(music) Well, back in October of last year, we looked at the shipwrecked faith. Specifically, how do people make shipwreck of their faith? What causes it? And there in APJ 1849, Pastor John, you define the shipwrecked faith as a person who makes a beginning in the Christian life, but who drifts away as their heart increasingly prefers sin over Christ.

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, and so it rejects a good conscience and becomes defiled by the world's sin. Basically, a shipwrecked faith is the heart's desires corrupted. You made that point in APJ 1849.

But sometimes when we speak of the shipwrecked faith, we assume that this state is one of final undoing, like there's no hope of return, it's over, you shipwrecked, or you don't shipwreck, and that leads to today's email from a listener named Jacob. Pastor John, thank you for all your service and for your passion in the gospel.

My question is this. Is there hope for those who have shipwrecked their faith? I believe I've done this, as 1 Timothy 119 describes, happen to those who have rejected a good conscience. I feel my communion with the Lord has been dry and blocked for almost six months now due to my personal sin.

Can a shipwrecked faith be undone? I think it would be unbiblical and unwarranted and unhelpful for me to say to Jacob that he is beyond hope. Those six months of sin and disobedience and distance from God are no sure sign that Jacob is beyond hope. So, let me try to give five encouraging reasons from the Bible why I say this for Jacob's sake, especially and others, no doubt, who perhaps share his condition.

And then we'll close with a sober warning and a hopeful exhortation first. Let's just pay attention to the context that he's referring to, 1 Timothy 119-20. It's a very hopeful context, not a despairing one when he talks about the shipwreck. He says, "Hold faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, the good conscience, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme." So, Paul knows these two men.

He knows them, and he says that they've made shipwreck of their faith by rejecting conscience and that he has handed them over to Satan. But why? Why did he hand them over? It does not say he handed them over for final punishment. It says he handed them over to Satan to "learn." Learn.

The word is "piduo," which means to give instruction, to train, to discipline. So he handed them over to be instructed, to be trained, to be disciplined. This is not a word for final judgment or damnation. This is a word for remediation, improvement, hope. And supporting that interpretation that I just gave is the fact that there's one other place in the writings of Paul where he speaks about people being handed over to Satan because they've sinned in an egregious way.

In 1 Corinthians 5.5, he says, "You are to deliver this man who's committed this terrible sexual sin, deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord." Again, the aim of handing him over to Satan is salvation, not damnation, which means that making shipwreck of your faith in 1 Timothy need not be final loss.

There is hope for a turnaround. That's my hopeful argument number one. Number two, why did Paul use the image of shipwreck? Because he used so many other images for the destruction of faith or the damage of faith. Why did he use that? They rejected conscience. They've chosen to live against their conscience in sin.

They've therefore left the faith. At least it looks like they've left it. And they've turned away. What did shipwreck mean in Paul's experience? Well, he tells us. It's quite amazing. I didn't quite realize this until thinking about it for this question. Here's 2 Corinthians 11 25. "Three times I was beaten with rods.

Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked." Are you kidding me? Three times I was shipwrecked. Now that's before the one in the book of Acts. So we can say at least four. "Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I was adrift at sea." Paul must have thought, "Good Lord, I've got to be persecuted in every city.

And every third time I get on a boat, you're going to make it go down?" That's a lot of shipwrecks for a life as short as Paul's. Paul had experienced three shipwrecks, even before the one in the book of Acts. And one of them evidently left him drifting in the water, holding on to some wreckage for a day and a night before he was, what, picked up by some other boat or got to shore?

I don't know. Amazing. Three shipwrecks, as if it were not enough that he was persecuted everywhere and had every other manner of trouble. But here's the relevant thing for Jacob's question. Shipwreck, in Paul's experience, did not mean death. It didn't mean judgment and death. It meant loss and suffering.

It was not final, at least not in Paul's experience. It wasn't final. Three times he had come through it alive. He knew people survived shipwrecks. He had. Three times. So there's no warrant. There's no warrant to think that when it says shipwreck of faith in 1 Timothy, he meant that's the end of faith.

It'll never come back. It can't survive. It's not holding on for a day and a night in the water. No hope for Hymenaeus and Alexander. No hope for Jacob. No way. That's not what it implies necessarily. You can't argue that from the word shipwreck. Third, one of the most beautiful sentences in Paul's letters is 2 Timothy 4.11, where he says to Timothy, "Luke alone is with me." This is his last letter.

