I Shipwrecked My Faith — Am I Doomed?
00:00:00.000 | (music)
00:00:04.000 | Well, back in October of last year, we looked at the shipwrecked faith.
00:00:09.000 | Specifically, how do people make shipwreck of their faith? What causes it?
00:00:14.000 | And there in APJ 1849, Pastor John, you define the shipwrecked faith as a person who makes a beginning in the Christian life,
00:00:22.000 | but who drifts away as their heart increasingly prefers sin over Christ.
00:00:28.000 | It's a heart preference issue. The heart falls in love with riches, or the heart falls in love with this present world and its approval,
00:00:38.000 | and so it rejects a good conscience and becomes defiled by the world's sin.
00:00:45.000 | Basically, a shipwrecked faith is the heart's desires corrupted. You made that point in APJ 1849.
00:00:53.000 | But sometimes when we speak of the shipwrecked faith, we assume that this state is one of final undoing,
00:00:58.000 | like there's no hope of return, it's over, you shipwrecked, or you don't shipwreck,
00:01:03.000 | and that leads to today's email from a listener named Jacob.
00:01:07.000 | Pastor John, thank you for all your service and for your passion in the gospel.
00:01:11.000 | My question is this. Is there hope for those who have shipwrecked their faith?
00:01:17.000 | I believe I've done this, as 1 Timothy 119 describes, happen to those who have rejected a good conscience.
00:01:25.000 | I feel my communion with the Lord has been dry and blocked for almost six months now due to my personal sin.
00:01:34.000 | Can a shipwrecked faith be undone?
00:01:38.000 | I think it would be unbiblical and unwarranted and unhelpful for me to say to Jacob that he is beyond hope.
00:01:51.000 | Those six months of sin and disobedience and distance from God are no sure sign that Jacob is beyond hope.
00:02:04.000 | So, let me try to give five encouraging reasons from the Bible why I say this for Jacob's sake,
00:02:13.000 | especially and others, no doubt, who perhaps share his condition.
00:02:19.000 | And then we'll close with a sober warning and a hopeful exhortation first.
00:02:27.000 | Let's just pay attention to the context that he's referring to, 1 Timothy 119-20.
00:02:33.000 | It's a very hopeful context, not a despairing one when he talks about the shipwreck.
00:02:39.000 | He says, "Hold faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, the good conscience,
00:02:46.000 | some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander,
00:02:52.000 | whom I have handed over to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme."
00:02:59.000 | So, Paul knows these two men. He knows them, and he says that they've made shipwreck of their faith
00:03:07.000 | by rejecting conscience and that he has handed them over to Satan.
00:03:12.000 | But why? Why did he hand them over? It does not say he handed them over for final punishment.
00:03:21.000 | It says he handed them over to Satan to "learn." Learn. The word is "piduo,"
00:03:30.000 | which means to give instruction, to train, to discipline.
00:03:35.000 | So he handed them over to be instructed, to be trained, to be disciplined.
00:03:42.000 | This is not a word for final judgment or damnation.
00:03:46.000 | This is a word for remediation, improvement, hope.
00:03:51.000 | And supporting that interpretation that I just gave is the fact that there's one other place
00:03:57.000 | in the writings of Paul where he speaks about people being handed over to Satan
00:04:02.000 | because they've sinned in an egregious way. In 1 Corinthians 5.5, he says,
00:04:10.000 | "You are to deliver this man who's committed this terrible sexual sin,
00:04:14.000 | deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh,
00:04:19.000 | so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord."
00:04:26.000 | Again, the aim of handing him over to Satan is salvation, not damnation,
00:04:34.000 | which means that making shipwreck of your faith in 1 Timothy need not be final loss.
00:04:44.000 | There is hope for a turnaround. That's my hopeful argument number one.
00:04:50.000 | Number two, why did Paul use the image of shipwreck?
00:04:55.000 | Because he used so many other images for the destruction of faith or the damage of faith.
00:05:00.000 | Why did he use that? They rejected conscience.
00:05:04.000 | They've chosen to live against their conscience in sin.
00:05:08.000 | They've therefore left the faith. At least it looks like they've left it.
00:05:13.000 | And they've turned away. What did shipwreck mean in Paul's experience?
00:05:20.000 | Well, he tells us. It's quite amazing.
00:05:24.000 | I didn't quite realize this until thinking about it for this question.
00:05:29.000 | Here's 2 Corinthians 11 25.
00:05:32.000 | "Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned.
00:05:37.000 | Three times I was shipwrecked."
00:05:41.000 | Are you kidding me? Three times I was shipwrecked.
00:05:45.000 | Now that's before the one in the book of Acts.
00:05:48.000 | So we can say at least four.
