CHURCH IMPROVEMENT: BUILDING A CHURCH THAT HONORS GOD AND LOVES PEOPLE BY TEACHING AND LIVING TRUTH THAT TRANSFORMS CHILDREN AND TEENS

2 Timothy 1: 4-5 & 3:10-17

INTRODUCTION

What does it take to make a Timothy? “Timothy who,” you ask? I’m talking about the Timothy to whom two letters in the NT are addressed. Let me refresh your memory about this young, yet influential man. He first appears on the pages of the sacred text in Acts 16:1. Turn with me there and let’s read it together (p.784). Timothy is the son of a non-believing Greek man and a devout Jewish mother who, when she heard the gospel of Christ, became a Christian. He grew up in the Greek city and culture of Lystra, which is in the southeast corner of modern Turkey. While, as we heard in 2 Timothy 3:15 he was taught the Scriptures by his mother and grandmother from infancy, he did not participate in the public worship of God as a Jew as evidenced by the fact that he was not circumcised. Most likely, as is often the case when unbelievers are married to believers, especially when the believer is the wife, his un-believing father did not permit attendance at synagogue or participation in the overt and public observances of Jewish life. However, either this husband and father could not or did not stop Timothy’s mother and grandmother from teaching him the OT Scriptures from his childhood.

What is remarkable about this young man is that even though he was raised in a home where faith was not embraced by his father, which often leads to children, especially sons, not embracing faith, this young man had a reputation within the church in his home town of Lystra and of the neighboring town of Iconium as being a young man who was full of faith. He was well known to the Christians in these two towns and was recommended to Paul as someone who would make a good companion and worker for the gospel on Paul’s apostolic team. Most likely he is in his late teens or early twenties when he joins Paul on his missionary journey. He spent the next 10-15 years of his life accompanying Paul in his travels and ministry and sufferings throughout the countries bordering the northern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

This young man became so valuable to Paul and to his work of spreading the gospel that when Paul received word of all the trouble that was going on in the church in Corinth, he sent Timothy to remind the Corinthians of the gospel and the way of life that Paul had taught them. Similarly, when the there was difficulty in Thessalonica, he sent young Timothy as his representative. Then again, when Paul is in prison and writes to the church in Philippi he tells them that he is going to send to them Timothy. Listen to how he describes Timothy in the second chapter of that letter: “I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon… I have no one else like him who takes a genuine interest in your welfare. For everyone looks out for his own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know that Timothy has proved himself in every way for as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the gospel.” Timothy, unlike everyone else that Paul knows, is interested in what interests Jesus and that is the well-being of his church. Timothy is living for the glory of Christ in the joy of Christ’s church, just like Paul.

However, for all the admirable things that are said about Timothy in the NT, the two letters that bear his name show us that this young man was not perfect. In short, Timothy was timid. Paul had sent him to Ephesus to pastor the church there and to help in the fight against the false teachers who were infiltrating the church. He was having a hard go of it and was in danger of bailing out. Paul, when he writes his second letter to Timothy, is in prison in Rome and presumes that he is about to be killed for his stand for Christ. So he writes this second letter with great passion and urgency to strengthen Timothy and help him to hold fast to Christ and to be faithful to the ministry. You can see Paul’s concern for Timothy’s timidity everywhere in the letter. Just note with me 1:6-8, 2:3 & 8-9.

What I want us to see in our study this morning are the human factors that led to Timothy becoming, by his late teen years, a young man whom was viewed by his church as ready for missionary service and who, in spite of a timid personality, remained faithful to Christ over a lifetime. We know that ultimately the reason that Timothy became a man of faith and persevered is the grace of God. However, we have recorded for us in the NT and especially in Paul’s second letter to Timothy the human factors, the means of grace that were instrumental in Timothy becoming the man he became. The reason I want us to see these human factors is because we have living in our midst dozens of potential “Timothys.” Just look around at all these children and teens that God has placed among us. What are we doing to help these young people become faith-filled adults? That’s what I want us to consider as we see what happened to Timothy. I’m not asking how to turn all our children into missionaries, though I do pray some will become such, but what are the ordinary means that God uses to turn children and teens into faithful, lifelong followers of Jesus Christ? I am not going to give a formula or promise you that if you do this all of your children will love Jesus. Salvation is entirely a work of sovereign grace and there is no ironclad promise that if you do these things all your children will believe. Let me repeat that. The Bible does not say that. However, the Bible, as we can see in Timothy’s life does tell us how God saves when he saves.

