Keep Up The Good Work

Right, we are back in Second Timothy chapter 1. We are going to finish up this first chapter this morning, adding to Timothy the encouragement the Apostle Paul is giving him in terms of how he should conduct his life and his ministry. And so I'm just going to begin by reading the verses that we're going to look at this morning. Beginning in verse 13, Paul tells Timothy, “Follow the pattern of sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus, by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes. May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains. But when he arrived in Rome, he searched for me earnestly and found me. May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day. And you well know all the service he rendered at Ephesus. In the book of Acts, Acts chapter 20, Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, supplies for us the details of Paul's conversation with the elders who were at the church of Ephesus. And Timothy is leading the church in Ephesus. That's why at the end he references that you know all the service that this Onesiphorus rendered to this church. But in Luke's account of what Paul told the elders of the church of Ephesus in Acts chapter 20, we read this: “For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will rise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.” Paul says that he taught the elders, declared to the elders at that church. He says the whole counsel of God, not just the gospel message, but really the entire body of Christian doctrine. He proclaimed it. He explained it. And Paul knew that eventually there were going to come individuals in this particular church—and then really in all sorts of churches throughout history—that were going to try to manipulate the message of the gospel. They were going to try to manipulate other Christian teachings in order to accomplish their own personal agendas. And he says here that they're basically going to try and lead people astray with it. They're not going to spare the flock, not going to spare the church. They're going to come in and they're going to try and draw people away. And this is especially important as Paul is writing to Timothy in this last letter that he's going to send to him before he is executed. He's making sure that Timothy understands just how important it is that he, a spiritual leader in the church, hold on to the Christian doctrine that Paul has communicated to him. It is so important for him to grasp and hold on to that. In fact, really what Paul is trying to get Timothy to understand—and us as well—is that we all need to be diligent to take good care of God's good gifts. We got to take good care of God's good gifts. And first on that list is the truth that God has revealed to his church. So, Timothy, Paul, you and I, we need to hold tightly to the truth that God has given us. Ranger, could I get access to the slides? Um, and uh, so, excuse me. Paul was a sort of a prototype, if you will, for the church. Think about like, I don't know, when's the last time you went to a mall? I don't know. This is sort of like asking when's the last time you used a rotary phone, maybe. Um, but in the malls, they used to have the mannequins, right? And there was supposed to be like, voila, look at what you could look like if you bought these clothes that we're selling right now. Sort of an example, right? You buy our stuff and you could look like this plastic person here. Paul was kind of like a prototype. He was there representing what the teachers and preachers of the church should be and do. He went ahead of them. He planted churches. He evangelized. And he lived his life as an example of what a follower of Jesus Christ should be. And Timothy had spent a lot of time with him—years and years and years—as Timothy went with him on these missionary journeys and was able to observe in all manner of real-life, real-world scenarios how someone like Paul lived out the Christian faith, and he was able to learn from him in that way. Very similar to how Jesus equipped his twelve disciples as he really carried them with him throughout his earthly ministry so that they could learn firsthand from him and be taught by him. And so really someone like Timothy had learned this stuff repeatedly again and again as he and Paul no doubt had conversations as they traveled, as he got to observe Paul conducting his ministry, ask him questions. You know, why did you say it that way? Why did you do it that way? And really got to soak in all of this invaluable information about how one should live the Christian life. And it was Timothy's responsibility, having learned all this, that even more important than anchoring his life in who Paul was, he was supposed to anchor his ministry in the truths of Christian doctrine. The truth is unchanging, but there's the subtle temptation to change it; it's always going to be a constant pull. And so Paul tells Timothy in this last sort of section of exhortation in this chapter, tells him first of all follow the pattern of sound words that you've heard from me, and then similarly guard the good deposit that has been entrusted to you. That word “follow” literally means grip tight. Hold on tight to it. Or guard the deposit. Somebody has deposited this into you. Timothy, I have deposited this to you. You guard it. Thanks to the beauty of YouTube's algorithm—how it works, we may never know—but I was introduced to a British comedy sketch from what I would guess is probably the late 70s or early 80s. And the scenario of the sketch was a gentleman was standing at the bank teller, which is also probably something you guys haven't been to in a long time, right? He's