Sermon Transcript
Well, that was a treat this morning to have God’s Kids here in just the time of worship. I felt that was really refreshing. Thank you, parents, for making that possible and all those leaders that were working hard these several months to get ready. Actually, they’re getting ready for the concert that they’re gonna do in May, so it’s coming up already. Hard to believe.
Well, we’re gonna take out our Bibles again this morning, and if you didn’t bring one, we invite you to use the message note sheets or the Bible that’s in the pew in front of you. We’ve just finished a series titled Only by Prayer, 40-day focus. It was a wonderful series. If you were a part of that, I hope you were encouraged and you’re continuing to live out what you learned from that series. We’ve been praying for each other in many different ways as a result of the series.
And we begin today a brand new series, a series in the book of 2 Timothy. After the service is over, make sure you stop in the lobby at the table out there that has some workbooks and study guides to help you follow along in the study that we’re going to enjoy. But in your message note sheet this morning, you have the primary passage that we’re gonna be looking at. And I was— as I was looking at this, I was just thinking about the stuff that we have in our lives that mean a lot to us, stuff that we give a lot of our time and our attention to. For instance, one of those would be the phone that many of us have, or all of us have.
It used to be that you never gave any thought to your phone. It was something that, you know, sat at the house and that was about the end of it. The only time you paid attention to your phone was when the phone rang or when you needed to make a phone call. Otherwise, you were just happy that the phone was there and it wasn’t connected to you. It wasn’t, you know, this cord that was connected to you or whatever.
But now our phones are just all the time connected to whatever it is that we’re doing. Our minds are led by our phone in many ways. Interesting, the surveys that are being done now about how much time the average person spends on their phone or their iPad or their mobile device, and the average is about 4 hours, 4 hours a day. Now, that may be hard for you to believe. For some of you, you say, what’s wrong with that?
You know, that’s incredible. Others, it’s unbelievable, it’s lamentable. They’re saying now that about a quarter of our waking hours every day are spent on our mobile devices. And half of that time every day that we spend on our mobile devices, actually specifically an hour and 56 minutes, are spent on social media platforms. So that would be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter— these are the top 6— Snapchat, WhatsApp, and YouTube.
Okay, so those 6 apps. Now you say, really? We could, you know, like half of the time of the 4 hours we spend on those? Well, think about it just for a minute. If you in the morning got up and you perused Facebook for 15 minutes, okay, there’s 15 minutes of your time.
And then at break on the job, you took a 10-minute break and you also got caught up on Twitter notifications during that time. And then over lunch hour, you did some messaging on Snapchat. Or WhatsApp, and then in the afternoon you spent 20 minutes watching a YouTube video because there’s this comedian you always watch at that time to lift you up, or some kind of information that’s gonna be an enrichment to your soul, or whatever it might be. And then 35 minutes that night you spent on Instagram winding down. Well, all of that adds up to 1 hour and 50 minutes.
And that doesn’t include the answering of emails that we do with our phones or iPads or whatever the mobile device we’re using. That doesn’t include the phone calls we make. It doesn’t include checking the weather. It doesn’t include catching up with news and all the other things that we do on our mobile devices like order decaf sugar-free vanilla soy lattes and then go by the store, you know, and pick it up because we order them in advance because we don’t want to waste any time, right? And we don’t want to go to the store and stand in a line.
We don’t have any more time to waste. We’re already doing that on our phones and our iPads and, you know, other mobile devices. So, the point of this is, is that we just give a lot of attention and a lot of time to our mobile devices. Not all of our time or attention. I mean, there are a lot of other things that we do.
So, there are other things that are on our mind throughout the day like school and work and family and food and piano lessons and sports and, you know, food and graduation and where to go to college and food, dinner, and laundry, and you know, you know how this list goes. And of course, what we think about changes over time depending on the season of life or relationships that we share. So guys, come on, when you were in elementary school, you probably had no interest in girls. You didn’t think about girls at all. Girls had cooties, and so you ignored girls, hung out with all the guys, you know, and that was what it was all about.
