And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom.
To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen! 

II Timothy 4:18 

How shall we face our future? We need not face the days ahead with fear, anxiety or any sense of foreboding about what may come our way. How can we approach the coming days with assurance that all will be well? The Apostle Paul was coming to the end of his earthly journey. The words of our text are very likely some of the last he ever wrote. He was in prison and would shortly endure beheading for preaching Christ. In human terms, his future was less promising than any of ours. With what could Paul encourage himself for his immediate and long-term future? Our text summarizes it for us, ‘and the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen!’ Paul’s confidence lay in Christ and His faithfulness. That he is referring to Christ in our text becomes apparent if we consider the words with which he began the chapter, ‘I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom.’ Paul was looking to Christ to intervene in all his affairs. His expectation of deliverance and preservation lay in the Christ Whom he had encountered on the road to Damascus. Paul’s Christ is our Christ. We look to Him with confidence for every aspect of our future. Regardless of what the future holds, we look to Christ knowing that He will deliver us from every evil work and preserve us unto His heavenly kingdom. 

Our Gracious Master and Our God, 
we rejoice that our times are in Your hands. 
We praise You we can look to You  
knowing You never fail. 

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom.  To Him be glory forever and ever.  Amen!

II Timothy 4:18

‘Amen’ is the affirmation of faith.  As Paul comes to the conclusion of his expression of confidence in Christ to deliver him from every evil work and to preserve him for His heavenly kingdom, he adds the word ‘Amen.’  This is the seal which we set in faith upon the promises of God.  God has said it; that settles it; we believe it.  God has chosen us in Christ before the world began, Amen.  He has predestinated us unto the adoption of children, Amen.  He has sent Christ into the world to satisfy the demands of the law in precept and in penalty, Amen.  He has sent the Holy Spirit to regenerate us, to bring us to repentance and to give us faith, Amen.  He is sanctifying us by renewing us in the whole person after the image of Christ, and enabling us to die more and more unto sin and to live unto righteousness, Amen.  He will deliver us from every evil work and preserve us for His heavenly kingdom, Amen.  To all that God has done, is doing, and will yet do, we add this affirmation of faith, Amen.  As this year moves on, we will behold the workings of God to show us Christ.  We will see Him do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think.  Our testimony is, Amen.

Our Wise and Wonderful God,
we rejoice that You do all things well.
We praise You that as we behold Your works
day-by-day, we may utter this affirmation of faith: 
Amen, Lord make it so.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom.  To Him be glory forever and ever.  Amen!

II Timothy 4:18

‘To God be the glory, great things He has done.’  Our chief purpose in life is to glorify God.  As Paul comes to the close of his earthly journey, he offers praise to Christ Who would deliver him from every evil work and preserve him for His heavenly kingdom.  In the Psalms we read, ‘whoso offers praise glorifies me.’  Therefore, by praising God, Paul was glorifying Him in the final days of his earthly life.  This was not the only way in which Paul was glorifying God.  He had written earlier, ‘whether therefore you eat or drink or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God.’  This expands the opportunity to glorify God into a practically limitless sphere.  What was available to Paul, as the means of glorifying God, is also available to us.  This elevates the most mundane of our activities to having the potential for being means by which we may glorify God and magnify Christ.  Our everyday employments and interactions with others become opportunities for us to make much of Christ by imitating Him.  This gives purpose to our most common, daily activities.  By these, we may say through our actions, ‘To Him be glory forever and ever, Amen.’

Our All-Powerful and All-Wise God,
we rejoice at the privilege you have
bestowed upon us to glorify You.
We praise You that day-by-day,
in thought, word and deed,
we can glorify You and exalt Christ.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom.  To Him be glory forever and ever.  Amen!

II Timothy 4:18

Christ is King.  He affirmed it before Pilate, and proved it on a host of other occasions in numerous ways.  According to Paul, He will ‘judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom.’  This takes our thoughts back to Matthew 25 where Christ describes the last judgment by saying, ‘When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory.  All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats.’  Paul declares as much in II Corinthians 5:10 when he says, ‘for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.’  How could Paul, writing in our text, say with such confidence, that Christ would ‘preserve me for His heavenly kingdom?’  He indicates where his confidence originated in the first chapter of II Timothy when he says, ‘for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that day.’  Paul’s confidence was in Christ to preserve him to His heavenly kingdom.  Paul’s source of confidence is our source of confidence as well.  We know Whom we have believed and are persuaded that He is able to keep that which we have committed unto Him until the day when we see Him face-to-face.  We rest in Christ, believe in Christ, look to Christ, depend on Christ and hope in Christ, He is able to preserve us unto His heavenly kingdom.  We rest upon His merits, His blood, and His righteousness.  Christ is all we need.

Our Glorious, Living Christ,
we rejoice that You are King of kings and Lord of lords.
We praise You that You will continue to reign
until all of Your enemies become Your footstool.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning

And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom.  To Him be glory forever and ever.  Amen!

II Timothy 4:18

We stand in the threshold of a new year.  All that we could have done or not done in the past year is behind us.  We have before us three hundred and sixty-five days of opportunity.  As we arrive at this dawn of the year, we want to have confidence and certainty.  We do not want to face the year with fear, anxiety or any sense of foreboding about what may come our way.  How can we approach this incoming year with assurance that all will be well?   The Apostle Paul was coming to the end of his earthly journey.  The words of our text are very likely some of the last he ever wrote.  He was in prison and would shortly endure beheading for preaching Christ.  In human terms, his future was less promising than any of ours.  With what could Paul encourage himself for his immediate and long-term future?  Our text summarizes it for us, ‘and the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom.  To Him be glory forever and ever.  Amen!’  Paul’s confidence lay in Christ and His faithfulness.  That he is referring to Christ in our text becomes apparent if we consider the words with which he began the chapter, ‘I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom.’  Paul was looking to Christ to intervene in all his affairs.  His expectation of deliverance and preservation lay in the Christ Whom he had encountered on the road to Damascus.  Paul’s Christ is our Christ.  We look to Him with confidence in the incoming year.  Regardless of what the future holds, we look to Christ knowing that He will deliver us from every evil work and preserve us unto His heavenly kingdom.

Our Gracious Master and Our God,
we rejoice that our times are in Your hands.
We praise You, that at the beginning of this year,
we can look to You knowing that You never fail.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning