1 Timothy Overview

Even though I don’t remember that phase of my life, from everything my parents have told me and what I’ve heard growing up from our brothers, is that I was a really happy child. In spite of the picture that you saw on Instagram this past week that looked like I was very puzzled and distressed, that was probably because the first time ever that I was staring at a camera or a stranger standing there with a camera. That’s why you saw that picture, but generally speaking, I was supposedly a very, very happy child growing up. So that picture, even though Jewel chose that picture, is not really a good accurate reflection of how I was as a child. So I just wanted to make that disclaimer before we start our new series Wise Young Servant, and if you are thinking about what this is all about, Lord willing, for the next several months we’ll be going through the book of 1st Timothy. A book that is really important in the life of the church, one that has been studied quite a bit, especially when it comes to how to set up churches, how to set up leadership within the church. In fact, in all God’s Word, 1st Timothy has more instructions on the qualifications of leaders within the church and on how to set up church and church discipline than any other book in the New Testament. So it’s one that is very important in the mind of pastors, but it’s not only for pastors, it is also very important to everyone in the body of believers as well, and I hope and pray that as we go through this book that you will learn a lot of things that maybe you never thought about before. There are some very interesting passages in this book that will be, it’ll be very unique, and messages in some maybe that you’ve never heard before as we go through this book of 1st Timothy.

As an introduction, I just want to give you these three books: 1st Timothy, 2nd Timothy, and Titus. These three books are known in God’s Word as pastoral epistles. This title, pastoral epistles, is not something that is found in church history. In fact, it was around the 18th century that this particular terminology was coined, pastoral epistles, and the reason for that is because these are very uniquely written to other pastors from the pen of the Apostle Paul. All the other New Testament books, the epistles that we have, are being written to a church, a group of people, or believers all across, whereas these three are specifically written from the pen of the Apostle Paul, specifically to Timothy, who was a pastor, and also then to Titus, who is an elder as well.

If you remember our series in the book of Acts, we talked about Timothy a couple of weeks ago as we went through Acts 16. I hope at least some of you remember what we talked about in the case of Timothy, but just for your remembrance, I want you to take part to the first time in God’s Word where Timothy is mentioned, that is in Acts 16:1-2. In the early chapter, in Acts 15, we know that tremendous story of Paul in his first missionary journey ministering in Lystra, and you know what happened to him—he was stoned and left to die outside the city gates. But miraculously, God would bring him almost back to life. Some people think that his vision of going to the third heaven, that he talks about in Corinthians, happened after his stoning in the town of Lystra. So he was left to die, and you know, when somebody leaves you to die, it means that you were pretty much dead, and so many people think that he actually died and, you know, he actually went to heaven and came back, and there are some people who believe that. Whatever the case might be, this definitely made a great deal of impression upon young Timothy, who was there in Lystra, because by the time Paul comes back for his second missionary journey, we see a man who was already converted and was also ready to now accompany the Apostle Paul in his second missionary journey.

That’s what we read about in Acts 16 verse 1 and 2. Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived. I love the word disciple that is used by Luke over there about Timothy, which means that he was already a believer, probably definitely during the first missionary journey of the Apostle Paul, because the gospel was reaching Lystra for the first time during the first missionary journey of the Apostle Paul. Then Luke gives us a little bit of detail about this man Timothy that he talks to us about in Acts 16. His mother was Jewish and a believer, but his father was of Greek origin. Many theologians believe that his father was already dead by the time we come to Acts 16, and so he had this mixed racial group that is now raising him. You have a Gentile father and a Jewish mother, and from God’s Word—we’ll talk about in a second—we know that his upbringing, at least on the mom’s side, was very much grounded in God’s Word. It was a very devout Jewish family, but many people think, and probably rightfully so, that his father was not a believer.