But then you got a little bit older and you got a lot more interested in girls. You couldn’t get girls. Off your mind, like I can’t get Bernice off my mind. Well, the same kind of thing happens for girls too. Like, I used to kid the students at Biola University.
I’d go there a couple times a year and teach a couple seminars for them a couple times a year, and we would have a lot of fun, especially at the beginning of these seminars and stuff. And I’d often ask, you know, at the beginning of the seminar, so you tell me, girls especially, is the favorite Bible verse on campus still, If any man will come after me, let him. And they would, yeah, about like that, you know, but they really meant, yeah, it’s still kind of a favorite Bible verse on campus. But there are a lot of things that we can think about other than guys and girls. We can think about work and school.
And what about God? You know, what about God? Where does God come into this thing? And for many people, unfortunately, God’s not somebody they give much time to. I mean, if you were to graph, you know, like let’s graph the amount of time that I might think about God, and there’s the 0 down here line, and there’s the 10 line up here, which would be all the time I’m thinking about God.
For many people, you know, this graph might be empty when it comes to thinking about God, or maybe there are a couple of spikes like at Easter and Christmas and maybe in times of desperation where if there is a God, then God, please help me right now. And so there might be a couple of, you know, points where the graph rises at that point. But think about it, even among believers, professed believers who, who believe in God, have relationship with God, even their chart might look like, you know, a spike every 7 days, you know, for Sundays that— or Saturdays, that sort of thing. Um, but I, you know, you really have to adjust that because, uh, many of us don’t get the Sunday thing every week either, do we? It’s just, you know, and so if that’s all it is, it’s just, you got to wonder, you know, is this a relationship or not?
Because I think it would be sad if God was pretty much absent from our lives because that would be an indication that we don’t have a relationship with him. You know, when we have a relationship with somebody, when somebody special comes into our life, it’s just natural to think about them. All the time, especially as the relationship grows and it grows maybe into a friendship and then best friends and then maybe a dating relationship or marriage or whatever it might be. And when relationships like that grow and you grow closer to somebody, it’s just natural for you to think about them and wanna do life with them and spend time with them because they become a very important part of your life. And hopefully that would be the case in our relationship with God where we’d be thinking about God a lot because he’s a very important part of our life.
Well, I got to thinking about that as we start into this epistle, this letter, 2 Timothy, because in the opening verses Paul kind of tips us on a relationship that he has with God, but also on the relationship that he has with Timothy. Now, some of you are familiar with the book of 2 Timothy. A few months ago we were into 1 Timothy, and now we’re into 2 Timothy for as we kind of finish off this church season. But this letter was written by the same person that wrote 1 Timothy, the Apostle Paul. He’s writing to Timothy again, so his second letter to Timothy.
Timothy’s a pastor. He’s a young pastor. He’s pastoring the first church at Ephesus. It’s 67 AD, and this actually turns out to be the last letter, the last epistle that the Apostle Paul writes. What’s fascinating is, is that he wrote 12 other letters, and they come just before this letter, so that if you’re reading through the New Testament, Paul’s epistles all show up together.
You have 13 of them in a row, and this is the last one. By the way, if you’ve ever wondered how are they arranged, they’re actually not arranged chronologically— Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and so forth— they’re not arranged chronologically. They’re actually arranged by length. And so if you were to go back to the Greek language and you just compare the number of words, you’ll find that Romans is the longest letter that he wrote, all the way down to 2 Timothy, and 2 Timothy is the last letter that he wrote, and it’s fascinating because in this letter what he’s giving to Timothy is really his final words. But it’s amazing that he even wrote any of these letters because the Apostle Paul at one point in his life wanted nothing.
He wanted no relationship with God through Jesus Christ. He wanted nothing to do with Jesus. In fact, his life was focused on eliminating all thoughts about Christ by eliminating those who were talking about Christ or who were thinking about Christ. He just wanted to eliminate it altogether. But all of that changed when Paul— his name was Saul at that time— when he met Jesus and Jesus began to build a relationship, and he built a relationship with Jesus, and Jesus came to be on the Apostle Paul’s mind all the time.
