Spirit Empowered Ministry (2 Tim 1:6-14) | Adult Sunday School

Okay, we're good to go. Good to see each one of you this morning. We're going to get started in our Sunday school class this morning, so come on in.

We got a lot of wood to chop this morning, so to speak. I invite you to open your Bibles this morning to 2

Timothy chapter 1. 2 Timothy chapter 1 for our study this morning.

And there is a outline available. If you haven't got it yet, maybe raise your hand.

Guys are passing them out. I'm working hard at not calling these a handout, because that is a little different connotation.

Need one right back here. These are outlines, not handouts. Anybody needs a handout, raise your hand.

More hands went up than for outlines. What's going on here? Well, we're a church that's known for our handouts and outlines.

We're going to be looking at 2 Timothy chapter 1 this morning. We won't dig into the entire chapter completely.

We're going to be looking at mainly verses 6 through 14. And at Paul's last letter to his young friend and close ministry partner,

Timothy. Also, Paul's last words to the church. So it really is what is commonly called

Paul's last will and testament. And we're going to see some things from it this morning that I think will be hopefully helpful to us in our own lives and ministry.

And before we do, let's commit our time to our Lord and ask his blessing. Our Father, we know that we are able to gather together in the name of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, only by your grace and your providential working. And so we thank you for the time that we will share this morning.

We pray that our study would be fruitful, that you would be glorified through it, and that you would teach us what you would have us learn this morning by your

Spirit. Because that is the main import of what we will see this morning.

The power of your Spirit in our lives and ministry. So I ask your blessing on this and on each one who hears this message here at Kootenai Church, but also elsewhere.

May you accomplish every divine purpose that you have for it. And may you be glorified in it.

And we just ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. So if you have your Bibles open to 2

Timothy chapter 1, we're going to spend a little time this morning on the background of this letter, because I think that's going to be helpful.

And I would encourage you to read through this entire letter sometime in the next two or three weeks, maybe several times in the next two or three weeks.

Because next Sunday, not in Sunday school, but during the worship time, I'm going to be preaching from the second chapter.

And then two weeks after that, from the fourth chapter. We're not going to cover every bit of the book in these three sessions.

But I thought, well, I'm going to do some background work for this Sunday school class. So I might as well preach from it as I fill the pulpit on those two

Sundays. So we're going to spend a little time in 2 Timothy in the next three weeks or so.

Today, we're going to be looking at 2 Timothy chapter 1, and we're really going to focus in on verses 6 through 14.

As Paul focuses in on the absolute necessity of the power of the

Holy Spirit for ministry and all of life for the believer. The year was probably 67, maybe 68

AD, more than 30 years after the ascension of our Lord. Paul would have been in his mid to late 30s when he wrote this letter to the young pastor

Timothy. He had left Timothy in Ephesus to do work there. And Paul had traveled on to Macedonia.

Paul had been imprisoned in Rome in about 60 AD. And he was there for about two years.

His first imprisonment under the emperor Nero. And he was there for only two years because the witnesses from Jerusalem did not show up to testify against him.

And at that time, the Romans would keep you in prison if you were accused of a crime as a Roman citizen.

That's why he appealed to Caesar. He wanted an all -expense -paid trip to Rome because Rome was the center of Gentile power.

Paul was God's appointed apostle to the Gentiles. So he wanted to go there and appealed his case to Rome and they sent him there.

But he was there for two years. After that, the witnesses from Jerusalem didn't show up, so they let him go.

And he was back out on the mission field. It's not known exactly when the church at Ephesus began, but we know that according to Luke's account in Acts chapter 18,

Paul had been there with Priscilla and Aquila and he was traveling back to Antioch during his second missionary journey.

And after spending time in Antioch, Paul returned to Ephesus and ministered there for two more years.

Luke's account in Acts chapter 19 helps us understand something of the ministry he had there.

Luke says, And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus.

Later on the same chapter, it says, And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.

But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus.

This continued for two years so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both

Jews and Greeks. It was Paul's habit when he went into a new town to go to the Jews first out of obedience to Romans chapter 116, that he said the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe to the

Jew first, also to the Greek. And that was a priority Paul kept. And so should we. Jews are to be the first people that the church evangelizes.

And Paul did that every city he went to. Even when they rejected him, if he left and then came back to that city, he would go to the

Jews first. That was a priority that the apostle Paul kept. Ephesus was the capital of and the most important city in the

Roman province of Asia. It was a critical hub of ministry for the apostle Paul. It was also a pagan city dominated by the pagan temple to Artemis and all that that involved.

