Paul and Timothy

I invite you to turn to second Timothy and to chapter 1 page 995 in the church Bibles as you're turning there let me thank you for the your prayers as I spoke at this pastors conference this past week in Portland Oregon and as we were together as pastors you know we have the opportunity to talk about all kinds of things if you wonder what pastors talk about when they're all together there's not usually about the weather we talk about how when you preach to your congregation you don't really know who's there you don't know the condition of their souls in fact you're entirely dependent upon God the Holy Spirit to apply the word to the lives of individuals and then thinking along those lines I went and rediscovered for myself words of wisdom from William Perkins Perkins was a Puritan he lived at the end of the 16th century into the beginning of the 17th he died in 1602 and he actually identified seven categories of people who would be present in a congregation as the Word of God was taught and I thought I'd just share these categories with you you might be able to find yourself in one of them first of all he said there will be non-christians who know nothing about the gospel and don't care secondly there will be non-christians who know nothing about the gospel and are teachable thirdly those who know what the gospel is but have never been humbled to see their need of a savior for those who have been humbled some in the early stages of seeing their need others who see that they need salvation not merely improvement and are convinced that only Christ can save them five genuine believers who need to be taught six backsliders who are in that condition either as a result of failing to be taught or as a result of failure to live consistently in the light of what they have been taught 7 a mixed congregation of believers and unbelievers well who is sufficient for such a task only God the Holy Spirit is able to navigate through all of that and he does so by the word so we read the opening verses of 2 Timothy chapter 1 Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God according to the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus 2 Timothy my beloved child grace mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord I thank God whom I serve as did my ancestors with a clear conscience as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day as I remember your tears I long to see you that I may be filled with joy I am reminded of your sincere faith a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now I am sure dwells in you as well for this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control amen now father with our Bibles open before us we pray for the help of the Holy Spirit that we might both speak and listen properly savingly to this end we seek you in Jesus name Amen well the crucial moment in a relay race is of course when the baton or what you refer to as the baton this is a very kind of I can't really say it like that but when the baton is being passed from one runner to the next that transitional moment and Olympic gold has been lost in a matter of just a few meters as a result of a fumble in that moment as we read and study second Timothy together now as we begin this if keep in mind that picture then we will be on track and if fir baton we think gospel then we will be really secure in our understanding the handoff that is taking place here in second Timothy is from Paul the Apostle to Timothy his young child in the faith Paul has run his race he tells us that at the end of his letter and he has kept going all the way through the tape and he is absolutely convinced that Timothy must do the same and so part of what he's doing is he's urging him to make sure that he realizes that this is no walk in the park that there is suffering involved and so on he wants Timothy to do what he says in Philippians 3 to press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called him heavenward in Christ Jesus and in keeping with the standard format of the time he identifies himself by way of his introduction when we write letters we identify ourselves in the conclusion you don't know who the letters from unless you turn over to the back page or Luke down to the bottom of the page but in the writing of the time the writer identified himself in the heading and so Paul identifies himself here Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus very easy for us just a pass over that same way as we understand he's an apostle of Christ Jesus but I want to pause on it for just a moment because some of us have really misguided views about what Apostleship actually is some of us who have come from a Roman Catholic background are still convinced that the a post olicity is two-faced to be found in the sea of Rome and that the present Pope is in fact the great apostle others who have come from a Pentecostal or charismatic background that may have actually referred to your pastor or one of your pastors as an apostle which is really unfortunate because he isn't or he wasn't and at best to refer to himself in that way as misguided and at worst is really unhelpful or you say you better keep going here and tell us what an apostle really is that's what I'm planning on doing when he says I am an apostle of Jesus Christ we need to realize that Jesus in his earthly ministry called 12:2 himself there are many people who followed in the wake of Jesus he had many many disciples but he only had 12 apostles there were 12 tribes in Israel and there are 12 apostles for example in mark chapter 3 mark records that Jesus went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired and they came to him and he appointed twelve whom he also named apostles so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and to have authority to cast