let all that is within me bless his holy name. How good it is to be back here. So many friends of the years at this conference. Dr. Campbell, thank you for asking me back here yet once again. You know, I've just put on a conference at Truett Seminary at Baylor University myself. I was the host. Called it Boomers and Beyond. It's really seniors, but now you call it Boomers and Beyond. I know this about putting on conferences. It's more taxing than ever speaking at one. We ought to give it up again for Dr. Fred Campbell, for Kyla. It is visionaries like this that make possible things like this.

1:09 And it is not just a vision, it's also a task. You may have heard it, a vision without a task is a luxury, and a task without a vision is a drudgery. And he has both of these. Thank you, Dr. Campbell. And then to others who labored in the exposition of the word with me, I've been blessed this week.

1:39 I went to bed last night. I had to go to saying, let it be. Let it be. A long time before the Beatles said that, the Lord said that. Let it be. I like the Lord's version better. It is a delight to be here. I've been helped by all the messages and fellowship with you. I want you to open the New Testament to the last thing Paul wrote, 2 Timothy. We have visited there this week at least once. There in that great word about preaching, preach the word, in season and out of season. but just after Paul's valedictory you find the last words that came from Paul.

2:33 Perhaps this was after his second imprisonment. Some believe that. If so, he'd been engaged in and out of Rome for ten years. But would you look with me reverently at the last things Paul wrote. 2 Timothy 4.9 Be diligent to come to me quickly for Demas has forsaken me having loved the world of the now and has departed for Thessalonica Kreskens for Galatia Titus for Dalmatia that's where Yugoslavia used to be Only Luke is with me.

3:25 Get Mark and bring him with you, for he's useful to me for ministry. Tychicus I sent to Ephesus. Oh, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas when you come, and the books, especially the parchments. Alexander the coppersmith, he did me much harm. May the Lord repay him according to his works. You also must be aware of him. He's greatly resisted our worries.

4:01 At my first defense, no one stood with me. May it not be charged to them, but the Lord stood with me and strengthened me so the message might be preached fully through me and that all the Gentiles might hear. Also, I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion, and the Lord will deliver me from every evil word and preserve me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory forever and ever. Amen. And then like a preacher who thought of one more thing to say after the benediction. Oh, great Prisca and Aquila, household of Onesiphorus, Erastus, State, and Corinth, Trophimus I left in Miletus, see.

4:55 Do your utmost to come before winter. You bid us greet you as well as Putin's Linus, Claudia, and all the brethren. The Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Grace be with you. Amen. I'd like to talk to you this noon hour about the apostolic Facebook. 37,000 employees all over the world.

5:35 Any given day, 1.5 billion clients. Every minute, 500,000 communicative posts. 80 million people using it are fakes. They're forgeries. They're not who they say they are. You know what I'm doing, man. It's that phenomenon called Facebook. so big the other day that Zuckerberg's Harvard roommate said they need to break the thing up. It has too much influence. I came to it rather late. There were some marketing gurus who said, Gregory, you need to get there. I didn't even know how it worked. Before I knew it, I had 5,000 friends.

6:25 I found out about something, and that is, on my timeline, people I didn't know were getting in fights with other people I didn't know. about controversies I didn't know. I started to feel a little bit like a boxing promoter who rented his ring out to two boxers he didn't know. I came a little bit late, but I did find out more about it. You have, I'm sure. And that is you can friend people, but you can also unfriend them. you can block them and you can unblock them. Later on I found out that sometimes when I woke up at 3 a.m. in the morning and looked at the thing and made a remark I wish I hadn't made, I could go back and edit it.

7:18 Thank you. But the thought occurred to me, what if in a back to the future or forward to the present, the Apostle Paul could have had a Facebook? an apostolic Facebook. What do you think would have happened with Demas?

7:40 Demas, Paul said, he abandoned me loving the world of the now. I suspect when Demas got to Thessaloniki, he blocked Paul. He didn't want Paul to see what he was doing in Thessaloniki. Well, then Mark, when they got in that argument, you know Mark, Mark, as long as they were on Cyprus with Uncle Barnabas and all of Unc's friends, it was good, but when they got to Turkey and they didn't know anybody, he went back to Jerusalem, went home to Mama. I suspect Paul unfriended him. I think he probably kept up with him, maybe on Priscilla's page. Priscilla probably was softer-hearted from time to time.

