2 Timothy 1:1-2 The Promise of the Life

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches on his series of 2

Timothy, Faithful to the End. Let's listen in. Good morning.

Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm really glad to be back together again with you guys.

I was out last week. The week before that, I was at a conference over in Cleveland at a church packed full of pastors and church leaders.

Super good time for me and the elders to get away, hear God's Word, and just see what's going on around the world, around the nation regarding pastoring, and that was super fun.

But it's also always good to be back here. I miss you guys when I'm gone, and always look forward to being back here.

We've wrapped up the book of Hosea, and now we're starting a new series in the New Testament book of 2

Timothy. So we're going to be carrying that forward over the summer, and I'm going to be introducing this letter this morning by tackling only the first two verses, but you'll see that there's enough there for our attention, and it's worthwhile for us to study even these introductory things here.

But my goal in our gathering is to introduce Timothy in a way that sets the stage for our entire summer in this book on Sunday mornings, and so taking these first two verses and then giving some of the context and all of that for Timothy's life would be beneficial for us in the long run.

2 Timothy is the last inspired writing of the Apostle Paul, and as we read this short introduction, keep in mind that we're observing a man who knows his days are coming to an end.

He actually declares that in this letter. He knows that he's about to be poured out as a drink offering, he says. But I would just ask you, what would you lead out with in your final letter?

Think about that. Like, you know that the end is coming. I mean, it's quite likely that he might already have been sentenced to death and just be awaiting the execution.

And so we're not quite sure how that all looks in his life, but he knows, and it implies that he knows, that this is his final letter.

And so what would you write in that final letter? And then further, a more fundamental question, who would it be addressed to?

Who would you be writing to? I think it's beautiful that here on graduation and Senior Sunday, we're actually starting and launching out into a book, and I didn't plan that, but we're launching out into a book where it's an older man speaking to a younger man, the older generation speaking to the younger generation.

And passing that torch, passing that baton on to Timothy and saying, hey, here's the kinds of things that I've learned in ministry, and here's the kinds of things

I would love to see carried forward in this next generation of people who are going to carry on the church. Paul is writing to the next generation, a young minister.

He's writing to the next generation, a young minister, Timothy, who is going to be carrying the gospel onward.

And he begins this letter with an affectionate reminder that he has been sent by Jesus to further the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus.

And by the time we get to 2 Timothy, Paul is reflective on his life. We get the impression of an older guy who knows that the end is coming, and he's reflective, he's a little more thoughtful, he's a little bit more personal, and his goal is to encourage

Timothy to carry on the work in the next generation. And even in these two short verses, we can see that Paul doesn't waste words.

Even his introductions are packed with the power of God's truth, and even the introductory portions that our minds might be tempted to skip over, you're going to see that there's a lot here that we would miss if we just skim over this to get to the heart of the matter.

So let's open up your Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to 2 Timothy, chapter 1, verses 1 and 2.

Again, 2 Timothy, chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. Probably take you longer to turn there than it will for me to read it.

But I want to remind you, like I do always, this is God's holy word. This is Him speaking to us, and a little bit later, after we sing some songs,

I'm going to be speaking and trying to make this make sense to us and what we ought to do with it. But this is where we hear from God, right here, 2

Timothy, chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, 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. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the way that you saw fit to reveal to Paul and encourage him in the inspiration of your

Spirit to sit down and write this letter to a young man under his charge, a young man that he was mentoring, for the benefit and the blessing of the church at large, that this apostle both invested in churches but also invested in individuals, invested in people.

Father, I just thank you that you have loved us and cared for us enough to bring us into community where the older men can teach the younger men and the older women can teach the younger women, and we learn from each other.

It's not just a one -way street of the older people trying to dump information on the younger people, but we learn and we gain so much by being around the energy, by being around those who are just casting off the vibes of enthusiasm and excitement.

I thank you that you are moving in this next generation. I just see it, and it's awesome to behold the way that a generation is being raised up to ask the questions, why?

But when they're convinced of the why, they go for it, and I'm excited about that, Father. It's encouraging to see.

Yeah, they don't respond exactly like my generation and older, but it's exciting to see the enthusiasm with which they adopt things and grasp them and carry them forward when they can be convinced of it.

And so, Father, I pray for your work in this next generation, just even as you worked through Paul to pass along the message to Timothy.

And I ask for your work in our hearts, wherever we're at in that. I recognize that there are people older than me, there are people my age, and people younger than me here in this room.

But all of us, all of us come to hope and grace and mercy through the promise of Jesus Christ.

And I pray that that would be in the forefront of our minds even now as we sing the promise of eternal life that has been granted us in Jesus, that lights our hearts up with enthusiasm to sing these songs.

Father, I pray that the worries and the cares and the concerns of this past week would fade into the background as we have an opportunity to reflect on the eternal purposes, and most importantly, the eternal hope that we have through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

And it's in his name that I pray. Amen. Go ahead and be seated and re -find your way to 2

Timothy chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. Reopen your device there or your Bibles or your scripture journals.

