Games People Play
Life is NOT a Game!
II Timothy 2
Think with me for a moment about all the games we play over the course of a lifetime.
When we are newborns, we play “Peek-a-boo” and “Patty Cake” with our parents, grandparents, uncles, and everyone else. Remember? Well, maybe you don’t remember someone playing it with you, but I’ll venture that you’ve played it with some baby.
As we grow, games continue to be a part of our lives. We get toys that encourage us to put round pegs in round holes, and square pegs in square holes. As we grow, some of them come with timers to see if we can get all the pegs in before the time is up.
Then we graduate to games like “Candyland,” and “Chutes and Ladders.” Games that teach us to count, read, follow rules, and win or lose with grace.
But the games don’t end as we grow. In our teen years we play card games, board games, and of course video games. Physical games like “hide and seek,” “tag,” “kick-ball,” baseball, football and basketball become a part of our lives.
In our adult years we continue to play some of those games, eventually choosing to watch others, and begin to revert back to board games. Computer games are very popular among adults. I recently saw an e-mail that read, “Before computer Solitaire, how did people fake looking busy at their desks?” Some adults have even been known to spend quite a bit of money on adult computer games and adult toys, like paint-ball guns and radio-controlled airplanes!
Retired couples play games in their homes, old men play checkers on porches, one of my memories of my grandparents home in West Virginia was of them playing a card game called “Tong,” or Dominoes with my great-aunt and uncle.
There was a game that was popular when I was a young boy called “The Game Of Life.” It is really a very good game. You start off with a car, and you immediately have to decide if you will insure it. Then you decide if you will go to college, or start in a career right away. You make your plans, and move through the board, and as you go along, you have to deal with real-life incidents. You get paid, you save, you have unexpected crisis that arise. You get married, you have kids, you get fired, and hired, you try to make it to the end and still have something to show for all your efforts.
It is a good game for young people to play, because it causes us to think about the consequences of the decisions we make in life.
And we haven’t even begun to talk about game shows on television! “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” is now on 5 nights a week, and all five episodes make the top ten most watched shows list every week. Add in Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Hollywood Squares, and a host of others, and you begin to wonder what else is on! Let’s be honest, we love games! They are a part of our life from beginning to end.
No wonder Gatorade has come up with an advertising slogan that states, “Life is a game, drink it up!”
With all the games we play from childhood through our adult years, it’s not surprising that sometimes we begin to think that maybe Gatorade is right. Maybe life is just a game. I think that many people in our culture have begun to believe that they can just “give it their best shot, roll the dice, do their best, and collect their winnings at the end.” Think about it. Much of the philosophy of our day tells us that if we don’t do so well, make a mess of our lives, and even lose at the game of life, it’s OK, because we will get another chance later. Right?
The Bible tells us in Hebrews that “it is appointed unto man once to die, and after that, the judgment. In the Game of Life, there is something called “the day of reckoning,” when you have to settle up your life’s obligations, to see how you’ve done – the Bible tells us that there will be a day of reckoning for each of us.
This morning I want to take you to the final thoughts of a man who was fast approaching that day of reckoning. Paul was, at the time he wrote this letter, in a Roman jail, actually it was more of a dungeon. The conditions were deplorable. The years of persecution and near-death experiences he had endured as a church planter had caused him to age well beyond his years. It was getting cold. In the last few verses of this last letter to flow from his pen, he asks Timothy, his “son in the faith,” to bring him his cloak. You can sense from his writing that he can feel the cold fingers of death drawing close as he feels the cold wind in the dungeon. He writes, “I am already be poured out like a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand.” And before death comes, Paul has some last minute instructions and warnings to give his spiritual son.
There is a lot of emotion in this letter. And I have read this portion over and over in the last couple of weeks in preparation for today’s message, and I have come to the conclusion that we simply can not do any better than to hear it from the pen of Paul himself. So please, don’t think of this as a dis-service. I am going to read for you a large section of this letter. Please hear the emotion of the writer, the weight of the words, and then we will discuss it a little afterwards. You can follow along in the Bibles that are under the seats in front of you, or follow on the screen in front. Or you may wish to close your eyes, and listen to it as if this were a letter written to you, personally from Paul, giving you personal instruction for your day-to-day life.
[Read II Timothy 2:1-4:5]
Does that sound like a game to anyone? You know, from the time we are 3 years old, until (for some of us) we reach 50, some of us like to play “army.” It starts out playing Combat! in the back yard, with pieces of tree branch or wood sticks, and ends up being paintball in the woods, with semi automatic weapons, but it’s still play.
But you know, I’ll bet that those who have been in real battle never have the desire to play at it again. Those like Terry Carr, who saw friends killed in the Tet Offensive in Saigon, or Bob Danielson, who fought in the South Pacific in WW II, or others who have been in the real thing, realize that there is not play in war – there is a real enemy, and he shoots real ammunition, and the wounds are terrible, and the cost is measured in lives, not paint blotches.