at the bank teller and he's depositing his paycheck, and the bank teller says, “Oh, Mr. Jones, I'm so glad you came in. We've been trying to reach you all morning.” And he said, “Really? What? What are you trying to reach me for?” He said, “Well, there was a break-in last night at the bank, and I'm afraid to tell you that the robber stole your money.” And he said, “What do you mean he stole my money?” He said, “Well, he stole your shoe box. When you deposit your money, we put your money in a shoe box. And don't worry, it's got your name written on it, so we know it's yours. And well, they took your shoe box.” And he said, “Well, don't you have a vault?” And the bank teller said, “Well, we're a very small branch and we can't afford a vault, so we keep your money in a shoe box, and I'm so sorry to tell you this but it's gone. He took your shoe box.” And so the guy goes to leave and he said, “Well, I guess I'm going to have to figure out how I'm going to feed my family.” And he's walking out, the teller laughs and he says, “Oh, it's a joke, sir. Nobody stole your shoe box. You know, imagine he's—” and he said, “No, no, your shoe box is right here. We still have it.” You know, so anyway, it's kind of ridiculous, isn't it? Right. Obviously, the bank doesn't keep your money in a shoe box anyway. No. Um, so, but think about that. Like, the idea that somebody—you're entrusting the bank with this deposit. You want them to secure it for you. That's why you give it to them—'cause you don't want to lose it. You don't want it to be stolen. You don't want your house to burn down and all your cash gets burned, whatever. Um, so often that's kind of the way we treat the truths of God's word. We hold it with all the security of a shoe box. It's kind of easy come, easy go. If we know it, we know it. If we don't, we don't. Whatever. Um, but what's so interesting is if we go to the New Testament, we've already looked at two examples this morning where the New Testament is consistently focused on this threat to the church of the eroding foundation of truth, that if we are not careful to guard it, if we're not careful to keep it secure, it will erode. Chaz read from Jude. And in Jude at the beginning, Jude writes, “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” There is an erosion of the faith that is threatening the church. And you have to fight for it. You have to contend for it because if you don't, the church is going to be destroyed as the truth is eroded. I mentioned in Acts chapter 20 when Paul talks to the Ephesian elders that they need to pay careful attention to themselves and to the whole flock, which is why he declared to them the whole counsel of God. Uh, also in Jude, Jude tells his readers that false teachers—certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. Peter in his second letter in chapter two writes this: “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed, and in their greed they will exploit you with false words.” And these are just some examples of the letters that God has seen fit to preserve in his word as a warning to us about this constant threat that is always looming, that if the truth of God as revealed in his word is eroded, is contradicted, is twisted, is manipulated in one way or another, that it threatens the church. It threatens what we stand for. It threatens our reputation. It even threatens our lives as followers of Christ. If we are not careful, we might be led away into what men like Jude and Peter and Paul are saying are destructive teachings. These aren't sort of neutral teachings. These have very damaging effects if care is not taken to preserve the truth. And this is what Paul is encouraging Timothy to be very serious about: to hold tight to the pattern of sound words that he has shown him in his life. And then even this idea of guarding it as a deposit that Paul has deposited into his life and that he is to guard and to deposit into the lives of other individuals. Now, thankfully, God has seen fit to give the church some special resources to help us in this quest to preserve the truth through the centuries and across cultures. The first is this right here, the Scriptures, the word of God. Did you guys, when you were young, did you ever play the broken telephone game where you line up and somebody has a little phrase and then they whisper it to the next person and they whisper it on down until the very end and then the last person reveals what they think the phrase was? And it's always so fun, right? Because it's ridiculous by the time it gets to the other end. You know, it's almost impossible just to whisper this to get it all the way to the end. But imagine if the person whispering also handed the person next to them a piece of paper that had the phrase written on it. It would be a whole lot easier, right, to get all the way to the end with the real phrase still intact. It's the same thing. We still preach, we still teach, we still explain the word of God. But we have this right here that helps to ensure that what we are preaching and teaching and explaining remains faithful to what God intended us to know and to understand. That's why later in this letter—maybe this is the verses that if anybody knows from Second Timothy, it's 2 Timothy 3:16—it's about Scripture. And Paul tells Timothy that all Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. In other words, what Paul is reminding Timothy in that is that this right here, the word of God, is a gift that God has given us. It's useful. It is helpful. It is a faithful, reliable source to understand how it is that we are supposed to live our lives as Christians in this world. And so the Scripture is a tool that God