Timothy

Guard, Livingstone, paul, Sermons, Timothy, Treasures

Guard the Good Treasure

Posted on October 7, 2022 by narciejeter

October 2, 2022

My jewelry box lid disintegrated after 20 plus years. I’ve put jewelry in this old Bath and Body Works holiday gift container for what feels like eons and Evy commented, it’s hard to find a big box with a lid. I’m on the lookout for another large container, I don’t need a vault or lock and key. I don’t need security like the Crown Jewels or lasers like the movie with Catherine Zeta Jones and Sean Connery, Entrapment. I know where my treasure truly lies and it’s not in a disintegrating jewelry box. What do you treasure? What do you hold dear?

Our text today comes from 2 Timothy. It’s the last letter Paul wrote before he died. In it he’s imparting wisdom to his spiritual son Timothy. Words that he not only treasures, but he takes to heart and enacts in his life and imparts to his fellow followers of Jesus.

2 Timothy 1:6-14 (NRSV)

⁶For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; ⁷for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

⁸Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God, ⁹who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, ¹⁰but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. ¹¹For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, ¹²and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. ¹³Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. ¹⁴Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

Paul’s basically telling Timothy to do three things: Remember, Rekindle, and Guard.

Remember

Remember what you’ve learned, who you are and most importantly whose you are. In verse 3 Paul writes, “I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day.” And in verse 5 he writes, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.” Paul’s remembering Timothy in his prayers and he’s commending Timothy for his authentic faith that he learned from his grandmother and mother. He was a witness to their knowledge and love of God and love of Jesus. It was obviously part of his upbringing. It was as natural as sitting down for breakfast or going to bed at night and because it was so natural it became in integral part of Timothy’s life and his own faith journey. Paul is encouraging him to remember that.

And NOT to remember his own limitations. In 1 Corinthians 16:10 Paul writes, “If Timothy comes, see that he has nothing to fear among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord just as I am.” Who knows if he was an introvert or if he was nervous in front of a crowd. The text doesn’t say. And in his first letter to Timothy, Paul writes, “No longer drink only water, but take a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.” Not only was he afraid, he had “frequent ailments.” But Paul saw himself in young Timothy saying in Philippians 2:19-22, “I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I, too, may be consoled by news of you. I have no one so like myself who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. All of them are seeking their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But Timothy’s worth you know, how like a son with a father he has served with me in the work of the gospel.” This a father, imparting his final wisdom to his son. Timothy picked up from his mother, Eunice, and his grandmother Lois, and we reaffirmed in getting and up close view of Paul’s life this critical piece of wisdom from Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” Remember to draw from the deep well that is Jesus and he will give you all the strength you need to go through any challenge you face. Remember every time God has brought you through something. Remember the times God has shown up. Remember the times God has made a way, when there seemed to be no way through or around or underground. Remember God’s rainbows. Remember Jesus, “Peace be still,” calming the wind and the waves. Remember the Holy Spirit’s turning our mere utterings into prayers. Remember.

Rekindle

The first place we guard that treasure is within ourselves. The passage calls us to “rekindle the gift of God that is within you.”

The image behind the term, “rekindle” is fanning something into flame. The embers are our remembrances of what God has done in our lives and all of God’s people through time. At some of their meetings, Boy Scouts have a contest on building a fire. Teams of scouts will be stationed at a campfire with a frame over the fire. The frame holds a pot of water. The goal is to start a fire, then build the fire up to the point that the water boils over the sides of the pot. The team that causes the water to spill over the side first wins. The scouts fan with whatever they find handy as fast and furiously as they can. The flames of the fire leap up, the water in the pot begins to stir until finally a bubble leaks to the top. The water rolls with more energy until at last some of it splashes over the side. That’s fanning into flame! Rekindling the fire within!

Has the world doused your fire? Stress, work, fatigue, disappointment, and heartbreak can all cause our flame to die down. We poke around in the embers, but don’t find much spark. Prayer, worship, and opening ourselves to the Holy Spirit can give us that energy; it can give us that spark. Remembering goes with Rekindling. Paul reminds Timothy of the essence of his faith so that he can rekindle that faith in Timothy. Sort of like fanning the embers of a fire so it won’t go out.