So I want you to imagine a young man growing up in a home, not only with a conflict between Jews and Gentile background, but a mom and a grandmother who are devoutly Jewish, and a father who is probably not a believer. In that kind of context is when the gospel will reach Timothy and make him to be a child of God. And look at the testimony that Luke himself writes about Timothy in Acts 16:1-2. The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him, and I told you that Iconium was several miles away from Lystra at that time, almost 50 miles, and even then, even the believers in Iconium had a good testimony about the life of Timothy. So as a very young man, probably by the time Paul comes to him in Acts 16, he is only in his late teens, maybe 15-16 years old. He had a very good testimony about his Christian life from not only his hometown, but also his neighboring town as well. And we see this also in the way in which Paul talks about the faith of Timothy. Look at 2nd Timothy 1:5: He writes to him and says, I am reminded of your sincere faith, not a fake faith, but your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded now lives in you also.

So now here in 2nd Timothy, Paul is making a reference to the Christian—not the Christian, but the very religious upbringing that Timothy had as a young man, a Jewish upbringing, but that was also one that was built on faith. The faith that they knew—they were very strong in it. They knew the Old Testament, and they taught the Old Testament to young Timothy. So when the message of the gospel would come about Jesus being the Messiah of the Old Testament, this would be a very easy message for Timothy to accept because he already had all the background and the life of faith that has been passed on to him through his grandmother and your mother.

90%, probably almost all of you sitting here tonight, are coming from a heritage just like this, and you should not take this for granted in your life. Many a times, I know that in our youth, and maybe when we go to a rebellious phase, some of us, maybe in a very moment of honesty, wish that we were born in different families so that we don’t have to come to Saturday night meetings and Friday fasting prayer and church every Sunday, and you know these kinds of thoughts can really go through our minds when we are teenagers and in our 20s and stuff like that because we don’t understand the value of our faith and the value of the heritage that we have, and how important it is, as in the words that we read today from the book of Proverbs, that you train up a child at a very young age and that even when he is old, he will not depart from it. And the Word of God and the way in which God’s Word can be planted deep in the hearts of young people is very, very important.

Even tonight, we have young couples here with their children here, not because the kids necessarily understand anything here today, but it’s very important that at a very young age, our children know how important the presence of God is, how important the church is, how important a priority that you give to it. So even though they might be sitting here distracted and running around and things of that sort, we all started like that. But it’s important, and I value and I love the fact that I grew up in a Christian home. I thank my parents who take me to every prayer meeting. I thank my dad for the way in which he would pinch me when I would not close my eyes during prayers or not sit carefully at prayer meetings, because I can tell you right now, years later, the Word of God that I heard on those days, the prayer meetings that I had, even though I don’t remember a whole lot of it, it still made a difference in my life. And you and I should be very grateful that we have grandparents and parents that have passed their faith and the Word of God deeply into our lives, and you and I may not realize it at a very young age, but I’m telling you, there will come a time when you’ll be so thankful that God, in His sovereignty, allowed you to be born into families such as this. But even if you did not have an upbringing like this, here is a great opportunity for you to pass on to the next generation, to influence and to make sure that God’s Word is faithfully transmitted and faith is transmitted from generation to generation to generation. The greatest gift, the greatest gift that you can give to the next generation is the passing on of godliness and the faith that has been deeply planted in your heart. That happened in the life of Timothy as well.

Look again at 2nd Timothy 3:14-15. Look at the way Paul describes this: For you, he says, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of. These are two different things. We all sometimes go through the learning phase, but it takes sometimes a long period before you become convinced of, and that’s a great place to be. Sometimes in the midst of the learning, there’s not a lot of conviction. There’s learning because somebody is telling you, and you’re learning it, but remember how we used to memorize scriptures when we were little? There’s not a lot of conviction in that learning; you’re learning for the sake of learning. But after a while, that Word of God that is deeply planted in the heart becomes, what, a conviction of your life. And it’s tremendous when that happens—when you face certain circumstances, when nothing else could help you, the Word of God that is deeply planted in your heart, when it comes almost like a spring that is bubbling from underneath the ground, rises up from the wrists of your heart and comes to your memory. It is a beautiful thing. That is conviction. That, too, is a point where a Christian matures, too, and we should all get there. Your learning and understanding of scriptures should not just be cerebral in nature; it has to be deeply something that is intrinsic to who you are—convinced of anything else, only this I’m convinced of. In fact, I can tell you, standing here even tonight, the only truth that I’m convinced of in this world is that that is the truth that is given to us in God’s Word.