8:35 He'd see his friend Priscilla. Alexander the coppersmith, blocked. And he said, Timothy, you block him too. But Luke, Luke was a friend, friend of friends. Oh, so many of these people, they were all friends with one another. Quilla, Priscilla, Kreskin, Stachicus, they kept up. And it's strange if there'd been an apostolic Facebook. you know what you might learn from an apostolic Facebook?

9:09 One thing you would learn is that you need one another in the service of the Lord. Did you read these sad words? The apostle said, in my first defense, the Greek New Testament says, not even one person, it's emphatic, stood by me.

9:36 I'm trying to imagine that. Why no one stood there. When Paul had come to Rome, you remember the shipwreck on Malta? When he finally got to Puteoli, the Roman port, the Christians were so excited. They came out. Here's Paul. He wrote Romans. I'm sure somebody brought out a papyrus and said, would you sign it right here, Paul? And even Christians from Rome made the trip to the seaport. Oh, it was exciting at first to see Paul. But you know, ten years later, all that enthusiasm had waned. makes you wonder. Of course, Lydia couldn't have come. She was all the way over there somewhere trading around Philippi. Would she could have been there? The Philippian jailer couldn't get there. Would she could have been there?

10:31 But you know, that man whose father he healed on Malta, Publius, he could have been there. Paul healed his father of death-dealing dysentery. Where was Publius? where were all those enthusiasts at the church of Rome that were so happy that he came it reminds you a little bit of what happened to Jesus on Calvary did you ever wonder where everybody was I mean, there was John and those women. Where was that man born blind? Why didn't he show up and say, I don't know, but once I was blind. Where was that man at the pool of Siloam? Nearby Calvary. He came by and I walked. For that matter, where was Bar Timaeus? He was just down the road at New Testament Jericho. None of them showed up.

11:25 In that regard, Paul was like his master. He was abandoned and he was alone. You know, it's fascinating how close you can be to greatness sometimes and not recognize it. There's an old saying, no man is a hero to his butler. Winston Churchill used to fight with his butler, and his butler would fight with him. They got tired of one another. Mozart was in Vienna composing that unforgettable music. His neighbors complained that he was practicing next door to them. I think it was that way about Paul.

12:05 And he stood alone. Oh, you say, wait a minute, the Lord stood with him. Yes, yes. Just as he did in Koran. Just as he did on that ship when he said, nobody's going to sink, you're all going to get to shore. But let me tell you something, even the Lord invisible, more real than any other, you will need a flesh and blood human being with you. Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his work Life Together, On the Run and Exile, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, The Christ in me is sometimes weaker than the Christ in your words. And I need you. A hero of the faith such as Paul. If you could have seen his face, I accept Priscilla looked at it, He looked stalwart.

12:57 He looked stoic. But if you knew his face, you could see the sadness in it that no one stood with him. One thing you learn from the apostolic Facebook, you know, I know it now better than ever, you need somebody with you in it. One of my favorite spots in the world, you know about it here in the Bay, it's one of my favorite places in the world, is just over the Golden Gate. there in Marin County, those Muir woods. You go down, down to a valley, and there are those thousand-year-old coastal redwoods. Name for John Muir, the great preservationist. I love to go there. It's a cathedral of trees. There's an uncanny silence, a transcendent presence. But you know what?

13:52 You never find one of them by itself. Look all over Marin County. There's not a lonely maverick Redwood. They're down there. You know why? You'd think they have deep roots, but more than anything else, they have entangled roots. So that one of them holds the other one up. Even so, also in following Jesus. I've known some famous believers, world-famous believers, not to drop any names, I could drop their name, but I heard two of them talking one time, and one of them told the other, well, you have no peers. And the one who heard that just said they're as if in agreement with it. I knew him, and he was a lonely, isolated man.