Our words can fan the flame or rekindle the embers of faith or dump a whole bucket of cold water and douse it. Words are powerful. They can be used to encourage and build up or they can bring ruin and tear down. Remember and rekindle your own faith so you can rekindle the faith of those around you in mighty ways. Rekindle.

Guard

And finally, Paul says we are to Guard the Good Treasure. What you have is a treasure. Regard it as a good treasure. A faith that is hard won and to be cherished. Paul said something similar 1 Timothy 6:20, “Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you.” We do have to guard the faith, guard it and nurture it so it doesn’t wither and die. Guard it so it gets easily shared. And guard against letting it be hidden away someplace so it never has an opportunity to bloom.

An army officer, his wife, and two children were living in a hotel while he was on a temporary military assignment. One day, a guest in the hotel saw one of the little girls playing house in the lobby. She was saddened for the little girl and said, I’m so sorry that you don’t have a home. The little girl responded quickly, oh we have a home, we don’t have a house to put it in.

That is the good treasure. Sharing freely and carrying our homes with us wherever we go. Protecting the good treasure of what has been given to us through the death of Jesus Christ – forgiveness of sins and resurrection hope that is life everlasting. Holding on to what is dear to us and treasuring it despite our address or current circumstances.

The famous missionary Robert Moffat returned to Scotland to recruit helpers to the mission field after years of faithful service in South Africa. When he arrived at the church he was to speak at one cold, wintry night he was dismayed that only a small group had come out to hear him. What bothered him even more was that the only people in attendance were women, and although he was grateful for their interest he had hoped to challenge men.

He had chosen for his text, “Unto you, O men I call” from Proverbs 8:4. He hardly noticed that there was a young boy present who was pumping the bellows for the organ that night. Moffat was so frustrated as he gave the message that night, hardly noticing that the boy was listening. When the call was given, nobody responded since they were all women and he was asking for men.

However, the young boy was deeply moved by the challenge Moffat had given. He was one of five children in a poor family that resided in two small rooms. His parents were poor in earthly wealth but rich in spirit and they inspired their son to devote his life to serving God and his fellow man. As a result of Moffat’s sermon, he promised God he would follow in the footsteps of the missionary from South Africa. He began working in the cotton mills at age 10 and continued there for many years, eventually earning enough money to put himself through college, where he studied medicine and theology.

When this boy grew up, he went and ministered to the unreached tribes of Africa. His name: David Livingstone. Moffat never ceased to wonder that his appeal, which he had intended for men, had stirred a young boy.

He spent most of his adult life exploring Africa, bringing “modern” medicine and God’s Word to its remotest regions. He was the first person to cross the continent from east to west and the first white man to see Victoria Falls. He planted missions, spread the gospel and endured incredible hardships. In doing so, it is said that he added a million square miles to what was then considered the known world — and hundreds, maybe thousands, of souls to the heavenly rolls.

He was showered with accolades for his work. But the thing about David Livingstone’s life that most touches my heart is the way he died. Early on the morning of May 1, 1873, he was found dead, kneeling beside his bed. While doing God’s will, praying alone in a remote African hut, he was taken up to his heavenly home. He was able to guard that good treasure until he joined the communion of saints. Guard.

Moffat was Livingstone’s Paul and Livingstone was his Timothy. We carry the batons of those who have long run the race of faith with perseverance and faithfulness. Paul was passing the baton to Timothy and he indeed is passing it to us. We have to remember, rekindle and guard the good treasure entrusted to each of us by the overflowing grace, love and mercy of Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. If we do that, we can pass the baton to our sons and daughters with wisdom, strength and example as we finish our race!

Campus Ministry, Dust, Glee, Kinky Boots, mentors, Rob Bell, Sermon, Timothy

Posted on September 22, 2013September 22, 2013 by narciejeter

Sweet starts this chapter with these words, “We are all treading in someone else’s footsteps.” We all work within the framework of someone else’s legacy and to those that have gone before in the great cloud of witnesses.

2 Timothy 3:10-11 says, ^“Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness,my persecutions, and my suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.”

A Timothy is a protégé, an heir, and an apprentice. A Timothy knows your mind better than anyone else. They can anticipate your every move even before you make it. A Timothy is not an Andy and a Paul is not a Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, where she will have to gopher all of Miranda’s every whims at all hours of the day or night. But, they would have spent an awfully lot of time together.