has given us to help hold tight to these teachings, to help guard this deposit. It isn't something that we just have to, you know, hope we remember. Thank goodness, right? Thank goodness we don't have to remember it because it would have been forgotten long ago. But he's given us this. He's also given us the church, a long line of faithful Christians who have passed down what they have learned. This is one of the things that Timothy is supposed to do as he's there in the church of Ephesus: to be a faithful leader to that church. And part of that faithfulness is to take what he has learned from Paul and to communicate that to the congregation, pass it on to them. He wasn't just to hold on to what Paul had taught him for himself, you know, and when he got home in the quiet of his bedroom, he could open it up and look at it and, you know, but it was for him and him alone. No, that wasn't what it was for. It was for him and for the whole church. He was taking what he had learned from Paul, but ultimately what Paul had learned from Christ, and was then passing it on. In 1 Corinthians chapter 11 verse 1, Paul says, “Be imitators of me, even as I imitate Christ.” This is the idea of Paul's life. It wasn't just sort of like, hey everybody, look at me, you should be like me because I'm so great. No, he wanted to be a conduit for people who did not have the luxury of living alongside Jesus Christ, hearing his teachings, understanding all that. He wanted to be somebody who could communicate that to others and that they in turn would be able to communicate that and pass it on down the line. This wasn't just something that Paul came up with though; this goes all the way back to Christ and part of the Great Commission—maybe the part that we talk about the least but the last charge—which is when Jesus says, “teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you.” So yes, we're supposed to go into all the world. We're supposed to make disciples. We're supposed to baptize them. But the last thing is we're supposed to teach them what Christ has taught and instructed us. There's supposed to be this passing on of this information, and that's what the church is for. That's one of the key actions that we are supposed to participate in: the preserving of this truth and the communicating of this truth. And then there's a third resource that God has given us, which is his Holy Spirit—the source of the power behind our ability to understand and to pass on the truths of Christian doctrine found in Scripture. That's why Paul says in verse 14, “By the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.” It's ultimately a reliance on God's Holy Spirit that is the key behind the success of all of this: that yes, we have the church, yes, we have the word of God, but if we don't have the Holy Spirit, it's all going to fall apart; it's not going to work. In John chapter 14, Jesus tells those who he's talking to—his disciples—verse 26, he says, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” So even in Jesus' charge in the Great Commission—“teaching them to observe everything I'm commanded you”—there's this implied dependence on the Holy Spirit because he's the one who's going to come to help them to be able to teach and to remember these things. It isn't like he's saying, “Okay, I'm leaving and you guys are on your own. I hope you do great. I hope you can do this for however long I need you to.” No, the Holy Spirit is there as a Helper to do what Christ has called us to do. In the letter to the Ephesians—this same church—Paul wrote to them a letter in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 17. We read this: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. Even in that opening prayer, the prayer is that God's Spirit would be given to them and that their eyes would be open to these truths and they would be able to understand them and to communicate them. That it's a gift of God through his Spirit. But I want you to look back at Second Timothy. So, we've got these resources that God has given the church as a help to do what Paul is encouraging Timothy to do: hold tight to these truths, guard this deposit, pass it on. But in verse 13, he says, “Follow the pattern of sound words that you've heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” How you hold on to these and how you communicate them matters. Don't give people an excuse to dismiss your message because you failed to represent Christ—well, because you were basically a jerk. First Peter talks about this in chapter three. He says, “But in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you.” Okay? So right there, you need to hold on to these things and you need to be able to explain why it is you believe what you believe. What is the source of this hope that you have? What is the source of your confidence in your salvation? And what is the source of your assurance, this hope of everlasting life through the gift of God? You need to be able to explain that to people. But then Peter says this following on that in chapter three: he says, “yet do it with a spirit of gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God's will, than for doing evil.” He's just telling them, look, when you respond to push back against your faith, when you give a defense for what you believe, when you answer questions and objections, the testimony of your life should be that you are one who is gentle, you are respectful, you are not obnoxious or arrogant or rude or dismissive or callous or any of these things. In other words, Peter's saying if they dismiss you, if they say things against you, it shouldn't be because you are an obnoxious jerk. It should be simply because they