00:05:50.000 | "Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea."
00:05:56.000 | Paul must have thought, "Good Lord, I've got to be persecuted in every city.
00:06:01.000 | And every third time I get on a boat, you're going to make it go down?"
00:06:05.000 | That's a lot of shipwrecks for a life as short as Paul's.
00:06:10.000 | Paul had experienced three shipwrecks, even before the one in the book of Acts.
00:06:16.000 | And one of them evidently left him drifting in the water,
00:06:20.000 | holding on to some wreckage for a day and a night before he was, what,
00:06:25.000 | picked up by some other boat or got to shore? I don't know.
00:06:28.000 | Amazing. Three shipwrecks, as if it were not enough that he was persecuted everywhere
00:06:33.000 | and had every other manner of trouble.
00:06:35.000 | But here's the relevant thing for Jacob's question.
00:06:38.000 | Shipwreck, in Paul's experience, did not mean death.
00:06:43.000 | It didn't mean judgment and death.
00:06:46.000 | It meant loss and suffering. It was not final, at least not in Paul's experience.
00:06:52.000 | It wasn't final. Three times he had come through it alive.
00:06:56.000 | He knew people survived shipwrecks. He had. Three times.
00:07:01.000 | So there's no warrant. There's no warrant to think that when it says shipwreck of faith
00:07:08.000 | in 1 Timothy, he meant that's the end of faith.
00:07:11.000 | It'll never come back. It can't survive.
00:07:13.000 | It's not holding on for a day and a night in the water.
00:07:16.000 | No hope for Hymenaeus and Alexander. No hope for Jacob. No way.
00:07:20.000 | That's not what it implies necessarily.
00:07:24.000 | You can't argue that from the word shipwreck.
00:07:27.000 | Third, one of the most beautiful sentences in Paul's letters is 2 Timothy 4.11,
00:07:35.000 | where he says to Timothy, "Luke alone is with me."
00:07:39.000 | This is his last letter. He's soon to be killed.
00:07:43.000 | "Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you,
00:07:48.000 | for he is very useful to me in ministry."
00:07:52.000 | That's beautiful.
00:07:54.000 | Now, I know that when John Mark left Paul and Barnabas
00:07:59.000 | and refused to go on the missionary journey work, we are not told why.
00:08:05.000 | We were not told that it was a crisis of faith,
00:08:08.000 | like a little mini shipwreck or something like that.
00:08:10.000 | We're not told. We don't know why he turned back.
00:08:13.000 | What we do know is that Paul was really angry.
00:08:17.000 | He was so displeased by Mark's behavior, he refused, absolutely refused,
00:08:25.000 | at the expense of his own friendship with his close friend Barnabas,
00:08:29.000 | he refused to take John Mark with him on his second missionary journey.
00:08:35.000 | Luke says it caused a sharp disagreement between Barnabas and Paul,
00:08:41.000 | and Mark, I mean, picture this, Mark must have felt a deep sting
00:08:48.000 | from the great apostle. I mean, picture it.
00:08:51.000 | Your favorite leader Christian says, "I'm not going to work with you.
00:08:56.000 | You're a quitter." Oh, my goodness.
00:08:59.000 | What a shaming thing to happen to John Mark.
00:09:06.000 | Now, that may be what Jacob feels right now in asking us this question.
00:09:12.000 | He feels like, "I've just so badly deserted like John Mark
00:09:17.000 | that I could never be useful again."
00:09:20.000 | But the encouraging thing is that here at the end of Paul's life,
00:09:26.000 | either he or Mark, probably Mark, has changed.
00:09:32.000 | Something's changed. Mark has become not just useful, but very useful.
00:09:40.000 | Get Mark and bring him, Timothy, because he's very useful to me for ministry.
00:09:48.000 | And I mention this simply to show that there have been
00:09:52.000 | and there can be now dramatic changes in people's lives
00:09:58.000 | so that being rejected and useless can turn around and become accepted and useful.
00:10:10.000 | So that's number three. Here's number four.
00:10:13.000 | Picture the night that Peter denied the Lord Jesus three times.
00:10:19.000 | Jesus had warned him that this was coming.
00:10:22.000 | And Peter, instead of humbling himself with trembling and pleading for help,
00:10:26.000 | "Oh, don't let that happen to me, Jesus. Please don't let that happen to me."
00:10:30.000 | Instead, he was cocksure it would never happen.
00:10:33.000 | "I'm not going to deny you. I'm ready to die with you."
00:10:35.000 | And here's Luke's description of that final moment after the third denial of Peter.
00:10:43.000 | This is just so moving.
00:10:45.000 | "Immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed,
00:10:50.000 | and the Lord turned and looked at Peter."
