Failure Is Never Fatal
Tom Shrader concludes a five-part study of 1 Samuel 3–7 by focusing on two final points: obedience brings blessing, and God is the God of the second chance. Using the nation of Israel's cycle of sin, judgment, and restoration as a foundation, he illustrates the theme of divine restoration through three biblical figures—Jonah, Peter, and John Mark—each of whom failed significantly and was then restored and used by God. The message calls both non-believers and wandering Christians to return to God in genuine repentance, grounded in the gospel's promise that nothing can change how much God loves His children.
“Failure is never fatal. God is the God of a second chance, and if you come to Him in repentance and faith, He will use you in extraordinary ways.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Samuel
Recorded: 2009 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 50 min
Themes: second chance, restoration, repentance, failure, obedience, forgiveness, returning to god, god's love, feeling like a failure, struggling with shame, wandering from faith, backsliding believer, new believer, someone considering returning to church, dealing with past mistakes, spiritually discouraged
Scripture: 1 Samuel 3:1, 1 Samuel 4:2-3, 1 Samuel 4:17, 1 Samuel 7:3-13, Hebrews 12:6, 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Corinthians 1:22, Jonah 1:1-4, Jonah 1:8-15, Jonah 1:17, Jonah 2:10, Jonah 3:1-10, Jonah 4:2, Jonah 4:4, Jonah 4:11, Luke 22:57-62, John 20:1-8, Acts 2:14-41, Acts 4:7-20, Acts 13:5, Acts 13:13, Acts 15:36-39, 2 Timothy 4:6-11, Galatians 2:14
Theological Themes: divine restoration, sanctification, repentance and faith, god's discipline, idolatry, soteriology, biblical obedience, grace
Full Transcript
Review of Previous Points
Open your Bibles to 1 Samuel. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand and someone will bring you a copy. When you get it, open to page 204, which puts us in 1 Samuel.
We started three weeks ago a discussion on five points I wanted to pull out of 1 Samuel chapters 3 through 7. Today we are going to finish up, so I'll do a brief summary and then we'll work through the final points.
The first point we made is that disobedience by God's people will bring about judgment and calamity. If you look at 1 Samuel chapter 3, verse 1, you'll see the Word of the Lord was rare in that time and visions were infrequent. What we're seeing is God gradually withdrawing His favor — not communicating through the prophets, withdrawing light, and bringing judgment to the nation of Israel. This is not something unique to Israel. Hebrews 12:6 tells us that those whom the Lord loves He will discipline, and if we are disobedient to God there will be discipline associated with it.
The second point was that we need to place our dependence on God and nothing else. In 1 Samuel chapter 4, verse 3, the nation of Israel has been defeated and four thousand men have been killed in battle. The nation gets together and says, "What has happened? Let us take ourselves from Shiloh the ark of the covenant of the Lord, that it may come among us and deliver us from the power of the enemies." They had walked away from the one true God but were clinging to an image or a symbol of Him. The ark represented His presence, His authority over them, His teaching, His revelation, and His reconciliation to them — and they were putting their faith and trust in the ark rather than in the one true God.
We can see how anything that comes into our life can become an idol that replaces the one true God. It could be something as subtle as placing faith and trust in the Bible, in the Word of God, but not in the God of the Word. The call is to trust God — Him and Him alone.
God Wants a Holy People
The third point, which we looked at last week, is that God wants a holy people. God wants a people who are distinct and different. For the nation of Israel this was made very clear — He told them how to dress, how to farm their land, and gave them specifics on what to eat. He dealt with them with great specificity.
The call comes to us in the Sermon on the Mount that we are to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, living in such a way that is distinctive and different. The phrase we've used is this: a transformed heart and an informed mind produce a radical life.
We can get trapped in that in all sorts of ways. We talked about some of them last week. We can become very religious and forego a relationship with God, moving into religion rather than relationship. We can begin to serve Him out of duty. What is important is that God has the affection of our heart.