So he then begins this letter this way, 2 Timothy 1. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my dear son, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I really think those are incredible words. If you put it into the context, I mean, if you were somebody who knew Paul before this all happened to him where he connected with God through Jesus Christ, you would be shocked that he’s now an apostle. He’s an apostle of Jesus.
You’d probably be saying to yourself, are you kidding me? No. Really? He’s an ambassador for Jesus. So having met Jesus, before he wanted meeting Jesus, he wanted nothing to do with Jesus, and now he wants everything to do with Jesus so that he’s thinking about Jesus all of the time.
In fact, who Jesus is and what Jesus was all about was changing Paul. So just notice that in the words that are used here in these opening couple of verses. Christ Jesus, used 3 times there. You can just Pick them out there or underline them. Christ Jesus made Paul an apostle, and when he made him an apostle, he gave him a new calling.
He gave him a new vocation, a new reason for living. And this, this call came not because of Paul’s will. Do you see it there in verse 1? But it came because of God’s will. And his relationship in Jesus Christ wasn’t a distant relationship.
It actually uses the word in, I-N. He was in Jesus Christ, so he was in union. The idea is intimacy. They shared intimacy in a relationship, and it was through this relationship that Paul was given a brand new life. That would speak about Jesus said, I’ve come that you might have life and you can have it abundantly.
It would also speak about the promise of eternal life where Jesus said, whoever believes, whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. And that’s not all. God the Father and Jesus Christ our Lord also gave Paul— and I love this— he gave Paul grace and mercy and peace. Now those are 3 fantastic gifts. Just want you to think about that for a minute.
Do you ever think about somebody’s blessing on your life and the relationship that you have with somebody because of their blessing on your life? In some way they’ve enriched your life. Maybe they’ve sent you a an encouragement card or some kind of a gift card. Maybe it was an email of affirmation. Maybe they gave you something special.
Maybe they gave you a new car. I don’t know, still waiting on that one. Maybe they gave you a used car. Let’s use that one. If they gave you a used car, if you have a relationship with somebody and they gave you a used car, probably every time you get in the car and drive it, you’d think about them.
You say, well, I can’t believe I get to drive this car, this used Tesla. Or whatever it was. Probably not a used Tesla. Paul’s life was deeply impacted by his relationship with God through Jesus Christ, who had gifted him with grace and mercy and peace. 3 gifts that you could say this— if you’re going to get some gifts, you know, put these at the top of the, the gift list.
Grace, what’s that? Well, grace is getting what we don’t deserve in a good way. God’s undeserved favor Paul was a recipient of God’s undeserved favor and salvation and forgiveness and righteousness. Who was Paul? He was— he called himself the worst of sinners who did not deserve one of those gifts, not one of these gifts, grace and peace and mercy.
And yet God gave him what he didn’t deserve. And God gave to him peace, full peace, surpassing peace in our hearts and our minds, inner tranquility he’s speaking about. First, a person comes to have peace with God, no more distance in a relationship with God. No more condemnation, but peace with God. And then they begin to experience the peace of God.
And that’s what Paul’s talking about here. He used to be at odds with God. There was a rift between him and God, but now he’s enjoying the peace of God. Let me ask you, do you have any room in your life this morning for a little bit more peace? Anybody?
I put my hand up on that one. Absolutely. Like all the time. Some of you didn’t raise your hand, so that probably means No, I don’t want a little bit. I want a lot more peace.
That’s— are you asking that question? Yeah, my hand’s coming up on that. Yeah, peace. Paul was a recipient of grace. He was a recipient of peace.
He was a recipient, notice here, also of mercy. And mercy is not getting what we deserve. Not getting what we deserve. And what do we deserve? What did Paul deserve?
What does anybody deserve outside of relationship with God through Jesus Christ? We deserve condemnation and we deserve punishment and we deserve judgment. But instead of all of that, he got mercy. He got lovingkindnesses. In fact, the Bible says that God’s lovingkindnesses are new every morning, that we can come before his throne of grace and find mercy to help us in time of need.