Even just, you know, watching the political circle circus that is going around us makes us again just run to God’s Word, and all the chaos in the world makes us go more and more to this Word, and how wonderful and beautiful it is. A couple of nights ago, we were reading the book of Hebrews, and we came to Hebrew 9, and we were reading about the sacrifice of our Lord and how He became our High Priest, and at the end of the chapter, we just turned to each other and said how beautiful God’s Word is. And then Elijah put cold water on our fire by saying to us, “It is only beautiful to you. It is not beautiful to somebody who just reads it.” And I said, that’s true. To the believer’s heart, though, the Word of God is so enriching and beautiful. And so this is what should be happening: we have learned and become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it. In the life of Timothy, it was his grandmother, his mother. Again, the Apostle Paul would also become the greatest mentor in his life. And how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures. When did he start learning the Holy Scriptures? When he was an infant. A lot of times we think that, oh, our children are too young to study God’s Word, they don’t understand it. But it doesn’t matter. From infancy, teach God’s Word to your children, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. That is why the Scriptures are important—because of the ultimate end result of what those Scriptures do. They bring about eternal life into your soul, they bring about salvation to your life, and that can only happen by the learning of Scriptures that now leads to faith in the finished work of Christ on the cross. So these are very, very important.

And so, with this background, Paul sees a young man, and I’m thinking that he probably encountered him even on his first missionary journey, and he thought about him all throughout the gap of many years that he had between the first and second missionary journey, and probably when he came back and he saw this young man again, said, I want to take this person with me. There’s also a reason why. Look at Acts 16:3: Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. And we talked about this on Sunday as well. Now why did Paul want to take him on the journey? Not only because he was convinced of God’s calling in his life, but remember what happened in Acts 15. Paul had just lost his faithful companion because of a dispute between them—Barnabas had gone in a different direction to Cyprus—and so Paul really needed somebody else to come alongside. And here comes Timothy, though young he was, to take the place of the much older and much more experienced Barnabas. But he did something else, and look at the obedience of Timothy and the willingness of Timothy to do whatever it takes for the gospel. He had this young man who was, well, in late teens, maybe even early 20s, circumcised so that his uncircumcision would not become a stumbling block to the proclamation of the gospel, especially among the Jewish people. Why? His dad was a Greek, so he was never circumcised because circumcision was a Jewish custom. Paul knew that even though circumcision has nothing to do with the gospel, he did not want anything to hinder the spreading of the gospel. So he asked Timothy, “Do you mind getting circumcised?” And that’s not a small thing. This young man willingly now has to endure some pain and has to go through circumcision.

And so what do they do? Verse 4 and 5, they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. The churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers. Because of a lack of time as we go through the book of Acts, we see, and as we go through 17 that we talked about last Sunday, even in Berea, we see that Timothy was there. Tomorrow you will see that in Athens Timothy is there. In Corinth, Timothy is there with Paul in Acts 18, even on his trip to Jerusalem in Acts 20, Timothy is there. He was with Paul in his first Roman imprisonment, and he went to Philippi in Philippians 2:19-23 when Paul was in prison in Rome. Not only that, Paul always frequently mentions Timothy in his epistles: Romans, 2nd Corinthians, Philippians, 1st Thessalonians, Colossians, 2nd Thessalonians, Philemon—all mention the name of Timothy because he was somebody that was so important in the mind of Paul. Look at 1st Corinthians 4:17, in the way he describes Timothy: “For this reason,” he says, “I have sent you”—to the Corinthian church—“Timothy,” and then he describes him, “my son, whom I love.” Now, he is not his biological son, but he is a spiritual son to him. And Paul says, I love him so much. Why? Look at the next sentence: “He is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.” You know, what is Paul saying here? I’m gonna send Timothy to you. You know, he’s so perfect—I love him so much, he’s so faithful in the Lord, and not only that, when he comes to you, he will actually remind you of me because he is somebody who is really living his life exactly as I am living, and I have complete confidence in him, not only in his life but also in his teaching as well.