I used an illustration last week that I love. When we're taking care of the grandkids, one of them will often get hold of something they shouldn't be into. My tendency is to say, "No, no, no" — which solves nothing and injects friction and tension into the relationship. Susan will simply come over, take whatever they're playing with, remove it, and give them something else that captures their heart and imagination. That is what God has to do with us. He takes away our affection for our sin, our own agenda, and living our own way, and He replaces those with an affection for Him and His agenda. We become driven by what God wants and what pleases Him, rather than our own likes, dislikes, and pleasures.
God Is the God of the Second Chance
Points four and five are the two points for today. Point four is that God is the God of the second chance. Point five is a counterbalance to point one: obedience brings blessing.
I want to really focus on point four. Look at what happens as we close out 1 Samuel chapter 7. Samuel comes in verse 3 and speaks to the nation of Israel. He says, "If you return to the Lord with all your heart and you remove the foreign gods and goddesses from among you and direct your heart to the Lord and serve Him alone, He will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines."
Obedience Results in God's Blessing
The sons of Israel removed Baal and Ashtaroth — the gods and the goddesses — and served the Lord alone. Samuel gathered the people together and prayed to the Lord for them. In verse six, they gathered together, drew water, and poured it out. This is a picture of confession and sacrifice. They fasted and they indeed repented, saying, "We have sinned against the Lord."
The point I want to make now is that obedience results in God's blessing. The Philistines heard that the sons of Israel had gathered together and went up against them. When the sons of Israel heard it, they were afraid, and they said to Samuel, "Do not cease to cry to the Lord our God for us, that He may deliver us from the hand of the Philistines" (1 Samuel 7:9).
Samuel makes sacrifice and burnt offerings and cries to the Lord of Israel, and the Lord answers. The Philistines draw near and battle against Israel. But verse ten tells us that the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day against the Philistines, confused them, so that they were routed before Israel. The men of Israel go out, pursue the Philistines, and strike them down.
Then Samuel, in verse twelve, marks the moment. He takes a stone and says, "Thus far the Lord has helped us." He marks the place. In verse thirteen, the Philistines are subdued and do not come anymore within the borders of Israel. The hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel, the cities the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored, and there was peace between Israel and the Amorites.
The Pattern of Wandering and Restoration
Here is the pattern we see within the nation of Israel. They are in right relationship with God, they begin to sin and wander away, God disciplines and chastises them, they turn back to Him, and He restores them. Our fifth point was that when we are in obedience to God, there is a sense of blessing in our life — a rightness in our life. Not necessarily that circumstances are going to be smooth, but we may have a very clear understanding of them.
We are going to experience His grace and mercy and peace. We are going to experience Him even if the circumstances are not removed — His presence right there in them with us. We will see Him, understand that, and experience this extraordinary blessing as He begins to work in our lives.
In chapters three through seven, we see Israel sin, wander away, face God's judgment, and then return to Him. But the point I want to camp on is this: God is a God of the second chance.
God's Patience and Israel's Judgment
There is no question that Israel has blown this big time. They sinned in a mighty way before God. He had been very patient with them over an extended period of time as they sinned, but finally judgment came. He had told Eli through Samuel in chapter two that there would be a sign — the judgment would come when both of Eli's sons were killed on the same day.
If you turn back to 1 Samuel chapter four, the battle has gone on and Eli receives a reconnaissance report from the front line. It is verse seventeen. The one who brought the news replied with four things: Israel has fled before the Philistines; there has been a great slaughter among the people — as many as four thousand killed, as we see in verse two; your two sons are dead; and the ark of God has been taken. That report about his sons would have resonated with Eli. He would have understood that the judgment of God was now upon them. It was more than he could stand. He fell over backwards and died.
The nation of Israel is in total disarray as a result of their sin. They are defeated by their enemies, and the judgment from the Philistines becomes a picture of God's judgment against them. But God is not done with them. God continues to work in their midst.