out demons so Jesus calls these individuals to himself and as a result they then hear his words and they see his works too then he gives the special promise of the Holy Spirit who will guide them into all truth so in John chapter 16 that is recorded for us by John and Jesus says to these fellows he says now I'm going to go away from you and it's good that I go away from you you're gonna be sad about my departure but it is for the good when I am here I can only be one place at a time when I go the Holy Spirit who has been with you will be in you and he will lead you into all truth so all the things that he had been teaching them and showing them which they frankly were not getting it was all gonna dawn on them when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon them the penny would then draw up and suddenly the significance of things that they had not fully fastened on would become apparent to them and they were then to be sent out with the responsibility of formulating and communicating the gospel so for example Peter knew that Christ died but when he writes his letter he formulates the truth of what is in the death of Christ so he writes Christ died for our sins once for all the righteous for the unrighteous to bring us to God so that nobody would be in any doubt as to what was happening in the death of Christ that the truth of what had taken place in his atonement was then formulated by the apostolic Authority and that apostolic Authority was then conveyed as the gospel goes out to the ends of the earth now their parcels then were a unique unrepeatable group of individuals that's why I say to you that the pastor who calls himself an apostle is not actually an apostle because the apostles were a unique unrepeatable group who shared at least these three things one a sight of the risen Christ to a divine Commission from Christ and three the inspiration of God's Spirit so that what they wrote down was on par with the Old Testament Scriptures they were not simply writing ad hoc notions but under the guardianship of the Holy Spirit under the impetus of the Holy Spirit as they wrote so they were providing for us what we have now in the scriptures which is the apostolic authority which is where the apostolic tradition is to be found and where that tradition is carried on in those who both believe and love and proclaim that same gospel now it was to that group that Paul was added you remember that Paul had been a persecutor of the Church of Jesus and one day on the road to Damascus breathing out slaughtering and all kinds of animosity towards Jesus and his followers he meets Jesus and he is literally swept off his feet and as a result of that he is added to the apostolic band in fact he's the last one to be added he actually says this when he reports to Agrippa who is asking him to give a reason for what it is that he's been doing and why people are so concerned about him let me just give you a little flavor of this so that it's anchored in your mind in in Acts chapter 26 you can turn to it and follow along if you choose he tells Agrippa that he was absolutely convinced that he ought to do everything in his power to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth I was absolutely convinced that we needed to shut this operation down I did it in Jerusalem I locked up the Saints he said after receiving authority from the priests and when they were put to death I cast my vote against them I was committed to punishing them in the synagogue's I tried to make them blaspheme and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities in this connection and here we go verse 12 I journey to Damascus with the authority and commission of the high priests at midday O King I saw on the way a light from heaven brighter than the Sun that shone around me and those who journeyed with me and when we had fallen to the ground I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language Saul Saul why are you persecuting me it is hard for you to kick against the goads and I said who are you lord and the Lord said I am Jesus whom you are persecuting but rise and stand up on your feet for I have appeared to you for this purpose to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me and then he goes on to say and therefore o King Agrippa I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision but I then got up and went out and did what Jesus had told me to do and that's why I am before you today he says and right there in the phrase I am sending you in Greek ego Apostolou literally I am Apostle in you Sall and as a result Paul Dan came to view himself as I say as the last of the the Apostles which in point of fact he was and talked about how in 1st Corinthians 15 Jesus had appeared to James and to all the apostles and then he says in first corinthians 15:8 last of all as to one untimely born he appeared also to me for I am the least of the Apostles unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God but by the grace of God I am what I am and His grace to me was not in vain so when he introduces this letter with the self designation Paul an apostle of Jesus Christ it involves all of this he has been sent to declare what he has discovered namely the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus the whole letter is about the gospel and as he sits in some dingy dungeon in Rome he's not in this is not his first arrest where he was in house arrest in Rome able to have friends come and see him and bring him stuff but now he's in this dingy dungeon he's facing the prospect of death and he writes about the promise of life we are not to overlook that it is quite remarkable isn't it as he writes this letter with the thought that they're going to take his head off his focus is on the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus it is