Now, doesn’t that sound like something that you would want to keep on your minds, like, all the time? It was on Paul’s mind all the time. You know, I see these as the MPG gifts, the MPG gifts. I’m not talking about MPG, miles per gallon, okay? Okay, not that where, you know, you go out and you buy a car that’s not electric and you’re interested in how many miles can I go on a gallon of gas.
Not that. But these MPG gifts, which are the more the better, and they come to us in abundance through Jesus Christ, are mercy and they are peace and they are grace. And when you come to begin to experience these gifts and keep your mind on these gifts, it can cause your heart to overflow with thanks like Paul’s did. Do you see that here? His heart was overflowing with thanks that was also turning him him into, or had turned him into, a servant.
So he was serving the Lord as his forefathers did, and he was trying to serve the Lord with a clear conscience because of the gifts of mercy, peace, and grace that were his. So in a sense, you can think of it this way. After Paul began this relationship with God through Jesus Christ, having begun that relationship, that changed everything for Paul. It made him a thankful person. It made him a servant of Jesus Christ, it made him somebody who wanted, like for Timothy, the same gifts of mercy, peace, and grace.
Now, how often, let me ask you, do you think about God’s mercy and God’s peace and God’s grace? Paul thought about it all the time. You know, if you go back into his letters and you look in those opening words, sometimes they’re called his opening salutation and stuff, and you know how sometimes we begin a letter, we begin the letter the same way. And you can do that mindlessly, you know, just sort of, uh, it’s perfunctory. We just do it perfunctory.
I don’t think that how Paul began this, these, these letters were perfunctory. I think that he was thinking about that church he was writing to. He was thinking about that individual that he was writing to, and he really meant it when he put into every one of these letters 2 words in the opening part of the letter? Grace and peace. Every time he talked about grace and peace.
You open in the book of Romans and you’ll find it there in the opening paragraph. 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The prison epistles, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, again, grace and peace are found in that opening paragraph. 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, grace and peace are found in the opening paragraph. Titus, grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord are found there.
Philemon, grace and peace are found there. And then guess what? You get to 1 and 2 Timothy, the last 2 books that Paul wrote, and this is fascinating because Paul adds mercy. In 1 Timothy, he says, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. And 2 Timothy, again, he says the same thing, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I find that fascinating, that the, the books that came at the end of his life, he’s even thinking more about mercy, about God’s mercy. They were constantly on his mind. And it’s no wonder that he had a thankful heart, verse 3, that he had a zeal to serve the Lord like his forefathers or his spiritual predecessors served the Lord, which would be people like Noah and Abraham and Moses and David who serve the Lord. And the word serve here has the imagery of a priest who’s serving in the temple. And this priest isn’t serving in the temple with dirty hands, but the priest is serving in the temple with clean hands.
And that’s what the Apostle Paul was desiring. He was desiring to serve the Lord with— you see it there— a clear conscience. Clear conscience is the outcome of a life of dedication and confession and the forgiveness of the Lord. But a clear conscience is also an indication of somebody who’s serving the Lord and their heart’s in it. They’re not just going through this, you know, they’re not just going through the motions.
The Lord was very much a constant part of the Apostle Paul’s mind and heart. He constantly was thinking about the Lord. And so right at the outset of this epistle, we got something that we can grab onto here. Really, it ought to be the same for us so that the Lord isn’t an afterthought The Lord is kind of distant in our thoughts, distant in our relationship, but the Lord is very much central in our minds. So the thought here I would pull out of it is simply this: get your mind on the Lord.
Get your mind on the Lord. Well, you say, well, I would get my mind on the Lord, you know, but life is hard right now. It’s hard in the home. It’s hard on the job. It’s hard on the campus.
I mean, if life was better, I would have my mind more on the Lord on a regular basis. Do you know where Paul was when he wrote this letter, the letter of 2 Timothy? He was actually in the worst of conditions. He was in jail. When Paul wrote this letter, the Christian church throughout the Roman Empire was facing severe persecution and severe hardship.
They were living under the, the 5th emperor, the 5th Roman emperor, and his name was Nero. Nero actually came to the throne in AD 54 at the age of 16. He was given rule over the entire Roman Empire. Now, let me ask you, anybody here around 16? Anybody?