Samuel and the Call to Genuine Repentance
Remember what we observed: even as we watch Eli and his family, his sons and their leadership, blow this completely, there is always a small parenthetical insert that speaks about Samuel — Samuel is growing, Samuel is being called, Samuel is becoming the man of God. Now God raises him up.
In 1 Samuel chapter seven, verse three, Samuel calls the people to repentance. If you return to the Lord with all your heart, get rid of the idols and the false gods in your life, serve God and Him alone — He will deliver you. And we see that there is genuine repentance.
Genuine repentance, by the way, is not just tears. It is not simply saying "I'm sorry." There must be evidence from it. Paul talks about false and genuine repentance in 2 Corinthians chapter seven. There is a repentance that looks real — it has tears and sadness all around it — but there is no behavioral change. That is not the case with the nation of Israel. Their words of repentance and their cries of repentance are matched by a life that has changed, demonstrated through fasting and prayer and turning away from false gods to the one true God.
It Is Never Too Late
The message here is that it is never, never too late for God to work in your life. If you are here today and you have wandered away from Him — you are a Christian — it is never too late to come back to Christ. Or if you are here and you are not a follower of Christ, perhaps during communion you honestly dealt before God and realized you are not a follower of His. That may be an accurate assessment of where you are, but you do not have to stay there. It is never too late to come to Christ for the very first time. He is the God of the second chance.
Failure Is Never Fatal
We are like the nation of Israel. You can read this story and get pretty self-righteous. You can go, how dumb are these guys? How much do they need to see? How can they blow it time after time after time? But if you can set aside that self-righteousness, perhaps we could ask the same question about you. How many times do you need to see God work? You've seen Him work. You've seen Him save you. You've seen Him deliver you. You can point back in your life at specific times when He worked in undeniable ways, and yet you turn from Him.
Here is the theme we'll hang on to for the next half hour: failure is never fatal. Failure is never fatal. By the way, success is never permanent either. You see this with financial advertisements — "We return 17%, 18%, 22%" — and then, in the fine print: "Past performance doesn't guarantee future results." My favorites are the weight loss ads. There will always be someone like Becky from Wisconsin, who goes through whatever the program is and comes out looking thinner, but right there in two-point print it says: "Results may vary." Past performance doesn't guarantee future results.
I want to stay on the encouraging side of this. Maybe you're here today and you think, man, this is me. I hope that in the next thirty minutes you feel an incredible sense of encouragement. I don't care how big you've blown it. I don't care what your assessment of your life is or how bad you think it is — God is there. If you'll come to Him in repentance and faith, if you'll come back to Him or come to Him for the very first time, there is hope.
We are going to look at three illustrations from Scripture, and we will spend a good portion of time on all three. I'll tell you up front: all three make the same point.
The Story of Jonah
Let's go to the book of Jonah — page 657 in the pew Bible. If you don't have a pew Bible, start turning to the right. When you see Isaiah and Jeremiah, slow down. Move through Lamentations and keep going until you reach the smaller books. Jonah is just four chapters long.
The book thrusts you right into the middle of the story with the strangest ending imaginable. It begins: the word of the Lord came to Jonah. The word of the Lord came to Jonah and said, "Arise and go to Nineveh, a great city, and cry out against it, because it is a wicked city." Jonah heard the word, he rose, and he fled to Tarshish. He goes to Joppa and boards a boat headed in exactly the opposite direction.
Let me give you your geographic bearings. It is as though God said, "Jonah, go to Flagstaff," and Jonah said, "No problem," and headed to Tucson. He didn't go just a few degrees off. He didn't go to Williams, or toward Vegas, or toward LA. He went in exactly the opposite direction. God didn't stutter or stammer — Jonah knew exactly what God wanted. He simply didn't want to do it. He didn't want to do it for a variety of reasons. It was dangerous work. He had no affection for the Ninevites whatsoever. They were a wicked city. So he heads the other way and gets on a boat.