as we will see when we get to verse 10 which won't be this morning that it is in the discovery and the promise of immortality that is enable to deal with his own mortality he's going to speak of Jesus who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel how do you do how are you going to deal with your own mortality unless you know the one who has conquered death and has brought life the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus and the promise of immortality you see our world there's nothing to say concerning this death is the one signal our world is is in dire straits the wages of sin is death God has said eternity in the hearts of men and women and how then are we going to deal with our own prospect of death unless like Paul we are dealing with it according to the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus and this is by the will of God in other words he didn't appoint himself he didn't apply for the role he was not appointed by the church he was appointed by God well that's enough on verse 1 we can gather our thoughts under the thought under the heading the authority of his Apostleship in 2 verse 2 the intimacy of his relationship a relationship with this young man Timothy well although latter as we said last time has been crafted with a wider readership in mind it is still dominantly personal and it is precious isn't it - Timothy my beloved child is not his physical son he's referring to the fact that he has his child in the faith we have no details of Timothy's conversion but it would seem more than likely that Timothy had come to trust in Christ when Paul had made his first visit to Lystra which is where Timothy was born in and that's recorded for us in Acts chapter 14 by the beginning of Acts chapter 16 when Paul makes his second visit to Lystra he's discovered that Timothy this young man is well spoken of as a follower of Jesus and he's someone that Paul things would make a jolly good traveling companion and the intimacy of his relationship is it comes out again and again when he writes to the Corinthians in first Corinthians 4 he refers to Timothy again as my beloved and faithful child in the Lord when he writes to Philippi he says I'm going to send Timothy to you because I have no one else like him he's peerless when it comes to somebody that will take a genuine intro in your welfare and in a world vastly different from our own a world that valued and esteemed age and esteemed experience Timothy was not to be despised for his youth he was probably somewhere in his mid thirties at that time which should be an encouragement to many of us if your mid thirties is youth and some of us really are able to extend middle age for a long time to come don't let anybody despise you because of your youth he says my boy but set the believers an example in speech in conduct in love in faith and in purity imagine Timothy just responding to that that's in the first letter what me an example of speech conduct faith love moral purity must have lay down on his bed and said how in the world am I going to do that well that's the appropriate aspect which is there in the balance of verse 2 2 Timothy my beloved child there is not only the intimacy of his relationship but let me suggest to you thirdly you have the availability of the resources so the authority of Apostleship the intimacy of relationship and the availability of the resources what are these resources well 3 grace mercy and peace grace mercy and peace we've been singing about them this morning the hymns are well chosen the songs are well chosen had been full of each of these aspects and Paul writes of what he knows when he writes to the Romans remember he tells them that we are justified by His grace as a gift justified by his grace as a gift he had previously relied on his religious background the fight that he had had a good upbringing that he had gone to the right schools that he'd kept all the regulations that he was a good boy everybody knew how bright he was everybody knew how fastidious he was making sure that he dotted the i's and cross the t's and he was pretty well convinced that if God was looking for somebody to accept he must be right at the top of the list until they realized that he had such a covetous heart he doesn't tell us the nature of the covetousness but I wonder did he covered the faith of Stephen did he see Stephen being stoned as saul of tarsus says put your coats here I'm not going to actually throw any stones but I'll look after your coats until you kill him did he stand there in awe and see this Stephen lifts his eyes to heaven and commit himself into the custody of God did Paul look at that and covet that in terms of faith did he look at that and say wow how can somebody do this the cover this nature of his heart revealed that he broke in God's law that he couldn't earn his way in and what a day it was from the truth dawned on him put in a right relationship with God by grace as a gift the wages of sin death the gift of God eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord the gospel grabs him changes him if you're still relying on some external things you're doing the gospel has not grabbed you and changed you or at least you are you are not holding on to the truth that will set you free the same way it was grace that allowed Paul to continue when he was most aware of his weakness three times he says I asked the Lord that he would remove the thorn in my flesh and three times he told me no and then he told me why for my grace is sufficient for you he said my strength is made perfect in weakness Paul and works on that basis and he and he concludes well then I will most gladly glory in my weakness that Christ's power may rest upon me for when I am weak then I am strong but I know I'm weak I know I'm unworthy to call upon your