Anybody? Okay, just look around. Go ahead, put your hand up. Be happy you’re around 16. Yeah, you’re like, yes, yes, I love 16.
I get to drive. Are you kidding? Okay, so this is not something to be bashful about. It’s something to be happy about. But the people who raised their hand, can you imagine this?
Them as the emperor of the Roman Empire at 16. That was Nero. And when he started, everything was peaceful and it was great, and people were like, yes, our future is bright because Nero has taken over. But Nero did take over. He became ruthless and brutal.
He killed his own mother. He killed his chief advisors. He killed many other nobility at that point in time. He actually seized their treasures because he had a thirst for excessive acts of decadence, including dangerous chariot races and combat between gladiators. And he loved gory spectacles of prisoners thrown into wild— with wild beasts while the crowds, you know, the bleachers cheered that on.
And then in AD 64, a fire, fire destroyed Rome. And you know what happened there? People suspected that Nero was the one who ordered the fire And they said he ordered the fire because he wanted to make himself a brand new palace, a larger palace. But he wouldn’t take the blame, so he deflected the blame off of— off himself onto Christians. And that led to a terrible time of persecution on the church with torture, execution, and Colosseum entertainment.
In fact, Tacitus said this, their death, speaking about Christians, was made a matter of sport. They were covered in wild beast skins and torn to pieces by dogs. Dogs or were fastened to crosses and set on fire in order to serve as torches by night.
Those were the conditions that Paul was living. That, that right there. He was jailed in a damp, dark dungeon near the Forum in Rome, and he was waiting for his death. And we know from other historical documents that his death came just a couple of months after he wrote this letter.
So he’s totally aware that this could be it, that this could be his last will and testament. And so he writes this young pastor Timothy who’s pastoring this church in Ephesus, and he wants to give him some significant lessons. And this first lesson is one of the significant lessons. A lesson that hopefully we would all do well to hang on to, that we need to constantly keep our minds on the Lord. Several years ago, I read the book Tuesdays with Morrie.
Mitch Albom wrote this book. It’s a book that’s focused on— was focused on the Tuesday visits that Mitch made to his former sociology professor His sociology professor at the time was losing the battle with ALS. And so Mitch said that during those visits, it was actually a life-changing time in his life as he listened to Morrie, as he listened to Morrie talk about life and some of the things that he learned over life. And so the book became a series of lessons that Mitch penned that he learned and wanted to share with others. Boy, it went on to help millions of people, still helps people everywhere.
Well, here you have a book that was written by a person who died shortly afterwards that God wanted us to benefit from. It first benefited Timothy, and now hopefully it benefits people like us so that when we see a person like the Apostle Paul who went from wanting nothing to do with Christ to the point where he was absolutely in love with Christ so that he thinking about Christ all the time, we think that’s the way it ought to be.
And I think to myself, but is it? Is it like that for us? Are we as natural in thinking about the Lord as we are as natural in thinking about somebody else that we love or somebody that’s brought blessing into our life or somebody that we’re thankful for or somebody that’s gifted us or somebody that’s forgiven us? Or somebody that’s given us a brand new life, it’s natural for us to be thinking about them all the time. But do we think about God and a relationship with God in the same way or even greater?
A couple of days ago, I was reminded how thankful I am for the Lord’s mercy and peace and grace, for this new life that I have in Jesus Christ, and the new life— if you’re a Christ follower, the new life that you have in Jesus Christ. An old friend of mine posted on Facebook a picture. It’s a picture of the old water tower in the Fresno area where I used to live as a teenager. And in this post, he was reminiscing about the time that he and a couple of friends got caught by the police as they were climbing this, this water tower, a tower that nobody’s supposed to climb. Well, when he posted this, Bernice shared it with me, and I said, I was one of those 2 friends.
And we talked a little bit about it, and it brought back memories of some of my stupid days. But I then went on to say, you know, that actually reminds me of the time that I was with him and we climbed Morro Rock. And I don’t know if you’ve ever been into Morro Bay and you’ve seen this rock over there. It’s an off-limits bird refuge. But anyway, we decided to climb it, and we got caught by the park rangers, and they didn’t have good words for us.