Verse 4: "The Lord hurled a great wind on the sea and a great storm on the sea, so that the ship was about to break up." The sailors are terrified and cry out to their own gods, each one of them. But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship, laid down, and fallen asleep. The captain approaches him and says, "How can this possibly be? How are you sleeping? Get up, call on your God. Perhaps your God will be concerned about us, and we won't perish."
The sailors then decide to cast lots to determine which man among them is the source of the problem. The lot fell on Jonah. Verse 8: "They said, 'Tell us, on whose account has this calamity struck us? What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? What are your people?'" Jonah answers, "I am a Hebrew. I fear the Lord God of heaven" — not enough to obey Him, I would add — "who made the sea and the dry land." They became extremely frightened, because they understood who this God of Israel was. They already knew he was fleeing from the Lord, because he had told them. Interestingly enough, Jonah's testimony before these lost sailors was simply: I am running away from God.
They ask what they should do to calm the sea. Jonah answers in verse 12: "Pick me up and throw me into the sea and the sea will be calm, for I know that on account of me this great storm has come upon you." But they don't want to do that. They are afraid, and they begin to row harder. The storm only grows stronger. They call on the Lord, pleading that they not perish for this man's life. Finally, in verse 15, they pick up Jonah, throw him into the sea, and the sea stops its raging.
Something significant takes place at that moment. The men fear the Lord greatly. They offer sacrifice to the Lord and make a vow. And the Lord, who had already used the storm, is now about to use a great fish. Verse 17: the great fish swallowed Jonah, and Jonah was in the stomach of the fish for three days and three nights.
We now come to Jonah's prayer in chapter two.
Jonah's Second Chance
God commands yet another supernatural event in verse 10 of chapter two. He commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto the dry land. That is the history. Look at chapter three, verse one: "And the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time." He is a God of a second chance. He gives Jonah the same message: go to Nineveh, cry out against this city, its wickedness is before Me.
Jonah arose this time and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. It is an exceedingly great city — three days' walk to cross this massive city filled with sin. Jonah proclaims the prophecy of the Lord, and the people respond. They respond all the way up through verse six to the king, so that the king, all the people, and all the animals are repenting before God.
In verse seven, the king issues this proclamation: "By the decree of the king and his nobles: do not let man, beast, herd, or flock taste anything. Do not let them eat or drink. Both man and beast must be covered in sackcloth." This is a picture of repentance. The king says in verse nine, "Who knows? Who knows? Maybe God will turn. Maybe God will deliver us."
God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked ways, and He relented concerning the calamity which He had declared against them. So here is what has happened: God called Jonah to go to Nineveh. Jonah went the other way, was thrown into the sea, swallowed by a great fish, spent three days inside, had this encounter with God, and was vomited up. The word of the Lord came a second time, he went to Nineveh, preached the word of God, and the people responded.
So Jonah must be pretty happy at this point. But chapter four, verse two tells us: "It greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry." He hates these people. What he is essentially saying is, "Here is the problem, God — I did not want to go to them, because I knew You were just the kind of God who would save people like that."
The Strange Ending of Jonah
The book ends in a striking way. God asks, "Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 people who do not know the difference between their right and left hand?" They are like children — they do not know anything. Would you have them perish, Jonah? And of course, Jonah's answer is yes. It is a very strange ending to the story.
After you read verse eleven, you find yourself thinking there has to be more — but there isn't. My sense is that because Jonah writes the book, that is the last word. Jonah does sense God working in this, but the point remains: in spite of Jonah, and as Jonah comes to his senses — however reluctantly — the word of God comes to him a second time.
Running from God
You may be just like Jonah. You may be running and running and running. God may be asking you the very same question He asked Jonah in chapter four, verse four: "Do you have good reason to be angry?" I encounter so many people who are so angry about so many different things. Answering that question is actually quite helpful, because most often it leads to the realization that somehow you think God owes you something. For whatever reason, that anger has pulled you away from God — you have wandered from Him and you are no longer obedient to Him.