disagree and they have a problem with what you believe. The way you do it matters. The way you defend the faith, the way you guard it, the way you proclaim it—it matters. That's part of the Christlikeness that we're supposed to model. That's an important component of preserving these gospel truths. So what can you do to ensure that you are holding fast to and are protecting the same biblical truths that Paul and Timothy were holding on to? The first one is you need to study the Bible. You need to study what God has revealed to us in his word. You need to know it. How are you going to hold on to it? How are you going to protect it? How are you going to preserve it if you haven't even read it? If you haven't even sought to understand it? Another thing is we need to be preaching it, proclaiming it, discussing it regularly. How many of you have read a book, you got done reading it, and somebody asked you, “What was that book about?” and you'd be like, “I don't know. It was about something.” Especially if it's not a story, you know, if it's just information, sometimes you got to talk through it. You got to think about it and process it and you got to access it with your brain and then kind of let it come out. That's the same thing. You need to be reading this and knowing it, but you also need to be talking about it, discussing it. If you're not a preacher or a proclaimer per se, you need to hear preaching and proclamation about it and you should at least be able to talk about it with people. Another thing you need to do is seek to understand the theology embedded in the Scripture. What is it this is trying to communicate to us about God, about heaven, about hell, about salvation, about life, about all the things? Understand the doctrine in the Scriptures as you share it with others. Learn how to answer objections. Be a part of the chain of Christians throughout history who have sought to preserve and pass on this good deposit. And you need to pray for discernment and faithfulness. Ask for God's help. If we just see this as a task list to do, a task list to master, we're going to fall far short of our abilities and our potential because we are ultimately dependent on God. And so we need to be asking God for help to understand, for help to communicate, for help for all of this that is necessary to guard this truth. So this idea of holding tight, holding firm to the truth of God, it's not just something for Timothy. It's for every one of us. Hold tight to it. The other thing we need to do is support the team. Support the team faithfully. And this last section here is proof that Paul's words are meant for more than Timothy. It's meant for other people. Others were living by them and others had rejected them. And there's plenty of clear warning in these last verses that even the most vocal supporter can desert the faith or abandon the church. The temptation is always there for us to cave in, for us to just sort of fade out, drop off, whatever. There's never a point where we arrive at we've sort of reached our peak performance level and we'll just maintain that indefinitely. In fact, in John's letter, First John, one of the things he says there is he talks about individuals in the church and he says that they left us because they were not of us, and they left us to show that they were not of us. In that he is fighting this whole perversion of the gospel known as Gnosticism. And people were trying to sway the believers in that church to this false understanding of the identity of Jesus Christ. And eventually many of them just leave the church completely. Initial and even enthusiastic support for the church and for the message of the gospel is not a reliable method of measuring true conversion. Any of you guys picked up hobbies that you were just so into for like two weeks and then it was just like gone? That happened a lot during COVID, right? People were getting into all sorts of weird things because they just didn't have anything to do at home. So, you know, people are knitting full-size replicas of their pets and they're, you know, just doing all this crazy stuff, you know, and picking up all these hobbies and then all of a sudden, you know, I've picked up a thousand hobbies and I was so into them for all of two weeks, you know, and then the next one came along and they're gone, you know, it's weird. Same thing can be true of our Christianity. We can be so into it for a little bit of time until the new thing comes or we lose that initial sort of surge of enthusiasm for it and then it's gone. Jesus' own disciples—remember when the heat got hot, they were gone too. When he was getting arrested and tried and crucified, it was maybe we don't want to be hanging around with this guy. It's in all of us to run and hide when things get difficult. That doesn't mean you all will, but definitely the potential is there. It's in all of us to lose interest when the things we initially pursued just for novelty's sake lose the novelty. It's in all of us to talk real big but act real small. That's especially when the cultural pressures get real. They're not hypothetical anymore and they can be difficult to resist. So far in this letter, Paul has challenged Timothy to not be ashamed of the gospel or to be ashamed of Paul as he's in prison. He's challenged him to share in the suffering for the gospel. As we just saw, he's challenged him to hold tight to this pattern of sound teaching and to guard this good deposit. And now Paul makes this both personal and urgent because he reminds Timothy of something that Timothy already knew: that not many people had done that. And in fact he says that all who are in Asia turned away from me, among whom