And we'll just kind of be introducing this here for a moment, and then we'll get into an outline later. But just kind of introducing this, when we read the second letter of the

Apostle Paul to Timothy, we are reading the final writing of the Apostle Paul, as I mentioned in my introduction.

And in this book, we're going to find a man's final ministry words that the

Spirit revealed to him. His ending words are an investment in a younger man, and his final letter encourages guarding the ministry of the word.

That's going to be thematic throughout 2 Timothy is guarding the word. It's likely that Paul first met Timothy when

Timothy was just little Timmy. I don't know what they called him in Greek, if they used that kind of prefix or not, or that like little, you know, kidify the word.

I've got an aunt that still calls me Donny. Don't try it. I don't like that. But any of you have an aunt like that, that calls you something that you don't like, like from your childhood?

A couple of you? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. But Paul traveled through Timmy's hometown of Lystra, which is in modern -day

Turkey, kind of in the south of modern -day Turkey, up against the Mediterranean Sea there. And he traveled there during all of his, really two of his missionary journeys, but the city of Lystra, and on that first missionary journey that Paul went on, he stopped by Lystra.

Paul's ministry in Timothy's hometown can be read in Acts chapter 14. So if you like kind of making these connections through these letters and through the book of Acts, the book of Acts gives us the history of that early church and those travels.

And then some of these letters go out to people from those places. And the ministry in that community could hardly seem like a success from a human standpoint.

Lystra was hard, hard ground to till. If you had been there with Paul, you would have left with a reasonable conclusion that ministry in the city of Lystra was a train wreck.

It was a train wreck. And I'm not exaggerating. I'll explain here in just a moment. I'll kind of give you a synopsis of chapter 14 of the book of Acts.

They roll into Lystra, and some of the features of the time there included immediately the healing of a man who was lame.

Now, how many of you are going, success so far? Like that's a good start to a ministry, a guy that's never walked, and in Jesus' name, you heal.

Miracles do not pre -walk. Does that sound good? So far, so good, right? But how many of you know that miracles do not produce faith?

Miracles don't produce faith. And so, the people of the city immediately jump to a logical conclusion, what they're thinking from their standpoint and their perspective.

This man has been lame among them for his entire life, and all of a sudden he's up walking. And they immediately say,

Paul must be the Greek god Hermes, and his traveling companion Barnabas must be the

Greek god Zeus. Now, the reason that it's kind of humorous, the reason they came to that conclusion, Hermes was the talker, and Zeus would come down and be the stoic one.

And so, we get a little view of what Paul was like based on their, well, this is Hermes, he's the talker, and Barnabas is probably standing back stoically letting

Paul take the lead, so they assume he's Zeus. So, they saw the miracle and they misinterpreted it.

How often is that the case for us, right? See the thing that God is doing and misunderstand the whole thing.

And so, the priests of Zeus and Hermes begin to begin a parade from their stables down into the city square with the goal of sacrificing.

They're pushing some oxen and whipping them down into the city so that they can make sacrifices because Zeus is here and Hermes is here and they're getting ready to make sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas.

How many of you know Paul and Barnabas did not want to be sacrificed to? This is not a ministry, this is going sideways quickly, but it even gets more off the rails in what happens next.

They're literally saying, this is Zeus and this is Hermes. In the convincing them that they are not deities, the

Jews begin to speak up in the crowd. There was a synagogue there and the Jews begin to stir up the crowds all the way to the point where eventually they go, they're not gods, they're imposters, and they begin to pelt

Paul with stones until they were confident he was dead and then they dragged his body out of the city.

That's how Paul's ministry goes in Lystra. Like a successful start, right? Like how many of you are going like, rah, rah, rah, sign me up for that mission?

Not at all, right? Like they drag him out and now I'm telling you this for your edification this morning because you need to understand where Timothy comes from.

He's from this town. He's from this city. Was Lystra a successful ministry church?

Was it successful? Well, I mean, you might go like, it doesn't sound super successful to my ears, right?

I mean, Paul was stoned and left for dead and by the way, to close the loop on that, he didn't die there.

That's not how he died. He goes on to write this letter and he actually, I believe, was miraculously either raised or healed because the people who believe come and stand around him and he gets up and dusts himself off and then it says he took a 15 -mile trip the next day.

Now, if everybody thinks you're dead one day by stones, like being crushed by stones, and then the next day you take a 15 -mile journey and then minister in that next town, how many of you know that God did something miraculous there?

Like there's a little something that happened for him to be able to take that trip the next day. But was it successful?

We're told that some people believed and became disciples, so on that stand alone, you might go, yeah, success, but the vast majority rejected

Paul and even tried to kill him in Lystra. And out of that context, we find that Timmy's grandmother and mother became followers of Jesus Christ.

We don't know the order or the details. Did they come to faith together? Did grandma come to faith and then passed it on to mom, then passed it on to Timothy?

The details are not explicitly clear, even though you can look down at verse 5 of the same chapter. We'll talk about that next week.

We don't know what the order was. But the detail of that matters very little because Timothy, a powerful minister for the gospel in the next generation, came out of what likely would have appeared to us to be a run -for -your -lives kind of ministry.

