Sunday Sermon: All that God Gives
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Text: 2 Timothy 1:7
Series: Certain Truths for Uncertain Times
When I was growing up, I remember being given a book of “famous last words.” I don’t remember anything about who gave the book to me, or why someone thought I might have need of it, I just remember receiving it and reading those last reflections of notable people, reflections that represented insights and conclusions they felt important to leave behind.
The awareness of death does have a way of bringing everything into focus; does it not? When you are confronted with your mortality, regardless of your age, you suddenly begin to see what matters in life and, as is the case with famous last words, you want others to see it too, and you want them to see it before it is too late.
Paul’s second letter to Timothy, Paul’s protégé in the faith, can be thought of as Paul’s last words. Paul had been privileged to have enjoyed a good number of years to advance the cause of Jesus Christ, whom he had met on the road to Damascus when he was a persecutor of the church and not its friend. Jesus, of course, had changed Paul into a most zealous advocate of the faith and from that time on, Paul never missed a moment to proclaim Jesus and to encourage others to do the same.
Now, at the time of 2 Timothy, Paul is in a Roman prison, condemned to death. This is not the same imprisonment Paul had known years earlier, when under what was essentially “house arrest,” Paul could write freely and receive guests freely. Now, Paul is alone in a cold Roman dungeon, with only his companion Luke left to visit and provide him comfort, and Paul has plenty of time to look back over his life and reflect on the people and the places that had meant so much to him and his ministry, which includes Timothy.
According to the book of Acts, Paul had met Timothy during his second missionary journey when he had passed through the town of Lystra. Paul could see the potential in this young believer and had Timothy accompany Silas and him as they made their way into northern Asia Minor and then across the Aegean Sea to Macedonia and modern-day Greece. Later, Paul would often send Timothy ahead of him into various places or at times in his place when Paul was unable to go, such as to the church at Corinth, a most contentious congregation, so that as Paul writes to them in his first letter, Paul says to them: “(So) if Timothy comes, see to it that he has nothing to fear while he is with you, for he is carrying on the work of the Lord, just as I am” (1 Cor. 16:10). It’s as if Paul knew that the rowdy Corinthians might try to run roughshod over this young minister and he didn’t want Timothy to be put in a place where Timothy’s worst fears about serving Christ might come true.
I tell you that background because of the text before us today. Paul has seen that his days are numbered and that, as he puts it in the fourth chapter, “the time of my departure is at hand” (2 Tim. 4:6). If Timothy has in fact been prone to any bout of uncertainty over God’s ability to sustain him, Paul wants to dispel those doubts as best he can. And so, Paul offers these words to the young man he had been mentoring for a good number of years: “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but (he) gives us power and love and self-discipline.” In other words, though fear is something that every one of us feels at some point in life, fear should never be the believer’s prevailing mindset because of how we have been given the abundant provision of grace through God’s Holy Spirit, a provision of grace which shows itself in everything that we need to advance Christ’s cause in our world.
I can’t imagine anything Paul could have said that would have been of more benefit to Timothy than these words we’re looking at this morning. For that matter, I don’t know that there’s anything Paul ever said that is of more benefit to us today. After all, is it not the case that we all find ourselves all too often on the target end of fear, where we get anxious and concerned about what is going to happen and where we convince ourselves that some looming disaster is waiting to consume us? How many times have we held back from some word or action that might have made much of Jesus simply because we were concerned about what others would think of us or what others would not do with us? How many opportunities have we squandered because we were in effect being controlled by a spirit of timidity?
What this passage reminds us is that such a spirit does not come from Jesus. Jesus does not want us to be troubled about tomorrow. What was it Jesus had said to his disciples prior to his crucifixion? “Let not your hearts be troubled. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you” (Jn. 14:25-27).
Paul is picking up on that teaching of Jesus to his disciples with his own word of encouragement to Timothy. I love how Paul couches his teaching. As was so often the case in his writing, Paul uses a triad, a grouping of three virtues, in this case, power, love, and self-discipline, each of which builds upon the other. For example, to be powerful or to have authority over others can at times be used in a terribly abusive way. We’ve all seen how that has happened at some point in life. But power cannot be used in that way when it is tempered with agape love, an unconditional regard for others, which is grounded in God’s unconditional love for us in Jesus Christ. And finally, self-discipline is the key to keeping power and love in balance. Otherwise, power becomes domination and love becomes sentimentality. But with the help of the Holy Spirit, all three work together in synergistic fashion to create opportunities for us believers to join God in the redemptive work He is doing in our world, even at a time like this present one, when too many have become paralyzed over what they see is a hopeless tomorrow.
When I think about where so many churches and so many Christians are today, struggling to sustain their witness because of the challenges of this present hour, I can’t help but see the source of the struggle as stemming from their not relying on the provisions the Holy Spirit makes possible. In a “normal” season, a season where folk are pretty much free to go where they want and do what they want, churches and individual Christians can get by in their own strength and wisdom, and when they find themselves stuck in some kind of spiritual rut, they only need a gentle push from the Spirit to get them going again. But when we find ourselves in an “abnormal” season, a season where our strength is insufficient and our wisdom is called into question, we need more than a gentle push. We need a radical infusion of heavenly power to give us the power, the love, and the self-discipline that are necessary to stay the course in the right way and for the right reason, for, as the old hymn puts it, “all is vain unless the Spirit of the Holy One comes down.”
Charles Spurgeon, the great British Baptist preacher of the nineteenth century, likened the work of the Holy Spirit to the geophysical dynamics of an artesian well. Have you ever seen such a well? It’s truly a remarkable thing. The word artesian comes from an old Roman city in northern France, where in the Middle Ages, wells were dug in which the water ran freely because of the power of the water pressure at higher ground levels. It didn’t matter if a season of drought or some other natural calamity took place in the area where the well was located. The power from on high kept the water flowing freely.
This present hour contains so many opportunities to advance the cause of Christ. People all around us are more open than ever to experience a source of inexhaustible strength that will see them through this current season of drought and challenge to a better one. God has called us to examples of calm at a time when others are cringing at what lies around the bend. So, let’s be that sort of people, a people who offer that sort of witness, but not in our strength and power. Let’s offer it instead in the power of the Spirit so that our words and our deeds may remind others that all that God gives through the Spirit will forever be more than enough and for those who believe that truth with all their beings from them “streams of living water will flow from within” (Jn. 7:38). I can’t think of anything more important or more “famous” that a Christian could ever say.