When we fast-forward through Scriptures, we don’t really find much about what happened to Timothy right after all of the journey through Philippi and Corinth, but we know that Timothy would eventually end up being the pastor of the church at Ephesus. Ephesus would become a very important place, and we’ll talk about Ephesus here in a minute. But in this course of ministry, Timothy would suffer a lot. In fact, when you go back to Hebrew 13:23, there’s a verse in which it talks about the imprisonment of Timothy, the only verse in the Bible that talks about it. History doesn’t tell us much, and not many people even know about this. But look what the writer of the book of Hebrews says about Timothy: “I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been released. If he arrives soon, I will come with him to see you.” What does that mean? Timothy is in prison. We don’t know the circumstances, we don’t know how he ended up in prison, but Timothy even was in prison. And history tells us that during the great persecution of Domitian that happened from AD 80 to AD 84—the same persecution in which John was exiled to the island of Patmos—Timothy was beaten to death in those persecutions. That’s what church history tells us. That’s how Timothy died. But when he was dying, he was still pastoring the church at Ephesus.

Now, when talking about this book 1st Timothy, when is it written? To kind of spoil, you know, the ending of the book of Acts: in the book of Acts, at the end, you find Paul in house arrest in Rome. That’s how the book of Acts ends. The Bible is silent on what happened to Paul right after that, and we just have to go through the writings of the first century, the early church historians and fathers, to understand what happened to Paul. They write and tell us that Paul was actually released from prison, his house arrest—that was not his final imprisonment. And then he wanted to do something so dearly in his heart. You know what that is—travel westward. And so most historians and theologians say that Paul actually went to Spain to preach the gospel, even though it is not recorded in God’s Word. Then he finds his way back to Rome, where he was arrested a second time, from that prison cell where he would write 2nd Timothy, where he writes, “My race is run, I fought a good fight, I’m about to be poured out.” That is written during his second imprisonment, the one that would eventually end up with him being a martyr. The idea here is that it is thought that 1st Timothy was written between the first imprisonment and the second imprisonment of the Apostle Paul around AD 62—some say AD 63, 62—somewhere in that time frame, basically almost in the last couple of years before his death. The 1st Timothy was written by the Apostle Paul. Titus, the book of Titus, is also thought to be written around the same time.

And here is the big idea behind this book: as I told you, Timothy is pastoring the church at Ephesus. Paul has been made aware of false teachings that have crept into the church. Not only that, by the time he’s writing this into Timothy, Timothy is around 30 years old. He’s a young pastor. Paul is well into his 60s by this time, and he has many, many years of ministry. And here’s a young prodigy that he grew up, that he mentored, that is now pastoring this church at Ephesus. If you look at the church in Ephesus, it is a very interesting church. We know that John was there. So imagine the congregation here, okay? John is one of the elders at Ephesus. Timothy is a lead pastor at Ephesus. So young Timothy, around 30 years old, is leading the church at Ephesus. John is well into his 80s, is there in the church at Ephesus. Yes, who else is probably there? Mary, the mother of Jesus, is probably there at the same time as well. Remember, at the cross, Jesus had entrusted the care of Mary to the hands of John. So wherever John would go, Mary would also be going with him. So you have this congregation that is filled with the giants of the faith, and this young pastor is asked to lead the church.

Not only that, Ephesus is such an important, strategic place for the gospel. We know that the word Ephesus means “desirable,” and that’s a beautiful name. You know what that means? It is really a place where everyone desired to live because it was a thriving commercial place, but it was also a place that was filled with all kinds of idolatry and fornication. And we know that in God’s Word, Paul would come and preach God’s Word at Ephesus; many people were converted. He would come back to Ephesus again and spend two and a half years there teaching God’s Word to the people at Ephesus. And so a church that was built upon a very strong foundation—Timothy as its pastor. But Paul had now started to hear that there were some problems going on in the church at Ephesus, and he also wanted to strengthen and encourage young Timothy in his ministry at Ephesus. And that’s why he would write the book of 1st Timothy, and then again, towards the end of his life, 2nd Timothy as well.