name but because of your grace and because of your mercy I stand here unashamed this is not there's not self-help stuff this is not the power of positive thinking this is not saying I know I stink a little bit here but I'm really good over here now this is saying I know what I am and I'm so thankful for your grace because there's gonna be grace that sees Timothy through when he gets the baton in his hand it's going to be sufficient for Timothy to be strengthened by grace grace will provide him with all the gifts he needs with all the benefits that requires and all of them will be as undeserved as they are necessary so they don't never be able to say look at me look at these amazing gifts I've got there's nothing worse than spiritual pride all pride is horrible but spiritual pride is the worst because why would a man ever be proud of something that is so patently not is but God gave it to him it'll draw attention to yourself because God has given you a gift the gift is a gift Timothy grace secondly mercy Paul had received this ministry as a result of God's mercy that's what he says in 2 Corinthians 4 therefore having this ministry by the mercy of God we do not lose heart Timothy knew what he was and Timothy knew what he should be that's the real problem isn't it we know what we are we know what we should be this is true of your pastors isn't of anybody else that's why dick Lucas humorously says to his congregation on one occasion if you knew what I was like you would never listen to me preach and then he says and if I knew what you were like I would never even preach to you because the gap that exists and where where's the answer to be found in the mercy of God you see that the only time that we will really be merciful to the outsider to the unbeliever to the person who is flagrantly opposed to the gospel it's when we are actually aware of the mercy of God and the only way that I'm aware of the mercy of God is in light of my own fallenness my own flawed nurse my own foolishness my own failings that's why I love the line in all the love that drew salvations plan or the grace that brought it down to man or the mighty Gulf that God did span at Calvary and then here we go mercy there was great and grace was free and pardon there was multiplied to me pardoned on the strength of what another has done forgiven because another has borne the punishment mercy and peace for he himself says Paul of Jesus is our peace and when Timothy faces a opposition from unexpected sources when he is unraveled by the challenges that will inevitably be his the people have deserted Paul they're going to desert him what's he gonna do when people started go off to other churches and gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear was he going to do in that occasion that's why Paul front loads the information he says listen my boy grace mercy please let me say that to you again grace mercy peace made a peace which passes understanding and the grace which makes us what we are and the fellowship of God the Holy Spirit bind our hearts and life's within his love this is what he's saying to him and he starts the whole thing off in this way there's a sense in which he can't get any higher than this what a great beginning and this threefold stream flows from God the father and Christ Jesus our Lord the authority of his Apostleship the intimacy of his relationship the availability of these resources and then let's just take a moment to go into verse verse three and the encouragement you will notice comes first and then the exhortation encouragement then exhortation we'll come back to this because this is a lesson that all of us as pastors need to learn especially young pastors we tend to drive our people pull them cajole them exhort them come on come on come on come on and it takes a long time for us to realize that more is accomplished in encouragement than in exhortation the encouragement always has to come first Paul does it all the time it's impossible to read any of his letters without realizing that this is it this is his form look at the opening phrase of verse three I thank God that's selfless isn't it I mean he's not on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean he's in a dungeon facing the imminent prospect of his death and his opening gambit is I thank God what have you got to thank God for Paul you're gonna get your head chopped off you're in a miserable dungeon what kind of God is this you serve what kind of Jesus is this thing you're following what kind of Christianity is this you see well I thank God I thank God and what an encouragement it was but you see if you think about Paul's life encouragement had been so foundational at the very beginning of it is it's almost as if he is his Christian life was was born into into an environment of encouragement the encouragement of Ananias who was actually afraid of him and yet did as God instructed him and when after three years in the wilderness Paul then shows up in Jerusalem we read that Luke tells us that none of the disciples wanted to have anything to do with him they were afraid of him after all he'd been breathing out slaughter and threatenings and they'd heard something about him but he'd be who knows where he'd been the last 36 months and now all of a sudden he's shown up came walking right in to one of their congregations and the people said sorry no no can do we don't want you in here and who saved the day Barnabas Barnabas it's one of my favorite lines in the whole of the New Testament but Barnabas took him and brought him to the disciples to know the name Barnabas means son of encouragement if ever Paul was on the receiving end of encouragement it was in the ministry of Barnabas to him at the beginning and all the way through so it's no surprise that he starts off I thank God my serve as