And so anyway, they did let us go, and I shared that with Bernice, and I said, and that reminds me of a 3rd time where I got caught with the same guy doing something else stupid. We, we had jumped over the fence at the Kearney Hardtop Races, and you’re like, what’s that? It’s this racetrack over in the Fresno area, and we climbed the fence because we didn’t want to pay to get in. Well, we couldn’t pay actually, and so we were gonna you know, enjoy the races for free. And so we jumped over the fence, but that actually didn’t turn out well because there was this ginormous security guard who saw us and he came over and said things that, you know, I can’t completely repeat, but the gist of it was, you better get back over that fence right now or I’m going to beat the tar out of you.
And since I of the two didn’t want to have the tar beat out of him, I jumped over the fence as quickly as I could, got back over. My friend, who is kind of along the lines— he still is somewhat like this— where, you know, he wanted to be able to get the last word, the last word. He turned as he was beginning to go back over the fence. He turned to this, this guy who just said, I’m going to beat the tar out of you. He turned and he said, you and how many armies?
Well, that didn’t go over well, so he jumped over the fence as fast as he could. What was interesting on the other side was he broke his foot when he jumped over the fence. I’ll never forget this. And so, I’m sharing this with Bernice, and I’m like, you know, it is only the grace of God that I’m doing what I am right now. It is only, you know, the mercy of God that I’m doing what I’m doing right now.
It is only the forgiveness of God by which I experience peace. And you could probably think of the same kinds of things in your life where you look back and you were doing stupid stuff, that now you regret, but it was very much a part of your life. And it’s not that you clean it up and you get it all perfect. We still need God’s mercy, and we need his peace, and we need his grace. And if we just continue to live in light of the fact that we need his mercy, and we need his peace, and we need his grace, it will produce in you thankfulness, and hopefully it’ll change how you live your life.
That’s what was going on in the Apostle Paul. He never let that go. There’s a second significant lesson here in these opening verses. Paul, having said, I thank God whom I serve, as my forefathers did, with a clear conscience, he added this, the last part of verse 3 through 5: As night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers, recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with you. I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice, and I’m persuaded now lives in you also.
Apparently, not only was the Lord on Paul’s mind, but constantly on Paul’s mind was also— were also the Lord’s people, also the Lord’s people. And so he first brings into focus Timothy, and he calls him in verse 2 his dear son. The fact that he used the word son suggests that Paul saw Timothy as a spiritual son, and Timothy saw Paul as a spiritual father. And Timothy, as you can see in verse 2 there, Timothy was dear, or beloved is a word that’s used in some of your translations. He was dear to Paul so that Paul prayed for Timothy how often?
Do you see it there? He prayed for Timothy night and day, which is to say constantly. Timothy was constantly on the Apostle Paul’s mind. Now I want to just ask this: do you have people in your life that are Timothy, a Timothy to you? Timothy kind of people, people that are constantly on your mind enough that you would pray for them night and day.
Now usually we say day and night, but the Jewish way of talking about it at that point in time in terms of their, their calendar and, uh, how they viewed the day was from sundown to sundown. And so it was night and day. For us, we’d say day and night or sunrise to sunrise. But the picture is a 24-hour period of time. And so he’s telling Timothy, Timothy, I just want you to know you are on my mind all the time.
And actually, you are on my mind to the degree— listen, this follows well on the prayer series we just did— in such a degree that I’m praying for you all the time. All the time. What a great way to remember people. To constantly be praying for them. And so he’s suggesting here in these couple of lessons at the beginning of this new letter, he’s suggesting, you know, get on your mind the Lord, but also get on your mind the Lord’s people.
And really, it shouldn’t be hard to have on your mind the Lord’s people if you have Paul and Timothy-like relationships in your life. Say, what’s a Paul and Timothy-like relationship? It’s a relationship where there will probably be tears, You see that in verse 4? There’ll be times in your life where tears will be shed. Sometimes those tears are shed when there’s a separation, and evidently he’s thinking back to the separation of when Paul was with him in Ephesus, and then Paul left Timothy in Ephesus, and they parted with tears.