But He is the God of the second chance. And if you come to Him — this is so important to me personally — I spent thirty years of my life living entirely for myself. That is a very hard habit to break. Living entirely for myself meant that every person, every relationship, every thing in my life existed for me to use for my own benefit.
When you live thirty years that way, you leave a whole path of destruction behind you. It is not just destruction in your behavior in a given moment, but a whole life of destruction and broken relationships. It never really occurred to me that God would save me. And then when He did, it never really occurred to me that God could use me. But He did.
That is not the end of the failures, by the way. There have been many of those failures right here in front of you. But God does that, doesn't He? God is the God of a second chance.
Peter: Up Close and Still Falling
Let me take you into the New Testament, to the Gospel of Luke, chapter twenty-two. We meet a man named Peter, who has had every opportunity to see Jesus work firsthand, up close and personal. He has heard all the messages and seen the great signs. He is part of what you might call the executive team — among the apostles, there is a smaller circle of Peter, James, and John whom Jesus periodically takes aside for special times of prayer, teaching, and encounter with God.
Peter was there at the Mount of Transfiguration, where Moses and Abraham appeared alongside Jesus in His transformed body. Peter has been present for all of it. As Jesus begins to reveal to the apostles that He must die — that He is going to Jerusalem and will suffer greatly — Peter responds boldly. Peter says he will go with Jesus and die for Him.
Jesus responds with something both respectful and sobering. He acknowledges the sentiment but tells Peter it is not going to happen the way Peter imagines. In fact, Jesus tells him he will not even be faithful through the night — he will deny Him three times. Peter insists that is impossible. He knows what he is made of. There is no way. But Jesus says Peter is not going to make it through the night. And Luke records what happens next.
The Denial
Having arrested Jesus, they led Him away and brought Him to the house of the high priest. Peter was following at a distance. After they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard, they sat down together, and Peter sat with this group of people. A servant girl saw Peter as he sat in the firelight, looked at him, and said, "This man was with him, too." But Peter, in verse 57, denied it, saying, "Woman, I don't know him."
A little later, another saw him and said, "You're one of them, too." And Peter said, "Man, I am not." After about an hour had passed, another man began to insist, saying, "Certainly this man was with him, for he is a Galilean." Probably his dialect gave him away. And Peter says, in Luke 22, verse 60, "Man, I don't know what you're talking about." And immediately, while he was still speaking, a rooster crowed.
Now Luke tells us something here that none of the other gospel writers tell us. He says the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Over the years I have tried to imagine myself in Peter's spot at that moment, because it is all coming together for him. He remembered the word of the Lord — that before a rooster crows today, you will deny Me three times. There is this eye-to-eye moment between Peter and Jesus, and I cannot imagine the intensity of it.
When my girls were small and I really needed to get their attention, I would pick them up, hold them right out in front of me, and say, "Look at me." That had to be a very helpless feeling, legs flopping around. Now they do it to me. But imagine that moment as Jesus looks into Peter's eyes and Peter looks back.
Verse 62 says Peter went out and wept bitterly. He lamented. He grieved as one who had lost a loved one to death. It is a moment of poignant grief. You talk about blowing it big time — you cannot blow it any bigger than that. Face to face with Jesus, having said he would go with Him, even die with Him, and then: "I don't know him. I don't know him. I don't know him." And he weeps bitterly.
Peter and Judas: Two Very Different Responses
If we can hit the pause button for a moment, because I want to come right back to Peter — in my mind, there is not a ton of difference between what Peter did and what Judas did. Not a ton, other than Judas made some money out of it. But they had two very different reactions to their failure, primarily because one is a child of God — Peter — and Judas is not.
The Empty Tomb
A couple of days later, at the discovery of the empty tomb, turn over to the Gospel of John — just the next book over, at the very end of chapter 20. Mary Magdalene discovers that the tomb is empty, and in verse two she runs to Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved — that is John himself, who is writing this gospel. She tells them they have taken away the Lord out of the tomb and they do not know where they have laid Him.