14:51 It should not be said of any believer, You have no peers. Take another look at Apostolic Facebook with me. You can see the different outcomes for those who had been on Paul's timeline. My wife Joanne and I several years ago were visiting the Italian city of Florence. There's an art museum and a great house. It's like other museums that side by side by side were these great canvases in gilded frames. every one of them worth $100 million, but there was a trick, a gimmick at the end of it. There was a false wall, and after all of these paintings by Raphael and Rubens and everybody, there was a gold frame on a false wall. You could get behind it and put your face in it. Everybody was taking a picture of their face in the picture that had happened in the gallery.

15:51 So Joanna and I got behind it, got a picture of the picture. I've seen people taking pictures of pictures to put them on Facebook. Look at some of the people that Paul mentions in the frames. Demas. There's Demas in the frame. Demas has forsaken me, having loved the world of the now. If you look at Demas, you'll find that in Colossians. And Philemon, he was a fellow worker. In fact, in Philemon, that word sunergos, he's in synergy with me. All three of those names appear in Philemon and Colossian together. Luke, Mark, and Demas. I'm sure when Onesimus left with that letter to go back and make things right with Philemon, And Demas was at the banquet as he was going out the door.

16:49 He said, I'll be praying for you as you go back. But then Demas abandoned because he loved the world of the now. There he is back in Thessaloniki. I'm sure he had everything Thessaloniki had. It had a theater. It had Roman bath. It had something like a coliseum. It had a race course. It had things you wouldn't even want to name. And you know if you go back to Thessalonica, you can get everything Thessalonica has to offer. no you can't Bible doesn't hide that there's pleasure in sin for a season but I'm sure at midnight in that Greco-Roman city where there was no ambient light in the darkness of the night when he could no longer have the rush of adrenaline that came from running away Thessalonica became like ashes in his mouth when he thought about Paul back in Rome in prison.

18:03 There was an old saying in Greek, whatever happens in Thessalonia stays in Thessalonia. But I think that grew pale. Oh, Demas. Demas! Robert Burns was a Demas. Robert Burns was a great poet. His poetry still moves me, a lyrical poet. He died at 37 because when he got famous he became a Demas. He ran off to London, died a drunk, but you know what he wrote right before he died? He says, pleasures are like poppies spread. The flowers picked, but the bloom is shed. Are like a snowflake fallen on the river.

19:01 A moment white, then gone forever. Damus could have written those words. Did you ever leave footprints in concrete when you were little? I did I don't know if that's just a Texas thing maybe y'all got more to do than that out here but we used to be when they port a sidewalk or a driveway and I was a little kid you'd take your shoes off and put your footprint or your handprint and date it I can go back to where those little steps were now half century ago it's almost haunting to think of that but I'll tell you something more haunting and that is those footprints in history that demons left pointed away from the Apostle Paul. What a way to be in Holy Scripture forever. But wait a minute.

20:00 Here's another frame. In that frame, picture of a picture on Apostolic Facebook, here's John Mark. You remember Mark? There he was, abandoning Paul and Barnabas after the great ministry on Cyprus, The inlet road into Turkey was threatening. It was full of bandits. It was up hills. You didn't know what was on the other side of those mountains. He was from a wealthy family. In fact, John Mark appears to be a runaway. I think he's the same young man, unidentified incognito in the last chapter of Mark, who awakened by the crowd leaving the upper room following him. Remember, he ran out of his own garment. He just seemed to have a tendency to run away. and he disappears from the record in the book of Acts. Vanished.

20:53 But thank God that was not the end of it. I do think that Paul kept up with him on Priscilla's page. and there he is he's with the church in Jerusalem there he is out street preaching there he is holding the papyrus of one of Paul's letters and you know what it came that the the script was flipped and Paul believed in Mark more than Mark believed in Mark and Paul gave Mark back Mark.

21:34 Can you imagine what he meant to that young man when he got this word sent to Timothy? Look, you tell Carpus, I want my coat. It's cold here. Isn't that pitiful? That thing was like a poncho. A cloak like that had a hole in it. If you could have had that, you would have found the blood from Paul's back on it. where he was whipped five times. If you could have tasted it, the salt water from the Mediterranean would have stung your tongue. A rip on it when he went over the wall in a basket. Isn't it pitiful he couldn't even get a poncho unless it came from Turkey? But right along with that, bring Mark. He's useful. Oh, my. Let me tell you something in the ministry. one of the chances you have is to distinguish between a Demas who will never come back and a Mark if you believe in him.

22:32 will come back. One of the great, if not the greatest of all musicals is that musical called Les Miserables. It's been performed all over the world. It's Victor Hugo's tremendous novel. You remember the plot of it? Jean Valjean had stolen some bread to feed his sister's starving children. and was given 19-year prison sentence. Finally got out, embittered, hardened, rancid in his soul.

23:12 A Christian bishop let him spend the night, and he repaid the bishop by stealing his silver. The gendarme caught him the next day, brought him straight back to the bishop. It was ecclesiastical silver. And you know what the bishop did? The bishop said in the presence of the police, Oh, wait a minute. you didn't take everything I gave you here are the candlesticks and then whispered to him use these to make yourself an honest man and in the musical he sings, this man has saved my soul. He believed in him, and Jean Valjean grew up to what he believed in.

24:00 That's what happened to Mark. Paul said, Mark, I believe in you more than you believe in yourself. Come on back. You're useful to me. Let me tell you something. In your life, you will either be the recipient of that or the instigator of that. I've been on both ends of that. And I think, wait a minute, here's another picture, one more. Look in this frame. Luke, here's Luke, joins with Paul at Troy and never leaves him. There he is going back to Jerusalem. There he is in front of the furious mob of Jews. There he is at Caesarea Maritime with Felix and Fessus. There he is on that ship voyage. There he is when the ship goes down.

24:54 When Paul floated up to the island of Malta on a piece of wreckage, there's Luke on another one. There's Luke who never left. oh it's so good to be a Luke I wish I could have been a Luke William Graham died the other day Ruth Bell Graham died several years before him Ruth Bell Graham said Jesus was so real to my family her father was a missionary to China L. Nelson Bell said he was as if he was always with us oh to spend a lifetime like that my maternal grandmother Grandma Selby, talked to Jesus all day, sang to Jesus all day. I thought he lived in that little farmhouse. I didn't.

25:45 When I was in seminary, they used to bring in fallen folks who would give their testimony. They'd run off and become alcoholics or immoral in some way, drug addicts, go in the jail, and they'd come back and go to how the Lord restored them. And that was good to hear. I guess we were a little cynical at seminary. When one among us fell, we'd say, well, he's just out building a testimony so he can come back in.

26:12 there's something better, and that is to be a Luke. And you might say, well, I'm Humpty Dumpty, and I've already fallen off the wall. Let me tell you what was the possibility, even for Demas, to come back and spend the rest of your life being a Luke. there's even a rabbi Rabbi Herschel said people don't go to hell because of murder or adultery theft they go to hell because at any minute they could have repented and they didn't there's nobody here who couldn't decide today I'm going to be a Luke I wonder if you could get back behind the wall and put your face in a picture do you identify with any of those well it's known I know at noon you're hungry I know you won't just one more thing when you look at the apostolic Facebook, you'll find out at the end, it's the individuals that count.

27:23 Now, isn't it interesting, if you count them, there are 17 names in these verses. You know, if I were Paul and I'd been writing the last thing, you know what I'd probably done? I'd probably said, let me summarize Romans for you. It is the greatest thing ever written. Or I might have said, let me remind you of the great speeches I've made. Remember Felix, and there's Festus, there's that mob in Jerusalem. Oh, Areopagus, when I was up on the hill with the Greek. Oh, incidentally, a Supreme Court justice was saved there. His name was Diana, you know. Or I might have gotten out my Bible and said, Do you see these maps in the back? those are my journeys.

28:13 But you know what he didn't do any of that? You know what he ended up doing? He ended up calling these names. not his great books or the crowds or the masses or the throngs or the journeys or the drama at the end some of them are famous names some of them never really caught on Eubulus, Pudens hadn't met anybody named that close to me. This is right out of my heart to yours.

