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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the Epistle reading, Paul’s letter to his dear beloved son by faith, Timothy. You may be seated. This morning’s texts are more about God’s divine hand in every one of our lives than it necessarily is just about one man. In the Acts reading, we see where Timothy happened to be come across by Paul in his travels, and how the Lord allowed their lives to cross and to be influenced by one another. It’s interesting: all that’s said in the Acts reading is that he was the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer. Her name was Eunice, the Scriptures tell us, in the second letter to Timothy. It also says his father was a Greek, which implies that he was an unbeliever. So there’s a mixed marriage, a believing wife and an unbelieving husband, and a son who is a believer as well, named Timothy.
Now it’s interesting how Timothy’s life was shaped. It was not the typical pastor’s kind of, or maybe we should say, what we think a pastor’s upbringing should be. For he came from a mixed marriage. His influence in his faith was not by men, per se, at least none that are mentioned. It talks about, in the second letter to Timothy by Paul, that Eunice, Timothy’s mother, was shaped in her faith by her own mother named Lois. Now, I don’t know what that must have been like. Some of you may. Some of you know people like that, where it’s not necessarily a perfect environment. Meaning, mother and father are stalwarts of the church, grandparents both are stalwarts of the church, and so forth. Timothy didn’t have that. Neither did Lois or Eunice. So you can only imagine what shaped their confessing faith.
Very interesting. Here is Eunice, whose father we have no idea about, but whose faith was shaped by Lois at a time when Christianity was barely out of the womb, meaning Christ had probably just died, which is probably around the same time that Eunice had a young girl named Lois in her household raising her. We don’t know if she raised her by herself, but how difficult that was to be the only parent encouraging her. Well then, as all mothers are, Eunice’s mother, Lois, was praying that Eunice would marry a believer. Didn’t happen, did it? Lois could have become bitter because Eunice didn’t follow her values or goals, but she didn’t. She loved, which impacted Eunice’s life. Eunice, maybe surprising Lois, kept that faith intact and passed it on to her little boy named Timothy.
So little Timothy had to put up with a lot of playground teasing. When you look at Timothy’s life before he met Paul, all of the things that shaped Timothy, we only get a glimpse of a little bit. His mother, Eunice, and his grandmother, Lois, and that’s it. Consider in your own mind for a moment the people that God used to shape your faith and your confession of that faith. The faithful pastor who confirmed you or married you or baptized your children, maybe. The Sunday school teachers, from old to young, from boisterous and joyful to cratchety and faithful. Or those parochial school teachers who weren’t getting paid for what they were worth, but gave you the faith by their faithfulness and affirmed you in that. Not to mention your own mother or father. Your own children have been shaped by other people, maybe in as profound a way as you yourselves have shaped them. That is how God works, isn’t it? Thanks be to God, because we parents, it’s by grace our children grow up to be Christians sometimes, given us and our hypocrisies and our anger or our emotions or our hidden emotions or whatever you want to call them.
Consider those people who have shaped your children’s faith. And that’s very important because it makes us see in Timothy’s life how Timothy wasn’t an island unto himself. How Timothy’s life was shaped by many people, a few that we know of and many more that we don’t, just like your own life and your children’s lives.
And in that epistle reading, the first letter to Timothy, Paul is encouraging Timothy in a very difficult situation that Timothy found himself. Here’s a young pastor in his congregation. First congregation. Young. Younger than most all the people that he’s ministering unto. And if you think being young in American society has some issues, being young in a Middle Eastern society has far more profound issues. He encourages him to maintain the good confession of faith just as Jesus did.
And the example that Paul pulls for Timothy to look to, and for you to look to, of all the examples of Jesus confessing the faith, he uses Jesus confessing the faith in front of Pontius Pilate. Now that’s interesting. He doesn’t give the example of Jesus confessing the faith in front of a Roman centurion whose faith is lauded by our Lord Jesus. He rather gives him the example of Jesus confessing the faith in the face of someone who will murder him and who himself will probably die an unbeliever. Doesn’t that seem a little wasteful of a confession? Why use that as an example? Why?
And the better answer would be, why not? Because that is what we are to do: confess the faith in front of people even whom we think in our heart will never believe these words. And yet we are called to be faithful to that confession of the faith. Consider that dialogue between Jesus and Pilate. You remember, Pilate receives Jesus, and there’s a questioning that goes on, and Jesus is asked, “Are you the king of the Jews?” by Pilate. And Jesus responds, “Do you say that of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?”