So Peter and the other disciple arose and went to the tomb, running together. The younger one gets there first but waits out of respect. He looks in, and then Peter follows and enters the tomb — typical Peter, he is in. They saw the linen wrappings and the face cloth, which had been around His head, not lying with the other wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Something happens here: John sees and believes at this point, though they still do not fully understand the scripture that He had been raised.
Restored and Recommissioned
As John finishes his gospel, Peter has an amazing encounter with the risen Christ. He sees Christ and actually has a dialogue in which three times Jesus says, "Do you love me?" and then gives him a command: "Tend my lambs, shepherd my sheep, tend my sheep."
A Transformed Peter at Pentecost
Keep turning to the right, and the next book is Luke's second volume — the book of Acts. Luke wrote both of them. We fast-forward about a month and a half, and we see a very different Peter. Pentecost has come, the Holy Spirit has filled him, and he stands in chapter two, verse 14, and begins to deliver an incredible sermon.
He speaks in verse 22 about Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to the people by God through the signs and wonders they saw Him perform in their midst. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter one, verse 22, that what the Jews wanted was a sign — and they had seen the signs, they had seen the wonders, performed right before them. Peter then declares that this is the man who was delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, whom they nailed to the cross — but God raised Him again, putting an end to the agony of death, because it was impossible for Him to be held in its power. That is the Easter message, and Peter delivers it in this incredible sermon recorded from verse 15 through verse 36.
Look at the response. When they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "What should we do?" And Peter said, "Repent and be baptized, each one of you, for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the Holy Spirit." Verse 41 tells us that those who received the word were baptized, and that day about 3,000 souls were added to the kingdom of God.
Just a month and a half earlier, Peter's reputation was this: "I never knew him. I never knew him. I never knew him." And even today, when we do word association with Peter's name, we too often leave him in the Gospels and never let him get to the book of Acts to see the new creation. Just like you and me — a man with a transformed heart and an informed mind whose life radically changes. He begins to heal, his reputation spreads everywhere, and the authorities call him in to answer for it.
Peter's Bold Proclamation
In Acts chapter four, verse seven, the authorities asked Peter where he got the power for what he had done. Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, answered: "Rulers, elders of the people, if we are on trial today for the benefit we have done for the sick man" — and the lame man is standing right there, walking — "as to how this man has been made well, let it be known to all of you, to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by this name this man stands before you in good health. He is the stone which was rejected by the builders, but became the chief cornerstone."
Then Peter, without hesitation — you can almost hear the power in his voice — declares: "There is salvation in no one else. There is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved." And the authorities don't know what to do with this.
What they see in Peter is what they should see in you. They didn't see diplomas. They didn't see a long history of religious activities. You see it in verse 13: "Now they observed the confidence of Peter and John. They understood they were uneducated and untrained. But they were amazed, and they began to recognize them as having been with Jesus."
When people see you, do they realize you have been with Jesus — His fingerprints all over you in a recognizable way? That is what you are called to: to be the light of the world, to let your good works shine in such a way that people see them. There is something visibly distinctive about God's people.
The authorities conclude that they cannot do much and decide to release Peter and John, but they order them to stop talking about Jesus. Peter's response in verse 19 is essentially: that is not going to happen. "For we," verse 20, "cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard."
The Transformation of Peter
What an amazing story this is. "I never knew Him. I never knew Him. I never knew Him." And then, a month and a half later, he becomes this extraordinary instrument that God uses to bring thousands of people into a saving relationship with Christ. Peter is a stunning example of what God can do through someone who has failed — because He is the God of the second chance.
John Mark: Another Second Chance
There is one more person whose story is very similar, though the circumstances are a little different. It is found in Acts chapter 15, but we need to stop at chapter 13 on the way. Acts 13 covers the first missionary journey, where Paul sets out with Barnabas. In verse 5, they take with them a helper named John. Then in verse 13 of that same chapter, we discover that John had left them. We do not really know the circumstances — we only know that at that point, John is gone.