did my forefathers as did my ancestors with a clear conscience as I remember you he says I'm not actually here to come up with something novel when you read for your homework in a chapter 26 you realize that he reinforces this before Agrippa because remember the people were saying to him this guy Paul is a troublemaker he's got some newfangled ideas we don't really know what he's on about but we would like you to take care of him and Paul says to Agrippa he says I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our forefathers I stand here on trial because of the hope promised by God to our forefathers do you see what he's saying what he's saying is that the gospel was the divinely ordained sequel to Judaism the gospel is the divinely ordained sequel to Judaism it's not a new religion but it is the fulfillment of the promises of God keep that in mind when you're talking to your Jewish friends if you understand this you would be better able to talk to them you're able to say to them listen do you realize this that saul of tarsus who was the archetypal jew when he became a follower of jesus did not disdain as judaism in fact he explained to people all the time that what he was involved with was actually the hope that was burned into the very core of the Hebrew people that the Messiah would come and Paul said and he has and I met him well his Thanksgiving is not just generic it is specific I thank God whom I serve as did my ancestors with a clear conscience as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day well we'll finish here he thanks God for Timothy each time he comes to mind there's nothing intermittent or haphazard about it this terminology he's actually used in his first letter to describe the prayers of of the genuine widow first Timothy 5:5 she who is truly a widow left all alone has set her hope in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day continues in supplications and prayers night and day and Paul says and that's my pattern as well he began and ended his day in prayer Timothy was always on his list I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day we seldom forget those for whom we pray consistently I suggest to you that it's virtually impossible to forget a person for whom you are I may pray regularly let me give you an illustration of this as being encouraged in my own life to conclude so that it might encourage us similarly in 1986 after I'd been here three years we went home for the first time we didn't go home for three years because I was frightened if I went home I would never come back you were hoping I would go home and never come back that was the way it works when I went home I ran home to see family but also to speak at a conference in Port Stuart in Northern Ireland and in that conference I was cast in with some very wonderful pastors and and teachers of the Bible one of them Alec Mattia whose work I had always admired and then I met him and I was over awed by him now because of a strange sort of magnificence but just because of his godliness and when in the early days of the week we sat together and talked over a meal he said to me do would you like to go and and walk in the afternoon I didn't really want to but because it was Alec Mattia invited me yes yes I want to and so I would go and wake him up because he took a nap in the afternoon he's probably 20-some years older than me he's in his mid 80s now and I would wake him up and then we would go out and we would walk around him we would talk and then the next day we did the same we did it all week became part of a routine we parted from one another at the end of the week as we parted he said because he always calls me my dear boy he said my dear boy I will pray for you and I said thank you so we left that's July of 86 spring of 87 it's Easter it's Good Friday it's you know one o'clock in the afternoon and I don't have I don't have a sermon or anything like a sermon for the Good Friday service which is now five or six hours away and in a moment of desperation I reach up on my shelf and I take down a big fat commentary on Isaiah written by Alec Mattia and as I look into it I find material there that not only can be used but also which absolutely helped me I mean it just in a palpable way it got me it got me good you know and all of a sudden I said to myself you know I think I'll form this man up I'd never spoken to him since July the previous year this is now March or April I warned him up and I'll just tell him hey thanks for writing the book you've really bailed me out and my congregation and so I called him up and he answered the phone and I said Alec this is Alistair Beck he said my dear boy literally he said Beryl and I Beryl was his wife she since died now that was probably four or five in the afternoon here so it was nine or ten o'clock in England he said Beryl and I were just having a cup of tea and before we had our tea we prayed for you and for Susan and for Cameron and for Michelle and for Emily there's no way in the world he could name my entire family at the drop of a hat as a result of a random telephone call unless he actually did what he said he would do what an encouragement you may think that there's not much you can do get your prayer list get those grandchildren on it get your sister your work colleague whoever it is we'll come back to this father for the Bible we thank you for your grace and mercy and peace we give you our praise knit our hearts together increasingly in the bonds of the gospel we pray for Jesus sake amen

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 9,126

Rating: 4.8532109 out of 5

Keywords: Grace, Prayer, Thanksgiving, Preaching, Ministry, Church Leadership, Alistair Begg, 2 Timothy

Id: lj_u5b-oCKs

Length: 37min 9sec (2229 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 29 2014