Who is Timothy? Of all the early Christian workers on behalf of the Gospel, Timothy was the closest to Paul. It’s often the case, that Paul pushes Timothy to the beginning of his letters to a particular church. For example, 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians and 2 Thessalonians, all start this way. Paul looks on Timothy as a son in Philippians 2:22. He was from Lystra in Asia Minor. He was born of a Greek father and a Jewish Christian mother. Timothy was young when he first joined Paul and Silas, but his co-workers in Lystra and Iconium spoke so highly of him that Paul decided that he could handle this journey. Although Timothy’s mother was Jewish, he had not been circumcised. Paul was concerned that this would impede his authority among the Jews to whom he would be preaching, who knew his father was Greek, and so he circumcised him personally and ordained him as a preacher. His mother Eunice, and his grandmother, Lois, are noted as examples of piety and faith.

What kind of legacy will you leave your descendants? Alan Jamieson says it like this, “Like Abram, the question that we, too, must consider is whether we will have descendants: not children in our own line but descendants in faith and life. Will we love and care for others in such a way that they become descendants? People to whom and through whom the lessons of faith we have learned are passed on?” What’s our legacy going to be? Will our descendants be numerous as the stars or will they all be extinguished when the mere flicker of doubt sends them running for the hills?

Before Paul had a Timothy, he first had to BE a Timothy. Paul was a protégé of Gamaliel, the most important rabbi in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus. Gamaliel was the grandson of Hillel, one of the greatest interpreters of the Torah in Jewish history, as evidenced by the title bestowed on him of Rabboni, “our teacher” rather than Rabbi, “my teacher.” Even though Gamaliel recommended patience with those who claimed that Jesus was the Messiah, his star pupil Saul didn’t agree with him and stoned the “blasphemers.” Before becoming an evangelizing Paul, Gamaliel’s star pupil was a persecuting Saul. In Acts 22:3 Paul tells a crowd in Jerusalem, “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strict manner of law of our fathers, being zealous for God as all of you are this day.”

A mentor is someone who is a wise and trusted counselor and teacher or an influential senior sponsor or supporter. Synonyms for mentor are an advisor, master, guide, or preceptor. We all have mentors that shape us and mold us as we ask vocational questions or continue on our career paths. That make it easier for us to not walk this journey alone. It depends on the relationship how hands on the teaching is, how personal.

Osmosis was how protégés like Timothy learned from Paul. He traveled with him, watched what he did, and then was given “tests” or assignments to complete to see how well he was developing his potential. Wherever Timothy went, he carried the aura of Paul’s authority and name with him. For example, the Assistant Directors are leading the leadership meeting this afternoon, and I want y’all to treat them the same way y’all would treat me….only better. The Timothy relationship cannot develop without the patience of presence. A Timothy needs a balance of instruction and silence to process the teaching, and the trust you place in him or her to do the job. You don’t have to say a word, or call every other day, to let him or her know you still care. That’s the difference in a Timothy relationship, you care. You care about how well their soul is doing.

I will have dinner with three of my Timothy’s tomorrow night in Atlanta. I’m meeting with Angela, Jessica and Jon at the Vortex, a hamburger joint in Little Five Points. Angela spent two years with me. She was a rising Junior when I got to Winthrop Wesley, needless to say that first semester our relationship was rocky. She didn’t want anything to change and she liked Wesley small, which would never work for me. I’ll never forget taking Angela on her first camping trip or her first rafting trip. Stories abound, and I will tell you about her first camping trip Wednesday night. She saw me at my best, and at my worst. And she’s the only one that has ever experienced the joy of Enoch projectile vomiting on her when he was an infant. She’s now the campus minister at Georgia State Wesley, and I’m exceedingly proud of her. Jon and Jessica are in their second year of Candler, where I went to seminary. Jessica worked for me as my student assistant for 3 years and Jon lived for two years at Wesley in a small room that we had on the side. So they certainly saw “my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness.” The good, the bad, the ugly.

I could name students that are not ministers, lest you think I’m creating little spawns of me. Josh and Jaime that work at the CDC, Jan that’s a neuro nurse, Ashlee who some of you met in New York, that got her Master’s in Social Work from Columbia University. I am incredibly proud of all of them and I’m hoping that they’re creating a ripple effect of being God’s hands and feet in the world. A healthy tree is not a single tree, no matter how beautiful it may look. A healthy sycamore tree is a tree with heirs, a sycamore community with trees in various stages of growth and development. You must always look at trees successors before you judge its health and vitality.