So when you read 1st Timothy, you hear these kinds of terminology like “fight the good fight,” “stand firm.” You see these things because he is trying to encourage Timothy not to give up and not to lose his hope and his trust in the Lord as he continues to pastor the church at Ephesus. In this book 1st Timothy, you will see these main things mentioned: one, writing on what the importance of standing against false doctrine is; how to have order in worship when you come to chapter 2; leadership qualifications—in fact, even our church, we follow the model that is written in 1st Timothy, the qualifications of the elders in our church is based upon the writing of Paul in 1st Timothy and again in Titus. So everyone who is an elder inside Restoration Church has to meet the qualifications that are written down in 1st Timothy and then again in the book of Titus. So this is not only Paul writing what he thought was right; this is the Holy Spirit through Paul writing to the church of all the ages on how you should establish leadership within the New Testament church. You also, toward the end of this book, rage against materialism and the danger of it. But it’s not only just these functionalities within the church that Paul talks about—there’s a lot of theology within 1st Timothy as well. For example, Paul writes about the proper function of the law, the attributes of God, the fall of man, salvation through Christ, the person of Christ and His second coming, election—all of these things are covered in the book of 1st Timothy.

So I hope and pray that in the weeks to come, you all would be very excited to come week after week as we learn through 1st Timothy. And I want to encourage you to do that—not to miss even a single week—because wouldn’t it be wonderful that if you come every single week and you go through the entire book, that when you read this book again, it will never be the same again? Because the things that you have learned here Saturday night over Saturday night will come alive as you read the Scripture again in your life. So I want to encourage you to make this a daily habit to come on Saturday night.

So in that context, knowing that Paul wrote it to his young prodigy, for Timothy, who was his son in the faith, the one whom he loved, who had so much religious upbringing but was transformed by the gospel, who was now pastoring at the church in Ephesus, Paul writes to Timothy. Now what I want to do tonight, in the few minutes that I have left, is to cover just the first two verses: 1st Timothy 1:1. This is the way Paul would start his writing to Timothy. He says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus—the word apostle simply means “one who is sent.” That’s all it means. It does not have any other great meaning behind it. I know we are living in an age where people love to be called apostle. In fact, it’s probably because they don’t understand what the word apostle means. You know, the title apostle is probably most apt today for a missionary, because the one who is sent out is what an apostle is. But in the timing of God’s Word, an apostle was very, very important, because an apostle is someone, at least in the writing of the first century, who had an eyewitness account, encounter, with the living Lord Jesus Christ. So the 12 disciples of our Lord are called apostles in God’s Word. We know that Paul saw Jesus on the way to Damascus; as such, he was also qualified to be an apostle. We know that Barnabas is called an apostle. It’s not only people that necessarily had a face-to-face encounter; leaders within the church were called so-called apostles in the first century. One of the criteria for your writing to be included in the New Testament canon was that you were an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. Anyone can write anything they want, but that will not make it into the Bible. The New Testament church established that as a canon—that it had to be written by one of the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. So if you were to ask the question, who are the original apostles? The 12 disciples. And then Judas obviously fell away; Matthias was selected in his place, and you can add a 13th person to the original apostleship that we find in the New Testament, and that is the Apostle Paul. So you have these 13 men who are the original apostles. But then in the New Testament church, we have people who are designated with the title of apostolic ministry, oversight, you know, looking after churches. And we see that in the New Testament as well.