Like that's what's going on there in Lystra. But Paul was fortunate to get out of Lystra with his life, and in Acts 16, after several years have passed,

Paul comes back to Lystra. How many of you are never going back to Lystra? If they like pelt you with stones, drag your body out, and then you're like, you know what?

Let's go back there and just see what's going on. That's Paul. That's the apostle Paul. And so he goes back there and he comes to Lystra and he finds a small but flourishing community of Christians who introduce him to one of the fruits of his ministry, a young man maturing in Christ and eager for ministry named

Timothy. Isn't that awesome? I mean, I don't know that Paul did not have an opportunity to disciple them.

He didn't have an opportunity to walk with them. He didn't have an opportunity. And here's this young man eager for ministry, eager for the gospel, and ready and charged to go.

And it's all written in Acts 16 that Paul takes Timothy under his wing and he begins to travel with Paul as a minister of the gospel.

And right here we can just take a moment to remind ourselves that God brings successes out of our weaknesses.

Amen? I am so thankful that the resources of my life, and you can personalize this to you, but the resources of my life are not limited to what

I have in my bank account. My power is not limited to my muscles. My ability to win others is not limited to my ability to muster charisma or my rhetoric or my intellectual argumentation.

There is more to ministry than what you can see on the outside. Amen? There is more power available.

You cannot look in this room and determine who has the most spiritual power on the outside. It might be the smallest and frailest person in the room that has the greatest power in the kingdom of God, and we just don't know.

Because we cannot measure with the way that God measures. Because, church, we serve the living

God who raises up Timothys from Lystras, raises up Timothys from the most unlikely of places.

What we're tempted to consider a lost cause, God might very well be working for his own glorious fruit.

If I was Paul, I would have avoided Lystra like the plague. He returns and finds faith flourishing in a place where all he had experienced was violence and pagan worship.

Violence and pagan worship is his experience, and what he finds is a flourishing small church.

Our work in the faith is not our work in the faith.

It is God's, or it's not working at all. It's God's, or it's not working at all.

By the time we get to verse 1, Paul has been investing in Timothy for about 16 years as of the writing of 2

Timothy. It spans the years, if you're trying to look at a time frame, and some of you like history, some of you don't.

About 50 AD, and that's a precise, that's not like, kind of like, 50 sounds so round that you're kind of going like, oh, is he going like, maybe it was 30?

No, it's 50. About 50 AD to 66 AD, we have pretty good documentation.

History of this time frame is there's a lot of writings available in about 66 AD. 67

AD is under Nero's persecution, which most people think that that's when

Paul died. So he dies in 67 AD. This is likely written about 66

AD, give or take some months there before he's martyred.

Paul and Timothy traveled together. So after the account of chapter 16, we see

Timothy woven all throughout the ministry of Paul. He's mentioned in Romans as being together with Corinth at the writing of that.

Paul and Timothy traveled the Roman world together. Eventually Paul even trusted Timothy and entrusted him to go to Ephesus and set things right.

And we see that in 1 Timothy. So he initially traveled with Paul and then began to be sent out by Paul as his emissary to other places.

And so there's a big trusting relationship between Paul and Timothy. The second letter, this second letter demonstrates a softer and more personal

Paul than any of his other writings. If you want to see Paul's like the height of his like, like the most aggressive letter he writes is

Galatians. Oh, you wicked, foolish Galatians. Who's bewitched you? You know, he like levels the club at the

Galatians. And here this is the most personal and heartfelt and tame. Not that that's not heartfelt either, but this is the one that's kind of like a softer and gentler

Paul. By word usage and tenor, most scholars identify 2 Timothy as the most personal of all of the letters.

And I can't help but wonder if this isn't a case of an older man who knows that his life is drawing to an end, reflecting a bit more on relationships.

I believe that most men in this room can relate to the common course of life that I've identified for myself.

Dudes, I don't know if you think about this, some of the ladies might actually identify this to some degree as well. But I would say that guys run this kind of course in their life.

You can confirm it or not. Selfish at the start, driven in the middle, wishing we had been more relational by the end.

Go ahead and raise your hand, guys, if that's starting to kind of reflect a little bit of what you're experiencing, okay? Selfish at the start, driven in the middle, wishing

I had been more relational by the end. I heard something mentioned today in a podcast that I was listening to about virtue.

And there are virtues of resume and there are virtues of eulogy.

That's what the guy was identifying. Think about that. Virtues that you want spoken of on your resume and virtues that you want spoken at your funeral and the two don't overlap much.

But that driven in the middle, trying to build a resume, trying to get all of your ducks in a row and everything lined up, and where are the people on your resume?

They're not. They're in your eulogy. Do you know what I'm talking about? What are you investing in? What are you working toward?

What are you hoping to produce? Those of you that are in the middle, that driven middle,

I'm speaking to you. What are you shooting for in this thing? Paul's in prison.

He's got some time on his hands. He's in Rome. Historians and scholars who do better than me at piecing this history together in a timeline, they believe that Paul was imprisoned in Rome twice.

I see that. When people kind of identify that and draw out a timeline, then you can begin to see it as well in his writings.