28:54 God, God's been better to me than I could deserve in a dozen lifetimes. I've got to preach at huge conventions and Baptist World Alliance and assemblies here and there. Now, let me tell you something. Honestly, in thinking about that, it just makes me tired. tired do you know what I remember now in the autumn of ministry individuals My first pastored in South Waco. I'm a junior at Baylor. What I didn't know about pastoring would fill the encyclopedia. I lived in the best house in the poorest neighborhood in Waco. Uncurbed, unguttered streets, tri-ethnically integrated Hispanic folks, black folks, the poorest white folks in Waco.

29:50 I was the counselor, the food pantry, the ambulance driver. Ambulance wouldn't even come down there. I had to take people. They came to the parson and said, Quick, come down. Jack's having a fit. I didn't know who Jack was or what a fit was, but I went back to a slum house with a screened-in back porch and a 25-year-old man laying down, when I came in the door, had a plate in his hand, and he broke it. Later on, I found out he's have what we call DTs.

30:20 I led Jack to Jesus, baptized him. Mr. Junior at Baylor went down to the bars on 3rd Street and pulled him out. I literally tried to keep Jack saved. I should have left Simon, but up to the Holy Spirit. Right now, on my way to work where that house was is a $200 million science building that Baylor built there. But I look under it and I remember Jack. On the other side of I-35, every franchise known to man feeds the 17,000 Baylor students. Long gone is the alley on South 9th Street. When I was a junior at Baylor, we had a church bus, and on Saturday I'd knock on kids' door to bring them on Sunday. I was pastor, teacher, bus driver, visitor.

31:14 I remember going up that muddy alley sitting on a broken down back porch. a little nine-year-old boy, would you ride my bus? Yes. I said, do you know about Jesus? No. And I led him to Jesus on that back porch. He got on the bus and confessed faith in Christ. When I looked behind McDonald's and McAllister's and all those franchises, underneath them, I remember that alley.

31:47 I remember my seminary pastor at C.T. Sharp 80-year-old, fourth-grade graduate, the wisest man I ever knew. He'd been by turns a rancher, a professional wrestler, a pie chef, a mortician. I don't know what. He'd done everything.

32:08 I remember Brother Sharp, my friend. I want to tell you something. When the wind begins to chill in its autumn of ministry, you're not going to be thinking about big crowds. You're going to be thinking about individuals. That's why Paul called these names. But think of what it meant to them that he called their name. I mean, yeah, there's the big names, marquee names, Timothy, Luke. Well, look here. Some of these names would have been incognito. They would have never been heard of. They would have lived and died in anonymity. Eubulus Putin's Linus guess he got in Charlie Brown but other than that he's on one but just because they got in the orbit of Paul they reflected the light of Jesus and look at this right now in the same book that begins with Abraham Isaac Jacob and Joseph and ends with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

33:36 Here's Eubulus. And Putin's. And Linus. But you know what? It's an open list. Names are still being added to that list. It's open enrollment.

34:04 Here's Leroy, Shaniqua, and Bubba Joe, and Mary Ann, and Juan, and Margarita. I thank God.

34:24 It's an open list. My grandpa Gregory was the only deacon in the first church I preached at in high school. The Wendhill Baptist Church. You couldn't see a house from Wendhill. It was in Jack County, the worst county for farming in Texas. His grandpa Gregory didn't know the first three laws of real estate, location, location. For 90 years, he lived there trying to get a living out of the sand mesquite trees, rattlesnakes, copperheads. There's a one-room clapboard church with a wood stove in front of the full pitch. You preached on either side of the flue. They sang the same song every Sunday. It was written in 1893, every Sunday.

35:22 Now, you wouldn't confuse it with Brahms or Beethoven. Its musicality isn't elite. I used to wonder, but now I know why. That was a hard life. Right out by it was the Windhill Cemetery, out the window. But every Sunday at the top of their voice, they would sing those words written by Philip Johnson, when the roll is called up yonder, when the roll is called up yonder, when the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there on that bright and cloudless morning when the dead in Christ shall rise. You know, I'm so glad that one day Albert Gregory and Lena Gregory and Cliff Gregory and Edith Gregory and by God's grace, Joel Gregory got on the list.

36:25 Thank you.