Today, this title is abused by a lot of people. People think that, you know, after you become a pastor for many years and after you become a little bit older, you become an apostle. I am kind of very hesitant to use this title for people, and I’m not saying that apostolic ministry does not exist in the world today, but apostolic ministry today is only to confirm what is already written in God’s Word. There is no apostle in the world today as in the way we understood it in the first century, which means that today, for example, if somebody comes and says, “I’m an apostle,” and he writes a book, that is not equal to God’s Word. You understand the difference here? It’s that the Bible is a closed canon. Revelation tells you, you cannot add anything to this book, nor can you take anything away from this book. That means that there is no new revelation that is given to any apostle today. If somebody wants to claim, “I’m an apostle of the Lord,” perfectly fine—if you want to claim that as an oversight ministry, somebody who is shepherding over pastors, I think it’s perfectly fine. But if you go beyond that and say, “Now what I say is equal to what Paul was saying in the first century,” then we have a problem, because that’s how you end up with false teachings and false doctrines. In fact, the whole idea behind Mormonism is exactly that—that God is still speaking, there’s a new revelation. You know, if you speak to a Mormon, he will tell you, you have the Bible, but we also have the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Mormon is equal to the Bible. And that’s what the problem is. So it’s a slippery slope, and that’s why God made sure that His Word was closed after the first century. Why? Because God did not want men coming later on to pollute the Word of God, the doctrine that was given to them once for all, that was given to the saints for all the ages. So understand the difference here.

But Paul is an apostle of Jesus by the command of God. Almost in every other instance in God’s Word when he talks about him being an apostle, you know what he says? By the grace of God. Here, he says what? By the command of God. What is he saying here? It’s that, yeah, it is by the grace of God, but it also is God’s will that I’m an apostle of Him. And then he uses the terminology here, God our Savior. In fact, this is a very unique thing that he says here in 1st Timothy 1:1. It is only in the pastoral epistles of 1st Timothy, 2nd Timothy, and Titus that Paul ever uses the terminology, God our Savior. In every other instance—about 20 other times that it’s used in the New Testament—it’s always talking about Christ our Savior. So the question comes, why is Paul using the terminology God our Savior in 1st Timothy 1 and not Christ our Savior? There’s a little bit of a historical background—you’d understand as to why he used this specific title, God our Savior. By this time that Paul is writing the book of 1st Timothy, Nero had become the emperor in Rome, and guess what he was saying, calling himself? Nero was calling himself Lord and Savior of the world. And guess what Paul is saying to the church at Ephesus, and to Timothy specifically? Nero is not the Lord and Savior. I am an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ by the command of God our Savior. And not only that, in that term God, you see the triune God coming together—the Father who loved us so much and sent His Son, the Son who died for us on the cross, and the Holy Spirit who, by the death of the Son, brings about the regeneration, born again, in the life of those who believe.

I love what John Owen, the Puritan, writes about this terminology, God our Savior. He says, “Everything God does, He does as the triune God. Each person of the Trinity is involved in every action of God, yet at the same time, each person has a special role to fulfill in that work.” What he’s saying here is this: we believe that the Holy Spirit is what enables us to be born again. But when we say that the Holy Spirit makes us born again, you cannot discount the fact that the Father and the Son are also involved in that work. Jesus is our mediator. There’s a special work that Jesus does for us today, but in a way, the Holy Spirit is also our mediator. So there is a—every action that is done by any person of the Trinity, all three are involved in it. And so this terminology, God our Savior, means the triune God is involved in saving you and making you to be a child of God.

And then he says something else: Jesus, our hope. Christ Jesus, our only hope. Christ Jesus, the only hope that we have. And you know what is true in the world today, as it was thousands of years ago? Jesus is still the only hope. I mean, things haven’t changed, have they? I mean, we have become so sophisticated, we have become more wealthy, and we have become more knowledgeable, and we’ve become more advanced in technology and all these things, but the truth of what was written thousands of years ago is still true—Jesus, who is our only hope.