But also there was a sense of expectation that they were going to have a reunion someday, and there would be joy. And you’ve probably seen both of those emotions play out at airports where a beloved family or friend or family member leaves on a trip and they’re going to go away to college or they’re going to, you know, serve in the military, so they’re reporting for duty or they’re just leaving to go somewhere. And tears are common in airports. You’ve seen this, or maybe you’ve experienced this. We call these parting tears.
My daughter, when we put her on an airplane to fly off alone as a teenager, it was only natural for us to have tears. We had tears over that. I think That was good that we had tears over that, wouldn’t you? She was flying off all alone to Guatemala to join Focus on the Family and a bunch of other teens to minister over there. I think it was normal and right to have tears.
But then there are the others— this is the other side that often is experienced in these relationships: reunions of joy, where sadness is replaced with joy or shouts of joy. Kind of like what we experienced recently when we welcomed back to California our daughter-in-law. And 2 grandkids. They’ve been living in Texas and they’re moving back here, so we picked them up at San Francisco Airport while our oldest son Brent was driving their car across the country from, from Texas. At least it feels like it’s all the way across the country over there on Texas side.
You’ve had those experiences, experiences of, of parting tears and joy-filled hearts. What’s it a sign of? It’s a sign of connection. Connection. The Lord’s people connecting with each other in healthy ways.
But also, in healthy relationships, there’s affirmation. And verse 5 is really just a picture of the affirmation that Paul wants to express toward Timothy when he says, I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice. And I am persuaded now lives in you also. I like that, don’t you? Where he’s saying, Timothy, when I see your life, when I see your faith, I see something that’s sincere.
I, I see something that’s, that’s genuine. And I see faith that was impacted by your mother Eunice, and I know your faith was impacted by your grandmother Lois. The faith that you have is faith that they passed on to you, and it’s now living in you. The faith that you have, listen, isn’t just their faith. It’s your faith.
It’s your faith. And I love that. You know, young adults need to hear that. They need to hear that from others who see it. They need to hear people say, I love what’s going on in you, that the faith that was in your family has become your faith.
You know, especially when kids are raised in Christian homes, God doesn’t have grandchildren. So children that come to Jesus Christ are people who make a personal decision to receive Christ as their Lord and to begin a relationship and to build a relationship with the Lord. And what Paul is saying to Timothy is, Timothy, I saw this faith in your mom and I saw this faith in your grandmother and they impacted your life. What’s missing here is there’s no dad mentioned. From what we know, evidently Timothy’s dad wasn’t a Christ follower.
But that didn’t deter Timothy from coming to faith. He came to faith in Jesus Christ, and that faith became his faith. And Paul took note of that. He was close enough to Timothy that he could affirm his faith. He was that close.
And that reminds me how important it is so that we in our relationships are close enough to one another that we can affirm one another in the faith. At any age. This is something that’s wonderful. When people see others walking in the faith, that’s not something to just sort of be quiet about, but that’s something to encourage in, in other people. We had a— I had a recent experience at— I think I mentioned this already— at WinShape, which is the training center for Chick-fil-A.
And we were there with Walk Thru the Bible Ministries in Rome, Georgia. But I had an experience there where on one of the days they had us doing some team-building exercises, and so they divided us on a 8 teams, I guess it was, and they put with each one of our teams a trainer. So we did all of these team-building experiences, and you’ve been a part, I’m sure, of these kinds of things. It’s a lot of fun. It’s also like fearful in some ways, and that’s the point.
You know, we’re gonna, you know, bring you to the place of where you can go and then make you go past that and all that sort of thing. And so we really had a great time, and I was on a team that had a couple of our crazy comedians, I guess you could say, that are part of the group, and they always are cracking jokes and doing stuff. And so this trainer is trying to get us to do certain things, and these guys are, you know, taking over the experience. And so anyway, she’s trying her best to keep everybody’s attention and get us on track and all the rest of that stuff. And she did a great job.