And he administered effectively in Ephesus and probably also influenced farther up into the

Lycus Valley in what's now Western Turkey. The geography of that area helped him do that because the mountain ranges run perpendicular to the coastline.

That created valleys that extended up into the inner parts and it made possible for travel and commerce up into the valleys from the coastline.

And about 125 miles to the east of the city of Ephesus, which was a coastal city, was the little

Lycus Valley and three churches there that are very prominent in scripture, two of them more prominent than the other one, but they're like a little triangle of cities there.

Hierapolis, Colossae, and Laodicea. Paul mentions those in his letter to the Colossians.

And so that was probably also, even though Paul didn't go there and plant those churches, a man named

Epaphras did, that was probably also influenced by Paul's two -year ministry there in Ephesus.

And it was an effective ministry. He preached, he taught, he grounded people in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he also trained the elders that were there.

After Paul ministered there, he went on to Macedonia and as he was heading back for Jerusalem, he did not have time to go visit the city of Ephesus.

So he called the elders from there to meet him near the coastline at a town called Meletus. It's recorded in Acts chapter 20.

And in that encounter, Paul had a very personal and emotional meeting with these men.

And he said, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.

Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, but from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.

And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them, and there was much weeping on the part of all.

They embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken that they would not see his face again, and they accompanied him to the ship.

Clearly, he had spent enough time and effort and energy with these men to develop a close bond, a personal relationship with them, and to know that they were part in company with him and wouldn't see him again was an emotional event.

He had made a tremendous investment in the church at Ephesus, investment of time, of teaching, preaching into the lives of these men and the leadership.

So, around five years later, when he writes his first letter back to Timothy, he tells him to remain at Ephesus.

Paul was going on to Macedonia, and in that first letter, he's extremely concerned about what's going on in the city of Ephesus and the fact that Timothy was there basically as his apostolic representative trying to straighten things out.

And Paul's words to the elders of Ephesus that day near Miletus were not just encouragement.

They weren't just a warning. They were prophetic because eventually, men did come in.

Fierce wolves did come in and assault that church. And even from among themselves, men arose teaching twisted doctrines, false doctrines, and Timothy's there trying to have to deal with these things.

And decades later, God used the aging apostle John and his great vision we call the revelation of Jesus Christ to warn the churches with the very words of Jesus himself.

And one of those was the church at Ephesus. In Revelation 2, the

Lord says this, I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first.

If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

He said some positive things about the Ephesian church, but by that point in time, it had declined and degraded down to where the

Lord himself has to speak these words of warning and threatening to take away their lampstand.

So Ephesus was a critical ministry. And Paul writes that first letter to Timothy. It's encouragement, it's instruction, but it's also a warning.

And Paul captures his purpose in writing that first letter. In his third chapter, he says, I am writing these things to you so that if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living

God. Timothy was Paul's protege. You might say his like his apprentice, his ministerial disciple.

If you want an older word, his apostolic legate that he had left there to represent him in Ephesus.

And Timothy was considerably younger, less experienced. And from what Paul writes, he probably had a little problem with timidity, perhaps.

And two of the three pastoral letters were written to Timothy, the third to Titus. And it's important to remember the order that we have them in our

Bibles is 1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus, and then Philemon. Philemon, more of a personal letter from Paul to Philemon, who was at Colossae.

But remember that 1st Timothy was written, but 2nd Timothy was written last.

That was the last thing Paul wrote to Timothy, but also his last words to the church because we know he was executed in Rome shortly after he wrote that letter.

After his release from house arrest and his first imprisonment, in the last chapter of Acts, it's recorded there,

Paul was back on the mission trail resuming his ministry to the Mediterranean. And this would have been around 62

AD. And it was during this time that Paul wrote to Titus from somewhere in Macedon.

From there, he traveled on to Rome. He went back to Rome and probably arrived there around 67.

But things had changed. Nero was still the emperor, but things had gone sour in Nero's administration.

It was not the same environment when Paul got there the second time. Many believers at this time took a lower profile.

Many have sort of got real quiet concerning the Gospel because of the Neronian persecution of the

Christians. We're going to talk about that in a minute. And Timothy, still back in Ephesus, was probably tempted to do the same thing because of this massive persecution against Christians during that point in time.

But Paul, knowing that his time on earth was coming to a close, wrote 2 Timothy.

And this second imprisonment was not like the first. And the first imprisonment, it was house arrest.

We're told that. It says in Acts 28, he lived in his own rented quarters for those two years until they let him go.

But here, he was arrested and tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.

So he's condemned to the Mamertine prison. We're going to take a look at that. And this was not a prison as we would think of prisons.

This was essentially a hole in the ground. A holding cell for men waiting execution. He was not waiting to go on trial.