MAIN POINT

Children in the church, by God’s grace, become faithful Christian adults through…

I. Parents and grandparents who intentionally teach them the gospel (2 Timothy 1:4-5 &3:14-15)

There was a Jewish woman named Lois who came to a sincere faith in the true and living God as revealed in the OT Scriptures. She was not merely an observant, law-abiding Jew but a true believing Jew; like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David. Lois lived outside of Palestine and practiced her faith in one of the scattered Jewish enclaves in the region of Galatia, in southern modern Turkey. She had a daughter named Eunice. At some point, under the instruction of her mother, Eunice also came to believe that God was going to save his people from their sins and for his kingdom, through the Messiah who was yet to come.

We are not told how it happened, but while a young woman, Eunice married a non-Jewish, pagan Greek man. Was this a young, illicit romance or the result of a man from the dominant culture forcing a minority woman to bow to his demand to become his wife or perhaps the arrangement of two sets of parents seeking some advantage for themselves? We do not know. What we do know is that this marriage was a violation of God’s command in the OT where on scores of occasions the people of Israel are commanded, “Do not intermarry with them (non-Jews). Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons…” Eunice ought not to have married her Greek husband. However, here we find the sweet savor of grace in the life of sinners. How often people feel that because they made an unchangeable decision at some point in their life, like marrying a non-Christian or getting a divorce or getting pregnant when not married or having an abortion, that they are forever relegated to God’s second best, plan B. Can Eunice and her son Timothy, whose husband and father is an unbeliever, be an encouragement to you? Eunice did not let her entry into an unsanctioned marriage turn her away from God or cause her to despair that she might belong to God and love and serve him. She lived in repentance and by faith in the midst of the circumstances she found herself, regardless of how she got there. She trusted the God who revealed himself through the Jewish prophets in the Scriptures. She loved him and raised her son to love him, even though she had entered an illicit marriage.

Am I saying that it doesn’t matter if you marry a non-Christian? No, I am not. God still tells his people to avoid marrying known non-believers. If I hear that you are planning to marry a non-Christian I will be on your doorstep to plead with you to find your joy in Christ and not to believe the lie that you can be a faithful follower of Christ and knowingly enter this relationship. Then if you do marry and you will still talk with me I will be asking you to repent of what you’ve done and to believe the gospel and live as Christian who is married to a non-Christian, just like Eunice. Do not think that will be easy. Eunice did not have an easy life. As many of you know, being married to someone who does not share your love for Christ has its own measure of pain. What I am telling you is the amazing grace of God. He works in the lives of all kinds of sinners and there is no condition you can get yourself into where he cannot forgive you and then use you, in spite of sinful choices you’ve made in the past that have ongoing consequences in the present. Whatever you may have done in the past and whatever the consequences may be in your life now there is, by God’s grace through Christ a place for you in Christ’s church and a life of faith for you to live in these circumstances.

When Timothy was in his early teens a small group of Jewish men, travelers from Palestine, came to Lystra, the city where Eunice and Timothy lived. Barnabas and Paul and a few other associates visited the local synagogue and also spoke in the marketplace. What they said turned this little town upside down. They announced that the Messiah had come to Israel but that the leaders of Israel with the full consent of the people had betrayed him and turned him over to the Romans who had killed him on a horrific cross. But then, he had risen from the dead and they were witnesses of his resurrection. They proclaimed that this Jesus, now resurrected, offered full pardon for sins and the fulfillment of all the promises of the OT in his eternal kingdom for everyone, Jew or Gentile, who would trust him. Barnabas and Paul spent quite a long time in this region preaching the gospel and performing signs and wonders in the name of Jesus. It was during that time that Eunice and her son, Timothy, upon hearing this glorious good news from the apostle Paul, believed in the crucified and risen Messiah, Jesus and thus became members of Christ’s church. Sometime after their conversion a group of Jews from a neighboring city, Iconium, came to Lystra and formed a mob that stoned Paul and left him for dead. Eunice and young, impressionable Timothy witnessed this violent attack and were among those disciples that gathered around Paul’s bruised and broken and presumably dead body. They watched him get up and go to the neighboring town of Derbe to continue preaching. God preserved his life and he continued preaching in that region before returning to Palestine.