This next picture that I have is—most of you won’t recognize her, but I show this picture just to show the joy that is in the face of this woman. This is Corrie Ten Boom. I talk about her often, and you know, she was a young woman when she was sent to the Nazi concentration camp. She saw the death of her father, and she had to watch also the death of her sister. I mean, some of the most inhumane conditions ever faced by any human being—she saw it, and she saw the most depraved and most utter cruelty that any man could do to another man when she was in the concentration camp. She was not a Jew, but she was in the concentration camp because she, as a believer of the Lord Jesus Christ, had given refuge to Jews in a hidden wall in their home for many years. That’s why the book is called The Hiding Place, and because of that, she ended up in a concentration camp. She saw women, children dying. Even the other day, I was talking about this—going to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC and just walking out of that place and being utterly shaken to the core by what you see in there. I mean, it’s unimaginable that one human being can do this, not to just another human being, but to millions of people. But you see the depth of human depravity and how evil we can be even in our life without God’s redemptive work. But she says Jesus allowed her to forgive and everything, and look at what she says. She said, “If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. But if you look at Christ, you will be at rest.” Remember this: if you look at the world, what will happen to you? You’ll be distressed. Even this week, if you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. How many of you turn your television off because you can’t just stand to watch what you’re seeing? How many of you, your hearts break when you hear of another school shooting? Yeah. If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. Then you start to look within—oh, what can I do? How can I make a difference? And you feel rather helpless, right, without God. And what will happen? You’ll be depressed. But if you look at Christ, you will be at rest. See, Jesus is the only hope. He’s the only one that can truly give rest.

And then he continues, verse 2: To Timothy, my true son in the faith—grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus our Lord. The word there, true son, literally means a son of genuine faith. Remember, we talked about this a little bit, but he is again saying that verse 2 as well, as compared to many false teachers and many false people that Paul had encountered in his ministry, he’s saying about Timothy, you are my true son in the faith, which means that from the time I met you, you have been a faithful servant of God, never letting go of what you’ve heard, and you’ve always been a true, faithful son of God. And then he tells him, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. In Philippians 2:19-23, this testimony Paul gives about Timothy: you know that Timothy has proven himself because, as a son with his father, he has served with me in the work of the gospel. That’s why you call him the true son of the faith. But then Paul gives him probably one of his famous and most intimate greetings. He says, “Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.” I have to admit, verses such as this, I ignore all the time in my study of scriptures, and I’m sure you’ve done it, too. When you start reading a book, these are the first verses sometimes that you read—grace, mercy, and peace. I want us to take a few minutes and just stop at this verse for a second. Theologians call these three things—grace, mercy, and peace—sisters of salvation, and you and I need to really ponder and think about the profound nature of this greeting. These are not very simple things; these are things that make eternal difference.

You all know what grace is—if I were to ask you a definition, you would tell me it is what? The unmerited favor of God towards you. But grace also has a past. Grace is what God did for us in the past, not only by the death of Christ on the cross, but even before the foundation of the earth was laid, God’s grace was shining towards your life and my life. Even before we sinned, God’s grace had originated in the mind of God towards the man who would be lost forever. You know what mercy is? God withholding judgment that is rightfully ours. But you know what mercy is? Mercy is something that God does for us every single day, because we should be punished every single day for the sins in our life, but God, in His mercy, is withholding judgment. Not because He is not a God who judges, as we’ve studied in Lamentations, but because of His great mercy towards us. When we experience the unmerited favor of God and the withholding of God’s judgment that is rightfully ours, you know what the end result is? Peace, a tranquility, a calmness of the soul that this world can never take away from you. Unless and until you experience grace and mercy, you will never have peace in your life. Any other peace that is manufactured outside of receiving grace and mercy from God is fleeting in nature, and it will never have eternal significance or lasting value in your life. Grace and mercy He gives to us.

I love what one theologian—he gives an illustration of this, and I wish Jason was here tonight because he would understand the illustration better. If you’ve ever gone climbing on a mountain, one of the safety rules that are given to mountain climbers is this: keep three points on the rock. In other words, before you move a foot, make sure the other foot and both hands are firmly positioned on the solid rock. And if you’re going to move a hand, make sure your other hand and both feet are securely placed. Basically, you always have three things that are holding on to the mountain at all times, to the rock that you’re climbing. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing. He writes and says that’s a good safety tip for our spiritual lives as well. To keep from falling, we need to keep a solid grip on three rock-solid truths—grace, mercy, and peace. These three things have to be so much things that we cling on to: the grace of God, the mercy of God, and the peace that comes as a result of it. These are the end results of our salvation. That’s why they’re known as sisters of salvation.