When Paul and Barnabas decide to go on a second missionary journey in Acts chapter 15, turn there to verse 36. Paul says to Barnabas, "Let us return and visit the brethren in every city in which we proclaimed the word of the Lord and see how they are doing." The plan is to go back, see what God is doing, encourage the people, and perhaps even learn from them.
But Barnabas wanted to take John — the same John from chapter 13, also called Mark — the one who had left them. Paul kept insisting they should not take him along. His reasoning: Mark had deserted them at Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. Eugene Peterson's paraphrase captures Paul's position plainly in verse 38: "Paul wouldn't have any of it. He wasn't about to take along a quitter who, as soon as the going got tough, jumped ship."
Barnabas pushes back, and a sharp disagreement arises between the two. In verse 39, Barnabas takes Mark and sails to Cyprus, while Paul chooses Silas and heads toward Syria and Cilicia. If that were all we had about John Mark, we would be left debating who was right. And this episode is actually a profound lesson for us: two godly people can look at the same circumstance and reach two very different conclusions.
Two Perspectives on a Failure
Barnabas looks at John Mark and says, in effect: I understand exactly what happened. This was very difficult work. He was a young man. He has extraordinary potential, and God is beginning to work in his life. Barnabas had likely sat down with Mark, heard him out, and concluded that the situation was entirely understandable. His verdict: take him with us — he is of great value.
Paul's perspective on the exact same situation is different. He reasons: we have been down this road before. We tried this once with this man and it did not work out. This is tough work, and he cannot be babysitting someone while trying to press forward in that work. No, thank you.
So a sharp disagreement arises. It is not the way God would ideally want things, and yet the outcome is that there are now two missionary teams. Unfortunately, they are not in sync with one another. But that is not the end of the story.
Paul's Final Words About Mark
Turn to 2 Timothy chapter four — Paul's last written communication to the person he loves more than anyone else. He is at the end of his life, and that is where we pick it up in verse 6: "I am already being poured out as a drink offering; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. In the future there is laid up for me a 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."
It is impossible to read verse seven without pausing on Paul's assessment of his own life. You have heard people say they want to hear at the end —
The God of the Second Chance
Paul's assessment of his own life is clear: "I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith." Now he is closing this letter. He writes, "Make every effort to come to me soon," and then he mentions Demas. This is the third time we meet Demas in Paul's writing. In the previous two mentions, Demas is spoken of in a positive way — he is part of the group saying goodbye, one of those Paul lists when closing a letter with greetings.
But this third mention is not positive. "Demas, having loved this present world, has deserted me. He's gone to Thessalonica. Everybody's gone." Verse 11 continues: "Only Luke is with me." Love for the present world can pull you away even from the Apostle Paul himself.
Then comes this remarkable instruction: "Pick up Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful for service." Paul is not simply saying he wants to say hello to Mark. He is saying Mark is useful — this is the very man Paul once refused to take with him. Because God is the God of the second chance, and failure is never fatal.
Hope Is Always in Short Supply
There was a recent election centered on the themes of change and hope. What we are talking about today is real change and real hope. I came across a piece by a writer who covers a great deal of business content. He was discussing how marketers essentially sell hope, and his reasoning was this: people need hope, they run out of it, and it must be replenished. Hope is always in short supply.
He went on to say that the magical thing about selling hope is that it makes everything else work better — every day is better, every project works better, every relationship feels better. And if you can actually deliver on the hope you sell, there will be a line to your door. Hope increases productivity. Hope needs no justification.
There is one great hope for you, for me, for us, for the world — and that is Jesus. One author writes that true Christians flee to Christ as their only hope. A mark of spiritual maturity is that we are no longer constantly worrying about our own spirituality, but rather we focus on Christ and His accomplishments — on the gospel itself.