That’s kind of like the introduction to this confession of faith. It’s the next couple of things that are mentioned that truly are the confessions of the faith. Incensed, Pilate responds, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” Pilate is throwing everything into Jesus’ faith of sarcasm, and Satan is going to use it to pummel Jesus as well. Jesus, instead of arguing anything, just confesses the faith and says, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from this world.”
That’s sometimes the hardest confession of faith for you and I to confess in words, more importantly, in actions. When it comes to money, the use of it, the misuse of it, what we save for, what means something to us. If it’s taken away or scratched, dented or burned up or lost or stolen. Pilate, thinking he’s caught Jesus in this, says, “So you are a king.” Jesus responds with another important confession. He says, “You say that I’m a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world.” Not as a king, but with this confession: “To bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is on the side of truth listens to my voice.”
He’s now making a very sharp definition that either you are or you aren’t. There isn’t an in-between. Either you listen and obey and hear the word of truth, or you disobey and forsake the word of truth. And it is truth that Timothy must confess in his congregation. And it’s truth that you and I live to confess in this world. Where political correctness makes it the desire of all of us not to rock the boat, stir the fat, up in the cart. Oh, we’ll choose the things about which we don’t want to be politically correct, but let it be about religion. Let it be about your faith. Let it be about what really matters in this world and what doesn’t matter in this world. Reticence befalls all of us.
Pilate leaves the room and he is incensed, and he goes and talks to the Jews, and the Jews remind him of what they desire and they emphasize it with the exclamation point of twice saying, “Crucify him, crucify him.” Pilate returns, asks him some questions. Jesus is silent. Pilate’s last interchange with Jesus is, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have the authority to release you? And I have the authority to crucify you.” He’s being attempted. He’s attempting to intimidate Jesus, to bully him. We don’t need to bully people into the faith. And you sure do not have to receive being bullied or intimidated by others. Keep the calm and the confession yet before you. Calmly, Jesus responds, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.”
Now you and I can look at that and think, “Well, he knows that already.” Do you? Do you know that there is nothing in this world that can harm you unless God allows it? And then that there is no end to your life unless God deems it. And that no one can do anything to you unless he allows it. And if he does, his hand is the one in it, and his hand is loving and kind. He showed it to the twelve in the upper room, and he shows it to you each Sunday here.
I’m loving and merciful. What Paul does in his letter to Timothy, the first letter, where Paul is encouraging him in this congregation, he says, “Remember your identity.” Not in so much as those specific words. But he says it in these words in our text. He calls Timothy, “Oh man of God.” It’s a real interesting statement. One of the few places that it’s proclaimed. “Man of God” is a reminder that yes, you are clay. And to dust you shall return as man. Amen. But you are my man, for you are a man of God, which implies you have been baptized. Timothy had been baptized. He goes on and says, “Take hold of the life eternal to which you were called.”
He reminds him, “You are my child. You are my beloved son.” Though the world would love to sink its teeth and claws into you and claim you as its own, and though many times you have been willing to take that path of ease and less conflict, he has called you to this path of which he and his hand will lead you as he led our Lord Jesus and as he carried him. He reminds him he will display this at the proper time, your glory and your reward. Some days it seems as if what we do and our faithfulness has no bearing, impact, or meaning to anyone. But remind yourself of Eunice and her mother Lois and their faithfulness and what it did for a young man named Timothy and Paul and how it affected congregations where Eunice and Lois would never visit or know.
So it is in your life. God has utilized you and people in your life to shape you and your faith, to use you where he has placed you, with people whom no one else here will be interacting except you, for the sake of the kingdom, something bigger than you or me. This is Timothy’s encouragement by Paul. He does not want to negate that Timothy needs to be reminded of his identity, just as you do, just as I do, so that as we wrestle in this world and proclaim this faith that we’ve been given, we do it knowing by faith, not by sight or results, but by faith it is faithful and good, pleasing to the Father, and he will bring it to pass in his own time.
But until then, don’t overlook the young in our church who are going to be tomorrow’s pastors, the young men whom you see around you. Do not overlook the young women and their lives as they are used by God as teachers. And regardless of whether they become pastors or teachers, more importantly, they will be husbands someday, and wives someday, God-willing fathers someday, and mothers someday. That the church always needs and can never be without, just as Timothy could not have been without his mother and his grandmother. Notice our closing hymn when we sing it, celebrating the faith of these women, just as we have had those in our lives that have shaped us.
In the name of Jesus, amen.