There was an article that appeared in Christianity Today a few years ago that I read by a woman by the name of Nicole Cliff. She describes herself as a woman who had a very pleasant adult life of firm atheism. The idea of a benign deity who created and loved us, she wrote, was obviously nonsense, and all that awaited us beyond the grave for her was joyful oblivion. “I had no untapped, unanswered yearnings in my life. I was a happy atheist,” but she said certain things started to change in my life. The first incident that happened was one time when I was alone in my room, and I started worrying about my child, and I said to no one, “Be with me.” And I thought, that’s kind of embarrassing—the thought is coming to me, “be with me,” to say to someone—but there was no one to speak to. I was in an empty room. I didn’t know why I said it or to whom. I brushed it off. I moved on. The situation resolved itself, and I didn’t think about it again.

I continued on my atheism until one day, I ran across John Ortberg’s writing obituary to philosopher Dallas Willard. The daughter of John Ortberg were dear friends to me, so I read the article. In the article, John Ortberg writes about a conversation that he had with a famous Christian philosopher, Dallas Willard. He asked him, “Do you believe in total depravity?” And he answered by saying, “I believe in sufficient depravity. I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that, when we get to heaven, no one will be able to say, ‘I merited this.’” See the difference? Even sometimes Christians, we think, oh, I am good, I should go to heaven. But he says, all of us are sufficiently depraved that one day, when we get to heaven, no one will be able to say, “I deserve this. I merited this to get here.” She said, I was just reading an article in a magazine, but a few minutes into reading the piece, I burst into tears. Later that day, I burst into tears again, and the next day, while brushing my teeth, while falling asleep, while in the shower, while feeding my kids, I would just spontaneously burst into tears. I didn’t understand what was happening. She read more Christian books, and every time, she cried all over again. She emailed a Christian friend and asked if she could talk about Jesus, but at about an hour before our call, I knew I believed in God. Worse, I was a Christian. I was crying constantly while thinking about Jesus because I had begun to believe that Jesus was really who He said He was. So by the time my friend called me, she says, I told her that I want to have a relation with God, and we prayed. Since then, she says, I have been immersed by a pastor in the Pacific Ocean while shivering in a too-small wetsuit. I have sung “Be Thou My Vision” and celebrated communion on a beach while weird, off-California strip around me. I go to church, I pray. But even after accepting Christ, I continued to cry a lot. I just read a news article that literally sank me to my knees in how broken this world is, and yet how stubbornly resilient and joyful we can be in the face of that brokenness. My Christian conversion has granted me no simplicity in life. It has complicated all of my relationships, changed how I feel about money, messed up my public persona. Obviously, it has been very stressful. But then, she says, it has been very beautiful at the same time.

The Christian doesn’t stop crying even after he becomes a believer. We cry constantly, but the crying is different. Before then, the crying is because you don’t know what to do. Before then, the crying is coming from a place of confusion and darkness. Once you meet Jesus, the crying is coming from a place in which peace and joy is still in the midst of it because Jesus is in the midst of it. Even when we face the brokenness of this world, we cry, and we cry this week, we cry every day, but there is still a beauty in the midst of it because of the grace of God and the mercy of God that is in the midst of it. Only Jesus can give you peace.

Let’s stand in the presence of God. We’re gonna sing that old hymn, “Be Thou My Vision.” In one of the lines, it says, “Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise, be Thou my inheritance now and always. O be Thou and Thou only the first in my heart.” I pray that the God who gave you grace, the God who gave you peace, the God who gives you mercy every single day, will be first in your heart, and you will cry out to the Lord tonight from the depths of your heart, “O God, be Thou my vision. Yet You and You alone be the only thing that I look upon every single day. Let You be the source of all comfort and joy in my life.” Let’s sing to the Lord.