Paul says that the Christian life is not a game! We are soldiers! We dare not take this battle lightly! Paul gives us three orders in this portion of scripture, at least three that I want to point out this morning; there are perhaps other ways to divide it. We are told to endure, we are told to evade, and we are told to embrace.
1. We are told to endure.
There are three examples that are given of faithful endurance. The first is a soldier. We must be single minded in our walk of faith. Can you imagine the effectiveness of an army where the soldiers were not trained, not disciplined, not concerned for their fellow soldiers? Imagine an army where the soldiers sleep in their own bed every night, work 40 or 50 hours a week, spend their weekends getting drunk and partying and once a week spend an hour sleeping through a training meeting. Not a very effective army is it? We are called to be faithful soldiers. To be not be entangled in the affairs of civilian life – but striving to please our Commander!
The second example of faithful endurance is an athlete. Tell a serious athlete that he is just playing, and he will be greatly offended. Those who take their challenge seriously put in hours of training, study and hard work. They don’t work out an hour a week and expect to compete. They don’t fill themselves with a steady diet of fats and sugary treats and expect to win. They have committed every part of their lives to the effort, and discipline themselves to be victorious.
The third example of faithfulness is the farmer. There are plenty of examples of hardworking, enduring farmers all around us. They don’t take vacations; they hardly take a day off! I remember a cousin of Carol’s who had a 10,000-acre cattle ranch in Montana. When he was going to get married in Billings, his dad offered them $10,000 cash to elope so that he wouldn’t have to leave the ranch for a day to travel to the wedding! You know farmers like that – men and women who get up at 4:00am to milk every day, rain or shine, snow or ice, whether they feel like it or not. They are faithful, they endure. And we are called to do the same.
We are called to be faithful soldiers, dedicated athletes, and hard-working farmers – 24/7/365 – giving our all to the cause of Christ.
2. We are told to evade.
Paul tells us that we are to stay away from certain things. In verse 16, he tells us to “shun profane and idle babblings, for the will increase to more ungodliness.” Paul gives an illustration of such babblings – Hymenaeus and Philetus were going around spreading heresy about the resurrection. Folks, there are lots of false teachings that are being dressed up to look like church teachings. We need to be very careful about what we buy into. Some of the stuff that you will see on television from so-called “prophets” is outright heresy.
Paul continues this in chapter three where he tells us to evade what my Study Bible labels “perilous men.” These are people who “creep” into homes and “make captives” of people who are week. These are a frightening bunch, and each time I read this chapter I am chilled by its message. Listen to the description of them again: [3:1-9]
Paul says clearly “Turn away from these people!” Have nothing to do with them! These are folks who have all the trappings of “religion,” but there is no substance! There is no power; there is no real knowledge of the truth!
The second thing Paul tells us to evade is found in verses 22 & 23, “flee youthful lusts… and avoid foolish and ignorant disputes.” I believe in the context of this paragraph, that Paul is calling for those of us in the body of Christ to put aside the petty arguments that cause us to beat up on our fellow soldiers of Christ. He says that [vs. 24] “a servant of the Lord must be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance.” If there are those who are in error, we are to keep our head. It is not our job to argue them back into the Kingdom of God. It is God who will chose to grant them repentance. We are to flee that desire that burns in us as immature people to always prove ourselves right, and simply gently present the truth – allow God to do the work.
3. We are told to embrace.
In the midst of all these false teachings and false teachers that we are told to evade, avoid and turn away from, how do you know what to believe?
Paul answers that question by telling us what we should embrace:
Look at verse 15 of chapter 2,
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
Personally, I like the King James Version of this verse better,
“Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”
If you are solely trusting in the words of some teacher to give you spiritual truth, and are not studying the Word of God for yourself, then you are just playing at this thing called Christianity. You are a prime target for the enemy to capture you and lead you away, like those described in verse 26, “that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.”
We are called to embrace the Word of God. If this Book is not at the center of our lives, then we are just playin’. Study this word! Know it, memorize it, study it, and study it again! It is those who carry this book, and display this book, and yet do not know this book, who “have a form of godliness but deny its power!”
Paul reaffirms this in verse 3:14 & 15, when he says, “But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of …from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” Continue in the Word – remain in the Scriptures.
Endure.
Evade.
Embrace.
Words not to a player, but to a faithful soldier, a disciplined athlete, a dedicated worker.
You know, folks, some of us are just playing what we thing is the game of life. We have a sense that we’ll just give it our best shot, roll the dice, and hope for a good outcome. I know that some of us here are playing the Christian game. Putting on the show, the appearance of godliness, but it’s not real. It that’s you, you’re in grave danger. Because the consequences of losing are eternal, and there’s no mulligan, no do-over, no second chance. You get one shot at it, you better get it right.
If you do not know Jesus as your personal Savior, if you are not walking in fellowship with Him, then today is the time to quit playin’, and start livin’.
Life is NOT a game.