But it's a little hard to piece together if all you have is the Bible, exactly what the timeline is. The Bible is not made to be a timeline, but when you supplement that with other historical documents, you get a lot more history of Paul's life.

He was imprisoned twice. How many of you have ever heard of his house arrest, that Paul was under house arrest? Any of you ever heard that?

That was a little bit of a gentler imprisonment that occurred in Rome. That was the first one.

This is not that. This one is in a dungeon. He is not likely under house arrest at this time, but instead, as the persecution is ramped up under the

Roman emperors, culminating in his death under the emperor Nero, tradition says that he was held at the famous Mamertine dungeon under the streets of Rome, a terrible place where people went to die or went to be executed.

And whether or not that is the case, what we do know for certain from the writing of 2 Timothy is that Paul is feeling lonely, he's feeling abandoned, and the writing is on the wall that he is going to be poured out as a drink offering for his

Lord. He's going to be martyred for his faith and he says as much. So some categories that we ought to look for and think about in this text as we think about this entire summer in 2

Timothy is three words that ought to ring in our ears as we're going through this week after week is personal, vital, and final.

Personal, vital, and final. Paul is writing to his friend. It's a very personal writing. There's heart in the verses.

There's heart in the way that he's trying to communicate, but also vital because he's writing,

Paul is writing because what he has to share is of vital importance for the future of the church, meaning even us.

It's inspired by the Holy Spirit, not just merely reading somebody else's mail going that was good for them, but it's vital information about passing the truth on generation to generation to generation.

And then Paul is writing what appears to understand as final. He had a strong sense that the end of the line was soon for him and so that he writes with that kind of sense and feeling and vibe of this is the end of the road for me, but it's not the end of the road for the church.

Right? And you can kind of understand how that would flavor the things that he says and flavor the way that we ought to think about what he's saying here in this text, in this letter.

So after a long introduction, let me provide some structure for the rest of the sermon. These points will go fast.

Paul's authority, Paul's mission, Paul's investment, and Paul's hope. Again, that's authority, mission, that's all in verse one, and then investment and Paul's hope in verse two.

Again, we have a short text, but all of that is packed in here and you're going to see it as I, hopefully you see it as I go here.

I'm not doing any damage to the text to get to these four main points in this small text, but first we see

Paul's authority. Every letter needed to say who was writing it and he begins with the word

Paul. I love, why in the world are the Greeks so much smarter than us?

In English, where do you find the name of the person who's writing to you? Why?

Like why? Why would we do that? You write a five -page letter to somebody and they've got to go to the end, oh, that's who's writing.

Now page forward and read it. Why would we do that? The Greeks did it differently and I think smarter and they would up front say who it is that's writing and Paul is the clear author.

We don't need to argue about that. I love it how scholars, I get to read commentaries and sometimes they just skip that part where they're arguing about who wrote it when it says

Paul. Okay, good enough for me. Let's move on, right? Like the revealed holy word of God says

Paul wrote it. I don't need to hear people with like all kinds of letters behind their names who think that they're smarter than the

Bible try to explain why Paul wrote it when it already says Paul wrote it. Paul's the author.

He identifies himself not just a random Paul but the one who was commissioned and sent out by Jesus Christ himself as an apostle.

And the word apostle had likely assumed, well had assumed a technical designation.

It's a title by the time that second Timothy was written. Now it generally means one who is sent out but by this time of writing it was a technical title of one in the church and a person who used this title for themselves was saying a couple of serious things about themselves.

So when somebody called themselves an apostle, if it was true of them, then these things were true as well. They had met

Jesus. They were witnesses to his resurrection. And third, they were commissioned by him, sent out intentionally by him to specifically testify to his life, death, and resurrection.

Now where am I getting that? Am I making this stuff up? Am I just kind of like, well, let me just tell you what an apostle is. I'll invent a definition.

Acts chapter 1 verses 21 through 22, they're actually going to replace an apostle.

So they say, here's what we've got to find. Here's the kind of guy and where he needs to be in life in order for him to replace

Judas. So how many of you know what I'm talking about? You remember that? You remember that account? And they say that we need to replace him with another who has been an eyewitness to the resurrection who can testify that they saw him raised.

We can't have an apostle that hasn't seen Jesus Christ in the flesh raised from the dead.

He needs to have been there with the ministry of Jesus. And so that's a requirement.

Now I'm saying this because I want to jump into a little bit of a side note here that's I think pretty important.

I want to point out that there's a renewed interest in utilizing the title of apostle in the church today.

How many of you are aware of that? Any of you aware of churches that would use the title apostle? Some of you.

I've met men who take that title up for themselves. As a matter of fact, probably about 12 to 13 years ago, somebody walked into my office.

It was a storefront. So this is way back at the start of the church. And they came in the storefront.

The door wasn't locked. I had a little office in there. And they walked in and they basically began to explain to me that they're an apostle and the

Lord had told them that they are to be over my church and wanted to know when they could start.

I'm not even joking. I can't make this stuff up. And I still see the guy around in the community today. And he was literally like, yeah, the

Lord has told me that he's given me the apostolic authority over southwest

Michigan. And I'm just coming around to say I'm your apostle and I want to take over.