Joshua in the Old Testament, did not pass the baton, he had no heirs. Then came the judges, spawning the most horrible times recorded in the Hebrew Bible for Israel. When the baton is passed, we tend to grab the wrong end of the stick, where our mentors are holding. We want to be clones not heirs. Joshua is not Moses’ clone. Timothy is not Paul’s clone. What we find is a “mash up.” Mash-ups remix the same song with a different beat, sometimes in a different key.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FPsAVg2DNU

Glee made mashups popular again. Do you see what I’m saying? They’re not the same song, but there are some similarities and you can tell it is the same vein.

The process of being a Timothy is a gradual revelation of the song your life is composing, that one-of-a-kind, unrepeatable, irreplaceable song that only you can sing. Remember Winnie the Pooh in the story about losing his song? He gets his friends to go on the hunt for his song and then he finds that his song is within him. “A friend is someone who, when you forget your song, comes and sings it for you.”

When James Mawdsley was imprisoned in Burma, he sang to give himself courage, “After [the prison guard] left, still unable to sleep, I began singing “How Great Thou Art.” My voice got louder and louder until I was belting it out. I could feel strength coming back to me; I was not going to bow yet. A gaggle of guards came running and told me to be quiet. They were excited and afraid. I sang to the end of the song, congratulating myself on my defiance, then crumpled back into bleakness.” Let Jesus sing through you. When God sings in and through us, liberation happens. The sound of a voice calling from the darkness can pierce through that very same darkness.

The primary organ a Timothy must possess is ears. Jesus says when Pilate confronted him, “Everyone who belongs to the Truth hears my voice.” Sweet says if anything indicates the success or failure of a Timothy, it’s the ability to listen. “Some things can only be heard by those with ears to hear. The more layers of interference—iPods, iPhones, cell phones, the tv, Netflix – the more our inner voice is blocked and the more help we need to hear.

Astonomer and atheist Carl Sagan said, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” Sweet makes the supposition that more either becomes better or different. More as better means doing what you’re already doing, except doing it bigger, faster, with added value. In contrast more as different means doing something unique and outside the box. As Christians, we don’t live better than others. But we sure as heck better be living different. They will know we are Christians by our love. Timothys have to take some leaps into the unknown when they do the different route. How about you, when someone says, “You sure are different and you think different.” Do you take it is a compliment? Is it meant as a compliment, or is it almost always negative in its implications? What about when we say it to others?

Charlie in the Broadway Show Kinky Boots, is set to inherit his father’s shoe business, but he has other plans of moving to London with his girlfriend Nicola. When his father suddenly dies, he must take over the shoe business. His doubts are expressed in a song “Charlie’s Soliloquy” and I would like to play it for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E81VXIDSxe4

Charlie:
Do I belong here?
Am I what’s wrong here?
Know what I’m doing?
Or am I a fraud?
Do I fit in?
Where do I begin?
Same old Charlie,
Frightened and flawed.
So, I pretend
and keep my head up like I
Know how this will end.

Maybe these pieces
Are falling together.
Making me feel like
I’m not alone.
Punching holes
Into this leather
This kind’a feels like
I’m back home.

I’m watching myself
And I know what to do.
Hey look at me now
It’s a shoe.

Charlie was feeling alone with the burden and the weight of his father’s legacy on top of him. But then he realized that he’s not in it alone, he’s got a community behind him. He’s got a cluster of sycamore trees rooting for him, quite literally.

I couldn’t help but call to mind the Rob Bell NOOMA video “Dust” so I’m going to end there. Because anybody can be a Timothy, if they want to be. Anybody can follow if you have a willingness in your heart. Just pay attention to be on the lookout for mentors.

Dust – 9:30-13:49

Let us pray.

Holy and Gracious God, may we be covered in your dust. May we earnestly seek you and to do your will in our lives. May you give us hearts to follow, but also hearts to mentor, to guide, to lead. Like Charlie may we find reassurance for our doubts. May you speak truth over our lives and may we hear your truth and not brush it to the side. In Jesus’ name I pray, and I pray as you taught your disciples to pray, saying…