Two Ways to Read the Bible
Tim Keller describes two ways to read the Bible. The first way is to read it as being basically about you — about what you have to do in order to be right with God. If you read it that way, you will never have a sure, certain hope, because you will always be asking whether you are living up to it. You will never be sure.
The other way is to read the Bible as though it is all about Jesus. Every single thing is not about you and what you must do to make yourself right with God, but about what He has done — and that makes you absolutely right with Him. It is as though Jesus is saying: unless you can read the Bible rightly, unless you can understand salvation by grace, you will never have sure, certain hope. But once you understand it is all about Him, then you can have peace, you can know your future is guaranteed, and you can face anything.
When we talk about preaching the gospel to ourselves every day, we are talking about rethinking the way many of us have understood the Christian faith. We thought of the gospel as that thing we believe once, and once we believe it, we are in — we are a child of the King. But we come to understand that it is not only that. It certainly has that component, but the gospel is also what sustains us each and every day. We are needy people.
Losers Chasing Losers
A friend of mine has a father who is not merely neutral toward the Christian faith — he hates it, and he hates Christians. There is much about what we do and why we do it that he cannot understand. One thing that makes no sense to him at all is missions. Because he is antagonistic, here is how he describes it: "Losers chasing losers — guys who can't cut it in this culture who go off to another second-rate world and try to save those people."
At first, you might feel insulted by that. But I stopped and thought about it, and said: that is exactly what the Christian faith is. A bunch of losers like you and me, chasing down other losers, with the only thing that brings hope into a world that is hopeless. We all fall short of God's glory, and there is nothing we can do about that on our own. But failure is not fatal. He is the God of the second chance.
An Invitation to Hope
Perhaps you are here today, and when we took communion you said, "No thank you — I don't believe this, I'm not part of this." You do not have to remain in that condition. You can come to Him in repentance and faith. You do not need a priest, you do not need a rabbi, you do not even need me. You can call out from right where you are seated and say: "I believe. I have sinned. I am separated from God. Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead." Why? Because He is the one true God, and everything He said was true. You can have hope. You can know where you will spend eternity.
And there is something more. The gospel does not only apply to dealing with our sin — it applies to every area of life. There is an article that works through this under fourteen headings, making the case that the gospel speaks to our approach to discouragement, the physical world, love, relationships, suffering, sexuality, family, self-control, race, culture, non-Christians, human authority, human dignity, guilt, self-image, joy, and humor. The conclusion of the author follows from all of this.
The Gospel as the Answer
All problems, personal and social, come from a failure to use the gospel in a radical way — that is, as Paul writes in Galatians 2:14, to line up with the truth of the gospel. The gospel is the answer. The gospel is the means of hope.
Maybe you are here, you took communion, and you would say you are a child of the King — and you indeed are. And you have blown it. You feel distance. Do you understand that it is you who has moved, not Him?
Here is a sentence that has been very helpful to me in the last year: there is nothing I can do and no time in which God is ever going to love me more, and there is no way in which He is ever going to love me less. I am His child. You are His child. What He does is change the affections of my heart, and all of a sudden my behavior changes. Why? Because I am in love with different things. I want what God wants.
Failure Is Never Fatal
Here is the message of the day: God is a God of second chances. Failure is never fatal. You may have blown it in fourteen thousand ways, and you can come to Him. And it is not just come to Him and you are forgiven and that is it — He will use you in extraordinary ways as you obey Him and fall in love with Him. The transformed heart and the informed mind produce a radically changed life.
Father, thank You that You are a God of the second chance, because I need it — a third and a fourth and a fifth and on and on. Thank You that You love us with a perfect love and that You have saved us and delivered us from our sin. God, I pray for those who are here today who are maybe for the very first time wrestling through what this means, that You would move them to come and to talk to somebody here today. For those who have blown it and would acknowledge it, may they understand that there is forgiveness available to them. Thank You for saving us and bringing us into right relationship with You. Let this gospel transform our lives and how we live. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.