Now you can remain the pastor, but I'm your apostle. I'm over you. That conversation went very brief.

It was not a long conversation. What are you talking about, dude? Nope, not going to happen. There are people who will claim that for themselves.

And I think you can imagine why. You can probably imagine some invented things about why somebody might want to call themselves an apostle today.

There's a growing movement in America that goes by the acronym NAR. It's the New Apostolic Reformation.

I am only telling you about it to inform you because you may encounter it. You may not encounter it and not even know it.

There are a couple of very large churches in the Kalamazoo area that are associated and affiliated with the

NAR. They won't advertise that. They won't tell you that. But they are big, big, big churches. And it tends to be a very big movement, a very upfront and flashy and glitzy kind of performance type of thing.

It has a strong charismatic basis. And it's a movement that claims apostolic renewal, that there are new apostles that God is raising up to claim that foundational authority.

You must listen to them. You must heed their words. And they speak on behalf of God. And it's kind of like,

I thought we already had God's Word. I didn't think we needed you to add to it or anything like that.

But my caution to all of us here is the reality that Scripture indicates a very unique ministry to the apostles.

It calls them the foundation of the church. And the church is built on the teachings of the prophets and apostles.

Where do you find that church? Where do you find the teaching of the prophets and the apostles? That is to be the foundation.

Anybody got it in their hand? Go ahead and raise it up. You got it? The Word of God. Yes, you have access to the prophets and the apostles.

The very teaching that God desired for us to know is all available there. They are the foundation.

Their teaching is authoritative through the inspiration of the Spirit. They were eyewitnesses to the resurrection.

You can trust them. And they were commissioned and sent out, which is the Greek meaning of apostle, sent by Jesus Christ Himself.

That's what it means to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. Sent out by Him. So even here in our text,

Paul is quick to identify that he became an apostle. How? By the will of God.

By the will of God. He didn't apply. He didn't submit a resume. He didn't fill out a gifts assessment test and come up with, oh look, my test results are apostle.

No, Jesus busted into his trip to Damascus. Arrest him some

Christians. And He broke in with a blinding light, appeared to him in the flesh as the risen

Lord, set Paul straight, saved his soul, and called him to witness to the resurrection as the apostle to the

Gentiles, to the non -Jews. Jesus appeared in the flesh to His apostles. But there's also another unique phenomenon surrounding the use of the title of apostle that informs me to a large degree as well and indicates how disrespectful it is that anyone would take up that mantle and that title for themselves today.

There's not a single man in the next generation, and they wrote. Church, some of you don't like reading.

Oh man, I tell you what, if you set out to read the early church fathers, I think you'd be hard -pressed to read everything that they produced in a lifetime.

There's a ton of writing from the next generation after the apostles. They're called the early church fathers, and they wrote a lot, and they used the word apostle a lot.

And guess how they used the word apostle? Only ever for that founding generation. Only for those twelve, and Paul, and a handful of others, they actually believe that there are about fifteen or sixteen apostles who carry that title, who actually observed the life of Christ.

He appeared to them and He sent them out. And aside from that, no one in the next generation, not a single soul called themselves an apostle.

No one took that title up for themselves. What does that tell you? It tells you that nobody in the early church thought, this is just a title that we ought to just throw around.

No, there was deep and great respect for that founding generation, and those founding guys who were called and sent out to start the church.

And even further, this is astonishing to me, even when the church grew to obnoxious levels of pomposity in the

Middle Ages. Talk about pompous. Talk about arrogance. The Middle Ages was a time where the church was full of itself, and leaders were scrambling for authority and trying to get literally like the church, and politics, and nations together so that they could reign over France and the church, right?

Like that kind of stuff is going on. And none of those popes called themselves apostles, not a single one.

No pope has been willing to title himself an apostle. Like that's a big deal.

No, it's a new thing. It's an arrogant thing. It's a disrespectful thing that anybody would call themselves an apostle.

If you're on a website and somebody declares themselves to be an apostle, if you're visiting a church and somebody says,

I'm an apostle, run. Run. Like there is a motive behind that.

It's a disrespectful thing. Like me buying myself a stethoscope and telling you I'm a doctor, would you come to me?

You better not. And unfortunately, in many contexts, it's a dangerous thing. How is it dangerous,

Don? It's just a title. Like some people get words mixed up and stuff, and it's dangerous because the higher the title

I can claim for myself, the greater the authority I can wield. You know what

I'm talking about? Beware of places where the leaders take up titles that are not theirs. Wow, that was a lot on that.

Paul was made an apostle through an encounter with and commission by our risen Lord. And Paul is indeed declaring this title over himself to clarify the heights of his credential.

God forbid that we would water that phrase down. Take it to its furthest extent. When Paul says he's an apostle, that is a big deal.

Listen up. Listen up. Listen to the foundation of the church, the prophets and the apostles.

I don't, by the way, I don't believe he identifies himself that way primarily. Again, remember this is a personal letter. Why does he write it here?

Like, did Timothy have confusion? Did Timothy need to be corrected? Was Timothy like, I kind of doubt whether Paul's an apostle or not.