He was condemned to death already, and he was just there awaiting his execution. And he writes 2

Timothy. It's such a personal, sad letter, and it's very different from 1 Timothy. A totally different tone.

New Testament scholar William Mounts captures that, I think, very well. He says, 2 Timothy is unlike either 1

Timothy or Titus. It is an intensely personal letter written to encourage Timothy in his difficult task and to ask him to come to Rome.

Since it was written to one of Paul's best friends who knew his theology and not to a church who did not know his theology, like Titus, or to a church who knew his theology but was choosing to ignore it, 1

Timothy, one is not surprised that 2 Timothy does not sound like other letters.

It was not intended to be a theological treatise. Okay, very important. So Timothy was experiencing a very tough going at Ephesus, and surveying both of these letters tells us of the wide range of issues he had to deal with.

Church leadership, he had to be involved in that. Preaching, teaching, evangelism, pastoral care, he had to deal with false teachers and their false teachings, false doctrine.

And not only that, he had to pay attention to his own spiritual life, of course. Very important. Spiritual warfare is never ever fought on simply one front.

Have you noticed that? It's always multiple problems, multiple issues. When you get one thing settled over here, something else pops up over here.

One new fad comes down the pike in evangelicalism and the church addresses it, but then all of a sudden, there's another one or maybe two more over here.

One theologian likened it to the old whack -a -mole game. Remember that? And whack -a -mole,

I looked it up, I couldn't remember, but there was only six, right? Six moles that would pop up.

Theological whack -a -mole is like having 100 moles popping up all over the place. You just can't whack them down fast enough, but that's what's going on and Timothy had to deal with it.

Paul reached the end of his life. He knows it, but what comes through in this last letter is concern for the ministry, not just of the church, but for individual people, including

Timothy, for his brothers and sisters in Christ and also for the church and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So if we were to compile a list of Paul's instructions for young Timothy from 1 and 2 Timothy, just from his first letter, it would sound something like this.

In his first letter, Paul says, Timothy, I want you to confront and correct false teachers, calling them to repentance, a sincere faith and a good conscience.

Fight hard for the truth, guarding your own spiritual life. Pray for the lost, no matter who they are and lead the men of the church to do the same in unity and holiness.

Exhort the women of the church to fulfill their God -ordained role of submission to their husbands, working in their homes to raise up godly children, setting an example in their homes of faith, love and holiness.

Carefully and prayerfully select spiritual leaders for the church based on their godliness, giftedness and good reputations.

Actively and aggressively discern and expose spiritual error and those who attempt to teach it within the flock of God.

Always be feeding yourself on the sound words of scripture, staying far away from myths, false doctrines and the philosophies of men.

Work hard in your ministry, always keeping your hopes set on the life to come in Christ. Continuously discipline yourself for the purpose of spiritual growth and godliness.

Boldly and lovingly command and teach God's word to his people. Model the fruit of the spirit so that all can follow you.

Concerning the word of God, faithfully read it, explain it and apply it publicly to the people. Keep growing in Christ -likeness in your own personal life.

Confront the sins of your people, but with gentleness and grace. Lead your people to give special care for the widows in the congregation.

Carefully select leaders in the church who demonstrate spiritual maturity and faithfulness. Take care of yourself physically that you are strong to serve

Christ. Teach your people to be faithful and hard workers in the church and in their outside employment.

Honor faithful pastors who rule well and especially who work hard at preaching and teaching the word. Apply the word of God in the church without partiality.

Live your life content with what God provides and flee the love of money. Instead, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness and gentleness.

Fight the good fight of faith against its enemies. Keep all of God's commandments.

Charge the rich to be generous and to be rich in good works. Guard the word of God that has been entrusted to you as a sacred trust.

All of that for Timothy, ministering in Ephesus in just the first letter to this young pastor.

After he was imprisoned for the second time in Rome on death row as he awaited execution in the fall of 67, he penned his last words to Timothy, last words to the church, very personal letter to the same young preacher in 2

Timothy. But he continues to exhort and encourage Timothy by telling him to, and we're going to be looking at this this morning, fan into flame the gift of God which is in him so he can be useful to the

Lord. That's the Holy Spirit. Don't ever be timid, fearful, or ashamed of the testimony of Christ, but suffer in the strength and power of God.

Follow Paul's own pattern of preaching and teaching, sound words, and guard the truth that has been placed in your care.

And take that truth and teach it to faithful men who will also pass it down to faithful men so the next generation will hear the

Gospel. Suffer as a good soldier of Christ. Keep a single focus on the Lord of the church,

Jesus Christ, and don't be distracted by the things of the world. Lead the flock of God with authority.