00:10:56.000 | Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him,
00:11:01.000 | "Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times."
00:11:04.000 | And he went out and wept bitterly.
00:11:09.000 | "Surely this was a shipwreck, if ever there was one."
00:11:14.000 | Three times. Three times he denies the Lord of glory
00:11:19.000 | after three years of experiencing his glory and beauty and love and patience.
00:11:25.000 | Three times in the hour of his greatest suffering and loneliness.
00:11:29.000 | And Peter knew the Lord saw it.
00:11:32.000 | He saw it happen.
00:11:34.000 | It was just no question. Jesus knows what I've just done.
00:11:38.000 | He saw me and he knows what he's done.
00:11:41.000 | And therefore, his guilt must have been horrible.
00:11:48.000 | The shame he must have felt as he wept must have been absolutely overwhelming.
00:11:54.000 | And then, as we know from the Gospel of John,
00:11:59.000 | the Lord met him after the resurrection and three times, no accident,
00:12:04.000 | three times asked him, "Do you love me?"
00:12:09.000 | And after he heard yes, after each of those three times, he said,
00:12:14.000 | "Feed my sheep."
00:12:17.000 | "You're back, Peter. You're back."
00:12:20.000 | Amazing. Absolutely amazing.
00:12:23.000 | The ship of faith wrecked. It really did.
00:12:28.000 | But it didn't wreck utterly, not finally.
00:12:33.000 | And Jesus welcomed him back.
00:12:37.000 | And then my fifth statement that I said would be a sober warning
00:12:42.000 | and an exhortation of hope comes from Hebrews 12.
00:12:46.000 | It's about Esau.
00:12:48.000 | It says, "Let no one be sexually immoral or unholy like Esau,
00:12:52.000 | who sold his birthright for a single meal.
00:12:55.000 | For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing,
00:12:59.000 | he was rejected."
00:13:01.000 | Let me say that again because that's sober.
00:13:04.000 | "You know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing,
00:13:10.000 | he was rejected.
00:13:13.000 | For he found no place of repentance,
00:13:18.000 | though he sought it, namely repentance, with tears."
00:13:24.000 | And here's the sober warning.
00:13:26.000 | It is possible to make shipwreck of your faith like Esau
00:13:30.000 | and never be saved.
00:13:32.000 | That's a sober warning.
00:13:35.000 | But here's the hopeful truth and my exhortation.
00:13:40.000 | The text does not say, "Even though he repented,
00:13:45.000 | God withheld the blessing."
00:13:47.000 | That's not what it says.
00:13:50.000 | It says, "He sought repentance with tears, and he couldn't find it,
00:13:56.000 | couldn't do it."
00:13:58.000 | This is the final shipwreck from which there is no salvation.
00:14:04.000 | We sin so long or so deeply that we can't repent.
00:14:11.000 | We can't.
00:14:13.000 | Our hearts have become too hard.
00:14:15.000 | But the hope is obvious, right?
00:14:19.000 | It's obvious if you repent.
00:14:22.000 | If by God's grace you can turn and renounce your sin and come to Christ
00:14:27.000 | and take him afresh as your Savior and Lord and treasure,
00:14:32.000 | he will receive you.
00:14:35.000 | All who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
00:14:39.000 | So the exhortation, Jacob, is, and every other person listening
00:14:46.000 | in Jacob's situation, "Come to Christ.
00:14:51.000 | Come back.
00:14:52.000 | If you can come, he will have you."
00:14:56.000 | Amen.
00:14:57.000 | Yeah, a lot of angles on this from Scripture.
00:15:00.000 | Every third time Paul sailed, he was shipwrecked at least four times in a lifetime.
00:15:04.000 | That's an incredible thought.
00:15:06.000 | Paul survived all four of them.
00:15:08.000 | Amazing protection, but very illuminating on shipwrecks and whether or not final
00:15:13.000 | in Paul's mind as well.
00:15:14.000 | Thank you, Pastor John, for that.
00:15:16.000 | And thank you for joining us today.
00:15:17.000 | Ask a question of your own.
00:15:18.000 | Search our growing archive or subscribe to the podcast outlet,
00:15:21.000 | AskPastorJohn.com.
00:15:24.000 | Well, can you guess who God loves more than anyone else in the universe?
00:15:32.000 | God most loves God.
00:15:36.000 | And this glorious fact is for us really the greatest news in the universe.
00:15:42.000 | In fact, until we understand this point, the good news itself, the gospel,
00:15:46.000 | will never make sense to us.
00:15:48.000 | Justification won't make sense to us.
00:15:51.000 | Pastor John will explain why on Wednesday.
00:15:54.000 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:15:55.000 | We'll see you next time.
00:15:56.000 | [END]
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