So he's here defending himself. Not at all. But rather, I believe it was for the broader audience that he knew under the inspiration of God's word that this was going to be read.

It would have been immediately included to the church in Ephesus where Timothy was working when the letter was received and it would have been read by them.

But also, of course, it has in mind us who need to understand on what authority we ought to be reading somebody else's mail.

Why are you reading somebody else's mail? Why do we read this church? It's a private letter to Timothy, isn't it?

But it's a private letter written by an apostle under the inspiration of the

Holy Spirit. And I tell you what, if you've ever read 2 Timothy, it hits like an authoritative word for the church, does it not?

It tells us what to do. Our calling here is to trust in the authority the Bible has revealed through the prophets and the apostles.

If you have questions about the new apostolic reformation, one of my fundamental desires and passions and loves in this role as a pastor is spiritual direction.

If you find yourself getting hooked into conversations about this, you've encountered this on the webs, on the interwebs, there you go, internets or whatever you want to call them, you found it out on the webs.

That a generational thing? Yeah, it was. Wherever you might have encountered this, or if you're encountering this, set up a time to meet with me if you're curious about these things.

It's tricky how easily we can be roped into things that are not healthy. And even if you're offended by anything that I said, maybe it's been offensive to you that I would tackle something like this as directly as I have,

I'd love to talk with you about this. We also see in verse 1 Paul's mission, not just his authority as an apostle of Jesus Christ, but we see his mission.

And those two, of course, are connected. Paul saw his calling and his mission as one in accordance with and furthering the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus.

And that's a mouthful, but it's partly because the word translated according to that you can see in the

English Standard Version of the Bible. You'll see it there. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, according to the promise.

That's a tricky preposition in Greek to translate. But what is clear is that Paul is referring to the connection between his calling and his mission.

And his mission can be summarized as advancing. I think that's really what that word according to is, in accordance with the advancing of the promise that restored life is found only in Jesus, in accordance with and with a furthering mindset to the promise of life in Christ.

That's the good news, church. That's what he's getting at. The good news is that God promises to give eternal life to anyone whose life is attached to Jesus and his death and his resurrection.

Amen. Why was Paul sent by Jesus? It was to spread the promise of life to the

Gentiles. You got any Gentiles in the room? Most of us. Note that the promise is, the promise is life, abundant life, restored life, joyful life, full to overflowing life.

And some might even go so far as to call it eternal life.

The ministry of a lifetime here of Paul's life is summarized by such a small portion of a sentence called to be an apostle by the will of God, according to the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus.

And that's his ministry. He's an old man. He's getting ready to die. And he says, this is what

I've done. It serves here to remind a young man of a worthwhile target for a life. Paul, nearing the end of his life, is writing to a younger

Timothy and says, my calling has been to advance and spread the promise that life can be found only in Jesus.

When you don't know what to do, church, I think Paul would say it points in his life when he didn't quite know what to do.

He just shared the promise. Just share the promise when you don't know what to do. When your life gets all jammed up and you don't know where to turn, turn to the promise.

There hasn't been a stage of my life when I couldn't share the promise. There have been times when I didn't know where to work.

There have been times I didn't know which house to buy. There have been stages in my life that I was reeling from substantial loss.

There have been seasons of my life that I felt exhausted and confused or hurt or spiritually empty. And I think you can all relate.

But there hasn't been a single day or season since I encountered my Lord that I couldn't declare the promise of life in him.

Not a single day, church. When you don't know what to do, share the promise. When you don't know where to turn, share the promise.

When you don't know what to go or what your next step is, then just share the promise. How many of you know that that's an investment of good life?

That is a rewarding investment if you just make it your goal to share the promise of life in Jesus.

All of us need to hear this worthwhile calling because none of us are apostles, but all of us are under what is sometimes called the

Great Commission, and I like to call it the General Commission. It's meant to be run of the mill.

It's meant to be your normal day. It's meant to be kind of like the mundane, it's like the bread and butter of the

Christian life is share the gospel. That's the bread and butter. By calling it great, we imply that it's something for great people to do at great times and in great seasons.

It's not. Share the promise. Make your life a life of sharing the promise.

In a simple few words, Paul reminds Timothy and us of the central calling to spread the promise of life in Jesus Christ, the

Messiah, who saves his people to newness of life. Amen? Third, we see

Paul's investment. We can look at verse 2 to see Paul's investment, and you look at it and you kind of go like, wait, where is it?

Where's the investment? And it looks like a young man. Paul's investment here in this text looks like a young man.

He calls Timothy his beloved child. And because of what's coming in verse 5 next week, you can kind of see,

I'm reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and now

I am sure dwells in you as well. The Greek there, English implies an order.

The Greek is kind of like a little more wishy -washy on who believed first and who shared it, but it comes in the family, and the family is sharing the gospel within the family.

Seems unlikely that Paul directly shared the promise with Timothy, but instead he probably shared it with his grandmother, who shared it with his mother, who shared it with him.