Work hard to accurately interpret, teach, and apply the Scriptures. Avoid useless people who talk about useless things.

Keep your life pure so that you will be useful to the Master. Flee youthful lusts.

Pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace. Don't get caught up in foolish and ignorant controversies that just bebreed quarrels, especially in an election year.

I added that last part. That was mine. I confess. Couldn't resist. Don't be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patient, correcting your opponents with gentleness.

Be ready to face the dangerous times that will come with a deep understanding of God's Word. Know that all

Scripture is God -breathed and profitable to equip you for all tasks. Preach the

Word. And preach it when it's popular to do it, and especially preach it when it's not popular.

And use it to reprove, rebuke, and exhort people. Endure hardship. Do the work of an evangelist.

Fulfill your ministry. At the end of this letter, Paul warns Timothy to avoid a man named

Alexander the Coppersmith. And throughout this letter, Paul names names. People who have abandoned the faith.

People who have abandoned Paul himself. People who have just bugged out. He names them. And he warns particularly against Alexander the

Coppersmith. And then, almost as an afterthought, something for himself.

Come before winter, and bring my cloak and my parchments. Just name my coat and Scriptures.

All of that for this young timid pastor to be equipped to minister in a land far, far away, a long time ago.

But all of it, too, very, very applicable to us right here, right now, in North Idaho in 2024.

But if Timothy was to carry out this very formidable list, if he was to do it

God's way, he was going to have to rely on some very formidable power that is not intrinsic to him.

He's going to have to do his ministry by the power of the Holy Spirit. And that's why Paul begins this list of commands in 2

Timothy chapter 1 with this encouragement to rely on the power of the

Holy Spirit. Any ministry done in the power of the flesh is doomed to failure, no matter how impressive it looks to the world.

And you've seen it. You've seen these ministries with a preacher who just skyrockets into prominence and these massive ministries and satellite ministries and thousands and thousands and thousands of people that are involved.

When that person goes away, have you noticed what happens? The ministry disintegrates. You know why?

Because Christ didn't build that ministry. It was built around a man and a personality.

But all ministry done in the power of the Holy Spirit will have God's eternal blessing no matter how insignificant it looks to the world.

So, there's a little bit of the spiritual and religious and historical background that brings us to this letter.

What about the emperor Nero? I think it's worthwhile to talk a little bit about the political context this happens in.

His name, Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. He was born on the 15th of December in 37

A .D. and he died June in 68 A .D.

So he only lived 30 years. He lived 30 years and he committed suicide. The first time

Paul was... Let's see. There we go. The first time Paul was imprisoned, he was imprisoned under house arrest according to Acts chapter 28.

This is a late 19th century artist rendition of what he thought that first imprisonment might be like.

It's said that Paul is here writing his letter to the Ephesians and he's going to send it to...

This is supposed to be Tychicus who was going to take it back to Ephesus. But his environment was not nearly what it was later on.

In his second imprisonment in Rome, he's imprisoned in what this place called the Mamertine Prison.

This thing was essentially a hole in the ground. You can see the ceiling. That's the entrance into this place.

And the artist in this particular rendition, of course, he had to show you what it looked like. So he had to have a little light coming in the ceiling.

Probably wasn't there. It's probably just a dark, cold, stinking place.

Eventually, it was discovered and cleaned out.

You can actually... I got some pictures of it. The tours you can take. But Nero was born in AD 37, died in 68.

He was emperor in AD 54 to AD 68 when he committed suicide.

His mother, her name was Agrippina. She was the great -granddaughter of the former emperor

Augustus. And she had a real lust for power. Okay, she just did.

And she managed to marry the current emperor, Claudius, who adopted

Nero because she wanted Nero to be in line to be emperor so she could influence things through her son

Nero. Well, eventually, Claudius did die. In fact, he died of poisoning and she was implicated in it.

Now he's out of the way. And he died at age 40 when Nero was just three years old.

And a few years went by. And Agrippina influenced the people in power at the time.

And part of that was the Praetorian Guard who were influential in selecting the next emperor.

And at the age of 16, he became the emperor of the Roman Empire. Here's a statue of him.

Obviously, he's fairly young in this particular one. There's another one of him. Anecdotal reports say that Mark Zuckerberg fashions himself after the emperor

Nero. I don't know. Could be. Maybe in looks. Hopefully not in how he handles administrative issues.

There's another one. He's a little bit older. They made lots of busts of each other. It was common for the emperors of Rome, the

Caesars, when they came into power, to mint coins of themselves. They have visages of themselves on the coin.

And even all the way down in Jerusalem, you know the story of Jesus asking for a coin, a denarius.

He said, whose image is on that? And the image of it would have been Caesar. The Caesar could have been a coin just like this.

The Jews had to carry those around in their pockets to pay taxes with them. And they hated doing that. Why? Because it was an idol.

They considered it an idol to have the visage of a man on there. And there was various statements proclaiming their status and their power and so on on these coins.

Here's one here with Agrippina in the background, which she always was trying to influence him.

She was pretty successful at it. They minted silver coins and gold coins. And here's another one.

So during the 14 years that he was in power, a whole series of different coins were minted. And here is, again, the

Mamertine prison that he put Paul in and condemned him to death. The early years of his rule were considered kind of a golden age because he made a lot of reforms.

He had returned a lot of the power back to the Senate that had been taken away from them by the previous emperors.

And so it pleased them to do that. He constructed vast palace complexes, lush gardens.

He really liked to build things, very immaculate building projects that cost a lot of money.

So he raised taxes on the populace. He loved to compete in the Olympic Games. His personal hobby was making personal appearances where he was sort of the main character, you know, the star of the show.

He appeared as a poet, an actor, a musician, an athlete. And again, he was raising taxes on people to pay for all this lush construction.

And for a while, he was fairly popular. But eventually, the Senate and others around him began to conspire to get him out of office.

And so he just simply had him arrested and executed, which didn't help his popularity with those folks.

And so at the age of 16, he's going through all of this and his mother's behind the scenes influencing him.

Eventually, that wore kind of thin. And he began to resent her influence in his administration.

And eventually, he moved her out of the palace. He denied her the protection of the Praetorian Guard and even forbid her to come to any of the gladiatorial games.

Well, she didn't like that too well, of course. So she began to favor his stepbrother and to promote him to be the next emperor.

And eventually, Nero, just simply to solve that problem, murdered his own mother. He was married several times.

Several of those wives were murdered or exiled. And over time, with all the plots to kill him and all the various rebellions and insurrections,

Nero became increasingly paranoid and vindictive. But the great issue that happened during his reign was in 8064, a massive fire broke out in the city of Rome.

It destroyed much of the city. 10 out of 14 of the provincial regions in the city were destroyed.

And the people blamed Nero. They thought he lit the fire himself in order to be able to turn around and rebuild some of his buildings.

Well, amazingly, and maybe in the providential working of God, two of the areas of the city that did not suffer much damage were occupied predominantly by Christians.

And so Nero, in order to have a scapegoat and get the blame off of him, began to blame the

Christians. And the Christians weren't real popular anyway with the populace because they were considered sort of not being interested in participating in much of the pagan social activity that was going on, much of it just perverted types of things, and they didn't participate in it.

And also they considered Nero the Antichrist. The Romans would say, Caesar is

Lord. And of course, Christians would say, Jesus is Lord. And so they were not very popular. So it was real easy to persecute them.

And eventually that's what happened. And Paul arrives in Rome during this period of time.

He's immediately recognized as a ringleader, as he was called.

Even the Jews in Jerusalem said he's a ringleader. Of course, he's arrested, condemned to death, and put in a mammoth -eaten prison, eventually executed in 68.

So this is the background, the history of what is going on there with this letter.

Let's look together in the time we have left at 2

Timothy 1. And I'm just going to read down through it starting in verse 1.

It says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus.

Now right there when I read that, I think here's a man sentenced to death, right? And he mentions that right in that opening sentence.

And so, oh, by the way, here's the contemporary view of the mammoth -eaten prison. The Catholic Church has located this eventually, and they built the church on top of it.

And a little closer view of the front of it here. They, of course, have excavated it, and it has obviously artificial light in there now.

You can still see the hole in the roof. And here's what it looks like, contemporary pictures.

They have put a staircase down into it so that they can do tours. And have embellished it with altars and various other things.

And so you can go and have a tour. You get a little idea of how cramped and crowded this thing might have been with a few prisoners inside of it, people taking a tour.

But this was no prison as we know prisons, and Paul is there waiting to die.

So he says, you know, by the will of God, according to the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my beloved child, grace, mercy, and peace from God the

Father and Christ Jesus our Lord, I thank God whom I serve as did my ancestors with a clear conscience as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day.

As I remember your tears, I long to see you that I may be filled with joy.

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelled first in your grandmother Lois and your mother

Eunice, and now I am sure dwells in you as well. He's used the word that has the same root four times here in these verses.

He says, I remember you constantly. I remember your tears. I am reminded of your sincere faith.

Of course, there's a man getting ready to die and he knows it. What's he doing? He's reminiscing, right? But he doesn't stop there.

He says in the very next verse, and he uses the very same root word, for this reason I remind you to fan and to flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands for God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self -control.

This is Roman numeral one on your outline. Fan into flame the gift of God.

I just simply use the imperative commands that are in this passage as the outline.

And Paul understands and we should understand that the first one is foundational to carry out the other ones or anything else he says in this letter.

This letter also is full of commands. Fan into flame the gift of God. Some have said, well, this is the spirit that's in Timothy and just his own spirit.

But the best understanding of it is that Paul was talking about the Holy Spirit of God. And you can demonstrate that exegetically here.

Part of that is which he says, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.

Remember that Timothy was a Gentile. Even though his mother and his grandmother were Jews, his father was a

Gentile. And you were considered a Gentile or a Jew based on your father, not your mother and father.

So he was considered by the Jews, he would have been considered a Gentile. And you remember when Paul met with Cornelius in Acts chapter 10, and he preached the gospel to Cornelius.

Cornelius was a Gentile. He was what is called a God -fearer, which means he's a

Gentile convert to Judaism. But Paul had to carry out his mission. And part of that mission was to demonstrate the movement of the gospel from Jew to Gentile.

Okay, this is a critical massive issue in the New Testament. It's huge. They even had to have the

Jerusalem council to officially decide that the gospel is going to Gentiles and the

Gentiles don't have to become Jews in order to be saved. They're saved just like Abraham was by faith alone.

That's Paul's whole argument through Romans and even in Galatians. So when he was preaching to Cornelius, Cornelius is saved when he's preaching.

And when Paul lays hands on him, he gets the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Why? Because it's important for them to make that connection of the gospel going from this

Jewish apostle to the Gentiles and making that transition. And once that happens, it's no longer necessary for it to happen again.

Once you cross a bridge, you don't need to go back and cross it again and again and again and again. That's what that was for. And it was an audio -visual demonstration of the movement of the gospel from Jews to the

Gentiles. And it was also critical for them to connect this with apostolic teaching. All kinds of teaching going on, but the church needs to focus on apostolic teaching.

So that's the same thing that I think is happening here with Timothy. And this is why it's the work of the

Spirit that's so important for Timothy. The Holy Spirit did not give us or you a spirit of fear.

Remember, the persecution's going on. Timothy's probably getting a little hinky about this whole deal, you know, because Paul's going to get executed.

And a lot of people are abandoning Paul. They're bugging out on him. And Paul says, not you,

Timothy. Fan into flame. Stir into flame. The idea is to rekindle the gift of God, the

Holy Spirit, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. The Holy Spirit did not give you a spirit of timidity or being scared of things, but of power.

Power to do all that He asks you to do. Power to love and also self -control. All of these things are very critical.

This concept of self -control is sometimes translated sound judgment, sound mind, or self -discipline.

All of these things are a work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. And one of His functions is to control our minds.

Our minds which were damaged, fallen in the fall. The judgments or thought processes, even the idea of being courageous under persecution is a work of the

Holy Spirit. Faithfulness, that is a work of the Holy Spirit. And of course, love. What's the first fruit of the

Holy Spirit? Paul mentions love. That's a work of the Spirit. All of these things are there. And this moves us to Roman numeral two.

Stir up the Holy Spirit. Stir up His work. And remember, the Holy Spirit is a person. He can be quenched.

He can be grieved. He can even be lied to. We know that from Acts 5, right? Remember Ananias and Sapphira?

They lied to the Holy Spirit. So all of these things come into place when we want to accomplish what

God has for us. And so in verse 8, Paul says, Do not be ashamed.

Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me,

His prisoner. Stop right there in verse 8. Paul says, because the Holy Spirit is in you and He's there to empower you to do your ministry, don't be ashamed of the

Gospel. That's a real issue all the way through this. It should be, because there's a massive persecution going on and a lot of people are bugging out.

Don't be ashamed of the Gospel and don't be ashamed of me, Paul himself. And so, this is only going to be done by the power of the

Holy Spirit. Other men were ashamed of Paul. Look down in verse 15. You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from Me, among whom are

Phygelus and Hermogenes. This is something Paul also mentions names here.

And he says over in chapter 4, verse 9 and following,

Do your best to come to me soon, for Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.

Crescens has gone to Galatia. Titus to Dalmatia. Luke alone is with me.

Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful for me. Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus.

And so on. But Paul is pretty much abandoned. He's almost alone. Luke is there at least when he's writing this.

It's thought that Luke probably wasn't there very long after this. Eventually, Paul would have died all by himself.

But the flip side of the coin of not being ashamed, and Paul uses the strongest contrastive term in the

New Testament, translated in our language, but do not be ashamed. But he says,

Roman numeral 3, share in suffering. Share in suffering, he says in the last part of verse 8.

Share in suffering. For what, Paul? For the gospel. And how am I going to do that? By the power of God.

Again, once again, it comes back around to the power of the Holy Spirit. What's the power of God? The power of God is the

Holy Spirit. That's how you share in suffering. And it's for the gospel.

By the power of God. Over in chapter 2, verse 3, he says the very same thing. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

This is an echo of Philippians 1 .29. Paul said there to the Philippians, to you it has been granted for Christ's sake not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake.

You don't hear much about it in evangelical circles nowadays, especially here in America, right?

But salvation and suffering are linked in Scripture. And not just in these passages.

Over and over again. Our election. We like to talk about our election. I'm elect, you know.

Chosen by God. Yeah, chosen by God to believe, but also chosen by God to suffer for His sake.

Those two cannot be separated in Scripture. They go hand in hand. And even though we don't see that much of it in our own generation, at least not like that, we don't know what the future holds.

We don't know what's going to happen. And it may not just be suffering for your faith. There's all kinds of ways we can suffer.

We can suffer physically. We can suffer emotionally. All those things. But if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, your

Savior will be there for you to meet you with the grace necessary during whatever suffering He calls you to go through.

This was Paul's great goal. Again, to the Philippian Christians, he said that his goal in life, that I may know

Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering, being conformed to His death.

You don't hear about it too much or think about it too much maybe, but Paul's fellowship with Jesus, he considered the fellowship of suffering to be real fellowship.

And it's so important. And with the mention of the gospel there in that verse, it's almost as if Paul just can't resist just talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

He just sort of explodes into a rehearsal of the elements of the gospel. It's like he says, there's a great big package here called the gospel.

And I'm going to open it up and I'm going to show you the parts and the pieces. I'm fighting the clock here a little bit. It's down at the bottom.

The glorious gift of the gospel. He just unwraps it in verses 9 -10. Our salvation is by the power of God.

And there again, that's the end of verse 8. That's the Holy Spirit, right? We're saved by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Our salvation is unto a holy calling, being set apart for God and God's purposes and God's work.

Our salvation is not because of our works, 9b. Our salvation is because of God's purpose and grace.

And again, our salvation is a gift in 9d, which He gave us, right?

Salvation is a gift. And He gave us that gift in Christ Jesus. And our salvation is, was, before ages began.

It's like whenever Paul talks about the gospel, he talks about it personally, of course. But he also sometimes just stands back and looks at this incredible panoramic view of salvation like he does in Romans 8, right?

What's commonly called the golden chain of redemption. Whom He foreknew, these He also, these He also, these

He also. And he ends up at glorification. He just wants to see the panoramic view of salvation.

Nothing's in question there. There's no contingencies. There's no question as to whether or not if God foreknew you in eternity past, you will be glorified.

It's one of the greatest statements of the security of the believer in all of Scripture. And Paul does the same thing here. Our salvation is, was, before ages began, very literally, before times of ages.

And our salvation is manifested because our Savior Jesus Christ appeared. Apart from Him, there's no salvation.

There's no salvation apart from Jesus Christ. And last, our salvation is because Jesus abolished death and brought life.

What do you think that meant to Paul at that stage of his life? You better believe it. He's thinking about the eternal life that he has in Jesus Christ.

And if you flip your paper over, it was for the gospel, Paul says, that I was appointed.

He was appointed a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher. All of those things. And Paul had completed that task that God had given him.

And this is why, he says, he's suffering. But, Paul says, I am not ashamed.

All these other people are. All these other people that he mentioned, they're gone. They're ashamed of the gospel. Timothy, don't you be ashamed of the gospel because I'm not.

And he says, because he is trusting Christ to guard what Paul has entrusted to him.

Now, the ESV is not a real good translation of that. A better translation there, and I just reproduced it for you there, is the

Legacy Standard Bible. He says, I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to guard what

I have entrusted to Him until that day. Paul had made a deposit, it's commonly called, with God in heaven through faith in Jesus Christ.

And he's convinced God's going to be able to take care of that and guard that and I'm not ashamed of the gospel.

And every single one of those elements, Paul is believing that and achieving that by the power of the

Holy Spirit in his own life. Which brings us to Romans 4, verse 13, follow the pattern of sound words that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Paul is very concerned for Timothy that he is going to take the gospel and continue to teach it and preach it so that the gospel can go on accomplishing its powerful purposes.

The word follow there in the ESV, that's a little vanilla, okay?