He's soon to be killed. "Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me in ministry." That's beautiful. Now, I know that when John Mark left Paul and Barnabas and refused to go on the missionary journey work, we are not told why.

We were not told that it was a crisis of faith, like a little mini shipwreck or something like that. We're not told. We don't know why he turned back. What we do know is that Paul was really angry. He was so displeased by Mark's behavior, he refused, absolutely refused, at the expense of his own friendship with his close friend Barnabas, he refused to take John Mark with him on his second missionary journey.

Luke says it caused a sharp disagreement between Barnabas and Paul, and Mark, I mean, picture this, Mark must have felt a deep sting from the great apostle. I mean, picture it. Your favorite leader Christian says, "I'm not going to work with you. You're a quitter." Oh, my goodness. What a shaming thing to happen to John Mark.

Now, that may be what Jacob feels right now in asking us this question. He feels like, "I've just so badly deserted like John Mark that I could never be useful again." But the encouraging thing is that here at the end of Paul's life, either he or Mark, probably Mark, has changed.

Something's changed. Mark has become not just useful, but very useful. Get Mark and bring him, Timothy, because he's very useful to me for ministry. And I mention this simply to show that there have been and there can be now dramatic changes in people's lives so that being rejected and useless can turn around and become accepted and useful.

So that's number three. Here's number four. Picture the night that Peter denied the Lord Jesus three times. Jesus had warned him that this was coming. And Peter, instead of humbling himself with trembling and pleading for help, "Oh, don't let that happen to me, Jesus. Please don't let that happen to me." Instead, he was cocksure it would never happen.

"I'm not going to deny you. I'm ready to die with you." And here's Luke's description of that final moment after the third denial of Peter. This is just so moving. "Immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed, and the Lord turned and looked at Peter." Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, "Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times." And he went out and wept bitterly.

"Surely this was a shipwreck, if ever there was one." Three times. Three times he denies the Lord of glory after three years of experiencing his glory and beauty and love and patience. Three times in the hour of his greatest suffering and loneliness. And Peter knew the Lord saw it.

He saw it happen. It was just no question. Jesus knows what I've just done. He saw me and he knows what he's done. And therefore, his guilt must have been horrible. The shame he must have felt as he wept must have been absolutely overwhelming. And then, as we know from the Gospel of John, the Lord met him after the resurrection and three times, no accident, three times asked him, "Do you love me?" And after he heard yes, after each of those three times, he said, "Feed my sheep." "You're back, Peter.

You're back." Amazing. Absolutely amazing. The ship of faith wrecked. It really did. But it didn't wreck utterly, not finally. And Jesus welcomed him back. And then my fifth statement that I said would be a sober warning and an exhortation of hope comes from Hebrews 12. It's about Esau. It says, "Let no one be sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal.

For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected." Let me say that again because that's sober. "You know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected. For he found no place of repentance, though he sought it, namely repentance, with tears." And here's the sober warning.

It is possible to make shipwreck of your faith like Esau and never be saved. That's a sober warning. But here's the hopeful truth and my exhortation. The text does not say, "Even though he repented, God withheld the blessing." That's not what it says. It says, "He sought repentance with tears, and he couldn't find it, couldn't do it." This is the final shipwreck from which there is no salvation.

We sin so long or so deeply that we can't repent. We can't. Our hearts have become too hard. But the hope is obvious, right? It's obvious if you repent. If by God's grace you can turn and renounce your sin and come to Christ and take him afresh as your Savior and Lord and treasure, he will receive you.

All who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. So the exhortation, Jacob, is, and every other person listening in Jacob's situation, "Come to Christ. Come back. If you can come, he will have you." Amen. Yeah, a lot of angles on this from Scripture. Every third time Paul sailed, he was shipwrecked at least four times in a lifetime.

That's an incredible thought. Paul survived all four of them. Amazing protection, but very illuminating on shipwrecks and whether or not final in Paul's mind as well. Thank you, Pastor John, for that. And thank you for joining us today. Ask a question of your own. Search our growing archive or subscribe to the podcast outlet, AskPastorJohn.com.

Well, can you guess who God loves more than anyone else in the universe? God most loves God. And this glorious fact is for us really the greatest news in the universe. In fact, until we understand this point, the good news itself, the gospel, will never make sense to us.

Justification won't make sense to us. Pastor John will explain why on Wednesday. I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you next time. . .