But regardless of how that chain factors in, Paul is not stealing valor and implying a closer relationship or claiming a scalp and I led

Timothy to Christ when really his mom should get the credit or something like that. But Paul here, what he's doing is he's showing a tender place in his heart for Timothy by calling him beloved and by indicating that the chain came through Paul of sharing the gospel with him.

But while the Apostle Paul can certainly be said to have invested in churches, I want to point out that he invested in churches by investing in people.

He invested in churches by investing in people. I find it helpful to see that Paul wrote to churches and to individuals, remember?

Yeah, he wrote to Ephesus and Philippi and Colossae and Rome, but he also wrote to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, right?

He wrote to churches, but he wrote to people. I love the way that the New Testament encourages older men to invest in younger men, older women to train up younger women.

In church, we are made relational. I say this all the time. We are meant to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service.

And all of those happen in the gathering of God's people. We grow and are meant to grow and are made to grow in relationships.

Very few people on this planet will leave any institutional legacy to speak of, and very few of those institutional legacies will have any lasting value.

But all of us have an opportunity to invest in people who will last forever. If the Lord's return is even a few decades off, there will likely be a day when there is no more recast church, but there will never be a day when there is no

Stephanie Fuller. There will never be a day when there is no Paul Genio, or Ben Wainwright, or Erica Nepple, or Alex Frohbeter, or Elaine McLaughlin, and I could just go on with the names, right?

Just keep going until I get your name too. There will never be a day that you don't exist.

Investment in people is a good investment, amen? It's a good investment. And note that here at the end of his life, when he had met his share of Demases and John Marx and Alexanders, all men who are mentioned through his writings as people who hurt his heart,

Paul was not above the fray. He was hurt by people. Paul still has a love for people.

He hasn't grown cynical. He hasn't grown jaded. He hasn't given up on investing in people. Has he been burned?

Absolutely. He's been betrayed. He has received relational scars, and he can still say to Timmy, my beloved child, even after decades of hard ministry, what

I'm pointing out is even after decades of hard ministry, Paul's heart still works.

It still loves. It still invests. He has had reason to stop caring.

And how many of you would, maybe just, it's awkward, but how many of you have ever just had a temptation to give up on people?

Anybody? My hand's up. There's times, right? There's seasons.

And how many of you would recognize that it would not be a stretch for people to give up on you? Yeah? Have you given people cause to give up on you?

I know I have. But as a minister of the promise of life in Christ Jesus, Paul has chosen to not stop loving.

Do you see that? He's still here at the end, in this book, loving. A good chunk of Paul's investment was in people, and we also ought to consider in what ways we are investing in people as well.

Lastly, we see at the close of this introductory sentence, at the end of verse 2, to Timothy, my beloved child, grace, mercy, and peace from God the

Father and Christ Jesus, our Lord. While he refers to his mission as spreading a promise, we see here that his hope is found in belief and trust that the promise will be fulfilled.

The end of verse 2 is what scholars call a wish prayer. Paul is wishing for a fulfillment of certain things for Timothy, but by saying it, he is declaring that he really thinks these things are available and coming for us.

Can you imagine how unfair and unkind it would be to say to Timothy here in this letter, grace, mercy, and peace to you?

Hopefully, maybe, like someday, like maybe that could happen, but you better get to work, and you better get some peace, and you better get some mercy, and you better get some grace, because like,

I don't know how that's going to turn out. I hope that you have some. Is that what he's saying here?

No, not at all. He's not saying, I kind of, I wish these things for you, but, you know, we'll see how

God provides. Maybe he'll give you some grace if you're lucky. No, of course not.

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Jesus Christ, our Lord, is not some misplaced hope for some generalized good stuff in the writings of Paul.

Paul is pointing Timothy and all of us to the fulfillment of the promises of life in Christ.

What is the promise? That there is grace from the Father and the Son. The concept of grace, by the way, that word in the

New Testament, it's an overarching word that covers so many things, like our inability.

No, you can't work for grace. It incorporates our sin. You need grace. It incorporates the incarnation of Jesus, Him coming to live among us to provide us with grace, the perfect life of Jesus, Him living the life on our behalf that provides us grace, the sacrificial death of Jesus, the grace of His forgiving our sins, the resurrection, the grace of Him defeating all of our, really, the enemy of death and all of our sins.

All of those things are wrapped up in this one word, grace. His saving love and favor granted to people according to His will and His work and His love,

His steadfast love toward us. Paul's hope and confident trust is that grace is coming for Timothy. What an encouraging word for a mentor, and I would say and remind you, church, grace is coming for you if you belong to His Son, Jesus Christ.

That in itself should provide you a little bit of enthusiasm, a little bit of joy, a little bit of gladness going out into your week.

But also, that's not the end of the promise. There's a further promise. There's a promise of mercy coming from the Father and the Son. Mercy is a question of what we deserve, and there's a lot wrapped up in the word grace, but there's also a lot wrapped up in the word mercy, and that mercy has a gross side to it.

It has a dark side to it. Why? Because I would say that as much as the good of God stretching out toward us in grace is found in all of the things of grace, there is something really dark at the center of mercy, and it's hell.

Hell itself is wrapped up in this word mercy because the force of mercy is always found.