In 2 Timothy we are told the human factors at work in his embracing the gospel of Jesus Christ. First, in 1:4-5 we find out that Timothy’s grandmother and mother both believed the promises of God and so these two women first possessed the sincere faith that he now possesses. Then, in 3:14-15 we are told that these faithful women made sure that Timothy, in the midst of a pagan home, received a first rate education in the Hebrew Scriptures. Timothy’s mom obeyed the command of God given to her in Deut. 6: 4-9. “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. These commands that I am giving you today shall be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” While she could not fully participate in synagogue and practice her faith out of deference to her husband, she made sure that she taught her son the truth of God as given in the OT. We don’t know how she did it, but she made sure that Timothy, who spoke Greek, learned to read Hebrew. She told him the stories and explained to him the law and filled him with the same hope that filled her heart, one day God would visit his people and send his Messiah to rescue them.

Notice, that while it is the OT that Timothy was taught, it was these Scriptures that made him “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” In other words, Eunice didn’t teach the Bible to Timothy so he could win at Bible trivia or in order to perform some religious duty. She taught him the Bible so that the Messiah would save him. It was due to her faith-filled instruction that when Timothy heard the gospel, along with his mother, he believed what Paul said, that Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the OT. God graciously enabled Eunice and Timothy to see that the Christ promised in the pages of the OT was this Jesus of Nazareth who suffered and died and rose again. They saw that Jesus Christ and his saving grace is the topic of this book that they knew so well because they had studied it daily for so long.

What would have happened to Timothy when he heard the gospel if he had not been taught the Scriptures from infancy? The Holy Spirit would not have had his word in the heart and mind of Timothy to use to bring conviction of sin and to reveal the glory of Christ. Nobody becomes a Christian without knowing the Scriptures at some level. When you do not teach the Bible to your children in your home you are working for their damnation, not their salvation. God may save them in spite of you, but he will not save them through you. Teaching the Bible to your children does not guarantee that God will graciously save them but you can know with certainty that God will not save them apart from a knowledge of Christ and his salvation that is only found in the Bible. I beg you, for your sake and for the sake of your children to make your home a center of biblical and theological education. Cause your children, “from infancy to know the sacred writings that are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus.” Read the Bible, use the catechism, memorize the Bible, tell the stories around the dinner table, ask your children questions and encourage them to ask you questions. If your spouse won’t help, do it anyways, as Eunice did with Timothy.

Almost from the first day that Jane and I believed that God was calling us to Janesville to plant this church it has been our burden to be a church that made motivating, equipping and supporting parents in their holy calling to teach the Scriptures to their children in their home central, because it is the primary and ordinary means God has given for the salvation of children of the church. That is why one of the first things that I developed and began to teach was our “Faith Training Seminar”. This seminar is aimed to carefully set forth a biblical/theological foundation for parents to pass on their faith to their children and for our church to embrace an intergenerational approach to our life together. It is full of practical help. I would urge you that if you have not yet attended one of these day long seminars that you join us this Saturday at the church for this seminar. Talk with Mel or me or call the church office by Tuesday.

Children in the church, by God’s grace, become faithful Christian adults through…

Parents and grandparents who intentionally teach them the gospel
And through…

II. Real life relationships with faithful Christian adults (3:10-13)

Prior to Paul’s return to Antioch and the church that originally sent him out on this first missionary journey, he traveled back through all the cities where he had started churches, appointing elders and telling each of these congregations, “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” Eunice and Timothy were a part of those congregations and heard these words from Paul and Barnabas. Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch a long time. It was during this time in Antioch that Paul wrote his first letter, the letter to the Galatians. The Galatians were the churches in Pisidion Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. Eunice and Timothy were among those believers who first heard this letter to the Galatian Christians.