are Phygelus and Hermogenes. It doesn't mean every single believer, but everyone who had the ability to help him, the ability to assist him, the ability to be unashamed publicly for the gospel and to be unashamed of him—including these two individuals who it seems like Timothy would know and that it would be surprising that these two individuals bailed out on Paul and bailed out on the gospel. It seems like these were individuals that we would expect to be rock solid. And Paul says, “Even these two that we would all say, well, they're never going to be the ones to bail out on Paul.” He says, “Even them. Everyone but Onesiphorus.” He wasn't ashamed to help Paul. In fact, it seems like he sought that out. He arrived in Rome and he searched for me earnestly, found me. May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day. That's all we know about this guy. We just know that it was part of his character that he helped Paul and he helped the church in Ephesus. He was not ashamed. Part of the church's strength is that the church is dependent on people like him. It's not just the Pauls and Timothys that the church leans on. It's the people that are in the background. This guy Onesiphorus, we don't know anything else about him. What was the rest of his life like? What was the type of ministry? What was the type of aid that he lent to Paul? We don't know anything about that. We just know that he was a guy who supported the advancement of the gospel by supporting the people and the churches that needed help. Several years ago, some of you might remember when Tim Davidson was here. Uh, he was a chief who was stationed at the Air Force at Travis Air Force Base. And when he was here, he gave me one of these little challenge coins. And this says the Travis Chief's award coin. Okay. And on the back, the enlisted corps, the thrust behind the spear. Now, I've never been in the Air Force or really in any of the armed service branches, but my understanding of what this coin is communicating is that it's all the people who enlist in the service that are the force behind what the Air Force is trying to accomplish. It's every one of them. All of those enlisted men and women are necessary to accomplish the objectives of the Air Force. And I think it's the same thing in the church. It's every one of us is a part of accomplishing the objectives that God has called for his church. It's not just the preachers. It's not just the missionaries or the evangelists or the, you know, the big thinkers, the PhDs. It's every one of us has a role to play in advancing the gospel, in accomplishing what God has called his church to be, which is to be lights in a dark world, shining out. We often talk about this sort of nebulous Christian community that's out there. That word “community” derives from a Latin word communis which has two roots: com which means together and munis which is perform or service. The idea being it is a fellowship formed by mutual obligation, shared duties, shared resources, shared gifts. It's not just we're all right here together. The whole church is supposed to play a meaningful role in preserving and proclaiming Christian doctrine, the whole counsel of God. Every one of us, even if you never stand in a pulpit, you play a role in the proclaiming of the truths of Scripture. The gospel ministry of the church depends on you. Maybe you never thought of it that way, but that's what I believe Paul is trying to help Timothy understand and the church at Ephesus understand: that Timothy has a responsibility to guard these truths and to not be ashamed of them, but so does everyone else in the church. The people who abandon that, it's a problem. The people that were faithful to that like Onesiphorus, thank God for them. The church depends on them. Every one of us can be on the side of the Timothys and the Onesiphoruses. And we need to guard against being really hot one day and then just fade off into I just don't really care about this anymore. I'm not going to stick my neck out for it anymore. I'm not going to be inconvenienced by this anymore. I think I'm going to go on to something else. Even if you don't ever see yourself as a teacher or a preacher, understand that the life and the ministry of the church needs you. Maybe you're not a Paul or Timothy, but we can all be an Onesiphorus. We can all be a part of supporting the team and guarding and holding on to the truth. Let's pray. Dear Lord, I thank you for the way Paul brings this message home so that it's clear that this is something that Timothy is to take very seriously. But it's not just something for Timothy. It's advice. It's counsel that needs to be regarded by everyone in the church, that we have an obligation to actively guard the truth that you have delivered to us. We thank you that it's not all on our shoulders, that you've given us helpful resources like your word and your Holy Spirit and other believers, but it's certainly something that we all need to be guarded against a callous or cavalier attitude towards. Help us take seriously this responsibility that's handed to us. Help us recognize that the truth of your Scriptures is like a treasure that we should guard—but not just guard for ourselves—guard and protect and share and pass on. Make us diligent to do that and in all the various ways that we can support the ministry of the gospel. Help us all to see the roles that we might play as we use the gifts and the knowledge that you have blessed us with. We ask that through our attention to these details and to being unashamed of you and of your fellow servants, may you help us to lift high your name and to shine brightly in this world. We ask this in your name. Amen.