The power of mercy is always found in what is not given. What do we deserve, church?

Eternal torment in hell. And what is not given to us based on the mercy of God?

Hell. Paul understood that the default state of a hardened rebellion against the

Almighty God is that which results in eternal separation from Him. That's hell. And therefore, he uses the word mercy to rightly declare what

God has removed from all of us, all who embrace His promise of eternal life in Jesus, all who are trusting on that by faith.

In His mercy, God will indeed remove the horrendous punishment that we deserved. Amen? Paul reminds

Timothy and all of us that God extends mercy to all who trust in the promise of Jesus Christ. The last hope of Paul will be realized when

Christ returns to bring His people into His eternal kingdom. That's the promise, the final one, of peace in Christ Jesus.

Peace also incorporates a lot. There's a lot written under that word. Peace is the promise of a healed reality.

Earthquakes and tornadoes and trees falling and cancers and neurological disorders and accidents and betrayals and gunshot wounds and lice and broken down cars and Roman imprisonments are all in view as we contemplate the meaning of this peace that Paul wished.

For Timothy, a reversal of all of those terrible things. A rightly ordered life of shalom.

Shalom is the Hebrew word and what they would call the restoration of things to the way that God designed them.

The Greeks use the word arene. In English, we use the word peace. But it's the restoration of reality to that rightly ordered life of paradise.

How many of you are looking forward to that day? You're looking forward to it? There's a day coming, church. And what is your hope?

What is your hope? I can think of no better hope to issue than what Paul wishes for Timothy here.

Grace, mercy, and peace to you, Recast Church. If you're trusting in the promise of Jesus, then these are yours through the promise of eternal life from God the

Father through the promise that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. In just these two short verses,

Paul unpacks his authority, his mission, his investment, and his hope. And how about us, church? Where is your authority?

Where is your authority? Man, oh man, I hope that you are firmly rooted in the word given through the prophets and apostles that is the revelation of God.

Let this be your authority. Not in a man, not in an institution, not in someone who claims to be an apostle, certainly not in Google, okay?

Certainly not in a chat group or a YouTube channel or a political entity or a political party or a politician, certainly not in any of those things.

But let your authority be the word of God, amen? And what is your mission? What is your mission?

Sharing the promise. Sharing the promise in any way, shape, or form that you can. The promise that life is found only in Jesus Christ.

Where is your investment? Where are you sowing your life? Let me encourage you towards sowing whatever you're doing, sowing more in people, more in people.

Where is your hope? Grace, mercy, and peace that is pledged to be ours through Jesus Christ our

Lord. As we consider Paul's example, let's come to the tables during this next song to reflect on the central place of his sacrifice in the promise of life.

It's ironic that the promise of life comes through his death, of course, and resurrection.

But the promise is that God will forgive and restore anyone who asks Jesus Christ to forgive their sins and receive him as their

Lord and King. If Jesus is your Savior and Lord and you're at peace with others here, then

I encourage you to come to the tables this morning to take the cracker. We take that cracker to remember his body that was broken in our place.

This is a memorial thing, a remembrance thing, but I want you to remember that he told us to do this as spiritual nourishment for ourselves.

This is something that is a reminder, and it's so much more than just a reminder. It is something that we do together in the reflection of what it took to restore us and the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us.

Do this remembering the hope of the promise, grace, mercy, and peace to us from God the

Father at those tables. Let's go out from here trusting the authority of God's word, engaged in the mission of sharing the promise of life that can only be found in Jesus, and let's continue to invest in people.

All of that, all of that calling seasoned with the hope given to us by God the Father and Christ Jesus our

Lord. Recast grace, mercy, and peace is coming for us.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the hope that we're granted, and even just these two short verses that you would speak to us in this introductory comment from Paul to Timothy, recognizing just his mission, his calling, his purpose, the authority that you gave to him that grabs our attention, that pulls us up out of ourselves to give attention to your holy word and the prophets and the apostles.

And Father, the calling for us to place our hope firmly in what Christ has done for us, glorious promise, and the investment in others,

Father. I pray that all of this, that this message would result in a movement among us to love each other well, to invest in others well, that older men would take on and invest in younger men, and older women would take on and invest in younger women.

Father, it's exciting to see the seeds that you're sowing in this next generation. They are so different than my generation, so different than the generation before me.

But they are, I'm just encouraged, I see so much passion in them and a desire to honor you when it's made clear.

And so, Father, I pray that we would be all the more eager to show them why we believe. This is a generation asking, why do anything?

And when they're convinced of it, they go for it. So, Father, I pray that that would be a reality, that we wouldn't drop the ball in my generation to explain the why to the coming up generation.

But, Father, that we would be a church that is investing, investing, investing in the future. That we're not one of those churches that 20 years from now, man, somebody's got to come in and say, time to close the doors, because you're just ignoring young people.

But I pray that you would help us to be a people that now take seriously the call, like Paul to Timothy, us to the next generation.

We thank you for the promise that we have to share with them. The why in these tables.

Because Jesus Christ loved us and gave himself for us. And I ask this all in Jesus' name.