And at one point, I just felt like I wanted to just help her know that she was doing a great job. So as we were transitioning from one experience to another experience, I went over there and I said, hey, I just want you to know you’re doing a great job, and I know that You know, working with this crowd can be difficult at times, but you are doing a great job. And I just began to ask a little bit about her spiritual journey. She said, well, actually, I was raised in a Christian home. And I said, that’s wonderful.
Tell me, at what point did your parents’ faith become your faith? She said, I’ve never had anybody ask me that question before. I said, well, tell me a little bit about it. Oftentimes, you know, there’s that point in time where a person, when they’re raised in a faith home, they make it their own faith. When did that happen for you?
And she told me the story, and that opened up the door to talk about some other details and all of that. I think it was affirming, an affirming conversation. You know, there are opportunities like that around us all the time to affirm others, to just come alongside and say, I can see your faith, it’s genuine, it’s sincere. I love what God is doing. In your life.
And I suppose the closer we get in our relationships to each other, the greater the potential impact those relationships could have on each other for good. You know, one of the things you ought to think about, I think we all ought to think about in this regard, is how much time do we actually spend outside of a building like this or outside of a life group or outside of a Bible study? How much time do we actually spend talking to people about faith matters? Even people that are people of faith, how much time do we— you know, it’s easy to talk about the basketball tournament. I think the game’s tomorrow night, and we could spend the whole conversation talking about that.
You know, it would be so good to take some time and to affirm one another’s faith. That’s what Paul’s doing here, right at the outset. Do you think this meant something to Timothy? I do. Right at the outset, he’s affirming Timothy in his faith.
So what have we said today? There, there are a lot of things in life that we could dwell on, a lot of things in life that we could get our focus on, but perhaps 2 of the best things that we could get our mind on all the time would be, number one, the Lord. The Lord. And you know, one of the ways to increase the possibility of thinking about the Lord is is just becoming more thankful than we are right now. Do you notice the thankful thing that’s there, that’s central?
Thankful for the Lord’s mercy, thankful for the Lord’s peace, thankful for the Lord’s grace. And so as we live with the spirit of thankfulness, I think we’ll find ourselves thinking about the Lord more and more. As you build this relationship with the Lord, as we come to know him for who he is and what he has done, well, that all the more, like any relationship, hopefully will increase the time that we spend thinking about the Lord. And the second thing is, is let’s get our mind on the Lord’s people. Let’s make prayer for other people a regular part of our lives so that we’re praying for them and we’re close enough to them that there are going to be times where we share tears and there’s going— there are going to be times where we share much joy, but we’re close enough to know them and encourage them and be a part of their lives and not be silent, to speak up and do what we can to connect with others in significant ways.
So there are a lot of things in life that could be on our minds that we could dwell on. We could dwell on work, we could dwell on school, we could dwell on careers, money, sports, daily tasks, bills, politics, all of that. And that’s not to say that we don’t give any thought to those matters. We have to, and they’re important in our lives. But let’s make sure that we’re not just only focused on all of that other stuff.
Let’s make sure that we get more and more attention onto the Lord and the Lord’s people, because that would be to the good of their lives, and it would be to the good of our life, and it ultimately would bring honor and glory to the one that we love the most. Let’s pray.
Father, thanks that we can think about these things this morning, and thank you for this amazing life that you offer to everybody through your Son Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
And Lord, my prayer would be this morning that everybody here has that relationship and they are enjoying that relationship to the fullest. Help us, Father, make this more central where it is not. And may we think even more about who you are, that you are the God of grace and you are the God of peace and you are the God of mercy. May that transform our thoughts. And Lord, may we also care about others.
In significant ways, in ways that cause us to come alongside, and we want to affirm them and to demonstrate love to them and to share life with them. And may these 2 relationships change how we live, what we think about. May they fill our hearts and our minds with thanks and with prayer. Today we thank you for that. And Lord, we pray even as right now we reflect again on what you’ve done for us, that you would be pleased and it would be something that would transform us to the image of Jesus Christ.
For we pray in his name, amen.