Several years later Paul decided to return to these churches to see how they were getting along and to communicate some decisions that had been made by the first Christian church in Jerusalem about the relationship between Jews, Gentiles and the OT law. It was on this return journey that the Christians in the churches of Iconium and Lystra recommended that Timothy accompany Paul on his missionary journeys. Timothy was in his late teens or at most, early twenties. What had happened to Timothy during those 5-10 years since Paul’s first visit? It seems that Timothy had gotten involved, as a teenager, in the full life of his church. He had developed a reputation as a godly young man who was gifted in teaching the gospel from the OT Scriptures. Why was he able to do this? Because his grandmother and mother had taught him the Scriptures from infancy and so when he heard the good news that Jesus was the Messiah, he immediately began to make the connections and was able to teach with clarity. The thing that I want to emphasize here is that Timothy, as a young man, was accepted into the life of the church. He was a full participant and was respected for his insight and knowledge of the Scriptures. He was not segregated into a youth ghetto and treated as if he was in some special category, not child but not adult. The brothers who recommended him were most likely the elders of these churches. Timothy had significant relationships with other mature believers in his local church.

Notice in 2 Timothy 3:10-13, when Paul is seeking to strengthen him during a time of uncertainty and doubt, what does he ask Timothy to remember? When he is faced with insurmountable opposition, he asks Timothy to recall all that he has witnessed in Paul’s life. The word translated “know” in v. 10 is not the usual word for know. It technically means, “know by experience” or “closely pay attention to.” In other words, Timothy knows all this stuff about Paul because of his close relationship with Paul and his careful attention to Paul’s message and life. Timothy has become the man he has become because of his full participation in his church from his teens and because of his close relationship with Paul as a young man. Paul wants Timothy to imitate him and Timothy knows what it means to imitate Paul because of his long and close association with him.

Notice that what Paul emphasizes about their common experience is Timothy’s knowledge of the persecution he suffered when planting the churches in Timothy’s home state. He reminds Timothy of how the Lord rescued him out of all these sufferings. He wants Timothy to recall what he witnessed as a teenager, Paul being stoned, left for dead but then rising up and continuing to preach the gospel. Then Paul tells Timothy that he can expect to experience what he witnessed firsthand in his life, persecution and the Lord rescuing him out of it. He also reminds him that false teachers are not going to go away. He will always have enemies. What is apparent is this: Timothy has grown up in his faith from his association with Paul in the midst of real life. He didn’t go away to seminary to prepare for this job. He lived with Paul and lived what Paul lived and now, when Paul is not with him, Paul only needs to remind him of what life was like and Timothy immediately knows what is expected. He is able to simply remind Timothy of how the Lord worked in his life so that Timothy can gather strength from how God helped Paul endure suffering and false teachers.

About a month after Christ gave me new life in the spring of 1975, as a 20 year old, I met a man named Jesse James. He worked for Campus Crusade for Christ. He was 29 years old, married and had three children. I met him towards the end of my junior year of college. I remained in Stevens Point that summer and Jesse invited me to his house for dinner during the break between the spring semester and summer school with a couple of other students he knew. I went to his house every night for the next 10 days and stayed until midnight most of those nights. I pummeled him with questions and it was in those late night discussions that my faith in Christ was confirmed. Jesse left town by the end of May but when he came back the next fall I joined a small group that he led, spent a part of every weekend at his home and met with him almost every week to talk about the Bible or questions I was encountering as I shared the gospel in my dorm. We met with other students together and set up group meetings where he shared the gospel and I watched and then eventually, I shared the gospel and he watched. But mostly, we simply spent time together in my living environment, in his home and together in the church. I learned a great deal about marriage, about parenting, about leadership and about living the Christian life just by being with Jesse in a wide variety of real life settings. There is no doubt that next to the example of my parents, it was the example of Jesse that formed much of whom I am today.