The word is actually hold and hold on tight. It's a present active imperative. Hold fast,

Timothy. Hold fast. Hang on tight. And hang on tight to sound words.

Words that are sound. Hygenos in the Greek. We get the word hygienic from that, okay?

Transliterate it right over. Hygienic. That which is clean. That which is pure. That which is not contaminated. It has that concept.

Same thing with the Word of God. Don't proclaim the Word of God that's been contaminated or that's been adulterated with human philosophy.

Preach and teach the pure Word of God. And Paul says, which you have heard from me.

He's talking about apostolic doctrine. Don't teach or preach anything else. That's not what we're about.

We're about teaching and preaching apostolic doctrine and hold fast to that. It's been deposited in your life and in your mind.

You need to continue to put that in other people's life as well. And the power to guard it dwells in us.

Again, back to the Holy Spirit. The power to guard is the Holy Spirit. Follow the pattern of sound words.

Hang on to sound words that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

It's the Gospel. Verse 14, Paul says, and here he just comes right back around to the

Holy Spirit. This is why I'm convinced the reference to the Spirit is the Holy Spirit of God because he just comes back around to it.

By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.

Guard it. Follow the pattern of sound words. Be obedient to it and guard what has been deposited in you.

And you're only going to be able to do that, and so are we, by the power of the Holy Spirit. So in summary, by rekindling the power of the

Spirit in his life, Timothy and we as well will have the infinite power of God to not be ashamed of Christ, but to share in any suffering

God calls us to. And we don't know what's going to happen in the future. I'm not a prophet or a son of a prophet, but I know that God's power through His Spirit will meet you at that point of need no matter what the suffering is you encounter in your life.

Hold fast to the pattern of sound words, the truth, the Word of God. And for us, this is apostolic doctrine right here, the

Word of God. And no matter what it costs or what we have to endure, guard the good deposit, the treasure

God has placed in our trust. Any thoughts or comments or questions you might have on that?

It's kind of a whirlwind of data. Yeah, okay.

I either totally muddied the water or... Yes, sir. I just found this out, but I think you had said that Timothy got his

Jewishness from the Jewish people. Yes, did

I? You were right about me misspeaking if I said that. Yeah, his ethnicity would be determined by his father who was a

Gentile. So he was considered a Gentile by the rest of the Jews. You're right. Thank you for clarifying that.

No, Timothy was considered a Gentile because of his father being a Gentile. By the rest of the

Jews, by the culture. That's why when they got so upset at him for thinking he was going to take

Timothy into the temple at that point in time. So your ethnicity is determined by your father's ethnicity.

What's that? In that day, the ethnicity would be determined by the father, not the mother.

Again, that's why he was considered a Gentile and could not get entrance into the temple.

That's why they had that wall separating the God -fearers from the rest of the temple.

They were still considered to be Gentile ethnically. Well, Paul did that as an accommodation to them.

He wouldn't have had to circumcise him if he would have been considered a Jew in the first place. He would have been considered a

Jew. Okay, anything else?

Well, in just a minute or two, we have left. How about some practical principles? Certainly, if you read back through this, you can think of some other ones.

Here are just a few. Regardless of the social, political, or religious environment, we are to fearlessly pursue our biblical mandates in the power of the

Holy Spirit. Apart from empowering of the Holy Spirit, we are helpless to do

God's work, God's way. And we are. It doesn't matter what our background is, what our education is, what our experience is.

Every time we minister, we have to minister in the power and strength and encouragement of the Holy Spirit. And third, the gospel of Jesus Christ is the heart of our message and is to be proclaimed within the whole counsel of God or sound doctrine in the power of the

Holy Spirit. The gospel has a context and it's the entire word of God. Very important to remember that.

Fourth, our sanctification is in and through the truth. John 17, 17, his high priestly prayer, he prayed to his father, sanctify them in the truth.

Your word is truth. Okay. So we are to focus on the truth and it's empowered by the

Holy Spirit of God. And fifth, we're to proclaim and guard the word of God and trust that God will guard what we have placed into his trust and do that by the power of the

Holy Spirit who dwells in us. Okay. Amen.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for our time in your word today.

We thank you that we can trust all things to you, especially what we have entrusted to you, our eternal destiny, our eternal souls.

We know that you have entrusted us with the word of God. And so while we are here in this life, help us to be faithful as Paul was to proclaim your word unashamedly, to preach and teach the word of God, to take advantage of every opportunity we have to share

Christ with others. And now, Father, as we gather to worship you, to fellowship together, we pray that you would bless this time that we have.

Be with those who would lead through music and through preaching your word in a very special way.

Give them power and joy as they lead us. And we just thank you and praise you in Jesus' mighty name.