Mark DeVries, who has worked in local churches his whole life in youth ministry, in his book “Family Based Youth Ministry” says that the primary indicator as to whether a teenager is going to become a faithful Christian adult is not how involved he or she is in youth ministry activities. Rather, those teens who develop significant relationships with mature Christian adults, whether a parent or another adult in the congregation are the most likely to become mature Christian adults themselves. The way that young people, in fact, all people, grow up in the faith is through the vehicle of relationships with older Christians. The pages of the Bible are full of these examples, as are the pages of history. It has been my dream, since beginning this church that we would be a place that fosters and encourages significant relationships between teens and adults. I dream of being a place where young men and women, in their teen years, are full participants in the life of the congregation, contributing to the ministries and functions of our church, not segregated into a youth ghetto to be entertained. I dream of being a place where we are learning together and serving together and playing together to the glory of Christ. We have made a beginning but we have much farther to go.

Children in the church, by God’s grace, become faithful Christian adults through…

Parents and grandparents who intentionally teach them the gospel
Real life relationships with faithful Christian adults
And through…

III. A church that depends upon God’s word to create mature Christians (3:16-17)

Paul’s purpose in writing 2 Timothy is to enable Timothy to stand up and fight the fight of faith in the face of overwhelming opposition. In this part of his letter he has told Timothy to remember what he learned from he and from his mother and grandmother. But he ends this section by pointing Timothy to the ultimate foundation upon which he must stand. While the examples of others are necessary, our ultimate loyalty does not lie with people. The greatest motive for standing firm in Christ is not fear of disappointing our parents or our mentors. Rather, as Paul tells Timothy, our ultimate foundation is God’s word. The reason that Paul holds himself and Timothy’s mom up as examples is because they are living examples of the effect of God’s word upon human lives. It is the word of God, which causes the effect, and we dare not see the power as deriving from merely human ability or goodness. The reason Paul, Lois and Eunice lived lives worthy of imitation is because, “All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness that the man of God may be adequate, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

There is a subtle danger in every church and Christian home that we come to depend upon our methods, rather than upon God’s word. Methods are merely the delivery systems of God’s truth. The power is not in us or in our methods, whatever they may be. The power is in the word of God. It is this word that is God-breathed, not the method we use to deliver it. It is this word that teaches, that rebukes, that corrects, that trains. Whatever method we adopt for getting truth to people must never be given the same respect and authority as the word we are aiming to get into the lives of people. There is no command in the Bible to gather on Sunday mornings at 10 am, begin with a song, have some announcements, do a children’s sermon, take an offering, then sing some more songs and then listen to a sermon. There is no place in the Bible that commands parents to homeschool their children, nor is there a command to send your kids to public school. There is no command in the Bible to organize your church into intergenerational small groups called Discovery Groups. There is no command in the Bible to have age-segregated classes called Sunday School or to not have age-segregated classes. There is no command in the Bible to use the catechism. I can tell you without any question that what causes trouble in most churches is when we treat one of our methods for delivering God’s word as if it is God’s word.

Look at what the word of God does. This book, which God himself has breathed out, is useful to teach us the truth about ourselves, about God, and about the only way to be saved from sin, death and hell. Without the Bible we cannot know God, nor the truth about ourselves. God, who is invisible, has revealed himself to us on the pages of this book. As God teaches us the truth through this book he also rebukes us for the false ideas we have about ourselves, about God and about reality. To be a Christian necessarily means that I admit that I am wrong on a regular basis as I grow in my knowledge of God’s word. But the Bible doesn’t only teach us the truth it also trains us in how to live a righteous life. Actually it corrects us for the wrong ways we live and then trains us in how to live a righteous life. Again, being a Christian is being a person who regularly must confess the many ways we have disobeyed God. We are continually confronted by God in his word with the wrong ways we live and talk and think and then shown the right way to live. You ought to regularly walk away from Sunday morning having discovered new ways you were thinking wrong and living wrong and also new ways to think right and live right. If you never leave church without being confronted with your thinking or living, either you’re not listening or the Bible isn’t being taught there. Christians daily are confronted with the need to change our minds and to change our lives. As the word of God has its teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness effect upon us we grow up, we become men and women who know how to live faithful and productive lives in God’s world. It is this word that parents teach to their children and older Christians teach younger Christians through the web of relationships that make up our church.

Children in the church, by God’s grace, become faithful Christian adults through…

Parents and grandparents who intentionally teach them the gospel
Real life relationships with faithful Christian adults
A church that depends upon God’s word to create mature Christians

© Copyright 2005 John Swanson
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